Molly

Save your annoyance for someone who would make such an argument, and I'll reserve mine for those who propose that indiscriminate, unrestricted human breeding is a net benefit to man or beast. Oleg, even a poor farmer knows enough to practice strict eugenics with a herd, avoid overcrowding pastures and overextending feedstocks, and to refuse to waste any resources on an underperformer.

Dunno.... trying to grasp why folks might be virulently prohibitionist, and the best I can come up with is that they don't know much of anything about it and have thought about it even less-- that it's pure puritan knee-jerk. That seems like too simplistic an explanation, yet there it is, with no evidence to refute it. ('Gateway' concept, Capricorn, is not just false but completely preposterous.)

Well, I have a neighbour who figures cannabis is a bazillion times better for him than the narcotics that the healthcare system wants to supply him with (at no charge)... so yeah, cannabis laws are going in a dopey direction. (Nyark nyark. Pun intended. Bad, bad pun.)

Well, as a voter, I'd welcome some rational conversation about it. Many things about it furrow my brow.... the taxes I pay, for a start; the quality of graduates/certification populating my world; what the role of schools actually is. We need to decide whether it's a babysitting service or an education system, for a start- know what the goal is, and therefore what the priorities are. I'd say we even need to decide who makes the decisions! Mr. McGuinty clearly responds to the loudest noise... Does Hudak instead respond to the greatest need? (Hudak's background is largely irrelevant. Harris was a teacher.)

There was/is a lot more to the profligacy than the Catholic/everyone else segregation. (Or French language segregation, which didn't play any role in our 7 buses situation, and is money well spent in any case) It was either stupidity or dishonesty that required all of the high school students of this (largish, fast-growing and likely-to-be long-term) settlement area to be bused down the road to a different community instead of being served here where they live. It's additionally wasteful to have kids who live side-by-side being bused to their choice of 5 different schools in two different towns. (I can't really argue with the special needs bus, but it would probably be cheaper to pay the kids parents to deliver him.) Higher standard? I think not. If the local hardware store clerk devoted the time mixing my paint to calling down the store owner, I'd darned well expect to see a different face next time in (if I came in a next time). We could devote a whole thread to the ethics of teaching, and how much political comment is appropriate on company time, but in 50ish years of dealings with teachers and schools it was an entirely new experience to me, and I didn't like it. (And in Saskatchewan schools of my experience, it would get you unemployed.) The 'create a crisis' quote predated my arrival in Ontario by several years, and Mr. Snobelin had long since ceased to be education minister.... In a way that's what makes the whole thing so... fascinating/otherworldly. I was not here for the upheaval or the transition. Only the result. The howls coming out of the Ontario education system were loud enough that I was handed chapter and verse of it by teachers in Saskatchewan (beyond news reports) long before we even contemplated coming here. I was led to believe that we would see an education sytem that was entirely broken, cut to the bone and beyond.... (Considering that we chose our location to access a school-based program that was unavailable in any but a very few places, it was a matter of some confusion and curiousity.) We found a system that was much more richly appointed than any we had previously experienced. Such disfunction as it suffered was not based in 'no money and too much interference', but in not having a rational standard or a clear direction. Best resoponse to situations like that is to cut well past the comfort zone, and then start trickling money back to the highest priorities. (Whereas cutting alone happens to the places it's least difficult to neglect, rather than the places least deserving.) 'Create a crisis' was a public relations gift, but it's also a valid and extremely useful strategy for change. I've used it; you've used it. He was an idiot to get caught naming it, but it was also the right thing to do. Oh, and the computer engineering program-- seek the extra money from, for instance, the busing budget. I think we're both saying here that spending priorities are a bit wonky.

First, Janice McKinnon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janice_MacKinnon If Mr. Flaherty is even halfway serious about eventually balancing a budget he might benefit from seeking her advice. And second, Douglas a crappy communicator?!!! What planet are you from?

Take an old bull and a prime finished steer to the auction mart and compare what you get for each of them. On this overcrowded planet, breeders aren't doing anyone any favors. They need to be drastically curtailed.

Of course... but seriously, are we even seeing an attempt to keep up with day-to-day? Even with no overtime one might expect to see a tiny surge in deliveries, but we are seeing even less than on regular pre-strike days. Maybe that's chance and maybe it's conditions (like none of the backlog is easy junk mail, so the pile might be tougher than if it was comprised of the usual) but we have to wonder also whether it's by design.

I'm kind of wondering if it's still on. As the backlog is supposedly being cleared 'as quickly as possible', there's not much mail hitting the boxes around here. No junk mail, no personal mail. Not even last month's bills....

Wow. It's really impressive how Mr. Gunter manages to close that piece with an unsupported, gratuitous off-topic slam at the NDP.

Ths shifts the topic, but I did find it interesting: \ http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-07-06/news/bs-ed-chantix-letter-20110705_1_chantix-cardiovascular-event-heart-patients Sound-bite reporting catering to short attention spans, and reporters underpaid, underappreciated and overworked leads to crap reporting. We have a lot of that now, and precious little of 'the best and brightest' journalism. (Truth be told, many are no more than semi-literate. That's sooooo disappointing....)

Amen.

Life is a highway ...and I'm sad to say I'm getting right sick of Feist. The lady makes truly fine music, but the short list has been done to death. The ultimate overplayed song, though, is Anne Murray's Snowbird. It's been 40 years since it was every second song on every station, but I still want to run out of the room screaming when I hear the opening bars.

Pft! Meaningless, pointless rhetoric. Paul Martin earned the name Dithers by saying 'Yes' too many times. John Tory cost himself a political career by being rediculously too eager to say it... but let's hear y'all quote Janice McKinnon being thoughtlessly overgenerous, even one time.

Oh, sorry. I don't pay a lot of attention here, so I'm a little slow to respond. The really low-hanging fruit is the fact that our street-- 22 occupied homes-- was served by 7 different school buses, every morning and every afternoon. They all travelled nearly empty, and more or less 2 by 2, because the schools they were heading to were each in near proximity to at least one other with a similar function. That was obvious big money, and so was/is 13 grades and 2 years of kindergarten, compared to the 12 grades with one year of part-time, optional kindergarten taht we came from. Overall, though, our sprout gained access to class options beyond his wildest dreams... with labs, gyms, shops, stages all with the attendant instruments, tools and supplies all at his fingertips... meanwhile, community resources- things like free use of the curling rink- were left untapped. There was a moratorium on new school construction, so portables were everywhere, but the style of thought was such that the schools being planned were two or three times the size where (sense of community and) economies of scale run out, and located so that not a nickel of busing saving was likely to be gathered. It all seemed very foolish. Along in then there was a great to-do about the possibility that some Toronto schools would no longer be able to afford their pools... (Imagine school pools.) There were lots of other luxury things, too... whole bands and classes and squads going on excursions overseas or across the continent or... some of which they paid for and some of which the taxpayers picked up... lots of single event stuff. The 'double-cohort' was extra-bulgy, too, when a lot of kids graduated, but came back to spend another year, mostly in order to mature. (That seemed so odd, that they were so reluctant to spread their wings, so dependent, so unripe.) I have wondered, but not researched, how many provinces would make such post-graduate students welcome, and under what conditions. So, to my mind and experience, there was lots and lots and lots of room left for savings. There was miles to go to get to what was/is normal for, probably most of the rest of Canada. I'd love to know how... deluxe... things were before they were supposedly 'destroyed'. .......... Meanwhile, various members of the staff- a guidance counsellor, a classroom teacher, a vice-principal- while dealing with us in a professional capacity, bitched at length about the government of the day. It honestly seemed like it had become a habit of speach. Extremely unprofessional. I found it pretty shocking. (The reluctance to face any kind of accountability was... overdeveloped.)

But possibly only the majority because those deaths happened first.

Maybe. Guarantee, though, if I'm channel-flipping and come across a CFL game, I'll almost certainly watch it, but if it's NFL (or any permutation of the 4 down, little field game) I'll even more certainly keep on flipping.

...(because......)... ...and therefore: ..... What's your point, man? Out with it.

Call me fundamentally libertarian. Small l, mind.

Precedent? (You should read some Frank Herbert with particular attention to the notions surrounding Jorj S. McKie, Saboteur.) The last thing we need is someone brand new, champing at the bit with a whole fresh list of equally creative ideas. A change is not a rest-- the deficit is deep enough, the burden of taxation heavy enough already.

What? What are you talking about? In the first place, sentences vary wildly from province to province, not always sticking to the criminal-code mandated minimums (so a person wanting to know the effect of over/under-sentencing could probably have a look at the impact of that), and in the second place, the reference is to sentence, not how much of that sentence is actually served. In the third place, the charge is impaired, not impaired causing death... but in the fourth place, it wouldn't matter a darn whether it's included or not anyway since it's the cumulative effect we are looking at. Do you have some kind of problem with the idea of 'average' representing an overall tendency? I find it more meaningful than some unanalyzed string of unrelated anecdotes... And 5 here... is not the relationship between recidivism (and/or escalation) and retribution the very subject under discussion? What is your point? Are you just nitpicking for fun or are you trying to say something meaningful? (Did you understand the point you seem to be attempting to refute?)

McGuinty has the advantage of not being dangerous. He's already done most of the really stupid things on a bland agenda, and resting on hold for a while probably wouldn't be a bad idea. I can't say I see the alternatives as positive change. John Tory would have been premier last time but for that unpredictable burst of electoral enthusiasm, creating new(ish) policy on the fly. WRT the union campaigning.... yes, that's way out of line, but in keeping with well-established tradition. The open politicking we ran into while interacting with all things school surprised us even more than the profligate spending habits. We percieved it as disgracefully unprofessional. Still do.

A major Harris F-up was asset sales. That toll highway, for instance, should never have been put in private hands. The education cuts, though... there might have been more orderly ways to do it, and better sets of priorities within it, but the system still looks downright obese to me. We transferred a kid from Sask near the end of it, and found the (remaining) luxury and waste absolutely staggering. Listening to the wailing and breastbeating about cuts felt like a step through the looking glass.

Wild Bill... if we are to be entirely rational about domestic defense, how very foolish of us to have effectively disarmed ourselves through gun-owner harrassment laws. Truth is that anyone inclined to kick sand in our national face is unlikely to be deterred by even the most deadly military force our pocketbooks can muster... so the function of our warmaking capacity is not defensive in nature.

Yep... and he was paid $4 million and change for that performance. Was Don Narcisse (for one) getting $200,000 at the time? Maybe. Maybe not. Ishmael was not 20 X as productive, as entertaining, as skilled.... His second year he accepted the same paycheck, sucked, took some injuries, did some stupid stuff and then bailed on his contract. Edit: While he didn't even come close to living up to the billing, 'centrepiece of the Argos and savior of the CFL' that was a high pressure role to be thrust into. I could almost have been convinced to feel sorry for him.