kimmy

"Who to vote for?" and "Who do I want to win?" are two different questions. I live in a riding where the CPC candidate will win by a huge margin regardless of who I vote for. Last election, I voted for the local Green Party candidate, because I thought she was a promising young individual and I wanted her to at least win her election deposit back. She did better than that, finishing in virtually a 3-way tie with the NDP and Liberal candidates. She went on to win a seat on city council since then. This election I will once again vote for whichever candidate I find most worth, regardless of their party. The Conservative candidate will, once again, win in a landslide. I have met him. I was in a photo-op he did to highlight "stimulus" funds that were being dispersed at a project my employer was working on. Didn't really care for it. Didn't really care for the whole stimulus thing, although that's not his fault. I'm strongly leaning toward my local Liberal, who seems like somebody I would probably really admire if I knew her. -k

Yeah, seems to me Danny Williams was always hollering about how unfair things were to the Newfies. "We won't settle for less!" Ontarions, of course, never have to whine for anything; they get their way without having to complain. -k

Well, they slashed transfer payments to the provinces, and left the provinces to make the cuts themselves. They solved the debt by offloading the painful part of it to the provinces. That's highly debatable. Per-student spending on public schools is lower now than it was before Martin slew the deficit. The real-dollar cost of attending university is several times what it was before Martin slew the deficit. Not that it's Martin's fault, of course. The drunken spending of prior generations was unsustainable, and Martin did what had to be done. Of course, those of us who came along a few years too late to benefit from lavish government spending on education still get to pitch in through our tax money to pay for lavish new spending on the proposed senior care programs that are going to be all the rage. Yay! -k

Not sure why premium cable would be an important part of a rehabilitation program. I recall somebody (Dennis Leary?) quipping about prisons with cable TV so that convicted child molesters can watch Nickelodeon. I'm not sure that giving them Showcase so they can watch "Weeds" or "Breaking Bad" or "Oz" or "The Sopranos" is such a great idea... -k

So, now that the candidate herself has admitted to, and apologized for, exactly the same kind of violent rhetoric that lefties blamed for the attempted murder of Gabrielle Giffords... I'd again like to ask... Where's all that faux outrage now? -k

Yes... I think a campaign that can fairly be compared to Paul Martin's 2006 campaign is what has put an end to Harper's chances of a majority. -k

Bert Brown was elected by Albertans in 1998 and 2004. Stephen Harper honored the selection by appointing Brown to the senate after taking office, but he was under no obligation to do so. Liberal Prime Ministers had ignored the selection for 8 years, and were within their rights to do so (but it would have been a nice goodwill gesture...) Stan Waters was also selected as a senator by Albertans in 1989. Bryan Mulroney appointed Waters to the Senate in 1990. -k

The Kimmy Research Institute, a highly-respected think thank that has been analyzing global affairs for over 20 years, has just released a report describing Gerald Celente as "a fricking moron" who uses the same methodology as telephone psychics. There'll be "blowback" from Libya? Dude, the Middle East has been mad at us for decades. They're mad from Iraq. They're mad about Israel. They're mad about everything that's happened since 9/11, and they're also mad about everything that happened before 9/11. They're just plane mad. You're gonna "predict" that the Arab world will get mad at us? Wow! Can you tell me who's going to win the 1990 Stanley Cup? Predicting that the Arabs are going to attack is like predicting that the sun could come out. Might not happen today, might not happen tomorrow, but it's going to happen in the future, just like it's happened lots of times in the past. I don't get it, Gost. You seem like a bright enough guy, and yet you fall for the dumbest crap. This guy. Or Alex Jones. At least Jones is funny, I'll give him that much. I watched some of his "Japan Earthquake analysis" and almost peed myself when he started talking about . Jones talks like Foghorn Leghorn, and he's about as smart too. -k

A major downside to a reformed senate is that the senate might assume reform amounted to a mandate to actually do something. Nobody wants that. The only reason people tolerate the senate is that the senators don't rock the boat. -k

No, it's not the same incident. "Dump John Reilly" blog Separate incidents. Reilly's comments about the "digital penetration" incident, for which he's being grilled: Article -k

Assuming the officer attempted to defuse the situation verbally first and was unsuccessful, the Taser was the next logical step. What should he have done instead? Cracked the kid with a baton a few times? Martial arts? Try and wrestle the knife out of his hands? The possibility of injury to either or both parties would have been much higher if the officer tried to take the kid down hand-to-hand. The taser was developed for situations just like this, to end potentially dangerous situations with a minimal possibility of harm. It's unfortunate that misuse of the taser has turned it into such a hot-button issue that people would rather see police crack skulls with batons than use the taser in the way it was intended. -k

As I said before, I've been grabbed inappropriately and been mad as hell about it, but never thought the other party should spend months in jail for doing it. Now, I don't know that the incident we're discussing was "just" a grab, but at the same time you certainly don't know that it wasn't. -k

So you're responding to a report of a domestic disturbance, you call up the registry on the way to the residence and it comes up with no registered guns. So you walk in assuming that everything is clear, and now your head is red spray and chunks stuck to the wall, because the drug-gang mooks inside didn't register their weapons. Look, if you're a police officer, you need to assume you're walking into a dangerous situation whether the registry says there's guns there or not. So the idea that the registry informs them of potential danger is retarded at best, and worse might even give them a false sense of security. So that's a moronic argument for the registry's usefulness. I actually agree with that premise. However, I object to bullshit arguments being made to falsely illustrate its usefulness. -k

Hey, who knows, maybe it was a boobs-grab instead. It apparently happened on a bus... how serious could it have really been? -k

Regardless, how does the long gun registry prevent domestic violence? I'm pretty sure that registered rifles and shotguns are just as dangerous as unregistered ones. I'm still giggling about Michael Ignatieff's comments on the issue during the debate tonight. "When I talk to police, they tell me they check the registry before they respond to a domestic violence call! That way they know for sure if they're walking into a dangerous situation! The registry keeps our police safe!" -k

Are you sure? My listings say I have "Glee" at 8:00. -k {If the leaders debate was "Glee", who'd be Britanny and who'd be Santana?}

WTF, Gost. Some withered old fruit yelling? That's what we need to wake up to? "They" are going to bomb "us" right back? Who are "they"? Colonel Moe's army? Or the angry Muslims who've been trying to bomb us for decades already? If the "next great war" is Colonel Moe rising up and fighting back, then truthfully I'm not sweating that too much. If "the next great war" is angry Muslims the world over smiting down upon the west, why's this going to start it? I mean, angry Muslims already have a list of gripes longer than your arms. I don't see how enforcing the no-fly zone or defending Libyan civilians against a psycho dictator is going to make things worse. -k

I only saw the last 30 minutes, and I didn't think to tape it because I didn't think the national media would be so galactically stupid as to schedule the debate to be mostly over before I even got home from work. -k

Quite possibly. Who knows what might happen if a case attracts enough negative attention? It's Wild Rose Country. The perp is probably lucky he didn't get lynched. Without specifics, how can we know? -k

I notice we went from "rapist" to "molested" in the span of a few minutes. "Molest" covers a lot of ground too. It could be a horrifying incident or it could be an ass-grab in the check-out at Safeway. I gather that this particular incident took place on a bus, so I suspect it was probably closer to "ass grab" than "horrifying incident". Sexual assault is such a broadly applied term, and incidents vary so much from one to another that I think it's impossible to assess whether 90 days is a fair sentence without any specifics about the case. I will say that I've been grabbed inappropriately, and while I've been mad enough about it to throw punches, I've never thought it was severe enough that somebody should spend months in jail over it. -k

How tall is Steve Paikin? I believe Harper is 6'2 ... and when they were shaking hands, it looked like Paikin was a whole head taller. -k

Based on the 15 minutes that I've actually been able to watch, I would say Jack Layton and Stephen Harper are doing well. This was supposed to be peoples' chance to "get to know Ignatieff". Frankly ... he's pretty annoying. I'm still considering voting Liberal, but Ignatieff sure isn't helping. -k

Maybe for toddlers... Is it my imagination or is Duceppe's speech slurred tonight? I've heard him many times and never noticed this before now. -k

I think it's a non-issue. However, I'd like to hear why people who blamed "heated rhetoric" for the assassination attempt on Gabrielle Giffords explain why this is different. -k

Thanks, networks, for scheduling this so that it would be 3/4 over by the time British Columbians get home from work. What a slap in the face. If I could meet the network people face to face to discuss this, I would smack the shit out of them. What a bunch of assholes. At least I got back in time to hear Ignatieff's moronic answer on how the long gun registry keeps cops safe. Has everything he's said today been that stupid? -k