Tallacus
so are they still going to bash Christianity even though now a MUSLIM is the biggest mass murderer of gay people here in America?

jessica
yes. i'll have great fun bashing both of them. i'll bash the jews, too.

truth
Christians rule. Our LORD is returning and will destroy all of his enemies.

jessica
will he bring his 12 boyfriends with him?

truth
you will find out one day when you stand before him on Judgment Day trembling in fear for your blasphemy.

jessica
actually, i'm counting on somebody going back in time and killing mary before jesus is born.

or. wait. is that a naturalistic explanation for a virgin birth?

truth
Yep, Islam was last. Muhamad added a whole bunch of his own stuff.

jessica
i see. and the other two books are totally legit. just like the book of mormon, i suppose.

Bad Company Gaming
Believe it or not, Christianity actually condemns violence against non-Christians, not that it means they don't view homosexuality as sin, but they do encourage kindness and love for the individual. Of course this won't stop the libtards from doing what they do best, I have a theory on how they are still going bash them after events like this. Either by actually or pretending to acknowledge that islam has violence and tolerance problem, but not without putting christians in the same boat(which is stupid, because there's a HUGE difference between christians protesting gay events and muslims massacring gay events), blaming christian fundamentalist for encouraging anti-gay hate from radical islam, or maybe come up with some bs excuse or logic to defend islam and bash christianity by attempting to "prove" that it has an even worse violence and tolerance problems(again, very stupid).

no
when has a Christian in this day in age committed a massacre killing 50 homosexuals

Bad Company Gaming
Spolier Alert None

jessica
hitler was a christian.

Bad Company Gaming
no he's a fake christian, just as fake as a darwinist who believes in a god.

jessica
well, by that logic, you very well can't claim these people are real muslims.

if these people are muslims, and representative of muslims, then hitler was a christian, and representative of christians; if you reject that hitler is representative of christianity, you must also reject that terrorism is representative of islam.

fwiw, i would be more likely to argue that hitler is a representative christian and isis is also representative of islam, then argue we should tear down all religion. it's not that most christians aren't like hitler so much as it is that most christians don't understand their religion - if they did, they'd act and sound more like hitler. likewise, islam is vile to the core - but most "muslims" don't really practice their faith.

the problem here is the divide and conquer. they want to pit us all against each other. the solution is to reject the division, which also means rejecting religion.

Bad Company Gaming
I would say your right, but you're not, because christianity condemns murder and other unjustified acts of killing or violence. Hitler was using christianity to get to power and keep the Germans from turning on him, he basically made them think that he was a christian, when really he was agnostic (or an insane person who tried to merge two word-views that contradict each other). The reason why the Orlando shooter and ISIS is more likely to be follow the islamic faith than Hitler following the christian faith, is because unlike christainity, islam promotes violence against infidels(non-muslims), there's not one thing in the quran that condemns actions like these, despite muslim leaders saying otherwise, which further supports islam having a violence and tolerance issue in modern world, thus rationalizing the term "radical islam", and while I do agree, this doesn't mean they represent every muslim or that every muslim is at fault, it does mean they represent muslims who share the same or similar views. BTW even if Hitler was religious, he was beaten(in kill count) by atheistic dictator Joseph Stalin, not saying that this proves religion is bad or good, but it does prove that atheists can be just as evil.

Also, did you know Hitler had an muslim friend? Don't believe me? Look it up.              

jessica
listen, i didn't bring up hitler to get into a genocidal pissing match. but, do you realize how many deaths fdr is responsible for, too?

the bible, like the koran, tells you to never kill - and then tells you when it's ok to kill. like, for example, if you're an adulterer. or gay.

what you're not really realizing is that christianity and islam are not just sort of the same thing but are actually literally the same thing. think of it like a trilogy. judaism is vol. 1. christianity is vol 2. islam is vol 3.

Tallacus
so I am calling for the Termination of @Zack Ford the author for Think Progress LGBT issues who blamed Christian America for the Massacre in Orlando, I ask anyone who is for truth to join in in the #FireFord  campaign for this PoS to issue an apology or resign

jessica
actually, i think it's probably tactical to stand back and watch the christian right and the neo-liberal right tear each other down. i'd recommend that the left should sit this fight out.

Tallacus
the left is perpetuating it with their hatred of Christianity, I am not religious myself but I really see this as wrong so fuck @Zack Ford Think Progress needs to kick his ass out, a journalist has a responsibility to tell the truth, Mr. Ford's hatred of the values that built this country makes him an ally to the enemies that are destroying it

jessica
a debate between christians and neo-liberals over "the values that built this country". hrmmn. well, you both supported slavery.

i'm more interested in discussing the values that can tear down your country, myself.

Tallacus
you had to be living under the rock to be unaware of all these values destroying our nation, from SJW Fascism, to Socialism to anti male, anti constitutional sentiments just to name a few

jessica
i'm not debating your premise, i'm encouraging your projected outcome.

like i say: this is more of a source of entertainment than a political battle that i want to pick a side on. i'd rather just make some popcorn and watch.

i'm going to give you a little bit of a pro-tip about the anti-sjw thing, though.

i'm pretty critical of them, and that might suggest that we're on the same side. but, we're not. see, you think they're evil communists. i think they're confused conservatives. you fear them as tyrants. i just make fun of them, and think they're harmless idiots.

the actual truth, the way i see it, is that if you could sit down with them and have a reasonable discussion, you'd determine that you actually have a lot of common ground. i, on the other hand, am never going to agree with either of you.

from my perspective, you're two sides of the same coin.

Tallacus
oh yeah its all fun to watch and make fun off, until it comes for you

jessica
well, i've taken steps to protect myself, too: i have a rain coat to protect me from their tears.

Tallacus
a rain coat isn't going to protect you, this isn't something you poke fun off at, I am talking about real protection, arming yourself, knowing what is dangerous and to avoid it, and informing others of the great evil we all are facing

jessica
yeah. you know, i'm not really afraid of kids with thin skin. they're just annoying. but, people that want to react with guns are legitimately a little bit unsettling.

Bad Company Gaming
this could be the lgbt's time to get the NRA's good side, arm themselves, and fight back against radical islam.

Tallacus
some are at least the non a feminine ones are taking a stance to protect themselves

jessica
if i was going to pick something to fight here, it would be the continued occupation and bombing of afghanistan. it's time to end america's involvement in overseas wars.

bring the troops home, NOW. i don't want to escalate. i never wanted to fight in the first place.

i'd rather tear the state down to end the war than escalate it. america offers me nothing of value, nothing worth fighting for. see the russian revolution for historical precedent.

Bad Company Gaming
Of all the things I disagree with, I do agree with you on one thing. We need to bring are guys back.

MrAranton
Hitler had the members of the SS swear that they believe in a (singular) god-creator  and that atheists are arrogant, delusional and unsuited for their cause. That clearly shows that he was not an atheist and believed in a monotheistic relgion, and there aren't that many around. If Hitler wasn't a christian, do you think he was a muslim, a sikh, a zoroastrian, a Yazidi or dare I even say it: a jew?

jessica
it was actually well understood at the time that the catholic church was a part of the alliance of axis powers. that is, the pope was close to both hitler and mussolini. they helped in rounding up groups for the concentration camps. and, remember: the anti-semitism in nazism was built on top of the anti-semitism in catholicism.

Bad Company Gaming
Well his actions completely contradict his "faith", he even killed christians who opposed him, not only that but he also believed that the ayran (or german) race was, not only superior, but an evolving race while other races are destined to die out (sounds a lot like "survival of the fitness" from darwinism). So my answer is this proves that he's not a christian or an atheist, but an insane person who tried to merge two contradicting world views, it's like as if he's trying to make the wrong puzzle piece fit. Besides if you think  christianity is bad just because one of the most evil person claims to be one, then that should mean that atheism and  is bad thanks to other murderous leaders like Joseph Stalin(again, killed more than Hitler), Fidel Castro, and Mao Zedong.

BTW, just someone criticizes atheists doesn't mean they're religious(not even me), take liberal atheists and feminazis vs conservative and neutral atheists for example.   

jessica
you're right about the crazy person part, and it applies equally well to the orlando shooter.

but, i just want to point out that the ideas you're attributing to darwin are not his. true darwinism is better articulated by the mutualism of peter kropotkin; it's not a fundamentally violent worldview. what is a fundamentally violent worldview is capitalism, and what you're (incorrectly) assigning to darwin is actually rooted in the economic writings of nineteenth century liberal capitalists like malthus and spencer. you should be focusing your ire on the right, not on the left.

the protestants were basically right about the catholic church: it was an organization devoted to secular power. and, marx was right to point out that it merely used religion as a tool of control, without bothering to care what it was actually about. that's where your contradiction collapses - the church itself only ever paid lip service to it's beliefs. so, when hitler said he was christian, it meant that he wished to utilize the control mechanisms of the christian social order for his own gains.

but, the reformation was also a failed and co-opted social revolution that produced even more violent institutions than the catholic church. much of nazism can in fact be traced to christian writing, sometimes through the intermediary of nietzsche (who was himself a christian).

further, the real christians were always on the far left of the social spectrum, and it remains that way today. marx basically articulated the line that is attributed to gandhi: i like your christ, but i hate your christians - or, perhaps, i like your christians, but i hate your christianity. an educated christian would see their system reflected in the writings of kropotkin, of russell, of chomsky...

MrAranton
Hitler was not a christian because ... reasons is a "no true scotsman"-argument. You're redifining christianity to somehow not include Hitler. What gives you the authority to do so? But even if I let you off the hook on this one: Hitler had christian accomplices and loads of them. The first international treaty Hitler signed, was with the catholic church. The catholic church also shipped Nazis to South America to help them escape the trials set up by the Allies.

Given the amount of christians killed by christians in conflicts between protetstants and catholics (in my country those fights left a larger percentage of the population dead than both world wars combined), the claim that Hitler wasn't a christian because he killed christians, too is just ridicoulous.

The Nazis did not invent anti-semitism. There was religiously based anti-semitism for centuries before anyone ever heard of Nazis. "The jews killed our saviour, any hatred they face, they brought upon themselves" That's something I was taught when I still was a Christian - and one of the reasons why I didn't want to be one anymore.

The doctrine gulags were established to enforce was communism. That's not the same as atheism.

State Communism as developed in the USSR and their Satellite states is often referred to as a political religion because it functioned a lot like a religion. Actually it's almost a carbon copy of christianity; just replace any reference to god and jesus with a reference to the writings of Karl Marx and Lenin, replace "heaven" and "the kingdom of god" with "The classless society", "hell" with "gulag" and "sin" with "counter-revolutionary thought and/or action" and you're done. The dead of the gulag do not prove the dangers of atheism. They prove the dangers of doctrine-based thinking. And no, even though atheism can be incorporated into larger doctrines, it is not complex and encompassing enough to be considered one itself.

jessica
the state actually literally pushed for the worship of stalin; the cult of personality had an apex of literal emperor worship that looked like something from the roman period. stalin was a tsar, a caesar - a god. the soviets tried to erase this from history under khrushchev and largely succeeded; it's so disturbing that western scholars have even avoided it. but, you can find pictures of icons of stalin on the internet, along with modified christian prayers that replace jesus with stalin in verse. the state distributed these icons and prayers to orthodox christians and expected them to use them to replace their jesus worship with stalin worship.

Bad Company Gaming
Stalinism, in a way, is a parody of christianity, where the worship of god is replaced by worship of man.

First off I'm not redefining christianity, If I was then there wouldn't be anything in the bible that contradicts Hitler's ideas or actions(and before you say something like for example "but Hitler hated gays", let me explain to you the difference between him, westbro baptist chuch, and other christians who disagree with homosexuality. Hitler and westbro hates homosexuals to the core and like islam think they should be put to death, while the other christians believe homosexuality is a sin(religious crime) that can be forgiven, this doesn't mean that they hate gays like Hitler or westbro, they just disagree with them, they dislike the "homo" not the person who is gay, its kinda confusing, but hey at least they view and treat them like humans compared to muslims), the one redefining christianity was, guess who, Hitler himself, to better fit the nazi regime by excusing his racist ideas(something that is contradicted by "all men are created equal" in the bible), liking all humans to animals or sacs of meat, and rejecting the vision of heaven and hell, creation, and suggestive opposition to tyranny(something that was controversial in the roman empire). Hitler used christianity, and faked his faith in order to rise to power and began to use "the no-true-scotsman" fallacy to exclude christians that were against him and turn the "positive christians" against them, according to Goebbels Diaries(one of the leading member of the Nazis) "He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity". Not to forget he was influenced by the occult a big no no for christians. Besides the way you guys use the "no true scotsman" arguement is as bad as the way the left use it to whitewash the attack in orlando and excuse islam, if you think it's rational to hate christianity because Hitler claimed to be one, then it should rational for me to hate atheism because Stalin claimed to be an atheist. Also, I just wanted to clarify something the point about my previous post was that it didn't matter what you're religious view is, you can commit the most awful crime and become the most evil man, regardless of your morals contradicting it or your religion condemning it as "sin" or promoting it as a "righteous act". 

jessica
i didn't realize that the declaration of independence was now canonical.

MrAranton
You keep treating christianity as if it were a monolithic block. But there are hundreds if not thousands of denominations, there some communalities that make them christian, but beyond that there are a lot of differences. Because of that almost any statement along the lines "christianity stands for x" or "y is un-christian" is a sweeping and inaccurate generalization.

To understand the religous undertones of Nazi ideology you have to be aware of some peculiarities of language used in German political discourse at the time. Most of them have to do with the somewhat unusual religous landscape of Germany. It is not dominated by a single denomination - like in France or Sweden - but it is nowhere near as fragmented as it is in the U.S. Additionally there has been a lot of bad blood between the denominations - after all the religously fueled conflicts of the 17th century had - in relation to the total population - been more destructive than both World Wars combined. Because of that bad blood - and the "Kulturkampf" of Bismarck era - religious affiliations were downplayed in politics. In the 1920s and 1930s a vast majority of people just would not vote for candidates who openly affiliated himself with another denomination.

Nazi-ideology contains a lot of ideas that have their origin in christianity, but in order to avoid the denominational minefield that Germany was at the time, these ideas were re-phrased in a denominationally neutral fashion and unless you're aware of that, a lot of them sound downright secular. I guess this gets even more prounounced if you're not looking at the original German but any translation of it.

Another thing you've missed: Hitler's mind was quite erratic to begin with, and it got worse over time. You can't pin his position down on anything because for most of them you'll find at some point in his life he held an opposite view. Because of that individual quote don't prove anything about Hitler. Up to 1919 for example there is correnspondance in which he speaks very favourably of Jews. He did develop a fascination with the occult, but then at the time a lot of christians did; that was fad of the time and does turn him into a non-christian. And yes there are statements in which he blames christianity for "dulling" the superior germanic mind; but on the other hand, as soon as his power within the NSDAP was great enough to do so, he kicked out all Neo-Pagans. So apparantly returning to the old germanic beliefs wasn't his goal either...

After the first successes during WW2 the propaganda presented Hitler as a vessel of god's will and the Nazi-ideology as a supplement or clarification on Christianity. The general spin was that Hitler was to lead god's new chosen people into the conquest additional "Lebensraum im Osten" just as Joshua led the Isrealites to conquer the promised land of Kanaan. Go read the book of Joshua, compared to the atrocities that book boasts were commited in the name of god, Hitler was an innocent choir boy. The bible is an awful book that sets a lot of bad examples and can be cherry-picked to justify absolutely every single atrocity Hitler comitted. And because of that as long as christians call the bible holy, they cannot distance themselves from Hitler. And no, Jesus' "love thy neighbour" does not negate that, because filty heathen scum are not neighbours.

Bad Company Gaming
BTW, Friedrich Nietzsche was an agnostic. He may have christian in his early years, but he rejected his religion and became a skeptic of christianity, take his work "death of god" for example. I seem to notice you guys have a problem all acts of violence(including self-defense), makes me ask a question, are you a pacifist? Reason why I'm asking is cause it seems like your logic associates, for example, a guy who kills a creep to defend his daughter's life (and virginity), with a murderous serial-killer like the one in the shooting.    

jessica
i don't think nietzsche was ever truly an agnostic or an atheist, i think he was what you call a christian that was struggling with his faith. he framed certain discourses in certain ways that challenged traditional western thiinking, but he never transcended christian thought. you could never understand his writing without a rigorous study in christian philosophy, and in the end his writings don't even make sense outside of a christian discourse. you could think of him as a christian equivalent to job.

i'm not a pacifist. i'm an anarchist. i believe in self-defense. but, i reject state violence. so, i'm in solidarity with somebody stepping in to prevent a crime, but i reject state violence (including "punishment") as an act of criminality, itself. liberals refer to this as the rule of law. i don't want to speak for the other poster.

real atheists don't have much to say about nietzsche that is very nice. it's a collection of false dilemmas and non-debates that only make sense in the context of christianity, itself.

just briefly: i don't think that the collapse of religion necessitates either the collapse of society or the collapse of morality, because (as an atheist) i don't think that society was built on religion, or that morality has anything to do with religion in the first place. this would only be a serious debate to me if i was a christian to begin with. as a non-christian, this is just not a relevant discourse to me.

you consequently have no choice but to place him in the christian discourse, if you want to place him in a discourse at all.

he makes no sense in an atheistic discourse. in fact, he's decidedly ahistorical in an atheistic discourse - about 1000 years out of date.

he kind of makes the classic error of conservatism, in glorifying a past that never existed.

----

Kevin Solway
"Racist religious hate is a problem with any religion", says CNN.

What gives CNN the right to insult Buddhism? They have no idea what they are talking about.

jessica
google search term: rohingya.

j reacts to "delete your account"

listen.

i know clinton has trouble with young voters. but, she's dipping into the barely legal area with "delete your account".

twelve year olds can't vote, hill. they're actually widely ridiculed online, too. oops? yeah.

this hip grandma thing is a dead end of possibly catastrophic proportions. that's not to say she shouldn't be trying to spin a few memes out, but it's going to work better if it's authentic.

that is, after all, the actual problem, right? she's widely seen as a big faker. hiring a staff of....is that the new scandal? clinton uses child labour for her twitter account?

but, that's just obviously fraudulent. all you're going to get out of kids from that is an awkward laugh and some eyeball rolling. i actually don't think there's anything particularly uncool about grandma memes. it would actually even be sort of pioneering. digital natives are a lot less cognizant of the technological divide than older people are; they don't really see the screen the same way. what i mean is that older people tend to look at the internet as some alternate reality that you have to move into, while digital natives just see it as an extension of reality. so, there is not real-life hillary and internet hillary. there's just hillary. that means that you want to use their tools, sure, but you want to look and sound your age, too - because they won't separate the digital from the physical the way that older people will. you are your twitter account.

if trump wasn't such a loud-mouthed buffoon, he'd have a natural advantage because he's actually writing the stuff himself. that's what the kids want, they just don't want what trump is saying.

she shouldn't delete her account. but, she might want to get more involved with it.

i was a canadian before it was cool.

this is a bit of a classic piece of canadiana; some people may even argue that this was the best canadian band of all time, although it was very short-lived - we only got two records out of the original line-up.

they're doing a twenty year anniversary set with the original line-up at the windsor bluesfest (and they managed to get jeff martin, singer/guitarist of another obscure-outside-of-canada canadian act called the tea party, to open).

the fact is that i saw this concert once before. it was called edgefest, and it happened in 1997.

to get an idea of the popularity of these bands in canada, note that the opening bands were collective soul, green day and the foofighters. the headliners were the tea party, i mother earth & our lady peace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNhGGdfqFME&list=PL919D15E55E8F8498

this is a couple of cuts from the tea party's opus, the edges of twilight.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7pg4ndDy_gaVTV_e6gcFigsqAuTvt7Bo

note to self: don't consume five grams of mushrooms this time.

Tippi
Or he could just become a Democrat - an actual one, not just someone who thought running as an independent wouldn't him get enough attention.

deathtokoalas
i'd rather see him split the democrats in half. two-party spectrums are really one-party oligarchies. a third party is necessary to save the country's democratic institutions from lapsing into a nepotistic cesspool, to be sold to the highest bidder.

ipolitics.ca/2016/06/11/clinton-owes-sanders-a-dignified-exit/

j reacts to clinton v sanders being more like luke v vader than clinton v obama

so, it's been clear for a while now that people are not entirely cognizant of the severity of the divide in policy. what's not so clear to me is if sanders is seen as less progressive than he is, if clinton is seen as more progressive than she is or if it's somewhere in between.

it's also no doubt a little bit of a reflection of familiarity. the united states is a two-party system.

it's the old kodos line.

"go ahead, waste your vote."

the only way that most people can really conceive of a role for sanders at all is in the democratic party. so, of course they throw out ideas like a vp run.

remember: clinton's view is they ran the race and she beat him and he therefore loses and his ideas should go away.

i've been clear that i don't think that a meaningful collaboration is possible. it's like telling skywalker and vader to put aside their differences and get along. the fact that people can't see, or won't see, or can't process, the difference is kind of disappointing.

there's still a long time before the convention.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-sanders-idUSKCN0YY0F9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlcngdW2Ju4

"bernie. i am your master."

"join the dark side, bernie."

noooooo!!!!!

don't do, it bernie! don't join the dark side!

that's right. don't join the dark side. heed your own advice, sir.


listen.

bernie's been shuffled home. the stage is set for episode VI. but, that means that this shit ain't over until i see some happy ewoks dancing in the forest. which means we have until burning man to set this right.

no, really.

there's an important part in return of the jedi where luke tries to convince vader to turn away from the dark side. that's what's up next. but, it will fail. and, we will have to blow up the party.

somebody call chomsky, make sure he's ok.

--

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/another-neocon-endorses-clinton

j reacts to orlando (trigger warning?) pt 1

i guess that the right thing to say is that i've become entirely desensitized to mass shootings. i guess the way i react is something like this:

1) there's a lot of problems with mental illness, poverty, inequality and the correlated collection of issues in the united states.
2) therefore, they need more money for services, more wealth redistribution, more resources for integration, more attention on changing social attitudes, etc.
3) however, the deeply anti-intellectual culture in the country (fostered by elites through media and by politicians) rejects this in favour of militarization.
4) therefore, they're fucked until they change their attitude.

hey, look. a cloud.

the way i see it is that mass shootings are an expected result of american culture, and no sane person could look at the culture and expect anything different. so, i'm really not shocked. it's just expected. it would be shocking if americans just randomly stopped shooting each other for no good reason.

they don't need more gun control. they don't need more cops. they need a collective slap upside the head and a collective attitude adjustment.

it's a social issue, and they need a social revolution to address it. there's currently almost no understanding of this, and no reason to expect it to stop.

i'm not trolling. really. i don't want to hear about immigration reform. i don't want to hear about hiring more cops. i don't want to hear about gun control, either.

laws don't solve problems. jails don't solve problems. cops don't solve problems. what solves problems is people listening to each other.

so, that's what i want to hear about.

http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/07/25/the-gun-violence-epidemic/

but, you won't hear about a sane approach. you'll just hear bloviating nonsense back and forth.
there's nothing left-wing about gun control. it's harshly statist and deeply authoritarian.

a real leftist would approach the issue with a root-cause analysis and argue for more funding for mental health services.

but, there is no left in the united states.

11-06-2016: shifting gears back to final archiving steps (with rants in between)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

a presidential endorsement from the koala central command

sssshhhhhh.

history is clear - the american left gets nowhere by caving in. so, turn your scare tactics around and throw them at hillary - she'd better make some concessions, or she's going to lose the election. it will make little difference to anybody at all - to her donors, to her would-be supporters - if trump beats her. well, except to her. she's the only person that should be frightened of anything, and it's up to us to making sure she's shaking in her pants.

let's march, march, march until she begs us to stop.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-manning-barish/how-bernie-sanders-can-st_b_10385408.html

ok. so...

the russians hate hillary. this might be true. it might not be. but whether it's true or not has nothing to do with it. the more important thing to think about is how much the russians hate hillary, it's one of those deep gut hates, and whether you really think this whole electing her thing is a good idea or not. not because the russians should tell america what to do, but because it's kind of actually sort of a red line for them.

i know. usa! usa! ugh. well, at least stock up on some canned soup, k?

the air conditioner upstairs is starting to break. i can hear it wheezing. finally.

i'm trying to overload it.

it's literally 35 degrees out today - pre-humidity. i have the windows open. and i have the heat on - set to 28. it's actually on, too. i tried to turn it down, but i don't want to feel the slightest bit of refrigeration on my skin...i want to sit in my own sweat...

i don't think i'm being unreasonable. rather, i think there's absolutely no way to justify installing an air conditioner in your unit that affects the units around you. i don't care what he wants it set at; i don't want to know it exists. if it's 35 degrees outside, and the air conditioner is preventing it from being 35 degrees inside, i feel i have every right to set the heat to 35 degrees - and that the guy running the air conditioner is liable for the costs of returning the air in my room to ambient conditions.

i mean, ideally, i'd just open the window and let the heat come up and down with the temperature outside. yes - i really do want it to be 35 degrees in here. we only get a few weeks a year of nice, hot, humid weather like this. i'm not about to let him suck all the heat out of here.

he's going to wake up to a really nasty hydro bill. but, he earned it. i only wish that i could see his face.

j reacts to the mess with the senate over euthanasia (blame trudeau....)

ok.

listen.

i happen to agree with the senate on this particular issue. there should not be restrictions on euthanasia. there should be oversight, but not restrictions. the law needs to be about putting in place the contractual requirements to carry it out, not about dictating terms or conditions. this is the kind of normative tinkering that the liberals are supposed to be opposed to. i know americans are reading this - you want to think of canadian liberals as social libertarians, and pretty literal and pretty strict ones.

so, this is actually an unexpectedly strict piece of legislation from that party. i've criticized it, and i think rightly.

but, the fact that i agree with the senate on this issue is less important to me than the premise of picking a side between the senate and the house in the first place. i would rather see the house pass a bill i think is too restrictive than set a precedent for the senate to interfere with the house.

i neither favour abolishment (i think some check on power is a good idea, as an emergency mechanism) nor an elected senate (i don't want to see the kind of gridlock that exists in the united states). what i actually favour is the status quo, as it previously existed. i don't care about the costs. and, i interpreted trudeau's talk as just that - talk. i didn't, for a moment, think he'd be insane enough to give an unelected body a mandate to modify legislation by an elected body.

the thing is that it wasn't broken. it really wasn't. i don't agree with those that claim that it was. so, why fix something that isn't broken?

should the senate start interfering with the business of the house, then the system will actually all of a sudden become broken. they have no mandate for this. i will all of a sudden need to switch my position to abolition, but with a caveat - there needs to be a suitable replacement that can act as an emergency block on power, but not interfere in the day-to-day business of the elected house.

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-senate-takes-on-the-house-over-assisted-dying/

the house should reject the amendments.

and, if trudeau wishes to block the rejection, there should be an immediate confidence vote that removes him from power.

it's really unprecedented. there was no referendum. and, it's a serious enough abuse of power for the canadian equivalent of impeachment.

yes: i voted for him. i support most of his platform. but, this is something that can't even be entertained.

j reacts to elizabeth warren as vp & the politics of regulatory capture in 2016

once again: the error is that you've placed warren in a category she was never really in. just like you did with obama.

warren's choice to wait until the primaries were done and then pick the winner was really rank opportunism. you expect that from the president. elizabeth warren is not the president. what it suggests is a lack of ideological conviction.

this is somebody that was a republican into her 40s, and switched parties because she thought democrats were better protectors of the "free market". she's then spent basically her entire career trying to turn the clocks back a hundred years, to a time before market theory was discredited across the spectrum. she's a fish out of water - the economic equivalent of a creationist looking for a university that hasn't drunk the kool-aid of evolutionary biology.

she's anything but progressive. she's lost in lala-land. clinton has her defects, but she's not going to appoint somebody lost in a bunch of long debunked, naive nineteenth century nonsense.

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

the reality is that she's widely seen as a crackpot.

--

warren's ideas about banks are something akin to resurrecting beta max and hd-dvd: they failed the first time, so let's try them again.

i know she has a big email list. but, there's a reason she's broadly seen as a fringe idiot in washington.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/18/how-naive-is-elizabeth-warren.html

10-06-2016: still struggling to move on after the primaries

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

will the british exit the eu?

i dunno. i'm more interested in whether the germans are going to declare independence from washington, in which case the british association with the eu becomes a rather stark problem.

the pound is an anachronism. but, washington doesn't want london under the euro. in the end, they may end up under the dollar.

say goodbye to eurasia and hello to oceania, britain.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/11/gender-bathrooms-transgender-men-women-restrooms

it's indeed too early and nobody should get excited about anything. but, the averages are useless and should not be consulted. this is a useful way to measure responses to advertising, but it is a very, very poor methodology for political polling.

the general election is a snapshot that will reflect very short-term opinions, not the cumulative response of weeks of measurements. the polls you get on any specific day are, in fact, likely an accurate reflection of what people are thinking on that specific day. the error is in deducing that people will therefore think that same thing tommorrow.

voting choices are going to be especially volatile when there are very few policy differences of substance between the candidates, as is going to be the case in 2016. worse, they're both widely despised. who is less reviled this week?

that holds today as much as it will in november. all the averages can do is create inaccuracies by blurring together the margins. again: the error is in the model. elections are not market research surveys. snapshots are better measures than averages, you just have to know that they're volatile when you're reading them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-polls_us_575adbcbe4b0e39a28ad606c

this.

warren was a republican until the second bush administration, when she switched to the democrats because she thought that republicans had lost respect for free markets. she'd be better off on a ticket with ron paul.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-republicans_us_57586d0de4b0ced23ca6c42f

i put a graphic up on my google+ profile. i'm an exaggeration. but, using harper as a baseline - and being very familiar with both harper and clinton - you have to put clinton to harper's right. challenge the spectrum, if you want. but spectrums are relative. in that spectrum, that's the right place to put her: just an inch to harper's right in both directions. and, i simply don't know where to put trump.

i'm a caricature, as i point out. but, you can see the distance.

i've never played many video games. i remember sitting and watching friends play. kind of like the bitch in the room. turned out literally. but, my understanding is that this is the kind of thing that happens when a character dies - you're looking at a respawning somewhere, often randomly. then the plot regenerates itself. it kind of seems like that's what you're getting here...

just a reminder as to why we'll probably eventually get in a huge fight and never talk.

you're probably either in the blue, or very close to the origin point. it's the nature of living most of your life in a harshly neo-liberal society. you might not realize it. a lot of it is subconscious. it's reached the point of social norm. but, it's true nonetheless.

somebody asked me the other day why i'm on disability. the truth is that the answer is this chart. i can't even make myself breakfast without collapsing in a mess of contradictions.

it's cliched, but i have to remind you that i think i'm the one that's sane. there's probably not a meaningful answer as to who is crazy or who isn't. but, the current arrangement is the only possible one.

j reacts to the political spectrum, and where the candidates actually are on it

sometimes, pictures are more useful than arguments.

there's really no rational reason at all why you should expect me to support clinton, or think she's less terrible than trump. all you have is fear. and i'm not buying it.

i'm probably not representative of the average sanders supporter. i'm an exaggeration. a caricature. but, the picture demonstrates the point and why running clinton is so alienating for so many would-be democratic party supporters.

i'm not exaggerating, either. the conservative party of canada supports single-payer health care, didn't push back against gay marriage at all, won't even talk about abortion, supports medical marijuana, wrote some pretty tough campaign finance laws ...

she really is to the right of harper. both economically and socially. not dramatically. but measurably.

this is their take. pretty close to mine, actually - although i don't think trump belongs on the economic right like that with the rest of them.

https://www.politicalcompass.org/images/us2016.png

 

i just did that test and again came up well to the left of even sanders. it's crazy to tell me to vote for clinton.

but, i mean....i identify as an anarchist, or an anarcho-communist. i know i'm left of everything and everyone. no surprises, here. more like no shit.

but, the point i'm getting across should nonetheless be obvious.

https://www.politicalcompass.org/yourpoliticalcompass?ec=-8.0&soc=-6.62

by comparison, this is 2008. clinton & obama are right on top of each other. sanders is closer to kucinich. and, i'm closest to nader - who is who i supported.

https://www.politicalcompass.org/images/usprimaries_2008.png

what a bunch of racists.

hey, hey hillar-y....

j reacts to tea party republicans for bernie sanders?

see, this is typical vox propaganda.

there has, in fact, been rigorous polling - going back decades - that demonstrates that tea-party type republicans are strongly supportive of government programs like medicare. remember: in the era that sanders is representing, this was the democratic party base. they lean right on social issues like abortion, gay rights, gun control - but they're very much in favour of government services.

that's about class. again.

it's no secret that trump is unpopular amongst republican women, either. that's not really identity politics, though. i mean, listen to the guy. it's easy to understand why republican women are less than happy about the prospect of trump winning, and maybe a little irritated by anything that would help it along. you'll no doubt get the same reaction from republican hispanics.

it's not lazy journalism. it's corporate-financed and driven social engineering.

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11902144/poll-america-bernie-sanders-race

http://inthesetimes.com/article/15732/the_tea_partys_misconception_of_medicare

yeah. snicker. i know. but, underneath the confusion is support for medicare, for veterans, for social security - they just lack the education to be able to articulate themselves.

i hadn't thought of this before. i figured sanders was mostly swinging anti-war libertarians. but, bernie sanders is actually exactly what the tea party needs.

https://erinamelia.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/medicare-keep-your-hands-off-my-medicare.jpg

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/10/on-social-issues-tea-partiers-are-not-libertarians/64169/

"A recent poll by Lake Research shows that 82 percent of all Americans oppose cuts to Social Security, including 83 percent of Democrats, 78 percent of independents, 82 percent of Republicans — and, in one of the most startling findings of all, fully three-fourths of all self-described Tea Party members (74 percent). (Social Security Works has a video and a petition on this subject.)"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/entitlement-cuts_b_4133753.html

this is a special kind of brilliant, existing in the intersection point of a parody of prog rock concept records and an exploration of wagnerian opera.

j reacts to sanders supporters preferring satan to trump (but what of stein?)

nobody has ever seriously suggested that sanders supporters will vote for trump - although i do think he had a chance had he stuck to trade and toned down the nonsense. it's still probably his best tactic, but it's the best of a bad bunch. it may be true that most people realize that he's not going to build a wall or ban muslims. but, the thing is that it also follows that he's not going to pull out of nafta, either. he just has absolutely no credibility at all. what he says is absolutely meaningless. so, if the problem with clinton is that you think she's a liar that's only in it for herself and that you can't believe a word she says, trump is not a solution. to a sanders supporter, they really come off more or less as interchangeable. so, the reverse of that is that trump doesn't seem so scary, either - he just seems like a non-solution.

the question is how many of those sanders supporters will ultimately move to stein as clinton reverses the minor concessions she's made in the general, not how many will move to trump.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/10/sanders-supporters-prefer-clinton-to-trump-exclusive-poll

something else, though.

"Analysis of the detailed poll findings also suggests Sanders voters could help Clinton recapture support from young people, union members and voters in the midwest and north-east."

ok. that's true - you didn't need a poll for it. but, why would they want to?

can you give me one reason that a sanders voter should vote for clinton? "trump eats children" is a good plot for a cartoon show, but not actually a very good argument.

now, i want to be clear: i'm not suggesting that you're going to see a poll with the greens competitive any time soon.

i think the libertarian thing, from sanders voters, is probably a kneejerk. it may be reflective of ignorance, or identity politics, or a bit of both. 15% seems like a lot, but 15% of 18% is less than 3%. we do live in a patriarchal society. it may be clueless and ignorant to label bernie supporters as 'bros', or suggest that her gender is what's pushing opposition to her (hey! hey! hillary! how many kids did you kill today?), but one would nonetheless expect some level of gender-based reactionary rejectionism. 3% seems like the right number. the sanders--->johnston swing may be a good metric to gauge how much it is that sexism is actually a problem. why else would you vote for gary johnson, after supporting a candidate that wants single-payer healthcare and state-funded tuition? you'd have to be entirely clueless or hopelessly sexist. i'm pretty critical of identity politics, but it has a use and this is it.

the real fight is between clinton and stein. it might not present itself for a while. it might take until october, even. but, this is where bernie supporters' heads are at, and the choice they're going to be making.

the media will not cover this until it is forced to.

if she can get some traction to start with, though, don't be surprised if she gains support very quickly.

what we've learned with sanders is that americans are inherently conservative in their voting choices. they have to know their candidates. that's stein's biggest challenge.

and i would encourage sanders supporters to facilitate this, rather than get in line behind another war criminal.

if you can't make sense of what you're seeing in front of you with logic and policy-based analysis, then you need to look at other explanations - and identity politics are as valid as any other, to specifically explain how small numbers of voters react in irrational ways. it's when people start using identity politics as a dominant tool of analysis, or suggest that identity > ideology, that i'm going to push back and call "bullshit". this is a bankers' wet dream. some kind of vulgar gramscian brainwashing through advertising. it's divide and conquer. so, of course it gets pushed down. but, it's almost always very easily deconstructed as nonsense (and i've done that on this page).

what the system wants is to be able to manchurian candidate you by your identity - to push a few buttons and get every gay eskimo with a pet squirrel to behave the same way. they want to destroy your individuality in favour of a constructed identity that they can download into your brain from head office. the tools are still pretty crude - advertising, tv, movies, mainstream music, just media in general - but they're developing. and, they've managed to capture a large swath of the left.

again: it's usually deconstructed, and usually into class, with little effort. but, it's not some accident that the media goes out of it's way to obscure things and break you down into these atomized advertising demographics. they hope it's self-fulfilling. but, leave it to the misanthropic cynic to have more faith in human individuality than that.

so, yes - there are going to be people that will not vote for clinton because she's female. there will also be people that will vote for clinton because she's female. but, you need to measure this at around 2-3% of the total voting population, not 40% of all voters in the primary. and, you'll likely see it more or less balance out.

09-06-2016: cautious idealism gives way to dour realism (slowly tuning out)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

i'm not bleeding yet. but my wrists have been a problem for weeks. there's a huge red splotch that looks like it's going to blow. what do i do? go to a hospital? wait it out?

i'm trying to eat more and drink more water - and i actually think i'm succeeding. see..

i boosted my hormones a few months ago, and i think that what's happening is that they're not getting fuel to carry out their instruction set. something that happens when you take estrogen is that your body gets instructions (in the form of chemical signals) to redistribute fat differently. now, energy can neither be created nor destroyed but only converted from one source to another (we can be engineers in context - it's true enough). so, if you get instructions to increase hip width and and build breast size but you're not consuming more excess energy for storage then your body is going to have to go towards other stores of fat - like your arms - to complete the instructions being given out by the hormones. the solution is that if you're very thin and you want to boost your hormones then you should probably eat more, too.

like i say: i do think that increasing my calorie intake has started to make a difference. all the fat is migrating to the girl spots, which is a start. i'm not storing weight in my stomach (in fact, my stomach looks smaller because my hips are coming out). but i'm not noticing my fat stores in my arms or my neck come back yet, which was why i started eating more. it's only been about two weeks, though, too.

as i was typing this, the red mark disappeared. i think that's what i was expecting would happen. it was probably just irritation from laying it down on the table, although it remains reflective of not getting enough calories. listen: i actually eat well. i just put my body into shock.

had it blown, though, i'd definitely be seeking naturalistic explanations.

j reacts to the deeply orwellian takeaway from the primary

for real tuning out. just about done wiping the music facebook page. will need to catch up on the vlogs after. this is done, i'm disinterested, and i want to get some real work done.

but, let it be written that my takeaway from the primary is this:

hillary clinton has won the democratic primary not by winning minorities but by suppressing them through restrictive voter id laws. this is a relic of the old dixiecrat machine, which clinton in fact represents only a mildly reformed faction of. the media coverage is a function of this.

it'll take a few years. but, when the dust settles this will be properly understood.

if elected, she will carry on the dixiecrat-lite policies that her husband created and her predecessor carried on. in a brutal twist of irony, she will likely get her constitutional amendment to restrict abortion, too.

y'all should've paid closer attention to orwell in high school.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/06/the-definitive-case-for-why-bernie-sanders-should.html

j reacts to hillary's perception of herself as popular and bernie as unpopular

as mentioned. she's basically stuck in the 80s - she thinks she wins by winning reagan democrats, which means running against her own party. or, what used to be her own party, anyways.

absolutely predictable. completely tone deaf. sure. but predictable.

if anything at all, what you will hear from her is that the primaries prove that the democratic party is not leftist and america has left socialism in the 40s, or something.

stuck in the 80s.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-kuzmarov/damning-report-on-mexico_b_10364942.html

j reacts to the media's false equivalency of 2016 with 2008

obama and clinton had very few policy differences. clinton and sanders are so different, it's hard to believe they're running for the same party. in the end, voters may turn out to be less informed than people like me are assuming - as angry as people like me get when crackpot sociology goofs try to argue for identity "politics". but, it's very hard to see why sanders supporters would consider it worth their time to vote for somebody that they are systematically opposed to on every single policy position on the table.

the truth is that clinton & trump are closer together than clinton & sanders are. sanders lost a three-way race early in his career, and never seems to have gotten over the guilt of being responsible for electing a republican. i don't know what the precise consequences were. but, he's still holding on to this. so, the circumstances are going to have to be extreme for him to avoid endorsing clinton.

but, his supporters are a different story. this is a different scenario than we've seen in a long time. past metrics are not going to be applicable.

what stein is going to need is a tipping point. there was a lot of mathematical research that came out about this around the arab spring. what was learned was that you only need to sway a small number of people to spur a movement. in fact, that appears to be what happened with sanders, too. he went from 10% to 45% almost overnight. it wasn't gradual. there's a lot of literature out there about this. stein's team should be reading up on it, because what it suggests is that she doesn't need to go after all of sanders' supporters, but just enough of them to get the tipping action.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/09/bernie-sanders-thorn-in-hillary-clintons-side#comment-76032206

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Sociology

j reacts to the future of the american left

i actually agree with this.

sanders has not changed the democratic party, and is not the party's future. rather, what he's done is demonstrate that the democrats are a dead-end for substantive change, and created a third party in american politics. that third party is not yet organized, but if it is not organized by sanders or stein then it will organize itself.

so, no - sanders is not the future of the democratic party. the democrats put themselves in an opposite direction back in the early 90s, with clinton/gore. rather, he's representative of the final fracture point that the clinton/gore/obama direction has pushed the party in.

the democratic party as we know it will not survive the belligerence of a hillary clinton presidency, or even the belligerence of a hillary clinton candidacy.

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/9/11867810/bernie-sanders-obama-future-democrats

but, let's be clear. the democratic party has been fracturing for twenty years. what happened around obama was....he wasn't what people thought he was. people shouldn't have thought he was what they thought he was. and, a lot of people never realized he wasn't what they thought he was - still haven't, never will. they've still got this weird meme in their head. if that's the future of the party, it's a brave new world, indeed.

so, the better analysis is in terms of fracture points rather than approval ratings. and, what we're seeing this cycle is the consequence of a process, not the result of a personality.

if you want to blame somebody, the people responsible are the clintons.

j reacts to what the democrats really mean when they talk of "unity"

i just want to point something out, though.

if you look at how the "democratic party establishment" is reacting to sanders right now, it's all hands-off. the media is reporting this as though it's some sort of enlightened epiphany of libertarian agency or something.

"I'm not pushing him to do anything." - harry reid.

the implication is they'll give him space to work it out on his own.

but, i think you need to take these people more literally. what they're literally stating is that what they really want is for him to just shut up and disappear. to not do anything.

they don't want him at rallies. they don't want him getting out the vote. he's just not on the same page, ideologically. so, all he can do is corrupt the narrative - as they see it.

i've been pointing out for a while that this is a lot harder than even the most cynical want to accept. sanders has successfully articulated a third-party vision in a way that has already broken the spectrum open. he just doesn't seem to realize it yet.

maybe, it's actually better if he gets behind clinton in a way that destroys his own credibility. maybe, he should be purposefully martyring himself; maybe those jesus comparisons were less crazy than initially apparent. watching his supporters abandon him for that third party might be the best way to get what he's been advocating for.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/09/politics/bernie-sanders-washington/

08-06-2016: kubler-ross through time dilation

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

and, remember kids...

j reacts to the outcome of the democratic primary some more

"I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets. I think that is not true anymore." - elizabeth warren, explaining her decision to switch parties in her....40s.

that's the 1990s.

you rightfully criticize clinton for being a republican when she was a kid, yet you give warren a pass? it's just inconsistent.

"I was a Republican at a time when I felt like there was a problem that the markets were under a lot more strain. It worried me whether or not the government played too activist a role."

--

i'm tuning out. for real. and, i think it's a matter of days before the media pulls a massive u-turn and starts ganging up on clinton. but, moving forwards over the next few months, we have to understand what cllinton is.

more than anything else, clinton is a salesperson for the international arms industry. i know she's campaigning as anti-gun. and, the nra isn't likely to endorse her. but, it's broadly a huge charade.

what she does is that she acts as a conduit between american weapons manufacturers and buyers overseas. she's a salesperson. and, the policies she's going to put down are going to be largely with the purpose of maintaining the export market.

most of what you're going to hear from her, and see from her, is ultimately just a big excuse to sell weapons. even the geostrategic part of it is only able to exist due to the economics.

the war economy is not inevitable. this idea that america needs the war economy to thrive is wrong. there's lots of ways out, and if you combine them together you get a way forward.

but, that's what we have in front of us - the imminent spectre of total arms industry lobbyist control of the presidency. and, it's what you need to prepare yourself for.

hillary or condi?

probably neither. but it's eerily appropriate, too.

even at this late date, i do remain convinced that mark foley was, in fact, right.

see, at least when this kind of rhetoric comes from this guy, it's a reasonable expectation.

put another way: when you talk like this, you sound like this guy. take a look at yourself in the mirror, folks.

an unexpected new recording by the future of the left

this is unexpected, actually. i thought they were done.

it's also the best thing from falco in quite a while.

this is the kind of thing you need to average out, and the conclusion is probably right: most people that you suspend from school need more integration, not less. they need hugs, not ostracism. social programs & restorative justice designed to reintegrate are the smart approach, here. punishment is the dumb approach.

but.

i was a punk kid. i used to get suspended for pranks. all the time. i wouldn't be surprised if somebody told me that i spent more time in the hall in grade 8 than in class (although, note that i often had a book with me). the pranks were of varying severities. i actually dynamited the school mascot once and then put it back in place, still smoldering. they blamed it on the rivals across town. i got away with that one. but, i got caught for lots of things, too.

see, i wasn't a bad student, though. to the contrary. in fact, one of the tactics the school used to try and get me to behave was to take me out of "advanced" courses and put me in "enriched" courses, so i wouldn't have anybody to get in trouble with because the enriched kids were just not going to do that. and, that actually ultimately worked.

what i want to get at more is that i remember spending in-school suspensions doing homework: reading books, doing math, writing essays. and, i arguably got more work done in that situation than i did in class.

but.

there may have also been social consequences, too.

it's not at all surprising; they're both liberal republicans. what i know about elizabeth warren suggests that she was probably a goldwater girl, too.

"I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets. I think that is not true anymore." - elizabeth warren, explaining her decision to switch parties in her....40s.

"I was a Republican at a time when I felt like there was a problem that the markets were under a lot more strain. It worried me whether or not the government played too activist a role."- elizabeth warren

i think the actual truth is that elizabeth warren, like barack obama, has not been properly vetted. and, the results of promoting her will be just as disappointing.

it's statistically wrong. i was male all the way through high school; it wouldn't have been hard to find a female that could beat me at arm wrestling. the reality is that neither physical strength nor athletic ability distribute along gender lines. so, you're setting up a demonstrably false sexist premise and then using it to argue for a demonstrably false sexist outcome.

that said, what that actually implies is that athletics shouldn't be gendered in the first place.

to be clear: you won't find any convincing evidence that boys can necessarily run a track faster than girls. that's not something that's actually upheld by evidence. it's just a boneheaded, sexist assumption.

on the longterm historical irrelevance of bob dylan

the honest truth is that i don't have an opinion of blonde on blonde because i've never found dylan to be historically interesting enough to bother listening to. of the '66 discs, i'll take revolver and freak out! over the rest of them. sorry.

but, even more accurate is that the historical path forwards to what i listen to doesn't really start until '67, and is actually mostly british. crimson. genesis. floyd. moody blues.

if i was in california in 1966, i wouldn't have been into the doors or the beach boys or any hippie garbage of the sort. i would have been into surf music, mostly. some early punk, no doubt. i probably would have preferred to be in detroit. and, i would have agreed with zappa that the hippie culture was basically the beginning of the collapse of western civilization.

so, don't expect happy retrospectives. that's not my culture. sorry.

i'm actually really disappointed in this, as it is operating purely at the consumer realm of hot dog gadgetry. enough audience building. when is crazy russian hacker going to open a discussion about collective ownership of the means of producing hot dog gadgetry? we the people ought to own the hot dog gadgets, not the 1%. it is only through their control of the technology. but, we don't need them. we can democratize the technology. we can build the hot dog gadgets for ourselves!

--

look at you. pushing product placements for cheap american garbage. you're a spokesman for capitalism. you should do a video on your favourite type of apple pie, and change your name to SelloutAmericanInfomercialChannel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe_vXdMrHHseZ_esYUskSBw/discussion?lc=z12esnfiirudetgio04cjz3beortchnb3vs0k

"losing patience"

yeah. right. what are you going to do, hill? not get voted for?

sanders has incredible leverage, here. and, he's been pretty patient, himself. if i was him, i'd be launching an independent run right now and laying out arguments that hillary is truly no better than trump. i'd be threatening to split the democrats in half unless i got what i wanted.

www.cbc.ca/news/world/california-primary-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-1.3621007

j reacts to the outcome of the democratic primary

disappointing outcome for sanders supporters in california, certainly. but, clinton's win has to come with an asterisk.

2008 turnout in california:
clinton - 2.6 million
obama - 2.2 million

there's some reasonable rounding, there. but it's 4.8 million voters - a little less, but more than 4.7 million.

with 94% reporting, these are the numbers in 2016:

clinton - 1.8 million
sanders - 1.4 million

that's 3.2 million.

she got less votes this year than she did in 2008; total turnout is probably going to be down by over a million votes.

what of the media reports of voter registration amongst young latinos? i don't know. i've seen reports of deregistration, both recently and a while back.

but, whether this is a weak measure of enthusiasm all around - she also got less votes in new jersey - or yet another reflection of voter suppression, it's not a strong walk into the convention.

there's been a substory the whole time about sanders bringing kids into the democratic party, and this idea that it's going to be good for clinton. but, they're nowhere close to each other on policy. one way or another, the lack of voter enthusiasm we just saw in california (which is used to not mattering - that's not unique to this cycle) should be a dose of reality.

bernie is not going to deliver for hillary.

--

and, google throws greg palast at me right off the bat. first result.

http://www.gregpalast.com/california-stolen-sanders-right-nowspecial-bulletin-greg-palast/

--

i've got a great idea for how clinton can celebrate her gender identty.

why doesn't she go around to elementary schools around the country and get all the little girls to write their names on the bombs she plans to drop all over the world?

maybe, if we're lucky, she can be the first woman executed for war crimes, too.

actually, that glass ceiling has already been broken.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irma_Grese

but, it's true.

it's great to have a strong, female war criminal in office for little girls to look up to. maybe they can be war criminals when they grow up, too.

of course, more sane people may suggest that hillary clinton is actually a terrible role model for girls and that she's hindering her cause more than she's helping it.

but, this is america. nobody cares about sanity in america!

--

alright, alright.

it was turnout. abysmal. who knows why.

let's take a moment to vent, resolve to vote for jill stein and move on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neGdoqsuiN8

07-06-2016: eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn (offer me alternatives...)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the end of the democratic primary, as it happened

55% is a little low for initial results in jersey.

i really think that there's a substantial possibility that there could be a huge upset in new jersey tonight. as mentioned: the best predictor is rhode island, because it's the only open primary for miles around.

her initial numbers were way better than 55% in the closed primaries around jersey.
see, you have to keep in mind how this works, right.

hillary always jumps out ahead on mail-ins. strangely. then bernie catches up on day-of voting.

if she can't cross 60 in early voting, it's going to be close.

see, i think there's reason to expect they'd fuck up the demographic modelling. it's the same situation as michigan, where they're plugging closed primary data into an open primary.

i'm not saying he's going to win. i'm just saying that you shouldn't be surprised if it's closer than expected.

--

yeah.

jersey was an open primary in a liberal state. you can say what you want about the dynamics walking into the situation, but an inability to split in a liberal state like jersey suggests that the party has made a choice one way or the other.

again: do not expect me to post positive things about hillary clinton. i'm mostly going to be just tuning out altogether.

but, i'd advise voting for jill stein.

i don't think hillary clinton should be president. i think she should be tried at the hague for war crimes, and sentenced appropriately.

--

but, i just want to...

i'm saying the party's made a choice, right. and i'm rejecting that choice. does that make me some kind of a sore loser, or something?

no. because i was never a supporter of the party.

see, and this is going to drive a lot of democrats nuts. there's going to be a substantial number of people that aren't going to fall in line, here. and, the media will throw all kinds of accusations of treason at them and scratch their head and not understand.

but, we're not democrats. we never wanted to be democrats. we've spent our entire lives protesting against democrats - rhetorically, and in some cases more than rhetorically. in a normal year, we would have never even considered the democrats as a serious option. support for sanders was just a pragmatic decision to support a candidate that was really to the right of where we actually are, but actually had a serious chance of winning.

now that this has evaporated, we're not going to all of a sudden become democrats and support everything we've spent all of our lives fighting against.

again: the american spectrum doesn't make any sense. there's no socialist option. not even a watered down one. nobody should be surprised that there's so many disenfranchised people when you only offer two options.

bernie's legacy can't be in helping hillary win. i mean, he can't seriously turn around and endorse her. it's not like 2008 - he represents an entirely different political philosophy. sanders endorsing clinton is not like clinton endorsing obama. it's more like clinton endorsing mccain.

in fact, i desperately hope he doesn't, because he'll instantly become irrelevant if he does. this isn't 'bernie can deliver', it's only 'bernie can destroy himself'.

bernie's legacy has to be the construction of an independent socialist movement in the united states. that has to be what bernie or bust really means.

and, in the process, we'll have to see who aligns with the establishment and who doesn't.

don't be tricked. trump == clinton == obama == bush == gore.

--

regarding my error in analysis, it's hard to say much without the cancelled exit polling. i mean, the polls were fairly accurate, in the end - i just didn't trust the polling. less because i thought they were doing something wrong, and more because i thought they'd been paid off.

i don't think my logic was wrong. but, i'll point out that it looks like turnout in new jersey in 2016 is going to be less than it was in 2008. we're not going to get exit polls, but if we did have them i think we'd learn that the flux of independents that bernie needs - and was able to get in rhode island - just didn't show up at the polls. it might not be precisely due to the ap's declaration last night. but, it may be a consequence of a widespread perception that the race was over, so why bother.

you can twist the logic around either way, right. but, old people are more likely to vote than young people. young people need the movement. old people don't. further, partisans are more likely to vote than independents. to suggest otherwise is just a bad argument. so, if clinton is drawing old partisans (who would vote through a nuclear attack) and sanders is drawing young independents (who might be more interested in a tv show), it's...

i mean, this is the story of the century, right. young people don't vote.

again, without exit polling, i'm just guessing. but, the turnout numbers implicitly suggest that sanders' strength bailed on him in jersey, which would have the effect of approximating a closed primary.

so, the racist models fluke out one last time.

--

i've been over this before. and i'm a canadian, remember. but, i just want to put down an idea of the demographic that you can expect is tuning out, or voting for the greens.

1) i paid almost no attention to the 2012 election at all. i interpreted mitt romney as being everything that barack obama always wished he was. i would have voted for jill stein had i voted at all.

2) i initially supported clinton in 2008, based largely on the strength of her more progressive health care plan and memories of her role in the good friday agreement [that is something she should actually be proud of]. but, it was always fairly tepid. i was never fooled by obama - i saw him as a front for the banks from the absolute very start. by november, i would have voted for ralph nader, if i bothered voting at all.

3) i actively supported john kerry in 2004, based largely on his less aggressive foreign policy.

4) my first choice for the leader of the greens was jello biafra, but i would have enthusiastically voted for ralph nader in 2000.

5) i was only 15 in 1996. i would trace my political awakening to propaganda surrounding the bombing of serbia. i would have probably voted for clinton.

--

so, i'm hardly a defining demographic. but, i do exist.

--

if you're curious about my actual voting record in canada..

1) i voted for the liberals under jean chretien in 2000.
2) i voted for jack layton's ndp in 2004. this was a vote against paul martin. in hindsight, i somewhat regret this.
3) i voted for jack layton again in 2006.
4) i voted for the liberals in 2008, which was the year that stephane dion was running for prime minister.
5) i voted for jack layton again in 2011. this was a vote against michael ignatieff. in hindisght, i do _not_ regret this.
6) i voted for the liberals again in 2015. this was a vote for justin trudeau.

i have voted exclusively for the liberals at the provincial level, which would be votes for either dalton mcguinty or kathleen wynne.

--

so, i'm a useful-to-study swing voter in canada.

but i'm off the spectrum in the united states.

--

nonono, listen - i didn't expect sanders to follow the expected path. i do not expect sanders to concede until the last superdelegate votes at the convention. it's over. but, that doesn't matter. and, i know this is strange for americans, but it's not so strange from the perspective of somebody raised with a three party spectrum.

the question is not whether he'll concede before the convention. he won't. he won't. the question is whether he'll concede after the convention. that is, whether or not he will run as independent.

so, let's be clear. you want to ask when he'll give up and support clinton. the question is if he'll give up and support cllinton.

this goes back to what i've been saying about how sanders is representative of a different tradition than hillary clinton. people raised around the american political spectrum are going to be confused about this. there's two parties, right. he can't win. why fight?

because he's not a democrat. that's the actual truth of it.

i still think that the answer is that he will eventually support clinton. but, i don't think he's completely decided that he will, yet. the entire set up is to facilitate a third-party run. i mean, listen to what he says.

"i'll support clinton if she supports single payer."

she's never going to support single-payer. so, he'll never support her.

like, that's not random rhetoric. it's calculated. he might not follow through with it in the end, but he's talking like that to keep the option open.

so, let's get the question right. it's reasonable to conclude that his apprehension about trump is too great - that's what he's broadcasting. but, don't take it for granted, because that's also what he's broadcasting.

fdr wouldn't have moved an inch without the threat of a popular movement. that's his mindset. he's not thinking about sucking up to clinton. he's thinking about scaring the hell out of her.

-

it's not like the coverage is naive either, right. if you read the headlines from the perspective of a third party on the left, rather than the perspective of a democrat or republican, what they actually state is something like this:

"sanders should drop out because he has leverage over clinton and may succeed in extracting concessions from her."

--

i'm kind of glad you posted this the way you did, so i can respond contextually in an appropriate way. you need to think of hillary like the liberals and sanders like the ndp, and then place them in a minority government - as we saw in the 60s, 70s and 00s. it worked out well in the 60s and 70s. especially the 60s. lots of people think it was our greatest parliament.....

the ndp would never just let the liberals pass whatever they want. they always demanded some influence, and when they didn't get it? they'd vote down the budget.

it's a hard game of difficult negotiations. but, it's how the parliament works.

the american punditry is going to have a hard time with this because the three-party system is foreign to most living americans. it shouldn't be, though. it happened in the 30s, when the socialist parties forced a set of concessions from fdr that is now called the new deal.

they could call a history prof and get them to explain it. or they could call a canadian. but, what we're seeing unfold in the united states right now has not happened for a century. this isn't politics as usual. this is very different. our media is uniquely positioned to understand and explain it and should take the opportunity to.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-california-primary-1.3621301

j reacts to the allied media conference

you might expect that i should probably go to the allied media conference in detroit this month. i kind of wanted to post this on their site, but i think it's better if i post it here. and, you can bring them here, if you'd like.

i just don't want to concede the ability to moderate (or not moderate).

if you go through the list of events, something should jump out: it seems designed to break people down into tiny little subsets. so, you have the meeting for trans people of colour, the meeting for latinas, the meeting for women of colour - and a few meetings that are exclusively geared at white people, too.

when i see that, i interpret it as counter-productive. you get all of these people together in the same space to talk about politics, then you break them into micro-demographics. if i was going to write the book on how to break-up the revolution without a stick, that's pretty much exactly what i'd write. break them down into divisions. make sure they don't talk to each other. make sure they walk out having seen nothing but their own reflections, and maybe with a heightened sense of isolation.

and, i mean, what else do you get out of walking into a conference like this and only talking to other people that are like you, or that can be categorized as statistically similar, anyways? you should expect to walk out of this place feeling isolated - because the conference was designed to isolate you!

where's the meeting on inter-racial class struggle? it's not in the list. there's an introduction to being a dj. there's nothing about bridging divides. it's all about creating and enforcing them.

then, i looked a little closer. this event has some major sponsors, including the ford foundation. now, what do you think the ford foundation wants out of an event like this? do you think the ford foundation wants to fund seminars on class struggle?

rather, i might suggest that what the ford foundation - as well as google, who is funding it through their (functional) mozilla subsidiary - really wants is data. well, if you're an advertising company, that's what you do, right? you break people down into these microscopic categories.

so, what is this going to be like? i'd expect to get asked a lot of questions, and for some people in the back to be taking notes.

the one thing that i pulled out that looked a little bit interesting was this workshop. it kind of seems a little anarchist at first glance. but, on second glance what came out was the likelihood that it's probably a focus group to unveil an advertising strategy. the website says venture capitalist all over it.

you need to be careful with this shit. but, this isn't real. don't be fooled into thinking that it is.

http://amc2016.sched.org/event/77Qf/peer-to-peer-sharing-economy-and-commons-roundtable

what i think that a lot of the reactionary right fails to realize is that a great deal of what they're railing against is really corporate advertising and people that get sucked into it looking for something better.

plumbing update

the sink has been a little slow the whole time, but it began to slow down a bit more yesterday. we did get some rain, but it wasn't very much. the toilet is not currently clogged, but it is draining a little bit slowly. the sewers outside are a foot higher on marion than they are on cataraqui. i remain convinced that there is a substantial clog under the intersection that will recreate itself until it is removed.

i have been addressing the problem with water pressure - that is, i will fill the sink up to the very top and then let it drain. this is noticeably effective, but only temporarily.

while i am not requesting action at this point, i am taking note of the circumstances as was requested.

j

06-06-2016: day four of detox ends with the realization that facebook has broken it's timeline

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

the reality is that this is pornography.

sex sells.

or, if you'd prefer different language, just realize that the way rape culture is covered and capitalized on is a part of rape culture, itself.

i just want good solutions. and that means rejecting bad ones.

you might think you're fighting something. you're not. you're entrenching it.

she seems to believe that it is of the utmost importance to prevent the lion she's grooming from smelling the interviewer. i suspect that's not arbitrary.

j reacts to the stanford rape case (you're all stuck in the fucking cave)

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.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/stanford-swimmer-brock-turner-sexual-assault-father-reacts-1.3618571

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.

j reacts to requests to play nice with democrats

listen. i'm not walking on eggshells, worried about what fucking democrats think.

you picked a shitty candidate. you'll have to deal with that. next time, pick a less shitty candidate.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/did-bernie-sanders-just-hand-trump-the-election

here's some fucking 90s for you.

you made your bed, democrats. now, lie in it.

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.

www.cbc.ca/news/trending/stanford-swimmer-brock-turner-sexual-assault-father-reacts-1.3618571

the email scandal promises better ratings.

www.cbc.ca/news/world/sanders-clinton-nominaton-report-1.3619679

j reacts to the ap's call that clinton has clinched the nomination

my best guess is that nbc has decided that you'll stay home and watch friends if you think the primary is already over.