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ReeferMadness

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Everything posted by ReeferMadness

  1. ReeferMadness
    Does it matter? Are you worried she would have divided loyalties and .... do what exactly?
  2. ReeferMadness
    What nonsense. The entire history of nuclear energy has been one of government subsidies and wild, unsubstantiated promises. Back in the 50's and 60's, nuclear proponents were promising electricity "too cheap to meter". The head of the US nuclear agency was once talking about nuclear furnaces in peoples homes. Current nuclear plants are generating liabilities in the form of wastes that will need to be monitored and protected for centuries to come. And who will wind up paying the decommissioning costs for these white elephants? Probably the government. Thorium may be better and I would be supportive of government funded research through universities. But there needs to be some hard nosed reality injected into the analysis to prevent it from turning into the same boondoggle as the nuclear industry.
  3. ReeferMadness
    Don't jinx the election. The NDP thought they had the last BC provincial election in the bag but they managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
  4. ReeferMadness
    Excellent. Don't let any fresh ideas or knowledge influence you ever.
  5. ReeferMadness
    Oh, yeah. Think about that the next time to grab a coffee at a Conservative rally.
  6. ReeferMadness
    Number of thorium salt reactors (in real world, not research) = 0. This has been the darling of nuclear boosters forever but somehow they never quite get there.
  7. ReeferMadness
    In fact, there are solar shingles (shingles that have solar cells embedded) on the market today. I think that building solar energy into building materials is a smart way to go. It's expensive to use today's batteries as backup storage but there is a lot of research going on into better technologies.
  8. ReeferMadness
    Don't even go there. I've put a ton of links in this thread to demonstrate that there are a range of different approaches to how powers are divided between elected heads of state (whether directly elected or elected by parliament) and heads of government. You and smallc have ignored them all and just bleated "but they're all the same". You want content-free? Go review your own posts.
  9. ReeferMadness
    By all means, you should never have to hear what anyone you disagree with thinks. Only an echo chamber of your own views. That's the Harper way!
  10. ReeferMadness
    Here's a CPC candidate who deserves to be muzzled. #jerrybance http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jerry-bance-marketplace-1.3217797 Where do they find these guys?
  11. ReeferMadness
    Yes. Much better to have meetings of the true believers so that you only talk to people who kiss your feet.
  12. ReeferMadness
    Well, good for you. If you keep your standards low enough, you'll never be disappointed. Is your standard for fine dining any food that doesn't give you botulism? Is your standard for a great novel that the words are spelled correctly and and the pages are numbered properly?
  13. ReeferMadness
    lolol I love watching you monarchists dance. You KNOW that it's indefensible to have a hereditary head of state in the 21st century but you rationalize and make excuses.
  14. ReeferMadness
    Well, keep it up. You might understand them some day.
  15. ReeferMadness
    That's Conservative style democracy in action. Pay for access.
  16. ReeferMadness
    It sure is. Just keep telling yourself that. That's the only way you can believe it.
  17. ReeferMadness
    Again with the sweeping generalization. small c made the same claim about elected presidents - read the rest of the thread. So, occasionally changing leaders is your standard for good democracy? Could the bar be much lower? I don't know where you were during the provincial referendums on PR but I just covered this.
  18. ReeferMadness
    A good system should prevent too much concentration of power in the hands of too few people, particularly unelected and unaccountable people. And this isn't just a case of one overly autocratic government, this is a trend that has existed since about 1970. Honestly, monarchists have more stubborn, unthinking, passionate loyalty than Maple Leaf fans. The electoral system needs to be fixed too - it doesn't need to be an either/or thing. But our experience in BC tells me that the chances of getting PR are not great. The government can change the voting system on its own but that would cause a huge hue and cry, even among some inside the party in power. So, the politically safer course of action is to hold a referendum. As soon as you hold a referendum, established interests will come out of the woodwork to run a campaign of FUD to kill it. It happened in Ontario. It happened in BC.
  19. ReeferMadness
    That's the way. Stick your fingers in your ears and shout LALALALALALALALALALA!!!!
  20. ReeferMadness
    First of all the electoral college is idiotic. How delegates are chosen varies from state to state and the whole process is an anachronism. You need to remember that a lot of these bizarre mechanisms like the electoral college were put in place because the people who knew best (aka the people with all the money) feared democracy. And they still do. So, yes, people need to be better educated. But the institutions themselves should be reformed to make more sense. And part of that would be to eliminate anachronistic practices.
  21. ReeferMadness
    I don't deny that the chancellor, as head of government has most of the power. My point was that there are different ways to elect a HoS and different ways to carve up the powers between the HoS and the head of government. And I still believe that an elected HoS has legitimacy that a hereditary one lacks.
  22. ReeferMadness
    The German President is expected to be non-partisan but the position is far from strictly ceremonial. Read the rest of the thread.
  23. ReeferMadness
    Well, I can't name names but there are a lot of them. Now let me ask you a question. Can democracy be effective if most of the people don't have a basic understanding how it's supposed to work?
  24. ReeferMadness
    Really? You're just going to keep repeating the same nonsense hoping nobody will notice? OK, in Finland, the president is directly elected, can order premature elections, appoints and discharges ministers (including the PM), acts as commander in chief, and needs to ratify legislation. Unlike Canada's GG, the president does veto legislation. In Germany, the president is elected by a combination of the budestag and state representatives. The German president proposes the Chancellor to the Budestag, appoints judges, civil servants and military officers, concludes treaties and confirms that laws passed by the Bundestag are constitutional. If you think these systems are indistinguishable from Canada's, great. I'd take either of them over ours.
  25. ReeferMadness
    Colorado has brought in $150 million in tax revenue from legalized marijuana.
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