i'm sorry to say it, but the only zombie apocalypse i'm worried about right now is an ndp majority. the candidates they're running....they're just....

let's just say that they're not really up to par.

it's less that i'm concerned about them ruining the country or something. it's more that they seem to provide almost no potential for any kind of pushback. it's this mass of backbenchers that will produce almost no private members legislation, and just do what the party instructs them to.

and, it's sort of amazing, actually, because the ndp have up to this point been known for the quality of their mps in contrast to the quantity of them. they never elected a lot of people. but, you knew when one got elected it was a good one. because the hill to climb was that much steeper.

i'm really attached to voting for a local mp that's going to stand up and make independent choices, rather than a rubber stamp for the politburo in ottawa. it's kind of distressing, even.

if the party executive spun it around a little and got them out, it might swing some voters like myself a little more convincingly. but, instead, they seem to understand the deficit of talent they're working with, and have them scripted to the absolute core.

they may have stripped the socialism out of their platform, but they seem increasingly centralized, increasingly focused on a cult of leadership and increasingly harsh on dissent.

so, it kind of seems like a zombie apocalypse, in terms of what we're actually going to get: mindless, strict observation of the party line.

i swear, my body has loosened up by a factor of 80%, if such things can be measured, which of course they can't. but whatever stress buildup existed is fading away. and, that should actually help me focus a bit better.

it should also help me kick the cigarettes. it seemed pointless when i didn't know how much longer i'd be alive...

i bought one more pack for the next day or two. i need to put the election shit down and get through the remaining tracks for this. that last track is bugging me, because it just sounds kind of odd. i may end up replacing it after all. and, the next few should be pretty quick to pass over.

my odsp was extended until 2020.

i can stop worrying about that, now.

by 2020, i am exceedingly confident that i will complete my discography and be moving into phase 2.

checks

hi.

just letting you know that my disability extension was approved, so i have checks ready to give paul for the rest of the year, whenever he's home to take them.

j

my ndp candidate seems to be an anti-science hippie with few views of her own that will just occupy the seat, zombie like, and vote as she's told. total backbencher.

my liberal candidate seems to be some kind of business person that is critical of nafta and calling for it to be renegotiated - which is not likely to happen. but a bit of contrariness and independent thought is a bit more appealing to me. he seems to be pro-active in cross-border issues. trade is one of the big issues that has turned me off the liberals. this guy looks like he's a rogue liberal that's a bit more in the style of the old liberals i had somewhat of a fondness for. he may end up a little outside the caucus, but maybe he can shake it up a little.

the green candidate is quoted in papers as a liberal party activist as recently as late 2013. i'm guessing he's going to sound like a mcguinty liberal, but there's basically no information as of yet.

i don't want to vote for a zombie. and, if the green candidate and liberal candidate end up being indistinguishable, it seems foolish to vote for the one with the lesser chance of winning.

i may end up voting for the damned liberals. we'll have to see how the ndp candidate defines herself, but i'm really not expecting much besides memos from head office.

i believe trudeau's position is actually that he'll support it if it's no longer widely opposed. which is almost comically liberal. mulcair's position is that he'll support it if it passes the environmental review. but, see, it's unclear to me why it is that they would think - in contradiction to all polls - that criticizing mulcair for possibly being *against* the pipeline would be good politics. you'd think they'd criticize him for being in favour of it, if they were trying to win votes - whether it's true or not (and it mostly is).

but, see, there's been this constant string of hints for years that these elections are...they're not inconsequential, so much as that they're really directed at a layer of power that's largely obscured, and of unclear national origin.

there's a sort of cognitive dissonance around it. on the one hand, we're all very naive, aren't we? on the other, what's the use in peddling evidenceless conspiracy theories? but it's the absolute truth: you'll see these weird campaign announcements and attacks from time to time that just make you scratch your head, until you realize "oh. right. that's not meant to influence voters. that's meant to influence that unstated ethereal force of unclear national origin."

it's just this unclear force that seems to be of great importance.

like, diefenbaker getting into a lot of trouble with kennedy-johnson administration, and then disappearing.

or there was the time that reagan accused trudeau of being a soviet spy, and then trudeau disappeared.

and the time that chretien refused to go to war, and canada got mad cow, sars and stephen harper (i'm undecided on which is more dangerous to our health).

it's just been there. this force. in the background. for many years. and the actors seem entirely aware of it. but, there's very few ways in which the public can quantify or understand it

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/brian-gallant-criticizes-tom-mulcair-s-energy-east-pipeline-stance-1.3197057

the biggest benefits that i can think of regarding this are in transportation. that's less transportation time, less transportation costs and less pollution resulting from travelling. we produce a lot of carbon getting to work and back, and we waste upwards of 10% of our day on it. how necessary is that, really, if we're just sitting in front of a screen when we get to work?

there's other benefits. less child care costs, for example, which are a kind of a deadweight on the economy.

but, i think this is ultimately a carbon reduction strategy. and, it's one that offers a better quality of life or many.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-pitches-new-parental-leave-proposals-flexible-work-plan-1.3195987

Re: deleted response
see, this is why people get so irritated by conservative propaganda. the guy suggests a policy for people to work at home more, and to provide for more flexible hours, and you jump to the most ridiculous and unlikely scenario: which is that everybody is going to request the graveyard shift. it's just idiotic.

most federal workplaces are not open overnight.

these large regional margins of error suggest that sudden swings, especially when they slice across the spectrum, are mostly due to sampling error. but, that doesn't give their earlier results greater stability. i look at some of the trendlines in these regional polls and see absolutely nothing whatsoever of value out of them; they're flying around all over the place by 10-15%. i really wish the firms would get meaningful sample sizes if they're going to do weekly polls. the result does make the ndp numbers seem the most volatile, but that has to be interpreted in the context of how the ndp's immediately apparent volatility affects the numbers for the other parties. for example, the last nanos poll gave the conservatives a 10% bump on the ndp in ontario in a way that is inconsistent with the other polling. on first glance, the conservative numbers look roughly stable while the ndp numbers look volatile. but, that can't actually be true - it's actually impossible.

the abacus polling was another internet poll. it seems like the internet polls are consistently polling the ndp a little higher. i suspect this is a consequence of bias in the sample, due to how the poll is being taken. the forum polls seem to continue to be understating their margins.

the phone polling is mostly placing them tightly together, but that may also be technology dependent because younger people are going to be harder to reach over the phone. it's well understood that phone polling tends to overweight older people. this has tended to balance out in recent elections with higher conservative voter turnout. the fact that the conservatives are having a hard time getting over 32 in phone polling - and with questionable regional polling - suggests they ought to be extremely concerned.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-polltracker-aug19-1.3195182

gwest
I'm not at all sure that your hunch about what the Liberals would do - especially if they're whittled down a bit from 2011 - when confronted with an opportunity to share power with a minority Harper contingent.

I can't forget the aftermath of the 2006 election when 'Liberal' David Emerson packed his suitcase and walked across the floor to Stephen's open arms and a cabinet post...and I seem to recall a long form interview with Peter Mansbridge when the new PM made it pretty clear that he feels there really isn't that much difference between Liberals (on fundamentals) and Harper's own views about running the country. Although he clearly hates Pierre Trudeau and probably would have liked to see the Liberals decimated as a political force - he saves his real antipathy for the 'socialist' NDP: Recall that speech in the US when he led the National Citizens Coalition and said of the NDP..."The NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men..."

Furthermore, the antipathy of the power elites (within the Liberal party) in this country toward the possibility that the NDP (despite the centralizing tack it has taken since Jack Layton) might actually get to shape policy and write laws which would affect the ability of those elites to keep managing the economy for their own benefit would be a strong goad to convince Trudeau fils that he should support a minority Conservative government after October 19.

Wells's book, by the way, has some really interesting things to say about the centrality of the 'relationship' between Pee Wee and Ray Novak....it's well worth another read for anyone who hasn't picked up a copy.

deathtokoalas
i responded to this elsewhere, and need to agree in reiterating that the liberals will NOT back an ndp minority, and anybody voting for the liberals under that perception should strongly reconsider doing so. it's not exactly conservative propaganda, but it's delusional of the realities in the house. if you're voting for the liberals for other reasons, whatever - after taking a look at the candidates in my riding, it seems clear to me that the liberal is the best candidate (and he's critical of nafta, to boot) and i may end up doing that myself. but, this idea that the election is going to come up with any kind of arrangement between the ndp and the liberals is nothing short of delusional. the liberals will conscientiously oppose the ndp on the right in an attempt to position themselves as an alternative to the conservatives.

but, they won't outright back the conservatives, either, for the same reason. it would be a suicide pact, in either circumstance.

you can't believe everything these guys say. you should be pretty skeptical about it. but, when trudeau says no to a coalition, he's being dead serious and you should take him at absolute face value. this will NOT happen, in either direction.

but, you could see some floor crossings. even if the ndp win a majority, i'm sure they'd be happy to take the experience of some cabinet ministers. and, if they're just a few seats short, it's the perfect excuse. similarly on the other side.

and, in the long run, there are some liberal mps that will be tempted to bail in either direction. it's an inherent problem with parking the middle party in third place. there will be plenty of pressure to rip the party in half.

the media will not drop this. but voters really need to get it out of their heads. it's not a possibility. it's been ruled out, explicitly. and the liberals would be destroying themselves by even considering it.

trudeau will have little choice but to allow carefully arranged "free votes" on almost everything. and, that will give them the flexibility to run the house from the center, as they pick and choose policies from the right and the left.

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/19/Harper-Minority-Team/

Wwm
Hi, i agree that the Liberals most likely won't join a formal coalition unless they have the most seats themselves [then they'd think it a great idea] But i do think they'd vote non-confidence in Harper at the first opportunity and allow the NDP to govern like you said through free votes and subtle pressure on the NDP to make their bills acceptable to the Liberals. All of which may be less than perfect but it's still a hell of a lot better than what we have now IMO.

Of course, as i've said before, the best of all possible outcomes, in my eyes, is that the NDP comes up a seat or two short of an absolute majority and that the Greens make up the missing seats in a coalition that puts Elizabeth May in as Minister of the Environment.

deathtokoalas
we may end up with a bit of obscure manoeuvring around the precise point of the election, but i would expect the liberals to prefer harper as prime minster to mulcair, for the reason that it keeps them in direct opposition to a force without momentum. i hope i explained that concept in easy to understand terms; it's a little aloof. allowing mulcair to become prime minister would set a new ball in motion, as it were, and put them back where they started. terms in canada (won via fresh mandate) nowadays seem to be around 10-15 years or so. by that time, they'll be appealing to a generation of people with only vague memories of liberal government, and they'll be in the same position the ndp are now in.

technically, stephen harper will remain prime minister after the election, until he resigns or is replaced by the gg. should the governor general decide he is most likely to win a confidence vote, the issue may never really arise - he could just remain prime minister. see, the thing is that it may not be remotely clear who is most likely to win a confidence vote. and, then what? if the gg cannot make a distinction, how is that he can replace him? and, you can expect harper to pull his usual obfuscating playbook out and, perhaps correctly on an abstract level, argue that it's undemocratic to replace him. the possibility of harper whining about this on tv, combined with the actual reality of such a house composition, may suit the liberals well enough that they don't push this. and, that would leave mulcair arguing he ought to be prime minister with less than majority support - an argument he can't win in the public spectrum. he won't make it.

but, it won't take long for harper to do something like bundle a law against abortion in the budget (i exaggerate only mildly to avoid providing any good ideas). if we end up in this kind of mess, it will be harper that instigates another election by packaging a confidence vote into something the opposition can't support. but he might wait a month or two to let the dust settle. it's risky - it might not settle in his favour. but, there's little other option. harper will not govern under trudeau's thumb.

i really don't think this is likely. but, let's suppose it happens. and, let's even look at existing numbers that (i think naively) suggest harper gets around 130 seats, the ndp around 120 seats and the liberals with almost all of the rest of them.

trudeau has recently indicated that the liberal party will only whip it's votes under three circumstances. the first is planks in the party platform, presuming they win (which is now unlikely). the second is confidence issues. the third is charter issues.

confidence issues would include a speech from the throne. but, it's stipulated that this applies to a liberal government.

now, it may be sort of silly to go pouring over a liberal election promise and looking for loopholes that they could use to get out of it without technically breaking it. but, the broad idea here is that trudeau has committed to open votes as a part of his campaign. and, he's likely to be keen to demonstrate that he means it.

i think that this is the way out of this: trudeau will allow a free vote on the throne speech. well, a "free vote". there'll be just enough so it passes.

propping up the ndp would be strategic suicide for the liberals. this will NOT happen. and, people planning on voting for the liberals thinking it will should think again.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/17/a-harper-minority-would-have-options-all-of-them-terrible/

Kendall
But both Mulcair and Justin have rejected a coalition government and that should be the signal for leftist Red Grit Liberals to vote NDP .... and the Blue Grit Liberals to vote Conservative to Stop Mulcair .....

deathtokoalas
that's not how either voting bloc thinks. people don't vote based on fear. that's the conservative talking point. right-leaning liberals vote liberal because they're not conservatives. and left-leaning liberals, however rare they may be nowadays, have specific reasons that they don't vote for the ndp.

here's an example.

suppose you're a gay dude making 500,000/year in a gta suburb. you're about as liberal as you can get on social issues - do as you wish, harm none. you're into science-based policy, 'cause you're smart. you're an atheist. but you're also a fiscal conservative, and you think you're overtaxed.

this is what a right-leaning liberal looks like. they're liberals on everything except taxes. and, in a pinch, they're probably more likely to vote for mulcair than harper - and may even be tempted to by mulcair promising to not raise their taxes.

the swing on the right is a red tory swing, and almost always swing towards the liberals rather than away from it. that's why the liberals were in power for the entirety of the last century and the conservatives weren't.

the other side of the spectrum is a little more fluid, because those stark defining points don't exist.

but, the fact is that harper walked into his job as conservative party leader with 38%. he hasn't bested it. he's not going to swing right-leaning liberals. he hasn't, yet. he won't in the future....

conversely, trudeau's red tory shtick may very well be tory enough to break through the harper fatigue and cut deeper into the conservative base than we've seen in a while. that's their strategy. the problem is that it's mathematically and strategically stupid, because it's just going to sweep mulcair in on the other side.

so, i need to be clear: i think the liberals will best their 2011 numbers by a good margin. but, it will be at a 10 point loss to the ndp and a 15 pick up from the conservatives - which will put them second place across the country, and win them almost no seats.

i think the results will look something like this:

ndp: ~37% - majority
conservatives: ~30% - opposition
liberals: ~27% - lose party status

nobody ever said that fptp was fair.

it'll be a while before i state that with any conviction, though.

a 2% swing would be dramatic.

if i were in that position, i'd purposefully try to get fired just to make a political issue out of it. might be why they won't hire me...

you can't do this.

i know. they're doing it.

but they really can't, and get away with it. in the long run.

it's the kind of thing that destroys political movements.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/federal-public-servants-warned-about-social-media-use-during-election-campaign-1.3195402

well, he's kind of right. there's lots of really good reasons why we need a change in government. this political theatre soap opera isn't one of them.

don't bother: i don't even know the plot line...and don't care to. it's really not important.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-harper-duffy-questions-1.3194754

i support this in principle, but he can't actually do this. the trade deals that canada has signed forbid it as "anti-competitive". if he tries, he'll get sued by a consortium of investors, then be forced to change the legislation to abide by wto regulations. the new world order forbids governments from carrying out policies that promote job creation.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-pledges-millions-of-dollars-to-support-green-technology-1.3194875

Wray101
With the exception of Harper's China Investment Deal, all the trade deals have notice of withdrawal clauses. To end Canada's participation in NAFTA requires 60 or 90 days notice and viola, not more secret NAFTA challenges from American corporations. The EU trade deal is not signed, all the rest - Ukraine, Israel, Chile, South Korea, can either be negotiated or ended. Any trade deal with an investor protection clause needs to be torn up and tossed into the circular filing cabinet.

jessica murray
that's all very true and everything, but the liberals have not indicated the slightest level of interest in renegotiating or criticizing the trade regime since the mulroney era. there's a contradiction here, and it's not likely to end in pulling out of any trade deals.

that said, it would be an interesting question to pose to trudeau directly: if his legislation is ruled anti-competitive, would he amend it or pull out of the relevant agreement?

further, keep in mind that the issue in ontario was not carried out through any specific trade deal. it was carried out through the world trade organization.

the rising gap between the economy and economists is a growing problem that requires innovative solutions.

we can see that as the economy has changed dramatically, economists have remained stagnant. this is largely due to downward pressures from ideological forces, and can be resolved by creating incentives to better analyze evidence.

the disconnect between wages and productivity will not reassert itself; rather, we should be beginning to understand that the connection is no longer valid, as a consequence of automation. this is a part of a fundamental economic shift that we have to get our heads around. which means we need to stop looking towards the old, steady hand and start looking towards young people that have grown up in the new economy and understand it without the baggage of the past.

back when workers were involved directly in production, it certainly made sense that wages should rise with productivity. but that is no longer true and will never again be true in the future. today, most workers are involved in jobs that have to do with the distribution end of the cycle. we should not expect increases or decreases in productivity to have any effect on wages in a store or a restaurant.

further, it follows that the old arguments about inflation and wage increases are no longer valid either, because labour costs are coming primarily out of the retail end rather than the production end.

the economy has drastically changed. economists across the spectrum have not. it's the rising gap between economists and the economy that needs to addressed, as a starting point.

i drew a graph:

 

daveruda
+deathtokoalas The resonable thing would be to tax the production itself instead of Labour. That way everyone can still enjoy the fruits of production. On top of that use the automation as a way to reduce working hours and share jobs and free time more equal.

deathtokoalas
+daveruda i don't deny that this is sort of a snotty position, but i've never seen anybody counter it effectively.

if corporations are people, why is it not discriminatory to give them special tax status? (the reason is that they're constitutionally exempt, but it's basically legislating themselves above the law). why should they not be taxed like people?

that's 30-40% above $100,000. and it could solve a lot of problems.

for ideological reasons, i'd rather put the production in the hands of the people. but, that's probably unrealistic. in the short term, i'd really honestly like to see corporations taxed like people...

these are the same kinds of kangaroo courts you see in all these trade agreements. it maybe opens up a little bit of space for liberal democrats to get these taken out of the upcoming slate of agreements.

it's a class thing, and you've maybe got the causality backwards. lower class white dialects are also viewed in a rather derogatory manner. and, it kind of goes back quite a ways in english. we have this collection of words we're not supposed to say. these are words that developed in the common vernacular of english, often from norse or welsh, and were rejected for deviating from the correct, aristocratic anglo-saxon version of it. scottish dialects remain widely mocked as well. judging people by the way they speak is a way to enforce class divisions, rather than a cause of them.

personally, i'm in favour of abolishing collectivized grammar altogether in favour of purely individualized expression. there's a kind of gramscian argument, there. the enforcement of correct modes of grammar is equivalent to the enforcement of correct modes of thinking. you could look at the rules of capitalization as one example of how grammar enforces the status quo. stepping back from that and allowing children greater freedom in constructing their own grammar conventions will allow for a wider range of individual expression that would be much more difficult to encapsulate into hierarchical categories.

for that reason, i think linguists need to be careful about how they approach ebonics, or whatever you want to call it. there have been periodic calls for this to be taught in schools and enforced as a cultural norm. but, the result of that is that it is going to enforce a hive mentality and then be used to further enforce a black/white class distinction. the path to equality is to abolish these sorts of distinctions, not to further cement them.

while integration has certainly not proceeded at the level that one might have predicted after brown v board, ebonics is not entirely a black language, either. whites raised in lower class majority black neighbourhoods in cities like detroit will speak in roughly the same way that the people around them will. policies that aim to mix it up a little and break down the association of dialect with skin colour will help in removing it as a tool of racial segregationist thinking, even if it doesn't take it out of the toolbox for class oppression. breaking down that perception and partial reality of ebonics as a "black language" is probably the best way to start.

it's a complicated dynamic. because, sovereignty is not necessarily left-leaning. a part of the bloc's collapse was from right-wing adq supporters irritated about voting for "communists". the bloc started off on the right, but it had to make that choice to swing left to appeal to more voters.

what that means is that, in some way, the bloc is directly in competition with the conservatives for right-leaning sovereigntists. and, the bloc's ability to split is consequently not necessarily good for the conservatives, as is often assumed by analysts: they can steal sovereigntist voters from the conservatives, too. conversely, the conservatives probably have more of a swing with bloc voters in certain parts of quebec than they do with ndp or liberal voters.

i'm iffy analyzing three-way raises races. four-way raises races? it might as well be down to dumb luck, really.

but, the conservatives taking seats in quebec city should surprise nobody.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-quebec-aug17-1.3193588

man, my grammar has been terrible recently. i think the edit button has made me lazy. and yet there is no edit button, here.

it's funny how your synapses can short out and throw out "raises" instead of "races". it's spelled correctly. but it really only sounds similar.

anyways. i'll be more careful. i'm kind of picky about that...

see, if he's campaigning for moderate conservative voters in the gta then this is in fact how to do it - offer them another tax cut (as if harper hasn't handed out plenty of tax cuts, as flatly odd as some of them may be...) and rail against "government corruption". that's the way you used to win elections, back in the olden days. and, the suburbs are a kind of insular bubble - always twenty-thirty years behind the times.

but, it's a tactic that cedes so much ground around so many of the issues that it's functionally a fight for second place. perhaps even a race to the bottom. fitting...

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-holds-rally-with-kathleen-wynne-in-toronto-1.3193641

Sherlocks home
This is a serious question, I hear about the middle class daily, what about the working class? What about the welders, carpenters etc. To me the middle class is a professional, doctor, dentist etc, working class is non professional work, it seems that help is going to go to one sector of the population, leaving out the poor and the elderly, unless I have heard wrong or simply do not understand Canada's 'class' system. Again this is a serious question.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-where-the-leaders-are-aug17-1.3193295

jessica murray
politicians focus on the middle class because polls suggest that most people consider themselves in it, from people near the poverty line to people in big suburban houses.

if they went out and talked about helping the poor (the "lower middle class"), they'd alienate the bourgeois class. if they went out and talked about helping the rich (the "upper middle class"), they'd alienate the working class.

some people also suggest it's a way to avoid using marxist language, but it's no doubt a secondary point. it's just an attempt to think the entire audience is being spoken to.

what you want to do is take a closer look at the various policies and see what the actual numbers are. the language is constructed to gloss over this, and will be obsolete in a few years - once politicians realize that voters today have unlimited access to details and aren't afraid to go find it.

the supreme court will reinstate their constitutional right to vote. this is petty nonsense coming out of the government's attempt to appear consistent on the anti-ignatieff propaganda; harper knows this will be overturned, and would not have passed it if he thought it wouldn't be appealed. that's what you're dealing with with this guy...

a decade from now, we will probably look at the stephen harper period and see little of lasting substance that would not have occurred anyways. he's got those trade deals. there'll be a bridge or a road here and there. but most of his other decisions will be overturned or modified to the point that there's little of his signature left on them. we won't be debating his legacy so much as we'll have a hard time really defining what it is.

but, the one thing that will stand out in this period is how strongly he pushed the courts to enforce the constitution, and the precedents that they set in overruling him. in the process, he's made it that much more difficult for anybody to try and emulate him.

there may not be much legislative law that outlasts him very long. but, there will be a large amount of constitutional judicial precedents that carry on for decades.

he's consequently done less to change the country than he's done to put constitutional rules in place rules that prevent him from changing it in the ways he'd like to.

....which is just consistent with everything else about him: repeated epic failure.

a common response to somebody stating they're a conservative is to ask them what they're conserving. a common answer is that they're upholding the constitution.

we're in a sort of strange period, as our constitution was written somewhat - albeit not radically - to the left of the prevailing conservative consensus. but, has that not been true of every constitution? did the feudal aristocrats in france agree with "liberty, equality, fraternity"? did the totality of american landholders agree that all men are created equal, even if it didn't include slaves?

if i'm right about my shifting party theory, which sees the liberal party stabilize as the country's right-wing alternative, it's rather fitting to place them into the position of conserving the country's institutions as they actually exist. they built this. it's their responsibility to protect it. and, if i'm wrong, it's a mindset that is inevitable to overttake canadian conservatism. eventually, the canadian right will necessarily be composed of trudeauvian liberals that uphold the charter.

the future of conservatisim could be nothing else

it's very hard to see harper in anything but reactionary terms, or the reform movement as anything more than a last gasp attempt to hold on to the past that will eventually be swept away into the dust bin.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/expat-new-brunswickers-upset-they-can-t-vote-in-election-1.3191810

you're not looking at broad levels of evidence. winning the seat last election by 40% or more doesn't make it a "safe seat". a safe seat is a seat that the conservatives have consistently won. like fort mcmurray. as mentioned previously: if the conservatives had more "safe seats" than the other parties, they wouldn't have spent most of the last century in opposition. 2011 did not represent a fundamental shift in the electorate. in fact, it had very low turnout. and, the numbers (by any polling) have changed dramatically since then, with large movements through both swing demographics.

take bc, for example.

harper won 45.5% of the vote in bc in 2011; the ndp won 32.5%, the liberals won 13.4% and the greens won 7.7%. current polling has harper around 20-25%, the ndp around 40-45%, the liberals around 20-25% and the greens around 10-15%. that's a big difference.

for you to point out the ridings and say "gee. in order for the ndp to win this seat, harper would have to lose 20%. that can't happen" is kind of foolish of you when the polling suggests that harper has in fact lost 20% in the province.

you're ignoring facts out of an inability to come to terms with them.

with numbers like that you would expect a reversal in outcomes. with a 20% swing, you should be looking at seats where harper won by 60% last election as in bounds.

as i pointed out in the article: the idea here is correct. you're just really not being remotely scientific in the way you're approaching it. if you begin with the assumption that people will vote the same way they did in the last election, of course you'll end up with the results of the last election.

a big win here and there does not a "safe seat" make. a "safe seat" has to have a long history in a single party. the margins could fly around all over the place. it's the consistency that is more important. and, yes - the conservatives have a significant number of them. but, it adds up to a minority of the seats in the parliament that is a far cry from declaring them the favourite.

you're half right in explaining the attack ads, but you're not pointing out that they're not working. both the ndp and the liberals are up relative to the previous election, and the biggest shift in voting intention seems to be from the conservatives to the liberals. them's the numbers: despite harper's effort, he's losing votes to trudeau. direct polling has pinpointed c-51 as the dominant factor in the collapse of the liberal vote towards the ndp earlier this year.

but, i would not expect the conservatives to expend much energy on the ndp for the reason that there's almost no swing between the conservatives and the ndp. the swing between the conservatives and liberals is about 5-10%, and mostly in the gta - it could, in theory, win them the election if the liberal vote didn't collapse so badly on the left. the swing between the ndp and liberals is as much as 30% by some estimates, and distributed widely across the country. it's the important part of this election, and has been the dominant factor since paul martin purged the liberal party. and, i would expect this to be the first election where a measurable swing between the ndp and the greens begins to open up.

the only way you'll see harper start to nail mulcair is if the ndp gets so far ahead that the best conservative strategy is to try and swing votes from the ndp to the liberals in order to split the vote. and, that's a long ways away. he'd have to be solidly over 35% nationally.

thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/17/New-Dem-Battlegrounds/

Macb423
But I recall that in 2011 the conservative media, led by the Post and the Globe and Mail, puffed up the NDP and trashed Mr Ignatieff, nicely splitting the votes in Ontario so the Conservatives won their majority. I think we can expect the same as this election unfolds. Maybe in the other direction, as you say. I'm not sure the NDP needs to be above 35% to make this a winning strategy for Mr Harper, since this election, he won't have his 39% but will be running at 35% or less himself.

deathtokoalas
i don't think that the attack ads made much of a difference. i was in that liberal/ndp split category at the time, and i came to my own conclusions on ignatieff by reading some of his writing. he was unelectable on his own merits. the conservatives didn't have to tear him down. and, when i voted for the ndp in that election it was a conscious decision of conscience to not vote for a pro-torture, neo-liberal war monger.

ignatieff was to the right of harper on a slew of issues. you don't have to blame it on anybody. he was a poor candidate. and he didn't appeal to liberal voters because he didn't believe in liberal party values.

by contrast, i voted for dion. and, while it's unlikely that i'll vote for trudeau, it has little to do with the attack ads.

in fact, i voted for paul dewar - who was articulating a more principled foreign policy perspective that i was in greater agreement with.

but, i want to stress this point. because the liberal "intelligentsia" does *not* understand what happened.

michael ignatieff did not lose in spite of his great intellect and brilliant writing. he lost *because* of his poor foresight and the opinions he expressed as an academic.

canadians were not brainwashed into not voting for him because he spent time out of the country. canadians looked at his record, weighed it carefully and rejected it as inconsistent with their value systems.

this does have something to do with the time he spent away. he didn't understand the political movement he attempted to lead.

and, as bad as harper has been, we are lucky he disappeared. ignatieff would be standing shoulder to shoulder with obama as he blows up half the world - and without any of the good political sense that harper has to keep it at arm's distance.

sorry. one more add.

the media is going to tell you that the race in toronto is between the conservatives and the liberals - even if the numbers are split. the logic is by looking at the past results of the ridings, which often have been liberal-conservative battles with the ndp in distant third.

however, if you follow what i'm saying and you look at the numbers closely, what emerges is a close three-way battle.

the reason is that the conservative rural ridings in ontario are very safe. so, if they're down 10% province wide, they're down more than that in the cities. but, the liberals are still struggling to reach their 2008 levels in ontario. conversely, the ndp are up by well over 10% on their 2008 levels. but, because the ndp are the opposite of the conservatives - more of their votes are in cities than rural areas - that means they're up disproportionately. a 10% bump province wide suggests a 15-20% jump in urban centres.

current polling numbers don't suggest that's enough to put the ndp ahead, comfortably. it suggests a tight three-way race. even if the liberals can get back every single vote that they lost to the conservatives in 2011, they will still lose a lot of votes to the ndp - many more than they will gain back.

and there lies the crux of the problem. taking the conservatives down to 35% doesn't help if neither the liberals nor the ndp can get over 33%. and, while there's clearly been a lot of movement from the liberals to the ndp in these ridings, there's a breaking point - because a lot of these ridings are quite wealthy. compounding the problem is that the liberals' election strategy is itself bounded - appealing to moderate conservatives can only take you so far before party politics prevents you from cutting deeper, and it alienates you from the other side. in the end, the perception that these races are between the conservatives and liberals could allow the ndp to dominate from the margin. and, that has been the general movement of voters over the last decade or so - as a result of the liberals endlessly pursuing this strategy.

this is why i float the 35% number. it's about the breaking point that's necessary. if the ndp are polling 30% over all of ontario, they're probably polling around 35% over much of the urban spaces. if the conservatives are polling 35% in all of ontario, they're probably polling around 30% over those same spaces. if the liberals are polling 30% over all of ontario, it's probably close to a wash. but, these are rough numbers subject to a lot of randomness and a lot of toss-up races - 33 here, 37 there....

if the ndp can get to 35% over all of ontario, it suggests they're polling closer to 40% in the urban cores. and, then the two-way result and urban/rural split is complete and clear.

until or when or if that magic number appears, this race remains exceedingly unpredictable, as the three-way dynamics throws everything around all over the place in key areas. but if it does appear, it's done.

Ken
I would expect this to be the first election where a measurable swing between the ndp and the greens begins to open up~This has been the problem all along the greens propped up by the Liberals and Cns to split the NDP votes! Where else does the greens get money to run all of their candidates and advertise? Mostly from the Conservative as greens are small C cons no where near a leftist party! To limit EM to just one debate and to vilify the other parties is the best advertising for the Greens. GO NDP GO

deathtokoalas
the greens are serious about stopping pipelines and pulling out of free trade agreements. the ndp are not. it's a different kind of left - the ndp have traditionally been a worker's left, whereas the greens are a libertarian left. the economic realities of the present and future indicate that worker's parties are a thing of the past, because we no longer have workers. the result is that the ndp have moved into the center-left, and have become indistinguishable from where moderate liberals used to sit.

the green party is the new left. they're going to have to make some changes, which will include replacing elizabeth may with somebody that's not a pro-life minister. but, that doesn't change the facts of it.

the new left is going to prioritize a transition out of fossil fuels, a greater focus on local economies at the expense of global trade and more political power at the local level. the planks of this new left were developed in the alter-globalization movement of the mid to late 90s, and have been further developed through the occupy movements.

up until this point, this new left has been split between the ndp and the greens, and has also included a lot of non-voters. this swing is going to open up because the ndp are in the process of completely abandoning it. it will mostly be composed of traditional "workers left" types that are stuck between the past and the future.

ken
it's a different kind of left and funded by whom from Harper or who ever pull's the strings of the media to refuse EM joining the debates where May takes a shot or two at Harper but her main thrust is the NDP! She gets many of the sympathy vote from the how dare you crowd not allowing her to debate, when she is not up in the seats in parliament to be invited, If she shut downs everything then what and the NDP is lead by an environmentalist in Tom Mulcair who will go all out green in time and give them a chance to change over from fossil fuels you can't make everyone live in the dark ages by stopping it all over night! now you are telling me that the Occupy movement was all green? I was there and I am NDP does that count to you or are you just fluff & stuffed with spin?

deathtokoalas
well, her main target ought to be the ndp at this point. they're shredding their policy conventions in public, and making it clear they're going to govern on the right. that's not what ndp voters are signing up for. the ndp has created this problem themselves by moving to the right and alienating their supporters. if they don't want to lose support on the left, they should stop abandoning it.

i'm not a partisan green party supporter. i'm a libertarian socialist that makes arms-length pragmatic voting decisions based on what's on the actual table. i'd rather see the party system abolished, frankly, and have everybody run as an independent. i'd prefer direct democracy on a wide range of non-specialist issues and technocratic rule under a wide range of specialist ones.

as such, my voting decisions have been partially riding based; i voted for john manley a few times under chretien, then ed broadbent & paul dewar when paul martin took over. i swung back to the liberals to vote for dion, even though i knew dewar would win the riding. i knew at the time it would probably be the last time i ever vote liberal, so i felt it was important to try and give them as much leftist support as they could get before they caved. and i understand that the green vote won harper the election in 2008, which i'm still rather bitter about. this was legitimately stupid. there was absolutely no reasonable reason to vote for a fifth party when the natural governing party had adopted it's platform and the leader of that party had endorsed them. but, we're in a different situation today; muclair is throwing around transparent rationalizations to cement the ndp as another neo-liberal party. dion was different, but i wouldn't expect mulcair to govern differently than harper. i then voted for dewar again in 2011. i've since moved out of ottawa into another safe ndp riding, but the candidate here is a backbencher for life. that said, i would not consider actually voting for a green candidate out of protest until i learn a little more about that person as an individual.

conservative supporters will follow the party wherever it takes them. the rest of the canadian spectrum will not be lead, nor will it follow. it expects to chart the course and for the politicians to listen to them. so long as canadian politicians think they can warp public opinion and ignore their policy conventions, they will continue to be thwarted by a public that demands they start listening.

--

Macb423
Puzzling, though. Polling across Canada shows the Conservatives running about 8 points lower than their 2011 totals, with little chance of improving those numbers because they are almost no one's second choice. Wouldn't that suggest a fair number of seats should be in play, even some the Conservatives won by over 50%? Here in BC the polls show that Conservative support has fallen by even more. This suggests to me that some of their "safe" seats might not be. Can someone tell me what is wrong with this analysis?

And I very much appreciate the explanation of the attack ads against Trudeau. It appears that, as usual, the Conservatives are better at political strategy than the rest of us. Sigh.

adolan
The popular vote numbers are misleading. Moving from those small-sample size results to seats is a tricky process and is based on a lot of assumptions. Hence the margins of error around projected seats based on popular votes are very wide.

Macb423
Yes, I think I understand that piece. But it still seems if the Conservatives are losing 8 points on average throughout Canada, some of their "safer" seats should be in danger. I mean if you drop from 50% to 42%, the seat will be in play. But of course, our so-called opposition parties won't cooperate very well with each other, so maybe I'm dreaming.

Wwallace mud
If many of those who voted Conservative in 2011 in ridings that were already sure wins for the Conservatives are now answering that they won't vote Conservative this time the naatioinal numbers would go down for the conservatives but on a riding by riding basis that type of drop wouldn't effect the seat total outcome.

deathtokoalas
yeah, but that's not how you'd expect to distribute it. the safe seats are safe because they're safe. rather, you'd expect that 8% drop (and it's more like a 10-11% drop) to be disproportionately distributed to seats that have swung in the past. this is why you can see a 20% cut in bc and almost stable numbers in alberta; that balances out to lower national numbers, and should actually indicate a *greater* impact than 8% in bc.

it depends on the riding, obviously. it's tricky to try and do anything uniformly when it comes to this. but, the way this is being interpreted here is not the right way to interpret it, it's flatly backwards. these seats where he got 45% should be expected to fall to between 25-35%, whereas seats that he got 65% in are the ones that should not be expected to move much at all.

we can certainly talk of safe conservative ridings, but when we do so we should talk about seats that have been conservative for decades - not new ridings with mixed populations that have shown wide movement in the past.

it's not at at all unheard of for a riding to swing by up to 20 points in canada from election to election.

the numbers in ontario are fluctuating, but it's looking like he's down about 10%. but, that's misleading. you would expect all of that 10% is in the gta - which makes it more like 15%. rural ontario makes up some of his safest seats. and, that likewise takes that 45% in the 905 down to 30%.

it's just all backwards...

i just did a political poll for the canadian election.

94% liberal
93% ndp
91% green
79% communist
5% conservative

the poll was pretty inaccurate in terms of the way it assigned positions. for example, it claimed the ndp were in favour of nationalizing the oil industry, which hasn't been true since before i was born (and which i'm in favour of, fwiw). and it claimed the liberals were in favour of national pharmacare, which has been voted on at the liberal convention but never taken up by the party (and which i'm also in favour of).

i'd say my preference right now is: green (probably about 90% agreement), ndp (about 70%), liberal (about 60%) - and conservative is not an option. but, on the key issues to me, only the greens are legitimately appealing at this point. i'm not quite a communist, and i'd never vote for any kind of mlm or trotskyist or any other variant. bunch of fascists, really. but i'm some kind of anarchist. and, taking the authoritarians out of the spectrum, i'm just listing from left to right. even the liberals are pretty much out of my sphere, but i just can't drop them. i have a lot of respect for what pierre trudeau was able to get through into law, even if a lot of it was with heavy ndp prodding.

it's actually surprising that i got such a high rating on the conservative side. i did a us poll a few years ago where i agreed with romney on 1% of issues. that was 1 out of 100 issues. the 5 indicates that our right is a wee bit more moderate.

i'm a politics nerd. i'll be buzzing around this until it happens, and likely even for a while after it - depending on the outcome. but, i want to get some more work done tonight.

this is from the last election, and you can see how the canadian spectrum works a little. the bq is a quebec separatist party that only runs candidates in that province.

since then, though, the ndp have moved to roughly where the liberals are in that picture, and the liberals have crossed the economic axis (while remaining roughly steady on the social axis).

i hope the cbc runs a vote compass this election, and it's accurate, and people use it. it may be enlightening to people.

there were no extremist islamist groups opposing israel until the 80s. that took 40 years to develop, as a reaction to the israelis' continued insistence on asserting religion as the basis of the conflict.

it's hard to get rid of these things entirely, once they're started.

but, if you want the palestinians to stop resisting on religious grounds, the first thing to do is to stop differentiating against them on religious grounds. when you walk into an area and say "people of this religion have all of the rights, people of this other religion have none of them", then what would one expect besides resentment fuelled by religion?

i don't want to take these groups off any lists. they're not groups that the west should support or interact with. but, they didn't come out of nowhere. and, they will fade away if the root causes of their existence are addressed.

www.cbc.ca/news/world/hamas-hezbollah-denounce-isis-reject-own-blacklisting-by-canada-1.3192702

you realize that some of those seats - Fort McMurray-Athabasca, for example - have literally *never* elected a non-conservative, right?

there's a wide swath of alberta, saskatchewan and rural ontario that will never vote for anything except the most right-wing major party. the conservatives take these seats for granted. there's something like 100 of them. but, if that truth were an insurmountable advantage, the conservatives would not have spent most of the last century in opposition.

there's a lot of truth in the idea you're working with, which is that regional support does not translate well into national numbers. but, if you look at the regional breakdowns, what that suggests is that it's the liberals that are in extreme trouble because they don't have a regional base.

that 34% should be plenty to allow them to win, if it means strong showings in quebec & bc and a reasonable showing in urban ontario. but if the liberals end up below the ndp across the country, they could pull in 30% and get 30 seats; they could finish in second place in 300 ridings. and, while that seems extreme, it's my current projection given the existing numbers.

as you say, the conservatives will get their safe seats. but that's not a majority. and the ndp will take just about everything else.

..so long as they can continue to hover around 35%.

thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/15/Note-New-Dem-Strategists-Dig-Deeper-Polls/

updating the threat of terrorism is used to restrict civil liberties

i've corrected this mix, but i doubt you'll be able to hear the difference - because i can't. the eq on the bass was demonstrating the mixer problem that i've now determined is widespread. i've corrected it to be the same mix that i initially created in ram in a mathematical sense, but this is a kind of an idealist triviality. multiple a/b testing has determined that i cannot identify which is which. in fact, the difference file even nulls over the verses under the mastering compression.

initially written in 1996. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015. corrected to control for malfunctioning electronics on aug 11, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-threat-of-terrorism-is-used-to-restrict-civil-liberties


https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/werso-smidits

there's a lot of face-saving rhetoric here, and some of it kind of falls apart: if iran could get a better deal by walking away, why don't they? because the truth is that they are walking away, into open russian arms.

but, what that means is that the crux of the argument underlying all this hand-waving is absolutely dead-on: this is the best you're getting. it's this or nothing.

the evidence suggests that iran is not building a bomb in the first place. but, the advanced air defense systems that the russians are moving in negate the need for a nuclear deterrent. and that deflates the issue.

the agreement essentially allows the iranians to dispose of their nuclear waste by sending it to russia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlG90dMLo50

so, it's official?

the neo-cons just lost. it's time for america to change course

the media discussion around the deal is essentially useless, because it's approaching it from a false perspective.

it doesn't matter what source of information you're drawing on. left. right. tabloids. academic literature. american media, or foreign media. they all frame the deal in the terms of america having iran where it wants it and being able to turn the vice until it gets what it wants. that is, essentially all media interprets the situation in the vacuum of american-iranian relations. when the rest of the world is mentioned, it's in order to help mediate, or give the us extra muscle in negotiations.

this interpretation exists in the realm of fantasy. and, one cannot understand the circumstances unless it is entirely discarded as absolute fiction - which is near impossible, because it is the only narrative available anywhere at all.

the issue on the table was never based on the assumption that iran is in the american sphere of interest, which is what is necessary to get to the existing narrative. rather it was always seeking to resolve the question of whether iran will remain in the american sphere of interest, as it was until the revolution - or if it will exit that sphere of interest and enter a joint russian-chinese sphere of interest. and, what the deal on the table does is "allow" that exit to occur. the republicans are rejecting the deal for that reason, not due to anything about enrichment. but, they are out of touch with the reality of the situation, which has changed to the point that if they follow through with their rhetoric on iran it is likely that they will start a world war. the importance of the agreement is being ignored because the narrative is based on an incorrect premise.

allow is in quotations because the truth is that the americans can no longer prevent this. and, this is a consequence of other policies. rising american militarism in eastern europe, european sanctions against russia, the continuing war in syria and the general recent western hostility against moscow have emboldened russia to behave a little bit more aggressively. the sanctions were intended to force russia to change it's behaviour. this was stupid, it was predictably going to fail and the people pushing for these sanctions were acting out of clear ignorance of the russian mentality. this is a failure at the state department of comical proportions; it is an error that should have never even been contemplated.

a few weeks before the deal got signed, russia announced plans to move advanced anti-aircraft systems into iran. this was something the russians had previously been threatening to do, but refrained from doing as a fig leaf to the west. they kept the threat up for leverage, but didn't do it to prevent hostilities. now that those hostilities have reached dangerous levels, they are following through with their threats.

these missile systems make the containment of iran difficult to the point of nearly impossible. they are an effective deterrent against an american invasion. further, they make the nuclear option unnecessary. we can no longer bomb iran to stop them from making the nuclear weapon they wanted to make to stop us from bombing them. in that sense, this is indeed a "permanent" solution - it's a permanent acceptance of the loss of iran.

once you understand the situation, you understand why the republicans are kneejerking - they refuse to accept the loss of iran. but, that does not make them any less foolish. as iran is now protected from attack by russian missiles, the entire basis of the sanctions regime has fallen apart. a refusal to sign the deal will not do anything to prevent the loss of iran, but will do everything to piss off the rest of the world. there's little indication that they care, but this is folly at a frightening level - and as mentioned could have disastrous consequences.

what we will see in the next few years is increasing iranian integration into russian and chinese organizations, like the sco. there's even talk about them being the first non-soviet state into the csto. trade will increase across asia, as eastern countries increasingly ignore the sanctions.

and the fact is that america cannot prevent this. it can only sign a weak agreement to save a little bit of face, and look mildly foolish rather than irrelevantly weak.

had they not slapped those sanctions down on russia, things may have been different. but, they set this in motion themselves.

america is not the emperor of the world. it can't just go around telling everybody else what to do.

Ryan Herich
It can tell iran

deathtokoalas
+Ryan Herich no. the takeaway from the situation is that it cannot, that the rest of the world will not stand around and watch any longer and that it is time to move on.

as time goes on, jessica is orienting herself further and further towards the looney right. the idea that the eu is the cause of the economic stagnation in europe, or that leaving it will benefit the british economy, is the most absurd economic ignorance from the least educated sectors of the british public. it's not the kind of perspective that deserves any kind of serious analysis. watching jessica conduct these interviews from positions of extreme ignorance (and yet unplaced confidence that is really simply arrogance) with people that are much smarter than her is increasingly like watching the village idiot walk into the local university with a bible and use it in a debate over equations. it's becoming painful, paul. this is a bad combination....

will the uk leave the eu? the conservative position is about two things: (1) leverage and (2) sovereignty. and, while it may be true that socialism is dead in europe, it has died along with "socialism" in russia. the underlying fear was never socialism, exactly, but that the continent would realign with the russians. this fear is no less valid today, socialism or not.

the various tensions playing out in the world are no doubt exacerbating this old fear. a german swing to russia would put the uk in a bad position, where they would have to make some choices they don't want to.

that's what this issue is about: not getting pulled into a german realignment policy, and rather maintaining the sovereignty to remain the junior partners in the anglo-american empire. we'll know how serious the british concerns about german alignment truly are by whether the referendum runs or not; if it runs, there's some serious movement going on. if it doesn't, it's just continued leverage.

i actually suspect he's working for the banks, just like obama, and is on a parallel mission to take down clinton. it's a lot of deja vu with 2008. i mean, who is running all these youtube channels? and where's he getting all this money from, all of a sudden?

it's not that i'm particularly fond of clinton, or even have many agreements with her regarding much of anything. but the way that a certain segment of the establishment has consistently gone after her is very curious to me. the base anti-establishmentarian in me finds that sort of compelling.

in public, she hasn't signaled anything but every intent to do what she's told. so, why are they so keen to keep her out of office?

Upton Sinclair
+deathtokoalas Bill Clinton removed provisions from Glastegel which helped the banks a great deal and Miss Clinton has received a lot of campaign donations from banks, he gets money from unions and regular people donating as they like him - kinda like a kick starter but political.

deathtokoalas
+Upton Sinclair the situation around glass-steagall was kind of complicated. clinton didn't write the legislation, it was written by senate republicans, and did not have the power to veto it. republicans had tried to pass similar legislation through the 80s, but it was always blocked by senate democrats, who had a congressional majority for a very long time - up until the clinton administration.

it's an open question as to whether he would have vetoed it, if he could. he's on the record as claiming he would have, but his record is kind of spotty on it. but, the bottom line is that he didn't write the repeal, and he couldn't have stopped it.

i don't think glass-steagall was the issue that lined the banks up against her in 2008. i think it was health care. and, that's largely been taken care of. further, few would argue that she was not a sufficient enough war monger during her time as secretary of state. and yet they continue to despise her.

what i find curious about the situation is that it's really not clear why this is. it can't be just a kind of broad, general fear that she's "too liberal" - even if any liberal would scoff at such a claim. the lengths that they go to to get rid of her are just off the wall. there has to be a specific reason for this, and it's not obvious.

Upton Sinclair
+deathtokoalas I personally dislike her due to the fact that she just seems fake and heavily influenced by the various donors backing her and not liberal enough, she seems like if she were elected she'd bring home pocket change. I personally find Bernie more appealing than her due to the facts he's not getting huge campaign donations from billionaires and millionaires like Clinton and basically all other major politicians, he's a proven progressive who's always stood by what he believed in and not what's most popular at the time, and he's just more to the left - which I like.

deathtokoalas
+Upton Sinclair see, i think that that's the "official narrative" which is meant to convince you to vote for him and keep her out.

bernie sanders is somebody that's been in politics a long time and who has blazed his own path for a long time. but, this run seems orchestrated. i'm not falling for it.

i don't think he's actually running on grassroots support and union funds. i think it's just what you're being told. that's what they told you about obama, too - and you learned the hard way that it wasn't true.

i'm not stumping for clinton. i'm much too far to the left to consider voting in the two-party system in the united states. i'm just calling a spade; bernie's not what he appears to be.

i'll acknowledge that there is a difference between sanders and obama, in relation to clinton. on paper, clinton was always to the left of obama, they just created a mirage to hide that. on paper, sanders is clearly to the left of clinton. but, i'm not expecting the outcome to be different.

i don't have any evidence. not yet, anyways. it's just informed intuition. but it's a skepticism that is necessary and that will unfortunately probably reveal evidence as time unfolds,

bloodybleeder
+deathtokoalas I'm more fascinated with a persons ability to ignore the shit out of Hillary's corruption. The very thing leftists HATE about government corruption... "but... she's a woman, its all propaganda...YOU HATE WOMEN!"

deathtokoalas
+bloodybleeder leftists don't really care about government corruption. it's a christian values, conservative right-wing kind of thing. like most leftists, i take the socratic position that democracy is impossible without corruption, and upsetting yourself over it is banging your head against the wall for no rational reason.

i should clarify a little. exactly how the left views government corruption depends on how far left you go. but this discussion is kind of outside the realm of democratic politics. and i need to state again that i'm not a clinton supporter; if i was an american, i would certainly prefer bernie's rhetoric, but would lean rather heavily towards a more left-leaning party like the green party. i'm just pointing out that i'm very skeptical of all of this, and suspect that something on the order of a vast right-wing conspiracy is underlying it.

but, the basic idea on the left - that really anchors the whole concept of what left-wing means - is that government is inherently corrupt. you can't make government less corrupt; power corrupts. not absolute, absolutely. but relative, relatively. so, we might bring something like a class analysis in to explain this, and try to find ways around this. but whether you're talking about the anarchists or communists or anybody else on the far left, our basic argument is that we need to get rid of government altogether because it can never be reformed.

if you pull a little more into the center, they argue for things like regulatory bodies to try and minimize corruption. but, the basic premise remains that the corruption is unavoidable. the best you can do is try and police it. and, that might be preferable to you if you don't like corruption but aren't quite upset enough about it to start a revolution.

people like me that are further left than this will point out the capture issue, but are ultimately left shrugging it off until more people come to our side and argue for the abolition of the state altogether. we know there's nothing that can really be done.

it's only the right that has ever identified corruption as a sin on an individual level rather than a systemic problem. it's only the right that has ever promoted the idea that the solution to corruption is voting out the corrupt individuals and replacing them with incorruptible ones. the left has always seen that as naive.

so, in practice, while parts of the moderate left may argue for regulatory bodies to minimize corruption, the broad left sees it as a systemic issue that exists independent of individual politicians and is forced to accept it as a part of the system until more broad-based support can be generated for anti-statist reforms. the left consequently rarely bases voting decisions on the issue of corruption. but, the right seems to maintain the kind of protestant perspective that corruption is a consequence of wicked people and can be stamped out by replacing them with more scrupulous people.

to put it another way: left-leaning voters are going to tend to assume that they're all equally corrupt and either decide not to vote at all or base their voting decisions on something else.

it's hard to claim this disc is a lost classic, if you're a canadian - it was ubiquitous for a little while. but it sort of seems like it.

it may be partly because it's at about the time that canada began to lose it's own, distinctive musical culture. we hung on for a few more years, and arguably even hit a peak in the mid 90s. but, since then, canadian music has become an expression of what america has lost. younger people may correctly see something of greater value, by comparison. but, it's a different animal. the truth is that we've lost as much as they have; it's just harder to tell from the outside.

never did get into the beach boys. more of a beatles fan. but this song really hit me just the right way when i was about ten or so.

their bassist was actually a rather substantial musical influence on me and, along with mccartney, still really forms the crux of how i approach the bass guitar, underneath however many other influences.

jim m
+deathtokoalas beetles? stones

deathtokoalas
+jim m the rolling stones created almost nothing of any lasting value. their legacy will die with their fan base.

the beatles-stones debate is an anachronism. people will follow their parents. bloody wankers. but anybody under 40 (if not 50, nowadays) can clearly here that the stones were not in the same league as the beatles. it's the same thing with the beach boys, really.

we can have beatles-floyd debates - and i may side with floyd, depending on the context. or maybe beatles-byrds debates, if you're so inclined. but a beatles-stones debate is pointless. it's like arguing the relative merits of thomas pynchon v. dr. seuss.

Anonymous User
+deathtokoalas Nothing of lasting value? The Beatles are undeniably a major influence to many artists, but to act like the Rolling Stones made nothing of lasting value is hilariously wrong. I'm not even a Rolling Stones fan, I would also rather listen to The Beatles, but let's not kid ourselves.

Jake Britt
+deathtokoalas Brian Wilson is the guy The Beatles went to for their inspiration...

deathtokoalas
+Anonymous User they never even released a mediocre record. their one attempt at doing something interesting - satanic majesties request - is just laughably bad.

they were talentless hacks. they were always absolute followers - there's not an original idea in their discography. they may have some place in the history of fashion. but, they will be lucky to get a footnote in the musical history of the period. the beatles, on the other hand, will be remembered for quite some time.

it's all ** or * records - out of ten stars.

they'll have a better chance in a paragraph on the mahavishnu orchestra.

"john spent his early days loosely attached to a clownish group of bohemian village idiots called 'the rolling stones' before he began his career in earnest. remaining information about this group is scarce, but it is known that they were of great popularity in their day amongst the uneducated, rural underclass."

deathtokoalas
+Jake Britt that's a poor way to express the relationship between brian wilson and paul mccartney. there was a kind of a rivalry. brian wilson was very impressed by revolver, and made pet sounds in response to it. mccartney was impressed by pet sounds, and countered with sgt. peppers. his inability to top sgt. peppers is the actual reason that brian wilson never released another record. it drove him insane.

fwiw, mccartney has since acknowledged the importance of the session musicians on pet sounds. he was not initially aware that the bass parts were mostly written and performed by carol kaye, for instance. and, he seemed to be a little taken aback by that, as though a fraud had been exposed to him.

it was a leading question on the tpp. nobody opposes increasing trade.

that 18% green-leaning ndp vote is really on the brink of splitting, and may be an underestimate. a large amount of that is very fragile at this point. mulcair has already made a series of choices meant to position himself dead centre, and the online reaction to a lot of it has been pretty dramatic. he has those voters on his side, at most, until he passes legislation they don't like - and he *will* pass legislation they don't like. they may hold their noses and vote for him, to get rid of harper and then start criticizing him five minutes later. that might be what i end up doing. if he doesn't slow that centrist cave down a tad, he might manage to scare them off before the election.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/14/the-ekos-poll-ndp-liberals-still-struggling-to-break-free-of-deadlock/

Spencer
Ekos for the past 2 months seems to consistently low ball Liberal support by around 2 or 3 points and high ball Green support compared to most other polling firms.

deathtokoalas
this swing in the green vote is real. the ndp has been disappointing to left-leaning voters as of late.

Spencer
I wouldn't be that surprised if the Greens picked up a point or two by the end of the campaign, but I still think Ekos is high balling them when every other polling firm has them at about half of what Ekos does.

deathtokoalas
this poll put the ndp-green swing at almost 20% of the ndp vote. that's closer to 5-6%. i think it's a given that mulcair can kiss that goodbye if he starts backing pipelines and signing free trade agreements, as he's signaled he will. but, holding them up to the election is a question of how loud the centrist rhetoric is, and how intent those voters are to ignore it to push a change in government. they have little choice but to conclude he at least couldn't be worse than harper. but, protest voters vote with their hearts. he could very well scare off enough of his base to drop him to second or third, in his rush to the middle.

wow. if you're a poll geek, you should check out that mainstreet pdf file. i wish more firms did this kind of polling on undecideds. it really clarifies where people are actually at. for example, quantifying that only 6% of undecideds in ontario are leaning conservative [even keeping in mind that 50% refused to answer], while 18% surveyed are undecided, is very clarifying.

and that poll gives the liberals some hope in quebec, too. hrmmn.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-polltracker-aug14-1.3190102

i've been ignoring the senate scandal fiasco as a sideshow, even a show-trial for harper to use to push his senate agenda through. i couldn't see it having much of an effect on the critical swing on the left. and conservative voters are so rigid, they'd follow their leader into a fire, or drink the kool-aid, or whatever analogy you want....

....but, that swing on the left is shutting down and stabilizing....

a lot of people attributed the 2006 loss to the sponsorship scandal, and it perhaps had some effect in shoring up that roughly 5-8% "pc swing" that was floating around after joe clark endorsed the liberals in 2004. but it was really the nature of the swing, being right-leaning. and, i think there's an argument that the ruling on gay marriage was as or more important. i think it's effect was really overblown. harper really didn't walk out of it with a higher vote total than the conservatives & reform got together through the 90s - which is what you'd expect under *ambient* conditions.

so, if the analogy is to hold, i'd argue it should actually have a minimal effect, rather than a dramatic one.

but, what the duffy thing can hurt is the red tory part of his base. that 5-8% bump that joe clark gave the liberals (and went back in '06) has been gone in most polling for months, leaving him with numbers that are not far off of what reform got in the 90s. it consequently may be a factor in moderate conservatives swinging to the liberals.

and, the truth is there's a lot of stuff like this that could even eat into the libertarian side of the reform base. something like c-51, or the attempt to make boycotting israel a hate crime, could rub civil libertarians badly. conservatives in canada have generally leaned strongly towards protections for civil rights as a balance in being "tough on crime". he's not really balancing this in ways that most conservatives *i* know would approve of.

the narrative up to now has been those attack ads. there's really no evidence they've had any effect at all. in the end, actions speak louder than words.

the flip side of this is that if you look at the liberal numbers of 28% and realize that 6-8% of this is coming from traditional conservative voters, and then you compare the remaining 20% to the 37-40% they were getting in the 90s, you quickly see just how badly the ndp have eaten into the liberal support. that's a 15% swing from the liberals to the ndp. and it might be there for a generation or more.

it won't hurt jobs, and it will help people in the long run. further, it's nice to see some policy based on behavioural economics. one hopes that homo economicus is on the path to extinction; it seems, it couldn't compete.

but, let's not be naive. sure: this might help people in the long run, so long as it remains viable relative to the inflate and burst cycle. but, the real winners are investors. that's a lot of other people's money to gamble.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ontario-retirement-pension-plan-who-loses-who-wins-1.3189773 

Angry Earl
actually the investor's (banks, mutual fund companies, etc) would benefit most from the private investment (e.g. RRSPs, TFSAs) rather than a government pension plan because they make money off the fees, but the investment costs with large pension plans (e.g. CPP, Ontario Teachers, OMERS) are trivial in a percentage cost and the investment returns have greatly exceeded the private sector over many years. If I could have CPP or OMERS invest my money for me, I would be glad to turn over my portfolio.

Jessica Murray
that may be technically true, but we're talking about creating funds by taxing people that otherwise wouldn't create rrsps - *because* they wouldn't otherwise create rrsps.

it's going to end up in the hands of investors, who are going to gamble it on the stock market and do all other kinds of shady things with it. in the end, they get the largest profit, not the pensioners.

state propaganda speaks of things like "educating people about how to save and invest". it's misunderstanding that it's not an issue of education (although it may be broadly lacking) so much as it's an issue of priority. personally? i have no plans to make it to 65. i'd rather spend the money on beer and popcorn. i can't argue i'd invest it better, i'd argue i don't care about investing it. but, then what happens when i make it to 79, after planning my whole life to live to 59? "oops. forgot to save. too busy having fun.". well, that's what a government *does*...

if there are windfalls, the government could very well raid it; i don't see a big problem with that, so long as nobody gets a letter in the mail telling them there's no money left. conversely, if there are shortfalls, the state will make up the difference through other means.

instead of handing off the money to investors, they could pocket it. but, they won't, because they don't want to. and, they don't have the initial stock market capital that you can get by pooling money together, either - which is very useful if you're going in.

i've been saying for years that the liberals need to beat the ndp, not the conservatives, and they're fighting battle after battle on the wrong side of the spectrum. call it a self-fulfilling prophecy if you wish, but the pendulum has now swung: i would expect the liberals to grow primarily at the expense of the conservatives at this point, while the ndp grows at the expense of the liberals, and the greens grow at the expense of the ndp. running an unpopular government at the far end of the spectrum means the conservatives don't grow, they shrink...

as the liberals slowly take over the right, and cement themselves as a moderate conservative party, the conservatives will fade back into the socred legacy they came from. harper wanted this to be his party, and his government. harper party. harper government. and, that's likely what he'll get. the conservative party is done when he is.

you'll inevitably see some crossings and realignments, with traditional conservative party support slowly moving into the liberal camp - and bringing it a lot of money. which is probably what they've been angling for the whole time. all the votes are on the left, but all the money is on the right.

so, i'm going to stop saying this. they set their own course, and the support on the ground has caught up to the rhetoric and policies: they exist on the right, and are in competition for conservative voters.

this election? not likely to work out well. next election? the existential struggle swings right.

if you set out to destroy the liberal party of canada, you'd better be willing to accept the consequences of failing at it.

the liberals may come out of this firmly on the right of the spectrum, but it's the tories that have days that are numbered.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-polltracker-aug14-1.3190102

SOB_Van_Owen
Traditionally, Conservatives campaign from the right but govern from the left and Liberals campaign from the left but govern from the right. It is all in an effort to control the middle.

This is different though. Trudeau is trying to outflank Tom, not Harper. The only thing I wonder is if he will let Harper sit as a minority PM for three years like his spineless predecessors did.

Jessica Murray
well, i think the conservatives are doing a pretty good job of campaigning on the right...

i don't think you can underestimate how badly this government has tarnished the "conservative" brand. they're in a distant third with voters under 55. distant. like, 20%. as their base dies, the party dies. within a few years, they're unlikely to be competitive.

that 30% conservative number has been a rock bottom since wwII. it's been unheard of to see the conservatives consistently polling in the 20s. but, it's masking the liberals' swing to the right, and the voters they've lost permanently to the ndp.

i mean, imagine trudeau's father campaigning on balanced budgets. it's rather comical.

the regional breakdowns make the three-way race somewhat of an illusion. the liberals don't have a regional base. even if the liberals can get up to 30-32% support, that likely just means they come in second place almost everywhere they lose. they will likely not be a significant force in the next parliament. with a few bad gaffes, they could even lose party status - even with 20-25% of the popular vote, if a lot of it is in alberta and quebec, where they can't win.

but, the moment the conservatives lose power, they lose the only argument they have. and, once harper steps down, you'll see the conservatives "release their delegates", if you will. that base of long time moderate conservatives does not like him any more than the rest of the country does, but they're sticking with him because they're conservatives and they like stability. the moment they're no longer in power, and they have a new leader, all bets on numbers higher than than the ~10% the socreds consistently got up to 1980 are off.

inflation of any sort always increases prices. deflation of any sort never decreases prices. so, you're half right. it's not a nefarious plan by the nwo or the rastafarians or something. but it's a fundamental fact of capitalism: prices never come down.

www.cbc.ca/news/business/oil-storage-tanks-filled-to-levels-not-seen-in-80-years-1.3190001

this is how you hold people accountable.

i'm just legitimately curious: do you have any comments regarding this idea of making boycotting israel a hate crime?

that sounds like it might be a little contentious on your side of the spectrum.

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGy6uV7yqGWDeUWTZzT3ZEg

i mean, it's kind of not respecting market theory.

and then there's the hate crime minefield.

fwiw, i'm not a supporter of bds as a tactic. i agree with chomsky's criticisms. but, i'm still curious.