when a dog starts acting like that, a smart person immediately deduces that it's probably rabid. staying out of it's way is the smart decision.

canids instinctually go after the sick and the weak, including the elderly.

i think you might want to listen to that marley tune a little more closely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brX0XcmtVUY

it's true, actually.

i started smoking in second year because i realized how powerful a stimulant it was. those all nighters experimenting with various substances tended to go a lot better when i had that pack of nicotine to keep me awake. and, it cut down on hangovers, too, because i could sober up or come down before i crashed.

at first, i'd just buy a pack on the weekend and smoke it at the party. over time, that turned into buying a pack when i had to stay up all night to finish an assignment, or study for a test. and, then the physical addiction clicked in, and the properties of nicotine as a stimulant reversed themselves: i needed it to stay awake. trying to quit becomes very difficult, because you need a week off to sleep.

to this day, it remains the primary reason i have difficulties. i can go days without smoking if i'm not doing anything. but, as soon as i need to focus on something, i start freaking out.

it's better if you just avoid it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4srWvLXZRw

i'm not going to address the issue as to whether this is a conspiracy or not. i'm just going to burst your bubble a little.

i don't need a tragedy to support gun control and weapons education. i would support it anyways. even if you're somehow right, it would have no effect at all, whatsoever, on my opinions about guns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO5aUzeSoMU

not ants, but water

hi.

i've been checking for ants periodically, and it seems to be ok for right now. but i've noticed that some of the drywall in that enclave is rotting. it's over in the corner, pretty much directly underneath where the water from the air conditioner is constantly falling off the porch. i haven't touched it, but it's pretty obvious from looking at it that if i were to touch it, it would cave right in.

now, i don't know for sure that the reason the drywall is rotting through is water from the air conditioner. it's been humid, then cold, then humid, then cold, then humid. but, it *is* directly under where the water is coming down.

and, i don't know how substantial a problem it is - i just don't know.

but, i thought i should let you know that it appears to be rotting and that a good guess is that the water is dripping into there.

j

see, the worried thing is misleading in intent. i’m to the left of the ndp, and worried mulcair is going to end up like bob rae. that’s a different kind of worried than the centrist narrative would pre-suppose.

i think the results of this, and other polling, are obvious: canadians like the historical image of the ndp. the party of tommy douglas and stephen lewis. the part of universal healthcare, foreign aid and pacifism. and just the broad idea of being socially democratic: the party that will swing canada back on a direction towards scandinavian style governance. mulcair, himself, is seen mostly as a titular head of a set of ideas, rather than a driver of them, himself. people are voting for the car, not the driver. and, i think that would have been entirely predictable c. 1995. eventually, generational change was going to catch up to the historical record.

but, it’s a strange plot twist, as the ndp has moved out of it’s place of moral superiority at exactly the same time as the generational shift has placed them in front. is the ndp that exists in voters' minds the same ndp that actually exists in front of us today? and, how quickly will people be able to realign their perceptions to the reality? to me, that’s the issue that determines if they can win this or not.

also, i need to point out that you’d have to be nearing retirement to have any memory of justin trudeau’s childhood. i’m not a young person. i’m in my mid-30s. and i’ve read quite a lot about his father. but, i was three years old when he took his walk in the snow. and, the first time i’d ever heard the name “justin trudeau” was at his father’s funeral. if you were ~20 in 1975, you are probably still too young to remember trudeau as a kid, and yet you are ~60 today.

these people no doubt exist. but they’re not representative of the general voting public.

www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/abacus-data-poll-mulcair-is-still-least-known-leader-but-gaining-acceptance/

i'm in favour of pot in corner stores. pick up some bud, some rollies, some cheezies, some pizza pops...

it would ultimately be a carbon emissions reduction plan, because it would minimize trips to the store.

but, i don't really have a problem with selling alcohol at the corner store, either.

www.cbc.ca/justin-trudeau-pot-marijuan-canada-election-2015-1.3213624

i would suggest a devious plan to use care bear themed subliminal messaging between television frames. we'll all be off to the yoga studios, screaming about how wonderfully meaningful life is in no time!

i would also suggest that we just burn all the existentialist literature. we don't need our new positive-thinking, smiley-faced superhappyfun citizens to be corrupted with any of that nonsense.

--

it'll no doubt be a province thing. i'd expect quebec to allow it to be sold in depanneurs. ontario will likely be more strict. but that won't necessarily mean bankers hours for access.

for example, pot bars will no doubt pop up where people can buy something at the bar (marijuana has a wide array of fine culinary options, from refreshing drinks to delicious desserts). they'll id. they'll tell kids to get lost. you might not be able to take the j outside with you, but there will no doubt be late night options. until 2:00 am, anyways.

of course, if you walk into pretty much any under-35 bar, the reality is that everybody is stoned, anyways. it won't be much of a difference.

the comments here. yikes...

let's all take some time for rap news.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/syria-migrants-canada-drowned-migrants-1.3213772

robert fisk and patrick coburn both publish widely in the independent, not the guardian.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/syria-migrants-canada-drowned-migrants-1.3213772

the liberals and ndp are certainly correct. but, i don't think this is smart politics

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/syria-migrants-canada-drowned-migrants-leaders-respond-1.3213878

yeah. it's an unnecessarily long election, isn't it?

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-alexander-refugee-crisis-1.3213869

Sing_a_song
@Jessica Murray Well the script that was supposed to have been followed is that the CPC, with its ample funds, would steam-roll the opposition parties in the second half of the campaign. So far, it seems that the longer campaign is just prolonging the pain.

Jessica Murray
i rejected that narrative from the start. it was clearly an act of desperation from the beginning.

the conservative advantage in funding is a figment of the media's imagination; the other parties have no borrowing restrictions, and can go in debt as much as they want. the conservatives have created this zero-debt fantasy reality and enforced it on the media in such a way that it can no longer analyze situations rationally. and, do you think they won't go into debt if they're in it to the end? they've got four years to pay it off.

rather, the conservatives had to shoot themselves in the foot to get there - calling an election early actually restricts their ability to spend. that's a big cost. so, what benefit would justify such a cost?

the desperation was in hoping that a long election would give the other two candidates enough time to alienate their respective bases. and, they might still. i think mulcair is digging himself into a pretty nasty hole.

but, the funding issue? it's not a real factor. it never has been. not in canada...

--

the kneejerk xenophobes are back again. i'm catching up on the last thurston moore disc, so i'm going to rant a little.

"let the arabs deal with their own problems. syria for syrians. canada for...err...nevermind..."

in fact, there ought to be some truth in this statement. the saudis are awash in cash. surely, they can deal with this? but, what's actually going on in the region has been kept fairly obscure, and if you have a grasp of the situation on the ground it's actually obvious that the oil money cannot solve this problem because it is the cause of it.

as a leftist, i normally want to get to root causes. now, that doesn't mean bombing people. that's an argument against bombing people, actually. what it means is alleviating the social concerns that lead to extremism. normally, leftists point to poverty as the overriding root cause; that is, inequality. and, the poverty that comes from the desperation of war and alienation and subordination and humiliation is certainly a factor. but, in this case, it's a secondary issue.

the primary issue is what is actually increasing imperialist aggression from the saudi theocracy, who wants to purge the region of people it considers heretics. they pour billions into these groups. we call them terrorist groups. in truth, they're functionally state actors. they are preparing the region for an eventual saudi takeover. and, unless we want to declare a war on the saudis (and i actually think that the americans should be pushing for regime change in riyadh, and should be willing to use as much force as is necessary to do it), we have to take the situation at face value: if these people are not given an escape route, they will be killed.

root cause analysis is the right approach. but, in this case it exposes an insolvable problem.

it's all fine and great to look back at the thirties and suggest that funding an opposition in germany was the best way to attack the root causes leading to the holocaust.

it wasn't going to stop hitler from killing anybody. you had to get people out.

--

H2O = hijklmno
The biggest contributor to the Syrian refugee crisis is Assad.
Defeating Assad means helping ISIS.
Defeating ISIS means helping Assad.
Bombing the country into the ground may be a solution, but is it humanitarian?
What will happen after the total destruction of Syria?
There is no one single solution as Alexander wants to imply!

Jessica Murray
this particular assad, the younger assad, was not groomed for power. it was his brother that was groomed for power. but, his brother was killed and the responsibility fell to him.

while his brother was being trained as a military planner and a statesman, the younger assad was training to become an eye doctor. he had has life planned out as a private citizen outside of government.

circumstances thrust him into power. but, he had not planned for this and did not want it. so, he set in motion a process that would transfer power from the military to the people.

this is when the saudis stepped in. they cannot allow for peaceful transfers of power to civilian governments. they are ruthlessly consistent on this point: all attempts to pursue democracy must be obliterated by all force possible.

the rebels in syria are not fighting for the people against assad. they are fighting for the saudi theocracy against the people. cynics will claim that of course assad will be popular when the other option is armed thugs that will publicly execute you for wearing the wrong clothing. but, the reality remains: assad represents the popular will, which is to defend the nation against foreign-backed extremists.

it's only half your fault for being misinformed. the media has indeed failed to understand and educate the western populace on the situation at hand. and harper himself may legitimately not understand what is actually happening.

but, there is a single solution: the government in riyadh needs to be removed. unfortunately, that solution is not being contemplated,

--

Archie D. Bunker
I realize it didn't make the MSM yet, but I wonder how the CPC, LPC and US Democrats and GOP(Republicans) are reacting to the rumor that Putin is sending some of his air force pilots into Syria to help Assad get rid of ISSIS.

Putin (if it's true) actually helping us in fighting our terrorists?, an enemy that we can't ( or don't want to?) ever catch and eliminate?

And if he succeeds at eliminating ISSIS, we could repeal Bill C-51 as a useless bill, and the institutions that required it could be shut down to save the taxpayer some dollars, that can be spent on more useful things like food and shelter, infrastructure etc... All these fake jobs would be lost....so sad!

Obama seems to be awfully quiet about this!

I think they don't like the idea that Russia will be shooting at the U.S.' proxi army.

Putin would be calling Obama's bluff big time,... if it's true

Jessica Murray
syria was a russian cold war ally. syrian generals rely very heavily on russian generals for "advice"; that is the sneaky way to say that the syrians are essentially under russian military command, much as canada is under american military command. russian involvement has consequently been very strong - dominant, in fact - from the start.

this is absurd.

the idea that public servants cannot be partisan applies only to their jobs. for example, consider the riding redistricting. you had to have the people that redrew the boundaries do so in a non-partisan way. that is a very obvious example, but even things that seem like they have nothing to do with partisan politics can have political angles to them.

it says nothing about rights of expression, which are protected under the charter.

this is not an interesting court case to test the limits of the laws. the government is not even close to being right here. rather, this is a clear and very egregious abuse of power that cannot be tolerated.

ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/public-servant-investigated-over-political-harperman-song

i have no memory of 1988. but my understanding is that john turner was widely reviled by his own base and the inflated ndp support was more of a reflection of people not liking the liberals as an option, and swinging to the ndp by default. i think that might be more directly comparable to the 2011 election, which had the liberal vote collapse under widespread disgust with ignatieff. the difference was really quebec, right? if the tories swept quebec in 2011 like they did in 1988, the house would have looked very similar (i think the ndp did better out west in 1988 than they did in 2011). of course, it's absurd to suggest the tories can sweep quebec today, and it was an inevitable result of patriation in 1988.

and, i do think we're setting ourselves up for a sweep in 2015 that is going to look somewhat similar to the sweep in 1993. it won't be as bad. the right is not split (yet). and it's not clear if the sweep is going to be primarily ndp or joint liberal-ndp, within a certain range (the liberals are severely restricted outside of urban areas in central canada). but it's a similar dynamic.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/03/tbt-ndp-had-a-pre-election-poll-surge-in-1987-too/

Promich
Based on their records, shared appreciation for entitlement and corruption, and distain of climate science, the Lib-Cons are merging in the minds of many voters.

One could readily conclude that the right vote is indeed split between the Lib-Cons, thereby putting a lot of Ontario and BC seats in play for the NDP.

Election day will be interesting.

deathtokoalas
see, i think that narrative is about ten years out of date. in that period, the ndp has positioned itself as harper-lite, while the liberals are regaining their focus on what it is to be a liberal. but, as i've pointed out elsewhere, i suspect that we might see a lag in public perception that doesn't entirely correspond to the political realities of the ndp moving into the space previously occupied by the progressive conservatives.

promich
Ridiculous, unsupported claims with zero credibility.

Justin has a Big Oil lobbyist as a chief of staff (Cyrus Reporter), voted for weakening the Navigable Waters Act and is on record saying he supports the Keystone project without a proper environmental assessment.

Like Martin and Chretien, what it means to be Liberal is to wage a war on climate science. And yes, that is what Justin stands for, clearly. Why ignore the obvious evidence?

In no way have the NDP moved to the space of the Progressive Conservatives. The Bay Street media spin was that running a deficit is leftist somehow, ignoring the fact that Mulroney, the real Trudeau and Harper (in that order) created the biggest debts in history. It's an idiotic spin that you should be smart enough to see through.

Justin is also on record saying that an affordable national daycare plan is an unobtainable dream. Such a policy was promised in the LPC's Red Book from 1990 of course. There's a reason it's known as the "Red Book of Lies." What the LPC really stands for is hypocrisy, entitlement and corruption - that's the banner Justin carries. Every value the NDP is opposed to.

In his memoirs, Justin's father stated that his values aligned with more progressive parties like the NDP, but he joined the Liberals to access power and make change. Justin decided not to follow his father's footsteps, sadly. In the same position, Pierre would have run for the NDP.

You come across as a Bay Street media troll. I'm guessing their Lib-Con puppets pay your salary?

deathtokoalas
no. i'm an anarchist. i've voted for the ndp in the past. i've refrained from voting at all fairly frequently. i don't align with any specific party, and am leaning heavily towards the greens in this election, primarily on their opposition to the tpp. if i end up voting for the liberals, it will be because i conclude that the race between the liberals and ndp in this race is close, and i'd rather see marijuana legalized quickly. it's really the only meaningful difference in their policy positions, from what i can see. if it looks like the ndp is too far ahead for it to matter, i will likely vote green - or not at all.

chretien's government was one of the prime architects and drivers of the kyoto agreement. they put forth a lot of resources into studying how to deal with the problem, and came out with a fairly environmentally focused platform in 2008, if you'll recall. or perhaps you don't recall. trying to get off carbon is not a simple problem. it's something you have to study carefully before you can come up with ideas. that exchange between dion and ignatieff was very costly to the country, but what it really demonstrated was ignatieff's utter buffoonery. maybe we could solve world hunger over a latte this afternoon, and disarmament before supper, while we're at it.

i don't agree with the liberal position on these pipelines, but i believe that mulcair has what is essentially the same position (insofar as it's important to me - i don't care about refinery jobs in new brunswick). they're both going to try and build these pipelines. they're both fronts for the same interests. mulcair has openly stated that he wants to put environmental review processes in place so he can use them to reduce opposition. it's a pr strategy. trudeau is moving along with it because he's being told to, but he's also promising a lot of infrastructure to move forward. the ndp has not promised a dime for green infrastructure. they're just looking to maximize revenue from the dirty oil so they can spend it on the programs they want.

as a leftist, i understand that artificial scarcity in the money supply is a tool of class warfare, and while i'm aware that the ndp has brandished this tool what that implies is that they are not a party of the left, rather than that leftists balance budgets. i think we can print as much as we want. literally. i have no patience for austerity, or this argument that we have to live within our means. i'm interested in what our resources actually are, not the arbitrary resources that are placed on us by banking institutions. and, so when i see the ndp say things like that they're going to put off the increase in the health transfer until the budget is balanced, that upsets me - because i care about health care, and i don't care about budgets.

the provincial wings of the ndp under romanow, rae, selinger and others have taken positions that are punitive of workers and citizens in order to help bankers. the cuts in saskatchewan were very deep. the disaster in ontario was so bad that every major union in the province supports the ontario liberal party. the ontario ndp ran the last election trying to outflank the conservatives, by running on corruption scandals and tax cuts. it's a pattern. and, on issue after issue we see mulcair lining himself up in the same space on the spectrum.

but the big issue is tony blair. not thatcher, exactly. tony blair.

because, this is exactly what blair did: he positioned himself an inch to the left of the tories. just, almost indistinguishable differences across the board. and, he won on it, and then carried on thatcher's economic policies - and swapped out the faulklands for a much more damaging war in iraq, one he deserves to be tried as a war criminal for.

when thomas mulcair stands up and claims that he is trying to position the ndp as a new labour party with blair's "third way" as it's guiding principle and blair himself as his icon, that should be cause for dramatic concern to all ndp supporters, historical or present. because you know what?

tony blair was to the right of brian mulroney on almost every issue you could imagine.

this article fails to correctly represent either party's position on the legislation.

it's kind of epic, really.

please, people: take the time to learn the truth. it's widely available, today. you just have to sit down and take the time that is necessary to work it out.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/03/trudeau-wont-say-whether-c-51-is-constitutional-despite-support/

(deleted)

well, you didn't even state what you think, so i have no basis to react.

(deleted)

the conservatives have a majority. the liberals had the choice of allowing the bill through without amendments, or trying to add amendments. they did not have the choice of stopping the bill. and, i would again direct people to elizabeth may's notes for a good analysis of the details in committee.

(deleted)

once again: the option of preventing the bill did not exist. the options that the opposition had were:

(1) allow the bill to pass without amendments.
(2) attempt to amend the bill.

the ndp picked the first option. the liberals tried to push the second option, but were not able to do so due to the ndp's politicking around it, including placing amendments in it that they knew the liberals would vote down. and, i would once again refer you to elizabeth may's notes to understand the process in which that happened. she's very smart in her analyses, and is often able to cut through the crap and figure out what's actually happening.

it's all very great to say "look. we voted against it.". but, if you actually care about what is in the bill, that is the completely backwards way to go about opposing it. voting against it at every step when you're in opposition is functionally exactly the same thing as supporting it. the only way that an opposition party can influence a bill like this from opposition is to make amendments to it. and that's what the liberals tried to do, and the ndp blocked them from doing.

Badriya
Fact 1. The NDP voted against C-51 and will repeal C-51 if elected.
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/mulcair-vows-repeal-bill-c-51-ndp-rally-surrey

Fact 2. The LPC voted in favour of C-51.
The article did omit the fact that Trudeau has promised to repeal parts of C-51 if elected.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/trudeaus-liberals-proposing-modest-amendments-to-bill-c-51/article25010473/

deathtokoalas
the ndp has flip-flopped it's position a few times. it initially claimed amendment, just like trudeau:

http://globalnews.ca/news/1843737/given-the-power-mulcair-would-amend-anti-terror-bill-not-repeal-it/

then it claimed it would repeal it, as your article states. but it cannot actually do that.

then it played politics on it in committee, voting down liberal amendments and changing things in ways the liberals couldn't support so they'd vote down their own amendments. elizabeth may has kept very detailed notes on that that you're free to research. it's quite damning.

finally, mulcair has retreated back to his original position - which is the same as trudeau's position.

there is no difference between the parties on this issue.

i never claimed that trudeau could repeal this bill. but, the technicalities of how a bill like c-51 works is that it can't be repealed, it can only be replaced or amended. and, this is why mulcair's position has changed - it's a necessity as to how the system functions.

again, i would suggest people look up elizabeth may's notes on the topic. she was there. and, she's quite good at this kind of analysis. we weren't.