i can't stand the hellman's stuff - it has this strange bitter after taste you get out of, like, british food, or something. or miracle whip; it tastes too synthetic. but i go through a container or two of the no name brand mayonnaise a month, here.

it's not for blts or fries though, it's for straight up tomato bagelwiches - sliced open and loaded up with tomatoes, mayo, hot sauce, salt & pepper to the point that one requires a fork and knife. i'll argue that this is actually a very healthy lunch, given that the mayo is the only discernible fat content in it.

i think that a lot of people have been brainwashed by a lot of years of poor science that suggests that mayonnaise is somehow unhealthy; they're really passing on an urban myth that was likely taught to them by their mothers.

it's an interesting question, actually.

are christians more likely to tolerate a surveillance state, because they're being watched anyways?

don't snicker too hard. i have long been convinced - through both anecdotal and survey evidence - that the reason so much of the united states rejects climate change has nothing to do with economic logic, fox news brainwashing or any of the usually defined culprits. it's just because god made a covenant with noah that there will be no more floods, so climate change is therefore impossible.

that's why we have rainbows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkxgrrHbKG0

i'm actually streaming this after it's deleted. hooray for ram.

we only have an incomplete understanding of what the sophisticated, hellenistic culture thought of christianity at the time. we know they were generally hostile to it - using language not far distanced from "illiterate goat herders" - but the exact extent of their hostility has, unfortunately, been erased from history via book burnings and organized character assassinations.

the best we have are these allusions. we can construct that a text called against the christians, written by porphyry, must have been extremely popular, widely read and deeply influential. but, we can't read it ourselves.

i'm going to post a bit of a public service announcement about polling in the election, because i can. i never specialized in statistics, in fact i hated stats, but i've taken a bit more of an appreciation for the approach of measuring uncertainty since then. i am literate in this topic, and the media that most people get their information from is not. i also worked on the phone for years when i was in school, which is important experience if you can contextualize it properly.

the reputation of polling has taken a big hit over the last few years. how could the polls be so wrong? well, what you're referencing weren't polls to begin with. and the actual polls really weren't that wrong at all - so long as you understand what a margin of error is.

so, this is what we saw happen: the media consults an array of "internet panels" for research, these panels are nowhere close and then the media blames the inaccuracy on "low response rates" or "bias in the data". the entire narrative is completely ridiculous. rather, the actual correct conclusion is as obvious as can be: internet polling is not random, and because it is not random there is no way to determine it's accuracy. they don't even have margins of error. it's consequently not even accurate to suggest that the internet polling was wrong; you can't define what "right" or "wrong" means when you can't calculate the error. the actual accurate analysis is that what the media refers to as "internet polling" is not actually polling. you should not try and analyze it - it can't be analyzed. it's only utility is as propaganda. you should simply completely ignore it.

which brings up the other problem. consider the ontario election in 2014, which had the following results:

liberals: 38.65
conservatives: 31.25
democrats: 23.75
greens: 4.84

the result was a liberal majority. yet, the polls also seemed to suggest a minority. were they wrong?

well, the margin of error was generally around 3%. in order for them to be "wrong" with a 3% margin of error, they would have to have fallen outside the following ranges:

liberals: (35.65, 41.65)
conservatives: (28.25, 34.25)
ndp: (20.75, 26.75)
greens: (1.84, 7.84)

in fact, most of the telephone polls a few days ahead of the election did fall in these ranges (or in a larger range, with a larger margin of error). the online polling was all over the place and completely inaccurate, but if we ignore it like we should then we see the polls were almost spot on. a poll that had the liberals at 36 and the conservatives at 34 with a 3% moe might have seemed to hint at a minority, but it would not have been "wrong". rather, the widespread forecast of minority results were a consequence of the media reading the polling incorrectly. not bad polling. poor mathematical literacy in the media. so, don't blame the pollsters for doing it wrong. rather, blame the media for not understanding how to read the polls.

there's not a lot of good polling being done right now. i know. i've surveyed it. you've basically got two options if you want to understand what is going on.

the first is the nightly tracking by nanos, which is here:

http://www.nanosresearch.com/main.asp

on the one hand, he's doing everything right: sufficiently large sample sizes, telephone polling so it's actually random, proper weighting, etc. his results, nationally, will be accurate, within the margin of error. they always have been before. and, that 1/20 bit is a statistical caveat that never actually happens.

on the other hand, his polling is functionally useless because the election is going to turn on regional differences, and his sample sizes are too small. it's a 5.5% margin of error in ontario, which is far too large to tell us anything at all useful about what's happening there.

so, nanos is accurate nationally and useless regionally.

the forum polling is using phones, but it's always wrong and i don't know why. they just have a very bad track record at every level. they're obviously doing something wrong at a basic level. they're the only firm putting the ndp anywhere close to a majority and it's having a disproportionate effect on the coverage. but, there's little reason to think it's actually accurate, given that they're always wrong.

besides nanos, the other two you need to take seriously are ekos and mainstreet. phones. big sample sizes. but mainstreet does not do regular polling.

which whittles the list down to a single reputable polling firm: ekos.

http://www.ekospolitics.com/

unfortunately, the numbers are not as good as any of us would like them to be.

1. conservatives (29.9, 33.7)
2. ndp (27.7, 31.5)
3. liberals (25, 28.8)

but, the actual thing that matters is ontario - a province where the ndp do not appear to be competitive.

the media is continuing to tell us that the ndp are ahead. if nothing changes, that narrative will likely remain static. we will then ask how the polls were so wrong, when they end up tied for second.

the reality is that the legitimate, reliable, actual polling continues to place the conservatives at the front of a close pack and that a sober analysis of the results in front of us would suggest any outcome other than a conservative minority remains highly unlikely - unless the conservatives collapse in ontario.

the polling will not be wrong. the analysis is wrong.

it's important that traditional ndp supporters realize that they need leverage if they are to force the ndp to take these things seriously. judging by their platform, they'll be worse than the liberals ever were. that leverage needs to come in the threat of lost votes via the existence of a party to their left.

it's not going to be enough to campaign. they need to be threatened with some kind of actual harm.

the crazy thing is that such a party exists - the green party. mulcair and the rest of the party leadership needs to be sent the message that he cannot take votes for granted, that failure to act will lead to shifts in voting intentions.

it's also worth pointing out that there's not really anything in here that wasn't in the green shift.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/leap-manifesto-ellen-gabriel-naomi-klein-1.3230162

as far as i can tell, this is a two-page pamphlet with a lot of flowery language and essentially no substance. i'd rather vote for the greens, thanks.

http://rabble.ca/news/2015/09/leap-manifesto-calls-radical-changes-to-canadas-extractive-economy

it is on the ballot, naomi. it's the green party platform.

rabble.ca/rabbletv/program-guide/2015/09/features/watch-live-tuesday-prominent-canadians-launch-manifesto-outl

it's nowhere near where the ndp is. not far from the greens, though.

more hyperpartisanism and flat out ignorance from the media party.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/15/manifesto-backed-by-prominent-ndpers-calls-for-overhaul-of-capitalist-economy_n_8139602.html

it's 35% in the united states. that ought to be the bare minimum level being discussed.

there is no competitive advantage in offering lower corporate tax rates than the united states, so where they stick theirs ought to be considered our minimum floor.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-ndp-fiscal-plan-1.3230097

j54445
It is 38% in Canada....

Jessica Murray
yeah, but there's all kinds of rebates and stuff on top of it; the functional rate is currently at 15%, which is just...it's stupid, really. there's not another way to describe it. in return for giving them back more than half of their taxes, harper has shifted billions of dollars of what should have been tax revenue into interest-bearing debt for the banks.

if there was any logic in this in the first place, it has been thoroughly debunked. it's a policy that has to be viewed, at this point, as sheer folly. just utter idiocy.

Don't complain
........ You can't compare U.S. with Canadian. Unemployment is far higher in the U.S., minimum wages are far lower and they basically don't want investment in American industry. They have no where to grow, we have extensive room to grow and prosper.

Jessica Murray
that's not the point. the government should be attempting to extract as much tax from industry as possible, by the mandate of the people that demand wealth redistribution. the only relevant downward force is the threat of relocation. and the only economic place to relocate is the united states. so long as it is not higher drastically here than there, there is no reason to relocate. it follows that the policy of the government of canada should be to raise corporate taxes to just higher than that in the united states.

shaftturner
why do people always forget about provincial corporate income tax?

again.....pull your head out of your a.. and learn about provincial corporate income tax before yourant and sound silly.

Jessica Murray
because there are not state taxes in the united states? you have to compare apples to apples. it's not the responsibility of the federal government to concern itself with provincial tax policy.

j54445
Utter idiocy? Just like I am reading from you. Did you not see that tax revenues continue to increase while Harper cuts our tax rates? Is that utter idiocy? The US does not pay an average of 35% as a corporate tax rate because there are abatements and reductions for that as well. Also, I would not try and imitate the Obama administration on economic policy considering their deficit is over half a trillion dollars.

Jessica Murray
tax rates have no effect on the economy. this is the basis of the policy being idiotic. politicians will say that they want to keep tax rates low on the belief it has something to do with jobs. that is empirically false. it has been proven without any question of a doubt that tax rates have no effect on jobs. to continue to hold to this kind of religious thinking is absolute delusion, utter folly - and total idiocy.

all of the parties are delusional on this point, even the greens.

shaftturner
are you even old enough to vote?

Jessica Murray
that picture is about three years old now, but, even so, i'm much older than i look. i actual identify as gen x - which puts me two generations older than the youth vote. it's trudeau's generation.

i'm actually presenting the educated view on the topic. what's depressing is how far it deviates from the conservative media narrative.

seeitmyway
you are wrong, the 155 rate is the small business rate, you need to search the combined rates for Canada, typically in the 30% range.

Jessica Murray
i'm not interested in the combined rates or the small business rate. the corporate tax rate in canada is set to 38%, but decades of rebates have reduced it to 15%. that is all rebates.

what the article should say is that the ndp is promising to reduce corporate welfare by a piddling amount. they're not raising taxes. they're reversing rebates.

38% is about right. if it were my platform, i'd throw every single giveaway and handout in the trash.

seeitmyway
As someone who owns a corp that pays it you are wrong. Period.

you are obviously young and so great at Goggling LOL. rather than believe me or anyone else on here, do some investigation for yourself.

Read and understand how corporate taxes are paid and then the dividend distributed to the investor/owner. see what taxes are then paid on the dividend. Learn what companies do with their retained earnings. I hope you will see that Corporations are not the bad guy, gov't waste is the real bad guy here and no amount of additional spending will fix that. What is needed is a real focus on eliminating waste, that will upset a lot of people especially the very powerful public unions. A simple example of waste is in your neighbourhood, I bet you have both a school library and a public one, Why?

Jessica Murray
i'm in my mid 30s. i was 32 in that picture. that's not young - unless you're very old. and, i've always identified with older people. i would consider myself mentally middle-aged, and expect my voting patterns to align with people in their mid 40s and early 50s. at a dinner party, i would tend to ignore people my own age, be very rude to people younger than me and gravitate towards the oldest people in the room, in hopes of learning something from them.

i'm not interested in what you're saying. but, i think it's clear that you're working for somebody. and you have to understand that i am neither young, nor representative of young people. i hate young people. and they hate me.

there are exactly two people alive today that were born in the 1800s - one in the united states and the other in italy.