trying to tie polievre to trump doesn't make any sense and is likely to backfire, as the only people likely to believe it are those that want it to be true. polievre was first elected in 2004, which was when george w. bush was president and paul martin was prime minister. this is before trump, before doug ford, before rob ford and before stephen harper, who i believe saw him as a loser and a lifetime backbencher because he was on the far right fringes of the party, and exactly the image that harper was trying to get out of the media.

it is likely a good idea to remind people that polievre would be more comfortable in the old reform party, but the actual reality is that almost everybody that is actually in play has little to no memory of the early 00s, let alone the distant 90s, when they were still little kids, or before they were born. i remember having that awkward discussion with kids in bars c. 2020ish, before the pandemic.

"oh. you were born in the 90s. hrmmn."

i look young, it's not my fault. the little ones come to me, not vice versa. they even buy me beer.

this is actually going to need to be an ideas election because it's an election that represents a generational overturn. the simple reality is that the demographics in 2025 are dramatically different than the demographics in 2015. we're going to need to look at some new ideas, and look at some old ideas, and have some new debates and some old debates because we have a lot of new voters. 

that's healthy.

the left, whatever that means in canada right now, can't get lazy this cycle. this cycle is about cyclical demographic renewal, and if it wants to ignore that it's going to get pushed aside.

the assassination of nasrallah is not escalatory, but it is destabilizing in the literal sense of the term.

don't let anybody tell you that what happens next is predictable.

the reason the liberals jumped from third place in 2015 to win is that thomas mulcair very stupidly tried to run in the centre and it blew up in his face. singh is making the same mistake, and it reflects a shift in the party.

the ndp keeps making the mistake of running to the right of the liberals whenever they think they might win because they are actually to the right of the liberals.

the ndp has decided to oppose carbon rebates in canada. this is a devastating political error, and it might be dramatic enough to save the liberal government.

climate change is very much a ballot issue for a very large percentage of left-leaning canadians and, by opposing carbon rebates, the ndp are taking themselves out of the competition for the very large pool of voters in canada that swings around on the left of the spectrum. ndp opposition to carbon rebates leaves the liberals as the only choice left on the ballot by default.

the fact that the conservatives are trying to frame this as a ballot issue is going to make this particularly difficult for the ndp and especially in liberal-ndp urban ridings. i am in one of those ridings, and i might project a high likelihood of a liberal win in windsor-west due to the ndp opposing carbon rebates, as i now essentially have no choice but to vote liberal or not at all if i don't want to lose my carbon rebate. as this is a very poor riding, that $1000 a year makes a real difference in people's lives. they will mobilize to prevent losing the rebate.

conversely, it will not make the ndp any more competitive in rural ridings, where the carbon rebate is seen as a "tax" instead of as a rebate.

this is not exactly good news for the liberals, as the outcome might be an unworkable parliament. however, it is very bad news for the ndp, who are seeing their poll numbers cave as a result of a tone deaf shift to the extreme right in an attempt to appease wealthy upper class donors that don't like carbon rebates because they redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. the ndp's voting base is correctly aghast at this bizarre policy shift in the wrong direction to appeal to the wrong people.

due to this major strategic mistake, along with a few others, like sympathizing with far right palestinian terrorists, i think it is the ndp that is going to be virtually wiped out in the next election as they are no longer identifiable as a left-wing political party due to the aforementioned shifts to the hard right, and the liberals will probably hang on by a thread, in an outcome that might be similar to 1979.

it's strangely topical.

again.

the next president is going to need to spend almost all of their time in office undoing the foreign policy mess left by the last two presidents, especially by biden who has been far worse than trump, and i'm going to make a focus on pointing out specific actions that will be required to reverse the mess left by these two idiots.

the first thing that needs to be prioritized is ensuring that the united states aggressively enforces it's ongoing occupation of germany, the frightening unravelling of which has singularly resulted in the ongoing instability in eastern europe. we are actually experiencing german rearmament, which is a singular threat to global peace that is unlike anything else seen in the post-war era. the prevention and suppression of german rearmament through continuing uk-usa military occupation should be the united states's single greatest military and tactical priority, as there is nothing else on the planet that poses the united states a greater threat than the potential of german rearmament.

let us remind ourselves that germany is a conquered enemy of the uk-usa alliance that has been under occupation since 1945, after being defeated twice in two major wars in the 20th century. germany was partitioned in the 1940s and reunited in the 1990s because it was the focal point of a world war that resulted in the death of almost 100 million people and it needed to be placed under massive control in order to prevent it from rising again. germany is not an ally of the united states that is a part of the american alliance by choice, it is a conquered and vanquished foe under massive american occupation. germany is only america's "friend" because it has been conquered by force and subjugated via occupation. the removal of american troops would allow for german sovereignty, which would instantly result in them reverting to being the uk's primary global foe and a major headache for the united states. that must be prevented at all costs.

the germans have not spend much on "defence" since 1945. let us remember that this is because a condition of the treaty that ended the war, and also a condition of the treaty that ended the previous war, was that germany not have a military that could threaten it's neighbours. the american (and french and british and previously soviet) occupation of germany has been a central part of the post-war security arrangement.

trump has no apparent understanding of any of this. instead, trump is upset that the germans don't buy enough weapons. he appears to have no understanding of why it is a good idea that the germans not be buying weapons, but instead has been agitating them to increase their military purchases. this isn't some sick hitler fetish, it's just a lack of understanding of the existing american security priorities, and a deficit of basic knowledge about recent history. unfortunately, trump's ignorance as to the purpose of the american occupation of europe led to a series of poor decisions that led to the destabilization of eastern europe, resulting in the ongoing war, which nato is clearly already involved in. 

i will repeat a third time that the longstanding post-war american occupation of germany is due to the fact that the germans are a vanquished enemy of the anglosphere that needs to be pacified via massive occupation and not it's friend or ally and that removing the boot from germany's neck will lead to a return to it's previous policies, and perhaps even a policy of german revenge against the west for decades of occupation and control.

yet, in one of the most stridently frighteningly ignorant decisions ever made by a commander in chief in american history, trump actually ordered a troop movement from occupied germany into former warsaw pact and slavic-speaking poland because the poles purchased more american military hardware than the germans, and in order to create an incentive for the germans to purchase more military hardware so that they could continue to be "protected" by the united states, as though the russians started world war two by invading germany rather than vice versa, and as though the germans want the americans there to protect them, ignoring the fact that the americans are occupying the region by force in order to pacify and subjugate it and have been for 80 years. even the germans were left confused and baffled by this apparently dramatic and entirely irrational shift in american military doctrine. a more startling use of doublespeak outside of 1984 could not be found if searched for, but this has largely evaded the analysis of anybody, including russian apologists, who are focusing on literal nato expansion.

underlying the problems of nato expansion is the severe threat of german rearmament, which threatens both the russians and the west and should be prevented at all costs by the united states and by the uk, not just by the russians. 

transferring these troops back into germany from poland should be the first step taken by the next president to ensure that the occupation of germany continues and to prevent it's developing rearmament, which directly threatens american security. the germans should be explicitly told not to rearm directly by the next president. the russians will understand this as a de-escalation tactic and should react appropriately.

this will not end the war in ukraine, but it's a necessary pre-requisite and it is in the west interest's. german rearmament is a far greater threat to american security than the russians have ever been or ever will be. this needs to be the focus, not containing the russians. biden's delusional quixotic adventures as the world's last cold warrior need to be done away with with intent and force, lest we find ourselves in a third world war against a rearmed germany, and with a weakened russia that cannot save us for a third time.

if it were actually true that china had reached overcapacity, it would be a cause for great celebration. this is capitalist newspeak for the marxist term "superproduction", which is a prerequisite for actual communism.

alas, we're not actually there yet.

i think the idea she's actually trying to get across is dumping, which is a valid grounds for tariffs, but i don't think it's actually true. the problem isn't that china is making too much stuff, it's that it makes everything so much cheaper because it doesn't pay it's workers.

i have been calling for years for organized labour in the west to make the difficult and dangerous decision to try to organize chinese factory workers. that's what needs to be done.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/16/remarks-by-national-economic-advisor-lael-brainard-on-responding-to-the-challenges-of-chinas-industrial-overcapacity/

i just want to...

is it the government's role to keep people safe? this is so hobbesian. it's not the function i want to assign to government, and i want to avoid this whole debate over whether the israeli government failed in some foundational purpose on oct 7th. if you want to think like that, you should at least be thinking like an actuary and recognize the idea of an act of god, poor language in context notwithstanding.

i just want to suggest that the reason the israeli secret service didn't see this coming is that it was in truth so idiotically stupid, as the response so clearly demonstrates.

this is an issue that came up in the cold war in a different manner. it didn't take long for the russians and americans to get themselves into a stalemate by playing game theory by the book. as scary as the consequences might have been, there was no real threat of actual nuclear war, except if somebody made a literal mistake, and pushed the wrong button, or got fucked up and drunk and just did something dumb. the reason is that everything was so predictable and in truth so incredibly boring. drills were run. exercises were carried out. everybody knew what everybody was doing, everything was predictable and everything was calculated and safe.

what happened to break this routine in the 80s was that the americans elected this cowboy named ronald reagan that shot military spending through the roof and began acting in ways that the russians couldn't predict. in the language of game theory, reagan was irrational; the russians could not make sense of this, and became absolutely mortified of the fact that they couldn't predict his behaviour. this was irresponsible; it was insane. 

it worked. 

the russians stood down. the cold war ended.

what else could they do? reagan was irrational. there was no other rational choice when faced with irrationality. they try to tell you that reagan won the cold war, but when you look into it, this is what it actually means, that he broke russian game theory strategy by refusing to behave rationally and they got so scared that they just gave up.

the reality is that the smartest minds you can assemble will never be able to combat the dumbest people you can find because the great weakness of intellect is that it cannot defeat the abjectly idiotic.

i will reiterate that i don't want to engage in this hobbesian discourse. this is not my vision of the purpose of the state. but there is no defense against such stupidity; there was no way to predict it, and no way to mobilize against it and no way to react to it but to punish it.

i think i'm safe until april and maybe even until next november. hopefully i can get out of here by then, regardless.

there's a few hurdles still, but the judge helped me out a lot by setting very generous timelines without being prompted. i was worried that this was going to be a short circuit approach to this issue. instead, the case conference set a series of motions in motions court and put in place a process that could take a year or longer to work itself out.

we don't let nazis organize in canada and it's a well-established precedent.

this march should be stopped in it's tracks.

In early September, the group promoted another demonstration scheduled for Oct. 5, the Saturday before the anniversary of October 7, boasting that Palestinian martyrs “have shown the world that resistance is the only path to victory against Zionism.” 

what?

have you seen any pictures of gaza lately?

i don't think they're winning.

the very few restrictions we have on free speech in canada almost all have precedents in literal nazi marches or the literal spread of nazi literature.

this proposed march outside the israeli consulate on oct 7th is the very rare example of free association that is so disgusting and so dangerous and so harmful that it must be shut down by the police, and the precedent in canada should uphold that, if argued correctly.

this is the very rare real life example of a justified use of state power to prevent free association.

if you read this blog, you know i have almost no limits on free speech.

this is the limit. this is hate. this can't proceed. this must be prevented, by a mob of angry jews if necessary.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/palestinian-youth-movement-october-7

yeah, he won't leave, alright. 

his term ended 15 years ago and he has the nerve to call somebody else an occupying usurper.

no self-awareness with this one. at all.

and he's a huge problem in the region, too. they need to throw him out of the country.

yeesh.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/396790

Mahmoud Abbas was elected President of the Palestinian National Authority (PA) on 9 January 2005 for a four-year term that ended on 9 January 2009.

why do they even let this thug speak at the united nations at all?

who gives a fuck what he says?

i'd like to urge el presidente abbas to hold a fucking election.

can we stop calling him president and start calling him dictator?

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-president-abbas-urges-un-stop-war-gaza-2024-09-26/

lebanon is not a province of turkey.

erdogan needs to sit down and shut the fuck up and fuck the fuck off.

lebanon is ethnically jewish and historically and culturally descended from byzantine rome, which makes it culturally greek. that gives the greeks and the russians, as the successors of the eastern roman state, some leverage.

lebanon is not french and is not turkish and is not arab and these meddling colonizing powers need to get the fuck out of it.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkey-voices-support-lebanon-amid-israeli-attacks-2024-09-25/

this is a really bizarre issue.

frankly, i think that even most ten years old can process the clear reality that these protesters are idiots and the best way to show these kids how stupid the pro-hamas protest movement is is to bring them to a protest like this. it was hopefully an educational experience for most of them as to why they should avoid pro-muslin protests and muslims in general. i knew what a nazi was when i was ten and i knew they weren't good people and i should avoid them.

i'm old fashioned about speech nowadays it seems, but i still believe that the best way for idiots to discredit themselves is to let them speak and prove they're idiots.

that doesn't mean it's appropriate and it's hard to process what the intent was. everybody should be concerned about this, in trying to figure out why this happened.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/tdsb

i would insult harris' policies, but there's nothing to insult.

who needs the suez canal anyways?

that's old world stuff. monroe is spinning in his grave.

we've got panama's canal. right? USA.

and, we have a man with no plan and a camel.

 

we used to be the best country in the world.

then we embraced market capitalism.

now we aren't. not even close.

the prime minister recently told stephen colbert, who is the least funny host of his program in it's long history, that canada is the best country in the world.

he is relying on statistics and rankings from the 1980s, which was 40 years ago. canada has not ranked anywhere near the top of these lists in decades.

today, canada is the dumbest country in the world.

this is the predictable outcome of an unregulated market economy, and we're particularly stupid in canada for following this path, because it was already so predictable due to the existence of so much evidence.

canada's late embrace of neo-liberalism is like the idiot that starts smoking pot in their 20s.

wait.

https://www.tvo.org/article/ontarios-housing-crisis-is-becoming-literally-absurd

in recognition of biden's generosity, i propose the ukrainians rename the giant, useless field being fought over, which history has referred to as the killing field, to Field Biden, or perhaps Biden's Field of Dreams.

if you fund it, the nazis will come.

maybe he can leave some war planes behind in egypt for the chinese as a gift on his way out.

why doesn't he just hand over the suez canal to the chinese in a special ceremony?

what a fucking idiot.

https://www.politico.eu/article/joe-biden-pledges-billions-military-aid-ukraine-war-volodymyr-zelenskyy/

the walrus was paul.

everybody knows that.

i'd rather see the president put a 20 million dollar reward out for the death of john bolton.

this might be the one thing i agree with the iranian national guard on.

i guess there's always possibility for common ground.

https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/us-offers-20-million-reward-info-iran-plot-kill-trump-adviser-bolton-rcna172847

there should only be one public housing solution available for crackheads and junkies, and it's the county penitentiary.

see, this is really not a very conservative perspective. doug ford apparently think that drug addicts deserve social assistance money while those with disabilities that are not addicted to crack or meth or heroin should get jobs like everybody else. 

this is what happens when you elect somebody with a loser drug addict in their family, they have warped and backwards thinking about drug addicts.

i would rather call on the ford government to take a harder line stance on cutting off social assistance to drug addicts so that those that need assistance and actually deserve it aren't stuck in line behind a parade of junkies. i'm in the absurd situation where it would be easier for me to get housed if i was a heroin addict. 

should i go out and get hooked on crack like his brother did so the government will help me find housing? 

that's retarded, like his brother was.

there should be a zero tolerance policy for drug addicts accessing any kind of social assistance and people with a history of drug use should be subjected to routine drug testing and thrown off welfare if they fail it. 

i suspect his caucus agrees with me and i'd encourage them to push the point.

too much public money is wasted on drug addicts and it's crowding out access to services for those that need and actually deserve it. it needs to end.

no more welfare for addicts.

let's make that real.

https://www.cp24.com/news/we-need-to-get-these-folks-back-working-doug-ford-stands-behind-comments-on-encampments-amid-backlash-1.7050054

it just makes no sense for anybody to pay rent right now. there's no context where paying these prices is rational. you're just paying the rentier class, which is out of control and needs to be regulated.

anybody and everybody should be doing everything they possibly can to avoid any sort of rental agreement, until the market corrects itself.

i have a case conference on friday morning that was scheduled by a stupid court employee instead of doing her job and answering my questions. it will probably merely result in motions being scheduled, which is what i was trying to get done, and which this stupid conference has dramatically slowed down and screwed up. there are no grounds to quash, but it gives the landlords an opportunity to quash an appeal that i should win easily and which they don't deserve to have. this idiot woman should really be fired.

i moved to windsor because the rent was affordable. it's no longer the case. i'm left with the harsh reality that the units i can afford here are not worth renting.

for example, i could rent a room in a shared building for something like $900/month. but, why would anybody rent a room when they can stay at a shelter for free? it's the same thing, basically - you have to share a bathroom and a kitchen and you can't move anything into the house with you because your roomates could steal it. renting a room seems like a stupid waste of money when you can stay in a shelter instead for free.

can somebody explain to me what the difference between living in a rooming house and living in a homeless shelter is, besides the cost of rent?

this is a reflection of the parasitic nature of the rental market, as well. the reason the rents are so high is because there's too many middle class people trying to profit from renting out rooms to poor people at inflated prices. 

it makes no sense to participate in this system. i'm really better off putting my items in storage and sleeping in a hotel than i am renting a room and being forced to endure shared accommodations, given i'd have to put everything in storage, anyways.

i don't think i'd be unhappy living that way, per se. i mean, i don't want to waste my time going to work; that would get me absolutely nowhere, in finishing my art projects. i've recently been wasting weeks at a time washing my body off because these disgusting perverts won't stop drugging me. getting out of here under any circumstance at all seems necessary to get my life back in any context at all.

if i can get all of my items in storage except a couple of laptops and some devices, i can focus on building the offline archive out of a hotel room (and at tim horton's, or the library) and eat out of the food bank until they can find me a subsidized unit. it's a lot of effort to get into a stable housing situation, granted, but it's better than wasting my time going to work.

absurdly, if i do the math on this, i might be able to save up a down payment on a house by living in a hotel on odsp. if i can keep shelter costs down and eat out of the food bank, i could put aside around $400-500 a month by avoiding paying for rent by being homeless instead, which is pushing to $6000/year. i can maybe start accruing a little interest on that. if it takes more than five years to place me in a unit, i could have around $30K by the time it happens, which might be enough for a down payment on a 30 year mortgage that can reduce monthly fees to a "rent" i can afford, which would be substantively less than the current market.

i could also win a couple of court cases between now and then that could give me a boost to towards that goal.

the reality is that i have a lot of writing to do in order to complete my discography and that it doesn't really require having an apartment in order to finish. the spartan existence associated with living out of the library may actually help me focus.

i want to put something else out there: if i end up on the street, the straight edge lifestyle i've been living for the last few years will become permanent. i will not be touching any sort of intoxicants if i end up on the street: no alcohol, no marijuana, no cigarettes. i will drink a lot of coffee and do a lot of writing.

my odsp is stable and permanent (i will not face the stress of renewal. i'm permanent. for life.) and should easily cover the cost of long term storage. they will cover the cost of sleeping in a hotel every second or third day as well.

so long as i have a bicycle and a laptop and access to coffee money, i should be able to refocus on working on my art instead of wasting my time doing meaningless labour, which is what i haven't been able to do since this house was bought in early 2023. these people are forcing me to waste all of my time on legal battles and on washing the filth off of my body instead of being able to focus on my art. 

i want out. i want my life back; i want to be able to refocus on my art.

the situation i'm in is so shitty that i just want it to end and am starting to look forward to homelessness. i just want to get out of this hellhole and get away from these disgusting perverts.

people are accusing trump of isolationism, but, in four years, joe biden has failed to station a single us soldier overseas anywhere, including in places they should beyond any reasonable debate be, such as afghanistan and yemen, and if that isn't the most extreme form of isolationism that the united states has ever seen, i don't know what else is.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/biden-warns-isolationism-final-address-stronger-world-acts-113960710

nobody should expect that kamala harris would attempt to micromanage global events like biden has, which has blown up in his face. trump demonstrated in his four years in office that he will likely listen to his advisors rather than try to force his policies down on anyone.

i have indicated that i think trump is the predetermined winner of the election and democrats will stand down, as they did in 2000 and 2016. nonetheless, i want kamala harris to begin to broadcast who she would delegate foreign policy responsibility to should she win.

this has no relevance in the modern world:

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

lebanon is not a colony of france.

the french need to fuck off.

they gave diplomacy a chance for 40 years and it failed, it put them in a crisis situation with hostile neighbours and useless fence-sitting allies that just sit around and watch. 

they need to secure their borders with force. clearly.

and france needs to sit down and shut the fuck up. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/25/france-says-it-is-working-with-us-israel-hezbollah-cease-fire-deal/

i would prefer to oppose a ground invasion of southern lebanon by israel. unfortunately, the complete and abject failure of the un mission in the region, which is mostly run by the useless french, has rendered it necessary for the israelis to carry through on. the french are apparently only interested in "peacekeeping" in areas that they can extract resources from, like western africa. 

france should completely withdraw from lebanon and stop pretending it's interested in it.

that means the israelis are justified in occupying the south of lebanon up to the river litani in order to show the french how to do what they've demonstrated that they're incapable of doing. the french should be embarrassed by their uselessness, and should stop pretending they're a world power and stop trying to involve itself in the region. the israelis should also send the french a bill for the labour costs of having to do their work for them.

if hezbollah continues to attack israel after setting up positions in the demilitarized zone, they will be justified in pursuing them, but i cannot support a full ground invasion of lebanon until that happens. it's consequently up to hezbollah to decide if it wants to get invaded or not.

i don't normally support israeli attacks on civilians; i'm normally relatively critical of israel. october 7th created an exception, and partly because it was carried out with the broad support of the people of gaza. israel had no option but to obliterate gaza. when the romans wanted to destroy a city for carrying out crimes against it, they would kill who they could and sell the rest into slavery, they would burn every structure to the ground and then they would unearth the paving stones, letting the fields reclaim the space. there are at least two well known examples of this, carthage (in north africa) and corinth (in greece). gaza is only being spared this fate, which is what it deserves, due to (i think regressive) changes in social attitudes around this kind of retribution and due to a lack of resolve in the west. the west should be making an effort to reconnect with it's indigenous religions and value systems, as it continues and completes the long overthrow of christian colonialiasm.

as hezbollah acted in concert with hamas, and has in the process created a deadzone in israel, israel has no choice but to secure it's borders by pushing hezbollah back.  

however, there is a fundamental difference between how the gazan people, who are muslims that are mostly descended from the philistines, influenced and participated in the terrorist attack on oct 7th and what level of participation the lebanese people, who are christians that are descended from the indigenous phoenecians, have played in the attacks carried out by hezbollah, which is a colonizing muslim occupying force trying to control and dominate the indigenous christian population, and this cannot be conflated.

israel has told lebanon that it is targeting hezbollah and not lebanon and that it is at war with hezbollah and not lebanon. it needs to hold to it's word as closely as possible in doing everything it can to minimize civilian casualties.

the following are examples of legitimate targets:

- members of hezbollah leadership (or anything that targets people working for or associated with hezbollah)

- weapons depots

- missile launch sites

the following are not legitimate targets:

- united nations missions in lebanon, who have failed to secure a buffer zone

- civilian infrastructure

- civilians, and particularly not christian civilians

further, i need to state again that israel should be seeking political allies on the ground that want to expel hezbollah (which is a colonizing imperial military occupation) from the country, of which there are many to choose from.

i'm surveying regions and while windsor is still the least expensive, brampton, mississauga and waterloo are getting competitive.

i'd actually like to move to waterloo next and have been intending to go from windsor to waterloo to subbury (probably) for years.

that's right.

the world's on the brink of collapse and, if it happens, history will record that it's his fault for mismanaging everything.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/24/us/politics/biden-unga-speech.html

there's a conspiracy theory that kamala harris' father was actually white, making her white and indian and not indian and african/jamaican. this would have some effect on identity voting in some places in the united states, which exposes the flimsy reasons why some low information voters make voting decisions.

obviously, that shouldn't matter.

however, kamala harris does seem to have a lighter skin tone than her presented parentage would intuitively suggest.

her mother's skin tone was similar but discernibly darker than hers:

you'd expect that if her father was black, harris would be darker than her mother, not lighter.

however, this isn't science. guessing genotypes from phenotypes is pre-mendelian. you can't do that.

it's a rough rule of thumb, though.

at the least, if i was kamala harris, i would seek a dna test. i would have reason to wonder. it has been reported that she doesn't have a relationship with her father, and the obvious reason might be the correct one.

it is not unusual for women to seek mating partners outside of their civil law arrangements. studies have indicated that upwards of 30% - one on three people - are raised by men that are not their biological fathers. women in a free society are consistently forced to balance economic and biological considerations in who they choose as mates, and those things don't necessarily align and they don't necessarily make compromises when they don't.

the united states has a public election and a private transfer of power. if you read the news carefully, you can generally understand what the private transfer of power is going to be before it happens. this has been the case since at least the 2000 election, when the public election did not predict the private transfer of power. i can't comment in this way on earlier elections because i don't remember them well enough.

based on the language being used, i would expect donald trump to be the next president, and that everybody performing in the dramatic production called the election (including kamala harris) knows that this will be the outcome.

it would also appear that jill biden is going to run in 2028.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/jill-biden-says-peaceful-transfer-power-january-rcna171932

if there's anybody reading this that wants to rent to me, for an affordable amount (i'm poor), i need to point out that i have learned via experience that i need a male landlord. i have learned over the last 20 years that ciswomen just can't handle me.

this wasn't my impression when i went into transition around 2002. i actually thought i'd prefer the company of women, and one of the reasons i went into transition was to break down that barrier. women that knew me for a while generally figured it out pretty easily, but i didn't like the walls that women shot up when i approached them. on first impression, women always saw me as a potential sex partner, and never as a friend, and i was trying to abolish that. i had some male friends, but i didn't have anything in common with them (besides common interests in music, which was the only basis for friendship with men that i have ever been able to establish), i didn't get along with them well, i didn't trust them very much and i wanted to get past it and start fresh. i was having trouble building friendships with women because they didn't want to be my friend, they wanted to have sex with me. that was incredibly frustrating to me.

going into transition actually made that problem worse, not better.

i learned this truth a long time ago and have consequently avoided female landlords, female managers, etc in my life, but what has happened since i moved to windsor on two separate occasions is that i signed a lease with an older male and found myself happy in the arrangement for around five years, until they sold their property to women, who instantly targeted me for removal. i didn't put myself in either of these scenarios. in both cases, the house was sold to women who i would have never signed leases with because i would have easily predicted how it turned out.

the problem is that ciswomen expect me to behave masculinely and get extremely angry with me when i don't. i actually don't have that problem with straight men, who tend not to care much, but ciswomen just can't handle me being trans. they just can't deal with it. they find out a little about me, that i'm a musician, that i'm well-educated, that i'm clean and cook....and they just can't deal with it. this has been constant for 20 years and i decided a long time ago that i don't want to deal with them, wither. i just want to avoid them.

i did date a few women when i was young, and one of them yelled at me for an hour when i told them i was going into transition, and used the phrase "crime against women" as she was screaming, while half laughing and half crying. that sounds like an abjectly stupid thing to say, but she was just being honest.

i wanted to establish a greater level of equality with the women in my life, but they can't and won't accept it, and i don't want to deal with it.

so, i will be seeking a middle aged male landlord. again. i can only hope he doesn't sell to another cisfemale, because i can predict what will happen if he does.

for the ignorant idiot stalker that won't fuck off and leave me alone:

https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2023/10/07/pythagorean-tuning/

this is not the kind of thing to do on the cheap. canada should own it's own satellites, not rely on those owned by south african companies. the cost is the least important metric, when organized in terms of priorities.

i would rather see this done through a crown corporation than via loans to a private company and it would be far more efficient and far less expensive for the government to do this itself than to pay investors and shareholders in a marketization scheme, although that's no doubt a part of the plan. the way that corporate capitalism works is that investors pay politicians to write laws that send them subsidies. this isn't ideal, but it's real life. telesat has no doubt sent the liberal party a fair amount of money, and they get the contract in return. that's what really existing actual capitalism actually is.

however, it's better than offshoring it to a south african company, and the conservatives should be ashamed of themselves for proposing offshoring the country's satellite network in order to print less money. what a bunch of cheapskate losers. that's exactly the economic model that has led to the hollowing out of local industry and the collapse of the middle class. it's exactly the wrong economic model for the country to follow if it wants to compete in the 21st century.

we need to invest more in local industries and stop offshoring in order to do everything on the cheap.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/conservatives-call-on-elon-musk-to-step-in-after-liberals-provide-loan-to-ottawa-based-satellite-operator-1.7047103

american politicians will have a shit, but this is in truth very good news for canada as it indicates that the market pressure is relieving itself via people acting and voting with their feet.

the market is not the correct way to deal with social problems, generally, but in the absence of a government willing to do anything except pass laws that benefit property owners, we're not left with any other choice but to rely on the inefficiencies inherent to a market-based society.

this is not the ideal way to reduce migration into the country, but it's probably the only way it's going to actually happen. and it has to happen, and probably for a long time.

there are currently minimal to no opportunities for economic migrants in canada. there's not even a housing supply sufficient to provide them with shelter. they need to clear out and move on.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/investigates/canada-us-border-migrants-security-camera-footage-1.7329983

it sounds to me like these people tried to grab the guy because they didn't like how he looked and he defended himself. if that's what happened.

this story doesn't really add up. 

i'm not going to speculate further.

a few men approached the suspect and brought him to the centre's basement to speak with him

like, did they forcibly confine him to the basement? that's not legal in this country. i'd defend myself if somebody did that to me, too.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/man-arrested-chateauguay-mosque-attack-1.7329897

i understand that the political system in lebanon is impossibly dysfunctional and they have to redesign their constitution. however, that's a necessary but not a sufficient condition for lebanese self-determination.

as a very small country with a very strategic port, the lebanese have been constantly dealing with outside manipulation for decades. the israelis are probably the only actor in the region that will let them govern themselves, but they have to convince themselves that it's true.

i would like to see lebanon help israel rather than fight it and i want israel to try to make that happen. i admit i'm driven by a desire to correct mistakes in history. this is a single ethnic group that should be reconnected.

there's a saying about horses, water and drinking.

on some level this is pointless, but it's the correct tactic: just keep taking out the leaders. yes, they will be replaced. take them out, too.

a corollary of this approach of neutralizing hezbollah in lebanon rather than trying to take them on directly is that expelling hezbollah from lebanon also helps liberate the lebanese people from an increasingly brutal occupation, not just by iran, but by muslims more generally. the lebanese have essentially given up and accepted it. it's not clear that they're going to react immediately, but anything that gives the lebanese back their freedom is a net benefit to the area and really the planet.

this is a small area with an ancient history that has usually been a part of the west. lebanon is a country that potentially belongs in the european union. it deserves full self-determination.

https://www.msnbc.com/andrea-mitchell-reports/watch/israel-officials-say-entire-senior-command-of-hezbollah-eliminated-219810373786

you can charge your phone with wireless, right?

that means you could blow it up remotely, too.

i'm trying to understand how israel might be behind the pager attack in lebanon and coming up blank. i think a more likely suspect is the chinese, and it opens a can of worms. could they do this to american devices?

the media is speculating that they planted bombs in a production facility. that sounds ridiculous. it's a plot in a james bond film.

it is physically possible that they might be zapping them with a satellite using gps, which is why everything in the area is blowing up rather than specific targets. they would essentially be shooting out a frequency all across lebanon that causes devices of the sort to do something like vibrate, or overheat. this would be an application of quantum physics, rather than some kind of sneaky production sabotage. the israelis are currently working on replacing and expanding their iron dome with a laser system. a high frequency audio attack isn't crazy at all. 

muslims tend not to keep dogs as pets, but are there stories in lebanon about dogs freaking out at the time of the attack?

i'm more likely to lean to the idea that it's something the chinese are dropping into all kinds of devices, probably including chinese made chips and phones. the pentagon has been warning about that kind of thing for a while. if so, it's a positive signal that the chinese aren't going to tolerate terrorism in the region.

the problem with the democrats right now, and this might be a long term and structural problem, is that they can't figure out who america's friends and enemies are, because they're basing their foreign policy on domestic policy rather than vice versa. this is what happens when an empire permits immigration from societies that want to destroy it from the inside.

the democrats want muslim americans and chinese-americans to vote for them, which fundamentally fucks up their foreign policy to an unworkable mess and functionally makes them unelectable and renders them incapable of governing.

america needs to be able to fight it's enemies, and it can't do that if the natural governing party relies on them as a part of their voting coalition.

this is one way that empires collapse. it seems oddly similar to how christianity destroyed rome from the inside.

i've been suspicious about biden's connections to iran via iran-contra since before he was elected but have never been able to find direct links. the closest thing was the weird elliot abrams appointment.

i would strongly suspect that this is the tip of something very serious.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/19/iran-sent-hacked-trump-documents-to-biden-campaign-fbi-says

do you dispute the obvious truth that hezbollah will eventually be destroyed by nato?

then you agree that it's now or later.

and it's better to do this as soon as possible.

the mistake that was made by committing to ukraine makes this difficult to impossible, which is harming our would-be allies in russia and emboldening our arab and chinese enemies.

i'm going to say what i said previously.

a broader war against hezbollah is clearly morally and strategically justified and i'd like to see nato come to israel's defense. unfortunately, nato is bogged down in a pointless war in ukraine, which has no strategic value to the united states or to europe, and which is a conflict that is even directly against europe's self-interest, and is wasting billions of dollars and screwing up all kinds of economic efficiencies attacking the russians, who want to be our friends, when those funds and resources could be spent securing a more strategic area, namely the middle east, and destroying people that hate us and want to fight us, namely muslims. this is the catastrophic and backwards mess biden has created, which the next president will need to clean up so that nato can more easily defend it's interests in strategic reasons like the suez canal and red sea, a well as the persian gulf, instead of wasting money and time fighting in eastern europe, which is useless, and creating enemies out of would be friends.

hopefully, joe biden is the last hurrah of the cold war and the end of the 20th century and the last idiot trying to fight the ruskies and the next set of leaders just pick up his entire foreign policy disaster at an arm's distance like a soiled diaper and throw it in the bin, in an attempt to start over fresh from scratch. we'll see.

so, a broader war against hezbollah is justified and i think america should be taking the lead in fighting it.

as it is, unfortunately, it might not be very smart for israel to try to do such a thing alone, even it is morally and strategically correct. they need to find some allies somewhere in order to do this. that may require waiting for the united states to elect somebody that realizes the wisdom in pulling out of ukraine and more efficiently allocating nato's strategic resources to more valuable areas, first.

bc has long been in a weird scenario where it had a liberal party that was supported by people that were conservatives, because the urban/rural divide in the province is so dramatic as to build a very clear dichotomy in a two party system. it's hard to define a workable dialectic in bc, when you've got rugged outdoorsmany conservatives on one hand and effete urban elitists on the other. you just get squeezed.

the conservative plurality in bc has, for decades, hated voting for the liberals.

it is consequently likely that support for the new conservative party is being exaggerated by enthusiasm for a blue option on the ballot. i've posted a few times about how david eby seems to be an odd duck in the ndp, and that he may be facing the opposite problem, namely a lack of enthusiasm from his base, as he tries to moderate specific positions, which is overdue and required and should not be reversed regardless of the outcome. the bc ndp's position on drug legalization was insane and had to be re-evaluated.

i have also been vocal about the need to force addicts into treatment if you want to help them at all, or basically stop pretending and let them die on the streets.

but i can't support this. this isn't the right way to do this. 

this is a very scary change in the law that could result in your kids getting rounded up and thrown in asylums and would hopefully be struck down immediately as unconstitutional. this is going from one unacceptable extreme to the other. we cannot be allowing doctors to make consent decisions, or forcing care decisions on people, even if they're crazy. bodily autonomy and the right to security of the person is and must remain paramount.

rather, drug addiction is an issue that needs to be dealt with by increased policing and a return to charging drug addicts with criminal offenses and throwing them in jail, where they can get treatment options while incarcerated. british columbians should be extremely frightened by a government that wants to argue for the removal of requiring consent to treatment, rather than just going back to putting drug addicts in jail cells where they belong.

https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/ebys-finds-new-found-urgency-on-involuntary-treatment-on-eve-of-bc-election

ukraine cannot defeat russia. the idea is retarded.

what america wants is a long, drawn out war that costs russia a lot of money and what russia wants is to fight that war in ukraine and against ukrainians instead of in russia and against germans.

this president's legacy will be as a war mongering incompetent buffoon stuck in the ideology of the 20th century.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/18/america-ukraine-russia-biden-00179657

are trump's tariffs going to lead to inflation?

that would be a very free market position, which thinks all tariffs are bad, and which has little to do with any actual existing free trade agreement. it's a talking point amongst right-wing politicians, but it doesn't reflect any existing economic policy anywhere.

the discourse reflects the attempt by kamala harris to position herself to the right of donald trump on economic issues, which everybody can see is the empirical fact.

it is not the case that tariffs always lead to inflation. in practice, politicians tend to use tariffs when local economic factors favour foreign production as more cost effective, so it does lead to inflation. this is politics, not economics.

tariffs are supposed to help domestic production by increasing the costs of foreign goods, which is supposed to help domestic producers compete. that will lead to an increase in costs in the short term. however, if the tariffs actually work, the domestic producers begin to outcompete the importers, and costs come down via economies of scale. in the long run, there is no inflation, but there is an increase in local production and an increase in local jobs.

in order for the tariffs to actually work, the underlying economics have to work. that is the question to ask: can american producers scale up production in such a way that they can offer locally produced goods at a cheaper cost than foreign producers, or do the foreign manufacturers have a comparative advantage in the production of these specific goods that makes it impossible for local manufacturers to compete?

as everybody knows, the major input factor has long been and remains the cost of labour. it is difficult to make trump's economics work, and the result will probably be more inflation and less local production. however, there's a caveat to this, and it is prison labour.

yeah. prison labour is legal in the united states, and it allows local firms to compete with chinese manufacturers. that's not what those union workers are voting for, but it's what they're going to get, and it makes sense if you're the pentagon, as it brings production of sensitive materials home and harms the export economy of your most serious global opponent. much of the "reshoring" that has occurred over the last ten years is using prison labour, which requires capturing blacks and mexicans into the prison-industrial complex. that is what trump's tariffs are really about, and why they're likely here to stay.

the united states is becoming more like china every year.

tariffs on developing industries is also a good idea in general as it helps them develop without facing pressure from outside competitors.

the way to get what american workers want is actually to build organized labour movements in asia. the uaw and other big unions should be sending agitators to china and vietnam to do the very difficult job of organizing union movements in very oppressive workplaces. american intelligence agencies should be working with the unions to do this, as it is in america's strategic interest to develop organized labour movements in asia.

you won't get that kind of thinking from trump.

tariffs are neither bad nor good. tariffs are hard. trump won't get the outcome he's marketing, but he is likely to get deep state and systemic support, if he focuses on specific items of national security. it's up to union workers to understand what they're voting for.

i'm having a lot of continuing lingering issues with these stupid religious people, who refuse to allow me the right to self-autonomy in choosing my gender and sexual orientation but want to decide it was determined by "god".

there is no such thing as god. it's a dumb, primitive idea that has no place in the 21st century. we don't need god to explain the universe. the idea creates more questions than answers and is no longer a useful way to understand the world.

but, that's just the point - this issue about gender and orientation isn't a debate amongst atheists, who understand these are all choices and all exist on a spectrum. "born this way" is a religious position, it's not based on any kind of science, and this is a debate that exists strictly in the religious community, where on one side you have biological determinists that insist god made your gender and heteronormality is baked into it and on the other hand you have religious inclusionists that want to argue that god made everybody equal and we need to love each other how we're made.

i don't take either position.

i vehemently reject the existence of god as stupid and primitive and childish.

i take the position that evolution is random and unguided and that i've somehow evolved cognition and we've somehow developed medicine to the point that i have the ability to do what i want to my body and therefore have the right to because i own it. i wasn't born as a transgendered person. there is no biological condition called "transgenderism"; it is not a genetic condition, it is not genetic variation and it is not some kind of disease. it is an arbitrary, harmless and meaningless choice that free people can make to modify their body, as transhumanists, in a free and secular and liberal society.

so, i want to get out of this bullshit. i'm not interested in the debate, as it has been framed by the religious left. i own my body and want the right to do what i want with it and the right to fuck who i want, when i want, however frequently or infrequently, in the way i want. this is about free will. this isn't about god, which is an intellectually bankrupt idea that needs to be aggressively forgotten.

i would imagine that, in a free society of the future, people will modify their bodies as they choose, arbitrarily, without being constrained by archaic anachronisms like gender identity theory.

third time's a charm, donny.

if somebody is out to get you, they've given you two chances already.

three strikes and you're out.

flint is a majority black city in michigan.

like, the campaign didn't even lure some props in with free crack, or anything.

it's just an endless sea of white men. and a wife or two.

there were a number of possible outcomes in lasalle, but the bloc win was the most likely. what is my analysis as to why that happened?

quebeckers are fed up by being overrun by refugees - even english quebeckers, and even montrealers.

it is very likely that that fact will define how quebeckers vote in the next election.

i don't like nate's models. they are less conservative than the models at his old site, but they are still too conservative.

these two sites are useful in that they collect polls and present links to them, not in their aggregators. i advise against using aggregate methods for election forecasting and suggest using snapshot polling instead.

nonetheless, what these methods (which are designed to measure and track corporate branding) are good for is capturing shifts in the electorate after they've already happened. you'll note consistency in minnesota, wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. i would suspect you'd see the same movement in washington, new york, ohio, illinois and oregon, but only oregon is maybe in play right now.

i think trump has a very good chance of winning minnesota.

you'll also note that the democrats are trending positively in georgia and nevada, which is predictable and probably correct.

i still think that harris will win michigan by mobilizing black voters in metro detroit and that she should be favoured in georgia and arizona as well. but the decrease in support from white voters in white states was predictable and is real and something the democrats are going to have to accept and deal with.

the liberals are actually broadcasting that they want an early election, probably because the ndp have recently crashed.

the national popular vote may look decisive, but i don't think it translates into a change of government. i'm going to predict that the outcome will not substantively change, but the ndp and liberals may lose seats, while the conservatives and bloc may gain seats.

trudeau needs to take direct responsibility for parachuting in a candidate rather than allowing for a nomination process and the party needs to stop meddling at the local level and drop the corruption and nepotism.

the way that canada's electoral system and landscape is, the most likely outcome of an election remains a liberal minority, perhaps with a strengthened bloc.

it doesn't help the liberals to swap the ndp for the bloc. however, it might be good for the country, including the west, which might find itself getting more of what it wants via bloc influence over the liberals.

as an ontarian at the terminus point of the windsor-quebec corridor, i wish i had a bloc quebecois candidate in my riding.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/bloc-beats-trudeau-liberals-in-montreal-byelection-ndp-holds-on-to-manitoba-seat-1.7040763

i want to clearly articulate my position on marijuana use amongst adults.

i understand that this is perhaps a very gen x position, but i'm a very gen x person, and i'm not interested in the perspectives of young people, which, in canada, are undergoing some kind of depraved level of gramscian conditioning to encourage them to smoke drugs when they're over the age of 21. it's an experiment doomed to fail. i predict that canada will re-criminalize marijuana within the next 10 years and that it will likely actually become a populist issue to do so. it is the liberals that legalized marijuana, but support for legalization is higher in the libertarian right, and they all support either the ppc or the conservative party in this country. liberals in canada tend to view smoking as a serious public health issue that needs to be stamped out with stricter restrictions. it will be a liberal government that gets a popular mandate to recriminalize marijuana along with the criminalization of tobacco (these things will happen together for the same reasons), and the conservatives will oppose it.

my position on marijuana use is that it's something people start doing when they're between the ages of 12 and 14 (as pre-teens. it's not even a teenage behaviour, it's a pre-teen behaviour) and that they will tend to smoke drugs at house parties when they are teenagers, when somebody's parents are away for the weekend, and may think they're cool and think they're having fun when they do so, while not realizing that most people think they're gross losers, and not really being cognizant that they're largely being avoided by and excluded from the social in-group.

then, things tends to happen. they might fail a course. they might lose a job.  they might lose a boyfriend or girlfriend that is annoyed that they're stupid when they're stoned and smell gross all of the time, which makes intimacy a barrier. 

generally speaking, what happens, then, is that people stop smoking marijuana around the ages of 18-24 or so. the person continuing to smoke marijuana after the age of 25 is then what society calls a loser.

still, these losers do persist past the age of 25, but they slowly fall off. marijuana use will decrease sharply after 22 or 23 and nose dive after 25 so that, by the time you get to around 30 or so, the only potheads left are the unemployed and the unfuckable. after 30, anything more than exceedingly spare marijuana use at concerts or birthday parties becomes a marker of social ineptitude, economic failure and absolute loserdom.

this graph from a 2017 paper uploaded to researchgate confirms my life experiences and social perceptions:

there remains a place for adults to smoke extremely small amounts of marijuana a handful of times a year in extremely social situations. however, at 43, i have absolutely no patience for lingering habitual marijuana use in my peer group, especially not in residential spaces, and especially not in isolation. smoking pot at any age by yourself is pathetic, but is pitiful in your 40s. that's something i haven't dealt with in 20 years and i'm not interested in, remotely.

i would imagine that if the cia was trying to kill trump, which is not impossible, that they wouldn't have failed twice.

rather, this is the result of irresponsible fake left propaganda about trump being a fascist dictator, and a reaction to the fact that the united states did in fact come very close to dictatorship very recently, after the 2000 election, which actually was stolen.

it would have been justified to assassinate bush at the time and a lot of people realize that now. so, if you could go back in time and kill bush before he got elected, would you do it? what if you had the chance to do it today? it's not a grounded or fair analysis (biden and harris are more similar to bush than trump is), but it's rooted in a real desire to do what should have been done, to set history right, and to avoid the mistake they made 25 years ago.

the democrats need to take a look at the nature of their social media networking and tone it down.

however, trump isn't helping himself, either. there is no convincing evidence that trump is the threat to democracy that george w. bush was, but he would help himself if he would also tone it down and often just shut the fuck up, as well.

trump has become strangely protective over rfk, jr. it's unclear why, beside the endorsement, although the protective behaviour precedes the endorsement.

while it demonstrates some level of mental short circuit, his bizarre dog eating comments at the debate are clearly intended to project and distract from the suggestion that rfk, jr is a dog eater.

indeed, hamas is recruiting a new generation and going to university campuses all over the world to do it.

people sign up for this shit. what do you do?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-official-says-despite-war-losses-terror-group-has-recruited-new-generations/

my ears are still mildly clogged and it's just lingering forever.

i'm going to diagnosis myself with severe acute sinusitis and hope it gets better soon. like, very soon.

but the air conditioner upstairs isn't helping.

it's like the apocalypse. it already happened.

as an atheist, you might expect me to write that stuff off as a lot of nonsense, but i have actually read all of it (when i was quite young) and i realize that the eschatological part is a fairly poorly written piece of greek drama (there's a literature of this type of writing, and this is probably the worst extant example of it) but the bulk of the "prophecy" is really just base geopolitical analysis that is largely pretty rational and really anybody could have come up with.

if you're standing in jerusalem, at almost any point of history since cyrus, the beast from the east is obviously iran. one might note that most of russia is to the west of jerusalem.

the apocalypse, as described, is a relatively straight forward projection of the greco-roman/persian conflict that went on for centuries and came to an end in 628 ce. the last phase of the conflict saw the iranians capture jerusalem in 614, then the romans launched the first known jihad to recover it, in 627. this last war completely devastated both empires (imagine germany and russia after world war two), and actually resulted in a mass depopulation of roman palestine, as everybody fled or died. what happened next was the bubonic plague hit the devastated persians in 627-628 and persia was then outright conquered by the arabs in 633.

this is the conflict described by the geopolitical analysis in the bible, and you're left to draw your own conclusions about 1000 year reigns of antichrists and whatnot.

but my point is that it's not some brilliant foreseeing of history, it's just an obvious projection of an inevitable outcome, standing between these giant warring civilizations. some deep reckoning was inevitable. and it did in fact happen, in the 7th century.

if the bloc win lasalle, trudeau should resign as pm, resign his seat, resign from the party and go spend the next ten years hiding in hungary in abject shame.

for those looking in on the outside, losing lasalle would be like the democrats losing california. it would suggest they're completely dead in the water.

this will also be the second time in less than a year that the liberals will need to learn the lesson to let their constituents nominate their own candidates and stop parachuting candidates in.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-liberal-candidate-in-montreal-by-election-says-campaign-is-about-her/

the world should not have allowed the issue in yemen to fester to the current point. that these barbarians in yemen continue to exist is very pointedly a symptom of a lack of american leadership in the region.

a coalition similar to the one that defeated isis needs to be reassembled to entirely eliminate the houthis from the face of the planet.

these operations need not last forever. however, they need to continue until the enemy is destroyed. this should have been done years ago, and needs to be done now. those arguing otherwise should be dismissed as cowards and failures.

unfortunately, i don't think that either candidate for president has the leadership qualities to assemble a coalition of this sort to eliminate this enemy and we will have to deal with several more years of terrorist attacks until this threat is neutralized and destroyed.

were these russian missiles?

how did these monkeys get access to this technology?

https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/09/15/central-israel-strike-houthis-claim-hypersonic-missile-used/

they used to speak british in britain.

really.

it's actually true.

you may have heard older people or history teachers make the claim that "we'd all be speaking german" if world war two had turned out differently, which, if i may intervene, is extremely unlikely. hitler had an easy enough time invading a couple of weak neighbours, but you have to realize that most of them actually didn't fight. the british and french didn't actually fight either, at least initially. it was called the phony war. 

the russians fought, because the alternative was being turned into soap for lebensraum. the nazis really planned to exterminate the russians, but they probably would have just absorbed the british.

as soon as the nazis faced a real army, they collapsed. as they were landlocked and didn't have colonies, they had difficulty with things like access to oil. they didn't stand a chance in the long war. the british empire, including america and australia, was simply superiorly positioned. it was just a process of fighting it out, which they tried to avoid because they knew it was harmful and dumb (and because they liked the idea of arming the nazis to fight the soviets).

yet, the truth is that, at least in the anglosphere, we already speak german because the brutal invasion of britain by german speakers that is being imagined hasn't just already happened, it's happened several times, from several angles - vikings, danes, saxons, angles, jutes, normans, etc. if you look at a map, anglia and saxony are regions in the german-speaking continent.

there's been some recent historical revisionism that suggests that the germanic speaking barbarians may have been invited into the region to overthrow the romans (there's a curious historical event called The Great Barbarian Conspiracy, which is recorded obscurely, but seems to be exactly that), who were seen by the british as a colonial invasion force, and that the celts may have willingly adopted a germanic identity for that reason, as the germans were the freemen (this is actually more like braveheart than marx) fighting the declining empire and winning. if you've been struggling against an unwanted colonial power for centuries and somebody starts winning, it's enticing to want to join them. that's probably the actual reason why we speak german - because the germans beat the romans (going back to the battle of teutoberg forest, which is a fun story to read if you don't know it, even if it's half legendary), and the celts got slaughtered by julius caesar in one of the worst genocides in human history.

it is a little unconventional, but, for this reason, i consider the uk to be a part of scandinavia.

if that hadn't happened, we'd all be speaking brythonic (brittanic, or british, which is what they used to speak in britain), breton, cornish and welsh.

does canada export a substantive amount of ammunition to the united states? seems backwards.

i interpreted it as a meaningless and in fact truly foolish political decision by ms. jolie who, like other fake left and actually very conservative politicians who have recently made the mistake of sympathizing with hamas, may be in for some political consequences for her foolishness.

i would advise the americans against making much of an issue out of it. i mean, look at the actual numbers. they can't be substantive.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada-arms-sales-for-israel

i have stated repeatedly that the uk's primary concern here should be to prevent german rearmament, not to contain russia.

germany has attacked britain a great deal many times over the last two thousand years, including the premise of the shakspeare play hamlet and accounting for the fact that the british people today speak a dialect of german. also, world wars one and two.

the closest thing to a war between russia and the uk was the crimean war, which involved the uk attacking russia. rather, the uk and russia are historical allies when things get tough, and they usually align against the damn germans.

what's happening now - germany rebuilding it's army to fight an aggressive war in ukraine against russia - puts britain at imminent threat of danger from it's primary recent historical antagonist. for that reason, the british should be seeking to wrap this up like a cupcake at tea time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvdyd4nnzro

hamas is not a rational actor. that should have been obvious from day one, and you'd have to be pretty fucking stupid not to figure it out immediately. you don't treat hamas with respect or as an equal or as a rational negotiating partner. you have to step on it's throat until it coughs.

i consequently have a different suggestion to israel, at this point, and it's probably overdue.

if the previous offer of negotiation was to release the hostages immediately or face complete annihilation of your city-state, hamas has chosen complete annihilation, and the people that live there are overwhelmingly in support of it. that's reflective of a low level of education in the region (and the culture..) but so be it. you can't fix stupid.

israel actually needs to escalate, in response.

israel should start executing palestinian prisoners daily until the hostages are released, and the number killed per day should slowly increase until the hostages are released.

that's how you deal with hamas. that's what hamas understands.

this was my oral arguments for the eviction hearing on may 27th, which will be basically what i'm going to present in divisional court, but reframed to address the issues at law on appeal.

i'm going to post it here for the public interest, if you like to read a good argument.

the judge at the board was a retard and wouldn't let me read me most of it. there are just bad judges and this was just one of them.

no.

it indicated she has no grasp on reality and has no inkling of what an effective policy on the topic might be.

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2024-09-12/ty-article-opinion/harris-said-what-israeli-center-left-leaders-wont-we-need-the-two-state-solution/00000191-e294-daab-a7d1-e6ddb1eb0000

i got an updated number of $1055, but the city registry is also denying that the program is being offered this year. i'll see what the email i sent out says.

$1055 is not close to market rent for a one bedroom. at all.

still, the math becomes 1370*.3 - 1055*.9 = $538.50

538.50 + 582 = 1120.50 and adding $538.50 to the 1370, which is inevitable at that amount, is $1908.50. if add the $70+, it's very close to $2000. the cheapest apartments for rent are in the $1250-$1400 range and these are going to be gross buildings full of potheads that i don't want to live in. at that range, i'd have to move into another basement apartment, which i want to desperately get out of. i want an actual apartment in an actual apartment building.

i've found one at $1325 that i could move into if they let me. that would leave me with $2000-1325 = $675 which is about the same as right now, give or take. but the place would.

yeah.

let me try to apply for this.

if i can.

this is a slightly different program, but it doesn't look like this is very promising after all.

ugh.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-action-needed-now-on-canadian-ontario-housing-benefit

the city of windsor is trying to argue that the average price of a one bedroom apartment in this city is $1000.

that is not remotely close to accurate. it is closer to $1500. i would not be able to find a one bedroom anywhere at all for less than $1200 + utilities. rooms run in the $800+ range and bachelors are consistently over $1000.

i'm going to pursue this, but the city appears to have set up a program and then not applied it's own definitions correctly. the frustrating thing is that the extra $500 isn't enough to open the market up, because it's still $100-200 less than the cheapest apartments. 

it makes the program essentially useless, but i'm waiting on an email for an updated average price.

i think i found a better answer to get out of here. i had to get on priority status first, which i am, so this wasn't a waste of time.

there's a city run program called the wehb:

https://www.chrwec.com/forms/WEHB_Information_Sheet_and_FAQ.pdf

i'm waiting for clear answers from the office, but i believe average rent in windsor is currently $1683, according to google, which would entitle me to a subsidy of:

1370*.3 - 1683*.9 = $1103.70.

the maximum shelter amount from odsp is $582. i should be able to then add that to the wehb amount to get to:

1103.70 + 582 = $1685.70.

the way it works is that they will claw back whatever is leftover from that, after calculating actual rent & utility costs. so, if i can get an apartment for $1500 + hydro + internet, and it comes to around $1600, then i'll actually get the $1600 rather than the $1685.

this would then leave me with $1370-582 = $788. my rent is currently a little less than $800, and i pay $40/month for internet. i don't pay hydro. so, i have around $530/month. $250/month is a lot of money when you're poor, and it means i could actually get a real apartment in a real apartment building, if the program has reasonable turnover times.

with the extra $70 from the province, that would give me around $850/month to spend, which is a lot for me, but the exciting thing is that it's maybe a way out of this hell-hole i'm trapped in.

if i wait for actual subsidized housing, which i may not be able to do, what they do is set your rent at 30% of your income, which for me comes to $411. it would be officially non-smoking, but they would likely expect me to live in studio apartment or a small one-bedroom and may ask me to move around based on the needs of others. i may have to tolerate neighbours that are criminals or....people that don't understand western cultural values and aren't interested in them. i could further cram internet and hydro into the $582 amount, but they would reduce the allotment by whatever is left, giving me a maximum of $788 after the process, until the inflation boost next august.

this is a better option for me, especially if i can get into the system and find a nice two bedroom or large one bedroom for $1400ish.

there is apparently a higher vacancy rate in the high rises along the waterfront (which is what i want) at that price range that is just out of what i can afford without this program.

let's hope this is the way out of here and i can do it fast.

i'm sorry if i'm confusing people, but it's because you legitimately, honestly, truly really don't know what socialism is at all.

socialism is not about peace and love; socialism is about conflict. socialism is about history, and it's a theory of history that describes historical change as a process of violent class conflict. it is an algorithm for the violent overthrow of the state.

the hippie bullshit is actually burkean or voltairean conservatism, or in some cases actually buddhist woo, it's not socialism, and socialists are constantly annoyed and frustrated by people that won't fight for their interests or that won't acknowledge the perpetual class war.

smart socialists know you need to pick your allies (hint: not stalin) and you need to pick your battles so you have some chance of winning. running around amok in africa and ending up in jail for decades doesn't demonstrate much of a useful theory. however, socialism is still always a violent theory of revolutionary overthrow, it is not a peaceful one of co-existence or harmony.

if you want the peace and love, you are really a conservative and should be looking at the literature in the other pile, although there is a sneaky point, in that marx himself often supported conservatives over liberals, despite calling himself a liberal.