Molly

As much as American Woman is gamely defending the interests of children, the interests of the children still seem to be getting lost in the argument. Anecdote alert: So very many kids miss out on the ball team, the drama club, the sleepover, the camp... the consistent help with homework, the music lessons, and even the close friendship with the kid down the street, because their time is spent being shuffled between parents, and their obligation is first to the custody/visitation orders and only second to their own best interests. Some are even put in harm's way by the enforcement of visitation orders. There are far worse things than having one parent or the other wander or be pushed out of a childs day-to-day life.

Stats bedamned, we are far from having unanimity about whether it's in the interests of the state to care about the details of citizens' personal arrangements. I don't accept that there's any need for more than 'the nuclear option' with respect to visitation. Court time and enforcement time costs taxpayers money at an alarming rate. If the issue is a very big deal (a big enough deal for the state to consider stripping one or the other parent of parental rights) then it is worth that investment to get the situation settled. If it's not- if it's just a matter of convenience and or pettiness, with the arrangement otherwise endorsed by all parties, then why the heck should the state be involved? |Why should the state be mediating personal squabbles between people don't appear to particularly want it settled and who 'game the system'? In essence, if the parties know that it isn't important enough for 'the nuclear option', then they should be forced to suck it up, grow up, and figure it out themselves. Taxpayers can be left out of it.

But Evening Star, the things you are giving credit for are things he was forced to do under threat of being tossed out. He had to govern very moderately, on eggshells, without offending anyone, because he headed an unpopular minority government. (Mind you, I wouldn't call Newfoundland 'no one'.) What's more, not only does he not deserve credit for 'our economic strength', no credit is due for doing no harm, either. That deficit is a whopper- unnecessarily. PIK did mention one I forgot, though. This government has taken note of the North without anyone holding them by the scruff of the neck to rub their noses in it. They haven't done much about it, and given the issues currently arising, any party would take note, but they do appear to have some interest in it, voluntarily.

I was going to answer that in detail- then found that the ads had been removed from the easily access links I had started with, so I was about to go searching.... and then I thought, why should I do that anyway? Seriously, if you don't understand what is mendacious about those attack ads, it isn't for lack of someone to explain where the twisting, weaseling effort to mislead resides. It's because you want to be lied to that way, and intend to defend the falsehoods by hook or crook, maybe even to the death. So I'm saying that if you can swallow 'em, and so sincerely desire to swallow 'em, then have at 'er. They're all yours.

Dre... #245... Well expressed.

I can't go better than a D- because the only thing I can honestly give them credit for is for not being as destructive as I feared. It is possible for them to be worse. Thank God they have been kept in minority. They've been given all sorts of wholly undeserved credit for our economic situation; have done their damnedest to undermine our parliamentary system from every angle; have been secretive and sneaky and partisan about.... everything. They practice a day-to-day mean-mindedness, and when given a chance to choose between blind, irrational assumption and fact-based analysis, choose the former every single time. They are anti-inellectual; anti-science and have displayed an open hostility even to the gathering of information, much less of letting it guide their actions. I am a fiscal conservative and a former Conservative partisan, but this bunch frightens and embarrasses me. This isn't Diefenbaker or Stanfield/Clark conservatism. This isn't even Mulroney conservatism.

I find your post troubling because it sounds like a claim of property rights... "I paid for that child. It's mine!"... the only issue being the duration of rental. (Off-topic and with tongue in cheek, I look at your pronouncements about rights vs. responsibilities, ruefully wondering which is which. My own anecdotes include women telling of exs who flatly refused any childcare role while they were married, insisting that they contributed money so the rest was her problem. Suddenly upon divorce, that money was supposed to be buying rights to the presence of those children instead of the right to avoid them like a bad smell. It buys neither, nor should it.)

They look like reruns to me. They were offensive, and mendacious the first time by. They haven't become more truthful, or more of a credit to the Conservative character, with the passage of time.

That's a completely different subject from 'attack ads', but if you are counting, there's no good reason to stop at 2 (cultures, languages, legal systems, solitudes, worldviews, etc., etc. etc. etc.). The rest of the Canadian realities are not erased by your apparent inability to count, just as History didn't stop just because some dearly wish that it had. If Quebec is so very different, then it is different by virtue of nurturing an asinine grasp of nature of Canada. I'm neither French nor English. I don't venerate either of those two European states.. in fact my forebears left Europe, fled Europe, dumped Europe for extremely good reasons. I speak a language of convenience, and it defines nothing more meaningful than that my forebears landed in North America. And I've probably been a Canadian for decades more than you have! You have a heck of a nerve insisting that I must be happily sorted into one of two categories defined by you, based on an irrelevancy, and demonstrably, rediculously false. Your suggestion that there are only two possible categories rings very much like the apartheid classifications... I guess if I'm not English nor French, I must be coloured? UnCanadian? (Like Mr. Ignatief, who, if I'm not mistaken, has been a Canadian for at least a decade or two longer than you have, too!)

If that one is an 'attack ad', then so are all the ads in which the Conservatives describe their own policy. Let's see... it says the Conservatives would have sent troops to Iraq, want to spend billions of dollars on tanks and aircraft carriers; weaken gun laws; scrap the Kyoto accord, sacrifice Canadian healthcare for US style tax cuts; not protect a woman's right to choose. and that Stepehn Harper was prepared to work with he BQ. Are you sure they weren't just reading verbatim from the Con website?

The words are those of Jeffery Simpson, not mine. It's a fine rant, spot on, deserving of a salute, and a resounding, "Hear, hear!"

While that writer doesn't seem to understand what an attack ad is, this one gets it: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/attack-the-policies-not-the-person/article1879272/ There’s not a word in the attack ad against Mr. Ignatieff or the one directed at NDP leader Jack Layton concerning their policies or ideas. Politics, if you follow the twisted logic behind the ads, is all about personalities; and political argumentation is apparently all about tearing down the motivations and personalities of opponents. This twisted logic makes the ads so thoroughly appalling. To say that a politician is ambitious, and should be scorned as such, is like mocking an athlete because he or she wants to win the game, or a business person because he or she wishes to make a profit Is Mr. Harper himself without political ambition? After all, apart from a few short years out of politics in Calgary, he’s been around or in politics all his adult life. It would be demeaning toward Mr. Harper to say, as he now alleges about Mr. Ignatieff, that everything he does is driven by personal ambition. When a politician so lowers the tone of discourse to impugn his opponents’ motivations and backgrounds, how does that politician expect the broad public to have any respect for the accuser, the political process and all those who work there. If anything, the attack ads reveal much more about the attacker than the attacked. No wonder all parties struggle to attract people of great quality to politics, since who would want to be depicted as the Conservative attack machine does about two highly intelligent, committed men such as Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Layton? You can disagree with both of them on issues or ideology; you can criticize their sense of the public interest; you can dislike their parties; but they are both honourable men who, as a matter of public record, accomplished more outside politics (Mr. Ignatieff as a writer, broadcaster and public intellectual of international renown; Mr. Layton as an academic and head of the Canadian Federation of Municipalities) than Mr. Harper did. What attack ads do, therefore, is degrade discourse and turn all but the sharpest partisan into someone revolted by the entire world of politics. The Liberals began running hard-hitting television ads Friday, but at least they stuck to issues, not personalities. We, as citizens, might hope for political leaders who inspire, or at the very least act as we would wish to act ourselves, with some measure of civility and mutual respect. (Emphasis is mine.)

You reckon he doesn't want an election? Well, the preemptive strikes suggest that he intends to cause one. I certainly find them stirring. They remind me of every reason that I view the PCs with contempt. They are, to begin, mendacious to the core, and as Nicky says, insult the intelligence of very many of us. Not all of us , obviously, because the bobblehead chorus chirps along on cue... This, August: Sorry Shakey, Ignatieff does not sound like an English-Canadian. And he's certainly not a French-Canadian. So, what is he? is about as offensive as it gets. He sounds like me, August. He sounds Canadian. Crawl out of your hillbilly hole long enough to learn that the only dichotomy to 'Canadian' is 'yes' or 'no'.

Pig wrasslin', Nicky? Feeding the trolls?

Good Lord! We have had 4- that's FOUR- prime ministers who were not North American born, John Turner being the most recent. Saipan, if you have so little grasp of the rudimentary civics of this country, you have more nerve than a bad tooth to comment at all about the politics and political structure of the place. You should be ashamed.

? Does this mean you are assuming that no one over over 65 (or under 20) has an income over $70 K?

Yes, actually. There is. Profit incentivization is about the first thing on that list. The care you recieve in Canada will be less risky, less intrusive, and almost invariably less costly than the care you would recieve in the US. Basically, in Canada, you might not get what you want, but you'll get what you need. In the US, if you can get what you need, then you can generally also get what you want, whether it's medically a good idea or not. US medicine is sexier, more dramatic, wa-ay more costly, but less effective overall.

Precious that Dave Tkachuk is both the one who brought it to light, and one of those invited to review it... Tkachuk being one of the crowd appointed by Mulroney, when he expanded the ranks of the senate, in order to subvert it. Not many petunias in that onion patch/ Far too many glass houses for so much throwing of stones.

If you are going to correct someone's referential spellings, you should probably familiarize yourself with the things they are referring to. In this context, 'moran' is perfect, and carries a double punch for the faulty spelling.

Yes.. simply moving around in a safe environment. The barriers to fitness that are placed on todays children are overwhelming. Some of it is the failure to recognize accessibility as absolutely key to effective use: Kids who must be driven and attended while they play will play very little. Activities that demand a constant stream of $$$$ will only be followed up by opbsessive parents, not kids looking for something to do. If great blocks of time must be set aside, then it's easier to just flick on the tv instead. If regulatory t's must be crossed, it's rarely worth it. Activity levels would be improved by increasing the number of safe, nearby neighbourhood parks, and generally increasing available sporting facilities-rinks, pools, gymnasiums, playing fields- designed to be within SAFE walking/riding distance, and even line-of-sight of 'home'. Sidewalks and bicycle lanes should be a high priority, and bike paths that go useful places, and not just randomly into some gully... regulations demanding walking 'shortcuts' through sbdivisions, and the lashing of retail and industriasl space to residential permits, to force more neighbourhood-building... Every regulation should be reviewed from the perspective of what exactly is being disincentivized, too. Bike helmets are one that ... well, perhaps it is merely coincidence that the use of bicycles as a means of conveyance and/or recreation, drops in the flusher the very moment that helmets are demanded. Certainly they reduce serious bike injuries, but \i'd feel better seeing some statistical evidence that it isn't just because all but a very few give up biking. In the end, the solution to maintianing physical activity might be wii and other technologies like it.

http://www.cobourg.ca/docs/Community%20Centre/Cobourg%20Context%20Excerpts.pdf Someone did some decent research on participation trends- starting page 12. Precis: participation in pretty much everything sporting is in sharp decline. ............... The recommendations have a great deal to do with urban planning, and will impact things like facilities grants. I shudder at how badly fitness/recreational opportunities are served, now and in the future. How many kids now have a ball diamond, soccer field,bike path, swimming pool to which they have true access? They have enough money to get in the door; thier parents will allow them to go there and will assume they are safe, even without an adult attatched to them; they don't need someone to drive them; they don't have to belong to a league; abide by a schedule; own specialized equipment... etc. Physically active play is increasingly restricted to the well-to-do. Reductions in expectations will further erode access.

Depending on the degree to which Sun tv emulates the southern model, the question becomes whether disinformation/misinformation/outright ignorance is good or bad for democracy. http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf "4. Variations in Misinformation by Exposure to News Sources Consumers of all sources of media evidenced substantial misinformation, suggesting that false or misleading information is widespread in the general information environment, just as voters say they perceive it to be. In most cases increasing exposure to news sources decreased misinformation; however, for some news sources on some issues, higher levels of exposure increased misinformation.....................................................................................................................................19 2" It's worth reading all about it.

We aren't immune from that idiocy in science-responsible branches of our federal government, so why would be immune from it in our schools? If it was rare and obscure, folks would laugh about it instead of getting angry.

You say that like it's a bad thing..... Perhaps some of the horrors- like abuse/murder/destruction of children, if it is to be done at all, should simply be done, without pretense of the support of law, or of possession of moral high ground. Would it really have been worse for Omar to have died at the scene than.... what his present and future looks like? I dunno.

There's more plastic used to wrap a single pallet (or hay bale, for that matter) than I use in a year. Bags are ubiquitous, but they aren't the beginning and end of plastic waste and pollution.