"In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor- the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors."
Monday, November 25, 2024
canada is clearly not getting a free trade agreement from the united states, which is what we signed up for in the 80s. they put tariffs on softwood lumber, they're trying to fuck with our dairy industry and now they're threatening a 25% flat tariff, which is just a 25% tax. that's not free trade.
i think canada should tell the americans that if they don't want to respect their trade agreements then we're not interested in signing agreements with them and tell them that we're going to pull out of reciprocity flat out for the next four years and reapproach the issue when a new president gets elected.
that would include dissolving the oil export agreements for the next four years.
the us congress should modify this law and remove the president's authority to unilaterally enforce tariffs.
that power should belong to congress, under the american constitution, and not to the president.
if a democratic senator put through a straight forward bill without earmarks or bullshit, it would likely get swift approval and the senate can probably even get the two thirds required to overturn a veto, which is how clinton got beat down by the congress.
targeted tariffs on specific items to protect specific industries are in the united states' interests and something congress should look at. a flat 25% tax on everything is inflationary and stupid.
if the presidency is going to abuse these powers that congress gave it, the congress should take them away as a punitive measure.
the ottawa river actually has a history of changing course, partly due to seismic activity in the region, but partly because it's a gigantic, chaotic drainage system.
the idea that ottawa and montreal could get wiped out by the river one day relatively soon is actually pretty real.
this is what happened during the last period of global warming:
vancouver will get wiped out by the fraser.
i think that this is the pattern we're going to see normalize this winter and that it may be a more normal la nina pattern for the next few decades, once people adjust the model for relativistic climate change effects.
a normal la nina pattern would have this precipitation event rush through the detroit-quebec city corridor, up the st lawerence seaway, but the jet stream is pushed north here so that it's happening across lake superior and up into james bay instead.
that's the shift here. ymmv.
it would mean more water into the ottawa river and increased flooding in ottawa and montreal, but whether the rain falls into lake superior or lake erie is likely trivial, from where i am.
if you live in south-western ontario, you should broadly expect something similar to last winter. don't rely on the long term forecasts. the forecasts will keep predicting that it will get cold ten days from now, and keep pushing it back, until it's february and it never actually happens.
we might get a day or two of cold weather overnight, but i suspect it won't happen at all.
expect highs in the 5-10 degree neighbourhood to persist and lows to barely hit freezing at all.
this will be good for the growing regions and for the general habitability of the area, which has been questionable since first contact.
they keep downgrading it.
it's currently a 57% chance that la nina will develop by the end of the year, which was the same probability that harris would win the election, as of october. chances are in the 70% range of a weak la nina that might maybe last for january-february.
given that they are not adjusting for climate change, i'm going to forecast that they will only actually measure a la nina for the djf period and when they do it will be a statistical wash.
it is there in relative terms, though.
this image gets it:
i have not been making forecast predictions recently because i've been locked inside. this missing la nina issue is something i want to predict an outcome for.
the issue is statistical more than meteorological, in that they're using outdated averages that are getting overrun by global warming. that was the point of my sarcastic post a few weeks ago. a la nina is there, in relative terms, but not in absolute terms, so you go trying to apply the model and it breaks because it hasn't been adjusted for climate change effects. i'm reminded of a physicist with a broken classical model (this is a vague analogy, don't take it literally) that makes a newtonian prediction that is wrong because it wasn't adjusted for relativistic effects and can't figure it out, until somebody does the calculation and shows them; oh, i just needed to use the lorentz factor, and it's fine, silly me.
what does that mean?
it means you take the normal la nina model, as interpreted in a euclidean system (i want to avoid discussions of spherical geometry right now, although you should realize the earth is an ellipse and not fat) and translate it upwards in the y axis (that is north) by some amount.
i can't predict the amount. i don't have data.
but, the idea is as follows.
normally, la nina means it's warm and dry in florida and wet in california. this year, you should shift that northwards, so it's also dry and warm in georgia, at least, and maybe further north than that, and it's drier in california and wetter in oregon and washington and british columbia.
the shape of the jet stream should be the same, but it should be pushed northwards.
the models will continually get this wrong and you should expect a winter where the meteorologists are constantly incorrect, but you should be able to analyze it in terms of the translational effect noted.
where i am, in south detroit, the increased amount of warm energy in the atlantic ocean should keep the jet stream a little further north, and the precipitation systems should consequently end up more around hudson's bay than around the great lakes, or at least in the northern rather than southern great lakes region. that should largely result in a warmer, drier winter than average, overall, which is the opposite of a normal la nina. when we do get precipitation, it should fall mostly as rain rather than snow.
bashar assad is a secular leader, and the entity that the west should be supporting in his struggle against terrorism and foreign funded state wahhabism in syria. as a secularist, i find the reaction by certain elements in the democratic party to tulsi gabbard's meeting with assad to actually be extremely concerning.
i think these people - duckworth, warren, etc - didn't get the memo, which is that the cold war is over and that the enemy of the west in the 21st century is islam, not russia. biden didn't get the memo either, but he's now in the dustbin of history, to be remembered as one of the worst presidents in the country's history, and this reversion back to the cold war is about to be discarded with. do the democrats want to brand themselves as wanting to hold on to the cold war? do they want to insist on being the party of the past? no thank you.
to the extent that assad has received russian support in his fight against islamic extremism, which is true, it is an embarrassment to the west that the russians had to step in to fight the terrorists because the west wouldn't do it as a result of their alignment with the saudis.
assad is the good guy in this war, and a realignment by the americans towards a policy goal of expanding secularism in the region and away from funding or tolerating saudi wahhabism is long overdue. this is the reason i opposed the invasion of iraq, as it tipped the balance of power away from secularism and towards islamism, which had the predictable outcome of generating a rise of extremism in the region, of which assad ended up as the last bastion of hope in the struggle against - and he won. i would have hoped to hear that from democrats, rather than republicans, but i'll have to take what exists as it develops.
if that's the best argument that the democrats can come up with, in a repeat of their embarrassing and debunked claim after the 2016 election that clinton lost due to russian interference, i hope that gabbard gets confirmed.
with 53 seats, the couple of moderate republicans left will probably not be able to effectively align with a democratic opposition and senate democrats are consequently going to be entirely helpless over the next few years. rather, the balance of power is going to be placed in the center of the republican party, who should have enough votes to block trump's less conservative picks.
i would put out a call for smart senate democrats (i wish kyrsten sinema was still in the senate) to actually try to work with trump against the conservative majority, as that is the point of conflict that is on the brink of developing; the senate is a lot more conservative than trump is and is going to be trying to pull the president further to the right, creating an opening for voices independent of the democratic party to try to usurp a balance of power.
as a secular leftist, i would predict that i'm likely to repeatedly align with trump against this more conservative senate, even if only marginally so.
i hope the prime minister at least bought his daughter and a dozen of her friends a second set of tickets so she could go see the show without her father.
in the end, i'm sure taylor appreciates his contribution and the government of canada's contribution. this is what passes as on arts subsidy under trudeau's randian market fundamentalist regime - tax cuts and handouts for the globalist investor class and the ultra-rich.
haaretz is a mildly right-of-centre publication.
this kind of thing happens during wars (the americans arrested eugene debs, for example), so it's expected, but it's not justified.
i think that restrictions on al jazeera were actually justified, as it's a worthless propaganda outlet that no smart person should read except to debunk it and it's coverage was actually generating conflict due to the role that qatar was playing in the mediation process (that is, that it had a conflict of interest that should have prevented it from reporting at all, if it had any kind of journalistic standards, which it doesn't. there were al jazeera journalists working directly for hamas, and pictures of them sitting in at hamas meetings to determine strategy.), but press freedom is a foundational value of any democracy and the attack on haaretz should not be accepted without criticism. it is consistent, however, with israel's slide into the oriental despotism that defines middle eastern societies. talk of israel colonizing the middle east is backwards; israel is being slowly absorbed back into the despotism of arabism, which is what tends to happen in these situations, and which was actually predictable, if you have a good grasp of history. whatever happened to the philistines, who were giant aryan greeks, anyways?
it follows that israel may not really care much about press freedom or democracy and such criticisms may not be responded to by israeli society.
if that is the case, so be it, but it should be noted by the west, who should adjust to it.
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