The Terrible Sweal

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What are 'rights'? How do they come into being and/or from where? Who gets to have them and why?

And yet, Canadians don't want an election.

Ah, so many points to challenge, where to begin... 'a corrupt party' is an unwarranted assumption. There is no evidence so far of any participation by either a majority of party grassroots members, party MPs, or the formal party heirarchy. 'one region (Ontario) refuses to vote' is a fallacy of composition. Regions do not vote, voters vote. Ballots force voters to vote 'for' someone, even if their choices are sparse, not against someone. Ontario is not 'refusing' Harper because of his region, but because of his perceived deficits of utility for their (individually evaluated) objectives. I continue to see the regional analysis propagated as an explanation for the failures of various political movements and leaders, chiefly by apologists on the losing side(s). An ironic vicious cycle, perhaps. Anyway, voting is fundamentally an economic excercise. Each voter asks himself that classic defy-at-your-peril question: What's In It For Me? No party has the power to change or evade this question. Any party that doesn't have a good answer for this question is doomed. Sane? I'm sorry, but I don't have any idea how that sentence can mean anything whatsoever. Sovereign or autonomous but also not? I don't get it. Do you mean like federated? Like ... now? What's In It For Who?

BQS, Would you support this bill in the QNA? RESOLVED that the government of Quebec should begin negotiations with the government of Canada for the purpose of leaving the Canadian federation and taking up soveriegnty as a fully independent world state.

Rocket, I agree that Preston was starting to build some credibility just at the moment he got yanked. But his later ruminations since leaving office have been bizarre and nigh unto toxic, so it is a relief they turfed him before he became dangerous. August, your comment suggested that there is a regionalistic motivation for accepting or rejecting Harper or other leaders of the Alliance cum Tories. I think that interpretation is mistaken. Ontario voters don't think in terms of regional origins. I don't mean they 'nobly turn their minds from human stereotype to higher and truer assessments'. I mean that regionalism is simply, by happenstance, not high among elements of their bounded-rationality voting. If you're not from her 'municipal concession of principal residence', an Ontario voter couldn't really care less where else you might be from.

Only if you start, as you have done, with your conclusion firmly established: that these nations are 'socially progressive' and thus automatically anything they do must not be barbaric. The fallacy is clear.

The NDP/Liberal accord leaves the Tories totally screwed. The electorate wants to wait for the full report before having an election anyway, but the Tories can't pull the plug with only the Bloc on their side or they'll wear the Separatist label for the whole campaign. Actually, the Liberals made a tactical mistake in promising the election in the fall ... they didn't need to make that promise.

I guess I didn't make my point clearly. In marketting terms (percieved value, etc.) winning elections is the proof of the expectation you will govern "well". This expectation is based on perception of characteristics including past performance.

So, this poll was a farce. A media-contrived number to fill their headline space.

Pateris, You know very well why people admire Trudeau, you just disagree with either the reasons or the attribution of them to Trudeau.

The only barrier to a united Canada are two regional seperatist parties. I'm sure you can figure out which two.You just don't get it, do you IMT.If there is any threat to Canadian unity right now, it has been caused by Jean Chretien and the Liberal Party of Canada. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ludicrous. If there is any threat to Canadian unity right now it remains the separatist opportunists we have known lo these many years.

Strawman argument. Deep integration is not the same thing as a strong national military capability. I support the latter to stave off the former. Well, I'm not sure what your point is there, but I can't help but notice that you neither denied that is part of the agenda, nor argued that is is a good thing. Well, that's just plain wrong. Now don't bother to quote that line of the Charter to me. It does not mean much of anything. Because we presently avoid catering to any religions, all are welcome. Start catering to religion, as the Neo-tories secret agenda provides, and you head straight for tyrrany. Again, I can't help but notice that you didn't make any sort of argument here, either. So, you admit it. Good to speak frankly, isn't it. It seems clear from this response that you don't understand what I am talking about.

Economies of scale? In health services? What could they possibly be? Are you suggesting that we perform hip replacement on an assembly line? Well, there certainly are some economies of scale available in the delivery end, but I was actually thinking of risk-sharing ... a greater distribution of risk reduces its acuarial unit cost. I only hurts when I laugh. Even if you are correct, and I think partly you are, this doesn't refute my point that if private providers are in competition with public providers there will be resource competition between them. And as long as we keep it there, it won't represent a direct competition with our system, nor a justification for de-universalizing or underfunding our system. None of which makes a positive case for opting for such a system.

You're onto something here, kimmy. As f...ed as the Liberals seem right now, the other parties are also completely jammed up. The NDP desperately wants to avoid an election because they need some kind of success out of this minority government before they face voters. Still, they can't be seen to condone corruption or they will write themselves off. Meanwhile, Harper can't bring down the government in conjuction only with a party that wants to destroy the state. It would look ... troubling.

Actually, I don't concede that at all. I'd like to hear your case for that. Threats will get you nowhere, amigo.

Let "deep integration", be number one (and it's certainly a whopper!), then... 2 - irresponsible decentralization; 3 - religious catering; 4 - 'recapture' (my own creation, a term for unravelling social progress); and 5 - privatizing gains while socializing costs (and outright profiteering). So much for the agenda. Meanwhile there is always pure amatuerish incompetence.

What a steaming pile of self-regarding, condescending, vapidity. Try this on for size. The Liberal Party has been successful politically because it is better at politics. That is, in the free market of democratic leadership, the Liberals have offered the better product. You right wiggers who prattle endlessly about how 'stupid' the people are, are forgetting the basic reality of the 'free market' distortion you idolize: Marketting. Apply the concept of 'perceived value' to our political process, and you'll begin to see why, election for election, the Liberals have lead the Tories. Make no mistake, the Liberal party is a machiavellian machine of exquisite ruthlessness. To some extent, the degree to which the Canadian people and our institutions have harnessed and utilized this resource, may be measured in the success or lack thereof of Canada as a country.

To be sure, a lot of Canadians believe in the idea of Canada, but a vanishingly small few would have said Jean Chretien represented this ideal. HA! I suggest that the only thing that qualifies these comments as 'perverse stubborness' is the perspective you view them from. Those particular Quebeckers strike me as extremely naive, or perhaps simply self-righteously deluded.

Get a grip, August. I think Chretien was corrupt ... old-style (remember Mulroney?), unsurprising, corruption. But 'every thing' he said and did? No. And I don't find it difficult to 'contemplate' that PM may be corrupt too. I just don't have any specific basis to be convinced of it.

Unfortunately all that is utter fantasy (or worse, fabrication). Creating privately paid parallell services improves service for those who can afford it, at the expense of increased costs in the public system due to (1) competition between the sytems for resources, and (2) lost economies of scale.

True. They are much more likely to carve it up in a piecemeal fashion, leaving millions of people to slowly bankrupt themselves or be sold to the mercies of someone's profit margins. The only mystery is why Conservatives think Canadians should want this. Why do you think Europeans accept it? Are they just not as smart as you? "Europeans" accept nothing of the sort. Clearly you are badly uninformed about health care in Europe.

I'm no Layton fan, but this particular toryism is a false ad base canard. That home is in a mixed income developmen whose very point is to bring differebt income levels together in the neighborhood. As for supporting the Liberals, Layton has no choice: does he want to be responsible for either producing a Tory government, or a pointless election of another Liberal one? No. The NDP needs to convince people they have a useful contribution to make to public policy, and this minority is their best chance for that.

Please. The opposition planned to change the rules to give themselves the advantage of inititiative. So, the government played the rules first to keep the advantage of initiative. Either of these machinations were within Parliamentary rules. The government simply beat the opposition to the punch.

that's very informative... all these years Chretien was using the Google translator as a speechwriter!