kimmy

... Your point? Chretien governed with his 39% of the popular vote. Martin governed with his 36% of the popular vote. Neither of them were ousted to make space for a guy who'd just 2 months earlier received 26% of the popular vote. To put the scope of Dion's defeat in historical context, it should be pointed out that he brought the Liberals a smaller portion of the popular vote than John Turner in 1984. I don't have figures handy, but I believe the phrase "all time low" was used to describe Liberal support during this past election. I said a number of times during the election that I'd have considered voting for the Liberals, but I'd never consider voting to make Stephane Dion Prime Minister. Considering the amount of Liberal support that bled to the other parties during the election, I think even many traditional Liberals simply did not want Stephane Dion to be Prime Minister. It was widely speculated among analysts that the results were a personal rejection of Stephane Dion. When polled about the party leaders, Canadians routinely ranked Stephane Dion somewhere between pocket lint and crab lice. Leaving aside the question about whether it's allowed or ok or "undemocratic" or whatever, let me just ask this. A guy who was just crushed in the polls and thrown under the bus by his own party is about to become Prime Minister. Does this really sit well with people? Can this guy really stand in front of Canadians and say "I am the 23rd Prime Minister of Canada"? (Well, we know he can't literally *say* it, but you know what I'm getting at.) This will certainly be an unprecedented situation. In 20 years, I wonder how this will be looked back on. I'm curious to see how history looks back on "Prime Minister Dion". -k

Wait, that 28% includes the BQ's 10%? Trying to interpret BQ votes as in any way an endorsement of Stephane Dion as Prime Minister is nonsensical. This new coalition will need the support of separatist MPs to win any vote it puts before the House. You can try to spin it any way you wish, but that is what it comes down to. It's an unprecedented situation. The "plot" in 2004 was to join forces with the BQ to defeat a government that had clearly lost the respect of Canadians and required a new mandate if it was to continue to govern. This new plot is to join forces with the BQ to form a government. The attempt to draw some sort of moral equivalence between the two situations is a desperate attempt at rationalization. -k

Given the typical level of Bill Maher's work, how good could it have really been? The Jews think it's an abomination to eat shelfish, but they don't see a problem with bulldozing peoples homes in Palestine, hurhurhur If the Pope would tell Catholics that it's not a sin to pull out, maybe the priests would stop molesting altarboys, hurhurhur Hey, if Islam is the Religion of Peace, why do they keep blowing shit up? Think they've run out of virgins in heaven yet? hurhurhur After I give Bill Maher $10 to hear his insights on religion in the world, why don't I give Gilbert Gottfried $10 for his insight on winning friends and influencing people, and then maybe I'll give Carrot Top $10 to hear his insight on dressing to impress. -k {hurhurhur}

For some reason I thought this thread would be about Coors Light. -k

It is certainly within the rules. However, the lefties who've gone on for the past 3 years about the injustice of having a Prime Minister who was chosen by only 38% of Canadians seem strangely supportive of having a Prime Minister who only 26% of Canadians voted for. -k

He didn't attribute the occupation of the airport to Americans. He pointed out that these knuckleheads have figured out that the fastest way to escalate the situation is to drag Americans into it. They wanted to disrupt their government, but recognized that inconveniencing Westerners is the most obvious way to do so. -k

I think August's point is not that Americans are "to blame", but rather that the people blockading the airport are doing so because they know that doing so would make the situation an extreme priority for the government. The idea is not that a majority of passengers are Westerners; just that many Westerners do pass through the airport. Why attack the airport instead of the train station? Because attacking the airport makes your cause an international issue. -k

So as I understand it, if the Democrats obtain this seat, plus win a run-off election in Georgia this week, they would have 60 seats in the Senate, giving them a "super majority" and making the senate effectively a rubber stamp for the Democrats. Is that correct? -k

I sometimes wonder if it's "drinks", Oleg. -k

Well, I was trying to anticipate what the conspiracy crew will probably be saying about this. I certainly don't believe it's a "false flag" operation. I believe that it's face-value. India has had significant recent trouble with Islamist* terror, and this appears to be more of the same. Terror attacks in India usually don't even rate a mention on the news; this one is news primarily because of the brazen nature of the attack and the choice to target Westerners as well as Hindus. -k * note the use of the term "Islamist" as opposed to "Muslim". A Muslim is a follower of Islam; an Islamist is someone who believes in creating a Muslim state.

The Deccan Mujahideen's attack is a response to Western interference in India and the Middle East? But they said they're fighting oppression of Muslims in India, and demanding the release of "mujahideen" fighters being held by the Indian government. Maybe the interference they're mad about is that India is interfering in their plans to make the Kashmir area into a sovereign Muslim nation. -k

I at least agree with the part that I bolded. Decision-making should be made at the level closest to those affected, and exclude people whose interests are not relevant. On issues that are outside the scope of municipal boundaries yet still regional in scope, provinces are obviously best-equipped to make decisions. It would be stupid to have Ottawa bureaucrats deciding which rural roads in Northern Alberta should get upgrades, or whether a mining project in Interior BC should be approved. -k

What's that, specifically? -k

Muslims are claiming responsibility for a major terror attack in a country that already has major trouble with Muslim terrorists. Think Muslims may be involved? Seems rational to me. "Gut reaction"? Ok, I assume it is inevitable that some colorful alternative theories are presented. I will help. This is a "false-flag" operation initiated by US operatives. The "Deccan Mujahideen" will be discovered to be a ruse very shortly, and the real culprits will be revealed to be... Pakistani agents. A trail of evidence has been planted that will place the blame on rogue elements of the Pakistani government. The goal is to destabilize the government of Pakistan, and ultimately create a reason for NATO and Indian forces to occupy Pakistan "to maintain order". All of this had to be done before Barack Obama is inaugurated. Politicians say a lot of stuff. It is entirely possible that it is indeed an outside group, but India has had a lot of trouble with homegrown terrorism. They would not want to concede that their handle on their own internal problems has deteriorated to this extent. The group claiming responsibility is the "Deccan Mujahideen". Deccan is an area of India. The group claims to be acting on behalf of persecuted Muslims in India, and is demanding the release of all "mujahideens" held by the Indian government. However, I am reading a lot of speculation that this attack is beyond the abilities of an unknown group and that someone like Al-Qaeda, or some other established terror group, or even members of Pakistan's intelligence forces. Rogue Pakistani agents -k

How small and fast moving are we talking about? I could certainly imagine pirates using speedboats of various sorts for attacks on vessels near coastlines, in rivers and lakes, and so on, these attacks are occurring far out at sea. The Sirius Star was 450 miles from shore when it was captured. That would seem an unlikely distance for speedboats even if they knew exactly where to be to intercept the tanker. This article shows a photograph of a pirate speedboat, showing room in the boat for little more than the 6 men and their weapons. This article shows 3 more of the same sort. Tiny, open boats with no storage capacity. They simply can't be carrying much fuel, and these things are not very fuel efficient. That vessels such as this could attack ships hundreds of miles out at sea is highly improbable. The recent account of the Indian Navy vessel's battle with pirates indicated that the suspect vessel was a fishing trawler, and that after the Indian Navy engaged the ship some of the pirates attempted to escape in speedboats. This article contains a photo of a pirate vessel seized by the Royal Navy, seen towing a boat (I assume the inflatable craft are Royal Navy boarding parties). The model seems to seems to be of a "mothership", a fishing trawler or merchant vessel, towing a number of speedboats which the pirates use only when they're ready to attack. Speedboats might be a challenging target for an aircraft, but fishing trawlers and merchant vessels would be sitting ducks. I think they have different objectives, different modes of operation, and therefore would be confronted in different ways. I thought you of all people would like the potential of this idea. I'm not talking about an occupation or a police-action or "peacekeeping" as Canadians might call it... I'm talking about simply causing people to die and their boats to sink, without actually officially doing or saying anything. If pirates started turning up dead, and their boats started sinking... what are they going to do, call the police? The United States position on the matter could be "hey, man, wasn't us." Unfortunately, I have to give Wikipedia all the credit for this one. "It's wet" is about the extent of my naval knowledge. -k

The USS Missouri was the star of the movie "Under Seige" (which guest starred Tommy Lee Jones, Stephen Segal, and Erika Eleniak as I recall) and has a certain charisma that just conveys a message. (That message is, basically, "mess with us, and it's going to be raining 2-ton shells up in your area.") Outdated or not, it would undoubtedly cause an outbreak of soiled pants among any pirates who encountered it. And there's the rub, because one boat on a very large expanse of water can only do so much. If you were to recommission an old warship to deal with piracy, you wouldn't pick the Missouri, you'd pick the Saratoga or Kitty Hawk and have a wing of radio/reconnaissance aircraft in the air full-time looking for any ships on suspicious courses and listening for distress calls from shipping vessels being pursued. And when you find what you're looking for, you could have attack planes there (anywhere!) in under an hour, if your carrier is at a nice central location. I expect that attack planes showing up unexpectedly and bombing pirate ships to oblivion would have a drastic effect on the amount of piracy in the region. However, I think that the amount of piracy would also be substantially reduced if pirates started turning up dead in the streets of Eyl, or if their ships just started exploding mysteriously in the harbour. I think this sort of thing would probably be fairly simple and cost-effective. -k

The episode of South Park that inspired this event was intended as a satire... the person who started the "Kick a Ginger" group might have even intended it as a satire... but at the point where there was an actual swarming with an actual victim, it's not satire anymore. Why shouldn't it be considered a hate crime? I don't have the text of Canada's hate-crime legislation handy... is there some clause that specifies that it's not actually a hate crime unless the victim is non-white, gay, Jewish, or Muslim? One could argue that the concept of a "hate crime" is inherently flawed to start with. If I punch someone as I walk down the street, does it actually matter why I did it? If I said that I did it because I thought the victim looked like an immigrant, does it become more serious than if I said I did it because I was having a bad day? Should the prosecutor be trying to convince the jury that I did it because the victim was brown rather than because I have anger management problems? There's an argument to be made on both sides, perhaps, but the law seems to believe that inciting violence against an identifiable group is a very serious issue, and from all appearances this case certainly seems to qualify. We'll have to wait for more information. If the same group swarmed the same kid on a regular basis before this incident, then you'd have a point. (then again, if the same group swarmed the same kid on a regular basis, how come nothing was done about it before now?) Have people organized to declare a day on which to punt their toddler siblings? If so, did they actually follow through? We need details! -k

You're definitely a rustic, Oleg... -k

An interesting premise, but I don't think it stands up to critical thinking. What it comes down to is that the brains go where the jobs are. The Arrow project no doubt had the best aeronautics engineers in Canada, and with the cancellation of that project and no project of equal stature in Canada to take its place, it seems inevitable that these people would have to leave Canada to make best use of their skills. Aviation firms in the US and UK probably recruited as many Arrow engineers as they could get, and apparently NASA hired some as well. But it seems unlikely that the Arrow cancellation had anything to do with why a present day Canadian technology professional might wind up working in the US. A lot of these brains work in fields where Canada never had an "Arrow" project in the first place. My dad is an engineer. Like many families headed by technology professionals, we moved around quite a bit. In Canada, in the mid to late 1990s, Canada had a west-to-east brain drain, as Nortel Networks was hiring every engineer and programmer they could get their mitts on. Nortel was hiring something like 1/4 of all electrical and computer engineering graduates from Canadian universities. My family was one of thousands that moved to Ottawa during this time. When Nortel crashed in spectacular fashion, we were among the thousands of families that left Ottawa just as quickly. Dad's work has had us live in several of Canada's major cities at one time or another. He has also had opportunities to find employ in the United States. It was his choice to remain in Canada, and happily there always enough opportunities in Canadian technology for that to be an option. For others, depending what industry they're in, that might not be the case. If there was a high-tech company in Maidstone, Saskatchewan, and that high-tech company folds, then Maidstone is going to experience brain drain as there are no other high-tech jobs in Maidstone for the unemployed technology professionals to work at. Ottawa experienced brain drain on a much larger scale in 2001 when Nortel laid off thousands of technology professionals, and JDS Uniphase and all the other companies nearby that depended on Nortel also laid of thousands of technology professionals, and suddenly the job market had tens of thousands of unemployed technology professionals with no jobs... and most of them left Ottawa permanently. swooosh... brain drain for Ottawa... but brain gain for Vancouver, and Calgary, and Portland Oregon, and Raleigh North Carolina, and lots of other places that still had jobs. Brain drain in a modern context isn't a result of something "Dief" did in the 1950s. Brain drain is a function of people going where they need to to pursue the work they want to. -k

Good topic, Chick! It is unfortunate that it got derailed with capital punishment. Why do women like "bad" men, and why do "good guys" finish last? I think that it is not "bad" men that attracts women, but strong and confident men. There is something inherently attractive about a confident man. However, a lot of confident men are also dumb men. In my experience, the men who have the most confidence are often the ones who are too numb to recognize how flawed they are, just as the most perceptive men are often the least confident. As Annie Savoy says in Bull Durham, "The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self awareness." Men who are both confident and highly aware are rare jewels. Men who are confident and not particularly aware are easy enough to find, and for many women, the aura of confidence is enough. It triggers the same biological stuff in women that draws us to providers and protectors. As for "good guys" or "nice guys", in my experience they are not actually particularly good or nice, or at least not any more than average. The "nice guys" I have known have as much dark-side stuff in them as anybody, lots of supressed anger, lots of bitterness, lots of resentment that is lurking just below the surface. They bottle it up, they hide it, but it is there, just as much as in most other men, and perhaps more. They're good at hiding parts of themselves that are not "nice" from other people and maybe even themselves. If a woman breaks a date with a "bad" guy, he'll probably tell her about her bad behavior in no uncertain terms. If she breaks a date with a "nice" guy, he'll probably tell her that it's not a problem and that he understands she's busy and that he didn't actually want to go much anyway, while inside he's actually a seething mess of bitterness, rage, and rejection. He's probably plotting some kind of passive-aggressive stratagem that will hurt her feelings the same way so that she'll know what it's like. There is some kind of conceit, some sort of underlying assumption that he is doing something noble by bottling up all these negative feelings that the "bad" guy would air out. He will spend days puffing himself full of indignation about what a good person he is and how ungrateful and unappreciative she is, and how stupid she is to not recognize how kind and special he is. Guys confide in me. I know this stuff. It is frankly not pretty. Confident men often convey qualities that people associate with "bad guys". They're not afraid of confrontation and not afraid to express anger. They are not afraid of standing up to women, because they know that there are plenty of women out there. They are not afraid of being pushy when it comes to getting what they want. Men who lack confidence often convey qualities that people associate with "nice guys". They seek to avoid confrontation, so they suppress anger and go out of their way to accommodate others. They are willing to be doormats to women because they are not confident that they will meet other women who will accept them. They do not fight for what they want if doing so might bring them into conflict with others. I no longer believe that deep down inside "nice guys" are actually any nicer than average. I just believe that they lack the confidence to exhibit behaviors that people don't think are "nice." So, uh, the movie. I have not seen it and have no idea what it's about. However, the straight-laced woman falling for some dashing rogue who both fascinates and frustrates her... that's Jane Austen formula A, isn't it? -k

For some reason, I'm not in the least surprised that Craiger's world view is based on -k

A handy way to check for bias is to substitute a noun with a different noun. In this instance, I am highly confident that if the facebook group were "Kick a Jew Day" or "Kick an Arab Day" (just to pick a couple at random) it would be taken extremely seriously. Apparently yes.http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/st...17-a9b8b314af71 http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/C...ishColumbiaHome http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=18b43b...68-3b53f8fb26d4 http://www.thespec.com/News/article/470441 http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/2008112...s-targeted.html From a quick search through google news. It certainly seems obvious that South Park was making a parody of ignorance and bigotry. Yet... the message seems to have been completely lost on some teenagers. I don't know that there was ever a facebook group set up to plan anvil-attacks on coyotes. I think the herd mentality figured into this to some degree. Also, South Park is rather different from Bugs Bunny Roadrunner Hour. Talking animals attacking each other with dynamite is all rather nonsensical. The South Park kids, while cartoons, are kids who go to school and are often faced with realistic issues. I also think the allure of doing something subversive figured into this. -k

Well, more blonde than anything. But that wasn't the point. I didn't post that because I was worried about my own safety. (Anybody who kicks me for whatever reason had better be worried about their own damned safety. Kicking kimmy is an extraordinarily bad idea. It's simply not done.) I thought there were a few interesting ideas involved. First off, as Mr Canada pointed out, the role of parents. As Oleg touched on, the idea that what would be a shocking idea if directed at an ethnic or racial group seems to provoke none of that reaction when directed at kicks who are not an ethnic or racial group but are nonetheless an identifiable group. RB also points out the phenomenon of social networking and its role in this story. -k

What is that? A plea for attention or something? She's not my hero. I said shortly after she was selected that "I love the woman, hate her views." I still feel about the same, although I now also hate that she turned out to be so poorly informed. I thought it was great that a feminine woman had a high profile role in the US election. I hope that in the future, female politicians might be inspired to be feminine. I found myself unable to relate to that asexual, defeminized woman running around in her shitty lime-green pant-suits and trying to act like an angry little dude with little-man issues. Presumably the result of focus-groups or image-consulting that concluded that if she came across as feminine then people wouldn't think she was strong enough to be President. If that was supposed to be the model of the future for women in politics in America, it was pretty uninspiring. Palin had some serious shortcomings as a candidate. That said, I didn't see any reason to let stand the repeat of the misquote regarding "God's plan". We discussed that, you got pwned, and that was about all that needed to be said, and I didn't see much point in continuing. I assume you've "called me out" because you think you've posted some awesome zinger and wanted some satisfaction? I can't imagine what that would be, unless it's this: I didn't even think this merited a response, but if you insist... I will first off point out that my religious beliefs shouldn't actually be at issue. It doesn't alter any of the facts. It strikes me as an extraordinarily juvenile tactic to try to bring that in to the discussion. While you obviously fancy yourself a real scholar, you frankly don't convey that impression. Second off, I will point out that only a complete idiot would make assumptions about somebody's religious beliefs based on what province they're from. And, for the record, despite the reputation, Alberta has the lowest proportion of church attendance in Canada. And finally, even though it shouldn't be an issue, it bugs me to be accused of being a religious kook. I'm an atheist, raised by atheists, and I have strong feelings about religion intruding into the public sphere. I have had a number of dustups over the years with people like Jefferiah and Sharkman and Betsy over the issue of religion in society. However, I also strongly respect the rights of religious people to hold their views. I think it's extremely unfortunate that some people are unable to see that those two viewpoints are not in conflict, but are actually necessary parts of the whole in our multicultural society. -k {Contact the Holeee Jeeeezus Church of Strikes and Spares for information about God's special plans for your life, so that you can follow him with your whole heart and make him take you and love on you a lot!}

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/20...ick-ginger.html http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2008/11/20/gi...ck-warning.html South Park is known for relentless satire on just about any controversial topic. Anything from racism to religion to political correctness is ridiculed without mercy. The show is often controversial and often generates debate about whether they go "too far" or whether there's even such thing as "too far". However: it's clearly not a kids show. Kids are dumb. Kids don't understand satire. -k