i'll do an installment of ironic campaign songs a little later, once the field has narrowed, but this has to be for warren:

just an update: this rebuild has been brutal.

i thought it would be quick because i'd just be pasting html files in and cross-referencing, but this has demonstrated itself to be time consuming.

the politics document will be between 400 and 450 pages, and i hope to finish the build in the next few hours. but, i'm not going to do all of the clean-up or upload it, yet, because i want to get the legal stuff done first.

november might not be much different, as i will still have a lot of mirroring to do.

just a reminder.

====

oct 26, 2013

i was looking for something like this a few months ago. nice to see it appear.

they did a good job pulling together sources and making it readable, but it's a little naive in how it talks about the elite using the illuminati to "explain revolt", as though they were confused by the masses of starving people trying to kill them and didn't understand why. maybe, though, they're trying to avoid replacing a conspiracy with another.

the illuminati conspiracy was created by the catholic church as a means of scaring the peasants away from enlightenment revolutionary activity. masons were cast as the legions of satan. the illuminati was likewise a satanic plot. did the peasants want to go to hell? if not, they'd better stay away from those nogoodnik enlightenment revolutionaries...

over time, the tactics were adopted by "protestant" preachers in the united states for the same reasons and to protect the same interests, except the satanists became communists. hence, the new world order conspiracy.

so, it's not just a naive attempt to understand the world by primitive european aristocrats; it's a very carefully worked out means of mind control.

ironically.

https://overthrowingilluminati.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/how-to-overthrow-the-illuminati_read.pdf

i'm not advertising for the atkins diet. i eat very little meat, myself; i recommend a balanced diet.

there are many scientists working in the field to try and promote more sustainable practices across the field of agriculture - both for livestock and for crops.

my intent is to convince you that blaming meat consumption is a red herring.

the problem is oil, not cows.

https://news.berkeley.edu/2012/04/02/fertilizer-use-responsible-for-increase-in-nitrous-oxide-in-atmosphere/

i don't know anything about the sunrise movement. i'm too old for student movements, at this point.

and, i don't know if the stooge they got on cnn actually had anything to do with it, or was just an actor on tv.

but, i will tell you very authoritatively that the question posed to klobuchar was an oil industry talking point designed to distract attention away from fossil fuel companies and towards farmers in the midwest, who are an easy target, but are not a substantive part of the problem.

 if you need it stated to you this way, so be it.

 https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm

those are the facts.

i'm sorry.

those local epa numbers are, again:

transportation: 26-30%
all agriculture, including livestock: 9-12%
livestock: 3-5%

in the united states, meat is less carbon intensive than grains.

the reason is the pesticides.

i know it seems like it sometimes, but the president of the united states isn't actually the emperor of the world.

nor are consumption patterns in india or china relevant, in context.

it's the local epa numbers that are relevant.

well, do you import beef from the other side of the world?

chances are pretty high that it's from the state or province you live in, unless you're eating at some bourgeois restaurant.

so, global production from agriculture isn't relevant to your consumption patterns. what's relevant is your local transportation footprint.

again: this isn't accidental. this is propaganda. those "audience questions" sounded like lobbyist talking points. they were the same points i've heard in online debates by bots and trolls. the whole thing was clearly set up.

the numbers i previously cited were from the epa reported cited in this article.

https://theconversation.com/yes-eating-meat-affects-the-environment-but-cows-are-not-killing-the-climate-94968

well, which endorsements matter?

the reason i want to give sanders the edge here - even over biden - is that he seems to be doing better with things like unions. does anybody care who their congress person endorses, really? i think people care more about endorsements from community newspapers, unions, church leaders, etc.

and, i actually expect that sanders will run the table on all of this stuff, which is why he's the more serious candidate, over warren.

warren, on the other hand, will do better with the actual party people, but it's not clear if those types of endorsements will help or hinder her. i've pointed out before that i think her polling numbers are being exaggerated by "friendly" sampling decisions, but that's a hunch.

but, i live in detroit, too. and, i'm going to tell you a secret: bernie is still the most popular candidate downtown, which is pretty black. the watch parties at the downtown bars are all sanders watch parties. but, i'm seeing watch parties in ferndale and grosse pointe pop up, wealthier white suburbs, and they are increasingly warren watch parties.

nobody seems to care much about biden.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-it-really-a-three-candidate-race/

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2015/08/vote-trudeau-for-more-pipelines.html

and, those numbers are misleading, anyways.

they're comparing global numbers, which takes into account the fact that much of the world uses bad farming practices and doesn't drive cars.

i've fact checked this before and this article is more accurate - in the united states, transportation is in the 25-30% range and livestock emissions are in the 3-5% range. the difference is a little smaller in canada, iirc, but the same basic distortion is present.

so, if you're reading this, and you're talking about your own lifestyle choices, you don't want to think these are comparable issues, or that going vegan is much of a real answer. they aren't, and it isn't.

https://www.futurity.org/dont-blame-cows-for-climate-change/

overall?

klobuchar is providing the kind of answers that sounded good fifteen years ago.

now, we need to move faster than that.

and, i'm just being honest.

so, i'm giving cnn twelve pinocchios on this.

it's a distraction.

Environmentally, AMP systems came out in the green, while feedlot emissions were in the red primarily because of feed-based nitrogen emissions from fertilizer.

again: when cattle farming is a problem, it's due to the petrochemical inputs, and not the cattle itself.

it all goes back to the oil in the end, and the need to find ways to leave it in the ground.

and, can we feed cows without oil? well, we did it for 9900 years...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180319120133.htm

you know how cow farmers used to get their own fertilizer back in the day, right?

it's tricky - there's good ways and bad ways, best practices, etc. i'm not going to argue against efficiency.

but, don't let the oil companies pull the wool over your eyes on this - the problem is their product. solely. strictly.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/cows-beef-farming-reverse-climate-change-global-warming-a8202121.html

suppose you have a lake that is fed by a river, and exits into a series of underwater caves, before falling off into a natural reservoir. it's an ancient lake in a stable geological area, so the flow of water is in perfect harmony with itself.

now, let's suppose some asshole humans show up and reroute this other river into the lake, that is the same lake we just talked about, in order to reclaim the land under the other river to build a casino. they just figured that the river would flow into the lake and that would be that.

but, in fact, the second river was much larger, which increased the amount of water flowing into the lake by a great amount, leading to annual flooding once the reservoirs filled up. so, they take the money from the casino and hire a geoengineer to study it.

the geongineer takes a good look at the situation and decides that the lake can take about 90% of the flow rate without flooding. so he needs to find a way to reduce the amount of water flowing into the river by about 10%. he then looks at the two sources and measures their rates, concluding that the original source of the lake is responsible for about 15% of the flow rate and the river that was routed into it by the assholes is responsible for 85%.

he then takes his findings back to the casino owners, who quickly devise a strategy.

"well, why don't we reroute the initial river, then? that way, we can save our casino and prevent the flooding. and, it's a smaller river, so what can they do?"

so, they route the smaller river in a different direction one night, when the inhabitants in the region are sleeping. and, indeed, the flooding stops for a while.

meanwhile, however, the reservoir is slowly filling up. and, when somebody else further upstream decides to reroute the river for their own self-interest, the flooding comes back again.

this is a parable to help you understand what happens when you blame livestock farming for global warming. while it may be true that livestock is responsible for ~15% of emissions, these emissions can be placed into equilibrium. it's this new river that is causing the floods. and, in the long run, it's the new river that needs to be addressed to stop the flooding - even if rerouting the small stream might help for a while.

stop for a second.

agriculture started about 10,000 years ago. the warming started about two hundred years ago. think it through. we had 9800 years of agriculture without devastating climate change, right?

now, let me blow your mind a third time: it is actually thought, now, that we did experience a little bit of warming at the start of the neolithic, but that it's hard to separate from the natural warming that occurred at the end of the last interglacial, and that it ultimately balanced out. farming produces emissions, but it also acts as a sink, right?

if you're still confused, the thing you need to ask yourself is where does the carbon come from. so, long as the carbon is coming from the sky or the soil or living things, it gets recycled. it's when we start pulling it out of the underground reservoirs at industrial rates that it fucks up the balance.

if you're concerned, you're way better off getting an electric car than going vegan.

there are convincing reasons why you should cut down on the amount of meat you eat. i'd like to see the meat economy shift to insects, myself. but, reducing your carbon footprint really isn't one of them.

what the newspapers will tell you is that agriculture produces around 15% of the carbon that goes into the atmosphere, which is true. but, what they forget to tell you is that this is naturally occurring carbon, not new carbon.

what?

carbon, of course, is a naturally occurring substance in the environment. it's at the centre of every living organism around you.

and, there's something called a carbon cycle that describes how carbon recycles through the ecosystem. i suppose we get hit by meteorites once in a while, but the net amount of carbon in this system is roughly constant.

climate change is about the amount of carbon that we're introducing into the carbon cycle, and the only source of this introduced carbon is from fossil fuels, where it's been trapped in the ground, for millions or billions of years.

now, as mentioned, there are net inputs when it comes to meat production. the pesticides used to grow the grain are very carbon intensive, and opening up new grazing lands means cutting down trees. there's also transport issues, as well as a number of other things i'm sure i'm forgetting. but, in the abstract ideal of cattle roaming free on naturally occurring grassland, on the edge of an existing forest, there's no net increase of carbon at play.

so, why are they pushing this so hard?

because they think that if they can convert us all into vegans, they can salvage their business model. that is, the idea is to shift the blame, and then shift the source. they essentially think they can continue to emit new carbon, so long as they remove carbon from the existing cycle. get it?

but, it's a false solution, anyways, because even if we did manage to eliminate carbon being recycled by agriculture, your cars are going to eventually replace it all.

stated simply: it's oil industry propaganda. and, it's wide spread. and, people you like will repeat it. but, it's wrong.

i want to make a general comment, though, because we're seeing a trend show up in blaming the issue on cattle farming. i ignored it at first, but it's starting to become a theme, and that's disturbing, because it's not based on any actual science.

it is true that farming is a substantive contributor to global warming, but the idea that it's the dominant factor (and specifically that cows are the dominant factor) is simply wrong and, i believe, ultimately sourced from a dubious hollywood film that took copious amounts of money from the fossil fuel industry. when you hear people talk like this, red flags should go off in your mind. this is pseudo-science, but it's worse than that - it's meant to shift the blame from transnational industry to small farmers that can't really defend themselves.

the host at one point even suggested that the problem would be solved if the whole world went vegan, which is so horrifically wrong as to demand a retraction.

raising cattle is, in theory, actually carbon neutral. why is that? because the carbon that the cattle release into the environment came from the environment in the first place. cows don't create carbon, they use carbon and recycle it. the reason that farming is a substantive contributor is not due to cattle, but due to the use of oil-based pesticides for vegetables, as well as the habit of land-clearing to make room for them.

so, no, you don't have to give up burgers and cheese to solve the problem. nor is giving up burgers and cheese from a state like wisconsin going to make any substantive difference. factory farming is not a significant net contributor. but, soy and corn are.

if you're solely concerned about carbon emissions, your soy burger is worse.

i'm sorry if i burst your bubble of ignorance, but you need to stop watching movies. read books, instead.

i suppose it's not surprising to see this on cnn. i mean, the party itself refused it. so, why wouldn't exxon step in, right?

but understand it for what it is. and, now that the tone is set, i'll do my best to deconstruct the situation further as it happens.

we need to go after industry, not farmers.

he should sue her for copyright infringement.

so, amy klobuchar wants us to dispel with the notion that climate change isn't happening right now.

i guess she's going for those few holdout marco rubio democrats.

i pretty much tuned out, right there.

to be clear: the intent behind this kind of an attack would not be to try and convince people that warren is a racist, although that would be a bonus. rather, the intent would be to force her to adjust. and, then, once you get lots of media images of warren shaking hands with black and brown people with weird clothes and stuff - and the sanders campaign may have to help disseminate those - you can snap this white voting bloc out of the haze it's in.

so, if you can convince black voters that warren is a racist, that's a bonus.

but, what bernie's campaign really needs to do is convince white voters that she's not a racist.

then, they can get back to looking at policy - and she'll lose when you put the issues on the table, straight up.

is warren's campaign not kind of....white?

so, how can bernie go after warren?

well, the disproportionate and skewed media coverage is a potentially insurmountable problem.

but, let's start with this: where's the diversity in warren's campaign?

and, i'll say this again: i don't think the law is unconstitutional.

i just think they need to use the right arguments.

it was always a left-wing policy. leftists are supposed to believe in state secularism; conservatives are supposed to believe in religious freedom. liberals take a middle approach.

we just live in an era where nobody knows their right from left anymore.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/secularism-law-opinion-jean-francis-lisee-1.5274015

"she's splitting the vote"
"no, he's splitting the vote."
"no.."

listen.

she's splitting the vote.

so, should sanders drop out and give it to warren, then?

not if you want universal healthcare, he shouldn't.

in order to win, sanders has to have an outright majority going in. he can't give the party any opportunity to overturn the results, because they will, if they can.

and, in order to do that, he had to block warren at the start. he had to stop her from gaining any traction at all.

but, he's run an aimless campaign that allowed the media to prop her up, while he campaigned in areas he can't actually win in, and chased demographics that are either out of his reach or too marginal to really matter. and, she's managed to undercut him through his own incompetence.

she still can't win so long as biden is there. but, she can - and will - run interference long enough to give it to biden.

right now - and it's early. things will change. - it seems clear enough that biden will sweep the south, while warren and sanders split the north and west. warren still doesn't have a path, but splitting the delegates is enough to keep bernie out of it, because once you get to the convention, they won't support him.

so, you may even end up in a scenario where sanders has more delegates than warren going into the convention. but, they'll pick warren, anyways.

and, warren will lose to trump.

again: the relevance of the situation is becoming questionable.

it could very well be too late.

if he thinks that standing up for muslims will win him votes, then he's wrong.

in fact, if he lets the media frame it the wrong way, which they will if he lets them, it could cost him the nomination.

....and sikhs aren't even that unpopular, here.

it's certainly not comparable to how america interprets islam, anyways.

i mean, i can publish some more data about how the ndp is doing under jagmeet singh, if you want me to?

no, what i'm drawing attention to is a racist media.

listen: you get what i'm saying or you don't, i'm not going to push the point, and i largely think it's too late. i don't think this requires a lot of explanation, or takes a lot of thought to work out, even if you need somebody to point it out.

but, let's be careful about muslim voter participation. it's easy to look at data and say "70% of muslims voted democrat", and think that's a rising group. but, two points. first, 70% of "muslims" is not the same thing as 70% of muslims. and, second, it's misleading if you take into account that only 5% of muslims voted.

(it should be obvious that i'm just making numbers up, but i'm aware of the trend)

in fact, it doesn't take a lot of thought to realize that those 5% are outliers, comparable to the children of evangelicals that swing left in revolt of their parents. and, to be clear: i'm in solidarity with those voters. but, they're "muslims". they're not muslims. and, there's never going to be a whole lot of them.

some outreach towards muslims is of course a good idea, as is outreach towards any other group. you want as many votes as you can get, obviously. but, when you're dealing with an unpopular group and a hostile media that's keen on framing you negatively, you need to be careful about cost benefit analyses. and, while he might not like to hear it, bernie needs to be careful with this.

as it is, i don't think that linda sarsour's endorsement has much to do with her being a muslim. she doesn't seem to be a spokesperson for the muslim community, but rather an activist in a youth movement that i'm too old to be aware of. ok. but, that's not how the media is covering it, and not how most people are going to interact with it.

i'm just saying that he needs to be mindful of the realities of what the media is actually doing, and that he needs to be realistic about the potential benefits of outreach to this specific group.

but, i don't know who she is.

i have no comment on the endorsement.

one of the frames that the media is pushing right now is to associate sanders with islam.

that's obvious.

and, if he walks right into it like a self-righteous liberal idiot, it will hurt him.

and, no, muslims are not a key swing group.

they mostly don't vote at all, and if they were going to, they would align with evangelicals.

i don't know who linda sarsour is, but the sanders campaign needs to be mindful of the media's apparent insistence on projecting sanders as a pro-muslim candidate.

that's not going to help him win votes in any important demographic - not suburban women, not southern blacks, not midwestern whites. muslims are deeply unpopular amongst pretty much every key swing group.

which is, of course, why they're doing it.

again: i've never heard of her before. i have no analysis or comment, other than to be cautious about the optics, because they're not positive.

and, i'm sorry if you're a muslim and find that offensive, but, like, get an analysis.

the increasing concentrations of carbon in our atmosphere and oceans are a real thing, and they will have measurable consequences in the future. but, this is only one aspect in a complicated system, and for much of the planet, it's not even the dominant aspect. in the higher temperate latitudes of the northern hemisphere, it's actually a minor concern in understanding the weather for most of the year.

and, it won't keep us warm if the sun shuts itself off - not any more than a lighter will keep you warm in the dead of winter.

for better or worse, it seems as though we're currently emerging from a weak solar period, and, within the next couple of years, should expect the higher temperate latitudes to stop bucking the global trend.

for right now, expect a cold winter.

i know you want to see the solar system as something that's fixed and "natural". inalterable. many of the early greeks liked this concept of the universe that they understood. and, it's hobbesian, in some way. but, it's just another type of naturalistic fallacy.

the "natural state" of the universe is one where chaos and randomness is dominant, and small variations in only vaguely understood distant forces could very well wipe us right the fuck out.

we are a small planet suspended in an unimaginably large ocean of unimaginably powerful energy, and we get thrown around by the universe at will, even as we remain anchored in place by our sun - which is itself experiencing massive turbulence.

if you want to understand what is happening in front of you, you need to begin by understanding how small you are.

milankovitch theory is an example of a messy theory, which is the case for most modern theories. what that means is that you can't find nice equations that govern the behaviour of the earth over any period, and you even need to calculate for error and compensate for uncertainty.

so, it's true that the milankovitch theory has proven lacking in key contexts, but the correct takeaway is that the system is proving more complex than we thought it was, and we've yet to uncover all of the complexity. it would be naive to suggest that there's any other way to uncover this besides slowly waiting for the data to come in via increased observation of the relevant celestial mechanics. and, it could take quite a while to work it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

you need to take a course in the topic and get back to me on it.

but, listen: if you're arguing against the well understood correlation between solar cycles and weather in the northern hemisphere, something we've understood for centuries, then you're an ignorant moron and not worth bothering with.

High-pressure areas are normally caused by a phenomenon called subsidence, meaning that as the air in the high cools it becomes denser and moves toward the ground. Pressure increases here because more air fills the space left from the low. Subsidence also evaporates most of the atmosphere's water vapor, so high-pressure systems are usually associated with clear skies and calm weather.

in the northern hemisphere, we experience rapid atmospheric cooling starting around the beginning of september as a consequence of the earth's tilt as it orbits the sun in a wobbly and imprecise manner, which is why we get two things near the end of the year:

1) a lot of high-pressure systems.
2) winter.

further, when you see high-pressure systems assert themselves earlier in the year, or linger later into the spring, the reason this is happening is that the sun isn't warming the atmosphere up enough, or even because the amount of solar energy hitting the earth on the tilt is decreasing in counter-intuitive ways. this is complicated, because it is non-linear. physicists call this an n-body problem, because you calculate it using the sum of the gravity exerted on the earth by the n bodies around it. there is no general solution to the n-body problem, and we are better off trying to measure this directly than solving it using numerical methods. the dynamic nature of the sun further contributes to the complexity in this system. climate scientists would refer to the fluctuations caused by the n-body problem, together with the fluctuations in the solar field, as the mechanics comprising the milankovitch theory.

just in case people don't understand: high pressure atmospheric systems in the northern hemisphere are caused by decreases in energy in the upper levels of the atmosphere, which are driven by variations in sunlight.

so, when you hear a weather forecaster talk about a "high pressure system moving in", you should understand that the primary driver of that weather phenomenon is, in fact, solar insolation.

and, that is basic science.