Moonbox

The Senate ones didn't. Those were the big ones that people really cared and talked about. I apologize. That was before I ever really started posting here and it still has nothing to do with anything past October 2008. If they're still paying off election debt from 7 months ago I'd say they're not in amazing shape, especially compared to the CPC. As for their policy and whatnot, at least we agree on that. What? He'll make a confidence motion over NOT making EI an even bigger welfare than it already is? I would love to see where you stand on that. As a huge critic of fiscal responsibility, it would be interesting to see where you stand on allowing Canadians to work for 9 out of 52 weeks a year and collect the better part of a year's salary. I'd assume you'd be against it seeing how critical you are of unneccessary spending, but then I also doubt you'd actually criticize your own religion party allegiances.

No, I think people on the right understood that it wasn't a really practical time to start reforming. As things turned out, like I said, there were hardly any appointments at all until after the last election and only then when the coalition threatened and Conservative poll numbers started to sink. And I said that Harper wouldn't call an election so soon because it would be political suicide. As it stands, May has come, there's been no election, the LPC is still broke and the Liberals are still mixed up over what they're supposed to be about. Their increase in the polls is more a matter of the CPC leading through a recession, which I said would happen, because no part does well during a run of economic crap. But shouldn't they be asking if people want a CPC that acts like Liberals or a Liberal Party making NDP-style promises. EI proposal?

Find me someone who voted based on that issue and who feels betrayed. That's kind of what you said but not exactly. You said he would call an election before the Liberals reorganized. The Liberals are still broke and still don't know what they're all about. They're still a mess, and there's been NO election. Why? Because everyone knew it would be political suicide to call another election deep in an early financial crisis. He abandoned them, sure, but I wonder how much the fact that the Liberals are close to getting their hands back on the bureaucracy. He didn't start making Senate appointments etc until December, when the coalition was threatening.

If your company laid you off, then you should have been working more than 360 hours previously anyways. If you're going to collect EI, it should be from long and gainful employment being lost. It's there to ensure that you can meet your obligations and not lose your house and car while you look for new work. By reducing the requirement to 360 hours, all you do is turn it into more expensive welfare, but one that's even easier to abuse. Well we should all quit work then so we don't over-burden the health care system right? - PS...I hope you're joking

I'm curious as to how Ignatieff reconciles wanting to reduce spending and be more responsible fiscally, and allowing people to work 9 weeks a year and mooch for the next 43.

I don't expect people to be totally informed. With that said, millions of voters go to the polls without even reading a newspaper on occasion. When popular opinion is successfully swayed by things like what sort of mustard you put on your hot dog, I question the intelligence of the average popular opinion holder. The reason politicians get away with so much crap is because nobody cares and nobody notices or understands. When you make important decisions and form strong convictions without any knowledge to base them on, that IS stupid. Nevermind the debate as to whether or not it's worth getting informed or worth voting at all. It's kind of like literring. Multiply that one vote/uninformed decision and multiply it by millions and it does become a problem. It's one of the biggest reasons the rich are so able to maintain the status quo and get away with everything they do. People are just too dumb/apathetic to care.

I think handing the Liberals their worst defeat in history would could as a success for him. Harper was defined to Canadians years ago by Liberal attack ads and his response to them. At this point nothing he can't reverse this. Nobody cares who the attacker is. You clearly didn't care when you were voting for Paul Martin years ago. As for the polls, they're not as easy to interpret as you think.

All we can safely say is that it certainly wasn't a priority of his in the minority government. Given how imminent his defeat is getting, I think he's trying to even out the senate and the bureaucracy as much as possible before the Libs get their hands on them again. It's VERY understandable. No. You said Harper was going to call another election before spring. Don't try to weasel your way out of it. There was no qualification that it had to be against Dion, explicit or implied. We discussed this at length. The reforms, ESPECIALLY Senate reforms, would have been EXTREMELY difficult to put forward. They bordered on Constitutional Reform. It would be impossible in a minority. Again though, it's not like you care. You don't even want the reforms. You just want to whine and b**** about anything and everything you can when it comes to Harper.

So it's ignorance. As far as I'm concerned, ignorance is a type of stupidity. The people you're talking about usually have no problems developing strong opinions about the politics in question, but with almost zero knowledge on the subject, what can you call them but stupid? Who votes without knowing or understanding the issues? Yes. I was about to say...lol

Bingo

Keepitsimple I think your praise of Harper is a little over zealous. He overspent on every budget and heavily too. This was while the economy was performing well. He's alienated the majority of Canadians to the point that until he steps down or gets defeated, we'll be be running expensive and ineffective minority governments. He's a pandering buffoon just like he promised he wouldn't be. The only reason I've stuck with him is that a Dion Liberal government wouldn't have fixed his mistakes and would have only made them worse. I pray for the return of Chretien-era fiscal policy. If that comes from a new CPC leader or from Ignatieff, I don't care. I'll take it either way. So far neither looks likely to me.

I think the banks went belly-up for over leveraging bad mortgages. I think AIG went belly-up for overextending with credit-default swaps. They are inter-related anyways so maybe I over-simplified. Sorry. I apologize for assuming you know nothing of economics and I was obviously wrong, but the value of the economy is nonetheless NOT going down 90%. We saw US household wealth drop like 18%, which is equal to 85+% of the value of the NYSE, and we are probably seeing a full year's worth of GDP wiped off the balance sheets, but the economy is not going to be worth 50% less in the end and especially not 80-90%. I think 1970's level inflation is a possibility over upcoming years but the doom and gloom scenario the opening post presented is just silly.

Totally agree. It's too bad there are so many people out there that do. This is why FOX news is actually taken seriously in the states. Sadly the only remedy is to make people smarter. I'll hold my breath for that one.

The attack ads served to drive Liberal numbers lower than ever last election. No, they didn't give the Tories a majority, but that's only because Harper totally goofed up in Quebec. What's particularly amusing about your analysis of things, however, is how the Chretien/Martin Liberals set the precedent for juvenile attack ads like the ones we're seeing lately. They framed Harper as an anti-abortion and anti-gay crusader with the secret agenda of wanting to make Canada a colony of the USA. He's never recovered from this. Of course, this was all fine and dandy when the Liberals were doing it. I'm not saying two wrongs make a right, but I am once again highlighting how completely screwed up your perception of things are and how selective your memory is when you post. It's hard to take you seriously anymore. It feels more like I'm arguing against your religion rather than politics with you.

Yes...let's play politics Kindergarten style... Please. Respect goes both ways, and it's earned. Stephen Harper lived through 2 elections through which the Liberals basically said he was an evil anti-abortion, anti-gay crusader with a 'secret agenda' to turn Canada in to George Bush land. If politicians were going to all agree to be perfectly honest, not smear each other and get along quietly, that would be one thing, but it's not politics. We agree on that at least.

HAHAHA. Jdobbin you're REALLY reaching low nowadays. Your posting gets less intelligent every day. Oh, and just because I know you love rules so much, please refer to the Rules and Guidelines regarding 3rd party insults. Thank you.

Once again Jdobbin is telling us what Stephen Harper thinks and what he's planning to do next. We're all still waiting for that Spring Election you were guaranteeing Harper was going to call BTW. I guess my point is that more often than not you have no idea what you're talking about and just say whatever you think you can score points on... It doesn't matter to you that reforms on patronage were not possible given the minority government. All that matters is that you've found something you think makes Harper look bad. Too bad it doesn't look nearly as bad when someone looks at it 'intelligently'.

The Tories did not have carte-blanche to do whatever they wanted. The opposition would not have allowed it despite how impotent Dion was. Without a majority, none of these things can happen, especially not Senate Reform. You can say what YOU think the CPC WOULD have done with a majority, but we'll never really know and your opinion is irrelevant and far from unbiased anyhow. The alternative for the Tories is to take a principled stance, handicap themselves by maintaining a Liberal-dominated Senate and bureaucracy, and then allow the Liberals to further stack them following imminent CPC defeat over the next months or year or so. Gee I wonder which is smarter to do. It's an unfulfilled promise and the people who were counting on it understand why it hasn't come to pass. The main critics on this issue are people like you who don't actually want the reforms but will try to score points on it as a broken promise anyways.

It's not like the Liberals are howling for reform though are they? For there to be any meaningful reform you need either a majority government or the support of the Opposition. You can call it a broken promise but this is just like the Senate appointments. It's stupid for the CPC NOT to appoint their own people in a Liberal stacked bureaucracy when the Liberals are 100% certain to continue their old ways and 100% certain to block any reform. What are you getting at here Jdobbin? It's okay for the Liberals to make patronage appointments but NOT for the CPC because they promised to change things, even though they're not being allowed to change things by the opposition??

Where did you 'hear' that from? The way the bankruptcy is going to work is that current shareholders will get basically nothing. They ran the company into bankruptcy. The current debtholders will get almost nothing. They lent money to a company headed for disaster. Under the bankruptcy agreements being organized, apparently the government and the UAW will end up owning 89% of the company. The current shareholders ALL combined will end up with a 1% stake in the company, with the remaining 10% owned by the debt holders. Given the new stakeholders in the organization, I think it's safe to safe they won't be moving to Mexico.

Wow way to keep the discussion mature Radsickle. He's not manipulating anything. That Ignatieff might be out of touch with Canada is a genuine question MILLIONS are wondering right now. The CBC's ombudsman himself admitted to big problems with biases in its journalism within the last 8 months. The Star is FAR, FAR, FAR more Liberal leading than even the CBC. Out of ALL the large newspapers in the election last year, the STAR was the ONLY one that endorsed the Liberals, and even tried to make a case for Dion as a strong leader.... . I think you're WIDELY mistaking the amount of respect the Star has. It's WIDELY acknowledged by everyone as the most pro-Liberal newspaper in Canada. You can think what you want about its journalistic integrity but it's sorely lacking in balance. The National Post's bias towards the CPC can't even compare to the Star's love affair with the LPC. Headlines like, "Flahery wages VENDETTA against Ontario" are examples of the sensationalist language the Star uses to promote the Liberal cause. That's not journalistic integrity. That's Fox News style.

Smaller economies and militaries than ours can and are operating more than one type of aircraft. The biggest concern is how many F-18's we can even field at the best of times in the first place. They're getting so old Canada can barely keep 40 of them combat ready in the first place and if we ever need to send them abroad the situation looks even worse.

Rising interest rates don't generally all of the sudden raise loan/mortgage payments by themselves. The interest rates have to go so high that the monthly payments no longer even cover the interest, and that's only on variable products. Everyone is going for fixed rates right now. On top of that the banks have generally raised the spreads on their lending since last summer in anticipation of the low interest rates today being temporary (which they most certainly are). Unless prime goes up to like 10+% all of the sudden it's not going to be nearly as bad as you say it is. Remember you said that in 3-4 years and laugh at yourself then. It was a different sort of crash, you're right. Back then you had extremely high oil prices holding the economy back and this time we have the opposite. No kidding you can sustain the economy with national borrowing. It's just going to mean that the taxes for the rich in the USA are going to have to go up to fix the disaster they created. That doesn't spell disaster. It's long overdue anyways. It was still panic. Obviously the US government wasn't going to let the entire banking system fail. They backstopped the crisis and a LOT of savvy investors have made a fortune in the last few months KNOWING the markets were not "Dead as we know it". There will be inflationary pressure caused by money printing but that's going to be significantly curbed in the near term because a lot of the money being printed is ending hoarded by the banks who are trying/being forced to re-capitalize themselves. Printing money only causes inflation if the money is flowing in and out of consumer's hands. I'm going to stop taking you seriously right there. You know the expression "a little bit of knowledge is dangerous thing."? The banks' leveraging ratios do NOT do NOT do NOT reflect the value of the US economy as a whole. I'm not going to explain why. I'll let you ponder on that. I don't have the time to teach pre-101 level economics, sorry.

but the F/A-18 E/F is almost a completely different plane than the f-18. They share the same name and look similar, but they're totally different airframes powered by totally different engines and have vastly different capabilities. Even so you are right. They're still using the F-18's and they're not useless but they're certainly showing they're age and it's a pretty big stretch to be counting on them as a primary fighter until 2017. At this point it's hardly worth replacing them until the F-35 comes out but it leaves us with a 40 year old fighter as our sole and primary air asset. In hindsight it probably won't matter but it would be nice if we weren't perpetually leaving ourselves with our pants down.

The USA has been retiring their f-18 squadrons en masse over the last decade as far as I can recall. That kind of gives us a picture of their modern day effectiveness.