my cunning plan to extricate myself from this hellhole faces a stress test tomorrow.

they apparently won't let me make my case in the court because they seem to realize i'm going to change the laws. the gatekeeper bitch has gone quiet on me, but i'm not convinced she's disengaged. there was supposed to be a hearing tomorrow, but the lawyer didn't confirm the motion, so it got cancelled. what should happen is that it should be rescheduled, which probably means rescheduled to march or even april.

if that happens, i'll be here until either november occurs or i get moved out via subsidized housing, whichever happens first, and the answer is almost certainly the former. my cunning plan will have worked flawlessly. however, it it needs to get through this stress test first, and then i need to win an attempt to quash in the spring. 

there is some possibility that the judge might just cancel everything instead; that would be wrong, but judges are sometimes wrong, and the silence of the gatekeeping bitch is worrying me.

i will either have very good news tomorrow afternoon, and be safe here for the winter, or very frustrating news, and need to pack up and get out on short notice, which i'll probably be able to barely do.

it's remarkably hypocritical that the democrats are frightened of the bunch of harmless nuts that stormed washington on jan 6, but are celebrating the bloodthirsty islamist barbarians that recently stormed the government in syria.

trump should not pardon the islamist rioters in syria, and especially not the ones on the most wanted terrorist list. rather, he should put sanctions on syria.

guantanomo joe wants to criticize syria for human rights abuses. right.

it's not that syria didn't have some problems, it's that they were mostly tied to the previous ruler (who died 25 years ago) and that the reforms that his son brought  in were actually extremely liberalizing, leaving syria as probably the most moderate muslim state in the entire middle east. the turks, iranians, egyptians and saudis are all infinitely worse than syria has been in decades.

worse, syria was a rendition site for us torture during the iraq war. that is, a lot of the basis of the criticism comes directly from cia torture sites in syria.

i understand that this is a proxy war and that what actually just happened was a turkish-backed coup in syria, which is only possible with nato oversight (and russian disengagement). it looks like israel is going to make a mess of the situation, which is what assad was trying to avoid, and which is sort of required. these terrorists are bad guys, and at least the israelis seem have their heads out of their asses about it.

joe's analysis is just not of the current era, or of the current century. biden unquestionably green-lighted this, and he no doubt did it because harris lost the election. it's a last hurrah. yet, like so many of the horrible foreign policy decisions he made, it's through the filter of somebody that never let go of the cold war.

the younger assad is probably the least ruthless dictator anybody's seen in the region in the modern era, at least. the language coming from the white house and propaganda in line with it is not consistent with reality, and largely delusional in terms of what assad was and where he was trying to take the country, which was actually into the european union, in the very long run.

now, syria will be lucky to avoid a fate different than afghanistan went through in the 80s, and i can only wish them luck. they'll need it.

instead of fighting the last battle of the cold war, biden should have been blowing up the existential threat developing in yemen, which he's completely avoided dealing with because he's obsessed with settling scores with the russians.

unfortunately, israel might be the only power left that can save syria from collapsing into afghan-like backwardsness and, in fact, that might have been the plan.

i hope that israel takes these fuckers on directly and wipes them out.

unlike the coast of lebanon, damascus is outside of any reasonable sphere of ancient israel and, in invading damascus the israelis would be pushing it beyond any acceptable point, but i'd rather have the jews seize the city and enforce some modern concept of law than see it governed by thugs out of the back of a koran.

over the upcoming weeks and months, the reality in syria is going to resemble the initial taliban takeover over afghanistan. if you have any buddhist statutes in syria, get them out while you can.

i would hope that the canadian consulate would indicate it's willing to evacuate people, especially women, from the country while they can get out, as one of the oldest centres of civilization in the world collapses into unmitigated barbarism.

this is a sad day for syrians, a sad day for the region and a sad day for the world.

the loss of syria to brutal muslim barbarians is another black mark on biden's deplorable foreign policy, and let us hope it is the last pathetic mistake made by this horrible administration.

the people that just took over syria are a turkish proxy group, but they are an off shoot of al qaeda and morally equivalent to isis. isis basically just won in syria. 

this brutal takeover of the syrian state by backwards barbarians is a horrific catastrophe for syria and for the syrian people and will potentially put an end to a relatively moderate period of rule by a secular state and usher in decades of oppression by a brutally backwards theocratic state, similar to the despotic barbarism that rules over saudi arabia.

the west should be thoroughly embarrassed that the russians had to prop up the last vestige of civilization in the region for years, and in the end had to sacrifice it to protect it's core interests in europe. 

everybody in the entire world is worse off for this disaster.

these barbarians are worse than the taliban, and the syrian people should expect an outcome worse than taliban rule. the syrian state itself, under islamic rule, will unquestionably become a source of terrorism in the broader region.

i hope that there are immediate sanctions placed on these barbarians, and i hope the russians haven't completely abandoned the people of syria to the depravity of islamic fundamentalism, which they do not want, and which is a fate worse than nuclear war.

fuck you joe biden. may you rot in hell, with your worthless dead children.

yes, i understand that trudeau has been trying to push older white men out of government.

clearly, that was stupid and needs to be undone. they need to reach out. 

trump is going to treat doug ford's fat ass the same way he treated chris christie's fat ass. bad, bad choice.

stupid choice. he'll get his ass handed to him. they won't respect him.

trump himself is not a conservative. he's going to get along better with an older white liberal.

send bob rae. send marc garneau. send ralph goodale.

the liberals have no deficit of people they can send.

stephen harper would be a better pick than doug ford if you want to actually get something done.

i think the puerto ricans would have something to say about canada being the 51st state.

that's twice, donald.

you got one more strike, and you don't want to know what happens when you strike out on puerto rico.

it would be terrible for canada, and the best thing that could happen to the united states, as the republicans would never get those electoral votes, ever.

the liberals should not pick a female right now and especially not a young one. maybe later.

the best way to deal with donald trump is to send an older white male down there, like a ralph goodale or a marc garneau. unfortunately, the liberal party has purged itself of older white people recently, in the dumbest destruction of talent this side of the russian revolution.

trump will not like polievre either. 

the liberals actually have a chance to one up the opposition by putting an older person in power, but i don't expect that they will.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/5-things-we-learned-about-melanie-joly-in-nyt-profile-that-declares-her-top-contender-to-replace-trudeau

in order to meet our nato funding requirements and chase off the mob tactics that come in the protection racket we're stuck in, we should spend the money on nato flak jackets for the polar bears and train them to attack russians on command.

the russians may laugh at us.

"you think russia don't know bear? aaaaahahahaha."

but it's the best possible defense. truly.

now, if we can teach the polar bears taekwondo on top of it, putin would be completely fucked.

we'd have to fly in some grizzlies and black and brown bears to meet diversity requirements and stop the polar bears from becoming a nazi paramilitary, which is what is going to happen with climate change anyways, they'll all back-cross to whence they came, and we'll have a race of hybrid bears ready to bite.

as the bears move in to russia, they'll need to capture the young russian bears to train them, in a janissery-like tactic, to turn the russian bear against itself.

canada doesn't have a migrant issue because swimming across the arctic ocean is too hard. you've got the cold, the polar bears - it might be a fun adventure if disneyfied, but for most it's way too hard when you could just get to brazil first, or if you're already in latin america to start (as most are).

however, what canada does have is a lax visa issue. it is too easy to legally enter canada, so that the actual bad guys that have a few brains tend to use it is a backdoor.

we consequently don't have caravans of desperate people looking to eat, but we do have terrorists and other criminals using canada as a way to sneak in. that's not what trump said, and there's little evidence he even really cares (he seems to actually legitimately want the tariffs. this isn't a bluff. he just wants tariffs because he thinks they'll bring back jobs and this is how he bypasses congress to do it.), but we need to do this for ourselves, anyways.

canada is currently changing it's policy on immigration due to realizing we're dealing with the effects of overpopulation in the cities. some kind of policy to incentivize people to settle in smaller towns should be tried to try to get people to spread out more. we also need to realize that we let a lot of bad people in because we're not checking because we think it's racist and we need to re-evaluate that position. it's not racist to ask if a person's religious views may lead them to uncanadian beliefs or activities that may pose a threat to the people around them.

https://san.com/cc/suspected-terrorist-arrested-by-federal-agents-at-northern-us-border/

looks pretty similar to last year, if you ask me; statistically, within the margin of error.

where i am, in windsor, you never see freezing overnight lows in february and rarely see them beyond the first week of january. we get a week, at most, of what canadians would call winter, right during the last week of december.

we skipped it last year and it's looking like we're going to skip it this year, too.

the shift in energy northwards means that if you're north of sudbury, or even north of barrie, i'd get a shovel, but you probably already have one.

i'm also putting down a warning for ottawa: you may not get to skate again at all this year, and this spring is going to be brutal. get your sandbags down now.

https://weather.com/en-CA/weather/tenday/l/Windsor+Ontario?canonicalCityId=76c141061d15e7f8d2c987004795c229983119d19f53c3ee179e9983c2afbffa

this is horrific.

hts are bloodthirsty terrorists opposed by 80-90% of the syrian public, which fully backs assad and vehemently opposes jihadist rule. hts is also a proxy of the turkish government.

for the turks to arm and train these barbarians and send them into syria like a mercenary group in order to invade and pacify, and then absurdly claim that assad is oppressing his own people, when the truth is that the russians then have to come in to protect the population from the turkish-backed terrorists, is outrageous, but it is the level of propaganda being spewed by western media around this war for years, now.

i don't know if trump is going to actually shift direction here or not. i strongly doubt he understand the subtleties or what nominating gabbard actually means; he's just rewarding a loyalist. however, the entity that is at war with his own people is not assad, it's erdogan, and the country that's in need of regime change, by a coup if necessary, is the turks.

as mentioned, it would be nice if this turkish mercenary group could remove hezbollah from syria, first. i would just get out of their way and clean up the mess after. the west, however, should be looking at the long run, and it is more leaders like assad that want a western style democracy and want to tilt westwards, not less.

syria is more like lebanon than iraq, but it's somewhere in between. they don't want to be ruled out of the back of a koran by islamic thugs, they want something broadly european in government, and the only party offering that is assad. that is why assad, despite his failings, commands massive levels of popular support in syria.

https://apnews.com/article/syria-insurgents-aleppo-iran-iraq-militia-12341a6c15a772e207a1b5513c11f8fd

gaza already looks something like hell, but i actually agree with trump's basic position.

the us-israel position from day one should have always been to reverse the negotiation process by threatening to obliterate gaza unless they release the hostages immediately, rather than trying to negotiate.

assad is not aligned with hezbollah or iran, but syria has become a russian protectorate and in the process has become unable to remove hezbollah. the israeli strikes on hezbollah are in assad's long term interests and he no doubt is in full support of them.

the capitalist disinformation around syria is tremendous and has been since the initial bullshit claim that assad attacked a peaceful demonstration, when he was bombing saudi-backed isis rebels.

what happened in syria (which is a military junta that the russians have taken control of since about 2015 or so) is that assad actually designed a democratic constitution and was going to put it up for a referendum, and the saudis vetoed it by launching a western-backed invasion. remember that the united states cannot tolerate democracy in the middle east, which makes them a great ally of the saudis; assad threatened to allow democracy in a state that is actually secular and has historically had a mix of christians and muslims and that got him marked for death.

assad's father was actually an ally of saddam hussein and syria was aligned against iran in a series of wars in the 20th century.

when the turks realized the saudis were going into syria, they had to push back because syria is a buffer state on the turkish border. the turks do not want a direct border with the saudis, they want some space. that, and the turks figure that syria has a long history tied to constantinople, and not much of one tied to mecca. the turks, somewhat correctly, would consider syria in it's sphere, not in the arab sphere.

what developed out of that initial conflict between the saudis and turks over syria became a complicated proxy war and, when it slowed down, the iranian proxy of hezbollah wandered into the mess, to nobody's wishes. everybody wants hezbollah out, even the russians.

we'll have to see how this develops, but my initial perception is that the turks and israelis made a deal for turkey to enter the ongoing war on the side of israel by invading northern syria, which will also create a problem for the russians in ukraine. israel cannot conduct a ground war in syria, but turkey can. ukraine and syria are actually the same war; this actually becomes a war between russia and turkey.

the russians might want to step back and let the turks clear hezbollah out before launching a counter-offensive, which would be assad's preferred outcome. the kurds will be sitting and waiting to come in if required.

i want trump to try to pry assad away from russia and realign syria towards the west, then tell the saudis to back off and let syria be free to design it's own government, but that is unlikely to happen given turkey's nato membership and saudi influence in washington. we will instead be told lies about assad, like we were about saddam hussein.

assad's father was a tyrant, but the younger assad, who was not groomed for power, is a mild-mannered figurehead that grew up in britain. he has western inclinations. these should be leveraged.

we get a cm of snow in december and the meteorologists think climate change is over. the depth of resistance to reality is baffling.

as i suggested, the storm track has been pushed to the north. the detroit-quebec corridor used to get nailed by snow in la nina. growing up in ottawa, i remember 50 foot snow banks and trudging to school in the blizzard. that just happened in thunder bay, instead, while i think it's going to be raining most of this week in ottawa.

it's actually very mild here in windsor, with temperatures hovering around freezing, and small amounts of rain in the forecast.

what trudeau just did is equivalent to walking into a tiger cage and asking the tiger not to eat you.

it's valuable to compare the outcomes.

mexico called trump and told him to fuck off and it looks like he did. trudeau comes to trump and begs like a pathetic slave and the result is that trump told him he's going to get hit.

the canadian government is very stupid, and that's no doubt what trump deduced. trump is a bully. all bullies seek victims that are weak. we advertised weakness to the bully. 

the most basic rule with bullies is that you have to stand up to them, which is what mexico did, which was the smart approach. we cowered to the bully, like fools, and he punched us in the face.

we need a government willing to stand up to donald trump. that's how you deal with him, and then he folds like a cheaply constructed hotel, like most bullies do.

the other thing to keep in mind is that canada has more to steal than mexico does. canadians think we have "shared values", but that's not what trump sees. trump sees easily plunderable wealth that can be stolen with minimal effort. what the mexicans have is labour to exploit. it's not the same thing.

we need to get our heads out of our asses and stop with the fantasy about platitudes and friendship and deal with the reality of an aggressive actor declaring war on us, before trump pulls the heads out and sticks his cock in.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/30/justin-trudeau-donald-trump-mar-a-lago

i'm waiting for elizabeth warren's endorsement of the terrorist attack on aleppo.

the west has a second chance to get this right, to condemn the terrorists for what they are and to offer support to assad to fight them off.

estimates are suggesting that the "tax holiday" will cost the government, and it's ability to deliver social services, around 1.6 billion dollars.

i can't imagine that's the case. nobody is going to save $40-50 on beer and popcorn.

a better estimate is probably in the 400-500 million dollar range.

given the massive headache and extra costs this is going to force businesses to incur, the rebate was probably the better approach. everybody - businesses, governments and individuals - could have better absorbed this by mailing everybody a $20 check instead.

not $200. $20. that's a better estimate.

while i may be likely to criticize the text myself, the outgoing president has an obligation to understand what the fuck he's doing, and should never, ever be criticized for reading anything.

shut your fool mouths.

https://www.jpost.com/international/article-831368

as the situation in eastern europe develops over the next few months, it's worth remembering that ukraine is not a western-style democracy but is a few decades removed from despotism and is one of the most corrupt and politically rotten countries in the world. to the extent that criticisms of russian democracy are overblown but valid in principle, all of those same criticisms apply with equal or greater force to ukraine, which is linguistically, culturally, ethnically, sociologically, historically and politically indistinguishable from russia in any meaningful or coherent sense. ukrainian independence from russia is about as valid as the independence movement in texas.

the reason that the americans have been apprehensive about sharing military technology with the ukrainians is the realization that it would end up sold to the russians by corrupt actors within or russian infiltration of the ukrainian state. everything else aside, ukraine cannot be admitted to nato because it would be a security and intelligence breach and would create a backdoor for russian infiltration into nato itself.

it is likely that ukraine will be forcefully told it cannot join nato and the pentagon was just stringing them along the whole time as an excuse to inflict damage on russian defense capacities. nato doesn't give the slightest fuck about ukraine, ukrainian infrastructure or ukrainian casualties in the war. most recently, the americans have been asking ukraine to lower the age of conscription, which is enforced with extreme violence in ukraine by armed thugs in a stazi-like secret police that kidnap young people at gunpoint and send them off to war. the americans are increasingly and aggressively encouraging the ukrainian government to round up ever younger children to march them off to die, to kill some statistically greater percentage of russian conscripts and inflict some marginally greater level of damage on russian defensive abilities, which is reminiscent of what happened at the end stages of nazism in germany, where they started rounding up little kids and handing them machine guns and sending them after soviet tanks, to get entirely obliterated. does that sound like they care about ukraine to you?

a component of the ukrainian state may actually retaliate to that news by realigning with the russians and, if they do, it will likely get messy, but will demonstrate why they cannot be integrated into the west.

cutting them off will expose the depravity of the american policy, but that is already clear, and if trump is the fall guy he won't give a fuck. it is the correct thing to do to minimize threats of nuclear war and reestablish ukraine as a buffer state that can allow for some concept of tentative and uneasy peace.

the russians need something to exist between them and the nuclear arsenal in germany. that's not negotiable and trying to take that away was a mistake that led to the situation on the ground. they would rather it is poland, but ukraine will have to do for now and the ukrainians will need to accept their fate as what they are, which is a buffer state. that's too bad for ukraine. let them cry in their borscht, and sing their sad songs, and write their existentialist books and work together in communes to cope on the ground; they cannot transcend their condition, and must be told to suffer through it for the good of the rest of the world.

i'm not currently in the mood for a round of homo erectus jokes, but you can do that yourselves if you'd like.

homo erectus (when are they going to change this name?) was our ancestor, but paranthropus bosei was not, they were an extinct species of hominid-like great apes.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/early-human-footprints-1.7396753

i wouldn't get along with these guys much, but the difference between this display of silliness and trudeau going to taylor swift with his teenage daughter is that trump is demonstrating a level of self-deprecation and full blown surreal irony while trudeau was actually honestly trying to be a cool 50+ year old millennial, in clear evasion of his obvious gen x birth date.

ella-grace trudeau should have been legitimately utterly mortified. barron trump needs to lighten up and enjoy the party.

ironically dancing to ymca at thanksgiving with the richest man in the world in front of baffled conservative onlookers (kristi noem was certainly looking uncomfortable during the ava maria sway as well) may turn out to be the only policy promoted by the second trump administration that i am in full and clear support of. i wholeheartedly agree with this policy.

taylor swift can indicate if she agrees or not, but i suspect she might as well.

this is what democrats, liberals and other fake leftists are having difficulty understanding and have to find some way to grapple with: the reality is that donald trump is actually the cool kid, and they aren't, and that this is a cultural shift that nobody's seen before and nobody knows how to understand or react to. i am sure this is following as a corollary of the restrictions on social interactions pushed by fake leftists during the pandemic, in opposition to the libertarianism embraced by republicans which did not explicitly try to stop young people from having fun, which has enforced a flipped cultural reality on young people that the rest of us are going to need to get our heads around and adjust to.

i am, however, disappointed by stallone. c'mon, man.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-musk-barron-ymca-mar-a-lago-thanksgiving-b2656355.html

the trudeau government has apparently decided that it would rather everybody miss out on it's $250 gift than treat seniors and the disabled fairly and with equal respect.

everybody should take note of the underlying fascistic ideology in the government's behaviour, as though we just woke up in the fourth reich.

useless eaters unite, we have nothing to lose but our trains of thought.

i would tell google that it should consider relocating itself outside of the united states, if the state is going to try to force them to compete.

competition is harmful, in general, and should be avoided as much as possible. when competition is enforced via the threat of state violence, everybody suffers.

competition in search is irrational and would harm everybody. a government trying to force competition in search is creating a social harm that the company should seek to protect itself and society from by getting out of the jurisdiction of.

i would rather see a state monopoly in search that enforces standards and maximizes outcomes than a series of companies competing for search, which would create unequal and poor results for people searching for things.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp81ppr3l9go

would buying weapons from lockheed martin save us from putin?

no; that's the exact opposite lesson to learn from ukraine.

russia attacked ukraine because nato was dumping weapons into it, which it saw as a threat.

it follows that it is actually rather obvious that the best way to make ourselves a target is to buy weapons and the best means of protection is to not buy weapons, as the russians are only likely to attack out of self-defense.

i think this is completely ass-backwards, anyways. canada and russia are extremely similar and should be trying to work together to build an alliance. we will need the russians to help us defeat the chinese.

talking to joe rogan for an hour, and probably arguing with him for most of it, would not have won kamala harris the election.

to the extent that there's some valid concern underlying the question regarding whether democrats are able to reach what they call independents, unaligned voters, low information voters and generally unpolitical citizens, you can't undo the 10 years of targeting these people that trump has invested in with an hour of time.

further, the entire point is that trump is not kamala harris and kamala harris is kamala harris, in the sense that she's an establishment politician. these voters or non-voters are simply not politically aligned with the kamala harrises of the world, they are politically aligned directly against the kamala harrises, and she would have little chance of swinging them.

what that suggests is that if the democrats want to access these voters, and they no doubt should, that they should be running candidates that appeal to them, which would be somebody like bernie sanders and not somebody like kamala harris.

the next democratic primary will probably be very open and a candidate that appeals to non-voters will have a better chance.

democrats need to understand that kamala harris was a bad candidate that couldn't win and that the only tactic the party has is to stop running bad candidates that can't win. there is nothing she could have done differently besides not running in the first place.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/27/harris-campaign-democrats

this is not how americans think at all. if you attack their institutions, they'll bomb you. this is the dumbest approach possible.

the primary goal of the federal government should be to prevent a recession, to make reciprocal demands about the border and to broadcast that we will not comply with their other concerns (like their bitching about nato spending, which means buying things from their military-industrial complex, as nato is a protection racket) so long as the tariffs are in place and then wait.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/tariff-canada-retaliate-trump-1.7394432

if they did it by continent like they do it in the united states, toronto's demographics would be:

43.5% european (white)

39% "asian"

10% african (black)

4% south american (hispanic)

4% mixed

1% indigenous north american

that is not comparable to anywhere in the united states. remotely.

the old tory political establishment in this country needs to wake up to what the new facts are, and it is that nafta has allowed mexico to overtake us, economically.

canadians think they're so much better than mexico. canada goes to g7 meetings; mexico is a third world country. these are old facts; pre-nafta facts.

this is reality:

within five-ten years, canada will be competing with indonesia and turkey for 15th place, while mexico enters the top ten.

expect mexico to replace us at the g7 summits within the next five years. we already shouldn't be there and it's a matter of time before they throw us out.

we think we're america's largest trading partner. nowadays, it depends on how you measure it and by most measures we either aren't or we're tied with mexico or china.

this is reality:

we think we have shared cultural values with the americans rooted in a shared british heritage.

this is reality:

we think we have a close military alignment and are trusted allies. 

we don't anymore. at all.

we have to adjust to reality.

the extremely weak reaction by canada's premier's to trump's declaration of war on us is pathetic and disgusting and the bulk of them should be charged with treason for their capitulation to the enemy.

i stand in greater solidarity with the mexican response at this point.

i wouldn't expect this to succeed in the long run, but it's worth a try.

if the lebanese can enforce the agreement, great. i wouldn't count on that lasting very long.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2d3gj9ewxo

right.

so, have canadian producers undercut the market by crashing prices and balance it with a government subsidy to local oil producers (i don't like that in general, but...) rather than a retaliatory tariff. the debt will go up, but the price of oil will come down across the board, and that will balance out to no increased revenues by the americans. then, sue them to pay for it.

this will make other markets more attractive than the united states, as well, and production will shift.

if you take that approach, the americans will pay for their own tariffs, in the long run.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-would-impose-25-tariffs-oil-mexico-canada-under-trade-plan-sources-say-2024-11-26/

i want to suggest an alternate tactic to retaliatory tariffs, as that is just going to create a recession. the intention of government policy should be to avoid a recession and not to create one.

the way that government can react to avoid a recession is by emulating what it did during covid, by absorbing the costs of tariffs and placing them on the national debt. it would be preferable to allow the bank of canada to print this debt than to allow it to accrue interest via private bond holders. 

the way to recoup this debt would then be to sue the united states for it both at the wto and through the mechanisms erected in nafta specifically to address it. trump will be gone in a few years (he might die in office. it might not take four years.), and we can address the issue with the next president.

canada and the world should consequently be treating trump like the lame duck that he is, under the expectation that he doesn't last four years and that, even if he does, his policies will not last much longer than that.

if the government absorbs tariff costs by collective action with the bank of canada, it should avoid a recession, at the least, and we'll have to figure out what happens next.

drop the platitudes: tariffs are an act of war and this is a declaration of war. we need to treat it as a declaration of war and to use war time economic tactics in response.

canada should also be absolutely clear that it will refuse to meet the nato spending targets and will consider purchasing military hardware from non-nato countries until the tariffs are removed.

it is very foolish for the united states to declare war on china, mexico and canada at the same time, especially if it seeks to win a long war with china, but it's what we have in front of us.

what is ford implying here when he says canada isn't mexico?

that canada deserves special treatment? why?

because (some of) canada is english-speaking? because it used to be mostly white?

hispanics are a substantive part of the american tapestry, and spanish-american colonies make up a tremendous portion of the united states, including the heavily populated states of california, texas and florida. mexico is a larger trade partner with the united states than canada is and trades in actual goods, whereas canada, which is a corrupt petrostate, sells little besides oil and some other raw commodities of marginal importance.

ford's racist comments are actually entirely correct: canada is not as important to the united states as mexico is. we're not in the same category as they are at all. if i can be joan rivers for a minute; canada, you're no mexico. we're the lesser and least important partner in the trilateral agreement, and by a substantive margin.

ford needs to clear his eyes of the racist bullshit and see the truth.

https://www.cp24.com/politics/queens-park/2024/11/26/ford-says-trumps-proposed-25-per-cent-tariff-on-canadian-goods-like-a-family-member-stabbing-you-right-in-the-heart/

i indicated initially that the best tactic was to try to avoid trump as much as possible, but if he's going to target us, it's important that we don't cave or appear weak.

we have our own concerns about border security.

- illegal migrants entering canada from the united states. we should demand that the administration put a stop to this immediately, under threat of economic sanctions.

- guns entering the country from the united states. we should demand that the fbi launch a special task unit to cease all illegal gun trafficking into canada from the united states.

- americans buying up medications in canada. we should pass a law against that, i think.

we should threaten to cut off the flow or dramatically increase the price of oil, if trump doesn't address these concerns.

we should tell the americans we're going to cut off the flow of oil unless they shut down illegal crossings from vermont.

no. as usual, ford's a buffoon.

there's no fentanyl moving from canada into the united states and we're taking in their migrants not vice versa.

we need to tell the americans that we're fed up with their bullshit and that they need to abide by their agreements. if they're not going to negotiate in good faith, if they're not going to be a reliable partner, we're no longer interested; we'll find other markets.

we've walked away from them before and we can do it again.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/devastating-ford-warns-of-impact-of-new-tariffs-promised-by-donald-trump-1.7123237

how many americans are obese do you guess?

20%? no way, right?

it's 40%. no shit. almost half the population.

10% are morbidly obese.

and a staggering 75% of americans are overweight.

in canada, 35% are overweight, which is still far too much, but it gets the point across.

i'd like to see some science on this. this strikes me as a bad idea, but i want to know what the realistic prognosis for marginal cases really is.

the general reality is that dieting pills, and even diets, are always short term. you get these people hooked on this stuff, and what are the outcomes? strokes? cancer? kidney and liver failure? 

it's very american to try to cure obesity with drugs, but you have to change. you have to eat better. you have to exercise more.

the only valid use for these drugs is probably for the morbidly obese, and it's just to give them a chance to change. obesity in america is not just widespread, it's profound; americans are not chubby or a little overweight, they're dangerously and grotesquely fat. how do you tell them to exercise when they almost can't? if a drug can give them a chance to get better, that could save their lives, but only as a form of shock therapy and only for a short period of time.

if these drugs just become a way to avoid changing, they're going to lead to their own epidemic of liver failure.

so, where's the science on this?

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/united-states/biden-proposes-medicare-and-medicaid-cover-costly-weight-loss-drugs-for-millions-of-obese-americans/article_5f93f82a-ca22-5423-ae44-772b274dc923.html

i got it cleaned up and reassembled but i can't get it to post. it turns on and the fans just run. i was previously unable to get it to turn on at all, so it is progress, but it's thrown me into basic pc troubleshooting.

i don't have a known good video card to swap in. there's no integrated video. the video card has been funny for a while. the ram has been suspect. so i can't rule anything out.

it's an old nvia pcie x16 card. there's two slots for pcie x16 and only one of them worked. i believe it's because the clip fell off the other slot quite some time ago. now, the clip has fallen off both slots. this is a 32-bit recording pc, so i actually want to avoid wasting limited ram on the video card. i might have to try to downgrade to a pci card or a pcix4 slot. on this computer it doesn't matter, that's fine.

my 98 pc has an agp card in a p3bf with no pcie and there's no agp slot on the p5b. i have two other desktops and neither has a video card. they do have pcie x16 slots.

i can try to put the video card in one of the other pcs to make sure it works. that will at least tell me if the card is broken.

i had to remove the video card to reprogram it, there wasn't really another choice.

i should try reprogramming it again but not this morning. this morning, the main goal was to get my bed back, and i'm consequently a little overdue on a shower.

i have some writing to do this morning so the shower will have to wait until tonight.

if the board can get power i should be able to bring it back still, i think.

the pc speaker doesn't work (the speaker disconnected from the power, which was fragile) but i can try to jimmy it or even finally to resolder it to try to get a beep code at least.

in fact, this board had been misbehaving for quite a while.

i don't know exactly what the point of keying on this machine is, but it has been up and down for years and i have suspected it's been tampered with periodically since i moved in here in 2018. i think the guy that first rented to me in here might have been an undercover cop.

for example, the temperature controls on the board were not working. they are now.

just like brand new.

hopefully, this resolves some of the freeze issues i was dealing with as well.

this is a very capable machine for what it was built for, but it can't be overclocked or controlled remotely, and i've been trying to explain that for years. the device needs to be left alone. this is probably the last time i'm going to be able to bring it back.

did i post this?

https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/other-motherboards/asus-p5b-premium-vista-issue-i-think-my-creepy-landlord-bricked/td-p/1021410

the board has been sitting on my bed under a sheet for months. i bench tested it tonight and it still works.

it's been sitting for months because i've been trying to redesign this site as an offline archive and every time i'm ready to get back to doing it, the fucking muslim retards drug me again, and i have to spend another three or four months detoxing before i can do anything useful. it's been extremely depressing, and the fucking idiots think they're doing something to help me. one of the disgusting perverts thinks she's going to have sex with me, when the actual truth of the matter is that i'm going to beat her to bloody pulp and flush her corpse down the toilet if she ever gets the chance to lay a finger on me. i would never, ever, touch a disgusting, filthy arab; if any ever tries, i will slaughter them and sacrifice them to odin.

they got me at the end of october somehow. i'm not sure how. i think they drugged my frank's by taking the pins off the front door. i've managed to metabolize it, but i'm still detoxing.

unfortunately, i have to prepare certain things to be able to move and i also want to sleep in my bed again (i've been sleeping on the couch for months).

i'm not going to be able to do anything at all until i move, that's clear, but my recording pc should at least be put together again (after being nicely cleaned up and derusted) within a day or two.

the last time i cleaned it up was in 2013, so i guess it's overdue for a good cleaning. the process i used to push the firmware back down also restored it to factory conditions, so it's as good as a brand new 20 year old windows xp machine.

i need that archived as i'll have to consult it when i can stop wasting my time fighting off these muslim retards and can get back to actually doing something meaningful and productive.

if there's grounds to ban muslims from entering the country, it should be on the basis that only a retard would believe something so stupid at this late a date in history, and that's actually a critique worth taking seriously, and on such crude and verbose terms.

the federal government should take a look at bringing back the national energy program.

it's not like they're ever going to be competitive in alberta.

i would behoove of the americans to return to a good neighbour policy in hemispheric trade negotiations.

"In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor- the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors."

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-4-1933-first-inaugural-address

canada is clearly not getting a free trade agreement from the united states, which is what we signed up for in the 80s. they put tariffs on softwood lumber, they're trying to fuck with our dairy industry and now they're threatening a 25% flat tariff, which is just a 25% tax. that's not free trade.

i think canada should tell the americans that if they don't want to respect their trade agreements then we're not interested in signing agreements with them and tell them that we're going to pull out of reciprocity flat out for the next four years and reapproach the issue when a new president gets elected.

that would include dissolving the oil export agreements for the next four years.

the immigration system that trump wants is the system that canada used to have before jason kenney and justin trudeau worked together to ruin it.

we have the model right in front of us, we just need to return to basic sanity.

the points system was an excellent system and should be brought back.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/miller-changes-immigration-asylum-1.7393121

the us congress should modify this law and remove the president's authority to unilaterally enforce tariffs.

that power should belong to congress, under the american constitution, and not to the president.

if a democratic senator put through a straight forward bill without earmarks or bullshit, it would likely get swift approval and the senate can probably even get the two thirds required to overturn a veto, which is how clinton got beat down by the congress.

targeted tariffs on specific items to protect specific industries are in the united states' interests and something congress should look at. a flat 25% tax on everything is inflationary and stupid.

if the presidency is going to abuse these powers that congress gave it, the congress should take them away as a punitive measure.

https://yeutter-institute.unl.edu/who-has-authority-impose-tariffs-and-how-does-affect-international-trade

it's overdue, but this is the correct position to take economically, politically and also morally.

i would suspect that almost anybody that isn't a ford voter will agree with him.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-singh-liberal-cheque-working-canadians-rebate-1.7392930

i would actually support a total ban on the growing, production and sale of potatoes or potato products if i thought it was feasible.

they are not food.

don't eat them. ever. at all.

Potatoes have been related to increased risks of obesity, type 2 diabetes (T2D), and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mainly because of their high glycemic index.

---

Too much sodium may also increase the risk of stroke, heart failure, osteoporosis, stomach cancer and kidney disease.

this is pathetic.

i'd like to call for a 200% tax on potatoes and potato products to try to decrease consumption, and a 500% tariff on imported potatoes to keep them out of the fucking country.

potatoes are not food and should not be marketed as though they are.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/potato-price-fixing-allegations-1.7392669

is trump going to deport his wife?

might be easier than divorcing her.

<rodney dangerfield>take my wife...</rodney dangerfield>

the ottawa river actually has a history of changing course, partly due to seismic activity in the region, but partly because it's a gigantic, chaotic drainage system.

the idea that ottawa and montreal could get wiped out by the river one day relatively soon is actually pretty real.

this is what happened during the last period of global warming:

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

vancouver will get wiped out by the fraser.

the canadian government, under industry pressure, has recently removed or reduced basic fortification requirements on almost everything, and made fun of people for criticizing it by citing extremely weak and mostly industry-funded science.

the vitamin d deficiencies in most of canada are staggering.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/dozens-of-people-in-canada-have-scurvy-and-it-s-because-of-food-1.7120194 

fact check for the liberal press, which is currently in complete melt down mode:

i just want the truth.

they can't handle the truth.

if this is the bullshit that the democrats start pushing, they can count me out, that's for sure.

the democrats need to drop the religion and focus on being a secular party, strictly. they don't need more religion, they need less religion.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/24/us/reverend-william-barber-democrats-cec/index.html

i think that this is the pattern we're going to see normalize this winter and that it may be a more normal la nina pattern for the next few decades, once people adjust the model for relativistic climate change effects.

a normal la nina pattern would have this precipitation event rush through the detroit-quebec city corridor, up the st lawerence seaway, but the jet stream is pushed north here so that it's happening across lake superior and up into james bay instead.

that's the shift here. ymmv.

it would mean more water into the ottawa river and increased flooding in ottawa and montreal, but whether the rain falls into lake superior or lake erie is likely trivial, from where i am.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/weather/forecasts/winter-travel-advisories-as-first-accumulating-snow-hits-parts-of-ontario

if you live in south-western ontario, you should broadly expect something similar to last winter. don't rely on the long term forecasts. the forecasts will keep predicting that it will get cold ten days from now, and keep pushing it back, until it's february and it never actually happens.

we might get a day or two of cold weather overnight, but i suspect it won't happen at all.

expect highs in the 5-10 degree neighbourhood to persist and lows to barely hit freezing at all.

this will be good for the growing regions and for the general habitability of the area, which has been questionable since first contact.

they keep downgrading it.

it's currently a 57% chance that la nina will develop by the end of the year, which was the same probability that harris would win the election, as of october. chances are in the 70% range of a weak la nina that might maybe last for january-february.

given that they are not adjusting for climate change, i'm going to forecast that they will only actually measure a la nina for the djf period and when they do it will be a statistical wash.

it is there in relative terms, though.

this image gets it:

(https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/november-2024-enso-update-ask-me-anything)

i have not been making forecast predictions recently because i've been locked inside. this missing la nina issue is something i want to predict an outcome for.

the issue is statistical more than meteorological, in that they're using outdated averages that are getting overrun by global warming. that was the point of my sarcastic post a few weeks ago. a la nina is there, in relative terms, but not in absolute terms, so you go trying to apply the model and it breaks because it hasn't been adjusted for climate change effects. i'm reminded of a physicist with a broken classical model (this is a vague analogy, don't take it literally) that makes a newtonian prediction that is wrong because it wasn't adjusted for relativistic effects and can't figure it out, until somebody does the calculation and shows them; oh, i just needed to use the lorentz factor, and it's fine, silly me.

what does that mean?

it means you take the normal la nina model, as interpreted in a euclidean system (i want to avoid discussions of spherical geometry right now, although you should realize the earth is an ellipse and not fat) and translate it upwards in the y axis (that is north) by some amount.

i can't predict the amount. i don't have data.

but, the idea is as follows.

normally, la nina means it's warm and dry in florida and wet in california. this year, you should shift that northwards, so it's also dry and warm in georgia, at least, and maybe further north than that, and it's drier in california and wetter in oregon and washington and british columbia.

the shape of the jet stream should be the same, but it should be pushed northwards.

the models will continually get this wrong and you should expect a winter where the meteorologists are constantly incorrect, but you should be able to analyze it in terms of the translational effect noted.

where i am, in south detroit, the increased amount of warm energy in the atlantic ocean should keep the jet stream a little further north, and the precipitation systems should consequently end up more around hudson's bay than around the great lakes, or at least in the northern rather than southern great lakes region. that should largely result in a warmer, drier winter than average, overall, which is the opposite of a normal la nina. when we do get precipitation, it should fall mostly as rain rather than snow.

bashar assad is a secular leader, and the entity that the west should be supporting in his struggle against terrorism and foreign funded state wahhabism in syria. as a secularist, i find the reaction by certain elements in the democratic party to tulsi gabbard's meeting with assad to actually be extremely concerning.

i think these people - duckworth, warren, etc - didn't get the memo, which is that the cold war is over and that the enemy of the west in the 21st century is islam, not russia. biden didn't get the memo either, but he's now in the dustbin of history, to be remembered as one of the worst presidents in the country's history, and this reversion back to the cold war is about to be discarded with. do the democrats want to brand themselves as wanting to hold on to the cold war? do they want to insist on being the party of the past? no thank you.

to the extent that assad has received russian support in his fight against islamic extremism, which is true, it is an embarrassment to the west that the russians had to step in to fight the terrorists because the west wouldn't do it as a result of their alignment with the saudis. 

assad is the good guy in this war, and a realignment by the americans towards a policy goal of expanding secularism in the region and away from funding or tolerating saudi wahhabism is long overdue. this is the reason i opposed the invasion of iraq, as it tipped the balance of power away from secularism and towards islamism, which had the predictable outcome of generating a rise of extremism in the region, of which assad ended up as the last bastion of hope in the struggle against - and he won. i would have hoped to hear that from democrats, rather than republicans, but i'll have to take what exists as it develops.

if that's the best argument that the democrats can come up with, in a repeat of their embarrassing and debunked claim after the 2016 election that clinton lost due to russian interference, i hope that gabbard gets confirmed.

with 53 seats, the couple of moderate republicans left will probably not be able to effectively align with a democratic opposition and senate democrats are consequently going to be entirely helpless over the next few years. rather, the balance of power is going to be placed in the center of the republican party, who should have enough votes to block trump's less conservative picks.

i would put out a call for smart senate democrats (i wish kyrsten sinema was still in the senate) to actually try to work with trump against the conservative majority, as that is the point of conflict that is on the brink of developing; the senate is a lot more conservative than trump is and is going to be trying to pull the president further to the right, creating an opening for voices independent of the democratic party to try to usurp a balance of power. 

as a secular leftist, i would predict that i'm likely to repeatedly align with trump against this more conservative senate, even if only marginally so.

she should take note that the rest of the country has been constantly embarrassed by her father for the last ten years.

we feel your pain, sweetie.

i hope the prime minister at least bought his daughter and a dozen of her friends a second set of tickets so she could go see the show without her father.

in the end, i'm sure taylor appreciates his contribution and the government of canada's contribution. this is what passes as on arts subsidy under trudeau's randian market fundamentalist regime - tax cuts and handouts for the globalist investor class and the ultra-rich.

donald trump,

can you get zelensky to get rid of the toilet face and clean himself up a little as issue number one? 

he looks like a fucking bum.

thanks,

j

haaretz is a mildly right-of-centre publication.

this kind of thing happens during wars (the americans arrested eugene debs, for example), so it's expected, but it's not justified.

i think that restrictions on al jazeera were actually justified, as it's a worthless propaganda outlet that no smart person should read except to debunk it and it's coverage was actually generating conflict due to the role that qatar was playing in the mediation process (that is, that it had a conflict of interest that should have prevented it from reporting at all, if it had any kind of journalistic standards, which it doesn't. there were al jazeera journalists working directly for hamas, and pictures of them sitting in at hamas meetings to determine strategy.), but press freedom is a foundational value of any democracy and the attack on haaretz should not be accepted without criticism. it is consistent, however, with israel's slide into the oriental despotism that defines middle eastern societies. talk of israel colonizing the middle east is backwards; israel is being slowly absorbed back into the despotism of arabism, which is what tends to happen in these situations, and which was actually predictable, if you have a good grasp of history. whatever happened to the philistines, who were giant aryan greeks, anyways?

it follows that israel may not really care much about press freedom or democracy and such criticisms may not be responded to by israeli society.

if that is the case, so be it, but it should be noted by the west, who should adjust to it.

matt gaetz is actually now unemployed. 

funny how that turned out for the best.

if trump is indicating he wants to pick up where michelle obama left off in trying to get americans to be less unhealthy, democrats should be all over that.

i do actually agree that the united states has a very serious obesity problem and it's tied to the food industry, or more precisely to the chemical and oil industries, who have managed to hijack the country's agriculture industry and monopolize it at every level.

i'm not sure how you deal with that, but having hulk hogan yell at little kids probably isn't the best approach. i'd suspect that some kind of science-based policy would probably be a better idea.

or maybe i'm wrong. maybe hulk hogan is a panacea. what do i know?

the thing about putting hulk hogan into cabinet is that it would actually be a brilliant distraction, because nobody's going to care about what trump actually does when they have such a comedic goldmine at their disposal.

i want to hear hulk hogan do a dean scream.

 

they should make him the president's special envoy to the cocaine industry.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5006719-hulk-hogan-suggests-trump-may-nominate-him-for-position-in-administration/

i would like to move to chicago, boston or seattle, as my top three picks.

the donation button's on the side.

if you were to send me some cash tomorrow, that is probably exactly what i'd do; immediately put my stuff in storage in windsor, and escape to the united states, scope out the scene in detroit for a bit and try to figure out which market is best for my art.

i didn't have the benefit of rich parents that most artists with my aspirations list do. real life is that it's pretty much a pre-requisite that you need to have some cash up front, and that's the only way to get it. they wanted me to work for the government, or something; to do a stupid, boring day job and raise a family. i'm not remotely interested.

they did give me the opportunity to build the life i wanted, but then wouldn't let me live it. it's extremely frustrating. nobody can save money in this economy, and i need to dissolve and start again.

if i could get to $20,000, i'd do it, although i'd obviously like a bit more.

if key cities with substantive art scenes in the united states - boston, new york city, chicago, seattle, san francisco - are running low on people and want some migration, i'll sign up.

i need a few thousand dollars to get started and an affordable place to stay, and if these cities are losing people, there's no doubt a surplus of affordable housing.

it would be quite a treat to get out of over-populated, increasingly smelly and dirty canada, where i'm fast becoming a minority in the country, and don't really want to be.

chicago has seen a decrease of 85,000 people since 2020. this is slightly less than the decrease of 205,000 votes that the democrats saw between elections. trump increased his totals by 16,000 despite the 85,000 less people.

san francisco has seen an almost 10% decrease in population between 2020-2024, which is almost 100,000 people. i couldn't find totals.

minneapolis only decreased by about 6,000 people since 2020 and seems to be recovering

seattle bucks the trend and has actually increased since 2020.

a statistician trying to figure this shit out needs to grasp that the deck has been shuffled and that this election is only data point one in what may indeed be a realignment in the making, but it's not yet clear how the cards fall.

in the end, get it right and call it what it is: this is the covid realignment, driven primarily by migration out of the cities.

another number being thrown around is that kamala harris got about 800,000 less votes than joe biden in new york state alone.

nobody is pointing out that the population of new york state decreased by about 600,000 from 2020 to 2024 or that 80,000 people died of covid.

this is an interesting map, because it makes no sense on it's face:

you see massive shifts to the republicans in chicago, detroit, minneapolis, phoenix, seattle, portland, san francisco and the bos-wash region....and moderate shifts to the democrats in rural illinois, rural michigan and indiana, suburbs of seattle, northeast california and oregon and upstate new york and pennsylvania, as well as across the us midwest.

that is the opposite of the election narrative, right? 

i mean, trump still got like 70% in the midwest.

is it all because of liz cheney?

probably not. it is probably measuring the migration of older, wealthy democrats into rural regions during the covid pandemic, leaving less affluent right-leaning voters in the cities behind to die in the urban jungle, as well as the outright death of older democrats in blue states due to covid and older republicans in red states due to covid.

based on that map, democrats may want to focus on kansas and nebraska.

drop the low turnout excuse. it's bullshit.

i want to present this as a cautionary point for anybody trying to analyze outcomes in the next canadian election. i'm not going to sort through my own site, but i've pointed this out before.

big demographics changes have happened since 2020.

this article (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/23/city-turnout-black-hispanic-neighborhoods-00191354) is wrong because it's making a logical mistake that i addressed in my comments about wayne county after the election - they are assuming that less votes for harris means less votes in total, rather than looking at issues like third parties and new voter registration.

the article suggests that this means that turnout was down by 14,000, which is really not by much, in total, but is a logical error.

what was turnout in these regions?

you can't just subtract the amount and decide it was down by 14,000 votes. jill stein and cornell west certainly got some amount of those votes, and it doesn't measure population changes, or the fact that a lot of black people from black neighbourhoods died of covid after the 2020 election.

what i had to measure in wayne county was the difference between democrat vote totals (which were down 60,000) and turnout, which was only down 13,000. in wayne county, trump increased his totals by about 24,000. if you were to look at just the republican and democrat numbers, you'd conclude that 60-24 = 36, so turnout was down by 36,000 votes. however, we know that the green party was up by 30,000 votes in wayne county, just to start with - and we know that turnout was only down 13,000, not 36,000. 

you would need to see what turnout is before you can make that deduction. you can't just subtract it out. that's wrong.

based on similar numbers from wayne county, if the difference is only 14,000 (rather than 36,000), it might suggest turnout in these counties might have even been up, but that's somewhat of a jump.

let me ask this question directly: does anybody have mortality data of black people dying from covid after nov 10th, 2020 or of the general population change in urban regions since the start of 2021?

i found this in philadelphia:

Between 2000 and 2020, Philadelphia saw a modest increase in its population. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 marked a turning point, with the city losing over 53,000 residents in the following years.

.

.

.

Philadelphia’s population has declined in recent years.

This represents a decrease of 4.18% since the 2020 census, which recorded 1,600,684 inhabitants.

https://nchstats.com/philadelphia-population/

according to this article, turnout was down about 73,000 votes.

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/decision-2024/voter-turnout-throughout-philly-area-mostly-lower-than-2020/4020775/

the decrease of about 70,000 is roughly in line with the population decrease of about 50,000.

this is detroit:

(https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/22974/detroit/population)

the blue curve is population growth. the red curve is indicating a decease in population decline and a slight increase the last year, but it's still a year over year decrease from 2020-2024.

the difference between 2024 and 2020 in detroit is about 20,000, which is roughly in line with the decrease of 13,000.

given the demographic changes that happened after 2020 due to covid, you would expect decreases in total votes in the cities and increases in total votes in the counties, and that's what happened.

it shouldn't be presented as an argument that there was low turnout in cities; there was a general population decrease in cites (remember?), so the lower vote totals is in line with a decrease in population. in fact, trump increased his raw totals - not percentages - in these cities, despite the overall population decrease. harris' numbers moved with the general trend, and trump bucked the trend.

my only response to the videos of justin trudeau at the taylor swift show is to remind people that he's 52 years old.

sad.

i support the nationalization of twitter and facebook, and the assertion of constitutional rights to free speech on the platform, as an extension of the commons.

i don't agree much with this bickering by the state.

but it's relatively clear that the answer they want is right in front of them.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/24/australia-meta-facebook-news-journalism-deals-canada-warning-fire-season

we've seen this before on the left; repeatedly, in fact.

we're stuck in a catch-22: the only way to generate change is to unite, but we're so incredibly prone to co-option by fascism whenever we do, that the few of us that know better end up locking ourselves in closets and crying.

mobs of thuggish hamas sympathizers driven by iranian propaganda and smashing businesses up is not communism, it's a night of broken glass, repeated as farce.

https://communist.red/the-spanish-civil-war-and-the-crimes-of-stalinism/

when a group that calls itself left-wing and anti-capitalist goes out and acts in a way that is more reminiscent of nazi brownshirts or stalinist republicans than any sort of legitimate union organizing, it needs to have a mirror held up to itself to understand that it's lost the plot and doesn't have a theory.

these protests have nothing to do with the left in any remote abstraction.

i used to go to anti-globalization protests when i was young, when it was a left-wing movement seeking to struggle against decisions made by global capitalist leaders that would severely harm working people in canada.

nowadays, these protests have been hijacked by the far right and these people should be denounced for what they are, which is fascists.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/anti-nato-protest-montreal-1.7391642

i would be concerned that arresting netanyahu for war crimes, however much you may dislike him, risks trivializing the idea of war crimes.

this court in the hague, whatever you think of it, needs to be used sparingly or not at all. you can't just haul anybody you don't like into the hague and accuse them of war crimes. there has to be an exceedingly high bar that's not being remotely met in gaza.

i will say that netanyahu needs to tone it down in lebanon.

the claim that there's a persistent "high risk of famine", which never materializes, is an exceedingly weak basis for an arrest warrant, especially considering the length that the israelis have actually gone to to feed their enemies. you could criticize them for their policies; israel is a democracy, that's allowed. but, jumping to a war crimes warrant is not justified by the facts.

the attacks in lebanon north of the litani and especially north of  the alawi are much more suggestive of an aggressive rather than a defensive war and harder to justify, although it's still grey. the question is whether israel has exceeded the action that is justified, which is dismantling and destroying hezbollah, and carried out attacks in civilian populations, which is still blurry but increasingly leaning in that direction.

however, lebanon is not a signatory to the rome treaty, either. nor is syria

trudeau has, broadly, been a complete embarrassment on foreign policy. he is without ambiguity the worst prime minister in the country's history in terms of global influence. the world laughs at him.

if he wants to arrest netanyahu, he should recognize palestine first. it wouldn't resolve all of the issues, but in order to accept the argument that a crime occurred in the "state of palestine", you have to acknowledge a state of palestine, first.

there is obviously no actual state of palestine, there never has been and there probably never will be. the region was a part of the ottoman province of syria before the british mandate, going back centuries. palestine was what the romans called the region, after the biblical philistines; they renamed in a purposeful act of genocide. the arabs kept the roman name for a while, but reverted to calling the region syria, after the (christian) assyrians. the british resurrected the name out of old italian history books. it had been out of use for centuries.

so, there's a good reason that canada doesn't accept the existence of the state of palestine. but, you have to reverse that if you want to talk about the icc's jurisdiction over a region that you don't accept even exists.

that puts aside the merits of the warrant, which i think are beyond weak. i'm just talking about jurisdiction. the canadian government is operating in a contradiction where it wants to enforce what it calls international law, in a way that is inconsistent from it's own policy because this in actual truth is very shaky in terms of the scope of international law in the first place.

a country like russia, which does recognize palestine as a state (even though it obviously isn't one), would at least be consistent in arresting netanyahu for war crimes, despite not being a signatory to the icc.

if we have to make a choice, i think we should make the other choice: canada should more loudly articulate the position that it doesn't recognize the state of palestine and, as such, cannot recognize the jurisdiction of the icc over a state it doesn't recognize exists.

if you can find 1000 people in your neighbourhood, city or town that agree that sending $250 to rich people to spend on toys or diapers as an election gimmick is stupid, and that the money should go to the vulnerable instead, you could get a $250,000 donation to the local food bank or other local charity to help low income seniors or disabled people put together via an adhoc direct action committee, and maybe make some friends in the process.

it's a better idea than trying to block it.

the best way for liberal voters to react to these stupid checks going out to people that don't need it and hurting public finances for services in the process - which is a conservative policy that i would guess that almost all base liberal voters would oppose by definition - is to create a mass movement to donate the $250 checks to food banks (that hand out edible, healthy, actual food not the over processed non-food that they're cutting the gst on) or charities that help disabled or retired people in their community.

i'm stuck in the house, but i'm not good with people anyways.

go forth and get this done.

you can't even sponsor a kid in africa for $5/month.

i'm actually poor and actually getting pinched by inflation in rent right now.

unless somebody gave it to me, or i won it in a law suit, or i had some urgent expense, it would take me well over a year to spend $2000 on things that aren't food, bills and rent.

over an average two month period, i'd be likely to spend maybe $100 on the items cited and probably closer to half of that.

that would be a tax cut of roughly $2-$5.

thanks for the free coffee, guys.

When asked about the impact his recently announced affordability measures could have on provincial budgets, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he expects his provincial counterparts to recognize the financial challenges Canadians are experiencing.

is the disease that doug ford has contagious? is that it?

you'd have to spend $2000 on beer and popcorn to save $100.

if you have $2000 to spend, what kind of challenges are you experiencing?

meanwhile, the handout actually isn't going to anybody that actually is experiencing financial challenges, and is going to people making $50,000-$150,000/yr.

the premiers should sue his stupid ass in federal court.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/premiers-asking-reimbursement-hst-tax-holiday-1.7391116

Gillian Petit, a senior research associate at the University of Calgary's economics department, said that while the policy will help people save money at the checkout, it might actually go further for those with higher household incomes.

"They have more income, so they consume more," she said. "Persons with lower incomes are also going to save on the GST, but they're not going to save as much in dollar values. They have less income, so they consume less."

With the $250 rebate reserved for people who were employed in 2023, those who might need it most are excluded, Petit said. "If we really wanted to address affordability, we would target persons who are struggling with affordability [or] persons who are spending a large amount of their incomes on basic necessities."

that's right. this is economically stupid and it's also small-minded and petty. stupid, small-minded and petty is doug ford and doug ford's base, but liberal voters are going to be....confused....by this policy.

the fact that this benefits high income earners, however, is exactly why the ndp is supporting it.

let's see if the ndp tries to expand the gst credit to people on disability, oas and welfare or if they go along with this fascist message of producerism being pushed by the capitalist parties.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/gst-holiday-what-you-need-to-know-1.7390054

this is the senate map, with pennsylvania shifted to uncallable.

the difference, the deciding factor, was harris herself.