Scotty

It wouldn't unduly bother me if they overdosed and put themselves out of their - and our misery.

And where do you think most of them get the money to pay for their habits?

Not these ones.

As I understand it, the plan is to let Greece not pay the money it owes the banks, then to pump the banks full of money so they don't go bankrupt as a result because then other banks which are owed money by THOSE banks will go bankrupt and on and on and on go the dominoes. It's more like European taxpayers making up for the money the Greek government owes because its own taxpayers haven't been paying taxes.

Closure means curtailing debate on bills in parliament, and ramming them through. Closure Then there's time allocation, which is what the tories have done. Limiting Debate

I have no information on how it started, but avoiding taxation is the favorite sport of Greeks, and as I understand it, half the national economy is underground and thus can't be taxed. Despite this the Greeks have a social welfare state which would make Canadians envious for its lavishness and generosity. How do you pay for that while half your taxes are not being paid? You borrow. You keep borrowing because the electorate is spoiled rotten and will throw you out of office if you dare to propose lowering benefits. And then you hide the level of borrowing until its too big to hide any more and hope by that time someone else is in power to have to take the heat.

There are more white people in Ottawa than Muslims... er.. I mean, there are more non-Muslims than Muslims in Ottawa. Nevertheless, most street gangs are Muslim (Somalians). And Somalians are heavily involved in violent crime of every conceivable sort, from swarmings to prostitution to drugs to muggings to armed robbery to sexual assault. Lots of Lebanese involved too, particularly in drugs. And there are tons of Somalians (not so much Lebanese) in Ottawa slums.

So don't rape babies or grow marijuana plants.

None of which really matters a damn.

No, the argument is, first, that while the statistical crime rate has fallen, it is still well above what it was before the justice and prison systems took on a decidedly liberal tilt. Second, if people are becoming less and less likely to report crime then of course, it stands to reason that crime rates which are based on police reporting are going to go down - even if actual crime doesn't. We're building prisons because prisons are crowded, and because the government plans to make parole more difficult, to do away with mandatory supervision, and to increase sentences will result in a larger prison population.

What is it you don't understand? Do you consider the Liberals to be a 'totalitarian party' too?

A billion and a half dollars, wasn't it? How many trucks and LAVs could you buy for a billion and a half bucks, AG?

As far as I've seen from you, you've said you work in some sort of family enterprise. Maybe you'd care to enlighten us what your expertise is. Anyone who actually works in the military, particularly if they're in the combat arms, has a lot more insight into the failings and inadequacies of equipment than you do. You can knock off that 'largest budgets in the world' nonsense. It's not impressive. We're a western country, which means that our soldiers make more than other country's presidents - well, except that those presidents usually steal a lot more. We spend far more money on wages and benefits than any country which isn't a western democracy, and we're one of the larger western democracies - despite people who continue to see us as a small country because they only compare us to the US. So a raw monetary figure is no guide to whether we're actually getting a well-equipped military.

This is exactly my point. It's not that complicated and not that expensive. The way things have been run over the past generation is that the government buys something, be it trucks, tanks, LAVs, fighters, ships, or whatever. It buys them all at once, and then buys nothing more for ten, twenty, thirty or forty years, whereupon it again has to place a huge expensive order to replace the entire inventory. It's insane!

Except the 'great leader' is basically fulfilling his mandate and the wishes of the people. Chretien invoked closure some 50 times during his time as prime minister. But I guess that was okay, right? It certainly didn't make them 'totalitarians'.

I don't understand how that works. If they work on, say, Christmas instead of their own holiday, you still have to, by law, pay them double time don't you?

Yeah, replace half the old, rundown, crappy equipment and call it a great bonus. Replace all the old, rundown, crappy equipment? That's too generous! And the money isn't being spent on training and readiness because it's being spent on bureaucrats.

Right, you know more than the army guy. To me, not providing enough armored vehicles to equip an entire unit is like telling half the cops they can have cars but the rest have to jog to each call. It's ridiculous.

The thing which bugs me about these sorts of problems is that the cost of armored vehicles is really not very high given the overall size of the government's budget. It's also not that high given the money we pay to DND. The gross inefficiency of DND in allocating that money properly is the problem. It's long been said that we have more HR specialists than soldiers. And the fact that HQ bureaucrats in finance and administration grew fifty percent over the past ten years is an indication things have gotten worse, not better. Stop reading hopeful press releases as gospel. The navy's been saying as much for ten years now. Ten years they've been working on those lemons, and they're still lemons.

No, I don't. However, alcohol is only dangerous when used to excess. Narcotics are dangerous period.

It will address the issue OF crime. I don't think anyone has suggested it will affect the reporting rate of crimes. The reporting rate of crimes, or rather, the falling reporting rate of crime, as documented by Stats. Canada, is brought into the conversation to explain why the official crime rate, which is based on police reported crime, might be inaccurate.

And yet I've also seen reports of studies which seem to show that women are as or more likely than men to initiate physical confrontations in a relationship. Yet men are the ones who usually get arrested because, in a way, society still sees women as children. Ie, yes, she might have pushed you and slapped you and kicked you, but you're the BOY, so you don't hit GIRLS, no matter what. And, of course, men are rarely going to call police to complain that their wife slapped or punched or kicked them. But if they do hit back, and the woman then calls police, then in most cases he's the one charged and booted out.

No, I just think people who use dangerous mind altering drugs for entertainment on a regular basis are morons. Oh, excuse me, was that 'derogatory' towards potheads?

Ask about Ottawa's slums, why don'tcha...

So do these employees also get statutory holidays off? In other words, do they get more holidays than other employees?