kimmy

Haha! I was thinking the exact same thing! Also, it reminds me of something that happened a few years back. Some online magazine, I forget who... had this edgy young woman writing articles for them... but then they found out that she wasn't 23, she was 36. They fired her. I guess her work didn't seem as fresh and edgy when they realized it wasn't being written by a kid. -k

Most surprising thing is that Jeb Bush has fallen back among the likes of Cruz, Huckabee, and Rubio. There's still a year to go, but geez. Get it together, Jeb! (link to poll) Lately I've seen several articles like this: and this: Fun times! -k

Some might, others might be young single men who don't have a wife and children waiting for them in the refugee camp. But isn't the larger message here that the ones most in need of help are the ones waiting in the refugee camps, not the ones trying to swarm into Europe? -k

So in short the ones arriving in Europe in waves are not the ones who need help the most? -k

You're proposing that the refugee process and migration are more dangerous than staying in Syria? I find that pretty difficult to believe. -k

So... why are such a small percentage of the Syrian refugees women and children? Why is such a large majority of them male? If it were really about protecting people most severely affected by the conflict, wouldn't we see a more even split along gender lines? -k

I think we need to call in Pliny and Betsy to discuss this topic further. -k

You don't think the typical Syrian refugee is going to be, by Canadian standards, a religious conservative? -k

I suppose that they will congregate with like-minded people in public places and harass and intimidate people who don't conform to their religious views. I live in the most redneck community in BC. There's nothing you could tell me about this that I don't already know. And that's why I'm certainly not stoked at the arrival of a bunch more rednecks. -k

I picked the 80,000 figure because that's roughly the population of Edmonton's Mill Woods district which already has a lot of Muslims and would undoubtedly be where Edmonton's share of the Syrian refugees settle. I don't know the names of the equivalent neighborhoods in GTA, GVA, Calgary, or Ottawa, but I'm certain that they exist and that they too will be receiving the bulk of the refugees destined for those cities. I don't believe that it has to come to homicide. I anticipate we'll see verbal abuse, harassment, and intimidation before homicides. If 5000 Kim Davis were dropped into my neighborhood, I'd be looking for a new address too. I can't see why people would pillory her on the one hand yet talk about how we need to get us some Syrians on the other. They're basically about the same. -k

I'm worried about people who don't have the same freedom to choose their circumstances that I do. I believe that settling a large number of socially regressive people into communities is going to change those communities for the worse. -k

So if you drop 5000 people who think homosexuality is a crime that should be punished by prison or death, and that women rate somewhere between livestock and property, into my neighborhood... I am moving ASAP. That's so what. -k

I don't think anybody is saying that most Muslims are rapists, or that all Muslims are disrespectful to women. There are progressive Muslims. Some of them might even be Syrian. But by and large, your typical Syrian takes his Quran very seriously and socially speaking is going to have views that make Mike Huckabee look like a liberal hippy. -k

But we don't get to screen them on that criteria. We can check if they have criminal records and are on terror watch-lists (theoretically, at least). But we don't get to ask "how would you react if you saw two men holding hands on the street" or "do you think women should be allowed to work outside the home." This isn't immigration, where we get to choose people we think are educated and have something to offer. This is, basically, we get what we get unless we have a red-flag reason to turn them away. It just bothers me that some progressives will talk about what a scumbag Kim Davis is and in the next talk about how we need to bring in more Syrians. -k

25,000 sounds like a drop in the bucket, but that's a little deceptive. The 25,000 won't be spread evenly about the country. They'll be landing in neighborhoods like Edmonton's Mill Woods, and equivalent neighborhoods in Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa, because those neighborhoods already have prominent Muslim presence. So now you're not talking about 25,000 into a population of 30,000,000 you're talking about maybe 3000 to 5000 into a population of about 80000 and it doesn't seem like a drop in the bucket anymore. -k

If the Holocaust were an accurate reflection of Germany's present day state, I doubt Muslims would be rioting to get into Germany. -k

hmm. I mostly remember a bunch of angry old-people complaining that "the gays are getting more rights than everybody else." It seems like your kind of people like to pretend they care about gay people when it gives them a chance to complain about Muslims. I find it as funny as when progressives bend over backwards to excuse and accommodate bigotry... if it comes from brown people. -k

Truthfully, after spending a few weeks at your Coffeetime forum, I think that you and your cranky old friends have more in common with the Muslims than with me. -k

You answered your own question there. The information you provided pertains to screening security threats, not regressive views. If you were a gay person, would you be excited about the prospect of bringing in thousands of people from a place where homosexuality is a crime that gets you thrown in prison? -k

Some might be, but others aren't. We've had incidents of imams, often ones brought in straight from (and sponsored by) Saudi Arabia, caught saying shocking things. British documentaries have done undercover filming in mosques and found imams saying things quite different from the public face they'd like to put on. We're talking "Muslims Muslims Muslims" because right now it's a large group of Muslims we're talking about drop-shipping into Canadian communities. I think we can agree that domestic violence and domestic homicide are issues in general, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm not claiming that bringing in thousands of Muslims will increase the rate of domestic violence or homicide. I'm arguing that bringing in tens of thousands of religious conservatives is a threat to the social progress we've made. And I'd feel the same if we were talking about drop-shipping 25,000 fundamentalist Christians into Canada. -k

The back to school song. -k

Is there even any debate on that point, Waldo? We make fun of the US deep south for their plethora of ignorant, anti-science, bigoted religious conservatives... but those people are educated liberal intellectuals compared to the people we're being asked to bring in en masse. If you're a supporter of things like women's rights, gay rights, tolerance of diversity, and so on, why would you be excited about the prospect of drop-shipping to Canadian cities tens of thousands of people who find those concepts completely foreign? -k

Sometimes seems like recent converts can be the biggest fanatics. We've seen that with most of the recent Canadian homegrown terrorists; people from typical Canadian backgrounds who just discovered Islam a couple years ago and are ready kill for their newfound faith. -k