that's reversible.
with minimal effort.
Saturday, March 8, 2025
i'm more concerned about carney's apparent authoritarian streak. he didn't want to be finance minister, he wanted to be prime minister. he has to be the boss, in control, but it seems to be more about his ego.
he's probably better off as a bankbencher economic advisor, but he wouldn't do it, because it's all about him and his legacy.
he can't break things the way biden did, and he does legitimately know what he's doing on monetary policy. yet, when people seek absolute power like carney is, it's almost always a good idea to stop them from getting it.
"handling" trump is not the right approach.
the right approach is adapting to trump.
personally, i would argue that that is the one issue where carney is clearly best qualified, by a large margin. it's everything else that i don't like about carney, and which i'm far more concerned about, given that trump has 2 years max and carney might be in office for a while.
there's some articles up suggesting trump wants to invade canada for the reasons putin invaded ukraine, which would be difficult to defend against a strong analyst. is canada inviting chinese troops into the country?
but, the history is the other way around. canada is not a lost province of the us; the us is a lost province of canada. the united states declared independence from canada in 1776.
maybe, one day, we'll get them back.
Friday, March 7, 2025
if the us picked a fight with some block in europe, would canada come to europe's defence?
no.
in fact, a foundational shift in the trudeau government was to kiss washington's ass. it was decided that pushing back on iraq and cuba wasn't worth it. if trudeau were in office when bush invaded iraq, he would have signed up for it because fighting it in principle wasn't worth it.
we see how foolish that is now, and how right chretien was. chretien is this weird yoda character that speaks broken english and is somehow always right about everything, despite coming off as not very bright. he wrote most of the legislation we give the elder trudeau credit for. it was utterly stupid to intentionally flip the policy and bail on the global south. we may now suffer tremendously for that.
asking europe to pick between america and canada isn't going to help us. that is clear, and they shouldn't be faulted for it.
does donald trump think he's thomas paine all of a sudden, or something? he keeps talking about common sense, as though he even knows what that even means.
i bet that your average trump voter would guess that thomas paine is ringos starr's new wrestling name, tommy pain.
they'd let him use his sticks in the ring, right?
i don't understand what the intent or purpose of "cutting off" things to the united states is. is it supposed to be "punitive"?
they're our only market in many cases. they can buy things elsewhere, and in fact want to; we don't want them to. we want market access and they're trying to take it away. "cutting off" things us what they want.
if i was in a fight with somebody and i was given the choice between denying them access to goods or services at my own cost or increasing the price of goods and services, it is clear that my self interest would be the latter. i would always choose raising prices over denying access, every time, without serious debate.
perhaps the obvious truth should be considered: if the behaviour of canadian politicians aligns more closely with american interests than canadian interests, as has often been the case since mulroney and the fta, maybe that's what the truth actually is. perhaps this is a charade and the truth is that ford, trudeau, the bulk of the old tory media and the rest of the punditry-political-industrial complex are actually working for american lobbyists and that is why they are talking about "cutting off" trade with the americans at our own demise and cost and their actual longterm benefit, rather than maintaining it by aggressively trying to cash in on it by introducing export taxes.
when some deduction doesn't make sense, perhaps the axioms should be questioned and reanalyzed.
Thursday, March 6, 2025
i watched part of the state of the union. it wasn't that different than previous ones.
this is what i want to say: trump is worth opposing, but not on the grounds the democrats want to oppose him on, which are mostly the small number of things he should be supported on. in fact, the democrats are going to largely avoid opposing trump on the things he should be opposed on, because they actually agree with him.
trump comes off as uncouth, granted. people criticize him for not really being rich because of how he acts and talks. further, he has some ideas that we haven't heard in a while, and some of them are bad and some of them are less bad. however, fundamentally, i don't see a break from the status quo neo-liberal washington consensus, where the democrats and republicans agree on everything i'm opposed to, and they argue about things i either don't care much about (gun rights) or actually think the republicans are right about (russia).
do you think that colbert looking guy running the house of representatives sitting behind trump supports tariffs on canada? he doesn't. he hates it. he's waiting trump out. the bankers do this from time to time in history, and it exposes what the truth is, which is that trump is the puppet, and the real oligarchs are using him to sit on power and get what they want done, which appears to be an end to this stupid war with russia first and more tax cuts second.
i will eventually pick a side and align with a party, but it's not going to be in the next four years. what i see is the same thing i've seen since the end of clinton, which is my entire adult life - two parties that i disagree equally with in their core principles, which they largely share, and can equally support 10-20% of the policies of, albeit my support would be for different policies on either side. i would disagree with 90% of what democrats support and 90% of what republicans support, but would agree with random policies pushed by either party.
i'm going to largely agree with what trump does as commander in chief, which is his actual job, amidst howls by the democrats, which i will mostly ignore or flat out criticize. i was vehemently opposed to biden's foreign policy, which i thought was catastrophic and brought us to the brink of nuclear war. i will strongly disagree with trump on his economic and tax policies, which democrats will probably actually vote for. i had minimal support for some of biden's domestic policies, but i largely thought he was too right-wing on economic issues and his legislation had no chance of accomplishing what it purported to accomplish because it relied strictly on voluntarism and the use of market theory, when he should have been passing laws about emissions levels and then sending people to jail for breaking them.
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
i sample a small section of the good neighbour policy speech in my 2004 symphonic work, "interplanetary isomorphism".
this composition is complete, but the recording/ep remains unfinished. i have been intending to complete a remaster of this track for years, which would close the ep, but i've been fighting off all kinds of bullshit and haven't been able to.
it is featured as the centrepiece of my upcoming eighth record, {e}, which will be backdated to 2005 when it can be finalized.
all sound in all trivial group material created by the identity element, the one. that's the point. it's solely me; strictly me. nobody else is ever invited. any attempt to participate would be violently stricken.
the missing link between inri and the trivial group is pythagoras, and i've created an akousmatic project to fill that in, but it's still in sketch stages because i simply can't get any work done. i was reading reconstructions of pythagorean philosophy in 2004. via pythagorean philosophy, which may have had indo-iranian origins via thracian influences, the trivial group is the origin point of the platonic tragic hero, jesus, which inri is named after.
there are three official inri lps and one official deny everything lp, two official jjjjjjjjj lps and one official ftaa lp between the inri project and the trivial group project, which culminates in a 2xlp set. all of these projects in the main sequence (inri, deny everything, jjjjjjjjj, ftaa, trivial group, cycles per second, tetris, pi, proverbs) only include me as a member, but may include guest contributions from others. not the trivial group; if it's filed as trivial group, it is me and only me and strictly me and nobody else ever at all. otherwise, it's not the trivial group, it's some other group that is isomorphic to c2 or c3 or c4 or k4. there are also some side projects (rabit is wolf, cynicide collaboration, throatmotor, etc) with others, but mostly with an old acquaintance named jon that was reliant on me for bass for a few years.
canada will not find friends or solidarity in europe. that's why i've been arguing against supporting them. that's the point.
if what trumps wants is hemispheric dominance, which is the monroe doctrine and not "manifest destiny", and he's looking to make a deal with the russians to get it, then the solution is to look towards other actors in our own hemisphere, not to poke monroe in the eye and pine for a return of colonialism by calling the french back into louisiana. vive la nouvelle-orleans et saint-louis libre? let us instead advance the good neighbour policy of fdr, retooled for canada, and look to make friends in the south.
the reality is that almost everything we buy from the united states could be grown or manufactured in mexico and already is and is already on our shelves. i guess it depends where you shop. i'm poor, so i do almost all of my shopping at walmart, and they don't import anything from the united states, it's entirely from mexico.
there are large countries in south america with advanced economies: peru, argentina, chile. brazil has a lot of the same problems as america, except far worse, but is a very populous nation with tremendous potential. it might be a secret nuclear power.
we are better off waiting this out and expecting it to be short-lived, but if this goes on for a while and the americans really want a new civil war for control of the hemisphere then we'll have to understand that and build alliances in the hemisphere to contain them with. right now, it's a little too early for the canadian government to be talking about an american containment strategy, but it needs to be ready, as a contingency plan.
right now, we should just slap massive export taxes on the giffen goods and perfectly inelastic commodities to try to milk them of their own stupidity and wait it out.
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Monday, March 3, 2025
Ford has previously warned that a 25 per cent tariff on most Canadian goods at the Canada-U.S. border could result in the loss of 500,000 jobs in Ontario.
so, what happens if you shut down nickel and electricity exports? you just make it worse; you just create more job losses. you reduce revenue streams coming from taxes. you create a negative multiplier that is recessionary, especially in northern ontario. this could devastate northern cities; this is retarded.
the americans are shooting themselves in the foot and, in response, we're shooting ourselves in the groin. that'll show 'em, right?
but, if you keep the industries running and hike the price via export taxes, you save those jobs and create a revenue stream to help the workers in the industries that do get shut down by the tariffs.
ugh.
retards. everywhere. you have to be a retard to want to run for office because you have to be a retard to actually want to make decisions for others and control others and implement power over others. what do we do?
the greeks used to pick their leaders in the assembly, and force them to serve against their will, not let them volunteer to run, as they knew that allowing politicians to volunteer self-selects for retards that want power and dominance and control.
no. when i call you retarded, that doesn't mean i think you should be forcibly sterilized. it just means i think you're a fucking moron and should be called out publicly for your worthless, abject fucking stupidity, and i think that calling people out for being complete idiots is necessary and required and positive.
i ultimately don't like people telling me what words i'm allowed to use. i'll decide how i want to speak, not you, and you can go fuck yourself if you don't like it. i have no remote concerns about your feelings; i'm strictly concerned with my rights to free expression, and if you want to restrict my right to expression in any way, you are my enemy and must be smitten and destroyed.
until relatively recently, i would generally avoid calling somebody a retard because it was unnecessarily rude and tended to reduce the quality of the discourse. it was just unnecessary to resort to specious ad hominems; i could insult your position, instead of insulting you directly. it was more effective to merely imply you were a retard, and not helpful to actually point it out. it made me sound brash and uncouth. i have a better vocabulary than that. really. however, when these retards on the fake left (they're actually the far right. the left doesn't restrict speech, only the far right restricts speech) started trying to tell me i couldn't use the word, i felt it necessary to start using it just to assert the fact that i can and i won't be told otherwise.
what this is about is rebelling against an authoritarian culture trying to tell people what they can and can't say and how they can and can't think. people of all ages and all political alignments don't like that and are likely to spit in the faces of people trying to control them through policing their language, and kick them down the stairs and tell them to fuck off.
it is actually one of the basic principles of ideological liberalism to reject authoritarian control structures trying to police language or create categories of thought crimes. i consider my insistence on the right to call you a retard to be a left-wing position and those institutions trying to shut me down to be on the far right.
it does not align me with any of these groups at all, and i'd like to see more socialists be more vocal about this. the politics of restricting free expression is a losing political position, and these guys (they are 95% men) have co-opted a foundational principle of the left that the left needs to aggressively and assertively take back from them. this is our policy and you can't have it; fuck off.
shipping oil to the eastern seaboard is not forward thinking. the carbon era is ending, trump will be gone in a few years, and it's generating a gigantic ecological threat for minimal economic gain over a short time frame. they should just leave the system in place and implement massive export taxes. the governor of michigan is trying to shut down the existing eastward movement of fossil fuels, and i fully support her in doing that.
this idea that transporting oil by pipe is safer than by boat or train (or plane) is missing the point. activists opposing pipelines are trying to stop the movement of oil altogether; we want to keep it in the ground.
canada still has massive undeveloped hydroelectric potential. i understand that some environmentalists oppose developing hydroelectric dams because they're conservationists (right-wing environmentalists, conservatives) that want to keep nature untouched. i support sustainable development that uses the science of ecology to develop a holistic relationship with the environment that allows for the continuation of development and industry in a way that doesn't generate a negative impact. we can reroute rivers in a way that is safe and doesn't harm the species that live in them. we should be focusing less on mining and moving dirty oil for the old economy and more on generating clean electricity for the new economy.
i don't want to own a vehicle, i want access to an efficiently run publicly owned electrified transportation system that connects the entire windsor-quebec corridor as a giant megalopolis.
an export tax on oil is also a carbon tax, remember. it's worth supporting strictly on that ground alone.
industries will also find ways to adjust to the tariffs.
have you noticed that the price of coffee has doubled in the last few years? there are apparently climate issues with the production of coffee, but the increase in cost is due to the tariff taxes on the cost of aluminum. the tariffs increased the cost of producing the tins, and the costs got passed on.
in response, walmart has started selling it's coffee in cardboard containers instead, and they are selling their house brand at 50% the cost of the cheaper coffee (maxwell house) and a third to a quarter the price of the premium brand. they are going to completely undercut and rive maxwell house out of business unless they adjust, and i'd expect they will. these cardboard containers are made from recycled cardboard and are more sustainable as well.
coffee is an essential good for many people, including myself. coffee is food. i'd like to start growing it here indoors in a a circular, sustainable manner. removing the large amount of aluminum in the manufacturing process is actually a good thing, long term.
the right move for canada to make next is to slap large export taxes - 100%-200% - on items that the united states gets from us and can't find another source for, such as oil, uranium, potash, aluminum, nickel, gold, canola and electricity.
it is stupid to threaten to cut off the electricity like ford is doing.
he should jack up the price, instead.
then, you take that money generated by the export taxes and use it to help the workers harmed by the tariffs.
i'm still watching the liberal debate.
now is not the time to balance the budget, but three out of four candidates are insisting on doing it. let's remember back to 2015. the ndp were the opposition, and mulcair was running way ahead of trudeau, but then he promised to balance the budget, and trudeau promised to run deficits. trudeau ending up leapfrogging mulcair and winning a majority.
it's not the 90s anymore, but it's not as though chretien ran on balancing the budget. in fact, he faced major pushback for it. balancing the budget was what a very large number of people voted against in 1993. he ran on cutting the gst.
i'm consequently not entirely sure what these people are thinking.
canada is going to need to run large deficits to mitigate the effects of these tariffs. i don't want to hear about balancing the budget, i want to hear about the government absorbing the costs.
none of the candidates are impressing me but three of them are right of centre, and it leaves the remaining candidate - karina gould - as the only option, by default, although she seems to be rather flawed, as well. i'd rather put carney in a technical or finance role than make him prime minister; he doesn't strike me as a good candidate for that role.
the canadian liberals do this every few years, they swing to the fiscal right and run these technocratic candidates, and they can never generate popular support because it's not what people want. the banker is going to become leader, but he won't last long.
the idea that canada can mitigate it's problem with the americans by retreating back to the british empire is delusional. the british need to maintain lapdog status with the americans and will not stand up for us. further, the americans are militarizing the pacific to try to contain china, and will need to aggressively position forces in australia.
the only way that we're going to escape washington is to conquer it, and if you follow the narrative, that's actually what the americans are worried about. they're afraid of us. that's the point.
we need to find some way to work with the americans, and politicians suggesting otherwise should be seen as insane. it's geography. it's unavoidable.
everybody needs to calm down. trump is a lame duck president, and an anomaly on canada. he's not overseeing a shift in policy, he's a loose cannon. we should avoid reacting rashly, as this won't last, and we don't want to create more damage than is necessary, when we seek to undo this with the next president.
Friday, February 28, 2025
what happened in the white house today with zelensky and trump looks brutal. granted. but, history will demonstrate trump is right.
what i have realized, and what the media won't cover, is that biden was hopefully the last cold warrior. he started from day one in his withdrawal of afghanistan (which, whatever he said, was about redeploying resources to europe) and had an obsession with creating the knockout blow to finally defeat the russians. he never campaigned on this, and few people saw it coming. nobody seemed to want to believe it.
in the end, nato was launching an offensive incursion in russia by sending trillions of dollars into ukraine which is not an ally or a democracy. ukraine is the most corrupt country in the world. it's a kleptocracy that has experienced multiple coups since the collapse of the soviet union, and spent the first 25 years under a literal dictatorship. it's recent history is more similar to a country experiencing oriental despotism, like kazakhstan, than any country in europe. it has generally leaned towards russia, not the west; that was why there needed to be a coup in 2014.
the catastrophic mess that biden created by his aggressive policy to destroy russia (he seems to have thought the russians were so weak they'd be defeated by ukraine, which is absurd) has to be cleaned up using similarly aggressive tactics. zelensky is not a politician; he's a creation of biden, and he says the things he says because it's what biden groomed him as. he's a puppet that's lost his puppeteer. he should resign, and should be replaced.
i am still watching the liberal leadership debate, and they keep arguing with each other over who is going to increase military spending the fastest, under the flawed perception that a "strong military" will "keep us safe".
i would have expected liberal leadership candidates to actually want to talk about diplomacy and what canada is going to do to stop wars from starting.
that said, i would support some kind of missile shield in the arctic, similar to iron dome but on a larger scale. that would be very expensive.
Thursday, February 27, 2025
every response by every candidate is about trump.
trump is a lame duck president in poor health that might die in office and appears to be a puppet of elon musk.
i want to hear about what ideas they have to address the problems canadians face in canada, like too much immigration and not enough housing.
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
what do i think is really going on with this doge thing?
i think it's a cover. smoke and mirrors.
donald trump does not care about fiscal solvency and is not a fiscal conservative. he proved that in his first term. he slashed taxes irresponsibly and generated huge deficits, then shrugged it off, which is the norm for republicans since reagan. republicans always create huge deficits, often largely via war spending, but also via overwhelming corruption. it is true that they cut services for the poor, but this isn't about saving money, it's a type of class warfare. it's also a means of scapegoating that helps them get the working poor and lower middle class to vote for them, against their class interests.
i would expect millions or billions of dollars to disappear in the next four years, or to be spent on weird consultants, and for the money to ultimately be funneled to trump and/or musk. that's the actual point. they're not just making stuff up, they're distracting you from what they're doing by telling it to your face and hoping you can't figure it out.
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
i acknowledge that it's somewhat of a gloss on the facts, but in russia the narrative is that ukraine is preventing the east from succeeding, after it voted to leave, and this is fundamentally actually true, even if it ignores the attacks on kyiv and the rest of the country, who have not vote to secede and probably won't.
it's not dissimilar from the american civil war in a lot of ways, with zelensky playing the role of lincoln and the russians acting like the british empire, except, in this telling of history, the south secedes and rejoins the empire.
when you drop all the bullshit and look at the basic conflict, zelensky is fighting a war to prevent the east from seceding, which is fundamentally an attack on democracy. there's good reason to question his democratic legitimacy, and to question the democratic legitimacy of his position in the war.
does trudeau actually believe the nonsense he's spouting about ukraine or is he just reading something somebody gave him? is he ignorant or stupid?
not only should a condition of ending the war not be ukraine in nato, it should be the withdrawal of nato troops from poland back to germany, and the americans should be realizing right now how important it is that they occupy germany, which is a vanquished enemy, not an ally or friend. the importance of occupying germany has never been more apparent than it is right now.
should the russians give back the territory they've (re)claimed from ukraine since 2014? well, that should be up to the people that live there, who are russian speaking and who voted to join russia. maybe there should be another vote, but if what you're going on about is saving democracy, you have to realize it would be undemocratic to send these people back to ukraine, when they want to be a part of russia.
this war was inevitable, after the coup in moscow 35 years ago. it took too long to happen, really. you should stand with the people - the actual people - and not with either military, one of which is a totalitarian system and the other of which is a protection racket. that means listening to them when they vote and self-organize, even if you don't like the outcome.
Monday, February 24, 2025
this isn't our war, and throwing rocks at the russians - who we share a very large border with - like this is abjectly moronic. trudeau is a complete, utter buffoon.
i would be vociferously, vehemently opposed to this, and i will explicitly vote against the liberals on this policy if they bring it in before the next election.
i would have never expected to see the liberals arguing for the occupation of a foreign country, but here we are.
ruby dhalla may have broken some rules, but they all have. it is more likely that she got disqualified because the party executive doesn't like her politics, and that's fundamentally undemocratic. in a democracy, you don't prevent people from speaking because you don't like their views, you engage with them and try to convince them that they're wrong. it demonstrates a continued weakening of free speech rights in the liberal party that's been ongoing for some time, which everybody should be extremely concerned about.
if the party really doesn't like her views, it should be confident that she'll lose. right? that they can't be confident they can beat her indicates that they don't have confidence in their own grassroots, and perhaps they ought not to, but it would be extremely helpful for everybody to learn just how many votes ruby dhalla can get running on an anti-drug, anti-immigration platform in the liberal party of canada in 2025, and the party might want to learn something from that rather than ban her from speaking. perhaps the truth is that some of their policies on these topics should be modified, because their positions on drug use and immigration are actually borderline insane. members of the grassroots should be given the opportunity to argue that, and the party should listen, if they speak loud enough.
i mean, if even the party grassroots is arguing this point, which is notoriously left wing, the party needs to pull the dildos out of it's ears and start listening.
the liberal party i used to support just wouldn't act like this; it would strenuously argue that when you don't like somebody's views, you engage them in debate and defeat them and aggressively criticize people suggesting otherwise, because you ultimately have to do that in order to change them. banning ruby from running doesn't make her go away, it just means you're ignoring her and choosing not to see her standing in front of you; it's ostrich logic. you have to engage. that's why the liberals opened dialogs with these unliberal groups like muslims in the first place, because they realized you have to engage with them to convince them to change, and that this is necessary moving forward. these unliberal groups in our society like muslims must change.
shutting ruby down on a trivial technicality like this more or less just proves she's right and that, to an extent, we've already lost the fight against the authoritarians, like the fundamentalist muslims that are increasingly taking over the liberal party, because they made the mistake of letting them in.
i wouldn't have voted for ruby, and i haven't identified as a liberal in a very long time, but i'd have ripped up my membership over a party's refusal to uphold basic principles of free speech and free discourse. i wouldn't align with a political movement like that, wouldn't support it, wouldn't donate to it and wouldn't vote for it, and what the liberal party needs to realize and understand is that what's happened is that it's been co-opted by the right-wing foreign religious and immigrant groups that it initially engaged with to try to assimilate. it reached out to these groups to try to change them, and got taken over and overwhelmed by them because it didn't set rules for itself.
i might suggest to more powerful people than i in greater positions of power than i that the liberal party of canada is too important an institution to allow to be overrun by barbarians at the gates, and that they need to take the party back using the methods they have in front of them to do it.
the reality is that the pretty indian woman in makeup got banned from running by the muslim-dominated liberal party executive because she looks like a slut, and this isn't the first time we've seen the liberal party engage in attacks on indians, sikhs or hindus that seem motivated by a fundamentalist muslim perspective. this needs to be understood, exposed, attacked and dismantled.
Thursday, February 20, 2025
these guys are dipshits.
in fact, the german business class will be extremely appreciative of trump for ending this, if he does. this war is not popular in germany at all - not amongst workers and not amongst business. it's just this class of fake left politicians that have egg all over their face, and they're only embarrassed because they look like idiots for having to flip-flop.
a lot of the people that knee jerk are going to be just trying to avoid contradicting themselves in public.
see, this is what i was talking about in suggesting a handful of democrats should try to grab the balance of power.
trump will hold a core of republicans, but a substantive amount of his policy positions are so unconservative that he'd be looking to the far left of the democratic party for support.
people like myself, for example. i absolutely agree that zelensky is a brutal fascist dictator, and that he's a front for the most dangerous right-wing coalition we've seen since the nazis. i think trump is getting the puppet strings reversed, but his analysis is spot on.
so, how does somebody like bernie sanders walk into this and try to take advantage of it? sanders is unfortunately a bad example, because his foreign policy actually sucks across the board. however, there is a clear opportunity for somebody on the real left to step in here and try to influence policy, because the lindsay grahams of the world are gonna hate this, and they can fuck off on the horse they rode in on.
as republicans melt down and revolt, i'm having the opposite reaction. i have spent the last four years railing against biden's foreign policy, and pointedly refused to endorse him in 2024 or 2020 for the specific reason that i thought he would be a foreign policy disaster, and i was clearly right, he was the worst foreign policy disaster in decades. i have repeatedly blamed biden for starting this war in this space (he is not solely to blame, but he set it up, and he let it happen). i think trump is a godsend for showing up and trying to put an end to this mess.
in fact, my position is a bit more meta than this; i realize that it is absolutely imperative that the united states have russian support if it wants to win a war against china, and i realize that the russians want to be on our side, we just have refused to let them be on our side. the chinese have got us fighting each other, when we should be working together. ukraine is irrelevant and fighting the russians is retarded; it is the russians, and only the russians, that will help us beat the chinese, and we have no chance against the chinese without russian help.
when i look at american and british state and corporate media, and i see it take this anti-russian position like this, i realize it's a subtly pro-chinese position, and it makes me wonder.
i'm reminded of the debate between obama and romney, where obama nails romney for thinking russia was america's adversary. clinton first and then biden reversed that and aligned with romney, in calling china a competitor, and russia an adversary. trump's position is closer to obama's again, which is the correct one - china wants to be america's enemy and is america's greatest and probably only serious threat, while russia actually wants to be america's friend, and is constantly being rejected in it's advances. america has for decades very stupidly tried to build alliances with it's enemies and tried to start wars with it's friends.
america doesn't stand a fucking chance unless it figures this out, and future historians could point to this shift in policy as a game-changing decision that saves american hegemony from the brink of collapse.
Sunday, February 16, 2025
it would seem that carney has emerged as the runaway favourite, with chrystia freeland running at a distant second and karina gould as an also-run. there's some business guy running, too, apparently.
there's one more candidate.
is ruby dhalla a dark horse in the liberal leadership, given that they use preferential voting, she's a legitimate outsider, she's the only immigrant on the ballot and she knows how to leverage her appealing appearance?
she might be.
it does look like carney will win the most votes on the first ballot, and the expectation should be that he will win by the third round at the latest, but i wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being dhalla that gives him a run, rather than freeland.
the reality is that appearances are very important in politics. it's better to learn that at the start of your career than at the end of it. that's just real life.
in ontario, the liberals have tended to lean pretty far to the left, as well, and the differences in policy are often difficult to articulate. often times, on issues such as gun control, the ndp actually come out to the right of the liberals. it's counter-intuitive.
i don't support merging the parties.
but they need to stop competing. it's stupid.
it's a classic prisoner's dilemma.
instead, they're going to be stupid and compete and both lose, and ford will win another majority.
if the liberals and ndp want to throw this fatass dumbfuck loser doug ford out of office this cycle, and probably next cycle, they're going to have to strike an accord. it's not that doug ford is particularly popular, although his demographic numbers are admittedly somewhat frightening if you break them down and analyze them. these are numbers that should really throw liberals in this country for a loop. the problem is that the anti-ford vote is almost evenly split almost everywhere, and they don't make any attempt to work together in any way, they just show up to compete against each other, they run directly against each other, they split the vote and they throw the election away. it's utterly foolish, tactically.
there is no possible outcome besides a ford landslide, and a situation where he gets 40% of the vote and has 100% of the legislative power. i don't want doug ford to be premier any more, and his approval rating is worse than joe biden's, but there's no realistic path to get rid of him.
the liberals and ndp need to take a different approach and should perhaps look at the recent elections in france for ideas as to what to do.
i'm going to flip this issue over.
the united states is not good enough to be a part of canada, like turkey or ukraine is not good enough to be a part of europe. there are a few things that the united states needs to change about itself before canada would consider admitting it to be a part of the dominion.
1) it needs to adopt the metric system.
2) it needs universal healthcare. today. this is non-negotiable. this cannot wait any longer.
3) it needs a bill of rights with bodily self-ownership in it, so that abortion is a constitutional right.
4) it must do away with property rights immediately. yuck. gross.
5) it has to accept better protections for trans rights, and allow for state-funded transgender surgery.
6) it needs a multi-party democratic system. the two party system is not democracy.
7) abolish the second amendment, outright. yuck. gross. i don't want that kind of bullshit in my constitution.
8) ban the death penalty.
9) abolish all slavery, including prison labour.
this is not a complete list, it's a set of basic starting points.
once the americans have implemented these policies, they can get back to us about becoming a part of canada.
odsp is currently about 55% of minimum wage (net, not gross, which is more appropriate because we don't pay taxes), which is too low, but i'd settle for a doubling in the housing amount, which is the actual problem and an issue everybody is dealing with.
odsp, however, needs something more than money thrown at it. it is suffering from a design flaw brought in during the harris years to shift to something market-based. this was rooted in the silly conservative idea that people are more free when they have more financial choices (because that's what i want in my life, the freedom to make financial decisions. right. in fact, that's about the last thing i give a fuck about.) and less free when they have less financial choices. ergo, disabled people would be more free if better allowed to participate in the market. essentially zero disabled people agree with that logic; disabled people generally want freedom from markets and look to odsp as an escape mechanism from the tyranny of the market, which they can't compete in.
it's the same issue with religion. conservatives want freedom of religion. secularists want from from religion.
today, they give us 55% of the minimum wage and tell us to compete with minimum wage earners for market housing. a one bedroom apartment in the cheapest city in ontario is roughly the same amount as my entire odsp check, $1300-$1400/month. how can i compete on the market when i'm not given the resources to? but, it's the premise - that disabled people can compete on the market - that is actually the problem, because it's backwards and orwellian and stupid. the definition of being disabled is that you can't compete on the market.
the inevitable outcome of telling disabled people to look for market housing and then giving them 55% of the minimum wage is that disabled people are going to end up homeless. the math is pretty oppressive. it doesn't work out any other way. worse, the disabled are the people in society least able to pull themselves out of poverty, or generate money from nothing. then the conservatives moan and complain and whine that they're throwing away all this money on the disabled, when this is actually not what we want and not what we need.
odsp needs to be redesigned to fix this design flaw brought in during the harris years by stop telling disabled people to pay market rent and then handicapping them by preventing them from being able to compete on the market by giving them too low a fraction of the minimum wage, so that they cannot compete with minimum wage earners for housing. the two ways to do this are to get odsp recipients out of market housing by increasing subsidized housing (which is the better idea) or, if you want to hold to the delusions of market theory, by setting the amount that odsp recipients receive to an amount that allows them to compete on the market. they would need to at least double the shelter amount from $600 to $1200, keeping in mind that, as a disabled person, i actually don't need income for things like gas money, because i can't afford (and in my case don't want) a car.
i'm such a dour realist that when i dreamt of gentle, rolling fields and pastures this evening (as i truly did, i woke up a little after 1:00), it was in an algorithmic pattern, so i could deconstruct it into computer code.
my brain subconsciously deconstructed the landscape into patterns and turned it into a cgi background.
some napkin math for the liberals.
1368x = 2056 <----> x = 2056/1368 = 1.50
a 50% increase, and legislation that it increase at the same rate as the minimum wage so that the distance between the two is maintained (canada is a metric space. i'm sorry.), would be sustainable and fair.
bonnie crombie repeated in the debate that she wants to double odsp, which is something that i've heard politicians say before, and sounds encouraging, but should actually be taken as a red flag - it's not a serious promise, and it will be broken. as an odsp recipient that is having difficulty finding housing, an increase in benefits is exactly what i need right now; it would be a godsend. however, i want to see and hear a serious plan for odsp that is sustainable and realistic, not a crazy promise to win my vote.
what would doubling odsp actually mean?
As of February 2025, Ontario's minimum wage is projected to increase to $17.82 per hour on October 1, 2025. This would result in a gross monthly income of approximately $35,149.92 for a full-time employee working 26 pay periods per year. However, after taxes, the net income would be approximately $29,026.
ok.
how much would my yearly income be if you doubled my odsp check?
it's currently $1368 and set to increase by around 3% on aug 1 due to inflation, as it is pegged to inflation. $1368*12 = 16416. 16416*2 = 32832. they don't tax this.
so, if you doubled odsp, my income would be higher than minimum wage. unless you also boosted minimum wage - and maybe you should, to $20 - that would not be fair. as an odsp recipient, i know that's not fair.
however, we've increased minimum wage faster than odsp and that's created a problem that was foreseeable. that was a bad policy choice.
something fair and sustainable would be to set odsp as a fraction of the minimum wage, say 85%, and ensure they increase together, so increasing one doesn't harm the other. i don't want to play into protestant work ethic narratives about lazy disabled people, but some subset of alcoholics and drug users (particularly) should have that incentive in place. this does not describe most odsp recipients, who have legitimate disabilities, but it is a nontrivial subset and if you tell them they're better off doing drugs on odsp, they will make that choice.
when she tells me she wants to double my income, i'm supposed to run to the voting booth. i'm not that stupid and i don't appreciate having my intelligence insulted.
i'd call on the liberals to release a serious, sustainable plan for odsp. the province needs it. i need it. it's overdue and required.
Saturday, February 15, 2025
it turns out doug ford sent me a check after all. i didn't pay taxes last year, but i did file my taxes because i get tax rebates.
it's not a good public policy, but i need the cash and i'll take it.
the donation button is on the side and i'm on the brink of putting everything in storage and hitting a hotel c. mar 15th, right now. i kind of have to because i can't even go outside. the only way out of here is via an intermediate source.
Friday, February 14, 2025
there are specific goods that the united states used to make - used to dominate the production of - and no longer makes at all any more. the reason is indeed due to free trade, but trump is misunderstanding the problem.
the chinese have more than a comparative advantage, which is fair trade in principle, but an absolute advantage in the cost of labour. it's not just china, it's most of the far east, india, africa and parts of south america, including mexico. the united states cannot produce goods at the same cost because it has to pay up to 10x as much in labour costs. therefore, it cannot compete.
one solution would be to make labour unions illegal, but what is great about that? who wants that? donald, do you want that? really? you don't, you're desperate.
the minimal reshoring that's occurred recently has been about moving production into prison facilities, and that is actually happening, look it up. that is the only type of labour in america that can compete with overseas labour costs.
rather, the solution is to support labour movements in the developing world. if the chinese had some organized labour, their comparative advantage would collapse, and everybody - except the investor class - would be better off.
this is the solution that workers should be supporting, but it's hard to get the uneducated idiots to listen. they should be standing in global solidarity with each other and fighting capitalism. instead, they elect donald trump, who installs tariffs by imperial decree, which just makes everything worse.
Thursday, February 13, 2025
some number of years ago, hillary clinton started comparing putin to hitler and the liberal press has run with it ever since. it's a toxic, stupid, offensive comparison that should be ridiculed and avoided.
i probably won't be happy with the outcome of this, but i'm not happy with the process. it's not exactly joe biden's fault personally, except in the sense that he escalated in a ham-fisted manner that was far too transparent. he made it far too obvious that nato was planning an attack on russia (which has in fact happened, now) and left putin without an option but to strike first. a different president might have been less obvious, less clumsy, and generated a different response. however, the responsibility for this war lies with western military leaders going back to clinton and hw bush, including with trump who ordered a massive troop movement from germany into poland. this is not the fault of any particular person in america, it is the responsibility of the war obsession in american culture and american society, and the obsession of the elderly in defeating the soviets in the cold war. comparisons to yalta (when stalin helped us defeat hitler. a lot.) are so bizarre as to be downright offensive. america has more than a small level of moral responsibility to clean this mess up.
right now - today. this minute. - the focus needs to be on averting further escalation and preventing a nuclear war. we can write and rewrite the history books tomorrow and the day after. trump is correct to identify the imminent danger and threat and seek to swiftly put an end to this, before we all burn.
the important thing right now is not the terms of the peace, it is the return of peace itself.
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
i'm almost done 88 with the genesis plow through, and i'll do 89, but i'm going to flip to "90s" for 90-99, 00s for 00-09, 10s for 10-19 and "20s" for 20-25 and then rewind, but i might be gone by then.
the phil collins hits are instantly recognizable by people of all ages, and most people know the gabriel megahits, and know that gabriel and collins are connected. the bassist also had a couple of big singles, including "all i need is a miracle" and "living years" and that connection is less known. the two guitarists both released widely, but did not make massive singles like that; hackett sold a lot of albums, but not many singles. the keyboard player did not have a successful solo career. the three of them that did focus on single releases (collins, gabriel, rutherford) were ubiquitous in the 80s in a way that only the beatles were previously.
in fact,
According to available information, the only three musicians who have sold over 100 million records both as a solo artist and as part of a band are Paul McCartney (The Beatles), Michael Jackson (Jackson 5), and Phil Collins (Genesis).
i'm trying to get a point across about the cultural importance, here. i will do this for other important 20th century artists like zappa, puppy, crimson, bowie, nirvana and floyd, but none of them will be as impressive as this in terms of breadth, depth, longevity, scope and raw sales. as a music historian, i have to understand that.
i have a music web project that's currently on hold until i can get my exercise space set back up. right now, somebody is drugging me when i'm sleeping and hacking my raspberry pi remotely, so i have the pi off and the exercise cut until i can control my surroundings again. just a few more months, i expect, before i can get back to doing cardio on the bicycle.
cardio on a bicycle is a type of exercise that decreases body mass and leads to weight loss. i bicycle to stay thin and keep my cholesterol down. getting out of this mess is taking longer than i wanted. the last thing in the world that i would want would be to gain muscle mass or gain weight, so i've avoided any exercise at all while i think i'm being drugged with steroids by these disgusting freaks and will continue to until i'm sure i have the testosterone completely flushed out of my system and i'm able to assert control of things as being back to normal.
i am trying to avoid this issue of trans kids playing sports and i can't. i frankly don't care much about competition, and i would not consider this to be a pressing concern to most transgendered women. what percentage of transwomen care about sports? at all? 10%? nor is the issue of much importance to voters, but it's seen saturation level advertising, and the political establishment is reacting by following through so it can say "look, we won".
so, i've been forced to reflect on something i don't care much about and in the process have developed a different perspective.
i think the broader concern should be america's unhealthy obsession with competition and success in children's games, and that this is in truth merely one manifestation of the broader sickness in american culture around competition and sports. this issue with trans kids playing sports is really the same kind of abuse we see young men routinely incur at the hands of their fathers and increasingly see young women incur at the hands of one or both parents. for too many young people in america today, their worth as human beings is tied directly to their ability to excel at some children's game that is a triviality in the larger scope of existence.
the question that keeps jumping out at me is why the political and academic systems aren't encouraging more healthy attitudes about children's competitions, more generally - ideas about sportsmanship, inclusion and the importance of having fun when you play the game. is a factor in america's obesity rate the attitude it instills about exercise as a competitive process in so many young children? does the way that america approaches exercise as a form of competition exclude and alienate so many people, not just trans people, that they become so mentally damaged and experience so much trauma that they end up dangerously overweight?
i want to see the system promote more co-ed exercise activities that are about co-operating in teams and including and accepting people in the team despite their differences, and not about hypercompetition and the exaggeration of difference as factors to analyze in the course of competition.
kids should be having fun when they exercise, not be so obsessed about winning that they attack their colleagues over coveted spaces on the team.
when i was a kid, they told me that it didn't matter who won, what mattered was that you enjoyed the activity. there's lost wisdom in that. i would rather refocus on cooperation and de-emphasize competition than kneejerk with a militant trans rights response.
that's what i have to say after thinking about it a little and needing to adjust to this barrage of media. this isn't my fight on it's face, but perhaps it is in abstraction, and i want to side with co-operation in opposition to competition.
again, i don't like that i have to do this, but some people are incredibly hard-headed, in addition to being ignorant and stupid. in fact, i've posted this before.
this is a picture of my franco-italian father and i at my grade 8 graduation, outside of frank ryan middle school in ottawa, ontario in the late spring of 1995, when i was 14:
my dad had a little scottish, a little mikmaq and apparently quite a bit of russian (from an unclear source) in him, but his father's side was overwhelmingly franco-ontarian (with some wonky indigenous ancestry that i was able to sort of prove with a clovis test) and his mother's side was italian. he was, however, an austrian celt in his y-dna, indicating that before he was french he was celtic, and his dna mutated in the alps, likely within the halstatt or la tene culture:
in fact, his y-dna (and therefore mine) is an old mutation, making him somewhat of an archaic european cave man, genetically. my dad is in truth what central europeans actually looked like thousands of years ago. i actually have NO neanderthal dna, which is very unusual. it's like <0.1%.
i could not trace his russian ancestry, but it is there. i was able to determine that there was likely an illegitimate child in his grandfather's family. in my opinion, he looks more russian than italian.
his mother was north italian, and the dna test pulled up an affinity to the gotti clan, which is both a large crime family and a marker of germanic ancestry. gotti means "goth", which is an italian slur for "dirty, barbaric german". it indicates some distant swedish ancestry, which is what the dna test pulled up: 10% north italian, <1% sicilian. my grandmother did not have gracile features, but she seems to have been very italian in the roman sense of the word.
he did not have middle eastern ancestry of any sort.
my mother's side is overwhelmingly viking, and i really look more like a swedish/finnish kid here, as i generally did. my mother also appears to have some jewish ancestry on her father's side, but it's distant, like the indigenous mikmaq on my father's side. there's also some suggestion of viking/mikmaq marriages on my mother's father's side at the point of very early contact in the 16th century, in the form of mothers in the genealogy that have non-western names and appear out of nowhere. my mother's father's ancestors were scottish shipbuilders that migrated to nova scotia very early in the colonial period, and (before that) appear to have been vikings that settled in the very north of scotland (moray) and became shipbuilders instead of pirates as they settled. so, you can trace them from sweden to scotland to nova scotia as vikings, pirates and shipbuilders. my mother would appear to be directly descended from aristocratic scottish-viking pirates in the very northern tip of scotland. my mother's mother is finnish/irish.
i used a screenshot of my head for my inri youtube site because it's the earliest picture of me available:
i've also used it for my second class citizens site, as the picture was taken in late 1995 and that is the most appropriate project to connect to late 1995:
for some reason, this headshot was misperceived as belonging to an acquaintance of mine from high school named sean, who later sang some demos for me (which i rejected as not what i wanted), by people that apparently knew me from the period and they will not let this go: they are insistent that this is a picture of sean.
this is not a picture of sean, it is a picture of me, as is clearly demonstrated by the above picture. i don't mean to be an ass, but sean did not have a father. it could not have been him, at the least; even if you don't believe it's me, it can't be him. however, it's me, clearly.
all of the pictures on my site are of me, unless noted otherwise, and that is very infrequent. virtually all of the thousands of pictures posted are of me.
i have no motive to post pictures of somebody else. i was in fact a cute kid. i know that.
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
the reality is that carney understands trump's language better than anybody else on the stage. he really is honestly the best choice, as much as it bothers me to admit it. it happens. fuck the bankers, but this one is best positioned.
if you want to send people, you need to send personalities, not politicians. to donald trump, people like smith and ford are just another ron desantis or chris christie. that's exactly the wrong tactic.
you need to send a tv star or a musician or a sports hero. i've floated don cherry. he likes wayne gretzky. i don't want to float names, but you get the point.
bob rae would be a better choice than doug ford.
is there some value to the idea that ford would be better to deal with trump?
no.
ford is a fat idiot, and trump is going to make fun of his appearance and call him stupid, as he should. besides, trump would be unlikely to talk to the governor of ontario. if ford wants to run for prime minister, he should; i wouldn't vote for him. as it is, he should sit down and shut up.
there's a classic canadian vote split developing in ontario, with the conservatives set to get around 40% of the vote and the liberals and ndp hovering around 25% each. this generally happens when neither the ndp nor the liberals offer a compelling vision.
i don't support any of the candidates in the election and don't intend to vote.
i'm not very interested in nationalism, partly because what is defined as "the national interest" actually means "the interests of the bourgeoisie, middle class and banking establishment". these are not my class interests, and it is class that i am concerned about, not nationality. i would always put party before country, as my self-interest lies in advancing the interests of my class and the "national interest" of the bourgeoisie is entirely opposed to my self-interest.
the "national interest" of foreign banking establishments and of the collective foreign bourgeoisie is not in my class interest, either.
i will be focused on my own interests, and i would expect that i will frequently show apathy or downright hostility towards any concept of national identity or struggle. you will almost never see me align on much of anything with any of the major political groupings in this country, for the reason that none of them legitimately represent the lower class of artists with little or nothing to sell.
Saturday, February 8, 2025
genesis salvage discs (1976-1987):
disc 1 (immediate post-gabriel replacement disc):
- down and out,
- dance on a volcano, entangled, mad mad moon,
- eleventh earl of mar, one for the vine, all in a mouse's night, blood on the rooftops, unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth, afterglow,
- wot gorilla?, los endos
disc 2 (immediate post-gabriel outtakes disc):
- squonk, robbery assault and battery, ripples, trick of the tail,
- it's yourself
- inside and out
- burning rope, deep in the motherlode, scenes from a night's dream, say it' alright joe, the lady lies
disc 3 (80-83 salvage disc):
- duke's suite (behind the lines, duchess, guide vocal, duke's travels, duke's end),
- misunderstanding
- no reply at all, me and sarah jane, dodo/lurker
- naminanu, submarine
- mama, that's all, home by the sea, second home by the sea
disc 4 (83-87 salvage disc):
- it's gonna get better, just a job to do, silver rainbow
- tonight tonight, land of confusion, domino, the brazilian
- do the neurotic
i'm continuing to work through the genesis mega discography and have created two post-gabriel collins period genesis salvage discs that i'm going to pause with for a bit and i want to draw attention to the end of this track, which is a very slick and professionally written pop song.
it's barely noticeable, but do you hear when phil does the call and response with the horns in the fade out? this is 1980/81, before autotune, but phil doesn't need it, because he has absolutely perfect pitch. and, he completely nails it, beyond the slightest microtune. it's inhuman.
it's a triviality. sure. almost anybody could do this, in truth, but the ease and perfection in which he does it is a clear demonstration of why musicians of successive generations just won't let phil go. he was a truly singular talent, whether the douchebag losers of the era, who were mostly talentless wretches, realized it or not.
it would seem as though the reason elon musk is shutting down us aid actually has to do with a right-wing nwo conspiracy theory about population control.
i was actually going to suggest that a major part of the blowback would be unchecked population growth, which would severely threaten american hegemony, and to argue that, at the least, a skeleton family planning section should be kept running.
this is quickly turning into a worst case scenario that only those with trump derangement syndrome saw coming and everybody else thought was crazy. who'd have thought that qanon would take control of the white house via elon musk, who appears to have captured the president in the worst sense, perhaps via some kind of blackmail?
you don't normally see the very wealthy behave like this because they generally aren't retarded. make room in the dei space, as musk may be the first retarded billionaire. i don't know if that's true and actually suspect it isn't.
but this can't continue. shutting down us aid for these reasons is incomprehensible and the question on everybody's mind should be "what next?". the correct answer should be no. this is over; either some kind of barriers need to be erected to keep musk out, or he needs to be taken out, and the latter is increasingly looking like it might be the right answer.
Friday, February 7, 2025
there's some articles with steve bannon floating around canadian mainstream news, where he tries to explain that trump has developed canada derangement syndrome not from south park or john candy, and not due to an insistence on using tariffs as a source of taxation, but to protect north america from russia and china. accompanied with these articles is a picture of north america in one solid colour, like a risk board.
in fact, trump has been vocal about wanting to redesign nato, although he hasn't really clarified what he intends, or if he has a plan at all.
this picture already exists. it's called nato.
in fact, trump has been vocal about wanting to redesign nato, although he hasn't really clarified what he intends, or if he has a plan at all.
my question to the trump administration is this: in terms of arctic defence, what can you achieve by annexing canada and greenland that you couldn't better achieve through nato and norad, which has been the status quo since 1940?
i think this is a valid question:
it's not that trump is wrong, it's really that these regions are already in the american umbrella system, and that he doesn't seem to really grasp it. the american empire is a confederation of states, it has been since 1776. it's a foundational part of american culture, identity and history to reject colonialism, and while there's plenty of examples of americans meddling around in the affairs of other countries, americans really haven't gone out and conquered other countries like this without justification, however flimsy. it bought lousiana. it claimed a justification to invade mexico. canada was supposed to be annexed as a part of the revolution, but it never happened; instead, we were folded into the new world order that developed after pearl harbour. the idea of just picking a fight with a country like canada has no precedent in american history and is in a real sense exceedingly unamerican.
as he frequently does, trump is trying to create something that already exists or to fix something that isn't broken, and in the end will probably break it rather than fix it. he's a bull in a china shop. as this develops, a lot of canadians may find themselves not really disagreeing with trump, so much as looking at him and saying "well, that's the status quo. what are we changing, exactly? and why?". in fact, we have an answer to that question, and it's to create an unfair advantage for american capital, and that's not something anybody should sign up for.
canada and the united states have a joint defense using norad, nato and the coast guard that vritually all camadians support and the question of sovereignty over canada is of little relevance in ensuring that this system is effective and functions correctly. it is entirely unclear what trump might hope to accomplish by annexing canada, other than absorbing 30+ million people that would never vote for him or his political party.
Thursday, February 6, 2025
i'm more than a little bit disgusted and appalled by the idea that i'm supposed to feel bad for rich rock stars and movie stars in los angeles that lost their homes, and donate them money.
doesn't california have any social assistance? but, these people are rich, they wouldn't qualify for anything like that.
i'd tell them to go sleep in a shelter until they can pull themselves up by their own boot straps.
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
i would actually probably support a plan to temporarily depopulate gaza, rebuild it and then move people back in with extremely strict filtering rules (nobody with any remote connection to hamas or islamic jihad, at all), although i think the details right now are rather scant.
i have long called for the gaza strip to be annexed by egypt, but they won't do it.
the country in the region that can best absorb that kind of population transfer is saudi arabia, and they should.
people arguing that this is some kind of infringement on palestinian rights need to understand that there has to be real, long term, substantive consequences for what they did. they have to be collectively punished. they need to be made an example of. there's no other possible outcome.
i have to do this, apparently. it's very stupid, given that there has been no rabit is wolf material in over 20 years and never will be any more rabit is wolf material.
but, sean hansel is officially now kicked out of rabit is wolf for being a phony piece of shit asshole, meaning the band now only has one remaining member, jessica murray.
*shrug*.
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
my best guess is that trump wanted to wait until after the super bowl to increase the price of avocados.
again: they've told us why they're doing this. they want to tax non-americans and use that to replace domestic tax revenue. the tariffs are a revenue source. it's really not about jobs.
of course, american consumers end up paying the tariffs, but that doesn't seem to compute with them.
Monday, February 3, 2025
now the statement is
"representing some 57 per cent of Canadian food imports."
the previous statement was:
“We import about 60 per cent of our food from the U.S"
these are very different statements. i believe that 60% of the food we import is from the united states, and that it's mostly junk food. i don't believe that we import 60% of our food from the united states.
we import about 30% of our food and grow or raise about 70% of it domestically. .6*.3 = 0.18. so, we import about 18% of our food from the united states.
seems like there was a fail at the editing stage, there.
trump is probably vaguely right in pointing out that we don't import american agriculture - specifically - but it's because they do things like inject their beef with crazy hormones, and that's gross. we should clarify why we have restrictions on american agriculture products, and it's because they're unhealthy.
i don't want unhealthy american meat and dairy products in my food supply and i would support continuing to block them from importing their food here until they make their food less unhealthy, even if they tariff us over it.
i can't make sense of this better than anybody else.
it would seem as though trump has different expectations from mexico and canada, and that this is neither about immigrants nor about drugs in either case. mexico has done what trump wanted and canada hasn't.
or maybe trump just hates trudeau and doesn't hate sheinbaum. that might be closer to the truth.
what this is about is offshoring taxation. they've been clear. canada is more wealthy, per capita, than mexico. canada is consequently a better country to tax than mexico. it might be difficult to actually do the math on that and have it make sense, but trump doesn't seem to be doing much math, or seem to be very good at math. this is likely something approximating the actual thought process.
tariffs on mexico would really drive up the cost of food in the united states. a lot. that would not be true about tariffs on canada.
trump is a bully looking for somebody's lunch to steal, and we're the easier target, with less consequences.
the price to rent a room in windsor is down about 40% since last year, but it has yet to translate to apartments.
things are moving in the right direction. the tariffs will actually help me.
i have a hearing for damages on april 3rd but i don't know if i can hold out here long enough or if the landlords will pay it if i win.
as per usual, it does not look like hamas is going to abide by the agreement it just agreed to and is going to try to extract unrealistic concessions before releasing the remaining hostages.
you can't argue, debate, reason, rationalize, negotiate or do business with these people. they're not rational actors.
Sunday, February 2, 2025
these changes are oppressive and stupid and intended to appeal to a political base, but do they actually make any substantive difference to anybody?
i have a nexus card that has my legal gender on it, which is female. it was just renewed in the period between trump being elected and taking office and got here a few days ago. it doesn't say x or t, it says f. i'm not going to be crossing the border immediately, but i'm curious as to how the border will interpret that.
i was told i had to update my documents to reflect my legal name change in ontario, and i did. if the americans have now flip-flopped and insist i revert, i will then have different legal genders in canada and the united states, and i don't expect that there's going to be a logical way to deal with that.
“We import about 60 per cent of our food from the U.S"
that doesn't make sense to me and, if it is true at all, it must refer almost entirely to prepackaged junk food. the only items in my diet that are clearly american in origin are oranges and doritos, and i an get the oranges from mexico, i'm sure.
i would actually support increasing taxes on pre-packaged junk food as a public health policy.
the key idea i want to get across is that the tactic should be to put steep export taxes on the "giffen goods" that are perfectly or nearly perfectly inelastic in the american market (uranium, some other minerals, electricity and oil) and use the revenue to socialize the losses. that would actually be a productive retaliation, in that it would transfer the cost to american capital. tariffs on american goods in canada might help some local producers, but it doesn't generate the revenue streams the government needs to socialize the losses.
if the americans want us to act like an ally and maintain the tariffs on china, they should lift the tariffs on us.
if the anericans want us to buy military gear, they should lift their tariffs on us. there should be a complete moratorium on all us defense industry purchases until the tariffs are lifted.
something that's going to happen is americans from the northern states are going to start buying mexican produce in canada to evade the tariffs. will the border cops crack down on that?
further, does canada want to maintain it's tariffs on china, now? if chinese goods become cheaper to buy in canada, that could also generate a market.
there is talk of "restricting exports of minerals". that's not the right approach.
as i mentioned previously, an export tax on uranium or hydro-electricity would be the superior approach, even superior to retaliatory tariffs. the idea would be take the money generated by the export taxes and use it to pay for social programs from unemployed canadian workers, and generally socialize the costs.
restricting the export of minerals just harms our own industry, which is what trump wants. that would be senseless.
my diet is mostly fresh produce and i buy for price, with few counterexamples.
in my fridge currently, i have:
from canada:
- beets
- carrots
- kale
- tomato
- red pepper
from mexico:
- mangos
- limes
- avocados
- i often buy guava from mexico, but not currently
- i believe that the cara cara oranges i often buy are also from mexico (none currently)
- blackberries
from peru:
- strawberries
- blueberries
from chile:
- raspberries
- cherries
from costa rica:
- bananas
from italy:
- kiwis
from china:
- garlic
"made in canada from imported ingredients":
- walmart brand not from concentrate orange juice. i would guess it says this because walmart sources it's oranges from all over the world, not just from florida. it may generally be mostly mexican oranges. walmart canada will import the cheapest oranges.
- walmart pineapple. is it from hawaii? probably not, actually. walmart canada likely sources the cheapest pineapple on an open market.
probably imported from the united states, although it doesn't actually say:
- tropicana grapefruit juice
product of the usa:
- oranges
- broccoli (but i often buy canadian broccoli)
the reality is that mexico is a major producer of citrus fruit and should be able to replace american oranges in the canadian market very easily.
that leaves the tropicana grapefruit juice, which markets itself as from florida but has also recently undergone some shrinkflation. i bought this on sale, but i had recently moved to the pc brand, which doesn't say where it sources it's grapefruits from but probably is "made in canada from imported ingredients".
we certainly import most of our fruits and vegetables, especially in the winter. however, we may be over-estimating our reliance on american imports, specifically. i eat mostly produce, and i don't think i need american fruits or vegetables at all. "buy canadian" really isn't the best tactic, if you're mostly buying produce from mexico or south america in the first place.
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