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[Thanos]

The difference being that if the East amalgamates their votes behind a hostile party (i.e. the Dippers, the left-wing side of the Liberals) they can arbitraritly bring all economic activity in the West to a screeching halt. In return the West can't do the same thing to the East and, as opposed to the East, has never even threatened to try to do something like that, not even under a Western PM like Harper.

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[Thanos]

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[Thanos]

Just because some isn't born here doesn't not make them a Westerner. If I move to Nova Scotia one day and spend the rest of my life there I'll consider myself a Maritimer, even if I'm a transplanted one. Labelling someone by the precise geographical location of their birth is idiotic, not too far down the line of silliness in saying that only people of a certain bloodline or ethnicity have rights. It's something only small-spirited runts in some outsider-hating backwoods would do. Harper's lived in the West long enough to be considered a Westerner, period.

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[Thanos]

As opposed to Trudeau Sr., Chretien, or even Mulroney, Harper's been one of the few (if not the only) Canadian PM who tried to govern the entire country equally. Alberta got the tax breaks on oilsands development but Ontario also got the stimulus packages and auto industry bailouts during the 2008 meltdown. It wasn't one or the other, or punitive measures being laid on one region in order to boost another, not in the way that Pierre Trudeau perfected the region vs. region game.

As for my "aggression", well, whatever. If a rolling eyes emoji bothered your day that much then I'm sorry.

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[CountLothian]

Thanos Thanos:

As for my "aggression", well, whatever. If a rolling eyes emoji bothered your day that much then I'm sorry.

[Thanos]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

No, calling me a xenophobic backwoods-dwelling "small-spirited runt" was what I considered pointlessly mean-spirited and unusual, when for the most part we're in agreement here.

As for what you're saying about Harper, yeah, I agree, that's the feeling I've gotten as well, and it hasn't seemed like any of the issues people are having with him are rooted in any sort of provincial issue, so he has done well in that regard.

Well, I didn't aim that at you, not on a personal level anyway. It was a generic thing aimed at the sort of stupid people who dig down deep to make sure that others are always outsiders. It's an attitude thing, easily found as often in places like Toronto as it is in some geek hamlet in Alberta or BC where the locals can't stop themselves from staring and gawking like idiots at anyone who wanders in from the outside. It's exemplified by the attitude of the likes of Linda McQuaig, who are just not capable of controlling their contempt for those who don't fit into their thought patterns, ideologies, or policies. They have no empathy and no understanding so they literally do not care what would happen to anyone who ends up on the wrong end of their dogma.

Your photos make you seem tall so I wouldn't have called you a runt anyway. A jabroni, maybe, but not a runt.

[andyt]

$1:

Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper, along with other G7 leaders, has committed to a zero carbon economy by 2100.

Pretty hard to do that and keep digging up the oilsands.

The deniers have it easy, they can just claim there's no problem and we should just dig away like there's no tomorrow. Anybody that actually believes we have to do something about increasing atmospheric CO2, can't just yap about it while being a carbon piggy as usual. And not just dig it all up before 2100 and fuck the future. Obviously we can't just stop using oil tomorrow, and we're not going to stop digging up our oil while everybody else keeps going whole hog. But we should be investing in alternate technologies and in increasing efficiencies of using carbon products.

[andyt]

$1:

A 2009 paper in the journal Nature by researchers from Oxford University and elsewhere calculated that more than half the planet's proven oil, gas and coal reserves would have to be left in the ground for the world to keep global warming to below two degrees Celsius — considered a critical threshold to avoid massive climate disasters.

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[2Cdo]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

Thanos Thanos:

Well, I didn't aim that at you, not on a personal level anyway. It was a generic thing aimed at the sort of stupid people who dig down deep to make sure that others are always outsiders. It's an attitude thing, easily found as often in places like Toronto as it is in some geek hamlet in Alberta or BC where the locals can't stop themselves from staring and gawking like idiots at anyone who wanders in from the outside. It's exemplified by the attitude of the likes of Linda McQuaig, who are just not capable of controlling their contempt for those who don't fit into their thought patterns, ideologies, or policies. They have no empathy and no understanding so they literally do not care what would happen to anyone who ends up on the wrong end of their dogma.

Your photos make you seem tall so I wouldn't have called you a runt anyway. A jabroni, maybe, but not a runt.

Ah, I see now, my bad, sorry for the misplaced outrage. Misinterpreted it as a little more focused than it really was.

6 feet, but at 120 pounds I guess a better term than runt would be spindly or scrawny

Holy shit! I seen more meat in a bag of chips.