Moonbox

and on that I'll agree. and also on What my whole post was about, if you read the title again, is all the people crying foul play as if Harper is doing something terribly evil and crooked. Instead, what he's basically doing is calling Dion's weak-kneed threats as the bluffs they are while at the same time making him publicly declare he won't support Harper's government and cooperate. If Dion has publicly stated he won't support the government, why wait for the inevitable and seemingly near future non-confidence vote?? Unless, of course, you're a Liberal and you're waiting for the polls to improve.

Yes. I know. That's not what's been happening. There's been no consensus. By your very words you'd supported my point. The rest of parliament DID NOT support him. They voted against or abstained. Abstaining to legislation that your party can't support because you're afraid of an election is not cooperation. That's called waiting for the polls to improve. That's a sham parliament. What you just said is nonsense. Dictate? Godwin's law anyone? You don't dictate in an electoral democracy. If he was to 'dictate' anything crazy like the doom mongers say he's trying to, his party would vote non confidence against him. Any elected government with a majority basically dictates legislation. That's providing the Senate and the whole party goes along with it. Your just using big scary words.

Fair enough I can keep that in mind. With that being said, my name calling was a direct reference to the people who are carrying on about the fixed election date 'law' being broken as per the title of my post. As for the bill, you're right, . There's no specific escape clause there and you're also right in that this seems like a pretty vague and leaky piece of legislation to me. So Harper is guilty of passing a law that holds no water. Okay. So maybe that's what people should complaining about instead of calling him a crook. and what you're suggesting is that Harper, instead of calling an election when it's favourable for him, should wait instead for Dion to do otherwise. The fixed election date is a moot point when your opposition has declared they're not willing to cooperate and are threatening to topple the government. Either that's a misquote or I typoed. Over half of parliament is voting against him or abstaining, meaning he is passing legislation without the support of over half the House. The NDP and Bloc vote against him. The Liberals silently protest by abstaining. What this basically means is that while they are unwilling to support Tory legislation, they are just waiting for the appropriate time when the polls favor them instead of Harper to dissolve parliament. Parliament is functioning until the polls favor the Liberals. I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect Harper to handicap himself by allowing the opposition, who declared they will not cooperate with Harper, to wait until the polls look better for them to initiate what they themselves have been implying is a foregone conclusion.

No. He's saying that they've declared they're unwilling to cooperate moving on. Dion has admitted as such. A minority government, without the cooperation of the opposition, the government can't function. Am I wrong?

They've passed bills, sure, but lately they've been doing so without the support of parliament. Nobody is talking about what Harper did last year. They're talking about now and lately. Half the House is openly opposed to him. They've made it CLEAR they're not willing to support him moving on, so to continue as we are is to govern with Dion watching the polls with his finger on the election button waiting for an opportune time to strike. Why would ANYBODY do that????

Guyser you didn't answer any of my questions. My opening post was a response to everything you said. You ignored the fact that Dion has been threatening to bring down the government, but hasn't yet. Why? Because he's just waiting for a time that suits HIM. Harper met with him, they discussed the CPC agenda, Dion was quoted by the media as saying there is no common ground whatsoever and never has been. Let me put it clearly. The Bloc and NDP consistently vote against him. The Liberals abstain. When Harper passes legislation, less than half the House is voting for it. That clearly shows he doesn't have the confidence of the House. That is not a functioning parliament. Parliament is a sham right now and the reason for that is that the Liberals are afraid to admit they don't have the support of Canada right now.

Alright answer me this. If you're arguing with someone, and they're carrying on and complaining and complaining but they refuse to look at the issue reasonably and respond to any argument presented to them, what would you call them? Cry baby was the term that came to mind for me. When they are UNABLE to argue rationally, I call them simpleton. Pick your poison. Mangina, on the other hand, is teenage potty language and lost any funny factor it might have had about 10 years ago. As to your other response, at least you argued the fact. Is the fixed election date law meaningless? Maybe it is at is stands. Do you have a copy of the bill in front of you? No? Me neither. I can't imagine Harper would have passed the bill if it was 100% pointless. Maybe it needs to be revised? If Harper had a majority and he called a snap election, I'd be on your side right now and calling him liar myself. In a minority, I see no wrong done, especially considering how much Dion has been going on about how he disagrees with everything Harper says and does in Parliament. Please any of you, go back to my original post, read it, and refute my claim that parliament isn't functioning when over half the House of Commons is voting or abstaining. I'd like to see you try, but I doubt any of you will. I expect more of the same.

If Harper comes back with a minority his government should function fine and no party would dare defeat him within the next few years. A renewed minority provides him with the renewed confidence of Canadians and any party that tried to defeat him over anything but the most controversial issues would be to blame for any other money wasted. A renewed minority is fine for Harper because basically it says to the opposition, "See! Canadians want me here. Quit yer bitchin!"

and my point is proven. Again, when asked to provide a rationale for your opinions, you couldn't or refused to. The best you guys could come up with was misquoting me and lobbing teenage insults at me that you learned from TV/Internet. You couldn't even manage insulting me properly. You quoted me as calling you a cry baby and simpleton for being unwilling/unable to provide a counter argument and then you responded I had sand in my mangina. That qualifies, I believe, for the "NO U!" department. I asked you a number of questions. You refused to answer them. I asked you to provide counter-arguments. You replied like a child with direct personal insults. Again, all you did was repeat yourself and fling nonsense at me. That's you look stupid in every discussion and that's why the Liberals will fail miserably in this election. When a party campaigns towards the lowest common denominator, the smart people end up voting against it.

Hey, I'm not going to argue with you about the intelligence of going there in the first place. I'm arguing as to the intelligence of a Liberal government sending troops there in the first place but then wanting to bring them back with the country worse off than it was before they came. The Americans invaded Afghanistan unilaterally. NATO was then called in for a peace effort. Is it going incredibly well? Not amazingly. Is there progress? Sure. You're right in that Afghanistan is a mess of a country. It's culture and people are about as different as they can be to us. With that being said, it also provides the world with the vast majority of illegal opium. It was a whole country devoted basically to illegal drug production for consumption around the world. It was run by murderous warlords who governed outside of local or international law and was a proven training ground for extremist fighters. Basically it needed to be cleaned up regardless. It was a whole country devoted to destabilizing the rest of the world. A NATO peace mission is quite a bit different from British Imperialism. Britain's policy was 'make the world England'. They imposed their own laws, their own culture and their own taxes on natives throughout the world and they never had any intention to leave. A NATO peace mission is there to make sure that keeps things stable while a non-dangerous autonomous government repairs the country and asserts itself. Afghanistan is unique in that it has always been broken so NATO is basically starting from scratch.

Yeah he said, "Unless we're defeated or prevented from governing." The opposition has already declared they intend to bring the government down. What's the difference between an opposition that DOES prevent him from governing and one that WILL prevent him from governing when the polls suit them best? It doesn't matter what he didn't describe. Since he didn't describe anything, it really has no place in this discussion does it? As for your last comment, please, counter away. The whole theme of my posts lately have been that Liberal cry babies do NOT usually try to counter arguments presented to them. Instead, they gloss over what was said and respond with quotes like yours that really just repeat the same theme over and over. Harper is evil. Harper is a liar. Harper is a baby snatcher and a blood sucking oil baron blah blah blah. If you're going to complain about something, you should at least be able to look at it rationally and you should be able to present me with a counter argument. Otherwise, yes, you are a cry baby and you are a simpleton. You and people like you are all bleating, "Harper lied! Harper cheated!" My post explained point by point how he came to that decision and how any REASONABLE person would have done the same. Your response was basically, "HARPER LIED HARPER CHEATED." Repetition should not be confused with reasoning.

We can all see that in almost every thread on this board right now, there are people whining and carrying on about how Harper apparently broke his own law. In this thread I'm just going to very simply break down how his law wasn't broken and how it was perfectly reasonable for an election to be called. I'll go ahead and make the assumption first that everyone knows what the escape clause is for the legislation he passed, namely if parliament isn't 'functioning' it can dissolved without infringing on this law. Now that we know that parliament not functioning is a pre-requisite to dissolving parliament, let's take that one step further: Dion and the rest of the opposition have been threatening to vote non-confidence in the Harper government for many months now. Duceppe and Layton have at least been voting against Haper, while Dion has been abstaining with most of the liberal MP's from voting at all. The abstension can really only be taken one way. The liberals are making a show of things with a sort of silent protest. It's their way of saying, "We don't like what you're doing and disagree with it but we are afraid of losing another election right now." So now here we are, with over half the House of Commons either voting against or abstaining from every piece of legislature passed. How is this a functioning parliament?? It's simply not. Over half the elected representatives are openly opposed to the current Prime Minister and the only reason an election HASN'T been called yet is because the Liberal opposition is guilty of the exact same thing they're accusing the Harper government of: Opportunism. The only reason the Liberals HAVEN'T voted against Harper yet is because they see where they are in the polls and they're waiting for a good time for THEM to pick and choose the time of the election. If that time didn't come (probably because of Dion bumbling) before the fixed election date, that's only because they didn't improve in the polls and NOT because they had confidence in the government or were happy letting it carry out its mandate. For the simpleton, what Liberal cry babies are really saying is: "Although the majority of parliament is openly opposed to the CPC (which really means it's not functioning), Stephen Harper should make sure that the House of Commons remains muddied under the shadow of a possible election until the fixed election date. Stephen Harper should, because it would be PERFECTLY reasonable, make sure that the next election is held at a time specific to Dion's choosing and at Dion's advantage. Stephen Harper should ignore the fact that Dion has made it crystal clear he does not intend to cooperate or compromise (the very definition of 'functioning' in a minority government), and he should ignore the advantage he has over the Liberals right now. Obviously that would be 'fair' and that's what the Liberals would do right???"

Yeah first off the Taliban was and is largely supported by northern Pakistanis. Calling Afghanistan a sovereign country in the sense of Canada, Greece or Cuba is fallacious at best. It was a territory occupied by warring tribes prior to the USSR occupying it and the Taliban after it was hardly a legitimate government. The country's primary source of income is opium and the whole place was quite factually a nest of drug smugglers, political and religious extremists and murderous warlords. NATO's mandate was to stabilize the country, support the creation of a working government capable of defending itself and the interests of Afghans and to put an end to the Taliban there. The Taliban were not there to govern Afghanistan. They were there to make money and exploit.

The majority of Canadians don't know anything about the situation. This is not the first place I've tried to explain this. You cannot overthrow a hostile foreign government, occupy the country and fight off an insurgency for years in a mission to stabilize the region, and then just leave before you've finished the job. Why? Because the insurgency you've been fighting will end up taking control of the government. You'd be left with a country controlled by the murderers and crooks you'd been fighting for the last several years and you'd be abandoning the people living there that actually had hoped to turn the country around. What's worse is that these same murderers and crooks hold grudges and likely won't leave you alone even after you leave. Make no mistake. Afghanistan is not Iraq. A democratic government does not have to do what the majority wants it to, nor should it. The majority of Canadians don't know the first thing about Canadian politics and believe what they want to belive.

You're basically saying that past liberal transgressions don't matter because the main offenders are gone now. Yet then you bring up Bernier. Umm....? The Cadman affair was balogna cooked up by the Liberal government. Cadman himself said he wasn't bribed. That's really all there should be to it. The fixed election date is also irrelevant, because Harper had a minority and Dion had indicated he was going to bring the government down at some point anyways. What you're saying is that Harper, knowing that his opponent did not intend to allow him to continue to the fixed election date, should wait for a time of Dion's choosing that would be best for the Liberals for the next election to be held. I think you MIGHT be a little biased if you think anyone reasonable would be expected to do that. He broke no law. Your supposed 'antics' and 'dirty tricks' are nothing but rhetoric and have no relevance to this discussion, as you really provided no explanation. Your declaration of cheating is baseless as well. So far all we have are allegations and the Liberals right now are flinging those in every direction. Until it's determined by third party authorities to be 'proven' that's all they are. What the Liberals, and people like you, fail to do at every turn, is reason out your opinions and actions. You're quite willing to bleat like sheep to your shephard's (the Liberal party and its leaders) tune, but asked to support anything you're saying and most of the time we get little more than angry key-board pounding saying, "I THINK the conservative are crooked" and "Harper is George Bush in disguise."

Personally I don't think he cares either way. I think he was trying to send a message with his suit as in, "You can't just say whatever you want without consequence." Yes, it's politics, but the Liberals should know better than to accuse someone of criminal activity with no evidence. The federal Liberals for the last couple of years have shown (at least in my opinion) to be the biggest bumblers in recent memory. Their leader is incompetent and disliked, the whole party knows it, and the icing on the cake is that in an economic downturn they come up with a carbon tax plan that WILL hurt them in this election.

Quick Greenthumb! Put your tinfoil hat back on! The evil conservatives (and Darth Vader) have satellites watching you right now!!!

Not enough to really make a difference. Our military budget needed increases unless we wanted our soldiers driving Honda Civics rather than APCs.

Does anyone remember in the 1970's how we were supposedly headed towards a new Ice Age? Remember all the scientists who were backing that theory up? I don't have an opinion on whether or not global warming is happening and whether or not it's caused by man. What I do know, however, is that both sides have come up with nothing but highly disputable evidence. Anyone who says, "Global Warming is happening and there can be no doubt about it." is full of shit. Anyone who says the opposite is also full of shit. We don't know yet and we have no proof yet.

I voted against it because I'd prefer not to further centralize Ontario policy on Toronto and the GTA. Anyone with a brain outside of the GTA voted against it, and thankfully nobody in the GTA understood it either.

It's the only good way to do federalism. Without the 'riding' system you end up with up with large urban areas dominating the political scene to the detriment of everwhere else. These other areas end up feeling completely sidelined with all of their issues being ignored while urban areas like the GTA get all of the funding and attention. It's terrible for federalism and places like the prairies would have nothing to do with a Canada under that system.

Personally I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect that they would be allowed. Where do you draw the line on when they should be allowed to participate? I think they've drawn it in the right place.

Again, it's the same old crap people have been trying to scare everyone with for years. Think it through. Canadians don't....want....anything to do with that sort of crap. We live in a democracy. If Harper were to mess with Iran, abortion laws, gay rights or anything of the sort he'd be left with a constituency calling for his head. He's able to see the issue through from point A to point B. If he WERE to try and pass that sort of legislation in majority, he and his party would never be re-elected. Providing his cabinet would go along with it (they wouldn't) and provided the Senate would allow it (they wouldn't) at the very worst he'd pass legislation that would be immediately repealed when his party is defeated at the next election. So what you're basically saying is that Harper is going to commit political suicide and his whole party is going to fall on their swords with him so that he can implement incredibly unpopular policy for maybe 3-4 years and have it all reversed thereafter? He'd accomplish nothing in the end. Please, next time you're going to come up with that sort of balogna, think it through. A---->B. Somehow you're getting the rest of the alphabet mixed in there on your way. Either that or you're just not thinking at all.

I'd have to go along with you on that. I'd bet money on it.

This whole thread is fascinating...in the sense that it's interesting to wait and see what sort of wacky theories/opinions people come up with.