kimmy

That's completely ridiculous. Canadians are paying high prices at the pumps because the Canada-US exchange rate is in free-fall. The world energy market is based on the US dollar, and the Canadian dollar has dropped 20% vs the US dollar in the past year. The drop in the price of oil has been offset by the drop in the Canadian dollar, and THAT is why we are still paying high prices at the pumps. Good grief. Do you guys even think about this crap before you post it? I know that you guys can't wait for the Alberta NDP to be a failure, but you might want to at least wait for a real reason to blame them instead of inventing imaginary stuff to blame them for. Is it too soon to coin "Notley Derangement Syndrome"? -k

I am always as brief as possible. When you're reading your daily Kimmy you can always be assured that you're seeing ideas expressed as concisely as you'd expect from a writer of my calibre. A page of text from me is as thought-provoking and engaging as a whole thesis from lesser writers! -k

I believe Sanders is suggesting a constitutional amendment to put an end to Citizens United, and he's not the first to suggest that. I think John McCain has said something similar. There's actually bipartisan support among voters on the subject... polls show that over 80% of US voters feel something should be done about big money in politics. Well, one of the big problems is that *nobody* knows what's in TPP; it's been negotiated in complete secrecy. Hilary is probably among the relative handful that knows what's actually going on. There was some material released on WikiLeaks a while back, and while it's hard to be sure that stuff was actually real, it turns out that very little of it was actually about trade. One thing that attracted a lot of attention was rules making it much harder to get generic drugs onto the market; granting pharmaceutical companies a way of "evergreening" their patents to lock out generics in perpetuity. That's probably great news if you own a pharmaceutical company, but it has little to do with free trade and doesn't actually benefit consumers. Just the opposite. There's more stuff like that. There's legal remedies for companies to go to extranational courts to overturn or pursue financial damages for local laws they find inconvenient, things like that. Is that really the kind of stuff economists are talking about when they talk about the benefits of free trade? What's the benefit of free trade agreements for us regular folks? We get access to cheaper consumer goods, right? Well, we've already got access to cheap consumer goods. You can get on the web, contact a Chinese seller, and get them to ship their gear right to your mailbox. Last month I bought a Chinese knockoff of an $80 knife. Amazing quality. High quality steel. Incredibly well made. It cost me $9, including shipping. Freaking amazing. I mean, we're already benefiting from trade with China. TPP isn't about giving you and me access to more options. And why should it be that we're depending on Julian Assange to get this information? Hilary has come out with her own plan, which will cost $350 billion over 10 years, so that's something at least. -k

I bet we could find lots of offensive Twitter hashtags that actually exist, and lots of them that aren't actually intended for comic effect either. -k

What's Hilary going to do about Wall Street? The billionaire class? She spends her time in the Hamptons rubbing elbows with those guys. Where's her SuperPAC going to get a billion dollars from if she does anything about that? Obama has had 8 years to do something about it, and the best they could do was Dodd-Frank, which has been steadily gutted since before the presidential ink even dried. And Obama's DoJ is responsible for journalists coining the phrase "too big to jail". What's Hilary going to say about Trans Pacific Partnership? She spent years flying around the world promoting it to foreign governments. She can say she's concerned about it now, but that would be kind of like Grand Moff Tarkin saying he's concerned about Alderaan's ecological condition. For the past 8 years, the Democrats' policy on college affordability has been to make it easier for students to borrow more money, so that colleges can keep raising tuition. Does Hilary have something fresh up her sleeve on that front? Maybe she's saving it for closer to the election. -k

Basically you have used over 3000 words to explain that you are angry that some prominent atheists don't share your views regarding sustainability. -k

See, I think all of that is wrong. I think that almost every professor has the sense to know that some topics like religion and abortion are hot-button topics that could land them in hot water. It's probably not nearly as obvious to professors that other topics might be equally hot-button depending on the audience. Would a professor talk about non-related stuff in class? Well, yeah, it happens. I audited a physiology course once where the professor went off on a pro-vegan tangent; another professor at a course I audited had really engaging discussions before class about a wide variety of stuff; people would get there early because it was fun. I don't know if he ever got in hot water; the time he made fun of traditional Chinese medicine might have been touchy; he also chatted about the Gomery inquiry. I didn't do much post-secondary but I saw professors talk about non-course material quite a bit in an effort to relate to students. Mostly it was harmless stuff like sports or funny stuff pulled off the internet. Personally, I have no difficulty picturing some professor, especially some older guy with tenure and a class that's 80% white and 80% male, grumbling about the diversity seminar they had to attend, probably egged on by white male students. Referencing the Dalhousie dental thing again, I believe some of the Facebook posts in question spoke in glowing terms about one of the professors who they deemed a hero for being defiantly un-PC in class. I am literally delighted that one of you guys actually gets this. And for what it's worth, if I thought informing professors and academic staff about microaggressions was an attempt to censor political debate or shut down dissenting views, I would be opposed. But I don't think that is intended at all, and I think that the efforts to represent it as such are a ginned up controversy designed to create a backlash against "political correctness". -k

I've watched TYT quite a few times and I'm somewhat familiar with Cenk Uygur. And I think that telling an anti-feminist woman to "go make him a sandwich" is the same kind of barb as telling female fundie Michelle Bachmann to "1 Timothy 2:12" during her short-lived Presidential campaign. As for "#killallwhitemen" it was a popular satirical hashtag, not an actual genocidal campaign. For those not familiar with Twitter, putting a hashtag in your post links it to ongoing discussions with other people who follow that hashtag. #killallwhitemen was an ongoing comedy topic among snarky feminists who coined the term to make fun of the man-hater stereotype and the male butt-hurt directed at them. -k

It was a brochure from a diversity seminar. I think people understand from the context that it's not a change to curriculum in the poli-sci department (or whichever department you're in where affirmative action would be a relevant academic topic.) That argument rests on the premise that people have good judgment about what's appropriate or not appropriate in the first place, and we've seen examples recently to put that in doubt (like the Dalhousie dental professor who thought it would be a good idea to "wake up" the students with a bikini video at the start of class.) You're the first of the free speech warriors here to even agree to that much, so that's progress. -k

Well, to make it a more realistic example, let's change it from a red shirt to an Ed Hardy shirt. If you came to me with your new Ed Hardy shirt and said "hey, check it out! What do you think?" I would give you advice on why it would be unwise to wear that shirt in public, aside from maybe at monster truck rallies or cage fighting events. I could explain to you that women will assume you're a clueless douche. That people will assume you're an immature mook. People will make assumptions about your intelligence and your judgment and your lifestyle. I could explain that just by your choice of such a questionable garment, you're creating negative biases against yourself before you even get to open your mouth. I can provide all that advice. I can't make you not wear the shirt, but I can provide information as to why it could have negative results. If you decide "you know what? Kimmy is full of it. This is an awesome shirt, and I look great, and I don't care if a few people think it looks stupid, I'm gonna do my own thing! I gotta be me!" that's completely your call. But don't complain later on that you didn't know your stupid shirt would make you a target of scorn and ridicule. You were given the advice and you chose to ignore it. -k

That's an incredibly shoddy rationalization for completely unjustified use of powers that were supposedly created "to protect national security". It if were an NDP government using warrantless surveillance on Conservative Party gatherings on a flimsy pretext like "looking for violent ultra-right-wing extremists" I doubt you'd be accepting of such laughable arguments. -k

There's no evidence that this was an "edict", nor a decree, a declaration, a dictate, an ultimatum, a commandment, a fatwah, or any other such thing. If this was really a curriculum policy update for the political sciences department, would it have been distributed as a brochure for a general audience of professors and academic staff? Alongside examples like "assuming non-white people are service workers" and saying "you people"? Does that really seem like the way a department would notify its professors of changes to the curriculum? And to once again reference the dick-cheese salesmen I sometimes interact with: you know, when that guy comes up and starts talking to me like an idiot, I don't go through a mental checklist of whether I'm being rational before I form a negative opinion of him. I don't really care if it is or isn't a socially accepted convention that you ought to talk to young blonde women like they're morons; it grates on me regardless. Reactions are formed quite quickly without much conscious thought. If you're in a position where your livelihood depends on positive interaction with the public, why on earth wouldn't you want information like this? -k

Sure, Charles, I think most of us evolve our views over time. I'm often surprised when I look at past threads and see some of the stuff I wrote years ago, and find how my perspective has changed in the time since. But really, Charles... do you honestly believe that our self-proclaimed socialist and teacher's union supporter has, in the span of a few days, evolved his views to the point that he's now somewhere to the right of Stockwell Day on the political spectrum? -k

See, Argus, we were talking about this before, and like I said: keep giving the government extraordinary powers to combat terrorism, and they'll keep finding ways to classify more stuff as terrorism. You assured me that "no no no, they wouldn't abuse these powers, people wouldn't stand for it!" Well, how's that working out? -k

This has been on my radio lately: The song was commissioned by the Chrysler company to use in commercials for their Jeep Renegade vehicle. How does that make you feel? Does it make you mad? Appalled by the cynical commercialism of art? The song is actually pretty catchy. Still mad? Ok, well, it's worth pointing out that in days of yore, getting a commission from a wealthy patron was one of the few ways for a composer to earn money. Writing a song for Chrysler is actually following in a grande olde tradition. Does that make you less mad? Ok, well, having their song played on TV has actually been a huge promotional boost for the Ambassadors. It's generated a ton of interest and turned "Renegades" into by far the biggest success of their career. And that shouldn't be a surprise, because getting a song included in an ad or a TV show or a video game can be a huge boost for a band. A prime example of a band scoring a huge break after their song got picked up for an advertising campaign: Cage the Elephant. "No Rest for the Wicked" gained little notice when it was first released in 2008. But a year later it got picked up as the theme song and advertising campaign for the "Borderlands" video game, and Cage The Elephant were overnight famous. -k

Why? Does it contain microaggressions? -k

In some cases the excavation has already been done; large projects now exist using abandoned mines. -k

Do people really hate what Sanders says? The issues fueling his surge are: -college affordability; -Trans Pacific Partnership, and the completely non-transparent negotiations surrounding it; -big money in politics, Citizens United; -income inequality, the disproportionate amount of economic gains going straight to "the billionaire class"; -Wall Street regulation, finance industry reform. I think these are actually issues that a lot of people from all across the political spectrum care about. -k

Is what he himself claims really relevant? The first words out of every bigot's mouth are "I'm not a bigot, but..." I confess that I fail to grasp the distinction. All of these MRA/anti-feminist/Red Pill/MGTOW/manosphere types have all blended into a single entity that I can't really distinguish from each other. -k

oh STFU. -k

First it was "hur de dur! The atheists supported the Iraq war, because Hitchens!" Then it was "hur de dur! The atheists are racist against the Muslims! Harris and Dawkins hate the brownish man!" Now it's "hur de dur! The atheists want to ruin the world with technology!" First off, "only justified if there is a reasonable prospect that we are indeed making this place a better world" is false. Swaying people away from potentially harmful beliefs (like "climate change is a hoax because God would not allow humans to change His creation" or "climate change is irrelevant because Jesus will return shortly and the earth will be left in ruins after the chosen are taken to Heaven" or "it would be better to let my daughter drown than see her shamed by being touched by a male rescuer" or so on) is always justified. Secondly, since when has the application of new technology been the exclusive domain of atheists? Since never. Go back through history and you'll find that the arrival of almost every world-changing technology, from widespread availability of electricity, to industrialization and the steam engine, to urbanization, to agriculture, to in all likelihood fire and the wheel, came times in history when religious beliefs held sway. North American native peoples may have had their traditional beliefs and culture, but they didn't turn up their noses at the horse and the rifle when they saw the potential to put food in their childrens' bellies. "How do we know this?" We don't know this. Belief in the possibilities of technology might not solve everything, but it's more realistic than every other idea out there. God *isn't* going to protect the ecology for us, nor standing by to wait for the events of Revelations a realistic solution. Atheists by and large recognize that resources are finite and that the "go have dominion over all the earth" type thinking isn't sustainable. Atheists, by and large, support access to contraception and reducing population growth; the "go forth and multiply" types in the Christian and Muslim faiths by and large don't. Many atheists support advances like cleaner energy sources and less pollution and ecological conservation as a means of mitigating the damage humans are doing to the earth. What do you propose as the alternative that atheists are overlooking? -k

I recall the phrase "Brevity is the soul of wit" was spoken by Polonius in Hamlet, just before he blathered on at length to prove he was neither brief nor witty. Conversely, though I haven't read the book myself, I've heard that Bret Easton Ellis went wrote at length about trivial detail of Patrick Bateman's high-end consumer goods in "American Psycho", to make a point about the empty, soulless existence of its (uhhh...) protagonist (?) ...we see this reflected in the movie, as he monologues at length ascribing genius and purpose to the rather vacuous lyrics of Huey Lewis. He's searching for meaning where there isn't any; he's filled his apartment with shiny objects to provide some sense of purpose and accomplishment in his meaningless life. "For sale: baby shoes, never used." That works because it engages the reader's imagination to fill in the details. But it doesn't make any statement about the human experience... it invites the reader to make their own statement. This might be an effective way for an author to stimulate a reader, but it's not effective at actually expressing an idea or a theme you want to explore. Inviting the reader to fill in their own mental picture of the contents of Patrick Bateman's apartment doesn't express the idea that Easton-Ellis wants to convey. Brevity in politics? The most successful political slogan in recent history? "Hope and Change." Like "For sale: baby shoes, never used", "Hope and Change" invites people to fill in the blanks. What kind of change? What are you hoping to see? People took it to mean everything from economic opportunity to ending racial inequality to Wall Street reform to affordable education to marijuana law reform. When people looked at the actual policies they weren't actually all that great, but if you ignore the specifics then Hope And Change was whatever you wanted it to be. Ever watch a horror movie, and find yourself quite scared anticipating the monster, ...and then when they actually do the big reveal, it's ... kinda lame? Way less impressive than you imagined it? Like the horror movie monster, once you got to the big reveal, "hope and change" was way less impressive than than you imagined it was going to be. We live in an age where people watch 30-second segments on the news, and meet the politicians in 10-second soundbites, and the politicians stand on a stage festooned with posters saying what they're talking about because otherwise viewers won't know from the 10 second soundbites. Brevity is a matter of necessity because of the way people receive their information. The politician might well have some more detailed policy to address the issue, but for the sake of the people watching their 30-second segment, he also has to get that message condensed into a 10-second soundbite. -k

This is sheer drivel. Having an opinion of how future events will unfold is not the same as a belief in facts that aren't supported by evidence, and it's ridiculous to try to equate the two things. -k

I just want other candidates to be forced to talk about the issues that are driving Bernie Sanders' surging popularity. Is that so wrong? -k

I completely agree. This just helps him promote himself. Not just in terms of attention, but also building his reputation as some kind of a freedom-fighter. "The SJWs are trying to ban me! They're scared of my truth!" No different from how Ann Coulter thrived upon and relished this kind of attention during her triumphant tour of Canada. If people are talking about this guy at all, the headline shouldn't be "Mayor denounces men's rights speaker", it should be "men's rights activist calls for legalization of rape on private property." If we're going to be talking about these idiots, we should be talking about what a bunch of pathetic losers they are. Calling for them to be banned just lets them claim to be victims. -k