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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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Re: It requires an invasion of an oil-rich state to finance the next invasion ...
Without checking the second link, I recall Ms. May spoke about record heat last month in northern Alberta. The Cdn. weather data within the following link can be set for April 2016, to see what it was for Fort McMurray then. Aside from a number of hot days that month, I don't know what to make of the data since the average temp. for the month doesn't seem extremely high, but there must have been a natural tinderbox there ready to go:
...
Yes, there's April weather data for 2016 for Alert available too. I wonder whether there was a warmer April average on Mars somewhere that month ;) :
Apparently I may not have made much of a joke. At least at some times during Earth's year, it seems, it can get up to 20 degrees C (68 F) at Mars' equator at noon there:
I'm glad we can agree on things now and then, Nigel. Otherwise, normally being an unashamed reactionary may be one of the few saving graces that I have. :D
One other hypothesis I have set out to track down material online about recently was my hypothesis that there has been a great jump in the rate of mass shootings, say in the US, since the 1960s, after all the left wing social experimentation in that decade, besides in the 1970s. Being conservative in my values, I had supposed a greater rate of mass shootings would be the result of general moral decline, in the US (alone). So far not a lot of luck in my online research yet, either way, although I did come up with an interesting map of the rate of modern (circa 2013) firearm-related deaths per state in the US, within the link below; with the especially notable exception of Texas, it would seem to my untrained eye, at first look, that generally the more Liberal values states in the US had a lower rate of such deaths. Maybe there's another reason for why these states' data is this way, but this doesn't (at least initially) bode well for my hypothesis, based on this sketchy info, so far:
...
in the US, since the 1960s, after all the left wing social experimentation in that decade, besides in the 1970s.
...general moral decline, in the US (alone).
...
My own experience with some of the experimentation/decline in those years, in Canada instead, I can give a couple of small but possibly indicative second-hand anecdotes about, from my youth, in Ottawa. In the 1970s it was a well-known secret that every summer there was a 'Wiener Roast' campground summit for feminists from inside and outside of the Cdn. gov't, along with their male sympathesizers. The summits continued at least into the late 1980s, if not far beyond, afaik. These days there is a girl's camp held on the lawn across from my apartment during the warm season. Some of the songs I occasionally hear, I wonder if there is indoctrination going on, or just good-natured pursuit of the battle of the sexes, e.g. things about boys and their attitudes. Who knows.
Also, one girl at my high school in the 1970s was parading around like a queen, according to those who knew her, because her parents were civil servants, and she knew she was going to have a job for life in the gov't. Nepotism in gov't nowadays is not supposed to be nearly as bad as it was well-known to be in the 1970s, but I have no way to be sure.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
Here's a poll showing significant Canadian support for the Leap Manifesto (what did I predict early in this thread?? I TOLLLD you so . I'm a political genius when I don't follow my principles):
All right. Now all the NDP has to do is adopt the Leap Manifesto, and find a charismatic leader, as I earlier & cynically suggested that they should do (after setting aside my right-wing principles), and the NDP will have a truly serious shot at winning a federal election for the first time, relatively soon.
What should the federal Conservatives do to win an election soon? My own political principles were somewhat set out on my CFC blog that I referred to earlier in this thread; my platform there was based on an old chesstalk poll thread of mine, which further elaborated on my principles. That blog entry has since over 60,000 views, far and away my most viewed one. However, probably way too many Canadians wouldn't like my platform (my small number of responses to the poll went even worse result-wise for me when someone indirectly invited me to write what I thought was wrong with modern day politics, and I began discussing my personal views on modern moral decline).
Dragons' Den star businessman Kevin O'Leary is currently running to lead the Cons, and even likes the idea of using lots of referendums, which my platform earlier independently suggested. However, some of his views would be rather unpopular, e.g. making university curriculum totally related to grad's employment prospects, or in any referendum giving aboriginals only equal voting power to other Canadians, and otherwise no override, and worse still, he is not young, nor very charismatic to most, I'd guess. So, what should the Cons do, you might ask impatiently? Well, first try to get a leader who is charismatic enough to compete with Trudeau the son in that regard, such as Peter McKay. Then, putting away my personal right-wing principles, I'd cynically suggest the Cons move to the political centre even farther than when they had pretty much stayed there under Harper (no one much cared at the end, since he seemed rather vindictive, and under a cloud of scandal with the Duffy affair alone; the fact that Harper's gov't dared to merely ask unions and aboriginal chiefs for financial transparency towards the end further fueled resentment). The Cons should promise to do some of the least economically harmful things that are in the Leap Manifesto, such as offer universal dental care, if it's truly affordable (my own wild guess: such a gov't program might cost $15 billion or so a year for some years). This would move further to the centre as I suggest, AND steal from the NDP's platform, as they always whine that the Liberals do to them, anyway. Brilliant. :D
P.S.: For comparison purposes, here's a wikipedia link for the economics of Canada's health care system (slightly dated costs used), followed by a link re: Canadian dental expenditures in 2013 :
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