if you're still not following my reading of things, i'll reiterate.
that's two polls, now, with sanders up by 5 amongst democrats. wisconsin is an open primary. so, that would indicate he should win by about 10 points, if his support actually shows up to vote.
but, there are going to be dead people voting in the primary, and there are going to be suppression tactics for living people. that means you should see her start off with a big lead, and it should come down a little. or a lot - if turnout is high enough.
if you are in wisconsin, you'd better get out and vote. i believe that michigan demonstrated that you can overwhelm the process, if you do. but i think that ohio demonstrated that the party is just going to take it that extra mile if they think they're threatened.
given that the polling results are now clearly in sanders' favour, the lead that clinton takes in "initial results" should be absolutely obscene.
it may even be hard to deny.
see, they may also see this coming and blow the state. but, that's dangerous, going into new york, for her. if i was her? i may advise going ahead and rigging it and taking the chance on getting caught - because the truth is that everybody that cares already realizes it, anyways. and, so long as the media plays along, anybody that points out the inconsistencies is just going to get called a conspiracy theorist.
the pre-polling results suggested a virtual tie in both illinois & missouri simply amongst democrats. the results seem to suggest that independents in the open primary didn't affect the outcome. it's highly suspicious. but it may be the model that's repeated.
"I have said many times that I am a praying person, and if I hadn't been, during the time I was in the White House, I would have become one, because it's very hard to imagine living under that kind of pressure without being able to fall back on prayer and on my faith."
as incompetent as trump will probably be, the status quo establishment is not doing a good job in differentiating itself. if trump wins, people are going to look back and blame it on the media for transparent hit job after transparent hit job. and, you know what? maybe, it's just the internet. maybe this would have worked twenty years ago, when we are at the whim of network television. and, maybe this inability for the establishment to get out of old media is the broader narrative for the election. it killed jeb. it might kill clinton, in the end. and, all the fox news style take downs of trump are blowing up in their faces, too. i had a similar analysis of the last election in canada, where the conservatives relied entirely on tv advertising and ended up unable to even get through to the old folks, in the end.
i need to be clear. i do not get cable. i don't watch network television at all. so, i have not seen a single report on this from cnn, nbc, cbs or whomever else. my coverage of this story has come to me exclusively via the internet. and, as such, it has been framed to me entirely in terms of it being a manufactured tempest in a teapot.
it's not even a question of the internet undoing the brainwashing. i literally have absolutely zero contact with the network tv narrative. and, all i'm seeing - as a consequence - is an entirely transparently bungled attempt at a smear job.
if even half of the under 40 demographic is equivalent, and i believe that's a conservative estimate, then it's only the networks that lose credibility here.
but, if tom goes, who is going to credibly rail on the government for not balancing the budget? the conservatives have no credibility on this.
here's the thing: he purged the party of anybody that might challenge him. the ndp used to be the party of hard working mps that had to fight long odds to win their seats. today, it's tom the great leader and his faceless minions of seat-warming backbenchers. they've got bigger problems than finding a new leader. but, they'd better figure out a way to get him to listen to their party's constitution, too.
even if he wins, a review will be good for the party because it will help bring some stronger voices to the forefront.
Resource Nation
What's your evidence that Mulcair is not a corporate stooge.
His record of near silence on the Chinese Foreign Investor Protection Agreement, and minimal effort to oppose TPP and CETA is evidence that Mulcair is a corporate stooge.
jessica murray
what was the term he used for the tpp? enthusiastically in favour?
i'd normally be expected to vote for the ndp. but i basically voted against mulcair back in october. i'm not sure i'd say he's a corporate stooge, though, as much as i'd say he's an *aspiring* corporate stooge.
you can imagine him showing up at the bankers meeting and being all like "hey guys!", while they slam the door in his face kind of thing. then, you'd see him peering in the window and pouting about not getting in.
kind of like hillary clinton...
--
noname2004
Mulcair is the wrong person for the NDP future, end of story.
BluesBerry
It's easy to say that someone is unsuited for a particular job.
It difficult to say why you feel that is so, and the characteristics you feel the next NDP leader should have.
Jessica Murray
being ideologically aligned with the ndp would be a good first start.
i'm shocked. they sound like every other aging boomer couple i've ever heard. this is pathetic. it's the kind of hit piece you expect fox news to throw at hillary clinton.
trump is not somebody that's likely to gain my sympathies naturally. but, if you turn him into the underdog, people will become more receptive to what he's saying.
the left has a fundamentally different psychology. we don't pile on the persecuted; we don't take pleasure in kicking people when they're down. we're stuck with this weak human emotion called empathy. we align with the downtrodden. we want your huddled masses. we claim the meek shall inherit the earth.
Maryanne Slater
Not every aging boomer. Just the ones down at the coffee shop who blame teenagers, minorities and women's lib for everything wrong with the world today.
jessica amber murray
actually, it sounds a lot like a tongue-in-cheek exchange between my pot-smoking, liberal father and his much higher-earning corporate executive wife.
in fact, there's probably copious similar footage out there of the clintons ribbing each other, although the roles may be reversed more often than not.
i'm not about to endorse trump or anything. but the media narrative across the spectrum - from the young turks through to john oliver and cnn and all the way to charles krauthammer - has been nothing short of preposterous. the over-the-topic rhetoric, the specious logic, the flat-out smearing - none of this could exist on the other side of karl rove. the american political discourse has entered a period where the tactics of fox news and the bush regime have been adopted by the entire spectrum. it is a society where truth is no longer even an old-fashioned virtue, but merely an annoyance. mr. colbert, come forward and accept your award for prophesying the future.
the actual truth is that donald trump is a moderate democrat.
actually, she's absolutely right. and, if he can tear up a few trade agreements while he's inciting some riots, that's a positive. i haven't worn a shirt with a slogan in twenty years, but i'd be tempted to wear one that says this: if you think that it's pragmatic to shore up the status quo right now, you're not in touch with the status quo. and, fwiw, he's more pro-choice than her, too.
but, listen. the bernie or bust crowd is aware that trump is going to be a
disaster. the point is that you vote for him because he's going to be a
disaster. because people are fed up, and want the country to burn down
and the society to start over again. the choice is between somebody who
can ably steer the ship and somebody who is going to crash it in five
minutes. yes. clearly. but, we don't want to sheer the ship. we want to
crash it! so, can we realize that's the position, here, before we debate
it further?
BB
So basically if we can't get captain sanders who could sail this busted up ship outta the rocky waters and repair it. only other choice would be to have captain trump quickly crash the busted up ship and build a new one.
jessica
i don't like the way that's framed, though. let's begin by understanding the metaphor properly: the ship is capitalism. or existing capitalism. or whatever. it's in bad need of repairs, because it's been sailing around for years under a self-regulating regime of repairs. inspectors estimate it's on the brink of sinking.
like fdr before him, we think bernie can probably not just fix the ship's problems but also make it a little nicer. so, we're still on the ship. we're still sailing. the aim is sticking with this ship, still. let's realize that, too.
hillary is going to take this beat to shit ship and sail it around in circles for a few years. we can trust her to navigate it. but, it may flood in the process, too. we can expect that when she's done, the ship will be in worse shape than when she inherited it, simply through that many more years of use without repairs.
and, trump is going to sail right into the rocks, likely within a few minutes of taking over.
so, you're talking in fatalistic terms. i would reject that. there's not any reason why i couldn't be arguing for sailing the ship around in circles for a while and trying to fix it later, other than that i'm sick and fucking tired of sailing around on a sinking ship.
so, yes: it's reckless. it's not prudent: not moderate, not middle of the road.
not at all conservative.
kind of rash, maybe? revolutionary, perhaps? risky? a gamble?
yeah. sure.
but, i never claimed to be a prudent, middle-of-the-road, moderate conservative, either. if i was, i'd probably be ok with voting for the status quo. right?
i had initially argued that if you give trump supporters a clear option to defeat cruz then they will take it. kasich needed a little bump to convince people that he can actually beat cruz. the polling released this week may provide that. and, you may finally see that movement towards the center.
remember: trump is not winning because he's crazy and people like it. he's winning because he was controlling the center of the republican spectrum. he was the buffer against the crazies. and the more advertising was thrown into cruz, the better trump looked.
when the field was split a dozen ways, it was rational to support trump if your goal was solely to defeat cruz because he was the only candidate that seemed like he had a real shot of doing it. but, now that there is only one serious option (kasich), there is a possibility that the support will coalesce. i had initially bet on this happening around bush, and a little earlier, but he spliced and ran before the fight even started.
kasich just needed a trickle to form, in order for it to build into a stream.
kasich should be favoured in virtually every remaining state. he could conceivably run the table. it's not cruz v trump, with kasich splitting. it's trump v kasich, with cruz splitting - but beneficially.
put another way: cruz won't be able to cut into centrist support for trump. but, kasich will be able to peel it off quite easily, if it looks like he can actually win.
in fact, i'm going to call it right now (i'm allowed to change my mind): kasich sweeps the northeast on april 26th.
--
but, the point is that none of the candidates were reflective of the voters' will. so, do a country-wide IRV with the three remaining candidates.
this is the kind of non-logic that follows hillary everywhere she goes.
if she's running for president, that means she should be less strenuously investigated. if she was running for a lower office, well, then you'd be justified in fully investigating.
they are purposefully messing with your head. they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
once again: all evidence suggests that hillary is taking us over the finish line and directly into the orwellian state.
this is a strategy that assigns very little intelligence to voters and will almost certainly produce a backlash. if you (the media, broadly) keep running segments like this, you're going to push white voters right into his arms. the study was asking about affirmative action - and the response is tautological. the confusing part is how 58% of republicans somehow think that affirmative action helps white people.
what the trump phenomenon demonstrates is that there is a mass of uneducated, impoverished white people in america that need social programs written for them. they've been confused by decades of propaganda that scapegoats minorities instead of corporations. but, by sitting there and pointing fingers at them and belittling them, you just come off as a bunch of smug, upper class pieces of shit.
the election match-up media narrative that's developing is a conflict between wealthy non-whites supporting clinton and poor whites supporting trump. that's an over-simplification, as are all media narratives. and i'm more likely to attack the narrative than fall into it.
and, of course, i'm a leftist. i understand what's happening. i'm inoculated from the group think.
but, at the end of the day, i am not a wealthy non-white. i am a poor white. and, i can tell you that the media will get what it wants, if it decides to frame the issue the way it's framing it.
"I don't want to send them to jail. I want to send them to school." - Adlai E. Stevenson
hrmmn. perhaps hawaii actually did just vote against the asian pivot.
an anti-war message is always meaningful. but, should a war erupt in the pacific, hawaii is right in the crosshairs. and, clinton's policies in the region are reason for hawaiians to pause.
"Creating a free trade zone in North America—the largest free trade zone in the world—would expand U.S. exports, create jobs and ensure that our economy was reaping the benefits, not the burdens, of globalization. Although unpopular with labor unions, expanding trade opportunities was an important administration goal."
i had said before that washington would prove it's rigged, but i thought it was a ballot vote and it wasn't. so, that was a rational deduction brought on by faulty initial conditions (i don't want to call it an assumption). we could have a talk about the limits of logic. this is tangential.
what i had said was that he should win washington by a huge amount, but it will be balanced out by the dead people vote in seattle. she'd definitely get jimi. but kurt is white. the value of caucuses is that dead people can't vote in them. i don't want to discriminate against zombies, but i do think that the party should be looking to bring in more caucuses and phase out the primaries.
he won't do nearly as well in wisconsin as he did in washington, zombie vote or not. so, it won't be as clear - i can't say the result will prove tampering with the kind of clarity that a rigged washington primary would have given us. but, you should temper your enthusiasm.
i haven't seen any recent polls. but, if you think he can do as well as he did in minnesota, then you should expect results closer to illinois.
you'd never measure something like this if you weren't vlogging...
but, the consequence of my cycling and ~30 hour days is that i live, on average, about 6 days a week. it's not exact, it's like 6.3 days/week if you divide it out.
of course, i'm using the same amount of time. i'm not dr. who. nor am i a tralfamadorian. i'm not even mick jagger. it's just that i'm splitting those 168 hours into roughly 6 periods rather than roughly 7. and, it turns out it's pretty consistent.
that means i live about 50 less days a year. and about 500 less days a decade. that's more than a year.
if i suppose that i live until i'm 70, i'll have only lived a little more than 60 actual years, if measured in days. so, might i live to be very old?
i'm not convinced that's how it actually works. but, who knows, really.
the dominant factor is the sun. the vortex shrinks in the summer and expands in the winter, reacting to the amount of sunlight hitting the earth. if we were to turn the sun off, the polar vortex would sweep over the earth, and we'd be plunged into a snowball earth scenario. and, if we were to turn the sun up enough then the vortex would disappear altogether. the expansion and contraction of the vortex is strongly correlated with the solar cycles. we're currently in a period of decreased solar activity. this is being counter-acted, however, by warming oceans due to global warming.
(the idea that this is being caused by warming is grasping at straws, and really rather outrageous given how entrenched the understanding of the vortex is. see mike lockwood, and in fact michael mann, for a better explanation of the solar effects.)
strangely, i now want to go buy some tannerite. which, it turns out, is a brand name rather than a scientific compound. no mention of their competitors, usa today? what's the profit in a stealth ad like this? excellent marketing, though. have to hand it to the company. great way to get a leg up on their competition.
tannerite: it'll blow your socks off.
you're making an incredible error in your perception that non-voting implies passivity, as though the idea is that trump wins and everybody goes home for four years. bernie or bust is a movement to reject the ballot box as ineffectual and move strictly to civil disobedience. what it is saying is that bernie is the system's last chance to listen, before the plug gets pulled. that doesn't mean apathy. it doesn't mean go home and get drunk. it means general strikes. it means million person marches, it means total war against the state. and, frankly, if you're taking this kind of entirely antagonistic approach, it doesn't matter if it's hillary or trump. in fact, there's not even a contradiction in voting for hillary and then going out and organizing the general strike.
it's been converted into a fashion trend, which will be it's own death knell once a new fashion trend appears. in the meantime, the kids are just looking for an excuse to copy the new trend. this is this year's party. next year, it will be some other thing.
it's frustrating that you still have all these people that think they can co-opt the media using it's own methods, only to repeatedly come face-to-face with movement collapse precisely *because* they tried to use those methods. by now, you'd think these lessons would be learned. but, leftists are not good at learning lessons. far too many of us seek our answers in a theory and are unwilling to adjust to evidence as it comes in.
they're not ideologues. they're not zealots. in fact, if you talk to them, you'll find out that a lot of them are centrist conservatives (although they may not realize it). they're just sheep following the latest fashion trend.
so, the facts in the case don't actually matter. what matters is being in the right place and having the right slogan on your tshirt.
the drip seems to be around the seal, rather than in the plastic - it was just accumulating on the plastic.
i have taped over the area. i know that this defeats the purpose of the drainage, but my prerogative is in keeping the water off of the floor. and, i suspect that the issue is upstairs, anyways.
i'm going to guess that the seal probably needs to be recaulked. but that the issue is probably really in the furnace.
i already debunked this kind of thinking. but, i'll do it again: specifically as it applies to west virginia and kentucky. this is a racist analysis, by npr. and it should be challenged. strenuously.
these are conservative, deep southeastern states. the white population in these states (and also in indiana, which was ignored) should be expected to behave the same way as the white populations in the similar states around them. tennessee. virginia. southern ohio, too. and, clinton carried the white population in these states by very large margins.
what you see when you look at those results is that support for clinton remains stable, while race fluctuates. what that means is that race is not a predictor variable. and that's a proof!
again: the media will not cease, nor will they desist. the media is racist. it is a part of their job to be racist. but they must be called out on it at every opportunity.
voters make decisions based on the content of their characters, not on the colour of their skins.
and, clinton should be expected to carry the white vote in kentucky, west virginia and indiana by significant to overwhelming margins.
"History shows us that a strong regional architecture can bring to bear incentives for cooperation and disincentives for provocation and problematic behaviors. But this kind of architecture does not just spring up on its own, just as NATO and other aspects of the post-World War II architecture didn’t just happen. It takes consistent effort, strong partnerships, and crucially, American leadership. And that is, at core, what our strategy in the Asia Pacific is all about. All of our actions – diplomatic, economic, and military – are designed to advance this goal. Let me offer three examples about how it works."
...
"Here’s a second example, which demonstrates how strong rules and norms matter in people’s lives. As part of that same trip last November, the President built momentum for a new far-reaching trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership that we are negotiating with eight other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This agreement is not just about eliminating barriers to trade, although that is crucial for boosting U.S. exports and creating jobs here at home. It’s also about agreeing on the rules of the road for an integrated Pacific economy that is open, free, transparent, and fair. It will put in place strong protections for workers, the environment, intellectual property, and innovation – all key American values. And it will cover emerging issues such as the connectivity of regional supply chains, the competitive impact of state-owned enterprises, and create trade opportunities for more small-and-medium-sized businesses."
my hawaii argument was based on the idea that hawaii would vote similarly to other pacific island states, but it was never presented with much confidence. there wasn't any polling done, and the demographic modelling is anti-scientific and should be rejected. i always said that this idea was preliminary and subject to modification by incoming data. all anybody could have given you was an inference (that is, a guess). one could have argued that sanders should have won because it was a caucus, but hawaii had a secret ballot so the logic of peer pressure is kind of funny. nor is hawaii a white state. i think the better analysis is likely to invert my argument. i had essentially suggested that clinton should be favoured because of greater name recognition, in what is really a distant colony (and that was the pattern in the other pacific island states). what was probably true in the end was that the name recognition worked against her - which is to say it was probably less about a vote for sanders and more about a vote against clinton. turnout does not seem to have been low, either. for substantive policy: how about the asia pivot, and concern about clinton starting a war in the pacific? there's no polling, so all one can do is make stuff up.
either way, that buffers the loss in arizona a little. even still, it looks like he's about 25 delegates behind where i said he should be. but, i also suggested that he only really needs to split wisconsin. he now needs to have wisconsin act more like minnesota than illinois in order to make up the difference. he should still be aiming for 200 going into new york. and, he absolutely must win new york.
i would not advise taking early polls seriously. but, it is a closed primary. and, the results in massachusetts and illinois would suggest a split is more likely than a win.
i could've sworn the wiki page said last week that washington was an open primary.
it now says it is an open caucus. and, that is confirmed by multiple media reports.
so, my previous claims that washington would prove the rigged system need to be revoked. that was based on the state being a ballot vote. oops.
i've been consistent: you can't rig a caucus at the level she'd need to win. so, we should finally get the blowout in a big state that we've been waiting for....
-
so.
hawaii - clinton will probably win, if hawaii fits the profile of the other pacific island territories.
washington - now that i see that it's a caucus rather than a primary, i would expect sanders to win decisively. idaho or utah numbers are reasonable.
alaska - there's no data to draw conclusions from.
"I don't believe [adolescents] are ready for sex or its potential consequences—parenthood, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases—and I think we need to do everything in our power to discourage sexual activity and encourage abstinence."
and, i
want to be clear about something: i am not a nihilist. i am an atheist
and a secular humanist. i believe i've actually argued very strenuously against
moral relativism and very strenuously against subjectivity in art. i
believe in the objective reality of a world determined via scientific inquiry.
there is no god in this world, but there are plenty of things that are true. in
fact, i would argue that the truth value of the statement there is no god
is true. that is, itself, a truth. i am a positivist. i believe truth is
obtainable - and that one of those truths is that there is no guiding force in
the universe.
but, i haven't been through this here. not exactly. bits and pieces.
the problem is the way the discussion is framed, to assume various things for
granted. i am an anarchist; i reject hobbes. i do not believe that people need
the threat of god, or the threat of some sovereign, to fall in line and behave.
rather, i think that religion and authoritarianism are corrupting forces. we
are not evil in despite of the state but because of it. the collapse of the
state would bring us back to a "natural condition" of mutual aid and
reciprocal altruism. this is not because we have a selfless nature, it is
because altruism and rational self-interest are equivalent, when fully
understood.
what that actually means is that i think that nietzsche is just a tempest in a
teapot, because i reject the assumptions he was working under in the first
place. understanding the obvious truth that there is no god will not collapse
society, but allow it to reach it's next stage of development. nihilists should
consequently be seen as reactionaries that seek to uphold the status quo - at
best. at worst, they end up as straussian neocons like hillary clinton and want to take
us back into the dark ages.
there is a certain line of thinking that ends with nietzsche, but it was a
stupid line of reasoning that was in opposition to the real movements of
enlightened thinking, anyways. his supposed crisis was resolved by aquinas, who
was himself just quoting aristotle. what you see in his writings is a fool
coming to terms with the idiocy of his systems of thought. but, only fools
would have ever walked down that path in the first place. this is centuries
after galileo!
so, i don't think that nihilism presents us with any sort of a real problem.
but, if we want to be stuck in this foolish historical narrative? a very
obvious and completely satisfactory solution immediately presents itself in secular
humanism. and, there is consequently really no reason to take note of the man
or his writings at all. he should be forgotten. instead, we should remember the
line of thinking that takes us from aristotle, through aquinas and ends with
comte.
ok, i need to back off. i keep saying that. i do. i've wasted way too much time.
i tend to get obsessive. it's a personality issue. it's ubiquitous across issues. but, this isn't worth my time.
i want to reiterate that my position in a trump/clinton election is strategic non-voting followed by mass civil disobedience. what i'm suggesting is that hillary is not a lesser evil. that does not somehow imply support for trump.
the spanish anarchists were faced with a choice between hitler and stalin, and they picked stalin. stalin then killed them by the thousands. all objective evidence would have suggested that stalin was the lesser evil, here.
what i'm arguing is that we're in a situation where the logic of a lesser evil collapses, and we're stuck with two equally sized and equally unacceptable evils - both of which necessitate immediate revolutionary action. if you're arguing you should vote for clinton to stop trump, you're back to trying to argue that stalin is preferable to hitler.
sanders is actually right. it's not just empty rhetoric. the spectre of a clinton presidency is no more acceptable than that of a trump presidency. there needs to be a stronger reaction than just voting for clinton and going home.
this is the breaking point.
-
if it's trump v clinton, i vote for a general strike.
polling for general election matchups right now is very preliminary. my questions remain hypothetical.
but, i'd be interested to see some polling of a three-way race: sanders, trump, clinton. if we consider that sanders is beating trump by 20 points, in multiple key swing states, how much of that goes to clinton if she runs? that language was chosen consciously.
i'm just wondering if something like this is reasonable, somewhere like michigan:
- sanders: 40
- trump: 35
- clinton: 25
the flip of that is that clinton could beat trump with evangelicals, opening up weird results like the following, somewhere like missouri, where clinton/sanders and trump/cruz both split. as missouri tends to split general elections, let's give them each 25%.
i would not advise taking any of this seriously until at least labour day. but a little bit of introductory polling may be useful for everybody.
-
it's just hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube, with sanders. and that's a good thing. but it means some polling on the hypothetical is useful.
-
and....clinton has already tried to appeal to the christian conservative vote, which there is quite a bit of in the democratic party base. she's a politician. she'll do what she thinks she needs to do to win. if trump is the nominee (and he is) then it opens up a vacuum on the christian right that she will pounce on. and, the gays will be thrown under the bus - the christian right is a far larger and far more stable voting block to integrate into her base of southern conservative minorities.
-
i know that what i'm saying is going to upset or confuse some people. but, you simply haven't been paying attention. this is precisely why she creates such a horrible reaction in the left-wing grassroots - she'd sell her own husband down the creek for the right endorsement, and all the smart people fully grasp that.
-
so, this logic that you're voting for her to stop the christian right? hillary clinton is the christian right.
-
and, if trump wins (and he will), that's going to be a big aspect of the election. she won't beat him with working class whites. her best strategy is to beat him on the right.
setting the bar for accusations of racism this low is extremely dangerous, as it sets up a cries wolf scenario. and, in fact, trump's likely opponent has not just supported but was integral in the development of some of the most racist legislation of the past fifty years.
but, this is a crazy argument, this idea that america is wealthy because of markets and cuba is poor because of no markets.
1) does america really have markets? it has lots of cartels. study the price of bananas - it changes everywhere at the same time, all the time. it has lots of corporate welfare. i'm not so sure about this.
2) america is the global empire. it's extracted massive wealth through theft, slavery and imperialist exploitation. meanwhile, cuba was a forgotten backwater in a collapsed empire. markets? hmmm.
3) there were these sanctions that were put on cuba. i think the president knows a thing or two about them.
i don't want to argue against his point too much. i think he's making an error in looking at capitalism and communism as competing systems rather than as expressions of the same system. what we need is not really a dialectic, but a reapproach to a different organization of society brought on by deindustrialization. but, in the end that could very well approximate a dialectic, because the deindustrialization does, in some ways, bring back aspects of the preconditions of liberalism. i don't know how you approach automation without social ownership, but that's just the initial conditions - the point is to open up greater freedom in social interaction by eliminating want.
but, you can't just stand there and say america is rich because of capitalism and cuba is poor because of communism and expect people to take you seriously because you're the president. it's crazy, no matter who you are.
i just want to remind people that i identify as gen x, i've always identified as gen x and i've never claimed otherwise. in fact, what i have claimed on multiple occasions is that i feel a very large generational gap with millennials, and have always had a very hard time understanding them.
i've pointed out repeatedly that i'm on the cusp. which means i don't actually have a generation. i'm too old to be a millennial, and they've always seemed weird and distant to me. gen x has always made more sense, and so i've always identified that way, but i do realize that i'm too young to really be gen x.
the point is that i want to be clear about what my audience is: both for my music and for my vlogs. i'm not quite middle-aged, but i nearly am. i'm not making any particular attempt to appeal to young people. i would expect that both my music and it's marketing will appeal to an above 30 audience, and not an under 30 audience. it's about a 30-50 demographic that is most likely to find the various things i do interesting. this is the cusp, plus the latter half of gen x.
so, if you're a younger person and you think i'm out of touch, that's ok. i would agree that you're probably right. and, i'm not particularly upset by it; i wasn't interested in being the cool kid when i was your age, and i'm not interested in being the cool kid now, either. older people don't need your approval to exist. and, realize i was on usenet before you could walk...
"Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman. But I also believe that people in committed gay marriages, as they believe them to be, should be given rights under the law that recognize and respect their relationship."
the drip was forming at the corner. i've just taped it over. hopefully that's good enough. i don't know if the drip was coming out of the corner or just rolling down towards it. my concern is just keeping the water off the floor, so if that doesn't work then i'll tape the connector over. but i think i have the responsibility to inform you.
i still don't have a phone. i've lived long enough without one that i've learned how to exist without one, and decided it's more of a luxury than a necessity. and given that it is essentially a government spying device, i've actually decided that i even actively don't want one.
so, i know you're transferring ownership. let me know if there's a better email address to use.
but, yeah. it's dripping. slowly. it seems like the plastic cracked. but it may be the seal, too.
i just want to add that the picture was taken on trump's jet, in flight, with trump in the other room. so, it could have been relevant. the way they did it didn't really make sense. but they could have made sense of it....
let's take a step back and look at things from an emotional distance.
can hillary win michigan? missouri? illinois?
she couldn't even beat bernie sanders.
could hillary clinton beat donald trump with evangelicals?
could donald trump flip illinois, michigan and pennsylvania on strong rust belt support?
post-industrial.
this is obviously a kind of a freudian slip. he misspoke because he forgot that bush wasn't in office anymore - the eight years were meant to apply to bush, and then he remembered that obama existed and tried to save it. he should have just admitted it. that's a common theme with bill: why don't you just admit it, man? smoking pot. banging secretaries. forgetting that obama ever happened. but, that's why this slip is freudian: in the long run, obama and bush may very well blur together into a single historical term. obama is, historically, just a continuation of bush. it's not what he consciously meant to say, but it is what he subconsciously knows is true. oops.
“The claims by President Putin and other Russians that they had to go into Crimea and maybe further into eastern Ukraine because they had to protect the Russian minorities, that is reminiscent of claims that were made back in the 1930s when Germany under the Nazis kept talking about how they had to protect German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia and elsewhere throughout Europe.”
this is more or less what i voted for, to start. no complaints.
i don't particularly care about the deficit, but it should be pointed out that they're being transparent in setting low expectations that they can outperform.
so, i've been following the election from up in canada, where i'm a fairly objective observer. and i happen to have a mathematical background. i'm the only person that i'm aware of that called for a split in michigan - based simply on polling data.
i think that what you're seeing is just classic ballot box stuffing in the city districts - cook county & downtown boston were the ones with the biggest psychological outcomes (although, have a little patience with the pacifists, because it's the delegate count that matters and whether bernie carries a state with 55 or loses it with 45 doesn't matter a lot, even if it adds up - he's not behind because he lost illinois, he's behind because he got beaten in the southeast, and he has to find somewhere where he can win by similar margins to balance it out) to this point, but i think we've also seen it in cleveland, detroit, atlanta and, now, phoenix.
the way this works is that she floods the early voting results with mail-in and absentee ballots. this tactic was very clear in both ohio and arizona (as well as illinois and missouri), where the initial results came in with her up around 75-25. she's basically giving herself a huge head start - 50,000+ votes. then, when the actual votes come in, they have to make up the difference. and, you can add in the voter suppression tactics on top of this.
what that means is that there really isn't a conspiracy with the exit polls. you claim the data is staying put all night. this isn't actually the case, from what i've seen. rather, the margins get closer and closer all night. and, that is actually a classic sign of data-rigging.
in fact, the reason the networks are calling it so early is that they would expect - if the votes are fair - that the early voting would be roughly the same as the late voting. if the networks were looking for it, they would notice that the results that they're seeing are very suspicious - they shouldn't be watching the tallies narrow predictably over and over. an election where clinton gets 75% with early voters and 40% with day-of voters is just about the most obvious fraud you could contemplate. but, that is, in fact, what we're seeing, in state after state.
but, you have to understand that clinton can't do this by herself. this is a full party effort. and, what it means is that the party had already chosen it's candidate before the voting started, and the outcome was never in doubt. the party is just expecting sanders to act as bait. that's all this process ever was about. sanders will not be the democratic nominee, and the idea that he ever would be was never seriously on the table.
the thing is that sanders has to know this. what you're going to find out in the next few weeks is whether he's been playing along, and was just doing outreach for hillary the whole time, or whether this was a plan from the start to use the democratic primary as a launching pad for a run as an independent.
for right now? she's no doubt going to pull the same trick in seattle. he should get something like 75% in washington, but it will probably roughly split due to early voting mail-ins. and, the race will be officially done. you'll have to see what he does, next.
*washington is not an open primary, but an open caucus. that changes everything. it is easy to see that i would have suggested a large sanders win is most likely if i thought it was a caucus.
i'm going to put out an open request for polling in washington for the democratic primary. there was no meaningful polling done in arizona, and i don't think that's an accident - i don't think anybody (except maybe sanders...) wanted there to be polling to consult. if you can do some polling, please do so.
i haven't really poked the models in the eyes, yet. i refused to accept the argument that sanders had a better chance in ohio than he did in illinois due to racial breakdowns, and i suggested that michigan would be a split, but i've otherwise largely arrived at the same conclusions, via different metrics. and, you might expect that, really - as i'm arguing that race is a proxy variable, rather than a predictive one. as such, you'd expect it should work out more often than not, even if it's logically incoherent to suggest that racial breakdown is a causal factor.
alaska and hawaii are giving me an opportunity to push back a little, although i need to provide the caveat that i have not seen any polling and reserve the right to modify my analysis as a consequence of direct data appearing.
so, the models will tell you that there aren't any black people in hawaii or alaska, so bernie should win big. it's a lack of people predisposed to voting for clinton due to the colour of their skin. i take a different view.
rather, let's look at votes, so far, for places outside of the contiguous 48.
american samoa
clinton: 68
sanders: 26
northern marianas
clinton: 54
sanders: 34
this is a small sample, and direct polling will render it obsolete. but, i think it's a better measure in at least hawaii - if maybe less so in alaska.
we should not forget this:
democrats abroad
clinton: 31
sanders: 69
...but, it's not the same thing as a state or territorial primary. sanders has consistently outperformed clinton with people that are very liberal and people that are very educated. if you're going to vote in the democratic primary from singapore or something, chances are that you're both. nor are we dealing with indigenous inhabitants. so, that should be removed.
the takeaway is that i can't automatically favour sanders in either of these states. although, note that they are caucuses. and, you know what i say about caucuses...
without direct polling, i think clinton's tendency to do better in distant territories gives her an immediate advantage in hawaii - even if it's not a large one. that logic may be less applicable to alaska, but it's at least as useful as racial profiling.
how about washington? well, i need to learn from past experiences. it looks like she cheated in arizona and ohio and inflated the wins. it looks like she cheated in masachusetts and illinois and snatched victory away from defeat. and it looks like she cheated in michigan and lost anyways. why wouldn't i expect her to cheat in washington?
washington is an open primary, which is the same as michigan and illinois. so, he ought to demolish her, there. 70% should be a low bar. but, that just means she'll stuff ten times as many ballots and make it that much harder for people to vote.
so, this is my actual prediction for washington: if there is any remaining doubt about whether this process is rigged or not, it will be over by the time washington is tabulated. washington will just make it that much more obvious.
*washington is not an open primary, but an open caucus. that changes everything. it is easy to see that i would have suggested a large sanders win is most likely if i thought it was a caucus.
i didn't see the results start coming in, but let me guess: hillary started with 70% "initial results", and it's been coming down all night, right?
there's not enough caucus states. and all evidence suggests that they're going to respond to any push back by stuffing more.
it was over before it started. all you can do in response is refuse to vote for her, and hope a third-party appears with enough of a movement behind it to make a difference.
i claimed bernie needed to be aiming for a 50+ haul tonight, which would have been a 70% floor over all. he did get close to 80% in both utah and idaho, but....arizona carried on the same pattern where clinton's lead in "initial results" was far too big to overcome with real votes. it's come down a lot over the night, as it did in other places. i will reiterate: i don't think clinton or the party is doing this for delegates (if you split a 45/55 result, it's not much of a delegate difference - although it does add up over 30 states if it consistently leans in the same direction) so much as i think it's about the tv coverage. hillary clinton is probably the country's last serious conventional media candidate. her base is not determined by skin colour or language or anything of the sort so much as it's determined by age. so, she's playing to the boomer and early xer tendency to watch the results on tv and go to bed. that's the real reason she's giving herself these insurmountable leads with supposed early voters - so that her base can go to bed seeing her ahead by 20--30 points, and conclude she's winning comfortably.
my math had him win washington 60-40 and pointed out a 70-30 win would give him some breathing room. after underperforming in arizona, he needs to be looking at something more like the 75-80% he just got in idaho and utah in order to just stay on path.
he has to win washington by a huge margin. it may be his last serious stand.
see, this is a good example of why trump is just.....
the idea of spending less money on war is something that's going to swing more than a few democrats, on it's own. this is realigning, even, when you line it up with his views on trade. i don't like the guy, but i'm having a hard time finding reasons why i should like him less than i like hillary.
but, he continually demonstrates that he's absolutely clueless about what's going on. there's only two ways you can parse his response on ukraine:
(1) he's just totally clueless and in desperate need of a major briefing.
(2) he's some kind of russian spy.
i'm not exaggerating. and while there's actually a few pieces of circumstantial evidence leaning towards (2), russian spies don't get prime time tv slots. they end up like alex jones. it's far more likely that he just hasn't the faintest clue.
yet, as clueless as he may be, that doesn't change the fact that this is so remarkably refreshing.
i've compared him to inspector gadget more than once.
i'm about as far to the left as you get. if you're going to run an election with one candidate that wants to ramp down nato and pull out of nafta, and another that's a liberal interventionist that was involved in writing the tpp, i wouldn't be much of a leftist if i picked the latter, would i?
i want to be clear: i'm advocating non-voting. neither one is acceptable. but, xenophobic trash aside, trump may honestly be the more left-wing candidate.
--
see, and then anderson cooper runs an essentially issueless interview - except the xenophobia thing. with clinton/cooper, specifically, you know the interview was scripted. so, the attempt is to zero in on a specific issue.
i don't think that's going to work. to begin with, i don't think hillary has nearly the stret cred that she thinks she does on minority rights. but, more importantly, it's just not what people are going to want the election to be about it.
i've been over this already. cue the scary music. build up the drama. easy, right?
here's a case study: the 2006 canadian election tried this tactic and failed badly. the then-ruling liberals, under paul martin, tried to paint stephen harper as an extreme right-wing nutcase that was going to bring in a police state and gut universal healthcare. the actual reality is that they were right, except it would have taken him 30 years to do it because he was a very methodical incrementalist. we got rid of him after nine years - and he had absolutely made baby steps on a number of issues.
but, the tactic backfired because people just didn't believe it. while trump is far more obnoxious than harper, he's also considerably to his left - and far less of an actual threat. you'd have to expect the same kind of reaction. especially in a country where those knocks on the door are already commonplace, under a democratic president.
so, is she going to take him on on all these issues and have to come out to his right over and over again? it's not a clean flip, of course. i'm sure hillary's tax plan will make a little more sense. and, hate it for being regressive all you want, but obamacare is going to win her some votes. so, you're not just looking at a possible realignment, but a possible reconfiguration. you'll get this blue collar republican trump voter that is working class, isolationist, xenophobic and in favour of big government expenditures, along with this moderate conservative vote that backs hillary on security and the constitutional rule of law. you want to run hillary and kasich on one ticket and trump and sanders on the other. and, who knows where everything lands in a couple of years...
--
sanders answered the questions excellently, but i don't see how....what i'm trying to get across is that the questions were framed to prevent him from getting any kind of a bounce. he tried to get some talking points in, but we didn't get that stark contrast that we got in the michigan debates. the choir will nod, but nobody is getting swayed.
sanders needs another debate. and another one. and maybe a third one, too.
jenny graves
"refreshing" should be a criteria when shopping for toothpaste, not the POTUS. Don't underestimate the significance of the fact that he is "absolutely clueless about what's going on".
jessica
but, i'd rather have a hapless fool with his heart in the right place than a calculated, tyrannical monster. trump will eventually get briefed. clinton will never develop a heart.
there's some wizard of oz imagery underlying this, too. one has no brain; the other has no heart.
jenny graves
That's why I'm voting for Bernie.
jessica
i'm a mathematician, and i'm one of many that are pointing out that the process is rigged, jenny. we see the same absurd results again tonight: she wins in a ballot state and gets decimated in the caucus. but, she's supposed to have a 70-30 lead amongst democrats! how can that be?
the party has already decided that clinton will be their nominee, and they don't care what the voters actually think.
utah: sanders should be favoured here, and there was a poll released yesterday that upholds this. remember: you can't rig a caucus (or at least not the same way that you can rig a ballot). so, if he gets the turnout then you could see the substantial victory that he needs right now. i said the same thing in illinois, and the language i used was a little more confident than my analysis, but the inability to rig the vote means that i shouldn't be beaten by questionable tactics, like i was there. sanders should really, actually win utah pretty big. an unexpectedly big margin would be a nice boost right now.
idaho: there's no polling at all, but sanders should get a very tentative advantage based on his wins in states like colorado and kansas - or perhaps his projected victories in washington and oregon. i don't know a whole lot about idaho, but maybe it's being pulled between the ocean and the plains, in terms of ideology? it's little more than an educated guess, but i think it's widely agreed upon. and you can't rig a caucus...
arizona: the one released poll had 24% undecided, which suggests a huge level of uncertainty. i am not at all aware of any factors that may sway undecideds in any direction, except the ubiquity of hillary clinton. i do not believe that the kind of media that would help sanders, and probably did in michigan, has happened in arizona over the past week. however, it's well known that sanders has a lot of support in tuscon, too. the cold truth is that there simply isn't any direct data to ground any kind of prediction in. but, there is a lot of reason to think it ought to be somewhere between nevada and colorado, in terms of results. if you see a clinton win with the same kind of margins that she got in some of the southeastern states, it should set off red flags.
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security."
if rubio was still running, trump would be hovering around 40 instead of around 50. and, if kasich drops he'll be hovering around 60 instead of around 50.
and, this is national. trump will get another 10+ point bump in the northeast.
if you're voting for kasich at this point, you're pushing back against two very strong factors:
1) the establishment is 100% behind cruz. which is going to backfire any moment, now. he'll win in utah. he may get crushed in arizona, as the anti-establishment vote abandons him and moves to trump. 2) the peer pressure is entirely behind trump. that's where you go, right now, if you're into mindlessly following the herd.
that means you must be pretty independent-minded, that you must have ideas of your own.
the second choice candidate of john kasich supporters is probably hillary clinton.
resist the pressure, john. keep fighting. you're the only thing stopping trump from winning the nomination.
---
the banks have put their support behind an unelectable candidate.
if they want to defeat trump, they need to drop cruz immediately and back kasich. there is a non-zero chance that, if they do that, kasich can win the big northeast states and take it to the convention. trump will demolish cruz in these states, one-on-one.
---
the person responsible for this mess appears to be cruz' wife. that's where the finger pointing should be directed.
“We have a lot of evidence now that the death penalty has been too frequently applied, and too often in a discriminatory way. So I think we have to take a hard look at it. I do not favor abolishing it, however, because I do think there are certain egregious cases that still deserve the consideration of the death penalty, but I’d like to see those be very limited and rare, as opposed to what we’ve seen in most states.”
should the left re-evaluate it's approach to trump?
again: i'll never endorse him. i'll endorse non-voting. which is passive, but equivalent.
but, the reality is that trump is no less of a potential ally than clinton. it just depends on the issue. maybe. i don't actually believe that clinton is an advocate of anybody: not gay people, not black people - nobody. she works for the banks, and that's it. but, you could make the argument that clinton is better on those kinds of things [you should expect similar supreme court nominees as the ones you got from obama], but trump is better on trade.
the truth is that trump is drawing attention to trade issues on the left in ways that sanders or stein never could. he's raising awareness. call him a useful idiot [even if you have to abuse the language], but if he can mainline opposition to free trade then he's doing the left a massive favour.
so, instead of falling into these divide and conquer lines and kneejerking in conflict? go to the trump rallies. talk to people. empathize on trade. but, then maybe talk a little about health care. a little about taxes. start from that point of agreement and try and build on it.
the smart approach is to try to co-opt this, not to try and shut it down.
"TRUMP: Well, I think if I'm a few short and I have, you know, 1,200 or if I have 1,100 and somebody else is at 300 or 400 or 500, which is very likely going to be the case, uh, and if I'm a little bit short -- and one of the reasons was we had so many candidates. I mean we started off with 17 candidates. And it came down to, you know, finally, it's down to three, frankly. But, you know, there are so many candidates, so it's very hard to get over that number. It's very unfair, in a way. But because of the fact that there's so many candidates and so many candidates are grabbing delegates. Now, here's what I say, because -- and now they're out. And now they're out. So I think I will get over that number. I think I may get over that number fairly easily."
are you taking notes, ted?
do you want this guy (cruz) making tactical decisions?
he can't even figure out a prisoner's dilemma. he'll be challenging putin to an arm wrestling contest.
"no, dmitri and sergei need to stay home. this is mano a mano. no 2 out of 3 bullshit, either. winner gets iran.".
dude shouldn't be running for president, he should be enrolling in a course in introductory game theory.
“If there is a way to structure some kind of constitutional restrictions that take into account the life of the mother and her health, then I am open to that, but I have yet to see the Republicans willing to actually do that, and that would be an area where if they included health, you could see constitutional action."
and, what percentage of his customers does he suppose work in the service industry?
see, i'd be foolish to argue for the tremendous foresight of capital, though. just because it's stupid - from their own perspective - doesn't mean they won't do it. that's how we got into this mess in the first place.
let's be real about the choices. we can maintain the status quo, where people do shitty work for shitty wages while the bosses get rich. or, we can let the ceos destroy the economy through automation, then figure out how to deal with 40% unemployment caused by overwhelming automation. i have an idea about that, too: maybe we could take ownership of the machines in common. then, instead of some boss owning the productive capabilities and handing us out a wage, we could just set the machines in motion and enjoy being unemployed.
i know. that's crazy. what do you think, that it's a fifth of the way through the twenty-first century, or something? we'll have to wait until the future, after the year 2000, for something like that.
i've got a great campaign slogan for hillary. and, get ready for this, because it's what we're about to be subjected to. this is the first truly orwellian election cycle.
VOTE HILLARY - SHE'S BETTER THAN FASCISM*
* note that hillary supports the tpp, global military intervention, mass deportations and strong restrictions on free speech.
if you think that hillary is going to stand up for anybody except her handlers, you are sadly mistaken.
this may be a dark and dangerous place to be, but i really want to push back very hard against the idea that we should be blaming it all on trump. here's the reality: a healthy society would be able to listen to what trump is saying and just shrug it off as a lot of nonsense. the questions we need to be asking ourselves and drawing attention to really have nothing to do with trump at all. they are:
(1) what are the economic factors that have led to this scenario, and who is responsible for them?
(2) what are the educational factors that have led to this scenario, and who is responsible for them?
(3) broadly, what are the cultural factors that have led to this scenario, and who is responsible for them?
when you just mindlessly blame it on trump, you're giving hillary a free pass - and upholding the status quo by avoiding substantive analysis.
that said? this is what we're going to see for the next eight months. the media is going to point at scenario after scenario that has been caused by the economic and social policies that clinton has supported, then suggest she's the antidote to it.
something else i need to point out about trump v hillary, though:
hillary looks frighteningly like my maternal grandmother [i haven't looked into it, but i promise you that hillary has finnish-irish ancestry]. trump looks a lot like my maternal grandfather, which is where my screen name of 'murray' originates from. they were divorced, i believe, before i was born. but, it's like the fight between my maternal grandparents that i never saw. making it sort of creepy.
my nana is far more liberal than hillary, though.
fwiw, i am basically the same age as chelsea. but, my grandmother is only a couple of years older than hillary.
"The longer Kasich stays in the race, the more it benefits Donald Trump," - ted cruz
see, if you had any doubt that this guy is an idiot....
ted. listen. if marco hadn't dropped out, he would have probably beat you in new york. and in new jersey. connecticut, as well. and in many other places, too. there are states on the calendar that you have absolutely no chance of winning.
what kasich does in these states is take trump down from 75% to 50%, or maybe a little lower.
the fact that kasich is splitting the anti-cruz vote is just about the only thing that cruz has going for him at all, at this point. even with that said, i don't really see anywhere where he can split enough of the vote to let cruz win. it's even a stretch in the rust belt (where cruz may very well poll third, and be ranked third by most kasich supporters).
it's bad enough that trump got a 5% bump from rubio dropping. at least kasich should be able to prevent him from clinching.
if kasich drops, at least half of his support will move to trump and trump will sweep the remaining contests. well, maybe cruz can win in wyoming or something, but the outcome will no longer be in doubt.
but, the republican establishment is not very smart. i said this a few days ago. can they win a prisoner's dilemma? cruz is failing over and over again, which is not surprising. he's a dolt. but, i really hope kasich understands the math well enough to know that dropping out is handing it to trump.
they seem to be really cracking down on my foreign policy perspectives. it's really pretty standard chomsky-lite, it's just that i'm....well, they wouldn't be going after me if i wasn't on to something, right?
you hear a lot of nonsense on these topics thrown around. propaganda. disinformation. counter-propaganda. it takes a combination of intelligence and education to get it right.
*this* is what they're actively trying to shut down - what they *actually* don't want you to hear.