They say if you live long enough

[silverback]

Ok so let's just pretend that the ad scam was a great thing for the benefit of this country. The missing money going back to the liberals was only the cost of doing good things for "Canada". Just a little money.

However, if by simply uttering the words "We Will not support America in this war in Iraq" meant that Washington decided it will be a cold day in h___ before any beef crosses the border, then I would say the Liberals have cost many of us much, much more than anyone will ever be able to calculate. All they had to say was that we don't have the troops - that would be the truth, but I guess they are much better at telling lies.

I cannot understand the paranoid thoughts that some people have about the United States. I am mad about what they have done to this cattle industry, but they also have more money than God down there. They have a tax system that actually lets people keep their own money and then decide what to do with it - what a crazy system.

The last time I checked, most people work for real companies or themselves, and the way that our economy operates is that we sell things and then we buy things. Anyone who thinks we can survive without trading with others is wrong. How about we get over this "Canadians are better than Americans" garbage and realize that there is not much difference. It must be really a crazy thought to some that it might be a good idea to try and improve the trade relations with the U.S. How can anyone argue that that is the wrong thing to do???

After that, don't believe everything that Farenheit 9/11 preaches, if you are a true thinking person who can do some research, it is very easy to figure out that it is just a film, not a factual documentary.

[ivbinconned]

Farmers-son please humor me and let me direct you, for reading, to two items that I have posted that you did not respond to, but do address two issues that you raise here.

No.1 May 19th "Every Body Does It", here you will learn, hopefully, that only very shallow thinking would excuse the crimes of the Librano$ with the suggestion that all parties are guilty.

No.2 March 11th "The Power Behind The Throne's"
Here one learns, hopefully, that your view (which is way out to lunch) on Canada's refusal to participate in Iraq could be summed up using the words of Stephn Harper..." there is no grand principle involved here, only ambition"!

Stephen was refering to Belinda $tronach of course but the same comment applies to Jean Cretian and his stance on Iraq.

BLATANT self interest was invoved!!

[ivbinconned]

IF nothing else this weeks gong show in Ottawa, has resulted in a lot of Canadians getting interested in politics !!!

[silverback]

Yes, but unfortunately many have also decided that the easiest thing to do is just say all politicians must be corrupt in the same way instead of actually listening and learning what some of them are trying to say. I believe that some politicians would actually be the type of people that I would like to sit down and have a beer with or visit with at a meeting sometime without worrying about keeping a hand over my wallet.

[cowman]

It is a sad state of affairs when people will defend a nest of thieves. I think Gomery has clearly shown that?
Will the inquiry reveal more? No doubt!
The fact is Paul Martin is either a crook or a complete incompetent...and I truly doubt he is incompetent!
You just have to love the comment from Peter McKay when he said he was going home to walk his dog...at least the dog was loyal! I guess he pretty well summed up Stronach with that statement?

[FarmRanger]

ivbinconned, even though I agree with most of what you said in your last post, I don't think it helps to say people's opinions are out to lunch. farmers_son is obviously intelligent and has his reasons for his opinions. If we all keep an open mind, and honestly debate these issues, then I think everyone will see truth without insults being necessary.

[FarmRanger]

Cowman, I nearly died laughing at MacKay's comment about walking the dog, that was his first volley at Belinda, and I sowmehow think that when parliament resumes he is going to be done licking his wounds !!! I don't really feel to sorry for him, he ought to have known better than to air his private love life months ago....who actually gave a damn ! But I do think he handled this mess with class.

[farmers_son]

As far as I can tell, I am the only one defending the nest of thieves on this thread. Perhaps I have been too easy on the Liberals, preferring to wait for the Gomery report before making my conclusions. The problem for me it not only are some of these people appearing before Gomery thieves, they are liars and one person says one thing and another says the opposite. Who do you believe? Justice Gomery will have to figure it out. Certainly I will not let the press make those judgements for me.

And for sure Stronach was not loyal. But doesn't Harper get some blame? He has mishandled some of his people, no doubt about it. His shouting match with Stronach was ill advised. And his determination to force an election at this time was bad for the country and bad for the party. The Conservatives would have been wiped out in eastern Canada for voting against the Atlantic Accord. And what was Harper doing, first supporting the budget, then not and on the big day supporting it after the government had to hat in hand to the NDs and hand over nearly 5 billion in spending that would not have happened if Harper knew more about politics.

Peter McKay may come out of this week the big winner. Definately a softer more human image than Harper or the love em and leave em Stronach. The picture of the heart broken McKay struggling with his personal loss as he sat directly across the floor from the young and attractive if not treacherous and self serving Stronach will stay in peoples minds a long time. If the Conservatives want to win an election they need to get McKay as leader. It would get them a lot of votes from across the country.

Certainly this week was high political drama. Normally would have been watching the playoffs but this was almost as good as watching the Oilers versus the Leafs.

[silverback]

How sad it is that what it all comes down to for the well being of this country is what the media decides we should be told. Does anyone on this page know exactly what was said between Harper and Belinda? Did anyone bother to ask if Atlantic Canada would get their oil revenues from a Conservative government?? Does anyone really know what went on between Belinda and Peter?? The answer is no.

A wise old man once challenged me to start questioning what it is the media reports and why it is they report some things the way they do. The media in Canada love things the way they are down east. The big shots get invited to all the parties and every now and then they get a "scoop" or some "leaked" information. For them it is way easier and more interesting to try and find faults with someone's character than to try and discuss what a policy is. What would have happened if Harper had agreed to let Ms. Stronach do what she wanted? The media would have labeled him worthless and weak. What happened when he "maybe" stood up to her and asked her to be loyal to party policy? He became a mean, weak little man who doesn't understand politics.

Why did this become the issue?

Is not the issue the ability of the Liberals to represent this country and quit wasting our money on themselves and their friends?? How many make work projects do we need in this country. Would some people just be happier if we admitted we were a socialist mecca and have all jobs in this country run by the Federal Government? Then we can all get paid the same wage, we can pool all our grain in one pile and give out baskets for everyone to come and get it, and then we can vote for the one party that led us to this great shangri-la - the Liberals. Unfortunately to me, this is way too close to our present reality.

[ivbinconned]

Farmers-son all you are doing here is repeating what the main stream talking heads are telling you to think.

Like your view about Iraq, OK, not "out to lunch", but 180 degrees off the mark is your stated view of Harper and McKay. Orchard could say to McKay..."what goes around comes around"!!

The following should move you closer to realistic view on Harper.


Subject: David Frum-National Post May17.05
Averting their eyes from scandal: Since 1993, Ottawa's press corps has been taking a nice, long nap
Things are looking mighty bleak for the Liberals this week. So naturally, it is the perfect time for the media to open a lengthy discussion of the flaws and foibles of Conservative leader Stephen Harper.
You've been hearing for a week now that Harper is too angry and/or too hesitant, too opportunistic and/or too ideological, that his platform is too right wing and/or too much of a Liberal copy cat. Harper's eyes are too blue, his hair too neatly combed, his skin too white, his style too cerebral.
Some might wonder whether these imperfections in any way compare to the revelation that the Liberal government of the past dozen years was in effect running a political scam in the province of Quebec. Some might note that Harper, icy though his eyes may be, never pressured a government-owned bank to lend money to his business associates. They might observe that he never manipulated government contracts to direct business to a firm run by his chief of staff's boyfriend. They might protest that Harper has never used political connections to enrich himself.
But of course it's precisely because the case against the Liberal government is so black and damning that we are hearing all these petty, peevish criticisms of Harper. It's awfully hard to defend a government as guilty as this one. Those in the press who shudder at the thought of a Conservative prime minister have had no choice but to go on the offensive.
Yet pettiness and peevishness have their uses too. The past year has been educational for Canadians. They are learning a great deal about the real nature of the Liberal Party of Canada, a party they have trusted too much and too long. They are learning the true character of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin and the inner circles of those men. They are learning how recklessly their tax dollars are spent and how selfishly they are used. That's all important information.
Perhaps Canadians will now also learn something important about the way in which political information is reported from Ottawa -- and (more important) not reported.
Those of us who were around for the Mulroney years remember how swift and eager the press was to discover and investigate scandals. But since 1993, the Ottawa press corps has taken a nice long nap, and even now, with Gomery on television every day, they are napping still.
Canadians still do not know, for example, the full truth of the Shawinigate story, or the HRDC scandal, in which $2-billion supposedly intended to help the unemployed went AWOL. The Chretien/Martin government insists the money is not missing, but merely misplaced -- the same excuse provided at Gomery. Is there anybody in Canada willing to take this excuse at face value? Two billion dollars is a lot of unaccounted money to flow through a bureaucracy. Might not some of it have stuck to somebody's fingers -- or been redirected into a party coffer? Isn't it time to take a second look?
Closer to the centre, there are the nagging questions about the connections between Paul Martin's finance department and the Earnscliffe lobbying/research group now being studied by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. I live hundreds of miles from Ottawa. Even at that distance, I keep hearing troubling stories about the alleged links between the two. Surely those on the scene have heard similar rumors too?
Maybe journalists have painstakingly checked out these rumors and decided there was nothing to them. Or maybe they could not be bothered.
Ottawa, after all, is a very small town. The Ottawa press and the Liberals may not always like each other, but they belong to the same community, attend the same parties, marry each other, and find individual career advancement in similar ways. The media and the Liberals live in Ottawa; the Conservatives are just visiting.
The editors and commentators, by contrast, often live in Toronto, chattering to one another from within an ideological cocoon in which abortion and gay rights matter far, far more than the trifling matter of whether the country is governed by scoundrels.
The Italians have a saying: "Italy is a country of many mysteries, but no secrets." There have been many secrets in Ottawa --but maybe not so many mysteries. The truths revealed by the Gomery inquiry are truths that many Canadians already suspected: that the Liberal government existed to serve itself, not them; that their money is being wasted and stolen; that the press too often reports less than it knows, or anyway, could find out.
And there's one truth more: Canadians have the power to demand better. They have always had it. The question before Canadians today is not whether they like Stephen Harper's haircut. The question is: Will they allow themselves to be bamboozled by those who wish to continue abusing the nation's trust -- and distracted from what really matters by journalists willing to tolerate that abuse of trust for dubious motives of their own?

[ivbinconned]

What I have been mulling over since dear Belinda did the number is, if Stephen Harper is so insensitive to Canadians needs why is she the only Conservative to cross the floor, or bad mouth him ?
I would think that if she was right and he was as much of a tirant as she would have us believe, more party members would have taken up the torch and left, knowing that if they did, they would insure the Liberals a victory and of course get rewarded in some fashion.
It appears to me that most of the bad mouthing of Harper is done by the media and of course Belinda and the Liberals.
Peter McKay may well be a better leader for the country, but hopefully if he eventually does become the Conservative leader he will manage to keep his lovelife private. I too await with eager anticipation the results of the Gomery inquiry, but don't have much faith in the Liberals caring a darn bit what the outcome is, and am not holding my breath waiting for Martin to call an election in the fall even if he has promised to do so.

[cakadu]

Speaking of wise men, a fellow once told me that you believe nothing of what you hear, half of what you read and everything you see for yourself. Plenty of responses state the fact that the media pulls us one way or the other and we could all find articles that support our positions and back up our beliefs.

The truth of the matter is that none of us have seen the actual documentation being presented in the Gomery inquiry, but Gomery is and he will be the one to decide what is fact and what is fiction.

To blindly paint all the party members as one thing or another is somewhat erroneous because not all of them would be bad and as silverback has said - some you may even want to carry on a decent conversation with.

How many times have we witnessed the fact that the right hand doesn't often know what the left is doing when it comes to government at any leveL, but particularly in federal and provincial politics. Each department goes about doing what it is mandated (or lead to do) and the others know nothing about it. It has only been in the last 18 months or so that we have witnessed our provincal government departments actually getting together to discuss common issues and outcomes and how to best deal with them.

It has been said that if a person is on the road to ruination, you don't stop the progress and the Conservatives and Bloc should have just let that train keep on going down the track because the more that was revealed with the Gomery inquiry, the more fed up Canadians were getting. Instead he chose (after being given advice to do so I'm sure) to start making noise and took the heat off of where it needed to stay.

The one common theme throughout this thread is that all of us are sick and tired of watching the mismanagement of the hard earned tax dollars we pay. We may differ on how we best clean the situation up, but at least we have one commonality between us.

There has to be some middle ground and some balance that we could reasonably live with - it doesn't have to go from one extreme i.e. status quo to the other which is separation. There must be middle ground in there somewhere like giving more autonomy to the provinces, as an example.

[cakadu]

Linda, I have always subscribed to the old adage about giving someone enough rope and they will hang themselves, I saw it happen in my own County last year, and even here the people that got the favors of paved roads etc. voted for change....having said that I don't hold out much hope that Ontario will ever vote against the Liberals because they have become accustomed to getting the lions share and Harper cannot promise them status quo and have any credibility in the west and Lord knows, he needs the West.

[ivbinconned]

There is truth and there is fiction...no middle ground between!

Isn't it ironic that in the midst of all the revelations about financial corruption, bribes, payoffs, secret meetings that have led to the present new low in Canadian political culture we see the Librano'$ colaborating with the N.D.P. and $tronach using bribes,financial payoffs, secret meetings etc. in a desperate bid to hold power where they will be more able to minimize the impact of Gomery and control the agenda.

[ivbinconned]

It is going to be interesting to see if the entire Gomery decision and recommendations will be made public or will be editted.