Bryan

SmallC, what travel agent are you using that has Manitoba to Turkey departures listed?

We do this same song and dance every year. At the beginning of the flu season, health officials berate anyone who questions the effectiveness of the flu shot, call them ignorant "anti-vaxxers", and baffle the public with high jargon condescending lectures about how effective the vaccine really is. Then towards the end of the flu season, we are told that this flu vaccine is not as effective as we were lead to believe.

Lesson learned a long time ago: if a US government agency is making public accusations against another country, that usually means it's not true.

That's precisely where the Conservative party sits. A lot more social spending than most right wingers would like, a lot more attention to fiscal practicality than most left wingers would like. The "leap forward" you speak of happened in 2006.

That's why I said that quoting "sources" is irrelevant. Now, if you were personally in the cabinets of several PMs and you told me that Harper was the worst one you worked for, and gave a list of specific things he made you do, THEN the story would have credibility.

Yes. Unlike the things you read on those sites, the things you see and hear are actually true.

Yeah, it's almost the reverse of what people expect. Cuba always allowed their players to go play in MLB, but the understanding was that they would remain Cuban nationals, return to Cuba in the off-season, and pay taxes in Cuba. The US government strictly forbids that, all Cubans MUST defect if they want to stay and work in the US.

It's been longer than that. 2011 things were certainly opened wide, but Cubans could always travel before that. What's changed is they no longer have to apply for it. I mentioned our family friends earlier. For going on 20 years now, they came to Canada to visit, then returned home to Cuba almost every year. In order to do that, they had to put in an application citing the reason they want to leave. That permission slip was a pain in the butt. The bureaucracy is like the DMV times a million. It's that permission slip that is no longer required. If their destination country will allow them, they can go, baseball players included.

Not so much: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-students-worst-in-canada-in-math-science-and-reading-1.2789907

That's just your opinion.

That's what I'm talking about, I think that the ballot should be trackable in some way. They have numbers on them, and they get assigned to you by the elections official once they cross reference your name. Whether they admit it or not, they COULD track which ballot belongs to what voter if they wanted to. If you had a chip and pin system that assigns the ballot to you, you could use your pin to verify your ballot at a later date if necessary.

I spent about 4 hours in my daughter's school yesterday. I'm there volunteering several times a week. Teachers have it VERY easy, it's a plum job. Very few people get paid so much to do so little. Short work day, lots of short work weeks, no stress of any measurable kind, huge pay, lots of holidays. It's a dream job really. I don't in any way harbour animosity towards those teachers. Good for them, they made a smart career choice that is paying off in spades. My issue is with teachers who complain about how hard done by they are. THOSE teachers need to lose their jobs and work in the real world so that they can see what real stress and tough pay really is.

I have trouble reconciling the two opposing concepts of anonymity and ensuring that your vote is counted accurately. It just seems to me that to be really secure, there needs to be a way to do a forensic recount that can verify if all of the ballots being counted were real. You should actually be able to check that your ballot was counted the way you intended. I think this really bring home why ID is the most important thing when it comes to voting. If everyone had a chip and pin encrypted ID card that was required for voting, and that logging in like that generated your unique paper ballot, that was in turn BOTH electronically calculated by a scanner when you drop it in the box (to give immediate results), AND physically counted to verify that initial count.

A teacher's job today is exponentially easier than it was in years gone by. That they are crying about the stress only reinforces the point that today's teachers are lazy whiners who have it far too good. "Stress". What a joke. You don't even know what stress is.

Depends on your definition of dictator I guess. The Blockade doesn't hurt the Castros much, but it sure is punitive to the average Cuban who is just trying to survive.

I just realized that you meant Cubans leaving Cuba, rather than Americans going to Cuba. (not sure how I mangled that) The answer is, Cubans already can leave, and have been allowed to for some time. My family has some Cuban friends who go back and forth between Canada and Cuba almost every year. What has changed recently is you don't need to have a temporary permission slip to go, just your passport. Up until a couple of years ago, Cuba operated their customs for both arrivals and departures on the basis that everyone foreign or domestic needed to get a visa to signify that they have received permission to cross the border. Now, only foreigners need those. This is the biggest problem. Ships that dock in Cuba are not allowed to dock in the US for six months, companies that have ANY business relationships in the US cannot trade with Cuba, even foreign companies that might own stock in American companies are subject to having their assets seized. There are so many things they simply cannot get at any price. Lots of modern vehicles in Cuba actually. There are lots of old ones, but far more newer ones. The thing about the old ones though, is it's not like they have access to parts. So they have to either make them McGuyver-style, or modify something from another machine to fit. As such, a lot of those '57 Chevys have Russian Tractor engines or other square-peg-round-hole solutions in the them.

For sure, NO. The embargo is still in full effect. This is mostly about improving the general diplomatic relationship, not open access.

How do you figure that what Argus wrote is in any way "conspiratorial"? There most certainly are countries that are far worse than Cuba in terms of human rights and democracy that the US maintains full relations with.

It will be very interesting to see what action follows Obama's words. He really does appear to easing diplomatic relations, he DID meet with Raul Castro in Havana, a proper US embassy most likely is going to be established, and some travel restrictions are going to be eased up. The prisoner swap is huge, that should have happened a long time ago, at least that does show that they really are talking. The embargo though, is not being removed. He may be giving the impression that it is in recent interviews, but it's simply not true. The embargo is an act of congress, it has not been changed, and Obama doesn't even have the authority to change it even if he wanted to (and he knows that). Economic sanctions are still in place, trade and tourism is still banned. Sadly, I suspect that this is all just for show as the Democrats are losing their majority in the House, and this is probably just a symbolic parting shot so that they can claim that it's all the Republicans fault that it didn't work.

A perfect example of the kind of broken moral compass rationalizations I was referring to. Thank you for confirming my previous post # 221.

Black people weren't legally people until they were. Women were property. Evil isn't OK just because a piece of paper says so. Wrong is always wrong whether the law says so or not.

No kidding. Which is worse... A/ an adult terrorist gets subjected to some physical discomfort in the effort to save people's lives ...or... B/ an innocent unborn child is cut up and ripped apart at the behest of the mother because he's inconvenient. The former is practical and logical, the latter is purely barbaric. Yet many on the left are offended by A/, yet think B/ is a right. Moral compass? Broken.

It is nothing but.

There is a very good reason why they do it, it makes them money.

Covering surgery due to their mental illness is in itself insane. Why single out gender? What if someone really believes that they should have been born with any number of different physical characteristics? Are any and all cosmetic procedures on the table then?