Moonbox

People are hugely mistaken on a few very important things about the Obama campaign. Personally I would have voted for him. With that said only a complete buffoon could have lost the election against the Republicans after Bush. Obama didn't have to sling mud. Republicans had already dived head first into the mud and were covered in it of their own accord. All Obama had to do is say, "We're not going to be like THEM" and he was a shoe-in. It certainly helped that he was charismatic and opposed the war in Iraq. All Obama had to do in the election was stand back, watch Sarah Palin self-destruct on television and make sure he didn't land himself in scandal.

Providing a synopsis might help. I'm not clicking it because I don't want to get Rickrolled.

Oh my god don't make me laugh any further. I'll bust a gut. On one hand you have a young (relatively) black American, a demographic which has NEVER handled the position of president. On the other hand you have an old fart of an ango-saxon university prof who lived the majority of his life outside of Canada. On the one hand you have a president-elect with COMPLETELY different position on virtually EVERYTHING than the demon of George Bush, and on the Canadian side you have a Liberal Leader with virtually identical views on war, economics and international policy as the current prime minister. A comparison of Obama to Ignatieff is about as apt as a comparison between Hilary Duff and Donald Trump. This is why the Liberals have such a problem creating buzz and excitement for their party. If people like you are making comparisons like this, you just reinforce the joke the party has become. I'll agree that he's an intelligent shift to the right from Dion at least. It's the CPC's own fault for letting retarded fundamental christians into the leadership. You're also right in that it'll probably cost them votes and possibly an election. or that he endorses torture in interrogation? Or did...until someone made a big deal over him being quoted as saying such??? Ignatieff is as right as they come. He's as much American as he is Canadian and an American Democrat makes a CPC right winger look like a communist. Personally, I'm not worried. I'm all for lower government spending and lower taxes.

I have no idea what DND or DFO are. I feel so stupid.

Alright madmax I'll meet your juvenile emoticons with simple logic. 1. A tax cut on consumer spending can ONLY help to increase consumer spending. Do you agree or disagree? 2. Government spending pumps money into the economy. Do you agree or disagree? 3. Harper indicated over a year ago that the economy might face a slow down? Agree or disagree? It's REALLY amusing watching you and others froth at the mouth over Harper spending over the last year or so and paint Ignatieff or Layton or whoever as a beacon of hope as they promise similar deficits and spending moving forward. Apparently increased spending leading up to the recession = BAD Increased spending AFTER the fact = GOOD? Could you please explain how?

Talking about Canadian and American militaries competing for resources is idiotic to say the least. If we get oil reserves mapped and exploited the Americans won't touch them. It's a wash to the Americans if Canada manages to assert some of its claims to the Arctic. They already have cheap access to all of our country's resources. Can you imagine: "Oh NO Barack! Our longest standing ally and trade partner has started building oil rigs and fisheries in the Arctic! Now we're going to have to import these resources duty-free from Canadian companies that are already partially owned by our own corporations!" The Americans will make and exploit claims but but they are certainly not going to assert their will over us and deny claims we take advantage of. Our economies are far to intertwined already to bother. The last thing we are going to see are American destroyers shutting Canadian oil rigs down.

The Conservatives right now are about as centre as you can get. The Liberals shifted drastically left under Dion/Rae leadership and suffered for it. If Iggy can bring them back to the centre-right they may indeed have a chance. MOST Canadians vote right of centre, believe it or not. The question is how far right will they go and how many will stop voting Liberal the further left they go.

The Americans crossed a line we haven't even neared yet. Our federal government's finances are a COMPLETELY different picture from that of the US. Don't even compare them. No we haven't. We've seen tax cuts with increased spending combined with a collapsing economy. The first two work to diminish the effects of the last. Your argument here shows a FUNDAMENTAL lack of logical thought. Either you don't understand the economy, or you're just blowing hot air. Either way, it makes it hard to take you seriously. We both know that expenditures have risen and that taxes have been reduced. That's fine. We get it. Your math, however, and the implications you make from it, again prevent anyone from being able to take you seriously. Revenue is down for two reasons. One is obviously the 2% GST reduction. The second is the fact that corporate revenue and personal income is DRASTICALLY down across the board because of a massive recession. I agree that the spending was unecessary. I am VERY pleased that taxes were reduced, however, because in all likelihood that has pre-emptively sheltered us somewhat from the effects of the recession. If you were to rule out the GST cuts and the spending increases, we would STILL be running a deficit. What's particularly amusing to me, however, with all you economic 'geniuses' is how you will condemn 2008 spending and the 2009 proposed deficit but all the other parties out there also promised massive stimulus and deficits. ANY stimulus spending will take many months to a year to even have an impact on the economy. Harper spending in late 2007 and through 2008 IS being felt already and this is savings jobs and keeping people working RIGHT NOW rather than in 6-12 months. Fancy that. Harper warned of a slowing economy in 2007. Mayhaps he was making plans to buffer the effects? Harper warns of slowing economy - Dec 2007

I really don't think this is something to worry about at all. It's common knowledge how Harper's government works. I don't see how this is going to do ANYTHING but make Ignatieff look even more like Harper than he already does. We've got two very pro-American leaders who have demonstrated VERY similar views on a good number of things and now one of these leaders is even hiring the other's staff.

It's 100% emotion based. Take away the public opinion for Bush and Iraq and you have this: -Americans enlisting in the ARMY (which serves) and receiving pay, benefits, education etc in return for enlisting. -The same Americans then refusing to do what they signed up to do in the first place. These soldiers are breaking their end of the contract. What is their moral opposition to war in Iraq? They don't believe in the war? They're not really being ordered to murder civilians or anything like that. There's ALWAYS civilian casualties in war and it pretty much can't be avoided. I would understand if American soldiers were being ordered to murder families and babies and whatnot, but their whole argument for going AWOL is extremely extremely weak. You know what you're signing up for when you enlist in the Army. Past enlistees had the fortune of NOT having a conflict to serve in. Now there's a conflict. You either do what you signed up for, got paid for and promised to do or you face the consequences.

It's going to be a public opinion battle. Personally I'd rather not have people who shoot our allies running the streets of Canada. If he's willing to fight with the Taliban, he's willing to finance them as well. It's clear where this dude's loyalties lie and it's NOT with Canada. He has no business here at all.

There is a saying that is surprisingly apt when you talk about very wealthy families. The way it normally works is thus: The first generation works hard and gets rich The second generation enjoys that money The third generation loses it Yes, riches beget riches, but in VERY FEW cases is that a perpetual thing. Maybe the top 1% of society or less end up permanently wealthy as the generations pass because you basically end up with a critical mass of wealth. Once you have billions and billions, you almost have to TRY to lose it. Most wealthy families, however, unless fabulously so, have the wealth dwindle via inheritances and spoiled children/grandchildren. There are exceptions obviously, but we ALL know that Bill Gates' kids are not going to be geniuses like their dad. They'll live mediocre, albeit wealthy, lives and they'll likely never do anything remarkable. Eventually that money runs out until the next genius is born.

I'm inclined to agree with everything you said there.

Well said. Exactly how I see things. With no export market for the Arrow, nothing was going to keep it afloat.

A lot of people had their heads in their asses. The project was ill-conceived, regardless of how well designed it was. That's my main problem with all the Arrow worshipers out there. It was a nice shiny piece of useless aircraft that history has proven to be have been obsolete on the drawing board. Yes, it killed our military aerospace industry and maybe there was a better way of doing it. With that said, the Arrow project needed to be killed. When people start talking about how we have nothing but a resource economy, I can come up with dozens of big companies manufacturing and researching interesting things. Bombardier is still making planes and is basically on top of rail car transportation right now. RIM is a world leader in communication technology. Ottawa and KW are giant hubs of high tech industry and research. We STILL have the know-how and capability to build and design ANYTHING here in Canada. The question is do we have the economies of scale and government support to do so? Not at all and no Canadian government has stepped forward to offer it.

I was responding to Wild Bill's claim that the company built the world's first airliner and was forced to shelve the project by the Canadian government. There was nothing wrong with the PLANE. It was a good plane for what it was intended to do. The problem with concept and implementation was the ROLE the plane was intended to do. You could design a Mach 2.5 bicycle and it could have the best technology in the world put into it. It would be remarkable but it would also be useless. The Arrow project died for the same reason soldiers don't carry shields into battle anymore. Soldiers are worried about bullets and shrapnel now, not getting their arms chopped by a zweihander. Similarly, modern militaries count ICBM's as the biggest trans-continental threat, not fleets of prohibitively expensive bombers flying across the ocean to drop bombs. My beef with the Arrow project was how BAD an idea it was to design THAT PARTICULAR type of plane in the first place. I'll agree it wasn't the design team's fault. They did a good job. The blame lies on whoever specified WHAT was to be built. That wasn't Dief.

I still think Harper should have let the coalition take over. History shows that governments leading during a recession generally don't fare well in the next election. Harper should have stepped aside, let the Liberals take the blame for massive deficits, and then come back like a saviour. This is what the Liberals should and probably will do. I don't understand why anyone would want to be in charge right now.

How does it not fix the facts? If someone wanted the Arrow they could have kept the company in business by putting deposits down for orders! That's how these sorts of things work! You like to argue by cold hard facts and the ones we have are that the company went out of business. Nobody put money up to keep the business running in anticipation for buying the Arrow. The US military did not develop a similar interceptor of its own and has not since. This is simple reality. Okay....so you have a company successfully building and selling airliners and they're forced to discontinue production for an ill-conceived and poorly implemented interceptor by the previous Liberal government. How is Dief responsible for that? It would have been the same as propping up the auto industry...it would have cost the same amount of money but would have saved a WAY smaller industry and provided a useless final product or (should they have started again from scratch on a new plane) an unknown product with no guarantee of success.

Jerry I understand what you're saying. It's a nice story to know Canada had the capability to develop its own defence systems. The problem was that it was terribly implemented. Yes, we ended up with an excellent design and good technology. The problem was there was no demand for that technology and that's something that the Canadian government should probably have examined a fair bit further before proceeding with the project in the first place. I realize it cost the tax payers money and jobs to cancel the program and that the Bomarc missile system ended up being a bust itself. Having said that the US wanted nothing to do with the Arrow and the Canadian military was pressured into integrating continental missile defense with that of the US. Like you said, the Canada was a small player. Unless you can get foreign countries to buy a small nation's weapons, developers are NOT going to survive. Because of the huge costs of R&D and infrastructure you need to sell enough units to make a project worthwhile. When no western powers indicated any interest in the Arrow, Avro officially had too small a market. It was a total cluster**** of mistakes and I can easily grant you that, but the whole myth of government conspiracy and vindictiveness is tinfoil hat talk. If Avro had designed a cutting edge air-air superiority fighter the US and Britain etc I'm sure would have bought on. Instead, they designed a plane whose role was no longer needed. That was the SINGLE most important mistake of the whole debacle and it counted for EVERYTHING.

and keeping the Arrow program going would have cost the taxpayers even more. We would have ended up with planes we'd have no use for. Spending tax payer dollars to build things people don't need is a BAD strategy. Yes it can make sure jobs are kept but in the end the average tax payer is not better off. Jerry please look a bit more into this very simple question. It's all I ask of you: IF it was just an idiotic and vindictive decision on Dief's part then why on Earth did the vast majority of the world's militaries (including the United States, the world's premier military power) cancel all similar projects? If the role is still needed, why are no militaries develloping pure long range bomber interceptors? The bottom line here is that with the coming of ICBM's the threat of giant long range bomber fleets crossing the ocean dissapeared. There wasn't going to be any defence anymore against nuclear attack and MAD led to the mexican standoff of the Cold War. Nobody with the capability to send long range bombers across the ocean was going to attack North America and this is still the case today. The world's militaries decided that it was smarter and more cost effective to build multi-purpose fighters that could fulfill limited high altitude and high speed interception roles along with dog fighting or air to ground support rolls instead of a pure interceptor. Since the Arrow was so far along when it was cancelled and because there was no way to turn the airframe into something altogether different.

Yes...trying to bolster the economy by investing in a housing market already well over capacity seems like a really good idea to me. While we're at it let's build some new Chevrolet and GM plants here.

Well said. Having Canadians a whole world away condemning Israel for doing whatever it can to protect itself is absolutely contemptible.

Go read a book because you're not going to find anything reputable on the internet really. I think the R&D costs for the Arrow were well over $100-200 million alone. When you factor inflation and the cost per aircraft being built we're easily looking a billions and billions for an airplane that history has proven most militaries had no interest in and did not need. Keeping the Arrow in production would have been nothing more than a multi billion charity.

It's true. A consumption tax hurts the poor immensely. At least with income taxes a lot of their income is untaxable anyways. With consumption tax increases basically EVERY dollar the poor earn gets fully taxed because it's fully spent. Consumption taxes can also be easily avoided by more well-off people. They can just take their income and turn it into savings instead of spending it. Obviously they will spend it eventually either way but for someone who's trying to pay off debt or save for retirement you'd see a HUGE reduction in spending and increased savings and debt retirement.

You can't put any political spin on the fact that there was zero demand in the western world for the Arrow which in hindsight would have been obsolete when it entered production anyways. Also, not to be snide but I think you REALLY have to take an Avro insider's view of the situation with a grain of salt. That's kind of like taking a GM or Chevrolet employee's view on the auto fiasco as reputable. I'll agree it looked like they tried to dust everything under the carpet, but the reasons for cancelling the project were legit. Those 25,000 jobs were costing the Canadian taxpayers billions to maintain. It was a good decision to pull the plug. If people are holding grudges against Tory governments of 50 years ago for making an intelligent decision that's totally their perogative. It really limits the options, however, and is a perfect example of blind and stupid voting.