onoway

wow If his views upset you so much why not just simply stop reading them? Name calling and this sort of aggressive hostility doesn't give you or your views any credit or credibility and only makes you look bad. Also claiming that somehow you have more right to be here or to be abusive to people because you've been here longer or participated in a wider variety of threads than they have is a crock. Unless you are Fred or the official moderator you are only a guest here as are the rest of us. Please stop. Someone once told me a few years ago that the forums were a club and anyone else who tried to participate was soon made to feel unwelcome. That hasn't been my experience but this episode seems to reflect that attitude. How sad.

CBC said that after Venezuela he is off to Ecuador. What with Julian Assange still a guest in the embassy in London they're going to be getting a reputation.

http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/2013-voting-law-changes-legislation-making-it-harder-vote http://www.globalresearch.ca/canada-s-c-51-law-to-outlaw-60-of-natural-health-products/8850 The bill did not pass but Health Canada has simply silently banned literally thousands of products anyway, forcing people to choose between big pharma or nothing http://www.voanews.com/content/hungarian-president-signs-controversial-media-law-112693124/170413.html That may be Hungary but shades of the same thing is now seen with Harper in Canada restricting access to information, even in the face of Freedom of Information Act which is (at least sometimes) simply ignored. We have also recently had amendments to bills passed which makes the parameters of the information legally available so extreme that it's virtually the same as denying access. Again in Canada, throwing everything but the kitchen sink into huge omnibus bills which are then pushed through without time for much debate or discussion so the opposition is made incapable of doing its job and the public is left largely in the dark exactly what just got passed into law. ww.seed-sovereignty.org/EN/ I would have thought the spying and collecting of information by governments on private citizens without any sort of reason or warrant being needed or even considered need not be pointed out, although that's perhaps the biggest one. I can't prove it, but I tend to think that 40 years ago (your time frame) there would have been outrage and utter disbelief that the US was not only condoning but using torture as a means to gather information and were keeping people in jails indefinitely without charges or an opportunity to defend themselves meaningfully. Will those do for a start or do you need more?

Judge Robert Bork, quotes: As government regulations grow slowly, we become used to the harness. Habit is a powerful force, and we no longer feel as intensely as we once would have [the] constriction of our liberties that would have been utterly intolerable a mere half century ago.

trying to figure out whose version of this I like the best..not sure this is it but it's one of the top 3 anyway

although that's likely true and not only in the US, I have to bring in an article I ran across yesterday about a former Canadian politician, now long gone. At present in Canada we are going through a bunch of wailing about patronage appointments, misuse if not fraudulent accounting of funds and other such business-as-usual-but-this-time-you-got-caught shenanigans. Back in the day we had at least one politician who had some sense of morality beyond whats in it for me: (I somehow lost the title, it's about Stanley Knowles.) I track down Susan Mann and she says, yes, the story I have heard is true. And yes, it does say something about public service and what that has changed over the years. "You hate to say it is a generational thing, that Canadian politicians no longer understand public service," says the former vice-rector of the University of Ottawa. "But it's hard not to come to that conclusion. "I mean, what ARE they thinking?" Now, Susan Mann has had an illustrious career - vice-rector at U of O, President of York University, successful author - but I have contacted her not with an academic question, but one about Stanley Knowles. The Member of Parliament for Winnipeg North Centre for nearly 40 years. The United Church minister who lost but one election between 1942 and 1984. I once heard a story about Stanley Knowles and I've been wondering recently if it were true. I contacted Mann to find out. There are plenty of Stanley Knowles' stories out there. His knowledge of Parliamentary tradition and procedure was legendary. It is said he could bring government business to a halt with one, well-researched question. "Stanley could ask questions that terrorized the government," remembers Mann. "Questions today, well they're not really questions, are they? It's all partisan chest-thumping." Knowles was first elected to Parliament in 1942, a United Church minister who had been raised in abject poverty after his father lost his machinist's job during the Great Depression. He was a CCF member, later an NDP, and he famously fought for the introduction of the Canada Pension Plan, speaking of his father while he waged his battle on the Hill. He was well-respected by all members of the House and when he had a stroke in 1981 Pierre Trudeau created the position of "table officer," so Knowles could continue to sit in the House of Commons. He cut a daunting figure, sitting at the clerk's table on the floor of the House of Commons, a tall, whippet-thin man with an ill-fitting suit and a church minister's steely, parsimonious stare. And he was parsimonious. That is also legendary. Lunch for Stanley Knowles was a sandwich and bowl of Jell-O from the Parliamentary cafeteria. He would read newspapers after others had finished with them. He brought his family for that first session of Parliament in 1942, but never would again, appalled at the cost to the treasury of keeping two separate residences. Yes, you read that last part right. Although he was ENTITLED, Knowles never used taxpayer's money to pay down a mortgage on a second house in Ottawa. Which brings me to the story I once heard and need Susan Mann to confirm. She laughs when I bring it up. "Yes, it's absolutely true," she says. "Can you imagine ANYONE doing that TODAY?" Then she starts to tell the story. About meeting Stanley Knowles in 1942, the recently elected Member of Parliament coming to her parent's house in response to an advertisement they had placed. She jumps back and forth while telling the story - Stanley Knowles is making porridge for her before she heads off to school. Stanley Knowles is teasing her dad about getting him a Senate appointment one day, so he won't have to work so hard. Dinner-table conversations about the Great Pipeline Filibuster of 1956. Afternoon tea and Knowles nibbling away at an Arrowroot biscuit. Have you figured it out yet? The question I am about to ask? No? Well, here goes: "So it's true then Susan? Stanley Knowles boarded with your family?" And Susan Mann answers: "For more than 40 years." Imagine that. An MP boarding while staying in Ottawa. Close your eyes and see if you can imagine Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau, Mac Harb or Pamela Wallin doing the same thing. BOARDING with a family. Making porridge for the kids on a school day. (Want more fun? Keep your eyes closed. Now imagine Mike Duffy eating an Arrowroot biscuit.) Anyway, Stanley Knowles passed away in 1997 and Mann says it is a good thing he is not around to see what has happened to Canadian politics, not here to read the news stories coming out of the Senate, Quebec, Ontario, the PMO. He would be appalled," she says. "Honestly, this would have broken his heart." Public service then and now. Thought you might like to see the difference.

background checks and such may have become irrelevant http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/download-this-gun-3d-printed-semi-automatic-fires-over-600-rounds/

It's hard to keep up with everything, like which plastics leach and so forth. It seems a bit pathetic though that the Environmental people should approve a higher dosage of a known poison in virtually ALL our food at the same time as they burble on about fat in fast food and tobacco. The reason, of course, is because RoundUp and other poisons have led to resistant weeds and insects so this is only going to spiral out of control just as antibiotic resistent bacteria have evolved from overuse of antibiotics....largely in the food chain through feedlots and such. And just as whole societies did not successfully evolve to manage milk, lots of people are not going to manage dealing with introduced weirdness in the food they eat very well. That speaks to the concerns of health care costs when ag practices are causing people to get ill. A lot of the illnesses are not short term, either, they are long term and often hard to diagnose (read expensive). A lot of people think it isn't coincidental that the astronomic rise in the incidence of asthma, allergies and indeed autism started to spiral with the advent of such practices. Some farmers maintain there is a link between pesticide use and the incidence of colony collapse disorder in bees. This is somewhat supported by the general freedom of CCD in organic orchards and fields. If we lose bees, the rest of it is academic. The sad thing about it all is that it's not only both entirely unsustainable and less productive in the long run but that such practices will make recovering from the effects take longer and be more difficult. We will never be able to get rid of GMO plants now as they have infiltrated the environment but we could stop messing it up more and more.

just read this http://grist.org/food/gut-punch-monsanto-could-be-destroying-your-microbiome/ I don't know about the USDA rulings but scientists at least 8 years ago knew that RoundUp wasn't safe, in fact they called for a worldwide ban after seeing the results of their studies where RoundUp was used extensively in southern Ontario. A few years ago I read a Scottish study which showed that feeding GMO food to rats changed the flora in the gut. Recently there was another one which showed that changes to some of the gut bacteria was a precursor to diabetes and possibly other health issues as well. It's also interesting that GMOs have recently shown up in non GMO wheat and it has NOT (yet) been approved for human use (escaped? who knows). Now Japan and possibly other countries as well are apparently shying away from American wheat because of fears of GMO contamination. SO, next stop is to make anything but GMO's illegal..There is a government warning in a farm newspaper here that seeds which come from a crop which has certified varieties available now have to be identified as one of those varieties, they can no longer be sold even as "common seed" of that species. Since virtually all food crops - certainly all big ag food crops - fit in the category of having an "approved" or certified list, it takes control of what he grows away from the farmer, since he cannot then legally even find a market outside big ag for such seed. Even if other people want to buy it. Ah yes, freedom, you say? Better living through chemicals. Not.

You don't count Sandy as a hurricane? We don't have a lot of people in Saskatchewan so it didn't have the impact a major storm has in large centres, but dozens of people lost their houses to massive flooding (In less than an hour the water was kneehigh in some parts of the town)certainly agreed with the designation. Simultaneously there were tornadoes one of which raised havoc on a reserve an hour west. Nobody was killed and aside from that those hit relatively uninhabited areas. so not newsworthy. It was the first time I had heard of tornadoes here so that made an impression. The reference to polar bears was an interview I listened to a month or so back..a photographer for National Geographic who (mostly) grew up in Greenland and other parts of the north. He's spent many years going back to visit and photograph the north (he photographs other places as well of course.) He said that only recently have dead polar bears been showing up frequently and it's a direct result of the changed ice conditions interfering with their ability to hunt seals successfully. He explained it in detail which I don't clearly remember now.

I am truly confused. Are you objecting to the idea that people have any responsibility for what the weather does, or are you saying that the people who say they are now seeing great white sharks off the coast of Nova Scotia or high numbers of dead polar bears are all lying? We had the "storm of the century" in Saskatchewan a couple of years ago, New York had its "storm of the century" last year and Oklahoma is reeling from the second hit in two weeks with major tornado damage and the season's just getting going. That's just on THIS continent. All just coincidence?

If you cannot access them then the possibility that they exist seems a trivial point. If they are abided by or if you have redress if they are violated then you have them, otherwise it's just "sound and fury signifying nothing." Telling a starving man that there is food means zip if he hasn't got access to any of it, and is in reality untrue for that man, although it might be true for others. I think that that's one of the scary things that's happening, we are so conditioned to thinking of ourselves as being "free" that we don't bother maintaining any vigilance to maintaining that, waltzing off to wars in the name of freedom notwithstanding. An acquaintance had a consultant over from Austria to help work out what he wanted to do with his property. Several times the guy commented that he couldn't believe how many restrictions there were to work around..not safety issues, just regulations. Trivial little things, like many communities having bylaws forbidding anyone to have an outdoor clothes line. "For want of a nail a shoe was lost..(etc)... a kingdom was lost and all for the want of a horseshoe nail".

It would seem to me that it matters a whole lot and is the crux of what we like to think of as freedom. We might give the government (through the police for example) some controlled access to our houses but object strenuously if they ignore the rules and march in to do whatever they want/however they want.

I may regret asking this but what is an Uper? The only definition I could find was a resident of Michigan and that I'm not. I had/have no intention of calling you a troll and not sure why I got put in the middle of this but this is the water cooler, and the one forum on BBO for discussing anything other than bridge or bridge related topics.

If the story is accurate, what's there to have a problem with? Who cares what he calls himself if people are living peaceful and happy lives? not many people do these days, it's not surprising lots have gone to join him. I suppose a lot of people figure he should be put away and everyone there should start paying psychiatrists to get where they think they are already.

:D maybe he didn't like being "educated" by a woman either.:D

For people who can't quite see themselves signing up for the Mars Mission, there is an outfit which is crowdsourcing funds for a telescope in space. Among other things, if you donate you can beam your photo out into the galaxy!. A bargain at only a buck... if you want to have your photo beamed into space, that is. I'll keep my buck but they've already got 1300+ people who seem to like the idea. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458134548/arkyd-a-space-telescope-for-everyone-0?ref=FrankMycroft

How much money would it take to guarantee the money normally gained from a field perhaps with a bonus of 5% or so, IF the farmers try a different manner of cultivating? How many farmers do you suppose would say no? These are mostly very poor farmers living subsistence lives and doing things that way simply because that's the way it's been done for generations. Governments in the "developed" countries have frequently paid farmers NOT to grow crops in order to keep the prices high, but that's not the idea at all. China did this when restoring the Loess Plateau. (Not sure that it was an optional choice there though.) The point is that with such a guarantee it might well not cost very much because the crops would almost inevitably not only come in but do BETTER than usual. So it would mainly be the cost of people to train and monitor and help with techniques. Farmers are already changing but it's slow because Africa is so big. It would of course help if we didn't burn as well, but we don't do it on anything like the same level, and our farmers/foresters also need to learn how this is a very short term gain for long term loss for them as well as for carbon emission. Are you saying that the last line in the quote is incorrect? What part of it? It isn't saying that anything is causing anything else, simply that two conditions were simultaneous at that time. Perhaps it does imply one may be associated with the other, but if that may be so, then it would surely be silly and irresponsible not to say unscientific not to include this as a possible side effect of returning to one environmental condition which according to people who supposedly know,was unique to that time (until now) in the history of the earth?

Since the latest news on the situation is It seems astonishing to say we shouldn't do at least anything that we know we can do (easilly and cheaply, like taking options other than burning fields in Africa) because we don't know it's us that's doing it. If you see a flood or fire threatening the house do you sit on your chair and not do anything because you don't know whose fault it is?

I think that part of the issue for people is the initial label "global warming" rather than "climate change". People looked out the window at -20 in September or April and said, "yeah, right". The other things are the lack of interest or leadership by governments who are great at yapping but demonstrate astounding inertia and the questionable suggestions offered about the things people can do, like massive P.R. programs advocating switching to (government subsidized? I have read, don't know this for sure) mercury filled CFL's rather than the much safer LEDs. Nobody is talking about liquid thorium reactors except possibly China and Japan. Nobody is talking about different methods of agriculture which could have a HUGE impact on carbon emissions. Burning fields in Africa is said to dump a magnitude more carbon into the air every year than all vehicle emission all over the world, and the cutting down of trees everywhere, especially in the Amazon but everywhere else as well makes it worse. Possibly aside from the Amazon, these things are simple to fix, with excellent r.o.i. They don't get press or looked at seriously by governments (again, aside from China who has spent a fair amount of money restoring some of the most degraded agricultural land in the world..successfully) because they aren't sexy and exotic enough? Speaking as a non scientist, scientists need to stop squabbling about minutae and get with the program. We don't need more debate about who's to blame, we need to get solutions proven to restore waterways and habitat underway fast and then we need some very good marketters to get the public on board. We don't need exotic nonsense like trying to invent weird solutions which may cause more problems than it arguably might sort of partially solve. The way to sequester carbon is right here in trees and soil. Take care of that, which will also help address the coming crisis in water supplies, and focus on seriously investigating other forms of energy. K.I.S.S.

There seems to be an echo in here...

Apple Avoided Billions in Taxes, Congressional Panel Says Even as Apple became the nation’s most profitable technology company, it avoided billions in taxes in the United States and around the world through a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and surprised experts, a Congressional investigation has found. Some of these subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., according to Congressional investigators. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless – exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world. In 2011, for example, one subsidiary paid Ireland just one-twentieth of 1 percent in taxes on $22 billion on pretax earnings from various operations; another did not file a corporate tax return anywhere and has paid almost nothing on $30 billion in profits since 2009.

Maybe we could somehow figure out how to move us ALL to Mars on our big helium earth balloon... :P

Yes, that's the problem with deterrents you can never be sure if they were effective because you don't know if they were ever needed. They say it pays to advertise...I think a sticker on a mailbox might not be seen, you'd be best to brand the place with a big sign that couldn't be missed. Or two - one in front and one in back. Both together way cheaper than a box of ammo, with money left over to brand your vehicle too!

Then perhaps the NRA ought to sell signs like alarm companies do for people to post prominently on their front lawns : Member of the NRA. This house protected by guns and people not afraid to use them. You could even have what appeared to be bullet holes artisically arranged here and there through the sign (like one I saw in Mexico plaintively telling people not to shoot the signs :P ) People wouldn't actually even have to have guns at all or be a member of the NRA! What a deal! Mind you the police would likely think people had a grow op or something in there and the neighbors might be a little alarmed thinking they had a nut case in their community (or maybe want to buy signs for their houses too, you just never know) but minor details could be worked out. There's a biz op for someone..