the new nafta still sucks but it is an improvement over the old one, and while sanders needs to campaign on an even better one, i actually expect that he'll vote for it, in the end.

i'm actually interested in how this debate unfolds, because sanders is in a very delicate and wonkish position that may be difficult to get across to voters.

canada's liberal party had this problem in the 1987 election - it took a complex position on nafta, and then couldn't get voters to understand it. in the end, they got squeezed between the party that was clearly for it (the conservatives) and the party that was clearly against it (the ndp).

but, is this a ballot issue in 2019?

if you were thirty years old in 1987 and lost your job in the 90s, you'd be nearing retirement at this point.

we're coming up on a point of generational overturn on this; this might be our last chance on it.

but, simply on it's face?

he's 77 years old.

he's been working his whole life.

he should have a comfortable nest egg.

if you look at just his salary since 1990, 29 years ago, i'm sure it's at least two million dollars, after taxes.

he currently makes $174,000/yr. that number has certainly gone up since 1990, but he's also had investments, and there's also been inflation. if we take a naive - and no doubt wrong - calculation, 29*174,000 = $5,046,000. so, that's over five million dollars. all you have to do is cut that in half to account for taxes and overestimates to get to two and half million dollars.

which brings up another point that i think is more valid - should he be accepting social security payments? i think that's a more valid criticism than merely pointing at his net wealth.

according to 2016 numbers, a net worth of $2.5 million is at the 95th percentile, which means you're almost in the top 5%. these are united states numbers.

but there has been some inflation since, so it's going to be somewhere between the top 5% and 10% of americans.

i don't think that's unreasonable for a serious presidential candidate, but i might wonder if it hurts his fundraising.

i mean, his net worth is probably less than jill stein's.

i've been waiting to see how this thing about bernie's net worth plays out, because i wanted to see what angle the media was going to use with it.

personally, i never thought that bernie sanders was a poor person. he's been in congress for a long time, and i'm aware that it's a relatively high-paying job. so, anybody feigning shock is either being naive or dishonest. further, i knew that he's written books in the past, and doesn't seem to have had difficulty getting them published. if anything, for a man of his age and experience, a net worth of $2.5 million seems a little bit paltry. where's the rest of it? we've had a lot of inflation since the nineteenth century; it's arguably in the realm of' 'upper middle class'. this is maybe top 10%, but certainly not 1%. the clintons are worth 50x that.

that said, my view on the topic is that it is irrelevant, anyways, as net wealth is not a policy position. but, that leads me to wonder why anybody would take the dissenting view - why would people think it's important? and, the answer has to do with identity politics, which makes it easy to see why the media is pushing it.

according to the media, people just vote for whomever is most like them; policies don't matter, it's just all identity. it would follow that if bernie is a millionaire (whether it's a surprise or not), then the poor white voters that he attracts to his base would no longer identify with him. they then deduce they can take him down this way.

but, we're supposed to be trying to win the election by swinging trump voters. so, there's clearly some blurry thinking, there.

i wonder how much of it is lingering bitterness amongst former clinton supporters, who think she lost because she was "out of touch" and "elite". but, again, there's not a lot of clear thinking here, as she lost to somebody who is more out of touch and more elite than she is.

bernie is getting baited on it, and it looks like he's biting. he needs the discipline not to get goaded. while i don't expect that most of his voters thought he was poor, he does run the risk of making awkward comments if he allows himself to be baited.

i think it's only an issue if he misplays it; there's no reason for people to care about it, per se.

so, there's some reviews up at the dtk site, to start.

whatever ridiculous narrative that the press wants to spin, i think it's fairly obvious that assange was being fed information by the cia and manipulated as a useful idiot.

i'm sure we're going to see a collapse in the rule of law around this, and there's a good place for principled lawyerly critique, here. but, it's really better for everybody that he's done, and i'm not going to dwell much upon it.

here's an americanism that omar's "different cultural experience" may not have had her veil pierced with, yet.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.

i'm done.

#ignoreilhan. 

there needs to be a collective effort to stop giving her any kind of media time, to just completely cut her off.

so, this space is now ilhan free - i will not mention her again. ever. she no longer exists.

#ignoreilhan.

the democrats are really making a terrible tactical mistake by continuing to defend ilhan omar. this is a woman that clearly has a startlingly low level of intelligence, and is never going to be anything more than a liability. they need to cut her loose and throw her under the bus.

i neither want to stand with her, nor do i think that ripping her apart (again) is a useful expenditure of my time.

her fifteen minutes are up. i'm tired of hearing about her, and wish she'd just shut up and go away.

just a note on the language and labels, and this is one of the things i have to repost every so often because people forget, or it never sunk in. there's so many terms that are synonymous on the left.

if you look up, you can see where i am in the political compass, which is but one test, but nonetheless provides a physical co-ordinate. this is where i exist in space. and, what are the correct adjectives?

to begin with, i thoroughly reject the term progressive. i almost never use it, and when i do it's in a limited context, or out of laziness or irony. that is one hint at detecting my own irony, which is sometimes pretty thick. but, if you look at the issues, i don't align well with progressivism: i am not in favour of christian temperance, i reject sterilization and eugenics, i oppose the premise of retributive justice, i reject manifest destiny and the monroe doctrine and i don't think that encouraging competition throughout antitrust laws is the proper role of the federal government. i certainly have some kind of overlap with progressives, but i also have some kind of overlap with conservatives, and i might suggest these labels are in truth closer to each other in space-time than i am to either one of them.

i prefer the term liberal, but only in the historical sense, and in a contemporary way that is almost directly contrary to the way it is so often used today. marx, paine, bakunin, proudhon - these people would have all identified as liberals in their time, even if most contemporary self-identified liberals would refuse to identify with them, at this time. if i use this term, and i will, it is usually in reference to some sweeping idea, or some specific aspect of history.

i would really prefer the term socialist, but i do not use the same adverb that you see so often today. democracy has always been a blurry idea, in the sense that it is really so difficult to define the authority of a democratic structure to enforce it's will on those of others. in context, this is extremely important.

i'd rather use the adverb libertarian than democratic. it's a subtle difference in some ways, but it flips the situation over on it's head; it's a difference between positive and negative freedom, in a sense. the democratic socialist is still a statist and hence defers to the state as a tool of authority to impose it's will on others; democracy, in context, means justifying that use of force by pointing to the democratic will as legitimizing. the libertarian socialist sees some approximation of statism, in the form of councils and collectives, as existing for the purpose of helping the individual achieve it's own goals, without any bias or guidance. so, the democratic socialist is into negative freedom, whereas the libertarian socialist is into positive freedom.

and, a libertarian socialist is also called an anarchist.

if we can get the thing straight once and for all, please.

the rockstar vodkas that i would normally buy are about $3.55 cdn. fwiw, these drinks do not contain hundreds of milligrams of caffeine, nor do they contain taurine or most of the other things you associate with energy drinks. they do contain ginseng, as well as 15 mg of guarana and a measly 30 mg of caffeine, per 330 mg can, although i would buy them in 473 ml cans in ontario. they're 7% alcohol.

i can source that:
https://www.inspq.qc.ca/pdf/publications/1669_BoissonsEnergisantes.pdf

that's actually more comparable to a can of pop like mountain dew (52 mg/355 ml) or pepsi max (69 mg / 355 ml) than it is to an energy drink. so, it's really just a prepackaged mixed drink.

so, as stated, i have purchased a 750 ml bottle of cherry-infused 40 proof vodka, instead, for $27.20. i have also purchased two 2L bottles of mountain dew for $2 each. i will now proceed to mix my own drinks, however messy that may be.

have i saved any money?

a "drink" of vodka in canada is 43 ml of 40 proof vodka. while i understand enough chemistry to know why this is (conceptually) wrong, i'm going to carry through with the calculation, anyways - (43/5)*2 + 43 ~ 60. so, i will need to put approximately 60 ml of vodka in my mountain dew.

(60/750 = .08)*27.20 = $2.18. i should get around 12 drinks out of the bottle.

(473 - 60 = 413)/1000 = .413. so, the mountain dew will cost $0.41.

and, $2.18 + $0.41 = $2.59.

i've saved enough to buy a beer from doug ford.

so, i guess i should thank the government for saving me some money, even if it hasn't had any effect on my health.

but, i will reiterate my preference for the prepackaged drink, as it is far more convenient.