overthere

So many people assume that proprep is what Trudeau had in mind when he promised electoral reform. It is a mystery why they would continue to think that. It was never an option,since in reality the only choice was ranked ballots, obviously. It is inconceivable that Trudeau and the Liberals would simply surrender majority Liberal governments-and surrender them permamanently, which is what would happen to them under proprep. If he absoluterly had to, Trudeau will go into the 2019 election with another round of FPTP, but there is really no reason for him to do that. He has the votes in the Commons to punch through ranked ballots legislation, he has the support of his party, there are no constitutional barriers to ranked ballots, and he will soon have the Senate stacked with cooperative 'Independents'. Spring session of Parliament 2017, done deal.

Yeah, I heard that the Magpies and Squirrels were filing a class action lawsuit against the Blue Jays for cultural misappropriation and chronic theft of the bird seed.

Gibbons will certainly get fired, and deserves it. This team is or should be better than last year, and Gibby is part of why it took Game 161 to get to a wild card berth. And now they are losing to a team that looks a lot like Kansas City did last year: fast, adaptive, balanced and willing to risk for reward. It is moot anyway, Shapiro wants his own people and Gibby ain't one of them. They need, in no particular order: -new manager -first base/DH that is not named Justin Smoak, hits left and delivers 100+ RBIs -right fielder that hits left and does not want $150 million dollars. Carrera full time? -another starter, perhaps Biagini? -almost an entire bullpen. They cannot count on the pensioners Grilli and Benoit, and of the rest keep Osuna, maybe Tepara, maybe Cecil. Have I missed anybody who can actually pitch at the MLB level? -second base. Shairo must be wondering a lot if Travis, who has been hurt often and seriously hurt, is durable enough . Goins just cannot hit well enough despite being very good defensively. Barney might be the choice to be backing up or replacing Travis next time he goes down........... The rest looks good. I wonder if there will be many "Thank you Jose and Eddie " signs today at Rogers? I bet Shapiro offers Bautista something like 2 years at $10M per, if he makes an offer at all.

The Accountant. I was pretty much expecting not to like it, but was pleasantly surprised. It has some unintentionally silly, laugh out loud bits and the premise is pretty flawed. Dweebs and nerds everywhere will love the whole idea..... But it had plenty of action and overall was quite entertaining. I did not nap at any time.......

white, brown, green. Everybody will get the same percentage of benefit from the LNG industry in Canada: 0%. Anybody taking odds on whether or not this plant gets built in the next 20 years? I say 'no chance'. When you dither and dick around long enough on regulatory delays, it is possible to both pretend you support something and stop it dead. Justin is just taking a page from Dads playbook on the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, the current Canadian and World record holder for wankery(Large Government Division). That one was proposed in about 1974, and received cabinet approval in 2011, about 38 years later. Despite having local First Nations support by the end, the peole who would actually finaqnce it had forgotten entirely about it. Same thing here. See you in 2060 or so.

I'm sure you have a point there somewhere. Could you highlight or bold it for me?

Read the article. He was a senior, politcial appointee of the Nfld Liberal govt. Now he is appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. Yes, I know you applaud that connection.

So he is a white Liberal male. two out of those three 'qualifications' are a surprise.

This is the relative cost of using various means of payment, using a median transaction of $36.50. This article is old and the costs will have shifted upwards since 2009 for both credit and debit, though likely not for cash: source And why have costs increased sustantially for debit and credit card transactions in the last several years? First, the charges on the (in Canada) VISA/MC branded debit cards are much higher than on Interac cards. At least one bank, TD, no longer offers solely Interac branded cards . Why? Because Interac makes next to nothing for banks. Visa/MC Debit makes plenty for the banks and for VISA/MC, all of which is passed to all consumers at the retail level no matter what method you use to pay. Second, all CDN banks and VISA/MC have pushed very hard for several years to get consumers to dump their low cost, low interest, and low merchant fee VISA/MC credit cards in favour of the Gold/Platinum/Free Lunch cards.. Why? Because not only are merchant fees much higher on premium cards which insure fatter returns to VISA and every bank, it is all gravy for them- they don't give a rats ass if retailers have to continually jack up prices to cover bank/VISA fat profits. And nobody seems to point the finger at banks. Customers of banks howl when their deposit interest rates drop, or when their bank jacks up srvcie charges, yet not a peep when they collectively screw us via merchant fees. I'll be following the fight between Walmart and VISA closely, since Walmart in some places refuses to take VISA in a scrap over CC fees. Walmart is widely hated by the latte class, but they are the only retailer that is fighting these assholes.

LOL. Bob is a renowned and thorough ahole, he definitely did not win for his personality! But he is surely the greatest songwriter of the 20th century, and deserves the Nobel.

Neither of those losses were as close as the score. What a waste of two decent starts by our pitchers. In the first one, once again they simply cannot advance runners because everybody is swinging for the fences, as always. In the second, we had another Kansas City-style example of how to win games that matterwhen hits are at a premium: walk, steal a base, steal another base, win the game. We were weak and pathetic in every regard. They have to win four out of five now. Yeah sure.

There are essentially two "different company": VISA and Mastercard. They don't negotiate unless your first name is Amazon or Walmart. And fees of 4% and 5% on the premium cards that give you lots of loyalty goodies are entirely common. You are looking at this situation from the point of view that it benefits you overall. Your premise that a business having credit card services for customers might have made sense in 1978, but today it is nearly universal. There is no 'increased revenue' when every competitor offers the same way of paying. In fact, in Canada , the opposite is true. As a retailer you simply cannot offer a deal to anybody for using cash, nor can you turn down transactions using that Ultra Platinum crd becuase you know the fees are very high. If you attempt to do these things, VISA/MC will withdraw their POS terminals and customers will have no option to use debit or credit. They have tied it all up in a neat bow, and that noose in Canada is getting tighter with the introduction of VISA/MC branded debiot cards. Interac (a very consumer friendly, efficient and cheap system)never used to advertise, now they do it heavily and are fighting for their very survival. For the sake of my wallet, I hope they somehow survive. There is no free lunch: you pay for every AirMile purported 'reward' or 'gift' or 'benefit' in full. I'm a bit shocked that any adult did not know this fact.

American teams cannot outbid US teams for players, there is a hard salary cap in place now.

Every Canadian rink is filled to capacity every night for NHL hockey. Too bad the US hockey players suck so bad when it matters.

They are most definitely material, from 2 to 4.5% of every transaction. Some businesses are harder hit than others, mainlythose with high volume low margins like Gasoline sales, groceries, liquor and many others. And credit card costs are dead costs for retailers, unlike labour. Yes, of course retail costs would drop if there no credit card fees. In the uS, many gas stations offer lower costs if you pay by cash and not coincidentally the discount is equal to the fat fee they pay credit card companies. And no, you have not seen retail businesses that don't accept cards for about a generation. Unless you are talking about Aunt Mary selling macrame at the local craft fair. Retailers do not have the option of refusing your Super Platinum Master Card that costs them 5% in additional fees because of all the 'free bonus miles' that you get for using it. Their agreement with MC or VISA forces them to accept any and all branded cards or their access to electronic pay systems is terminated. Now it is spreading to debit cards, and yes every cent and per cent of that profit center for banks and MC/VISA will be paid by you and me at the till.

The US has not won a major international best-on-best hockey tournament since 1996. Speaking of 'suck so bad'....... On the other hand, Canuckistan has won it all for quite some time now.....

No that is not evidence. Evidence is sworn testimony in court. It does not mean it is true, it means that somebody took an oath that it was true. 'Somebody' could be a person like Lucy DeCoutere.

Until recently, by far the largest source of revenue for nearly all NHL teams was the gate, the ticket revenue. It still is, for that matter. The NHL is still far away from the kind of money that MLB and especially NFL get from TV deals. Oh, and the Canadian teams all have sweetheart deals with municipalities. It is entirely common everywhere. In many ways, they are treated as other businesses. If, for example, you were Joe Moneybags and you announced that you were looking for a new location for a huge bacon plant. What would happen? You'd get offers from scores of provinces, states, cities, counties etc of free land, free services, no taxes and plenty of help in every way. It is scarcely unique to pro sports or to Canada.

Yes, that has been the case for a few decades now. Thanks for pointing it out immediately after I did.

LOL, where would you get the insane notion that anybody but consumers pay the credit card fees? As part of every rtansaction, We also pay retail workers wages, the rent the retailer has on the premises, the wholesale cost of the goods purchased plus markups. heat, water and a host of others that most certainly includes all credit card fees as part of the dollar you hand across the counter. The 'unfortunate enterprise' would like you to take the super expensive fee laden card and stuff it up......but VISA and Mastercard both oblige every retailer to accept any branded card as part of their agreements with every merchant. So the retailer just bundles that cost and adds it to the other charges that YOU and every other customer pay for the goods. Your free lunch aka 'rewards' is not free at all. You paid for all of it. You don't get any rewards for using VISA/MC branded debt, so why not support the no cost Interac system when given that choice? In noteworthy news, the sheep are fighting back...... Walmart has chosen to eliminate all use of VISA cards in some regions because they refuse to play any more. Love it.

You knew that Germany buys tons of coal generated electricity from Poland, right? And that Germany is the largest coal producer in Europe?

Magnifcent 7. Too long and too stupid. However, it was laughably diverse. The cast of characters who likely set back their careers with this turkey included a black man, Asian, First Nations, a fat guy(for the differently abled ) and a woman who apparently had all intelligent dialogue in her script replaced by extensive cleavage. They overlooked the LBGQT faction, maybe the sequel will address this shortcoming.

For many years, the NHL also had an equalization scheme where US teams subsidized the CDN small market teams. The CDN dollar was at $.65 or thereabouts, and all salaries are paid in $US. Those CDN teams would not have survived without the US cash.

For an outsider, it seems that a couple times every generation after a period of prosperity you are obliged to return the NDP to govt. A few years later you regain collective consciousness and emerge from the darkness.....

Interac is not a technology, it is a debit payment system specific to Canada. It works well, and more importantly is quite inexpensive for consumers. The US has had VISA and Mastercard branded debit cards for a long time. This is why CDN debit cards often do not work at point of sale terminals in US and Europe. Lately, some CDN banks(TD Canada Trust is one) have stopped offering Interac debit cards and now offer only VISA branded debit cards. The implications for consumers in Canada are considerable. Interac is effectively non-profit and operated by the big banks. The fees to consumers and merchants are very, very low. The fees on VISA and MC branded debit cards are much higher than Interac though lower than credit card fees. And of course those fees(just like credit card fees) are always passed on to consumers. Always. The reason that TD has jumped on the VISA debit bandwagon is that they now get a cut of the fee, where with Interac there was basically no fee to share. My reaction to this was to close my accounts and investments with TD, and to tell them why, specifically.