It is a marvelous country, and it is a good idea to appreciate that regularly. 
News is in, we are moving! Got my posting message and we are packing up to move to Edmonton.
Winnipeg to Edmonton? I’m not even sure if congratulations are in order. 
Well, the Eskimos powered past the Bombers by one game to come in 7th in the CFL this year …
Add, “So they’re not going to the Grey Cup,” and you have a wonderful sentence written almost completely in Canadian. 
I’ve mentioned my grandfathers before and their service in the Second World War:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10455587&postcount=65
It’s interesting to me that it seems this year, more than ever before, things around Remembrance Day got still more strident. There is an element of puritanism and holier-than-thou, look-at-me-I-remember-better-than-ypu attitude I don’t recall happening before. It’s not most people and I see none of it here, bit there’s more of it. I’ve seen more arguments on Facebook and in the media than I can shake a stick at, from sort-of-interesting arguments like the white poppy thing to - I am not making this up - people saying that if you use a little Canada flag pin to hold your poppy onto your jacket that’s a horrible insult.
Maybe it’s just me and all, but I don’t like some of the militarism creeping into this, and I know that sounds weird but there’s a difference, in my mind, between the sombre reflection of the horrors of war and the magnitude of the sacrifice made by so many, and the sort of weird veneration-of-soldier thing we’re seeing now (which is now so commonplace in the USA.) Neither of my grandfathers invested half as much into Remembrance Day as a lot of the armchair soldiers I see around me and in my social media do.
I hope “Lest We Forget” means more than just “thank the veterans.” That’s awfully important and all and I called my Grandpa every November 11. My grandfathers were genuine heroes in the most noble and justified war ever fought, make no mistake. But I think November 11 should be about more than “Heroes, heroes, look at the heroes.” I think it’s GOT me be about more than that. Heroes perhaps some of them were, but we don’t want to have to have such heroes. Isn’t part of the message that we should be trying to ensure we don’t have to keep doing this? It seems to me THAT part of the message is being lost.
As it happens we now also have a thread about the Hiroshima bombing and whether the USA had an alternative to bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the Pacific war (this would be approximately the 17000th thread on that subject.) I’ve no interest in rehashing that here, because it’s a complex argument that was - and this is objective fact - pretty strongly debated by U.S. decision-makers at the time. Some felt it was wrong; others (notably Douglas Macarthur) felt the alternatives were much more horrible and could amount to genocide.
For a moment set aside how you feel about whether the bomb should have been dropped on Hiroshima and consider what the world was like on August 5, 1945, the day before they did it. It was a world that was drenched in geysers of blood, a world in which the bodies were piled to the sky. It was a world in which slaughter, destruction and mass murder had been daily facts of life for years. Entire nations were razed, others turned into giant war-making machines. The list of victims is so vast as to be uncountable; the low end guesses are about twice the population of Canada today, and the high end guesses go to a hundred million souls (it is hard to know precisely how many died in the war in China, for one thing.) The blood and fire and horror had gone on for years.
It was a world in which dropping a nuclear bomb on a city could actually be reasonably argued to be the morally superior option.
I really don’t want that to ever be true again.
I’ve mentioned my grandfathers before and their service in the Second World War:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10455587&postcount=65
It’s interesting to me that it seems this year, more than ever before, things around Remembrance Day got still more strident. There is an element of puritanism and holier-than-thou, look-at-me-I-remember-better-than-ypu attitude I don’t recall happening before. It’s not most people and I see none of it here, bit there’s more of it. I’ve seen more arguments on Facebook and in the media than I can shake a stick at, from sort-of-interesting arguments like the white poppy thing to - I am not making this up - people saying that if you use a little Canada flag pin to hold your poppy onto your jacket that’s a horrible insult.
Maybe it’s just me and all, but I don’t like some of the militarism creeping into this, and I know that sounds weird but there’s a difference, in my mind, between the sombre reflection of the horrors of war and the magnitude of the sacrifice made by so many, and the sort of weird veneration-of-soldier thing we’re seeing now (which is now so commonplace in the USA.) Neither of my grandfathers invested half as much into Remembrance Day as a lot of the armchair soldiers I see around me and in my social media do.
I hope “Lest We Forget” means more than just “thank the veterans.” That’s awfully important and all and I called my Grandpa every November 11. My grandfathers were genuine heroes in the most noble and justified war ever fought, make no mistake. But I think November 11 should be about more than “Heroes, heroes, look at the heroes.” I think it’s GOT me be about more than that. Heroes perhaps some of them were, but we don’t want to have to have such heroes. Isn’t part of the message that we should be trying to ensure we don’t have to keep doing this? It seems to me THAT part of the message is being lost.
As it happens we now also have a thread about the Hiroshima bombing and whether the USA had an alternative to bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the Pacific war (this would be approximately the 17000th thread on that subject.) I’ve no interest in rehashing that here, because it’s a complex argument that was - and this is objective fact - pretty strongly debated by U.S. decision-makers at the time. Some felt it was wrong; others (notably Douglas Macarthur) felt the alternatives were much more horrible and could amount to genocide.
For a moment set aside how you feel about whether the bomb should have been dropped on Hiroshima and consider what the world was like on August 5, 1945, the day before they did it. It was a world that was drenched in geysers of blood, a world in which the bodies were piled to the sky. It was a world in which slaughter, destruction and mass murder had been daily facts of life for years. Entire nations were razed, others turned into giant war-making machines. The list of victims is so vast as to be uncountable; the low end guesses are about twice the population of Canada today, and the high end guesses go to a hundred million souls (it is hard to know precisely how many died in the war in China, for one thing.) The blood and fire and horror had gone on for years.
It was a world in which dropping a nuclear bomb on a city could actually be reasonably argued to be the morally superior option.
I really don’t want that to ever be true again.
Finance Minister announces a $3.7 billion surplus for 2015-16:
Economics types, what do you think?
Well, I’m not an economics type, but by viewing the previous audited years and looking at the trend, it seems to be moving in the right direction. I don’t see why there couldn’t be a surplus.
The comments on this article, as usual, are very ill-informed. Doesn’t anyone remember the stimulus spending in 09/10 that the Liberals and NDP were in total agreement with, if not the very instigators thereof.
Have any of these people actually looked at how the rest of the G20 is weathering this storm? Some examples:
Yeah. See above.
Well, we weren’t in Iraq, and it was the Liberals who sent us to Afghanistan. (Which I agree with BTW.) The Liberals also entered us into the F-35 agreement. And we actually haven’t ordered any planes yet, and might not.
It goes on and on and on, and it’s rather sad.
What on earth are you doing reading the comments? Never read the comments.
You were reading the Rob Ford comments a few days ago… wallowing, I call it. 
Sometimes it’s good to read the comments to remind us that there are a lot of people in the world who aren’t as rational and well-informed (and open to being informed) as Dopers. And that every one of those people has the right to vote. :smack:
If that’s what you’re looking for, there are any number of online fora where you can get such a reminder.
After a visit to such a forum, it’s nice to return to the SDMB, where ignorance is fought, cites are necessary, and rationality prevails.
So, Rob Ford has bought illegal drugs while he was mayor, the crack house wasn’t a crack house, Ford took a couple of runs at Denzil Minnan-Wong who was accusing him of stuff, and Ford is not going to step down no matter what. Oh yeah, he has no drinking or drugging problem. Apparently he just has extremely bad judgement - I don’t think that makes it any better.
And he has been asked to not show up at the annual Santa Claus parade. You know what would be beyond awesome? If he did show up anyway, loaded to the gills.
Also, don’t forget that the guy who originally took the cell phone crack video was murdered. Just sayin’.
I am sick of hearing about Rob Ford. Apparently, since I’m originally from Toronto, I’m supposed to care. I haven’t lived in Toronto in ten years, but that doesn’t stop local folks from wondering what the hell is going on in Toronto, and hoping I can provide some insight.
Tonight, I dealt with N, a local friend. I finished a performance of our local amateur theatre company’s show (this year, it’s “Peter Pan,” and I play Mr. Smee), and headed off to the local pub for a pint. There was N–nice guy, and as I said, a friend–and all he wanted to talk about was Rob Ford and how I felt about him, me being a Torontonian and all. I didn’t need that; after a show, all I want is a cold beer.
I wish the media would stop reporting every time Rob Ford blinks, burps, or farts. It would make my life a lot easier.
Ford really does have “thug” written all over him (well, from his actions, not his looks). That intimidation move in council chambers yesterday was unbelievable!
(Sorry, Spoons. Talking about it helps me process how a guy like this could become a mayor of Toronto.)
I keep wondering what his wife thinks of all this. A blow job by an intern suddenly seems like a traffic ticket.
You think you’re sick of it? It gets worse as you get closer to the epicentre. Today’s Toronto Star has, I kid you not, a sixteen-page special section on the subject.