kimmy

ha ha, sure. But the Republican nomination won't be decided by Canadians, or by reality TV aficionados. It'll be decided by Republican Party members who are engaged in the political process and serious about winning the 2016 Presidential election. Ted Cruz may not have a reality TV show, but he's by most accounts an electrifying speaker, as well as an Ivy League champion debater. When the campaign is underway in earnest, Trump's hype machine and his anti-Mexican rhetoric and his reality-show name recognition won't count for much. The Tea Partyists will drop him and get behind a candidate with more substance, probably Cruz. That's the scarier thought, to me. If Cruz is the speaker and debater he's said to be, he might have a real chance at this thing, and that's a frightening thought. -k

Sure it's a game. It's "let's pretend" just like any other 4 year old plays "let's pretend". When I was a child, I was an Indian chief one time, but I didn't get a treaty card or cheap smokes. -k

I consider the thread a joke. e^p*i started the thread to whine about "feminists" calling out men who spread their crotches on the bus. If this is the kind of injustice that men face in 2015, things can't be that bad. As for the issue, I concede that since I don't ride public transit anymore (I used to ride it extensively, mind you) I'm not impacted by "manspreading". However, I'm impacted by other asshole behaviors. Particularly, turds driving around with "fart cannon" mufflers, or other kinds of excessively loud exhaust-- especially on motorcycles. I live a few blocks from a street where these douchebags often show off their crappy vehicles and rev the engines for no particular reason. And as I mentioned, I got "coal rolled" last year. Asshole behavior affects us all. However I'm not sure that asshole behavior can be legislated away. I think that if somebody is taking up multiple seats on a crowded bus, either with their crotch or with their coat and purse and shopping bags, the thing to do is tell them that other people would like to sit down. -k

Trump's long-running TV game show may have something to do with that. Pat Sajak is better known in Canada than Ted Cruz too. It's hilarious that Ford is so morbidly obese that he can work up a horrific sweat just standing still. -k

McCain isn't Trump's friend. And McCain isn't running for president. -k

Yay! Free publicity! There's no such thing as bad publicity! Although, his comments have already cost him multiple millions of dollars in dropped deals for his TV show and clothing lines and other ventures. But hey, free publicity! Yay! -k

Personally I'm not, because when people ask me where I'm from I know they mean what part of Canada. And nobody's actually "from" Kim City, the place had 1/4 of today's population 20 years ago, just about everybody here came from somewhere else. However, for my friend who answers that question with "Vancouver" and sometimes has people respond with "ok, but I mean like where are you really from?" and aren't satisfied until they hear that her parents came here from Hong Kong, there's a different connotation to the question. And maybe instead of judging whether it's rational to feel that way in response to that question, maybe you could just consider that additional information and file it away for next time you attempt to start a conversation with someone of Asian descent. Nobody is saying you can't continue to ask "where are you from". This is just a piece of information that you could use or not use. That's the whole point of the brochure we've been discussing: provide people with information that might help them understand communication from the other person's perspective and have more positive interaction. Most of us already have a library of this kind of information that we've either been taught or learned through experience. Bad icebreakers include asking how much he gets paid, and asking "when's the baby due?" unless you're sure she's actually pregnant and not just fat. From the way you guys are responding to this concept, I am picturing that maybe at some point you've asked someone when the baby was due, and she glared and told you that she's not pregnant, and you concluded that she was being irrational for being angry since her prominent gut makes it a reasonable assumption that she might be with child. And perhaps you wandered off and were relieved that you found out early on that she was so irrational so that you didn't have to spend any more time talking with her. -k

He wouldn't buy a Playboy paradise; he's asexual. The waterfalls and storks sound nice, though. Ok, why don't you go get yourself a nice big cup of 7-Up. -k

Bernie Sanders is becoming the 2016 version of Ron Paul. No chance of winning, but gaining enough attention to make Hilary try to pretend she cares about bank regulation and Trans Pacific Partnership. -k

Wellllll, there was an incident as a juvenile that counts as a conviction... but that's beside the point. The point is, do we really want to be a society where stuff people did in their teens continues to define them even 20 years after the fact? This guy apparently participated in the curb-stomping of another kid, which sounds pretty bad. But are we to just make the judgment that Mr Dancey didn't learn anything from his time in jail, that he hasn't grown as a person since he was an 18 year old? The other thing is, how evenly is that applied? On the one hand we've got this incident that only came to light because Ezra Levant's new website has a hate-on for the NDP and apparently has a contact with access to records that were supposed to be sealed. On the other hand we've got cases like, for example, former BC Premier Gordon Campbell who got convicted for doing DUI while in Hawaii, while he was in office, and not only did he not resign, he got elected Premier two more times. What did Ezra have to say about that? Probably nothing, but I imagine other right-wingers at the time were saying something along the lines of "look, he made a mistake, but an error in judgment about driving drunk doesn't reflect on his ability to be a good premier. He's a good premier and after this learning experience I am sure he won't drink and drive any more!" Like, a 53 year old man gets busted driving around with a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit, and gets to keep his job and have a learning experience from it... but a guy who was involved in a fight as an 18 year old is unfit to hold a bureaucrat job 20 years later? -k

If fights you got in as a teenager disqualified you from holding jobs as an adult, I'd never work in this town again. -k

Oh shut up, you ass. I've never bought a lottery ticket in my life. I've never counted on winning the lottery to secure my future. Topaz asked "what if?" It's fun to dream. Have you never once imagined "what if?" -k

That's pretty cool, Moonlight! I particularly like the guitar. I have been on a "southern rock" kick pretty much non-stop since I got my own guitar several years ago. One of the less well-known bands in the genre that I like is called Blackfoot. Ricky Medlocke is the grandson of a blues man named Shorty Medlocke. Grandpa taught Ricky to play banjo when he was a toddler, and by the time he was 8 Ricky was playing drums for his grandpa's band. When he was 20, Ricky was playing drums for a different band, Lynyrd Skynyrd. He left Skynyrd after a couple of years to start his own band, Blackfoot, featuring himself as singer, front-man, and lead guitarist. Ricky and the other founding members of Blackfoot were all Native Americans, and Blackfoot might be the first (only?) all-native rock band to get on vinyl. They had a few modestly successful records in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but by then the southern rock genre was pretty much finished. They attempted to rebrand in hard rock and pop music but that didn't go very well. They continued to tour for several years after, but finally called it quits in the 1990s. Ricky was considering getting a real job at that point, but in 1996 he was contacted by Gary Rossington, who asked him if he wanted to rejoin Lynyrd Skynyrd as a guitarist and songwriter. He did, and has been with the revived Lynyrd Skynyrd lineup ever since. This is probably my favorite Blackfoot song, and hasn't been far from my headphones for several years. This Blackfoot song features Grandpa Shorty on the harmonica: -k

But you're not aligned with Trump at all. You're one of those Republicans that doesn't support Trump in the first place. You're one of the mainstream Republicans who want guys like Jeb Bush or Chris Christie to win. The only reason Trump is a factor at all right now is that the Tea Tard fringe has rallied behind him. And those guys really don't give a crap about John McCain. -k

The people who support Trump don't care about John McCain. McCain is one of those "establishment Republicans" that these people already hate. The people who'll be turned off by Trump's comments about McCain are people who already support mainstream candidates like Jeb Bush. I'm less interested in Trump's religious views and more interested in the assessment that his saying he hadn't asked God for forgiveness posed a significant problem for his campaign. -k

I would set aside a small portion of it just to have fun with, to spend on any ridiculous thing I felt like. I think the first impulse would be to blow a bunch of money on stupid stuff, so I think it would be important to set a limit on the amount of money you're going to do that with, and when your stupid stuff account is empty, playtime is over. I would use some of it to purchase rural land and build the woodlands home I've always dreamed of. I would set aside enough money in low-risk investments to live comfortably for the rest of my life. I would use some portion of it for education-- possibly learn to weld, do CAD and 3d design, things that I've been interested in but have never had the time or money to get into. Guitar lessons. Buy a CNC machine and 3d printer. Learn to make neat things. Maybe start a small business making things. I would gift some of it to my little brother. I would make a significant donation to charities. I'm not sure which ones yet. Preserving wildlands, protecting wildlife, helping poor people and sick people are things that would be high on my list. Money I had left over after doing all the above, I'd use for stock-market investment. -k

Interesting that the reporter feels that the bigger problem for Trump with that audience was that he had trouble answering repeated questions about his "relationship with God" and when asked if he had asked God for forgiveness, he said "no." -k

Conversely suppose that you get into a minor altercation on the way home from work, and later find yourself charged with some crime for which there's a mandatory minimum sentence of multiple years. You ask how it's possible that an incident that involved some minor pushing and shoving can result in a 5 year minimum sentence, and your lawyer explains that after a particularly violent fight a few years ago, there was a public outcry against the light sentence the aggressor received, and all fights are now punished with a minimum of 5 years. That's the kind of idiocy people are angry about. In the context of drug sentences, people are angry about minimum sentences that require that somebody caught with one joint receive a minimum sentence that was designed for somebody caught with a whole van full of pot, or that somebody growing a single marijuana plant receive a minimum sentence intended for somebody with a whole barn full of hydroponic growing equipment. Once in a while a dumb-ass judge gives a ridiculously light sentence for a crime, and public outrage ensues. I agree that this is a real problem. But the answer is not to force judges to sentence all crimes, regardless how shocking or mundane, with sentences that were designed to prevent the most serious crimes from getting light sentences. -k

The ball is in your court, e^pi*i -k

To me the manspreading seems similar to other rude behavior by young adult men-- I'm thinking of "fart cannon" mufflers, or straight pipe exhaust, or "coal rolling", or window-rattling sound systems. There's no rational reason for a Honda Civic with a 1.6 liter engine to sound like a Formula 1 race car when it's going down the street at 30km/h. If I can hear your pickup from 2 blocks away, you're an asshole. If your car stereo is annoying people from blocks away, you're an asshole. If you've modified your truck so that you can blast black smoke at people, you're an asshole. This happened to me last year... somebody "coal rolled" me while I was biking home from work. There are lots of "coal rolling" videos on youtube. It's possible that there are women who are doing this stuff as well, but in my observation it seems to be men in the vast majority of cases. I don't know what the explanation is. Maybe it's their only way to express their pent-up aggressive instincts, kind of like Fight Club for people who don't want to get in fights. Maybe it's some kind of lame attempt to show people that they're "alpha". But to me the "manspreading" seems to fit the pattern. -k

It's what any small-government libertarian would want. -k

Like I say, I have. And if that's something they want to tease each other with, that's fine. But that's not for me to say. My friend was as Canadian as maple syrup, but she went home to Chinese born parents and spoke Cantonese to her Chinese born relatives, and grew up in a culture where her physical appearance makes her "the other" and the beauty standard is me, not her, and many guys buy into all kinds of stereotypes about what Asian girls are like. She has all these experiences that I can't relate to and can't comment on, and I'm certainly not going to dismiss all of it by saying she's "white on the inside" because she grew up in Canada with English as her primary language. It seems incredibly dismissive, yet somehow patronizing at the same time. -k {"Oh sure Julia, they might see you as an Asian, but to me, you're all white! HA-HA! Get it?"}

And black people call each other "nigger" too, but I sure don't. -k

It's not a problem! I can quit any time I want! I'm assuming that there aren't a lot of these Haredi flying around, aside from maybe on direct flights to Israel, so I can't imagine it would have much net effect on the typical female traveler. Well, obviously it would be preferable that the problem be taken care of when seats are sold so that it never get to that point. But I think that if it's a choice between a flight being delayed for an extended period while angry religious idiots have their tantrum, or giving out a few perks to other customers in exchange for getting the issue settled expeditiously, I would think it preferable for them to give out some loot, shwag, and perks to smooth things over. I mean, if I'm going to be inconvenienced and insulted by some bearded idiot, I usually expect that to happen at the security counter. If it happens on the plane, then I'd prefer if they just hucked him off the plane to be honest. But if they're not going to huck him off the plane and are going to ask me to move to accomodate him, maybe they should make it worth my while. Hopefully with mini liquor bottles or a free upgrade to First Class! -k