Scotty

It's crass politics, imho. And that's what I don't like about the man and his party over the past five years. It seems that, rather than decide what they stand for, and what policies they believe in, the Liberals consult their spinmeisters on what they think they can get traction on, and then take the appropriate self-righteous stance. Thus I don't think Ignatieff and his party are against corporate tax cuts at all. They're simply trying to spin the tories as being in the corporate pocket, and themselves as being for the "little guy". Likewise, I don't think their opposition to the F-35 is genuine. Their party initiated the deal, after all, and if they didn't intend to buy the thing why did they spend almost $200 million of our money on helping develop it? No, I think their opposition is also based on crass politics. I think if the Tories had instead decided not to buy it the Liberals would have taken the opposite side, played the F35 a the greatest thing since sliced bread, and howled about the terrible waste of money the Tories were engaged in buy, in effect, tossing tens of millions in development money down the toilet. Almost every position they take, including their flip-flops on immigration, have struck me as nothing more than crass politics. There's no evidence they have any principals or any interest in developing any. They'll offer up whatever policies they think they can get traction on, and oppose anything, regardless of merit, that they think they can score points on. It doesn't get any deeper than that.

This is an example of what you do when you focus on things instead of people, and when you hire low end employees and order them to adhere strictly to rules. Toy soldier banned from aircraft because of 4 inch plastic "gun".

Bill Clinton, for all his innumerable character flaws and his idiotic sexual weaknesses was at least an extremely educated, intelligent, and thoughtful person. There is no evidence Ms. Palin is any of those things, and much evidence she is not.

First, you can tone down the pejorative adjectives. They're unnecessary, and also against the rules. Second, for someone who (in my opinion rightfully) questions Obama's experience and credentials for the job you ought to question Sarah Palin's even more. She's accomplished even less, and has no background of impressive and charismatic speechmaking behind her. She's also said some damned silly things.

Is any of that new? I mean, was it not going on just as much under the previous three administrations?

I never made any such claim. What I claimed was that that middle aged white westerners don't hijack or blow up airplanes. This is self-evident and no one has actually denied it so much as throwing up irrelevancies. Further, I'm not suggesting that airport security should simply wave through anyone with white skin and gray hair. I think security should work on the Israeli principal of focusing on the passenger instead of the baggage, talk to people, and find out more about them. In that way they can quickly eliminate most as possible terrorists.

Grandmother forced to remove prosthetic breast

You think the system makes us safer by strip-searching eighty year old grannies rather than focussing on young men from cultures/groups which are known to produce, harbour and support terrorists?

I don't have a specific "solution". However, I think it's pointless to be groping old white grannies when we know that armed terrorists are 99/100 going to come from certain segments of the community. We shoujld focus on those segments. Are you saying that all terrorists are Muslims? I don't think that these types of terrorists necessarily care whether we are in Afghanistan or not, and don't know or care whether we support Israel. Those who blew up Air India had no interest whatsoever in Canada's international politics.

Let me start by suggesting something obvious: when your car won't start, you dont' check the tire pressure. Why not? Well, because you know it's not going to be the tires. It's not going to be the muffler either. There are only a few things it could be so you're safe to ignore all the other parts in the car. Yet if we checked our our cars the way we conduct security screening we'd start at one end and work our way carefully forward, checking every single piece of equipment equally, giving no particular preference to anything until we found the one which was causing the trouble. Why is it alway sthe poor battery that gets gingled out?! Well, because it usually IS the battery. It's never the axles. We waste masses and masses of time screening paunchy, middle aged Canadians even though paunchy middle aged Canadians are NEVER the problem. No middle aged or older Canadian has ever hijacked or blown up an airplane. Not EVER. Let me be daring and suggest no middle aged or older White person has EVER blown up an airplene or hijacked one. What I'm getting at is we all know where the problems are likely to occure here, and logically we ought to be focussing on those areas. Efficiency and common sense say we could save lots of time and money and more properly secure aircraft from attacks if we focussed most attention on young men from the middle east and southeast Asia. That doesn't mean we give everyone a free ride. For as the shoe bomber has shown, others can fall influence to radical religious zealots. But we basically know what the people who are going to attack aircraft look like. So why is it considered immoral and unethical to focus our attention there? Spot checks mean that a terrorist, who almost certainly belongs to our suspect group, has a far smaller likelihood of being singled out. So we damage our own security interests by not profiling. There was a quote in a column today re Israeli screeners, who think the bags someone is carrying are by far less interesting than the people themselves. They focus on the individual, on who he is, why he is travelling, yet we don't dare do that. Would we ask someone what religion they are? Where they worshipped? Would we ask other personal questions to get a picture of what sort of person is getting on the flight? Not a chance. We're very timid in our screening, but in an odd way which says we should treat everyone as a suspected terorist, even though we know they aren't.

You may be right, nicky. I was certainly questioning why we shouldn't let them have at least a few more landing spots way back when. I don't know what the cost would be to Air Canada either. The thing is, once someone gets in my face, my instinct is to shove them back. The UAE got in our faces, and my instinct says to shove them back and put them on their asses on the floor. I'm not longer looking to cooperate or understand. In that context, I'd be more supportive right now of ending ALL landing rights for the UAE than giving them more. Heck, end their overflight privilages, as well. Make them fly around us and take more time and use more fuel to get to the US. Nobody pushes me around and I don't think Canada should let itself be pushed around either, especially by some puny little Arab with small-man syndrome.

I don't know. If I can't give Chretien an F then certainly he gets a very weak D-. This man had as close to absolute power as any Canadian PM has ever had, I think, for 11 years. He had total control over his party and a weak, fractured opposition. He had that for eleven years, along with a booming economy, and he could have done almost anything. Instead he did almost nothing. Environmental, health care and social problems were not addressed and were ignored until they got beyond the point of easy solution. Harper has been quite good, by comparison. And while he has done something to address social problems, he hasn't been particularly brave on that score, and has ignored health care and other issues.

Uhm, where can I get one of those buttons....

[quote name='TimG' date='25 January 2011 - 08:28 AM' If you reject fines as an option then please enumerate exactly what lighter punishments you would support. Losing custody and jailtime are the nuclear options and, as a result, are not effective deterrents. Perhaps community service of some kind, unpleasant community service? Maybe we could bring back the stocks and stick them in the middle of shopping malls (wouldn't want to be cruel vis a vis chilly weather). I wager a few hours spent in the stocks being ridiculed by teenagers would prod recalcitrant custodial parents into cooperating with court orders. Then there's the Singapore option. A cane applied to the rear end probably teaches a few lessons in respect, and wouldn't cost the family anything nor harm the child.

There's no point in repeating Liberal Party talking points. They did nothing to meet the obligations of the treaty they signed. When the Conservatives took power our CO2 emissions were not only not reduced in the slightest, they had grown by a higher margin than American emissions had grown. I believe ours had actually gone up something like 50% more than theirs even though they had repudiated the treaty. I didn't say anything about the Tories. I said "I" would support money for science and research into improving our energy use and development. Sure, so long as the money doesn't go to some futile attempt at piping CO2 into the ground or something, or to closing down power stations in favor of ridiculously pricey and inefficient energy sources like solar or wind power.

It's a fundamental aspect of human society that a "partisan hack" can support damned near anything. Witness George Bush's fierce defenders. There's nothing so mediocre that someone won't enthusiastically and zealously support it. Witness WHAM still being played on radio stations and the crowds at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Wouldn't a "die-heard partisan Harper Conservative hack" say something like this is the best government in Canadian history and award him and A+? Perhaps I misunderstood just how you're using your pejorative string of adjectives.

I'll give him a weak C. They could have done more on crime, more on prison reform and drug treatment, and especially on health care. They've essentially done nothing to the upcoming problems( not to mention the present ones) of health care. They've done reasonably well, but not terrifically so in supporting the military. I think they're weak in protecting our borders. I'd like to see the legal system streamlined and would love to see some bold initiatives there. Unemployment and the way the unemployed are dealt with are haphazard, and retraining is too little and too poorly thought out. There are just a lot of areas they could improve. I'm not singing their praises on anything, really. I do like that our foreign policy has some backbone now, and some principals. And they haven't wasted as much money on vote buying as their predecessors. They could easily get it up to a B but i need to see some vision and innovation to address issues, not the desire to let sleeping dogs lie.

I'm all for better technology, but Kyoto was doomed when the Liberals spent nine years after signing it doing essentially nothing. Only a herculean effort which included paying off dictators to 'buy' credits would have allowed us to meet what was essentially a pointless number anyway. I don't think there is anything we can do, or should do, with any of these foolish international treaties which will have any real effect on global warming. Improving technology might, but that is straight money into science. I'm for that. I have seen no evidence, by the way, that anyone is making big money on climate change/co2 reduction technology, or that its implimentation would be feasible in the short to medium term without greater advances in technology and without damaging the economy. Harper has been dishonest but programatic on climate change, suggesting he's in favour of fighting it, but delaying everything. I don't approve of the dishonesty, but I approve of the pragmatism.

Perhaps you could suggest others?

No, and I can't imagine why anyone would think I was. Suddenly throwing us out of a military base we use to supply a war effort which is not OUR war, but mostly theirs, and for that matter, YOURS, refusing permission for our defense minister to even land, campaigning against Canada having a UN seat, suddenly announcing a $1000 visa fee for Canadians... sounds mighty like a pretty hostile series of actions to me. Oh? Such as whom? How exactly does it benefit any particular group of Canadians to have our airline business ceded to a foreign owned airline? Not without reciprocity, and to an airline wholly owned by a foreign government.

A pittance, and in line with what we trade with South Africa, as I said.

The difference is it's her choice all along the way. The mother can choose to abort (the father has no say). She can choose to simply give the child away (the father cannot similarly disavow his responsibility).

How would you suggest they enforce such orders when the mother agrees, then simply dodges things? The child is not available, or is staying elsewhere, or the mother "forgot" or whatever. The only remedy the courts have, given that they will not touch child support because that's "for the child" is to put the mother in jail. The courts are extremely loathe to do so, leaving them with, in effect, nagging, as their only "enforcement".

What lies are told?