Scotty

With all due respect, the response to a post you think is dumb is not to write a post others will think is dumber.

While I'm no expert, wasn't Spain under Franco as close to a third world country as there was in Western Europe? I'm thinking his economic policies probably weren't the best. Spain has made immense economic progress since his demise. You want a leader who sets up camps and slaughters people by the thousands? Who do you want to see dead?

And why are you discussing THAT? That wasn't the case in Toronto, where large fences were erected to keep people well away from the gathering. Thus people were protesting in the streets, and this was known by the authorities, and permitted. Only a few people broke any laws - excluding the police, who broke laws all weekend long with apparent impunity. In fact, the illegal behaviour of the so-called 'blackshirts' paled in comparison to the criminal activity of the police as the former's violence was directed at inanimate objects while the latter vented their anger at human beings.

There were no riots! A few dozen skinny punks in black wandered down a street commiting acts of vandalism. But so far as I know they didn't attack anyone, and were never a danger to anyone but inanimate objects. The police, on the other hand, attacked people indiscriminately - perhaps you meant the Police Riots?

It certainly looks like these are genuine populist uprisings. However, if I told you that I'd been to the future, and that in two years, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt are all being run by brutal Islamist dictatorships would you be shocked?

No one is questioning them securing the buildings. Heck, they even built a giant fence around them all. But explain how they set up Queens Park as a 'free speech zone' for demonstrators to gather, then attacked the demonstrators there....

Far be it for me to say good things about the intelligence of the average voter, but there are some who have carefully thought out reasons for their dissatisfaction with crime and justice, and who worry about the broad nature and scale of the unprincipled religious nutjobs opposed to us. For example, does anyone really question that right this very second there are millions of people who would be overjoyed to see a nuclear bomb go off in New York or London?

Maybe if the voters weren't such damn fools, short-sighted themselves, and with very short term memories, we'd not have that issue? Whatever damnfool thing politicians do the ultimate responsibility is the damnfools who trooped off to the polls and voted for him.

No, that doesn't work for me. A ponzi scheme mostly works by selling things to people who don't realize its a ponzi scheme. Are you suggesting the governments which negotiated agreements with various unions are all too stupid to figure out the simple arithmetic of how much these agreements are going to cost them over a number of years? How do you have a school system - or a school - without personnel and a structure? And how do you staff schools when, with an already existing teacher shortage, you cut wages, benefits, and bargaining rights for teachers?

I don't know. I haven't tried to do the math, but remember we're talking taxes, not income. The effective income tax rate of the poor is about 0%. They do pay sales taxes, and if they rent a house (as opposed to public housing) they pay municipal taxes that way, but not much more. So if you add in a couple of million - or several million people who pay very, very little taxes that could skew the results lower as much as the smaller number of wealthy will skew it higher. Ie, Gates pays 60% taxes, you pay 40%, Fred, Ethel and Suzie all pay 5%. That gives an average tax rate of 23%, doesn't it?

How was my story selective? I was mocking a dumb decision by a judge who clearly has his mindset in some strange land far from the Canadian mainstream. Who appointed him is beside the point unless you can show he was unqualified in some way. The problem with the system is that just because you know the law, ie, are a lawyer, doesn't mean you have good judgment and can be a good judge. It's evident this guy, while he might well know the law well, doesn't have very good judgment. So it would seem the process by which he was selected and assessed is lacking...

Oh come on. You people on the Left Coast are so screwed up you need someone to tell you to live your lives.

Not particularly. There wasn't anything particularly revealing about it other than she's not exactly quick on her feet, and not exactly a mental giant. I hadn't expected she was, from what I'd seen previously. She's there because she's a native from up north. There are similar types in every cabinet, there because of their geographic location and ethnic/gender needs. I'm sorry, but we're you talking to me? I don't believe I've ever said anything about Kenney previously, positive or negative. Nor am I what anyone might call 'devoted' to either him or his party. Truth to tell I don't think all that much of the Conservative Party. It's just that I think so much less of the alternatives.

How is that any different from any other job? After multiple years of legal training, a brand new lawyer doesn't get to do much of anything without a senior lawyer inspecting it. First year interns don't do much of anything without a senior resident watching, and event hose horticulture and hairstyle grads are probably given the simplest of tasks while their seniors watch and instruct them in how things are 'really done'. The difference is the shiny new law clerk has 104 weeks of training and the shiny new cop has 12 - and a gun.

You people seem to all forget that the only reason you see Harper 'disrespecting the institutions' of the state are that, unlike his predecessors, he doesn't have 100% control over parliament, its committees, and all those institutions. Chretien didn't worry overmuch about such things. He was in total control of everything, and woe betide any director or chairman who dared to dispute his will. When Chretien said jump, whether it was the Commissioner of the RCMP, the Chief of Defense Staff, the head of the Business Development Bank of Canada, or any other government institution - they JUMPED.

How many people have the radical Christians murdered over the last few years?

What if they have a Pokéman militia?

But let's face facts, if she's wearing a tube top and high heels and talks about going swimming you KNOW she wants it! No need to listen to anything else she has to say - although, if you don't, you could be considered 'inconsiderate', and be grounded for a while. Soooo... everyone still against electing judges for fear we'll get some who care what ordinary people think of their rulings?

That's a damned silly argument. You want to create a school system. You hire a bunch of people to teach. You negotiate salaries and benefits with them. Then you scream that they're taking it unfairly? How does THAT work? Because the people you voted to represent you in the negotiations were idiots? So then you voted for them again?! And also, how is it their efforts are now undeserving and worthless just because they work for the people you elected to represent your interests instead of some private corporation?

Unintentionally hilarious. The Hutaree insignia includes a sword, crossed spears, and the letters "CCR" which stand for "Colonial Christian Republic." [12] Hutaree members use a unique system of paramilitary ranks with titles from highest to lowest: Radok, Boramander, Zulif, Arkon, Rifleman (three grades), Lukore, and Gunner (three grades). [12] University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman commented: "I don't see basis in biblical or military history for Radok, Boramander, Zulif, Arkon, and Lukore. They sound kind of like Pokémon names (e.g. Arbok, Charmander, Zubat), but there's no precedent there, either." Don't know why but I just find the thought of a bunch of religious nutbars naming themselves after Pokeman characters to be worth plenty of giggles

Really? Educate us then. Their web site says 12 weeks. Then they get their guns and go out into the streets to solve crimes.

Reading this does nothing whatever to cause me to doubt Kennie. The site appears to be some sort of fringe group from the far, far left which believes there is no such thing as illegal immigration. In which a columnist alleges Kennie nixed some gay friendly material from the new citizenship guide. This doesn't cause me any particular concern either. Whether he did it himself or on orders from somewhere else no one should be under any suspicion a Conservative Party is going to worry overmuch about being friendly with a demographic group which is unalterably opposed to them anyway.

I wish you would just stop talking about the Fraser Institute. You've already admitted you don't read or listen to anything they say, and have never bothered to attempt to validate anything they say. Your knee-jerk reactionary dismissal is silly and unconvincing. I did NOT inflate anything. I took 20% as the tax rate, not the 30% top rate. I took the average provincial tax which is about 10% and that brings us up to 30%. I took a relatively mid-sized house with average municipal taxes in an urban area. Yes, the HST isn't on EVERYTHING but it's on all the big ticket items, including fuel and heating and electricity an manufactured goods. You're right in that its now 13% not 15 since the tories lowered the GST but that's still 13% on most of what you buy. If its on HALF of what you buy that adds 6 1/2% to your total taxes right there. Re the unreasonableness of Tax Freedom Day. This is not something the Fraser Institute invented. There are figures for a number of countries here Tax Freedom Day Now, by the way, since you apparently are unwilling to do anything to validate the facts behind your opinions I did your work for you, to some extent. As the Left leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has been quoted as criticizing the methodology of the Fraser Institute on Tax Freedom Day I went to that organization's web site to explore its criticisms and found the following. The institute's own numbers show that, for low-income earners, Tax Freedom Day would arrive in late February; for the huge group of those who straddle the middle range of incomes, Tax Freedom Day would arrive by mid-April. So what they're actually saying is not that the Fraser Institute's figures are necessarily wrong in all things, but that the inclusion of the wealthier income groups distorts the picture. Which, I think, is a valid criticism. But one could also say that inclusion of very low income earners also distorts the picture, though in the other direction.

We talked about Tax Freedom Day, and your determination it was a lie, even though you never actually looked into it - because that would be too hard. Evening Star provided an entirely different set of statistics which, while noteworthy, did not prove anything with regard to actual taxes per person. Of course you will. But given you seem to make statements with no basis in fact because you couldn't bother to actually read any of the supporting data, I, and I'm sure others, will simply discount the value of your opinions.

I'm not enough of an economist to compare GDP and average income, or to figure out how imports and exports figure into things, not to mention deficit spending. However, I can do basic arithmetic. If you take a 20% take rate for federal taxes, then add in a 10% tax rate for the province, you're up to 30%. Now add in something like the HST, which is 15% of almost everything you buy, in Ontario, at least. Now add in the municipal tax you pay on your residence. It doesn't matter if you rent or own, you still pay taxes to the tune of several thousand dollars. Depending on your income that adds another 3-4-5-6-7% to your total tax bill. Now add in fuel taxes. Fuel taxes make up about 1/3rd the price of every tank of gas. If you live in the suburbs you pay a lot of fuel taxes. Some people I know have to fill up their tanks every 2-3 days. Then there are the other hidden manufacturing taxes and costs. It seems easily understandable to me how the average tax payment could rise to 45%.