on second thought, there's a third possibility: rebranding.

the ultimate problem may lie in allowing obama any kind of legacy, and partly for legitimate pr reasons. this may just end up spun around. you may end up with trump introducing a new trade agreement with the same partners that is designed to "punish china", and is essentially the same document, but is branded entirely differently. and, of course, trump will claim he wrote it himself, while hunting buffalo, or something.

the intent of such a rebranding strategy would be to get labour and voters, broadly, on side. it's actually very much in line with the kind of strategies you should expect them to use: when something is unpopular, you don't change it but rebrand it and relaunch it.

so, i'm going to alter my logic. there are three possibilities:

(a) trump still does not understand the tpp, and thinks he just stopped a trade agreement with china.
(b) trump does understand that the tpp is a containment policy, but is refusing to admit he was wrong, and is pretending that he thinks he stopped a trade agreement with china in order to avoid the hit to his ego that he would have to take in acknowledging that it's actually exactly what he wants.
(c) trump does understand the tpp and understands that he supports it, but is in the process of rebranding it for a complex of reasons.

two things.

1) this does not end the deal, because it is a congressional responsibility. it's really not a lot different than his "congress should do something about obamacare" order.
2) if he was doing this for the right reasons, it would be great. but he thinks he's rejecting a free trade agreement with china and this implies that he is unreachable by logic. the latter deduction is far more valuable, and i think it justifies any internal mumbling about assassination, or removal by other means.

yes, i oppose the deal. and, i'm not complaining about the slow down (even if this is a congressional responsibility...). but, the reasons he is doing this are insane and, in my mind, justify any removal attempts.

again: he either does not understand the deal, or he is too hardheaded to admit he's wrong. if donald trump understood the tpp, he would support it. either way, he can't be allowed to continue on as president.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/us/politics/tpp-trump-trade-nafta.html

i crashed hard this afternoon after yet another absurd day down here...

as mentioned here repeatedly, the situation has been clearing up over the weekend, although not decisively. and, while the smell seems to be gone now, it may take a while for the apartment to clear out completely and me to get my head back. i remain oozy, but am a little better than yesterday (which was a little better than the day before). i am convinced that something was fixed, at least, and believe it was a consequence of my tactics to draw attention to the issue. if the issue reappears, i will not hesitate to repeat.

but, what happened? i glossed over this in the vlog, but i'll be more detailed, here.

there was rattling upstairs on friday afternoon. the smell became noticeable on saturday morning; the headache hit before noon, and i fell asleep. i opened the windows on saturday night and actually mostly left the heat off (except when i was up to eat). the initial goal was to try and get him to turn the heat back on upstairs; given that i believed that the cause of the leak was turning the heat off the other day, getting him to turn it back on would at least put him face to face with the device, and have him see if he damaged anything. i sent the email out on sunday, which explicitly pointed to the likelihood that something was knocked loose on friday. it was not until monday morning that i gave up hope on him turning his heat back on, and turned mine up to 30.

late on monday morning, i heard another rattling upstairs followed by the liberal use of a spray bottle. about an hour later, a "gas inspector" that looked a lot like the new property owner showed up in construction gear. he walked around a little and concluded there was no sign of a gas leak, but agreed, when pressed, that the fact that i've had the windows open for several days would make it hard to get a good reading.

i gave the guy upstairs a chance to be honest, but i didn't expect that he'd take it. in the few years that i've been here, i've experienced nothing but dishonesty from him. he wouldn't admit to why he wanted to let dogs down here, for example. and, his own brother has asked me to not give him checks because he, himself, doesn't trust him. if your own brother does not trust you at 60-some years, there must be a serious problem, right?

but, i've been clear - repeatedly - that i do not think that he can be held legally liable and ultimately elevate responsibility elsewhere. the way you want to think of it is like this: suppose you told a six year-old that you think he accidentally broke the furnace. six is maybe a tad young, but you get the point. if that six year-old is home alone, and you told them this over email or phone, what would the six year-old do? well, first, it would check to see if it could fix the situation, and then it would destroy any evidence (such as spraying the area - and i don't actually know if febreeze would mask natural gas). then, it would deny culpability in any way possible by blaming others or making things up. if you asked the six year old directly, the six year old would lie. if eventually caught, the six year old would admit that the reason it lied was that it didn't want to get in trouble.

now, this might seem a little outlandish, but the evidence i've gathered around me has led me to conclude that this is the psychology in front of me. i've been operating this way for quite a while, now. i mean, you might ask the reasonable question: if you think there's a gas leak upstairs, why not just knock on the door? and, the answer is that the person that opens the door is incapable of dealing with the situation in an honest or adult manner, and needs to be directed from outside.

the reason that i glossed over this is that - given the situation, more broadly - it doesn't matter. i need to do what i did to get a reaction. and, i got the reaction i wanted. hopefully, the experience is enough to act as incentive for everybody to be more careful with the furnace.

as mentioned, the gas guy looked a whole lot like the property owner. again: i didn't ask questions (except when i did, and he shuffled nervously). i mean, if he were to go to the absurd point of putting on construction gear to try and convince me of something...

he admitted his device couldn't pick much up in context, and instead tried to blame the smell on the baseboards. i guess the solution is another furnace, right? lol. i set this up to demonstrate that this idea does not make sense. but, i wanted an analysis, and not an argument, so i just let him walk out.

as mentioned: the smell (which, as has been the case previously, was localized in the bathroom) has lifted. they did something. they might not be telling me what they did. but, i got them to do it. and, hopefully the threat of expenses will have them behave more carefully in the future.

i'm going to get something to eat. the vlogs should be done rendering by then. and i should be back at it when the sun comes back up.

my sister could actually pull off ivanka fairly well.

i've always leaned more towards a winona ryder or carrie brownstein kind of thing. it's just not my style, and never has been. i keep pointing out that i'm very gen x, and i'm not just saying it...

that said, the blond is coming. spring, probably. we'll find out.

i'm a lot better right now, but i'm also apparently unable to close the windows without getting woozy. the stench continues. with the heat set to 30, it's a decent balance, for now.

again: i've pointed this out to the old property owner several times and i'm not getting a real answer. he's going to have to wait until his gas bill shows up to learn, i guess - along with his electrical bill, which is heating a basement with the windows wide open because the gas is leaking.

who am i kidding. he'll blame it on the windmills in northern ontario and demand a tax cut. i'm going to have to call the new property owners over the next few days; the landlord is useless, and i'm not going to even bother, i'll just leapfrog him right off.

anyways. i spent the morning finishing the editing up until jan 20th (inclusive), which means vlogs are done until the 17th of february. they're rendering, right now. i'll start uploading when i close the virtual machine when they're done rendering...

so, the last 48 hours were not a total waste. but i really hope i can get a head start on the rest of the week this morning.

right.

so, what this does is demonstrate that wikileaks was only ever as useful as the closest machiavellian wanted it to be.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/22/white-house-refuses-release-trump-tax-returns-wikileaks

the difference between myself going after a trump supporter and an antifa protestor going after the same person is not ideological, so much as it is perceptive. for the antifa protestor legitimately believes they are face to face with neo-nazis. if i shared that belief, i would act the same way that they do. that i do not act in this fashion is not a consequence of a rejection of their tactics, which i in fact support when called for, but an analysis of the facts that suggests they are currently uncalled for.

when the issue is actual fascist groups, i very quickly align with the opposition. and, likewise, we can have a debate about where and when, so long as we ultimately defer to diversity of tactics and therefore do not get confused as to the nature of the real struggle. but, if you reject all violence as a matter of principle then you are an agent of the state.

if you feel threatened by this then i must request that you reanalyze your value systems, as there is blatantly something wrong, there.

i've been clear over a long period that i think that violence has a proper place in politics, perhaps especially in anarchist politics, but i'm going to take a step back and point you again to the breakdown i posted the other day.

if you believe that human nature is fixed, you're going to be more likely to lean towards a leviathan type state where all of the power is invested in the hands of a single body, language not carefully chosen but strangely analytical. you might claim you reject violence, but you don't, really - you just invest a monopoly on violence in the state. all of this violence is designed to prevent humans from acting out of line, because they're inherently evil.

but, if you believe that human nature is malleable, then you're going to inevitably come across the idea that violence may be a means to an end. well, we didn't imagine hitler out of existence, right, we had to beat the shit out of him. liberals are consequently going to tend to be less concerned with monopolizing violence, and less worried about hypocritical language, because they think they can use it to their own aims.

you will of course run into pacifists, and they've been badly smeared as liberals. but, go talk to a pacifist for five minutes and come back and tell me how liberal they are.

so, yes - i support vigilante groups to stamp out white supremacists, and i'd rather work outside of the state to do it. i'm sorry if you're confused, but i guess you need to try a little harder.