kimmy

Why would you laugh at something like that? This was one of the key leaders of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, who faced violence many times, not just at the bridge on the march to Selma, but also from white mobs and the KKK as he confronted segregation and the denial of voting rights face to face. What kind of person would ridicule a man who subjected himself to violence and literally faced death to fight for civil rights? The same kind of person who ridiculed the years of torture John McCain endured in North Vietnamese prisons? I suppose you prefer civil rights heroes that weren't beaten bloody by State Troopers? I understand that many people disagree with John Lewis's view that Trump isn't the legitimate president. I don't agree with John Lewis's view. But to go one step farther and not just attack his view, but also mock his life's work, to me seems like an astounding low point. -k

Luckily for us, Canada isn't Turkey. -k

I've just started watching "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency", on Netflix. The show is based on a series of Douglas Adams books that I haven't read. The show centers around the title character, a self-styled detective who believes he can solve mysteries by "holistic" means-- he wanders around doing whatever seems appropriate at the moment, in the belief that everything is interconnected and the universe will simply lead him to the solution. He's never solved a case, but he's working on his first: to solve the murder of Patrick Spring. He was hired to do this by Patrick Spring, who was still alive when he hired Dirk. He has since ceased to be alive. Dirk's karmic path leads him to Todd-- played Elijah "Frodo" Wood-- as a hapless hotel bellboy. Todd is down on his luck-- broke, spending all his money to pay for medication for his sister-- and things only get worse once Dirk crosses his path. Dirk immediately decides that Todd is important to solving the mystery, and his arrival in Todd's life brings Todd all kinds of chaos that he can ill afford. Also involved in the mystery are Patrick Spring's missing daughter Lydia, a missing cat, a stray dog, two missing persons detectives, two FBI agents, four strange individuals called "The Rowdy 3", Todd's troubled sister Amanda, Patrick Spring's bodyguard Farah, and a cult of weird bald dudes with tattoos who talk like they're mental. Further confusing matters is "Bart the Holistic Assassin", a disheveled, homeless, madwoman who is connected to Dirk somehow. She is much like Dirk in the sense that she simply does whatever and believes the universe will lead her where she is supposed to go. Unlike Dirk, she's a deranged serial killer, and leaves a startling number of corpses in her wake. She really has no idea what she's doing, other than that she needs to find Dirk. I'm early in the show, but so far she has killed everybody she's met except for Ken, a criminal computer hacker who she abducts for no particular reason. She's not sure why she hasn't killed him either, except that she seems lonely and seems to like having someone to talk to. She's convinced that the universe just leads her to people who are supposed to die, and in fairness, it seems like most of them have it coming. When Ken asks her why he's still alive, she shrugs and says "you must be special too." I have no idea what might happen when Bart finally catches up with Dirk, but I have a hunch that he probably owes her money or something ridiculous like that. I'm not 100% sure if I like this yet, but I'm interested enough to see where it's going. -k

What's the big deal? Obama's opponents spent 8 years doubting the legitimacy of his presidency. I'm sure Mr Trump will receive every bit as much respect and cooperation from Democrats as Mr Obama received from Republicans. -k

From the person who was earlier asking about cutting the hands off thieves? -k

I understand just fine. You clearly have no understanding of our system of government, why sit there and pretend like you do? All laws must comply with the Constitution. "It's against the Constitution" is all the response your ideas need. If you want to make laws that violate the Constitution, you have to change the Constitution first. Even the most minor change to the Constitution requires the agreement of Parliament, the Premiers, the Senate, and the Crown. It is such a massive task that it is almost never attempted. To make a change as drastic as removing fundamental rights would be so controversial that it would be impossible to obtain agreement on it. Despite what blueblood wrote, it will never happen. It will certainly not happen for the sake of allowing some politician to impose religious rules on everyone. Not happening, ever. Sorry. -k

Are you new here? A Republican sees unspent money, he doesn't think "hey, we could spend this to improve healthcare access." He doesn't even think "we should start paying down the debt." The only think he thinks is "tax cut!" -k

The Lord's Day Act was struck down explicitly because it imposed a Christian observance on non-Christians: "To the extent that it binds all to a sectarian Christian ideal, the Lord's Day Act works a form of coercion inimical to the spirit of the Charter and the dignity of all non-Christians. It takes religious values rooted in Christian morality and, using the force of the state, translates them into a positive law binding on believers and non-believers alike." I'm going to speculate that when you say "religious values" you're referring to ideas that are actually widely shared among many cultures and religions. -k

In recent decades Canada's demographic makeup has changed. This isn't a mostly-Christian country anymore. And the advent of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 expressly protects people from having religious ideology imposed on them by the law. Things may have once been as you say, but that's not the case anymore. What our Turkish friend has been asking is whether a religious politician could get elected and pass religious laws. The example she proposed earlier was: "For example secular people would like to jail thieves. Religious people would like to cut their hands. What we will do ?" Cutting people, or dismembering them if that's what she meant, is not an acceptable punishment under Section 12 of the Charter of Rights. No politician can say otherwise. -k

There's no law saying Sunday shopping hours are short. Some of our statutory holidays might have started as religious observations, but they exist now as traditions in our culture, same as Victoria Day or Canada Day. Many of our laws are based, of course, on Judeo-Christian morality, but the laws we have retained are laws that have demonstrable value and appeal beyond the Christian community. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" has analogs in every functioning culture that ever existed. Our concept of marriage has analogs in almost every culture. Not every culture has ever defined marriage in the traditional one man one woman sense, but I believe almost every culture has defined family units in some sense. I recent years our own culture has expanded its definition of marriage beyond the traditional Judeo-Christian definition. Many laws or values rooted in religion have demonstrable benefits to society. And just because we reject the premise that they must be law because someone's religious beliefs say so, we can still accept that these laws have demonstrable value. If some puritan politician were to campaign for the prohibition of alcohol because his holy scripture says alcohol is evil, that would fall flat. However, he could build a very compelling argument about the benefits of prohibition based on the demonstrable damage alcohol does in terms of health, crime, violence, drunk driving, and so on. We might reject "my holy book says so!" as a rationale, but we could still examine the merits of his idea independent of the religious reasoning behind it. I'd suggest that any law with a historical basis in religion would either pass the merit test or be ripe for repeal. -k

Google Music slipped this into my music stream yesterday, and it gave me chills. "If I had a heart I could love you, If I had a voice I'd sing." Fever Ray is the stage name of Karin Andersson, a Swedish record producer. She was also in a Swedish techno duo. This song was used in the TV shows Breaking Bad, Person of Interest, and later became the theme song from the TV show "Vikings", which I keep meaning to check out but haven't yet. -k

The Republicans don't want to "revamp their health system", they want to repeal Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. "Revamp" implies that they have any sort of plan, but they don't. They know what they're against, but don't know what they're in favor of. There are a few ideas they keep floating around, like giving people the same tax-credits for health insurance that businesses have, which is a good idea, and allowing people to shop for insurance out of state, which is also a good idea. They also keep talking about things like medical savings plans which would let people save up money in case they get sick, kind of like educational savings plans or retirement savings plans... which is a fine idea in principle, but when so many people live paycheck to paycheck it's pie-in-the-sky to think this is going to let people save enough to pay for medical care that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. That's not actually going to do anything to help the people who are going to need help the most when Obamacare gets repealed. One of the features of Obamacare that people actually care about is that it allows people with pre-existing medical conditions to get health insurance; the Republicans have no plan for how to address that issue. Ultimately, millions of people are going to lose their health insurance when Obamacare gets repealed, and the Republicans have no plan to replace it. Some Republicans urge that the repeal of Obamacare be delayed until they have a plan to replace it, but the leaders like Paul Ryan want it done ASAP regardless of the effect on people's lives. The biggest problem in healthcare in the US (and elsewhere) is extremely high costs, and nobody-- Republican or Democrat-- has a plan to reduce costs either. -k

You keep asking how secular government works but you can't be bothered to put any effort into understanding it. That's you're problem, not mine. You ask if a religious person could get elected and make laws to force everybody tto follow religious rules: the short answer is no. For the long answer, read my previous post. I have no further time to waste on someone who clearly isn't even trying to understand the responses they get. -k

In Canada (and the US, and many other countries) laws are only valid if they don't break the rules set out in the Constitution. Many laws created by Christian politicians have been overturned over the years because they were found to violate the rights of non-Christians. For example, in many parts of Canada there used to be laws that said that stores and shops have to be closed on Sunday. These laws were struck down because they were found to impose Christian practice on non-Christian Canadians. Religious people have the same right to participate in politics as everyone else. And if they get elected to office they can certainly try to promote their values, whatever those might be. However, the process of getting a law passed in the first place requires a lot of consensus. And, once a law is passed, it can be overturned if it is against the rules of the Constitution. If somebody wrote a law that required everyone to pray to Blalalo the Chicken God, it is very unlikely that this law would ever get approved in Parliament. If it somehow did get approved in Parliament, the Senate would reject it because they know it would never survive a court challenge. If it did somehow get approved in the Senate, no Crown Prosecutor would ever attempt to seek a conviction under that law, because they would know their case would be challenged and overturned by a higher court. If this law did somehow make it to a court of law, the law would be challenged and struck down because it violates the defendant's Constitutional right to freedom of religion. Even if a politician wanted to, they couldn't make a law requiring everyone to pray, or requiring women to dress a certain way, or so on. -k

Your question has been answered several times by several people. You either don't like the answer or you can't understand the answer. Fine, it doesn't actually change the answer: Not all religious people would ((insert religion-specific practice here)) to punish thieves. Religion Y wouldn't, Religion Z wouldn't, Religion W wouldn't, Religion V wouldn't, non-religious people wouldn't, and for that matter a lot members of of Religion X wouldn't either. You think the law should be changed to suit the opinion of some portion of the Religion X community, even though the rest of the religions would not agree? No. That isn't how it works. In a country where lots of different religions exist, no one religion gets their way all the time. We let everybody practice their own religion as long as it doesn't affect others, but people don't get to impose their religion on the public as a whole. -k

We now know that the FBI takes this dossier seriously enough that James Comey personally briefed Trump about it last Friday. It's ridiculous to suggest that it's not news. -k

Meanwhile, at the confirmation hearings: "It will not be my intention to do anything that will benefit any American." -Dr Ben Carson. Perhaps Dr Ben should stick to neurosurgery. His qualifications for the HUD secretary post are apparently that he's black, Republican, and loved by born-again Christians. There's nothing wrong with any of those things, of course, but none of them actually have anything to do with the job he's interviewing for. -k

Rex Tillerson is pretty lucky that the Golden Story broke the day it did, because it distracted everybody from a confrontation hearing that compares unfavorably with the Titanic and the Hindenburg. -k

CNN published a brief summary of the dossier, with the disclaimer that the allegations were unproven, yes? I think it's newsworthy that the intelligence community believes the Russians have a trove of blackmail material about the President. The specifics of the blackmail material is unimportant, but the possibility that it exists is very important. Where should CNN have drawn the line? The fact that this dossier exists? The fact that it contains unproven allegations? The fact that these unproven allegations include sexual escapades? And again, this is a guy who spent years fueling the Birther conspiracy theory and who has been promoting unverified and outright false information almost daily since he announced he was running for president. NOW he's upset about unverified information? What a big fat hypocrite. Welcome to the world you made, President Trump. -k

People can pray in school if they choose. They don't get to make everybody else pray, and they don't get to disrupt everybody else while they're praying. -k

I like the idea of "Banned" being displayed on the member's profile and to the left of the post. It used to work that way here. I assume this changed during the latest forum upgrade. For example, if I go to the profile of the aforementioned Jack Weber (PBUH) it still lists him as belonging to "Members". I can see that he's banned by looking at the moderator information, but that information isn't available to the general forum, and it used to be, and I would like to see it brought back. As for a list of members whose posting privileges are suspended, I don't feel like it. It would be a headache to update it. One suggestion is that people accept that members have a life outside the forum, and that sometimes if someone doesn't reply to your message right away it doesn't mean they're ignoring you, it just means they have something else to do. -k

Not all religious people would cut off the hands of theives. Christians wouldn't, Buddhists wouldn't, Hindus wouldn't, Jews wouldn't, non-religious people wouldn't, and for that matter a lot of Muslims wouldn't either. You think the law should be changed to suit the opinion of some small portion of the Muslim community, even though the rest of the religions would not agree? No. That isn't how it works. In a country where lots of different religions exist, no one religion gets their way all the time. We let everybody practice their own religion as long as it doesn't affect others, but people don't get to impose their religion on the public as a whole. -k

Hopefully the Canadian women heading for Washington will keep their lady-parts well protected. -k

I like free pizza! -k