it's not that trudeau was ever a good option. he wasn't. and, i never said he was.

but, this was the so-called left....

https://watershedsentinel.ca/articles/line-9-shipping-tar-sands-crude-east/

again: we can't know what would have happened.

but, mulcair was broadcasting that he was going to increase production, not reduce it - and there's little reason to think he wasn't being honest about it.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/jobs+here+leader+mulcair+says+during+calgary+foray/7543850/story.html

really.

in 2015, naomi klein started pushing this idea called the leap manifesto, which was the "green new deal", except actually thought through properly by some actual smart people. if you didn't know, naomi klein is married to the son of a former provincial ndp leader and the grandson of a former federal ndp leader. so, she has access to the leadership.

they threw her out of the room and locked the door and told her to never come back. why? they said it was unelectable....

four years later, the idea is trending on twitter, and they're all of a sudden in favour of it. so, what's changed? the idea's perceived usefulness as a voter-buyer. that's it.

but, if these people were going to throw you out of the room four years ago for proposing this, you can be sure that they won't follow through with it if you elect them, now.

it's hard and difficult and dangerous, but we have to vote green, this time around. we have to send the fuckers a message.

in fact, when naomi klein said more or less exactly the same thing four years ago, the ndp leadership ran her out of town with pitchforks.

with the liberals, you're never really sure. but, with the ndp, it's always a scam. don't fall for it.

i know that the ndp are coming out with all this language about "green new deals", but what they say is essentially meaningless - they've never done anything they've said they were going to do, ever. it's just a cynical way to try to catch a trend. if the trend on the left was higher wages for oil workers, they'd be all over that, too.

and, no, the ndp didn't have a better idea.

what the ndp ran on was increasing taxes on oil exports, and redistributing it towards social systems like health care and child care. their policy was not only completely disinterested in reducing emissions, but explicitly focused on making the government even more reliant on the industry. this was coming out of the ndp winning government in alberta, and getting into bed with the oil industry.

if your primary concern was the environment, as mine was, the ndp was actually probably the worst choice in that election. while the conservatives just flat out don't care one way or the other, at least they weren't running on structurally tying the country's finances to oil revenue, like they do in venezuela. that would have been an utter disaster. the liberals were at least running on embracing environmentalism as a capitalist profit making venture, and while that's certainly not the ideal option, it's a step in the right direction. but, they haven't done it. at all.

in the end, we can only know what what actually happened. so, we know that the liberals broke all of their promises around meaningful environmental legislation and systemic change - that's empirical, we can measure it. we don't know what would have happened if the ndp would have won. would they have built all these refineries, like they were promising? how would they have reacted to the collapse in oil prices? we can't know.

but, despite being disappointed with the liberals, i still think the ndp were the less green option in that election. and, i'll argue the point every day for the next three months if you'd like, because i still think the ndp are the worse option for green voters.

this was supposed to be a green infrastructure bank, and it was supposed to be a subsidiary of the bank of canada that operated on printed money, much as previous infrastructure banks did in the country's history - all of them created by the liberals.

so, it was a reasonable election promise, in the context of the broad election theme of canada being "back". they were admittedly vague, but it was easy enough to fill in the blanks with the historical policy that previously existed.

in the early 70s, the elder trudeau dismantled this infrastructure system under international pressure to move to private borrowing as a part of the collapse of the bretton woods system (it was a local consequence of the nixon shock). frankly, i suspect that he would have reversed that choice when faced with the kind of inflation that mulroney walked into in the mid-80s. as it is, mulroney did not reverse that decision, but chose to let the debt balloon out of control, and then shift taxes from producers to consumers in order to compensate. and, both his career and his party were utterly destroyed as a consequence of this rather brutal fiscal mismanagement.

unfortunately, the new trudeau government has not been about making canada great again, but has rather been a full pivot to a type of neo-liberalism that we haven't seen here before. what was supposed to be a way to fund a fast transition ended up distorted into another way for the banks to make money from public interest.

it's funny how they spin it as a way to reduce public spending, though. that's priceless.

so, i would expect the conservatives to shut something like this down, but i would hope that the ndp would be focused more on converting it into it's stated goal, and it's disappointing that they're more interested in falling into right-wing populist rhetoric about big banks, instead. that won't win them votes, here.

but, this is certainly an issue where voters should punish the liberals for being not just dishonest and misleading but flatly hard-headed and kind of stupid. they ran on something quite specific that is really the only serious answer to the climate crisis, something that was believable to implement and would benefit the country dramatically, and then did almost the exact opposite of what they said they would in a way that will make the country more expensive and less livable. they should get hurt at the polls for that.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/infrastructure-bank-looks-to-avoid-distraction-from-election-talk-ceo-says-1.4535567

so, what am i doing?

there's nothing planned this week. i was considering taking a ride out to royal oak to see bad religion on wednesday, but that's the second show there this summer where the ticket prices are just ridiculous. belle & sebastien was like $80. bad religion is $60. really. bad religion. $60. is this strictly a ticketmaster thing? that venue isn't much bigger than the majestic or st. andrew's, and i've never seen a show at either of those places charging $60 for floor admission. those are prices more in line with day festivals than with concerts. fuck, i can see the symphony for $15 if i'm willing to sit at the top.

needless to say, i'm not paying that. in fact, i'm very rarely going to pay more than $30 for a show, that's kind of my max, so it's about twice what i'm willing to think about. sorry.

i'm really hoping to get the rebuild for september done in the next day or two. i'm then going to need to focus on cleaning a bit, and then on tracking down the oiprd report. again: if they want to drag this out and make themselves look bad, it's their choice. i at least got a response from the ohrc, and they're indicating that they're processing the claim and will get back to me on it.

i think i want to actually put down the goal of getting started on october for the end of the week.

and, i think i'm mostly going to avoid eating for the week, as well. how much did i drink on saturday night? well, i had a 700 ml bottle of mountain dew with two shots of vodka to start, then i split a 500 ml can of mike's for the ride in and the morning lull, i had two small can's of stroh's (355 ml) at outer limits, and i had five cans of various beer at marble. that's over 13 hours, btw. so, that's 355*7 + 500 + 700 = 3.685 L, but the beer isn't as bad, calorie wise, as what i was drinking last week. so, i don't think this week was that bad, calorie wise...

...but i didn't really finish the purge last week. i had a meal on saturday morning, and then i ate when i came back on sunday afternoon, and ate again last night. so, it was really only a three day purge. that means i'll have to hold off on a real meal until friday to cut out a full week worth of calories, which was the initial intent. and, i have two days worth of smoothies to tide myself over as it's happening.

again: i'm not running a marathon on no food, here. i'm sitting in my bed rebuilding a blog from 2013. so, i'm expending minimal energy. and, the logic is that i've drank at least an extra week's worth of calories in alcohol over the last month, so i'm going to cut out a week's worth of calories in food to compensate.

i know what i'm doing, but don't do this at home, kids.

i mostly remember lincoln fields for the small record store they had in it. i hope he found a new location. i also think i had doctor's or dentist appointments here when i was very little, because my dad worked in the ncr building around the corner, but it's pretty vague. otherwise, it was broadly out of the way for me for most of my life, and i only remember stopping in there when i had to use the washroom, or stop to get something to drink as i was bicycling by.

this isn't surprising. everybody's known for years that it's dying. but, that strip up carling is certainly going to be different without it.

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/end-is-near-for-lincoln-fields-shopping-centre-1.4535838

i will repeat this.

the choice that america has on gun violence is between changing it's gun culture, or accepting it for what it is.

background checks are a reasonable policy that i have no opposition to. but, laws to restrict the sale and distribution of weapons will do absolutely nothing at all, so long as you continue to perpetuate the same gun culture across generations.

and, so long as you insist on maintaining your culture, you'll need to accept this as collateral.

again: i'm not actually opposed to background checks. and, i will at least concede that they may make a difference on a very small percentage of shootings, meaning the policy may have some positive effect, so i'd have to lean towards supporting them rather than being neutral towards them. but, i must insist that they are not a serious solution to gun violence. they're not even a band-aid, really. what they are is low-hanging fruit, and to hear politicians push them as an answer is a reflection of the cul-de-sac that the democratic party finds itself in on gun violence, caught between a small but vocal conservative minority that thinks that you solve complicated social problems by banning things and a fundamentally broken heartland culture that associates gun ownership with it's core nationalist identity.

that's the most aggressive policy you're going to get: background checks.

what the country needs in order to stop gun violence is a deep level of reflection about how it sees guns. politicians that seek to represent the perspective of rural identity voters need to begin to understand that it is the identity itself that is at the crux of the problem, and what needs to change in order to stop the violence. you hear them say this - this is not who we are. but, this is exactly the problem: you need to understand that this is who you are, and look very deep inside yourselves, collectively, in order to come to a solution. it is going to take a deep, critical examination of every aspect of american culture. it is going to require changing what it means to be an american.

or, you can accept that america is an inherently violent place built on a culture of violence, that america is a place where violence and mass murder has been the norm from day one; you can accept the status quo for what it is.

these are your real choices.

but, i will nonetheless ask the question, as people call for a return of the house to pass a bill on background checks: is there any evidence at this stage that either of these shooters would have failed one?

this is a potentially tricky scenario for the british government. i think that all decent people are going to want them to grant the order, but dubai is a friendly state that is in a tactical position when it comes to conflict with iran, and a protection order of this sort may very well involve a need for round the clock security.

is this woman a british citizen? if so, the state will have certain obligations, and likely be forced to do the right thing.

if she's not, the outcome of this could be heartbreaking.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5702466/princess-haya-dubai-ruler-forced-marriage-protection-order/

so, yeah, i went dancing last night. there was an overnight party as a consequence of the mini-movement (charivari) festival, and it might be the last really nice saturday overnight we get, unless we get some more intense hurricanes, which i don't think anybody really wants. i'm happy we got a summer in the end due to the ocean patterns dominating for a while, however short it ends up being; it didn't really click in until the last week of june, and it looks like it's going to fall off about mid-week. so, that's 5-6 weeks of actual summer. we can have nice days lingering into october or sometimes even november here, but the actual summer heat starts to lift at the start of september, so if the long range is saying it's going to dip a little cooler for the end of august then there's not much chance of a return to seriously hot summer weather for the year. don't misunderstand me - it's not going to snow this week. but, that might have been the last late saturday / early sunday where the low is above 20 degrees celsius.

so, we got one more nice weekend in, and i decided not to waste it...

my plan was that i wanted to hit a space rock act early called brujas del sol, then head to the dance party (which ran until 9:00 am). but, i expected the space rock band to be on a little later, so i thought i might check something out down the street, then come back. so, i showed up at trixie's around 22:00, and was told they just finished, meaning they played first in a four bill act (despite being advertised as a co-headliner). this is why you should post set times, bar owners.

so, i went to the outer limits and caught the end of an early floyd style act called astral hand, and the entirety of a set by a band called midas, that was probably trying to sound like judas priest but i think actually sounded a bit more like hawkwind. while i'll take 70s or 80s metal over contemporary metal any day, the reality is that i'm not particularly knowledgeable about metal of any period, and while it wasn't something i'd take an initiative to listen to or check out further, they had a few moments and were entertaining to watch.

and, then i danced until 9:00 am.

hey, listen. there's two famous quotes.

1) "i want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things.", often apocryphally attributed as "if i can't dance, this is not my revolution".
2) "'cause your friends don't dance, and if they don't dance, then they're no friends of mine."