"volunteer work" is, in most cases, merely reducible to "slave labour".

"volunteer work" is a contradiction in terms.

if somebody is truly volunteering, they are not working; if somebody is working, they should be paid subject to existing labour regulations, and those labour regulations should be viciously enforced at the end of a shotgun.

and, don't let them try to whitewash over the issue by claiming that this labour is for "volunteer work", either. that's just some orwellian newspeak; labour is labour, and it should always be compensated for.

did i break the we corporation scandal?

well, did i break snc-lavelin?

listen: i don't care about who in the corporation did favours for who on behalf of whatever member of the governing clique. we live in a system called capitalism, and everything i've seen described about the situation is just a function of the way that this economic system functions - when you get elected, you do favours for your friends. i'm in favour of abolishing the entire society from the bottom up, it is true, but some crony capitalism at a corporate charity is hardly the thing that's going to get me out there, ripping up parliament.

rather, my concern is about the class war ramifications of the government coming in and offering students work at two-thirds of the minimum wage. the prime minister should resign immediately, but due to his skirting of minimum wage laws and how it affects the labour force in this sector, and not do to some funny accounting that, ultimately, nobody actually cares about.

and, the corollary of that position is that the government owes students a substantive work program at a living wage, as well.

listen.

i don't exactly want to claim the ideas in john bolton's book are false. how the fuck would i know?

but, this is john bolton - a man who is a professional liar, and appears to have been thrown out of the white house for trying to lie his way into starting another war.

so, you need to consider the source, here, before you jump to too many conclusions.

i don't know. i really don't. but, i'd probably be more likely to trust the word of a small, hyperactive child than the word of john bolton, who has about as much credibility as a walrus denying getting into the fish pen.

a walrus would probably sound like scooby doo.

"i didn't eat the fish."

sure you didn't....

it's really a measure of the sad decline of any kind of liberal-left, though, when the contemporary fake left is built on the twin pillars of anti-russian conspiracy theories and tell-alls by disgusting neo-cons that have the gall to call other people liars.

this is rock bottom, for the american left. it really is.

what does it mean to say that herd immunity will save us from the pandemic? as though it is some kind of "strategy" to get 70% of the population sick to prevent, what? 70% of the population from getting sick? what? this is an absurd narrative, built on a strawman that nobody ever presented.

so, again: we don't have a choice to choose herd immunity as a way out of anything. it's not a way out. rather, suggesting that public policy be based around the inevitability of herd immunity is coming to terms with accepting the reality that there isn't a way out, that this mess doesn't end until we all get the damn virus, and it just more or less burns itself out. we're then left with ways to try to shape the path to this endpoint, rather than deny it's inevitability.

so, if you want to talk about a strategy, that strategy would be trying to prevent the most vulnerable of people from getting the virus, as it inevitably spreads. but, that strategy does not involve the utilization of herd immunity as something that can be deployed, but rather seeks to adjust to it as reality as it presents itself. it would follow that restrictions on the vulnerable could lessen once the population reaches a substantive level of immunity. it's meant as an algorithm for least mortality.

and, if you realize that the algorithm for least mortality necessarily requires sheltering a substantive number of the population, it makes sense to actually bring in policies that would speed up the process.

but, this isn't a decision that we can make, and to suggest that reaching some place of herd immunity will stop an outbreak is asinine; herd immunity is the consequence of the outbreak, and a place we can get to quickly or slowly. that's the policy decisions...

now, what we've learned is that an immunity level of over 20% would appear to be enough to substantively slow the spread of the virus, even if we're only starting just right now to see very high levels of immunity in the hardest hit areas, like new york city.

now, that doesn't mean that every area that got hit hard will develop widespread immunity. it seems to be a developing sad reality that the vectors of spread in some regions were restricted almost entirely to medical facilities; that is, it doesn't seem like there was much spread outside of the actual hospitals, in some regions. that may mean that these regions are still vulnerable to the virus and may see another round of it, but it just brings up the point - this won't end until we get immunity up, one way or the other.

there have been some studies that suggest that asymptomatic carriers may not develop substantive antibodies. but, understand that what this is essentially saying is that the body wiped it out with something else - like t-cells - before the immune system could produce a response. so, it may be the case that people that catch the virus and eliminate it before getting sick don't produce antibodies for it, but that's not a reason to overturn the field of immunology and declare this virus to be unlike any other that we've ever seen. if the virus makes you sick, you will develop immunity to it, even if some people may be able to clear it without invoking an immune response...because it's so weak, in fact.

or, at least, you'd better hope that's true, or you're never going to get a vaccine to work.

all of these things may, indeed, slow down the process of developing mass immunity to this virus, but it doesn't change the inevitable outcome - we will be dealing with this in one way or another until we get to mass immunity, whether we like it or not.

and, it may change in the process, too, forcing us to start all over again. repeatedly...

"mom, why isn't there a vaccine for the common cold?"

i'm distracted.

i'm going to try to refocus, now...

what kind of a demographic effect is this virus having on the united states, in terms of who it is removing from the voter pool?

it seems to have killed off a lot of older new yorkers, most of whom were probably democrats. new york's voting outcomes seem unlikely to be affected much. but, if this case spike in the deep south leads to a lot of deaths amongst older republicans in states like florida and georgia and arizona, it could accelerate some of the demographic trends that democratic strategists have been pointing to for some time now, and i keep claiming are too far down the road to seriously consider.

in georgia, for example, the republicans won in 2016 by 250,000 votes. now, i think democrats have been hoping that the demographic trends in the region are on their side, and that the 2020 election will be a lot closer than that - maybe down to the 50,000 vote tally. to be clear, i think everybody still expects that donald trump is favoured in georgia, it's just that the democrats might be in a good position to give him a good run in 2020 - and could maybe more realistically take the state in 2024 or 2028.

so, if trump's voting pool decreases by upwards of 20,000 people by the time the election happens (an admittedly morbid projection, given that the number of deaths in georgia is currently around 3000, but the number of cases is skyrocketing...), it could give biden a razor thin win, if he's extremely lucky.

in florida, which is seeing very high case loads, the spread was less than 120,000 votes. can trump afford to lose 20-30,000 retiree votes in florida? 

as mentioned, these are demographic changes that were occurring, anyways. it's frustrating that the face of generational renewal in the united states after covid-19 may end up being joe biden, but what we see could end up shaped by it in a real way.

and, that opens up the next question, and it's becoming a more serious question - what happens if biden and/or trump actually catch this virus? it'd be likely to make either of them extremely sick, at least. 

i'm sorry, joe, but it would be a fitting way for the election to turn.

and, if the full effects of this change in the voting pool are not felt in the 2020 presidential election, or in 2020 congressional elections, they will be felt in the 2022 congressional elections; a substantial increase in the die-off rate of the older generation will shift a lot of urban races in republican states, and very quickly.

i'm not going to do a point by point so much as present a general perception of each candidate. this is the third of three debates, at this point.

https://www.facebook.com/GreenPartyofManitoba/videos/vb.43307539939/959665857837160/?type=2&theater

i'm going to ignore dylan percival-maxwell and courtney howard because one has been disqualified and the other doesn't show up. that leaves 8 candidates. which i'm going to order here in what i consider to be a ranked order.

candidates i might consider voting for:

1) glen murray. i stated previously that glen is the obvious front-runner on paper, and while he has certainly made that point obvious both in terms of his demonstration of wonkery and his general demeanour, he's also appeared frustrated at the kind of hokiness of the whole thing. he's giving off the impression that he thinks these are a bunch of amateurs, and he needs to be careful to avoid being arrogant; on the other hand, a little bit of critical self-analysis is also useful, and if the impression i'm getting is that he thinks this seems poorly run, he's probably right. he just ranted over his rebuttal time twice, and while that might be interpreted by some as not following the rules, what it really does is (accidentally, perhaps) succeed in drawing attention to the futility of the format. the weird thing is that, in addition to being the candidate that is most experienced and most connected, he's actually well to the left of most of the other candidates, even while demonstrating what might be called a set of more reasonable filters than much of the rest of the field. that is, there were certain issues that are currently associated with the contemporary non-populist left that murray had the political intuition to entirely avoid, and almost everybody else just delved into immediately, without any caveats. so, i'm going to state this as clearly as i can: murray is obviously the most qualified candidate here, by a long shot. that doesn't mean he's going to win, but it does mean that how well he does should be gauged as a measure of how serious the party is. it's going to be hard for me to take them seriously, moving forward, if they pick more or less anybody else over murray.

2) dimitri lascaris. i was a little skeptical, but i knew dimitri was well-spoken, at least. he has a strong camera presence, which is increasingly important. his tone of voice sometimes lapsed to a newscaster voice, which he needs to be cognizant of. i wouldn't claim i have a high total level of agreement with dimitri in terms of precise policy views, but he seems to operate in the same ideological space that i do, and in a weak field, that's something. but, this should be read less as an endorsement of lascaris and more as a level of disappointment in the rest of the field.

3) judy green - she comes off as a party-line rule pusher. we would hate each other, as she seems very strict and ordered, and i'm exactly the opposite of that. but, if she implements the platform word for word, as best she can, she's probably as close to the most base definition of an acceptable candidate as is possible.

candidates that i'm not sure if i'd vote for yet or not:

4) amita kuttner - while she initially came off as somewhat of a space cadet, listening to her talk a little more has uncovered that it's more that she's not the best at communicating. i think that she's trying to articulate a vision of a society run from the top down by perfectly trained bureaucrats, who use their superior expertise and knowledge to save the world. in a sense, it's almost disappointing in it's caricature of the scientist that thinks the nerds will save the world (spoiler alert: they won't). she'd be acting at cross-purposes, then, to a leftist like lascaris, who wants to build a populist movement, and maybe more in conjunction with a technocrat like murray. but, the idea i'm getting across is that she seems to believe that the issue will resolve itself as soon as you get the right system of authority in place. this is worryingly misguided, and she might even deny it, but i can see through it. the question is where she ends up coming down on specific issues, and if this kind of misguided authoritarianism ends up being an asset for a party that seeks to be the country's social conscience, or not. that is, i might put that issue aside if i feel she's a legitimate vote of conscience against a government that needs one, even if i think it's misguided. but, i'd rather support a candidate that is more attached to building a bottom up process than a top down one, and i'm going to have fundamental disagreements with her worldview as a result of that.

candidates that i would never vote for:

5) miriam beddard - she comes off as an arrogant pseudo-intellectual that couldn't organize her way out of a toilet papering.

6) andrew west. andrew is clearly a fiscal conservative from a rural region, and while we know that the greens have these kinds of supporters (mike schreiner is one.), how well he does is going to be an interesting measure of where the green membership actually stands. they've seen an influx in membership, recently, and many of the candidates want to lean left, along with the party itself. where does that leave somebody like andrew west in the future of the green movement? i can tell you that if they pick him, i'll never even consider voting green, ever again, as it would indicate that the minds of the feet on the ground are in actuality too far way from me to treat as temporary allies.

7) david mercer. no right-wing liberals. a priori.

8) anamie paul - her literal flaunting of godwin's law means she automatically loses. that's the rules of the internet, kids. sorry.