kimmy

We were discussing this in another thread recently, and I again have to ask: why is the producer, rather than the consumer, being made the target of the carbon tax? People are familiar with pie-charts showing a break-down of gas prices. They should be able to look at a break-down like this and see that they pay X cents per litre for putting emissions into the air. That's really the only time the environmental cost of driving an Escalade instead of a Civic is going to smack them in the face. Ethanol-blended fuels would have a lower environmental surcharge per litre because ethanol-blended fuels produce less emissions per litre of fuel burned. I would have to dig out my highschool chemistry notes to figure out exactly how much, but the cost should be linked directly to the amount of C02 that gets put into the air. Propane and natural gas fuels likewise create less emissions per litre of fuel, so the environmental surcharge should be lower. That's just basic fairness. But what government has the guts to put something this unpopular right in front of the consumer's face? Mulroney had the guts to put something this unpopular right in front of the consumer's face... and look how that turned out. August will probably argue that applying the tax to the producer or applying the cost to the consumer are equivalent, since producers would just pass along the cost to consumers anyway. I disagree. -first off, not all oil or gas used in Canada comes from Canada. Refineries in eastern Canada get some of their oil from offshore. I believe that some wholesalers in eastern Canada get their gasoline from US refineries. How do I, as an environmentally concerned Canadian, know whether a litre of gas pumped into a car in Toronto or Halifax has paid the appropriate environmental surcharge? A situation could arise where a retailer is able to secure a big per-litre profit-margin advantage relative to his competition by finding a supplier that isn't subject to a carbon-tax on Canadian producers. -at what point in the production process is the tax to be applied? When the oil comes out of the ground? But not all oil used in Canada comes from Canadian sources. When the oil is refined? But wouldn't that create an incentive for oil producers to move the processing portion of their production out of Canada? I thought we decided that shipping our raw materials out of the country and then buying the value-added goods back at higher prices was a dumb strategy. -visibility and transparency. August speaks of creating a market for a service called environmental protection. If the goal is to create an understanding of the environmental costs of our behavior and to use market forces to discourage the waste of fossil fuels, then why (other than political expediency or cowardice) would we hide the cost from the consumer? Why implement the carbon tax in a way that invites the consumer to blame the high cost of fuel on greedy oil companies rather than on a community decision to apply an environmental charge? -kimmy

I've never seen anything written that it is useless for combat operations. It's true about the runways but once again I've never heard there's an issue with the Canadain Forces and runways. The Australians have made good use of their 747. Wikipedia's entry about the C-17 includes this snippet: Boeing's specifications for the 747-400 (on which the military cargo version was to be based) indicated that even if the darned thing is at sea level and empty, it requires a nearly 6000 foot runway. If the thing is fully loaded, it needs an 10500 foot runway at sea-level. To get a fully-loaded 747-400 from a 3300 foot altitude (ie: Kandahar, Afghanistan) you need a 12000 foot runway. (747-400 specs. woo-hoo: http://www.boeing.com/commercial/airports/acaps/7474sec3.pdf ) For the kind of places Canada's armed forces do their thing, I think it would be quite obvious that the C-17's ability to take off in 1/4 the space would be a huge advantage. What I have been reading seems to suggest that Canada's military has wanted the C-17 for a long time and prior to the present government simply was not given the budget for it. The insinuation that the competition was rigged to Boeing's advantage seems unfounded. -k

If Stephen Harper tried that, people like Geoffrey would claim that Harper had become Trudeau NEP Mark II. In Alberta, a federal carbon tax would be perceived as a tax grab by Quebec/Ontario on an Albertan resource - oil. I don't really agree. I hope that doesn't mean I have to turn in my Angry Albertan club membership card... I believe it would depend on the way in which the tax was implemented. In my view, the logical way to do it is to put the tax on the person who buys the fossil fuel, not on the person who produces it. (thus, rather than NEP II style attack on Albertans, it would be an outrageous tax-grab that attacks all Canadians. ) To go back to your analogy of lawns and garbage... if someone throws a big bag of McDonalds' McLitter on your lawn, should a financial penalty be imposed against McDonald's restaurants, or to the person who threw the McLitter on your lawn? If the penalty is imposed on McDonalds, the garbage-throwing guy is not really facing any disincentive to not litter, is he? The more desirable outcome is obtained if the guy is given a financial penalty for littering. In the case of McDonalds McLitter, enforcement would be difficult. In the case of a hydrocarbon tax, however, it would not. We already have the administrative mechanisms in place for taxing consumption of hydrocarbons. And while it might be difficult to predict whether a person who buys a McDonalds meal at a drive-through window will litter, it's easy to predict the amount of emissions a person who buys a litre of gas will put into the atmosphere. In my opinion, if somebody puts 50 litres of gas into their car, they should pay for putting the corresponding amount of emissions into the atmosphere; if a tar-sands plant burns 1000 tons of natural gas to make steam, they should pay for putting the corresponding amount of emissions into the air. To me, that seems fair. It makes each consumer directly responsible for their use of this public resource, and attaches a financial cost to their behavior. Would Albertans view a tax on consumption of fossil fuel to be NEP II? I don't see it, personally. I think placing the tax on the consumer rather than the producer addresses that complaint. -k

The federal government already considers itself the owner of the air in at least some respects. I believe air travel is regulated by a federal government agency? I believe that use of the radio spectrum is regulated by a federal government agency. Broadcasters and cell-phone service providers pay a lot of money for the right to pump electromagnetic waves into the air. It seems logical to me that people could likewise be asked to pay for the right to pump emissions from combustion or industrial processes into the air. -k

Last year when this was being discussed, I thought the most interesting option was a company that was refitting surplus Russian strategic lift planes with American-made engines, avionics, and mechanicals. In theory, it would combine the best of both worlds-- a really low purchase price, and a reliable supply of replacement parts. In practice, of course, it would be a political hot potato because if one of these planes went down, then regardless of the circumstances you'd be accused of murdering Canadian servicemen by cheaping out on their equipment. As for the C-17 transports... the article says that Boeing will meet orders of the planes and will be building them until 2009? It sounds like we'll get our planes, if they're ordered... And there are already a huge number of these planes in service, so it's not like the parts are going to just vanish the moment the planes go out of production. Existing customers will expect support for their planes for many years into the future. As for the idea that we should have just bought more C-130 Hercules aircraft... I am skeptical. I have read that Canada is using our fleet of Polaris transports so heavily that they're going to die prematurely due to the strain. If our existing Hercules transports are adequate, then why are the Polaris transports under such a heavy load? And if our Hercules transports aren't adequate, why buy more of them? The Canadian airforce says: "The CC-150 Polaris is the air force's only true strategic airlifter." ( http://www.airforce.gc.ca/equip/cc-150/polaris1_e.asp ) -k

During a commercial break in last night's football game, I was flipping channels and noticed that Access Hollywood was, indeed, reporting on the latest news of this character's arrest, interspersed of course with glam shots of J.Ramsey dressed up like a cheap hooker. Access Hollywood. This segment, J.Ramsey murder, next segment was that some adolescent girl won America's Got Talent or whatever it was called. Honestly, I would love to sit down with the producer of one of these shows and ask them to explain it to me. "Your program is an entertainment show. You interview celebrities, you preview movies and TV shows, and you provide news and gossip from the world of entertainment. How does the JonBenet murder fit in with this theme? Do you consider murder of children to be an entertainment item? Do you consider pedophilia to be an entertainment-related subject? Look at me when I'm talking to you. Do you consider this entertaining? Does your audience consider this entertaining? Answer me, fuck-face! How do you sleep at night? Would it be ok if I kick you in the genitals really hard?" -k

Out of curiousity, what "reclaimed land" outside of Edmonton are you referring to? The only reclaimed land I'm aware of that one sees driving out of Edmonton is a former open-pit coal mine that's around an hour west on Highway 16; seeing it is indeed an experience... an experience that lasts about 5 seconds. The last time I was by it, it was actually quite lovely, all radiant with green. In that area of rolling hills and farmland, it doesn't look out of place, except that the contours are odd and obviously man-made. If you feel this is some sort of shock-effect that will put an end to fossil fuel use, I think you're going to be disappointed. If you've spent any time on the highways of interior British Columbia, you've probably seen an entire hillside that's been completely razed of trees, certainly a much bigger visual shock than the sight of our nicely-reclaimed open-pit coal-mine... but last I heard, they're still logging in BC. Have you actually seen this "reclaimed land" outside of Edmonton to which you refer? As for Mr. Gore, my feeling is simply this: he has no business blaming *us* for allowing *them* to continue wasting energy. North Americans do waste an absurd amount of fuel for frivolous reasons. Unfortunately, we don't seem to care. Scientists and environmentalists have been talking about this issue for longer than I can remember, but people only really started paying attention when gas hit a buck per litre. For the most part, people don't listen until they get smacked in the wallet. As our conventional reserves get lower our reliance on the oil-sands will increase. As Mr Gore correctly points out, extracting oil from the tar-sands is an inefficient, expensive process, and you can bet that those costs will be passed along to the consumer. The consumer will realize the folly of using so much natural gas to extract oil from sand as soon as the consumer finds himself paying for that natural gas. People will seek energy-efficient lifestyle options when energy becomes too expensive to waste frivolously anymore. -k

The idea of the parties communications directors briefing MPs on the latest ideas coming out of our message board non-partisan think tank does make me smile. -k

I feel the same way. Of all the hundreds or thousands of dead or missing kids, what's so special about this particular one? Why is she famous while the rest of them aren't? Is it because her parents had her parade around on stage looking like the world's youngest prostitute? The beauty-pageant footage and sexualized glamour photos of this 6-year old add an element to the story that would nauseate and aggravate any normal person, which I suppose could have contributed to the infamy of the case. Or is it just that her family's rich and white? I dunno. I just find the media's fascination with dead blondes to be creepy and loathesome. How is it that the girl who vanished in Aruba came to be considered an ENTERTAINMENT story? Why were the latest updates of the Natalie Holloway case on those Access Hollywood type shows, sandwiched between movie previews and interviews with D-list celebrities? What the fuck? Who are these fuckwits? It's disgusting. -k

The ombudsman's reply-- that the Arab woman's emotional reaction typified what Harper was talking about when he stated he was not going to be swayed by emotional reactions from domestic communities-- seems fair to me. The comment that the report's mistake was in not making it clear that Harper was not responding directly to the woman also strikes me as fair. Perhaps they didn't mention this site because they simply weren't aware of it? Mapleleafweb is hardly on the same scale, either in size or notoriety, as Freedominion. Are the lefties now spreading some some sort of theory that Mapleleafweb is actually a mouthpiece for the Conservative Party? That's kind of funny. The idea of swaying public opinion through a website with a membership of this size is pretty silly (which, again, should be pointed out to the native protesters who've decided this is the place to publicize their message). And, as far as I know, Mapleleafweb is a project based at the University of Lethbridge, not some shadowy operative's basement. -k

What an inane argument. Are you suggesting that since anal sex was technically illegal, it simply didn't happen? Since Jaywalking is illegal, I guess that never happens either? How often was the anti-sodomy law enforced even when it was on the books? You've staked out an extraordinarily foolish position here. (and don't go accusing me of being a Liberal supporter or a Trudeau-lover. Long-time board members would snort coffee out their noses at that idea.) -k

Again, whether those beliefs are contradictory depends entirely on whether you consider a fetus to be a child. From the point of view of a pro-abortion liberal, they're not illogical or mutually exclusive at all. I don't know why you keep beating that drum.Fetus, child, drum. Kimmy, that's the sterile "when does life start" discussion. A liberal defines life as starting at point K so that an event at point G is "not taking life". Gee, what is the definition of self-serving, what is the definition of arbitrary and why do liberal arguments always seem to be self-serving and arbitrary? You're trying to push me in defending a position I don't actually hold, and I don't think I'll bother. "Fetus, child, drum" ...as Ernie and Bert would ask, which one of these is not like the others? The stock pro-life position puts you in the position of arguing that a clump of cells that can't do anything except for divide is somehow equivalent to an adult. Do you really find a position that equates a 4-cell embryo to an adult human to be intellectually satisfying? On the other hand, the stock pro-choice position puts you on a slippery slope wearing greased skis. You seem to support the pro-life view that life begins at conception because it's absolute and unambiguous. It might be, but it requires buying into a view of what makes a person a person that I find unappealing. Rather than argue this topic myself, I'll just refer you to Riverwind, who has proposed some ideas for addressing the question in a logical rather than arbitrary manner. That argument strikes me as "social planning". That is, "smart people could organize society so much better if they had full control to decide for others". Sorry, when I hear "broken home" or "unfit parents", I usually glance away while keeping an ear open for a possibly new perspective. It might not be a new perspective, but I think it's a troubling issue. The people least able to care for children are also the people who have more children and have them at younger ages. You're a mathematician, right? Compute a growth model for two populations. Population A is 10 times larger than population B. Population A produces on average 3 offspring per 2 adults, at an average age of 27 years. Population B produces an average of 4 offspring per 2 adults, at an average age of 18 years. How long before population B outnumbers population A? I have a strong suspicion that the clueless young alcoholic deadbeat dropout parents are raising a whole generation of kids who won't be able to find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight. I have the uncomfortable feeling that by the time my (still hypothetical) children reach elementary school, a lot of their classmates will be the socially maladjusted, completely undisciplined children of people who just aren't fit to raise children. Your analogy... ...becomes somewhat worrying if a significant percentage of those people leaving the mall are drunk and don't even know how to drive in the first place. -k

Personally I think that people who enjoy Rob Schneider films should probably be put on a watch-list of some sort. Were you ever an innocent child?Depends who you ask, I suppose.You can get as dumb as you want, Chuck (and trust me, with this last question you're getting pretty dumb) but you're not going to goad me into an argument about the morality of abortion. No. You oppose the use of the term "innocent" and I am calling you on it. You are refusing to justify your opposition. So, if calling somebody on their argument is dismissed as "dumb", hell, throw me on that bandwagon too. My point is that innocence is real and it does apply. If killing a murder is justified because we deem him to be guilty, than pragmatically a fetus is probably the most objectively innocent being in the equation. I didn't oppose the term "innocent"; I didn't say anything about it at all. I think you have me confused with Black Dog. And, to reiterate what Black Dog said on the subject, describing a fetus as an innocent child is not agreed on by everybody, and the question isn't on whether a fetus is innocent but whether it's a child. If you believe that a fetus is a child, then "innocent" is a perfectly fair description, I suppose (unless you're a fundementalist Christian...) But most people who support abortion disagree with the idea that a fetus is a person, or an entity at all. If a fetus isn't a person, then the term "innocent" becomes kind of nonsensical, right? Is my coffee-cup innocent? Is it guilty? Is it either? It just kind of sits there. It hasn't done anything wrong, so I guess you could call it innocent if you wanted to, but it seems kind of pointless to describe an inanimate object in terms that only make sense when applied to people. And this is the part of the discussion where pro-life people jump in and say "but a fetus isn't an inanimate object!" and pro-choice people say "we'll it's not a person either", and Kimmy says "I don't know" and leaves others to fight about that part. -k

I agree with this line of thinking. If kids are getting into criminal trouble at age 10, it's probably a good indication that they're headed in a direction that's not very good. There could be a variety of factors-- lack of parental supervision, abuse at home, unfit parents, mental illness or developmental problems, a problematic environment... whatever the case, when a kid singles themselves out for attention from law enforcement this early in life, it seems to me that finding out what went wrong earlier on would be much better than allowing the problem to continue and grow. Of course, it would be dependent on the relevant authorities being able to provide the kind of help that these kids would need. Given the number of problems we hear about involving social services, it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that adequate monitoring would occur. -k

Of course there's "no real proof" of something that hasn't happened yet. We're not talking Al Qaeda... it's not like we're talking about an operation where act-up activists have to buy pies through an undercover RCMP agent or have a secluded fruit-warrior training camp in northern Ontario. It's not like there'd be 6 months of planning and e-mails and financial transactions and pie-recipies from pie-making experts in San Francisco. I mean, really, what "real proof" would you imagine there might be? You keep saying that a lot of the delegates aren't even from Canada. So? A lot of them are, right? My understanding is that a large portion of the delegates are not medical researchers or healthcare officials, but rather advocates and activists. Am I wrong? So if there's a significant number of Canadians at the conference, of whom a significant portion are advocates and activists, I think it's wildly optimistic to expect anything other than an effort to create a disruption had Harper attended. Activists want to "create awareness" and publicize their message, and would justifiably view Harper's appearance at "their" conference as an unsurpassed opportunity to gain the publicity they seek. And, if you've looked around at various forums and websites you've probably seen first-hand the sort of intense personal hate that some in the gay community feel for Harper-- it is almost as if he was personally responsible for all of the intolerance they've experienced in their lives. I know you disagree with me, which is fine. Personally, I get the same sense from this controversy that I get from the furor that happens when Harper no-shows the Gay Day Parades. I don't think they want his approval or his blessing, I think they want him to show up and give them their pound of flesh in person. That's just my hunch. -k

Does Hezbollah advocate Sharia law? If that's the case, then our hypothetical Hezbollah-boosting lesbian would be supporting a group that would have her put to death. I guess that's a somewhat illogical position. "For a pro-abortion liberal lesbian to argue against war on the grounds it kills innocent children makes about as much sense..." Again, whether those beliefs are contradictory depends entirely on whether you consider a fetus to be a child. From the point of view of a pro-abortion liberal, they're not illogical or mutually exclusive at all. I don't know why you keep beating that drum. This is more interesting. Getting rid of both of the moral justifications claimed by one side ("right to control my body!") or the other ("sanctity of life!") is probably not going to be popular with either side of the debate. If this question were a matter of pure pragmatism and no other moral question were considered, when you look at the effects of kids from broken homes and unfit parents... we would probably be *promoting* abortions. -k

I will jump on that bandwagon! You would? (shrug) Whatever. I'm not familiar enough with your writing to have much of an opinion about that, but I have been reading August's messages for a long time and have come to expect a higher standard from him. It seems to me that if someone needs to resort to these kinds of debating tactics it means that they're more interested in propaganda than discussion, or that their viewpoint isn't strong enough to stand on its own merits. I would. I think it is foolhardy and irresponsible to kill such people when there is the opportunity to study them. Studying them could focus on prevention because at one point both of them were innocent children. That's a thought. I don't think our understanding of the brain is yet to the level where we could identify precisely what makes these people do what they do.I wonder. You know how some otherwise normal person might like Rob Schneider movies? Is that because of some physiological defect that we could diagnose, or is it just unexplainable human individuality at work? Could Paul Bernardo's enthusiasm for killing young girls during sex be a result of some physiological defect that could have been diagnosed before he killed anybody? Or is it just an unexplainable quirk that just shows up in the same way as somebody somehow deciding that Rob Schneider is funny? Maybe with enough research an answer could be discovered. Were you ever an innocent child?Depends who you ask, I suppose.You can get as dumb as you want, Chuck (and trust me, with this last question you're getting pretty dumb) but you're not going to goad me into an argument about the morality of abortion. In the context of discussing killing life, I do not think he should feel dirty. If you were at a rally or had a booth set up at the Students Union building at your local university campus, or providing sound-bites for your local news, then sure, go nuts. Chances are pretty good that you'll reach lots of people and that of the people you reach a fair percentage are dumb enough to be swayed by propaganda. But this isn't society at large, this is Mapleleafweb. There aren't actually that many regulars here, and the regulars here aren't the kind of people who are easily swayed by propaganda. (this is something that should be pointed out to the flood of native activists, whose efforts would be much better directed toward a larger, dumber audience.) -k

I think Chretien was wrong just as I think Harper was wrong. I didn't ask if you thought Harper was wrong (I think we have figured out your stance on that issue...) I asked if you thought I was wrong in claiming that among the 22,000 delegates are a large number who detest Harper, and a large number more who oppose his supposed views on health and homosexuality and poverty. Because, I'm pretty confident that I'm not wrong on that. And for all this talk of Harper's absence overshadowing the convention, I'm also pretty sure that if he had attended, the reception he'd have received would have overshadowed the convention in an even more dramatic way. Would it have been nice if the Prime Minister had given researchers some well-deserved public recognition? Sure. But we both know that any kind words Harper had for the researchers would have been overlooked because the real headlines would have become the spectacle of the Prime Minister being shouted down by mantastic, Sodomobile-driving activists. For what it's worth, I think Harper was wrong too. I think he should have gone to the convention, and conducted himself with courtesy and dignity. And when the pink-helmeted warriors with the rainbow t-shirts rushed the stage and dowsed Harper with bellinis or cosmopolitans or whatever it is that they wield instead of pies, I think he should have shrugged it off with his usual self-effacing humor. ("Were those guys in my Cabinet?") And I think that when all was said and done, average Canadians would see again who are the real small-minded extremists. If one wanted to know where Harper stands on AIDS research, one could look in his federal budget and see. Actions speak louder than words. I'm guessing Harper's finacial commitment to the effort ranks about where other recent PMs have: not nearly enough, in the opinion of medical researchers. If one wanted to know where Harper stands on AIDS prevention ... well, I think pretty much everybody in Canada knows. Big city newspapers have told him again and again that big city voters don't want to hear about that "values" crap. So what makes this-- a conference attended by thousands of people who by and large hate his guts already-- an opportune time to talk about that stuff? Seems like a rather poor idea. -k

Alot needs to be said, as Shady states clearly above.Kimmy, you claim that abortion and capital punishment are "different". Yet, both involve taking life, or taking potential life. So, the simple liberal argument "my body, myself" and "The State Must Not Kill" are contradictory. Indeed, it does seem odd that we protect the life of Clifford Olsen while allowing the abortion of an innocent child who could, potentially, discover a cure for cancer. If anything, the opposite - hanging Olsen and forbidding abortion - seems more sensible. For pete's sake. First off: I make no claims at all. I merely point out that the question presupposes something-- the equivalence of a fetus to an adult human being-- that most abortion access advocates would strongly disagree with. Your own language here-- admits as much. WTF is "potential life"? If you support the premise that a fetus and adult are equivalent, then why the qualifier of the fetus as a "potential" life? Then two sentences later you refer to the fetus as an "innocent child". The equivalence of a fetus to an adult, or a fetus to a child, or to borrow your goofy turn of phrase, the equivalence of a life to a potential life, is far from universally agreed upon, yet you're asking us to take it as a given for purposes of this discussion.Don't you feel a little dirty pursuing this line of argument? Don't you feel a little dishonest? Don't you feel a little like takeanumber? And finally, you make assumptions about my politics. Given the opportunity, I'd have no qualms or regrets about putting Clifford Olson or Paul Bernardo out of our misery. And, I was old enough to be the flowergirl when my parents finally got married; if abortion were as easy to get and as accepted in the early 1980s as it is today, I might well not be here to have this conversation. I have serious doubts about the issue of abortion, but that doesn't mean I wish to see the topic discussed in the bullshit frame of reference that the original poster wishes us to look at it. It's an insult to the intelligence of everybody concerned, and I'm surprised and disappointed to see you hop on his bandwagon. -k

Would it matter to you if he were fat, white, single, suburban, or (heaven help us) Jewish? -k

Is that what the 25,000 delegates are? Opponents? Not all of them, of course. But who's bleating the loudest? Stephen Lewis, who is about as politically as opposite of Harper as you can get. I'm sure that a considerable portion of the 22,000 delegates are gay-community activists and anti-poverty activists who'd proudly identify themselves as Harper's opponents. And I'm sure that a large chunk of the remainder are people whose positions on foreign-aid, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare funding would put them at odds with the CPC or the Liberals anyway. I really doubt that Harper no-showing cost him any votes among people who'd consider voting for him anyway, and I'm pretty sure that of the people who are worked up over this, none of them ever had any intention of supporting him in any case. Do you really think I'm wrong, or are you just trying to be melodramatic? -k

Animals sometimes try to avoid euthanasia. I'm sure some humans would go to great length to try to avoid being a victim. Surely Terri Schiavo and the crippled Calgary Stampede chuckwagon horses that got turned into dogfood last month were all about equally capable of avoiding euthanasia, meaning "not very". What's that got to do with the question? Why were Rugged Individualists lining up to fight to protect Terri Schiavo, when it was undoubtably Rugged Individualists who put those poor horses out of their misery? And most importantly, are you criticizing people for questioning the premises underlying a loaded question such as the original post? If the question is "how can liberals justify supporting abortion access when they oppose capital punishment," the answer is flat out simple: liberals justify it because they don't see the situations as equivalent at all. Need anything more be said? -k

Ridiculous. Nothing Harper could say or do would "win over these people". Had he made an appearance, it would have been called a shameless, cynical, transparent ploy to appeal to curry support among people he doesn't support at all. Harper could attend a million AIDS conferences and gay parades and wear a red ribbon on his lapel and rainbow colored shoes and visit every drug treatment facility in Canada, and it wouldn't change the fact that these people hate him and will always view him as their enemy. The gay community and those who are upset at Harper for not attending are blasting him for the same reason he gets blasted for not attending the annual Gay Day Parade in Toronto. Are they mad because they want him to pretend he supports them? No. They're mad because once again he didn't show up in person to give them their proverbial pound of flesh. And they're vocal about it because as political enemies of Stephen Harper, they're using whatever means are available to publicly attack him. I'm sure they probably would have been happier if he'd attended in person because the spectacle of him being booed off stage would have been a much bigger political opportunity to capitalize on than his no-show. This "controversy" isn't about Harper providing symbolic support, it's about dedicated opponents of Harper using the event to attack him. -k

On the contrary, arguing about when life starts as if that that determines "murder" and hence when an abortion should be illegal is entirely avoiding the question. As you point out, different people view this issue differently which means that some will consider it murder and others not. The debate will turn around in circles endlessly. Worse however, the definition is completely arbitrary anyway. One is free to pick whatever justification one wants to support one's opinion. "It's not murder because I say it's not murder."Finally, such an approach still does not explain how we (as taxpayers and citizens) can send our soldiers abroad to kill people, sometimes in cold blood. When Blackdog argues that a "fetus is not a baby" and hence an abortion is not murder, Blackdog is inventing a premise out of thin air and in effect avoiding the moral dilemma. You're off on some kind of weird tangent with this, August. The question itself is based on a premise that was equally invented out of thin air, and can't be fairly addressed without addressing that premise. Suppose I were to ask "How can conservatives reconcile being against euthanasia of suffering people when they're in favor of euthanasia of suffering animals?" There's 3 assumptions inherent in the question: -conservatives support the euthanasia of suffering animals. -conservatives oppose the euthanasia of suffering people. -suffering animals and suffering people are completely equivalent. So answer me this, August: how can you resolve your contradictory views about euthanasia? Don't try and weasel out of this by arguing about whether you actually hold those positions. And especially don't try and question whether a suffering human and a suffering animal are equivalent, because that's just evading the issue. -k

Who better than a social conservative to press the message then. Uh... just about everybody? The people who'd benefit most from the kind of advice a social conservative might offer also happen to be the people who could not care less what a social conservative would say. The overwhelming majority of North American people who have AIDS right now are people who heard that message over and over and rejected it. "Don't have unprotected sex." "Don't be sexually promiscuous." "Don't do needle drugs." Most people in North America who have AIDS have done at least one of those. Sure, there are people who got it through blood transfusions or were infected during rape or even by incidental contact with blood from an infected person. But in the large majority, it's still promiscuity and needles. Yeah, I know, nobody deserves a death sentence for a moment of bad judgment. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that, I'm just pointing out that Stephen Harper is the last person these people would listen to anyway. -k