Yeah, he's been doing this for a while. If you have a majority government, you can pretty much do anything you want. Similar to how a super majority works in the US, except there's not a lot you can do to delay or stop it.

He just passed two new bills C-51 and C-24 which are "anti terror" bills. 51 pretty much gives the gov't the ability to spy on citizens and gives our intelligence service the powers of the police. They can arrest anyone, and not have a whole lot of evidence or reason to. The other, C-24, has created a two tier citizenship. First class citizens can never have your citizenship stripped, while second class citizens can.

What makes you a second class citizen? Not being born in Canada, being a dual citizen anywhere, or being eligible for being a dual citizen anywhere makes it so you can have your citizenship taken away. For example, my mom was born in Denmark, I am still eligible for citizenship there, ergo, I am now a second class citizen. =)

It's pretty fucked, most conservatives are opposing both bills along with the rest of the damn country. =\

Thats not first class. that's just a regional jet. no first class on those planes.

Is English a second language, or are you just being disingenuous? Me thinks the latter. No...publicly owned roads are NOT toll roads because they are paid for with taxes. Taxes and tolls are different things, that's why they are spelled and pronounced differently. I live on a private road..so I'm certain they must exist.
It is absolutely NOT illegal to create a private toll road on private property with private funds. That's just asinine. It is nearly impossible to build one without using public services, such as the public roads and ports needed to deliver materials, but certainly not illegal.

It's leaching off me if you don't pay your fair share, and you have made it clear you don't think you should have to pay any, so I must assume you do all you can to minimize what you put into the pot...so yes, I would make an educated guess that you are leaching off me. I don't even itemize deductions, because I feel grateful to live in what I feel is a great country, and feel it's unpatriotic to try to shirk my duty to pay for my portion of government, even if I disagree with how they spend most of it. That's the cost of living in a 'representative democracy'.

As to mail, yes, you may not use mail boxes set up for/by the USPS for a private mail service...so you can't do 'first class mail'. You can, however, deliver letters for a fee to your OWN style of 'letter box', so your claim they have a 'monopoly' is ridiculous, they would be so happy to have it taken over, it's a big money loser and a huge pain in the ass to keep going. I'm personally grateful mail hasn't yet been privatized, as I know full well the service would suffer badly to make it profitable, for me especially since I live in the boonies and would never be profitable as a customer. To deliver my letters by FedEx would cost 10 times what USPS charges. (by the way, FedEx and UPS are proof that you already CAN deliver 'mail' privately, just not into a USPS 'mail box')
EDIT: What you said was akin to me saying 'Instead of just complaining about the quality of available burgers, you could open your own hamburger stand' and you answering 'I can't...it's illegal for me to sell "Big Mac's" because...government'.

AND, I would add, you have still never addressed my original point, that if business could/would 'self regulate', they would be doing so now. Self regulation is total fantasy, it simply doesn't happen. How exactly, I wonder, are 'the people' supposed to gain the knowledge about a companie's violations of public trust and health if there's no regulatory agency inspecting and reporting on what the company is actually doing, and they can do all their evil in secret?

Also, mail is a government monopoly. One of many, like roads. It's illegal to offer privately delivered first class mail in the States. Man, statists just keep setting them up and I keep knocking them down. Tell me more about these wonderful perks in statist land.

You thought right.

In a fitting coincidence, today was the last day of prep before my first class of students arrives on Monday. I took a job as a high school science teacher at a school for kids who have been kicked out of their zoned schools for academic and behavioral issues--students others have written off and worse. I've been watching and passing around the Taylor Mali and Rives performances all week. After years fighting what I now believe to have been my destiny all along, for the first time in a long time, I feel I am doing what I am supposed to be doing.

Thanks for the heads-up on the link.

I don't applaud Hamas, I think their actions are as deplorable.

But I understand them.

Similarly, I understand the French Resistance. Or the American "terrorists" (Son's of Liberty) that started the resistance against the British which eventually led to the War of Independence... Of course, those are terrorists that we agree with because they were on the side of good. So we call them a resistance or patriots. The people they killed were obviously all evil ne'er-do-wells who deserved it, innocents were never harmed... /eyeroll

I had a good laugh at the "50% of the kids have PTSD". Oh the poor dears, perhaps their government shouldn't have zoned their houses in a fucking warzone. At least they have bomb shelters, a warning system, Iron Dome ffs...

But you'll have to remind me, where are the bomb shelters in Gaza when Israeli artillery and guided munitions come a knocking? Where's the automated missile defense system shooting down incoming strikes, or the warning system to tell people an attack is imminent? Who's supplying them with first class military equipment?

Have you ever seen one of Hamas' vaunted "rockets"? A home built, hand machined dumbfire which uses ammonium nitrate and sugar as it's propellant, and mostly low grade explosives as it's payload. No guidance, just launch and hope it hits something. Yup, it'll kill you if it lands on you, but they are weapons of desperation, not a serious threat. The 600 to 30 kill ratio at the moment speaks to that.

"American sports have loads of delays and gaps":

The Durban Test match (cricket) between South Africa and England was to be played as a timeless Test match and some eleven days later it was still left drawn since England had to begin their two-day rail journey back to their ship at Cape Town.
It still remains the longest ever first-class match of ten days of actual play. The match was abondoned (sic) as a draw after 43 hours 16 minutes of actual play.
*(from here)*

...Somehow, I think that a kiss cam or some other entertainment (sure, why not a juggler too?) would be a very welcome addition in a match like that. Eleven days, so 264 hours, with 43+ hours of active game play. Better make it a long list of entertainment!

The pillows were a nice touch. Nothing like first class service.

Two points come to mind, strictly from the perspective of an armchair general.

First, you need first class logistics as well as industrial capacity to run a doctrine of fire superiority continously over lengthy periods of time. If you can't supply your troops adequatly, suppressive fire becomes a luxury. Basically, industrial prowess allows you to sacrifice resources instead of soldiers. The Sowjets, on the other hand, had ample manpower reserves, yet limited logistical capacities, leaving human waves as a doctrine.

Second, I suppose it's much easier on your nerves to be "pro-active" about incoming fire than to just wait for an opportune moment. The vast majority of soldiers in major wars were civilians with comparatively little training. During the later years of World War 2, for instance, the difference between seasoned Wehrmacht divisions and reserve/Volkssturm units was enormous, despite acute ammunition shortage in the entire European theatre. Interestingly enough, even the replacement of bolt action rifles with semi-auto rifles such as the G43 didn't increase ammo consumption as much as one might expect.

No no no man. I'm talking about how people SEE Cops versus how they see Soldiers. People give up their first class seats to soldiers on airplanes. Soldiers are always polite and helpful. I'm saying we could try to gear Cops as being like that in our society. Work on how they deal with people and their connections to the community cause right now it sucks. Cops are viewed with fear and/or hated most of the time. There's gotta be some more respect going both ways in that situation.

So a lot more training and community outreach, and making the job of becoming a police officer something of pride and a respectable position in the society would go a long way to civilize the nation.

I had a tai chi instructor (who was Chinese) who started my first class by showing videos like this. Then he stopped the video and said something to the effect of:

This is all a bunch of nonsense. None of this is real. Do not expect me to teach you anything like this.

The dude instantly won my respect. I was just there to learn a fun way to relax and because I thought it was beautiful. Apparently I was in the right place.

>> ^Ickster:

Technological questions aside, the economics will likely never work for scheduled flights. Concorde was scrapped because it was a money loser, not because it didn't work. I don't see anything here that suggests a ticket on this thing wouldn't be astronomically expensive.


Actually this is wrong. The Concorde did lose money at first, but then they did a survey asking people how much they thought a ticket from NYC to London on the Concorde would cost, and the results of the survey was that everyone thought it was more expensive than they were actually charging. So then they decided to charge a lot more for the tickets and market it as a "luxury" flight. This gimmick was successful - it became more profitable than any other division of BA.

It was retired after the famous crash while taking off in France. Even though that was it's only crash, after long investigation, and decline in first class passengers, they never brought it back.

I'm glad that many of them made it to museums, because the Concorde was a phenomenal piece of engineering.

I have no idea how well this Reaction Engine will work, but I hope to see it succeed.