sanders' purpose in the primary was to swing clinton to the left, which is why he picked up so much support.

for clinton to react by complaining - and she really is a whiner, isn't she? - that he was trying to pull her to the left is to state an obvious purposeful truth, and then bray at the moon.

yes, hillary: bernie's entire purpose was to try and shift you to the left. and, had you relented, you might have won.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/05/politics/cilizza-krieg-convo/?iid=ob_article_footer_expansion

again: cancelling deferred action does not make sense to american capital, which relies on the labour, and will prove deeply unpopular in the long run - which is what trump actually cares about.

trump's rhetoric was never anything more than a way to get the vote out in his base. he was never going to actually do anything like this - it would both be against his own class interests and against his own political interests.

what they're doing is sending it to congress, not abolishing it. that's what obama wasn't able to do, because the republican party had congress locked in a purely obstructionist tactic. now that the republicans have control of the white house, they're going to pass the bills obama wanted to pass in the first place. and, you might see a pattern develop out of this.

obama was always the status quo, corporatist, establishment candidate. the reason he pushed this through in the first place is that it's what the big money interests wanted. trump is not going to turn on those interests, as they are what put him in power and what he represents.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/05/politics/daca-trump-congress/index.html

the weather's kind of crappy today...

...and i think i have a new poop-throwing suspect: it's the husband. he mowed the lawn yesterday and seemed to stop to place objects. i thought he was stealing the citrus release again, but it's still there. the space was clear yesterday, but i picked up 7 clumps this morning after smelling it last night - distributed in a way that seemed designed for maximum annoyance.

it's kind of outrageously obvious - like the eviction notice is.

but, the situation is fundamentally different, now. i don't have the urge to sue that i did, previously; the reason is that i know there's no solution. the reality is that they're brazenly and maliciously harassing me, like the retarded white trash that they are. they're not going to stop if i win the case, so why bother? i'm better off just ignoring it until they sell the building.

...except that it looks like they're going through with the false eviction, so i have to counter-sue.

if i can get them to drop the nonsense around that, i'm really just going to withdraw. i mean, i'll keep taking notes and stuff - it could, in the end, be necessary for a master case. but the way you deal with spoiled children is that you stop feeding into it and then wait until they tire themselves out...

so, it's tuesday morning and i'm picking back up where i let off on friday night.

friday was a bit of an adventure, whereas saturday was a bit more of a normal overnight. i've recently picked up the habit of drinking too much caffeine when i get in and not substantively sleeping when i get home on sunday until monday morning; i slept all day monday.

before i left on friday, i noticed the paralegal had sent me back an email pretending that he didn't know anything about the eviction process. right.

the purpose of the harassment case was not an extractive process, but a vehicle to come up with a way to correct destructive behaviour and end the ongoing pattern of harassment. a settlement is not a solution, but a punishment (the restitution in the case is meaningful, but abstract). what i wanted was a solution, and not a punishment. unfortunately, i felt the need to introduce the court to arrive at a solution, as the property owners were entirely non-cooperative.

the introduction of a paralegal was unexpected (i did not know he would be there until i got there), but it presented a possibility to arrive at a solution without resorting to punishment. that is to say that it's much closer to what i wanted out of the process; what i wanted was a solution, and not a punishment. so, i took that approach.

but, it's now absolutely clear that nobody ever intended to arrive at a solution. so, we need to revisit the court process.

i told the paralegal that he's full of shit, but suggested he can prevent he and his client from a making a fool of themselves by indicating to me that the second part of the form would not be filled. i did not receive a response, so i am planning on mailing on wednesday.

this morning, i need to get to the subsidized housing space and drop off that form, get some printer ink, do some grocery shopping and in the end pick up the forms needed to reopen the case. i'll then get everything mailed tomorrow morning...

so, what's the rationalist read on this?

as should be obvious to most people by now, if it wasn't always, trump's attacks on migrants were always intended to generate votes - throwing people who grew up in the united states out of the country is literally an act of self-harm, by definition. but, the point from trump's perspective is that it has to be a popular decision.

trump is hardly an everyman, but he had some advisors that helped him take advantage of a certain streak of xenophobia with a particularly powerful caveat - it came with mass denial from more moderate voters.

so, you have voter a and voter b. voter a is voting for trump because he's a racist and doesn't give a fuck about anything else (including self-interest), whereas voter b is voting for trump because he has the same class interests (or at least imagines that he does) and in spite of his racial policies, which may leave him a little uneasy.

trump's decision is going to be based on what he thinks is more popular - on what will give him better ratings. and, there are some encouraging signs that he's realizing that cancelling daca would be broadly unpopular with more populous b type voters, while remaining violently popular with a type ones.

i'd like to think trump will take the next six months to do some polling, but you can't be sure with this guy. regardless, that's what he's doing - he's waiting the situation out, and will test the waters early next year to see if the deportation is more popular, all of a sudden.

i wouldn't expect anything to come out of this.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/04/politics/daca-congress-trump-decision/index.html

want to hear a fun conspiracy theory?

i'm not saying you should take it seriously. i'm just thinking out loud...

obama's period as the grand master will likely be recorded in history as fairly uneventful: a lot of continuity, with the seeming intent to act as a caretaker. due to trump, the long view may be unable to separate obama from bush, relegating obama to a kind of echo of bush. if hillary had won in october, the right historical question would have been why the country bothered voting for obama in the first place; as it is, the bush and obama years are likely to end up merged into bush-obama.

but, there is a specific anomaly in his presidency that will likely live on for a long time in climatological records: there weren't any hurricanes under obama.

it's curious how it played out. we had record temperatures near the end, year over year, but no increase in atlantic hurricanes.

i know, i know: you can't blame the hurricane directly on the carbon. but, we were supposed to have them in increasing intensity and increasing frequency.

i've been wondering for a while if he 'flipped a switch'. which means what?

well, the official rational explanation (tm) no doubt argues that the atmospheric patterns over north america were coincidentally such that they kept large storms offshore. perfectly reasonable.

look at what is happening in houston right now - the storm is being blocked from moving north. and, it could be a lingering coincidence.

but, maybe this new guy flipped the switch back - because it's just a bunch of bullshit anyways, right?

the next guy could always flip it back, again - if there's any record left of it ever existing.

what i'll say is this: i think this curious low in atlantic hurricanes under obama will fascinate scientists for a very long time.