kimmy

He's upset that Gomeshi asked about his acting career? Geez. If Thornton wasn't an actor, his band would be one more of thousands of little bands nobody has ever heard of. He wouldn't be on CBC in the first place. You can't use fame you earned as an actor to get attention for your band and then get mad when people are interested in your acting career instead of your band. Jared Leto studiously avoids using his acting career to promote his band. Although, he's not nearly as well known as Billy Bob. -k {"Hey, Carl, what are you doing with that lawnmower blade?" "I'm fixing to kill you with it, mm-hmm."}

They were going to repay using the $1.70 (or however much) per vote? Anyway, considering how much Liberal supporters bemoaned the Conservatives' financial advantage during the election, and how much Moon Unit cried about it after the election, I'm surprised to learn that the Liberals actually had this much to spend themselves. Anyway, I think yourself and Shakey should acknowledge Dion's crushing defeat for what it was: a huge blessing to the Liberal Party. Each time you read about the life Ignatieff is bringing back to the party, don't you feel a huge amount of relief that Dion got his ass kicked so thoroughly? You yourself, Dobbins, were worried that the LPC might be facing permanent ruination. Now that Dion has been fed to the dogs, donations are coming in again, support is up all across the country, even Albertans are interested in the new guy. The Liberals are a national alternative again, instead of the regional protest party of the GTA and certain parts of Montreal and Vancouver. Personally, I think you guys should write a nice little "thank you" to everybody who didn't vote Liberal, for helping you get rid of that gigantic boat anchor. -k

I absolutely believe that there are some people who are so dangerous that they simply can not be released back into society. I have no idea if this 14 year old is one of them, or if such a determination could even be made at this age. It seems to me that something more akin to Canada's "dangerous offender" designation might be more appropriate in situations like this. -k

The most surprising thing here is that the Liberals somehow came up with $14.5 million under Moon Unit Dion. How'd that happen!? -k

The comments regarding the undesirability of cars represents the real values of a lot of the enviroweenies. It's not the emissions, it's the cars themselves and the lifestyle they allow. Some time ago I sent an internet acquaintance links about the Tesla Roadster, an all-electric car with performance to rival a Corvette. He felt that it was the worst thing since Hitler. More practical consumer-oriented products like the ultra-low emission SmartCar or the upcoming no-emission Chevrolet Volt will likewise not satisfy them. It just makes them angrier, because it takes away their favorite guilt-stick. "You're not reducing emissions, you're just moving the tailpipe!" is the response. Well, considering the far greater efficiency of electrical generation and electrical motors compared to the internal combustion engine, combined with greater capacity of industrial plants to clean their own emissions, plus the large and growing percentage of our electrical generating capacity that doesn't generate emissions anyway, and that argument falls apart quickly. And then they get to the real objection: urban sprawl, and the amount of arable land covered by roads and parking lots, and the ecological badness of big homes that people can only have because they can drive long distances to get to work. Succinct, and accurate. -k

As with Canada and the tar sands, so with Obama and the US coal industry. He has to find ways of putting lipstick on that pig (to coin a phrase.) "Carbon sequestration", and "clean coal" and other so-far fictional technologies will be touted as justifications for pretending that elephant isn't in the room when he goes about talking about the evils of the tar sands, and demanding others reduce their emissions. As for going out and deliberately firing crap into the atmosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the earth, I hope to god they're joking. History is littered with bad ideas that seemed like great ideas at the time. -k

Stephen Harper could hire Mary Walsh as a special "liason" to "connect" him with Newfoundlanders. Ignatieff could hire Jann Arden to be his special liason with Albertans and fat-people. Jack Layton could hire an earthling to try to connect him with earth people. I bet Moon Unit Dion wishes he'd thought of this. Next week when some Conservative party analyst comes into Harper's office with the latest poll numbers that say women still think he's creepy, Stephen will say "no problem. I've got it covered. I just hired a liason to connect me with women voters. And guess what? She's female!" and out waddles Rita McNeil. -k

Harold and Kumar Go To The White House! Sad that Dr Kuttner committed suicide; I am kind of glad I quit watching the show after they turned Thirteen heterosexual. Kal Penn worked for the Obama Democratic campaign and the Obama Presidential campaign, and was part of some kind of Obama committee on arts and culture. He has also been teaching undergraduate courses in Asian Studies at Penn State university. But I suspect his main qualification is being one of a very small number of Asians with any visibility in American pop culture. I'm not sure why Obama needs to hire a "liason" to "connect him" with any particular constituency, however. I mean, imagine the reaction if Stephen Harper hired an ethnic actor to help sell him to some ethnic community. It would be a gold mine for Rick Mercer. Not sure what makes the concept less ridiculous when it comes from Obama. -k

Kimmy does not seek comfort in the misfortune of others. Kimmy is saddened when Canadians die needlessly. When Kimmy is confronted with the sadness of a needless death, Kimmy seeks comfort. In cases when the person's needless death is a result of their Recently, Kimmy was horrified to hear that a young mom was shot to death in her car, with her baby in the back seat. Kimmy's dismay was greatly reduced when she discovered that the dead mom was a member of a violent Vancouver drug gang. Self-inflicted. Kimmy was also horrified to hear that a Canadian had been kidnapped by the Taliban. Kimmy's dismay was again greatly reduced when she discovered that the victim had gone to seek out the Taliban, believing them to be her homies. Self-inflicted. Ms Qahaar, like drunk drivers, gang members, hardcore drug users, and many other people who choose to engage in risky activities, is in danger for one reason, and one reason alone: she put herself there. While that must be very sad to her friends and family, I feel very little sympathy for her. If you feel differently, perhaps you should start trying to raise $2 million to free her. There will be no party hats. However, I might send name in for a Darwin Award. She appears to have reproduced, however, which may render her ineligible. You didn't answer my question: why do you continue to refer to her as Beverly Giesbrecht? Do you doubt the sincerity of her religious conversion? Do you not respect the choice she made to become Khadija Abdul Qahaar? Are you the sort of person who still refers to Muhammad Ali as Cassius Clay? Many people seem to label anything they don't understand or agree with "insane". Some people say Robert Pickton must be insane, because no sane person could have done those terrible things. And here we have people saying Beverly Giesbrecht may be insane, because no sane person would change her name to Khadija Qahaar and convert to Islam and campaign on behalf of the Taliban. I've read articles arguing that feminism is a symptom of insanity, I've read articles arguing that conservatism is a symptom of insanity. All of which is crap, in my opinion. I think Robert Pickton may be entirely sane and simply enjoys killing prostitutes. I think Ms Qahaar may have been entirely sane and simply chose to reject a typical western world view in favor of an entirely different one. I believe attributing someone's actions as mental illness is inappropriate unless there is an actual diagnosable condition with specific symptoms. While I'm no mental health professional, I see little reason to suspect Ms Qahaar to have any such condition. She's clearly intelligent, clearly has the ability to reason and think logically, and while I don't agree with her interpretation of facts, that is in itself no reason to doubt her sanity. There are lots of people much saner than I am who I disagree with. And while I myself simply can't grasp the value many people place on religion, the sheer number of people for whom religion is a powerful force precludes the possibility that embracing religion is a symptom of mental illness, in my opinion. -k

In the past, the Liberals have been accused of turning a blind eye to the activities of Tamil Tigers fundraisers in Canada, allegedly valuing Tamil votes in Toronto area ridings more than they valued principles. However, I'm curious if this cartoon pertains to any news item or current event, or if it's just rehashing an old gripe? -k

Is it more sad if someone dies by grisly murder than if someone dies by car crash or drug overdose? Dead is dead, it seems to me. Like the drug overdose casualty or the drunk driving casualty, the cause of her death is, ultimately, her own choices. She sought her killers out, she made the decision to associate with them, believing them to be her allies. She may as well have jammed a needle into her wrist. Like all the Lower Mainland gangsters that have been slain this year, she's in danger because she chose to involve herself in situations that sensible people avoid. I will feel the same about her death as I do about theirs: said that a Canadian person wasted their life foolishly by becoming involved in something so stupid, but beyond that of little consequence to anyone except her own friends and family. As she wished to be known as Khadija Abdul Qahaar, I see no point in referring to her as Beverly Giesbrecht. What is that? An attempt to get me to view her as a reg'lar white-folk type instead of a Muslim fundamentalist? Or is it an attempt to dismiss the choices she's made in life? If either of those is the case, sorry, I'm not swayed. Her ethnic background is irrelevant to my view of her. And I see no reason to doubt her claim that her decision to embrace fundamentalist Islam was a result of introspection and soul-searching. According to this article, Ms Qahaar was a hardcore alcoholic prior to becoming a born-again Christian: http://www.straight.com/article-210122/giestbrecht According to her own mini-biography, linked to in the article, her doctor told her that she'd be dead within a year if she couldn't stop drinking. She found religion and went from a doomed alcoholic to a driven, energetic entrepreneur who (by her account at least) was quite successful. I'm certainly not a fan of religion, but if it gives someone the direction they need to turn their life around, who are we to say it was wrong? If her account is true, her life was a lot worse before she found religion than it was afterward, present circumstances aside. -k

If she is eventually killed by her captors, I will feel a twinge of sadness, about the same as I feel when I hear of someone who has died while driving drunk, or someone who has died of a recreational drug overdose. And I will comfort myself with the knowledge that like the drunk driver and drug overdose victim, Ms Qahaar is the author of her own demise. She's obviously highly literate, and her technical abilities have enabled her to create this platform from which to advocate for Muslim fundamentalism. Had she been raised in such a society, she would have neither the literacy nor technical proficiency to do so. I wonder if that has occurred to her? Here's someone who, upon learning of the 9/11 attacks, converted to Islam and made it her life's work to denounce the evils of Western democracies and to extol the virtues of the Muslim fundies. Now, she's apparently facing a death sentence at the hands of the virtuous Muslim fundies, and her only hope for survival is apparently that one of these even Western democracies will conjure up a ransom. Sorry, Waldo, but my digginess of the irony of her fate will not be diminished regardless of the outcome. -k

Qahaar, who changed her name from Beverly Giesbrecht after converting to Islam in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is the owner and publisher of a controversial pro-Islamic web magazine called Jihad Unspun. In the new pamphlets, the militants charged that Qahaar was not a journalist, but a spy sent by Canada. I dunno about you guys... but personally, I'm kinda digging the irony. -k

He had to die... any other resolution would have been like Captain Ahab deciding to just let the White Whale go. I don't know if the movie adequately expressed that aspect of his character. I miss the numb, queezy feeling the space squid climax provided in the book. I personally thought so... but now have my doubts. There seems to be a big disconnect between people familiar with the source material, and people who weren't. The extent to which people who've read the book liked the movie and people who haven't read the book just didn't care leaves me wondering whether the movie only works for people whose knowledge of the book gives them some emotional investment in the material, and or fills in the gaps left by the movie. Well, thank god I wasn't the only one who thought that thing was a steaming pile of shit. One riveting performance surrounded by a whole galaxy of nothing. Absolutely nothing to say, took a very long time to say it, and every moment without the clown on the screen was just a crashing bore. -k

I just skimmed it; I hear New York and think Democrats reflexively. Nonetheless, the fact that he mentioned that Gillebrand won by 6% in 2006, but neglects to mention that she won by 30% just a couple of months ago gives the impression that he's got an axe to grind of some sort. -k

I guess it depends what you mean by "prosecute" and "attack". In both Canada and the United States, people have the right to their religious beliefs, and the right to speak their mind. There should be no "prosecuting" involved in any of this, unless the "attack" is in the form of violence rather than words. -k

Didn't Kirsten Gillebrand win this seat in a landslide in the general election? Given that they got stomped last time, and that it's heavily Democrat country, the expectations may not have been very realistic. -k

I wonder if that might be part of the reason they're in financial trouble? -k

Oh, certainly we need to wait for the tape to come out to be sure. Three different outlets, including the NY Post, have said it appears to be her, but we don't know for sure yet. Given her track record, I'm anticipating it's legit. If the Vice President's office or the Biden family were as confident as you guys that there's nothing to this, they'd have already commented on the matter by this time. I find the fact that they have yet to address this to be quite telling. I'm certainly hoping that this turns out to be true, because Joe Biden deserves it to be true. I'm certainly biased on this one, and not because Biden is a Democrat, but because I believe in personal freedom and the rule of law. Joe Biden authored the "Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstacy Act" (RAVE Act... cute, huh?) which among its shining accomplishments, intentionally classified glow-sticks and bottled water as drug paraphenalia so that police officers would have probable cause to go stormtrooper on dance parties. The RAVE Act also means that if you own a venue where a drug arrest is made, you could face massive fines or arrest, and even people attending a venue where a drug arrest is made could be subject to arrest. Joe Biden is also the guy who made the Byrne grants part of the Democratic election platform. Byrne grants provide funding to police forces based on raw drug arrests (not convictions, simply arrests). Contemplate that for a moment: they want to create a financial incentive for police departments to arrest people for simple possession. Jurisdictions that have tried this program discovered that it discouraged investigation of dealers and distributors in favor of going after the casual user. Read more about Byrne grants here... Joe Biden stands for manditory jail time for simple possession. Personally, I think it would be pretty sweet if Joe's daughter wound up doing hard time for simple possession due to crap laws Joe pushed through in the 1980s. I think that would be a tremendous wake-up for Mr Drug Czar. Of course, unlike most people arrested for minor drug offenses, Ashley can just look at the prosecutor and say "do you know who my daddy is?" (it has already worked for her once...) The war on drugs has been a failure, and Biden has been its most visible and vigorous combatant. Personal liberties and the rule of law have been eroded in the name of fighting the war on drugs. For all the handwringing and anxiety about the Patriot Act, provisions enacted to help boost the "war on drugs" (several with Biden's name on them) have had a much wider impact on the lives of Americans. -k

It doesn't make him a hypocrite... but it calls into question the merit of his Drug Warrior campaign, don't you think? Here's a guy who represents the War On Drugs as much as any figure in American politics, and got draconian anti-drug measures onto the Democratic campaign platform. For 27 years, Ashley's entire life, he's been the champ on the issue. And yet, his own daughter was arrested for marijuama when she was in college... and apparently has not learned anything from her brush with the law, either. When Joe is making his whirlwind tour of Central American countries this week, do you think the snowballing issue of drug violence is going to be mentioned? Do you think the irony of getting pressured on cocaine by Biden will be lost on Central American leaders when Joe's own daughter is apparently caught on film stumbling around with a straw jammed up her nose and demanding somebody cut her a bigger line? If Mr Drug Warrior can't even keep his own daughter from experimenting with drugs, why should Americans trust his views when it comes to how the law deals with *their* kids? -k

Maintenance costs apply to whatever type of plant you build. They're predictable. The cost of wind, tide, and sunshine is predictable too. The cost of fossil fuels is not predictable, except that it is going to keep rising. I'm not advocating that existing plants be shut down, but a huge portion of our electrical generating capacity is already tied to fossil fuels, and will remain so for decades into the future even if not a single new fossil fuel burning plant were constructed. The cost of transporting our goods and heating our homes and turning our electrical turbines has already risen more rapidly over the past decade a lot faster than people expected. The rising cost of fossil fuels is a bigger threat to our quality of life than the aspirations of "enviro-luddites". We might not be able to put innovation on a schedule, but it is a fact that innovation occurs a lot faster when there's money to be made. It takes a lot of energy to make a boiler and a steam turbine as well. It also takes a lot of energy to get a ton of coal or natural gas out of the ground, and a lot more energy to get it to the power plant in a form it can be combusted in, and when you've burned it, you have to go get another ton of coal out of the ground and do the same thing all over again. At some point the lifetime cost of a fossil fuel generating plant is going to exceed the lifetime cost of a renewable energy plant of equal capacity. It's an inevitability, it can't not happen. What... renewable electricity requires a bigger power-grid than fossil fuel electricity? We need investment in our powergrid. It's aging, overworked, and the demand being placed on it will rise every year. That's a fact, whether the electricity comes from wind, coal, or the Hammer of Thor. I'm not sure if you're anticipating a day where one day somebody throws a switch and hundreds of fossil fuel plants shut down and hundreds of alternative energy plants suddenly whir to life. That's not how it is going to happen. This is an incremental process... as you mention, we're talking about plants with operational lifetimes of decades. A power generating plant started today, of whatever type, might well still be running when I die of old age. Many of the coal and natural gas burning plants that already exist might still be running when I die of old age. I don't think we should be gambling that fossil fuel will still be cheap and plentiful that far into the future. The experience of the past several years has made me quite worried about the cost of relying on fossil fuel for electricity decades into the future. We've already seen electricity costs rise sharply. I know what tides and sunshine will cost when I'm old. I don't want us to be sitting around in 2039 thinking "shit, why the fuck did we build all those fucking natural gas burning powerplants in 2009 when we already knew that natural gas was god damned expensive?" If that's how it turns out, how am I going to be able to afford to watch "Murder She Wrote" and "Matlock"? -k

Inverters can be over 80% efficient; industrial-sized transformers are 98% efficient or better. The fuel-cell stack itself would be the weak point, only 50-60% efficient. 70% * 50% * 80% * 98% = about 27% efficiency... so that's obviously pretty wasteful compared to a water-tower solution. I don't know about compressed air, but there's no reason for a water-tower type system to be less than 57% efficient, as I mentioned earlier. 57% efficiency might not sound super great, but given the amount of loss in a conventional system (I have heard fossil fuel generators can be 60% efficient, your earlier cite claims 30%...) it completely comparable. Particularly since the cost of the inputs is free. 57% of free is awfully cheap! There's no reason why a renewable energy system would be more labor-intensive or inefficient in operation than a fossil-fuel one. By the time you consider the cost of fossil fuels, and the energy spent in acquiring them and in transporting them to the generating station, it will be entirely the opposite, in fact. Ignoring the environmental argument and concentrating strictly on the issue of efficiently meeting energy needs, the difference in cost is this: a fossil fuel plant requires continual inputs, while a renewable energy plant will have a higher up-front cost but operate on free inputs. I have little doubt that for the time being, wind/solar/tidal plants will cost more dollars per megawatt of capacity than their conventional counterparts. Right now, I can't begin to guess at how much that difference might be. Perhaps for the price of building a wind-farm, you could build an equivalent gas-burning plant plus buy enough natural gas to keep it running for 1000 years. But what if it's only 100 years, or 20 years? What if it looks like the price difference could buy 100 years of natural gas at the time, but increasing scarcity and demand for natural gas means that by 10 years in, using tidal power would have turned out to be cheaper? That calculus is going to change in favor of renewable energy eventually. Non-renewable fuels are becoming more expensive. Sunshine and wind and tide are going to cost exactly the same in 20 years as they cost today, and the cost of the technology that exploits them is going to become cheaper every year as it advances. -k

Well, I bet the "I didn't inhale" trick isn't going to work for her! HAH HHAHAHAA ,,, he heeheehe ... huhhh. -k

The weight of tanks capable of storing hydrogen might be a barrier to building a hydrogen-powered Yaris... but hydgrogen fuel-cell powered buses were in service 10 years ago, using technology by Ballard Power Systems of BC. And the weight of the tanks would not be an object at all for stationary generating plants. I think that whether hydrogen were viable as a means of storing energy collected from wind/solar/tidal would depend mostly on efficiency. Suppose you take 100MWh of free electricity from windmills and use it to synthesize hydrogen... if when you run the hydrogen through your fuel cell array you get 60MWh out, then that's probably a very viable means of ballasting the unpredictability of wind power. But if you only get 6MWh back out, then it's a colossal waste. I don't know what the efficiency of synthesizing hydrogen is (the energy value of the hydrogen produced vs the amount of energy put in.) If it sucks, there must be other means of storing the energy retrieved from wind/solar/tidal power to achieve 24-hour stability. Simple one, off the top of my head: use that electricity to pump water into an elevated reservoir; use water to turn turbines on its way back down. Easy, technologically simple, reliable proven technologies... obvious really. Electrical motors are 85% efficient or more, mechanical pumps can be 75% or more, and electrical generators can be over 90% efficient... so even including the mechanical losses and inefficiencies, it should be possible to retrieve over 57% of the energy spent pumping water uphill. The difficulty you mention-- the sporadic nature of wind/solar/tidal power is understood, but this is not an insurmountable problem. -k

During the election campaign, a lot of people wondered why Bristol Palin's pregnancy was a topic. The reply was, "if Sarah Palin is running around talking about abstinence education, the fact that her own teenaged daughter got knocked up is relevant." Well, keeping that logic in mind, and keeping in mind that Joe Biden has made a career of fighting "the war on drugs", and that he is in fact the guy responsible for creating the term and job position of "Drug Czar", and that the Democrats campaign promises included draconian anti-drug measures, I think it is absolutely pertinent to note that Joe Biden's daughter is a coke-fiend. How d'yer like them apples, Mr Drug Czar? -k