Birdy

are you talking about the GST cut here? while it may be completely unnecessary from a financial standpoint, it made some serious sales last election with the general public. i think a lot of their election platform was looking for an 'in'.

slack. cut some. edit to add: sorry.. just seems like you guys can find the worst in the best of things, sometimes.

true.. but can you really blame them? they landed a shoe string minority only because of scandal, in a country that seemed pretty content with never giving them a chance to govern again. i'd raise an eyebrow if they DID stop campaigning.

puhleeze.

i wonder what the response would be say if the Liberal party would have done this. that and almost ALL politics are 'fodder for the campaign trail'.

i wouldn't say so.. but?

i hopehopehope toronto tickets aren't a nightmare to get!!

ooh.oooooh.oooooooh. i've been waiting for this!

meatpies! my mom makes killer meatpies for our christmas eve dinner.. with some homemade cole slaw and home made chili sauce. i think it's the best meal that takes place at my parent's house all year long!

it's gawker-heaven. you'd definitely crash.

i really had no idea people other than the ten regulars really ventured in! that's cool!!

jared, might i suggest never, ever, ever driving in los angeles.

me too! while i'm not the *biggest* fan of multi-foruming, i'm glad this little place was created... it's like a little community within a community. that and you guys are fun to get into it with!

should they not be entitled to host the conference though?

hey now! i'd say we're at least up to 10 these days. what a sticky situation. i hope that one day this could be true, without this sort of response:

Happy Birthday William!!

i don't think you understand me. i'm not suggesting that these words don't have meaning! of course they have meaning... i suggest we look at how they gained their negative connotations and look towards reversing that. a fag to you is a cigarette to another guy. someone in mongolia might not even know what you're talking about. ALL words were once random sequences of alphabet. They were invented at some point. They were 'assigned' their meanings and as society changes, so do their meanings. Why is it ok for an african american to say the word 'nigger', and it's not ok for a caucasian person to say it? don't you find that hypocritical? my point is the longer we uphold these barriers between us, the longer they exist.

interesting! from my perspective, you sympathize with the 'mob'!! let's not forget who or what is being attacked, and who it's attacker is.

oh, i must have missed this too.. sorry meggo. with any one of those words there was a start point where they assumed their negative connotation, so there must be an end point too. i'm looking to find the end point!

hehee! i missed this. thank you, thank you! it feels good to belong to the 'club'!

i'm not enjoying the warm glow of burning books! that's pretty much what i'm saying here... books were burnt for the words that were inside of them, because at one point those words were considered to be offensive, and really did require a societal change in attitude for them to be 'ok'. i'm TRYING to show that we've been down this road once before and that pretending these things don't exist, won't make them go away!! Which brings me to this: I guess if you want to call it a libertarian thought experiment, you could. I do practice self-censorship, but really do wish that we didn't have to (to the degree that it's being taken these days). i think we'd all move closer to a state of daisy chains around the sun if we didn't have to to keep 'who we are' behind closed doors. it just seems so wrong to me to say to someone 'you can't do that on public property, but behind those four walls you call your home, you can do whatever you want!'. what's being 'solved' here guys? do you really think that because you can't see discrimination, that it doesn't exist? really? and then when does it really stop? when all evidence of Christianity has completely disappeared? when even those last remaining lights are all turned off, the wreaths taken down, the carolers muted? what's the end point here? when will we all FINALLY be equal?? ok.. maybe we should take a little inspiration from this guy:

where'd this article come from d-rawk? i find the whole evangelical/preacher man, fox news, ultra-right winger spin that people put on this subject really interesting. whatever you have to do to make your case, i suppose. :crazy:

This bothers me. Have you not noticed that both sides are playing at word cop? The frustration for those who want to use a word like 'holiday' when it seems more appropriately accurate to do so, is that all of a sudden all of these (nominally) Christian white males start screaming from their TV and radio pulpits that we can't do that, because it just has to be Christmas. And god damn it, first they took the prayers out the schools, and now they want to be inclusive at city hall! (I've put up ornamental lights at city hall, by the way. Such things are fine there ... and you are quite welcome to call them Christmas lights, as you see fit) Not to mention that often the people arguing why it has to has just GOT TO BE "Christmas" from one side of the mouth are lamenting the secularization of the holiday and how it just isn't about Jesus enough these days from the other. If it is just a word, why get so worked up when someone says holiday? I think we are all being reactionary in the face of what we see as each others over the top reactions. And on and on it goes. Why get worked up over a "holiday tree" at Home Depot? Vote with your wallet and go buy a Christmas Tree somewhere else. I think it's stupid, too. They'll get the point. But I have no sympathy for these people who have enjoyed positions of complete priveledge their entire lives by being the right colour, and of the right religion, and the right orientation, from the right traditions having total meltdowns and screaming bloody murder every time they get a whiff that that position of priveledge might be threatened in some tiny way. Boo fucking hoo. City hall is supposed to represent everyone, equally. As are the schools. It's just a word, after all, right? i look at it like this. words are random. throughout the centuries they've changed and taken on different meanings. one word to me, might mean a completely different thing to someone say in madagascar! at one point, they didn't even exist. you take the word 'fag', and perhaps half the free world, probably even more, doesn't understand the negative connotation it holds towards homosexuals. (am i allowed to use the word homosexual?) it is we as a society who assigns these negative connotations to words, and we as a society who uphold them, in our continual recognization of them as 'bad words', 'swear words', 'words that are intended to hurt someone'! they're random sequences of the man-made alphabet!! they're JUST WORDS! instead of focusing on the negative, focus on the positive.. stand up, recognize the simplicity of it all, and in doing that, recognize the part of you that let's yourself get so offended by complete randomness, and work towards changing that! it just seems that the more we move towards equalling out the playing field, the more bland or generic things become/are becoming. i'm sure if some people had their way we wouldn't sing 'O CANADA!" in the classroom either. i'm sure that day is coming. and d-rawk, it's not just these christian white males who are taking up this cause, i am too!!! it's not about religion, it's not about racism, it's about expression. you're right, 'holiday' is a word, but just knowing that it's society's noname, generic answer in an effort to censor, is enough for me to pick up the cause. again, let's burn books.

let's burn books.

you're not affected by affirmative action, because we've basically done away with affirmative action! is it fair that the majority is to feel the victim? i'm not talking about the cultural continuity of christianity, i'm talking about the cultural continuity of Christmas!