guys.

listen...

just because you can't measure the carbon tax, doesn't mean it's not there.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

this is the kind of thing they're going to do, though.

this is from the mclean's article. an accurate quote, but without context.

"A carbon tax would add about $1,200 in additional annual costs for families with children.” - kathleen wynne.

(ominuous music)

why does kathleen wynne want to increase ontario's bills by $1200 year, per capita?

and you wonder why she's suing these losers for defamation, right?

again: i don't know how many ontarians can read. i think our literacy level is relatively high, right?

ugh.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i'm not addressing the point, i'm just backing up my own.

http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/kathleen-wynnes-attack-on-the-ontario-pc-carbon-tax-plan-misleads-voters/

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

this is confirmed, though: the progressive conservatives are running against a carbon tax that the provincial government has already ruled out.

they're running against a complete strawman.

these are the facts here.

1) trudeau has put down an ultimatum to pick between a carbon tax and a cap and trade.
2) ontario (current premier: kathleen wynne) has chosen cap and trade.

that is, ontario has ruled out a carbon tax.

3) patrick brown, previous conservative opposition leader, put together a platform that proposed replacing the cap and trade with the carbon tax. this would be really complicated, as the cap and trade system is actually international (and includes california). but he had reasons to do it.
4) it should not be surprising that conservative voters in ontario don't like the idea of a carbon tax.
5) patrick brown resigns amidst questionable allegations of "sexual misconduct" involving potentially underage girls.
6) all of the conservative leadership contenders decide they're running against kathleen wynne's proposal to bring in a carbon tax.

this is not a joke. they're really doing this.

and the post claims the debate showed they weren't ignoramuses...

i don't know how many ontarians....how do i put this? how many of them can read a book? but, it's too late to backtrack, now.

in addition to the anti-queer dog whistling, is this going to be the election about the imaginary carbon tax?

somebody find me a wall to start banging my head on.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i have no interest in watching the pc leader debate.

sorry.

the truth is that this riding is an ndp lock.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

coyne is often daft, but he's making the right argument here.

and, i want to clarify a point: in canada, this is a position that is academic rather than partisan. i would consider andrew coyne to be a conservative; he'd probably call me a left-wing extremist.

but, we're going to sound almost identical when it comes to this. and, it's because we read the same textbooks, not the same political pamphlets.

what trudeau has done to the senate is, constitutionally, pretty much the most objectively wrong thing that a canadian prime minister could possibly do.

and, this is why you will get the same responses from conservatives that you do from social democrats.

http://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-the-senate-has-no-business-meddling-with-the-budget

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

if it's passed in the house (and it's not ultra vires, in which case it is null), it's law.

i don't care about royal assent.

fuck the queen.

fuck the senate.

let's take a stand on this, canada.

as far as i'm concerned, marijuana is already legal. do you agree? then, let's act like it.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

well, i dunno.

is justin trudeau a potential dictator?

it seems comical. not because he's a liberal icon, but because he's obviously a dunce.

but, they said the same thing about hitler, didn't they?

i don't know what you even seize in canada, really. the oil fields, i guess. i wouldn't expect a canadian invasion of america any time soon. and, in that sense, it's hard to predict what might happen if he were to launch a coup tomorrow.

but, what he's done to the senate has crossed the line of 'concerning' and entered the region of 'scary'.

as a country, we have to address this as soon as we can. there are three options that are consistent with our history as a democracy:

1) elected senate. i think this is a bad idea.
2) abolition. i think this is a bad idea.
3) return to the previous status quo of unelected senators that only interfere in the process as an absolute last resort. i'd prefer this.

the idea of an unelected, activist senate is not a serious option in a free & democratic society.

'last resort' means 'if the government is trying to pass unconstitutional legislation'. and, we have a good example.

in the late 80s, the mulroney government tried to pass a law that would criminalize abortion, in clear contradiction to a court ruling that had struck the previous laws down as unconstitutional. the law was clearly ultra vires. so, it was an abuse of power, for that reason. this law was ultimately blocked in the senate.

it was the first time that the senate had blocked legislation in decades. and, presuming we can elect responsible governments, that's about as often as i want to hear from the senate - every few decades.

it's there, in case of emergency. but, it shouldn't be used unless necessary, because it's hopelessly undemocratic.

and, when the government loses it's democratic legitimacy, it breaks the social contract.

in my view, the marijuana legislation has already been passed. and, if the senate blocks it in the end, the country has a good reason both to discard the senate's behaviour (in favour of the relevant judicial precedent) and, frankly, to openly revolt.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

but, more seriously, about the senate.

we now have a reality in front of us that is actually kind of a pressing emergency. when most of us weren't paying attention, the trudeau government erected an unaccountable, unrepresentative & unelected layer of government at the top of the pyramid that has the power to completely negate the country's democratic institutions.

canada now has a really big problem on it's hands. and, all of the parties, including liberal backbenchers, should be standing up and making a lot of noise on that point.

it didn't matter when they didn't do anything. but, now that they are meddling in the democratic process, something needs to be done to formally minimize the influence of the senate.

otherwise, we are on a one-way ticket to the kind of fake democracy that exists in iran.

you need to take this seriously.

the sudden emergence of an unelected activist senate is probably the biggest crisis of democracy that the country has ever had to deal with.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

hey, if jeff sessions has a problem with canadians moving to florida because they puffed a little back in the 60s, that's actually really ok.

we'll just park our money in cuba, or mexico, instead.

you dummies...

jagmeet singh must cut his beard

the reality is that the liberals have a majority in the senate and could push the bill through tomorrow.

they're not doing this because it's not happening.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i need to be clear about what's happening in canada right now.

the liberal party in the senate is blocking legislation from the liberal party in the house. on first glance, it appears as though the liberals are just hopelessly incompetent; it's a schizophrenic system, akin to what happens to a body when it gets overrun by cancer.

but, this cancer is not accidental. this is by design.

in fact, the liberal party redesigned the system, so that the liberals in the senate would be able to block legislation from the liberals in the house. they did this by splitting the caucus in half.

this is the way this is supposed to work:

1) trudeau makes an election promise. like proportional representation. the dry run was marijuana legalization.
2) after the promises win the election, the party passes legislation in the house and sends it to the senate.
3) the party controls the senate, but what they've done is split the caucus in half. half are called liberals and half are called 'independents'. they were all appointed by the liberals. that way, the party can block it's own legislation without technically voting against it, then blame it on the opposition.
4) then, they can run on the same empty promise in the next election.

the model is the obama administration, which managed to avoid doing anything substantive through years of unified government via a similar mechanism.

but, the next government isn't going to want to do anything like this. the conservatives are still going to exist in the senate. they will eventually regain a majority. and, they will promptly undo everything that trudeau has done, in order to reassert control over it.

in the mean time? don't fall for this.

trudeau's words are not worth the paper that somebody else wrote them on.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

blaming andrew scheer for opposing marijuana legislation in the context of trudeau giving him the opportunity to do so, despite having a majority in both houses, is like blaming a lion for eating a child that's fallen into the exhibit.

i'm not stupid.

i'm not falling for that.

sorry.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

so, who's fault is this?

it's not andrew scheer's fault. he's the opposition leader. he's opposing. that's his job.

he does not have a mandate to compromise. he does not have a mandate to work with the government. he has a mandate to oppose every single thing that's put in front of him; that is what an opposition leader must do in a westminster system.

bipartisanism is a purely american concept. that is just not how our system works. if he were to do anything else, he would be incompetent and ought to be removed in a vote of no confidence.

no. this is unambiguously, 100%, entirely, completely, not-even-a-little-bit-somebody-else's fault but justin trudeau's.

and, i expect him to take responsibility for it.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i called this.

and, this is why trudeau set the senate up this way: so he can make whatever promises he wants, then blame it on the senate when it doesn't actually happen.

...the senate that he actually has a majority in.

just like obama!

is this going to actually happen? well, there's an election next year...

thankfully, whether legal pot actually happens here or not, this catastrophic joke of a "reformed senate" will not last one day past trudeau's eventual removal from power.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/02/15/politics-not-independence-leads-to-senate-delay-on-pot-legalization.html

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i'm actually chomping at the bit to go after these religious groups - and demonstrate the point i've been making for a very long time: religion is never an ally to the left, but always the enemy of the future..

i'm not interested in building understanding. i want a full out war. and i want these forces to be defeated.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i'm not worried about wynne on this.

it's horwath that i'm more concerned about...

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

to be clear: i'm not interested in compromising on the sex-ed curriculum. in fact, as mentioned here, it still has a long ways to go in removing religion from the system and replacing it with science.

i would push back hard from the other direction.

i don't think that students should be given waivers; if parents take them out of class, the students should be given failing grades and forced to redo the year. no exceptions.

and, if either wynne or horwath take compromising tones on this, it will be a vote breaker: i'll vote for the one that takes the stronger stance against ford.

and, if they're both unacceptable, i could very well not vote at all.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/02/14/leave-sex-ed-to-the-experts-not-fear-mongering-politicians.html

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

it's not that there aren't also white people opposed to the sex ed curriculum on the grounds of anti-queer bigotry, of course there are, it's that it isn't a swing demographic - that's the tory base.

they don't have to run this for them.

who it's for, who they're trying to swing, are socially conservative immigrants.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard

i need to repeat.

doug ford is going to be running on a deeply neo-liberal, pro-immigrant & pro-trade - but anti-queer - platform.

that's his punching bag, here.

jagmeet sigh must cut his beard.

this is why ford will win the primary.

it's also also why he'll lose the general.

the tories have already lost this election. but, their coalition requires those socially conservative middle-class immigrant voters. the demographics in ontario are such that you simply can't win with the typical white conservative demographics. they have to reach out. and this is really all they've got for them, at this level of government.

and, what it's about is teaching that homosexuality is normal; the parents don't want their kids taught that homosexuality is natural, as it contradicts their religious beliefs. the rest of it is trivial. this is pure anti-queer bigotry masquerading as "religious freedom".

i would actually argue that, the more that parents push back against science in the name of upholding religion, the more important it is to ensure that their kids are given exposure to the science, to unbrainwash them.

i have absolutely no patience and absolutely no sympathy for these parents. the harder they push, the harder society should push back. for the sake of democracy, it's imperative that their kids are educated, and not left to languish in ignorance, where they can perpetuate their hate to the next generation.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/doug-ford-is-gambling-ontario-parents-are-still-concerned-about-sexual-education/article37988965/

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

if the government is serious about legislating around s. 35, we're going to be launched into a significant debate in the country, and are going to be subjected to a lot of voices (perhaps including mine.) that ought not be prioritized.

i have partial indigenous ancestry, and it is in fact visible, but i'd never claim to be, and never have claimed to be, culturally indigenous. i've used it as pushback against certain baseless accusations, but it's been with the intent to twist their own words around and make them seem stupid when they are in fact being stupid, as people stuck in a certain mode of thinking have difficulties thinking things through logically; pointing out that i am partially indigenous (as a substantive number of canadians in truth are...) has the effect of allowing people to see the actual arguments more clearly, and not be blinded by base racialism. nonetheless, the closest thing i have to any childhood upbringing in indigenous culture would be the couple of months i spent learning about tree leaves in the scouts program. i do not speak on behalf of indigenous people, and would not claim that i do.

...but i was close enough to the idle no more movement to be able to direct outside observers to some important internal voices within the country. and, i'm going to direct people to these two voices, specifically.

the first is chelsea vowel, who split publishes under an indigenous name that i'd have to copy and paste in order to spell right. she publishes fairly widely, but she also runs a blog (google 'chelsea vowel'). and, i'd expect that she'll be writing quite a bit on what's coming up.

this is her most recently published article:
http://www.chatelaine.com/opinion/indigenous-languages-census-canada/

whether you call it 'religion' or 'spirituality' doesn't matter much to me; i don't want 'spirituality' in the schools any more than i want religion in them. but, i don't have any ideological opposition to teaching language, in principle.

and, i recognize the importance of protecting languages, too.

but, i'm just looking at a school curriculum, and i'm not convinced that teaching languages that are barely spoken is a useful way for kids to spend in-class time, considering all of the science that kids need to be learning to be competitive nowadays. i mean, consider if you're a second-generation chinese immigrant that grew up with chinese as a first language. i know that kids in western europe are expected to learn multiple languages, but you have to keep in mind that there are really only two major languages in western europe - there is the germanic language group and the romance language group (in addition to the smaller celtic and basque groups). dutch isn't so hard if you know english, and french isn't so hard if you know spanish. telling a kid they need to learn an indigenous language on top of learning chinese, french and english (four different language groups.) and learning about everything else is...you'll get a handful of kids that can do it, but the reality is that we can barely get english kids to speak french in this country. the truth is that less than 20% of canadians self-identify as officially bilingual, despite taking 15 years of instruction in both languages. so, the end result of this is inevitably that most kids don't learn to speak the indigenous language at the end of the process, anyways.

and, i don't see what is being accomplished by taking time away from other studies to learn what are going to be very difficult languages for most canadian kids, and difficult languages that they don't have much use for in day-to-day life.

so, i'm not opposed on principle. but i just don't see this leading anywhere but failure - and broadly so.

if you're going to do this, what you're going to need to do is look at something like an arabic language school for a model. and, i don't think that's the right path forwards. i'd be more likely to argue that we should abolish arabic schools than that we should build indigenous schools, regardless of the actual history that i'm not addressing.

so, i'm not going to argue that language should be kept out of schools the way i'd argue that spirituality should be. but, i would argue that if we're going to be bringing in more languages in schools that the kids would be better off learning more important languages, like chinese. this has to fall on parents. and, if in the end, the language isn't being used, it belongs in a museum, and not in a class room.

maybe funding voluntary after school programs is a better idea.

another voice i'm going to draw attention to is pamela palmater:
http://www.pampalmater.com/

pam is very active, and you will see her on the news from time-to-time, but she's more broadly in the "ignored by mainstream media because she pushes difficult truths" category.

if there is bullshit in the legislation, pam won't just find it, she'll organize and fight against it. she should be the go-to source.

i'm sure there will be groups on the ground, as well. some of them will be legit. others will be organized in the classic cia data-mining manner, and operate as front groups for the state, with aimless foot soldiers that are barely informed of what they're talking about. the independent press will fall for this.

but, i'm going to suggest that the more careful side of the independent media focuses less on the movement building and more on the academic analysis, as what's coming up is going to be shrouded in legalese, and probably difficult for most people to understand. the state will make the legislation look very pretty. i can guarantee you that. it will be these academics that will see through it, if necessary.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i can't be unique, right?

you probably know this person: the one that calls people out on their bullshit, because they are their friend.

and, you can't imagine how frustrated that person is going to get in a social grouping where everybody's just fucking full of shit all the time. they'll be constantly calling everybody out, won't they?

and, that person is consequently going to want to get out of that situation asap.

which is what i did.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

my position is that i was an excellent friend, but i was surrounded by people that were too stupid and narcissistic and selfish and close-minded and short-sighted and just fucking capitalistic assholes to realize what being a good friend is, and what just being a fucking narcissist's outlet to rant in the mirror is.

these people weren't looking for friends, they were looking for parrots to talk to themselves to.

and, i made the correct choice to distance myself from all of these people - because all of them were stupid and narcissistic and selfish and close-minded and short-sighted, and all i've ever wanted or been interested in or been able to deal with is honesty and transparency for the common good.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

you can separate your friends from hangers-on by focusing on those that are willing to stand up to you, those that are willing to criticize you and those that are willing to set you straight when you're wrong.

it is those that focus on evidence over loyalty that are actually your friends, and those that insist on vacuous nonsense like "loyalty" that are trying to manipulate you for self-interest.

those that remain quiet, that let you make stupid mistakes, that take your side withouut conditions - these are not your friends.

and, when people make ultimatums about support on the basis of loyalty, they are certainly not your friends, either.

nor are they very intelligent... or somebody that you should lament the loss of. these are people that you not only don't want to fall for, but that you want to actively push away from you.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i'm very much evidence-based.

solidarity without evidence is as vacuous as faith.

and, if i'm never on your side? maybe you're always wrong. and, rather than crtiticize me for not taking solidarity with positions that are vague or incorrect, maybe you should sharpen your argumentation, or flat out change your position to better align with the evidence.

if you can't convince people that you're right, that's your own fucking fault, isn't it?

friends are people that criticize each other in an attempt to get to a better approximation of the truth, not people that mindlessly fall in line behind each other to serve each other's narrow or dishonest self-interest.

solidarity without evidence is what is wrong with this world, and what needs to be abolished in order to build a better one.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

one more thing:

i'm about 5' 7" - right between my mom (5' 6") and my dad (5' 8"). that's on the lower range for xy, but it's still kind of tall for xx. so, my hands are not small due to height; i'm about average height, however you measure it.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

measuring from the top of my middle finger to the base of the palm, i'm around 6.6" - which is actually below average, even for women.

i need to do something productive.....

but, to complete the thought: the last time i checked hand sizes with my ex-gf's daughter she was about seven years old, and had roughly comparably sized hands. my hand size is truly not in the range of adult women, but more comparable to that of a young girl's.

back to work...

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

personally?

i'm willing to accept that i may have had minimal testosterone exposure, but i'm less interested in my digit ratios and more interested in my body hair patterns.

my father was italian, jewish, french and cree. he was as hairy a man as you ever will meet. i'm told my maternal grandfather was a roughly normally hairy guy. so, i should have expected something between normal and ape-man, growing up.

in truth, i've never seen more than peach fuzz, from my belly-button up to my neck. i mean, nobody is truly hairless, sure. but, my chest hair would be in the normal range for women, rather than the normal range for men. and, i was not on testosterone suppressors early enough to expect to prevent growth...

i've repeatedly argued that this is the only phenotypical evidence i have to present.

i remain convinced that my identity is not exactly a choice - although i will argue until i'm blue that i have the right to make that choice - but more of a function of my early upbringing.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

2.8/2.9 = .96551, which puts me in the normal female range.

but, this strikes me as a neo-phrenology and not something to take particularly seriously. given what we know about the importance of nutrition, i would reject the rigidity of this correlation, in the first place: i would not accept the claim that finger length is determined in the womb, but would rather point to environment factors and request that more study be done to clearly demonstrate the point.

but, does this idea that hormones in the womb might affect your sexual orientation make sense?  no. this is no less irrational than the idea that it is genetic, which is indeed deeply irrational (and void of any meaningful evidence, i might add).

that said, i can accept the idea that androgenic changes may affect gender identity rather than sexual orientation. and, if you read the studies properly, which i have, you'll see that this is usually what the data actually suggests, but that researchers continually present it in screwy ways.

you'll note that, like the birth order studies, which i will repeat have the strongest correlations that we've been able to find, far stronger than this, this idea simply does not apply to women. they've really only discovered a very specific thing, which is that xy fetuses that are underexposed to testosterone in utero develop more feminized traits - that is, that this is perhaps a partial explanation for the 'queeny' type of queer male, as well as the male to female transsexual.

but, what about bears? are you going to tell me that you think macho, rough gay men are what they are because they have a lack of testosterone? that's ridiculous. and, let's be clear about this: more than half of the population of gay men out there are hyper-masculine, tough guys with chiselled body-building type physiques, and that pride themselves on this hyper-masculinity.

the queeny types may not transition, in the end. but even the queeny gay men that identify as queeny gay men for their entire lives are expressing a kind of gender fluidity, and a kind of gender-queeredness. and, as mentioned, this actually makes sense, because an xy fetus with zero testosterone in utero would just end up female, and if the presence of testosterone is low enough, the testes may grow but not fall. we can do these experiments and see what happens. sure.

but, as a general explanation, this fails horribly. it does not describe the phenomenon of masculine gay men, which in truth is statistically the most of them. and it does not describe any kind of homosexuality or bisexuality in women at all.

what it describes is the phenomenon of effeminate men, whatever their orientation. and, it didn't require a study - you could have pulled it out of a textbook.

besides putting forth the argument that masculine gay men are created by an exaggerated excess of testosterone in the womb, and presenting some research for it that argues that heterosexuality only exists in a narrow range of testosterone production, i don't see how this idea of exposure in utero has any future. to my knowledge, this has not been done. and, the idea would likely not go down well, either.

but, i'll remind you that i'm skeptical about the idea that digit ratios are developed in the womb in the first place..

(and, yes, my hands are very small.)

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

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i'm a bad example.

but, my own gender notwithstanding, this is something that happens, sometimes, at the early stages of relationships: sometimes feminist dudes find themselves with women that are much less feminist than they are.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

and, i gave her three three months, even.

it just produced denial.

"i told you in november than i'm moving out on february 1st. it's mid january. what are you doing?"
"you're not moving out."
"but, i am."

and, so she shows up at my new apartment mid way through february and wants to move in, because she's on the brink of being evicted.

and, yeah - i fucked her in that apartment.

more than ten times.

but, i never let her move in.

remember this. it's a life lesson.

when somebody is cruel to another person, it's only ever half that person's fault. the other half of the blame belongs to the person that lets it happen.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i've gone out of my way to reject comparisons regarding myself. there is no basis of similarity, and that will only become more clear as time unfolds.

the similarity is with the ex-partner, not with me. but, i'll concede a similarity, even as i point out that it's really not a similarity with me, but a similarity with her...

we got a place together and decided on splitting the rent 50/50. i would not have accepted any other arrangement; i fully expected that she would pay her way. at the time, i thought she wouldn't have accepted anything different, either - we didn't really have this discussion, though, it was just unstated.

i mean, i made her pay 50% of the bill - and 50% of the tip - on the first date. she actually liked my insistence on this at the time. and i insisted. strongly. i guess she'd never met anybody that had this mindset; i must have come off like a character in a novel. in hindsight, i think she may have said one thing and actually desired another. i may have been pushing social expectations on her that she actually wasn't prepared to accept, after all.

so, when it came time to put the lease down, however many years later, we thought we knew where we both stood without having to talk about it.

maybe i should have asked.

(although, as it happened to be, she had a larger income than me at the time)

then, she cheated on me. so, i walked out on her, leaving her with a monthly rent that she couldn't afford to pay. and, she had just spent a thousand dollars, all of her savings, on a bicycle, too.

one might ask the question. she didn't have a math degree, and tended to stare back at me blankly when i spoke in math, but she wasn't a stupid person: she could do enough math to realize that her income was not sufficient to pay the rent.

so, why did she cheat on me, then?

because she never thought i'd do it. she thought i was bluffing.

she took me for granted.

that's the commonality, here.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard