so, what's the math on this?

harris, at least for now, is polling better amongst black voters. so, she might do a little better in michigan and certainly georgia. north carolina is probably a stretch.

however, she's doing much worse amongst white voters, which is going to hurt her not just in wisconsin, pennsylvania and probably minnesota, but apparently in oregon, in new hampshire, in new jersey and potentially in new york.

democrats are notoriously bad at math and they should have worked this out with a computer rather than trying to do it in their head. in fact, this outcome was obvious and predictable, but they are consistently terrible at this shit.

the media is going to keep throwing national polling at you, and harris might win the popular vote, but it is utterly meaningless.

in canada, it's hockey. i'm lucky i never went through that. but, they wake these kids up at 6 am and force them to spend hours skating around in circles, and tell them their future depends on it.

then they end up shoveling ditches because they never learned how to read.

we need to have a serious cultural discussion about getting competitive sports out of the class room and finding ways to generate young men that are more focused on their minds.

otherwise, the chinese are going to slowly beat the shit out of us and laugh at us as they do so.

today, i look at this guy tim walz, and i say to myself.

how many young men did this man remove from math and science class at a young age, and how many of them are infinitely worse off for it today?

if we're going to elect a teacher, why don't we elect a physics or math or economics or history teacher instead? why don't we elect a professor? there's one running, you know.

because we're idiots.

that's the simple truth.

yes, when i was in the ninth grade, i made the football team. but i would have never gone to tryouts if i thought i'd make the team and then i quit without playing a game. i was not in the starting lineup.

the problem is that i had a jock father. he played all of the sports in high school, so he naturally thought i'd want to. not so. at all. i thought sports were a stupid, boring waste of time and i hated competing and i hated competitive people. he also thought it would "boost my self esteem", which is what he thought was "wrong with me", rather than realizing i was just a girl and just wasn't interested in competition.

he basically ordered me to try out for the football team and when i told him i wasn't really interested in it he told me it was for my own good.

i took the path of least resistance. i reasoned there was no actual likelihood of making the team anyways, so it would be in my self-interest to get cut to prove the point. unfortunately, i kept going and i repeatedly didn't get cut. ottawa had a deficit of schools in the suburbs at the time, so they had to ship us into town, and he would consequently pick me up on his way home from work. i caught him talking to the coach once or twice when i was off elsewhere, and i think he actually talked him into it.

this was a frustrating situation for me. it mattered less when the tryouts and practices were after school and i was willing to humour him so long as it didn't affect my school work, and on the presumption that i'd get cut anyways. but, when i found myself on the team, i was all of a sudden expected to miss math and science classes (something important) to play football games (something stupid), which i didn't realize was going to be the case (i was in grade 9. i didn't care about football. i didn't know the games were during the school day. why do they do that? it's terrible.) and which i decided was idiotic. i wasn't going to be one of the dumb kids that skipped math class to play sports. i was embarrassed by the stupidity of the prospect of taking smart kids out of science class to tell them to run around on a field like retards. no fucking way.

so, i quit on the day of the first game, which was scheduled at the same time as math class, and went to math class instead.

i think it was unquestionably the smart thing to do, although it backfired slightly because my math teacher noticed and sent me to gifted classes for grade 10, which i did not want to do. however, it took my dad quite a while to get over the fact that his child was more interested in academics than sports.

this is why i don't breed:

i bring this up because this is the same kind of issue that's been annoying me for years. even after high school, i'd meet people that would remind me i was on the football team, "right?". no! i wish they didn't think that about me. that wasn't the reputation i wanted.

i wanted you to know i did well in math class; that was the reputation i wanted. but, nobody said that.

the government keeps promising to plant a lot of trees and never does, and that sounds like the best thing it can do both in response to this and due to the fact that we have such a vast surface area, but this is just one way that it's tricky.

there's a lot of methane released in those fires up north, too, which are partly being caused by increased temperatures. so, this is the start of those feedback cycles we were warned would start (checks freckle on back of wrist) right about now.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c703nzl25ypo

i just heard that taylor swift has prepared her endorsement for madonna's re-election bid as president* of italy with a prepared duet of the classic madonna track (don't ever ever) express yourself (in the new italy).

wait.

what?

listen, kids. taylor's fun. i get it. but you should decide who you want to vote for yourself. it's actually tricky because they're both terrible in different ways, so you need to sit down and figure out which one scares you the most (or the least) in which way. are taylor swift fans more concerned about owning their uterus or baby killing? i dunno. are they more concerned about nuclear war with russia or being soft on islamic extremism? i dunno. or you could just forget it and watch pinnochio and masturbate, instead. whatever.

i hope she does something bold like endorse jill stein, instead. that's my suggestion.

*yeah, i know it's prime minister.

i would suppose that kamala harris probably actually is an atheist.

in terms of novelty, i would be more excited about voting for an atheist than a woman, and i think we'll see an open atheist as president before we see a cis-female.

the reality is that, in a society where people are increasingly individualistic, increasingly disinterested in family (not just having kids, but also having parents), increasingly disillusioned by labour and increasingly disinterested in religion, the style of politics presented by harris and waltz is increasingly alienating to wide, broad swaths of the voting population, which are in the very core of what democrats need to win. this was a bad tactic 20 years ago, a worse tactic 10 years ago and a dumb tactic today.

when harris loses, everybody should blame it on nancy pelosi, and the party should ask itself why it listened to an 84 year old when she insisted an 82 year-old was too old to make decisions.

it'll be better in the long run.

the democrats need to clean house from the top down. like, they need a figurative blood bath. a liquidation sale. a viking house burning (read the sagas. that's how they do it. every time.). everything must go.

wisconsin.

very concerning.

this is new jersey.

scary stuff.

oregon doesn't attract much polling, understandably.

these numbers are curious:

i watched the harris interview and i think she came off terribly. if the claim is that she's a cynical, flip-flopping opportunist with no clearly defined political views, she just absolutely proved it correct. i would not even consider voting for her.

but, i'm about five positions to the left of kamala harris on the spectrum and she is not trying to appeal to people like me. she is not trying to convince me to vote for her. i'm not in her potential voting demographic.

that's fine. really.

i just doubt she has the ability to generate enough conservative support and mainstream cultural excitement amongst people that are essentially apolitical in the regions that it matters, if she has no intention to generate enthusiasm on the political left, as she clearly doesn't. as mentioned previously, i think we're going to see some new swing states present themselves in this election, and that pelosi and others essentially misread bad numbers in these areas as being tied to biden when they're actually connected to a larger level of voter apathy within a system that doesn't effect any meaningful change.

if michigan - especially michigan. particularly michigan. - was a canary in 2016, the democrats didn't get it. i mean, they reacted, but they didn't understand.

expect some similar surprises, because we've seen this film before and we know how it ends.

suggesting that industrial music developed as "white techno" has some value to it, even if i've never heard anybody say it. it's basically correct.

i both listen to and compose primarily electronic music. that's not some kind of hidden truth or some kind of surprise.

industrial music comes out of the punk scene but it has major overlaps with the development of house music in both the uk and the us (particularly in chicago). by the early 90s, wax trax was releasing uk exports on warp and vice versa.

the "techno" i've been listening to over the last few weeks includes side projects by members of industrial bands like throbbing gristle (via coil, download), skinny puppy (cyberaktif, download, skinny puppy, plateau, the tear garden, doubting thomas and also download member dead voices on air), die warzau (die warzau, eco-hed) and frontline assembly (delerium, econoline crush). i was also listening to some cocteau twins a few weeks ago, which isn't quite industrial, but was listened to by the same people that listened to industrial. there was some cop shoot cop (including contributions by jim thirlwell) and david bowie (a pop artist all these people consider as influential and that worked in an industrial techno space in the 90s) in there, too. i'm currently listening to an industrial pop band called econoline crush. next in the list is einsturzende neubauten, the german industrial pioneers that survived on nick cave royalties.

it is techno; the observation is correct. in fact, it's some of the most creative and important techno ever released, and it comes directly out of important historical techno scenes in the uk, us and canada. however, it essentially all has the point in common that it is foundational techno made after 1985 by seminal industrial artists of the 70s and 80s.

however, i don't have any detroit techno in my cd collection for the reason that it didn't have an overlap with industrial scenes in cities like chicago, vancouver and london. there wasn't much of a creative industrial component of the detroit techno movement, and i'm not going to speculate on it, but i suspect that it had something to do with race. while i've been here, the industrial clubs are empty, while the techno clubs are overflowing. i have been to both, but i can see where the party is and isn't.

i've had most of these cds for over 25 years and have kept them because they're some of my favourite records.

i am sorry if you thought otherwise, but that's your misperception of me and not something else. anybody that actually knows me at all knows that 70% of my cd collection is electronic music. further, essentially all of my original music is electronic music. there's no surprise there, but i do realize that there is a misperception based on a false projection that is not of my own making.

i like some rock bands, too, albeit mostly older ones. sure. i also listen to a lot of jazz and a lot of classical music. however, i like more electronic music and i always have. further, i have never liked loud or angry heavy metal bands or stupid flashy hair metal and there is really nothing like that at all in my cd collection or in my own discography.

back when i was able to go out and have fun, i would often go see a rock band from 20:00-23:00 or something and then spend the rest of the night, say from 00:00-6:00, in an all night dance club. i did that like a hundred times or something. a couple of times, i was even able to get to the morning symphony afterwards and get blasted by beethoven or debussy or ravel or rachmaninov before it was time to go back home. people that saw me in the early show might not have realized how much time i spent out dancing and vice versa, but i'm not interested and don't care.

i mean, ask some of the people in the club scene if they thought i was into punk rock or heavy metal. they would laugh at you. i was just a hot blonde chick out dancing. the truth is i was both, but i was living two lives, and i really spent more time dancing than at rock concerts, partly because it's the 21st century and rock music has been dead for decades while electronic music is still thriving.

it seems to me like this is a strong argument to keep one or both of the existing hospitals open after the new one gets built.

the downtown campus should remain open. closing it is crazy. that building will just fall apart.

this is what happened to the last hospital site that closed in windsor:

do you want that at erie and ouellette?

https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/windsor-regional-hospital-addresses-canada-s-rising-er-wait-times-1.7020764

the ambassador is living in the wrong century.

news, today, is global, or at least multinational. it's not truly global; i don't read much news from latin america or africa or china, but i could. an english speaker is going to get their news equally from the united states, canada, australia, the uk, israel, south africa, india and a handful of major european countries including france, germany and probably turkey, regardless of where they physically are in the anglosphere. they may also get some news from russia, china, qatar or iran, amongst others.

your average english speaker knows where they're from but identifies more as a global citizen in a broad alliance than a member of any specific country. these are good things, broadly, as it expands the reach of the english culture and creates a larger sense of cultural identity than these provincial villages we call countries.

https://thehub.ca/2024/08/27/hub-exclusive-u-s-ambassador-says-canadians-are-consuming-an-unhealthy-amount-of-american-news/

ugh.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/kamala-harris-cnn-interview-1.7309041

hope they get him next.

what kind of psychotic lunatic urges his own people to kill themselves when they're on the brink of total destruction? it's like the japanese emperor near the end of world war two, and there's a reason america had to use the bomb to make them surrender. it's an idea that's worth applying towards palestine.

if we treated the palestinians in 2024 the same way we treated the japanese or germans in 1944, maybe we'd be making some real progress in getting rid of these assholes.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-hamas-official-mashaal-urges-resumption-of-suicide-bombings-against-israel/

the justification for bombing the west bank the way gaza has been bombed currently does not exist.

so, i mean celebrate the mess america has created in ukraine, if you insist. if you'd like.

but, china's about to clean up the pieces, and it won't be in america's interests.

it would really be a lot more helpful to the americans if they had the russians on their side, which is the position the russians would prefer, and which is the most important lesson in the history of history, and something the neocons including biden have somehow refused to understand or learn.

because they're dumb.

you don't want to fight the russians. nothing good comes from fighting the russians. you want an alliance with russia.

and i want to correct something.

the chinese don't see russian weakness as a liability. the chinese see russian weakness as an opportunity. if russia is weak and america is weak, that means it's time for china to strike.

there's no alliance there. china doesn't believe in alliances; it's china versus the world.

this was something that obama got right and hillary clinton understood but couldn't execute: you have to project strength as a president of the united states in this world.

biden, harris and trump all project weakness, and their voters are concerned about domestic policy.

it's going to be a hard five years for the american empire, one way or another.

i believe the last time the chinese did this was right after bush got elected.

they're pushing buttons, to see how far they can go in the presence of a clearly incompetent commander in chief.

when it rains it pours.

this was predictable (and was predicted, by me), given the weak state of leadership in the united states, which is a situation that mirrors the george w. bush presidency. 

this is the problem with kamala - her domestic policy might be marginally better than trump's, but the world doesn't respect her. and we're really in no better a position than we were before biden stepped down, whatever the feeling is amongst democratic partisans.

the presidency is supposed to be a foreign policy position first and foremost and the united states is facing a major crisis in that position right now. biden is a foreign policy incompetent and always has been. harris looks like more of the same to the rest of the world. trump proved in his first term that he was a paper tiger, all bluster and no bite. his bluff is blown. this is broadcasting an easy target to the rest of the world.

the pentagon probably needs to get harris in charge now and have her convince the rest of the world that she's strong enough, tough enough and, goddamnit, people fear her, in order to prevent a global catastrophe. six more months of biden is just an invitation to encroach in the united states' sphere, while it's too weak to react.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/world/asia/china-surveillance-japan-airspace.html

the united states should stop acting as a mediator and end it's efforts to produce a cease fire and instead help israel get the job done and get this over with. what the united states is doing is just prolonging the process and extending and maximizing the punishment. a couple of quick naval strikes would get this over with in a week.

biden and blinken will not be interpreted well by history. this is a horrible and incompetent policy, but that's the expectation from biden.

ok.

so long as the idf is demonstrating some kind of progress in dismantling hamas, i want to avoid criticizing them. it's not pleasant to see and understand what is happening in gaza, but i understand that these people voted for a terrorist group to govern them, and this is kind of what they deserve as a consequence of that.

let it be a lesson to the whole world: stop supporting terrorism. this is what happens when you support terrorism; this is what will keep happening, if you continue to.

however, in recent weeks, and notwithstanding the assassination of the group's leader in faraway iran, after having ventured away from his cozy retreat in qatar, i have not seen much progress. the idf is chasing civilians around from place to place while it blows this or that up, which must be a very hellish existence. these people are not innocent and i do not want this misconstrued as a plea to protect the innocent, because they can't and shouldn't be analyzed or interpreted that way. but, i never did and never would support a merely punitive operation designed to torture and harass, no matter how guilty the population may be. collective punishment is indeed a war crime, and while these definitions are difficult to apply to the context, israel is getting to the point where it's pushing it too far.

i'm not calling for a cease fire.

i'm calling for israel to eliminate the remaining hamas leadership and hurry up and get 'er done. israelis may be developing resolve, and they should, but the international audience needs to see more progress. it's not going to tolerate a prolonged campaign of collective punishment for the sake of raining hellfire on the wretched. this can't be aimless torture. they need to finish the job and liquidate what is left of hamas.

however, israel should not pull away from the border with egypt, and probably not for decades. a long term consequence of what the palestinians did on october 7th needs to be a near permanent loss of sovereignty over the border with egypt, and everybody is going to have to deal with that. this issue should be revisited a generation or two from now.

as somebody with a math degree, i find the headline "how the Bayesian superyacht sank" to be comical.

stick to sampling, people.

"please welcome the next president of the..."

never gonna give you up.

never gonna let you down.

also, they should have rick rolled us.

shouldn't "little jon" nowadays be calling himself "old ass man jon"?

i'm just looking through the dnc performers list. they want to run on empty fumes because they expect harris' policies to fall flat amongst....everybody. i get it. she didn't do well in the primaries for a reason; she has a conservative record and ran as a "progressive", so she scared everybody off. she has no real tactic, if she starts talking policy. she's absolutely right to avoid it, if she wants to win.

it's less that she's going to push people to vote for trump and more that if she goes out and talks that she's going to generate voter cynicism, which suppresses turnout.

so, we're not having an election, we're having a party. just don't forget to put the crack pipe down to vote. remember to vote!

remember!

remember?

it's just that this party is kinda lame, if you ask me. it's like somebody purposefully made a list of the most washed up, overrated pop stars of the last 50 years and put them altogether. the only thing they missed was hall & oates.

like, i wouldn't go to that party.

i'm just not thinking this is going to work out.

tariffs are neither bad nor good, but they are hard.

canada exports 98% of it's steel to the united states or mexico. if the united states asked us to put up a tariff on chinese steel, we probably should.

however, the policy may lead to inflation in electronics and other luxury goods.

i wouldn't expect that china would put up a tariff on, say, canadian wheat, as that would just hurt it's own people. chinese retaliation is likely to be outside of the realm of trade, but our relations with china probably couldn't get much worse than they've been recently, anyways.

i'm going to conclude that the steel tariff, in concurrence with an american tariff on chinese steel, is a reasonable policy. 

i don't think the data ever supported this policy in the first place, but they have to do this as a bare minimum so thankfully they are doing it.

i pointed out previously that you couldn't take them seriously until they re-regulated the process, and this is incomplete, but it's at least a bit of good news.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada-to-reduce-the-number-of-temporary-foreign-workers-liberals-1.7014058

the cold reality is that no amount of intervention will prevent them from dying on the street, in the long run. but i don't want to see an industry develop around prolonging the life of addicts for weeks or months, which is what has been happening.

the cold, logical reality is that you need to either round them up and put them in jail or you need to wash your hands of it and let them flounder and die. anything in between may be well meaning but is just going to fail.

it's easy to predict what the government in alberta is going to come up with, and it's sending them to church to "find god" and "help themselves", and, frankly, albertans should be annoyed at such a waste of their tax dollars. but, i'd like to see somebody get this right, and it's not going to be a liberal government that does, in the end.

it's intervention or bust, but you have to intervene with intent and with force and you have to stick to it, and i'm not sure that a government in canada could actually do that without trampling all over the constitution. you would have to bring in draconian drug laws at the federal level, first. and, maybe the truth is that we should.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/alberta-drug-policy-dan-williams

there's been a lot of racist claims recently that jews are lighter skinned than (some) palestinians because they're actually all poles and ukrainians while the palestinians are indigenous, but have you gotten a look at what a lebanese person looks like?

the answer is almost identical to a white jew, and the lebs were never expelled from the region, although one will note that, unlike almost everybody else in the region, they're also roughly half christian. i haven't seen a study, but it would be an obvious observation that the whiter lebs correlate with the christians, while the darker skinned lebs are mostly muslims.

there's a reason for this, and it's that the region was in fact mostly lighter skinned up until the arab migration c. 700. roman palestine and greek and iranian israel/judah were pretty white places. the lebs and jews are both the remnant of that ancient population, which was displaced  by war and disease and partially replaced. these three subpopulations of white lebanese christians, white jews and white palestinians are the people that were actually there first, while the arabs moved in relatively late in history and brought a large number of african slaves with them, which darkened the skin of certain clans.

i'm just noticing this as i see pictures of lebanese politicians in the news. even the muslim ones basically look like italians, not arabs.

i can't verify if this is comprehensive or not.

i did not watch the democratic convention and am not really interested. 

but there was a cartoon in the 90s that seemed to be rather prophetic about the direction of the democratic party in the 2020s.

a cynical political atheist and disenfranchised socialist may have little choice but to interpret contemporary democrats like a bunch of stimpies.

it's like tipper gore had too many litters of children.

it's just a reminder that the liberals in canada are the party of bankers and the investor class.

workers should not follow this law, in the current economic climate. the time to cause problems on the ground is now. inflation is theft, and the recent gouging needs to be undone.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/railways-prepare-to-restart-after-federal-government-forces-binding-arbitration-in-labour-dispute-1.7010508

well, how else was django reinhardt supposed to survive?

he only had two usable fingers.

labour action is always required to set things right again after the bourgeoisie steals a chunk of money from the working class via inflation.

it is important to stand with the rail workers as they fight to reverse the cash grab by management and restore their relative wages. 

further, the bourgeois class should understand they are on notice: there will be further action, and there must be. management cannot be allowed to steal wages from workers, the workers must set things right, across the economy.

expect widespread labour action and lengthy strikes over the next two to three years in order to claw back the wage theft embedded in the recent round of inflation. this is how our system of class warfare operates, and these battles are required and necessary and good.

i spent something like three months yelling at the russians to take out the bridges over the dnieper, but they apparently didn't want to rebuild them. the russians are of the opinion that destroying infrastructure in ukraine is "barbaric", as they have intended from the start to take the country in tact.

frankly, i'm left to conclude that the russians haven't been taking this seriously and haven't been legitimately trying to win this war and this could go down in history as a very serious error. the ukrainians have no such qualms and have consistently done any sneaky dirty thing they can to win or advantage themselves against a clearly superior foe.

this is technically a war crime, but nobody is going to care.

conversely....do the ukrainians want the russians to actually start trying to win this war? if so, they should keep it up. this is a foolish escalation by a foolish government.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-russia-seym-bridge-1.7299873

10 of the 23 supervised consumption sites in ontario are within 200 metres of child-care centres or schools?

what?

i would rather see a larger number like 2 km than 200 metres, myself, but it's some progress, i guess.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ontario-supervised-injection-change-rule-school-distance-1.7299376

this is why the bourgeois left is getting skinned alive everywhere on the ground right now.

ctv is not the best broadcaster in canada, but this short article should be everybody's memo everywhere tomorrow morning. these are absurd drops in the standard of living, and everybody knows they were worse in 2023 and are going to be even worse in 2024 and even worse in 2025 unless government steps in with substantive policy changes.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/statistics-canada-says-median-family-after-tax-income-in-2022-down-after-inflation-1.7006153

i'm a revolutionary socialist.

i don't support any of the capitalist parties, and the fence-sitting position the democrats are taking on hamas is one of the symptoms of why i could never support them, as a socialist. 

any actual socialist would have no patience for a barbaric, fascist, right-wing group like hamas and be far more brutal with them than the israelis are being.

as a socialist, my critique for the bourgeois left is that they are not being aggressive enough against right-wing islamic extremism, not that they are being too aggressive against it.

what's going on is that people are confused about language, and that isn't new. what people want to call left-wing in the united states (people like bernie sanders) are actually conservatives, not socialists. they are better on some issues than other other capitalists (conservatives have historically had support for social systems), and arguably worse on others (their foreign policy is at times awful), but they are not leftist and not socialists. progressivism has always been a branch of conservatism, and the democrats have always been the conservative party in the american spectrum.

i am not a progressive. at all. i don't claim i am; i am forceful about rejecting that label. i try to stay very far away from what that word represents, nowadays. i am a socialist. i do often call myself a liberal, but carefully, and only in specific contexts.

i have frequently endorsed the green party, and i've at times been critical of democratic party propaganda (i would rank trump as a better president than biden, a better president than reagan and a better president than george w. bush, but not as a better president than obama, and as about the same as clinton. he's in the middle of the pack of the last dozen presidents, not the worst. i argued very clearly that trump was less of a threat to world peace than biden and i think i was right, but that is a reflection of how horrible a candidate biden has been since day one, and not a kind word directed at trump or his policies.), but i've never endorsed the republican party and it's not likely that i will any time soon. i don't usually endorse the democrats, either.

as somebody outside of the current spectrum, the way i tend to explain it is that i have an equal level of disagreement with republicans and democrats, but i disagree with them on different issues. if you did a survey and asked me to rank 100 of their positions, i would disagree with about 70 positions taken independently by each individual party, but they would be different positions. i am strongly opposed to recent democratic party foreign policy, but i disagree strongly with the republicans on climate policy. both are potentially apocalyptic. one is not less dangerous than the other. the difference between how i approach this and and how most other people do is that i'm supposed to layer the disagreement, i'm supposed to consider my disagreement with the republicans as more fundamental or foundational than my disagreement with the democrats, but i don't. i really disagree with them equally.

i'm going to hate whoever wins equally much. 

the data continues to point to a likely trump victory, in my analysis. however, it would probably be better for the country to have generational change, even if it doesn't result in a substantive change in policy. i don't think that's going to happen. kamala harris is less of an old lady, but she's still an old lady; she will carry out her second term past the retirement age, if she wins.

i would hope that the next election is between much younger people in their 40s that have legitimately new perspectives. this could have been better, but biden held on too long, and it's not going to be an actual turnover, one way or the other.

bezos doesn't like wage and price controls, it seems.

i don't think this is a serious political issue, but the fact that harris has gifted it as a talking point to the right is reflective of her low talent as a politician, and why she could have never made it to this point on her own.

this is going to happen; harris is going to say something stupid and it is going to hurt her dramatically, but it's an open question just how badly. not enough people are going to take the bogeyman of a centralized price setting agency seriously (although it would actually be very easy to implement. you'd just need to merge the systems. they're all the same.), but she should really try a little harder to keep her foot out of her mouth.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries

i missed this on friday.

this is a step forwards away from biden's messaging about job creation, which is probably what was killing him while he oversees three separate wars (and pretends there aren't any in the debates). the columnist is correct to point out that stimulating specific demand - whether it be in the form of free daycare money, free downpayment money, specific rent subsidies, etc - is just going to raise prices. 

yet, harris wants to win some votes, so she's trying to buy some. i hear voters are on sale. this is good bargain hunting. what's a girl supposed to do?

there's a contradiction here. harris' policies are essentially designed for demographics she's going to win anyways. not only is it not a good economic policy,  but it won't actually swing many voters, either.

she's got the right idea, but the implementation is all wrong, in both ways. this kind of stimulus, which is needed because we are entering a recession from the interest rate hikes, should go not to the middle classes but the working poor and the even poorer than that. further, these are the voters that harris is going to have the most difficulty with; they're the right people to try to bribe.

it's also worth noting that giving money to the poorest people also requires less handed out in total, because they don't need things like $25,000 tax breaks. my gross yearly income is about $17,000, canadian. a $5000 check would allow me to move out of a bad situation brought on by greedy new landlords. of course i don't live in the united states but you get the point.

there's a sweet spot to maximize economically if you're really lazer focused on the economy so you're not paying off debt, but a politician winning votes should be less concerned about that and just seeking to focus on voters with a relatively low floor.

there's a lot of ways to sell that, but the reality is that this recent round of inflation is the last straw in a process that has led to ever higher concentrations of wealth extracted from the poorest people. it's long overdue to reverse it, and it's probably at a breaking point where you have to.

i mean, just look at the other candidate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/16/harris-economy-plan-gimmicks

they legitimately should have impeached biden over afghanistan, he probably should have been impeached over ukraine and negotiating with hamas on a hostage release should also be impeachable, as it is in fact against the law.

but, what they're going to do actually do is political and cynical.

just how psychotic is canada's population growth?

this is eye-opening, and i don't believe it includes temporary migrants. our real population growth was probably closer to 6%, which is unheard of in a civilized country and needs to be severely restricted, or we're going to have the same social problems they have in africa, too.

https://thehub.ca/2024/08/19/deepdive-who-benefits-from-surging-immigration-hint-its-not-canadian-workers/

canada very rarely enforces anti-trust laws.

this deal should be blocked.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/19/business/7-11-7-i-couche-tard-circle-k.html

i don't think that harris should concern herself much with palestinian activists. they have very wealth donors, but they're a fringe minority.

she should focus more on pocketbook issues, and on restoring the democratic party's cultural status as the party of young people, which might be difficult. people are concerned about making ends meet right now.

this is black box harris at work: you can imagine she'll do whatever you want her to do. baby.

i actually think that harris is probably more pro-jewish than biden and that her language about too many people dying is just politics. biden is the master of smoke and mirrors, so it takes a little bit of effort to figure out that at the root of his policy is a a personality conflict with netanyahu, and a desire to take him down a notch. frankly, not many people can get away with this, either, but biden should not be meddling in this process the way he has been, he's just creating problems, not solutions. i've posted about this before. a summary is that while many arabs may legitimately want peace, the iranians and their proxies do not, and he's consequently out of touch and fighting the wrong war. that boat has sailed. he actually wants to put the palestinian authority in charge of gaza, which is just literally turning the clocks back and will obviously create a civil war.

i don't actually expect harris is going to spend much time on the middle east at all, if she wins (which i'd consider to be unlikely at this point). i hope she sends blinken to the Neville Chamberlin Cemetary of Failed Statesman. besides that, i wouldn't expect much at all.

rather, i would expect harris to take a dramatic veer towards domestic policy and hold to it, while delegating these foreign policy issues to military experts that know better, which is what biden should be doing but isn't.

for now, though, you can imagine what harris will do, and pretend you can support it. that's her upside as a candidate, and sometimes it works, but not this time, i don't think.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/18/opinion/biden-israel-policy-harris.html

the reason that putin invaded ukraine was to prevent a nato military buildup.

everything that's happened, to this point, proves his analysis was right: the west was intending on stockpiling weapons in ukraine until it burst over, so the russians could strike first or have to deal with a trilogy of russian history books one day called {napoleon bonaparte, adolf hitler, kanye west}. we were on the brink, truly.

so, he was right, and it's time for the naysayers to admit it.

it's also increasingly looking like he took too long to react and has failed.

everybody loses here except china, who cleans up the mess.

biden won't live to see it or understand it if he can see it.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/15/biden-missiles-ukraine-russia-00174147

of course mr. t would be mr. t.

mr. t is always mr. t.

imagine mr. t explaining that he ain't got nothing against cat ladies, but he pities the one that doesn't change the litter regularly.

it's potentially genius.

the problem with that cast is that it would likely actually be funny, so scratch that.

what's will ferrell up to?

conan o'brien is still alive.

i think.

also, it's too bad norm macdonald is dead.

i guess the next best rfk would be colin quinn.

what?

you can't tell what colour the macaque's skin colour is underneath the fur, anyways.

reading through this, i'm left to conclude that your average snl fan is about 75 years old, which is probably true.

they should give this a good go because, like biden, they are about set to retire.

fwiw, i'd like to see mr. t play jd vance and al franken play tim walz.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/arts/television/snl-2024-election-harris-trump.html

send joe biden your wishlist, i think he might be in the mood to be your easter bunny.

what do i want him to do in the next couple of months that he might actually do?

i'm not sure, actually; i don't live in the united states.

think about it.

they haven't done anything at all, this is jason kenney and stephen harper's system.

i'd like them to do some things on a number of files, but they won't do anything substantive unless the ndp tells them to do it.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/np-view-canadas-immigration-systems-needs-to-be-rescued-from-trudeau

rough couple of days. they may have drugged me again just past the 6th, but i don't know how. there's an effect of sweating over night that happened, but i have no point of entry and the secondary effects are minimal. it's currently ambiguous. if they did, it was less than previously, and it's passing quickly.

then, there was a migraine as i was doing court documents, and i've had to spend the weekend soaking. i'm currently stopping to drink some coffee, which is often the case when i'm here.

i have a lot of typing to do this week and it's going to be a while before things get back to some semblance of normality but it's careening uncontrollably in the right direction.

we should glitter bomb the imams.

we should not bomb the mosques, or at least not until they become centres of violence, which is inevitable, as it is baked into the religion and the culture. wait.

the chances that this woman was going to blow anything up are remote and slim and chances are higher that she was being ironic. the crown is supposed to be obliged to demonstrate that a threat is real and imminent and isn't merely the result of somebody shit-talking and airing frustrations. this should not have led to jail time and that it did is feeding into the narrative leading to the frustrated shit-talking in the first place.

nonetheless, however seriously or unseriously the woman ought to have been taken, i want to strongly suggest that this is the wrong tactic and wrong approach. it is apparent and obvious that concerns about the behaviours and beliefs of the muslim minority are valid considerations, but these considerations should be addressed by aggressively enforcing british law and not by declaring jihad against them. british law should be enforced as paramount, not concerns about cultural sensitivity.

so long as the muslim majority adheres to british law, there is no longer a concern about their behaviour. that's where the issue needs to be addressed.

it is not outside of the bounds of probability that, at some point in the future, the mosques might become centres where islamic militants organize to try to take over the country. that is not unlikely at all and it would require a different response. however, it isn't true right now, and concerns about beliefs and values need to be kept to scale in a secular society.

muslim clerics in britain should be made to feel welcome in order to integrate them, which will help them adjust to secular norms and values, which do not exist where they came from. we want the mosques to be as bland as the anglican churches and their followers to get bored with them and willingly embrace apostasy. threatening to blow up the mosque, however unseriously, will have the opposite outcome, it will make muslims feel outside of the british culture and have them cling to their faith as a sense of identity. that's when they lash out at a society that doesn't accept them.

i'm more concerned with organizing an education program to help turn the rioters into activists than i am with sending them to jail. these rioters need to be taught better strategies to get to the outcome of better integration in a dominantly secular culture.

an example of a better tactic would be to rent an area close to the mosque and turn it into a gay bar, and then instruct the gays to try to make friends with the muslims, or at the least to exist in their midst, to normalize them to it. there has not been a clear motive released yet, but the assumption is that it was a cultural attack; this is a 17 year-old stabbing little kids, so it seems unlikely to have been the result of some kind of rejection. so, you bring the dance classes closer to the mosques and you assert your right to exist in the presence of their religious institution and you try to integrate and welcome them into your cultural activities by laying down the cultural expectation of tolerance in the muslim community for non-muslims. you drop the need for them to be tolerant on their lap, and you prosecute them if they reject it, you don't threaten to blow them up, however disingenuously.

this is important. it has to be done.

we just fought this fight in the west a few decades ago, and the tactics should be fresh to native britons, who today are overwhelmingly atheist. this actually isn't hard. britain just went through this with the christians and just got out of it. the tactics are the same, and they should know what to do, but it requires these teachable moments for the poorly educated, who need to be better organized.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/14/woman-53-jailed-over-blow-the-mosque-up-facebook-post-after-southport-riots

i'm a revolutionary socialist, but angry white supremacist mobs is not my revolution.

it does, however, tell me that something is afoot.

to be clear: breaking stuff and beating people up isn't just bad, it's stupid. that helps nothing, that accomplishes nothing. that is not a policy. that is not a protest.

but, this isn't a couple of thugs. this is a huge, mass movement of people in britain that are angry and scared and don't have the education or capacity to react more intelligently.

yes, there's a public safety issue, and that needs to be the first priority. but, the state needs to react to a festering problem. it can't just gloss over it. it's not bad apples. there's an ideology at play here that needs to be nipped at the bud.

this is something that you see repeatedly in history, and especially in european history, as it's something that white people are a little bit closer to. white people don't like systems of control and dominance and don't tolerate it the way that people of other races and cultures do; white people are far quicker to start breaking stuff and burning stuff down and while it's generally a function of low ability and poor education it also gets a fucking point across: that's when the state needs to adjust.

elon musk is probably wrong, for now.

he might not be in ten years if something isn't done to change the status quo, and that's not a good thing.

a picture of fanboy david bowie very excited to meet his hero, frank black.

who is the rock god here?

hard to tell.

it's both.

there are some things that need to shift and these minerals will help, but if we replace intensive carbon mining with intensive cobalt mining we may not even be reducing total emissions at all.

we have to think past suburbia and private transportation. canada has incredible hydro electric potential to build and it can fuel efficient public transport if we design our cities correctly. it's a travesty that we lost that vision some time in the mid-20th century in favour of such a wasteful hyper-individualism in transportation.

unfortunately, both of the major political parties are seeking to build profitable industries first and foremost and the sad irony is that it doesn't look like consumers are coming with them. 

i'd like to see some polling on this. how many people in toronto want cars at all, carbon or electric? how many would rather toronto build a new york style public transit system, so that almost nobody has a car?

the government at every level is seeking to prevent that because it would reduce employment in a major industry and hurt foreign investment but it is what the planet demands and i suspect it's actually what most people actually would prefer.

so, how do we get past this, then? we can't just call elon musk or bill gates and ask him to do it. it has to be government driven.

elizabeth may is entirely gung-ho about mineral mining and the green party doesn't offer serious ideas on this issue, unfortunately and perhaps surprisingly for most people. the ndp is going to listen to it's unions.

it should start at the municipal level.

so, i'll say this to toronto and vancouver and montreal - organize a car-free city and show us the way. show us how many jobs building the infrastructure will create. show us how to generate the clean electricity to power it. build the plans. then ask for funding.

if you leave it to the federal parties, they're just going to keep the existing economy in place and try to swap oil for natural gas powered hydrogen and tell everybody how much money they made from it.

https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/august-2024/critical-minerals-green-shift/

if the conservatives are the extreme right and the liberals are the moderate right, then what does this intend to be?

the moderately extreme right?

the extremely moderate right?

if we're lucky, it could help the ndp by taking both of the right wing parties down a little.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-future-party-launches-1.7294230

does paul know that stevie is blind?

i mean, everybody really does look the same to him. everybody's black. he doesn't have to be colour blind to ignore race. it's really not there.

i'm pointing this out because it kind of sends a weird message all of these years later. paul could've done a song with michael jackson, for example. why did he pick the blind guy, to whom race literally does not exist for, to do the racial harmony song?

was the blind guy the only black guy willing to do it, or what?

did he call up other black singers first?

"whaddya think i'm blind, paul? no way."

i'll take my chances on divine wrath, mr. khamenei.

i would suggest you concern yourself more with the very real, human-orchestrated fury of the united states of america.

are the people trying to get rid of netanyahu extra excited about the return of naftali bennett to the pmo?

the turks, of course, as the successor state to the ottoman empire and the eastern partition of the roman empire, have a long history in the levant and northern africa.

could the turks stabilize gaza? 

yes, they certainly could, but gaza would then have to deal with a turkish military occupation instead of an israeli one, and ask libya or cyprus or armenia about that. the turks would be unlikely to leave.

however, turkey would be unlikely to be much of a threat to israel, as well. they may turn gaza into a naval base, but that would just give american vessels in the region somewhere safe to park. it would give the palestianians jobs, which would be a major breakthrough (mass unemployment creates economic reliance on hamas).

it ought to be egypt that does this, but if they refuse to do it, and turkey wants to step in, egypt will have to deal with the long term consequences of it's own negligence, which it outright refuses to do.

the idea of putting the palestinian authority in charge is a non-starter. fatah is overwhelmingly unpopular. the palestinians themselves will try to overthrow them.

it's not a bad idea, really. it's up to the egyptians to make that decision.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/14/world/israel-iran-hamas-gaza-war

biden is certainly leaving a helluva mess for the next president to deal with, anyways - ukraine, iran and, at this point, i'd expect a flare-up in korea or taiwan, as well.

islamic extremists are targeting taylor swift, and it's easy enough to understand why. yes, she's jewish, but that's probably not it. older people may see her as a silly, vapid pop star that at this point has been just copying ideas from the previous generation for over a decade, but throngs of young women of every race and background see her as a role model and inspiration. they're targeting her because she's a threat to conservative islamic cultural values.

i've got some issues with third wave feminism, but this needs some solidarity. we've got attacks in britain and canceled shows in austria, and i'd expect more threats and attacks are coming up. i would strongly doubt she wants to sign up to be a flash point in the new culture war (which is increasingly secularism v islam, rather than secularism v christianity), but she's been nominated and she has a responsibility to rile up her fans a little. her fans have the right to dress and act how they want, and she should remind them of that whenever she can.

maybe she didn't pick this fight, but she's gotta fight it.

iran has more guns but israel has better guns. israel should in truth make quick work of iran if it comes to it, it shouldn't even be close.

however, the thing israel wants to be a little careful about is the difference in population size, but that itself comes with some clarification.

remember: we don't know if israel has nukes or not. we think they do.

in a very long slog, iran could potential just out-die israel, and the truth is that they are crazy enough to perhaps try. that's the caveat for israel; if iran is in this until the end, killing 15x as many iranians as there are israelis may be a challenge.

yet, if you add up active + reserve (that is trained soldiers), it's actually more or less even, which says a lot about israeli culture and miiltary preparedness. despite the fact that iran's population is 10x as large, israel can put as many armed soldiers on the ground, and they are without question better trained.

but, this is almost certainly a moot point. any actual war is going to be fought in the air, and iran is going to get quickly obliterated.

perhaps biden could call mr. khamenei up and explain to him that the real supreme leader has an order for him.

that's not a suggestion, mr. khamenei, that's an order.

the one and only person that the white house should be referring to as the supreme leader is diana ross.

i've also noticed that the spokespeople in the biden administration have begun referring to the ayatollah as "the supreme leader".

can you stop doing that, please?

if you want to maintain the cordiality and professionalism, mr. khamenei is sufficient.

thanks.

very seriously.

how hard would it be to bomb the ayatollah's house?

not hard at all.

toppling the regime in iran would be the best possible thing to happen in the region and any events that lead to that outcome should be supported by leftists everywhere.

death to the ayatollah.

death to the mullahs.

biden was keen to start a war in eastern europe, where the west has no enemies, and keen to keep the peace in the middle east, where every country is america's enemy.

he gets the world completely backwards and he always has.

why don't we get a quick peace deal in ukraine first, leave the russians alone and then launch a war for regime change in iran and saudi arabia at the same time? that sounds like a foreign policy i'd support.

who would've thought it was possible for biden to act weaker than he looks?

the president should be telling the asshole ayatollah that he's not interested in what he has to say and he has five minutes to sit down and shut up and if he's still standing in ten minutes then tehran will get immediately nuked.

if you want the cubans to fuck off, joe, all you need to do is evacuate miami.

easy stuff.

what's the hold up? hurry it up!

if you want kim jong-un to leave america alone, all america needs to do is pull out of the pacific.

easy peasy.

get to it joey.

hey joe.

you know if you pull out of south korea, maybe the north koreans will stop bugging you. 

it's something to think about.

ugh.

what kind of messaging is this? what side is he on?

can somebody shuffle him off to a beach or something, he's just making an ass of himself. he complains about his "legacy", but if he wanted to protect his "legacy" he shouldn't have run for an office that he isn't capable of running in the first place, and never was capable of running.

biden is the worst foreign policy president since dubya.

it makes you wonder if he's selling arms to iran under the table to raise money for some shady project in ukraine or something.

https://www.axios.com/2024/08/13/iran-israel-attack-gaza-hostage-ceasefire-deal-biden

if muslims really can't deal with other people mumbling around them in different ways than them, they need to find a way to be more tolerant.

it's a good example of how islam needs to change to adjust to the modern world.

i think most people, especially in the west, would actually be moderately or even extremely strongly supportive of the idea that the jews should be allowed to mumble at their old crumbing wall and would certainly not denounce an activist minister for pushing the idea forward. they might even argue it's petty and small and mean to deny them access to the crumbling, or to ban the mumbling. it's bumbling to ban the mumbling at the crumbling.

i actually think they should bulldoze the whole site and build a shopping mall on top of it so nobody is mumbling at the wall anymore and they don't have anything to fight about anymore.

but so long as the crumbling walls remain, anybody and everybody should be able to mumble at them equally.

as a secular atheist leftist and self-identified godless liberal, i couldn't possibly support a law that says only one type of delusional nonsense is allowed to mumble at the wall. that's absurd.

all jews and muslims, and christians and mormons if they want, should be allowed to pray and mumble at the wall here and it is long past time that equal status to the ruins be afforded to all.

this is not a right-wing position at all; this is a crazy rule that should be changed.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg58yj57jdeo

i kind of like being weird, myself.

if you're not weird, you're boring.

i need at least one mr. kite reference at the democratic convention, please.

just to be weird.

yes, i'm suggesting that it should be downright illegal and punishable with jail time to use rental income to pay off your mortgage, and i'd like one of the major parties to pick the idea up in the next election.

a reasonable law to pass would be to make it illegal to rent a property until or unless you have paid some amount, x, of the price of the mortgage, and i would put x as higher than 75%. that is, in order to rent a property out, you'd have to have already paid at least 75% of the mortgage off. they should actually put you in jail for breaking that law, as well.

this would prevent people from putting minimal down payments down just to get property to generate profit from. capitalists are actually supposed to hate that kind of lazy, idle bourgeoisness.

apparently, to a southeast asian, "guava" is a generic term that refers to any kind of large citrus fruit, while in north america it refers to a specific species native to mexico. in an act of reverse-colonialism, mexican guavas have been introduced as a plantation species in hawaii and vietnam and have displaced some of the native fruit. a pomelo is a native south-east asian citrus variety.

somebody probably made an honest mistake and the actual truth is that, to a southeast asian, a pomelo actually is a guava.

they're wrong, but that explains it.

my pomelo is unripe :(.

'twill have to wait.

this, too, shall pass.

i'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but i don't see an actual, measurable shift in the polling since biden resigned. there's a certain subset of the electorate that has more enthusiasm for harris, but you can only vote once, and it's not clear that this subset will vote at all, so it doesn't actually really matter if the media prefers harris over biden.

harris has received a bump amongst black voters but in most states that should be offset and actually exceeded by a decrease in enthusiasm amongst older white voters, who may now consider trump, when they didn't previously. it's a question of whether exciting more younger black voters to vote may be more effective than getting out the vote for older white voters, and that strikes me as a failed strategy. younger, blacker people vote far less frequently than older, whiter people, especially in states with barriers to voting. it's unclear how much of the excited demographic will be able to vote, even if they show up and try to.

the media got what it wanted and it's producing the narrative it wants to, but it isn't rooted in evidence and it may turn out to not reflect in the numbers on voting day, where trump's more traditional strategy simply works better and he consequently wins.

for these reasons, harris maybe puts michigan and georgia back on the table, if not convincingly, but she probably makes wisconsin and pennyslvania harder to win.

i don't see the evidence to support the idea that trump isn't going to win in a landslide.

yeah.

it's been a national embarrassment for years that the government has completely deregulated immigration policy, allowing private companies to by labour from overseas. this is a national disgrace, and i'm glad the un is taking us to task for it, because the government won't address it.

https://www.lakelandtoday.ca/beyond-local/canadas-temporary-foreign-worker-program-a-breeding-ground-for-modern-slavery-un-report-concludes-9342820

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/01/18/plho-j18.html

a life without kiwis is no life at all.

my door is about to be wired fucking shut for weeks. nobody's getting in here. the stay is in place and the landlords can go fuck themselves.

but i need kiwis first.

when the apocalypse comes, i'd better have kiwis, or i'm not going in the bomb shelter.

ok.

replacing the shit kiwis is not the end of the world because walmart will refund them and they didn't have cherries or blackberries, so i can get the kiwis with the cherries and the blackberries, and some original all bran that's finally back in stock. further, the refund on the fake guava will pay for delivery and it balances out.

great.

(white) guava has the highest amount of vitamin c of any fruit, if you didn't know.

pomelo is some kind of half-assed grapefruit, apparently, that can't compete with the amount of vitamin a, even remotely.

i also need to find some kiwi asap as what they sent should not have been sold.

i ordered guava and they sent me a fucking pomelo. what am i supposed to do with this, play soccer with it? i can't fit this in my fridge, so i suppose it must be immediately consumed.

i have never had pomelo before.

should i live vlog this? naw. but i'll blog it.

if russia is the great protagonist of history, iran is the great loser.

it looks set to lose again very soon.

trump is supposed to be tough.

why isn't iran so afraid of him that they can't hack him? i thought that was his argument, that he's so scary that the world will cower at america's feet.

iran isn't cowering, iran is hacking at his feet like an annoying shiatsu.

c'mon coyote. give iran a kick in the teeth, tough guy.

it's been widely published that we have a housing shortage and this is true and is driving the market, but sorting through the small number of vacancies available and comparing it to what i can afford has led me to a secondary conclusion, which is that rents are almost always paying somebody's mortgage. this is an unsustainable situation which has been a hidden bubble in the rental market that is being exposed by higher interest rates and is going to need to burst because it doesn't make any sense.

almost all of the rental housing available on the market is something like the following:

- a condo which was purchased by an investor and being rented out, in which case the renter is paying the owner's mortgage

- a house which was purchase by an investor and being rented out, in which case the renter is paying the owner's mortgage, perhaps split into multiple units, or rented as a rooming house.

the number of actual apartment buildings on the market is exceedingly scarce, and this would be a reflection of the insufficient supply. because we don't have enough apartments, what the market has produced is houses and condos for rent, instead. that makes sense on it's face.

except it doesn't and it can't because the purpose of renting instead of buying is that it is less than a mortgage and it can't be if the cost of rent is necessarily higher than the mortgage to ensure the rentier can turn a profit. if i can buy a house for less than i can rent it for, why would i rent it? the point is that i'm renting because i can't afford to buy.

now that interest rates are higher, we have a situation where people are not just complaining that they figuratively cannot afford to pay rent or are forced into paying more than 30% of income in rent but actually literally have costs that cannot cover rent. paying rent as mortgage + rentier profit is literally impossible. it's unsustainable. and, that makes sense. renters shouldn't be able to afford to pay the mortgage on the property they're renting, let alone the mortgage + profit for the rentier; that's why they're renting, and not buying.

rentiers are not supposed to have mortgages or two or three mortgages or reverse mortgages and profiting from rent is not supposed to be a form of primary income for middle class people that have their own bills to pay. rent is supposed to be a form of income by people that own their property without mortgages (like apartment building owners) or a type of secondary income for people that have extra space. 

it makes no sense for people to buy houses with mortgages and expect to make a profit by renting them on top of paying the mortgage. that should have never been presented as a business model, but it has been, and it's the root of the problem.

we have this massive housing market built on an irrational concept and it has to crash. if we're going to have interest rates again, we need to get these small scale investors out of the rental market, build more apartments and (by removing the middle man) get the people that are renting the property from the small scale investors to instead be buying the property from the banks. these middle-man bourgeois investors were always parasites, but they're now breaking the market and need to get out. there's no place for a middle man in today's rental market. they're the cause of the problem right now.

with interest rates and inflation, renters cannot afford to pay their owners' mortgages, and the middle man needs to get out; otherwise, the market in the next few years is going to open up as people get evicted (because they can't pay rent, or the owners need to boost it to break even) and more vacancies will exist, but owners won't be able to decrease their prices enough to adjust to market demand because they have to pay the bank, and renters will simply not be able to pay the price of mortgage + profit that the small scale investor needs to avoid losing money. the result will be the irrational outcome of homelessness + higher vacancy rates, which is currently already present in the condo market, and which is a market failure, by definition. it may require the cmhc to step in to bail out small scale investors.

otherwise, the small scale investors will go bankrupt and need to sell to the people they are currently renting to, and that is a good thing and a healthy adjustment and correction. fuck the middle man. fuck the parasitic bourgeois class. yes, demand is outstripping supply, but it has exposed this issue as a secondary dominant problem that government needs to address. we need less small scale investors stepping in between potential buyers and banks and trying to extract profit from renters that should be buying those properties instead. government should enact policies to get the middle man out.

i can own a small house or condo on odsp if prices come down about 10%, interest rates come back down a bit and i can build up a bit of a down payment while i'm waiting this out. i can't wait it out. i don't think. i might be proven wrong.

a lot of these small scale investors are older and it will be interesting to see what happens when they die in the next ten years.

so, i am now in priority status for subsidized housing. i should end up with an actual apartment sometime in the next year, if it goes according to plan. the asshole landlords will need to wait me out, and may lose some cases at the board in the process. getting a stay was a little trickier than i expected but it's done and everything is going according to plan.

i'm disabled. i live on social assistance. i'm supposed to be in social housing. i don't want to be exclusivist about this because i legitimately believe that refugees deserve short term housing, but i require long term housing and i should actually be placed at the top of the list by default. i would call for a change of the formula so that disabled people with long term social needs get priority over refugees that need to stay in a hotel for some short term help; currently, in ontario, refugees are top priority for housing, and they shouldn't be, they should be lower on the list. we need to take care of our own first. most of the problems we have with disabled poverty levels would be solved by reformulating the priority list to get them in social housing where they're supposed to be but largely currently aren't. it doesn't make sense to put disabled people on the housing market; it makes perfect sense to put refugees on the housing market, because they are in fact expected to work, whereas the disabled are, by definition, not.

so, this is a bit of a shitty tactic to push forward something i should have easier access to, but it's in process and hopefully it enacts itself soon.

one of the upsides of social housing in windsor and canada is that it's non-smoking. good luck finding an apartment building anywhere willing to enforce a no-smoking policy, even if they advertise it or even prefer it. it's not worth it to them. the city enforces it by bylaw, it's city property. otherwise, if you want non-smoking, you need to buy a condo, which is post #2 this morning.

since their first days on the plateau, from origins somewhere deep inside russia, and perhaps ukraine itself, the iranians have been a bellicose people; a warlike nation, and one amongst many to be clear, but one with the intent and desire to conquer and assimilate, of which they did. all of the middle east fell, including egypt and even greece.

and then arose alexander, who struck the iranians down in one fell blow and transformed the middle east and iran in the process. iran was thoroughly hellenized. but, from the fringes of central asia, these barbarians arose again and rode back in to the plateau to rebuild their former empire.

once again, the new iran is recorded in history as a pesky and barbaric people intent on quarreling with the romans, who were clearly their military superior, until they no longer were, and centuries of warfare led to a final apocalypse, one not dissimilar to the story told in the bible. this is not substantive prophecy, so much as it is the most basic and most obvious geopolitical analysis possible from classical israel; yes, they will come from the east, and they did. as both rome and persia lay in ruins, the arabs wandered in from the desert and repopulated, and thoroughly struck down iran, once again.

but iran would not fall into the disused pages of history, for it rose again as an islamic empire, and in fact as the cultural and intellectual centre of the islamic world. not content with itself, it picked wars with the people around it, once again, and sought to dominate and control those around it a third time, until a blood thirsty genocidal horde rode in from the east and burnt everything flat to the ground, to teach them the lesson that alexander would not and muhammad could not. this was a thorough level of annihilation and it took many centuries to recover.

but, again, iran is back, and it's up to it's old and predictable behaviour - it seeks to dominate and control those around it.

i do not wish nuclear war on any people. yet, if these people could not learn from alexander, from heraclius, from mohammad and from genghis and tamerlane, then who will they learn from?

perhaps it will be america that will teach them a final lesson, as they face yet another imminent round of destruction by their neighbours for their persistent aggression, might they be so foolish, as they clearly are.

perhaps that is process.

perhaps that is the outcome that is correct.

c'mon donald. where's my coyote at? this is easy.

krazy kamala.

kooky kamala.

camel toe kamala. would he use that one? hey, check the footage.

kamikaze kamala.

this isn't difficult at all. maybe trump needs some to get some sleep.

"the republicans suck at war" might not be the way you're used to hearing it.

but it's probably the simplest and most accurate way to actually put it.

the democrats are better at war than the republicans, but in recent years have also been more responsible about it. they have tended to be the less extreme capitalist party.

but the wsws is often the only source that really drops the bullshit.

(i'm not a trotskyist, but i can tolerate them better than stalinists, maoists or leninists, which doesn't mean they're really that much better. the theory is better. the activists usually aren't, really.)

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/07/ispf-a07.html

is tim waltz supposed to be a democrat?

could've fooled me.

i wouldn't vote for him.

mr biden has always struck me as a little crooked around the edges, and his position on this israel/hezbollah/iran thing is really a little curious.

as is this appointment.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/08/biden-elliott-abrams-iran-contra-venezuela

there's lots of songs about staying, but i don't want to get across the wrong idea, so we're going with this one.

expelling hezbollah from lebanon, or at least pushing them into the mountains, would be a major victory for the lebanese people. 

lebanon is very different than anywhere else in the middle east and far more similar to israel than it is to any arab country. it's half christian and used to be far more than half christian. it has relatively liberal laws and a relatively liberal culture. it does not want to be ruled by islamic extremists.

the reason the syrian people, who are moderate muslims on paper but in truth largely secular leftists, have continually supported assad and the dictatorship that props him up is that he is protecting them from sharia law. this is also the reason he's such a pariah in the middle east. in fact, the laws in syria are substantively more liberal than they are in iraq, jordan, saudi arabia or virtually anywhere else in the middle east. as one random example, i happen to know that the syrian government actually funds transgender people to go through full transition, which is more liberal than some european countries and certainly more liberal than the united states. assad was actually trying to de-baathicize the country and hold elections, but the civil war made that impossible. the saudis of course hate democracy and that is why the saudis hate the syrian government and have gone to such great lengths to overthrow it. but, they can't because the overwhelming popular consensus is that, whatever the problems are with assad and the baathist regime, at least it's not a saudi puppet state that wants to run the country out of the back of a koran. 

in lebanon, the christian militias essentially lost the fight against islamic extremism and are being ruled by these hezbollah imperialists that want to colonize the region and convert them all to islam. they sit down and be quiet to avoid hezbollah's wrath. it's a brutal rule by dominance and control and fear.

i hope that the lebanese military walks into any vacuum opening up. lebanon is a failed state, but it doesn't need to be a hopelessly failed one. this is some glimmer of hope in a long hopeless scenario.

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-814331