i've been recording, i just haven't edited or uploaded because i wasn't sure which day was which. suppose you wake up at 4 pm and crash the next day at noon, then get up at 6 pm and crash the next day at 7 pm. how do you date that?

i wanted to edit tonight, but i'm already fading so it will wait until i wake up - clearly starting a new day on nov 5.

so , by tomorrow morning, there will be two vlogs for the last three days, probably with the 3rd and 4th combined into one day.

just a slight correction: because you pay the marginal rate on each bracket, you'd have to be making around $215,000 to actual see a tax increase. so, that takes it a bit closer to the 1% rule. but, they're also going to lose their child benefit checks - and that's apparently going to bring in 15 billion dollars in revenue, according to the liberal platform. if deficits are important to you, note that this simple (and eminently fair) handout revocation for the wealthy could have kept the government in the red. but, realize that that wasn't incompetence - conservatives run deficits on purpose to lower the size of government.

the key thing is that when you change the narrative from deficits to surpluses then you allow for more spending on programs that benefit low-income canadians - both in terms of social services and in terms of economic growth. in a country like canada, where we have such high minimum standards and so many of the quality-of-life indicators are in some way collectivized, the question of inequality is less about income per capita and more about access to services. a little spending money doesn't hurt, and it helps the money cycle around. but, what's important to more low wage earners is that the health and education systems are well-funded and that job opportunities exist. that's what is real - it's what the concerns are, directly in front of us. nobody's really walking around yelling about percentages or graphs, or crying that whomever gets to live off a trust fund. that stuff's just not real.

the difference is consequently a change in priorities. i wouldn't exactly expect to see this government change the numbers; the curve may flatline a little, but you're not going to see the gap really close. i do hope - expect - that government is reclaimed as something that improves our quality of life, rather than something that's seen as an obstacle to frivolous and short-sighted spending.

it's a tactic called "starve the beast". it hasn't really worked out as intended, because those governments get replaced by governments that increase spending. but, this is how it works:

1) create a structural deficit. he did this by cutting the gst and corporate tax rates, and then handing out boutique tax credits.
2) argue you have to reduce the size of government to get out of deficit. it helps if you have the media in your pocket.
3) repeat.

you can look this up, if you'd like. it's been studied in some depth.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadas-1-per-cent-club-unchanged-but-faces-prospect-of-bigger-tax-bill/article27077119/

A- on the cabinet.

a few of the female cabinet positions were beyond softball. what is a minister for democratic institutions? or for small business and tourism? what's frustrating is that there was really no reason to do that, other than a desire for a glossy photo-op cabinet. the reality is that a few young female mps got cabinet positions because they're photogenic, while older and more qualified ones didn't because they're not photogenic. i don't like this direction - at all.

but, it's only applicable to a couple of them. mostly, the picks ranged from obvious to reasonable to acceptable.

i don't think alberta should have received two cabinet ministers. they voted for the opposition. i'd like to see them sit in it for a bit. that kind of pandering is disappointing, but at least they didn't get anything related to climate change. i hope that this does not become a theme, and that trudeau is able to have the backbone to stand up to albertans. i'm really sick of albertans running the country - and we just tossed them to curb with very serious intent.

i don't know anything at all about harjit sajjan other than that he's a veteran. ideally, i'd like to see the ministry of national defence taken over by a peace activist willing to convert it into a peace ministry. i doubt that this is that person, but i have to admit i admire the panache in putting a sikh person of colour in national defence. that is going to enrage conservatives, and i enjoy that.

there is only one pick that i actively dislike - jim carr at natural resources. i was really hoping this would go to a decidedly left-leaning voice willing to stop "business as usual". jim carr suggests that we are dealing with "business as usual" and need to immediately start protesting against pipelines.

but, over all? it's pretty good.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-trudeau-liberal-cabinet-ministers-1.3302743

you missed your true calling as a used car salesman, larry.

i've never even seen a politician present arguments this disingenuous. it wouldn't work.

what a huckster!

and i'm not even opposed to the united states exporting oil. it should get the price up a little, and hopefully take the renewable industry off life support.

i think the premise that southeast asia is seen as more connected to china than india, explicitly, is kind of wrong; it's more that southeast asia is seen as existing within the east asian sphere (of which the dominant powers are china and the united states), rather than the south asian sphere (where india is really the only significant country at all).

the reason is actually connected to the way the united states carved the world up after world war two, which itself was a consequence of the fighting during the war - this region was broadly occupied by japanese forces, and then came under american command after the war.

but, there were of course also conflicts here during the cold war, which led to chinese-backed and soviet-backed client states. india, on the other hand, was broadly non-aligned.

it's within this entire context of this conflict theatre that the association comes out both in terms of economic reality and in terms of academic categorization.

chrystia freeland will probably be confirmed as a cabinet minister in canada tomorrow; the smart money is on international trade, but there are a number of ministries that are related to foreign policy and trade initiatives, and she's a candidate for any of them - and may be shuffled around between a few of them over time. being a parliamentary democracy rather than a republic, we don't have the kind of confirmation hearings that you have in the united states. it's more like "what if the house of representatives ran the entire government". if you think on that baseline, it would be like combining the secretary of state with the house committee on foreign affairs. but, the representatives are not fixed in their roles and can be moved to any other committee/cabinet at any given time. if the liberal government sticks around a while, she'll likely get through most of the important posts, and may even one day be a contender for the prime minister's office.

if you ask around in canada, she has kind of the hillary problem - the right thinks she's a militant feminist, whereas the left thinks she's somewhat of a conservative hawk. when that happens, it's almost always the case that they're both right and they're both wrong.

what she's saying here is absolutely correct. i was posting things along these lines last year, or maybe a little earlier, suggesting that this is actually the optimal russian strategy. the reason is that the baltics are exactly where they're parking that missile defense shield, and the russians have a very dominant strategic objective in preventing this. you don't have to be a russophobe or a conspiracy theorist, or even a militant jingoist, to realize that russia has very legitimate defense concerns on their borders with nato. that's just cold objective facts. you'll get the same analysis on this from william kristol that you'll get from noam chomsky - it's not partisan, or based on a worldview, it's just the flat out reality of it.

where chrystia and i would seem to disagree is on why this is happening. see, here's the conservative hawk thing: she takes the kind of dominant washington consensus view that putin's an out of control maniac. the more subtle view, which i think is more rooted in fact, is that he's reacting to a very aggressive american foreign policy and would really rather focus on trade. when they took out ghadaffi, he didn't do anything. when they tried to take out assad, he didn't (initially) do all that much. when they went after iran, he played along. but, when they launched a coup in ukraine, he was forced to react.

to my knowledge, this isn't happening. yet. but, we have seen the russians put air defenses in iran (which is what the nuclear deal was really about) and we've seen them walk right into syria. putin's tactic seems to be to draw the center of conflict away from russia and into a proxy situation; the calculation around something like causing a ruckus in estonia is likely that it's too close to home (it's a short flight from talinn to moscow), and they'd rather fight this thing out somewhere else, if they must.

yet, given the reality, it remains entirely feasible that they could start backing oppositions not just in estonia and latvia but in poland and romania and even france. and, how she's describing this is exactly how it would happen. she knows this because it's exactly what nato did in ukraine.

americans are stupid because they're programmed to be stupid. in fact, the media and politicians are only able to present things to them the way they do because they're programmed to be stupid. it's the education system. it's parenting. it's the cultural goalposts. it's children's entertainment. there's not a stupid gene; there is a possible way out. but, it's entirely true, and it's crystal clear - unless, of course, you happen to be the topic of discussion.

bit of a twist, though: bill's not as smart as he thinks, either.