kimmy

I strongly encourage all Alex Jones supporters to buy Endgame: The Movie. I also recommend that Alex Jones supporters buy Terrorstorm (the Special Edition), as well as the Police State Trilogy. And be sure to buy at least a one year subscription to Alex Jones' Prison Planet site. I recommend that Alex Jones supporters purchase all of these things, because it adds up to $130 that they won't be able to spend on bullets, Kool-Aid, and industrial quantities of ammonia nitrate. Silly little worker-bee! Did you really think Obama could become President if he wasn't *already* part of the Secret Inner Circle? Vote out one head of the hydra and another takes its place! It's change you can believe in! Ha hahahaha! HAHAHAHAAA!!! -k {HAHA! HAHAHA!!}

One of the world's largest supertankers, the Sirius Star, owned by Saudi Arabia's state oil company Aramco, has been seized by pirates off the Horn of Africa, and is being taken to the Somali port of Eyl. The ship carries an international crew of 25, who are reported to be unharmed. It is also carrying 2 million barrels of oil. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/081118/worl...piracy_saudi_us These waters are patrolled by warships from several nations, including Canada apparently, but the pirates are becoming more and more brazen. One tends to suspect that a heist of this magnitude will prompt certain nations to become more pro-active in their approach to the pirates... -k

Chretieneze? It's kind of like English, only different. I don't believe the Jews constitute a "race" by any conventional definition of the term. I believe that statistics show that Jews, as a group, do on average have among the highest achievement in terms of academic success, university degrees and post-graduate degrees, and income. It is a stereotype that Jews have a culture obsessed with achievement and become doctors and lawyers and business owners, but there may be some truth behind the stereotype... and these are professions that people do tend to associate with "articulate" and "educated". -k

What she said this week doesn't alter the fact that your interpretation of her prayer about Iraq is completely wrong. As for what she did actually say this week, it sounds like you are referring to Palin's interview with Larry King: "My life is in God's hands. If he's got doors open for me, that I believe are in our state's best interest, the nation's best interest, I'm going to go through those doors." She believes that God creates opportunities for people. She says that she will act on those opportunities based on what she believes is her state's interest and the nation's best interest. Which is again rather opposite to claiming that God will tell her what to do. Earlier she prayed that the military action in Iraq was the right thing to do. Now she says that if God creates opportunities for her, she will decide what to do based on what she thinks is the best interest of her state and her country. Both of these statements reflect the belief that God does have a plan, and that humans don't know what that plan is and must therefore act in accordance with their beliefs and principles. This is, in fact, the religious outlook of most Christians, though it is not often expressed as sincerely as by Palin, or expressed at all by politicians of any note. Earlier in the interview she made reference to crystal balls as a means of predicting the future: "I'm not going to close any doors of opportunity that perhaps are open out there in the future. Not having a crystal ball, I do not know what those opportunities will be. If I have to call an audible down the road here and circumstances change and the door is open for me to do so, it would be something that I would take that challenge on, that responsibility." Is it logical to conclude that Palin is also secretly a gypsy? If a politican says "we will have to see what's in the cards," is that evidence that they're a Tarot reading occultist? People seem to have some kind of emotional investment that Palin is a kook who believes that God speaks directly to her. In fact, her statements both on Iraq and this week show the opposite: she believes that we *don't* know God's plan and that that we must act on our principles and pray that we're doing the right thing. People sift through Palin's statements looking for something to support their a-priori belief that she's a religious kook. If one approaches Barack Obama's statements with the same a-priori assumption, one finds a rich trove of material to support that belief. Obama said that he can heal souls. Obama said that people experience the realization that they must vote for Obama as an epiphany in the form of a ray of light from the heavens. Certainly those two comments are far kookier than anything Sarah Palin said. How is it that nobody ever thought to sift through Obama's statements on religion with the same zeal that has been applied to Palin's? -k

I used the word "hypothetically" because I can't recall whether the Obama campaign specifically made this promise themselves. They certainly didn't have to, as media was enthusiastically doing so on his behalf. But if I recall, this was the gist of some of Michelle Obama's content, notably the proud/not-proud stuff? She was speaking only for herself, of course, but I think her point was that Obama's campaign was making black people feel included for the first time. And, if the charge can be made that the McCain campaign was playing the race card in a coded way by playing up his past associations with angry black leaders, it should be equally valid to say that Obama's talk that he could "heal the country" was also a coded appeal to the idea that choosing a black president would heal racial divisions. I asked, because I honestly didn't know. Whether Johnson's addresses on the subject worked out well for him is somewhat debatable, judging from the race riots during his tenure. He certainly had lots of opportunity to plea for unity, and little choice but to address the subject. As for Clinton, I'm not actually aware of how he earned this title of honorary black person. Is it because he played saxophone and had a lot of sex? Did he say or do anything notable on the subject of race relations, or is it just that black people thought that he was pretty cool for a honky? You can "whatever" if you wish, but we both know how it'd have played out. "How can this man, who has never experienced racial discrimination in his life, this son of an Admiral whose military career benefited from family privilege even as a captive of the North Vietnamese, this man who owns more homes than he's ever visited, how can this man even pretend to understand the experience of the excluded minorities, the disenfranchised, the people who hold their breath with fear whenever a police cruiser rolls past, the people who blah blah marginalized blah white privilege blah blah..." -k

Wow! Hal Turner's top secret sources have provided him with another Amero, authorized by Shadow President Daniel Carr himself! (don't believe that Daniel Carr is the real president of the United States? Well if he wasn't the president then why is his face on a coin? Huh? Huh? The same fruitcake as last year, brandishing another novelty coin like last year, from the same manufacturer he got his last novelty coin from. Has Hal Turner gotten more credible in the past year? Has DC-Coins become an official mint in the past year? Of course not. The one thing that's different from last year is that the financial crisis allows him to play on people's fears about their savings. That's about all that's changed. -k

Left to their own devices, the Islamist fundamentalists don't turn into happy-happyland. Left to their own devices, the Islamist fundamentalists give you what you saw in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime. They give you the violence seen in northern India that goes almost unmentioned in the west. The kind of unrest seen within many north African states, notably Nigeria right now. The secessionist violence in the Philippines. The humanitarian crisis in Darfur. And the genocide in East Timor. The Battle of Vienna may have adjusted the scale of their ambitions, but the underlying belief is about the same. I don't think anybody claimed that all Saudis are bad. And while the Saudi government may not be to blame, some Saudi citizens with big wallets and fundamentalist beliefs seem to be sponsoring an awful lot of trouble in the world today. -k

When I saw this thread, I was hoping it would be a Polynewbie style conspiracy theory full of wacky claims, dysfunctional logic, fictional information from disreputable sources, and of course Rumsfeld talking about the "$1.3 trillion dollars" that were "stolen". I was sorely disappointed to find that the post is actually sensible and raises a legitimate point. Saudi Arabia is a prickly subject for two reasons: -they have the West over a barrel, quite literally. Energy dependence is a big stick. -Saudi Arabia contains the holy sites of Islam. Taking any action against Saudi Arabia could turn into an all out war of civilizations if Muslims felt that Islam itself was under attack. But you raise a good point. Saudi Arabia kind of sucks, and there's little we could do about it. Some Saudis are choosing to spend their money on stuff that's not specifically too good for the West. Saudi money is behind the most controversial mosques in Canada, and the United Kingdom, and no doubt other western democracies. Radical Saudi priests supported by Saudi money are promoting a narrow and virulent version of their religion in western nations. When Vancouver's Rudwan Khalil turned up with his ass shot up in Chechnya, his path was traced back to a Saudi priest in a Saudi-funded mosque in Vancouver. When Britain's "Undercover Mosque" videos turned up shocking hate within Britain's mosques, it traced back to Saudi priests and Saudi money. The infamous "radical madrassas" in Pakistan that are churning out combatants to fight in Afghanistan are Saudi-funded. It would be nice if the Saudis stopped spending their money on promoting hate. -k

Certainly. It is wrong to make generalizations about the tens of millions of Americans who voted for either candidate. However, I will mention as a point of interest that this is at least the 3rd video of people in authority evangelizing the virtues of Obama to children under their care. (along with the Obama Youth Regiment, and the music teacher who had her students sing Obama Carols.) -k

Exit polls are not a factual record of who voted for whom, but as has been pointed out that is information we do not have access to. Exit polls *are* a statistic. They're a statistic that tracks who people leaving polls say they voted for. That's a statistic. Track a sufficient amount of this statistic, and you can obtain a statistically significant sample which you can base predictions about the population as a whole. The principle is no different from voting intention polls. Exit polls are have the same merits and shortcomings as other polls. Sample size, the limitations of random sampling, and the potential for untruthful responses are factors that make exit polls less than perfect, but they're still rather good. Exit poll predictions of election results have been shown to be highly accurate in predicting the final result, generally within a couple of percentage points. That speaks to the general accuracy of exit polls. Using exit polls to analyze results in terms of race, education, income level, etc, makes things more confusing, but in this particular situation we are merely relying on people to state their race correctly, which I suspect most are willing to do. The bottom line is that when major news organizations are willing to stand behind these statistics and use them in their analysis of the results, when the political parties themselves employ these figures in analyzing what went right and wrong for their campaigns, then I think that these figures are certainly good enough for Kimmy to reference during a post on MapleLeafWeb. And while the exit polls do not constitute factual proof of who voted for Obama, they do illustrate a strong and obvious trend: Obama obtained a huge boost from non-white voting compared to his Democrat predecessors. +2% White votes vs Kerry +8% African American votes vs Kerry +13% Latino votes vs Kerry +6% Asian votes vs Kerry +12% "Other" votes vs Kerry +1% White votes vs Gore +6% African American votes vs Gore +4% Latino votes vs Gore +7% Asian votes vs Gore +11% "Other" votes vs Gore http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1 http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/res...0/epolls.0.html http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/index.epolls.html That just scratches the surface, as the raw percentages don't reflect the massive boost in turnout among non-white voters compared to prior elections. -k

I have chosen to bring progress and achievement to another community. Already great things have been achieved here since my arrival. -k

By misconstruing the full quote, you make yourself look like an idiot. By presenting a selectively edited version of the quote, you make yourself look like a dishonest idiot. Go read the full quote that you yourself posted a few messages back and reflect on how dumb you look for now attempting to pass off this partial quote that omits the key portion. Seriously: aren't you embarrassed to have posted something so blatantly dishonest? edit: perhaps I am being overly harsh on you. It seems unfair to pick on a message board poster for doing something when ABC News did the exact same thing: http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/12/ab...y-war-question/ -k

I dunno... ...that they didn't hold McCain responsible for those issues? ...that they considered McCain to be a better candidate? ...that they considered Obama to be a lousy candidate? ...that they preferred McCain's policies to Obama's? One can only wonder. This is cryptic indeed. Well, it sounded like you were accusing Shady of something he didn't actually say, when in fact it was Gosthacked who was throwing around "race card" accusations; Shady's only contribution was to ask when the McCain campaign had done so. So only the most blatant and cynical use of race qualifies as "playing the race card" in your view? What about, hypothetically, promising voters of all races that choosing a black president would reduce the feeling of alienation and resentment among minorities? Has talking about racial issues ever worked out well for a white politician in America? I'm thinking probably not since Abe Lincoln, but feel free to let me know if I've forgotten anyone. Obama can go out and sound like a champion to some voters and appeal to white liberal guilt in the rest and win across the board. For McCain to even attempt to speak on this issue, the reaction (regardless of the content of his speech) would have been universal: "WTF does this honky know about it?" Good grief, there's no need to be like that. -k

Which "beautiful people" are we talking of in particular? -k {if it's me, please don't interpret my awesomeness as any sort of statement about you. It isn't. I can't help it if my presence makes people insecure about their own shortcomings.}

Shouldn't that question be directed at the person who accused the McCain campaign of "playing the race card"? And what's your opinion on that question? In light of Rev Wright's nauseating speeches coming to light, Obama went on TV and gave a speech about race that many have pointed to as a pivotal moment on the campaign. Could a white candidate have gone on TV and made a speech about race? If he were Barry Dunham, D-Whiteguy, would the message of "Change!" have been as resoundingly successful? Did the visible proof that he really IS different from every other major party Presidential candidate in history help that message? If he were Barry Dunham, D-Whiteguy, would he have received the support of 95% of black voters and the large majority of other non-white voters? He never asked people to vote for him based on his skin color. And he never tried to deflect legitimate criticism of his policies by saying "y'all just pickin' on me because I'm black." However, it seems to me that his campaign was able to use his race to beneficial effect anyway. -k

Not unless people decide that this sort of thing isn't really a big deal. -k

I think North American made the prettiest designs ever put in the sky. -k

You really can't grasp it, can you. Uniformed, armed goons in front of a polling station don't have to be "doing" anything to be an issue. Their mere presence is unacceptable. Their mere presence *is* the story. I mention banana republic elections as an example of why real democracies don't let armed thugs stand in front of polling stations. If the student who videotaped the Black Panthers, and the person who called the police, and the police who responded to the call were all of the same view as you, then yes, America would be a lot like a banana republic. But fortunately it turns out that America is still a country where thugs in front of polling stations *is* considered an issue. -k

My daddy took me to the air show every year when I was younger. I've always loved planes, and the military ones are way cooler than the civilian ones. -k

First off, I didn't attempt to make any link with Obama. I don't believe in the slightest that these two knuckleheads had anything to do with the Obama campaign. Secondly, if KKK members were stationed outside of a polling station, you can bet that a lot of people would be talking about it, a lot of people would claim it tainted the election results, and some people would no doubt be claiming it as somehow demonstrates something about Republican supporters as a group. No, I just quoted the part that seemed like a pathetic attempt to rationalize what was going on. Hey, just a couple of dudes chilling on the street. People could just walk around them... if people are scared of armed men in paramilitary uniform, that's their own problem. The same could be said in the above-mentioned scenario of KKK members outside a polling station. Hey, people can just go past them, right? If somebody doesn't want to come face to face with Klansmen on their way to vote, that's their own problem, right? The same could be said of banana-republic elections where people have to walk past El Presidente's stormtroopers to cast their votes. Hey, people can just go past them, right? If somebody doesn't want to come face to face with El Presidente's thugs on their way to vote, that's their own problem, right? There's no evidence that these men prevented anyone from voting, and as for whether anyone saw these armed men and chose to not even approach the station, one can only guess. This person, a Republican poll observer, claims that the men did act in an intimidating manner when he approached the poll: "We got a phone call that there was intimidation going on. I walked up to the door, two gentlemen in Black Panther garb, one brandishing a nightstick, standing in front of the door. They closed ranks as I walked up. I am a veteran; that does not scare me. I went inside and found poll-watchers, they said they had been here for an hour — I went inside and found poll-watchers, they said that they had said not to let people outside because black people are going to win no matter what. At that point, I spoke to him, we would not get into a fistfight, I said, and I called the police." http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1..._voters_in.html The man's political affiliation obviously invites the suggestion that his account is biased. However, the Panthers' confrontational attitude toward the student with the video camera suggests that they were not exactly just a couple of guys standing around relaxing. -k

Monsieur Dancer has beaten me to pointing out most of the technical inaccuracies in the original post. The favorable comparison of the Arrow to our current Hornets is laughable. The Hornet is a far superior aircraft in every respect except for top speed and maximum altitude. Top speed and maximum altitude are not the measure of a combat aircraft. There are a lot of very very fast aircraft that have been eliminated from the world's militaries over the past 20-30 years because being fast just wasn't enough to make up for their other shortcomings. The Arrow would have been among them, had it not been cancelled. This is simply not accurate. The North American F108 Rapier was in development concurrently with the Arrow, and its performance would have considerably exceeded the Arrow's. The Rapier was cancelled at the same time for the same reason: with the arrival of the ICBM, there was no longer any need to be able to intercept bombers. -k

Thanks for clarifying the history of the issue. Lawrence Decore was well before my time. However, I'm old enough to remember some of the complaints about city planning during Reimer's time in office. One that always made dad furious was that the 114th street corridor from Southgate to the University was so badly congested, and when Reimer spent a bunch of money to upgrade 114th street, it didn't do anything to reduce traffic congestion, it just added flowers and bricks and heritage-style street lamps. I have not lived in Edmonton for almost 2 years, but I do know that before I left, a lot of major capital projects were being announced, and some had already been completed. And in fairness to Bill Smith, some of the major projects had been initiated during his time in office. The south-to-west-to-north portion of the Anthony Henday project had just been completed before I moved away. I understand the 23rd Ave/QE2 interchange is now well underway. That is, as I understand it, one of the worst intersections for collisions, one that contributes highly to the crash statistics that Craiger mentioned. Gateway Boulevard, as a "gateway" to the city, kind of sucks. Once you get past 51st Ave, you get all those run down little shops, with cars turning in and out of the parking lot, right off of the main highway without even a turning lane. But "Gateway Boulevard" isn't really a gateway; if you're going north on Gateway past 51st Ave as you head into Edmonton, you probably missed your turn-off. Keep going straight on Gateway, and you literally drive off a cliff when you get to the river valley. It's typical of Edmonton, in the sense that roads were not planned with any idea of flow or where people actually wanted to go, it seems like they just built straight lines, with the idea that people would go where they wished. And if a lot of people start taking one particular route, just raise the speed limit and maybe build some turning lanes at big intersections. (Is Stony Plain Road the worst example of this kind of thinking?) It is unfortunate that the city has decades of bad planning to overcome. However, I think that it has sunk in over the past several years that Edmonton is a big city whether they like it or not, and that it has to be built and managed accordingly. -k

If you're reading it that way, it's either because you're not very good at reading, or intent on willfully misconstruing what she actually said. There's no reason to make yourself look foolish by pursuing this topic when there are plenty of legitimate criticisms of Palin. -k

We've all read your posts enough to recognize complaining about those darned "unqualified foreign workers" as a recurrent theme. You didn't specify the Chinese in particular this time, which I guess is a step in the right direction. The city was able to manage growth effectively during Reimer's time in office because there wasn't any growth. Bill Smith cheaped out on infrastructure during his time in office. He spent the bare minimum (and usually less) to keep the potholes filled, and crowed about how fiscally responsible he was. The city was desperately behind the curve on infrastructure even before the boom really hit. Together, he and Reimer kept the city's infrastructure stagnant and completely unprepared for what came. As your article mentions, Calgary somehow managed to do a whole lot better. Maybe the reason for that is that Calgary had forward-thinking mayors who were happy about entering into 75%/25% cost-shared projects with the provincial government, instead of taking a nickel-and-dime approach and bragging about how thrifty they were. -k

It took you this long to sleuth that one out, Sherlock? -k