we're getting closer to the weekend, and that warm pacific air is still being forecast to dominate, hurricane or not.

looks like it'll be nice. better enjoy it....

i'm agreeing with this forecast, except that i'm still expecting the jet stream to defeat the ocean, in the end. so, i think we're going to get cold very fast, again, like last year. and, i'm holding out hope for an early spring. if not this year, then next year. soon...

i just want to clarify the point again: we've got two things, here. the warm ocean is mostly the result of climate change - not always, but usually. the blob would be an example of an ocean anomaly that may be solar in origin. on the other hand, the wobbly jet stream is mostly the sun. so, where i am, you get these things fighting with each other, and the weathers end up moving in extremes.

but, the sun is coming back, soon - which means they won't be fighting with each other any more, and it'll just be flat hot. the jet stream will retreat to the north, and we'll be dominated by pacific air for years, like we were in the mid 00s. and, they'll blame it on el nino, and be partly right, if it is.

so, the solar cycle is currently masking the warming effects at the latitude i'm at.

i have to keep pointing this out because people get confused.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/2019-canada-fall-forecast-winter-outlook-temperature-precipitation

i know it's seems like i've been distracted, but i've actually been kind of sick.

i need to do some cleaning in here and take a shower, and then i'll get to what i was doing overnight. i don't think it will take long...

i need to reiterate the point: what states do you expect warren to win?

she's not doing well in the south. biden's set to sweep, and sanders is doing much better with black voters.

i haven't actually seen any polls in the west, which is a bit of a problem - california isn't the last state any more. where's the polling?

she's doing better in the midwest and northeast, but the only polls i've seen have her tied for second, at best - and usually in the third.

it was a while ago, but the only polling i'd seen in massachusetts had her in third.

"well, biden's going to drop", you say. well, i don't agree - maybe he should drop but that doesn't mean he will. and, i agree that this is necessary for her, but it hardly seems sufficient.

if biden drops, sanders should pick up most of his support in the south, so that doesn't help her. it opens up a space in the west, but you've still got to deal with harris, even if sanders can't get traction, and if her base is educated woman, she's a potential block. there's at the least no clear path, and no evidence she'd do well. and, given that this viagra vote seems to be a real thing, biden dropping could very well help sanders more than warren, in the midwest and northeast. i think a fair assumption at this point is that it's a split, and then she's still not actually winning.

so, where's her base?

what states can she actually win?

and, if she can't win any, what's her plan? to limp into the convention with 35% of the votes, and hope they pick her without winning any actual states?

(and, bizarrely, there's a decent chance that they might.)

so, what happens if bernie drops out, then? well, there's your wild card - but what are the chances? regardless, is that her plan?

because, if it's not her plan, it doesn't seem that she actually has one.

logic tells me that she's going to look at the data and realize that she needs to drop out before iowa. but, i have this sneaking suspicion that the whole point of what she's doing is to try and muddy the field up - that she's running for vice president, and essentially just blocking sanders.

if this three way race lingers on, the only person that can win is biden, and it's going to be a messy process, as he does it.

meanwhile, all the ndp seems to care about is saving union jobs in the automotive sector.

https://blackburnnews.com/windsor/windsor-news/2019/09/16/ndp-announces-auto-strategy/

the next section, on "good governance", is mostly about ethics and stuff, and seems intended mostly to appeal to conservatives. good luck, guys: they don't swing. but, i don't really care one way or the other about most of this stuff....

i would support forcing cops to get warrants before they can eavesdrop, or get data from isps. i'm otherwise largely apathetic about privacy laws, and tend to preach individual responsibility when it comes to online behaviour. people need to stop giving the data out.

they don't mention proportional representation in the section on electoral reform. interesting. are they open to discussion about preferential ballots?

on criminal justice reform, i would support the elimination of mandatory minimums, which have largely been struck down by the courts. i would oppose solitary confinement, although i'd also support the opposite - i don't think prisoners should be forced out of their cells and into the general population if they don't want to be, either. i'm in favour of rehabilitation, where it's mentally possible. i appreciate the recognition that the gun problem mostly exists at the border.

so, i actually don't agree with any of that, either.

---------

that is a strong platform, in my opinion. there are some omissions, but the only point of real disagreement that i would have with them would be on immigration policy, which i don't consider to be a ballot issue.

it's a very fact-based document, and that's refreshing in a spectrum that is often driven by bad data, demagoguery and emotional manipulation.

they get almost everything right.

so, who's my local candidate, anyways?

the next section is called "advancing the just society", and...

the "just society" was a historical policy by the elder trudeau, which was sort of ripped from lbj's "great society". so, it's kind of a part of the canadian lexicon, and it's not odd to see it pop up here and there. this platform is going to town with it, though, in a rather clear attempt to undermine both the liberal party and it's current leader. the messaging is clear - the green party and elizabeth may, not the liberal party and justin trudeau, are the true protectors of the legacy of pierre trudeau - for better or for worse, i suppose.

it's ballsy. pierre was ballsy. is it true? they'd have to govern; we'd have to watch them do it. but, there's a good case for it, at least.

i enthusiastically support all of these kinds of things, i always do.

but, the thing i want to point out is that the section on sex work gets it right, and maybe it's because it was written by a woman - they want to liberalize the sex work laws, but they point to the gai (as well as the free tuition.) as a way out, indicating that they get the point that sex work may be a choice for some people, but should never be the only choice available for anybody.

it's otherwise a statement of solidarity and support for women, queer people and minority language rights, the latter being a quintessentially canadian thing. no criticisms, here.

the next section is called 'renewing the social contract' and is a series of commitments to the social safety net in a social democracy. canada's system is largely functioning, so these commitments are largely just upholding the status quo, if suggesting ways to improve it, and ultimately promising to maintain it.

while we need more investments in housing, the big novel proposal is the gai, and the details are scant. it's mentioned that the intention is to be livable, and that's what you want to see, but some more details would be nice. and, if the answer is "we'll work out the details in committee", you should interpret it for what it is - aspirational.

these are otherwise the nuts and bolts of governing in canada, kind of thing, and i have nothing but support across the board for all this stuff.

there's a section on "invoking ecological wisdom", whatever that means.

i don't think a ban on single-use plastics is a smart approach, as it won't actually solve the problem. this is maybe an example of what is now an aging party adopting a fashionable position that isn't well thought through.

but, i recognize that there aren't good solutions with bio-plastics right now, either.

this isn't the same kind of pressing concern that emissions reduction is - we're not in a race against time, and we could potentially find ways to clean the oceans up. we've found plastic eating microbes; if there is magic in nature, it's called evolution. we know we can't ban energy, we need to transition from dirty to clean. and, likewise, we're going to have to shift from oil-based plastics to biologically derived ones, and we're going to have to be smart in pushing it through.

beside that, the section was about things like species conservation, and i don't have much criticism to drop regarding it.

- i don't have any direct criticism on the transitioning workers section, but i'll point out that this isn't really my concern. i mean, it's a problem that kind of solves itself, if you actually do this right. i am in support of retraining programs.

- i don't really care about the tax code, one way or the other. you're neither going to attract me with a good tax policy nor repel me with a bad one. it's just irrelevant to me.

- with the retreat of the ndp from the left and towards the neo-liberal consensus, the greens have recently become the last alter-globalization party. if you're still opposed to nafta, regardless of the changes to it, the greens are the only party that still opposes it, and other deals like it. they are the only party opposed to the isds provisions. since 2015, this has become another reason to actively support them.

=================

immigration is something where i may have less agreement with them, although they don't seem to be terrible on this, either. they're not explicitly arguing for increases in immigration. they want more money for integration, including for english and french instruction, which is good. they want to ban the "temporary foreign workers program", which is good. they want to focus on professional accreditation, which is good. i would also support policies designed to strengthen civil rights at the border, and ensure that the rule of law is being upheld for non-citizens.

i don't know if being a climate refugee ought to be grounds for opening the doors, though. my positions on this are subtle:  i don't support deportation in much of any context, even for criminals (i don't think that foreign countries appreciate us deporting criminals. put them in jail, and try to rehabilitate them.), but i think you have to have a good reason to get in, because we don't have infinite resources. i mean, there's a contradiction here: the greens know we don't have infinite economic growth, so they should conclude that we can't have infinite refugee inflows. i think the primary policy ought to be to help potential climate refugees adapt by working with their local governments - and that this should be seen as a primary foreign aid goal.

i don't think that we should abolish the safe third country agreement with the united states, either. that's a knee-jerk reaction to a president you don't like, it's not a carefully thought-through long term policy. we will come to regret that.

i do not think that family reunification should be given priority status in evaluating immigration or refugee claims.

and, i would oppose giving "cultural institutions" charitable status, as well. rather, if there's a tax policy i'd be likely to actively support, it would be in taxing churches, mosques and other religious groups.

but, these are minor concerns to me, overall, and my disagreement with this part of the platform is unlikely to prevent me from voting for the party. immigration is not a ballot issue for me. i would rather work to shift the party's positions on this through internal debate than attack it from the outside, as this is not where my core political allegiances exist, one way or the other. but, i'm not going to silence or censor myself, either - i'm going to insist on the debate, and insist it's up for debate.

======================

- while i would support converting the relevant vehicles to electric cars, i'm not a particularly strong advocate for postal workers. we should keep a state-run system of easily accessible post offices, but i don't mind picking up my own mail. again: that's not a ballot issue.

================

the section on sustainable farming is refreshing to see in the sense that it avoids most of the nonsense you see floating around on the internet today (although, i wonder how some people would react to that, if they're legitimately concerned and don't know better.).i just have a few minor points.

while i agree with the need to cut down on pesticide use as well as the need to cut down on transportation costs, i am far more concerned about the safety of urban farming than i am concerned about, say, gmos. i'd be more likely to eat a gmo tomato grown in a field than i would be to eat an organic tomato grown in a rooftop in toronto, and the reason is that the air and soil quality is likely to be terrible, in the latter. in a lot of ways, this is a question of regulation. but, due to toxicity concerns, i'd argue for labeling of urban products, so people know what they're getting. i like the controlled conditions for urban greenhouses (perhaps in conjunction with things like hydroponics) better than rooftops or backyards....

i would also like to see some kind of explicit federal support for the idea of insect farming, as it's a more healthy, sustainable and humane way than veganism to generate protein for human consumption.

lastly, while it's mostly a provincial issue, doing something with compost would help with that 2.5% from landfills.

=============================

the fisheries thing is complicated, and while i support management, i'll leave that one to the experts, other than to point something out - being where we are in canada, so long as we're not overfishing, there's almost no way we can lose on this. swordfishing in nova scotia? we have salmon in bc, how about tuna in newfoundland? quotas are key...and relevant quotas that understand changing migration patterns are paramount.

===================

- as a low income artist, the best way to support me is via a livable gai and through actualizing real, affordable housing. i'm never going to sell my product; it will be left to fiuture generations to evaluate it.

- what are the serious opportunities for industrial cannabis waste to aid in the shift to bio-plastics? but, that's an r&d question, something that needs funding.

"but, you'd be replacing the climate debt with a financial debt."

no. that's why you use the bank of canada. and, i actually agree that you need to have limits on printing money, but this is an emergency - we don't have any more time to waste on market theory, we need to do it now. that's what interest-free printing is for.

but, like....we can always cancel the debt, anyways. people forget that. if it was up to me, i'd just wipe out the national debt by legislation.

the section on identifying what the crisis is and how to solve it is central to any support i may give to the green party - and, remember, i haven't decided to actually vote for them yet, i've just ruled out the other options and reduced the decision to green or spoil.

in canada, the liberals have historically supported infrastructure spending by printing interest-free money through the bank of canada, although it was only ever a minor part of the funding, and it was mostly phased out by the elder trudeau (this was a part of canada's reaction to the nixon shock). but, from roughly 1940-1970, we printed a lot of money, and we used that money to built much of the infrastructure that is today causing much of the problems - bridges and roads but also power plants, which were at the time mostly publicly owned. it is frustrating that the liberals argued that we didn't have to pay the bankers when we were causing the problem, but are now insisting that the bankers get their cut when it's time to solve it. like most decent people, i really hate the vampires in the insurance industry. and, yet, despite all my rage...

let's avoid that.

so, it was easy to believe the liberals when they said they were going to do this, and deflating to see what they've actually done.

the plank in the green party platform specifies no P3s, and that's a good thing, it's what i want to hear. this is the way we solve this - not through tax incentives or faith in the markets but by printing the money and fucking doing it.

so, i would float this document to the various democratic leadership campaigns as a funding policy and general strategy that i can actually support.

so, that's the good stuff.

i could nitpick the language in the indigenous section, which is a good chunk of the document, but i'm not going to. what's more important to me is that the government eventually adopts the general idea that the colonial state needs to take a step away from overseeing indigenous communities as protectorates, and finds ways to allow them to define what sovereignty actually means. it's easy enough to come into this with a collection of preconceived notions, and the undrip is just another set of them, but if you look into this what you'll see is that what these people actually want is a complicated, messy thing with a lot of tribe-by-tribe specifics and very few universalized approaches. you could never write a policy paper on this, not in 2000 pages, let alone 20.

so, what we need is a commitment to the democratic process, which sounds almost trivial, but is deeply lacking in our present and in our history. unfortunately, this is going to be exceedingly difficult because what we are is a colonial state. asking canada to stop being a colonial state is like asking a lion not to hunt. it's a fundamental transformation that is going to require not just a deep reanalysis of the indian act - and a commitment to democracy means understanding the subtlety around the abolition v replacement debate within indigenous communities - but probably a reanalysis of confederation, and an overhaul of the constitution. we took a first attempt at this under the elder trudeau, but he really just laid the groundwork for future reforms, something that was deeply understood but that we couldn't get through (see meech lake), as the discussion turned to globalization in the late 80s.

so, they get the general idea right. and, that's all you can ask for in a document like this.

but, i also want to make a foundational point: the future of the green party and the indigenous sovereignty movement are almost certainly intrinsically interwoven. it is long overdue for the greens to make a serious outreach attempt for indigenous voters, and i hope their efforts work out. this should be their base.

so, i flipped through this, and it's pretty much the same document they've been kicking around since the 90s. it's never been perfect, and i've always had some serious disagreements, which is a part of the reason i've largely avoided voting for them, but i know where they stand; they're a lot like bernie sanders, in that respect - they've been saying the same thing for as long as they've existed.

https://www.greenparty.ca/sites/default/files/platform_2019_en_web_update_09-16.pdf

there's questions around timeframes closing, including around elizabeth may's lifespan. and, while they deny being utopian, a lot of this stuff can't be done fast enough to make the difference it needs to make anymore. if there's a broader criticism of this document, it's that it represents an optimism to actually substantively reverse the damage that probably can't be accomplished any more. so, it needs a greater focus on mitigation and adaptation, and i would suspect that will be the theme for the party in the next few cycles.

but, i'd rather start by telling you what i want.

i'm a low-income, highly urban artist nearing the age of 40 that doesn't even have a driver's license and will probably never get one. i prefer to bicycle; when i can't bike anymore, i'll have to resort to walking or relying on public transit. this isn't some kind of exercise in zen buddhism or stoicism or something, or an unwanted consequence of poverty, but a conscious lifestyle decision that reflects the kind of world i want to actually live in. it's leadership by example, even if you might not want to follow - although i hope you do.

so, i want to live in an urban green space that is largely self-sustainable, which includes being free of both car exhaust and tobacco and marijuana smoke, and i want to live amongst educated people that have sophisticated self-interests that are not necessarily market-driven. i think that the best way to get to this endpoint is to socialize the means of production, but i recognize that my existence is finite, and i've long accepted the idea of a minimum income as a way to allow people like me to live the lifestyles they actually want to live.

but, i think that proportional representation is a bad idea - i would rather see a preferential ballot. further, there is almost no room for religion in my environmental-technological utopia, except as a veneration of the earth. i can almost tolerate a type of mystical gaia theory, so long as it is empirical, in the end. i have essentially no patience for the abrahamic faiths, and see no place for them in the future.

so, what are some specific points of contention, then? let me put these in separate posts.

mr. trump,

as you know, the saudis were voluntarily keeping production low on request of the united states. this has artificially kept the price high. while iran may have their own interests in the region, as is their right, it makes little sense for them to attack an oil field in saudi arabia, so long as production is being voluntarily curtailed.

the obvious conclusion, sir, is that you're being played. the question is who, and there are only two reasonable answers: israel and russia.

my immediate hypothesis is that this is the walrus' attempt to manipulate you into doing what you wouldn't. and, rather than bomb iran, what you need to do is get tough on netanyahu - he just tried to play you like a fool.

some advice, that's all, from
the infamous koala hating canadian

this is the debate i'm talking about:

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/federal-election-debate-from-a-catholic-perspective-tickets-64374772678

i'm merely going to boycott it, but feel free to get some rowdy protesters out there to shut it down, too, if you want.

so, i'm going to call for a general boycott of the religious debate in canada. i'm frankly baffled that this exists.

i'm not watching it - i'm not supporting it through ad revenue, and i'm not commenting on it.

i would encourage you to boycott it, as well.