i'm going to post it here for the public interest, if you like to read a good argument.
the judge at the board was a retard and wouldn't let me read me most of it. there are just bad judges and this was just one of them.
Friday, September 13, 2024
Thursday, September 12, 2024
i got an updated number of $1055, but the city registry is also denying that the program is being offered this year. i'll see what the email i sent out says.
$1055 is not close to market rent for a one bedroom. at all.
still, the math becomes 1370*.3 - 1055*.9 = $538.50
538.50 + 582 = 1120.50 and adding $538.50 to the 1370, which is inevitable at that amount, is $1908.50. if add the $70+, it's very close to $2000. the cheapest apartments for rent are in the $1250-$1400 range and these are going to be gross buildings full of potheads that i don't want to live in. at that range, i'd have to move into another basement apartment, which i want to desperately get out of. i want an actual apartment in an actual apartment building.
i've found one at $1325 that i could move into if they let me. that would leave me with $2000-1325 = $675 which is about the same as right now, give or take. but the place would.
yeah.
let me try to apply for this.
if i can.
the city of windsor is trying to argue that the average price of a one bedroom apartment in this city is $1000.
that is not remotely close to accurate. it is closer to $1500. i would not be able to find a one bedroom anywhere at all for less than $1200 + utilities. rooms run in the $800+ range and bachelors are consistently over $1000.
i'm going to pursue this, but the city appears to have set up a program and then not applied it's own definitions correctly. the frustrating thing is that the extra $500 isn't enough to open the market up, because it's still $100-200 less than the cheapest apartments.
it makes the program essentially useless, but i'm waiting on an email for an updated average price.
i think i found a better answer to get out of here. i had to get on priority status first, which i am, so this wasn't a waste of time.
there's a city run program called the wehb:
i'm waiting for clear answers from the office, but i believe average rent in windsor is currently $1683, according to google, which would entitle me to a subsidy of:
1370*.3 - 1683*.9 = $1103.70.
the maximum shelter amount from odsp is $582. i should be able to then add that to the wehb amount to get to:
1103.70 + 582 = $1685.70.
the way it works is that they will claw back whatever is leftover from that, after calculating actual rent & utility costs. so, if i can get an apartment for $1500 + hydro + internet, and it comes to around $1600, then i'll actually get the $1600 rather than the $1685.
this would then leave me with $1370-582 = $788. my rent is currently a little less than $800, and i pay $40/month for internet. i don't pay hydro. so, i have around $530/month. $250/month is a lot of money when you're poor, and it means i could actually get a real apartment in a real apartment building, if the program has reasonable turnover times.
with the extra $70 from the province, that would give me around $850/month to spend, which is a lot for me, but the exciting thing is that it's maybe a way out of this hell-hole i'm trapped in.
if i wait for actual subsidized housing, which i may not be able to do, what they do is set your rent at 30% of your income, which for me comes to $411. it would be officially non-smoking, but they would likely expect me to live in studio apartment or a small one-bedroom and may ask me to move around based on the needs of others. i may have to tolerate neighbours that are criminals or....people that don't understand western cultural values and aren't interested in them. i could further cram internet and hydro into the $582 amount, but they would reduce the allotment by whatever is left, giving me a maximum of $788 after the process, until the inflation boost next august.
this is a better option for me, especially if i can get into the system and find a nice two bedroom or large one bedroom for $1400ish.
there is apparently a higher vacancy rate in the high rises along the waterfront (which is what i want) at that price range that is just out of what i can afford without this program.
let's hope this is the way out of here and i can do it fast.
i'm sorry if i'm confusing people, but it's because you legitimately, honestly, truly really don't know what socialism is at all.
socialism is not about peace and love; socialism is about conflict. socialism is about history, and it's a theory of history that describes historical change as a process of violent class conflict. it is an algorithm for the violent overthrow of the state.
the hippie bullshit is actually burkean or voltairean conservatism, or in some cases actually buddhist woo, it's not socialism, and socialists are constantly annoyed and frustrated by people that won't fight for their interests or that won't acknowledge the perpetual class war.
smart socialists know you need to pick your allies (hint: not stalin) and you need to pick your battles so you have some chance of winning. running around amok in africa and ending up in jail for decades doesn't demonstrate much of a useful theory. however, socialism is still always a violent theory of revolutionary overthrow, it is not a peaceful one of co-existence or harmony.
if you want the peace and love, you are really a conservative and should be looking at the literature in the other pile, although there is a sneaky point, in that marx himself often supported conservatives over liberals, despite calling himself a liberal.
the media coverage of the debate is nonsensical and ridiculous and exactly what was obvious and should have been expected by everybody, but it demonstrates what the sad actual truth is - democrats really just wanted their candidate to be as rude as trump, so they could start winning again.
the best line of the night was when trump offered to send harris a maga hat.
i'm endorsing the green party as i usually do, except in the extreme situations of 2004 and 2016, but i'm not repeating the same mistake i made in 2016. the vote against bush in 2004 was worth pushing for. otherwise, there's no use in voting for democrats, because you never get anything worthwhile.
but, he's right.
what democrats have wanted these last ten years is their own trump and harris is the closest thing they've managed to put forth to it because biden just didn't have it in him to be so blatantly and transparently full of shit the way harris does.
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
i want to post an update on the status of this site and my writing, video, music and other art projects, in general.
i've been pointing out for roughly five years that somebody was trying to hack my sites and decided it was probably a government. i've restricted my suspects to the canadian, american, russian and saudi governments, but have long decided that the most likely suspect was my own government in canada, and that they may be trying to make it look like the russians or saudis as a decoy.
my house was purchased in the spring of 2023 and it took a few months for me to become certain that the house was bought by somebody connected to the state trying to take over my sites. they have also been trying to detransition me.
i am in a legal battle with these battle that i am trying to direct into a ticket into subsidized housing. i moved to windsor from ottawa in 2013 to seek a lower cost of living. this started to break up a little around 2018ish and by the end of the pandemic, it was clear that there was nowhere in this country that i could afford to exist in and live the lifestyle i want to live. i need to get into subsidized housing. i don't have any other solution.
in the mean time, i have a team of professional hackers sitting upstairs trying to break into my sites. they have literally broken into my apartment and stolen my passwords on several occasions. they have repeatedly drugged me with testosterone.
i am not going to be able to do anything in relation to any of these art projects until:
1) i'm able to get into a situation where i'm no longer being drugged. i can't function in any capacity when i'm under the influence of the drugs they're giving me.
2) my network is secure.
so, unfortunately, everything is on pause until i can shake these shitheads off, and i don't know how long that's going to take. moving is a necessary but perhaps not sufficient condition.
for this reason, i am hoping there's a change of government in canada as soon as possible, even if it's not in my economic self-interest in the long run.
it is disgusting and immoral to talk about negotiating with hamas, to propose making a deal with them or to suggest israel make concessions or consider a truce or ceasefire with them.
the correct language that the media and political negotiators should be using is "unconditional total surrender", not "cease fire" or "deal".
whatever you think of donald trump's involvement or lack thereof in the capitol hill storming (i don't think he committed any sort of crime and that the supreme court has been correct to throw away the lower court rulings), there's no question that richard nixon posed a far greater threat to democracy than trump has or ever will. claims that trump is the greatest threat to democracy since sliced bread are hyperbole and not based in evidence or facts.
i watched part of the debate and fell asleep half way through.
both of these candidates are peddling in conspiracy theories, half-truths and outright lies. the media will correctly tell you these things about trump, and not mention that they are also true about harris. the harris campaign has apparently picked up some kind of weird qanon type internet conspiracy called "project 2025". i believe trump when he says he hasn't read it, because trump doesn't read much. and these people are not trump people. frankly, most heritage foundation types would be more likely to vote for kamala harris, although they wouldn't have been likely to vote for joe biden.
there is one thing i'm picking up that is different about kamala harris and it should be substantive if it is your ballot issue. hillary clinton was not pro-choice; in fact, she supported a constitutional amendment to restrict roe v. wade. biden has clearly never been pro-choice, even as he has put on a facade as a pragmatic necessity, as a democrat. biden is old enough that he was elected before roe v. wade. i think a lot of young people don't even know that liberals and socialists that are today over the age of 80 are largely not pro-choice, but rather overwhelmingly consider abortion to be immoral. for example, have you ever heard chomsky talk about abortion? it's disorienting, to say the least, and this is chomsky - the captain of the self-ownership team. biden's positions on abortion are out of touch, and he knows it, so he kind of talks around it.
obama was also very wishy-washy on abortion rights:
kerry was personally opposed to abortion as a moral issue, but supported abortion rights, legally and politically. if you're pro-choice, do you find that convincing?
gore was outspokenly anti-abortion at one point:
harris is clearly pro-choice. no caveats. no subtleties. as far as i can tell, she is the first (major party) candidate for president that is clearly unambiguously pro choice, with no second-guessing it.
i have previously suggested to people to be careful about voting for democrats if your ballot issue is abortion as you might get something you're not expecting if you don't do your research. this is still true, at any level. but, harris is different than previous democrats on this issue, as she is believably pro-choice, and unambiguously so.
on every other issue, what i saw was a mess of lies and contradictions, and they both came off as unelectable.
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
my ears are fucked but they're getting better.
hey, maybe it's covid. really. as far as i know, i never had it, and i never got vaccinated at all.
i suspect i was actually one of the first people on the continent to get it; i think i picked it up at a plaid concert in detroit in december, 2019 [plaid having come to the us after a european tour], and that i unknowingly took it to toronto with me the next week. i initially thought it was the six paper joint handed to me as a persie at the armed show the night before, but now i think it was covid.
i think that was the last time i got noticeably sick at all. this is weird; sore throat, plugged ears, no cough. it's like being sick without being sick.
Monday, September 9, 2024
i wish i didn't have to do this, but every once in a while i get some stupid right-winger try to go after me about my comments about hitchens being misunderstood, and just prove my point in the process. there's a general argument and a specific one, and i try to argue at the level of the general because the level of the specific is so dubious, given that much of what hitchens published at the time was factually wrong and from dubious sources, indicating he kind of lost his mind. it's also frustrating to see how aggressive the right has become in trying to claim hitchens, given how upsetting his position at the time was.
i distinctly recall watching amy goodman outright balling and sobbing after listening to him speak c. 2002/2003. i was only barely old enough to really get it, but it must have been devastating to experience.
so, there is a specific argument that hitchens picked up from some bad sources, parrots the propaganda on the issue and isn't really very important. i don't want to argue about that 20 years later; it doesn't matter. what's more important is to try to argue why hitchens took this extreme shift, and to do that you have to really understand his underlying ideology, which was trostkyism.
i've pointed this out repeatedly: you don't get hitchens because you don't get that he was trots. in response, they tell me to read some bullshit article he published at world net daily or something, and i can't get through to the retards. why did he do that? because he was trots.
"but read this article that has this specific factoid that says...."
no. why did he write the fucking article? he was a fucking communist.
if you really hold to trotskyism, seriously, honestly, you want to support worldwide revolution at all times, and that is what it was about. hitchens decided that the worldwide revolution meant supporting the overthrow of saddam hussein. now, that wasn't thought through - not through a filter of engels and not via an analysis of reality on the ground - but that's what he did, and when pushed on it, as he was, he retreated to arguments along the lines of "well, democracy is messy. they need to figure it out.", which...
my argument is that he would have been right about iran. but, anybody and everybody saw this was not a correct analysis of iraq.
it is true the hitchens then published a lot of bullshit, most of which i did read but no longer remember, and most of which has no real historical value and should be and will be forgotten as a mistake at the end of his life. that doesn't matter. it doesn't matter where zarqawi slept in the years before 9/11, and it doesn't mater if there was yellow cake. hitchens was just in solidarity with his side and willing to jump on what advanced his argument, because he needed to be on a team.
his actual argument, and the actual reason he supported this, had nothing to do with that, it was about the perpetual revolution, and what he saw as a regime that, if overthrown, would allow for iraqi self-determination, because he was not a racist at all but in fact gave the arabs far more credit than they deserved, and far more credit than anybody else, including myself did. and he was wrong to give them that much credit, as they promptly proved him wrong.
he might not have been wrong and, in 100 years, maybe events will unfold in an unpredictable way that suggests he was on to something.
right now it looks like he was wrong and that iraq needed and still needs somebody to fill the vacuum left by saddam hussein and come in and mop up the islamists in the name of arab secularism, then hold the state like a leviathan until the iraq people are ready to move to the next stage.
the correct lesson from hitchens' great mistake is this: don't put your engels away so quickly.
Sunday, September 8, 2024
as i've pointed out repeatedly, the fundamental problem is that biden thinks he's solving the larger israel-palestine issue (ala camp david more so than oslo) rather than dealing with the particular problem in front of us, which is destroying hamas. he had a predefined plan in place when he took over office and has resisted the need to change it to reflect shifts in facts and reality. as a result, he's creating problems, not solutions.
he has consequently defined "success" as getting a peace treaty, which might have been fine even two years ago, but makes no sense after october 7th, which changed everything and which he's not reacting to.
the goal of the white house should be destroying hamas, not getting a peace deal between israel and gaza, and trying to aggressively enforce a pre-oct 7 reality on a government dealing with a foundational shift in reality should be and largely is being seen as disgusting.
this is some evidence that he's maybe accepting the new reality. but the best thing that the united states can do is speed this up by helping israel get to the finish line, and stop slowing it down by aggressively seeking this illusory peace deal.
what biden wants as an outcome - a solution to the broader conflct - is not going to happen before january but will require the elimination of hamas as a prerequisite.
the ndp are stepping away from the liberals and they are pointing to stalled legislation, which ought to be a good reason, but the reality is that ther polling is cratering, as they're seen as being a part of an unpopular government.
this is tricky in a three party system.
generally, a decrease in ndp support most benefits the liberals, and if you're familiar with thinking in the ndp, you might realize that a primary purpose of the coalition agreement was to prevent an election the conservatives would win.
had trudeau just fucked off years ago, the liberals might be in a better position. currently, there's no foreseeable outcome but another liberal minority, and a decrease in ndp support would indicate that they should call the election now and not wait.
the actual reality is that the leadership of the ndp would approve of that.
i think this is a more realistic map and i'm posting it for a reason.
if i were to predict an outcome today, it would be this:
even if harris wins all of the "sun belt" states, and even if she wins michigan, which i think is very likely, she still has to win one of {minnesota, wisconsin, pennsylvania} to win.
should harris focus on north carolina instead?
i woudn't advise it.
it's worth noting that kamala harris chose to release an endorsement by corporate ceos on the same day that biden signed an executive order on labour standards, undercutting the ability of these corporate ceos to hire illegal labour under the table.
it's as though she finds the idea of standing with workers to be embarassing and had to do some damage control, which is the status quo ante in the contemporary democratic party and in the liberal party of canada as well. if these workers were smart, they'd be managers and worth standing in solidarity with. right? who cares about dumb workers. they don't fund the party.
it sends a pretty clear message, if you're listening.
Saturday, September 7, 2024
broadly speaking, republicans and democrats rarely differ in their israeli policy and if biden has institued an actual shift of policy on israel it would be unlikely for any republican to overturn it. this is where the institutional reality of the two-headed monster is most real. when the policy shifts, it's not driven by partisan political considerations and doesn't reverse based on political objectives.
israel is a ballot issue, but it is generally outside of the political control of elected american civilian leaders and in the hands of centcom and the pentagon.
that said, i do not think that biden has created a real shift in policy but will be seen historically as an anamoly and frankly as an aberration. the role of the next president, whoever it is, is going to be to undo the foriegn policy mess that biden has left, not just in israel but throughout the world, and is going to rely heavily on the direction of the pentagon to do it. they may not even know this yet, but it probably doesn't matter, the policy will be virtually identical.
i would advise that american jews look at other ballot issues.
Friday, September 6, 2024
i want to get out in front of this.
the issues that and i others like me are dealing with are complex. i admit i signed up for this and am evading capitalism intentionally; i don't want in, i want out. i've made complicated choices designed to remove myself from the economy as much as possible, to boycott capitalist slavery as much as i can. others have had less choice.
out of control immigration is unquestionably a dominant factor in not just the cost of rent but the lack of availability of rental options. i want to be clear that the issue isn't just that the prices are so high, it's that the availability is so low. i have few to no options because there's almost nothing for rent because there's way too many people.
immigration is not the only factor but it's a gigantic one.
i don't blame this on immigrants, especially not poor people coming to work. i'm a little annoyed by more wealthy migrants coming here to buy property and jack up the rent, but we let them do it, and we created the situation for it.
rather, my scorn and contempt is for the political class that created this mess by deregulating the immigration system due to their faith in the religion of neo-liberalism, not the immigrants caught up in that scheme to lower labour costs. they're suffering from the over-population, too. don't blame the mexican guy over there that you've been forced by the government to compete with for food, blame the liberal party of canada for mismanaging the situation.
we are not likely to see the type of riots taking place in the uk, yet, but it's perhaps not far away. it's not just a right-wing backlash against weird customs. i'm a leftist that is pretty concerned that we're getting swamped by conservatives in ontario and doug ford, who was elected primarily by immigrants, is exhibit a. the riots in the uk are not rational but they are in response to a right-wing extremist from a foreign culture attacking some kids on a feminist rights issue. it should be leftists rioting in the streets over being swamped by conservative immigrants that are changing the culture for the worse, not right-wingers.
rather, what's potentially about to blow in canada is something more similar to the kind of riots you see in venezuela or india, which are just legitimately about over-population and the cost of living and legitimately about bad governance and government corruption.
you can buy a car in ontario without insurance or a license so long as you don't drive it.
like, say, if you park it in a parking lot and hang out in it all of the time.
you can get something that just barely works for under $1000.
i'm exploring contingency options surrounding how i can wait for subsidized housing without renting an apartment if i get evicted from this one. i'd have to put my items in storage for $~200/month. a car with doors that lock and heat that works is not the worst way to wait it out. you could leave a few things in there. like a fridge. maybe?
i would need to continue actually biking around with a bicycle as i can't drive, except maybe to move the car around the corner once in a while to evade the cops.
just don't tell anybody.
or you could send me money via that paypal donation link so i can think about a downpayment on a cheap house. i kind of need it right now.
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
the claritin was useless. i had to try. i should just throw it out.
but my ear is slowly unclogging. it was better this morning.
oddly, the fluid coming out is entirely odourless, indicating it probably isn't bacterial. so, what clogs your ears and eyes up, gives you migraines, gives you a sore throat and makes you exhausted besides strep throat?
- second-hand cigarette or marijuana smoke would do that but there's no enough of it
- or it's from meth manufacturing
ugh.
i have never done meth intentionally, although i suspect i've been drugged. why did i get targeted for this bullshit?
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
i'd rather see an online tool that can be accessed from everybody's phone and presents shelf prices for all items in a certain radius, and have the government mandate participation. this will take prices down.
if i want tropicana grapefruit juice in metro detroit (or windsor, on), i would enter it in the search field and it would tell me the up to date price of the item in all stores in the region.
not participating would attract heavy fines or loss of retail license.
i rarely take any kind of medication for anything. i really hate taking drugs. they prescribed me t2s (codeine) after the surgery to remove my testicles, and i didn't even fill the rx. i bought the over the counter tylenol with caffeine in it instead, because caffeine is more my thing. i have avoided cocaine like the plague because i know i'd like it but i hate feeling dopey and stupid. i'd rather just drink coffee like it's water and keep the effect toned down. i even take those caffeine tylenols for the brutal migraines i get (aura. aphasia. they knock me out for days.), when i've been offered narcotics for them, as well. fuck opiates; rape them and send them to hell. but, i could get an rx for a dozen habit-forming drugs with a phone call, and there's something horribly wrong with that.
i have a package of 10 capsules of normal claritin (i made sure i got normal claritin, not the creepy stuff with fucking meth in it) that i bought in 2017, which expired in 2019 and which had eight capsules left, until this morning.
it's not dangerous to take expired loratadine, right? it might not work as well. that's a good thing. i hope it works enough that it stops hurting but it's been building up for a while and i am truly a little worried. i also got some rx eye drops a few weeks ago to deal with some conjunctivitis and the fact that the drops worked indicates it was bacterial. a nasty bacterial infection that gets both your eyes and ears suggests it's potentially in your brain. i did some research on the eye drops and they're apparently toxic in your ears, but i may try to swab the outside.
i don't currently have other symptoms; my eyes were gunking up for a while, i had a sore throat a while back and now my left ear is so clogged it's wired shut, which is exactly what my eyes did. there's some strep going around, but i'm inside all of the time.
rather, i suspect i'm suffering side effects of the meth lab upstairs and i just want to document it for civil reasons. i need to get out of here, but it's very hard right now.
stages of grief:
1. denial
2. anger
3. bargaining
4. depression
5. acceptance
the israeli protesters are somewhere in stages 1-3.
from wikipedia
Bargaining – The third stage involves the hope that the individual can avoid a cause of grief. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. People facing less serious trauma can bargain or seek compromise. Examples include the terminally ill person who "negotiates with God" to attend a daughter's wedding, an attempt to bargain for more time to live in exchange for a reformed lifestyle or a phrase such as "If I could trade their life for mine".
from the article:
at the service of Almog Sarusi, a 27-year-old who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, his mother said: "You were sacrificed on the altar of defeating Hamas, of Rafah, of the Philadelphi Corridor. Enough, no more. Only a deal!”
does mommy have a proposal for hamas? what does this unelected woman want to offer to hamas to save her son, on behalf of the israeli state?
in truth, she does not. she is demanding that the israeli government wave a magic wand and save her son from death at the hand of extremist subhuman terrorists seeking to extract unrealistic concessions. her demands are unreasonable and irrational, but in fact they don't even exist. she doesn't have a plan. she is merely experiencing grief and unable to process the trauma of it. biden is, unfortunately, stringing her and those like her along, because he wants to remove netanyahu from power because he's a conservative. it's a terrible policy driven by the most cynical type of partisan politics.
the united states should be bombing gaza and helping israel to destroy hamas, itself.
hamas is the criminal and the cause of the deaths, but biden is the cause of the problem. for biden to even suggest that israel should make any concession to hamas at all is outrageous and disgusting and it really makes you wonder if he's selling weapons to iran or not.
netanyahu is on the right side of history. biden will be recorded as one of the worse presidents of all time and his disastrously stupid policy in the middle east will be a primary reason for it.
it's just a few more months before the idiot president is removed from office and while he should go directly to jail for negotiating with terrorists he certainly won't. let him die discredited and humiliated and alone, at the least.
Monday, September 2, 2024
generative music algorithms are not something new. brian eno was somewhat of a pioneer in the idea in the 1970s, but his own ideas have roots in the ideas of composers like iannis xenakis in the middle of the last century, which come out of serialism. musicians have been trying to destroy the book on music theory since the day after it was written.
i have used algorithms to create music as well, most prominently on this record, released in late 2000:
https://jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj.bandcamp.com/album/deny-everything-lp-4th-record-sample-free-instrumental-remaster
the last track, acidosis, features live performances (piano, guitar, bass, organ, synth, mandolin, flute) and algorithms generating sound via midi sequencing (drums, synthesizers, noise generators) and is very much a collaboration between myself and the computer.
my high school music teacher in the mid 90s was fond of a computer program called "jazz in a box" that would generate midi patterns using ai algorithms. how real it sounded depended on how real the sound fonts were, not on the underlying computer program.
i would be more concerned about midi sequencing + sampling technology taking the jobs of session musicians for instruments outside of standard band instrumentation. as a composer, i can afford to tell a computer to play a violin part, but i can't afford to hire a violin player. maybe i could find a friend that would do it for free. if i was a major production studio, i would be able to afford it but wouldn't want to if i didn't have to. sampling is a more serious threat than ai, but it's also progress in the sense of maximizing compositional flexibility and creative options in real-time spontaneity during the composing process.
no, i am a realist. i like facts, truth. and i'm brutal, yes. i'm not interested in magical thinking or prayer or hope or faith.
the volume of water in the glass is equal to 50% of the total volumetric capacity of the glass, presumably at room temperature and at sea level (nobody ever specifies that).
and hamas is a bloodthirsty terrorist group that only a fool would try to negotiate with.
there's not going to be a deal to release the hostages and pretending that there is going to be one is just wasting everybody's time and putting the lives of those that remain alive in greater danger of ending before they can be rescued. the reality is that they are going to be exploited for maximum profit and then killed by their captive murderers, unless the idf can get there first and release them.
the real narrative is that the idf is faced with a race against time to rescue them before they are killed. there will be no "negotiation".
this is why it is against the law in the united states to negotiate with terrorists and why biden should be impeached for negotiating with hamas.
a small percentage may be lucky enough to get rescued. most will not be.
this is the actual choice facing the israeli government in terms of what they are actually able to do: to make decisions allocating resources expended on rescue operations, to determine what is feasible and what may backfire.
it may turn out that these six people were killed because the idf was on it's way there. that just demonstrates the point - there is no way out other than through special operations by the idf, when they are feasible. they were never going to be released. they were always going to be killed when it was most beneficial for hamas to do so.
it's not a question of trying to prioritize a hostage deal vs fighting hamas, as though hamas is willing to just hand back the hostages if you were to ask them nicely. this is a false narrative being irresponsibly presented by the media.
the nature of hamas' demands makes a negotiation virtually impossible. they are demanding things like the release of mass murderers (and what are they going to do if you release them? kill more jews. that would be a losing interaction) and the recognition of a sovereign state in gaza, which is a ridiculous proposition.
everybody wants the hostages released but so long as hamas holds to absurd demands and insists on trying to extort concessions the process is a nonstarter and the outcome is impossible. it is a more realistic tactic to get the hostages back by forcing hamas to surrender via the use of overwhelming force than it is to expect them to release the hostages in exchange for one of their nonsensical demands.
history will understand this; that's not a real choice, it's a false narrative that doesn't actually exist.
i'm not exactly a bassist; in fact, i've been (by far) the best guitarist in every room i've ever been in when i've been asked to play bass, which is just the point. you know a guitarist is capable when they can also play bass. a guitarist that can't play bass should be told the truth, which is that they need to go back to guitar school. i'm not ashamed of repeatedly playing bass in scenarios where i'm in a room with five arrogant macho loser guys that claim to play guitar, and of which none of them know what an augmented chord is.
but this idea that nobody cares about bass players is bollocks.
bass players people have cared about:
- paul mccartney
- brian wilson
- roger waters
- blixa bargeld
- geddy lee
- mike watt
- lemmy
- kim deal
- kim gordon
- tony iommi (sorry.)
- jack bruce
- sting
- flea
like, i'm just getting started.
"nobody cares about the bassist" is a legit stupid comment. in rock music, especially, bass is incredibly important and it runs across sub-genres. even most pop bands that everybody agrees are driven strongly by their singers (like nirvana or green day) would be essentially unlistenable with less talented bassists. people might not know it if they don't understand music, but they would not have gotten anywhere without their respective bassists. kurt cobain would have been a mail order gigolo without krist novoselic writing riffs for him.
if anybody ever tells you that to their face, take their beer out of their hand and dump it on their head for me, then tell them jessica told you to do it.
Sunday, September 1, 2024
what netanyahu needs to do is buy hamas a pony. then they'll let the hostages go.
there's a point where the stages of grief lift and logic reasserts itself and these people protesting in israel are having a great deal of difficulty getting there. hamas is demanding things it can't have and then killing people when it doesn't get it's way.
there's only one entity here that is responsible for these deaths and it is hamas.
marijuana is entirely legal in canada, and be careful what you wish for.
first, the quality of the legal pot is horrific. marijuana is supposed to be fun; the stuff you get in the store here is genetically engineered as a pain reliever to replace codeine or something stronger and it just makes you numb and exhausted. it's not any fun at all. it's just a sleep aid; you just fall asleep.
worse, you can tell it's designed to be more addictive than the street variety. just trust me on that point.
i've smoked quite a bit of pot in my life. really. but i like to keep it out of the house. marijuana should be smoked at concerts and bars with friends or strangers, not in your living room by yourself. it's a party drug; smoking pot by yourself is disgusting and pitiful and lame. there's nothing more disgusting than putting a book down at 2:00 pm on a wednesday afternoon and realizing your neighbours are smoking a bong that smells like a skunk being anal raped and just overwhelms the whole room. it's utterly disgusting, and if it's legal there's nothing you can do about it.
what we did wrong in canada is that we legalized it without passing bylaws minimizing or outright banning municipal use. i don't think you should be allowed to smoke anything at all or even have a barbecue in a residential neighbourhood. tobacco, marijuana, steak, whatever - it's all smoke and none of it belongs in a residential space. go to a park or a party or a bar or something.
we've also let the marijuana industry get out of control and, like the tobacco industry before it, it's going to end up liable for a lot of cancer deaths resulting from a product that is designed to be addictive.
i consequently think i agree more with trump, from what i can see.
Saturday, August 31, 2024
so, what's the math on this?
harris, at least for now, is polling better amongst black voters. so, she might do a little better in michigan and certainly georgia. north carolina is probably a stretch.
however, she's doing much worse amongst white voters, which is going to hurt her not just in wisconsin, pennsylvania and probably minnesota, but apparently in oregon, in new hampshire, in new jersey and potentially in new york.
democrats are notoriously bad at math and they should have worked this out with a computer rather than trying to do it in their head. in fact, this outcome was obvious and predictable, but they are consistently terrible at this shit.
the media is going to keep throwing national polling at you, and harris might win the popular vote, but it is utterly meaningless.
in canada, it's hockey. i'm lucky i never went through that. but, they wake these kids up at 6 am and force them to spend hours skating around in circles, and tell them their future depends on it.
then they end up shoveling ditches because they never learned how to read.
we need to have a serious cultural discussion about getting competitive sports out of the class room and finding ways to generate young men that are more focused on their minds.
otherwise, the chinese are going to slowly beat the shit out of us and laugh at us as they do so.
today, i look at this guy tim walz, and i say to myself.
how many young men did this man remove from math and science class at a young age, and how many of them are infinitely worse off for it today?
if we're going to elect a teacher, why don't we elect a physics or math or economics or history teacher instead? why don't we elect a professor? there's one running, you know.
because we're idiots.
that's the simple truth.
yes, when i was in the ninth grade, i made the football team. but i would have never gone to tryouts if i thought i'd make the team and then i quit without playing a game. i was not in the starting lineup.
the problem is that i had a jock father. he played all of the sports in high school, so he naturally thought i'd want to. not so. at all. i thought sports were a stupid, boring waste of time and i hated competing and i hated competitive people. he also thought it would "boost my self esteem", which is what he thought was "wrong with me", rather than realizing i was just a girl and just wasn't interested in competition.
he basically ordered me to try out for the football team and when i told him i wasn't really interested in it he told me it was for my own good.
i took the path of least resistance. i reasoned there was no actual likelihood of making the team anyways, so it would be in my self-interest to get cut to prove the point. unfortunately, i kept going and i repeatedly didn't get cut. ottawa had a deficit of schools in the suburbs at the time, so they had to ship us into town, and he would consequently pick me up on his way home from work. i caught him talking to the coach once or twice when i was off elsewhere, and i think he actually talked him into it.
this was a frustrating situation for me. it mattered less when the tryouts and practices were after school and i was willing to humour him so long as it didn't affect my school work, and on the presumption that i'd get cut anyways. but, when i found myself on the team, i was all of a sudden expected to miss math and science classes (something important) to play football games (something stupid), which i didn't realize was going to be the case (i was in grade 9. i didn't care about football. i didn't know the games were during the school day. why do they do that? it's terrible.) and which i decided was idiotic. i wasn't going to be one of the dumb kids that skipped math class to play sports. i was embarrassed by the stupidity of the prospect of taking smart kids out of science class to tell them to run around on a field like retards. no fucking way.
so, i quit on the day of the first game, which was scheduled at the same time as math class, and went to math class instead.
i think it was unquestionably the smart thing to do, although it backfired slightly because my math teacher noticed and sent me to gifted classes for grade 10, which i did not want to do. however, it took my dad quite a while to get over the fact that his child was more interested in academics than sports.
this is why i don't breed:
i bring this up because this is the same kind of issue that's been annoying me for years. even after high school, i'd meet people that would remind me i was on the football team, "right?". no! i wish they didn't think that about me. that wasn't the reputation i wanted.
i wanted you to know i did well in math class; that was the reputation i wanted. but, nobody said that.
the government keeps promising to plant a lot of trees and never does, and that sounds like the best thing it can do both in response to this and due to the fact that we have such a vast surface area, but this is just one way that it's tricky.
there's a lot of methane released in those fires up north, too, which are partly being caused by increased temperatures. so, this is the start of those feedback cycles we were warned would start (checks freckle on back of wrist) right about now.
i just heard that taylor swift has prepared her endorsement for madonna's re-election bid as president* of italy with a prepared duet of the classic madonna track (don't ever ever) express yourself (in the new italy).
wait.
what?
listen, kids. taylor's fun. i get it. but you should decide who you want to vote for yourself. it's actually tricky because they're both terrible in different ways, so you need to sit down and figure out which one scares you the most (or the least) in which way. are taylor swift fans more concerned about owning their uterus or baby killing? i dunno. are they more concerned about nuclear war with russia or being soft on islamic extremism? i dunno. or you could just forget it and watch pinnochio and masturbate, instead. whatever.
i hope she does something bold like endorse jill stein, instead. that's my suggestion.
*yeah, i know it's prime minister.
the reality is that, in a society where people are increasingly individualistic, increasingly disinterested in family (not just having kids, but also having parents), increasingly disillusioned by labour and increasingly disinterested in religion, the style of politics presented by harris and waltz is increasingly alienating to wide, broad swaths of the voting population, which are in the very core of what democrats need to win. this was a bad tactic 20 years ago, a worse tactic 10 years ago and a dumb tactic today.
when harris loses, everybody should blame it on nancy pelosi, and the party should ask itself why it listened to an 84 year old when she insisted an 82 year-old was too old to make decisions.
it'll be better in the long run.
the democrats need to clean house from the top down. like, they need a figurative blood bath. a liquidation sale. a viking house burning (read the sagas. that's how they do it. every time.). everything must go.
i watched the harris interview and i think she came off terribly. if the claim is that she's a cynical, flip-flopping opportunist with no clearly defined political views, she just absolutely proved it correct. i would not even consider voting for her.
but, i'm about five positions to the left of kamala harris on the spectrum and she is not trying to appeal to people like me. she is not trying to convince me to vote for her. i'm not in her potential voting demographic.
that's fine. really.
i just doubt she has the ability to generate enough conservative support and mainstream cultural excitement amongst people that are essentially apolitical in the regions that it matters, if she has no intention to generate enthusiasm on the political left, as she clearly doesn't. as mentioned previously, i think we're going to see some new swing states present themselves in this election, and that pelosi and others essentially misread bad numbers in these areas as being tied to biden when they're actually connected to a larger level of voter apathy within a system that doesn't effect any meaningful change.
if michigan - especially michigan. particularly michigan. - was a canary in 2016, the democrats didn't get it. i mean, they reacted, but they didn't understand.
expect some similar surprises, because we've seen this film before and we know how it ends.
i both listen to and compose primarily electronic music. that's not some kind of hidden truth or some kind of surprise.
industrial music comes out of the punk scene but it has major overlaps with the development of house music in both the uk and the us (particularly in chicago). by the early 90s, wax trax was releasing uk exports on warp and vice versa.
the "techno" i've been listening to over the last few weeks includes side projects by members of industrial bands like throbbing gristle (via coil, download), skinny puppy (cyberaktif, download, skinny puppy, plateau, the tear garden, doubting thomas and also download member dead voices on air), die warzau (die warzau, eco-hed) and frontline assembly (delerium, econoline crush). i was also listening to some cocteau twins a few weeks ago, which isn't quite industrial, but was listened to by the same people that listened to industrial. there was some cop shoot cop (including contributions by jim thirlwell) and david bowie (a pop artist all these people consider as influential and that worked in an industrial techno space in the 90s) in there, too. i'm currently listening to an industrial pop band called econoline crush. next in the list is einsturzende neubauten, the german industrial pioneers that survived on nick cave royalties.
it is techno; the observation is correct. in fact, it's some of the most creative and important techno ever released, and it comes directly out of important historical techno scenes in the uk, us and canada. however, it essentially all has the point in common that it is foundational techno made after 1985 by seminal industrial artists of the 70s and 80s.
however, i don't have any detroit techno in my cd collection for the reason that it didn't have an overlap with industrial scenes in cities like chicago, vancouver and london. there wasn't much of a creative industrial component of the detroit techno movement, and i'm not going to speculate on it, but i suspect that it had something to do with race. while i've been here, the industrial clubs are empty, while the techno clubs are overflowing. i have been to both, but i can see where the party is and isn't.
i've had most of these cds for over 25 years and have kept them because they're some of my favourite records.
i am sorry if you thought otherwise, but that's your misperception of me and not something else. anybody that actually knows me at all knows that 70% of my cd collection is electronic music. further, essentially all of my original music is electronic music. there's no surprise there, but i do realize that there is a misperception based on a false projection that is not of my own making.
i like some rock bands, too, albeit mostly older ones. sure. i also listen to a lot of jazz and a lot of classical music. however, i like more electronic music and i always have. further, i have never liked loud or angry heavy metal bands or stupid flashy hair metal and there is really nothing like that at all in my cd collection or in my own discography.
back when i was able to go out and have fun, i would often go see a rock band from 20:00-23:00 or something and then spend the rest of the night, say from 00:00-6:00, in an all night dance club. i did that like a hundred times or something. a couple of times, i was even able to get to the morning symphony afterwards and get blasted by beethoven or debussy or ravel or rachmaninov before it was time to go back home. people that saw me in the early show might not have realized how much time i spent out dancing and vice versa, but i'm not interested and don't care.
i mean, ask some of the people in the club scene if they thought i was into punk rock or heavy metal. they would laugh at you. i was just a hot blonde chick out dancing. the truth is i was both, but i was living two lives, and i really spent more time dancing than at rock concerts, partly because it's the 21st century and rock music has been dead for decades while electronic music is still thriving.
Friday, August 30, 2024
it seems to me like this is a strong argument to keep one or both of the existing hospitals open after the new one gets built.
the downtown campus should remain open. closing it is crazy. that building will just fall apart.
this is what happened to the last hospital site that closed in windsor:
do you want that at erie and ouellette?
Thursday, August 29, 2024
the ambassador is living in the wrong century.
news, today, is global, or at least multinational. it's not truly global; i don't read much news from latin america or africa or china, but i could. an english speaker is going to get their news equally from the united states, canada, australia, the uk, israel, south africa, india and a handful of major european countries including france, germany and probably turkey, regardless of where they physically are in the anglosphere. they may also get some news from russia, china, qatar or iran, amongst others.
your average english speaker knows where they're from but identifies more as a global citizen in a broad alliance than a member of any specific country. these are good things, broadly, as it expands the reach of the english culture and creates a larger sense of cultural identity than these provincial villages we call countries.
hope they get him next.
what kind of psychotic lunatic urges his own people to kill themselves when they're on the brink of total destruction? it's like the japanese emperor near the end of world war two, and there's a reason america had to use the bomb to make them surrender. it's an idea that's worth applying towards palestine.
if we treated the palestinians in 2024 the same way we treated the japanese or germans in 1944, maybe we'd be making some real progress in getting rid of these assholes.
Wednesday, August 28, 2024
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
it would really be a lot more helpful to the americans if they had the russians on their side, which is the position the russians would prefer, and which is the most important lesson in the history of history, and something the neocons including biden have somehow refused to understand or learn.
because they're dumb.
you don't want to fight the russians. nothing good comes from fighting the russians. you want an alliance with russia.
and i want to correct something.
the chinese don't see russian weakness as a liability. the chinese see russian weakness as an opportunity. if russia is weak and america is weak, that means it's time for china to strike.
there's no alliance there. china doesn't believe in alliances; it's china versus the world.
this was something that obama got right and hillary clinton understood but couldn't execute: you have to project strength as a president of the united states in this world.
biden, harris and trump all project weakness, and their voters are concerned about domestic policy.
it's going to be a hard five years for the american empire, one way or another.
when it rains it pours.
this was predictable (and was predicted, by me), given the weak state of leadership in the united states, which is a situation that mirrors the george w. bush presidency.
this is the problem with kamala - her domestic policy might be marginally better than trump's, but the world doesn't respect her. and we're really in no better a position than we were before biden stepped down, whatever the feeling is amongst democratic partisans.
the presidency is supposed to be a foreign policy position first and foremost and the united states is facing a major crisis in that position right now. biden is a foreign policy incompetent and always has been. harris looks like more of the same to the rest of the world. trump proved in his first term that he was a paper tiger, all bluster and no bite. his bluff is blown. this is broadcasting an easy target to the rest of the world.
the pentagon probably needs to get harris in charge now and have her convince the rest of the world that she's strong enough, tough enough and, goddamnit, people fear her, in order to prevent a global catastrophe. six more months of biden is just an invitation to encroach in the united states' sphere, while it's too weak to react.
the united states should stop acting as a mediator and end it's efforts to produce a cease fire and instead help israel get the job done and get this over with. what the united states is doing is just prolonging the process and extending and maximizing the punishment. a couple of quick naval strikes would get this over with in a week.
biden and blinken will not be interpreted well by history. this is a horrible and incompetent policy, but that's the expectation from biden.
ok.
so long as the idf is demonstrating some kind of progress in dismantling hamas, i want to avoid criticizing them. it's not pleasant to see and understand what is happening in gaza, but i understand that these people voted for a terrorist group to govern them, and this is kind of what they deserve as a consequence of that.
let it be a lesson to the whole world: stop supporting terrorism. this is what happens when you support terrorism; this is what will keep happening, if you continue to.
however, in recent weeks, and notwithstanding the assassination of the group's leader in faraway iran, after having ventured away from his cozy retreat in qatar, i have not seen much progress. the idf is chasing civilians around from place to place while it blows this or that up, which must be a very hellish existence. these people are not innocent and i do not want this misconstrued as a plea to protect the innocent, because they can't and shouldn't be analyzed or interpreted that way. but, i never did and never would support a merely punitive operation designed to torture and harass, no matter how guilty the population may be. collective punishment is indeed a war crime, and while these definitions are difficult to apply to the context, israel is getting to the point where it's pushing it too far.
i'm not calling for a cease fire.
i'm calling for israel to eliminate the remaining hamas leadership and hurry up and get 'er done. israelis may be developing resolve, and they should, but the international audience needs to see more progress. it's not going to tolerate a prolonged campaign of collective punishment for the sake of raining hellfire on the wretched. this can't be aimless torture. they need to finish the job and liquidate what is left of hamas.
however, israel should not pull away from the border with egypt, and probably not for decades. a long term consequence of what the palestinians did on october 7th needs to be a near permanent loss of sovereignty over the border with egypt, and everybody is going to have to deal with that. this issue should be revisited a generation or two from now.
Monday, August 26, 2024
shouldn't "little jon" nowadays be calling himself "old ass man jon"?
i'm just looking through the dnc performers list. they want to run on empty fumes because they expect harris' policies to fall flat amongst....everybody. i get it. she didn't do well in the primaries for a reason; she has a conservative record and ran as a "progressive", so she scared everybody off. she has no real tactic, if she starts talking policy. she's absolutely right to avoid it, if she wants to win.
it's less that she's going to push people to vote for trump and more that if she goes out and talks that she's going to generate voter cynicism, which suppresses turnout.
so, we're not having an election, we're having a party. just don't forget to put the crack pipe down to vote. remember to vote!
remember!
remember?
it's just that this party is kinda lame, if you ask me. it's like somebody purposefully made a list of the most washed up, overrated pop stars of the last 50 years and put them altogether. the only thing they missed was hall & oates.
like, i wouldn't go to that party.
i'm just not thinking this is going to work out.
tariffs are neither bad nor good, but they are hard.
canada exports 98% of it's steel to the united states or mexico. if the united states asked us to put up a tariff on chinese steel, we probably should.
however, the policy may lead to inflation in electronics and other luxury goods.
i wouldn't expect that china would put up a tariff on, say, canadian wheat, as that would just hurt it's own people. chinese retaliation is likely to be outside of the realm of trade, but our relations with china probably couldn't get much worse than they've been recently, anyways.
i'm going to conclude that the steel tariff, in concurrence with an american tariff on chinese steel, is a reasonable policy.
i don't think the data ever supported this policy in the first place, but they have to do this as a bare minimum so thankfully they are doing it.
i pointed out previously that you couldn't take them seriously until they re-regulated the process, and this is incomplete, but it's at least a bit of good news.
the cold reality is that no amount of intervention will prevent them from dying on the street, in the long run. but i don't want to see an industry develop around prolonging the life of addicts for weeks or months, which is what has been happening.
the cold, logical reality is that you need to either round them up and put them in jail or you need to wash your hands of it and let them flounder and die. anything in between may be well meaning but is just going to fail.
it's easy to predict what the government in alberta is going to come up with, and it's sending them to church to "find god" and "help themselves", and, frankly, albertans should be annoyed at such a waste of their tax dollars. but, i'd like to see somebody get this right, and it's not going to be a liberal government that does, in the end.
it's intervention or bust, but you have to intervene with intent and with force and you have to stick to it, and i'm not sure that a government in canada could actually do that without trampling all over the constitution. you would have to bring in draconian drug laws at the federal level, first. and, maybe the truth is that we should.
there's been a lot of racist claims recently that jews are lighter skinned than (some) palestinians because they're actually all poles and ukrainians while the palestinians are indigenous, but have you gotten a look at what a lebanese person looks like?
the answer is almost identical to a white jew, and the lebs were never expelled from the region, although one will note that, unlike almost everybody else in the region, they're also roughly half christian. i haven't seen a study, but it would be an obvious observation that the whiter lebs correlate with the christians, while the darker skinned lebs are mostly muslims.
there's a reason for this, and it's that the region was in fact mostly lighter skinned up until the arab migration c. 700. roman palestine and greek and iranian israel/judah were pretty white places. the lebs and jews are both the remnant of that ancient population, which was displaced by war and disease and partially replaced. these three subpopulations of white lebanese christians, white jews and white palestinians are the people that were actually there first, while the arabs moved in relatively late in history and brought a large number of african slaves with them, which darkened the skin of certain clans.
i'm just noticing this as i see pictures of lebanese politicians in the news. even the muslim ones basically look like italians, not arabs.
Friday, August 23, 2024
i did not watch the democratic convention and am not really interested.
but there was a cartoon in the 90s that seemed to be rather prophetic about the direction of the democratic party in the 2020s.
a cynical political atheist and disenfranchised socialist may have little choice but to interpret contemporary democrats like a bunch of stimpies.
it's like tipper gore had too many litters of children.
Thursday, August 22, 2024
labour action is always required to set things right again after the bourgeoisie steals a chunk of money from the working class via inflation.
it is important to stand with the rail workers as they fight to reverse the cash grab by management and restore their relative wages.
further, the bourgeois class should understand they are on notice: there will be further action, and there must be. management cannot be allowed to steal wages from workers, the workers must set things right, across the economy.
expect widespread labour action and lengthy strikes over the next two to three years in order to claw back the wage theft embedded in the recent round of inflation. this is how our system of class warfare operates, and these battles are required and necessary and good.
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
i spent something like three months yelling at the russians to take out the bridges over the dnieper, but they apparently didn't want to rebuild them. the russians are of the opinion that destroying infrastructure in ukraine is "barbaric", as they have intended from the start to take the country in tact.
frankly, i'm left to conclude that the russians haven't been taking this seriously and haven't been legitimately trying to win this war and this could go down in history as a very serious error. the ukrainians have no such qualms and have consistently done any sneaky dirty thing they can to win or advantage themselves against a clearly superior foe.
this is technically a war crime, but nobody is going to care.
conversely....do the ukrainians want the russians to actually start trying to win this war? if so, they should keep it up. this is a foolish escalation by a foolish government.
this is why the bourgeois left is getting skinned alive everywhere on the ground right now.
ctv is not the best broadcaster in canada, but this short article should be everybody's memo everywhere tomorrow morning. these are absurd drops in the standard of living, and everybody knows they were worse in 2023 and are going to be even worse in 2024 and even worse in 2025 unless government steps in with substantive policy changes.
Monday, August 19, 2024
i'm a revolutionary socialist.
i don't support any of the capitalist parties, and the fence-sitting position the democrats are taking on hamas is one of the symptoms of why i could never support them, as a socialist.
any actual socialist would have no patience for a barbaric, fascist, right-wing group like hamas and be far more brutal with them than the israelis are being.
as a socialist, my critique for the bourgeois left is that they are not being aggressive enough against right-wing islamic extremism, not that they are being too aggressive against it.
what's going on is that people are confused about language, and that isn't new. what people want to call left-wing in the united states (people like bernie sanders) are actually conservatives, not socialists. they are better on some issues than other other capitalists (conservatives have historically had support for social systems), and arguably worse on others (their foreign policy is at times awful), but they are not leftist and not socialists. progressivism has always been a branch of conservatism, and the democrats have always been the conservative party in the american spectrum.
i am not a progressive. at all. i don't claim i am; i am forceful about rejecting that label. i try to stay very far away from what that word represents, nowadays. i am a socialist. i do often call myself a liberal, but carefully, and only in specific contexts.
i have frequently endorsed the green party, and i've at times been critical of democratic party propaganda (i would rank trump as a better president than biden, a better president than reagan and a better president than george w. bush, but not as a better president than obama, and as about the same as clinton. he's in the middle of the pack of the last dozen presidents, not the worst. i argued very clearly that trump was less of a threat to world peace than biden and i think i was right, but that is a reflection of how horrible a candidate biden has been since day one, and not a kind word directed at trump or his policies.), but i've never endorsed the republican party and it's not likely that i will any time soon. i don't usually endorse the democrats, either.
as somebody outside of the current spectrum, the way i tend to explain it is that i have an equal level of disagreement with republicans and democrats, but i disagree with them on different issues. if you did a survey and asked me to rank 100 of their positions, i would disagree with about 70 positions taken independently by each individual party, but they would be different positions. i am strongly opposed to recent democratic party foreign policy, but i disagree strongly with the republicans on climate policy. both are potentially apocalyptic. one is not less dangerous than the other. the difference between how i approach this and and how most other people do is that i'm supposed to layer the disagreement, i'm supposed to consider my disagreement with the republicans as more fundamental or foundational than my disagreement with the democrats, but i don't. i really disagree with them equally.
i'm going to hate whoever wins equally much.
the data continues to point to a likely trump victory, in my analysis. however, it would probably be better for the country to have generational change, even if it doesn't result in a substantive change in policy. i don't think that's going to happen. kamala harris is less of an old lady, but she's still an old lady; she will carry out her second term past the retirement age, if she wins.
i would hope that the next election is between much younger people in their 40s that have legitimately new perspectives. this could have been better, but biden held on too long, and it's not going to be an actual turnover, one way or the other.
bezos doesn't like wage and price controls, it seems.
i don't think this is a serious political issue, but the fact that harris has gifted it as a talking point to the right is reflective of her low talent as a politician, and why she could have never made it to this point on her own.
this is going to happen; harris is going to say something stupid and it is going to hurt her dramatically, but it's an open question just how badly. not enough people are going to take the bogeyman of a centralized price setting agency seriously (although it would actually be very easy to implement. you'd just need to merge the systems. they're all the same.), but she should really try a little harder to keep her foot out of her mouth.
i missed this on friday.
this is a step forwards away from biden's messaging about job creation, which is probably what was killing him while he oversees three separate wars (and pretends there aren't any in the debates). the columnist is correct to point out that stimulating specific demand - whether it be in the form of free daycare money, free downpayment money, specific rent subsidies, etc - is just going to raise prices.
yet, harris wants to win some votes, so she's trying to buy some. i hear voters are on sale. this is good bargain hunting. what's a girl supposed to do?
there's a contradiction here. harris' policies are essentially designed for demographics she's going to win anyways. not only is it not a good economic policy, but it won't actually swing many voters, either.
she's got the right idea, but the implementation is all wrong, in both ways. this kind of stimulus, which is needed because we are entering a recession from the interest rate hikes, should go not to the middle classes but the working poor and the even poorer than that. further, these are the voters that harris is going to have the most difficulty with; they're the right people to try to bribe.
it's also worth noting that giving money to the poorest people also requires less handed out in total, because they don't need things like $25,000 tax breaks. my gross yearly income is about $17,000, canadian. a $5000 check would allow me to move out of a bad situation brought on by greedy new landlords. of course i don't live in the united states but you get the point.
there's a sweet spot to maximize economically if you're really lazer focused on the economy so you're not paying off debt, but a politician winning votes should be less concerned about that and just seeking to focus on voters with a relatively low floor.
there's a lot of ways to sell that, but the reality is that this recent round of inflation is the last straw in a process that has led to ever higher concentrations of wealth extracted from the poorest people. it's long overdue to reverse it, and it's probably at a breaking point where you have to.
i mean, just look at the other candidate.
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