IntenseDebate - JulesAime

14 years ago @ Macleans.ca - Shouldn't he be busy r... · 0 replies · 0 points

We can't blame the politicians for that. A sound bite is the short quote that the media take to represent the long speech the politician made. The media gave us that phenomenon and the video exposes that rather nicely.

The best moment in it is when Obama is going back and fort with Paul Ryan and the look on Obama's face when it hits him that Ryan is much better informed on the subject than he is.

14 years ago @ Macleans.ca - Shouldn't he be busy r... · 2 replies · +2 points

It was impressive but I'm not sure it was particularly British. What it proved was just how much better things are when we can get the media filter out of the way.

14 years ago @ Macleans.ca - Always look on the bri... · 1 reply · 0 points

You wrote: "Oh for about the eleventy-billionth time: it was wrong when Chretien prorogued for political reasons and it's wrong now."

That's where we disagree. It wasn't wrong when Chretien did it and it's not wrong now. Nobody is selling out our system of government. Prorogation is written write into our form of government.

"For the love of god, stop changing the subject to a politician who's been retired for years." You must direct me to your past posts where you condemned the Liberals for fixating on Brian Mulroney then.

14 years ago @ Macleans.ca - Always look on the bri... · 3 replies · 0 points

Very good points but how does this differ from many other such political manoeuvrings in the past? How is it different from Chretien killing the Somali inquiry for example? And how are the journalists and citizens trying to stir up public opposition different from the many many cases of partisan journalists and partisan members of the public seeking to get their party re-elected by stirring up anger in the past?

I think you have a perfectly legitimate grievance but it's not evidence of the death of democracy. Prorogation just one of those tricks politicians use and Stephen Harper is only the 9 billionth politician to criticize something while in opposition and then use the very same trick when in power. You can get people upset about this sort of thing for a while but life will move on and most Canadians are going to notice that the sky is not in fact falling over the next few weeks.

14 years ago @ Macleans.ca - Always look on the bri... · 0 replies · 0 points

That's an interesting question but you do have to wonder why it's such a hot question right now as closure has been used many times before. Harper would have to keep at for several years, for example, to catch up to Bob Rae's record as premier. And accusations that Harper is just delaying an detainee inquiry are certainly just but why the outrage given that this pales next to what Chretien did to the Somali inquiry?

What we are seeing here looks suspiciously like reasonable questions raised to very high volume.

14 years ago @ Macleans.ca - Always look on the bri... · 0 replies · -1 points

Absolutely right on every point.

14 years ago @ Macleans.ca - Always look on the bri... · 13 replies · -2 points

You're right, that an interesting discussion for us to have as a country. But tell me, why is it such a bad thing to have a delay? I mean that as an honest question: what do we lose by coming back to this in a few months.

You probably know of the great pipeline/closure debate between CD Howe and Diefenbaker. It was lot like the current debate in that use of closure was painted as the death knell of Canadian democracy by politicians and journalists. The government lost an election as consequence. But closure is now a routine and familiar thing. No one today would call it the threat to democracy that Diefenbaker said it was. And the pipeline was and is a good thing.

If the Afghan detainees are really that important now, they still will be in three, six or nine months.

14 years ago @ Macleans.ca - Always look on the bri... · 15 replies · -3 points

He's right. And what a pleasant change to read a calm rational explanation of the facts after all the hyperventilating about the end of democracy et cetera.

14 years ago @ Macleans.ca - Big brother alive, wel... · 3 replies · -1 points

"Sometimes big brother doesn’t quite work. But when he does, boy, he pays off big."

Exactly right. And let's call this what it is, government corruption pure and simple. There is no actual intention to stop speeding here; it's just another revenue stream. You may remember the mayor of Gatineau a few years ago who complained that the Sûreté weren't doing their job because revenues were down. Everyone knows this is fraud and it erodes our respect for bot the laws and the governments that pass them.

14 years ago @ Macleans.ca - The only protest that ... · 0 replies · +1 points

I do no such thing. TJCook compared parliament to safety regulations at a nuclear plant and said no one would accept it if the regulations were occasionally adjourned. Likewise the canary, you don't want the canary there occasionally, you want it all the time.

But parliament doesn't work like that and never has any parliament in the centuries of British parliamentary tradition. It's a deliberative body that works slowly and ponderously and it does not sit around being ready to respond to anything. Never in the last forty years has parliament ever sat for as much as half the year.

There are legitimate arguments against prorogation but the notion that parliament is some vital must be there all the time or else democracy is doomed so popular around here is not one of them.

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