i'm agnostic on 9/11 so i'm just going to skip over it.

but, what you have to realize is that the russian-american proxy conflicts that are starting to get very hot are not an externality to the conflicts. this is a russian containment strategy, as was laid out in the pnac. it was this idea that america had to strike hard while russia was weak, because the collapse of the soviets was not an end of anything but merely a pause in a broad struggle. and, if you understand it properly, that struggle didn't begin in 1917 or 1945, either - it was a consequence of the napoleonic wars, which split europe into spheres of interest that were dominated by england and russia. there's a consistent strain of thought that the reason us industry funded hitler so generously is that it was hoping they would invade russia. if you look at the issue in ukraine closely, it's essentially an updated and modernized version of the same tactic.

the countries that they've been taking out are all old russian proxies. it's a process of plucking these areas out of the russian sphere and integrating them into the anglo-american sphere.

what has changed since libya is that the russians have made a decision to stop being naive. and, that is what the russians were: naive. they were convinced that whomever replaced bush would be more moderate, and that it was just a process of waiting the neo-cons out. but, they've realized that this was an error and have adjusted.

it's not a new war. and, if it's world war three, then world war three started a long time ago. it's the same war that's been raging for decades, and in fact centuries. and, it will neither end nor recede at any time in the near future.

history may not blame america. it may argue that any other state would have done the same thing under the same calculation that russia would not remain weak forever. however, it will certainly point to a missed opportunity by the clinton administration to push peace and co-operation rather than imperial dominance and self-interest.

if i were roman, i'd never forget this. it would play over in my head over and over. and, while the relationship may last a little longer, it would end at this moment.

i wouldn't be able to get over the plausibility (and i think, really, the likelihood) that the "prank" is a way to cover-up for the fact that she had to take a shower. see, otherwise, he's going to get home and wonder why she just took a shower while buddy was there.

as an aside, i don't like this fousey guy. at all.

i would quietly check the laundry for evidence. and, if the laundry is running before i got there, i would interpret it as incriminating.

you'll notice at the beginning her hair was dry, and then it's edited, and then it's wet, and she looks conflicted.

i'm not passing judgement. i'm just saying, that if i was roman? i couldn't deal with this. it's not something you play with.

it's partially the public nature of it. if you consider the possibility (and, again, i think the likelihood) that it's actually a cover up to hide the fact that a shower was necessary before roman came home, think about what posting it on a popular youtube channel - in this way - does to the guy.

i mean, it seems as though she did take a shower.

Nick Bean
+deathtokoalas You're thinking way to much into this. yeah it looks bad. but Roman is a good sport and knows this would never happen.

deathtokoalas
i don't know if you've been in a situation where you've had a partner that has not just cheated on you but lied about it, but, if you have, it's not something you get over quickly. it sticks with you. and, it affects your ability to trust people. a prank like this isn't harmless.

Nick Bean
+deathtokoalas I have, and I know what it feels like. Roman has been cheated on by his ex wife, so he already knows how that feels. Of course a lot of raging emotions came through. You could see the anger. But once you found out it was just a prank he was relieved.

deathtokoalas
+Nick Bean what i'm saying is that even if it is a prank, it's hard to know it is, for sure. and, that uncertainty is something that can never really be dealt with. it's this toxic thing that just balloons, until it explodes and takes the whole thing down with it.

Nick Bean
It's obvious you've been cheated on before. But not everyone is like that. A harmless prank is all this was.

deathtokoalas
+Nick Bean well, we'll see. i don't know...anything...about these people. but, don't be surprised if this festers and lingers and is ultimately toxic. based on what i've seen in this video, if i was in his shoes, i would have a hard time suppressing the thought that i was being played in just about the most disgusting way possible, and would be both searching everywhere for evidence (evidence to prove it wrong, mind you - i'd be trying to prove it didn't happen) and have a heightened level of caution about things i maybe hadn't thought of before.

you don't grow the economy by cutting spending, donald. and you know what? you know that. and everybody knows you know that. who do you think you're fooling?

what's he doing? his appeal was that he was out of the paradigm. but as time has gone on, he's just picked up talking point after talking point. and, he's starting to sound like every other republican.

if you line up bush and trump so they agree on every point, bush clobbers him. there's not a person in the world that votes for trump over bush, unless he's presenting some policy differences. bush is a safe bet - well, i'm saying that very carefully; from a republican voter perspective, he's a safe bet, anyways. trump is a massive gamble. and, he knows that, too.

this is how trump loses the primary - he loses his policy edge. he starts to fade in. then, he's not competitive.

slashing taxes and spending doesn't eliminate the comparative labour advantage that asia has over the united states in attracting producers, and it doesn't reverse the technology of automation. it's just a continuation of the same policies that have created the problem. it's the status quo.

he doesn't get back on message, and he's going to get destroyed.

listen: his immigration policy sounds deplorable, but he's just being honest in saying things that all of the other republicans (and most democrats) are thinking. i'm reminded of a policy paper in 1969 that the liberals in canada produced on aboriginal policy. for the first time, it explicitly cemented an assimilation policy and put the issue up for debate as to what the fairest and most just way to accomplish that assimilation policy was going to be. see, it recognized that it's past assimilation policies were often ham-fisted and repressive, but it concluded that it was (then, more than ever) the only rational way forwards and that it needed public input. there was massive uproar. but, the reality is that the government of canada had spent the previous 200 years operating a stealth assimilation policy. it wasn't a change of direction, it was just the government being honest about it for once and trying to open it up in the sake of fairness and transparency. in response to the uproar, they withdrew the paper and went back to pushing assimilation by stealth; in fact, the sneaky policies got even worse (with the eventual introduction of a blood quantum rule meant to abolish the definition of aboriginal within a few generations).

the truth is that america has a choice between carrying out a repressive, racist border policy in practice and not talking about it, and addressing it in the open so that it can be modified in ways that are more fair. and, trump was really moving in the right direction on it, relative to where this party has stood in the past.

there's been these other glimmers of hope that he's willing to take a fair, if autocratic, hand. see, this guy is a tyrant. sure. but he comes off as a sort of a fair tyrant. and, decades of slashes in education have perhaps left that as the best short term option in america - imperfect, but we may have to be realistic.

i'm not endorsing this guy. i don't like him. but, in a roundabout way, he was doing what needed to be done - before the party snapped him into line. now, he's just getting boring.

definitely a good piece.

but, keep in mind that nobody voted for this. i mean, look at the 2013 convention. the chasm between mulcair and his base is enough to fly an f-35 through, and i think that as soon as he gets a platform to paper you'll start seeing caucus revolts and a mass exodus to the greens.

and, we need to have a talk on the left about this.

it seems to me that the era of mass socialization in production is over. we're in a world where those jobs are done by robots. and, we need to be looking at rebuilding the left along libertarian/anarchist lines.

corbyn strikes me as a fucking hippie. and, while it's nice to get past new labour, the left is just digging sideways if it thinks it's future is in herbal remedies to cure cancer and rallies against vaccines.

the greens have some problems, but, they're already set up. and, they're roughly sitting in the right space of co-operative friendly libertarian socialism that the left needs to build itself on. the way to get them moving in the right direction is to crash and co-opt them and steer them in it.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2015/09/third-way-politics-suffer-massive-defeat-uk-while-canada-they-t

Alfredo Louro
Actually, the world could do with more politicians who are "fucking hippies".

deathtokoalas
yeah. great. let's all go back to the dark ages. who needs science, when you have magical thinking? after all. the best way to change the world is to change yourself!

Alfredo Louro
You'd be surprised. I have a book recommendation for you:
http://www.amazon.ca/How-Hippies-Saved-Physics-Counterculture/dp/039334231X

deathtokoalas
i want to make a far side cartoon with two bearded hippies in lab coats, standing in front of a table with flasks with coloured liquids and steam rising and whatnot, with one looking at the other and speaking:

"you know what, dexter? sometimes, i find myself wondering if everything is like strawberry fields, after all."

it's all in our minds, man. we just imagine it first, and then it appears. timothy was right.

marx was extremely dismissive about what he called "utopian socialism". now, let's not get caught up in that, sure - no need to trip over that. long time ago. but it remains true that the embrace of bullshit hippie anti-intellectualism is a one-way ticket to becoming a laughingstock - and deserving it.

Mark Ragnar
"seeing caucus revolts and a mass exodus to the greens"

Or, maybe you can hope that they will remember they are in a Westminster parliamentary democracy like the Australian Liberals did, and oust him as leader. However, if he becomes the first to lead a federal NDP government it's hard to see this or a mass exodus occurring.

deathtokoalas
well, the thing is that he's taken steps to throw a lot of people out already. the biggest victory was pushing libby davies out. in some sense, this should have already happened, but he's demonstrated a lot of control in the process...

it really depends on just how far he pushes and how fast. and, see that's the thing: where is tom mulcair on the spectrum? not his party. himself. if it's somewhere maybe just a little to the left of tony blair, and just a little to the right of brian mulroney, it's a very long ways away from a lot of his candidates. and, where is the broadbent institute in this mess? writing papers criticizing the ndp?

i guess it's release is imminent at this point; but i think this is a document that a lot of people are going to find upsetting, and that those people are going to have limited options fighting from within the party. it's not exactly the policy shifts that are going to push people out. it's the disinterest in discussing it.

Arachne646
Libby was my (utterly respected) MP and until I realized how much Mulcair had changed the platform of the Party, I thought she had retired just because of personal reasons, age and so forth. But now I really think that because she either doesn't want to work in a Party under discipline like that, or because she has a conscience, and won't shut up and be under a Party whip, she was forced to retire.

She was not paid off by the Israel lobby, and was, like Elizabeth May, one of the few MP's who spoke up against the massacre in summer 2014 by Israel in Gaza. She was a strong voice for Palestinians in Parliament.

I'll probably be voting Green in Vancouver East. The NDP platform nor the candidate in this riding doth appeal much, and there isn't a safer riding for them, but I think I'll send them a message.

deathtokoalas
it's well understood that she was forced out over comments she made about israel; the conservatives reacted, as one would expect them to, but the difference is that mulcair didn't just agree with them, but went out of his way to demonstrate it.

i tend to avoid falling into the "zionists control the world" narrative, but mulcair does seem to be unwaveringly pro-israel, which is a big difference and something i don't like, either. it's not yet clear to me exactly *why*. i'm getting the impression that a lot of it is a misreading of the public; he seems to see criticism of israel as an electoral liability, and is stamping it out for the simple reason that it makes the party look more electable. i'm not sure that's correct, to begin with. and, history isn't going to be kind to it, either. i mean, there were similar attempts to silence people in the democratic party in the united states about apartheid, and they're roundly condemned nowadays. it's worth pointing out that canada, under trudeau, played an ambiguous role; we seem to have provided more than moral support for the cuban forces in africa. but, whatever the accuracy of it, this calculus seems to be a big driver.

rumour has it that mulcair's riding also has a large jewish minority in it, but it seems to me that it's jumping through some logical hoops to deduce that this minority is supportive of likud.

a third possibility is that it's an attempt to lock into american policy, which is not zionist in the zionist sense - it's a geo-political thing, to ensure a military presence in the oil producing regions. the logic is that coming out as critical of israel would possibly alienate the pentagon and the white house, which is maybe a more important consideration in determining the outcome of the election than any of us really realize.

whatever it is, it's a real and substantial thing. the ndp have pushed out several candidates over this, and it's not likely to reverse course on it.

the reality is that there's not much canada could do anyways - actively or passively. the best hope is in electing a prime minister that is close enough to the president that he can maybe change his or her policies. but, it's pretty clear we're not going to get that from mulcair or the ndp - we're going to get an authoritarian enforcement of the status quo.

i'm not sure if the active campaigning really matters. i think ontarians see themselves without any real options; neither the conservatives nor the ndp have been electable in ontario for quite a long time, and it's hard to see how either are going to cobble together a coalition any time soon. the conservative grass roots is widely seen as a bunch of lunatics. and, the ndp has had a really nasty ceiling imposed upon them by their inability to appeal to unionized voters, which has forced them to take some very disappointing positions.

i think what's more to the point is whether allegiances from the provincial election may still be lingering, and if they may even be more formative than federal platforms, because people tend to be more engaged at the local level. it gives the liberal a kind of incumbency advantage, and hurts the ndp by association. and, as i've pointed out in a few other places, i think the results of the last election need to be taken with a grain of salt; a lot of very liberal ridings swung blue last election, as a consequence of somewhat unique circumstances. these people aren't going to require a lot of convincing to go back to their normal voting patterns. it's just a question of trudeau not being the guy that wrote op-eds in support of an illegal war.

where i think wynne can make a difference is in providing a couple of good arguments as to why it benefits ontarians to have a change of government. not attending rallies and standing together on stage, or maybe offering a few empty platitudes. a good essay. and, there's plenty of good reasons, too - she doesn't need to make anything up, she just needs to clearly lay it out.

but, that's likely to be minor - perhaps important, but minor. overall, it's less a question of the ontario liberals doing or being anything specific, and more a question of the federal liberals not being the specific kind of awful they were four years ago.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/peter-landry/kathleen-wynne-federal-election-harper_b_8112968.html

so, foreign policy isn't justin's strong point. i'd like to point to the liberals from the last government, but the truth is that they were all thrown out or resigned during the martin purge. but, hopefully a change of power will bring some of them back - and a few new people can learn a few things under their tutelage.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/10/trudeau-mulcair-munk-debates_n_8117966.html

but, he stated previously that he was going to delay the increase in the health transfer until the budget is balanced. i'm sure it will make sense on paper*.

also:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BuagPpdIgAAdBCN.jpg

* - by that, i mean that it probably won't actually make sense on paper.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/13/ndp-leader-tom-mulcair-announces-1-8-billion-health-care-plan-for-seniors_n_8129938.html

these battles will be fought and won in court.

it's not just a lack of political will. the crux of the pipeline debate is really around property rights.

regarding shifting out of production, the key is in building the other industries first. you can't expect the government to cut and run on it's own investments. but, you can put pressure on it to make future investments in sustainable production and phase the dirty ones out.

we've lost ten years. we can't get it back. we can try and accelerate it. but, there's really only one possible approach.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/cameron-fenton/climate-change-election_b_8119780.html

who wrote the headline? now, look at the confused comments. yeesh.

he's trying to spur investment. you've no doubt heard that tax cuts for businesses create jobs [although they don't]. by the same logic, tax cuts for property developers making rental units should create more rental units, although it probably won't for the same reason that tax cuts to businesses don't actually create jobs. and, this would in theory reduce rental costs by increasing the supply, if it were to actually work.

another thing that is restricting supply and thereby driving up costs is the large amount of dilapidated housing we have in our urban cores. money to fix these units up would drive prices down by increasing the supply. except that it's ignoring the fact that they were largely left in disrepair because property owners want to reduce the supply of housing to drive up costs in the first place.

what is at the core of the problem is that housing is too concentrated in too few hands. these steps are good, but in order to truly be effective they need to be paired with rules that restrict the amount of housing that a company can own in any specific area.

judging by the comments - and i've seen this elsewhere, most notably at occupy - the liberals have two issues in getting a policy like this across to voters:

1) the people that want lower rental costs don't understand the economics underlying the policy.
2) the efficacy of the economics underlying the policy is questionable at best, anyways.

but, the idea is that less taxes = more rental units = lower rental costs. if you combine that with pro-active action to breakup large landowning companies, you have a decent policy.

remember - the problem with markets is not that they create competition. it's that they prevent competition. if you leave a market to evolve without interference, it will become a monopoly. state intervention is required to break the institutions up and allow the market to function. and, the contemporary tendency of governments to refuse to do this is at the root of a lot of the problems we have in front of us.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/09/liberals-vow-tax-breaks-for-landlords-homeowners-as-part-of-social-housing-plan_n_8109734.html

i'll say it again: if corporations are people, why don't we tax them like people?

the constitution specifies that discriminatory laws are only unconstitutional insofar as they relate to "natural persons". so, preferential tax treatment for corporations and businesses gets off on a technicality. but, it's certainly discriminatory in spirit to say "these people are special and deserve a special tax rate".

eliminate the loopholes by simplifying the code; tax it all the same at the same income level, regardless of where it came from.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/10/baloney-meter-did-trudeau-unfairly-smear-small-business-owners-as-tax-dodgers_n_8115754.html

what's the deal with the corporations, anyways?

these people make billions of dollars in profit, and they hardly pay any taxes on it.

who are these people?

it's a bubble, and it's going to burst. i think the state's role is in determining how to react to it when it does, and i think this is a part of the strategy the state needs to adopt in trasferring the boomers out of the workforce. that is set to ramp up just about any minute, now.

boomers were told their entire professional lives to invest in housing. it's their retirement plan. when they get to a certain age (75, 80), or perhaps when their partners pass, they will sell their house and move into an apartment or a retirement home. they will then live on what they make on the sale, combined with whatever pensions they're entitled to.

and, had wages kept up with inflation it would have worked out just fine. but, as it is, their houses have been rising at 10% (inflation adjusted) while wages have been broadly stagnant. this is a useful graph:

it claims the gap is debt. in young people, it is. in older people, it threatens to be the difference between their retirement assets on paper and their retirement assets in truth - if the bubble bursts, and if they make it long enough to see it.

the first chunk of the boomers will likely be shielded from this. but, ten years from now, the first of the boomers are going to start hitting their life expectancies. as they die by the thousands, thousands of properties will appear on the market. this sudden increase in supply is going to burst the bubble, as their children seek to wipe their hands of the assets and sell them off to the people that are currently being priced out. and, i might note that this will likely slow down construction, and possibly lead to a recession. we should be building things right now, but housing is maybe not the most forward-thinking construction plan.

there's a lot of cliches about the boomers, how they remade society and etc. i think it's less clear how much of what they changed is going to survive them. and, their run through time may be better imagined as a bulge on a graph that slowly recedes over time. on the other side of this population and wealth imbalance, things may start to balance themselves out a little bit better.

so, yes - it's a bubble. and, the government has done a lot to stop it bursting, and will continue to do so (those mass purchases of toxic assets will continue). but the one thing they can't stop is a massive increase in supply created by a mass generational die-off.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/samantha-brookes/federal-election-housing_b_8119138.html

it's often stated that gen x is the first generation that has done poorer than it's parents.

another way to look at it is that the boomers were the first to place their children in debt to themselves.

we're paying interest on their savings.

Cornell Hessing
The only bubble that will burst is the one surrounding your alternate reality. Of all the factors that impact the housing market in the GTA (or Vancouver), the only one that will change is the interest rate. They wont be creating new land...foreign investors will continue to have access (even if protectionist measures are employed, savy investors will easily navigate them)...etc..etc.

Also, it's worth noting that the moment prices start to decline, supply will tighten.

Seriously, talk to someone...if you're wait for the market to crash to capitalize, you're doing your future self a HUGE disservice. Get in the market...start small if you have to, but get in! People that bought $400k townhomes 2 years ago have already seen more than $150k in equity growth.

Jessica Amber Murray
i'm not waiting for anything to crash. if i had advice, it would be to tell boomers to sell sooner than later. but, housing is not like the stock market. that's the error you're making, here, and it's rather ironic given your language - you're conflating what is called real wealth with what is called paper wealth. paper wealth is not tied to any kind of physical reality - it exists in the realm of our imagination. so, we can inflate something like the dot com bubble just about as far as we will allow ourselves to because it's just all make believe, anyways. but real wealth has to conform to the reality on the ground. and the reality on the ground is that housing cannot deviate nearly as far from incomes as it has been without eventually coming crashing down. at some point, people will simply be unable to buy property at the price it's listed at because they are not able to generate the wealth that is required to do so. banks are not likely to ease lending requirements. so, these properties will either sit on the market unsold or they will need to come down in price. that is, housing prices will need to be corrected to better align with incomes.

as mentioned, the cmhc has tools that it can use to offset reality somewhat, but the truth is that it's been abusing this power for the last decade or so and this is not a good thing. it's been trying to convert real propertied assets into imaginary paper assets, and created a lot of delusional people with delusional investments in the process. cash in while you can, because that cannot last.

it can continue the fantasy for quite some time, but what it will not be able to fight is a sudden increase in supply. this is where the demographics are leading us to. at that point, market principles overpower state intervention. and, let's be clear: the reason housing prices are high is due to state intervention, not some conspiracy theory about foreigners buying up property.