j reacts to trudeau not picking his battles well and wasting everybody's time

i'm confused. what does this "terrorist attack" have to do with the constitutionality of the legislation?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-c51-terrorism-balance-rights-security-1.3723167

if it was unconstitutional last year, surely it remains unconstitutional today.

??

i mean, unless the constitution was changed at some point when we weren't paying attention.....!?

forget the ndp. the only way anything gets done in this country is through the courts. let's get a constitutional challenge, please.

i need to be clear: current events don't affect the constitutionality of the legislation.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/c-51-sees-charter-challenge-from-civil-liberties-press-freedom-advocates-1.3161435

"The lawsuit is now on hold in court pending a response from the government."

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/cjfe/2016/07/one-year-after-initiating-charter-challenge-cjfe-renews-campaign-to-revi

the last government didn't want to follow the constitution, and got gutted by the courts over and over.

it seems like this government doesn't want to follow the constitution and will get gutted by the courts over and over.

hopefully, the next government will have more respect for the constitution. if not...

you don't overrule the constitution with identity politics and appeals to authority. the prime minister is neither king nor president. the office is not above the rule of law. nor does canada have any legal concept of an "executive order".

there is no choice in the matter. if he does not want to follow the rule of law, he must resign or be removed.

we don't need to change the way the senate operates, or the way the supreme court is chosen. but, i would support legislation to reduce the power of the prime minister's office and essentially abolish the application of executive power.

good.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/toronto-lawyer-watching-trudeaus-supreme-court-pick-closely/article31440520/

Aetna says it lost money in the Obamacare marketplaces because the people who signed up were sicker than expected. And while most insurers did expect sicker patients to sign up early — those who needed care the most would likely be Obamacare’s most enthusiastic customers — Aetna’s struggles haven’t improved. The insurer says its membership population actually got sicker in 2016.

--

you have no idea how absurd this entire conversation is to anybody outside the united states.

gingrichcare was never a good idea. it didn't matter who the spokesperson was, or how it was tweaked. it was always just a fundamentally incoherent way to provide health care.

i don't like market theory in it's most neutral applications. but, the right way to understand markets in the context of health care is that the product undermines the market. it's simply never going to make sense to have a market in health care....

it's single payer or barbarism. it really is.

j reacts to twitter use as trump's tragic flaw (and if he's right about being defamed)

this article is a lot of words to miss the basic point trump was getting across. it's focusing on the question of whether the lie was intentional, as though the crime is in the dishonesty. the crime of course is in the malice. you have to intentionally misconstrue in order to be malicious. but, it's the malice that is the crime - and the existence of harm that is the test.

our legal system is not a sunday school. you are not punished for doing wrong. rather, you are required to compensate those whom you do financial harm to. there's no moral question, here. it's dollars and cents.

the actual problem here is the character limit that twitter pushes down, which is forcing trump to truncate his arguments in such a way that they can be misinterpreted essentially at will. one of the best things he can do for himself at this point is to move to a platform that doesn't have character limits. this should be a lesson for future candidates, as well. it's practically an algorithm to be taken out of context.

had trump said "It is not ‘freedom of the press’ when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want with the intent to harm me, in contempt of the truth !"

...then he would be right. which is of course what he means to say. nobody thinks the media is neutral.

the bottom line is that i've seen quite a few stories that he would be right to launch legal action against, and would probably win compensation regarding if he did. this is not in the realm of discourse, and does not provide a reason to vote for him. but, he is raising a very valid concern about the level of discourse and the role that an incompetent media can play in the election cycle.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/does-the-first-amendment-protect-deliberate-lies/496004/

fwiw, this is the exact, precise reason that i have refused to use twitter from day one. this is the only twitter profile i've ever created.

https://twitter.com/dgkfgjklgjkgjka

15-08-2016: day three of listening (mp3--sansa--449s)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the tactic of calling hillary clinton a liar

this angle may be more legally successful, but it won't have any voter effect, i don't think. the reason is that everybody already know she's a liar. i mean, it's like trying a lion for killing gazelle. everybody knows that lions are assholes. yet, we somehow continue to have this strange attachment to them. you can show the lionphiles hours of footage of lions being assholes, and all you're likely to get out of them in the end is some kind of twisted admiration.

here is the surreal truth: every single clinton voter, if pressed, will acknowledge they are voting for a liar. nobody is going to defend her. they'll just rationalize it.

the reason the email angle was threatening to her had to do with how it made her seem on national security. the pay-to-play thing remains possibly damaging, but it's the kind of thing that you have to slowly explain to people and nail for weeks and then patiently wait out. and, trump isn't exactly inspiring, either.

this, on the other hand, strikes me as a waste of time.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/291494-gop-lays-out-case-for-charging-clinton-with-perjury