if you want to put him in jail for 20 years, might i suggest contributing funds? 'cause i really don't want to pay to house, feed and entertain the guy for the second third of his life - and then repeat for the last third, because he can't find a job due to the fact that he's a convict.
listen. nobody doubts that this is a problem. but vengeance isn't an answer. deterrence doesn't work - it's just a waste of resources that could be better spent on things that actually work.
you could have a bake sale to raise money to pay for food & shelter for rapists.
i'm really ultimately reacting to a different concept of freedom. you want to punish the guy? make him work at walmart for twenty years. but, you have to discard the idea of a free market, first. you have to discard labour as freedom and understand it properly as slavery. that's subversive.
leftists yell and scream that the christian social order is a failure, but they're not really addressing the crux of the matter. it's a tool, rather than an end to itself. so long as we accept these capitalist social norms, we're stuck in their self-perpetuation. we'll never see outside of the cave.
why don't you just shoot him in public? that's what you really want, right?
fucking christians. or muslims. whatever. you drive me nuts. and you get the world you deserve.
it's conservatives that demand punishment for criminal behaviour. conservatives then accuse liberals of being "soft on crime" because we prefer academically tested social programs that work, not old testament fire and brimstone that just perpetuates the problem.
i bet hillary agrees with you, though.
you should be educating people as to why they're wrong to demand repentance and vengeance, not helping to perpetuate their stone age ignorance.
stuck in the fucking cave.
---
aldphillip2003
He should really be castrated. If the punishment for rape was castration, I think we would see a drastic reduction of rape.
Eddycurrents
If the punishment for any crime is genocide, there wouldn't be any crime any more! Everyone would be dead, isn't that wonderful! /s
Tommy Vo
Let's shoot people in the face for smoking weed. That would totally help things
UUHH66
And what happens if someone innocent was convicted of rape? It happens, probably especially to minorities. Then innocent people would be getting castrated.
TheBushdoctor68
Harder punishments lead to harder crimes. If their balls will be cut of when convicted for rape, they will make sure the victim is never going to talk. You won't see a lot of women surviving rapes anymore.
Richard Wilson
or maybe we should spay women who lie about being raped?
and yes. I mean spay. I mean cut open a woman's groin and rip out her ovaries. There have been a few cases of women assaulting males. would you advocate doing that to a 20 year old woman? you want equality right? just playing devil's advocate.
espyTV
So if a woman rapes a man we should sew close her vagina?
kay jewl
your probably a Muslim right ?
jessica
why not just behead him?
---
putting people in jail doesn't solve problems. putting people in jail makes problems worse.
if you want to put him in jail for 20 years, might i suggest contributing funds? 'cause i really don't want to pay to house, feed and entertain the guy for the second third of his life - and then repeat for the last third, because he can't find a job due to the fact that he's a convict.
listen. nobody doubts that this is a problem. but vengeance isn't an answer. deterrence doesn't work - it's just a waste of resources that could be better spent on things that actually work.
you could have a bake sale to raise money to pay for food & shelter for rapists.
my best guess is that nbc has decided that you'll stay home and watch friends if you think the primary is already over.
Monday, June 6, 2016
when, i voted for the liberals it was because i wanted them to pass legislation - not because i wanted them to create a mess in the senate that would prevent them from passing legislation. it's really a comically absurd situation; he's obstructing his own agenda. the media should really be taking him to task for it. it doesn't matter what you think of the senate; this is the worst possible outcome from any perspective.
the government could get a majority in the senate with a stroke of a
pen. there is absolutely no excuse for having their legislation gutted,
and they should be loudly called out for incompetence should that be
something that actually happens. there's an easy answer to avoid this:
fill the senate with liberal senators immediately. it's just
incompetence to leave the senate open, then complain that they can't
pass legislation.
so, yes: i think bernie should keep going. and i think he should run as an independent. but, i know that he's not going to convince any superdelegates. see, i think he should push them to the absolute brink - make them show up and vote - but i don't think he has a real chance. it's an act of protest. further, i know he's not going to run as an independent. so, what next?
i think the first thing that leftists/progressives need to do is start asking hillary some questions. if she wants to represent the left, she's going to have to start explaining how she reflects ideas on the left.
so, what you need to do is start asking questions every time you see her. questions like this:
"when do you plan to table legislation for single-payer health care?"
well, she wants to represent the left. she wants bernie supporters to vote for her. she wants unity. obviously, then, she must have plans to introduce single-payer, right?
here's another one:
"given that you don't support taxes on wall street, how do you expect to fund an opening of tuition at public universities and colleges?"
again: she says she wants bernie supporters to vote for her. so, surely she has thought through how she plans to pay for this.
this one is really key.
"can you elaborate on your plans to withdraw american forces from the middle east?"
i think you get the point.
there's two components of this.
yes, there's a bit of sarcasm, here.
but, the truth is that you're going to have to do this. even if you end up voting for jill stein in the end. you should not give her a free pass, or give up, or drop these ideas. and, this is a kind of a non-confrontational way to demonstrate that there are real differences that can at best be glossed over.
if you just let her loose, she's going to immediately bolt back to the center-right, where she's most comfortable. so, you have to keep constant pressure on her to hold to whatever concessions you can get out of her - and constantly be pushing for more.
in the end, if she decides she wants to run on the right, you should force her to broadcast it. and, you should force her to deal with the consequences of it.
you fought too hard to just give up.
i think the facts in the trump university case are clear enough. it was a scam. and trump is deflecting.
but, it's a little curious to me that accusing an hispanic judge of racial bias is a horrible injustice, whereas accusing a white judge of racial bias is the core of a theory taught in university courses all around the continent. can we get some consistency, here?
reality check: trump has been railing against hispanics for months. i really don't think it's so outlandish to suggest that this might affect the ruling. when you deny this, what you're really doing is pushing this thoroughly debunked "justice is blind" model of legal theory. it's just not right - not as a way to describe how the legal system actually works in reality. rather, we have something called critical legal theory that explains the decisions made in court rooms in terms of things like racial and gender biases, class analyses, ideological positions....
judges don't exist in a vacuum. their opinions come out in their rulings.
so, would that mean that the ruling is invalid? no. it would mean that there are consequences for running your mouth off.
dude. listen. you're half right, but you're grasping at straws.
what you're suggesting is that hillary will be indicted before the convention, and bernie will therefore be the nominee. but, this is some kind of projective fantasy thinking.
in fact, the reason that hillary has not been indicted yet - and everybody agrees that the investigation is dragging it's feet - is that bernie refuses to concede. do you think that these people want bernie sanders to be president? i mean, get real.
see, it's the great lie, right. the thing that lets the system function. the perception that the united states is a democracy. but, we all know it really isn't, that the whole thing is political theatre. every cycle. every time.
they've got great screenwriters, though. really.
here's the plot, dude:
1) they've gotta get rid of bernie, first, before they can think about indicting hillary. so long as bernie is running, she'll prolong the charges. don't be surprised if the indictment comes within hours of bernie conceding.
2) then, once bernie's gone, they can use the email scandal to take down hillary. and, don't be surprised when this happens, either. expect a complete media take down. expect it to be brutal. expect it to be final.
so, no, it won't be bernie. but, here's an interesting twist: the only way to stop the indicitment is probably for bernie to launch an independent run at the exact same time as he drops out of the democratic primary.
otherwise, you're looking at the party bosses picking a candidate - and bernie's not on the list.
the government could get a majority in the senate with a stroke of a pen. there is absolutely no excuse for having their legislation gutted, and they should be loudly called out for incompetence should that be something that actually happens. there's an easy answer to avoid this: fill the senate with liberal senators immediately. it's just incompetence to leave the senate open, then complain that they can't pass legislation.
when i voted for the liberals, it was because i wanted them to pass legislation - not because i wanted them to create a mess in the senate that would prevent them from passing legislation. it's really a comically absurd situation; he's obstructing his own agenda. the media should really be taking him to task for it. it doesn't matter what you think of the senate; this is the worst possible outcome from any perspective.
this is, like, right out of the politburo. exit polls are used to determine the fairness of elections everywhere else. it's the tool. the state department insists on it, even. but, everybody knows that they're not any good here.
right. and, it was sanders that shut down the polling. sure.
hate! hate! hate!
again: what it demonstrates is desperation. we're not going to get exit poll data out of puerto rico, because they cancelled them. because they're useless, i guess. along with most of the voting stations - useless, too, apparently. so, we're not going to know whether he won day-of voting or not, like he did in arizona.
but, we do know that the dnc is clamping down pretty hard, right now.
this is no longer an election. it's now a character assassination. get ready for it.
see, this is another interesting example of head-scratching media from the clinton side.
what, exactly, does the clinton campaign wish to accomplish by reminding young people that the united states supported the contras? what is their concept of history, here? are they proud of this?
if i were hillary clinton, about the absolute last topic i'd want to bring up is american support for the contras. that's an argument that sanders is going to win. every time.
it's literally taking the wrong side of history.
i just want to address the "closing stations is bad for both of them" argument.
there's a strong consistency in just about every state: clinton performs curiously well with early ballots (well enough that it should be suspicious), while sanders wins day-of voting - and sometimes by dramatic margins. according to exit polls, he actually won day-of voting in arizona.
so, it might seem reasonable to suggest that closing down polling stations hurts them equally. but, the numbers we have suggest that this is not the case.
personally, i'm extremely interested in what the discrepancy is in puerto rico. we might not get exit polls. but, if we can find a way to learn that sanders won day-of voting, it...
....it's desperate. that's the most honest and most altruistic way to state it. nobody expected puerto rico to be competitive. but, the results are ultimately of little consequence. this is just desperate authoritarianism - transparent image projection.
actual numbers:
clinton - 40
trump - 32
other - 29
but, that's not the headline they want. the headline they want is that clinton is running away with it.
now, we saw this happen recently in canada. the dynamic in canada was an unpopular incumbent (stephen harper) and two other guys that were seen as interchangeable. so, you'd get polls that said something like this:
unfortunately, most statisticians will tell you that this is not wrong. the undecided should distribute.
the thing is that when they asked undecideds who they were willing to consider, something like 90% of them said they'd never consider the conservatives. so, the votes didn't distribute. in the end, that 13% (plus a little more) went entirely to the liberals.
i got into a lot of arguments about this. the crux of my argument was that the data tells us where undecideds are leaning, and they are almost entirely sitting between the ndp and the liberals. in the end, i was right. but, i didn't ever really get the clarity from my opponents that i wanted; it's still not clear to me if they understand what they were doing wrong.
so, now we have a nice big chunk of 30% undecided. that's a giant number. we're not sure, yet, whether there will be two or three or four major candidates. but, we can state two things clearly:
1) the large number of undecideds is not a consequence of voters seeing two options as interchangeably acceptable (implying the need for the candidates to define themselves better), but the result of voters disliking both candidates equally. so, you're looking at upwards of 30% of voters that are saying they want another option. that's unheard of in the united states.
2) while it seems like both of the major candidates are being affected by this, it seems like trump is being more affected.
so, is clinton leading by double digits? maybe. but, she should call gary up and buy him a beer - she's not winning so much as he's losing.
that's not something for her to celebrate or get complacent about, as it could (and probably will) change very quickly as trump aligns himself with the republican consensus.
one of the difficulties canadians have in communicating with other activists - and sometimes have in understanding the world outside of canada - is that poverty is not racialized, here.
we have poverty, sure.
we also have areas that happen to be quasi-segregated, by some combination of choice and market realities.
however, they're not at all correlated with each other.
one of the reasons for this is that canada actually has a pretty strict immigration policy that is focused very strongly around education. the result is that our immigrants are actually the most educated members of our society.
brampton is not a wealthy town in spite of it's high immigrant population, but because of it. it has very high education levels - not in spite of it's immigrant population, but because of it.
and, in fact, it's attracting a lot of investment because of it. if you drive through brampton, you'll see a lot of corporate offices. engineering. technology. fortune 500.
in a sense, it's almost a gated community. but, the gate isn’t about skin colour.
so, ghetto? absurd. canada doesn't have ghettos because we plan our cities to ensure that rich and poor neighbourhoods are intertwined. we have an effective tax system that distributes wealth properly. more importantly, we understand that the issue is not race but class. i grew up in a welfare project that was sandwiched between wealthy developments. there were gates at the top of the hill, but the geography prevented slumification of the area. the projects were only a few rows of houses at a time.
for a while, my mom lived in the welfare strip while my dad lived in a four bedroom standalone. the only thing that separated the two properties was a public park. i remember forming teams to play soccer in the park: it was the rich kids vs the poor kids. we were starkly aware of the class divide, yes. but, we used the same facilities. we kicked the same balls. we did it together.
i have a lot more to say about this, but i stopped reading when she said "white people send their kids to private catholic schools when they can afford it".
in ontario, we have a public catholic school system. this is a historical relic of canada being a francophone/catholic colony with a protestant/english ruling class. the solution was to set up two public school systems: a protestant school system for the english and a catholic school system for the french. over time, the protestant school system became a public school system and the catholic school system became bilingual to accommodate for irish immigrants.
but, the schools are neither separated by class nor by race nor by religion. i went to a catholic school. it was paid for by public funds. there were muslims in some of my classes.
i don't know why this piece was written, but it obviously wasn't fact checked and shouldn't have been published. it's attempting to understand canada through the filter of internalized american racism and ultimately declaring that canada must conform to a set of preconceptions, rather than learning that those preconceptions are actually not supported by any of the facts.
like i say: this is hard. americans think that america is the center of the universe, and that everything is pretty much the same, everywhere else. they have a very hard time understanding that the vast majority of their problems are unique to their own history and failure of governance and simply don't exist elsewhere. it's another example of the fallacy of universalizing the specific.
but, publishing the idea that white people have private catholic schools in ontario is pretty bad, globe & mail. you're in toronto. you should have caught that.
at the end, there's something about how brampton might collapse into a ghetto if the immigrant population loses it's source of low-wage labour.
no! you don't get it!
you can't become an immigrant into canada unless you have an advanced degree, can speak at least one of the languages and are determined to have strong market potential.
canada does not have a low skill, low wage immigrant population because it does not admit immigrants unless they are highly skilled.
i know. let's stop for a second.
has it clicked?
!?!?
if you're coming from india to canada, and we let you stay here, you probably have a phd. honestly. at least a masters. you don't even get the form unless you've graduated from something or other, alright?
they don't work in low skilled, low wage positions. they're at the top of the wage hierarchy. they're doctors. engineers.
and, if you look at the numbers, it comes out: south asians have the highest average income of any ethnic group in canada.
so, it's not a ghetto - it's one of the wealthiest places in canada, actually. because it's one of the most educated. because there's so many brown people.
yeah, i know. let your head explode. and realize that the solution is that government matters.
...and that america is not the center of the universe.
i just want to be clear.
let's say you're a young south indian fellow that wants to come to canada and start a business. you don't speak the language well, but you'll learn. you don't have money, but you'll work as a dishwasher for a while and then get a loan. this is the classic american immigrant experience in the minds of most, as placed there through a combination of 20th century propaganda and modern film work.
no. just no. canada will never let you in.
first, you need to be able to speak the language. beforehand. you get two options: english or french. we'll test you, too. rigorously. not an easy test. no comprende? no cigar, amigo. the americans have lower standards, we'd suggest you try them.
then, you need to have some money before you get in. we're pretty generous and everything, sure. but, you're applying for immigrant status. if you want to apply for refugee status, that's the line over there. we're not going to let you in if you're not bringing anything with you. that wouldn't be so smart, would it?
next, you need to have some education. high school? no. hit a school, and call us back. what, you want to go to school here? well, get through the process, and we'll let you in temporarily - but you're probably going home right afterwards, unless you find a job really fast.
finally, you need to have job prospects. it's not 1900. you can't just come here and think you're going to get a job picking grapes or something. you have to be able to prove you have some kind of communication with somebody on the inside. and, we want documents. we're gonna check up on you, be sure of it.
strict? well, maybe. but, note that we don't have any ghettos.
puerto rico wasn't even supposed to be in play. clinton was supposed
to win handily. this wouldn't be happening at the last minute like this
if internal polling wasn't suggesting a sanders win.
again: it's a reflection of the depth of corruption, and why sanders never had a real chance.
when they put blair in charge, i kind of vomited a little in my mouth. i concluded that the current justice minister is probably not in favour of legalization, or sees it as a career liability or something. it was less of a question of intention and more an issue of mismanagement: what does bill blair know about international law?
landslide annie is a much better choice. this will get done.
this is actually a humongous pet peeve of mine, this idea that stuttering or speaking slowly is reflective of some kind of lack of intelligence. it's the literal definition of "style over substance"; the absolute reflection of an anti-intellectual culture that places hollywood actors reciting lines at the top of a hierarchy and people that are actually processing things as they speak at the bottom of it. it's about projecting a sense of false confidence over actually knowing what you're talking about. and, trump is very much the poster boy for this kind of backwards thinking.
what the criticism actually says is "i have never been in a university classroom in my life". it consequently speaks for itself. but, you need to get over that instantiation of rage first. i'm pretty tolerant, but there's a specific kind of idiocy that just sets me off.
it's funny how if you go through a marxist forum post from more than five years ago, every single one of the users on the forum is now banned.
no, really. i've noticed this before. it's not a fleeting thought. i was at revleft, sorting through a post from 2011 - everybody on the thread was banned.
it wasn't a troll, either. really. and, you see this at lots of marxist sites, too.
"i can't get laid 'cause everyone is dead."
(i should explain that last comment.
)
again: this has to be a reflection of internal polling.
"Exit polls also show some evidence of Clinton’s strong performance with Hispanics, although with some inconsistencies. They had her winning Hispanics by more than 40 percentage points in Florida and Texas and by nearly 30 points in New York, although narrowly losing them in Nevada and Illinois."
but, this is exactly the kind of boneheaded thinking that has pushed silver into such a corner with his models, this year. texas is texas. if you discard texas, because it's texas, note that florida & new york were closed primaries (and therefore skew towards upper class voters) whereas nevada and illinois were open (and are therefore both a broader representation of latin-speakers and a better predictor in california).
instead of arguing that clinton performs well with latin speakers, silver should be pointing out that closed primaries make it very hard for latin speakers to vote. what he's picking out is consequently not minority strength from clinton, but the efficacy of voter suppression laws in preventing poor minorities from taking part in elections.
i want to be clear about what i think is actually happening.
1) a state elects a republican governor. like in texas. or florida. or arizona.
2) that state passes restrictive voter suppression laws that makes it hard for poor people, who happen to mostly be minorities, to vote. so, this is a class thing. but, poverty is racialized in large swaths of the united states, so it's easy to get confused.
3) the state runs a closed primary, which requires registration. registration is hard in states with voter suppression laws.
4) so, only wealthy minorities (with proper id) are able to vote.
5) exit polls indicate clinton won minorities by large margins, and the media concludes she has a large lead with minorities - when, in fact, this is just the consequence of laws that make it hard for minorities to vote.
i think this explains why sanders wins latin speakers in open primary states and loses them in closed primary states. it also goes a long way to explaining the ridiculous age discrepancy with black voters, but cannot be a total solution - there has to be some level of disenfranchisement or apathy amongst young black voters, as well.
you know what? she actually didn't change her position on gay marriage. she says that all the time, right. she claims consistency, and people laugh at her. but, if you look at the situation closely, on this issue, it's true.
she always said it was a court issue. so, she was always consistent in separating her own opinion (which was opposed) to the official position (which she claimed was out of her jurisdiction). the actual truth is that she still doesn't support gay marriage, on a personal level. but, she acknowledges that the court has made a ruling, and that's the correct legal mechanism to work it out through. she sees her role as upholding the rights determined by the court, not contradicting it.
now, you can dissect that all you want. if you want to believe she's a gay advocate, you argue that she supported it all along but held back politically. if you want to believe she's a fundamentalist methodist, you argue that she's just cynically phishing for votes. fwiw, i think the second option is more correct.
but, the truth is that there's really no flip-flopping. there's a consistent message of it being a court issue. as the court has changed, she has shifted to reflect that. but, the underlying position has remained the same.
this is a legitimate classic at this point. i first saw it live in ottawa at the babylon club on the slow riot tour in 1999. i was still a few months underage, and had to bring my dad with me to get in.
i'm listening to it now because hillary clinton has been working the accusation that trump thinks the united states is a third world country into her stump speeches. she's saying it every day. a few times a day.
if you're familiar with the track, you know the line:
america is a third world country. and i think it's pretty sad that people can't recognize that their own country is a third world, third rate, third class slum.
you can agree with him or not. the third world is defined by tremendous wealth inequality, which was the result of enforced market theory from the outside. neither the united states nor europe had ever truly been a market economy until the last thirty years or so, but the colonies have been since the dawn of colonialism. india. china. africa. south america. it's a part of the process of colonialism.
so, it shouldn't be so much of a shock to see north america approximate third world conditions when it adopts third world (market) economics.
but, that's secondary. more to the point is that this guy (who the band also samples on their first record) is a trump voter. clear as day. this was recorded in the 90s, but what you hear in the track is what is fueling things forwards.
maybe listening to the track will clarify why hillary's response of attacking him for a lack of patriotism is something roughly equivalent to "let them eat cake".
it's becoming more and more apparent that if sanders doesn't win, then trump will.
i've explained this in my vlogs, but it's a hard thing to find. i have reasons for posting this here.
i do not monetize show footage, nor do i include it in the vlogs. the reason is that it would give the copyright owner on the footage the ability to steal my vlog.
i think that people "out there" may be a little confused about youtube. youtube is not a system where people can post and make money from whatever they want. facebook video largely is exactly this. but, youtube is actually a very controlled system of content management.
here is one example. i was walking through detroit a few months ago, talking into my camera. i happened to walk by a bar that was playing a michael jackson song for a few seconds. understand that this is incidental audio - neither captured with intent, nor inserted consciously. it's not even "fair use"; i had no intention of even using it at all. it was just random background sound. however, sony was then able to take control of the entire half hour vlog and i had no ability to argue against it. i'm left to conclude that the same thing would happen if i recorded myself talking in a mall, a restaurant or anywhere else with background audio.
is that legal? of course not. but, there's no legal mechanism in place to have this discussion. the system is designed to benefit copyright owners at the expense of content creators, with no exceptions or caveats.
now, as it is, i don't really care about recording your band for the sake of recording your band. there will be some exceptions, but i go to a lot of shows and i'm only really deeply interested in a small fraction of it. rather, i'm recording a vlog. take yourself down a notch. it's not about you. it's about me.
but, what that means is that i have to abide by the rules - which not only do not allow me to monetize songs i didn't make (if i'd want to....but it's not what it's about...), but actually would give the artists i'm recording the ability to claim copyright over my entire vlog.
so, please be cognizant of the actual reality, here: in order to prevent record labels and other rentier capitalists from copyrighting my vlogs, i am required to separate performances out of my vlogs. not only am i not cashing in on their performances, but i need to take steps to prevent them from cashing in on my vlogging!
the system is unsustainable; it will have to be changed to take power away from copyright holders. but, for now, it is what it is.
nor do i claim copyright over material i do not own. should that be discovered, i would face punitive measures. the second picture demonstrates what happens when you upload something by an artist in a relationship with a large rentier: sony claimed ownership of the son lux video, whereas universal claimed ownership of the julia holter one.
listen - you can say what you want about this, but the important takeaway is that the dnc is a lost cause. voter suppression in an unorganized territory, in the last two weeks to save an unpopular frontrunner?
if you were to call the dnc the absolute embodiment of mindless foolishness, you'd be on to something. it might be an understatement. but, the idea that bernie has any serious chance of swaying the elites is delusional.
i stated a few months ago that all bernie can really accomplish is a rigorous demonstration of systemic party corruption. he's done that, and it will have long term consequences - the democratic party is done, as a vehicle for anything but the status quo. i stated a few weeks ago that he can't win, but he can sure make the party look stupid for refusing to give him the nomination. i do think that's what you're going to see happen over the next few days.
i've also stated that none of this makes any sense unless he's planning a run, but that the decision to run as an independent must be taken over the careful analysis of voter intention. we'll see if that works out or not.
but, the data that's coming in right now suggests that if you want a lock on latinos, sanders is the better choice. the capitalist refugees from cuba are going to continue to warp the narrative, but understand that this is about money and not about votes.
this is the media party's new nonsense: if there weren't super-delegates, clinton would only need 50% of pledged delegates to win, so she would only need half of the 4051 pledged delegates, which is 2026.
it's entirely circular logic. the party rules are that she needs 58% to win, not 50% to win. of course, if it were true that the party set the threshold at 50%, then that's what she would need. but, they very obviously did not do that.
well, unless you think that a pledged delegate is of equal weight to an unpledged delegate, which is an argument nobody would ever make. one would need to take that entirely ridiculous and elitist position to eliminate the circular logic, but it is itself a contradiction to take an undemocratic position to try and argue for a more democratic position.
just deal with it: the democratic party set the threshold at 58% because they wanted a strong candidate. hillary clinton has failed to meet the minimum threshold to win in the first round. the convention should therefore be seen as round two.
and, nothing could possibly be more american - if you understand what that actually means.
i had an unexpected talk about the hip last night. i couldn't remember the name of this track.
for those unaware, their singer was recently diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. they're doing a final tour. i hope he gets through it.
i think the hip have been overrated in canada, and underrated outside of it. their influence as canadian cultural icons probably never extended outside of a subculture, and that subculture got left in the 90s.
at the end of the day, which is coming soon, they will have amassed a collection of mediocre records and a really, really, really good greatest hits collection. but, as is usually the case with rock bands, the record label will fuck the choices up. hit spotify for some fan takes on this.
clinton is not the establishment pick. they hate her. she wants to be the establishment pick. but, the establishment doesn't want her.
they hang on to her in case of emergency. and, they nearly had to break the glass. but, trump is coming around.
who was the establishment pick in 2008? it was not clinton. nor was it mccain. it was obama. and, who got the media? who won? yes, plenty of people understood what was happening. you could look it up.
i'll leave it to the journalists to determine if we've been subject to a charade over the last year, or if the conflict is actually real. but, trump is very rapidly coming around.
the establishment candidate is donald trump. and, they're in the process of taking hillary clinton out to make room for him to walk in.
the eggs are fine. appropriate, even. it washes out. but please avoid glass if you're going to start hurling things at trump supporters. somebody may lose an eye.
let's think this through together.
things that are perfectly fine to throw at trump supporters
things that should not be thrown at trump supporters
- glass of any type
- bottles
- pets
- wild animals
- children
- muslims
- migrant workers
- #gavels
* - peeled, only
! - ymmv
# - non-rhetorically
i just want to reiterate that this is entirely appropriate.
these are people that are publicly supporting an open bigot. you have an obligation to make them feel uncomfortable.
just keep your elbows down. which is canadian for "don't throw glass shards at heads full of rocks".
it goes back to what i've said about trump normalizing the absurd. if he can convince you that his discourse is acceptable, the country is already done.
it's one thing to stand back and passively let him win, then start fighting him the next day. it's another thing to show up at the rallies and actively support what he's saying. that can't be seen as socially acceptable. the fact that he's running a major party isn't any kind of excuse for it.
so, there has to be an appropriate and proportional response. i think tossing tomatoes and eggs at supporters is within those bounds.
boycotting business is within those bounds. termination of employment may be, as well.
but, the problem with this approach - and the reason it's a losing strategy - is that she's stuck with this glaring problem: the objective facts indicate that she simply doesn't offer much of an alternative to what she's describing. the insider understanding is that she has a reputation for temper tantrums as a negotiation tactic, and that obama had developed a habit of just ignoring her when she went off on them. she's also describing herself. and, the more she takes this approach, the more attention she draws to her own dangerous - if predictable - foreign policy.
some of what she's saying is even simply anti-populist. america has been in europe long enough. has her court allowed her to interact with any "yankee go home" protesters in japan? she's likely only barely aware of such sentiments or how powerful they are, interpreting them as fringe voices from the peasant class.
tearing your opponent down only works if you take the opportunity to build yourself up. that's the point, right. the contrast. if you spend a half hour tearing down your opponent and then say nothing of yourself, you've just kind of lost the plot. you've just given your opponent free publicity. you might think it's bad publicity, but things have a tendency to define themselves differently. because you've implicitly defined yourself in the process - as an angry, spiteful person willing to set up a press conference to tear somebody down. it doesn't matter if what you say is true.
let's say i set up a press conference about oprah and put down a half hour speech about how she needs to lose some weight. this may be a narrative from her husband's term; i haven't seen any pictures of oprah recently. she gained weight, lost weight, gained weight - the tabloids loved it. constant material. but, i could spend an hour explaining that oprah needs to hit the gym and ultimately be correct in everything i say. but, in doing so, i'd be defining myself as an ass as much as anything else.
the thing is that she can't draw a contrast, because there isn't one. one can only control narratives in the presence of ignorance. hillary's foreign policy perspectives are too widely known. everybody knows she's not offering an alternative to what she's describing. and, she isn't. the more obvious she makes that by drawing attention to the topic, the more she places them on a level playing field.
i know she doesn't see it like this. she lives in a bubble of upper class, white meritocracy. but, that's the problem.
so, we heard a lot about donald trump, here. we didn't hear much about hillary clinton. and, while i won't argue with her overall message, or with any of her details, i must point out that if she's going to instigate this argument she must draw more effective contrast - which she can't do, because it's not real and everybody knows it.
trump has won by watching his opponents fuck up over and over. hillary's doing the same thing.
"The most likely outcome is that Trump would be neither good nor disastrous as president, but simply bad. For example, he might mismanage the country's finances, needlessly inflame racial tensions, undermine the rule of law, confuse and antagonize our allies, and hurt the economy through erratic policies that punish and reward investors based on his political whims."
hrmmn. sounds like obama.
this argument is actually particularly egregious given the circumstances, which is itself an argument to re-engineer society to abolish markets.
the general way to prevent scalping is to prevent people from exceeding their ticket quotas. but, i have no problem with sending cops out to arrest them, confiscating their tickets and distributing them on a needs basis.
see, i can make this argument because i'm an anarchist. but, this is a strange argument to hear from a socialist.
socialists aren't immune to political grandstanding or opportunism. they can throw around bullshit with the best of them. and, it might sway a few kids. but, the problem is that when people that understand the theory get wind of it, it exposes them as bourgeois and kills their credibility.
there's a kind of difficult truth at play, here. sanders is not actually a socialist in any meaningful way, and anybody on the left has a responsibility to point it out. but, it necessarily follows from pointing that out that it makes more sense to support him than it does to support a small third party. the reason is that historical materialism is incrementalist in nature.
now, i'm an anarchist, so i think historical materialism is a lot of nonsense. but, anybody that is walking around and calling themselves a marxist, a trotskyist, a maoist - anything of the sort, really - should be supporting sanders as a necessary stage in transition.
again: i can duck out of that, because i think hegel is a pile of anti-scientific nonsense. i reject the idea of the state reforming society. i want decentralized co-operatives. but, no marxist can get away with discarding the logic around supporting sanders. and, if you hear it from them, they're being disingenuous.
gorillas are individuals. the way they will react to different situations depends on their personality, which is in turn a function of their life experiences.
think of it like this. let's say the situation was flipped and a gorilla fell into the human pit. would you say "humans aren't dangerous, it's fine."? that would be an error, wouldn't it? many humans would bludgeon the gorilla almost immediately. but, it would be no less of an error than saying "humans are vicious monsters, shoot it!" - as plenty of humans would take the time to care for the child. put tersely, you would shoot if it was jeffrey dahmer in the enclosure and shrug if it was mahatmas gandhi. right?
while you can probably be pretty sure that the male gorilla in ohio would not have eaten the child, as a distant onlooker you and i are simply not qualified to say anything else of any value. in order to make a worthwhile decision, you need to be familiar with the personality of the animal.
this is a situation where experts are experts because they are experts, and everybody else is not because they aren't.
yeah. you know, i almost wrote this essay a few days or weeks ago. it was the term "folk theory of elections" that just about caused me to break something. it was used to describe the idea that voters have brains and can work things out, in contrast with the scientific understanding of elections that claims we vote based on identity.
i just didn't have the stamina to work it out. they've done the work here for me. thanks, guys.
see, she just doesn't get it. she thinks her "foreign policy experience" is going to help her win voters, despite the deep unpopularity of her open imperialism. the reality is that if she wasn't such an open fascist when she was secretary, she'd probably have been able to get to 60%. she honestly thinks that the american people are fully interchangeable with the romans, at their most savage point. she thinks that more wars will bring her more popularity. i was over this once before. the united states has not yet seen this kind of naked imperialism, but it's coming.
there was a period when roman emperors would routinely begin their rule by adding a province to the empire. this showed the roman people that the emperor had the favour of the gods and could uphold the glory of the empire. hillary clinton really, honestly thinks that this is the way to increase her popularity - partly because she sees america as a country full of illiterate savages.
trump is of course a horrible candidate. she's been handed a gift. there's only a couple of strategies she could pick that will squander such good fortune. making the election a referendum on her foreign policy (while trump pushes for glorious, splendid, long overdue isolation) is pretty much the only thing i can think of that will seal her loss with clear certainty. unfortunately, that's exactly what she's going to do.
i'm not going to talk a lot about the final polls. the saying is that the polls don't lie, but the pollsters might. i'm not even convinced that much is true - i have little faith in the sanctity of the data being thrown around.
it's not that the polls are meaningless due to bad methodology or whatever other thing. i'm flatly suspicious that the polling companies are corrupt. and, i've made this argument in this space already.
i'll just point out that:
1) hillary clinton has not won an open primary since mar 15th.
2) the polling leading up to several of her losses since then favoured her, and was shown to be "wrong".
3) in fact, the demographics also favoured her in several of the states that she lost.
i'd argue that you want to look more at recent contests for predictors. california should fall somewhere between the closed primary in oregon and the open caucus in washington. and, the best guess we've got for jersey is rhode island.
see, this should really work the other way around. that is, autonomous worker collectives that own their means of production should be forcing companies to bid on which products will be made there.
"Despite the praise Stephen Harper had in his speech to the party's convention last week for the Conservatives' electoral gains in Quebec, that is one province where the party saw its support decrease for a second consecutive quarter."
it's remarkable really. free from the shackles of governance, the man admirably carries on in total oblivion to reality.
first, you suggest the media should take note of the unrest and report it. but, the media exists to quell unrest. there's a potential for a moment of clarity there, actually.
second, i think it's a mistake to assume too much kneejerking. if you're the pro-market type of conservative that the republicans have been nurturing, donald trump is basically satan. it's a non-option for the economic wing of the republican party. if you ask around, you'll no doubt find people desperately seeking for 'real conservatives' and coming out with the libertarians.
there's an acceptable middle point. if you're going to show up with a pro camera and record the whole thing, that's called piracy. but, if you take a song or two on your phone, that's fair use.
there's a lot of recorded snippets of live music on my profile; for me, it actually doesn't have anything to do with them, it's just a part of the vlog. i've been questioned a few times and i'm just totally transparent: what i'm doing has nothing to do with recording them and everything to do with documenting me. they're not any more important or special than the seagull i filmed last night when i was smoking a joint in the park. so, i go to a lot of concerts and i try to take one song from each band i'm there to see. but, i'm the topic, not them.
i think that logic transfers over to really anybody that's taking a song or two for personal use, whatever it happens to be. but, as mentioned, there's a point where it's not reasonable. it's all about discretion around a concept of reasonable behaviour.
this is the actual story. i've been yelling about this for months.
i can't believe that it took fucking nbc to get it right.
clinton slays amongst older people of all demographics, while sanders dominates amongst young people. but, young blacks are simply not voting. this creates the illusion that sanders is doing poorly amongst blacks. but, if young blacks were participating at the same levels as young whites, the numbers would be far closer.
so, the real question is: why aren't young blacks voting? is it about not having the right kind of id? feeling disconnected? not having time? just a lack of awareness?
this has been expected for a while. the reality is that it's still illegal. there's a lot of writing floating around that the people running these stores somehow didn't know this, or were "confused". that's actually conservative party propaganda, and is designed to point the finger at the government in order to create a scandal.
obviously, these store owners knew what they were doing and made a calculation that the risk was worth the reward. they got burned. that's what happens when you gamble.
but, what's the best option, right now? well, this is a clear truth: this is a waste of resources. police. legal. and, in fact, i'd argue that everybody that was arrested today will have an incredibly strong civil argument for compensation. not only is it the case that they are wasting public money, public policing resources and public legal resources in the present, it's also the case that the state is going to have to produce huge payouts for wasting the time, money and resources of private citizens and commercial interests. i'm very much in favour of full legalization, but we have to collectively understand that it's going to come with a tremendous cost of reparations going to to the victims of prohibition over several decades. and, our court system will interpret the situation that way. for the first ten years or so, all the tax revenue is going to go towards legal costs fighting for reparations.
so, this situation is hard to describe without using the word stupid. but, the cops have a job to do, too.
the answer is that the feds should decriminalize it immediately, and then go after the black market once the legal distribution system is properly in place.
the narrative here is on the right path, but is still stuck in quite a bit of propaganda.
the reason they dropped the bombs was that they wanted absolute surrender. this panel is repeating a widely held misunderstanding: that the japanese were not willing to surrender. in fact, they had already been negotiating a surrender for quite some time. the biggest factor was that the americans had cut off their access to indonesia, which was their source of oil and rubber. the outcome of the war was crystal clear somewhere around d-day, and was in fact understood even earlier than that. the japanese could barely even fight without oil & rubber, let alone win. they had no chance. it was just a matter of time.
but, they didn't want an absolute surrender. the standard line is that they didn't want to hand over the emperor, but that's one of those historical glosses. like the idea that world war one was about an assassination in austria by serbian terrorists, rather than imperial competition over global resources. in actual fact, the japanese wanted to hold on to certain strategic islands, for resource reasons. these negotiations were preventing a surrender.
the actual truth is that the americans would not accept anything less than absolute surrender, including the occupation of all japanese lands. the japanese saw that as a bit onerous. so, they dropped the bomb to try and force the concession. it was a negotiation tactic. and, the fact is that it actually failed - the japanese did not surrender as a consequence of the atomic bomb. this is where the political/military debate comes in - the military knew it wouldn't work, but the politicians pushed for it anyways. that's become a common theme in american imperialism, and is perhaps reflective of somewhat of a flaw in the governing structure of the united states.
so, the bombs had little to do with the surrender. rather, what happened was that the russians saw what was going on and took it upon themselves to move in. this was just strategically intelligent. so long as the japanese and americans were haggling over terms, the japanese were an easy target for further expansion. further, the soviets had reasons to keep the americans out of japan, too. what set in was a race.
the japanese elite now saw themselves in a situation where they had to choose between being taken over by a communist regime and being absorbed by a capitalist empire. the capitalists may reduce them to a puppet-state, but the communists would execute them in public. so, they picked the americans over the soviets and accepted the absolute surrender.
it was the threat of stalin that forced the surrender, not the bombs.
but, that doesn't address the question of whether it was justified or not. i mean, just because it failed doesn't mean it was unjustified. i think this is a complex question without a good answer, but at the very least you need to get the motives right, first. see, you get a very different analysis if you think it was about ending the war early than you do if you understand that it was about forcing absolute surrender.
i think the better argument is that the atomic bombs actually weren't as large of an escalation as has been imagined. these were small bombs, in contemporary terms. the topic of iraq is brought up here. it was widely reported in 2003 that the "bunker busting" bombs - which were conventional - were actually more powerful than the h-bombs that were used in japan. and, the americans dropped depleted uranium in iraq, too.
i've argued both points, depending on context. my reaction has tended to be dependent on the precise argument i'm interfacing with. but, i don't think there's an actual answer.
tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1
it's spitting on a fish, in terms of what's worse. climate scientists talk about tipping points and feedback cycles. whether hillary gets us there later or trump gets us there sooner isn't a logical separation point. what you're really doing is buying into hillary's argument of incrementalism on a topic that is really purely binary. that argument can work on social issues, wherr a little better is really a little better. but, whether you freeze to death at -40 or freeze to death at -50 is irrelevant - you still freeze to death. so, you can't really say she's bad but a little better on this issue. it's just not how climate science works. if the permafrost starts going, it starts going - and you can't fix it with small regulations. you have to go all in, or not at all. if anything, it's more rational to take trump's position, if we're fucked and can't stop it, anyways - which is not an obscure position, either.
but, nationalization is not purely a left-wing idea. it's also an idea that the far right has historically drawn heavily upon. the united states doesn't have a history of traditional conservatism like the other british states or the germans do, so it might seem a little foreign. but, british conservatives like churchill were strong advocates of state-run industry. so was bismarck. today, that's about where putin stands on the spectrum. hitler didn't support nationalization, but he rejected free markets; the nazi system was defined by cartels with monopolies. and, this was kind of the same as the colonial system in britain, where you had these private charters (like the hudson's bay company, or the east india company) that were essentially run by the crown. here in ontario, we used to have a publicly run electricity company that was set up by our old-tory conservative party.
there's actually even support for publicly run utilities in classical liberal literature (adam smith, for example) as well, but it justifies itself in more proto-leftist language. the argument from the right is very old and very classist. well, look at saudi arabia. there's no private industry. it's all run by the state. communist? hardly. it's about concentration of wealth in the upper crust. state ownership is seen as a kind of firewall to keep the wealth in the hands of the aristocratic elite.
the more relevant question is probably related to whether trump has thought this through carefully or not. britain (and canada) have been democracies for a long time. germany wasn't. but even in britain (and canada) you have this system with the house of lords and these private charters that is just designed along this strenuous class lines. i'm not sure how one would propose this be emulated in the united states, or whether an elected senate (however weak it is...) may actually make that functionally impossible. but, most of what he says is functionally impossible, so that should be no surprise.
it's just not necessary to see this as a left-wing idea. and, if you want to look at ways that this could be done today, russia is probably your closest comparison. that might even be a broad statement: putin may be the best predictor of what trump would actually be like.
also - the canada thing is complicated. the numbers may have changed in the last few years, but we are usually actually thought of as a net importer, despite being able to potentially be independent. but, it's because the costs of production are so high that it's cheaper to import it. we tried to set up something called the "national energy program" in the 70s through a state run company (it wasn't a monopoly, just a crown corporation) that would have made us energy-independent through a complex system of subsidies, but the province of alberta flipped out. and, it was, in fact, a reaction to the opec embargo and the stagflation that resulted from it. it even worked. but, the consequence was that the bubble economy in alberta collapsed. housing prices fell, for example; it was, in truth, a correction on a bubble, but try explaining that to the guy that has his house fall by 80%. so, we could actually do this, and have tried, and may try again, but it's politically very difficult in the oil-producing regions.
one could define the term drought and cite rainfall levels, thereby demonstrating the point. but, it's also missing the point - which is that he's peddling fantasies to people who have had their hopes shattered. it's the thing that religions do. it's predatory, really. so, that evidence is not the solution to a reasonable debate but the shattering of one's dreams. there's a process here. denial. anger. more denial. acceptance. but, not everybody gets through it.
you really can't argue with him.
if i were clinton, i would refuse to debate him at all. i'd offer a press release describing him as a pathological liar that is not worth debating, or even listening to. and, i'd have a think tank dedicated to debunking every speech, offhand remark and anecdote that he spews - which would be a full time job for many people.
this is more like "don't feed the troll. ignore him and he'll go away."
and, i'm not joking. i would campaign as thought he doesn't exist. i would bring think tank people with me to the news conferences and duck the questions, instead allowing the experts to debunk him with citations and references to web sites.
this can't be thought of as an election between two candidates. it doesn't matter who wins - the country loses when we take this seriously. rather, it needs to be thought of as a teachable moment. she needs to create a kind of teacher-student dynamic. she should talk down to him at every opportunity. this has to be a no-brainer, unless you avoid voting altogether (which i still suggest).
she has to treat him like a complete, utter, total fucking retard.
the bureau of debunking that fucking idiot, trump.
some of my video comments over the next few days may seem confusing if you're following the Official Alternative Media Narrative, so i think i should be explicitly clear about this.
regarding the issues of financial regulation and the narratives around the bank bailouts, i may actually be closer to clinton than sanders. i wouldn't really agree with either, entirely.
see, i would take what is called an academic left perspective, which neither of the candidates are taking. clinton is taking more of an academic right position. what that means is that there are certain broad academic points that clinton has been making that i agree with (and are not really contested), but that i'm not ideologically aligned with her so i disagree with her on a lot of details. sanders is taking a populist position that is broadly (and correctly) seen as just flatly wrong by most academics. the people that are parroting him either don't know what they're talking about (cenk uygur) or are acting from questionable ideological positions (elizabeth warren).
i would prioritize careful, academic analysis (clinton/obama/krugman) over populist and misleading agitprop (sanders/pseudo-warren/wolff). pseudo-warren because i think she's misunderstood - she's a market fundamentalist, not a leftist. she's good at the agit-prop, but leftists will be sorely disappointed if she gets any kind of position of power. so, i haven't been shy about this: clinton is, indeed, broadly less wrong about the banks.
so, why am i supporting sanders? because i don't care about the bank bailouts. at all. i see the politicking for what it is: populism, agit-prop, maybe a little demagoguery. frankly, i'm pragmatic enough to see the value in it. what i actually care about is foreign policy, health care, social issues and more data-driven analyses of growing inequality.
and, this is not just why i'm supporting sanders over clinton. it's also why i couldn't possibly support clinton at all.
so, i hope that clarifies the point.
what the upcoming video comments are going to focus on is the question of whether some of this agitprop and politicking, as pragmatic as it may be, may have some unintended consequences - blowback - in it's use.
it's one thing to get people angry at the banks in order to get a tobin tax in. that's politics. it's good politics. it's another thing to wake up in eight years and realize we not only don't have a tobin tax, but now have also lost the lender of last resort because the masses got confused about what they were supposed to be angry about. that would be a tremendous fuck-up.
bob dole says trump should select gingrich for vp.
so, before we can think about who benefits or whether this is a good idea, let's contemplate what it might be like. and, in doing so, we need to answer the question: how does bernie usually respond to nonsense?
1) by laughing. he's laughed off a lot of what hillary has said.
2) satire. the speech bit, for example.
3) by repeating the nonsense in an incredulous tone, then launching into talking points.
so, for example, let's say the topic of global warming comes up. the donald thinks it's a nefarious plot by the chinese to crash the us economy. what, exactly, could bernie say on a podium in a minute or so that is going to address this? he won't. rather, you're going to get...
"...you think it's a plot by the chinese. ok. but, i think an economy where the 1% control...."
so, what is a debate, in context? it's impossible, because trump is consistently incoherent. while the juxtaposition may help in defining just how ridiculous trump really is, and turn off conservatives that are warming to him, it's hard to see how it can present sanders as anything other than confused, perplexed and flummoxed. if this is your first exposure to sanders, there's a good chance he's going to come off as a stammering old man.
"you...you want...you want to give nuclear weapons to south korea !? i...i...in an economy where the 1% control...."
so, what's actually going to happen, then, is not a debate. what's going to happen is that sanders is going to get a prime time tv slot to stump over, while he shrugs incredulously at the incomprehensibility of trump's positions.
i pointed this out earlier in the campaign: trump's irrationality is actually an advantage, if his opponent is rational. the reason is that rationality requires predictability.
the best example of this is reagan. it's widely understood that reagan forced the russians to stand down [i don't mean the coup, i mean collapse, i'm talking purely about the military] by increasing military spending through the roof. he then gets credit for "winning the cold war". there is actually a kernel of truth in this, but it's less understood how the russians reacted.
what the russians realized was that reagan was behaving irrationally relative to all their theories and models. you had generals on both sides running these game theory simulations against each other. one of the most famous results of this was this idea of mutually assured destruction. but, it's broadly acknowledged that one of the major reasons that nuclear war didn't happen was that both sides assumed the other would always behave rationally. this both led to unchallenged escalations and withdrawal decisions.
so, when they became unable to understand reagan as a rational agent, they had to stand down - because they could no longer predict his behaviour by assuming he was rational.
nobody should suggest that the lesson is that it is a good idea to elect irrational people to confuse the country's adversaries. rather, we should be grateful that the russians did not become unpredictable and irrational, but rather remained rational even in de-escalation.
but, it's going to put bernie in the same quandary on question after question. he can't argue with absurdity - and especially not in a few seconds at a time. rather, he's going to have to stand down over and over again.
ok, so a lot of people are pointing out that they got trolled. now, you can have debates about whether this is funny or not, but let's get what the actual point is here, first. nobody's doing that, and you kind of can't really have this discussion until you do.
what the site is doing is actually criticizing taylor swift for upholding broken stereotypes of antiquated femininity that seem better left in the third reich. so, are they feminazis? well, it's maybe closer to what they're articulating. see, here's the hard part: it's actually true. here are we are in 2016 and, like her or not, we're probably going to see a female president by this time next year. meanwhile, taylor's living in some kind of mad men reality, where women seek physical objectification as their ultimate purpose in life. there's a hole wide enough for criticism, there, to drive hillary's first deployment through. i kind of want to write this essay, but i really don't - i think you can put it together from here, once i've pointed this out. but, now that it is pointed out, let's keep it in mind as we carry on.
