and, what if your handpicked, black, progressive female candidate eclipses you?

that's fine.

i pointed out previously that in order for the left to win the primary in the states, they have to sweep the midwest and find a way to split the south. if bernie is the guy, so be it.

that said, bernie may want to be seriously considering the idea of a black running mate as a compromise/consolation - and don't look too badly into that. i'm just inherently cynical. so, frame it as a way to reach out, then. if this is a serious tactic, you should get the candidate running early.

so, let's say that bernie talks nina turner into running, for example. the way this would work is that she'd run strong in the south, with the intent of taking votes away from kamala harris particularly - and even a 5% swing could be decisive. then, when he wins by sweeping the midwest and splitting the south, he offers her a spot on the ticket, which is a concession because she got x% of the vote.

it doesn't have to be nina turner, of course, although she's kind of ideal for the task.

i'm just trying to throw some tactical ideas out there that are dialectical in nature. bernie wants to run as a uniter, and that's fine, in fact it's great, but it means finding smart ways to split the field and unite it at the same time.

so, if you know you have to split the south to win, and you realize that the way you fix that in the end is to offer a space on the ticket, then you get your candidate out there early. that way, you can accomplish your task, while getting the candidate you want, in the end.

are they the same character?

i don't know.

the first iteration - this one - is clearly a gay man breaking it to an obsessed female. he's sorry, and probably honestly so.

the second is about an evil bastard that apologizes disingenuously in order to get what he wants.

it would be a good story, in some sense, to explore the life of a character over the course of a fifteen year time span, caught apologizing in these very different contexts.

they should hook the leak up to brian pallister's kitchen sink.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/nearly-40-train-crude-oil-cars-carrying-crude-oil-derail-in-manitoba-st-lazare

“We have got to look at candidates, you know, not by the color of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or their gender and not by their age,” Mr. Sanders said. “I think we have got to try to move us toward a nondiscriminatory society which looks at people based on their abilities, based on what they stand for.”

this is a feature, not a bug.

my initial reaction to claims of a placental mammal going extinct in australia due to climate change was that australia doesn't have indigenous placental mammals, and humans must have introduced them.

frankly, i don't want to shed too many tears for dead rats.

but, it turns out that there are two kinds of placental mammals that were introduced to australia before humans, namely bats and a few species of rodents. or, that is the thinking, anyways.

i wonder, though, how a rat would have found it's way from new guinea to australia, short of a land bridge - which, while not entirely outlandish (water levels would have been lower in glacial periods), belies the fact that the continent does not have any other placental species. we have learned the hard way that placentals tend to outcompete marsupials for spaces in the same niches.

so, how did these placentals get there, exactly?

a bat could have flown. granted.

but, maybe we ought to spin this around: is the introduction of placental rodents to australia in the last five million years actually evidence that ergaster made it that far south?

i don't like rats; i mentioned that. but, justice, to me, means keeping australia as a safe homeland for marsupials and monotremes.

placentals out of australia! placentals go home.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rodents_of_Australia#Old_%22Endemics%22_*

age is an issue because it implies an increasing likelihood towards senility. for that reason alone, you can't brush off "ageism" the way you'd brush off racism or sexism - age does matter, if only on the extremes.

i'm less concerned about dole or mccain as precedent and more concerned about reagan, who it is well understood began to lose it near the end of his term - and was eventually officially diagnosed with alzheimers.

we're talking about an extremely important job, here, that can't tolerate any kind of mental slowness. i would consequently actually support a constitutional amendment to put an age limit somewhere around 75 - which is where mandatory retirement kicks in on the canadian supreme court.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/will-age-be-an-issue-in-the-2020-presidential-race.html

i just want to add an after thought to this bernie sanders running again thing.

i pointed out that the left may be looking forward to 2024, and that if an acceptable candidate doesn't present itself then bernie becomes the option by default - as a protest against the democratic party. that said, the best tactic may be helping bernie build a movement, anyways.

you also have to keep in mind that trump is, himself, also an old man. if the argument is that it's irresponsible to support a candidate at such an advanced age, that may be blunted by the reality that there isn't another choice.

so, if there is no viable candidate anyways, there is no harm in focusing solely on the future; while bernie himself may never enter the promised land, he might help lead us there.

trudeau actually took a walk in the snow just a few hours ago.

that's why there's snow angels in the yard.