and, again: if a member of the house foreign relations committee comes to you and says "american foreign policy is controlled by jewish spies under the influence of jewish bankers", and your only reaction is "that hurts my feelings", you're really not seeing the issue very clearly.

and, wait a second.

when did ilhan omar criticize israel? i mean, perhaps she did at some point, but that's not the issue at hand.

what she did was claim that american policy is being driven by the influence of jewish money, and directed by jewish spies.

so, to suggest that the issue has anything to do with criticizing israel is a ridiculous red herring.

actually, i think that jeff merkley would be a stronger candidate than bernie sanders.

i understand that bernie is raising a lot of money right now...

.....but i might remind people that that there's still a year and a half before the election, and that's a long time when you're in your late 70s. would-be left-lane candidates shouldn't pack up completely.

this is a more genuinely left-of-center analysis, even if it's just some notes on chomsky's writing.

and, it's the right way that you deal with this.

https://libcom.org/blog/the-death-israeli-lobby-29092008

i'm personally less concerned about the idea that her comments are "offensive" and more focused on the question of whether they're correct or not.

unlike arab oil money, which dominates the think tank circuit, "the jewish lobby" is largely a myth. the fact that it's a racist myth is less important to me than the fact that it's a myth. in terms of voting habits, american jews are overwhelmingly left-leaning. so, it's just factually wrong to go around blaming american foreign policy on the influence of jewish bankers. worse, it serves to distract from actual foreign policy discussions, namely the importance placed by the united states on controlling the oil supply.

if she was actually right, i wouldn't care if people were offended; but, she isn't. chomsky is probably the best source, here. even the iranians know who the big satan is, and who the little satan is. but, when you reduce a complicated foreign policy discussion to the influence of jewish money, you let the actual bad guys off the hook.

so, what i would like to see is for the left to essentially skewer her as an idiot - not a racist, even if she is one, but as a simpleton with a lousy grasp on policy, because that's what i actually get out of listening to her speak: that she's a complete idiot that lives in a conspiratorial fantasy reality and doesn't know what she's talking about, and should be denounced as exactly that.

so, the media ran a poll that told them that the three least desirable qualities in a candidate are being a socialist, being a muslim and being over 75.

the next day, all of the top articles on a google news search for bernie sanders return articles about ilhan omar.

well, my tactic for pulling the carleton site down from the archive.org site seems to have finally worked, thankfully. i got 861 files out of it, which is less than i hoped for, but better than nothing. that gives me some bounds to at least start a double check.

i'm still getting a 403 on the tripod site, and am going to try the same tactic for it.

as mentioned several times, this report was due on mar 2, 2019, which was a saturday. it is now mar 7, 2019.

i briefly spoke to kirsten on the phone today around 14:00 and was informed that the windsor police had requested a time extension. this request was neither communicated to me by the department nor by the oiprd. i consequently made a request that this be communicated to me in writing, and was told that it would only be done so once the director approved or denied the request.

i did not see the use of arguing with kirsten on the phone.

but, what does it mean for the director to approve or deny such a request? the report is already five days past a statutory deadline. if the extension is denied, a report does not magically appear; if it is granted, it is simply a gloss over a failure to meet the appropriate deadline. this is an absurdity.

i reminded the police of the deadline several times, so i cannot be accused of failing to perform due diligence.

the important information that i learned from the brief call is the following:

1) no report exists.
2) the oiprd denied my request to document the fact that no such a report exists.

i am rather baffled by this.

i will consequently be treating the situation as though the report was issued on the 1st, and will be filing with the superior court no later than the 29th of march, unless a report appears on or before that date.

j

the fact that bernie is a jew is not going to help him with black southern voters - and don't be naive about that point.

but, at the end of the day, his biggest problem with the south is going to be that the south does not want the kind of policies he stands for - it wants a candidate that is going to stand up for conservative family values and free market economics.

that is the south, whether it is white or black. and, it's not bernie sanders.

i thoroughly deconstructed this during the primaries, and i agree that the primary factor was age....in the north.

in the south, the fact is that you actually didn't see a lot of difference in the results, based on race - that sanders lost badly to white people, too. it was widely reported that sanders badly lost to black voters in these states, but the media forgot to mention that he lost by roughly the same margins to white people, too.

the conclusion that i drew was actually that the south is just a conservative place, and would prefer to vote for the more right-leaning candidate, regardless of gender or race. further, one might forget that this was true in 2008 as well, when obama ran to the right of clinton in the primaries; in 2008, it was clinton that supported universal health care, for example, and obama that didn't. obama ran as a kind of market-driven pro-business libertarian. or, at least, that was the impression i got from him, from day one. clinton was a communist that wanted universal health care, gender equality and the village to raise your kids.

so, you're going to see these surveys and studies come up and they're going to say "x% of black people think...", and they're going to all make the same fundamental error: they're going to treat the black vote in the united states as a homogeneous whole that is determined by ancestry (because the negro is preconditioned, of course), rather than a fragmented collection of geographically-specific interests.

if you look at the data carefully, what you're actually going to find out is that black people in new york aren't that different than white people in new york, and that black people in atlanta aren't that different than white people there, either - and that if you want predictive surveying, you should be looking at geography, not at identifiable characteristics.

but, i shouldn't have to make the argument too forcefully, because this is the same mistake everybody made in 2016: they looked at national polls, then got confused by the electoral college. the fact that hillary won the popular vote nationwide did not help her win an election, and a study that says that sanders is competitive for black voters across the country doesn't mean he's competitive for black voters in the carolinas.

it is far too early to expect polls to be predictive. but, if you're going to have these discussions, you need to look at local polls, and not national ones.

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/7/18216899/bernie-sanders-bro-base-polling-2020-president

he's being very cryptic, here. you need to read between the lines. he's saying one thing to the press, but really speaking past them in saying another thing to voters. it's an interesting example of how the press narrative can exist in a completely parallel reality to the dialogue between politicians and voters...

when he talks about a breakdown in trust, he seems to be acknowledging that he made a mistake in putting a noob in a position that should be reserved for trusted inner circles of the party. and, that is the right lesson - even if the mistake ends up fatal.

do i think that jwr did a good job on assisted dying, on cannabis, on drunk driving? i don't, actually.

but, it sounds like he realizes that the actual problem here is that the pmo is too insular, and ended up mismanaging an issue by not fully understanding the legalities around it, due to not having the expertise to do so. it was in over it's head, on this, and shouldn't have been. the adjustment of consulting more widely is a reasonable, welcome reaction; there have been broad criticisms around this pmo for existing in a bubble, and not reacting to concerns in reality. if the result of this is that the bubble bursts, that is good.

but, we're also going to see who he consults. and, i'll say this: this language is refreshing, because it sounds like something the old liberal party would say.

we'll see.

as an aside, i don't think that reacting firmly and decisively to factions that are trying to hurt you is authoritarian. rather, it's self-defence. this might be the correct adjustment, but he's continuing to broadcast his vulnerability to trojan horse attacks, and if he doesn't address that fundamental weakness, you can expect this will happen again.

in the end, atwood might have had her countries backwards.

welcome to ontario: the iran of the north.

i don't think this is going to get better. not here, anyways.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-pcs-teacher-complaints-misconduct-1.5045707

right. because living a life of privilege and then being appointed a cushy job is just like being thrown in jail for leading an armed revolt against slavery.

flat out stupid comparisons aside, i don't really buy this line. i mean, it's clear enough that she didn't want the job, but her daddy has a big mouth, and i recall him referring to it as a dead-end job back in 2015. it was something like "i'm glad she didn't end up in indigenous affairs, it's the armpit of the cabinet".

my guess is that she was primarily concerned about her career ambitions, even if it came out as not wanting to be the jimmy carl black of the party. token indian is not a path to the pmo.

i took a third year course in indigenous law back in 2013 and wrote an essay on the indian act, which doesn't make me an expert, but does make me more knowledgeable than the average bear. majority opinion in the indigenous community has long been to rework this legislation, rather than abolish it. one manifestation of this was the elder trudeau's famous 1969 white paper (actually written by jean chretien, whose career wasn't hindered by his time in this office), which called for abolition and assimilation - and was promptly met with massive discontent. the paper was pulled.

but, the reality is that trudeau-chretien (they're like an egyptian god, very much fused together into a singular whole) was really just dropping the bullshit; the assimilation policy had been being carried out in stealth since day one. the british never had any other outcome in mind, nor has canada. so, when you talk about abolition, you get this predictable kneejerk fear of assimilation, which is in truth well-grounded in historical fact.

the general consensus is actually that the act needs to be reworked, and used as the framework of a new governing relationship, in order to avoid the collapse of identity that will follow from abolition. and, surely, this framework should not be rethought by a bunch of white people...

if jwr felt so strongly about the indian act, it's curious that she didn't take the opportunity to help rewrite it. the younger trudeau has broadcast an interest in doing so.

perhaps she doesn't actually care so much about it at all.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/indigenous-services-cabinet-shuffle-wilson-raybould-1.5045932