clinton got ~270,000 votes in 2016 and about 40% of them were black, as per the previous calculation. so, she got ~ 108000 black votes.

with 99% reporting, it looks like biden is going to get less than 260,000 votes and about 35% of them were black. so, that's ~ 91000 black votes.

you need to make up margins of ~20000 to win these states back, not lose them.

biden won categories - like "prefer switching to single payer" - that don't actually make any sense, indicating that it's questionable that some of these voters really even understood what they were voting for, and may have just done what clyburn told them to, perhaps against their economic interests.

this is not how democracy is supposed to work. you're not supposed to ask your congressman who to vote for, you're supposed to look at the issues and work it out yourself.

so, i hope that this is the last election like this in south carolina where one person appears to wield a veto on the outcome, and that south carolinians take the process more seriously, in doing their own research, in future elections. and i hope that, in 2024, a majority of them will know how to fucking read - and will put it on clyburn's footstool or gravestone if they don't.

but, these kinds of absurdities aside, biden's numbers are not impressive. only 56% of the turnout was black, and he only get 61% of it. so, about 35% of the total vote was black and voted biden, and about 13% were white and voted biden - indicating you should expect him to settle somewhere around 48% if the exit polls are close, and that's about right.

clinton and obama got over 80% on higher than 60% turnout. that means over 40% of the electorate was black and voted for them. clinton also did dramatically better with white voters. she got over 70%, indicating she got almost three quarters of them. this cycle, that has split up between buttigieg, sanders, warren and klobuchar, with buttigieg getting the highest share of it.

this is important, because it's the crux of the argument for his electability - he can excite blacks, and get them to turnout, overturning small margins in important states. ignoring the reality that blacks in detroit and milwaukee will probably vote for bernie in larger numbers anyways, he just debunked his own propaganda, by failing to match the numbers of the person that supposedly couldn't get the numbers up enough.

and, what of buttigieg? well, he did sneak over 15% in the exit polls with white voters, which is what i suggested was a possibility. but, it doesn't seem like they were concentrated strongly enough anywhere to get him any delegates.

this results aren't particularly surprising, but they are actually underwhelming for biden.

and, again, sanders needs to be concerned about youth turnout - and may want to ask questions about those closures i pointed out.

i'm not willing to change my narrative yet because i don't think that biden gets much of a bounce from this, or that it changes the trajectory of the race, much. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/exit-polls-2020-south-carolina-primary/

true or false:

communists believe in the abolition of the state.

so, what have i been doing?

i've been sitting in front of this chromebook since i got back on thursday morning, trying to pivot and kind of failing to do it. i guess i got distracted by the need to make some calls, then got lost in the primary....

i also got lost in the need to eat up a lot of fruit before it started rotting, as i overbought a little for the month of february. that means i've eaten a few days ahead...

the weather is going to turn over this week, maybe for good. let's hope so. i'm eager for spring.

i've cleared the show listings out until wednesday at the earliest and probably until next weekend. as i've eaten a few days ahead to clear out the fridge, that also means i won't be getting a start on groceries until mid-week or later.

so, i'm going to get the reimage started, clean up the kitchen a little, take a shower and park myself in front of this thing for the next several days, with the intent to get some actual work done.

one question, though...

obama won razor-thin margins on the back of a total dominance of a specific minority, and historic turnout within it.

that was never sustainable, and anybody trying to recreate it is delusional. 

my point here is not about representation, i believe in democracy, and i think everybody's interests should be heard. my point is that biden's electability argument actually took a major hit, here, if you look at the numbers properly. 

if you have to accept the inevitability of a decrease in black turnout in the post-obama era, and the numbers are in, now - you do - then you're going to need to find some other way to win.

i wish that sanders was winning large numbers of latin voters in states that matter, more.

but, i'd consider the possibility of winning arizona on the back of strong latin-speaking support to be much higher than the possibility of getting black turnout up in milwaukee. if you want to win wisconsin back, you have to grapple with the actual demographics - this trump card of 99% black support across the board for the black candidate is over.

no.

stop.

the argument was that clinton lost because she couldn't get enough black voters out, right? i'm not sure how actually right that argument was - you might have been able to make a numerical case for it, but a decrease in black voters was inevitable, and it was never realistic that you'd get the same kind of turnout that obama got in 2008. iirc, obama himself saw a decrease in black turnout in 2012.

you might remember that something kind of historic happened in 2008.

but, nonetheless, if that was the argument, then biden just eliminated himself, because not only has he seen black turnout come in less than clinton had, but it's a great distance from where obama was.

i know he won. but, that numerical argument that you can beat trump if you just increase black turnout fails when your candidate is actually decreasing black turnout.

is that clear?

we knew biden was going to do well with black voters.

but, it seems like biden didn't do nearly as well as clinton did, let alone as well as obama did. it's not yet clear if he got over some imaginary line or not.

- black turnout seems to be down, overall

- biden's percentage of that reduced black vote is much lower than clinton's, more than 20 points lower

- youth turnout appears to be down

sanders has every right to be crushed, and he sounds crushed. he just spent five years campaigning here, and might not crack 20%. but - and i'm sorry - he only ever had one tactic, which was to split the vote, and he refused to take it, instead insisting that he could win the votes of people that have made it clear for his whole life that they don't like him.

if black turnout ends up down across the board, that pulls biden's argument out from under the rug. i never thought this was a good argument in the first place. but if your argument is that biden is required to maximize black turnout, and he comes in with decreased black turnout, he's clearly a losing candidate in the general. so, i'd like to see a breakdown of white voters, who the numbers state are the more important demographic in the general.

the most important takeaway here is that biden wasn't able to get black voters out in high numbers.

if these numbers hold, biden will get a lot of delegates, but i don't think it will give him much of a bounce, and i'd still expect him to finish fairly far down the list in most states on tuesday.

let's see if we get any polling...

the actual reality is that there was actually a very large number of north americans of german descent that supported the nazis in world war two, and we had to go through a kind of denazification program to try and integrate them, a process that was only partially effective. it's shocking to say it now, but the nazis were actually quite popular here, within certain ethnic groups. while this denazification was happening, these people claimed they were being discriminated against and treated as second-class citizens - a claim that was no doubt sometimes actually true. yet, today we recognize that their sympathies were wrong, even as we question how they were treated, and wonder if mistakes may have been avoided. we realize that it was necessary to do something to stamp out this ideology as best we could.

i wasn't alive back then, but i would suspect that the contemporary support for islamicists in the middle east amongst arab-americans draws a very strong comparison to the support that german-americans had for the nazis in the 30s and 40s, and that a similar program of deislamification is going to be required. this may not always result in savory policies, they will no doubt cry discrimination and they will often be right. but, we will look back at the process as necessary to eliminate or at least drastically reduce the prevalence of a particularly vile strain of thinking from civilized society. it's going to take some people that are willing to take tough and potentially unpopular choices, and they are likely to be reversed by the courts, but you can't just let this run rampant, you have to combat it. and, with the right types of campaigns, we can win this struggle.

if you sort through this, i am consistent on this point - i have strenuously rejected the false dichotomy that the media and certain politicians (funded by specific agents.) wants to set up between islamism and nazism, and have rather gone out of my way to draw parallels between these two systems of thinking. if you condemn one, you must condemn the other - and you should treat proponents of these ideologies more or less interchangeably, because they are basically the same.

so, you can put my comments into that kind of perspective.

i think these islamicists need to be wiped out, and i think you're on the wrong side of history if you're in disagreement with me.

i don't fear the russians. really.

i like to poke fun at them, though.

i'm going to get hit by a tornado from their weather modification systems....

vodka best medicine, sterilize digestive system.

why russia not have case? let me tell you why, it's because russia is strong! when americans get stuffy nose, they go cry to doctor, hand out week's pay for silly medicine that not work, maybe die of irony. ha! in russia, we just give the kids vodka, drink borscht and get rest.

no, really.

i'd suspect there are cases in russia, they're just too stubborn to get treated. and, they might be right, too.

if i catch this, i'll probably shrug it off, too.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/russia-hasn-t-had-any-new-coronavirus-cases-why-is-that-1.5479374

"you should believe men!"

"no, you should believe women!"

fuck. i don't believe either of you. i want you to prove your fucking case.

see, this actually strikes me as facile bickering.

which one do i believe? no - that's the wrong question.

which one can produce credible evidence is the right question.

i haven't looked into the case and have no opinion on the matter, other than that i think this debate is stupid, from both directions.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/chris-matthews-hardball-sexist-comments_n_5e597097c5b6beedb4eae952?ri18n=true

who is to blame for this shit, though?

her name is hillary clinton.

this is right from the un:

The humanitarian crisis still unfolding in Syria will probably deteriorate in a catastrophic manner unless the global community swiftly unites and mobilizes all tools to end the nine-year-long conflict in that country, senior United Nations officials told the Security Council today.

translation: the nato-backed islamic terrorists on the ground in idlib are on the cusp of defeat by a russian-led coalition of secular nationalists, and intervention in the guise of humanitarian aid is required to prevent total defeat.

it's a last ditch, desperate strategy, and it means they're almost done.

they even tried this with isis at the very end...which i found enraging....

any support toward the nazis on the ground in idlib will just result in an extension of this war.

if you want this war to end, which is what the syrian people want, then you should stand with the syrian government as they carry out their final anti-terrorist operations, and clear the area of the remaining nazi forces.

and, as westerners, we should all be embarrassed about where our government and press have stood and continue to stand on this.

so, i want to kind of translate this because the mainstream press, which now includes many of the sources i used to rely on, is just going to lie to you about what's going on.

idlib is essentially a terrorist safe haven - it's not isis, not by a long shot, but it is the closest thing remaining to it. in my perspective, wiping out what's left of these islamo-fascist nazi militants is just the last step in eliminating isis - so i support carpet bombing the region, with the intent to inflict a maximum death toll. if they're still there, they're not civilians, they're active participants, and i don't support taking nazis hostage, i support killing them on the spot. they need to be wiped right off the face of the earth.

the thing is that these nazis that are left in idlib are also the ones that we supported, in the west, via aid, mostly via turkey.

what the west, and this was under clinton's direction when she was secretary of state, tried to do in syria was essentially a replay of reagan's attempt to drive the soviets out of afghanistan, and while the end outcome appears to be essentially the same, it had a higher likelihood of success. nobody should have supported these groups, in contrast to assad - assad has some issues, sure, but he's at least a secularist. there's no justification to support islamicists over secularists, ever, under any circumstance  - that's just reactionary, plain and simple. but, had these groups not broken into pro-turkish and pro-saudi factions and started fighting each other, it probably would have worked.

what ended up happening was that the pro-saudi faction turned into isis, and the pro-turkish faction got sort of stranded. the syrians & russians focused most of their attention on isis, initially, and eventually managed to defeat them (although the western press gives the credit to the kurds, who will be utterly destroyed if the saudis ever get their way in the area). now, they're turning their attention to the turkish-backed forces in idlib, in an attempt to actually end this war and reassert syrian territorial integrity.

i've been clear that i am hoping that the russians will insist upon a shift to civilian power in syria, when the time is appropriate for it, and i do believe that they probably will.

in the mean time, we've had a kind of shift of american policy. the amount of support that the saudis were providing to isis was always this shady issue, with conflicting reports and even some straight-up propaganda about them helping to fight them. the turks have not felt the need to hide their support for the rebels in idlib, which are ideologically essentially the same, and have even tried to resort to manipulating public opinion by framing the issue as a humanitarian crisis. this has accompanied a shift in american policy - withdrawal from syria - that i was initially cautiously optimistic about, but i now see is a realignment with the terrorist forces to try to destabilize the russians.

so, what these nato voices are doing here is standing up for their assets, and they're doing it by using a variety of methods: propaganda about humanitarian catastrophes, cynical ploys at the united nations, appeals to temporary ceasefires, etc.

but, the reality on the ground is that the turks are in a stupid position and need to get out - it's a matter of time, and they're playing a dangerous game that they can't win.

i don't think that these people can be reformed; it's an ideology at the root of the problem, a belief system that needs to be eradicated. the entire civilized world needs to be united against this. it's a shame that we're on the wrong side of it.

so, expect this to continue for a while, but realize that the syrians are on the cusp of victory, and the americans would be best to encourage the turks to just get the fuck out.

https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/un-security-council-to-hold-meeting-on-syria/news

i guess the other explanation regarding the poll closures is that bloomberg paid somebody off to stop biden from running up the score.

the major beneficiary of this would of course be sanders. 

something else to keep in mind is that it is sometimes hard to vote in the united states if you're black, and, contrary to public perception, those concerns continue to be real in the democratic primary, as well.

in past years, i would have suggested that this would benefit biden at the expense of sanders, as they'd have done the research. this year, i'm not convinced that this is where the establishment has it's thumbs. it's a good experiment, actually. if biden ends up with 60% of the vote, you'll know why; conversely, if sanders pulls out a surprise upset, you may want to start asking some questions about voter suppression.

but, if there are accessibility issues, it will certainly help the candidates that do better with white voters, regardless of which class of black voters gets targeted.

https://prospect.org/politics/south-carolina-closing-poll-stations-without-notice/

clinton didn't just need to win in the south, she needed to run up the score.

biden may end up winning most of these states, but i think it exceedingly unlikely that he's going to run up the score. and, that consequently won't be enough - i don't even think it will be enough to beat buttigieg.

why am i doing this?

because there's a misconception about what happened in 2016. it is absolutely true that clinton did very well amongst southern blacks, but she also did extremely well amongst southern whites, and she wouldn't have run up these huge margins in the south, otherwise - it was a broad base of support in the south that aided her, not just specifically black voters.

biden is doing well with southern blacks - i do not dispute that - but he does not appear to have that broad base of support. he is not doing well with any white voters at all, and his support amongst latin speakers appears to be both middling and extremely tenuous.

south carolina is overwhelmingly black in it's democratic primary because it is overwhelmingly republican in it's general disposition, and that's where all the white voters end up. i'll remind you that they can vote tomorrow if they want, but most of them won't. so, biden's dominant support in the black community will likely be decisive; everybody realizes this, i offer no dissent.

but, almost all of these other states are not majority black, and that opens up very large spaces for some of these other candidates that are polling much better than biden is amongst southern white democrats - buttigieg particularly, and potentially klobuchar.

so, this mistake that is being made is that clinton relied on blacks, and it's wrong - she relied on the south more generally, and if you were to pull the whites out of her southern coalition, she'd have faltered, just as she would have if you had pulled the blacks out. she needed both, and she got both.

the evidence seems to suggest that biden will not be able to reproduce that cross-racial southern coalition, and people are going to be surprised by what happens in some of these states like virginia and tennessee.

biden could still win these states, but he's going to be scraping for votes, and it could split enough to give sanders some wins in places he otherwise had no reasonable expectation to win in.

i had to nap a little.

these are the existing popular vote numbers:

sanders - 28.49%, 163082
buttigieg - 23.28%, 133252 
klobuchar - 15.24%, 87250

warren - 12.94%, 74040

biden - 11.83%, 67695

i know that it's the delegates that matter, but this is maybe a better metric, to understand what's going to happen in these states on tuesday that have barely been polled at all.

south carolina is the biggest state so far, it is true. and, a very, very strong showing could potentially pull him up into second place.

but, if he polls in the low 30s, he could very well win south carolina and still find himself in third in the popular vote, even if he catches buttigieg in delegates.

i don't think he's going to get a bounce, anyways. apparently, the dominant factor in the polling reversal is the endorsement of jim clyburn (who is 79 years old.), which is very specific to the state, itself.

but, he's going to have to win by a convincing number to even catch up to second, going in to super tuesday - and then he has to face a broader, non-black electorate that he has tended to poll 4th or 5th in.

i was literally moments away from getting back to work on what i was doing, when the power flickered off and on.

i'm going to have to reimage.....

it seems to be a little bit better with 2 gb of ram, and i'm wondering - does the surveillance software have a 4 gb minimum system requirement? is that it?

if so, that's rather egregious and gets to what my point was, the whole time - i think anybody would push back against police surveillance, but what was actually pissing me off was that it was slowing my computer down.

please rewrite your software to be more efficient, you noobs.

well?

does anybody have a body count for jfk?

http://www.socialist.ca/node/1992

also - jfk was infinitely worse than fidel castro.

sorry. those are the facts.

i just don't understand how anybody can line buttigieg and biden up beside each other and pick biden - that's just an irrational decision, that has to be driven by something emotional, like a connection to obama, or an aversion to his sexuality.

i insist that it can't hold up, in the long run, even if biden wins this state by a large margin....

once we get enough data in to gloss over these anomalies, that should be clear enough.

asking white south carolinians what they think about trump directly is like asking ukrainians what they thought about stalin.

you're not going to get a straight answer. 

but, there's a lot of evidence that there's a lot of unease, particularly amongst evangelicals.

buttigieg has an opening, and these firms that are polling democrats and independents might have missed it.

i'm not saying that's going to happen, i'm saying it's a potential curveball, and one that would not be inconsistent with what we saw in the other early states.

so, what's my projection of south carolina?

biden seems like he's going to win in a landslide, and that would appear to be unavoidable to project.

sanders will get a few delegates. it seems unlikely that anybody else will.

what are a few wildcards to note, though?

south carolina is an open primary, and the kind of state where republicans tend to take their faith seriously. i would suspect there's a fair amount of restiveness in the base. buttigieg, in particular, has the potential to appeal to white, rural republicans - and they can vote in this primary if they want to. the data is not there to suggest a surprise surge, but don't be too surprised if he eeks out a third place finish, and a small number of delegates. he tends to do better than his polling, so if the polling has him at 12-13%, he's on the bubble. i'm going to stop short of suggesting this is likely, though - it's an outside possibility. he'll probably walk out without delegates.

klobuchar could also appeal to some write-in republicans, but this particular electorate is very religious and i question her ability to break out. if she's going to have another surprise surge, it's going to be somewhere like michigan or illinois.

i don't know why steyer has fallen, but i don't know why he rose in the first place, and it seems clear enough that he has. you wonder if it was real or not. i also wonder what kind of write-in that bloomberg can produce, in a state that is more ideologically in line with him.

but, whatever flukes happen, it seems clear enough that joe biden, that old racist, is going to ride the black vote to a landslide win, here.

and, then we'll see if the rest of the country cares or not next week.

they should just eat the damned locusts.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/running-out-of-time-east-africa-faces-new-locust-threat

it was indeed automatic.

it's in the mail...

the letter says "you may start using the program as soon as you receive and activate your new card".

that sort of suggests it's in the mail.

i really wish people would be more clear.

the border agent couldn't answer the question, though. she took my number and promised to call me back....

so, they didn't try and sneak anything in on me, and i've left another message with the motion coordinator.

last call is nexus.

so, the answer to the question is that the tribunal served the respondent with the request for deferral and she will be expected to respond to it with the other responses by march 24, 2020. i consequently do not need to serve her because they did it for me.

that is not explicitly stated in the correspondence, but it does make a lot of sense, in hindsight.

so, now i need to call the divisional court...

let's kind of think this through, though.

if a new virus shows up in china and starts killing chinese people, is it more likely that it was created by the chinese or by their enemies?

if the chinese were going to create viruses and let them loose, you'd expect them to let them loose here, right?

so, who is the most likely suspect, if we take the premise seriously? it would be the americans, of course.

which is making the infection rate in iran seem curious.

but, i still think this idea is dubious, because the virus is just too weak for that. it might save the chinese some money on public health care. it's hardly weapons-grade material...

so, did they create this thing in a lab?

they could have. if they did, they'd probably let it loose in iran first.

but, you'd think they'd be a little more efficient.

so, i'm going to classify that claim as highly doubtful. but, anybody trying to browbeat you with the idea that that's "debunked" or "wrong" should be treated as a propagandist - it's entirely plausible, in principle.

like, apparently the country with the second highest death toll is iran.

that's just kind of a curious fact.

ok, i'm calling now. for real.

let's try the human rights tribunal, first.

the data they've given us says that chances are that you'll catch this thing and have it pass without even knowing you have it...

but, again - why is the who freaking out, then?

they don't have elections to worry about. they're not pandering to their base. they're supposed to be beyond all that shit.

we'll see what happens...

let me answer a question directly, though.

will this be a pandemic?

well, we have flu pandemics every year. that word is presented as this scary, terrible thing, when it really isn't.

so, yes - the experts are suggesting it's likely, but that doesn't actually mean anything, and the mere existence of a pandemic doesn't justify the kind of reactions we're seeing.

i don't understand what's going on with the coronavirus at this point in time, and i haven't presented a hypothesis.

i have pointed out that the reaction seems to be unjustified, given the weakness of the virus. this is really just as virulent as the flu.

or so they tell us, anyways. i can hypothesize about actors and motives, but i can't make up data. the data says this is not that scary. but, then, why are they doing this?

so, what i've drawn attention to is that contradiction - they tell us this thing has a 0.5% mortality rate, and then they treat it like it's ebola. they, here, is not the media, it's not "liberal" politicians, but it's rather the global authorities that you expect to operate outside of the alarmism, and actually adhere to the science.

so, when these agencies tell you that this disease is not very dangerous, and then act like it's a serious threat to global health, it makes you wonder what's actually happening.

are they hiding a deeper death toll in order to prevent mass panic? that would explain why they tell us one thing, and act as though another is true.

or, is there some kind of power grab going on behind the scenes?

i don't know....

i know there's a contradiction.

we'll have to see how this plays out, but it really has to be one or the other - either the death toll is far greater than is claimed, or this is going to be used as an excuse to take away people's rights.

again: i could shrug it off if it was a politician overreacting. but, these are the global health authorities, and something is not adding up.

you can call me a media critic.

but, i criticize all media - i'm not aligned with any party or group.

i don't even have a cell phone. i use google to call out.

but, the reason i got off social media is that i got sick of correcting all of the nonsense people were posting. i felt like i was just wasting a lot of time with it. and, i realized it was a bad source of data.

youtube can, in theory, be a source of quality journalism, and there have been some good sites out there over the last few years, but there appears to be some powerful people trying to shut it down and turn it into a source of lightweight commentary that acts as a propaganda arm for the party machinery.

journalists need to try to find ways to evade that as best as they can. and, trust me - if i can track you down, if i can find you, i'll watch you. get yourself out there. i don't want to watch the mindless garbage on youtube, and i won't - that's why i gave up cable in the 90s.

it's very sad to see amy goodman reduce herself to a propaganda outlet for a cfr stooge. but, if you watch her, she seems to get giddy about lying, as though she's emancipated herself from the shackles of honest journalism. but, she's not a good liar - you can see it in her facial expressions.

i don't want to say it's sad to lose her, because she should be retired, anyways.

i think there were some financial transactions behind the scenes, there. it's a shame. but, this is what capitalism does.

i don't actually read social media. i don't have a twitter account, and while i still use facebook for local show listings, i don't actually read any feeds. i have a total of zero friends on facebook. i haven't sorted through a social media feed of any sort in five or six years. these ideas are my own.

...but if you think that i'm aligning with certain personalities on the right, you're actually just wrong. that's just another baseless smear by people that make a lot of money from routinely smearing people.

what does the young turks do? they're not journalists. they don't write articles, they don't do research. rather, their job is to smear people; they're professional gossip clowns that traffic in lies and misrepresentations. and, cenk uygur is an actual, legit rush limbaugh wannabe - something i've pointed out on many occasions in the past.

there seems to be some money floating around behind the scenes that is essentially trying to align all of these other media sources - democracy now, the real news, etc - with the young turks, using a series of shady shell operations like pacifica radio. i've only seen some cursory reports, but i've watched the coverage shift dramatically and i am convinced there's something pretty awful happening.

my best guess is that there's a fear that media coverage leading up to the next election might lead people away from the democrats. so, they're trying to get all of these alt-left sites aligned with the party line.

but, let me be clear - i'm not repeating the views of other people, here. i think for myself, and i produce my own ideas. that is a typical, cynically right-wing (and terribly wrong.) idea of how people behave, and i'm happy to sit here and poke giant holes in your flawed concept of "human nature" all day, if you insist on it.

so, go ahead and read through this, and then read through the views presented by those on the populist right, and tell me if you think they're even consistent. they're not.

why do they key on me, though? why don't they just ignore me? if i'm so wrong...

my hypothesis that the deep state was out to get hillary clinton (and prop up donald trump) started taking shape in early 2016 and is developed in posts to this site over late 2016 and early 2017, when i stepped away from it. i was claiming they'd never let her win as early as 2013. i have accused the nsa of rigging the election in favour of donald trump, and then blaming it on the russians as a distraction mechanism. i have called donald trump a pawn of the deep state, a creature of the intelligence agencies and a front for the cia - all before he was inaugurated.

is that what those other people are saying? or is it actually the precise, exact opposite position?

some of these people are no doubt working for the same groups that rigged the election for him....

think for yourself, people. it's critical. don't let other people define things for you, and when it comes to what these dishonest smear artists say, just consider the source - which does not have a good track record for honesty or fact-based reporting, at all.

i want to find this, or at least figure out what happened to it.

....because if i'm actually citing a repealed law, i should stop doing that.

ok. 

i'm going to make those calls and then see if my firefox filters really are useful here or not.

what the filters do is block all of the completely useless sites that appear at the top of the google search, making it possible to actually find useful information on the internet, again, like it used to be back in the olden days.

this act, from 2015, also has some overlapping language with the act i'm remembering, but can't find - suggesting it may have been created, partially, to replace the act i'm remembering.

https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/14s15

that law i posted - the public works protection act - is not the law i cited back in 2013 to the food not bombs activists, but it contains the kinds of provisions in the law i did cite.

it has been repealed.

is it possible that i can't find what i'm looking for because it's been repealed? yes. the wynne government in ontario was pretty unabashedly liberal. that's the kind of thing they would have done, after 2012. 

i can't prove that, though.

if you can find the information i can't find, great.

the only other thing i can think of is that it was actually a city of ottawa bylaw, but i don't think that's right, either.

i'm trying to figure out what the right search terms to use for something i haven't looked at in seven or eight years.

and, i have to get the language exactly right, too, or the search won't return it. it's trained to send back common results, and ignore these kinds of appeals to very specific academic terminology.

so, i'm trying to give it these wonkish phrases and it wants to send me to "constitutionalrightsfordummies.com", instead.

it's very frustrating...

i can't find it, and i'm giving up.

as mentioned, i initially did this research in relation to some questions posed by some food not bombs protesters at city hall.

food not bombs is an anarchist soup kitchen that attempts to get the christians out of the process and get directly at the lumpenproletariat. it's essentially a ploy to talk to homeless people about anarchy. i didn't get much out of it, because nobody stopped to talk.

we had a choice between "serving" at the city hall or across the street, and i heard a lot of kind of populist fallacy common sense type rhetoric about reclaiming the city hall for the people. but, i remembered from one of the cases i had studied (i don't remember this, either) that this was actually backwards - you actually have less rights on public property, for the reason that your constitutional rights are so intrinsically tied into property in the first place. 

i tracked down the precise laws, and i wrote up a summary and i posted it in some local activist spaces. there was a debate, but i think i got my point across - be careful bringing drugs into public spaces. you might think you have greater protections in public spaces, but you're actually not protected at all!

i can't find them. and, i'm giving up.

it was anti-terrorist legislation written in about 1980 or so, but it's still on the books. but, it hasn't been tested, and it would get struck down if it was.

iirc, the way the law is written is almost a direct negation of the relevant charter right against illegal searches. it's literally something like "the police have the right to search you without a warrant or probable cause if you are engaging in suspicious behaviour on provincially owned property", and it explicitly defined a rail link as a protected area.

i'm going to give up fairly soon. i wish that google wasn't so useless nowadays :\.

i still can't find the bill i'm looking for.

but this is the story i want to tell.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2015/06/during-occupy-moment-number-of.html

actually, it's not. i'm still looking for what i'm looking for...

this is the law i'm referring to:
https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90p55

in fact, that's something that mr. blair should know about because he exploited that law to arrest protesters during the g20 fiasco.

i want to clarify a comment i made about charging the protesters with terrorism. because the issue is to do with rail service, specifically, this is actually true, at least in ontario. it stems from a law written during the bill davis years (it is pre-charter) that has never been enforced and would probably be struck down if they tried, but it's there nonetheless.

i cannot find this law right now, and i'm on the chromebook so i'm stuck without my filters (google wants to send me to "know my rights" sites, which are completely useless), but i've had this argument quite a few times. people seem to think that being on public property gives them more rights, when the exact opposite is true.

so, for example, police can legally search you without a warrant if you are on any kind of municipally or provincially owned property. again - that hasn't been tested in court. but, there is a law that explicitly gives police the right to search you at city hall. 

in this same law, rail service is categorized as a specific type of infrastructure, and disrupting it is actually considered to legally be terrorism under the law, here. it would also be considered terrorism to disrupt the electrical grid.

i'm not suggesting they should be charged with terrorism. but, mr. blair was legally incorrect in his response, as he often is.

ok, that was a lot of distractions.

i'm going to get a bit more fruit, because i want to eat it up, and then get back to what i'm doing.

with the weather, it could be a few days before i get up and go anywhere. 

so, apparently trump wants to take money away from fighting ebola in africa, a disease with an up to 90% mortality rate, and use it to fight the coronavirus, which has a roughly 0.5% mortality rate, which is on par with the seasonal flu, instead.

this is baffling.

and, it is reasonable to call it racist.

somebody needs to stop him from doing this.

buttigieg should expect to be competitive in most states:, 
Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia

biden should expect to be competetive in far fewer states:
Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia

klobuchar has a few shots, too:
Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont

i don't think warren should expect to be competitive in any of these states, although she may win delegates in a few.

only sanders can expect to compete everywhere, except for the black-dominated alabama:
Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia 

and, bloomberg? we don't know. i don't expect him to do well, though.

i'll just remind you about the demographics in the remaining deep south states.

these are 2016 results:

arkansas: 80% white. 66% clinton.
tennessee: 67% white. 66% clinton.
texas: 46% white. 66% clinton.
virginia: 61% white. 64% clinton.

so, skin colour did not seem to be a predictor factor in 2016 at all, actually - about the same number of people voted for clinton, regardless of the demographics of the state.

that might be a little different this time, oddly. biden really only seems to be polling well with blacks - nobody else likes him. latin-speaking voters appear to prefer sanders. and, white moderates mostly want buttigieg.

biden could very well see himself win south carolina in a landslide, and then barely register in almost all of the super tuesday states.

i hear bloomberg is polling well in alabama, too.

it's increasingly becoming clear that we're going to wake up to a mess on wednesday.

who votes on tuesday?

Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia 

you could potentially see three or four or even five victors, if bloomberg pulls anything off.

or, bloomberg could cut enough into biden's numbers to give sanders some more weak victories.

but don't expect a biden win amongst black voters in south carolina to mean much to voters in massachusetts or vermont, who are still going to be looking at the candidates that did well in new hampshire.

so, what's the polling update, then?

it would appear as though steyer is falling, and biden is gaining those votes back. if these polling numbers hold, biden will win in a landslide.

if. we've seen this before. but, i'm not going to make numbers up - the polling says what it does.

this is the first example we've seen of what i was saying about bernie's competitiveness being a sort of a mirage - he's only appearing to do well because the vote is so badly split. any consolidation will see him leapfrogged.

really, the story in new hampshire and nevada was that the centre of the party couldn't pull it together behind one candidate, allowing sanders to win with a rather small plurality. if new hampshire would have decided on either buttigieg or klobuchar, they would have won by a large margin. likewise, if iowa or nevada would have gone all in on buttigieg (biden got under 15% in all but two counties; buttigieg was really the more competitive candidate, overall, despite underperforming with white voters in las vegas).

so, bernie may get beaten very badly here, if the split undoes itself. and, that may happen over and over again in these southern states, if they've come back to biden, in the end, and are sticking with him. but, that doesn't mean sanders is done....

black voters in the south may expect moderate northern and western voters to fall in line behind biden. i think it's increasingly clear that that's not going to happen, not any more than the opposite did.

so, rather, what's opening up is a potential schism in the moderate wing of the party, with southern blacks insisting on biden and the rest of the country increasingly settling on buttigieg, who still appears likely to do well everywhere except the south.

for right now, the thing in front of us, immediately, is south carolina and the polling does seem to suggest a landslide victory for biden, driven by a consolidation of the black church vote.

but, unlike previous cycles, there appears to be little evidence that this is going to clinch him much of anything, or even that the rest of he country is going to take much notice about who south carolina votes for at all.

so, the case they sent me is about an athlete that got caught doing drugs, and then tried to appeal a decision made by an international body to the divisional court in ontario.

it would indeed be rather obvious that the divisional court in ontario would not have jurisdiction to hear a judicial review of a decision made by an international body. that much is pretty obvious.

however, there does not appear to be any logical application of that precedent to the question of whether the divisional court has jurisdiction to hear a case that is clearly governed by the judicial review procedure act. 

so, i don't know whether to interpret this as a disingenuous stalling tactic or total incompetence on behalf of the city's lawyer. i have reason to believe both things.

i'm going to have to call in the morning to try and get an update and make sure they didn't try to sneak something in on me.

if this is their honest argument, the judge should essentially laugh at them. no. really. i will not be surprised if i watch the judge burst into a fit of laughter. 

ok.

so, i was a little worried about that, but it's....it's some progress. and, the fact that there was some kind of response indicates that any further decisions to avoid the process are intentional.

she has been contacted. she knows what's going on. 

i also got a response from the windsor police regarding the divisional court case, namely a book of authorities that strikes me as....

i'm wondering if i should ask the court to provide the police with a court-ordered attorney. really. the information i've been getting from them has been consistently ridiculous. i'm going to have to take a very close look through this case, but my initial perusal through it suggests that it has absolutely nothing to do with the case, or with their factum.

did they file something else and forget to tell me? i think i'll need to call there in the morning, too.

so, we're look at three calls in the morning....

if i can get enough evidence, though, i will take this to the justice and request she be charged with filing a false report.

i just...i don't even know if one or the other is true. i don't know anything about this person at all. i don't know what fits her psychological profile.

maybe she has legitimate issues with schizophrenia. maybe she's suffering from trauma as a result of some other set of events. so, maybe she wasn't lying; maybe she really is just nuts.

but, as more information comes out, that will become more clear. and, if i can have her charged, i will do what i can to get that done.

there's a difference between maliciously lying and being batshit delusionally insane. that's why i haven't been pushing the point.

what she told the cops was completely ridiculous, but i can't prove she actually lied. yet.

and, i don't know how much of it was prompted by a cop out to get me...

so, what the package from the hrto was was the same thing that was sent to me in december, just resent because they did get a response from the property owner after all, via email.

why didn't they just email her in the first place? why did they need a physical address? because the laws are out of date.

no, really. i gave them a valid means of contacting her (email) and they insisted i give them an address, which i couldn't find. the court then emailed her, and she responded via email with an address. they could have just emailed her in the first place, but something that makes that much sense isn't consistent with the law.

and, this is ignoring the absurdity of being arrested for stalking somebody that you don't know the address of.

that means my request for deferral is....i need to call them in the morning. they might want me to serve her, now that i have an address, before they carry through with it.

something of some interest to me, though, is that she admits in the email that i don't know her address - and requests it not be provided to me. in the police report, she claimed she feared that i would come to her house. is that enough to prove she lied on the report?

if i can prove that ryan myon is a real person, that is enough to prove she lied on the report.

there is a new deadline: mar 24th. she needs to get a response to the tribunal by that date, now.

i should write the hrto an email updating the situation.

ok.

all of the centres in the east are closed, and every number i've called in vancouver wants me to leave a message.

i'll have to try tomorrow.

but i'm almost certain that it's in the mail, and that's why there's no way to schedule. i just want somebody to tell me that, though,

i got a very thick package from the human rights commission in the mail, which is the next thing i'll need to check. i'm going to guess that it's either the respondent replying a little late or a rejection of my request for deferral. let's see...

NOTE: If this is a renewal application, you may not have to attend an interview. In that case, there will be a notice that you were Approved and the card will already be on its way!

let's hope that's the right answer.

i'm going to want to confirm that, somehow.

i would have liked to get a new picture, though :\.

argh.

so, i have been approved and i need to schedule an interview within 30 days.

i called the detroit nexus office and they told me i do that online. but, there's no way to do it online that i can see, and the website is telling me that i have no open applications - that the process is done.

detroit closes at 7:30. i'm going to see if i can find an office that's open a little later. voip over gmail is free long distance.

When the applicant receives a letter in their TTP account advising them of their conditional approval, he/she will have 30 days to schedule an interview at an enrollment center of their choice to finalize enrollment.

i like step-by-step instructions to minimize user error.

but, it's clear enough...

ok.

it's vague. but, i'm pretty sure that i need to go in to get a more recent picture taken. i may have to answer some questions, but i think i'm pre-approved.

they're telling me i'm approved until jan, 2025, anyways.

the cbp website uses pop-ups, in 2020.

so, chrome was blocking the popup - by default. i'm logged in as a guest, nothing's customized. it's just out of the box.

firefox let me decide to "allow pop-ups from this site".

but, that was why it didn't work....

i think that the cbp's website is not working on this chromebook, so i can't access the letter. it would be nice if they'd just email it....

let's try firefox.

that was a lot of sleep. that's ok, sometimes, and this was the circumstance where it is.

i got my nexus card approved until 2025. i'm just not sure if i need to get my card replaced or go to an enrollment centre or ...?

i did not get a chance to talk to anybody at villain's last night, so i'm still holding off on the reviews for a bit.

there are some legalish things that i need to do today before i get back to work. there will be some updates.

i otherwise believe that i am likely in for the next 10+ days.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/02/great.html

you know why god sent the coronavirus, don't you?

the gays.

obviously.

great.

expect mandatory prayer services and public flagellations for sinners.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51654494

viruses mutate. so, i don't want to be too smug about this. but, the global response to this appears to be a dramatic overreaction, enough that it is making me wonder what's really going on.

i suppose there's some possibility that they're hiding the death toll.

but, what i'm actually concerned about is the possibility that western governments are going to use it as the most recent excuse to ram through another round of restrictions on our civil liberties. and, as i keep an eye on this in the upcoming days and weeks, it's going to be in keeping a critical eye on what they're doing, to try to point out unnecessary attacks on our rights.

the virus, itself, does not appear to be much of a serious threat and i will not be drawn into alarmist rhetoric about it.

my honest opinion about that debate is that there were too many people on stage, and it prevented everybody from getting their point across. i think that's part of the reason that they interrupted each other and talked over each other - there just wasn't enough time to split up for that many people.

bloomberg & steyer both needed a platform to get a message across, and neither of them had time to do it. warren & klobuchar both needed to be able to convince voters they're not done and are serious competitors, and they didn't have time to do it. buttigieg needed to present himself as a superior alternative to biden, and didn't have time to do it. biden needed to convince people he's still worth voting for, and didn't have time to do it. and, sanders needed to defend himself against the attacks, and didn't have time to do it.

a couple of them - sanders, klobuchar - seemed to realize the importance of appearing animated. sanders was his old kranky self for the first time in a while, which was nice to see, and might help a bit.

but, i think that if you were walking into this without a clear idea of who you were voting for, nobody really had the opportunity to make a convincing case, and it probably didn't really help much.

winner: advertisers, who bizarrely got the last word in

losers: candidates, who were mostly denied the ability to get a word in at all

ok, i'm alright.

let's watch this debate....

+ mmmm. nachos.

it was an enjoyable show.

but i'm borderline hypothermic...

yeah.

i just want to make it abundantly clear that i think that carrying arms is a terrible idea - from an indigenous perspective.

a couple of guns might extend the length of the blockade, but at zero net benefit and at great cost to the public image of the band. these people need to remember that their success is greatly dependent on public opinion, whether they like it or not.

i understand the desperation.

but there are ways to evade the cops, and impose a financial cost. trying to get into a shooting match is just stupid.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/mohawks-blast-quebec-premier-for-false-dangerous-claims-that-kahnawake-protesters-are-armed-with-ak-47s-1.4828838

i will concede that neo-liberalism is popular, and i may take unpopular positions in pushing back against it.

but, i won't confuse it for socialism.

the closest thing to what they want is actually buttigieg.

but, he's gay.

none of those candidates represent black southern voters at all.

regarding the polling, though.

i don't think nevada is going to have much of an effect on south carolina. i did think that iowa, particularly, would have an effect on nevada, and i'd argue that it did.

it is true that sanders seems to have done well with most groups in las vegas, including culinary workers. but, it is still the case that the reason that biden did better here than elsewhere is because he had that union to prop him up - these aren't contradictory statements. remember - biden only got 25% of the ccds in clark county. so, getting 30-35% of the union vote gives lots of room for sanders to crush him, while still explaining why he did better here than elsewhere.

and, buttigieg may have done poorly with black voters, but that was expected; the reason he undershot his target is that he seems to have done poorly with white suburban voters, as well. that's the thing he needs to be worried about, because if he starts losing these white suburban voters in the next couple of states then he has no path forward.

in south carolina, the unions get replaced by the churches, and it's a lot harder for me to get my head around sanders doing well with these conservative black church goers. remember: blacks across the country are not all the same, and it's racist to argue that they are. but, the polling, which is intrinsically racist, does this all of the time.

so, some of the polling is suggesting that biden's numbers are weakening, and that does make some sense, but it makes a lot less sense to think those numbers are moving to sanders. the only argument you can provide for this is herd mentality, and the thing about south carolina is that it has a history of not doing that.

i know that sanders wants to pretend he represents these people, and he may legitimately think he does, but he really doesn't - these people are deeply, staunchly conservative and overwhelmingly directed by their faith. they should be republicans, really. i may criticize their apprehension of voting for a jewish candidate, but i won't trivialize it - it's real. they legitimately don't like him...

so, they're kind of stuck - disenfranchised, even. his numbers have come down in recent polling, but how else do you explain how a tom steyer can come out of nowhere and poll so high in a black state? they're frustrated. they don't like any of them...

this might change soon; this might be the last cycle like this. but, for this election, the black church vote will decide the outcome of the election, it is going to show up to vote in force and it is not going to pick bernie sanders.

the open question, however, is how many younger black voters are out there, right now, and how many of them get out to vote. the sanders campaign is delusional, and will reject this narrative, but it is true nonetheless - sanders is running against the church, and essentially needs to beat it with increased turnout, which is an almost impossible task.

the race does seem to be tightening, though. and, these are the faultlines and the open questions - after squandering so much time and so many resources trying to appeal to southern black conservatives and failing, can bernie pivot effectively and get enough young people out to beat the church, if it schisms, in the end?

but, if steyer is truly fading, and biden consolidates the church vote, sanders doesn't have a chance. and, we may be in for another nightmare, where black voters force the country to deal with yet another subpar candidate that has absolutely no chance of actually winning.

i think that's the overlooked slant here, though. there's been so much focus put on projecting the importance of what they pick, that people have forgotten to ask them what they want. they are disenfranchised, right now, but they almost certainly won't stay home.

i'm going to wait to watch the debate until i get back tomorrow night.

hey catholics.

i've got an idea for something you can give up on lent.

your faith.

we really don't seem to have advanced much beyond the utopian socialism denounced by marx & engels, in socialism: utopian and scientific.

we still have this mass of people on the ground that insist on operating with their hearts instead of their brains, and have no chance of success, because of it.

and, these people still need to be organized by charismatic planners and tacticians that can convince them that they need to fucking listen if they want to get anything done.

i can write you blueprints, but i'm awful with people. sorry.

"i don't know what you're talking about. profits? concessions? i'm just trying to stand on the side of what i think is right."

well, you're going to lose then.

and, your self-righteousness frightens me.

what are some tactics that can actually work in stopping some of these extraction projects?

yes, i support a diversity of tactics. i've been careful not to denounce anybody, i've just been clear that i think this is tactically stupid - that it's not going anywhere, that it's perhaps even counterproductive, and that it's reflective of a level of desperation, rather than careful planning.

but, if there is a purpose to blocking a rail line in southern ontario, it is to try and spark a broader movement, like a general strike. the way the feds responded seems to have demonstrated little understanding of this, which is something that the indigenous groups should exploit to their advantage. they've been given an opening, here, i'll concede that. so, what they need to do is get as many people out as they possibly can and cause as much havoc as is possible, with the hopes that it spills over. that was always the tactic, and they'll tell you that better than i can, but, as stated, the context is that it's a desperate act.....

i know from experience that these groups want to measure the value of a direct action by it's intent, rather than it's outcome. the mere concept of a "direct action" has this kind of romanticism to it, in contrast to the "peaceful protest" which is seen as pointless and ineffectual. they're not wrong to draw that contrast, and i've drawn it over and over again, myself, but they tend to have difficulty getting beyond the abstraction of romanticizing "direct action", of kind of role-playing revolutionaries by manning barricades, like it's a game in drama class, and actually developing meaningful direct actions that can actually extract meaningful concessions.

so, i've pointed to a sit-down strike, and the factors required to make it effective. maybe i can generalize this. i'm supposed to be the academic, here. what do you need to look at in designing an effective direct action that goes beyond these empty concepts of movement solidarity and moral self-righteousness?

1) the direct action needs to directly harm somebody's actual profit in a substantive way. you have to be able to physically get in between some capitalist enterprise and the expropriation of their surplus value. that is the reason that strikes and blockades are effective - because they cost people money, and that is the only thing that capitalists actually care about.

2) you need to be able to protect the direct action from the police, at least to the point of requiring a blood bath to take it down. if you get to the point where they need to send in snipers to take you down, that's probably good enough (although you might need to be prepared for them to try to psych you out). any direct action that can be dismantled easily by the police is simply a waste of time. the other way around this is to generate huge numbers of people, so that the cops are overwhelmed. but, if you're going to do direct action, it is absolutely imperative that you have a tactic to fight the police off. they will arrest you, if they can, and then you're not hurting anybody's profit any more, and can be safely ignored.

3) you need to have popular support. i'm not making an argument about democracy, here. as before, this is purely tactical - the only weapon that these people really have is the threat that they may get the broader society on their side. essentially, the police and government have to be worried that dismantling the direct action by force will lead to greater losses of profit than leaving them in place. 

once you have these three components in place, you can reasonably start making demands.

but, if your direct action essentially amounts to putting on a balaclava and looking chic in your revolutionary garb, as you yell slogans with ten people in an attempt to try to get laid, and get nailed by the press for doing it, then you're a retard that probably deserves what they get.

the blockades meet the first condition, and we'll see if they can meet the second through mass action or not. it's a passable strategy, at least, if they shift to a large number of ad hoc blockades that can come up and down quickly, rather than try and hold a single spot. if they can get enough people to cause enough mayhem, it becomes impossible to police, leading to greater profit losses and the possibility of the capitalists saying "enough" and making a concession.

i've yet to see any evidence of them actually doing this, but that's the way you do it - you set up small blockades, you move them around chaotically, you try to avoid predictable patterns, and you do it relentlessly. so, you stop trying to confront the cops, and start actively avoiding them, instead - because you realize that your focus is not in defeating the police by a show of force, but in harming the profits of the capitalist class, and you keep your focus on what your enemy is, without being drawn out by distractions or pissing matches. you stay disciplined...

the third condition is more challenging, and they need to spend a lot more time on it. they are losing this debate in the public sphere, and potentially harming the people they're trying to stand with, in the process.

i'd be a lot more likely to argue that direct actions tied directly to the pipeline have a greater chance of meeting these three criteria and actually leading to concessions.

breaking up banks & tech firms to generate more market competition isn't a socialist policy. it's a policy that is capitalist to it's bones. socialists would argue for the exact opposite policy - we would argue that competition hurts workers. 

nor is universal healthcare something that you need to invoke socialism to get to. it's true that it's the kind of thing that the framers of capitalism would have realized should be kept off of the market, and that the fact that it ended up on the market is a part of the socialist argument against the failure of capitalism, but if you want to invoke these "real capitalist" debates that are underlying sanders' economic positions, you should quickly get to the deduction that the health care industry is a natural monopoly, and that flailing against it is just going to lead to market failure. there is a perfectly coherent capitalist argument against market-based health care on strictly classical grounds, and if you listen to sanders closely, it's actually the argument he's advancing.

and we could go on. i won't. 

no.

stop.

look at the candidates for president at the last debate.

- biden is a conservative southern democrat.

- warren was a republican into middle age, and still sounds like one on fiscal issues, which is what she really cares about

- bloomberg was a republican for most of his life as well, and sounds like one on most issues

- buttigieg is what you would call a small-c conservative, and would probably have been a republican if he wasn't gay. i've called him a log cabin republican, and it's kind of true. there are actually speeches where obama openly admits that he only ended up as a democrat because the republicans wouldn't have him due to the racism. one wonders....
- klobuchar markets herself as being appealing to conservatives

- and, while sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, he's more in the tradition of progressive capitalism, and is probably the closest thing to an adherent of traditional capitalism in the batch. you hear this line from the libertarian right all of the time, about how really existing capitalism isn't really capitalism, it's "corporatism" and we need "real capitalism". if you look at sanders' proposals with a sober eye, you can see that he's essentially operating from this right-libertarian ideological position, even when he leap frogs the austrian economics in favour of a literal reading of adam smith, and trying to design a more pure type of capitalism, rather than overturn it or dismantle it. in that sense, there is a comparison to fdr, even if his policies are actually far less socialist than fdr's were. that's really what krugman was pointing out, and he is right to do it.

so, that's a bunch of fucking conservatives running for president under the democratic party.

and, what is trump? he's not a trostkyist neo-con, granted, even if he's surrounded by them. but he's hardly a conservative. he's an autocrat, an authoritarian, a "strong leader". a demagogue. he's almost better describable as a member of the chinese communist party than as a member of the john birch society, which seems to have resurrected itself in the form of adam schiff.

i know i've beaten this horse badly, but it's true.

and, while you can't fault some people for repeating what they're told, and shouldn't expect more from them than it, there are some people that you expect should know better than to use smear tactics, or abuse the language.

nowadays, the trotskyists are all in the republican party. the authoritarians are all on the right.

and, the democratic party is full of conservatives.

but, whatever a "centrist" is must have sat there and watched that reversal happen.

there was a wonkish debate between krugman and sanders in 2016, and the sanders campaign sees the world through an us vs them filter and remembers enemies and holds grudges. so, this is really an old debate.

this is what i said then, on april 9, 2016.

===============
j reacts to krugman's critique of sanders (he's right, but nobody should care)

krugman is right, but who cares?

what's the differences in health care plans? in foreign policy? on climate change?

if you break the banks up, they get captured. regulation doesn't work. we tried this. it failed. so, personally? you give me a referendum on a bank, i stay home. it's boring. and it has no effect on my life. i do not think this is what is driving the popularity of his campaign. and i think he needs to fight the perception that it is.

let's get less teddy roosevelt, and more franklin roosevelt.

the banks are important because that is where he gets the money to do the things he wants to do.

that is all.

the way to fix the financial system is to educate people about where they're putting their money. it doesn't matter if it's big or small, or private or public or anything else - so long as people remain clueless, they will be taken advantage of. you can't protect the ignorant. what we need is financial literacy.

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

i rant a little more here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBUxjVr4GLQ

(https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/04/j-reacts-to-krugmans-critique-of.html)

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

but, if you want to put this on a political spectrum? krugman is actually the leftist, here. it's a keynesian liberal left, but it's a left. sanders & warren are pushing chicago school style neo-liberal pro-market reforms.

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

may 28, 2016

some of my video comments over the next few days may seem confusing if you're following the Official Alternative Media Narrative, so i think i should be explicitly clear about this.

regarding the issues of financial regulation and the narratives around the bank bailouts, i may actually be closer to clinton than sanders. i wouldn't really agree with either, entirely.

see, i would take what is called an academic left perspective, which neither of the candidates are taking. clinton is taking more of an academic right position. what that means is that there are certain broad academic points that clinton has been making that i agree with (and are not really contested), but that i'm not ideologically aligned with her so i disagree with her on a lot of details. sanders is taking a populist position that is broadly (and correctly) seen as just flatly wrong by most academics. the people that are parroting him either don't know what they're talking about (cenk uygur) or are acting from questionable ideological positions (elizabeth warren).

i would prioritize careful, academic analysis (clinton/obama/krugman) over populist and misleading agitprop (sanders/pseudo-warren/wolff). pseudo-warren because i think she's misunderstood - she's a market fundamentalist, not a leftist. she's good at the agit-prop, but leftists will be sorely disappointed if she gets any kind of position of power. so, i haven't been shy about this: clinton is, indeed, broadly less wrong about the banks.

so, why am i supporting sanders? because i don't care about the bank bailouts. at all. i see the politicking for what it is: populism, agit-prop, maybe a little demagoguery. frankly, i'm pragmatic enough to see the value in it. what i actually care about is foreign policy, health care, social issues and more data-driven analyses of growing inequality.

and, this is not just why i'm supporting sanders over clinton. it's also why i couldn't possibly support clinton at all.

so, i hope that clarifies the point.

what the upcoming video comments are going to focus on is the question of whether some of this agitprop and politicking, as pragmatic as it may be, may have some unintended consequences - blowback - in it's use.

it's one thing to get people angry at the banks in order to get a tobin tax in. that's politics. it's good politics. it's another thing to wake up in eight years and realize we not only don't have a tobin tax, but now have also lost the lender of last resort because the masses got confused about what they were supposed to be angry about. that would be a tremendous fuck-up.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/some-of-my-video-comments-over-next-few.html

=========

august 8, 2016

j tries to react to trump's tax/spend ideas but gets stuck in the ultraparadoxical phase

see, what i'd like is for the democratic candidate to spin this around on him and claim she's going to increase taxes on the wealthy - and also on corporations. i know better. i wouldn't believe it, anyways. but the last thing the country needs right now is lower taxes at the top rate. it needs to be taking in higher income tax levels to spend on crumbling infrastructure and convert the economy away from fossil fuels. the problem with the stimulus plan was that it was too small. they need more of this, on a deeper level - and they need to generate the revenue to do it.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/08/restrained-trump-goes-at-clinton-for-tax-plan.html

a strong candidate would annihilate him on his tax policy, which is clearly disastrous and flat out stupid. it's 2016, and dipshit donald still thinks tax cuts create jobs? of course he doesn't. he just wants a tax cut for himself. if i was the nominee, i wouldn't talk about anything else.

i don't always agree with krugman, but he's kind of an expert on keynesian policies. and, if we're going to implement keynesian policies, he's not just a good explainer but arguably the best currently alive. we're lucky that he spends as much time writing in newspapers as he does.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/how-did-we-know-the-stimulus-was-too-small/?_r=0

ok. fine. so, do it right, this time. i mean, the other option is recession. look at europe. you have to find a way to win this debate on the facts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/opinion/krugman-the-stimulus-tragedy.html

see, this is just like the tpp. they both want infrastructure spending. they're both technically right. but, i don't believe either of them - i rather think that they'll both push tax cuts and austerity.

i don't know how i'm going to get through this mess with my sanity. i need to just disengage. i keep saying that...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/us/politics/trump-clinton-infrastructure.html

what a fucking disaster. wow. really.

i ought to be pointing out that it's good that they're both taking the right approach to stimulus. instead, i'm convinced they're both lying, and they'll both do the wrong thing.

and, the evidence is really, truly on my side.

i'm in the fucking ultraparadoxical phase, again. great.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG_iD8epJag

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOLC9gELguQ

he's basically right.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/opinion/time-to-borrow.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpowqpwNOnE

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

nov 20, 2016

j reacts to krugman's take on the supposed infrastructure plan

i think krugman is actually giving him too much credit.

my bet is that the infrastructure plan reduces to a tweet to ask investors to invest more in infrastructure, maybe followed by another tweet calling paul ryan some mean names for supposedly blocking it.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/infrastructure-build-or-privatization-scam/

there's actually precedence for this: whenever obama was faced with doing anything complicated, he wrote a speech explaining that congress should do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH7hvdqPP9U

from the start of this process, i never referred to bernie as anything more than a legit lesser evil, and it was refreshing to at least get that for a while, until the reality started to sink itself in.

in 2016, the military-industrial complex rigged the election in favour of trump and then blamed it on the russians to distract you. if you start seeing them blame bernie's successes on the russians, you should take it as an admission of guilt.

as for dr. wolff...

it's funny to see dr. wolff present himself as a protector of the new deal, because his academic work was actually written largely as a criticism of it. mr. wolff is known nowadays as an advocate of workplace democracy, but his claim to fame was actually a scathing critique of the new deal as a co-option of socialism; his central academic thesis, the thing that got people to notice him, was a series of papers arguing that the purpose of the new deal was to stop socialism, and that it worked. while it comes off as a conspiracy theory on first glance, it is actually mainstream scholarship to acknowledge that fdr intended to save capitalism from itself, not destroy it.

fdr was a capitalist to his bones, and richard wolff made a career out of taking him to task for it.

i've also noticed in several posts during the past that he has a tendency to view facts pragmatically. he's a marxist; they're all like that.

but, the point i want to make is that it seems as though dr. wolff likes to imagine that sanders is far more like he is than he actually is, that he may be suffering from the fallacy of projection and that he would likely be disappointed by what he actually gets.

so, be careful with the way that certain people are going to frame certain things.

and, i'll be here to keep them honest, as best i can.

i think it's a valid question, actually.

is krugman, himself, more of a socialist than bernie sanders is?

you'd have to take some kind of weighted average, as this is a spectrum with more than two axes in it. 

but, sanders has kind of a conservative streak on very specific issues, and krugman is about as big of a government liberal as you'll find.

i would certainly compare krugman to roosevelt before i compared sanders to him.

in fact....

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2015/11/15/democratic-debate-bernie-sanders-eisenhower-tax-rates-vstan-orig-cws.cbs-news

paul krugman is right - bernie sanders is not a socialist at all. 

it was chomsky that pointed out that, while he likes to compare himself to roosevelt, he's actually largely to the right of eisenhower, who is a better comparison, overall.

you centrists and progressives/conservatives can argue with each other all you want.

i'll go vote for the socialists.

i'm just curious if somebody could define this term "centrism" for me?

i've seen it applied to everything from a rooseveltian keynesian like krugman to a neo-liberal like obama to a neo-con like clinton, and i suspect it's most haphazard proponents would even use it to describe people like myself that, unlike bernie sanders, actually openly describe themselves as an anarchist, a socialist and a communist, and are actually several rungs to his left.

so, what exactly is a centrist?

i suppose that if you want to be literal, the best way to make sense of a term like centrism is to start by defining what the right is. then, once you've picked a left and a right, you can understand the centre through a dialectical process. is it centrist of me to resort to hegel like this?

but, then, where exactly is the right in american politics? it's a kind of nihilism, a sort of open fascism, that upholds strong leader politics and increasingly toys with adopting state capitalist economic models. i think you see where i'm going with this.

but, the odd thing about this topsy-turvy reality that exists in the american political discourse is that you can pivot around the centre without altering it - if we're going to have these definitional debates about left and right, the centre shouldn't actually be touched by it.

but what exactly is it, though, this shifting target of "centrism"?

maybe it's just whatever you call the people that you don't like much, this week.

personally, i'll stand over here on the far left and keep slamming people for being statists, thanks.

i made it home alive tonight, thankfully.

the rain kind of sucked, but i worked it out.

i wanted to stop at villain's to talk, but i forgot that they're closed on mondays...

i'm tentatively planning for wednesday as well, weather dependent. i think it's probably going to be too cold on friday.

i'm going to hop in the shower and probably zonk out, and i'm going to leave the show review until after i can talk to somebody and clarify what happened.

to be clear: i'm not worried about anything, really. i was told they called the police to escort me home for my own safety, because they thought my clothing put me at a risk to get assaulted (which is victim blame-y and weird). the bartender ended up driving me home. i'm not getting any bad vibes, i don't think. i'm pretty sure i was just completely unable to move, and that's really the sum total of the concern. 

but, i don't know if i was out for thirty minutes or three hours, and i need to figure that out before i can order time for the night. and, whether i got drugged or something else, i need to apologize, nonetheless - even if i end up with a negative review for calling the cops during bar hours, if that happened.

yeah, we didn't get quite the distortion that i was hinting at. i mean, i correctly picked out a trend, but it's not as strong as i projected.

biden did come down almost 5 points, in the end, rather than the closer to eight i suggested, and this is due to the reporting issues i pointed out, but it just simply looks like buttigieg did particularly badly in the suburbs around vegas (which are majority white.), and that hampered the effect i was hinting at. if he had done better with white suburban voters, he would have climbed up that extra few percent.

i'll repeat: it looks like buttigieg actually badly underperformed with suburban white voters in las vegas, and that's really what the difference in the results is. all other things considering, if he'd have matched those numbers with how he did in the first two states.....but he didn't. and, you would generally have expected him to win that demographic, that's not a stretch. why did he do so poorly with them in las vegas?

they're telling me that i shouldn't expect a letter, after all.

i made a request for one anyways over the phone.

should i buy a ticket anyways? i'm so iffy about this. are the prices inflated due to the blockade? should i wait this out, anyways?

let me get some fruit and look it up.

i napped this morning and afternoon and didn't get as much done as i wanted. i'm at least rested and awake, so i'm either up and in or up and ready to get out.

i also suggested that nevada wouldn't really be that different than iowa, and it actually wasn't.

the difference is more in the size of the urban centre relative to the rural regions around it, and in the way the state is districted.

i do expect south carolina to be a legitimately different game, though.

again: i suggested biden would miss viability almost everywhere, and he actually did.

i suggested that buttigieg would be viable in most places, and he was.

it's just that that the margin of error happens to take up 70% of the population, in this state.

yes, i knew that, and i should have looked at it more closely.

i know it seems like 96% in nevada should be enough to post a summary, but the results are actually coming out more or less like i said they would, relative to a reasonable margin.

biden's one big county is at 98%. all of the remaining results are in areas where he did poorly.

so, are there enough ccds left to pull biden down under 20 and buttigieg up over 15? i want to wait to see.

it does, however, seem clear enough that buttigieg will miss viability in clark county, and that is a blow to his campaign. you wonder, though. as mentioned, you expect a little cheating in clark county. if buttigieg ends up missing viability by 2-3 points, and biden's numbers seem inflated by that much....

what the experts will tell you is that nobody really focuses too much on these things because they don't actually really matter, it's almost more of a psychological thing to rile up your opponent. but, there are some elections that have been stolen - like jfk's theft of chicago, or bush' theft of miami. clark county is one of those counties.

let's not forget that the actual winner of the county is sanders, by a good margin.

so, i can bring in these issues to try and salvage my mathematical analyses, and it might be good enough for that reason. but, it doesn't change the outcome.

i don't think that biden should be particularly impressed by coming in a distant second in one county. biden lost every single county in nevada, guys. he was only even viable in 2 of 17. that's pretty awful, actually.

but, buttigieg should be particularly concerned, because how different is las vegas to san diego or el paso?

and, sanders should avoid popping any corks until he can break 40% somewhere. he's not winning nevada in the general with 35%.