ok, so her name is ronna mcdaniel.

but, that's not what it sounded like.

wait.

so, the chair of the rnc is ronald mcdonald?

why was i not informed?

just a reality check: as a voter, i don't want to "bank my vote".

i want to wait as long as i can before i make a choice.

further, campaigns that try to coerce me into voting too early are likely to come into some serious resistance.

while allowing people to vote early may make the process more efficient for undecided voters, that doesn't mean the schedule needs to change - if you're voting two months early, you weren't in play, anyways.

so, what just happened in the united states? what are the americans saying? is this a shift left? a shift right? a rebuke of trump? what's the message in the medium?

the medium is the message, isn't it?

it's a statement about democracy, more than anything else.

but, the winner here is neither the republican party nor the democratic party but the conservative movement, as a whole - they, and only they, got what they wanted.

1) they kept the senate.

2) they functionally split the house.

3) they got the president they wanted - the more conservative option, of the two.

and, so, you'll hear all kinds of bloviated nonsense from the usual suspects about socialists taking over government. further, the fake left will take this as a fake mandate and just repeat what they say.

but, it's all bullshit.

this is a major, resounding victory for the traditional right and that is what you're going to get for the next two years, at least - and it may, in truth, be surprisingly functional, if in ways that enrage many of the people that just put mr. biden in power.

biden, pelosi and mcconnell may not find themselves disagreeing about much.

you got fooled.

again.

november 11th is no day to be proud.

it is a day to be deeply ashamed.

when you take that moment of silence on nov 11, it should be to remember this country's culpability in one of the greatest war crimes in the history of the world and all of the innocents we murdered in the process of it.

...which means, yes - many of the children we sent to early graves from 1914-1918 could not participate in this country's democracy at all.

ironically.

or enragingly.

neither women nor men who did not own property could vote in canada until 1919.

what we need to remember, regarding the first world war, was that we lived in a society where people could be conscripted by a foreign monarch, rounded up at gunpoint and sent to die for the banks.

don't let them tell you they died for democracy - they did not, that is a lie and the people telling you as much should be called liars to their face.

so, i'll clarify - i will stand with those children who were given weapons and marched to their death, in a crime of such great enormity that we should never alleviate ourselves of our guilt. what we did to our own people in the first world war is on the same level of moral monstrosity as the slave trade or the genocide of indigenous people, and those responsible for this crime should be held in an equal amount of contempt.

i will stand with these innocent victims.

i will not stand with those who volunteered - i will condemn them for perpetuity, and curse the ground they are buried in.

i would, broadly, oppose wearing poppies as an act of militaristic, jingoist garbage.

it is important that we never let the elite kill us the way they did in the first world war ever again, fair enough. but, i stand with those that opposed that war, and not with those that fought in it.

i would support this policy.

keep your politics, beliefs, values and feelings at home and away from work, school and other broad social functions. they don't belong there - as a customer, i don't want to see it or have to interact with it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/whole-foods-bans-poppies-1.5791551

so, the pasta water just waters it down.

i think the vanilla flavour in the soy milk is enough to avoid the need for further sugar. i eat a lot of fruit, but i tend to avoid the refined stuff. i'll try it with (expired) mustard next time....

the surprise in pennsylvania is how long this is taking and how close it is. again - a lot of democratic votes are no doubt being thrown away because the signatures don't match or the stamp is in the wrong place or whatever else, and this is no doubt the reason it's so unexpectedly close.

i still think trump has the upper hand in georgia and arizona, and biden still has to concern himself with avoiding a recount in pennsylvania, which i think is unlikely. so, biden should still be officially worried about pennsylvania.

but, it's about time that it flipped, and that is probably the deciding event, in the end.

the next update took some time to take shape due to the reproportioning, so it's going to need to be a quadruple check as much as anything else. i now have 12 components rather than 11, there's a cost row added, etc. the data is going to be dramatically different, so it's going to be another day or two still, probably. but when it's done, i believe it will be the final update for the breakfast component, except to add further items for further nutrients (like seaweed, potentially).

i'm just starting to readd the vitamins, starting with a.