i actually think that non-voting is going to be one of the few non-violent approaches that people have in certain districts, in order to get the point across that the purchased wings of the political spectrum had better start listening. this is a tactic that should be generating discussion regarding the feasibility of building a movement around it.

but, if you look at the american election, there's still a halfways viable option in bernie sanders. i mean, he's not going to set off a revolution. but, maybe the experience in analyzing the post-war outcomes in america and the soviet union can do a little to remind us of the value of democracy. it's an imperfect democracy, but it's functional if it's utilized sufficiently. you want to make sure the workable options are really exhausted before you move to the death grip, in really shattering the facade of the system's legitimacy. and, hey, do you think the cia is above a coup in washington, if the people get a little too out of hand? don't think these people value the life of an american more than a chilean. shattering the illusion of real american democracy creates a path to reactionary authoritarianism in greater probabilities than it does to demagogically populist authoritarianism. if we're sure we don't want it, they may be more than happy to take it away.

you have to measure that against the nature of the system, though as well, which is designed to slow any kind of reform to a halt. law is of course a means to avoid violence in conflict-resolution, it all is, but the way the legal system is applied to activism is especially defined as a way to distract activists from making real changes. the institutional hurdles that a sanders presidency would have to jump through to apply some of the things he's proposing are so immense as to be almost not worth contemplating. and, then, in the end, it serves no purpose to elect a wood log and hope it floats against the current; you need to reroute the river. the true level of inertia exposes itself on greater analysis, and mass abstention again seems necessary.

i'm still torn on whether there's really a sufficiently useful option in this canadian election to take the scorched earth approach of boycott. for the longest while, it didn't seem like it. and, i understand that legal battles are going to be required to stop every single one of these candidates. but, those cases often seem like the correct dispute mechanism to settle the underlying issues on a longer term basis.

http://or-politics.com/newsnewspolitics/signs-pop-up-in-moncton-encouraging-protest-votes-in-federal-election/94057/

the bc general was weird, and i'm just going to avoid it completely. but, what the ontario election actually demonstrated was the clear inferiority of internet polls. it wasn't just ipsos that got it wrong, it was the internet panels across the board. the ivr and phone polling was actually pretty accurate. a media narrative developed that the polling was wrong, but the narrative was really flat wrong - it was only the internet polls that were wrong. had the proper narrative developed...

i would think that the first thing that such an organization would do, if it were serious, would be to strongly discourage the kind of polling methods ipsos is using. that it's not doing such a thing suggests it's not a body that much attention should be paid to.

ipolitics.ca/2015/09/21/feud-emerging-between-pollsters-as-election-day-approaches/

this article needs a serious fact check.

but, the issue isn't so much that the liberals are running to the left of the ndp; they really aren't. it's that the ndp are running to the right of the liberals.

rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/scott-piatkowski/2015/09/are-liberals-really-running-to-left-ndp-oh-please

the ad is actually clearly geared at what should be tory-bloc swing voters that may be currently leaning ndp out of groupthink. remember that the bloc was initially a conservative party splinter group, so it's always had a right-wing side in the party. this swing would be represented in provincial politics by the adq, although of course the pq have not been shy about trying to swing them over the last several years, either. a quick glance at the numbers would suggest that the ndp is likely attracting quite a bit of support from right-leaning voters, as even the most generous tabulations of conservative + bloc results are well under adq levels.

sure: it's a last gasp for dead air. but, it maybe offers a little insight into internal bloc polling as to what is left of their voting base and who may benefit from further erosion in it. it seems to imply that they have nothing left to lose on the left side of their base. i don't think the idea of remnant bloc support bleeding to the conservatives has been considered by many people, but perhaps it should be.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/18/voting-ndp-means-a-pipeline-of-niqabs-bloc-attack-ad/

so, i suppose we should be less concerned about all those confused, mistaken and misunderstood sharks - and create a selfie patrol that prevents people from harming themselves, along with laws restricting unsafe sefie behaviour. next time you see a shark, you just want to calmly explain your hierarchical dominance and point it towards it's correct prey sources; it's just a misunderstanding if it starts biting you. but, remember: friends don't let friends take dangerous selfies. and, report all suspicious selfie-taking behaviour.

www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/selfies-have-killed-more-people-than-sharks-this-year/57533/

well, there will probably be a million jobs created in the next six years, regardless; it's less than population growth.

i'm more interested in how this sounds like tim hudak's pitch in ontario, which is exactly what i'd think the conservatives would be trying to avoid doing right now. considering the party's use of microtargetting issues, that may suggest that it's worried about it's core supporters wandering.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/22/conservatives-would-strive-to-create-1-3m-new-jobs-by-2020-harper/

it's an interesting thought. but, by some estimates, if even a quarter of the undecideds vote as a block, it could swing the election. you have quite a bit of room to move on this hypothesis in being absolutely right, and yet being absolutely wrong. for that reason, there's almost no way to write off the undecideds - even if they overwhelmingly abstain, the few that don't are still the key in who wins, should numbers stay static.

if you look at how the 30/30/30 split has developed since august, the conservatives have more or less been flat while the ndp has lost a few points to the liberals. all of the data suggests almost all of the swing is on the left. i would expect the undecideds to eventually push one of those two parties up by a few points.

depending on where it happens, it could be disastrous for harper or it could save his hide. if the liberals get the bump, and it's largely in ontario, it could push the conservatives into third. but if the bump the liberals get is mostly in quebec and tepid in ontario, then you end up with equally sized opposition parties in a harper minority. conversely, if the ndp get the bump and it's mostly in ontario, you end up with conservatives winning tons of splits; if they get the bump and it's in bc, it could win them a small minority.

right now, it seems to be the liberals that are trending. but, even so, their gains may come at the expense of allowing mulcair a chance at governance, as they push tory seat totals in ontario down, but not enough to get over ndp dominance in quebec.

the point is, the undecideds are still huge - even if the vast majority stay home, in the end.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-undecideds-sep21-1.3237086

as a tenant, i'd consider a "no children" clause to be a selling point. i'd even be willing to accept a short-term increase in rent to help the landlord pay the fine.

there needs to be options for people that decide to have children. but there also needs to be options for people that have decided to not have children.

www.cbc.ca/news/business/got-kids-find-another-place-to-live-1.3233761

Donald D
Jessica, you have every right not to have children if you don't want to have them. You also have every right not to endure excessive noise in your dwelling. But neither you nor landlords are allowed to control how others respect the noise requirements in a building, and you certainly don't get to decide that families with children cannot live in the same building as you.

Your neighbours could be gay, black, Amish, wheelchair-bound, pet owning parents, and as long as they respect the noise and cleanliness regulations of the building, you get no say

jessica murray
i'm an anarchist, so i don't believe in property rights, which means i don't believe in tenants rights. rather, i think that the people that get to decide who lives in a building are the tenants, themselves.

if the tenants of a building decide they don't want kids in it, then it's up to the government to try and stop them. and, as mentioned, i'd be willing to help pay the fine.

you can throw around the language you'd like all you want, the question is what is it that you think you're going to do to enforce it? the only thing you can do is go to the human rights commission and get a fine. and, i'll gladly pay the fine and keep the restriction, thanks.

Sid
How idiotic and uncaring of you

jessica murray
well, it works both ways. it just means that people that want kids will need to organize to create spaces that are welcoming of their lifestyle decisions. i'd even support a little government help in doing that. but, not at the expense of my own peace.

Leopold August Wilhelm Dorothe von Henning
This isn't about "options", but human rights.

jessica murray
well, i'd question whether this is a valid application of human rights law; i don't think i'm paying to get around a rights abuse, i reject the idea that it's a rights abuse in the first place.

as mentioned, i would support the government subsidizing segregated housing units for people with children. that is the proper rights balance that respects their rights to housing and my rights to not be annoyed by them.

700kotchi
You reject anything that doesn`t fit your point of view it seems. See above.

jessica murray
this is the standard boneheaded reaction to my generally very subtle and sometimes quite complex arguments.

700kotchi
I don`t think you need worry about ever having children.

jessica murray
the most important thing that my parents taught me is not to have children. unless you have a lot of wealth to throw around, your goals immediately change. you no longer live for your own dreams; you must live for those of your kids. it's a type of martyrdom.

--

jessica murray
my post seems to have been disabled because it had the most likes and contradicts the message in the story. it's not remotely offensive. and that's pretty weak, cbc. rather than post it again, i'd request that you re-enable it.

Stan
(something about flagging the post)

jessica murray
and, you accuse me of not accepting the views of others? i've never flagged anything in my life, other than spam.

that's blatantly frivolous censorship.

original post:

as a tenant, i'd consider a "no children" clause to be a selling point. i'd even be willing to accept a short-term increase in rent to help the landlord pay the fine.

there needs to be options for people that decide to have children. but there also needs to be options for people that have decided to not have children.

there's nothing flaggable, there.

if people are going to abuse the flag function, it should really be disabled.

you're lucky there's not a legal process here, because you don't have anything close to a valid argument.

Extrapolate
My post has disappeared as well. Is that all it takes...to have someone who disagrees flag it ?

SquareDeal
How many. Is it in Bill C-51

jessica murray
while it seems as though this response is sardonic, the truth is that that's a good question. but, if so, i think it is codifying long existing practice. i can't be sure if i'm crosslinked to my 2008 election persona, but i was certainly dealing with censorship then, too.

and 2011, too, of course.

a large percentage of the people fleeing are actually christians.

the association of religion with the right-wing is a certain sort of religion - one that aligns with right-wing values. in that sense, it's sort of a meaningless correlation, other than to point out that a certain amount of religious interpretation leans to the right. the way we tend to understand this has cause and effect backwards.

there was actually a large amount of focus put onto this issue in the united states a few years ago. left-leaning internet sources felt some kind of urgent need to get across the point that, statistically speaking, christians prefer more communitarian interpretations of christianity that point more towards ideals of utopian socialism. these christians seem to have more numerical power, but they don't seem to be as politically mobilized as the smaller group of christians that seem pre-occupied with vengeance, and are driven very strongly by opposition to abortion.

there's no reason to think that isn't also true in canada. however, canada also has a different political tradition insofar as religion exists in it's political spectrum, because we have historical toryism - which, while existing on the right of the spectrum, holds much more closely to the communitarian concept of christianity. this is going to hold pretty closely to the reform/tory split in the conservative party.

the bigger question is where these people may feel they have to go. the ndp has a history in the prairie gospel, but that itself is a mixed bag in terms of historical vengeance-based policies, mixed with communitarian policies. but, it's barely a faint memory in the ndp of today.

one would suspect that this voting bloc may feel too alienated from the secular visions of the other parties, in the sense that there isn't a grassroots to blur that secular vision, like there is in the conservative party grassroots.

but, i think the article at least makes the point that these people would take a better option, if they saw it available to them.

30% is the floor, guys. +-. 27, minimum. i'm not making that up. that's historical reality.

globalnews.ca/news/2232630/christians-say-syrian-refugee-crisis-could-affect-how-they-vote-in-federal-election/

it's not the 70s. nobody cares about the debates anymore.

her insistence on the debates being an issue merely demonstrates that may is out of touch and needs to make way for younger people.

she'll reach more people over twitter. it actually gives her an advantage, as she's able to set the narrative - if she uses it.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/20/greens-file-complaint-to-cra-in-bid-to-get-elizabeth-may-into-munk-debate_n_8166226.html

wayne gretzky is a high school dropout. that is one of harper's major voting bases. and, frankly, if you're so uninformed that you would allow him to sway your vote, then you shouldn't be allowed to vote, either. non-issue. next...

ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/the-gargoyle-gretzky-to-endorse-harper-but-cant-vote-for-him

well, i got my forms mailed today. that's to cancel my student loan.

i can't be certain what the bureaucracy will do, but my understanding is that they basically can't overrule the doctor.

so, i'm celebrating this week. which means listening, but carefully - i know i can't mix when i'm celebrating.

and, it means making some different lifestyle choices starting next week.

...because it is critically important to maintain the existence of a species that sees us as prey. i suppose their plans are to breed thousands of them and release them back into the wild, where they can go back to their natural diet of villagers?

www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/zoo-spares-tiger-who-killed-zookeeper/57457/

see, the unfortunate thing is that it took you so long to figure this out. i figured this out about 25 or so. but, i think you still haven't quite figured it out.

you're still lost in the misunderstanding that we live in a meritocracy. but, if you look around a little bit more closely, you will hopefully see that your problem is not that you do, but that you don't - that we live in a system defined by rampant nepotism and corruption. we don't get ahead based on what we're able to accomplish, we get ahead based on the family we're born into and our ability to build social connections up the ladder, often in direct contradiction to our actual abilities. we would benefit from more meritocracy and less class hierarchy. a social reformation, if you will.

what they told me when i was in school was that i was brilliant. i came back at the 99th percentile of all the intelligence tests, for as far back as i can recall. i'll still ace just about an iq type test you can throw at me. but, i also failed the situational judgement tests in the 00s. three times. it's not because they demand the exceptional, it's because they demand conformity. i'm in the strange position of not being able to tell them what they want to hear because i'm so isolated from the people around me that i don't know what they want to hear. the only way i'm able to approach something like that is with logic, which is the wrong way to approach it. it's a test of whether the candidate is properly conditioned to behave in a hierarchical workforce. for me to pass the tests, i'd have to take courses in workplace behaviour that teach me the correct way to defer to authority and when i should not think for myself.

what i figured out about the age of 25 is that it's a waste of time to bother dreaming. i mean, it doesn't matter anyways. even if you get to where you want to get to, you've accomplished nothing of any value. so, i went back to school because i didn't want to get a job - i'd rather smoke a joint in the park and read a book under the tree.

the solution to the conundrum is to stop pretending you want the things you don't have. if you wanted them, you'd have already accomplished them. you studied science instead because you preferred it. so, stop letting the society define you, and take control of yourself, instead. if you can do that, you'll realize that you're happier reading that text book in your parents' basement than you would be otherwise. and that that's why you're doing it in the first place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pglv6VrA8ro

wait. this is the finance minister of the supposedly left-wing syriza party? he's got stiglitz shaking his head, and stiglitz is hardly a socialist. the real left media told us from the start that these guys are pseudo-leftists and you shouldn't expect much of a break from the status quo.

but what i found interesting about this video is how openly he suggests that the crisis is meant to stimulate a political union, and how easily stiglitz seemed to agree with him. this is generally considered to be in the realm of conspiracy theory, or at least in that space of somewhat heavy-handed left-wing analysis that tends to look like conspiracy theory to most people. but, nobody blinks an eye, here. it's just stated as obvious.

the truth is that stiglitz was very patient with this guy. the correct answer is that there is nothing that greece can do without looking at the framework of the eurozone. you can spend as much money as you want, it doesn't change the fundamental reality that the system is impossible. and, he even seems to agree with that and says "but...".

no. there's no "but". it's political union or bust.

Miguel Rodríguez Ruiz
How can the idea of a Federal europe be a left-wing conspiracy their?

*theory

deathtokoalas
+Miguel Rodríguez Ruiz there's a strain of thinking on the left that sees the european union as a kind of fourth reich and - implicitly or explicitly - tends to argue it was planned by nazi banking cartels, behind closed doors.

what i'm getting at is that this perception is really reducible to a question of scale. there doesn't have to be a grand illuminati cabal for it to be basically right.

Giannhs Kwstas
+jessica I dont think he speaks left wingy or right wingy, he speaks common sense. 

deathtokoalas
+Giannhs Kwstas what i'm pointing out is that he is not making any sense at all - he's spouting a lot of hard-right idiocy.

i should also point out that, in canada, "common sense" is doublespeak for "extreme right-wing policies". whenever that term is brought up, you know to expect absolute nonsense. it's broadly used to reject empiricism by pushing disingenuously presented intuition - to replace academic approaches with constructed gut reactions. it's the mark of anti-intellectualism. i don't know if that's also true in europe.

----

Alan Pater
Speaking of a US of Europe is counter productive, I think. Many Europeans hate the idea of modeling themselves after the US.

Perhaps Europe could take a look at the Canadian system? Canada has three territories and ten provinces, each with their own budgets for healthcare, education, welfare, etc.  Yet it remains an optimum currency area.

Alex Khalif
Hi, when Varoufakis talks about a "United States" of Europe, I think he is talking about some sort of "Federated Europe" where the peoples of Europe live in a more harmonious way, with the possibility of a number of shared institutions like a Central Bank. In his previous talks Yanis has stressed that Federation cannot be created in the middle of a crisis & that it will take approx. 20 years to make it happen. The institutions & structures that were created in the 60s, 70s & 80s by the so called technocrats n Brussels, Paris & Berlin have failed spectacularly to deal with the earthquake that hit Europe. Also among Europe's elites the notion of TINA (There Is No Alternative) must be killed off!!

Charly CGN
The Terminus Technicus we use in Europe is "Multi-speed Europe". Nobody seriously wants a "United States of Europe". Yanis Varoufakis is a fool. He and his communist party really should do all of us a favor and leave the Eurozone!

Alex Khalif
Varoufakis maybe an idealist when it comes to reforming European institutions as well as trying to stop Europeans turning against each other...BUT iam certain he is no fool & he is not a member of a "communist" government!

Charly CGN
Yes, of course. The Syriza-Party is a coalition of the radical left. That's the point. You know, I'm from western Germany and because of the subprime mortgage crisis and the corruption in Greece today we have the upcoming right wing-parties Front National (France) and AfD (Alternative für Deutschland - Germany). So, if now Varoufakis is not quick about returning to the negotiating table he is responsible for the rest of Europe to lose its patience.

Alex Khalif
Iam not going to mention anything horrible about the Germans or their culture as I have some distant relatives living there even though I now live in Australia. Iam very disappointed in what Schäuble & others in the government had to say after the meeting with Varoufakis.  They don’t seem to able to differentiate between somebody who is just a technocrat with a degree in Economics & Finance from a person with a deep intellectual understanding of European problems and practical solutions.  The human cost of this whole debacle is too high. Also, its not our responsibility here in Australia to find jobs for unemployed European citizens who have fled the crisis, we have enough unemployed youth ourselves...

taguchi13
Kindly watch the video you're commenting on Christian. It is evident, from your comment, that you have not.

Charly CGN
Right! We desperately need new GLOBAL institutions to deal with the consequences of climate change, inequality, injustice and implement the digital revolution.

TheHomoludens
Right, ´cause central bureaucrats actually solve problems, just look at Brussel...

Fool!

johnselekta
You are part of the problem I think. Media tells you he's a fool, you act like one. He is the only person I can see that wants to start at the top...where to do you think all the money goes? Thin air or a tax haven? Greece won't bring the Eurozone down, the people in power with hidden interests will as they profit from it.

deathtokoalas
canada is indeed the better example, primarily because it has an equalization payment system and the united states doesn't.

you could think of alberta as germany and new brunswick as greece. the way the canadian system works is that the federal government will collect taxes from alberta and send them to new brunswick as an "equalization payment", so that there are comparable standards of living across the country. if it wasn't for this system, the less wealthy provinces would not be able to afford things like healthcare.

that's the reality that greece has to come to terms with: it's economy will never be strong enough to use a german currency without a transfer system.

in the sense that this is accurate, it's exceedingly depressing.

is the biologically assigned sex of the child really that big of a deal?

i suppose i should be happy that i'm healthy enough that my lungs are still able to go into overdrive whenever i quit smoking. i've been through this often enough to know that this is the last phase before normalcy: the white blood cells start coming out in a quantity that sometimes makes me feel like i'm choking. i can literally stand over the sink and watch a connected gob of slimy goop fall out of my throat for upwards of a minute at a time. it only lasts a day or two. rather than clear my lungs slowly, my body seems to want to go into hyperdrive and flush it all out as soon as it can...

i'm actually scarily healthy. i tell people i won't live to 50. the reality is that if i can cut the smoking out now, otherwise keep my lifestyle (healthy eating, but more importantly no car) similar and get a little luck on inheriting dna from my mom's side, i'll probably make it to 90.

and i can't help but feel that this exaggerated response i always get when i quit is a function of being as healthy as i am.

i made a point of not getting anything done today, because i was expecting to pass out. i've actually been awake for a normal 17 hour day at this point and i'm feeling very alert. but, i'm still not doing anything...

tomorrow, i think, will be time to start again.

i determined yesterday, briefly, that the primary problem was, in fact, the firewire driver. i'm expecting it to boot up to a clean signal. perhaps another reason i didn't do anything today is fear that it won't.

so, sneaky tom claims he has enough senators to pass legislation, but won't tell us who they are. he has also just put the champlain bridge up for sale, but won't tell us where he got the jurisdiction from; his good friend philip is on the record as responding with "i shakes me head".

the last time i looked at the senate, it had a bare minority of conservatives required to pass legislation, dozens of vacancies and a rump liberal minority that has been disowned by his party.

so, we're to believe that he's managed to convince the entirety of that rump liberal minority, along with over a dozen harper appointed senators?

don't worry. he'll tell us who they are after we elect him. and don't forget to look at his other offers, including the champlain bridge.

he has dozens of open seats. the first thing he'll do is fill them.

this is the kind of absurdly irrational lie that destroys careers, because it takes precisely no careful thought to realize he's lying through his teeth on it. he'd better hope that very few people are actually prioritizing this as a voting issue, or he's digging another shovel into his own grave every time he opens his mouth on it.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-senate-abolition-ndp-1.3235746

so, the way this works is that we have to buy it because we're being ordered to, but harper is dragging his feet (diefenbaker may be using some magnets from his grave) and the other two are being facetious in suggesting a market-based competition. in the end, they will of course buy the f-35s like they're told. this might be the only thing they all agree on: they don't want this.

but, why do we have to do this, again, barack? you know they're going to sit in a hangar. hell, i'd rather you just keep them down there to begin with - we'd save money on keeping vandals away from them. and on wd-40.

why can't we just pay you a protection tax, or something? that way, we can budget it properly. plan around it. tax your compan..err....the russians. tax the russians to pay for it.

no, really, there's gotta be some way out of this. two out of three are insisting on balanced budgets, and i don't want anybody dealing with funding cuts to buy planes. we've got pilots. they'll be happy to take part in your silly empire, if you'd like - you just need to give them planes. or, if you really want us to have them, maybe you could give us some of that "military aid" that you give to countries like israel.

we're just kind of not really interested in being taxed on this. we've got stuff like single payer health care that we'd rather use that for.

see, the american perspective sees it as a win-win. they get jobs for building the planes. they get their allies the planes. it's all win. and, this is the post-war reality and has been since the war: they get to order us to buy their stuff because they're the empire and we're the client and that's how this stuff works.

what they're not realizing is that we don't spend more on the military than everybody else in the world combined, like they do. rather, we spend a lot on services. for us, that's an obscene amount of money.

it's not as easy as just levelling with them. it's going to require some kind of delightfully aloof comedy routine, or something.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-trudeau-scrap-f35-halifax-1.3235791

PrimeMinster Gerald Butts!
Where do you guys get such utter nonsense?

Jessica Murray
it's how the world works, man. maybe drop chomsky an email and ask him to explain it to you....

i just can't see how the liberals could be polling in the high 20s in quebec without being competitive in outremont. show me the polls, dammit...

it's not a mulcair thing. and i'm sure there's an intangible. and blah blah blah. it's just that it has to be at or near the top of the list of ridings that the liberals can win back if they're running higher.

it's one of those things where it's like fighting against gravity. as an independent observer, i see the numbers i'm thinking, and i think that outremont is worse than vulnerable. the ndp could run maurice fucking richard, it doesn't change the math.

well, maybe the rocket would change the math a little. you get the point.

if the liberals are up, outremont is vulnerable. no caveats.

so, show me the polls.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-trudeau-papineau-mulcair-outremont-1.3230605

iamjustme
Liberals are at 32% in Outremont, 54.6% in Papineau!

Jessica Murray
do you have a source for that?

iamjustme
Threehundredeiight.com ....Eric Grenier amalgamates all of the respected polls and has numbers for every riding in Canada.(CBC)

While the election is on he also has a contract with CBC.

Saw CTVs pollster this am. He said the NDP were trending downward, but Eric hasnt said that...

Jessica Murray
i see. you're posting the numbers from his "riding projections".

those numbers are more or less pulled out of thin air. there's some vague attempt to construct them to be consistent with the provincial polling averages, but it's ultimately merely a lot of guesswork. they should not be taken seriously on a riding-by-riding basis.

what i'd like to see are some actual riding polls.

when i moved here, it didn't take me long to realize i'd walked into a space that is rather strange, politically speaking. in the ontario election, it was not that uncommon to walk by middle class houses with giant union signs next to giant conservative party signs. it sounds like a contradiction, but it rather seems to be the bedrock of the political culture. there seems to be a sort of underlying insularism in the region that i think you want to explain by a lack of education. so, you get all these people that want strong unions to improve their financial circumstances, but are in truth deeply socially conservative - like most uneducated people. the saying is that conservatives may not all be stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives. this area seems to demonstrate the truth in this. what they really want is a right-wing socialist party.

i would consequently suspect that these ridings could easily swing conservative if they had a fiery populist candidate in the mould of a rob ford.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/canada-election-2015-harper-manufacturing-windsor-1.3235747

i am an actual, real-life leftist that is not afraid to stand up in a room of conservatives and declare myself a communist, and trust me – the media is not on my side.

i think this article is maybe circumlocuting a bit of an epiphany, in referring to the media as disconnected elites – although it is continuing to make an error in tying them to the existing spectrum. so long as we let the media do this, it can continue to divide and conquer in a weird way.

and it is a weird way. the media is it’s own party. i haven’t read the book, but “laurentian elites” is not a bad description. the truth is that they’re tories. not conservatives; tories. supporters of diefenbaker, clark and mulroney. bleeding hearts, as the elder trudeau would say. christian protectionists that enforce a noblesse oblige amongst themselves. that is at the heart of the refugee crisis: noblesse oblige. not liberalism. not socialism. toryism.

it’s a strange anachronism. there truly isn’t a party that represents the interests of the aging canadian elite. and, has there been a country in the history of capitalism where the elite is disenfranchised? hey, i’m the leftist here – i realize how little that makes sense. and, yet it is clear that this is what exists…

www.therebel.media/media_party_disconnected_from_public_they_serve?page=4

i think it's reasonable to be extremely wary of dynastic politics. and, frankly, i wouldn't vote for trudeau solely on his own merits. but, he happens to be walking into a situation where the other two party leaders are unelectable, which makes him the best option by default.

if he wins this thing, it's neither going to be a commentary on his own abilities, nor a commentary on the abilities of his father. it's going to be the country settling back in to it's comfort point in rejecting the politics of the other two parties. and, the truth is that most people realize he's a largely ceremonial figure head, anyways. the prime minister is not meant to be like the president; when he talks about decentralizing power from the pmo and allowing cabinet more independence, that's a direction i'm in favour of.

it's one thing to not know something. there's lots of things we don't know. all of us.

what's more important is whether we pretend we know things we don't or if we have the humility and maturity to defer to others that are more capable when we know we lack the required understanding.

it's that deference that marks a capable manager - and that pretension that marks an incapable one. the truth is that we've had far too much pretension in government for far too long and could benefit from somebody that doesn't see themselves as a philosopher king.

so long as he continues to understand what he understands and what he doesn't, and knows what to defer, i think we'll be ok - in fact, better off than if we are to elect yet another narcissist that thinks they can run the country from a single office.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/ranjani-iyer-mohanty/justin-trudeau-political-dynasty_b_8156318.html

Maryanne Weis
Jessica... take the time out of your busy schedule to read his policies and perhaps then and only then can you see the difference between voting for Trudeau or Harper and Mulcair.

Jessica Amber Murray
well, that's the thing - i don't think he's written any of these policies, or even had much input into the process. and i'm ok with that.

the big difference is the redrawn ridings. it is arguably the case that the cities were split up to harm the ndp in the first place; it certainly raised some eyebrows. even at 2011 numbers, the ndp would be expected to pick up most of those new urban seats in saskatoon and regina, with the one exception being rock-steady ralph. nobody's ever beating ralph. well, jesus, maybe - but the conservatives are not that bold. yet....

ralph's seat will probably eventually go to the ndp, too.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-prairies-sep19-1.3234750

Rush 2112
nobody causes harm to the NDP, They open their mouth and speak

Jessica Murray
well, the accusations of gerrymandering are kind of hard to ignore, if you look at the riding splits.

both cities were sliced into four parts in such a way that the rural parts of the riding would determine the winner with essentially no ambiguity.

had that not occurred, saskatoon and regina would have been sending ndp mps to ottawa the whole time.

HardRightByte
The cons didn't do this though, the Liberals did because at the time they figured the NDP were a bigger threat to them than the Reform Party.

Jessica Murray
this is accurate. for all the talk of "western alienation", it suited the liberals just fine so long as they could keep it contained, and the more the westerners cried and yelled like the entitled, spoiled children we've learned they are, and it was always clear that they are, the more they kept themselves hemmed in. it makes me angry whenever i see somebody apologize for the nep.

and, the truth is that this calculus was absolutely correct. nobody should apologize for being right. the liberals did not lose power due to a surge in conservative voters. they lost power because layton started bleeding them on their left, most notably in ontario. and, for them to win again, they need to beat the ndp, not the conservatives. the poll corrections over the last week have upheld what i've been saying for years: you can't push the conservatives under 30 for any length of time. you have to fight over the other 70% to form a government.

they seemed to get it then, what's more head-scratching is why they forgot it for so long.

china's population is roughly 40 times that of canada. yet it's emissions are only 16 times. another way to see this is to look at emissions per capita. china's is about 6. canada's is more than twice that, around 15. and, because we can only control our own behaviour, this is the right to way to look at the situation: we need to reduce our emissions per capita to a level that indicates we're doing our share, rather than polluting at two or three times the global rate.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/15/this-changes-everything-china-canada-climate-change-_n_8140518.html

scientists and media organizations should be presenting this information as emissions per capita, not as gross emissions. it may be true that gross emissions are a better way to understand the climate effects. but, per capita emissions make it clear what it is that we need to do in order to do our share.

despite the media narrative, the reality is that we'd be making a huge contribution if we could get our per capita down to where china's is.

Peter Thompson
Jessica Murray, if you want Canadians to get our per capita emissions down to China's level, set the example and start with yourself. No heat, no car, no electricity are the realities for the vast majority of Chinese, you first and enjoy the upcoming winter...likely your last.

jessica murray 
i don't own a car, and i heat my apartment with electric power that i'd like to hope will be 100% renewable in the near future. the largest part of my relatively small carbon footprint has to do with transporting food, which is something we can easily work together to avoid if we decide that we'd like to. the irony is not in me needing to look at myself; i already have, and i can assure you that i do about everything i can, and actively argue for people to get together to take further steps. my footprint is lower than china's per capita emissions. the irony is in your false assumption that i haven't, and your inability to see beyond your own mental blocks.

www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/see-which-nations-are-the-biggest-co2-contributors/57401/

i won't go over what's been said, other than to point out that the ndp never previously polled as high as 10%. if the bloc are polling at 10% or higher, the ndp would have to be swinging a considerable number of liberal voters to even be competitive.

that said, i'd like to see some polls in outremont - which is one of the first ridings you'd expect to see swing back to the liberals, if they're getting a boost over 2008, which they clearly are. i suspect this is a deflection.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/18/justin-trudeau-papineau-anne-legace-dowson-poll_n_8161098.html

i'm quitting smoking again. done this enough to know it's temporary. but, dammit....

you need to teach that raccoon to fish.

it's always a little disturbing to me when media purporting to be about "exposing rape culture" features violent rape imagery, knowing full well that many people that are watching are less than horrified by the imagery, if you understand what i'm saying. there's a very fine line between messaging and pornography; this is a topic that people engage with in complex ways, from repressed fantasies to voyeurism. sometimes, this line is crossed by accident, or at least not by conscious choice. i think lady gaga has a marketing team that is able to understand what i'm saying better than i'm able to articulate it, and they wouldn't make such an error as an oversight.

if i'm interpreting this as twisted porn, it's because it's designed that way.

so, this is pretty much the precise point where it makes sense to start panicking.

world war three is due to start any minute, now.

i've been leading up to this for a while, so it should be of little surprise. the force of which i'm doing so may, however, take some people off guard.

with careful consideration and much dismay, i need to endorse the liberal party. actively. and almost - i said almost - enthusiastically.

it's largely a reflection on the ndp, which i'm seeing in a very poor light over this election. the ndp leadership under mulcair has systematically eliminated any reason i had previously seen them as superior to the liberals. the few traditionally left-leaning things that are left, like child care, are of rather low importance and largely infeasible, anyways.

there's a number of things that i like about the liberals better if you line them up, but the reason i'm almost - i said almost - enthusiastic is the shift to sustainable manufacturing, which the ndp do not seem to have any interest in.

a few days ago, naomi klein & maude barlow set up a press conference where they put together a 15-point declaration that they expected the next government to adopt. now, my politics are certainly closer to those of naomi klein or maude barlow - without question. but, if you read the list the obvious conclusion is that it's a summary of the green platform, in an attempt to galvanize left-leaning ndp voters that are understandably drifting elsewhere. i understand why they felt the need to do this, and they're absolutely right that they needed to do this - but it's far too little and far too late. the media made the obvious maoist connotation and wrote them off as distracting from the ndp's centralizing messaging; mulcair said something like "they don't speak for the party", and in the process essentially disowned them. the media was almost solely interested in costing a vague 15-point plan that by nature cannot be costed.

it is clear that the ndp leadership will not act as anything better than a hurdle in adopting the points in the manifesto. but, voting for the greens isn't going to accomplish anything, either.

shortly afterwards, the ndp released a "budgetary framework" document with oil at $67. this of course stays within the ndp's existing narrative of obsession with fiscal conservatism. worse, it tips it's hat on the importance of oil revenue to the government. everything that the ndp has been promising has been constructed with the intent to maximize oil revenue. this just cements the irrelevance of the klein/barlow clique in the new ndp. the new ndp wants to encourage dirty industry, tax it and redistribute the proceeds. in some sense, this is traditional socialism - but it's best before date was about 30 years ago. well, it's a party run by people on the brink of retirement.

this isn't the first time in the history of the world where liberals seem like a better choice than nominal socialists, however liberal or however nominal - and in canada the liberals are very liberal, and the ndp's socialism is very nominal (if that, they denounced it). but it's still always difficult for a leftist to come to terms with this when it's in front of them. and, today, it's in front of us.

the crux of what the liberals are pushing is in setting up a new environmental infrastructure bank as an arm of the bank of canada that funds itself via floating "green bonds". this is an update on the infrastructure tactic we used after world war two, which allowed us to build most of what we see around us. i get the impression that this is meant to be a very large scale project. the reason klein et al suggest tobin and carbon taxes is that it's seen as more feasible than floating bonds; the liberals are quietly presenting an even better funding tactic. if there's a party that's going to move towards the manifesto issued by klein & barlow, it's crystal clear at this point that it's going to be the liberals and not the ndp.

and, we're left with the hard truth that we're seeing a confluence of platform positions on the left in canada - but that it's under the liberal party. what's emerging is a reality where elizabeth may, maude barlow, naomi klein and the rest are seeing their visions most likely accomplished by the liberals - and only the liberals, because the ndp are moving in the opposite direction in planning everything around profit made from dirty oil.

it's not what i want to be saying. there's some things about the liberals i don't like, but i think they're mostly reduced to issues that *must* be largely worked out in court. however, the reality is that they are the only major party that is serious about putting the proper steps in motion that we need to have set in motion to move into a post-carbon future, even as they're refusing to turn the taps off any time soon.

pragmatic and realistic leftists need to see things as they really are and vote accordingly.

every time i take one of these polls, i'm at the very edge of the libertarian socialist quadrant; i just pulled one up, and it said that i'm more of a libertarian than the dalai lama, and more of a communist than nelson mandela - who were the only people listed in the quadrant.

and, yet i tend to vote liberal. funny that.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/vote-compass-canada-election-2015-issues-canadians-1.3234556

mulcair certainly knows what he's talking about, but is wrong about almost all of it.

trudeau doesn't appear to really know what he's talking about, but is mostly right and pretty much across the board.

and harper neither knows what he is talking about, nor is he correct on most issues.

it took me weeks to forget about how truly awful trudeau was in the first debate, and while he was not much better here the difference is that mulcair was a lot less effective without having may to play off of.

trudeau: C-
mulcair: D-
harper: F

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/vote-compass-canada-election-2015-issues-canadians-1.3234556

so, did fiorina really win this debate?

in a word: no. i wouldn't say anybody really won. then again, it's like trying to pick who is best at an alien mating ritual. i really haven't a clue what republicans voters want.

but, you can see from the start that she was supposed to win - from the first question. and, it's not hard to figure it out.

when women candidates run against male candidates, they automatically get a roughly 5% bump. that's not to say clinton will necessarily win, but sanders doesn't have the demographic advantage that obama had in getting....i think it was 98% of the black vote? correct me if i'm wrong, but i think that's actually true.

clinton will not get 98% of the female vote. but, if she runs against a dude - any dude - she's guaranteed at least half of it. american elections are perpetually won on the margins, in these kinds of identity dominance plays.

if clinton is the nominee, the republicans essentially have no choice but to run a female candidate. and, as far as i can see, she's the only one running. further, if you flip the situation around, it's fiorina that gets the female bump over sanders.

it's a statistical fact. hopefully, it disappears in a generation or two. for now, it's the reality on the ground.

what you're seeing in the coverage is that fiorina has now been chosen as the establishment candidate. and, they have a pretty good track record of fabricating reality. we'll have to see if they can pull this off or not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WwzXkJd8aY

they hate clinton. this seems to be the tactic i was waiting for.

also: the correct answer is eleanor roosevelt, but you won't get that from these turkeys.

the debate was depressing.

mulcair certainly knows what he's talking about, but is wrong about almost all of it.

trudeau doesn't appear to really know what he's talking about, but is mostly right and pretty much across the board.

and harper neither knows what he is talking about, nor is he correct on most issues.

it took me weeks to forget about how truly awful trudeau was in the first debate, and while he was not much better here, the difference is that mulcair was a lot less effective without having may to play off of.

trudeau: C-
mulcair: D-
harper: F

the choices are throwing the calculus that they've spent the last 20 years constructing into the trash heap.

correlations will melt away into the sea, exposing no causal factors.

it will be back to the drawing board, as the archetype says.

wayne did always need that winger on his right to bounce the puck off.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/gretzky-harper-1.3234136

kurri. robitaille.

i think the numbers we've been seeing in quebec suggest that it's more likely that mulcair's seat is an open question.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-papineau-sep18-1.3233577

John Gee
LOL !

see if you can place a bet in Vegas on that,

Ha Ha Ha,

What a kook !

Jessica Murray
the liberals seem to be running close to 30% in quebec, which means they're probably running close to or above 50% on the island. when the liberals are doing well in quebec, they are likely to win outremont.

the finance minister has ultimate legal authority to set interest rates, not the governor.

something else i'd like to know is whether that proposed infrastructure bank is meant to be printing money from the bank of canada. if so, that's a big difference in terms of what rates are, and opens up the ability for the government to raise rates without putting themselves in too much debt.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-economy-debate-central-bank-1.3232927

IKEA Monkey
The Gov't of Canada has never interfered with the Bank of Canada's monetary policy in it's entire history.

Jessica Murray
that's ambiguous. there were some issues in the 60s.

my understanding is that there's a consultation process that has, up to this point, broadly resulted in consensus decision making.

but, legally, the finance minister has the authority. it's not independent like it is in the united states - or designed to be, either.

Gerry F
CBC WHY do you put all the Twitter stuff in every article? It's painfully difficult to read.
If I wanted to read Twitter stuff I would log on to it and read the news there.

Jessica Murray
i avoid twitter for the precise reason that the level of discourse on the site is painful. and it's active avoidance, rather than just a passive lack of participation; distinct rejection, rather than mere disinterest. if i was walking down the street and twitter start walking towards me, i would start walking in the other direction..

i'm an old internet nerd, from back in the days when people went on to the internet to avoid the inane idiocy of the culture around them. twitter is wholly representative of that cultural idiocy that the internet was once an escape from. it's consequently the actual, literal death of the internet.

www.cbc.ca/news/trending/canada-election-2015-globe-debate-weird-moments-1.3233233

so, after caving into various self-rationalizations over the first half of september, i've been de-nicing the last few days and have every intention to stick with it this time. i've said that for a long time. but, i've got my income stable for the next five years, i'm no longer in a hurry to do much of anything and i'm very much intent on getting over this. i had a little heatstroke when i got back on tuesday night and have been sleeping that off as well, but i think i'm alert enough now to at least try and get the machine back up.

i turned it off tuesday morning right before the script runs. i'm going to want to make sure i can get the firewire drivers correctly working before i run the script.

i didn't get my forms on tuesday. it turns out that the psychiatrist has to fill them out, and i'll have to wait until monday. nor does it seem as though the nurse practitioner is going to carry through with my prescriptions. he claims he'll work as a go between if i can find an endocrinologist, but he won't work with the guy from london because he claims he's unprofessional, which i think is a cop out - i think it's a religious thing, again. he said he put out a referral, but i'm kind of sketchy on it. i'm not convinced it's even a real person. but we'll find out. if i don't have an answer by monday, i'm going to have to get in contact with the guy in london.

i can't think of any reason why i should need to actually go to london and physically speak with him. i'm just asking for a refill of something i've been on for years and will be on for the rest of my life. it should be a five minute conversation, and it's not really necessary. and, if he insists on a blood test or something, i don't see any reason why i can't just get the blood test here and have the results sent to him.

the ideal remains trying to get the guy in windsor to see me because then i can indulge whatever silliness he wants at essentially no cost to me.

i'll find out these things in a few days.

and i think i should have the machine up in a few hours, even if i need to spend a few more days sleeping to finish the detox.

corporate tax cuts have absolutely no effect on jobs, whatsoever. lowering taxes will not create jobs. raising them will not eliminate jobs.

rather, jobs are created when demand increases, and eliminated when demand decreases. that means that consumption tax cuts could conceivably create jobs, but only if implemented at what are almost impossible levels.

as the issue is not actually tax increases or decreases but the elimination and creation of rebates, a theoretical rebate shift that transfers tax rebates for corporations into tax breaks for consumers would actually be likely to have the effect of increasing demand, and thereby create jobs, if it is large enough. unfortunately, those new jobs will be in asia, not in canada.

the general idea if you want to create jobs is that you want to redistribute wealth from corporations [that just sit on it] to consumers [who will spend it]. but, that logic relies on a country producing things.

in a predominantly service sector economy like canada's, tax policy will have absolutely no effect on job creation. nor will it have any effect on job creation in an extractive economy. it may be news to some that canada is a primarily service sector economy. i guess that happened when you weren't paying attention.

there's lots of things we can try and do to change the nature of the economy. but, as it is, this discussion is entirely propaganda.

there isn't even a hidden, kernel of truth stacked away in there. it's just utterly foolish nonsense.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-ndp-corporate-tax-rate-1.3232490

they're pretty much all the same on the very limited set of policies that journalists refer to as "the economy". i know voters continually pick this out, and i was pointing out a few weeks ago that it wasn't at all clear what they meant. and, part of the reason is that if the economy is the dominant voting issue then the 60% turnout rates become justified.

tax rates don't affect the economy. nor do budget deficits, in a strict and literal sense.

i'm *not* going to vote on the economy, but, if i were to do so, i would identify the following priorities:

1) canada benefits from a relatively low dollar. i would want to hear the party leaders come out and state their interest rate policies: do they agree with this and how active will they be to maintain a low dollar? this is really the only lever that the government has over the economy. and, there's no need to pretend the bank is or ought to be independent, either.

2) unfortunately, all three of the major parties support existing trade agreements and they all seek to expand them. what i would like to hear is an acknowledgement that the economy has changed for the worse and ideas on how to adjust to these negative changes, should they continue to support the agreements moving forwards. it would also be nice to hear an explanation that isn't transparently false.

3) i would like to hear one of the parties commit to exploring the idea of a guaranteed annual income. i believe that this is one of the biggest changes that is necessary to adjust to the new world order of "free trade" agreements.

4) although it may mean working against the trade agreements, what steps is the government willing to take to stimulate local production for local consumption and thereby reduce the effects of inflation?

it's not tax rates and budget deficits. nobody cares about these things. nor do they have anything to do with the economy, really.

it's unemployment, wage stagnation, inflation, outsourcing, mechanization, food security, reducing the reliance on imports, the technicalities in the trade agreements...

i suppose i should clarify: i would vote based on all or some of this if there existed some kind of option that deviated from the status quo.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-leaders-debate-economy-1.3231343

in literal terms, this is of absolutely no importance to me. i don't think ordering them to remove the scarf is particularly oppressive. but, i can't think of any good reason why they should be so insistent on it, either. i mean, they don't force you take off your baseball cap, do they?

where do the fashion police fall in the division of powers?

what's more concerning to me is why it's of such apparent interest to the government. what's driving this? it can't be some kind of weird tory nationalism, it's too out to lunch - none of these people are insane quite like that. some of them may be a little unstable, sure, but not in the king and country sense. so, what is it about? surveillance? race baiting to rev up their base? just base authoritarianism?

i don't have a good answer. but, i'd recommend we all be extra special careful to hide our uncool nieces from the self-imposed fashion critics in the pmo.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/niqab-ruling-appeal-1.3230288

PaleBlueDot
Agreed. A government that can dictate what you *can't* wear is a government that can dictate what you *can* wear.

Jessica Murray
i really think it's entirely a surveillance issue. they want the opportunity to get some good shots in, so they can file them away in a face-recognition database.

CeeDeeEnn
Im curious, if you escaped your "old" country, for a number of big reasons (emigrating is a major undertaking) why would you insist on bringing your "old" attitudes, opinions, etc with you and then insist on imposing them on the new country? Not a fresh start really.

It's not in the Koran, as the koran says both women AND men must dress modestly, yet "men" Imams, have managed to either force and/or brainwash women into thinking only they must hide their personality and faces

Jessica Murray
i just don't think this is a debate. i don't care what people's fashion decisions are. i'm not about to spend the slightest amount of time thinking about it, or trying to figure out why some people prefer scarfs and some other people like green socks or whatever other triviality.

and, as mentioned, i don't think that's really the issue. i think the government is looking for an opportunity to use it's facial-recognition software. they may be appealing to some base racist rhetoric to get the argument to the court, because they can hardly make the argument they'd like to, but what it's actually about is surveillance.

the riding changes should help. the way this was set up to split the cities in four was ridiculous.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/regina-how-did-your-neighbours-vote-in-the-2011-federal-election-1.3231066

i think the way "no seats east of winnipeg" sounds.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-atlantic-sept15-1.3229237

rather, i think i need some coffee when i wake up, before i post on the internet.

i like the way "no seats east of winnipeg" sounds.

see, this is plausible and everything, and i don't want to reject it completely. but, i suspect there's something else going on, related to facial recognition software. i agree it would be very hard to push the voting thing. but, there's no cameras at the voting booth either and should definitely not be any. are there cameras at a citizenship ceremony?

being born here, i'll admit to never having been to a citizenship ceremony, or even knowing much about them. but, even if this is a veiled lob at the base, it's just completely random. why target citizenship ceremonies and not some other random thing?

but, if the ceremony gives the state an opportunity to get people's faces into some kind of a system, it all of a sudden makes sense.

there's a little bit of consistency, too. rather than compare it to the voting thing, let's compare it to something that is maybe a bit more contextual: this government has also made it illegal to protest with a face mask. again, that seems completely random and pointless. until you stop for a moment and realize that they're probably filming the protesters, and the masks interfere with the software.

i'm just speculating, of course. this is actually a job for a real life, investigative journalist. it's maybe a wikileaks upload, if it's not a simple request for information. but, i think i'm on to something...

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/16/veiled-threats-the-conservatives-dog-whistle-pitch-for-the-anti-muslim-vote/

thecrucible
If they want a drivers licence, they have to show their full face for a picture. If they want an identification card, they have to show their full face for the picture. The list goes on.

All these situations result in a full face photo on file somewhere. Of everyone, not just new citizens. It doesn't make sense for them to use photos at citizenship ceremonies only.

No, this is purely a political "wedge issue". An attempt to get certain people to focus on one single issue, and get their vote based on that single issue alone. In this case, they are looking for the bigot vote with an appeal to the people afraid of their own shadows as well.

I abhor this kind of politics. I have seen normally thoughtful people get caught up in it. They become so focused on that single issue, they give up thinking about anything else. These same people would once dismiss the Green party supporters because of being "solely focused on the environment", but now they are doing exactly the same. It is psychological manipulation of the worst sort. It is modern day, marketing techniques driven, politics. It is designed to stop people from thinking, and turn them into an emotion driven mob. Wedge politics turns people into single issue voters.

deathtokoalas
but, there's various reasons why using the database for driver's licenses to build a new database of "people of concern" is a problem - there's the legalities of it, to begin with, and also the sheer size of such a thing, and the difficulty of really pulling what you want out of it.

getting people on film at a citizenship ceremony would be a faster, and at least not explicitly illegal, way to build that kind of system. and, as mentioned, there is precedent in it with the face mask law against protesters.

let's not jump to conclusions on the ads. just look at the facts:

1) one has been prime minister for ten years
2) one was a cabinet minister in one of the most important provinces in the country
3) one was a high school drama teacher

you don't need to be brainwashed by obnoxious ads to conclude that trudeau has the least experience, you just need to be informed of the reality of the situation.

but, nobody would have said harper had more experience than martin, either - that would have been foolish. in the end, this is simply not a vote driver. if it were, there would never be any changes of government.

rather, changes of government happen when voters decide that a change of direction is more important than experience and competence. it's always a conscious, calculated risk.

and, it's actually aligning in a consistent arc that has put trudeau in an increasingly better position than mulcair day over day for several weeks, now. mulcair is purposefully trying to campaign as the safe choice in an election where voters have made it clear that they want to roll the dice.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/voters-in-favour-of-liberals-economic-plan-but-unsure-on-trudeau-poll/article26389432/

nobody cares, except the journalists in the anachronism that is the tory media party.

all i hear when they say "balanced budgets" is "cuts in services".

http://www.hilltimes.com/news/news/2015/09/16/this-isnt-the-red-book-its-a-back-page-of-the-red-book-says-h%C3%A9bert-on-ndp-platform/43423

cocaine. clearly.

i can't stand the hellman's stuff - it has this strange bitter after taste you get out of, like, british food, or something. or miracle whip; it tastes too synthetic. but i go through a container or two of the no name brand mayonnaise a month, here.

it's not for blts or fries though, it's for straight up tomato bagelwiches - sliced open and loaded up with tomatoes, mayo, hot sauce, salt & pepper to the point that one requires a fork and knife. i'll argue that this is actually a very healthy lunch, given that the mayo is the only discernible fat content in it.

i think that a lot of people have been brainwashed by a lot of years of poor science that suggests that mayonnaise is somehow unhealthy; they're really passing on an urban myth that was likely taught to them by their mothers.

it's an interesting question, actually.

are christians more likely to tolerate a surveillance state, because they're being watched anyways?

don't snicker too hard. i have long been convinced - through both anecdotal and survey evidence - that the reason so much of the united states rejects climate change has nothing to do with economic logic, fox news brainwashing or any of the usually defined culprits. it's just because god made a covenant with noah that there will be no more floods, so climate change is therefore impossible.

that's why we have rainbows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkxgrrHbKG0

i'm actually streaming this after it's deleted. hooray for ram.

we only have an incomplete understanding of what the sophisticated, hellenistic culture thought of christianity at the time. we know they were generally hostile to it - using language not far distanced from "illiterate goat herders" - but the exact extent of their hostility has, unfortunately, been erased from history via book burnings and organized character assassinations.

the best we have are these allusions. we can construct that a text called against the christians, written by porphyry, must have been extremely popular, widely read and deeply influential. but, we can't read it ourselves.

i'm going to post a bit of a public service announcement about polling in the election, because i can. i never specialized in statistics, in fact i hated stats, but i've taken a bit more of an appreciation for the approach of measuring uncertainty since then. i am literate in this topic, and the media that most people get their information from is not. i also worked on the phone for years when i was in school, which is important experience if you can contextualize it properly.

the reputation of polling has taken a big hit over the last few years. how could the polls be so wrong? well, what you're referencing weren't polls to begin with. and the actual polls really weren't that wrong at all - so long as you understand what a margin of error is.

so, this is what we saw happen: the media consults an array of "internet panels" for research, these panels are nowhere close and then the media blames the inaccuracy on "low response rates" or "bias in the data". the entire narrative is completely ridiculous. rather, the actual correct conclusion is as obvious as can be: internet polling is not random, and because it is not random there is no way to determine it's accuracy. they don't even have margins of error. it's consequently not even accurate to suggest that the internet polling was wrong; you can't define what "right" or "wrong" means when you can't calculate the error. the actual accurate analysis is that what the media refers to as "internet polling" is not actually polling. you should not try and analyze it - it can't be analyzed. it's only utility is as propaganda. you should simply completely ignore it.

which brings up the other problem. consider the ontario election in 2014, which had the following results:

liberals: 38.65
conservatives: 31.25
democrats: 23.75
greens: 4.84

the result was a liberal majority. yet, the polls also seemed to suggest a minority. were they wrong?

well, the margin of error was generally around 3%. in order for them to be "wrong" with a 3% margin of error, they would have to have fallen outside the following ranges:

liberals: (35.65, 41.65)
conservatives: (28.25, 34.25)
ndp: (20.75, 26.75)
greens: (1.84, 7.84)

in fact, most of the telephone polls a few days ahead of the election did fall in these ranges (or in a larger range, with a larger margin of error). the online polling was all over the place and completely inaccurate, but if we ignore it like we should then we see the polls were almost spot on. a poll that had the liberals at 36 and the conservatives at 34 with a 3% moe might have seemed to hint at a minority, but it would not have been "wrong". rather, the widespread forecast of minority results were a consequence of the media reading the polling incorrectly. not bad polling. poor mathematical literacy in the media. so, don't blame the pollsters for doing it wrong. rather, blame the media for not understanding how to read the polls.

there's not a lot of good polling being done right now. i know. i've surveyed it. you've basically got two options if you want to understand what is going on.

the first is the nightly tracking by nanos, which is here:

http://www.nanosresearch.com/main.asp

on the one hand, he's doing everything right: sufficiently large sample sizes, telephone polling so it's actually random, proper weighting, etc. his results, nationally, will be accurate, within the margin of error. they always have been before. and, that 1/20 bit is a statistical caveat that never actually happens.

on the other hand, his polling is functionally useless because the election is going to turn on regional differences, and his sample sizes are too small. it's a 5.5% margin of error in ontario, which is far too large to tell us anything at all useful about what's happening there.

so, nanos is accurate nationally and useless regionally.

the forum polling is using phones, but it's always wrong and i don't know why. they just have a very bad track record at every level. they're obviously doing something wrong at a basic level. they're the only firm putting the ndp anywhere close to a majority and it's having a disproportionate effect on the coverage. but, there's little reason to think it's actually accurate, given that they're always wrong.

besides nanos, the other two you need to take seriously are ekos and mainstreet. phones. big sample sizes. but mainstreet does not do regular polling.

which whittles the list down to a single reputable polling firm: ekos.

http://www.ekospolitics.com/

unfortunately, the numbers are not as good as any of us would like them to be.

1. conservatives (29.9, 33.7)
2. ndp (27.7, 31.5)
3. liberals (25, 28.8)

but, the actual thing that matters is ontario - a province where the ndp do not appear to be competitive.

the media is continuing to tell us that the ndp are ahead. if nothing changes, that narrative will likely remain static. we will then ask how the polls were so wrong, when they end up tied for second.

the reality is that the legitimate, reliable, actual polling continues to place the conservatives at the front of a close pack and that a sober analysis of the results in front of us would suggest any outcome other than a conservative minority remains highly unlikely - unless the conservatives collapse in ontario.

the polling will not be wrong. the analysis is wrong.

it's important that traditional ndp supporters realize that they need leverage if they are to force the ndp to take these things seriously. judging by their platform, they'll be worse than the liberals ever were. that leverage needs to come in the threat of lost votes via the existence of a party to their left.

it's not going to be enough to campaign. they need to be threatened with some kind of actual harm.

the crazy thing is that such a party exists - the green party. mulcair and the rest of the party leadership needs to be sent the message that he cannot take votes for granted, that failure to act will lead to shifts in voting intentions.

it's also worth pointing out that there's not really anything in here that wasn't in the green shift.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/leap-manifesto-ellen-gabriel-naomi-klein-1.3230162

as far as i can tell, this is a two-page pamphlet with a lot of flowery language and essentially no substance. i'd rather vote for the greens, thanks.

http://rabble.ca/news/2015/09/leap-manifesto-calls-radical-changes-to-canadas-extractive-economy

it is on the ballot, naomi. it's the green party platform.

rabble.ca/rabbletv/program-guide/2015/09/features/watch-live-tuesday-prominent-canadians-launch-manifesto-outl

it's nowhere near where the ndp is. not far from the greens, though.

more hyperpartisanism and flat out ignorance from the media party.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/15/manifesto-backed-by-prominent-ndpers-calls-for-overhaul-of-capitalist-economy_n_8139602.html

it's 35% in the united states. that ought to be the bare minimum level being discussed.

there is no competitive advantage in offering lower corporate tax rates than the united states, so where they stick theirs ought to be considered our minimum floor.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-ndp-fiscal-plan-1.3230097

j54445
It is 38% in Canada....

Jessica Murray
yeah, but there's all kinds of rebates and stuff on top of it; the functional rate is currently at 15%, which is just...it's stupid, really. there's not another way to describe it. in return for giving them back more than half of their taxes, harper has shifted billions of dollars of what should have been tax revenue into interest-bearing debt for the banks.

if there was any logic in this in the first place, it has been thoroughly debunked. it's a policy that has to be viewed, at this point, as sheer folly. just utter idiocy.

Don't complain
........ You can't compare U.S. with Canadian. Unemployment is far higher in the U.S., minimum wages are far lower and they basically don't want investment in American industry. They have no where to grow, we have extensive room to grow and prosper.

Jessica Murray
that's not the point. the government should be attempting to extract as much tax from industry as possible, by the mandate of the people that demand wealth redistribution. the only relevant downward force is the threat of relocation. and the only economic place to relocate is the united states. so long as it is not higher drastically here than there, there is no reason to relocate. it follows that the policy of the government of canada should be to raise corporate taxes to just higher than that in the united states.

shaftturner
why do people always forget about provincial corporate income tax?

again.....pull your head out of your a.. and learn about provincial corporate income tax before yourant and sound silly.

Jessica Murray
because there are not state taxes in the united states? you have to compare apples to apples. it's not the responsibility of the federal government to concern itself with provincial tax policy.

j54445
Utter idiocy? Just like I am reading from you. Did you not see that tax revenues continue to increase while Harper cuts our tax rates? Is that utter idiocy? The US does not pay an average of 35% as a corporate tax rate because there are abatements and reductions for that as well. Also, I would not try and imitate the Obama administration on economic policy considering their deficit is over half a trillion dollars.

Jessica Murray
tax rates have no effect on the economy. this is the basis of the policy being idiotic. politicians will say that they want to keep tax rates low on the belief it has something to do with jobs. that is empirically false. it has been proven without any question of a doubt that tax rates have no effect on jobs. to continue to hold to this kind of religious thinking is absolute delusion, utter folly - and total idiocy.

all of the parties are delusional on this point, even the greens.

shaftturner
are you even old enough to vote?

Jessica Murray
that picture is about three years old now, but, even so, i'm much older than i look. i actual identify as gen x - which puts me two generations older than the youth vote. it's trudeau's generation.

i'm actually presenting the educated view on the topic. what's depressing is how far it deviates from the conservative media narrative.

seeitmyway
you are wrong, the 155 rate is the small business rate, you need to search the combined rates for Canada, typically in the 30% range.

Jessica Murray
i'm not interested in the combined rates or the small business rate. the corporate tax rate in canada is set to 38%, but decades of rebates have reduced it to 15%. that is all rebates.

what the article should say is that the ndp is promising to reduce corporate welfare by a piddling amount. they're not raising taxes. they're reversing rebates.

38% is about right. if it were my platform, i'd throw every single giveaway and handout in the trash.

seeitmyway
As someone who owns a corp that pays it you are wrong. Period.

you are obviously young and so great at Goggling LOL. rather than believe me or anyone else on here, do some investigation for yourself.

Read and understand how corporate taxes are paid and then the dividend distributed to the investor/owner. see what taxes are then paid on the dividend. Learn what companies do with their retained earnings. I hope you will see that Corporations are not the bad guy, gov't waste is the real bad guy here and no amount of additional spending will fix that. What is needed is a real focus on eliminating waste, that will upset a lot of people especially the very powerful public unions. A simple example of waste is in your neighbourhood, I bet you have both a school library and a public one, Why?

Jessica Murray
i'm in my mid 30s. i was 32 in that picture. that's not young - unless you're very old. and, i've always identified with older people. i would consider myself mentally middle-aged, and expect my voting patterns to align with people in their mid 40s and early 50s. at a dinner party, i would tend to ignore people my own age, be very rude to people younger than me and gravitate towards the oldest people in the room, in hopes of learning something from them.

i'm not interested in what you're saying. but, i think it's clear that you're working for somebody. and you have to understand that i am neither young, nor representative of young people. i hate young people. and they hate me.

there are exactly two people alive today that were born in the 1800s - one in the united states and the other in italy.

that's how it's always been. the court party and the country party.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/how-did-your-manitoba-neighbours-vote-in-the-last-federal-election-1.3228094

a couple of years ago, i moved out of ottawa to windsor. i'm frankly shocked at the bus service in detroit. on the one hand, it's cheap. but huge amounts of the city have no discernible coverage and most routes end at 10 pm. if i want to hit a concert in detroit, and it's not within walking distance of the tunnel, i'm usually stuck waiting for service to start up again in the morning.

we all likely to complain about things, because things are never perfect. but, don't take your transportation system for granted, ottawa. it's won awards for a reason.

but, isn't it obvious that the deficit is due to construction costs on the tunnel downtown? building stuff costs money. you wait this out.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/oc-transpo-projects-11-5m-deficit-for-2015-1.3227114

i think this is a kind of a misunderstood dynamic that i've been trying to draw attention to a little bit. thanks for the article.

i don't know how competitive the conservatives are going to be much of anywhere in quebec (and the few seats they manage to win will likely be very close), but the liberals are clearly up over the 2011 election in every single poll - often by more than twice and sometimes pushing three times where they were. and, a couple of polls seems to indicate that it's mostly coming from the ndp. this is being masked by the fact that the bloc are running at half what they were, on the back of further bleeding from the ndp. and, it's about the only thing that makes sense. i mean, the naive, literal view of the polling is that the liberals have picked up 10-15 points from the bloc, but that doesn't make sense; more likely is that the ndp have picked up that 10-15 points, and the liberals have picked up 10-15 points from the ndp. and these would be traditionally liberal voters in the first place.

whatever the factors that drove bloc voters to the ndp in the last election, there were also clearly factors that drove liberal voters to the ndp, as well. not only have these maybe receded, but there's a new dynamic at play. in 2011, the ndp were clearly a federalist party. that's not as clear anymore. i suppose, in theory, a liberal voting for the ndp could have sat down and carefully analyzed the candidates over the whole province and come to the obvious conclusion, but who would have really done that? today, it's a lot more obvious.

that puts a lot more ridings in play than the models are suggesting. in races that have been between the bloc and the liberals over the last several elections, that actually puts the ndp at a disadvantage because now they're actually splitting the vote.

consider a riding that was 40% bloc, 35% liberal, 20% conservative and 5% ndp in 2008. you have to remember that the ndp came out of nowhere in a lot of places. that could end up 35% ndp, 35% liberal, 20% conservative, 10% bloc. rough numbers out of my posterior, but you get the point.

of course, the ndp are still eating a little into the liberal vote, too.

but, that puts almost all of montreal in play, and all of the west in play, too.

i think what we're going to see at the conclusion of this election is that the ndp is the dominant party in *rural* quebec, and a lot of unpredictable splits in the urban areas.

this also depends on the polling you believe, too. the liberals need to be running at at least 20%, and pushing closer to 25%, for what i'm saying to make sense. some of the polls have them at 17 or 18, and if that pans out then i'm wrong. but, if they are really running in the mid to high 20s then the high ndp numbers province wide are likely very much an illusion.

(that is, an illusion as to potential seat counts. it would likely suggest they're going to win a lot of rural areas in landslides, and lose a lot of close races in the cities)

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/conservatives-and-liberals-hope-to-beat-orange-wave-in-west-quebec-1.3227976

ok, so it's the transmission lines that they're privatizing, not the generation or the board. i'm not convinced that will change rates. i'm more concerned about the logistics of operating the thing.

let's say a tree falls on a line on your property. if it's government owned, the government fixes it with taxes. if it's privately owned, does the company fix it? do they send you a bill?

this just isn't the kind of thing that really makes a lot of sense to separate from public ownership, because it's so massively collectivist by nature. but, wait - does it need to be? see, there's a caveat, here. is it even a smart buy for investors?

if we're moving into a future where people are powering their homes with solar panels, and there's a private entity in charge of the grid, what are the chances that people are going to connect to that grid? might it even act as an incentive for people to move more quickly towards energy self-reliance? and, if you starve the system of funds, will it be able to deliver electricity to those who can't afford to make the switch at prices they can afford?

there's deeper issues here than rates.

this has been a relatively progressive government from the start, but this is really not thought through well. in the end, it's going to cost them huge sums in lost revenue and could quite possibly even break the grid itself. i don't see any way around it: if they sell this, we're going to have to eventually buy it back. and, no doubt at a huge loss.

i mean, imagine selling the entire road system as a monopoly on the stock market. it's insane.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/wynne-firm-on-hydro-one-plans-despite-strong-public-opposition/article26363290/