07/2015 updated quickly. there were like two or three new posts...

there's too many poor people and not enough housing for us.

what i don't like is religion.

and, i will fight for secularism to the death....

but, i don't care about race. at all. sorry.

...and, i'm not the first leftist that has pointed out that liberals are broadly quite racist.

again: i'm a leftist.

i'm not a liberal....

the conservatives are legitimately stupid.

but, the liberals are legitimately racist.

"but, they're brown. they can't vote conservative. they're not pre-disposed to it."

the liberals are going to sit there looking at the results in 2023 and shake their heads.

"i just don't get it. we brought hundreds of thousands of religious conservatives into the country, and they voted us out, in favour of a socially conservative agenda. how did this happen? what did we do wrong?"

the difference is that when the conservatives increase immigration, they do it to shift the culture to the right, and are correct about the outcome - whereas when the liberals do it, they do it because they're racist idiots that think immigrants don't understand politics, when the truth is that they themselves don't understand the difference between a democrat-voting mexican migrant worker that is trying to avoid being deported and a deeply socially conservative muslim refugee that the canadian right welcomes with open arms, because they want to help them shape the culture in their image.

the liberals have become utter idiots on this file. and, their own policies are going to result in their own decline.

welcome to the dark ages, canada - where a right-wing coalition of multiple religions gives the conservative party a cultural majority, and liberals can barely get a word in.

i mean, you don't think the conservatives are going to decrease immigration, do you?

they're the ones that increased it in the first place.

it's their policy. it's their social engineering.

and, do you think all these gay bashing, women-hating muslims and nigerians are going to vote liberal?

it's a farce.

the two parties have the same policies.

i still think it's very important that i see some substantive movement towards building new housing.

....and, that if this mess carries on for a few more months, he's going to have a problem with low income voters.

i need to repeat: they had a very good platform.

and the other parties were awful...

voting liberal in 2015 admittedly required a little naivete, or a little cynicism, and it's funny how that sometimes works out, but it was the right choice - given how bad the other options were.

and, it is equally clear that voting for the liberals is the wrong choice in 2019 - now that they've proven that all they intend to do is carry on with the same set of neo-liberal policies as the conservatives, except on overdrive.

the ndp still have a chance to make a case, but the right choice this election is going to be to vote for a protest party - and shrug it off as irrelevant if the conservatives win, because there's not any meaningful difference on any substantive file, anyways.

that's why he's running on the largely irrelevant issue of immigration. well, irrelevant, so long as you're not now competing with refugees for resources...

the sad truth is that stephen harper was a better choice for the environment than justin trudeau.

and, he was better for poor people, too.

so, the neo-liberal oil gigolo wants to run on environmentalism and fighting inequality.

emissions are up, justin.

and, equality is down.

you had your chance to promote that narrative and you made a horrific mockery of it.

maybe he can ride into parliament on a white unicorn while he's at it. he'd look good in tight pants, at least.

i am going to vote in favour of the environment and in favour if equality - and that means voting against the oil dauphin, and his band of merry neo-liberals.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/08/19/trudeau-says-2019-canada-election-is-fight-against-polarization.html

i've actually been saying for years that i belong in the pacific northwest.

they would be better off building a few really big fans than putting a lot of really small ones together. but, i like the attitude.

they made sure they're not getting their electricity from coal, though, right?

https://www.facebook.com/events/2049472562029769/

&, as an adult, i have never attended any religious service of any kind, whatsoever - nor do i ever intend to.

...& i stopped attending the church services at school when i was like ten or eleven.

it was really as simple as that the catholic school system started a year early. honestly.

& i just never really felt the urge to switch to a public school.

my sister switched....

i do not have a single memory of attending a catholic church (for service) with any member of my family.

that is, if i ever went at all, and i do not think that i did, then i do not remember it.

i'm not talking about infrequent attendance.

i can't recall a single time. not one. and i don't think there ever was one, either.

....but it isn't.

and it never is.

and, so i don't react - because there's nothing to react to.

if it was christians in the parking lot across the street, i'd be drowning them out with atheist slogans, too.

i actually do not believe that the catholic church would recognize me as a member of it, as i did not go through the second or third sacraments.

i did not receive a "first eucharist" or any further eucharists.

i was not confirmed.

and, i was only baptized in a cynical act to send me to school a year early - at the age of four.

i was not christened as a newborn; i was actually old enough that i still remember it.

see, and the fact that i wasn't christened really tells the whole story. i was raised outside of any church, rather explicitly as an atheist. i have always identified as an atheist. and, i would presume that the church would interpret me that way, as well.

but, i'll tell you what: when catholics get in my face and proselytize and blare music at me and try and take over the place, i'll level the same amount of scorn at them, too.

what you're missing is that when i say that i think islam and christianity are basically the same thing, i'm not condoning islam, but condemning it.

the difference is that christianity barely exists, here. and, islam is becoming increasingly annoying.

the way the system should react to these kinds of things is to gather information and prosecute aggressively.

everything's on camera, right?

because, if observation in the shelter while awaiting a hearing is the only screening process we have, we'd better use it to the full extent that we can.

throw these fuckers out.

i mean, get your head around this.

1. claims refugee status.
2. commits hate crime.

really?

fuck right off.

there needs to be zero tolerance for any kind of criminality from these people whatsoever.

and, i have no patience for people claiming refugee status and then committing hate crimes while their claim is being processed - just throw them out.

fuck, throw them into the sea...

so, there are reports about problems with violence against queer people at these refugee shelters, and an idea that we need separate shelters for queer people.

it just goes to show how systemic the problem is.

if somebody in the refugee system is harassing somebody else in the refugee system due to their sexual orientation, they should be charged with hate crimes and deported.

i'm afraid that all of this frivolous talk of fearmongering has scared me away from the coverage.

facts, people, please.

yeesh.

....and, the fact is that if we're going to have open borders then we need to build more affordable housing.

like, i remember sitting huddled up in blankets, with a woman hovering over me, saying "drink this. it will restore your strength.".

i don't know what it was. crushed leaves. berries. as mentioned - it was probably a lot of vitamins.

i remember that it was very strong tasting....not very yummy...

the wood planks stretched across the forest floor, tracing out a kind of ewok village. remember: this part of vancouver island is technically a rainforest. it very much felt like it. you would follow the maze out to a platform, and set up a tent underneath a tarp.

as mentioned, i was sick, and i spent a couple of days in somebody else's dwelling. it was more permanent - not quite a house, but something like a tree fort.

we'll go over this in the alter-reality, in time.

this came up randomly on an unrelated google search.

my memory of my time spent here is blurry.

i had picked up some kind of virus in the island's interior due to not sleeping for days. we were on our way to the beach; i guess we thought we could just set up tents. at this point in the trip, we'd given up on any kind of meaningful planning.

i think i just thought i needed to sleep, but she seemed to think i was in worse shape than that. we weren't anywhere near health care - or, at least, it seemed that way. sarah wasn't sure how to react, so she got word of this commune, and basically took me there looking for help.

i slept for a long time - 36, 48 hours, and perhaps that was all i really needed. these people weren't doctors, but i drank the potions they gave me. they thought it helped. i suppose i needed calories and vitamins, too, so it's kind of tautological.

but, as mentioned, it's very blurry - i stumbled in half dead and stumbled out under the influence of something. i remember balancing on fallen tree logs. torrential rains. sleeping long hours in these tents..

sarah was not afflicted by what i was afflicted by and spent the time socializing, while i slept. iirc, they asked us to leave because she was smoking. this was a totally straight-edge place.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-pooles-land-a-modern-day-anarchist-experiment/

06/15 is updated...

and, that was a lot faster, as i had hoped.

can you just build some more housing, guys?

thanks.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/anti-poverty-strategy-will-aim-for-50-per-cent-cut-in-low-income-rates-cp-source-1.4060508

this is why the democrats are better for the economy: they print money.

it's not that the market can't continue to grow forever. there is no gravity in the stock market; these numbers have no upper limit. in theory, there is no reason why the market can't keep going up and up and up...

it's that money has to be created in order to be invested.

so, if you want this perpetually rising market? it's entirely plausible, and we know how to do it: the feds have to print. lots.

but, if the feds stop printing? then the market eventually crashes. that's when it can't keep rising...

there most be money coming into the market right now from things like home equity, which is just that much more insane.

i'm not a stock analyst.

i don't own stocks, or have anything to gain from the stock market moving one way or another.

but, i understand the basic mathematics underlying the american economy, and the fact is that a proper valuation of the stock market is a function of quantitative easing. that is, when you print money, the market goes up - and when you destroy money, the market comes down.

when stocks move in the opposite direction of the fed policy, what that means is that the market is in a bubble. and, that bubble must eventually burst due to divestment, as a consequence of money destruction.

what props the bubble up is short trading - people that treat the market like a casino. and, what we're seeing right now is that the market is being propped up dramatically by incredible amounts of casino capitalism.

how long can that continue for? well, i don't know. i can point out the fundamental relationship between printing money and trading it. but, i'm not a stock analyst, and i neither can nor desire to make predictions of this sort.

it's certainly overdue, though.

and, when it crashes it's going to be nasty....

is it possible that the bubble could persist until they start printing more money? i guess so. but, it would only cushion the crash, in the end. and, there's a kind of causality in markets crashing and money being printed, because capitalists have this silly idea that these crashes are short term....that the economy can eventually survive on it's own....

no.

so, i'm not altering my analysis. i'm just pointing out that it's taking a long time to happen.

at the end of the day, stocks are always worth what we imagine they're worth. that is true. but, when the money dries up, there's nothing left to trade. and, that is the inevitability that follows from stopping the printing presses...