Bryan

The only reason it goes without saying is it isn't true. The CPC plan has benefitted my family far more than any previous programs. It gives parents more options and more control over their own children's welfare. Not only did we have more money in our pockets each month to put towards the child care we needed, but we also paid less taxes thoughout the year, and got more back on our returns. The Liberals plan I was especially opposed to. A national social program is a euphemism for taking choices away from citizens, and charging them more taxes to do it.

Why do some people think that the only form of child care that exists is government funded? Why do they think that the UCCB was a bad thing in its own right? I said this in another thread yesterday: I'm not opposed to a tax rebate of some form or a needs-based subsidy for lower income families to apply to their child care expenses. I just don't believe in the day care itself receiving any funding whatsoever. If there "has to" be government funding for child care, give it directly to the families, and let them decide how to apply it.

The National Academy of Science still claims that cholesterol causes heart disease, so you'll excise me if I'm unimpressed. If you think Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick are "just some obscure guys", that explains a lot about why you are so confused about what Climate Science does and does not show. The people you list are well aware of who they are, and they are afraid because they have been continually exposing their misinformation. The hockey stick graph, which was Gore's big deal in the movie, has been completely discredited. Mann's computer model was rigged so that it gave you the same graph no matter what data you input. Even the IPCC removed it from their latest revision of the report. The thing passed peer review, it was published in every journal, used in all the movies and news stories, and was accepted by an overwhelming consensus of climate scientists, and it was wrong. The thing is, it was so ridiculously wrong, that it shouldn't have even been accepted by a high school science teacher. The first thing anyone who is not stupid should have said when they looked at it was; "hey, why is the little ice age missing?". "And why is the medieval warm period not on there?", "wait, it doesn't even account for the dirty thirties, what the hell?". Seriously, the thing was bogus right from the get go. Again, you need to understand that some of the most vocal opponents of the AGW theory are actual climatologists, some of whom who are members of the IPCC panel. Some of them were lead authors of the report.

We were members of the board. Every change we proposed was shot down as either too difficult, or not allowed under government regulations. When push came to shove, they always hid behind regulations. That's what made me determined that I would never use one that was regulated again, including my fantastic babysitter if she was. The issue of benefits is the same for any self-employed person. They tell you the price, you pay it. We didn't tell her how much, she did, and when she raised the rate, we gave it without question, The rate is the rate. Another issue for me: why were these kiddie warehouses allowed to go 8:1, but my babysitter was not allowed 5:1. That actually really made me angry, especially since the government was trying to tell her that her own daughter counts as one of the kids in daycare even though by the time she gets home from school, her dad is home, and he's taking care of her? Don't you think it's easier to find a private babysitter in Winnipeg than a licensed spot right now? There are ads in the weekies all the time. My daughter and two of her freinds are starting school in september, so I know of three open full-time spaces right now, as opposed to the waiting lists of institutions crying to the government with their hands out. They have a lot more options now, because that $100 can be applied anywhere instead of only to the place the government tells them, and as it stands right now, that $100 is over and above any subsidy that space gets, so it's even better for them than it is for me. Like I said, I favour the entire subsidy system to be removed from the daycares entirely. No institution should get any funding whatsoever, it should only be given to the parents, on a needs basis. That needs basis is what determines the regulated daycare subsidy. I'm saying let the parent apply it where ever they want. Let the rate be the rate, then the daycare or other caregiver gets full value for the spot, and it's none of their concern what portion of the payment is out of the parents pocket. Should we name names here (or at least what area of the city)? Because I checked out a lot of them (all of the ones within reasonable driving distance), and if there are acceptable ones in my area, I'd sure like to know which ones they are. Most of the ones I saw, I could not figure out how it was possible for them to get a license, the conditions were so bad.

If the evidence of the crime is found, they obviously DID have probable grounds, regardless of what a judge might rule. The existence of the evidence is the justification after the fact. Again, the remedy for making sure serious mistakes like the example you gave is to make the police and the judges culpable if the warrant was obtained through the use of deliberate deception. Send them to prison if you have to. Throwing out the poorly obtained evidence is not making a previous wrong right, it's covering it up with an even more egregious wrong.

Why is it then, that the AGW opponents are primarily actual climate scientists, while the AGW proponents are largely political activists?

Most Canadians (and most Americans for that matter) ARE stupid.

Only the ones that probably shouldn't have been hired in the first place. If they don't like their jobs they should find ones they do like. Life is way too short, and the options available are far too vast, to waste any appreciable length of time doing what you hate.

And this is a serious problem. Punishments are all over the map, and far too often too lenient. We need to reform the laws to provide much stiffer mandatory sentences, and to enforce truth in sentencing. What we need to see are reforms closer to these than what we have now: If you murder someone, you don't get out of prison, EVER. If you commit a violent crime, or an offence dangerous to the public, you got to prison for 20 years, and you serve ALL OF IT. No double time for waiting for trial, no house arrest, no conditional sentences, no time off for good behaviour, just prison. If you are an immigrant and you commit a crime, you get deported. No hearing, no appeal, you're gone.

Misinformed? I have two children of my own. The oldest DID go through regulated/subsidized daycare in Manitoba, and that was enough for me to say that NEVER would I ever put one of my children in a government regulated daycare again. I certainly take issue with your characterization of unregulated care being 'substandard'. We looked at a lot of daycares and private babysitters with both children. We visited the centres, interviewd the staff, and called up parents of children already using the care. Without exception, the regulated centres did not even come close to meeting my level of expectations for standard of care. In terms of staff to child ratios, cleanliness, interactions with the children, conflict resolution, and out of facility activities every one of them was flat out terrible. In that my wife and I were young and making low wages, we had no choice but to use subsidized care, because the plans at the time only doled out the cash directly to licensed centres. We had to pick the least bad of a range of unsatisfactory choices. And it was a nightmare. My child was poorly cared for, he was miserable, and he did not want to go. With the Conservative plan, we got a direct rebate given to US to use as we wanted. This allowed us to go with a local unlicensed private babysitter in the neighbourhood that we knew, and that we had determined was providing the level of care we expected. We could apply the subsidy aginst her rates, and finally be able to afford care that WAS up to our standards. We could not be happier. This has turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. We are directly involved with the care that our daughter gets, and she loves going. There was a potential issue where because of the number of kids she had for a brief period, that the province was telling her that she had to get licensed. We made it clear in no uncertain terms that if she did get licensed, we would find a different babysitter. The government does not decide the standard of care for my children, I do. Thankfully, one of the kids moved, so the babysitter was back under the "magic number", and the issue was never revisited. That is why the Conservative child care plan was EXACTLY what I wanted, and why I was happy to vote for them. The only thing that could make it better, IMO, would be if all direct funding to daycares was cut, and a needs-based subsidy was given to the parents only. If they believe in institutional daycare, they could still use it there, but the parents would have the final say, and the chips would fall where they were needed instead of where goverments tell us we have to go.

Not only that, but some of the most outspoken opponents of the AGW dogma are climate scientists who were actually lead authors and reviewers on the IPCC panel itself.

GST cut and the Child Care policy are primary reasons I voted CPC. They are both very smart policies. With GST, the poorest people pay no income tax anyway. Lowering the GST, the one tax they do pay every time, is the most direct tax cut you can give them. With the Child Care plan, it helped people with taking responsibility for their own children rather than warehousing them in government run institutions. I'd have voted for them on this policy alone, even if I disagreed with everything else in their platform.

Fine, lets assume the example given was hypothetical. An exercise in a textbook perhaps: Police know who the perp is, but their hard proof is sketchy. They know the guy has the evidence in the house right now, and are afraid he'll dispose of it before they get a chance to gather concrete enough evidence. So, they decide to take a chance with a judge and see if they can get a warrant anyway, even though they know they probably don't have enough. Dumb luck, they get the warrant anyway. In the process of carrying out the warrant, they find exactly what it was they said they were looking for. If it is determined that the warrant itself should not have been granted given the evidence used for it, then we most certainly have a case to discipline both the police AND the judge for that. Make it severe enough that they'll be more carefull next time. However, the evidence that was collected still matches what they were searching for. Shady tactics aside, the ends still justified the means, and the fact that they found what they were looking for is the proof of that. You say the method of collection alone should exclude the evidence and exonerate the accused. That makes people angry, because no matter how it was collected, it still exists. This bullshit about pretending the evidence doesn't exist is simply not acceptable to a lot of people. Evidence collected, and method of collection are two separate issues, and should be treated as such.

Please. What you are stating is exactly what the AGW hysterians are doing: cherry-picking short periods of time in attempt to show that their theory is correct. The truth is, climate changes all the time, and always has. Taken in the longest period of history possible, there is nothing remarkable about what little warming there had been in the 80s and 90s, just as there was nothing remarkable about the 30 plus years of cooling that preceeded it. The fact is that it only takes a very short period of time to erase the previous trends. The value in picking the last 10 years, is that is how long we have had a sustained directly observable period where there is no warming happening. What makes this relevant, and not just a cherry-pick, is the AGW hysterians have been particularly vocal about how much the earth is warming RIGHT NOW, how much more rapidly it's going to rise in the near future, and how it is a crisis. Call me picky, but for it to be taken credibly as a crisis, shouldn't it be --oh I don't know-- actually happening?

VW Jetta.

The earth isn't warming though, hasn't been for about 10 years. And most recently the earth has gotten cooler. So much cooler that all of the supposed warming from the last 130 years have been completely erased. The only thing that's been debunked is the AGW hypothesis, which was transparent fraud from the get-go.

Your attitude towards this is the reason people get bent out of shape about our justice system: not only are these punks getting away with it, but those in the system are falling all over each other defending the actions under the guise of "that's how it works". We know that's how it works, that's why we're angry.

It's already been thoroughly discredited. You can say you don't like what the CPC's have done, and certainly some of their policies are open to serious debate, but it's ludicrous to suggest that they haven't done anything. They are by far the most effective Government I've ever seen at any level at systematically going through their policy platform and bringing forth the corresponding legislation one after another.

My current vehicle was built in Mexico. By far, it is the best built car I've ever owned in terms of fit/finish/initial quality. I was very skeptical at first about good it would/could be, but now I'll specifically seek out a Mexican made car next time.

No, I mean file sharing is not comparable to property theft. If someone steals my car, it's gone. If someone downloads a copy of a CD, the physical CD is still there in the store for someone else to buy. Nothing has been stolen, there is no loss.

Liberals using fake evidence to make accusations against the Conservatives? This is supposed to be news?

There's a reason the CPC has delayed introduction of the new copyright bill again, they know it won't fly. People are increasingly demanding less restrictions, there's no chance in hell of them ever accepting MORE of them. If they try to pass a Canadian DMCA, it's over for the CPC in a 1993 kind of way. In a way, I feel sorry for Prentice though. He's probably got the most thankless job a cabinet minister could have right now. His obligations to his trade partners directly clash with his obligations to his electorate. It's virtually impossible for him to do his job in a way that will make anyone happy.

I'm not saying any of it is fake. I only want to point out that as someone who uses Photoshop for a living, doctoring images for magazine and book publishers, that faking those Mars shots would be pretty simple.

Again, illustrating the difference between Ontario conservatives, and western conservatives. Ontario conservatives are all too often conservative in name only. As a westerner who IS a conservative, it's infuriating. The Reform Party I whole-heartedly endorsed. I had big hopes that the CPC would turn out to be a real conservative national party, but this is turning into the same scenario as before where we have two liberal parties: one called Liberal that is fiscally prudent, and one called Conservative that is fiscally inept.

"that smoking thing" was at least partly backed up by the facts. The "CO2 is bad" thing is pure fiction.