i need to get up and eat some fruit.
Saturday, December 21, 2024
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
are the americans considering invading canada?
we're bigger than they are.
it would serve no purpose and give the russians an excuse to invade canada at the same time. we don't want a canadian molotov-ribbentrop.
there's a section in their constitution about this. it's not crazy; they always intended to, but they never did.
what if they just invaded ontario, quebec, alberta and bc and said "fuck the rest, let 'em sleep with the meese"?
well, they'd better start patrolling the north, but i don't think canadians would tolerate it, and they'd have to deal with canadian militias forever.
it's a better idea to just try to be nice to us, which is why every president for decades has done that.
it is clear that chrystia freeland wants to run for prime minister and is trying to build support in the party.
this woman is extraordinarily unpopular and has no chance whatsoever of winning an election.
i would like to call on her to resign her seat and move on. she had no qualifications whatsoever, and is the perfect example of an affirmative action hire that had no business in the job she was in. her protector has abandoned her. game over.
i'm concerned that she's going to take the party down with her. trudeau's in trouble, but he will likely retain core support; if they run freeland, the base walks and it's going to be a bloodbath.
to be clear: freeland has no support in the core of the liberal voting base. that's a big difference when the party is collapsing. somebody like freeland could potentially coast to an election win if the party is popular, but when the party is not popular, she threatens to alienate the base.
maybe she can write an essay about her experiences and have it published in the globe and mail.
i'm building a genesis mega-discography on the other site, because it came up in the 'g' part of the listening sequence, and i was perturbed that i had holes in my genesis cd collection. i really wanted to listen to it all from the start to the end, and i got carried away. so, genesis now his eight core members, including anthony phillips, daryl stuermer (and his work with jean-luc ponty) and chester thompson (and his work with zappa and others). i'm also tracking key records produced by john anthony, david hentschell and hugh padgham. it's going to be a massive list.
like many people my age, i have an admiration for phil collins due to it being something that was a part of my childhood. that makes me very not gen x, which is unusual; i am usually overwhelmingly gen x, but gen x hated phil collins, and my interaction with phil collins records is very millenial, which is atypical for me, even if my preference is towards what collins did in the 70s and very early 80s rather than his work in the late 80s and early 90s. i of course knew that collins was massively unpopular. however, i started to realize some time in the early '10s that my phil collins posts on social media (which were always posted with a disclaimer, like a trigger warning - WARNING - PHIL COLLINS POST) were met more with a tolerant level of astonished giggliness rather than legitimate revile, as though i was sharing some kind of dark secret that said something unexpected about me, and was a dirty fetish that they, too, shared. you too, jessica? i never knew. after all, i shouldn't have been a phil collins. i was posting all of this cool, abstract underground music. and then....phil collins?
well, yeah. that's the thing; phil was involved in a lot of the most creative and substantive music of his era. phil wasn't a pin-up boy. phil was a great drummer and a great producer with perfect pitch that converted a series of 60s motown hits into something that was relevant in the 80s. his records sold because he was a very good pop musician, not because he was sexy. it is precisely phil's musical ability that makes him compelling and worth taking note of and that makes him of interest to anybody interested in substantive music of any type. as a music historian of serious music, i'd be making a tremendous mistake by ignoring phil collins.
so, i knew there was a secret cult following, a quiet phil underground that knew.
i was not aware of anything mentioned in this article:
the mega super giant overwhelmingly genesis discography is being worked through and will come up on the np: page on the side within a few more days.
if you're a grocery store ceo or upper executive, i want you to get it through your skull that i don't "substitute" when you don't have an item i want, i go to another store to get it there instead.
this concept of "substitution" that you're aggressively pushing does not exist in real life or in the real life habits of consumers, it is a marketing construction that nobody wants. further, i don't remotely understand what the fuck you're even trying to say when you use ridiculous language like "store loyalty". what the fuck does that mean? that i'm going to overpay for something because i'm "loyal"? what? i think that what you're trying to actually say is that you think i'm fucking retarded.
drop the issue. if you don't have an item in stock, take it off your website. it's false advertising, you should be held accountable for that and somebody is going to do it if you don't stop with the bullshit of selling people something specific and then trying to deliver something else to them by using the bullshit orwellian excuse of "substitution".
Tuesday, December 17, 2024
the details are coming out in syria and it's a little different than the media narrative.
it actually wasn't the turkish-backed terrorist group that seized the capital from the north, it was an american-backed group that came in from the south, and the russians reacted by entirely bailing, apparently to avoid conflict with the us. what's worth noting is that the americans got there first with intent. they wanted to be in control, clearly, and wanted to take that away from the turks, who had to step back.
it follows that while it is the case that the turkish backed group, as an arm of a nato ally, has been installed as a puppet ruler, it is actually american boots on the ground that are in charge of the process. i don't know exact details, but i'd imagine they went for the palaces and the airports.
the israelis also came in from the south and the picture you put together is that the israelis and americans were trying to block the islamists from getting past a certain choke point, which is actually substantively to the north of damascus.
once the russians realized the americans went in, they flew assad to russia and stopped bombing the islamists. that was probably smart.
so, keep this in mind going forward: while it looks like the americans want to put the islamists in charge, which is exactly what happened in afghanistan, this doesn't actually appear to have been a turkish coup, after all. it's an american coup, and there are pentagon spooks sitting in syria right now calling the actual shots.
the russians and remnant syria forces might have been able to push back against turkish backed rebels, but they are not playing games with a direct american takeover. the americans came out of the desert. israel pushed in from the south. turkey came in from the north. the kurds got cut out.
this is consequently starting to look like syria no longer exists, and is going to get cut up, like libya.
Monday, December 16, 2024
that's right.
in ten years, our prime minster, darling of american media, has managed to accomplish one thing, which was to legalize marijuana.
his government has passed no other substantive legislation and has otherwise been indiscernible from the government it replaced, which was reviled by the centre-left by tha time it left office.
the party should now throw freeland out of the party and run somebody against her, preferably somebody who is actually a liberal, in the next election.
she was consistently the single most unpopular choice in opinion polls as a replacement leader, lagging behind everybody else in cabinet, people outside of cabinet and people who had already left the party. the party should distance itself from her as far as possible and carry out a scorched earth policy regarding everything she's ever said, ever done or any file she's ever touched. she's a right-wing loser.
maybe she can get a job working somewhere in the states.
i'm not very excited about carney, but i'm ecstatic to get rid of freeland, who belongs somewhere on the "was wiped out in 1993" wing of the old conservative party and only ended up on the liberal party because trudeau wanted her to run for office.
the media is going to present this as the coronation of mark carney.
in fact, it's the beginning of a process for the centre to reclaim control of the liberal party away from the regressive right, who has become ascendant in the party over the trudeau years. carney will not be a successful politician and will not last long. he could lose a by-election and will have trouble keeping a seat.
how will we remember justin trudeau? like bill clinton.
trudeau was elected to undo and delete harper, as clinton was elected to undo reagan, but has instead been a caretaker prime minister. the history books will talk about the harper-trudeau government as a singular entity, as all that trudeau has done for the last ten years is sit on harper's policy shifts and wait to lose an election, so that the harper government can be extended by a third conservative government. trudeau's singular substantive piece of legislation was to legalize marijuana, which is an ideologically market libertarian right-wing position that appears to be a failed experiment that will be reversed within a few years. i hope that the government, in the end, launches a class action suit against the marijuana industry to try to pay for some of the medical costs we're incurring, such as increases in lung cancer and heart disease rates.
liberals need to rise up and take back control of their party through a lengthy leadership process that is about foundational ideas and the soul of the party, which has literally been sold.
if the party cannot renew itself from the centre-left, it may cease to exist, to the great benefit of the ndp and the great detriment of the actual left.
the liberal party of canada actually seriously intends to run a conservative banker for prime minister.
there's almost no possibility they're going to win the next election. granted. but they do have to concern themselves with their long term reputation.
the party is all in. they're actively recruiting him.
Saturday, December 14, 2024
mr. trump, who appears to (bizarrely) read my blog,
you are right - syria is no friend of america. however, there are a lot of people in syria, in truth the majority of people in syria, that want to tilt towards the west. as an important part of the greek and roman world, syria has historically been a part of european culture and has generally had a western cultural identity. syria was unfortunately conquered by weird arab foreigners with strange customs in the 7th century as a consequence of the collapse of roman power in the region due to a bad round of the plague and a brutal war with iran (which has been there for a really long time), and has slowly been colonized by them over the last 1300 years, even when it has been a province of turkey, which has been the more frequent truth over the last 1000 years. syria fought very hard against the arab conquest and held off for centuries, but the region in general eventually fell to the turks (who were illegal immigrants from china that took over the region by sheer numbers and adopted the arab religion when they did). fundamentally, syrian culture does not tilt towards islam or towards arabism, it leans towards it's roman past. this is also true of lebanon, but it is not true of iraq, which was at times controlled by greeks and romans but has more often been controlled by iran and which is outside of the roman cultural sphere. this fact is a fundamental reason that lebanon and syria have seen so much turmoil since the fall of the turkish empire; it is stuck between a people that tilt westwards, and colonizing forces to it's south and east that are trying to control and assimilate them.
syria is not america's friend right now, but there are people in syria that want to be friends with america. it's important that a competent american administration find these friends of america - and friends of western civilization - in syria. they exist. they are plentiful. they need america to reach out a helping hand to aid them out of a mess, which is going to lead them into societal and civilizational collapse and result in the enforcement of barbarism through sharia law. the syrian people do not want that outcome, in aggregate. most syrians are secular, moderate and not very religious - like europeans are. that is why the foreign powers in the region want to prevent a democracy in syria, which is what assad was trying to create but wasn't able to due to the instability created by the civil war.
mr. trump, i want you to realize this truth and apply it more generally to your second term: a strong america should be looking not just to keep old friends, but also to meet new friends.
Friday, December 13, 2024
this is true:
but, this is also true:
Trudeau lives in quiet luxury while Canadians
but, this is also true:
Trudeau lives in quiet luxury while Canadians
starve to death on the street, and the pharmaceutical-industrial complex
murders people by addicting them to opioids.
in canada, people get their heroin from doctors. that's the actual truth. it's not being imported from china, it's being prescribed by emergency rooms.
i've seen this first hand; i've been pushed opiates in the er room. the nurses act like low level street dealers. it's a horrific racket. i had to physically push my way out of the er room by shoving nurses out of the way while ripping diodes off of me out of legitimate fear of involuntarily being injected with an addictive substance that would functionally end my life as a coherent being.
there have been studies, and the statistics are truly depressing. something like 80% of those street level addicts were prescribed opiates by their doctors, first. it's the health care professionals, themselves, that are responsible for the problem.
then they argue we need to treat addiction like a medical issue.
yeah.
exactly. right?
just say no to your doctors, kids.
Thursday, December 12, 2024
the americans have a huge military force in syria.
these islamic extremists are now attacking the kurds. they appear to be well trained. if they succeed, they're going to release the terrorists the kurds are holding.
this justifies the use of american air power to attack the rebels with, but we're certainly not going to see it from dhimmi joe. i don't think trump is interested, but that means that he won't care if israel does it.
this is an opportunity for israel to develop an ally in the region and they should offer to provide air support for the kurds, as they are fighting off these thugs.
if i were israel, i would be seeking to physically take control of the transit routes out of iraq to prevent the movement of weapons into syria, lebanon and gaza. i would put a focus on taking control of the entry points at the iraq-syria border.
the region is mostly desert, and largely unpopulated, besides with isis barbarians. i think that would be justifiable as self-defense, and largely harmless in terms of inflicting actual damage on anybody worth caring about.
equality means equality.
that means you lose equally when you deserve to lose because you're a weak candidate, that you don't get special treatment or have a space put aside for you due to quotas or affirmative action.
that means you have to fight with the big kids and be held to the same standards and win on the merits and not cry it's not fair when you don't.
the reality is that trudeau's comments are actually extremely sexist, that he has a long history of chauvinistic behaviour and attitudes and that his policies are rooted in the premise of giving a helping hand to the weaker sex out of noblesse oblige, when he's not just cynically trying to get laid (and we might not have to wait too much longer to get the stories about that, if you really want to hear them).
canada has run dozens of women for party leaders of the major parties and dozens for prime minister as leaders of smaller parties and not a single one of them has ever come remotely close to winning, and there's not a single case where it was because they were women.
was that an affront to female progress?
there was a female caretaker pm in canada in 1993 named kim campbell for a few months after the resignation of an extremely unpopular prime minister (brian mulroney) before the end of his mandate, which is not that dissimilar to what just happened in the united states except that biden never actually resigned, and this is what happened:
was that an affront to female progress?
no. she was a member of an unpopular government, she ran a terrible campaign, she made a number of stupid comments and voters threw the bitch out.
there is no use in repeating my analysis of the recent american election. there's a search bar and there's an index tree.
the canadian political class is so astoundingly stupid.
it apparently honestly thinks trump is going to reverse the tariffs if we stop fentanyl from entering the united states. the whole point of the demand being absurd and undefinable is that it can't be met.
the reason trump's demands are impossible to define is because they're intended to be impossible to meet.
then, they talk about how america is our bestest friend, and they couldn't possibly hurt us.
the reality is that the americans want to beat us up and steal our lunch money, and everybody wants to beat trudeau up and steal his lunch money, because he's such a fucking prick. he's putting a giant target on the country by refusing to resign and by continuing to be such an annoying douche bag everywhere he goes.
flying down to florida and trying to talk trump out of it was the dumbest thing he could have possibly done, as it broadcasted immense weakness and told them from the start "you can push me around". so, they are, and they will.
the liberal party needs to immediately shift tactics and present a leader to the world that most people don't want to beat the shit out of, and that leader needs to be able to quickly rebrand the country and then go stand up to donad trump.
canada is not a country of upper class effete loser douche bags, we're a country of lumberjacks that don't care. we have the united states infiltrated via the nhl and via the comedy network. don't mess with us, bitch.
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
trudeau and his party are probably going to finish in third place in the next election and could get wiped out everywhere except quebec.
i don't like the narrative of him being beaten up by elon musk and having his lunch money stolen. that's bad for the country.
the party needs to send him away somewhere.
there were three motions scheduled for today; i wanted a stay for a judicial review of the eviction, and i was responding to a motion to declare the lawyer vexatious, whereas they were trying to quash the application and the review, and prevent me from filing further in court.
i don't think either of us will be declared vexatious. that was what i actually wanted.
the motion to quash wasn't heard because it wasn't confirmed.
the only thing seriously heard was the stay motion, and i don't know whether i got it or not, but it means the appeal is safe, regardless, and that, even if i can't get a stay on the review, the stay on the appeal should allow both the appeal and the review to move forward, in the absence of the quash.
the justice might throw the whole thing out, but i doubt it.
it looks like i'm safe for the winter.
i think.
the justice appeared to acknowledge that evicting me without compensating me would be absurd, which is what the adjudicator didn't do because he was an asshole. i suspect that if the justice does cancel all of this then she will give me sufficient notice and perhaps some amount of compensation, which is in some way sufficient as it will allow me to plan an escape route, which is what i'm not currently able to do. this is what i thought would happen in the first place, that the board would say "there's no serious grounds for eviction, but the tenancy is toxic, so jessica should be given some amount of money to leave, and that'll be that.", and i would have in fact accepted that. that would be improper, technically, because the quash motion was cancelled, but she might claim discretion.
worst case, i think, is that i get ordered out for jan 1st or feb 1st.
but i suspect this is going to a hearing in april, rather than november, and i think she might give me costs, which would help a lot.
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
my cunning plan to extricate myself from this hellhole faces a stress test tomorrow.
they apparently won't let me make my case in the court because they seem to realize i'm going to change the laws. the gatekeeper bitch has gone quiet on me, but i'm not convinced she's disengaged. there was supposed to be a hearing tomorrow, but the lawyer didn't confirm the motion, so it got cancelled. what should happen is that it should be rescheduled, which probably means rescheduled to march or even april.
if that happens, i'll be here until either november occurs or i get moved out via subsidized housing, whichever happens first, and the answer is almost certainly the former. my cunning plan will have worked flawlessly. however, it it needs to get through this stress test first, and then i need to win an attempt to quash in the spring.
there is some possibility that the judge might just cancel everything instead; that would be wrong, but judges are sometimes wrong, and the silence of the gatekeeping bitch is worrying me.
i will either have very good news tomorrow afternoon, and be safe here for the winter, or very frustrating news, and need to pack up and get out on short notice, which i'll probably be able to barely do.
it's remarkably hypocritical that the democrats are frightened of the bunch of harmless nuts that stormed washington on jan 6, but are celebrating the bloodthirsty islamist barbarians that recently stormed the government in syria.
trump should not pardon the islamist rioters in syria, and especially not the ones on the most wanted terrorist list. rather, he should put sanctions on syria.
guantanomo joe wants to criticize syria for human rights abuses. right.
it's not that syria didn't have some problems, it's that they were mostly tied to the previous ruler (who died 25 years ago) and that the reforms that his son brought in were actually extremely liberalizing, leaving syria as probably the most moderate muslim state in the entire middle east. the turks, iranians, egyptians and saudis are all infinitely worse than syria has been in decades.
worse, syria was a rendition site for us torture during the iraq war. that is, a lot of the basis of the criticism comes directly from cia torture sites in syria.
i understand that this is a proxy war and that what actually just happened was a turkish-backed coup in syria, which is only possible with nato oversight (and russian disengagement). it looks like israel is going to make a mess of the situation, which is what assad was trying to avoid, and which is sort of required. these terrorists are bad guys, and at least the israelis seem have their heads out of their asses about it.
joe's analysis is just not of the current era, or of the current century. biden unquestionably green-lighted this, and he no doubt did it because harris lost the election. it's a last hurrah. yet, like so many of the horrible foreign policy decisions he made, it's through the filter of somebody that never let go of the cold war.
the younger assad is probably the least ruthless dictator anybody's seen in the region in the modern era, at least. the language coming from the white house and propaganda in line with it is not consistent with reality, and largely delusional in terms of what assad was and where he was trying to take the country, which was actually into the european union, in the very long run.
now, syria will be lucky to avoid a fate different than afghanistan went through in the 80s, and i can only wish them luck. they'll need it.
instead of fighting the last battle of the cold war, biden should have been blowing up the existential threat developing in yemen, which he's completely avoided dealing with because he's obsessed with settling scores with the russians.
Sunday, December 8, 2024
unfortunately, israel might be the only power left that can save syria from collapsing into afghan-like backwardsness and, in fact, that might have been the plan.
i hope that israel takes these fuckers on directly and wipes them out.
unlike the coast of lebanon, damascus is outside of any reasonable sphere of ancient israel and, in invading damascus the israelis would be pushing it beyond any acceptable point, but i'd rather have the jews seize the city and enforce some modern concept of law than see it governed by thugs out of the back of a koran.
over the upcoming weeks and months, the reality in syria is going to resemble the initial taliban takeover over afghanistan. if you have any buddhist statutes in syria, get them out while you can.
i would hope that the canadian consulate would indicate it's willing to evacuate people, especially women, from the country while they can get out, as one of the oldest centres of civilization in the world collapses into unmitigated barbarism.
this is a sad day for syrians, a sad day for the region and a sad day for the world.
the loss of syria to brutal muslim barbarians is another black mark on biden's deplorable foreign policy, and let us hope it is the last pathetic mistake made by this horrible administration.
the people that just took over syria are a turkish proxy group, but they are an off shoot of al qaeda and morally equivalent to isis. isis basically just won in syria.
this brutal takeover of the syrian state by backwards barbarians is a horrific catastrophe for syria and for the syrian people and will potentially put an end to a relatively moderate period of rule by a secular state and usher in decades of oppression by a brutally backwards theocratic state, similar to the despotic barbarism that rules over saudi arabia.
the west should be thoroughly embarrassed that the russians had to prop up the last vestige of civilization in the region for years, and in the end had to sacrifice it to protect it's core interests in europe.
everybody in the entire world is worse off for this disaster.
these barbarians are worse than the taliban, and the syrian people should expect an outcome worse than taliban rule. the syrian state itself, under islamic rule, will unquestionably become a source of terrorism in the broader region.
i hope that there are immediate sanctions placed on these barbarians, and i hope the russians haven't completely abandoned the people of syria to the depravity of islamic fundamentalism, which they do not want, and which is a fate worse than nuclear war.
fuck you joe biden. may you rot in hell, with your worthless dead children.
Thursday, December 5, 2024
trump is going to treat doug ford's fat ass the same way he treated chris christie's fat ass. bad, bad choice.
stupid choice. he'll get his ass handed to him. they won't respect him.
trump himself is not a conservative. he's going to get along better with an older white liberal.
send bob rae. send marc garneau. send ralph goodale.
the liberals have no deficit of people they can send.
stephen harper would be a better pick than doug ford if you want to actually get something done.
Wednesday, December 4, 2024
i think the puerto ricans would have something to say about canada being the 51st state.
that's twice, donald.
you got one more strike, and you don't want to know what happens when you strike out on puerto rico.
it would be terrible for canada, and the best thing that could happen to the united states, as the republicans would never get those electoral votes, ever.
the liberals should not pick a female right now and especially not a young one. maybe later.
the best way to deal with donald trump is to send an older white male down there, like a ralph goodale or a marc garneau. unfortunately, the liberal party has purged itself of older white people recently, in the dumbest destruction of talent this side of the russian revolution.
trump will not like polievre either.
the liberals actually have a chance to one up the opposition by putting an older person in power, but i don't expect that they will.
in order to meet our nato funding requirements and chase off the mob tactics that come in the protection racket we're stuck in, we should spend the money on nato flak jackets for the polar bears and train them to attack russians on command.
the russians may laugh at us.
"you think russia don't know bear? aaaaahahahaha."
but it's the best possible defense. truly.
now, if we can teach the polar bears taekwondo on top of it, putin would be completely fucked.
we'd have to fly in some grizzlies and black and brown bears to meet diversity requirements and stop the polar bears from becoming a nazi paramilitary, which is what is going to happen with climate change anyways, they'll all back-cross to whence they came, and we'll have a race of hybrid bears ready to bite.
as the bears move in to russia, they'll need to capture the young russian bears to train them, in a janissery-like tactic, to turn the russian bear against itself.
canada doesn't have a migrant issue because swimming across the arctic ocean is too hard. you've got the cold, the polar bears - it might be a fun adventure if disneyfied, but for most it's way too hard when you could just get to brazil first, or if you're already in latin america to start (as most are).
however, what canada does have is a lax visa issue. it is too easy to legally enter canada, so that the actual bad guys that have a few brains tend to use it is a backdoor.
we consequently don't have caravans of desperate people looking to eat, but we do have terrorists and other criminals using canada as a way to sneak in. that's not what trump said, and there's little evidence he even really cares (he seems to actually legitimately want the tariffs. this isn't a bluff. he just wants tariffs because he thinks they'll bring back jobs and this is how he bypasses congress to do it.), but we need to do this for ourselves, anyways.
canada is currently changing it's policy on immigration due to realizing we're dealing with the effects of overpopulation in the cities. some kind of policy to incentivize people to settle in smaller towns should be tried to try to get people to spread out more. we also need to realize that we let a lot of bad people in because we're not checking because we think it's racist and we need to re-evaluate that position. it's not racist to ask if a person's religious views may lead them to uncanadian beliefs or activities that may pose a threat to the people around them.
looks pretty similar to last year, if you ask me; statistically, within the margin of error.
where i am, in windsor, you never see freezing overnight lows in february and rarely see them beyond the first week of january. we get a week, at most, of what canadians would call winter, right during the last week of december.
we skipped it last year and it's looking like we're going to skip it this year, too.
the shift in energy northwards means that if you're north of sudbury, or even north of barrie, i'd get a shovel, but you probably already have one.
i'm also putting down a warning for ottawa: you may not get to skate again at all this year, and this spring is going to be brutal. get your sandbags down now.
Tuesday, December 3, 2024
this is horrific.
hts are bloodthirsty terrorists opposed by 80-90% of the syrian public, which fully backs assad and vehemently opposes jihadist rule. hts is also a proxy of the turkish government.
for the turks to arm and train these barbarians and send them into syria like a mercenary group in order to invade and pacify, and then absurdly claim that assad is oppressing his own people, when the truth is that the russians then have to come in to protect the population from the turkish-backed terrorists, is outrageous, but it is the level of propaganda being spewed by western media around this war for years, now.
i don't know if trump is going to actually shift direction here or not. i strongly doubt he understand the subtleties or what nominating gabbard actually means; he's just rewarding a loyalist. however, the entity that is at war with his own people is not assad, it's erdogan, and the country that's in need of regime change, by a coup if necessary, is the turks.
as mentioned, it would be nice if this turkish mercenary group could remove hezbollah from syria, first. i would just get out of their way and clean up the mess after. the west, however, should be looking at the long run, and it is more leaders like assad that want a western style democracy and want to tilt westwards, not less.
syria is more like lebanon than iraq, but it's somewhere in between. they don't want to be ruled out of the back of a koran by islamic thugs, they want something broadly european in government, and the only party offering that is assad. that is why assad, despite his failings, commands massive levels of popular support in syria.
assad is not aligned with hezbollah or iran, but syria has become a russian protectorate and in the process has become unable to remove hezbollah. the israeli strikes on hezbollah are in assad's long term interests and he no doubt is in full support of them.
the capitalist disinformation around syria is tremendous and has been since the initial bullshit claim that assad attacked a peaceful demonstration, when he was bombing saudi-backed isis rebels.
what happened in syria (which is a military junta that the russians have taken control of since about 2015 or so) is that assad actually designed a democratic constitution and was going to put it up for a referendum, and the saudis vetoed it by launching a western-backed invasion. remember that the united states cannot tolerate democracy in the middle east, which makes them a great ally of the saudis; assad threatened to allow democracy in a state that is actually secular and has historically had a mix of christians and muslims and that got him marked for death.
assad's father was actually an ally of saddam hussein and syria was aligned against iran in a series of wars in the 20th century.
when the turks realized the saudis were going into syria, they had to push back because syria is a buffer state on the turkish border. the turks do not want a direct border with the saudis, they want some space. that, and the turks figure that syria has a long history tied to constantinople, and not much of one tied to mecca. the turks, somewhat correctly, would consider syria in it's sphere, not in the arab sphere.
what developed out of that initial conflict between the saudis and turks over syria became a complicated proxy war and, when it slowed down, the iranian proxy of hezbollah wandered into the mess, to nobody's wishes. everybody wants hezbollah out, even the russians.
we'll have to see how this develops, but my initial perception is that the turks and israelis made a deal for turkey to enter the ongoing war on the side of israel by invading northern syria, which will also create a problem for the russians in ukraine. israel cannot conduct a ground war in syria, but turkey can. ukraine and syria are actually the same war; this actually becomes a war between russia and turkey.
the russians might want to step back and let the turks clear hezbollah out before launching a counter-offensive, which would be assad's preferred outcome. the kurds will be sitting and waiting to come in if required.
i want trump to try to pry assad away from russia and realign syria towards the west, then tell the saudis to back off and let syria be free to design it's own government, but that is unlikely to happen given turkey's nato membership and saudi influence in washington. we will instead be told lies about assad, like we were about saddam hussein.
assad's father was a tyrant, but the younger assad, who was not groomed for power, is a mild-mannered figurehead that grew up in britain. he has western inclinations. these should be leveraged.
Sunday, December 1, 2024
we get a cm of snow in december and the meteorologists think climate change is over. the depth of resistance to reality is baffling.
as i suggested, the storm track has been pushed to the north. the detroit-quebec corridor used to get nailed by snow in la nina. growing up in ottawa, i remember 50 foot snow banks and trudging to school in the blizzard. that just happened in thunder bay, instead, while i think it's going to be raining most of this week in ottawa.
it's actually very mild here in windsor, with temperatures hovering around freezing, and small amounts of rain in the forecast.
it's valuable to compare the outcomes.
mexico called trump and told him to fuck off and it looks like he did. trudeau comes to trump and begs like a pathetic slave and the result is that trump told him he's going to get hit.
the canadian government is very stupid, and that's no doubt what trump deduced. trump is a bully. all bullies seek victims that are weak. we advertised weakness to the bully.
the most basic rule with bullies is that you have to stand up to them, which is what mexico did, which was the smart approach. we cowered to the bully, like fools, and he punched us in the face.
we need a government willing to stand up to donald trump. that's how you deal with him, and then he folds like a cheaply constructed hotel, like most bullies do.
the other thing to keep in mind is that canada has more to steal than mexico does. canadians think we have "shared values", but that's not what trump sees. trump sees easily plunderable wealth that can be stolen with minimal effort. what the mexicans have is labour to exploit. it's not the same thing.
we need to get our heads out of our asses and stop with the fantasy about platitudes and friendship and deal with the reality of an aggressive actor declaring war on us, before trump pulls the heads out and sticks his cock in.
Saturday, November 30, 2024
estimates are suggesting that the "tax holiday" will cost the government, and it's ability to deliver social services, around 1.6 billion dollars.
i can't imagine that's the case. nobody is going to save $40-50 on beer and popcorn.
a better estimate is probably in the 400-500 million dollar range.
given the massive headache and extra costs this is going to force businesses to incur, the rebate was probably the better approach. everybody - businesses, governments and individuals - could have better absorbed this by mailing everybody a $20 check instead.
not $200. $20. that's a better estimate.
as the situation in eastern europe develops over the next few months, it's worth remembering that ukraine is not a western-style democracy but is a few decades removed from despotism and is one of the most corrupt and politically rotten countries in the world. to the extent that criticisms of russian democracy are overblown but valid in principle, all of those same criticisms apply with equal or greater force to ukraine, which is linguistically, culturally, ethnically, sociologically, historically and politically indistinguishable from russia in any meaningful or coherent sense. ukrainian independence from russia is about as valid as the independence movement in texas.
the reason that the americans have been apprehensive about sharing military technology with the ukrainians is the realization that it would end up sold to the russians by corrupt actors within or russian infiltration of the ukrainian state. everything else aside, ukraine cannot be admitted to nato because it would be a security and intelligence breach and would create a backdoor for russian infiltration into nato itself.
it is likely that ukraine will be forcefully told it cannot join nato and the pentagon was just stringing them along the whole time as an excuse to inflict damage on russian defense capacities. nato doesn't give the slightest fuck about ukraine, ukrainian infrastructure or ukrainian casualties in the war. most recently, the americans have been asking ukraine to lower the age of conscription, which is enforced with extreme violence in ukraine by armed thugs in a stazi-like secret police that kidnap young people at gunpoint and send them off to war. the americans are increasingly and aggressively encouraging the ukrainian government to round up ever younger children to march them off to die, to kill some statistically greater percentage of russian conscripts and inflict some marginally greater level of damage on russian defensive abilities, which is reminiscent of what happened at the end stages of nazism in germany, where they started rounding up little kids and handing them machine guns and sending them after soviet tanks, to get entirely obliterated. does that sound like they care about ukraine to you?
a component of the ukrainian state may actually retaliate to that news by realigning with the russians and, if they do, it will likely get messy, but will demonstrate why they cannot be integrated into the west.
cutting them off will expose the depravity of the american policy, but that is already clear, and if trump is the fall guy he won't give a fuck. it is the correct thing to do to minimize threats of nuclear war and reestablish ukraine as a buffer state that can allow for some concept of tentative and uneasy peace.
the russians need something to exist between them and the nuclear arsenal in germany. that's not negotiable and trying to take that away was a mistake that led to the situation on the ground. they would rather it is poland, but ukraine will have to do for now and the ukrainians will need to accept their fate as what they are, which is a buffer state. that's too bad for ukraine. let them cry in their borscht, and sing their sad songs, and write their existentialist books and work together in communes to cope on the ground; they cannot transcend their condition, and must be told to suffer through it for the good of the rest of the world.
i wouldn't get along with these guys much, but the difference between this display of silliness and trudeau going to taylor swift with his teenage daughter is that trump is demonstrating a level of self-deprecation and full blown surreal irony while trudeau was actually honestly trying to be a cool 50+ year old millennial, in clear evasion of his obvious gen x birth date.
ella-grace trudeau should have been legitimately utterly mortified. barron trump needs to lighten up and enjoy the party.
ironically dancing to ymca at thanksgiving with the richest man in the world in front of baffled conservative onlookers (kristi noem was certainly looking uncomfortable during the ava maria sway as well) may turn out to be the only policy promoted by the second trump administration that i am in full and clear support of. i wholeheartedly agree with this policy.
taylor swift can indicate if she agrees or not, but i suspect she might as well.
taylor swift can indicate if she agrees or not, but i suspect she might as well.
this is what democrats, liberals and other fake leftists are having difficulty understanding and have to find some way to grapple with: the reality is that donald trump is actually the cool kid, and they aren't, and that this is a cultural shift that nobody's seen before and nobody knows how to understand or react to. i am sure this is following as a corollary of the restrictions on social interactions pushed by fake leftists during the pandemic, in opposition to the libertarianism embraced by republicans which did not explicitly try to stop young people from having fun, which has enforced a flipped cultural reality on young people that the rest of us are going to need to get our heads around and adjust to.
i am, however, disappointed by stallone. c'mon, man.
Friday, November 29, 2024
the trudeau government has apparently decided that it would rather everybody miss out on it's $250 gift than treat seniors and the disabled fairly and with equal respect.
everybody should take note of the underlying fascistic ideology in the government's behaviour, as though we just woke up in the fourth reich.
useless eaters unite, we have nothing to lose but our trains of thought.
i would tell google that it should consider relocating itself outside of the united states, if the state is going to try to force them to compete.
competition is harmful, in general, and should be avoided as much as possible. when competition is enforced via the threat of state violence, everybody suffers.
competition in search is irrational and would harm everybody. a government trying to force competition in search is creating a social harm that the company should seek to protect itself and society from by getting out of the jurisdiction of.
i would rather see a state monopoly in search that enforces standards and maximizes outcomes than a series of companies competing for search, which would create unequal and poor results for people searching for things.
Thursday, November 28, 2024
would buying weapons from lockheed martin save us from putin?
no; that's the exact opposite lesson to learn from ukraine.
russia attacked ukraine because nato was dumping weapons into it, which it saw as a threat.
it follows that it is actually rather obvious that the best way to make ourselves a target is to buy weapons and the best means of protection is to not buy weapons, as the russians are only likely to attack out of self-defense.
i think this is completely ass-backwards, anyways. canada and russia are extremely similar and should be trying to work together to build an alliance. we will need the russians to help us defeat the chinese.
talking to joe rogan for an hour, and probably arguing with him for most of it, would not have won kamala harris the election.
to the extent that there's some valid concern underlying the question regarding whether democrats are able to reach what they call independents, unaligned voters, low information voters and generally unpolitical citizens, you can't undo the 10 years of targeting these people that trump has invested in with an hour of time.
further, the entire point is that trump is not kamala harris and kamala harris is kamala harris, in the sense that she's an establishment politician. these voters or non-voters are simply not politically aligned with the kamala harrises of the world, they are politically aligned directly against the kamala harrises, and she would have little chance of swinging them.
what that suggests is that if the democrats want to access these voters, and they no doubt should, that they should be running candidates that appeal to them, which would be somebody like bernie sanders and not somebody like kamala harris.
the next democratic primary will probably be very open and a candidate that appeals to non-voters will have a better chance.
democrats need to understand that kamala harris was a bad candidate that couldn't win and that the only tactic the party has is to stop running bad candidates that can't win. there is nothing she could have done differently besides not running in the first place.
this is not how americans think at all. if you attack their institutions, they'll bomb you. this is the dumbest approach possible.
the primary goal of the federal government should be to prevent a recession, to make reciprocal demands about the border and to broadcast that we will not comply with their other concerns (like their bitching about nato spending, which means buying things from their military-industrial complex, as nato is a protection racket) so long as the tariffs are in place and then wait.
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
the old tory political establishment in this country needs to wake up to what the new facts are, and it is that nafta has allowed mexico to overtake us, economically.
within five-ten years, canada will be competing with indonesia and turkey for 15th place, while mexico enters the top ten.
we think we have shared cultural values with the americans rooted in a shared british heritage.
canadians think they're so much better than mexico. canada goes to g7 meetings; mexico is a third world country. these are old facts; pre-nafta facts.
this is reality:
within five-ten years, canada will be competing with indonesia and turkey for 15th place, while mexico enters the top ten.
expect mexico to replace us at the g7 summits within the next five years. we already shouldn't be there and it's a matter of time before they throw us out.
we think we're america's largest trading partner. nowadays, it depends on how you measure it and by most measures we either aren't or we're tied with mexico or china.
this is reality:
we think we have shared cultural values with the americans rooted in a shared british heritage.
this is reality:
we think we have a close military alignment and are trusted allies.
we don't anymore. at all.
we have to adjust to reality.
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
right.
so, have canadian producers undercut the market by crashing prices and balance it with a government subsidy to local oil producers (i don't like that in general, but...) rather than a retaliatory tariff. the debt will go up, but the price of oil will come down across the board, and that will balance out to no increased revenues by the americans. then, sue them to pay for it.
this will make other markets more attractive than the united states, as well, and production will shift.
if you take that approach, the americans will pay for their own tariffs, in the long run.
i want to suggest an alternate tactic to retaliatory tariffs, as that is just going to create a recession. the intention of government policy should be to avoid a recession and not to create one.
the way that government can react to avoid a recession is by emulating what it did during covid, by absorbing the costs of tariffs and placing them on the national debt. it would be preferable to allow the bank of canada to print this debt than to allow it to accrue interest via private bond holders.
the way to recoup this debt would then be to sue the united states for it both at the wto and through the mechanisms erected in nafta specifically to address it. trump will be gone in a few years (he might die in office. it might not take four years.), and we can address the issue with the next president.
canada and the world should consequently be treating trump like the lame duck that he is, under the expectation that he doesn't last four years and that, even if he does, his policies will not last much longer than that.
if the government absorbs tariff costs by collective action with the bank of canada, it should avoid a recession, at the least, and we'll have to figure out what happens next.
drop the platitudes: tariffs are an act of war and this is a declaration of war. we need to treat it as a declaration of war and to use war time economic tactics in response.
canada should also be absolutely clear that it will refuse to meet the nato spending targets and will consider purchasing military hardware from non-nato countries until the tariffs are removed.
it is very foolish for the united states to declare war on china, mexico and canada at the same time, especially if it seeks to win a long war with china, but it's what we have in front of us.
what is ford implying here when he says canada isn't mexico?
that canada deserves special treatment? why?
because (some of) canada is english-speaking? because it used to be mostly white?
hispanics are a substantive part of the american tapestry, and spanish-american colonies make up a tremendous portion of the united states, including the heavily populated states of california, texas and florida. mexico is a larger trade partner with the united states than canada is and trades in actual goods, whereas canada, which is a corrupt petrostate, sells little besides oil and some other raw commodities of marginal importance.
ford's racist comments are actually entirely correct: canada is not as important to the united states as mexico is. we're not in the same category as they are at all. if i can be joan rivers for a minute; canada, you're no mexico. we're the lesser and least important partner in the trilateral agreement, and by a substantive margin.
ford needs to clear his eyes of the racist bullshit and see the truth.
i indicated initially that the best tactic was to try to avoid trump as much as possible, but if he's going to target us, it's important that we don't cave or appear weak.
we have our own concerns about border security.
- illegal migrants entering canada from the united states. we should demand that the administration put a stop to this immediately, under threat of economic sanctions.
- guns entering the country from the united states. we should demand that the fbi launch a special task unit to cease all illegal gun trafficking into canada from the united states.
- americans buying up medications in canada. we should pass a law against that, i think.
we should threaten to cut off the flow or dramatically increase the price of oil, if trump doesn't address these concerns.
no. as usual, ford's a buffoon.
we need to tell the americans that we're fed up with their bullshit and that they need to abide by their agreements. if they're not going to negotiate in good faith, if they're not going to be a reliable partner, we're no longer interested; we'll find other markets.
we've walked away from them before and we can do it again.
i'd like to see some science on this. this strikes me as a bad idea, but i want to know what the realistic prognosis for marginal cases really is.
the general reality is that dieting pills, and even diets, are always short term. you get these people hooked on this stuff, and what are the outcomes? strokes? cancer? kidney and liver failure?
it's very american to try to cure obesity with drugs, but you have to change. you have to eat better. you have to exercise more.
the only valid use for these drugs is probably for the morbidly obese, and it's just to give them a chance to change. obesity in america is not just widespread, it's profound; americans are not chubby or a little overweight, they're dangerously and grotesquely fat. how do you tell them to exercise when they almost can't? if a drug can give them a chance to get better, that could save their lives, but only as a form of shock therapy and only for a short period of time.
if these drugs just become a way to avoid changing, they're going to lead to their own epidemic of liver failure.
i got it cleaned up and reassembled but i can't get it to post. it turns on and the fans just run. i was previously unable to get it to turn on at all, so it is progress, but it's thrown me into basic pc troubleshooting.
i don't have a known good video card to swap in. there's no integrated video. the video card has been funny for a while. the ram has been suspect. so i can't rule anything out.
it's an old nvia pcie x16 card. there's two slots for pcie x16 and only one of them worked. i believe it's because the clip fell off the other slot quite some time ago. now, the clip has fallen off both slots. this is a 32-bit recording pc, so i actually want to avoid wasting limited ram on the video card. i might have to try to downgrade to a pci card or a pcix4 slot. on this computer it doesn't matter, that's fine.
my 98 pc has an agp card in a p3bf with no pcie and there's no agp slot on the p5b. i have two other desktops and neither has a video card. they do have pcie x16 slots.
i can try to put the video card in one of the other pcs to make sure it works. that will at least tell me if the card is broken.
i had to remove the video card to reprogram it, there wasn't really another choice.
i should try reprogramming it again but not this morning. this morning, the main goal was to get my bed back, and i'm consequently a little overdue on a shower.
i have some writing to do this morning so the shower will have to wait until tonight.
if the board can get power i should be able to bring it back still, i think.
the pc speaker doesn't work (the speaker disconnected from the power, which was fragile) but i can try to jimmy it or even finally to resolder it to try to get a beep code at least.
in fact, this board had been misbehaving for quite a while.
i don't know exactly what the point of keying on this machine is, but it has been up and down for years and i have suspected it's been tampered with periodically since i moved in here in 2018. i think the guy that first rented to me in here might have been an undercover cop.
for example, the temperature controls on the board were not working. they are now.
just like brand new.
hopefully, this resolves some of the freeze issues i was dealing with as well.
this is a very capable machine for what it was built for, but it can't be overclocked or controlled remotely, and i've been trying to explain that for years. the device needs to be left alone. this is probably the last time i'm going to be able to bring it back.
did i post this?
https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/other-motherboards/asus-p5b-premium-vista-issue-i-think-my-creepy-landlord-bricked/td-p/1021410
the board has been sitting on my bed under a sheet for months. i bench tested it tonight and it still works.
it's been sitting for months because i've been trying to redesign this site as an offline archive and every time i'm ready to get back to doing it, the fucking muslim retards drug me again, and i have to spend another three or four months detoxing before i can do anything useful. it's been extremely depressing, and the fucking idiots think they're doing something to help me. one of the disgusting perverts thinks she's going to have sex with me, when the actual truth of the matter is that i'm going to beat her to bloody pulp and flush her corpse down the toilet if she ever gets the chance to lay a finger on me. i would never, ever, touch a disgusting, filthy arab; if any ever tries, i will slaughter them and sacrifice them to odin.
they got me at the end of october somehow. i'm not sure how. i think they drugged my frank's by taking the pins off the front door. i've managed to metabolize it, but i'm still detoxing.
unfortunately, i have to prepare certain things to be able to move and i also want to sleep in my bed again (i've been sleeping on the couch for months).
i'm not going to be able to do anything at all until i move, that's clear, but my recording pc should at least be put together again (after being nicely cleaned up and derusted) within a day or two.
the last time i cleaned it up was in 2013, so i guess it's overdue for a good cleaning. the process i used to push the firmware back down also restored it to factory conditions, so it's as good as a brand new 20 year old windows xp machine.
i need that archived as i'll have to consult it when i can stop wasting my time fighting off these muslim retards and can get back to actually doing something meaningful and productive.
if there's grounds to ban muslims from entering the country, it should be on the basis that only a retard would believe something so stupid at this late a date in history, and that's actually a critique worth taking seriously, and on such crude and verbose terms.
Monday, November 25, 2024
i would behoove of the americans to return to a good neighbour policy in hemispheric trade negotiations.
"In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor- the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors."
canada is clearly not getting a free trade agreement from the united states, which is what we signed up for in the 80s. they put tariffs on softwood lumber, they're trying to fuck with our dairy industry and now they're threatening a 25% flat tariff, which is just a 25% tax. that's not free trade.
i think canada should tell the americans that if they don't want to respect their trade agreements then we're not interested in signing agreements with them and tell them that we're going to pull out of reciprocity flat out for the next four years and reapproach the issue when a new president gets elected.
that would include dissolving the oil export agreements for the next four years.
the us congress should modify this law and remove the president's authority to unilaterally enforce tariffs.
that power should belong to congress, under the american constitution, and not to the president.
if a democratic senator put through a straight forward bill without earmarks or bullshit, it would likely get swift approval and the senate can probably even get the two thirds required to overturn a veto, which is how clinton got beat down by the congress.
targeted tariffs on specific items to protect specific industries are in the united states' interests and something congress should look at. a flat 25% tax on everything is inflationary and stupid.
if the presidency is going to abuse these powers that congress gave it, the congress should take them away as a punitive measure.
the ottawa river actually has a history of changing course, partly due to seismic activity in the region, but partly because it's a gigantic, chaotic drainage system.
the idea that ottawa and montreal could get wiped out by the river one day relatively soon is actually pretty real.
this is what happened during the last period of global warming:
vancouver will get wiped out by the fraser.
i think that this is the pattern we're going to see normalize this winter and that it may be a more normal la nina pattern for the next few decades, once people adjust the model for relativistic climate change effects.
a normal la nina pattern would have this precipitation event rush through the detroit-quebec city corridor, up the st lawerence seaway, but the jet stream is pushed north here so that it's happening across lake superior and up into james bay instead.
that's the shift here. ymmv.
it would mean more water into the ottawa river and increased flooding in ottawa and montreal, but whether the rain falls into lake superior or lake erie is likely trivial, from where i am.
if you live in south-western ontario, you should broadly expect something similar to last winter. don't rely on the long term forecasts. the forecasts will keep predicting that it will get cold ten days from now, and keep pushing it back, until it's february and it never actually happens.
we might get a day or two of cold weather overnight, but i suspect it won't happen at all.
expect highs in the 5-10 degree neighbourhood to persist and lows to barely hit freezing at all.
this will be good for the growing regions and for the general habitability of the area, which has been questionable since first contact.
they keep downgrading it.
it's currently a 57% chance that la nina will develop by the end of the year, which was the same probability that harris would win the election, as of october. chances are in the 70% range of a weak la nina that might maybe last for january-february.
given that they are not adjusting for climate change, i'm going to forecast that they will only actually measure a la nina for the djf period and when they do it will be a statistical wash.
it is there in relative terms, though.
this image gets it:
i have not been making forecast predictions recently because i've been locked inside. this missing la nina issue is something i want to predict an outcome for.
the issue is statistical more than meteorological, in that they're using outdated averages that are getting overrun by global warming. that was the point of my sarcastic post a few weeks ago. a la nina is there, in relative terms, but not in absolute terms, so you go trying to apply the model and it breaks because it hasn't been adjusted for climate change effects. i'm reminded of a physicist with a broken classical model (this is a vague analogy, don't take it literally) that makes a newtonian prediction that is wrong because it wasn't adjusted for relativistic effects and can't figure it out, until somebody does the calculation and shows them; oh, i just needed to use the lorentz factor, and it's fine, silly me.
what does that mean?
it means you take the normal la nina model, as interpreted in a euclidean system (i want to avoid discussions of spherical geometry right now, although you should realize the earth is an ellipse and not fat) and translate it upwards in the y axis (that is north) by some amount.
i can't predict the amount. i don't have data.
but, the idea is as follows.
normally, la nina means it's warm and dry in florida and wet in california. this year, you should shift that northwards, so it's also dry and warm in georgia, at least, and maybe further north than that, and it's drier in california and wetter in oregon and washington and british columbia.
the shape of the jet stream should be the same, but it should be pushed northwards.
the models will continually get this wrong and you should expect a winter where the meteorologists are constantly incorrect, but you should be able to analyze it in terms of the translational effect noted.
where i am, in south detroit, the increased amount of warm energy in the atlantic ocean should keep the jet stream a little further north, and the precipitation systems should consequently end up more around hudson's bay than around the great lakes, or at least in the northern rather than southern great lakes region. that should largely result in a warmer, drier winter than average, overall, which is the opposite of a normal la nina. when we do get precipitation, it should fall mostly as rain rather than snow.
bashar assad is a secular leader, and the entity that the west should be supporting in his struggle against terrorism and foreign funded state wahhabism in syria. as a secularist, i find the reaction by certain elements in the democratic party to tulsi gabbard's meeting with assad to actually be extremely concerning.
i think these people - duckworth, warren, etc - didn't get the memo, which is that the cold war is over and that the enemy of the west in the 21st century is islam, not russia. biden didn't get the memo either, but he's now in the dustbin of history, to be remembered as one of the worst presidents in the country's history, and this reversion back to the cold war is about to be discarded with. do the democrats want to brand themselves as wanting to hold on to the cold war? do they want to insist on being the party of the past? no thank you.
to the extent that assad has received russian support in his fight against islamic extremism, which is true, it is an embarrassment to the west that the russians had to step in to fight the terrorists because the west wouldn't do it as a result of their alignment with the saudis.
assad is the good guy in this war, and a realignment by the americans towards a policy goal of expanding secularism in the region and away from funding or tolerating saudi wahhabism is long overdue. this is the reason i opposed the invasion of iraq, as it tipped the balance of power away from secularism and towards islamism, which had the predictable outcome of generating a rise of extremism in the region, of which assad ended up as the last bastion of hope in the struggle against - and he won. i would have hoped to hear that from democrats, rather than republicans, but i'll have to take what exists as it develops.
if that's the best argument that the democrats can come up with, in a repeat of their embarrassing and debunked claim after the 2016 election that clinton lost due to russian interference, i hope that gabbard gets confirmed.
with 53 seats, the couple of moderate republicans left will probably not be able to effectively align with a democratic opposition and senate democrats are consequently going to be entirely helpless over the next few years. rather, the balance of power is going to be placed in the center of the republican party, who should have enough votes to block trump's less conservative picks.
i would put out a call for smart senate democrats (i wish kyrsten sinema was still in the senate) to actually try to work with trump against the conservative majority, as that is the point of conflict that is on the brink of developing; the senate is a lot more conservative than trump is and is going to be trying to pull the president further to the right, creating an opening for voices independent of the democratic party to try to usurp a balance of power.
as a secular leftist, i would predict that i'm likely to repeatedly align with trump against this more conservative senate, even if only marginally so.
i hope the prime minister at least bought his daughter and a dozen of her friends a second set of tickets so she could go see the show without her father.
in the end, i'm sure taylor appreciates his contribution and the government of canada's contribution. this is what passes as on arts subsidy under trudeau's randian market fundamentalist regime - tax cuts and handouts for the globalist investor class and the ultra-rich.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)