kimmy

Next time I see a car with a bumper sticker that says "Proud parent of a Kim City Christian Academy student!" should I tell those people that they're not actually Christians? Or should I let them continue to sin and let God deal with it? -k

Who cares whether Christians support pride or Pride? The Biblical position on pride or Pride is completely irrelevant to the business or running a major city in 2015. -k

That the vaccine isn't 100% effective makes herd immunity even more important. -k

If the New Testament ever becomes the operating policy manual for the City of Edmonton, let me know. -k

I also recently saw The Hobbit, part 3. It was pretty crappy for the most part. I say that as somebody who really enjoyed the LOTR trilogy and had a lot of arguments with other Tolkien enthusiasts who were mad at parts that deviated from the books. My objection to The Hobbit movies isn't that they deviated from the book. My objection is that they weren't very good movies. A lot of dialogue that Peter Jackson and Fran and Philippa added was, quite bluntly, dog crap. The battle scenes were tedious, overly long, and pointless. Just a lot of chaos and noise for the most part. "Action" isn't necessarily exciting. The battle scenes in this movie prove that point. About the closest analogy I can think of is The Transformers movie, where you can't tell which robots are which or what's going on and it all just just a bunch of inane herp-derp. In The Hobbit you can at least tell the dwarves and elves apart from the orcs and goblins, but it's still a bunch of inane herp-derp. -k

Who cares? -k

So what precisely are the NYPD mad at the mayor for? What's the source of this claim that "he has blood on his hands"? They're mad that he didn't give a heartfelt endorsement of the guy who choked the unarmed man to death on video? Is that what they're upset about? So I hear that the NYPD are basically on strike right now, and that only serious crimes are being pursued. Issuing tickets for minor offenses has dropped by about 1000%. I imagine a lot of people in New York are asking: "what's the downside here supposed to be, again?" -k

Yeah, and I specifically mentioned the Abbotsford measles outbreak earlier in the thread. Call it "the bigotry of low expectations", I guess. I don't expect much from religious kooks, be they Saudi-educated Muslims, or Hasidic Jews, or the Abbotsford branch of the Dutch Reformed Church of Latter-Day Snake Handlers or whichever the hell those guys were. They're beyond hope. Tards gonna tard. There's no hope for them. But I expected better from young educated people. If you've got access to the best education we can provide and all the scientific knowledge mankind has produced, and you've got the power of the internet to provide access to unlimited information, and you use all of these incredible resources to make Jenny McCarthy and Rob Schneider and the frickin "Food Babe" into your personal medical gurus, then you're a pathetic person and you deserve shame and derision and a swift kick in the crotch. -k

He also founded the Hashshasheen, from whom we westerners obtained the word "assassin". Hassan i Sabbah had specially trained followers who were known for gutting political and military figures in gruesome public murders. i Sabbah was able to command influence from governments of his day through the threat of assassination. People would wake up to find a dagger on the pillow next to their head, just to let them know they weren't safe anywhere, but the real carnage was usually done in public with as many witnesses as possible, just to build spread fear of what would happen if you crossed Hassan i Sabbah. Oh yeah, that one. Well, the ancient Romans did a lot of brutal stuff to enforce their will upon the peoples they'd conquered. Jesus was far from the only guy who got crucified. It was a punishment generally reserved for rebels, rabble-rousers, and anybody considered a threat to the established authority-- Jesus would certainly have qualified as such. This sort of thing is hardly unique to that time or place, either. Making a prominent public example of trouble-makers as an example to others who'd follow their example is something that has been done by cultures all over the globe at some point or another. Fanatics of any calling are hard to deal with, especially if they believe there's a reward waiting for them in the afterlife. -k

As Bubber pointed out in like the 3rd post in this thread, it wasn't a prediction, it was a promise. She didn't say "I think that sometime in the next 3-4 years oil prices are going to plummet. She said that as President she'd bring $2 gas to consumers. -k

Like the Rapture? -k

Yeah so it turns out that a lot of local news stations use content from other sources. How about that? I get the point you're trying to make, Gost. Jon Stewart has made compilations of news analysts repeating the same talking points over and over that I think illustrate it better. -k

Was the book called "A Storm of Swords"? -k

Saudi Arabia's main oilfield is called GWAR? for some reason I find that even funnier than the idea that Michele Bachmann was a misunderstood genius. So anyway, $2 gas happened. Under Obama's administration. What does that tell you guys? That "Drill Baby Drill" was already happening? That the free market already had this under control and government interference from Newt or Michele wasn't actually required or even possible? I'm just hoping you guys can articulate how on the one hand you believe this is a promise that Michele Bachmann could deliver, but on the other hand something that Barack Obama should receive no credit for. Go ahead and entertain us with some mental gymnastics. -k

The thing about Gerald Celente is that he's an idiot. He said there'd be a total economic in 2014. He also said that about 2013. He said that by 2012, there would be armed revolution and food riots in the US. I can't find what he said about 2011, but I can guess. He said that in 2010, there would be (wait for it) an economic collapse. He said that the economic collapse in 2009 would be even worse than the economic collapse in 2008. In 2008 he said there'd be an economic collapse, which isn't much of a prediction considering the collapse was already underway by late 2007. Here's Gerald's predictions for 2015: http://usawatchdog.com/2015-forecast-manipulation-depression-and-war-gerald-celente/ In a nutshell, he says the economy is all just a big shell-game and it's all gonna collapse. He's not saying when, this time. You can see why Gerald Celente is a big celebrity on websites that carry lots of ads selling Doomsday Prepper gear to paranoid people. -k

Where is this outbreak? You might guess this would be in some poverty-stricken area where people may not have access to the same healthcare infrastructure that others do. Or maybe you'd guess that it's in some area with a high immigrant population, where maybe people didn't receive vaccinations or perhaps even brought diseases with them. Or perhaps you might guess it's the adherents of some fundamentalist church, like the recent Abbotsford measles outbreak. But all of those guesses would be wrong. The whooping cough outbreak is in affluent neighborhoods in Los Angeles. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/los-angeles-vaccination-rates/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/10/29/map-shows-california-has-become-hotbed-for-whooping-cough-measles-group-blames-anti-vaxxers-vaccine-council-of-foreign-relations-california-department-of-public-health/ And the problem isn't poverty or lack of resources. It's stupidity. The blame lies with parents who get their science information from Facebook instead of from school, and their medical advice from Jenny McCarthy and Alicia Silverstone instead of their doctors. Thanks to Jenny and Alicia and Rob Schneider and other celebrity idiots, the young and gullible and stupid are now under the belief that vaccines will make your baby autistic, and that you can prevent your baby from getting sick by feeding him organic miso soup. As a result... Smack an anti-vaxxer upside the head today. -k

Didn't Hassan i Sabbah actually invent terrorism in the modern sense? -k

I also recently saw Edge of Tomorrow, and I thought it was amazingly great. The premise (and I don't think this is a spoiler... it was made clear in the advertising) is that a soldier named Cage (Tom Cruise) is relives the same day over and over. Each time he dies, it starts all over in exactly the same way. And he does die. A lot. "Live. Die. Repeat." as the movie's tag-line says. He's like a video game character with infinite respawns. And like a video game player, he gets to keep the knowledge from his previous life to help him do better in his next one. Sometimes he does. Sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes it's hilarious. Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, Cage is a slime-ball when we first meet him. And like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, Cage evolves as a person as with each play-through. Unlike Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, Cage is embedded with a futuristic mechanized battlesuit infantry as the go to war against deadly tentacle-wielding aliens. It's a bit like Warhammer vs the Minions of Cthulhu. What really set the movie above the typical action adventure is the relationship between Cage and Rita (Emily Blunt). Rita is a highly decorated war-hero and she's the only person Cage can trust. Their relationship is very asymmetrical. He spends hundreds of days with her... she is his only ally, his mentor, his confidant... and he watches her die dozens of times. But each time she meets him, it's the first time. Over their many many days together, Cage comes to deeply care for Rita, yet she has no idea who he is. Cruise and Blunt are great in this. Loved it. -k

Gas prices have hit $2 a gallon. I remember the 2012 nomination campaign where Newt Gingrich had his adult daughters dressed in t-shirts that said $2 in gigantic letters on the front, along with a picture of a gas pump. One of those rare laugh-out-loud moments which didn't come along much after Rick Perry dropped out. So is this a vindication of Obama's energy policy? Or is it evidence that (as Republicans insisted all along, at least while Bush was in office) that the price of gas is beyond the President's control? It's the latter. Cheap gas isn't a result of anything Obama did, and it isn't a promise Michele Bachmann or Newt Gingrich could have delivered, either. Americans have $2 gas, and Michele Bachmann is gone from politics in a month. Sounds like a win-win to me. -k

Lowe and MacTavish have turned the Oilers into the biggest joke in all of professional sports. I can't believe these losers still have jobs. Almost every decision that they have made has turned out so completely wrong that I think the few things they have done right, like getting David Perron and Mark Fayne happened by accident. I was hearing about the Sam Pollock "inverted T" model of building a hockey team, where you start with goaltending, then defense, then center. Kevin Lowe has done the exact opposite, where you start with wingers, then add more wingers, and forget about goaltending or defense or centers. What a moron. The Oilers haven't had a top line center since 2000 when Lowe traded away Doug Weight. They haven't had a top defenseman since Lowe traded away Chris Pronger in 2006. Lowe has been in charge of this team since 2000, first as GM and then as president after 2010. In 14 years with Lowe in charge, the Oilers have only been in the playoffs 3 times. This season will be 12 out of 15 that they miss the playoffs. MacTavish has only been in charge for a season and a half, but every single part of the team has got worse since he took over. Hiring Dallas Eakins was a big mistake. The players were making progress and excited to be playing for Ralph K. Then Eakins comes on board and all of them have gone backwards. Everybody on the roster is worse now than they were when Ralph was coaching them. Trading Sam Gagner for that big loser Ted Purcell was pretty stupid. Purcell might be taller than Sam, but he's also a bigger wimp. Also, Sam is a center and Purcell isn't and if we had Sam we wouldn't have to have our 18 year old kid skating around looking lost because we're so short of centers. I think MacTavish probably decided on draft day that Draisaitl would be in the NHL this season, regardless. These guys are so dumb. I can't believe that such idiots get to run a quarter-billion-dollar business. I think it's great that Edmonton fans are taking out ads and billboards to call out these big fat failures. I can't believe that Daryl Katz is letting these complete morons ruin his franchise. By the time his new downtown arena opens, it will be empty. People think that Edmonton fans will always keep buying tickets no matter how dog-crap the on-ice product is. But the novelty of having Taylor Hall is wearing off and people are getting sick of being told that things are turning around because it is obvious now that things are just getting worse. The team is being laughed at around the league now, and nobody wants to spend thousands of dollars to support something that everybody is laughing at. With the price of oil falling by half this year, and fans getting tired of losing, I think there will be repercussions this time. -k

Meanwhile Jamie Dimon himself was personally calling up congressmen to lobby for changes in the spending bill that eliminate restrictions on banks speculating on derivative swaps. -k

For example? There's nothing inherently left-wing in secular humanism. I think secular humanism and libertarianism would be completely compatible. I think that secular humanism and classical liberalism (as opposed to liberalism in the current usage) would be completely compatible. I think the reason secular humanism is sometimes assumed to be a left-wing philosophy is that it is often in direct opposition to traditional views that conservatives are wedded to. -k

Of the original 10 commandments, there's only four that are really still much use-- thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness. Observe the sabbath? pfff. -k

Now that the deficit and the unemployment rate are back to where they were before the GlobalEconomicMeltdown, Republican cheerleaders have apparently decided that the economy was fixed all along. TARP didn't save the economy, TARP saved the banks from falling into the hole they'd dug for themselves. And if there's one thing you could find bipartisan support for in Washington, it's helping out the banks. -k