i was thinking as i was eating a salad that i can be fucking sarcastic in my foreign policy proposals. proposing a blockade of iran and telling the iranians to suffer the consequence of shitting in their own bed for shooting at ships is pretty vicious, really. it's sort of sadistic. but, sadism is one of the most blunt forms of comedy, because it is so absurd. really awful forms of punishment have a deep level of comedic value to them, which is really what i'm going for.

you'll have to forgive me. i don't watch tv. so, maybe i'm summarizing something that already exists, in which case i apologize. but there should be a resultant tv show called sarcastic dad that is about taking cruel and unusual punishment to it's logical conclusion in extremely dark comedy. these little fucking punks are going to get what's coming to 'em in the most ironic way possible, with flair and with shock value.

it would get cancelled, but that would just be the aura of it.

a lot of people, including myself, were loudly in support of regime change in iran way back in 2003, even as we were arguing against invading iraq. a lot of us have held these opposing positions the whole fucking time.

i would have preferred for the united states to have done this through the un. but so be it. the un is broken.

it's funny how everyone that supported iraq is opposed to iran, and everybody that opposed iraq supports iran. it doesn't mean anything on it's face, but it's true.

while a lot of former iraq supporters are going to claim they learned something, the reality is that they clearly didn't. even if they don't realize it, the difference is in the nature of the regime and the nature of the opposition to it.

iraq was a secular regime and iran is a theocracy. that's the difference.

i am not in support of the assassination of iranian scientists. that strikes me as of no utility whatsoever.

the americans are focusing on destroying iran's more conventional war machines, which is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to dismantle the state. they are not killing enough clerics, enough judges or enough of the deep state, and it's clear enough this won't work unless they refocus on wiping out the ruling class and the state's institutions, along with the weapons.

winner: russian and chinese weapons manufacturers.

loser: american taxpayers

the americans should close the straits themselves and sink anything coming in and out.

the americans clearly should have ensured they had control of the gulf before they started bombing. it's not america's responsibility to govern iran, but it is their responsibility to make coherent war plans. historically, the americans have had naval dominance over this waterway and the idea that iran could unilaterally close it would be absurd on it's face.

it's not that anything really changed. the united states still has naval dominance, but they appear to have allowed the iranians to put mines in the straits due to not foreseeing it happening. i warned you when this started that the obliteration would have to be complete and immediate, or it would open up opportunities to get in. anything iranian operating in the gulf should have been immediately bombed; it seems like it wasn't. the iranians themselves will suffer the most from this, so i can see how it didn't seem like a real threat, but somebody dropped the ball at centcom in not being aggressive enough. now, this is going to require clearing, which is going to take some time. further, mine-cleaning ships are not exactly military vessels, and they would be vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

this doesn't change any balance of power, it just creates annoyances and slows things down. it's a demonstration of incompetence by centcom that they let the inferior iranians mine the straits they have naval dominance over, right under their noses. it's an annoyance that's going to cost time and money to address.

that means that demining will have to wait, and there's no really easy way to make the straits usable again in the short run, even if they can send marines in to control the straits, which they should be doing.

i actually think they should do the opposite - they should blockade it and even mine the opening themselves, to prevent anything from getting in and out. demining will legitimately need to wait until moogabooga is eliminated and replaced with a democratically elected leader and iran will need to suffer the consequences of shitting in it's own bed.

on first glance, i would consider an israeli annexation of southern lebanon to be a little over the line. that's too far.

however, some things have to be acknowledged.

- lebanon is a failed state

- lebanon is unable to stop hezbollah

- the muslim colonization of southern lebanon is unsustainable

- israel has suffered terribly from the oct 7th massacre, and some increase in territory is morally justified as a reward for that suffering

when you put all of those things together, israel's need to take control of this territory and the region's need to decolonize it of recent islamization in the face of the collapse of the federal authority actually make the idea fairly reasonable.

however, israel should be making an attempt to get the people out of lebanon, and not just pushing them north. the people being driven out of southern lebanon right now are overwhelmingly not lebanese, but mostly syrian or palestinian. a better destination for the shiites, which is most of them, is iraq. israel should help get them there.

the guy going to the game on the tunnel bus is going to park downtown, pay parking, have a beer downtown, get something to eat, have a beer when he gets back, etc. you take away the bus, he either stays at home or just takes a cab right through downtown without stopping. 

it was the dumbest economic decision imaginable.

i also want to point out that the people on the bus pay taxes, too. for them, the bus is a service and taking it away is taking away a service they were paying for with their taxes, in order to pay for stupid christmas festivals and whatever else that they would largely not give a fuck about. did any regular tunnel bus riders get a tax rebate in return for the service that was taken from them? no - those taxes were rerouted towards other things, and most of those other things are bullshit. now, they're still paying taxes, but they lost this service they used.

when we bring back the tunnel bus, it should just run 24/7.

it's not like windsor has alternatives to the events that the tunnel bus serviced. the logic that the bus is taking money out of the city is deeply flawed; the bus was taking money into the city by increasing foot traffic into it. canceling the bus is redirecting the money elsewhere.

i don't give a fuck about sports and think competition is barbaric. however, a large number of people would take the tunnel bus over to see hockey, football, baseball or basketball games. i may be mistaken, but i don't think there's an nhl or nfl team in windsor. going to a minor hockey league game is not a comparable product.

i go over strictly to see concerts and i don't even go to the big shows. detroit is still a large market. so, i could go see a band like pearl jam in detroit, or see a pearl jam cover band in windsor. pearl jam's not coming to windsor. it's not comparable.

for me, though, i don't even go to the big shows, i go to the underground parties. in the summer, detroit usually has a party going until 7:00 am. in windsor, everything closes at midnight, nowadays. you can't even find a venue open until 2:30 anymore.

so, this idea that windsor is competing with detroit is deeply wrong. windsor is simply not competing with detroit, and there's simply no way to get people that want to go to a game or a show or a party to spend that money here instead. if the mayor of windsor wasn't a retard, he'd be trying to capture some of the multiplier effect of people coming through town to spend money in detroit. instead, he's sending them to lasalle or sandwich to spend that money there, instead.

i think that there needs to be a criminal investigation into this organization to determine why it's doing business in iran.

certainly, any donors are entitled to an explanation as to why they are doing business in iran instead of buying food in canada.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/daily-bread-food-bank-says-ship-carrying-90k-worth-of-food-destined-for-toronto-was-hit-in-the-strait-of-hormuz/

i'd like to see some new venues open up on sandwich street.

there's a dom in windsor that should greatly benefit from the new bridge.

worse is this idea that cancelling the tunnel bus is going to coerce me to spend more money in canada. wrong. 

the more correct way to think of it is that the tunnel bus was drawing me into the downtown core on days i wouldn't have otherwise gone downtown at all. i may have taken a few shots before i left, or otherwise spent money downtown on my way to and from the bus. cancelling the bus means i'll spend less money downtown because i have less reason to go downtown, and sending me on a detour to the new bridge is going to see me spend more money in lasalle or sandwichtown, instead. the new bridge is going to shift the centre of the city away from ouellette and to the southwest. in 20 years, we may call this area lasalle-windsor, or go back to calling it sandwich.

it's maybe not realized, although i don't know how people could miss it, that the reason downtown windsor shifted from sandwich town to ouellette in the first place was because the tunnel and the tunnel bus was there. you cancel or shift or undo that and you cancel or shift or undo downtown, because the major reason people go to downtown windsor is to go back and forth from detroit.

the problem with mayor dilbert is that he's a dork-ass family values conservative loser. we need somebody that's more interested in individual rights and less interested in family values and sees the priority in funding things like the tunnel bus, while slashing funding for stupid christmas bullshit.

from what i can tell, the decision to cancel the tunnel bus was broadly unpopular. we'll have to see if it's career ending and if it's a big enough issue to overturn city council, if we can find some candidates willing to put it on the ballot.

i'm hoping that they eventually sell the ambassador bridge to some government, who turns it into a walking bridge.

i'm a five minute walk from the bus station to go under the tunnel, a ten minute bicycle ride from the old bridge (which i've never been on) and at least a 20 minute ride to the new bridge. i don't know exactly how i'm going to access the bridge with a bicycle yet and that will determine the amount of time it takes to get across. then, when i am across, it's a twenty minute ride back to woodward. so, this might end up being an hour detour into town and i might find myself willing to pay to take the bus over, if i had the option, and then bike back around whenever i'm done - at 2:00 am, 4:00 am, 7:00 am, whenever.

i will not have to wait for the tunnel bus at the diner anymore, which often added an extra $10 to the trip, on it's own, and forced me to plan for overnight parties, even if i wasn't totally into them.

if they turn the old bridge into a pedestrian link, it will cut 10-15 minutes of bicycling, in either direction. 

i may eventually just move closer to the new bridge, and i tried to do that last fall, but i wasn't able to find the kind of place i wanted to, and moved downtown instead. i like the new place. there's some issues but i hope they work out. if they don't, i'll have to see if i can maybe even buy a small house near the bridge.

unfortunately, i don't think i currently have the choice to pay $5 to bring my bike across from downtown and then bike around the long way to get home, like i used to. the city took that away. i would hope it's a ballot issue in the next city election.

i can come up with a million better ways to save money than cutting the tunnel bus. the city just wasted millions of dollars on a useless skating rink, and wastes millions of dollars every year on stupid christmas lights. these are things that could and should be cut in order to bring back the tunnel bus, which was a major benefit to living here that is far more valuable than stupid christmas lights.

https://bridgemi.com/michigan-government/tolls-for-new-detroit-windsor-bridge-to-be-cheaper-than-ambassador-tunnel/

this is deeply undemocratic, and consistent with the government's broad behaviour, including it's foreign policy. this government has demonstrated a broad level of contempt for the concept of democracy, both at home and abroad.

it's up to voters in toronto to make sure that the liberals lose these elections.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-idlout-majority-poilievre-ndp-analysis-9.7124771