kimmy

Well this is certainly one of the stupidest threads to land at MLW in quite some time. I was thinking more like WorldNutDaily. WND has been loudly promoting this Obama = traitor idea the past couple of days. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/erik-rush-obama-may-orchestrate-terrorist-strike-against-us-give-isis-base-new-mexico http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/alan-keyes-obama-funding-isis-wage-war-people-united-states http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/wnd-columnist-voting-democratic-comes-close-being-treason -k

The second season of Defiance just ended last week. It's more Road Warrior than sci-fi... it's a post-apocalyptic environment where the science-fiction elements aren't very prominent (probably to save production costs as much as anything...) It was just alright, but I watched. The premise: 20 years earlier a fleet of aliens, fleeing their own dying planet, arrived with the intention of destroying the humans and taking Earth for themselves. The sides fought to a stalemate, leaving the alien fleet destroyed and Earth in ruins. War continues elsewhere on earth, but in the independent city of Defiance, built in the ruins of St Louis, humans and several species of aliens live together, trying to coexist and rebuild a functioning society despite lingering hate and mistrust. After the events of season 1, the independent city has been taken over by the fascist Earth Republic, who have installed a military man as acting mayor. The good: an interesting attempt at world-building. One of the alien races in particular has been quite developed as a culture. Some of the characters have become well developed and multifaceted. The most endearing characters on the show are the alien crime family who started off as antagonists and are pretty awful people. The alien doctor is hilarious, but she has an incredibly evil past. The new military mayor is partly what you'd expect-- a fascist goon-- and partly a good guy at heart who is trying to do good while serving awful superiors. This is the part of the show that I liked most: characters who'd be stock villains in other series are, in a way, protagonists of their own stories in this show. The bad: the main story arc was a bit of a dud. The characters who are supposed to be the main protagonists-- the deposed lady mayor, the roguish human lawkeeper and his adopted alien daughter-- are the least interesting characters on the show. It feels like the show grinds to a halt when these central characters take center stage, and gets going again once the secondary characters and their subplots take over. -k

I don't know the process for NFL rosters and player rights, but I do recall that this time of the year is when CFL teams bolster their rosters with guys who didn't quite make the NFL. Are those guys who couldn't earn a place on a practice squad either? The process seems so different from the NHL, where it seems like guys have forever to make the team. You're drafted, you play a couple more years of junior, maybe a bunch more years in the minors, and you still belong to the same team and go to their training camp each September. The NFL seems like the complete opposite. -k

Serious question for Ford supporters... Do you guys really think Ford is the best choice for Toronto, or is there some other reason you want him to win? Like, are you just hoping he wins because it will make liberals mad? Do you enjoy the notoriety and international attention he brings to Toronto? Do you just want Jimmy Fallon to have enough material to keep his show going for a few more years? -k

I have read about this. It's a real phenomenon that's been researched to some degree. It's not even a conscious choice, it's a subconscious mechanism in the same vein as body language. People adapt their speech to the group they're in as a way to build rapport. Peoples' social behaviors are pretty interesting and highly complicated. More is going on than we consciously realize. I had this experience myself when I was living in Ottawa and was at a party where there were a bunch of French-Canadians. I had been talking with them, and suddenly realized that I was mimicking their cadence. I suddenly felt quite embarrassed and hoped they wouldn't think I was making fun of them, but I hadn't been doing it on purpose at all. -k

Any chance that a CFL team will pick up Michael Sam? -k

I may be slightly exaggerating in regard to the extent of the kicking. A pig would not have been on the elevator with that man unless it were either an intruder or his pet. I think that taking some sort of action might have been justified were it an intruding pig (or an intruding dog for that matter). If it were his pet pig, then he'd again be reprehensible for treating an animal under his care in such a way. Once again, the context matters. -k

They have, and it has been in court for years. -k

I also provided examples of companies inventing losses out of thin air, like Son Of B.O.S.S. or the current Greene-King tax case ongoing in the UK. The article indicated that McDonald's charges LIBOR or lower-than-LIBOR rates on intercompany loans. Said before and will repeat: the bank doesn't even charge me LIBOR + 4% on my mortgage. Having now looked up the current LIBOR rate, I admit that I was wrong in that I do pay barely more than LIBOR + 4% on my line of credit. I pay LIBOR + 4.43%. They are going to all of these places simultaneously. They go to Ireland because of a peculiarity of Irish law that allows them to simultaneously be considered an Irish company by America but a foreign company by Ireland. They go to the Netherlands because they can exploit another loophole there that allows them to shuffle money to their broom-closet in Bermuda or the Caymans without being taxed. They go to Switzerland because of the low tax on commodities and the shadowy banking system. They go to countries like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands because of the low overall corporate tax rate. The largest corporations are all using these strategies to avoid taxes, structuring their corporations to mix and match the best loopholes from each. That's certainly an interesting idea. Has it been attempted to any degree? Regarding dividends, once the money is out of the country, it's not coming back-- at least not in the form of dividends. This is another area where corporate accountants are too smart for government auditors to keep up with. The term "synthetic repatriation" is what they call finding ways to use these foreign-held profits to enrich shareholders without bringing money into the country in a way that can be taxed. Two things they are doing is intercompany "loans", which is why many large corporations have large levels of debt, as well as using their foreign-held companies to perform stock buy-backs to raise the share price. I agree with that much, but allowing the most successful companies to shift billions of dollars of profits out of the country without paying any taxes is still evasion of their responsibilities. Apple sure likes going to court to defend their patents, yet they don't want to help fund the legal system that makes it possible for them to do so. That's simply wrong. The United States, and to varying degrees other western nations as well, have spawned all of this technological innovation because they have an environment that provides necessary elements. That environment costs money to maintain. -k

Argus indicated earlier that money spent investigating tax cheats yields a huge return on investment. CRA has suffered staff cutbacks, contrary to your claim. What is "adequate staff"? Every article I read regarding CRA and tax havens made the same point: CRA doesn't have enough resources to adequately investigate tax havens. So clearly "adequate staff" clearly means "more than they have right now." And? What about that, exactly, mitigates their practice of selling their product to a holdings company in Switzerland at 7% of market value? The law often uses a "reasonable guy" principle. This was discussed in the Starbucks article: in Britain the standard for whether Starbucks is complying with the law in their licensing fees is "would a reasonable businessman pay that fee if he wasn't paying it to himself?" In the case of Starbucks, they're paying 6% of gross sales in royalties for the trademark. Is that number reasonable? The article indicated that McDonalds franchises pay 4% for arguably the most recognizable trademark in the world. So, 6% seems a little high, but pretty comparable. It's possible that maybe a reasonable businessman might make that agreement even if he weren't paying the fees to his own offshore company. It seems very likely that Starbucks could go into a court of law and defend that as a legitimate business decision. It could easily be argued to stand on its own merits. Now bring that "reasonable guy" standard to Cameco. Would a "reasonable businessman" enter into an agreement to sell his company's main product at 7% of its market value? NO FREAKING WAY. -k

This line of reasoning ignores the context of the relationship. To illustrate, let's consider our relationships with our fellow human beings. I see desperate panhandlers daily, and seldom offer any assistance. I've fired people who really needed work desperately because they were crap workers. In the course of years of dealing with drunk young adults, I've inflicted bodily harm on numerous occasions. If I find the truck that "coal-rolled" me while I was biking last week I might vandalize it, and if given the opportunity I will kick the owner in his "truck nuts" so hard that he'll never reproduce. But if I'm looking after my friend's adolescent daughter, I'll fight to my last breath to protect her from any harm. So... what makes protecting my friend's daughter worth any risk, while some other human beings-- the drunk chick who wants a piece of me, or Mr Truck Nuts-- are entirely the opposite? Is she just inherently more valuable than they are? No, it's the context of the relationship. In agreeing to take care of her, I've accepted a duty. You'll take any risk to protect your spouse or your children. It's ingrained in us. And similarly, if you take ownership of a pet, you are accepting a duty. You're affirming that this is no longer some dumb animal, this is your responsibility. And somebody who can't live up to that responsibility-- like this Des Hague person-- casts serious doubt on his character. -k

It's the visceral vs the abstract. Even a little kid understands what kicking a puppy means. Not very many adults can understand packaging high-risk mortgages into mortgage-backed securities and making fraudulent claims about their contents and security. If we did have some video footage of bankers approving the "robosigning" of subprime mortgages, it would probably cost them more than $100k and community service, though. -k

You know that Michael Hardner is MIA when... ...the title of this thread hasn't been changed to "Man Kicks Dog" yet. -k

Whether Officer Wilson was completely justified or completely reckless in shooting Michael Brown is pretty irrelevant to what happened afterward. The people of Ferguson would not have trusted the police explanation of events. When it comes to police investigating themselves, they have no credibility. We have seen the police caught lying far too many times to believe their account when it comes to brutality or homicide. For reasons like this: Or like the guy who died from a gunshot wound to the chest in the back of a police car with his hands cuffed behind his back, and was declared a suicide by the cops. Or the RCMP attempt at whitewashing the death of Robert Dziekanski. Or many others. -k

Well, Hobby Lobby (contraception) and Chick-Fil-A (gay rights) in the US have both been targets of boycotts because their owners have taken public positions that have nothing to do with selling yarn or chicken sandwiches. It's a peril of taking a public stand if you're in a business that depends on the good will of the public to make a living. The sword swings the other way too; Christian groups like American Family Association and One Million Moms have ongoing boycott campaigns against businesses for a variety of reasons ranging from offering employment benefits to gay employees to advertising during "offensive" programs. The "Moral Majority" types have been attempting this sort of tactic for longer than I've been alive. No matter what you do, or even if you do nothing at all, you'll probably offend somebody or other. You can't please everybody. But you can displease everybody. By kicking a puppy on video. There's two important rules to remember when you're in a highly visible position. 1) Don't be an asshole. 2) If you can't help being an asshole, at least don't get caught red-handed being an asshole. Mitt "47%" Romney forgot those two simple rules and it might have cost him the election. This "Des Hague" guy forgot the rules, and it cost him a chunk of change and might cost his company a bunch more. -k

What portion of those who got tear-gassed in their own yards would you estimate to be from Ferguson? -k

People can decide to stop buying $8.50 cups of beer and $6.50 hot-dogs for whatever reason they like. "It's too expensive", "I'm trying to lose weight", "I'm cutting back on alcohol," and "I think the CEO of this company is a piece of crap" are all equally valid reasons. -k

WAAAHHHH! We don't need a court of law to rule on whether he's a prick. He's already confessed to all we need to know to decide that for ourselves: that's him in the video kicking and choking his puppy. What else do you want to know? Maybe the dog was high on marijuana? Maybe the dog had just robbed a convenience store? Maybe the dog gave him an orbital blowout fracture during a fistfight moments before the video? -k

The CEO of a multibillion dollar company called Centerplate was caught on video kicking and choking his Doberman puppy in an elevator in a Vancouver hotel. http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2014/08/27/centerplate-ceo-put-on-probation-following-puppy-kicking-incident/ (uncensored video: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8d1_1409102156%C2'> ) Kicking puppies is something cartoon villains do to show the viewer what lowlifes they are. It's something you might expect from a trailer-park misanthrope or a toddler or somebody else who doesn't know any better. Centerplate is a huge company that provides food services at many major sports venues, including BC Place. There is talk of a potential boycott of concessions at venues where Centerplate provides food services. -k

Memorization is a waste of time for anything higher than single digits. It is far more practical to break larger numbers into smaller calculations that you can easily perform in your head. For example: 12 x 17: (10 x 17) + (2 x 17) = 170 + 34 = 204 or 7 x 23 = (7 x 20 ) + (7 x 3) = 140 + 21 = 161 So simple that even Pliny could do it. Except, actually understanding the math (ie, the distributive property in this case) is harder for dumb-kids than memorizing stuff. And dumb-kids go home to their dumb parents who don't understand the distributive property either, and their dumb parents get on Twitter and say "Look at this ridiculous 'new math' they are teaching Jimmy at school! What's wrong with memorizing the times tables? #whateverhappenedtothe3Rs" and pretty soon you've got a bunch of dumb old-people complaining about how stupid modern education is and how they were way smarter back in the day because they memorized the times-tables (but can't remember them anymore.) -k

My point is that despite your insistence to the contrary, "the cost of doing business" can and does include losses and expenses that are completely fictional. Bermuda can offer a 1% tax rate, or a 0.1% tax rate if they want, because they don't have any people. They're smaller than Medicine Hat. Compared to a real country-- Canada, America, Great Britain for example-- their expenses are virtually non-existent. Collecting even a tiny sliver of tax on Google's IP patents pays their bills. How is it possible to "compete" with that? Create a true libertarian paradise where the government doesn't spend anything on anything? If it's to be "competition" with countries like Bermuda or Ireland or the Netherlands, then maybe economic sanctions and tariffs should be an equalizer we could look at. Apple might not like it when people buy Samsung Galaxies instead of iPhones, but Apple doesn't (yet) have an army and law enforcement to maintain, or social programs or education or healthcare to maintain. How many engineers and programmers does Bermuda contribute to Apple and Google? The intellectual property might be owned in Bermuda, but it's created in America, by the education system that Google and Apple aren't paying to support anymore. They are freeloaders. If their companies were really built on Bermuda intellectual property, Apple's flagship product would be the CoconutPhone, and their market cap would be about fifty dollars. You really don't see a problem here? Is it "legitimate global business" that these companies with $15 billion (Starbucks), $16 billion (Google), $30 billion (Apple), of revenue each year all have their offices in broom-closets on an island of 60,000 people? We're in a situation where we have to cut funding to education and healthcare and old age security and social programs... and if the reason we have to make these cuts is because companies are sending all their money to Bermuda, that's really shitty. If you recall how we got on this argument about tax dodges for rich guys and corporations, we were discussing how the value of labor is being eroded while people who already have wealth have great advantages in accumulating even more wealth. And everything you've written here for the past month-- "we can't really do anything about corporate taxes because..." , "we can't really go after people who offshore their money, because..." , "we can't really do anything about these international business arrangements, because..." -- just emphasizes the point. Apparently we really can't stop Starbucks from reporting a financial loss each year. Apparently we can't get folks like Mitt Romney to pay more than 13% effective tax rate. Apparently we can't go after people who've stashed tens of billions of dollars outside the country. Apparently labor is the only thing that the government is able to actually tax effectively. -k

I think that it is entirely plausible that there are situations in which Wilson may have been justified in shooting Brown. While people keep referring to him as "unarmed teenager Michael Brown", the fact is that he was a physically enormous individual who doesn't need to be armed to present a serious threat of physical harm. I don't yet have an opinion on whether Wilson was justified in shooting Brown. My objection isn't to Wilson's actions, it's to what the police have done since. And to the pro-police cheerleading as well. -k

That's because he's a military guy. Page is a former Sergeant Major who has been deployed with the army for much of the past decade. There's nothing directly to do with the Michael Brown shooting here. In my opinion its only relevance here is as yet another illustration that the law enforcement field attracts bad people as well as good people. Like politics. Some people are attracted to politics because they want to make the city or the country a better place, and other people are attracted to politics because they want to line their pockets with public money. Similarly with law enforcement... some people join because they want to Protect And Serve, but others sign up because they're turned on by the idea of having authority, or AUTHORITAHHH. -k

While we don't have all the facts about the initial incident, we have plenty of facts about the events that have happened since, and we have plenty of information with which to conclude that the police have handled this situation in disastrous manner. -k

-k