overthere

Agree that this was a below average year for the movies nominated, though pretty decent in general for movies released that did not make the Oscar list. I saw all eight of the Nominees, and I thought all of them were pretty good, none of them are worse than average, but none of them are going to make all time great lists either. I agree Ex Machina was worthy of a nomination, but Straight Out of Compton was kind of pointless for me and a movie that could have been much better than it was in the end.

Agreed, the cinematography was top notch in The Revenant. But I thought the movie was average, in part because Leo was miscast in this role. He just is not 'tough enough', he is not the kind of hardbitten man that would first be in that situation in the first place, then to survive. Not believable. Tom Hardy would have been, barely. The lead character survived things that were simply not survivable, and I don't mean a bear attack. I mean floating down rivers in midwinter, and then managing not to freeze to death despite having no dry clothes or a fire in very cold temperatures. I have lived in those climates and worked in some really remote places. A person would last about 5 minutes tops in the water before being unconmscious. Your limit without heat on exiting would be 15 minutes perhaps. Not Leo, who must have had the body fat of a walrus to survive that. I guess that is not his fault, but that of writers and producers huddled around a heated pool in Beverly Hills trying to imagine what it is actually like in cold weather. One Award I really liked was for Supporting Actor Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies. Pretty ordinary movie, except for his subtle and powerful turn.

we have listed the pipelines built and approved under the Harper regime several times. Trudeau has a shorter but much more impressive record of achievement already. He has managed to put all pipeline projects in severe jeopardy with his specific actions, which will have wide ranging negative impact on our economy for a very long time. He has made it clear that investment is not welcome in Canada, and corporations will certainly take note of that. Hello recession.

By his complete disconnect between the reality of managing the economy of an industrialized nation and his burning desire to shape our society in his image with borrowed money. No problem with that if his vision included any way to pay that money back, or even to stop borrowing more and more every year.

Canada is not in a recession, though Guess Who is intent on creating one as quickly as possible. I think the OP question is backwards, it should be' is Trudea as PM a liability for Morneau'?. The answer to that is clear and unambiguous

Baseball is ruled by stats, and compared to his peers and by every measure Bautista is worth a least $25 million per annum. The question is not that, it is for how long, and will he take fewer years/less money than $150 million overall, or both? One again, you don't understand the situation. If they keep Bautista this season to take a shot at a World Series, his contract is over. He can go anywhere he wishes with no compensation at all to the Jays. A free agent. The Jays have the choice of signing him now, trading him now, or getting nothing for him at the end of 2016.

Hey, here is a win-win. Lets pay Bombardier 8000 gazillion dollars to convert the C -Series jet into a modern fighter aircraft. We are resourceful and diverse, how hard can it be? We'd better ask Denis Coderre what he thinks about it first. Consensus required!

Not sure what you mean. He is under contract his season to the Jays for $14. If they haven't signed him by the end of training camp, like in the enxt month he'll play out his contract and become a free agent then. There won't be any buyers then, because they can just sign him diorectly and the Jays will get nothing for him at all. The only logical choices for the Jays are to sign him now, or trade him now. It is grtesque to get nothing for an asset that valuable, tough that is certainly a possibility. Before the Jays do that though, they need to cut down every large tree in the neighbourhood of Rogers.... because the lynch mob will form for Shapiro.

It 's a tough call. If the Jays can only afford to sign one of them, and that is likely the case, I'd rather have Bautista simply because he is a better player all around. Their offensive stats are almost the same last year, but Bautista is better over his career, and he is a much better fielder than EE. Bats is 35, EE is 33. Bautista should be paid more because that is his market value compared to other players in the MLB. There not many comparators because he is that good. EE also deserves and will get a substantial raise from somebody. It seems a problem, but it is the kind of problem many teams would like to have: too much offence.

No, I'm saying your source is either ignorant or a liar.

He has every reason to be confident, because he is an excellent player at the top of his game. It is not arrogance to want to be paid market value for your services. It is sanity. The fact that he played better than he was paid simply means he will be paid more, much more, than previously. That is pretty normal when your value rises. Bautista has played a lot of third base in his career, though most of his time is in the outfield. He won;t be bumping Donaldson off that position though. And he won't be playing first base or as a regular DH either. Bautista is still an excellent fielder. That does not just make him valuable to the Jays, it greatly increases his value as a free agent/trade prospect since he can easily walk into an everyday position player job in the National League. The first base position and DH are a daily fight between Encarnacion(who must have a position in the batting order but is just an OK fielder), Justin Smoak who is the best fielder of the three and a decent power hitter, and Colabello who is a substandard fielder but an excellent hitter for average and power but with a limited resume.

Is this a joke by May, or an intentional lie? I vote for a lie. You cannot refine bitumen until it is upgraded into crude oil. This is specifically done by Suncor in Fort Mac and has been for about half a century. They have two large upgraders. It has been done by Syncrude in fort Mac(get it, SYNtheticCRUDE?) since the 1970s. Shell refines the synhetic crude oil in Edmonton, where there are also two other large refineries. There is also another new upgrader /refinery underway in Sturgeon Heartland, which takes bitumen and upgrades it then refines into diesel.. And the bladeblah about output is another lie. The reality is that we have three companies(Enbridge, Trans Canada and Kinder Morgan) ready to build major pipelines to tidewater. Now it is down to two since Trudeau took the unilateral backstab of sideswiping Gateway. Of course, the other two are almost certainly DOA now as Trudeau has taken two actions lately to delay the applications, and will certainly take more to kill them while pretending he is 'just a referee'.. He wasn't a referee in the killing of the already approved Gateway project, he won't be with the others based on his actual actions so far. All three have customers willing to fill those pipleines with tax generating oil for the next 50 years or so. Please stop spreading the lies of May . Thanks.

I am so excited at the prospect of pouring billions in taxpayer money into getting people to work 10 minutes faster in Toronto. It is in The National Interest.

I'd go further and state that National security/rule of law must be the very first priority for any Canadian govt. The US is slowly but surely retreating from a role as the worlds policeman. We have to recognize that and act accordingly. I am not optimistic.

Although a few posters immediately attacked an American for US defence failures. Like that matters or is relevant. I guess they forgot to blame Harper, just this one time.

It is not clear who has medical issues., it has been widely rumoured that it is Saunders. Not good news right before the season starts, if it is true. More interesting is why they would want Bruce, who is a right fielder with some power...... Maybe that is why Bautista is edgy these days, they have been working on his replacement, Bruce makes $12 million, about $10 million more than Saunders.

The difficulty won't be marketing baloney like 'social responsibility". That will be the excuse to let Provincial Liquor Boards collect taxes for everybody, and I do mean everybody. No, the difficulty will be somehow defeating /competing against private sector weed which will be(as always) the very best quality for lower prices. And how will they enforce age restrictions on smoking weed when they don't do it now? Law enforcement? Criminal records? Teenagers in jail? Trudeau sees the minefield, he must. What his buddy Blair is working on is an exit strategy for the federal polticians. No way do they want to wear this mighty turd!

That would be the sane and rational course, given the clusterf**k that is coming, but it won't happen. All levels of govt want some tax money out of this. They cannot help themselves. The business model that govt will be competing with will eat govt weed bureaucracies for lunch. I am starting to wonder if there is a mathematical correlation between Broken Promises/Maple Leaf Web Apologists . Oops I said that wrong. I can see there is a strong link, I wonder what the ratio is.....

The bad news is that the staff as whole is unproven, and the starters are not yet set. Stroman looks solid, and we can hope that Estrada now has a second good year in a mediocre career. Can Hutchison regain consciousness? Can Dickey fight off advanced years and be effective? Can Happ stay in th roation as a lefty starter?Almost certainly Sanchez will be tried again as a starter and if a couple of these guys pan out.... I like their staff better than any recent year. They might have a Kansas City style triple whammy in the pen with Cecil, Osuna and Stroman. Outfield just got more cloudy, since the Saunders for Bruce deal got canned because Saunders failed the physical. And their budget is such that they will sign either JB or EE. Getting prospects, and they'd get some good ones, are far preferable to getting dick all in the off season. They can win without one of them this year, assuming their pitching is better.

It depends if Shapiro is willing to let EE or JB walk at the end of the season, for absolutely nothing in return. Or trade now, when somebody will pay for a year of either player at the very top of their game. Every day from now to the trade deadline, the value of each of those players in a trade drops. I don't see JB as a curmudgeon. His analysis of his situation and value appears to be perfect. ' Taking one for the team' is most often media BS. Professional athletes play for money, he has been underpaid and now wants market value for his body. The Jays can pay him or trade him, same as anybody else. If the Jays really wanted to sign everybody, why didn't they start with Price? They did not even make an offer.

My position? No, i think that is the Jays position. I doubt they feel they can afford at least $40 million per year to sign both EE and Bautista. You are talking like a fan, take off that hat which I agree would be wonderful to sign both of them. Myself and Bats are speaking to the business of baseball, niot the warm and fuzzy comfort of having anybody at any price.. And Joey has made some pertinent points. He told Shapiro a number required to sign him. Shapiro came back with some blah blah about budget and corporate structure and blahblah, Joey responds with: a) your numbers are full of turd, corps like Rogers that own the building, team and media can and do shuffle money routinely between sectors just for this reason, to negotiate better deals or try to baffle agents and players with irrelevant numbers. There is no trust.... and Why should Bats care about what Rogers wants or does? His market value is likely about $25 million, and the only real detail is the term. It is risky to sign somebody for 5 years at a time when his output would normally spin down because of age. Teams can insure big contracts against injury, but not for old age. The question is: why do you think that is possible for the Jays t sign both? And what do they do if they cannot sign both? Why haven't the Jays signed both already to long term deals, so all can sing Kumbayah around the campfire in Dunedin on a warm spring evening? I have no idea who Shapiro is talking to regarding trades, but you can be sure he is looking at trading at least one of them. He would be an utter fool if he didn't, both are valuable assets. Trading both would leave a huge hole in middle of their order, but having to trade one could probably be managed. There is no reason that either Donaldson or Tulo cannot be moved into the 3.4.5 holes in a mix with either JB or EE. If he has asked for $30 over five years, your thought of $25 over 5 years, this is a distinct possibility. I would also consider $30 million over 4 years. I doubt JB will get both monster money and term from anybody($30x5), but he will get one of them for sure. It is crazy to think that $25x5 isn't monster, but.... market forces. .

BUT HARPER!!! I reckon it will be the usual inability of bureaucracies at all levels to not tax and 'manage' this sucker into irrelevance that will doom the govt weed tsunami.

His stats in the last several years have put in in the very first rank of hitters. He is also a very good fielder, baserunner and a team leader. He has been underpaid the last few years. Now he wants his market value. No mysteries or resentment there, not for me. He is worth $20 to $25 million per. For me, the only sticking point is how long, because of his age. I am guessing that he wants five years total $100 million. I'd give him that, but front load it with $25 million for the first three years, with club options for the last two. Your notion of waiting through the season is kind of crazy. He won't sign at the end of the year, and if he has yet another great year the price goes up. He'd be nuts to not go to free agency, and the Jays cannot take the risk of losing him for nothing at all. He is saying put up or shut up. Shapiro went to his house and asked Joey what it would take to sign him. Joey told him. Shapiro came back with Rogers crying poor. Bats says: not my problem. And it isn't. It's Shapiros problem. If Rogers wants bums in seats, they have to pay for the reasons the bums come to those seats. Its his last contract. He is a very good player. They pay him now or lose him. Same with Encarnacion, who is younger but IMO not as good overall as JB. They cannot afford both, so they need to trade one of them and sign the other. Oh,and did his Tshirt at this acrimonious press availability say " Toronto is Home"?.. Love it!

BUT HARPER!!! Why hasn't anybody claimed this as an all purpose username? I'll play along though. Harper has sucked the PBO and the Fiscal Update into his conspiracy, with daily directives from his new headquarters at In n' Out burger in Las Vegas. The reaction of the Conservatives to looming deficit, with a majority government and at the beginning of their term- would be to slash spending. Spending on new and ongoing social program spending, at least. He had As an economist, Harper would be aware that a balance sheet has more than one column. And golly gee, why won't Trudeau unleash the spending of $25 billion in non-taxpayer cash to build a couple of pipelines that will bring mucho dinero to our beleagered peso?

No the problem with the EU is that member countries cannot make the next crucial step. The EU has a more or less united united monetary policy(with countries like UK keeping their own currency). But the recent global recession illustrated, as does the huge financial problems with Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland that it aint gonna work unless there is also a coherent fiscal policy with ti. Since that means all countries will have to give up some big decision on their own and toe the EU line, many of them will balk. Brussels does not want that to happen, and doubly so with the wealthier northern economies like UK. Without at least a pretense of working for the common good, the union is broken. I predict that if the Brexit campaign in the UK gathers much more steam, the EU will return to the table and do whatever they have to to keep the UK in the fold. They'll have to.