so, where was i?

- i was back from toronto on dec 11th, but i was sick.
- the show reviews finished up on the 16th.
- i got the response from the onhrc on the 16th.
- i have to wait until jan 21st to file a deferral.
- machine up and down from 18th-21st.
- html5 template worked out from 19th-22nd
- addendum first sent on 21st
-  22nd-27th - liner note updates for 11/2013 releases
- 24th: motions first sent
- 28th: seeds for december releases
- 28th-30th -master document
- 30th - printed & mailed the motions

- 31st-1st   - procrastinating
- 2nd-6th - posting for 12/2013
- 2nd-13th - posting for january shows in detroit
- 6th-15th - fighting with computer
- 9th - motion heard
- 10th - received record of application

so, i don't want to get cocky, but, so far so good.

the service workers don't appear to have turned back on.

the firewall log is still running.

i have noticed explorer reference some weird files, but i can't currently tie it to anything sketchy.

there's no email from the oiprd or the court, and the property owner has until the 21st to react, at which point i'll need to send the request to put the file on hold until the outcome of the divisional court ruling to the human rights tribunal. so, there's nothing pressing, there.

further, i've archived all the posts to this space in my email. so, i'm tentatively ready to get back to what i was doing.

the problem is that it's been so long that i'm hazy as to what it was that i was actually doing. so, i'm going to read up on each of the blogs to reacquaint myself with the process, and then i could conceivably be back to posting by the end of the night. of course, this depends on the system remaining stable...

it's very dry in here still, which is making it hard to smell anything at all. your nose needs moisture to work. i'm not getting that. my lips are chapped, my cheeks are bleeding, my hair is knotted up - it's really brutal. i'm trying to drink a lot of water, and get into the shower regularly to compensate, but the combination of things - the heaters, the dehumidifier and the smoke/pollution - is just horrific. he claims this is helping him; i'd suggest it's probably the cause of his problems more than the solution to them. i mean, he claims he gets migraines. well, i'd guess he's brutally dehydrated. but, he's apparently back to not working, so i'm wondering about the smoking, too. i heard him come in on the evening of new year's eve, and may have heard him crying. he seems to be unable to get over an exwife.

there was also an appraiser here the other day, meaning he's either getting a mortgage or selling the place.

but, for me, the dryness (and pollution, presumably) is really making me tired, spaced out and unable to focus. it's so dry that i can't smell well enough to know if i'm breathing in second hand marijuana smoke, but i feel tired enough and disoriented enough to suspect it. i'm also strangely hungry, which is making me that much weaker (and i'm on an eating schedule that i'm not interested in breaking, so i will sit here and suffer). i'm trying to drink a lot of coffee to compensate, but it's not really working. so, i'm operating at a degraded capacity, and we'll see what kind of effect it has on me.

if he decides to sell the place and moves out, that could be a net positive for me, if the next tenant ("owner") is a little bit more clean and a little bit less fanatic about the dry air. it'd be nice to get rid of the dog, too. a non-smoking clean freak female without pets or kids would be nice.

so, yeah....i'm half here right now, kind of fuzzy from the dehydration, and not entirely sure where i left off. but, once i figure it out, i'll be back to rebuilding the dec/2013 archive.

....which was close to being done, actually. promise.

i mean, even the idea that warren beat a republican incumbent is..

this is ted kennedy's old seat. the republican win was a total fluke. the democrats could have run a house plant and won that seat back...

on top of that, he essentially ran as an independent.

and, personally?

my position on warren has been more or less the same for years.

i actually saw this coming.

twitter is essentially the electronic equivalent of an angry lynch mob.

"i believe you because you're a woman" is not a progressive statement.

it's either white knight chauvinism or female supremacism, and egregiously sexist either way. it's absolutely backwards and totally reactionary.

belief must be based on evidence, not appeals to gender. truth does not have a gender bias. i'm even willing to label it a new fallacy - reductio ad genus.

i know that the twitter crowd will disagree, but these people don't think very clearly and what they think basically doesn't matter.

but, can a woman beat donald trump?

it's a goofy question. what woman? under what circumstances? are they going to literally have a pissing contest? it really shouldn't matter...

i think it's fair to say that a woman is likely to face certain challenges against donald trump that a man wouldn't, but the opposite is also true.

so, it's kind of a dumb topic and it sort of hurts my brain to try to articulate a coherent response to it. in principle, sure - but they'd better show up ready for a bloodbath.

do i think that these specific women could beat donald trump? i'd give klobuchar a better chance than warren, but i don't think warren's challenges are going to have as much to do with her gender as they are going to have to do with her politics, and her demeanor. the truth is that we've seen this in america over and over and over again. trump v warren, as unlikely as it is, may be indiscernible from trump v clinton, and warren may not have much control over that. but, it's the same thing that bush did to dukakis, or eisenhower did to stevenson.

northeastern eggheads don't tend to do well, nationally.

so, she set up a nice strawman to knock down, and everything. but, you should really just take it as another flag - another sign of her demagoguery and persistent dishonesty.

you should not trust elizabeth warren. and i mean, generally...

fwiw, warren has run a dishonest campaign from the start, and i'm far more inclined to believe that she's lying for sympathy votes than that bernie is trying to avoid getting into hot water over this.

so, i don't have any problems telling elizabeth warren she's a liar, because there's quite a bit of evidence that she's lied about all kind of other things.

that said, i wasn't there. i can't know.

but, it's not enough to just believe her because she's a woman, and that kind of thinking has no place in the modern world.

there are things you play politics with, and there are things you be pragmatic about.

the old bernie knew where to draw the line.

the new bernie doesn't, apparently.

nafta still sucks.

but, a sitting senator has the unique opportunity to try to make it better. and, that's something i haven't seen from sanders, at this point.

this bill is going to pass. so, sanders should be proposing specific amendments to the agreement to try to make it as good as it can get. instead, he's trying to turn it into a purity test, and it's going to hurt him, in the end.

but, it does still suck.

clearly.

regarding afghanistan.

there's reality, and then there's what the politicians tell you to try to get you to vote for them, and the reality is that there was never any intent to leave afghanistan.

the americans have been in japan and korea, now, for 74 years. and, there are still troops in germany, too, although they don't seem to mind as much.

they've been in the philippines since 1898, and have made a state out of hawaii. puerto rico may become a state one day too, if it doesn't sink into the ocean due to neglect, first.

there are countries in latin america and africa that have been occupied for most of the last 100 years. and, iraq itself has been occupied almost constantly since the collapse of the ottoman empire in world war one.

nor did the americans leave vietnam - they were driven out. they hung on until the embassy got stormed. you might hear things about a congressional authorization being withdrawn, but the actual reality is that they just lost the war. they didn't withdraw so much as they fled. if they could have held their ground, they'd still be there.

the reality is that the united states will not be leaving afghanistan unless they are pushed out by force.

when a politician tries to tell you otherwise, you should be skeptical of their other promises - it's a flag that they're slimy and dishonest. it's demagoguery in the literal sense - they know they're lying to you. they just think you're too stupid to figure it out...

i updated this:

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/01/so-to-recap-what-are-my-political.html

i might imagine that i'm presenting a new left in american politics that is centred in science as a guiding principle towards a technocratic, post-industrial full communism.

but, that would depend on how many people agree with me.

so, to recap, what are my political positions in the american cycle?

- i support single payer health care and the abolition of private insurance, and this would be my primary ballot concern.
-  i would support a manhatten-project style approach to addressing climate change - trillions of dollars in government expenditures on research, mitigation and adaptation. it should be the centre of all government policy, moving forwards.
- while i would oppose any movement towards regime change in syria, i would support targeted actions towards regime change in iran. i also think it's important to continue to keep an eye on isis.
- i would support detente with russia and the removal of nato troops from eastern europe
- i would recognize a broad chinese sphere of influence in the eastern hemisphere, but continue to support the japanese, particularly.
- i would support a 'good neighbour' policy in latin america
- i would support raising taxes on high incomes to mid twentieth century levels.
- i would support a universal basic income that is meaningful, not the small amount yang is presenting
- education should be free if you can get in, but it should be much harder to get in. jobs programs should focus on more targeted training that employers actually ask for.
- i would argue that immigration is a legal issue, not a political one, and take steps to get politicians out of the way, to allow the courts to do their job. "the best interests of the child" is the existing legal precedent, and it should be more closely adhered to.
- i would support constitutional protections for queer people as a means of freedom of expression and argue that this should be a primary focus of judicial appointments.
- abortion is closed
- faith has no place in politics; science is everything. i would support the elimination of "religious freedom" as a constitutionally protected right.
- i would support massive investments in public housing, with an eventual eye towards the abolition of private property altogether. property is impossible in a free society.
- i would be less inclined towards syndicalism and more inclined towards nationalization of industry; i think that industries should be owned by everybody, not just the workers that work in them. production should be geared towards demand and need, rather than profit.
- i would tend to not support plans to break up industry; i prefer nationalization. i don't believe in markets.
- nafta still sucks.
- broadly speaking, i would rather put people in jail than deport them; there is almost no scenario where i would support deportation. but, i think the laws need to be enforced. so, i would end up forcing illegals to do their time.
- migrant workers are entitled to the same protections and privileges and wages as non-migrant workers. that means that businesses that hire migrant workers under the table at substandard wages should be fully prosecuted to the full extent of the law. and, maybe the law could be a little more severe, too.
- in the long run, i would support a schengen-style arrangement in the nafta area, but the application of such an arrangement must be dependent on the improvement of mexican labour laws.
- reparations should be approached as a re-distributive policy under a socialist model. i would not support reparations in the context of a capitalist model, or on the basis of skin colour or family history. the past was what it was, but we have to be equal, in the future.

so, as mentioned previously, i don't have a lot of points of agreement with either party.

i am a communist, which means i tend to lean towards the democrats. but, i'm not one and i don't want to be one and i'm never going to feel comfortable supporting them.

i feel much more comfortable leaning towards a more radical alternative, like the greens.

i need to get in and out of the shower before 7:00. but i guess i'm bright and early today. let's hope i can make it a long day....although i still don't really feel very energetic. i'm just dehydrated and sluggish.

i knew there was some kind of issue with firefox connecting to something. i appear to have found and resolved that. we'll see if it fixes it or not.

but, i'm going to try and get some work done after i get out of the shower.

a little while back, firefox had an issue where all of the plugins stopped working due to a verification issue. i installed the developer edition of firefox to get around it, and never switched back to the regular version.

there's this thing it does called "servicing" where websites can push information down to the browser, and i found a list of sites, some sketchier looking than others. but this is apparently also a known exploit because the information is easily intercepted and spoofed.

there were some weird text documents showing up in my user directory, with sites i'd never been to in them.

i have turned that off as best i can and the text documents appear to have stopped. we'll need to see if that works or not.

....but this dry air makes me so tired....zzzzzzzzz.......