So this is why I'll be voting Conservative

[socialist]

Edited August 17, 2015 by socialist

[socialist]

So you have now confirmed you don't like the British parliamentary model of democracy, the system of gov't upon which Canada's is based. You are aware England's gov't is usually a formal coalition, aren't you?

If none of the parties get a majority of the seats, then the GG will ask Harper first if he could form government. It is entirely possible that the Liberals might be interested in forming a coalition government with the CPC for a duration of time.

I am not saying that that will happen automatically. I am saying it is one of the possibilities. I am a realist. You are a speculator and a Harper hater. Enough said.

[Argus]

If none of the parties get a majority of the seats, then the GG will ask Harper first if he could form government. It is entirely possible that the Liberals might be interested in forming a coalition government with the CPC for a duration of time.

Never happen. At best they would sit back and play kingmaker. They would never enter a formal coalition with the Tories. Even doing it with the NDP would be dumb.

[Keepitsimple]

Another reason to vote Conservative.......Harper's actually got a pretty good sense of humour!

One of the most surprising things to emerge during the research for the National Post’s in-depth profile of Stephen Harper is that — without fail —friend and foe alike said the staid Conservative leader has a unique penchant for comedy. And to prove it, they handed over an impressive catalogue of jokes told by our normally staid, humourless Prime Minister.

“Here’s a true story. Laureen is a loyal subscriber to Frank Magazine and loves to read about who is said to be sleeping around on Parliament Hill. Anyway, I said to her one day – ‘what are you going to do when Frank prints some untruth about me having an affair?’ Without missing a beat she said, ‘I’ll call her up and ask her what it’s like.’”

— From Harper’s 2002 speech to the Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner.

“But, in all seriousness, it is a fact that Jim, as fiercely partisan as he was, was also genuinely liked and respected by his opponents, liked by his enemies. That’s something in this business, something I envy — I can’t even get my friends to like me.”

— From Harper’s April 2014 speech at the funeral of longtime finance minister Jim Flaherty.

“It’s always fun being at the National Arts Centre, since I’m not liked nationally, by the arts, or by the centre.”

— From Harper’s 2004 speech to the Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner.

“Nobody has denounced me. Nobody has called for my resignation. Nobody in our party has even said anything outlandish and off-the-wall—at least not unless it’s official party policy.”

— From Harper’s 2003 speech to the Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner.

“Thomas Mulcair says he’ll be able to spend more by raising taxes on businesses because those taxes are too low. But friends, when he was asked what the business tax rate is, he was way off. He didn’t know. That’s the best description of NDP economic policy I’ve ever heard: ‘We in the NDP don’t know what your taxes are but we know that they’re too low.’”

— From Harper’s 2015 speech to supporters at a Calgary Stampede BBQ.

“At the time of the debate over same-sex marriage, I and some others were with Stephen in the Opposition leader’s office talking about data. Somehow the concept of heteroscedasticity (a complex statistics term) came up—why, I’m not sure, as it’s very technical. Stephen said dryly, ‘Of course our party prefers the traditional definition of scedasticity.’”

— Tom Flanagan, former Conservative Party campaign manager and Harper’s former chief of staff.

“I’m sure the NHL lockout is on a lot of your minds … but if bored Canadians want to watch pampered millionaires who only work in 45 seconds shifts they can sneak into the Senate.”

— From Harper’s 2004 speech to the Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner.

Link: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/the-secret-side-of-stephen-harper-the-staid-prime-ministers-quick-wit-is-lauded-by-friends-and-foes-alike

Edited August 17, 2015 by Keepitsimple

[Big Guy]

The right wing New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/the-closing-of-the-canadian-mind.html?_r=0

Wow!

[waldo]

Another reason to vote Conservative.......Harper's actually got a pretty good sense of humour!

cause none of that was written by someone else! I skimmed your cut&paste and was reminded of the woeful attempt by Harper at Flaherty's funeral... that was brutally forced and paled in comparison to the genuine tributary statements made by others!

[Vancouver King]

If none of the parties get a majority of the seats, then the GG will ask Harper first if he could form government. It is entirely possible that the Liberals might be interested in forming a coalition government with the CPC for a duration of time.

I am not saying that that will happen automatically. I am saying it is one of the possibilities. I am a realist. You are a speculator and a Harper hater. Enough said.

Your naivety knows no boundaries. Why would Trudeau commit political suicide by propping up his arch enemy? You are unable to integrate this simple fact into your spinal cord: Tossing Harper from power IS THE ISSUE.

Edited August 17, 2015 by Vancouver King

[TimG]

Your naivety knows no boundaries. Why would Trudeau commit political suicide by propping up his arch enemy?

You mean Thomas Mulcair? The trouble is the Libs want to be a viable party and they cannot be a viable party by propping up either the NDP or the CPC. It is their interest to play the two parties against each other and look for ways to advance positions which are uniquely Liberal. This also means it is in the Libs self interest to entertain the possibility of supporting the CPC if the terms are better than what the NDP offers. Edited August 17, 2015 by TimG

[socialist]

Your naivety knows no boundaries. Why would Trudeau commit political suicide by propping up his arch enemy? You just can't integrate this simple fact into you spinal cord: Tossing Harper from power IS THE ISSUE.

Well, the Liberals I talk to have more in common with the CPC than the NDP. What makes you assume all Liberals are for a coalition with the NDP? I don't live in a socialist cocoon anymore. I'm out there talking to people.

I think it is you who is naive.

[Keepitsimple]

The right wing New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/the-closing-of-the-canadian-mind.html?_r=0

Wow!

Ask yourself why - why on earth the NY Times would publish something so poisonous from a nobody named Stephen Marche - A novelist and a columnist at Esquire Magazine who lives in Toronto who writes about "culture". It's disgusting - and I would be just as disgusted if they would have picked Trudeau or Mulcair apart. It's simply not done.

Edited August 17, 2015 by Keepitsimple

[Black Dog]

Ask yourself why - why on earth the NY Times would publish something so poisonous from a nobody named Stephen Marche - A novelist and a columnist at Esquire Magazine who lives in Toronto who writes about "culture". It's disgusting - and I would be just as disgusted if they would have picked Trudeau or Mulcair apart. It's simply not done.

What is it about this article, specifically, that has sent you to the fainting couch here?

[PIK]

Your naivety knows no boundaries. Why would Trudeau commit political suicide by propping up his arch enemy? You are unable to integrate this simple fact into your spinal cord: Tossing Harper from power IS THE Talk

Talk of being naive, the libs and NDP hate each other . There will be more liberals jumping ship to the conservatives then the NDP. And I think the liberals have learnt their lesson when it comes to a partner ship with the NDP.

[Mighty AC]

According to their policy document the CPC is still against equal marriage rights. WTF year is it? This backwards party has to go.

- Point 70, Page 28 - http://www.conservative.ca/media/documents/Policy-Declaration-Feb-2014.pdf

Your old road is Rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

[Vancouver King]

Talk of being naive, the libs and NDP hate each other . There will be more liberals jumping ship to the conservatives then the NDP. And I think the liberals have learnt their lesson when it comes to a partner ship with the NDP.

According to the latest Leger poll, Liberal supporters second choice of parties is as follows:

NDP - 50%

CPC - 19%

But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant.

[WIP]

According to the latest Leger poll, Liberal supporters second choice of parties is as follows:

NDP - 50%

CPC - 19%

But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant.

Is that from a national poll? If Canadians don't give Harper the boot, we'll be stuck with Harpercons for another four or five years, and what's worse: Harper has already made systemic changes that are difficult to unwind; once he gets us signed up with TPP, TTIP and TISA, there's no point to elected government anymore!

[Topaz]

To all of you who support the Tories listen to this former Tory, Reformer and just have an open mind and share your thoughts of what he is saying. He seems to care more about the country and the future of HIS kids than voting party line always and now a days ALL voters should put country and their kids first. http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/former-conservative-mp-randy-white-may-change-vote-1.2523202

[Keepitsimple]

To all of you who support the Tories listen to this former Tory, Reformer and just have an open mind and share your thoughts of what he is saying. He seems to care more about the country and the future of HIS kids than voting party line always and now a days ALL voters should put country and their kids first. http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/former-conservative-mp-randy-white-may-change-vote-1.2523202

I did as you said - kept an open mind - and am very confused.....are you saying you are opposed to same-sex marriage, opposed to safe-injection sites, and favour using the notwithstanding clause? This guy has been out of government since 2006 and was obviously a loose-cannon long before that. Country and kids? Good God - who would this guy change his vote to?

For example, White has served on the board of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, which opposes the Insite safe injection site for drug addicts -- a project NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair has lauded.

And White was one of the most ardent opponents of same-sex marriage before it was made legal in 2005. In fact, White may be most famous for his comments during the 2004 election, when he said that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives would use the Charter of Rights and Freedom’s “notwithstanding clause” to prevent same-sex marriage, adding “to heck with the courts.”

Politics professor Tom Flanagan wrote in his book “Harper’s Team” that White’s comments were highly damaging and a “real turning point in the campaign,” which ended with the Liberals winning a minority government.

[PIK]

According to the latest Leger poll, Liberal supporters second choice of parties is as follows:

NDP - 50%

CPC - 19%

But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant.

We will see when the election comes, polls are for dogs.

[hitops]

Thanks for ignoring the history and the strategy of invoking enclosure laws and regulations that make your contention of the poor flocking to the cities to escape rural drudgery and thankful for sweatshop jobs a complete fabrication!

First, people have to be forced off the land, and then they move to dirty, overcrowded cities and take jobs that put them at a state of virtual slavery. It's the same as a somewhat related issue that infuriates me: all of the vitriol surrounding illegal immigrants moving to Europe and America, which never asks the WHY question, so that nobody in respectable media looks at root causes of why so many people feel forced to uproot their families and live a precarious existence in refugee camps and risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean or the militarized US border with Mexico. In both cases, the reader, viewer or listener is led to believe that these people are acting on volition rather than coercion!

Before capitalism, they didn't need those written property rights! It wasn't until the arrival of capitalists seeing their land for its export potential, that property laws became paramount....and the lack of legal title has been used time and time again wherever wealthy interests backed by guns, wants their land!

Before capitalism, the world was 99% poor as dirt. Everyone in the world, including the absolute most destitute, are far better off with capitalism. The wealthiest nations are also the ones that trade most with the US. If the US leaves you alone, you are probably one of the worst places to live on earth.

And in those countries without property rights, the way it worked was you killed and died for what you needed, you life average expectancy was about 30-40 years (assuming you survived childbirth), and most of it spent hungry and in pain. If you were a woman, you were probably considered property, or at least treated that way.

Socialists love making the poorest people absolutely destitute (or in fact starving to death), as long as that also makes rich people a little less rich. Somehow this makes them feel good. That is the reality of socialism when practiced in the largest historical experiments.

Edited September 11, 2015 by hitops

[hitops]

Not all.

I believe our profit margin could be much higher but for our executive. Production is high.....demand is growing.......our lunch is being eaten by poor administrative policies and failed capital management processes.

MBA's are not the key to the kingdom.....birthright greases the wheels too. Corporations are NOT a meritocracy. I look around and there is a dearth of leadership and those being promoted have only a veneer of capability as they play the corporate chutes and ladders game. They are holding back corporations from success.

That's an argument for the system, not against it. If the corp has a bad exec, it will do poorly. If times are good now, when lean times come those companies will suffer. The board will need to turf the doofus or face losing market share.

The fact that you have a bad exec and your lunch is being eaten, is exactly how it is supposed to work.

The natural response since you know much better than him, is to start your own company and do it better.

[hitops]

The workers are so desperate, you mean.

God you have no clue, no conscience.

I've heard sociopathy is rampant among the corporate set.

Can't wait to kick the bums out!

The fact that I have a conscience is exactly why I want those jobs to stay - they are so much better than the alternative for those people.

You are literally advocating they starve to death, rather than work those jobs. That is the alternative. Not because of anything anyone in the west has done, but because that is how life was before the west did business there Without those factories, that is their reality. One day this might penetrate the fog of your self imposed blindness.

[hitops]

I didn't even get to the part that the destruction of the ---SNIP--- numbers try to tell us!

It's a sad story. But before globalization and industrialization of places like Bangladesh, 95% of the world's population had every sadder, more brutal lives and stories.

The alternative.......is what matters. It is less important that people died in a fire, than that vast swaths of the population can now live something resembling a decent existence compared to abject, always on the verge of starvation existence, like their parents.

Bleeding hearts over here would shut down the factories, not realizing that by saving a few thousand factory deaths on the next decade, they would be indirectly killing millions by the dramatic impoverishment of the whole country (in other words, returning the country to what it was before the factories).

People die in cars every day. Let's ban them then. Try to even calculate in your mind the human cost of that. It's the same argument.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Charles Anthony
---SNIP---

[Peter F]

http://​http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1312764/Britains-child-slaves-New-book-says-misery-helped-forge-Britain.html

I know, they weren't of much importance

And look at how they benefitted!

http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/report-on-child-labour-1842

And none of that was necessary. Without government regulation and oversight the Capitalists would have us all living that way - Hell, what more do the unskilled deserve?

[Argus]

And none of that was necessary. Without government regulation and oversight the Capitalists would have us all living that way - Hell, what more do the unskilled deserve?

Without capitalism the government would have no money, and all those useless mouth breathers who now pay no taxes, or worse, need welfare or other huge government subsidies to survive, would either starve, or have to live in tin shacks like the third world's poor do.

[ReeferMadness]

Without capitalism the government would have no money, and all those useless mouth breathers who now pay no taxes, or worse, need welfare or other huge government subsidies to survive, would either starve, or have to live in tin shacks like the third world's poor do.

Wow. Would you like to provide any actual evidence for that grandiose sweeping generalization or should we all just accept it as gospel just cuz you're so much smarter than us?