"I use those words advisably. I understand how powerful they are. But I cannot believe that in the history of the White House and in that Oval Office, any president has ever spoken the words that I personally heard our president speak yesterday." - dick durbin, the high-ranking democrat from illinois who clearly doesn't know a whole lot about lbj.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

"why doesn't anybody from norway want to emigrate to the united states, anyways? huh?" - the president of the united states of america.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard

if you feel so strongly about it, i would like you to pen a 5000 word essay explaining why neither central america nor africa (or pick one. but the word count won't change.) are shitholes.

i could easily enough see myself describing a country like el salvador as a shithole. but, the president answered his own question, didn't he?

"why do they leave those shitholes and come here, anyways?"

i mean, does he have to ask the question? it's like asking why you bother to wipe your ass. it's just going to get dirty again, right?

yeesh.

when are the democrats going to stop calling the president names and make some substantive policy proposals?

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

it's not the government that is imposing these values, it's the supreme court, by interpreting the constitution.

i'm not a taxpayer. but, if i was one, i would not want my tax money to fund any kind of religious operations at all. whatsoever.

however, i suspect that government is not cutting funding to religious groups in a wide enough or systemic enough manner to be consistent with the appropriate constitutional rulings. i would hope that this changes in the upcoming years.

for example, the government should not be funding arts projects if they have religious undertones, or promote religious messaging. there should not be funding for mosques or churches, who should also pay taxes. and, i would like to see the provincial government abolish all funding for religious schools, including the end of the catholic school system.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/scheer-summer-grant-jobs-abortion-1.4484588

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

well, ok.

maybe she doesn't like google...hey, she wouldn't be the first person i've heard of that doesn't like google. toss a dart in crowd, right? i'm not exactly the biggest fan, myself.

i found this:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318287618_Why_Are_Arctic_Linkages_to_Extreme_Weather_Still_Up_in_the_Air

a couple of thousand citations.  it's certainly lagging far behind.

but, this is a recent publication, where she actually acknowledges that her work is not widely accepted:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318287618_Why_Are_Arctic_Linkages_to_Extreme_Weather_Still_Up_in_the_Air

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

people, listen.

this is mike lockwood's google scholar page. he's frequently cited. quite respected. and, the paper in question is the most cited, too.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8280hQ0AAAAJ

if jennifer francis even has a google scholar page, i can't find it. she does not appear to be frequently cited at all.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard

i didn't really have any experience with it before, but from what i can see in front of me on my bills, the problem with electricity costs in ontario is not the government, it's the private sector - and the solution is a bigger role for government, and a smaller one for the private sector. what i'm seeing is confirming all of the scary predictions that opponents to privatization brought up during the catastrophic mike harris regime. we should be taking actions to undo this, not carrying on with it.

my second bill, which is going to be more like what an actual bill looks like, is going to look something like this:

usage:  178 kwh (this is maybe a little higher than average, because i'm still adjusting to things)
cost of electricity: $13.84

i wouldn't have much to complain about if my bill was less than $15. i'm doing my part, here: i'm being responsible with my usage. and, the state is rewarding me with a reasonable price. so, what's the problem?

well, then the private monopoly steps in...

delivery charges: $24.12.

(and, you can hear them slap the bill down on the counter while they say it, with a bit of a hellish laugh.)

so, i'm paying the company twice the cost of my electrical usage, as a fee for the privilege to do business with them, as the only option in town. this is preposterous, but i'm paying the company, here, not the government - the government can't order them not to do this, but has actually offered a rebate system to offset it, if you're poor (and i am).

this is the largest component of the bill, by far. and, it simply shouldn't exist at all. thankfully, my $68 rebate should make the bill go away altogether, once it gets applied in full. so, what is happening here, in fact, is that the government is stepping in to reverse the price gouging being done by these private companies.

so, how do you fix this?

well, it doesn't make sense to have competing energy companies; you'll need a monopoly on the lines, anyway. it never makes sense to lay two paths between two endpoints and then force people to compete over which is cheaper; just use some graph theory to find the shortest route, and then pile bridges on top of each other, if you must. electricity lines should be publicly owned for the same reason that roads, cable lines and telephone lines should be. and, then, what you're doing is putting up a front to the line monopoly; there's not an actual choice, there, but merely the illusion of one. these front companies for the line monopoly would not choose to compete with each other, anyways, because competition would be damaging both to each other and to the line monopoly. so, the actual reality of such a thing would be that you could choose which company logo you like the best, while they all offer the same thing. and, if you think this is an exaggeration, let me direct you to the cable internet line monopoly in ontario, where what i'm describing is the actual state of affairs on the ground. there's a dozen different companies that all want to sell you exactly the same thing.

the only difference between a line monopoly and a total monopoly is that a line monopoly creates superfluous jobs in management...

but, would a government charge such an exorbitant fee for delivery? well, it's not entirely clear why there ought to be a delivery charge at all. and, i think a government would actually fold pretty quickly under public pressure, whereas a private entity like enwin will just tell us all to eat cake.

the solution is that we need to retake public ownership of our electricity generation in this province, and stop these private companies from profiting off of what should be a resource held in common.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i'm by no means an expert on oprah, but i'm not sure that her politics are as unclear as briahna is suggesting. she was on tv everyday for 25 years, often discussing politicized issues, and i've seen enough of it to come away with the impression that she's rather obviously very conservative, even if i have to use the term "conservative" in a british or canadian context to get the point across. it's kind of annoying that there aren't any actual tories in the united states, because it makes it kind of useless to identify them. americans don't understand what that means. and, historically, the democrats were always the conservative party, anyways. 

i would suspect that there are millions of people alive that are over the age of 40 and actually have a pretty good grasp on what her politics are, merely by watching her show every day for decades. it actually probably wouldn't be very hard to find quotes from her where she frames things in certain ways that explain what she's thinking. but, what i remember from watching her show (mostly in the 90s and early 00s...) is that she used exceedingly judgemental body language incredibly often, and that she quite frequently quite blatantly looked down upon just about anybody that deviated from those obvious conservative values. the projection was always something like "how'd i get stuck with this job where i'm dealing with freaks all day?" kind of thing.

and, it's kind of differentiating. because, these people basically all did the same thing, but approached it from a different angle. jerry springer wanted to broadcast comedy; his show was a joke. phil donahue seemed legitimately empathetic, although he may have been a faker. of the bunch, geraldo is the one that seemed most interested in systemic inequality, and getting to root causes.

what oprah always projected was "i don't want to be here. get me away from these losers.". and, it really did project a deep social conservatism.

but, the united states doesn't have a liberal/conservative spectrum. it has a black/white spectrum. and, demographics as they are, the black party is going to have to have a conservative streak.

my suggested tactic: let oprah run, abandon the democrats and vote for a third party.

i mean, i just spent a few minutes on google and found out that:

1) oprah has publicly stated that she has often voted republican, in the past.

2) oprah supported the 2003 iraq war. this is especially notable because she did a lot of shows about it. that is, this is informed support for the 2003 iraq war; she knew what she was doing.

3) oprah opposes the estate tax (for obvious reasons.).

this is toxic to the voting base that the democrats need to win elections with. but, it's probably both a necessary and an inevitable path for the democrats to walk down...