Stephen Harper's Speech this afternoon.

[d_rawk]

That was a great post, YT. I don't totally agree with every detail, but the broad brushstrokes are inspirational and true in that bigger picture kind of way.

I don't think that there is anything the CPC could have done to stave this off - we saw it coming (the back and forth in the 'US Recession?' thread being evidence of that), but there is only so much that can be done on this side of the border, and the financial industry, with maybe the minor exception of CIBC, has been comparatively quite responsible. We're a resource and commodity market that is going to get hammered when everyone else gets hammered.

I'm just glad that this happened while Harper is in office. Not out of any sort of spite, but because imagine if one of the non-big-two parties had had a rare shot at governing -- this would be 'proof positive' that the Green Party or NDP 'simply can't responsibly manage an economy'.

If it had happened with the Liberals governing, had there not been a period of Conservative power to break up the Liberal government after Liberal government after Liberal government, the Conservative supporters in this country would be screaming bloody murder.

As it is, while there are the occasional soft attempts to paint the Conservatives with all of this, it doesn't seem that anybody really believes it with much conviction. Thank the (c/C)onservative reputation for monetary prudence, I guess, whether or not that reputation has been properly earned.

I'm just glad we don't have to stand by and see someone wear this one unjustly. Anybody but Harper in office would have been vilified.

[SaggyBalls]

Thanks, D!

I am convinced that Harper will remain in power. I don't think it's going to really hurt us that badly when it comes down to it.

We'll still wake up and take that first morning shit and emerge victorious like we did that day before. What might change is whether or not we can afford to eat breakfast.

As it's really easy to point my finger and denounce government, it's not always the most important stance to get people to work together and genuinely improve our communities.

It is going to come down to the non CPC side of the government appealing to everyone to get the jobs done. That means efficient and prudent spending and support that nobody can deny is both efficient and necessary.

I believe that the next big shift in bringing support for special needs and community projects will have to come from the private sector and collective public of Canada, as a conservative mindset seems to leave us believing that philanthropy really only comes from anyone but the government. If there were some way for the Harper Government to give huge incentives or tax refunds to individuals, companies, and organizations to spur startup costs for charity, or to help improve the immediate world around us all, could it be seen as being helpful but not wasteful?

Perhaps Government matching a pledge dollar for dollar?

While there are certainly big business interests at the head of every major world government affiliate, would it not be better to use our energies to be optimistic or hopeful about how we could best conserve, support, and direct our good vibes? If so, we could all do our part to help solve the problems we'll face at home and in the news in the coming years.

Perhaps the Natural Law Party had it right all along.

And still, perhaps I'm trying to think of ways for the Right to not always be so wrong, and for the Left to not always be 'not quite right'

Edited October 8, 2008 by Guest
wasn't quite right

[phishtaper]

adoring fans look to the prime minister for fresh new ideas

[Birdy]

Thanks, D!

I am convinced that Harper will remain in power. I don't think it's going to really hurt us that badly when it comes down to it.

We'll still wake up and take that first morning shit and emerge victorious like we did that day before. What might change is whether or not we can afford to eat breakfast.

I don't find this quite fair to say. If the Libs, NDP or Green party were elected tomorrow, none of their platforms have the ability to stave off this impending recession. NONE. This implies our current economic situation is the result of Harper's government, which it certainly is not.

As it's really easy to point my finger and denounce government, it's not always the most important stance to get people to work together and genuinely improve our communities.

It is going to come down to the non CPC side of the government appealing to everyone to get the jobs done. That means efficient and prudent spending and support that nobody can deny is both efficient and necessary.

Gone are the days (so quickly!) of referring to Harper/Flaherty as the biggest spenders in Canadian history! How come so soon?

I believe that the next big shift in bringing support for special needs and community projects will have to come from the private sector and collective public of Canada, as a conservative mindset seems to leave us believing that philanthropy really only comes from anyone but the government. If there were some way for the Harper Government to give huge incentives or tax refunds to individuals, companies, and organizations to spur startup costs for charity, or to help improve the immediate world around us all, could it be seen as being helpful but not wasteful?

Absolutely, and I suppose exactly why the Conservatives are doing just that.

- allowing income splitting for families with children with disabilities

- giving first time home buyers tax credits

- making child care payments tax free

- incrasing the senior age credit amount

- renewing funding for affordable housing

- cutting tax on diesel

- lowering taxes for small businesses

- providing access to venture capital for innovative businesses

- creatiing innovative Automotive and Aerospace funds that help manufacturing change for the better

- giving nearly $1 billion dollars to science research

- new incentives for apprenices in skilled trades

- Reinstating funding for regional development to the Atlantic Canada Opportunity Agency, Western Economic Diversification, Canada Economic Development for Quebec regions

- Support the development of tourism infrastructure on the Saint Lawrence

- Establsh a new regional development agency for Northern Canada

- Establish a new regonal development agency for rural and low-employment communities over Southern Ontario

- $33 billion dollars in infrastructure pledged

- Incrased funding for older workers who have lost their jobs to go back to school or be re-trained

- $500 million for farmers to cope with production costs, etc.

- banning bulk water transfers

- $1.5 billion to support the production of biofuels

- $1.5 billion to produce more wind, solar, geothermal and tidal power

- A pledge to generate 90% of our electricity from non-emitting sources by 2020

- reforming or abolishing the senate

The list goes on.

Perhaps Government matching a pledge dollar for dollar?

Dollar for dollar for what?

While there are certainly big business interests at the head of every major world government affiliate, would it not be better to use our energies to be optimistic or hopeful about how we could best conserve, support, and direct our good vibes? If so, we could all do our part to help solve the problems we'll face at home and in the news in the coming years.

Perhaps the Natural Law Party had it right all along.

And still, perhaps I'm trying to think of ways for the Right to not always be so wrong, and for the Left to not always be 'not quite right'

Question - why do we, as Canadians, rely on our government to provide us a visionary goal? Why can't Canadians shape their own vision and then demand it of our governments?

I fear the kind of creationism that you're seeking will never be affordable and/or of priority. Those who seek to create with their billions of dollars, i mean, OUR billions of dollars, do it in the name of things like universal daycare.

The world has never been changed by government policy. The world has always been changed by an individual's revolution.

Edited October 8, 2008 by Guest

[Thorgnor]

Tommy Douglas... not a politician?

[Birdy]

Tommy Douglas didn't change the world. He planted a seed for free healthcare, Diefenbaker supported it, Pearson enacted it, and look where we're at now.

[Birdy]

Frederick Banting did. So did Alexander Graham Bell.

[Thorgnor]

None of those people were individuals and individuals don't come upon history and sieze the moment?!?!?!?!?!?!?... fate determines politics and all the rest of life I suppose... there is no point in arguing... the future has already proven me correct. All of the ideas that can be had have already been thought and exhausted.

"All your base is give up."

Whatever you do, don't make a change today or fight for your ideals...

Only other individuals can make a difference...

we mean nothing.

Our ideas are created from thin air, not precedent or inspiration.

Abandon all hope,

All ye who enter here...

[Birdy]

What do you mean none of those people were individuals? Sarcasm? I don't know.

I'm sorry, i'm the most stubborn person I know (aside from my little bro). Sometimes it takes little poetic phrases like your last to stop me in my tracks, and for that, I'm very sorry. I appreciate the poetic though!

All I was trying to say is that we should not rely on our governments to provide us with the idea in the first place. Why do we look for innovation from our government, why not look for it in ourselves and ask that our government support it? Noone sat Bell down on a government mandate to invent the telephone, or Frederick Banting to discover insulin. There was a passion in these remarkable people to do it on their own. THEY changed the world, is what I'm trying to get it. THEY as in the individual. Universal this and that is old now, the idea has been around, it's been tried. Why can we not support new and creative change - again, and sorry to regurgitate, like Singapore's two-tier health plan? The second any government starts contemplating solutions outside of the universal, Canadians get all up in arms about it. That's one of my major problems with the NDP and a little with the Liberals. They're all about universaility, when hindsight and foresight both agree, universal cannot deliver as univeral. I like the Greens for the innovation, and the Conservatives for their ability (at least when it comes to healthcare) to not be afraid to question the system.

I'm off to catch a plane outta here, but I think we agree on the whole individuality thing (maybe i'm totally wrong? ). I just like to be long winded and argue for the sake of debate. Mine is a family full of debaters.

[bradm]

Tommy Douglas didn't change the world. He planted a seed for free healthcare, Diefenbaker supported it, Pearson enacted it, and look where we're at now.

Alexander Graham Bell didn't change the world. He planted a seed for on-demand personal telecommunications, which (with the help of government-approved monopolies in the the USA and Canada) companies like Bell Canada and AT&T took and made available to the masses.

Frederic Banting didn't change the world. He planted a seed for the development and use of insulin, which the Eli Lilly company took and made available to the masses.

And look where we are now.

Noone sat Bell down on a government mandate to invent the telephone, or Frederick Banting to discover insulin. There was a passion in these remarkable people to do it on their own. THEY changed the world, is what I'm trying to get it. THEY as in the individual.

Noone sat Douglas down on a government mandate to invent public health care. There was a passion in that remarkable person to do it on his own. HE changed the world, is what I'm trying to get at. HE as in the individual.

Aloha,

Brad

[phishtaper]

um, sorry, i was snoozing ...

where exactly are we now?

[Thorgnor]

I love you Brad.

We're reading each other's mail right there.

[Birdy]

I love you all.

Bradm- you're very, very right.... and I thought that to myself afterwards but was running late, so please accept this as my retraction.

So yah, i was snoozing, where are we?

Individuals should innovate, that's my stand.

[Thorgnor]

The legitimacy of a democratically elected government comes from the idea that the various parties offer the best and brightest minds of the nation in pursuit of shared goals, with differing philosophies that represent the differences in society. I suppose that's why so few people in Canada actually care to rabidly participate. However, WE SHOULD ABSOLUTELY EXPECT innovative and spirited individuals in leadership positions to seek the elevation of our nation in all legislations.

I don't think there should be a debate about who that is... I think we all agree that there is only one party that is not inextricably linked to corruption in Ottawa... and they are linked to corruption in Quebec.

[bradm]

Bradm- you're very, very right.... and I thought that to myself afterwards but was running late, so please accept this as my retraction.

I accept your retraction, and I thank you, because in (and after) writing my post, it got me thinking about what it means to change "the world."

In one sense, in order to change "the world," you have to have something that makes a change around or across the entire world (or most of it), and in that sense, it could be argued that Douglas (or Bell or Banting} didn't change "the world," as the changes they made (public health care in one province, the invention of the microphone/speaker combination, the discovery of insulin) had scales that were far too small to be considered world-wide. (Birdy, I think it was in this sense that you considered Douglas' introduction of public health care not to have changed the world.)

But in another sense, in order to change "the world," all you have to do is something, anything, that makes a change, since "the world" can be thought of as the sum total of all things (big and small) as they are in the world; if you change any of those things (or create or discover a new thing, big or small), then you've changed "the world," since there's something in it that wasn't in it before, and in that sense, it's obvious that Douglas and Bell and Banting changed the world.

Aloha,

Brad

[Birdy]

I totally agree with you. I guess the problem when it comes to a democracy is that maybe too large a percentage of Canadians don't view things like innovation as important, or refuse to think outside of the box. Like in my riding for instance, manufacturing has beaten us down repeatedly, yet still somehow all of these people think that government is going to make the nightmare go away, doors to factories will reopen and life will go on as it did for the last 20-40 years. It's not gonna happen. People still litter and don't recycle and just don't care about the environment. Or people adopt the attitude that universal healthcare is okay the way it is and think we should cough it up because it all evens out in the long run. People are too happy with the status quo to elect a government that is innovative and spirited, or in the least questions how things have been running. Priorities for these people are just more of the same. So when it comes election time, they vote in more of the same. This is pretty much the essence of why I proclaim myself to be a libertarian. I'm sick to death of the status quo.

[Thorgnor]

That's why I'm an anarchist.

[SaggyBalls]

"Why can't Canadians shape their own vision and then demand it of our governments? "

I don't know why Canadians can't but more often than not we don't and innovation is something that this country needs to be able to adapt to ever changing markets and technologies.

Maybe the best first action isn't blindly infusing taxpayers' dollars into the system directly, but if we all told our representatives what we want to see changed from big to small, and what we'd like to see created, it would be a great start.

Nobody can stave off a recession in a free market, but there's a huge potential for this to turn from crisis to opportunity.

Perhaps we'll see this as a Crisitunity.

The Conservatives might not be the worst thing for this country to have as a minority Government, but we'll see how the next 4 years turns out for the SPP and for Globalization & our role in it.

Anticipating more sinister actions, We could fix a lot of our problems with large scale Hemp farming and alternative energy sources. Real high quality domestic biodiesel. Huge inroads in nutritious seed production and textiles.

And if we were to build the wind and wave power generators that we could line out coasts with, we could supply North America with all the power it could use, filling our coffers and supply loads of manufacturing jobs.

Can't get started in 2 weeks, but in a year or 2 we could get it done...probably for about $1.5 billion. And if it were kept as a crown corporation and not sold off and privatized then we could make money for years to come and mobilize a growing workforce of generator technicians.

So the USA's trying to get clean coal technology started...but if we flood the grid with energy it will make their startup unnecessary and give Obama even more reason to develop non-coal technologies...perhaps even buy some of our CANDU reactors and use some of our geothermal technologies.

Another incentive for us to support the innovation of alternative energy practices.

cha-ching.

[Thorgnor]

The Conservatives might not be the worst thing for this country to have as a minority Government, but we'll see how the next 4 years turns out for the SPP and for Globalization & our role in it.

Anticipating more sinister actions, We could fix a lot of our problems with large scale Hemp farming and alternative energy sources. Real high quality domestic biodiesel. Huge inroads in nutritious seed production and textiles.

And if we were to build the wind and wave power generators that we could line out coasts with, we could supply North America with all the power it could use, filling our coffers and supply loads of manufacturing jobs.

Can't get started in 2 weeks, but in a year or 2 we could get it done...probably for about $1.5 billion. And if it were kept as a crown corporation and not sold off and privatized then we could make money for years to come and mobilize a growing workforce of generator technicians.

With a conservative Government?!?!?!?!? You think this stuff could happen under a Conservative government, the father's of privitization?!?!?!?!?!?

Do you have any more crack?

[Birdy]

I'm muffling a scream with my hotel room pillow.

A scream that wants to say sooo much but i'm opting to bite my tongue instead.

Trogdor, didn't you just say only two posts above you were an anarchist!?

[Thorgnor]

Do you think there's a secret libertarian plot within the Conservative party trying to farm hemp? Why should being an anarchist prevent me from criticizing any particular party. Remember that even political feelings are culturally biased and my bias tends toward three of the party's more than the one to their right. There's anarcho-pacifists and anarcho-chaotics... and then there are crazies whose ideas don't seem to fit either or any other mold... they have little voice in a democracy or perhaps the homogenized voice of millions is a silencer aimed at diversity...

[Birdy]

I always thought the first creed of the anarachist was a rejection of the state. So, while I understand your cultural bias, I find it odd you are so quick to defend (or so it seems) those governments who propose to act as the BIGGEST state. If only Jack Layton were to give up politics and start up a commune! Ahh, paradise!

Here's an interesting article, a little harsh at times, but with some good key points about the nature of the human spirit and the want to do good:

The Death Wish of the Anarcho-Communists

Murray N. Rothbard

Now that the New Left has abandoned its earlier loose, flexible non-ideological stance, two ideologies have been adopted as guiding theoretical positions by New Leftists: Marxism-Stalinism, and anarcho-communism.

Marxism-Stalinism has unfortunately conquered SDS, but anarcho-communism has attracted many leftists who are looking for a way out of the bureaucratic and statist tyranny that has marked the Stalinist road.

And many libertarians, who are looking for forms of action and for allies in such actions, have become attracted by an anarchist creed which seemingly exalts the voluntary way and calls for the abolition of the coercive State.

It is fatal, however, to abandon and lose sight of one's own principles in the quest for allies in specific tactical actions.

Anarcho-communism, both in its original Bakunin-Kropotkin form and its current irrationalist and "post-scarcity" variety, is poles apart from genuine libertarian principle.

If there is one thing, for example, that anarcho-communism hates and reviles more than the State it is the rights of private property; as a matter of fact, the major reason that anarcho-communists oppose the State is because they wrongly believe that it is the creator and protector of private property, and therefore that the only route toward abolition of property is by destruction of the State apparatus.

They totally fail to realize that the State has always been the great enemy and invader of the rights of private property.

Furthermore, scorning and detesting the free-market, the profit-and-loss economy, private property, and material affluence – all of which are corollaries of each other – anarcho-communists wrongly identify anarchism with communal living, with tribal sharing, and with other aspects of our emerging drug-rock "youth culture."

The only good thing that one might say about anarcho-communism is that, in contrast to Stalinism, its form of communism would, supposedly, be voluntary. Presumably, no one would be forced to join the communes, and those who would continue to live individually, and to engage in market activities, would remain unmolested.

Or would they?

Anarcho-communists have always been extremely vague and cloudy about the lineaments of their proposed anarchist society of the future. Many of them have been propounding the profoundly anti-libertarian doctrine that the anarcho-communist revolution will have to confiscate and abolish all private property, so as to wean everyone from their psychological attachment to the property they own.

Furthermore, it is hard to forget the fact that when the Spanish Anarchists (anarcho-communists of the Bakunin-Kropotkin type) took over large sections of Spain during the Civil War of the 193Os, they confiscated and destroyed all the money in their areas and promptly decreed the death penalty for the use of money. None of this can give one confidence in the good, voluntarist intentions of anarcho-communism.

On all other grounds, anarcho-communism ranges from mischievous to absurd.

Philosophically, this creed is an all-out assault on individuality and on reason. The individual's desire for private property, his drive to better himself, to specialize, to accumulate profits and income, are reviled by all branches of communism. Instead, everyone is supposed to live in communes, sharing all his meager possessions with his fellows, and each being careful not to advance beyond his communal brothers.

At the root of all forms of communism, compulsory or voluntary, lies a profound hatred of individual excellence, a denial of the natural or intellectual superiority of some men over others, and a desire to tear down every individual to the level of a communal ant-heap. In the name of a phony "humanism," an irrational and profoundly anti-human egalitarianism is to rob every individual of his specific and precious humanity.

Furthermore, anarcho-communism scorns reason, and its corollaries long-range purpose, forethought, hard work, and individual achievement; instead, it exalts irrational feelings, whim, and caprice – all this in the name of "freedom." The "freedom" of the anarcho-communist has nothing to do with the genuine libertarian absence of interpersonal invasion or molestation; it is, instead, a "freedom" that means enslavement to unreason, to unexamined whim, and to childish caprice. Socially and philosophically, anarcho-communism is a misfortune.

Economically, anarcho-communism is an absurdity. The anarcho-communist seeks to abolish money, prices, and employment, and proposes to conduct a modern economy purely by the automatic registry of "needs" in some central data bank. No one who has the slightest understanding of economics can trifle with this theory for a single second.

Fifty years ago, Ludwig von Mises exposed the total inability of a planned, moneyless economy to operate above the most primitive level. For he showed that money-prices are indispensable for the rational allocation of all of our scarce resources – labor, land, and capital goods – to the fields and the areas where they are most desired by the consumers and where they could operate with greatest efficiency. The socialists conceded the correctness of Mises's challenge, and set about – in vain – to find a way to have a rational, market price system within the context of a socialist planned economy.

The Russians, after trying an approach to the communist moneyless economy in their "War Communism" shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, reacted in horror as they saw the Russian economy heading to disaster. Even Stalin never tried to revive it, and since World War II the East European countries have seen a total abandonment of this communist ideal and a rapid move toward free markets, a free price system, profit-and-loss tests, and a promotion of consumer affluence.

It is no accident that it was precisely the economists in the Communist countries who led the rush away from communism, socialism, and central planning, and toward free markets. It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a "dismal science." But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance. Yet this sort of aggressive ignorance is inherent in the creed of anarcho-communism.

The same comment can be made on the widespread belief, held by many New Leftists and by all anarcho-communists, that there is no longer need to worry about economics or production because we are supposedly living in a "post-scarcity" world, where such problems do not arise. But while our condition of scarcity is clearly superior to that of the cave-man, we are still living in a world of pervasive economic scarcity.

How will we know when the world has achieved "post-scarcity"? Simply, when all the goods and services that we may want have become so superabundant that their prices have fallen to zero; in short, when we can acquire all goods and services as in a Garden of Eden – without effort, without work, without using any scarce resources.

The anti-rational spirit of anarcho-communism was expressed by Norman 0. Brown, one of the gurus of the new "counter-culture":

The great economist von Mises tried to refute socialism by demonstrating that, in abolishing exchange, socialism made economic calculation, and hence economic rationality, impossible … But if von Mises is right, then what he discovered is not a refutation but a psychoanalytical justification of socialism … It is one of the sad ironies of contemporary intellectual life that the reply of socialist economists to von Mises' arguments was to attempt to show that socialism was not incompatible with "rational economic calculation" – that is to say, that it could retain the inhuman principle of economizing. (Life Against Death, Random House, paperback, 1959, pp. 238–39.)

The fact that the abandonment of rationality and economics in behalf of "freedom" and whim will lead to the scrapping of modern production and civilization and return us to barbarism does not faze our anarcho-communists and other exponents of the new "counter-culture." But what they do not seem to realize is that the result of this return to primitivism would be starvation and death for nearly all of mankind and a grinding subsistence for the ones remaining.

If they have their way, they will find that it is difficult indeed to be jolly and "unrepressed" while starving to death. All this brings us back to the wisdom of the great Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset:

In the disturbances caused by scarcity of food, the mob goes in search of bread, and the means it employs is generally to wreck the bakeries. This may serve as a symbol of the attitude adopted, on a greater and more complicated scale, by the masses of today towards the civilization by which they are supported … Civilization is not "just here," it is not self-supporting.

It is artificial … if you want to make use of the advantages of civilization, but are not prepared to concern yourself with the upholding of civilization – you are done. In a trice you find yourself left without civilization. Just a slip, and when you look, everything has vanished into air. The primitive forest appears in its native state, just as if curtains covering pure Nature had been drawn back. The jungle is always primitive and vice versa, everything primitive is mere jungle. (José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, New York: W.W. Norton, 1932, p. 97.)

[Thorgnor]

Unfortunately Euro-centric in its "universalist" approach to human economic interaction. Other modes of economy that have been described by ethnographers contradict the ideas that money is universally necesary and that more importantly, PEOPLE ARE NOT MORE PRIMITIVE THAN YOU BECAUSE THEY LIVE DIFFERENTLY!!!!! I don't mean to yell at you for quoting him but I can't yell at whoever wrote this so I apologize.

Likewise, I kinda said I'm hard to pin down, but I'm definately no communist.

ps. 1932... are you serious? You got mad at me for quoting Harper from four years ago?!?!?!?

Edited October 9, 2008 by Guest

[Birdy]

Nicely taken... out of context.

haha

Hey now, i said it was a little harsh.

Hook, line and sinker pour moi:

"In the name of phoney 'humanism', an irrational and profoundly anti-human egalitarianism is to rob every individual of his specific and precious humanity."

[Thorgnor]

My point is exactly that doing things differently is not INHUMAN, it's different... fear mongering however, is very human. Think about the context that Ortega spoke within and then translate it to now... he's a bigot, who's views are no longer acceptable because they have been proven largely false through, as I had said, ethnographic research. In other words people have actually gone and lived in places where money was not used, and came back alive, and still human...

Likewise his Republican revolution in Spain led to civil war and his side was with the wealthy, he was paid by the wealthy and he had reason to argue in favor of keeping your wealth at a time when his stuff was at risk in Spain, although he had already been exiled... probably not for being a "friend of the people" I would say.

He spoke before the second world war and you're willing to throw yourself behind his ideas which helped establish Totalitarian and Fascist philosophies and regimes. Post-Kant and pre-Heidegger... Not very humanist, but I suppose as a Libertarian you likely feel that the rest of us can live freeely as long as we don't force you to believe in the fantasy that we're all human, or step on your lawn. Or perhaps the rest of us can rot as long as there's a way for the rich to continue getting happy meals. There's not enough "private property" to go around... shoot an Indian and take it...

Out of context?

Even Ortega felt that we should be working for our nation's betterment, but he favored Darwinian Capitalism. Ortega specifically focused on the bourgeois, concerning himself with their problems because he felt that they were at the pinnacle of society, therefore the value of the masses, when taken as individuals is less than that of individual ruling class people, so I can see why he would have a problem with the elimination of economic disparity... he wouldn't have been able to write for a living if the rich didn't keep paying him.

Edited October 9, 2008 by Guest