j reacts to questions about whether bernie is angling for a run

see, i think he would have stopped already if he wasn't planning on it. but, i also think he's waiting to make the choice. if june comes around, and she's twenty points ahead nationally? well, no. if june comes around and he's beating her by ten points? probably, yeah. and, we know that growth is not infinite, but the direction of the curve suggests a run.

i do think he'll do everything he possibly can to win the nomination, though - and i he can, he'll take it. he'd legitimately rather run as a democrat. it makes everything easier.

but, i just have to think he knows his odds, and i couldn't imagine what else he's planning around. it depends on everything, of course. but the thinking has to be that he gets to the convention pretty close in delegates, and with all the momentum, and then marches the left out of the party once and for all.

i don't even think you need to pull out the indictment. what if he's beating her by 10% in national polls? consistently? right now, it's still ambiguous whether one candidate is polling stronger than the other. by june, it may not be.

j reacts to the cluelessness of voting for hillary explicitly to stop trump

but, i just want to remind you: over the next few months, you're going to hear all kinds of horrible things about donald trump. and, most of them will be true, on at least some level. but, what you're not going to hear - and are going to have to constantly remind yourself - is that almost all of it applies equally well to clinton.

so, for example, consider the border fence. terrible policy, sure. but, clinton's policy is, in fact, essentially identical. she's a lot less crude about it, but she favours continuing obama's mass deportation policies. one candidate is being sold to white xenophobes that blame minorities for class inequality, whereas the other is being sold to minority voters that blame white people for class inequality (see the trick, there?). but, the policies are not actually meaningfully different. if you're not fully expecting clinton to deport even more people than obama, you're not paying attention.

or, you could look at iran. hillary is, in fact, itching to bomb iran. she's entirely in line with john mccain and dick cheney. absolute neo-con. there is a difference in appearance: she knows a little about the situation, whereas trump is just trying to sound tough. there's no reason to expect any real substantive policy difference.

and you can go down this list for a while. you won't pull out much of a difference. the few things where there is a difference (trade, war) maybe ought to lean you towards trump - if you're an actual leftist, that is, and don't just like wearing the shirt and the hipster status attached to it.

so, i mean, if you don't like trump that's fine. i don't like him either. i couldn't imagine voting for him. just make sure you know where hillary stands before you vote for her, against trump - because you might be disappointed when you get exactly what you voted against.

but, maybe you still think obama is a peace candidate, too? you should have never thought that. he couldn't have been more clear.

so, you know that i frequent message boards. and i know that it's 90% people doing their jobs. but, you have to give trump's pr team some credit, even if you don't like his policies.

these are real-life talking point by paid trump hacks, who (like most of the country) are simply not taking ted cruz seriously anymore:

1) Ted Cruz has a pay as you go flip phone.
2) Ted Cruz wears Donald Trump Pajamas.
3) Ted Cruz keeps his khakis on during sex.
4) When at a steakhouse, Ted Cruz orders salmon.
5) Ted Cruz has every episode of Murder She Wrote on his DVR.
6) Ted Cruz’s default search engine is Bing.
7) Ted Cruz orders off of the kids’ menu.
8) Ted Cruz kisses his dad on the mouth.
9) Ted Cruz is no longer allowed to cut his own bangs.

shit hillary said vol 37

"I am very grateful that I had a grounding in faith that gave me the courage and the strength to do what I thought was right, regardless of what the world thought."

shit hillary said vol 36

"One of the major accomplishments in the execution of this responsibility occurred in 1998 when the Congress passed and my husband signed into law the International Religious Freedom Act. That Act incorporated, as a foundational element of United States foreign policy, the ideals of religious freedom on which our own nation was founded. And it required our government to designate a nation as a Country of Particular Concern if that nation's government had either engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom defined as systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of religion as outlined in international human rights documents. That helped to put the spotlight on countries that were not living up to the ideals or even their stated commitment in their own documents to religious freedom."

A total of 17,465 people died from overdosing on illicit drugs like heroin and cocaine in 2014, while 25,760 people died from overdosing on prescription drugs, including painkillers and tranquilizers like Valium, according to CDC figures.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/marijuana-overdose-deaths_us_5716468ee4b0060ccda452ad

this is such an absurd strawman - to the point that i see no particular reason to debate it. i'll even concede the point: so long as we have gendered bathrooms, obvious cis gendered dudes in bad wigs shouldn't use the one designated for women.

20-04-2016: 4/20 in detroit (imperial death march: melt banana, melvins, napalm death)

concert footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rYXwTfmJiI

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/04/20.html

previous vlog:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZhDGD6OoJI

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

20-04-2016: melt banana - infection defective (detroit)

their music:
http://www.melt-banana.net/

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/04/20.html

vlog for the day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPd2kz0SUg8

my music:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com

05. distracted by the democratic primary (trying to finish archiving) (dvd 5)

19-04-2016: winter archiving is over; hello to spring cockroaches (& new york primary)

chained vlog forward:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPd2kz0SUg8

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

it took me a while to figure out what was going on here. the doctor was kind of vague. we agreed i should be checked for stroke symptoms, and there weren't any. he told me it was probably a migraine, and i agreed, but it just struck me as a little extreme. so i've been worried about tumours, degenerative diseases...

in fact, i think what happened was a condition called transient aphasia (explained: https://migraine.com/blog/migraine-symptoms-transient-aphasia/) that is associated with severe migraines. i actually mention in the video that i'm experiencing "tracers", which is usually referred to as an "aura" in the migraine literature. but i actually manage to get myself in aphasia a little after 40:00.

j reacts to the inherently anti-democratic nature of two-party political systems

i think this is half-right. but, it is stuck in two-party politics.

i've lived my whole life in a three-party system. we have a conservative party that is roughly equivalent to the american democrats [in the late 70s, when it was morning in america for the conservative movement, the canadian conservative party was campaigning on legalizing marijuana]. clinton & obama would both be tories in canada. we have a liberal party that is historically more equivalent to the american green party - but would also be the party of your elizabeth warrens. and, we have an ndp that has historically been a socialist party and advocated for things like state-controlled industry. in fact, they succeeded in nationalizing the oil industry for a while. sanders would be a member of the ndp in canada.

your republican party would be a fringe movement in canada. the closest thing would be the social credit party, but it's a bad comparison, over all.

now, the spectrum may be skewed left up here. but, that's not really the point i'm getting at. the point is that we have three parties, not two, and so we have three orientations: right, left and center. in practice, it's neither the left nor the right that run the country - it's the liberal party in the center.

we could do this a few different ways. i like to bring in the idea of dialectics. because, if you look at the old literature, democracy has something to do with dialectics. the thing is that america has never really understood this, though. there's this idea in the american political philosophy that if you get right and left at each other's throat, you end up with synthesis in the form of bipartisanship. so, you hear this all over the spectrum. working together across the aisle. it's scary language, on some level - reflective of a one-party state. but, if you know where it comes from, you get that what it's really about is synthesis.

except that has never been what has happened. in a two-party system, you never get any kind of real synthesis. what you get are tugs and pulls on the center. you get pendulums sweeping back and forth. the right hand erases the left hand, and then the left hand erases the right - in the long run, it is the opposite of synthesis.

the reagan era undid the fdr era. and, the next generation will return the favour and throw reagan in the dustbin, as it resurrects fdr. will this go on forever? will the pendulum swing into perpetuity?

if so, the founders will have failed - they intended for synthesis. the two party system was about dialectics, not pendulums.

and, what of canada, then? well, the three-party system actually presents a functional dialectic by sending thesis and anti-thesis to the partisan extremes, and letting serious policy happen in the centre. so, it happens to be that the same party that brought us single-payer health care in the 60s also brought us balanced budgets in the 90s. by existing in the center, and synthesizing ideas from the parties on the left and right, the liberals are able to govern broadly empirically - and not ideologically.

i've been saying this for months, actually. matthew is absolutely right to point out that the democrats are not a party of the left, and at all. but, the solution is not for the left to take over the democrats. matthew also correctly points out that this will help the right more than it will help the left. the solution is for the left to stop co-operating with the democrats, to spin itself off and let the democrats sit in the middle. to me, the great excitement surrounding sanders is that he might be the catalyst to construct this three-party system, and finally let the dialectic work.

remember: conservatives are only wrong about 85% of the time.

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/20/11466376/bernie-sanders-future-democrats

spring bug update

i've caught two in the last twelve hours (one around midnight, the other around 8:00 am) near the front door, which is a little different. essentially every roach i've ever seen in here has been near the plumbing on the far side - in the kitchen usually, or maybe in the bathroom or sometimes in the closet in the bedroom. but always clearly near the plumbing as a water source. so, to see two of them come in from the other side like this is a little different.

so, i did some liberal spraying along each of the four doorways around the two entrances. i suppose we'll find out how many get trapped in it over the next few days. but, it seems to suggest there's been a population increase in the back area. it's generally stated that seeing roaches in the day is a bad sign.

i haven't seen any on the plumbing side yet this year, but i will be doing spring cleaning over the weekend - which means spraying behind the appliances and replacing the steel wool.

the headaches have subsided. and i want to be clear that i wasn't trying to be accusatory. i was just trying to figure out if the unit was sprayed when i wasn't here, as that struck me as a likely explanation for what was happening. pure intuition. and, obviously, i would like to be informed when the unit is going to be sprayed, if the unit is going to be sprayed. but i wouldn't have raised the issue if i wasn't getting dramatic symptoms coming from the air - not just headaches, actually, but visual hallucinations (tracers) and at one point an inability to speak. i mean, i spent a day in the hospital. they told me i had a migraine, and maybe that was it, but it kind of seems like i was poisoned. again: i'm not making accusations, exactly, i'm more just contemplating possibilities. however, because i've sprayed down here this morning, i've now contaminated myself regarding any testing. i wouldn't have sprayed if i didn't think it was gone, anyways. at the very least, realize this: if there was spraying down here this month, i got some pretty nasty side effects from it. so, that shouldn't happen again without telling me what's happening so i can adjust...

i am now moving this laptop back into the bedroom, and getting ready to turn the pc back on. the last thing i have to do on the laptop is clean this page up, but it won't make sense to do that right away - i'll have to do it as i'm rebuilding the alter-reality (and the period disc) from 1996 on. and, in order to get there, i still have to sort through some things, to make sure i've found everything i can.

i don't know if there are still usenet or mailing list archives for me to access online, but it's secondary to finding what i can in squirelled away pst files first, anyways. iirc, it was about mid-1997 that i started rambling on the internet. the alter-reality starts in the summer of 1996, and will consequently kick back in around july. but, then i've got a year before i need to worry about it. and, i consequently may put it off for a little while, depending on how fast i find things.

i'm hitting a strange show tonight (melt banana / melvins...and i'll probably stay for napalm death, too, depending on set times), because it's 4/20. but, i think i should get through most of this scavenging by the end of the day, too. and, then i can get back to finishing what i started doing back in december.

almost there. seriously.

and what do i have to show for it? well, i've pulled down over a gb of text from the internet. 1.2 gb. of text. stored in word documents. i jest you not, this is the truth. message boards. youtube. email. facebook. it's 1.2 gb of text. since 2011. and understand this: i have many times more than this from before 2011. so, when i claim that i'm building an alter-reality with a lot of writing....

it'll be really obvious what i'm doing as soon as i start doing it. and i'm just about there.

and, did i mention that i quit smoking, too? that was really important. and, frankly, this was a pretty productive way to do that. time is a strange intangible and everything. i'd prefer it if we weren't stuck running out of it. and, i may be lucky enough to catch the cut-off point after all. i'm beginning to think i was too pessimistic. but, i don't regret this. and, if i can catch immortality after all, then i'm just setting myself up for it. hey, that cut-off point is coming soon, whether i catch it or not.

j reacts to sanders losing in new york (and what he should do next)

so, i got in before the results - it was clear this was going to happen within a few days of the vote, even if i didn't realize the consequences of a closed primary far ahead of the vote (as so few did, apparently).

but, i still don't think it really says anything about clinton's relationship to blacks, in general. it says a lot about clinton's relationship to older, wealthy blacks. but, that was never in question. she does well with older, wealthy whites, too.

it's true she did well in the less wealthy areas, too. but, i want you to realize how absurd this reaction is: the sample size was too small to draw any meaningful conclusions from. that is absolutely ridiculous, but it's also absolutely true. if you hit the new york times results precinct by precinct, you'll have a hard time finding a precinct with more than 400 cast ballots. the harsh reality is that you can't draw any meaningful conclusions from such a biased sample. the fact that they're mostly life-long democrats is probably more important than anything else.

the remaining states aren't going to be as bad in terms of voter suppression, and should provide a better sample. i really wanted new york to give us better data, but the arcane rules that are in place make it even less useful than the previous collections.

anybody that is attempting to use the new york results to demonstrate something that was predicted about demographics, or use it to predict something in the future about demographics, is being dishonest. the only thing of any real value that the data from new york tells us is that dyed-in-the-wool life-long partisan democrats are strongly supportive of the clinton dynasty. which is not news.

--

but, again - let me state this clearly.

sanders will almost certainly lose the democratic nomination. and the media is pushing hard for him to drop.

but, he should not drop. just because he's probably going to lose the nomination doesn't mean his campaign is done. i've laid out the reasons he should run as an independent, and why he could very well win. there will be much wrangling on the way there, but it's mostly just an elaborate set of excuses to drag the process on until he can go solo.

could he have won new york tonight if the primary was open? well, they didn't even cast two million votes. there's twenty million people in new york. it's well within the realm of possibility. and, it's consequently not a very strong argument.

shit hillary said vol 35

"It’s a phoney referendum and it is going to be used by Assad to justify what he’s doing to other Syrian citizens."

j reacts to trump winning new york (and how to beat him in the general)

"yes, we will".

so, ted cruz wants to be obama? what? you are no doubt confused by this turn of events. has he received the memo from the heritage institute on the mandate?

yet, you shouldn't be. see, this is actually one of those situations where the banks just let slip what you're not supposed to know: that ted cruz is, in fact, the continuity candidate. the bankers switch parties every eight years, remember. ted cruz is indeed brought to us by the same bankers that brought us barack obama. hillary's not even their second choice- not even their tenth choice, really. but, they seem to have lost their minds over the last four years. i've pointed this out a few times: it's probably his wife's fault. you lose objectivity when you're trying to get your spouse elected. and, this entire cycle - hillary, trump, sanders - is all essentially a consequence of this monumental fuck-up. the banks picked a limp horse and stuck with it.

yes - you will lose, ted. third place, tonight. get used to this....

now, note this: it seems like kasich won manhatten. an island of teal in a sea of red. the obvious choice there is actually cruz - because he's the banker candidate. but, the whole plan is in tatters. note that, despite of this, trump still loses manhatten. and, that is telling.

so, how do you beat trump, now? listen - i may be non-committal in terms of support. don't expect me to hit the boards arguing for hillary. i think she's a war criminal, and makes a better republican than trump does. if sanders doesn't run, i'm going to endorse stein. but, this is a math problem, so i seek a solution. how do you beat this guy?

well, i think enough time has gone on to make his base clear, right. he's not swinging conservatives. at all. i will state for at least the third time that i think hillary will run to his right, and beat him on it. she will swing evangelicals and all manners of "moderate conservatives" that think he's some kind of raving liberal. rather, i think the danger is that clinton tries to present him as an extreme right-winger. her better tactic is to run against him the same way she's been running against sanders, and try and paint him as an unrealistic leftist. the early indications suggest she's not doing that, and it's going to come out in the end as an error.

again: he's not swaying conservatives. conservatives are actually up for grabs, here. and, hillary is a conservative. so, it makes more sense for her to go after them than to alienate them. they're supposed to be all about rational choices. hillary is their rational choice. they will grudgingly accept this.

rather, what he's swaying are these authoritarian types that want a "strong leader" to save them from evil. bush voters. he fucked up himself in attacking bush' legacy. that's his base. and, what they want is....let's say they want bismarck. or, maybe stephen harper? see, i've got some recent experience with this.

now, has what we've seen over the last year or so suggested that donald trump is actually a leader? i don't think it has. i think he's been a follower of the most blatant sort. he's bleeting the republican line on point after point. he changed his position on abortion to win votes (and nobody believes that he believes what he said, so don't bother with that). he changed his position on health care. he's changed position after position. that's not strong leadership, that's just following the herd.

the whole debate may seem facile and childish. and i don't want to fall into this narrative that voters are stupid. but, this particular type of voter is not so bright. and, this is how you get in their head: donald trump is not a leader.

and, he isn't. on party orders, he has taken foolish positions that he doesn't believe in. the reality is that he's doing what he's told. so, why should you believe he'll pull out of these trade deals? or anything else he says...

18-04-2016: thinking some more about new york & clearing out all gmail accounts via download

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to sanders' use of voter apathy tactics for closed primaries in the northeast

so, the sanders campaign is pushing a last minute corruption scandal....

on the one hand, this is a safe tactic, because almost nobody supporting sanders is going to care one way or the other.

on the other hand, it's gutter politics - because it isn't designed to win votes so much as it's designed to suppress turnout. see, that's what he needs right now, though. he's not going to swing these wealthy new york minorities that came to america to break it big and don't want to pay taxes to fund health care for poor people. but, he could conceivably disgust them enough that they get disinterested and apathetic.

hey, if you want to play the game, you want to win it. and, he's literally got millions of people that can't vote for him. i'm more inclined to suggest it's too little, too late - but also that it's a valid tactic going into pennsylvania.

but, it's also another implication that sanders doesn't plan to concede any time soon.

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

shit hillary said vol 34

“I’m very supportive of the mayor’s proposal to tax soda."

shit hillary said vol 33

“So we now have a chance to set a new global standard for good governance and to strengthen a global ethos of transparency and accountability. And there is no better partner to have started this effort and to be leading it than Brazil, and in particular, President Rousseff. Her commitment to openness, transparency, her fight against corruption is setting a global standard.”

j reacts (dvd 1)

j reacts to the dynamics in a possible three-way sanders/trump/clinton race

woah woah woah. let's take a step back, here. let's look at some true statements.

1) bernie's chances of winning the democratic nomination will probably be all but decimated tomorrow. i think he can make up more than 100 delegates in california, in the best case.  i don't think he can make up more than 200. a split is not good enough. he has to win. he has to make up delegates.

2) that does not mean that bernie is obligated to suspend his campaign on the near inevitability of a loss. he has claimed that everybody should get the right to vote their conscience. who can truly argue with that?

3) the united states is not a two-party system by law. if you scroll through this page, i think you'll see more than enough of an argument that he should run outside the democratic party. some arguments:

a) closed primaries where he's probably actually winning, but where his supporters can't vote for him.
b) obvious signs of vote tampering (stuffed early ballots).
c) voter suppression tactics.
d) the distribution of the vote.

i mean, he signed this pledge. fine. has the party lived up to it's side of it? i think there's an argument that it hasn't.

4) therefore, tomorrow's vote is not necessarily definitive or final. i think he should have bailed on the democrats months ago. but, at this point, he'd might as well wait until june before he does.

tomorrow may technically close a door, but it was a trap door in the first place. i've stated repeatedly that he never really had a serious chance. so, the facade may end. but, the candidacy may not - and, i would argue, should not.

some polls would help. clinton/trump/sanders. but, i think he can split the field.

let's split the republicans into five parts:

1) evangelicals--->clinton/trump [trump is a nihilist, and clinton is an evangelical]
2) rich bastards > clinton  [i think she'll steal this group outright]
3) libertarians---> sanders [i think he'll steal this group outright]
4) white working class > sanders/trump  [probably a clean split]
5) fiscal conservatives > trump

it's a function of how poorly trump fits into the republican party, granted. but trump is probably looking at numbers in the 30s, regardless. in a three-way race, sanders will probably bleed enough from trump to pull him closer to 30 - and maybe even into the high 20s. i consequently think that a three-way race like this becomes sanders v clinton in most of the country, with trump falling to third place.

but, some polls would help.

--

see, this is why bernie does better than clinton against trump & cruz. & trump should be kicking himself, because he could have - and probably wanted to - try and get them. unfortunately, the party knocked him in line...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3HwaBWx2-0

17-04-2016: archiving old email (by hand...) & starting to think about new york

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the new york primary being closed

so, what is happening in new york?

well, first let us point out that the media has been horrible. sure. but, let us also point out that sanders is still drawing gigantic, multi-racial crowds. it is clear that you have an establishment buckling against a populist movement. that's clear as day to anybody that gets their news from a good source. there's consequently a conflict developing on the ground...

how can it be quantified? well, that's what the polls are for, right. now, i'm supposed to know how to read these things. but, what i've learned over the last few months is that the american polling firms do strange things with the data, and it's very difficult to know how to read into them as a result. i'm also not certain that they're honest, or that the results on the ground are fair [in fact, i'm pretty sure that some of the states were rigged]. so, instead of trying to make predictions in such a messy climate, i'm instead going to draw some attention to some possible points of error.

first, let's understand what the polls say. in most circumstances, i'll argue against taking a straight polling average. but, the race in new york is the rare circumstance where this actually works out. the reason is that it's a closed primary, and i'll come back to that. so, it kind of does approximate market research. and, rather than try and figure out which way the masses are careening, you want to balance the data out. so, yes - you'll get a few polls that are around a 10% spread +/- 4-5. then you'll get a few that suggest it's more like 15%. it balances out to around 12%. and, this is the right way to read it: the polling, right now, suggests that the race is stable and the spread is over 10%. that would imply a comfortable clinton win.

where could it go wrong? well, i've drawn heavy attention to the idea of racist modeling. when these polling companies put their numbers out, it's not a straight tally. it's adjusted to fit census results. if they bake a bias into their polling, it could come out in their projections. i've hinted at the idea that there's a strong reason to suspect this is happening. if so, the polling could be exaggerating clinton's lead with minority groups, and thereby exaggerating her lead altogether. so, there may be reason to expect a surprise.

except, not really, because it's a closed primary. now, closed primaries are not closed by some accident - they're designed to exclude the unwashed masses. which means they have a class bias baked into them. after you cancel everything out, the closed primary is actually likely to maintain clinton's lead with minorities - because it's likely to exclude less wealthy minorities, who didn't register in time. nobody will deny that clinton has a substantial lead with wealthy minorities, many of whom would probably vote republican if the party was more pluralist (because they are wealthy). we're careening towards a reality where you have a conservative party for whites (the republicans) and a conservative party for browns and blacks (the democrats). clinton is arguably an even better spokesperson for this group than obama. but, that is really about class, even if it is a consequence of racialized politics in the republican party. the rules in new york are designed so that these wealthy and usually very educated minorities get a say, because they knew to register ahead of time, while the poor minorities don't - because they didn't.

so, we need to ask the question: how many of the people at these impressively sized multi-racial rallies are going to be able to actually vote? and, i think the answer is going to be disappointingly few.

i suspect sanders may win an open primary, and that the correlations by race would break down in an open primary. but, it isn't an open primary.

and i again need to request that you stay safe on tuesday if you live in new york. there's going to be a lot of people that want to vote - for sanders - and can't. they're going to be understandably frustrated.

so, i again need to point out that the real story is the question of why new york has a closed primary. hopefully, that issue gets addressed.

clinton may not really win, or at least she might not win an open tally of the popular vote. but, you should expect her to win the official vote totals. and, probably convincingly.

season 5

16-04-2016: last editing catch-up day?

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the idea that meeting the pope during eastern primaries is not campaigning

i don't mean in any way to question the ingenuousness of the gesture, but it strikes me as rather daft to argue that meeting the pope the day before the new york primary for the democratic party is in some way not campaigning.

there's lots of catholics in new york. 33%, apparently.

shit hillary said vol 32

"the fact is, i've always been a yankees fan"

need to know about spraying down here

jessica
hi.

i've been dealing with some pretty severe headaches for the last few weeks, and i'm kind of putting together a hypothesis. now, i think it goes without saying that the most important thing is everybody's health....

i went to a concert on the evening of monday the 4th. the first headache hit me on the afternoon of wednesday the 6th. i became aware of the bed bug concern on thursday the 7th. i was nursing one when you came down on the evening of the 8th. what i've noticed since then is that the headaches have something to do with the air quality in the basement, and that i'm going to need to air the basement out (probably tomorrow and monday). in the mean time, i have the fan running nonstop. i've tried to turn it off a few times, and the headache always comes on very strong. so, i'm pretty sure about cause and effect with something in the air in the basement.

now, who knows, right. it could be anything at all, really. but, i'm just having a hard time shaking the possibility that there may have been some spraying done in the basement when i was gone. i mean, it all adds up. while it's true that the basement is overdue for an airing out, and i could just be reacting to stale air. why did it just start to affect me a few weeks ago?

if there is something to the hypothesis, and i'm *still* reacting to the pesticide, there must have been an awful lot of pesticide sprayed down here. and, i think i ought to be concerned about long term effects, at this point, due to continued exposure.

either way, the reality is that i've had almost two weeks worth of migraines, now. i'm going to need to seek medical attention one way or the other. that's going to involve taking blood tests and other things - if i'm dealing with chemical exposure, i'm going to figure that out. so, if you can help me figure out of there was spraying down here, it's just saving me some time, really.

i've been thinking about it a long while and trying to get my head around it. how could anybody spray a unit and not tell the person?

that seems insane. so, i've been putting this email off, maybe to the detriment of my own health. but, i've clued in that there's a kind of child-like concept of punitive effects at play. i could imagine that he might have been afraid that he'd be "caught" with bed bugs, and so wanted to spray to make sure nobody found out.
and, then he couldn't tell me, of course. it sounds inconceivable. but, to a child, the possibility of not getting caught with bed bugs would outweigh everything else. or, at least that's the best i can make sense of it.

it's all horribly negligent and everything, but i'm really more concerned about my health, right now. if there was something sprayed down here, figuring out what it was will help me in determining what kind of exposure i've had, how much i've got in me, how to clear it out, etc. and, i'm going to get to the point through testing, eventually, anyways.

i trust you'd tell me, if you knew, because you're a responsible adult and everything. i'm more presenting arguments for you to throw at paul to get an honest response out of him. i really don't think i'd get one out of him, myself.

even if i can air the place out tomorrow and it works in eliminating the headaches, i think i need to know if i'm possibly reacting to something or not.

i need to be clear that i'm not exactly making any accusations. as mentioned, it could be anything. but, i can't shake the suspicion - and i'm consequently going to end up testing for it. if i can get some confirmation, it's just going to allow me to reduce exposure faster and reduce risk factors quicker.

the landlord
Jessica, I have asked repeatedly that My brother and niece catch one bug or bugs so that I could verify there are bed bugs. my niece started this scare originally with what she thought were bites on the back of her hand. That turned out to be Xema. She had recently visited her Doctor and was told she had XEMA on her hand and not bites. Up to this point they have not caught one bug to show me that Bed bugs are identified as a problem. At this point I am convinced there are no bed bugs at all. If there were bed bugs they would have multiplied and there would be evidence of many bugs and actual bites. I have not seen one bed bug to this day.  I know you research things quite well and I have done my share of reading and researching!        bed bugs spread and multiple quickly. I have not seen any evidence that there are bed bugs in my niece's place or any other place. ..... I was told that my niece's boyfriend, killed a bug crawling up the wall and which they determined it to be a bed bug. Still they did not keep it to identify it as a bed bug.. The other point I want to make is that the thought of bed bugs does make people panic and do not want to be associated with this problem. SO, people to panic and react without verifying. So please be empathetic to this reality.

SPRAYING. I do know that they did spray in my niece's place about a week ago which was about 1/4 to less of a spray can; my brother did the spraying, one time along the bed boards and baseboard in one room. This was isolated to their apartment only. I do not believe this product could have migrated to your apartment, since they followed the instructions to keep all their doors closed while this product settled.  Please keep in mind each units ventilation system does not mix their air to the rest of the air in the building. All exhaust fans purge air outside the building. Please, also keep in mind anything is possible when door s open and close, but I would say that any migration of the product would have been minimal to the existing hallway and they did keep doors shut for the appropriate time. The other point that I must make is that I cannot stop any tenant from spraying in their apartment. I cannot even stop you from buying a can of spray and you spraying your apartment.  All I can do is educate everyone to be mindful of any bug situations, think clearly of what they should or should not do and that they must contact me before they act.    Additionally, I have been specific with my niece and my brother, there will be no further spraying in the building for bed bugs, since we have no proof of bed bugs. They must have my permission to spray anywhere in the common hallways and basement!!!!!.   ....

jessica
yeah. and, i've done a little more research and it does turn out that the symptoms i was experiencing - aphasia (difficulty speaking) and auras - are actually common symptoms of severe migraines. the thing is they're *also* symptoms of pesticide poisoning. i mean, i initially thought i was having a stroke. there was a point where i couldn't speak. so....it's more like i wanted to rule it out.

consider this: i suppose you could imagine how a fumigation in here might have also created those symptoms. that's what i wanted to be sure hadn't happened.

i really don't have a history of migraines either, so it's not like i could say i was expecting something from a trigger. but lots of things cause migraines. it turns out the number one trigger is in fact environmental conditions. so maybe i just had a bad reaction to the stale air, after all.

i know it's a crazy thing, but thank you for determining whether there was spraying down here or not, just so i know what had happened.

in case you're curious, this describes the attack:
https://migraine.com/blog/migraine-symptoms-transient-aphasia/

it's maybe easier to see why poisoning is something that's in the distinct realm of possibility. and, so, given the circumstances...

j reacts to sanders outperforming clinton against republicans

so, why does sanders consistently beat clinton when matched up against republicans, but at best ties her head-to-head?

well, it suggests that there are some republicans that would prefer sanders to the candidates in their own field. yet, sanders is - by anybody's admission - the most liberal person in washington. wtf?

well, that's just it. you can partition the republican party into a few different components. you've got the religious right that's socially conservative. you've got the upper crust that's concerned about low taxes. these are what people think of as republicans, and compose the bulk of the republican base. but, you've also got a more than measurable, in fact sizable, minority of right-libertarians that prefer the republican party because they see it as being less invasive on civil liberties. the language is confusing and contentious, but these people are ideological liberals.

so, it's because he's so liberal, rather than despite it. and, this is upending all the conventional wisdom of the reagan era, which clinton is so intrinsically woven into. she's spent her whole life trying to appeal to the silent majority of reagan democrats - what the spectrum delusionally calls "moderates". but, they're all dead now. and, what's coming up in their place is a really starkly libertarian electorate, attached to both parties.

if we get nothing else from sanders, take heed of the following lesson: you're going to have to be liberal and proud of it to win an election in a predominantly x/y voting reality. and, sanders may consequently be simultaneously ahead of his time and stuck in the past. unstuck in time, maybe, even.

it's as simple as that right-libertarians prefer him over cruz or trump. and, it's easy to see why, if you think about it for a second.

15-04-2016: all comments from the 2015 canadian election (that i can find) are now archived

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

the answer is that we need to use more electricity. the policy assumed we'd be driving electric cars and running high speed rails up and down the detroit-quebec city corridor, by now.

our electricity is clean. you're not helping the environment by using less of it. rather, you'd be helping the environment by using more of it - and less fossil fuels.

i would support a renationalizing of the grid, and a system run at cost.

but it's backwards logic to blame the problem on the green energy act. the green energy act was massively successful - it created a large surplus of clean energy, which was going to be required to help us get off of carbon. this exists. it's in place. what has failed has been the slow adoption of electric vehicles.

...and that's been a failure, largely, at the federal level.

wynne needs to call trudeau up and get him to push some serious tax cuts for electric cars. that's the piece of policy that has been a failure. and, for obvious reasons - we just got out of ten years of petrostate politics.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/electricity-ontario-1.3538157

shit hillary said vol 31

“some critics of public schools urge greater competition among schools as a way of returning control from bureaucrats and politicians to parents and teachers. I find their arguments persuasive, and that’s why I strongly favor promoting choice among public schools.”

shit hillary said vol 30

"Schools may not provide religious instruction, but they may teach about the Bible, civic values and virtue, and moral codes, as long as they remain neutral with respect to the promotion of any particular religion.

This last point is particularly important, [because religious institutions, parents, & schools share] the responsibility of helping children to develop moral values and a social conscience."

j reacts to the electricity rate hike in ontario

before i start, let me say that i think the system should be publicly owned and run at cost.

but, there's a constant in people's reaction. they don't understand why the government would have a system that doesn't incentivize conservation.

the reason is that ontario has an almost entirely clean and fully renewable grid from a combination of hydro, solar & wind, mostly [we have something like 5% on natural gas, still - and absolutely no coal at all]. our government has already put the infrastructure in place. we could have transitioned quite some time ago, if people understood the facts on the ground.

but, instead, people want to conserve. because it's drilled into their heads. by american media.

but, the real way to break through this confusing set of contradictions is to come to the following conclusion: a market for electricity is impossible. that's the scam, here. it's the thing that needs to be abolished.

see, you can't turn the hydro off and you can't store the solar or the wind. so, generation costs are static. that is, they are not altered by demand. so, you literally can't conserve. and, you can't reduce demand, either. so, you can't adjust the supply. as costs are always the same, conserving energy just creates debt that needs to be recouped over the next season.

what, then, does it mean to say that there are market rates? it means to say that the producers can arbitrarily rip you off. there can't actually be a market - because there can't be any real adjustment.

if you live in ontario, and you're just cluing into this now, you should be absolutely livid - because they've been pushing this down on us for twenty years. they told us it would decrease costs. now, many people understood. many people tried to explain. but, the argument has constantly been lost...

the solution is that we need to cut our losses and renationalize the grid - and make sure we're not so foolish as to fall for these scam artists a second time.

in the mean time? waste as much electricity as you want. it's clean. it's renewable. and, we literally can't get rid of it fast enough. and, get an electric car, already! the system is there for it. you're supposed to be tapping into it.

short of nationalization, the only way that rates will stop hiking every few months is if the utility companies can actually sell enough electricity to generate a profit.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/hydro-rates-hike-ontario-energy-board-1.3536062

jessica
i have some advice for young women: i think they should go to parties where there's lots of alcohol and get shitfaced, then expect everybody else to take care of them until they sober up.

Joshua Arce
How about educating the dumb jock who thinks it's okay to abuse woman. Sexual or otherwise. He talked about things one does AFTER the fact. We need prevention.

jessica
do you really think the issue is a lack of education? dumb jocks are dumb. you'd have better luck teaching a lion to become a vegetarian.

world's a rough place. gotta deal with it, or you become a casualty.

You Don't Say?
problem is most people who are sexually abusing women don't view themselves as sexually abusing women, hence why you ought to not go to parties that involve a lot of alcohol, since it inhibits good judgement like that. sounds like some of the best prevention advice available to me.

jessica
that's absolute bullshit. they know exactly what they're doing.

---

Alison Lauren
Sure, its common sense that it's best to avoid being somewhere you may be vulnerable, but you can't blame a girl for wanting to go out??? Why is it that girls should stay home or avoid drinking because of what could happen to them at a party?? Isn't it time teach hormonal, imbecilic boys that it's aBSOLUTELY NOT OKAY to take advantage of girls or others??? Come oN, it's 2016 not 1016

Atler the Dark
They're trying to teach them. Rape has been illegal for a long time. But rape awareness has already grown into a borderline obsession.

Jesus
That's stupid, they're drunk, I would never put myself next to a drunk guy, and I'm a guy. Everybody is at danger when someone is drunk. A dudes just more likely to get his ass beat by a drunk guy than raped. Is that really worth going to a party and making a fool of yourself? A party Is a risky place when there's substances like that. You can't teach a drunk driver how to drive, so don't expect to teach a drunk man how not to rape.

jessica
do you honestly think they don't know better?

has it crossed your mind that they don't care, and they're never going to care?

does a lion shed a tear for an antelope?

world's a shitty place, kid.

Atler the Dark
Well that's a brutal way of putting it.

jessica
coming out of the 60s, there's been a lot of parents that haven't been teaching their kids about the way the world is, and it's going to require a correction in the other direction.

Theworldisbeautiful9
I honestly think he makes a good point. It's better to try to take steps to stay safe and prevent it from happening in the first place, but of course at the same time, people should be taught not to rape. No one is saying that we shouldn't.

jessica
see, you really shouldn't have to be taught not to rape, should you? that should be kind of obvious, you'd think - obvious enough that the benefit of the doubt is not worthwhile. and, it's ridiculous that there's even a discussion.

"well, nobody ever told him. how was he supposed to know?"

right.

but, that's not what makes me so angry about this. what makes me angry about this is the absolute default of parental responsibility that comes in telling your daughter that she has nothing to fear, because she has rights.

i'm not going to blame anybody for getting raped. the premise is preposterous. but, i'll absolutely point fingers at parents for failing at their responsibility to instill a concept of healthy fear in their daughters for a world full of dangerous predators.

you can't reverse negligence. but, you can take steps to stop it from perpetuating.

but, nobody is even trying to dispute the veracity of the claim. it might be offensive to some people. but, perhaps the truth hurts?

i should be back on track by monday at the latest.

but i need to answer a question: am i going to be doing anything new?

i've been clear for years that the answer is no. & absolutely not.

i'm 35 years old, now. when i started this phase of archival and completion, i was 33. i'm past my creative period. ask yourself this question: can you think of a single interesting record made by a 30 year-old?

but i've also grown up. and i'm past the age where i want to be making music, too. my contemporary interests are in politics and political philosophy. i will be spending the rest of my life writing.

but, i do not want to leave these ideas unfinished, either. so, i am focusing on completing unfinished works. and, then i am going to be doing something else with the rest of my life.

14-04-2016: distracted by current events while archiving, but nearing the end (archiving disqus)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the new york democratic debate

i made it through most of the "debate". & the disqus run was the last serious archiving step. i should be able to do a quick clean up tomorrow and then get moving forwards.  i'm going to pencil myself in 4/22 as my restart date.

there's two ways to look at the debate.

if you're an informed, policy wonk type, what you'll likely walk away with, regardless of where you stand, is a clear difference in perceptions about honesty. clinton was a horrible demagogue tonight. on question after question, she distorted and deflected and misled. but, see, if you could catch her on this, you probably already had this perception of her. if you couldn't catch her in the lies? you probably fell for them.

see, i think that sanders is a very good debater. but i'm high information. and, even so, i realize that clinton is a better liar than sanders is a debater. i want to be clear about the language i'm using: i do not think that clinton is a good debater. i only concede that she is a good liar....

the dynamics of the race are such that clinton cannot gain anything from a debate. so, the question is whether bernie was able to gain anything. and, i think that, at this point, and with that performance, it's hard to see how he can break through anything. i think that he had likely already swayed everybody that he was going to sway.

there's also the issue of the closed new york primary. i do suspect that he won the votes of millions of people that are ineligible to vote. and that - supposing that the vote is fair - that may be the difference.

i don't expect to see any significant movement. but, i might suggest that you take precautions on voting day, as there's going to be a lot of very disappointed people.

you ever read this?

http://www.greenparty.ca/en/platform

it’s pretty impressive, really. it’s going to take the ndp at least two years to reinvent it.

www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-leap-manifesto-and-where-the-ndp-will-land/

j reacts to leap, ndp/green parties and the future of the post-industrial left

the green anarchism of the green party is the future of the left. that has been clear for quite a while now. and, while the leap manifesto is a little bit scant on details, naomi klein is one of the leading proponents of the new left. so, everything is lining up, right?

no.

the ndp is run by the fossil fuel industry. it's an unholy alliance of capital and labour, bent on destroying the planet for short term gain. the hard reality is that it is no more likely to pick these ideas up than the liberal party is. and, i think everybody is fully cognizant of this, too. there's just that bit of cognitive dissonance...

it's easy to suggest that the issue should have been ignored rather than dragged on. the party would no doubt keep it's base of dues-paying union members happy. sure. and it may have expanded a little on the right, too. but, then the party leadership will wake up one day, two years from now, to find it is competing with the greens for third party status.

the green party platform is available on the internet. and, it's more than two pages of vague platitudes, too.

ask yourself this question: given that the party is probably going to win in the end, is it worth this level of struggle to merely fail at reinventing the wheel? or are you better off abandoning the ndp for the greens immediately, and trying to peel off progressive aspects of the union movement one-by-one?

i fear that the future is obvious: this goes on forever. in the end, the party wins. and, everybody has wasted years they should have spent organizing outside of the party.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2016/04/leap-time-reality-check

j reacts to the irrelevant political calculations around the tar sands shut down

the author's kinda biased. but, let's give him a mild benefit of the doubt.

here's the thing: whether this is toxic or not, it is necessary that the left wins the debate. i'm not convinced it's quite that bad, really. but, even if it is, it doesn't matter. i'm willing to lose every election for the next thirty years. it's one of those issues that has a moral aspect to it that is more important than short-term politics.

i mean, you could have said something similar about the whigs, fighting against slavery. it was madness. did they want to start a civil war? well, it might not have been anybody's first choice, but the fact is that it had to happen.

so, you can look at this how you will. but the people fighting for the ideas in the manifesto will not stop until the tar sands are shut down. and, you're consequently going to have to get used to fighting us.

http://ipolitics.ca/2016/04/13/leap-will-kill-notleys-government-unless-she-turns-it-into-a-weapon/

malatesta was right: unions are conservative organs of the status quo, and can only ever serve the interests of capital.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/04/13/jerry-dias-leap-manifesto-ndp-rachel-notley_n_9682484.html

j reacts to government restrictions on personal autonomy [the right to death]

i don't know who the government is trying to appeal to in placing these kinds of restrictions on access to death.

it's really simple, guys. it's my body. i get to decide what to do with it. not subject to a series of tests, but in an absolute and inalienable sense.

i believe that the following is true: if i do not have the absolute and inalienable right to die on my own terms, then i do not have any rights at all.

i look forward to the supreme court throwing this out and sending it back to the house for a more liberal interpretation. this is not good enough.

my body, my choice.

let's rewind back to the initial liberalization of abortion. it came with a set of clauses that we mostly all can't even understand anymore. in time, the entire debate was thrown out the window. we see it today as an inalienable choice that can never be interfered with.

i don't know why the government is bothering to slow down the process. it does not show prudence, or good judgement. it merely shows a lack of foresight.

the issue will be in the courts again within days of passing into law. hopefully, the next minister gets it right.

http://ipolitics.ca/2016/04/14/assisted-dying-bill-sets-minimum-age-limit-at-18/

j reacts to yet more scary, dystopian language suppression from the clinton campaign

hillary clinton performs political tasks in exchange for money. i believe that fits the literal definition of a corporate whore. and, no amount of hurt feelings - feigned or real - will change that.

stating the truth is more important than protecting feelings. and, the more offensive the truth is, the more important it is to state it.

please do not be silenced by the language police.

i mean, you can try and reclaim the term, if you want. is it truly so terrible to be a corporate whore? i mean, that's basically what her candidacy reduces to, right?

but don't pretend like it's inaccurate, or, worse, like it's ok to silence true words because they hurt your feelings.

to put it another way: the truth hurts, sometimes.

shit hillary said vol 29

"You know, I agree that we should be testing new teachers. I believe that we ought to have pay for performance where we evaluate teachers. I think we ought to streamline the due process standards so that teachers that don’t measure up would no longer be in the classroom."

j reacts to the truncated spectrum

see, this is another example of the warped spectrum: the idea that equality of opportunity is an idea on the left, and the only other option is to reject equality and align with the right. this is the truncated spectrum:

a) you believe in equality of opportunity (and are a leftist: a liberal, a democrat), or
b) you do not believe in equality at all (and are a right-winger: a conservative, a republican).

the idea of equality of outcome does not exist in the discourse. if it is mentioned at all, it is immediately rejected as extreme.

and, what that does is entrench a class hierarchy as beyond any kind of debate. we can talk about making it easier for people of colour to climb into the hierarchy - and then we label that "left-wing". but, we cannot talk about tearing the class hierarchy down.

so, when i show up and say "actually, this equality of opportunity stuff is a bunch of right-wing bullshit", it is immediately assumed that i do not believe in equality at all - because equality of outcome is not a feasible position.

there is no left in our society. there is merely degrees of the right.

13-04-2016: death and ... archiving?

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

shit hillary said vol 28

"I worked with the 100 Black Men in New York to help create the Eagle Academy, a high school for young African-American and Latino men. "

12-04-2016: a trip to the doctor

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the moral panic over canadian arms sales to the saudis

if you think that not selling arms to the saudis is going to save any lives in yemen...

i mean, they can always call the president and ask for another drone strike, right?

the saudi government is full of bad guys. sure. but the policy that needs to change is at a much higher level. the opposition to the arms deal is consequently really just a lot of empty moralizing.

which isn't to say that i think it should go through, so much as to say that i realize that it doesn't make any difference if it does or not.

the liberals will usually prefer to take the position of engagement over the position of boycott. and, it's probably legitimately the better starting point if you want to actually make some progress.

but, if you truly just want to pat yourself on the back without actually accomplishing anything substantive then by all means keep screaming and yelling.

j reacts to the polling in new york (and fact that it is a closed primary)

re: new york.

he wants to be seeing it a little tighter than this, right now. but, it's not particularly surprising, either. i think the larger ramification out of new york may be a push for a more transparent primary process. it's simply undemocratic to cut off registration so far in advance.

but, there's still a week. anything could happen.

j reacts to false accusations of sympathies with the tea party

fwiw, i am 100% supportive of fiat currency relations and i believe that a strong central bank is a necessity to prevent currency speculation by the wealthy. i would prefer to abolish currency and property altogether. but, so long as we are stuck with currency, i do believe that the fractional reserve banking is a superior system to any kind of fixed system of exchange, like the gold standard. i am a socialist. i understand that this is a socialist concept of currency. i support it because it is a socialist concept of currency.

i support a lender of last resort. i understand that the bailouts were loans. i believe that money can and should be printed at whatever volume is necessary to bring the economy to full employment. further, i realize that there is no such thing as debt.

so, i don't have any of these right-wing economic ideas. and, as such, i have little point of identification with the economic programme on the right.

i am a classical liberal on social issues, and i understand that i may be confusing to a lot of the modern left as a result of that. but, i am closer to a traditional concept of leftism than the modern left is. and, when i attack the left as authoritarian, i tend to do it from the left. that is, i tend to go after what passes as "liberalism" nowadays (from elizabeth warren through to the tumblr types) as a lot of confused conservatives. there's nothing liberal about the social justice warriors. it's just a post-modern spin on religion, and dangerous for all the same reasons.

we live in a reality where a defined left does not really exist. rather, we are presented with various strains of conservatism and told that they are liberalism and socialism, respectively. i reject all of this. so, you cannot place me on your spectrum, as you understand it.

but, i am clear where i stand in a broader spectrum. i am an anarchist/communist in the tradition of bakunin, kropotkin, wilde, malatesta and chomsky. i tend to lean marxist (mostly from engels, actually) on economic matters and liberal (mill, largely) on social matters. these are old fashioned perspectives that most people have jettisoned in favour of some concept of authoritarianism, to the point that i'm  broadly misunderstood most of the time.

but, i am a leftist - a very pure one that refuses to be corrupted by conservative concepts of human nature, even when it takes me out into left field. that's fine. i'll set up camp. you'll leave me there. that's ok. but, make no mistake of this - a leftist, i am.

...even if i ultimately defer to science, whenever i can.

shit hillary said vol 27

"As president, I will work to raise the federal minimum wage back to the highest level it’s ever been — $12 an hour in today’s dollars — and support state and local efforts to go even further."

11-04-2016: hard archiving push (huffpost archival finished)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the possibility of naomi klein running for the leadership of the ndp

it says avi lewis.

i'd rather see naomi klein run, myself. and, frankly, i'd say she's probably the smart money at this point. it's in 2018.

still want to move to canada?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/potential-ndp-leaders/article29582403/

see, here's the thing: naomi klein is a partisan hack. well, at least she is in canada, anyways. she's married to the scion of the ndp ruling class. she is the hatfield to trudeau's mccoy.

but, she makes some good points, too.

i've posted enough here over the last few days to get my point across: trudeau is, in truth, a very pretty spokesperson. in that sense, he's more like reagan than he is like kennedy. he knows enough about what is happening to avoid looking foolish (most of the time). and, he'll pass any beer test you throw at him. but, he's a front for a party establishment with very deep roots in this country. and, no - he's not as liberal as you'd like to think.

but, as far as lesser evils go, the liberals (broadly, not just trudeau) are head and shoulders above anything else on offer. they are a lesser evil. unambiguously. they work for the banks. but..

here's one example: health care. the history is complicated, of course. but, if you ask the liberals, they'll tell you that they continue to support public healthcare because they see it as providing the country with a competitive advantage in labour costs. the end result is universal healthcare, and we're all very attached to it. but, if you listen to them carefully, it comes down to a pro-business policy. it's the same thing with the indexing of the minimum wage. it's very progressive and everything, but if you listen to them talk what they will tell you is that it's meant to drive aggregate demand. so, yes: they will consistently come down on the progressive side of things, but it's more because they're driven by numbers than anything else. except when they don't (pipelines, for example). so, it's always a lesser evil.

but, despite being a lesser evil, the reality is that, in practice, they're more comparable to the green party than the democrats. so, you need to pull her back a little.

but, this may be a launching speech. and, this may be the next election: trudeau v klein.

(and some conservative will no doubt also run)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/24/trudeau-is-less-liberal-than-you-think.html

mellow out, or you will pay.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/elementary-students-meditation-1.3526011

"yeah, i have a very strong crossover appeal: cia/fbi/nsa."

"the only audience i'm building is in the secret service."

"when i say my audience is listening...."

"i think i'm bigger than allen dulles."

shit hillary said vol 26

"I would hope that, given the extraordinary capacities that the tech community has and the legitimate needs and questions from law enforcement, that there could be a Manhattan-like project, something that would bring the government and the tech communities together to see they're not adversaries, they've got to be partners. It doesn't do anybody any good if terrorists can move toward encrypted communication that no law enforcement agency can break into before or after. There must be some way. I don't know enough about the technology, Martha, to be able to say what it is, but I have a lot of confidence in our tech experts."

10-04-2016: stuck inside due to the weather (more huffpost archiving)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

i have not bought a pack of cigarettes in three months.

1) as a former smoker, i am now officially old.
2) i think i got this.

but i spent the last week dealing with migraines, so i'm going to give myself a few more days. friday is a hard stop.

when she was done her speech, rachel went into a greatest hits set, which included such canadian standards as run to you, summer of '69 and everything i do (i did it for you).

i don't really care. really. but, pick a side of the spectrum. if you want to be the new tories, go be the new tories. if you want to merge with the greens, merge with the greens. just stop trying to represent 90% of the spectrum. the lack of clear messaging got some of your best mps clobbered.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-convention-saturday-wherry-1.3528881

shit hillary said vol 25

"The last time I actually drove a car myself was 1996," Clinton said Monday in remarks to the National Automobile Dealers Association in New Orleans. "I remember it very well. Unfortunately, so does the Secret Service, which is why I haven't driven since then."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/01/27/hillary-clinton-car-auto-drive-nada/4942881/

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/hillary-clinton-hasnt-driven-a-car-since-1996/283375/

09-04-2016: clearing my head (archiving the huffington post)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

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

krugman is right, but who cares?

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

if you break the banks up, they get captured. regulation doesn't work. we tried this. it failed.

so, personally? you give me a referendum on a bank, i stay home. it's boring. and it has no effect on my life. i do not think this is what is driving the popularity of his campaign. and i think he needs to fight the perception that it is.

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

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

that is all.

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

shit hillary said vol 24

"I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better — better than anybody had run it in a long time. So I have an idea of what it’s going to take to make our government work more efficiently."

if you had a modern constitution, the cop wouldn't just be facing dismissal but plausibly jail time. and, he's going right to the raffle fundraiser at the child abuse unit, too, right?

just nuke them. fuck it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cuq3KJC7cc

listen to the sneer on this one. egads...

but, it's reflective. hillary represents the latte-drinking, upper-middle class. this anchor is an excellent proxy.

i'm always perplexed by the mindset that wants to keep kids sheltered and ignorant. it seems to me like they really want to, and maybe ought to, be playing with dolls.

the liberal legal academic system just spent the last thirty years putting in place an academic programme that teaches students that an entrenched, universal racial hierarchy exists - and that there is nothing that can be done to abolish it. we must adjust to it. and, then you wonder why the kids are fucked up? hey, guess what: maybe it has to do with what you've taught them. oops...

the reason they know that the system is racist, through and through, is because the system taught them it. did you expect them to shrug it off, or what?

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/04/01/black-lives-matter-protests-at-premier-kathleen-wynne-s-toronto-home_n_9592650.html

07/08-04-2016: the saga of the detector dogs (of migraines & bed bugs - and cbc profile wiped)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

shit hillary said vol 23

"The Free Trade Agreements passed by Congress tonight will make it easier for American companies to sell their products to South Korea, Colombia and Panama, which will create jobs here at home. The Obama Administration is constantly working to deepen our economic engagement throughout the world and these agreements are an example of that commitment.

The stakes are not just economic. South Korea, Colombia and Panama are three important partners in strategically vital regions. With the passage of these agreements, America has delivered for our friends and allies. I want to thank Presidents Lee, Santos and Martinelli for their patience and willingness to partner with the Obama Administration as these agreements moved through Congress.

But our work is not yet done. We will not be content until these agreements are fully implemented so that American exporters can reap the benefits as soon as possible."

this is the actual, flat truth: i don't care. i expected the government would be corrupt. i was not naive. i did not think they would be different. and, they can steal as much money as they care about, i'll still vote for them if they make some progress on reducing emissions, on poverty reduction, on legal liberalization (marijuana, assisted-suicide, etc), on feeding the beast and and on some of other things i actually care about.

let the conservatives yell and scream about finance. i don't care. i care about social issues.

apologies for the bad grammar. i'm still amazed that the cbc does not allow editing. it's the way people write nowadays.

but, this narrative expired about 1995. the thing is that the media is driven by an old tory guard that is completely out of touch with people under 50. it's this cycle of information going around in the heads of old folks, and that almost nobody else cares at all about.

let the right yell itself into irrelevance. just focus on what people actually care about.

(link lost)

i have to admit that i'm not really sure what the benefit of building public transportation through the collection of very small towns on the windsor side would be. i mean, it makes sense on the detroit side, where you have a large collection of medium sized cities. but, when you get outside of windsor, it's just a lot of small towns. villages, even. maybe there's some demand i'm unaware of, but it's kind of head-scratching.

the better way to get people into windsor would be to make it easier to get across the border. a pedestrian foot bridge over the tunnel would be ideal.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/city-vs-county-regional-transit-could-be-back-on-the-table-1.3523457

shit hillary said vol 22

"Mandatory sentences for certain violent crimes may be appropriate"

of unwanted dogs and media-fueled paranoia

jessica
it seems as though i've been able to avoid the dogs in the apartment for the night. to be clear: my opposition is that i don't want strange animals parading through here. i would not oppose a human inspector.

that said, i understand that i cannot stall forever. so, i will have to allow the inspection, should cooler heads not prevail. just allow me to quickly make the following points, both to attempt to persuade you to halt and to make clear where i stand should the dog track anything in.

1. there are no bed bugs in the unit.
2. bed bugs are not like roaches or air-borne pathogens. they must be carried from place to place.
3. a detector dog is a perfect transmission vehicle. it actively seeks them out, thereby volunteering itself as a ship from them to sail on.
4. it is consequently dangerous and irrational to allow a detector dog to move through the unit. there are no bugs in the unit now. there may be by the time it's done.

so, if you insist, i cannot stop you - i can only stall the process, in hopes that whatever media-fueled hysteria behind this comes to pass. but, should the dog "find" anything, i will legally argue to the maximum extent of my ability that it was the dog, itself, that brought them in.

there are no bed bugs in this unit.

the landlord
Jessica, I have become aware of the situation and I know my brother does not have good judgment or thinks things through. I will be around as soon as I can. Please wait till I get there. I have told my brother to find a bug for proof and not be so stupid to believe a bug smelling dog! I believe there are no bed bugs at this point.