nonsense, and not worth deconstructing - except to point out that it was clearly a jab at gun nuts. that is, it was the gun owners that were the butt of the joke. it's the dipshit social justice types that are (once again) missing the point - this is just another excuse to push down their authoritarianism and censorship. they'll jump at the opportunity to misconstrue things to push their morals down your throats.
i mentioned it was excellent delivery, and it really was. it was the kind of line you expect to hear in a conan monologue, or a daily show take down.
...and the takeaway is that it's increasingly clear that trump actually doesn't feel comfortable representing the base. he doesn't want to go out there and work up gun nuts and religious crazies. he's getting tired of this.
to be crystal clear and absolutely terse: trump was stating, tongue-in-cheek, that he actually supports gun control.
what do you think that donald trump really thinks of these people? do you think he's really on their side? that he'll stand up for them?
he thinks they're a bunch of pathetic, inbred losers that fell for a lot of barely strung together nonsense.
trump has a record: he's always supported gun control in the past - like every other sane northeastern liberal. and, what he's signalling is that he doesn't like the role he's playing, right now.
so, again: great delivery. 10/10.
i hope we get more of this, as it becomes increasingly clear that he's going to lose huge.
trump doesn't have a chance of winning the presidency. but, he can go out with a bang and give us some performance art that will last for centuries.
if clinton does win georgia, it should just be a reminder that vote splitting happens not as a consequence of insolent voting bases but as a consequence of poor political leadership. you should never, ever, ever, ever, ever blame voters for vote splitting.
how much is it going to cost in terms of campaign contributions to get clinton to show up to a press conference in a full out zoot suit?
we haven't seen a blowout like this in a while. reagan, i guess? it's not a prediction, it's just something to think about. i guess it's her maximum haul....
no, that's fine. send him out to have fun. write the pot off as a public expenditure. tell him to take an extra long vacation. great. that's exactly what was expected. but, i didn't vote for gerald butts, either - the party needs to take control back from the pmo.
the way she squinches her eyes indicates that this was involuntary, and her quick recovery indicates it was expected. but, those that are claiming this was not a seizure are also correct. it almost looks more like a cocaine tremor. i suspect her chai is a little special.
i've always thought this was fundamentally an anti-war song.
you could say it's about the "unknown soldier".
but, i think it's actually about the glorification of the military.
Spectacularity
Think it's more about twisting a person's image from being a hero in death to a secretive monster in life.
jessica
i think that's a kind of a generalization of what i'm proposing - the idea that the soldier is not a hero, but in fact a monster. but, there's a lot of very specific references to military protocol. i mean, you could apply that broad idea to lots of different things. i've just always gotten the feeling that the military context is what he actually intended....
see, what i'd like is for the democratic candidate to spin this around on him and claim she's going to increase taxes on the wealthy - and also on corporations. i know better. i wouldn't believe it, anyways. but the last thing the country needs right now is lower taxes at the top rate. it needs to be taking in higher income tax levels to spend on crumbling infrastructure and convert the economy away from fossil fuels. the problem with the stimulus plan was that it was too small. they need more of this, on a deeper level - and they need to generate the revenue to do it.
a strong candidate would annihilate him on his tax policy, which is clearly disastrous and flat out stupid. it's 2016, and dipshit donald still thinks tax cuts create jobs? of course he doesn't. he just wants a tax cut for himself. if i was the nominee, i wouldn't talk about anything else.
i don't always agree with krugman, but he's kind of an expert on keynesian policies. and, if we're going to implement keynesian policies, he's not just a good explainer but arguably the best currently alive. we're lucky that he spends as much time writing in newspapers as he does.
see, this is just like the tpp. they both want infrastructure spending. they're both technically right. but, i don't believe either of them - i rather think that they'll both push tax cuts and austerity.
i don't know how i'm going to get through this mess with my sanity. i need to just disengage. i keep saying that...
i ought to be pointing out that it's good that they're both taking the right approach to stimulus. instead, i'm convinced they're both lying, and they'll both do the wrong thing.
and, the evidence is really, truly on my side.
i'm in the fucking ultraparadoxical phase, again. great.
i've been very sensitive to the weather for years and years. for as long as i can remember, i've tended to get nasty stomach aches when the pressure outside changes. it's to the point that i can predict the season changes through reductio ad estomach - that is, by appeal to stomach. right now, i seem to be reacting very negatively to the reduction of humidity that came in last night. it's a really brutal sinus headache. so, loud music - and particularly absurdly loud music - is not a very good idea at the moment.
why is switching to the metric system never an issue in us elections?
i'm serious. they sign all these trade agreements that they pretend are about breaking down tariff systems. do you know how much money they could save by getting rid of the british imperial system of measurement?
surely, they must realize they've lost this war. and, it's nothing like vietnam, either. it's far worse. the rest of the world has moved so far past them on this...
i just want to see the reaction. i want to see the accusations from fox news. i want to see live interviews with people on the ground that think they're being invaded by france. and canada.
"british imperial system? no, we kicked them limeys out. i speak american, and i measure things in american."
"and they can take their statues and their fries with them!"
but, seriously. they'd save at least billions, overall, by not having to label and measure things differently for the us market. trillions, even - depending on your time scale.
"All countries except Burma (Myanmar), Liberia, and the United States of America have officially adopted the metric system, although Liberia has seen some introduction of metric units, and in 2013 Burma formally announced the beginning of its metrication program."
i suspect americans don't really realize how expensive (and annoying...) it is for the rest of the world to convert things into eighteenth century units in order to sell things there, or how expensive it is for american producers to need to convert things into modern units for export.
i'm still trying to process how and why the prime minister's office (i'm not sure he even signed anything...) thought it was a good idea to put kim fucking campbell in charge of anything, let alone in charge of a process to determine the next supreme court justice. i think she needs to immediately address the question that is on all of our minds: is a court room a proper venue to discuss serious issues?
we'll have to see what the results are.
but, what terrible judgement.
the prime minister's office recently appointed the person that approved this ad to pick the next supreme court justice of canada.
the actual truth is that the selection was probably calculated to appeal to female identity voters - ignoring the fact that she's a monster.
it would be really great if they'd stop electioneering and start governing.
it's not just bad judgement, it's also a real slap in the face.
remember: canada has a recall process. sort of. we can remove sitting prime ministers through a vote of non-confidence. we don't directly elect them, and the election is not in any way interpreted as a vote for prime minister, either formally or informally. the liberals could remove trudeau at any given point.
i think the most recent example of this was in australia.
the court nomination process is not minor. we'll see what comes out of it. but, if he appoints some "bipartisan" judge, i'd expect to hear a mutiny rumbling.
if i was there, i'd be leading the charge.
canada's greatest strength up to now has been it's court. we have very liberal courts, because we are able to appoint the judges more or less at whim. nowhere did he campaign on making it harder for liberal prime ministers to continue to appoint liberal judges. in fact, he won in a landslide.
not only is there no mandate for this, but it's directly opposite to his mandate - and entirely out of right field.
if you're on the political left, it is of the utmost importance that we retain control of the courts. i don't know where this idea of giving the courts away to a "non-partisan process" (read: corporate stacking) comes from, but it really has to be stopped.
i voted for the liberals and i want the liberals to appoint a very, very, very liberal judge. this is not complicated.
the existing selection process is not a problem, and it doesn't require a fix.
thankfully, i don't believe that what they're setting up is constitutional. ironically, the court itself will strike it down - should somebody challenge it. but, there's a lot of red flags going off regarding the amount of flat out fuckery this guy wants to push through. i don't know what it is...
his father was a law professor, a constitutional expert - perhaps not a gentleman, but certainly a scholar. justin trudeau has no meaningful academic background. and, he simply shouldn't be fucking with the way that government operates, like this.
i really think that the party has an obligation to step in.
i mean, my vote was premised upon two things that i thought would be obvious:
(1) he knew his role was to campaign, not to govern.
(2) the party was in charge.
i'm not sure either are panning out, right now.
the idea that the liberal party would have any reason to fuck with the court selection process is incoherent. he wants to one-up his father. and, he can't be allowed to fail.
if he wants to one-up his father, he should step down immediately, go back to school and run again in ten-twenty years.
as of right now, the premise is preposterous and the party cannot sit back and continue to entertain his absurd whims.
i just want to...
it's not like hw and w bush. the biggest problem is trying to compare the elder bush to the elder trudeau.
it's more like john adams and john quincy adams, in the sense that pierre trudeau was so important in drafting the country's constitution. but, john quincy adams was actually consdered a good statesman. i'm left kind of wishing that monroe or madison or even jefferson had a well-meaning but ill-equipped son. that is the right level of relative importance!
don't make the comparison, though. the elder trudeau was far too important in canadian history to compare him to a one-term president. you can't get a proper understanding of the trudeau name, that way.
let me be more explicit, but terse: if you set up an "independent, non-partisan" body then what is going to happen within minutes is that it is going to get captured by financial interests. this has been studied to death. you only do this if you're ignorant or you're corrupt - you're either not well enough read on the topic, or you actually want the body to get captured. i suspect the former.
there is no debate on the outcome. all independent bodies get captured. there are no exceptions. this is a failed policy approach.
so, when applied to a court selection process, the so-called independent body that he's setting up to prevent back room deals (a problem that doesn't exist...) can be nothing more or less than opening up the process to an open lobbying procedure in a way that is at arms-length from any accountable process. i almost want to throw orwell at you yet again, but i really do think that this is less corruption and more incompetence.
regardless, what he's done here - whether he realizes it or not - is put the seat up for sale.
his father would have rejected anything of the sort, which is just my point. it's not that he had some magical properties that the son could have inherited. he was just very educated on the topic and had the experience to see how things would logically unfold. he would not have bought into such nonsense.
again: i think most people assumed the party was in charge. very few people would have voted for a 40 year-old drama teacher, otherwise - even considering how unpopular the incumbent was. and, this is not what anybody voted for.
broadly speaking, every time you hear the terms "bipartisan" or "non-partisan", that is newspeak for "unaccountability" and "corporate oligarchy". it means that the government is relinquishing control to capital.
let's all think about how stupid the concept of ableism is, for a second. obviously, people with disabilities are as able to perform tasks as anybody else. shame on you for thinking that a disabled person may have some deficit of ability!
it's actually really scary, due to the producerism underlying it. it's an algorithm to discard the concept of being disabled and remove state aid for people with disabilities. after all, if disabled people are just as able as the rest of us (don't say they aren't! that's ableist!) then why should they get state aid?
disabled people can pull themselves up by their own boot straps just as well as anybody else, you ableist pig!
you need to be very careful with this orwellian shit. it's not just some dumb kids. it's organized. and, the ends are pretty shitty.
this is actually incredibly useful for me.
the venue is located on the campus of wayne state university and was rebranded as an electronic club in order to try and tap into the local student market. what was once the go to punk/rock bar in the city was reduced to pushing "sweaty student thursdays" and letting females in without cover. it was a state of affairs that was widely lamented. and, i don't think they ever really found the audience they wanted.
see, the magic stick was always an alternative rock or punk bar. it thrived on it's ability to take in acts that were a little different. it's a carefully built, niche audience. i think that had they approached electronic music with the same mindset, they could have found the comparable niche market. instead, they just saturated a market in a way that didn't make any sense. it wasn't upscale, so it couldn't push the douchey, bourgeois edm shit. nor was it underground enough to throw raves - there would be cops there every night. but, if medium sized artsy techno acts like squarepusher or autechre or aphex twin were to swing through here, this would be the place they should play. they got noisia (although noisia's gone to shit recently). i noticed some other stuff like tycho picked the royal oak. in the end, they didn't cultivate the right market - and detroit just doesn't seem to have it, anyways. i'd have jumped at an idm bar, rather than another edm one.
what i'm getting at is that the tweet is a good excuse to retreat back to what was. i'm not pushing a conspiracy theory; i don't know know the story. but i don't think the management is racist.
the conversion left downtown detroit without a proper small to medium sized rock venue. it was closed quickly when i moved here, but i managed to catch boris, cloud nothings, cymbals eat guitars and bob mould there. boris is through here again this week with earth and skipped detroit altogether. some of this would otherwise have moved to ferndale or a new venue opened in mexicantown - both of which are a lot harder for me to get back and forth from. the magic stick is a relatively safe half hour walk from the tunnel. so, if it reasserts itself that is useful to me regarding transit options... http://www.metrotimes.com/Blogs/archives/2016/07/21/the-magic-stick-returns-after-populux-social-media-scandal
you claim that voters in the middle of america want to vote for the person that they see themselves most in. it's not exactly identity politics in the "intersectionality" sense, but it's the broad idea.
and, then you claim they'll vote for the north-eastern liberal (donald trump) instead of the midwestern conservative (hillary clinton)? how does that make any sense?
this is why missouri is going to be so important. virginia is a different scenario: you've got expanding urbanization, migration south and just general....colonization? it's kind of the truth of it. virginia has been colonized by the north. but, missouri is actually deindustrializing..
she can't pull this off everywhere. but, that cluster of states around missouri is the real wild card. i don't think she'll win arkansas, but it very well might be closer than north carolina. i don't think she'll win tennessee, but she'll probably lose it by less than trump loses pennsylvania by. in the case of some extraneous circumstance - the rise of gary johnson? - those states are within striking distance.
i know that the media has been pushing the message for a long time now, but the reality is that hillary clinton is not a northeastern liberal. if she was a northeastern liberal, like bernie sanders, i wouldn't be so revolted by her. rather, she is a midwestern conservative. and, if the midwest really does prioritize their own over outsiders, she will be competitive there - even if missouri is the only state she can actually win.
if she swoops down there and pulls out the drawl...
who are they going to see themselves in more? the distant billionaire from new york with the very dominant foreign accent, married to some european floozy, or the woman they know well through her husband that talks and sounds and acts like them?
your argument just doesn't make any sense.
we've only had one poll from kentucky so far, back in june, but clinton was actually beating trump by 3 points. that's not so crazy to me...
the only poll in mississippi was in march, but trump was only up by 3. again: not so crazy.
that's no fair! why can they get rid of trump, when the democrats can't get rid of hillary? just more proof that the country is slanted to monied interests....
he has exceedingly limited options. the only reason that the media talks about pennsylvania, michigan & wisconsin is that there's just not a lot of real estate on the map. colorado isn't even really a swing anymore. the big wrench for the republicans is that virginia's apparent swing - which they seem to be ceding - leaves them without a viable strategy at any point in the near future.
he's in michigan on monday. michigan? well, do you have a better idea?
could you imagine dubya standing up on stage in august, 2000 and telling everybody that a vote for dubya is a vote for cheney? that would be a historical smoking gun. trump just gave it to us.
i'm just attaching some pictures of the damage created by the a/c on the front step, as well as the consequences of it on the space under the step.
i'm currently running two fans in the space to air it out. i've also left the door open and am keeping the window open over night. but, why not just put a bucket on the step to catch the water?
the investor's business daily. that doesn't invoke a lot of confidence.
but, the methodology is sound, and the results are consistent - if a little pro-republican. investor's business daily? but, that's useful variance if it's mild and the methodology checks out. it does.
so, we have four polling firms now that are worth aggregating.
the polling story for the week is that stein has seen a measurable bump. let's see if it holds into next week.
--
actually, i missed the mclatchy poll, which is also good. this is an outlier right now - clinton+14? she's not up much. it's more that trump is barely pushing 30.
they claim it's a straight sample. that's interesting to me, because i'd have expected the opposite phenomenon - that weighting would be helping clinton. weighting is another valid debate. i don't think that we can get away with not weighting at all, which is to say the data there is probably a little too raw, but i'd think that the general trend right now is to fuck with the data too much. so, again: that's probably wrong, but it's useful. and, as mentioned, it's surprising. what it suggests is that the other polling firms may be exaggerating trump's lead with white people.
so, we've got five polls, now. that's good enough, i think.
i need some new shoes and am trying to figure out if i should get something a little more designed for walking, or just stick with my characteristic frugality...
the last time i bought shoes was in mar, 2014. the pair of skate shoes somebody gave me, and were being worn all year in ottawa where there is much more snow, had developed some giant holes in them from the salt. these were expensive shoes, but salt does what salt does. realizing that salt in the winter is a fact of life in canada, i bought two pairs of very cheap ($5/each) walking shoes and expected them to meet the same fate.
but, the winters here are not as bad. even the cold doesn't necessarily bring snow, so the salt issue is just not comparable. i bought cheap shoes expecting the salt to get them within a few months, and instead got over a year out of both of them - which were in fact both worn down from sheer walking. i just walked through them...
i also quit smoking, so i'm not out in the salt 20 times a day anymore.
around the same time, i also bought a pair of sparkly pink fake cons. see, i know how i wear shoes down, so why waste money on them? but, i don't want to wear a pair of $5 walking shoes out somewhere, like a concert, either. i was down to these shoes on my compost run today and came back with sore feet. they're not worse than the cheap walking shoes, but that's kind of the point. i'm going to keep going on these four or five hour walks. so, should i spend a little and get something with better support? does it really matter?
see, here's the thing: how long can you really walk for before your feet get tired? my legs aren't tired. i'm fit enough that i could have walked another five hours. but, do shoes actually exist that can facilitate such a thing, or am i just being unrealistic and utopian again?
i think that buying the bridge would solve a lot of problems, actually. well, i wouldn't even buy it, i'd just seize it. but, the reality is that while we can lament how we got into this mess and try and learn from it, the fact that we have this bridge in private hands is a catastrophe and virtually everything and anything should be done to reverse the problem.
this is not my riding. i'm a block away, in windsor-tecumseh. and, i did vote liberal in the last election because i liked what frank schiller had to say about nafta (even though i realized he wouldn't be listened to) and, perhaps more importantly, i found cheryl hardcastle's views on gmos to be disqualifying. it wasn't the issue of gmos, exactly, but what it more broadly implied about her scientific literacy levels.
i know this may sound alien and quaint, but the place i always looked to for social leadership was actually the sciences. it took me the longest time to figure out how naive that was...
so, i remember not understanding why nobody cared about climate change. to me, it was natural for the scientists to take a leadership role in shaping society. it wasn't even progress. i didn't even see it as debatable, really. it was just obvious that society should be run by scientists.
as an adult, i can look back at myself and label myself a technocrat. i do retain the term, sometimes. in fact, that was my initial point of interest in (scientific) socialism, whatever the oxymorons in the term, and however apparent that is to me, now. why were lawyers running the country? what did they know about science? liberals, conservatives....what's this boring shit....where's the science party?
you can imagine how crushed i was when i realized that most people looked not towards scientists and academics for leadership but towards athletes and entertainers. and, this is coming from somebody that has had a deep love of music for as long as i can remember, but that understood it for what it actually is. what the fuck was wrong with people? just another factor for misanthropy, for depression, for disassociation - or to withdraw...
even in my early 20s, i couldn't really grapple with the truth of it. i got it, but i didn't really get it. it wasn't until i was able to talk to some people from outside the continent that i was able to get my head around how abnormal the society really is. university professors can hold televised news conferences in prime time in france; in korea, scientists can generate rallies that can pack sports stadiums.
the issue become apparent to me: what i truly need to grapple with is what the fuck it is that is wrong with us.
criminal negligence revolves around the concept of reasonable precaution. what is at question here is ultimately not whether he carried out an act or not, or even if he did so on purpose, but whether he took the proper precautions to ensure it didn't happen. the legal question will likely revolve around the discussion he had with the person that actually prepared the food. did he point out the allergy clearly enough on the order?
the article is poorly written - it does not provide any facts. but, if the waiter expressed the allergies with a sufficient level of force, then it falls upon the cook.
it is very difficult to see how any judge in any liberal democracy could legally fault the victim for forgetting their epipen.
but, a lot of how you react to this is going to depend on what kind of social contract you feel is best applied. i'm an advocate of the proudhonian social contract, but less so of the one promoted by rousseau. i do consequently think that the waiter has a moral, legal and social responsibility to ensure that he does not poison anybody, and that he should face collective punitive action by society should he not uphold that social contract.
i've hinted at this repeatedly, but i'm going to be explicit because it's somehow poorly understood that the soviet union collapsed not due to communism or centralized planning but due to the introduction of market reforms. we can have debates about whether things were really worse there or not, but the breaking point is not up for debate: the lines around the street for bread were because of pro-market reforms.
this is what i'm worried about with trump: that he'll let that kind of thing happen. it's the same basic problem that ron paul always presented. if you pull back funding enough, the state will collapse altogether.
it is a realistic threat.
so, i keep pushing this idea that trump will produce glasnost. i'm not going to stop, either.
i'm sorry, but i don't at all see why the question of sacrifice is remotely important. if i were trump, i would have said that i haven't made any sacrifices and aggressively asked why it's important to make sacrifices. this is supposed to be a free society. living in it is about advancing self-interest, not about making sacrifices. so, i don't know where this is coming from. is it in islam? calvinism? but, i don't identify with it.
as far as i'm concerned, their kid died needlessly for oil politics. i'd rather protest the war than go off on some conservative diatribe about "sacrifice".
i mean, trump didn't kill their kid. but, hillary set the process in motion.
i just don't get it...
"i've sacrificed. what sacrifices have you made...?"
that just doesn't resonate. sorry.
i'm the type of person to look somebody in the eye and tell them their sacrifices are their own, they have no right to enforce their sacrifices on others and nobody is responsible for their regret but themselves.
you made your sacrifices. i didn't make them. and, i'm not going to sit around and feel bad for you.
i took the mri looking for something like this, in an attempt to rule out ms. i was never looking for a growth. i'm not surprised that they couldn't find anything - i don't see any reason to take another with a contrast agent. but, there may be some subtleties in the imaging. i obviously just simply don't know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporomandibular_joint_dysfunction
i've had a down period the last two weeks that's a consequence of a
variety of things, but i don't expect any further political commentary
that is in any way meaningful.
i have a meeting on aug
11 to discuss the mri results with the ear doctor. i expect that it will
lead to a referral to see another doctor - either a bone specialist of
some sort or possibly a dentist. there is some possibility that i may
get a bad surprise. a lot of uncertainty remains around this, and i just
have to wait.
this "hybrid double ep single" that i
left off at is in fact constructed. i just need to finish writing the
notes - which shouldn't be taking so long.
i also need to be cleaning for the rest of the week, and will need to do a compost run, soon.
an economics debate between friedman and i would likely quickly escalate into a shouting match, as i accuse him of dishonesty and he accuses me of utopianism. but, this is a valid criticism. and, if this whole thing falls apart in the end, it's going to be written into her gravestone.
here lies hillary rodham clinton, who refused to run on the economy, and hence was laid to rest in a dunce cap.
fox is not like other major media outlets, because it's ideologically driven rather than market driven. cnn, msnbc, cbs, abc - they just want ratings and will bend over any which way to get them. fox has an agenda.
so, i'm always skeptical of anything from fox. i wouldn't trust them to report on the time of day.
but, the polling is reporting reliable methodology and the results are in line with the other reliable firms: clinton's up by around 10 points.
so, we have three media outlets using reliable polling firms that are worth consulting right now: cnn, cbs and fox. with some caveats with fox.
just another twist on this idea of polling as a means to shape the media that generates popular opinion, though: we've never been in a situation where both of the candidates are so overwhelmingly unpopular, and this kind of standard approach could consequently fail.
so, let's say that hillary's ipsos propaganda panel manages to get an upper hand in the news cycle and we're stuck dealing with weeks of flawed polling that ends up convincing most people that hillary is going to win in a landslide. under normal circumstances, we would expect the projection to create a herd mentality: hillary will get a bump in the polling because people are fucking sheep and they want to vote for the winner. that's what the whole thing is trying to engineer, and that both sides are going to be pushing. but, in this particular circumstance, i'd be a lot more likely to vote for jill stein - especially in a swing state - if i thought clinton was comfortably ahead, and more likely to vote for clinton if it looked very close (and i was convinced she was a lesser evil). a lot of republicans will say the same thing. and, some will even argue that they'll vote for trump in a landslide to send a message.
the same logic applies on the other side, too.
so, this may end up backfiring this cycle, because everybody is so disliked.
see, this is the point - it's exactly what i'm talking about regarding:
(1) media institutions aligning behind trump (for ratings - so expect this. the rnc beat the dnc soundly.)
(2) "phony" polls being used to project reality and alter public opinion, rather than measure it.
i'll rant a little more about this in the vlogs/reactions that come up this week. but, the actual truth is that the cnn poll is the only poll (besides the cbs one...) released this week that isn't obviously phony.
this is the world we live in. if you haven't read 1984 in a while, go dust it off.
and, yes - she does it, too. there were some phony pro-democratic "polls" released, as well.
again: the cnn and cbs polls are reporting reliable methodologies. the other "polls" are not.
i was thinking about it as i was walking, and this is my perception of things.
1) trump is a near certain apocalyptic disaster on the economy. not on trade, but on taxes. it's less the problem of putting the country bankrupt (that can't happen...) and more the problem of defunding institutions. i don't think he understand the importance of government funding and interference in the economy, or what would happen if that were to stop. hillary is in theory a better pick on the economy.
2) hillary is a near certain apocalyptic disaster on foreign policy. she's going to bomb syria. she's going to start a war in eastern europe, and try and blame it on russia. she might start a war in korea, too. trump is in theory a better pick on foreign policy.
so, as a left-leaning voter (i'm not actually a voter....), i'm left with the following choice:
1) is trump such a potential economic catastrophe that it's worth voting for hillary and the escalation of world war three into a possibly nuclear hot conflict? or..
2) is hillary such a potential foreign policy catastrophe that it's worth voting for jill stein and gambling on the country collapsing into glasnost?
i'm currently leaning strongly towards the second option.
if trump wins, you're looking at serious long term economic consequences that are probably unavoidable.
if hillary wins, you're looking at world war three.
let's forget about whether alien abductions have any real evidence supporting them, or even whether it's plausible, and just think if we can find examples that we can observe that might help us crudely understand what it would be like.
i've seen a bunch of videos like this. this is one of the less intense ones. and, they seem a little bit more relevant when applied to elephants - who are extremely smart - rather than rhinos.
for example, i saw one video of a team of doctors swooping in on an elephant with a calf in a helicopter, shooting it with a tranquillizer gun from the helicopter, jumping out, separating the calf, performing beneficial surgery on it, sewing it up and flying off.
if you were an elephant, wouldn't that seem a lot like an alien abduction? would the other elephants believe you? would any of the elephants be able to realize that the aliens were actually humans?
we're not exactly sure where elephants are cognitively, but there's some thinking that they can differentiate between languages and even understand context syntax. as far as we know, humans are the only other animals that can understand context syntax. they appear to bury their dead, which suggests some beginning concept of religion. nor do we completely understand how they communicate, but we think they may have developed some kind of language through the emission of ground vibrations.
the point i'm trying to get at is that they may not be far from where we were when we first developed the sky-god religions. one attempt to try and rationalize these sky-god religions is to suggest that they may be a memory of contact.
go find some videos of humans interacting with wildlife in africa via helicopter and come back and tell me that's crazy.
the economist/yougov and nbc/sm polls are both trash. don't even aggregate them. both blacklisted. remember: i'm reacting solely to methodology, not their claims.
clinton is leading comfortable in national polls, right now - by a little less than ten points. but, of course it's the local polls that matter.
it's very weird. a lot of times he seems like he doesn't want to govern.
mr. prime minister. you're the person that's supposed to govern. that means picking supreme court justices. and, you're supposed to pick the person that most accurately uphold and reflects your partisan agenda.
i don't understand where he's coming from. some kind of dark age buddhist "wisdom", or something?
i voted for the liberals. i want them to replace every judge with a liberal. i want them to replace the conservative judges with liberals. i want them to replace the liberal judges with even more liberal judges, and the extremely liberal judges with exceedingly liberal judges. i want the court to have exactly zero conservative justices on it. that's why i voted for the liberals. what's the use in having an election, when the liberals appoint conservative judges?
could you imagine hillary clinton making george w. bush the head of a committee to determine the next supreme court nominee?
wait. don't answer that...
it's absurd.
i'm really not opposed to a committee, but i would expect him to stack the committee with liberals - because the liberals won the election and therefore get to stack the court. that's why we had an election!
the supreme court - ironically - won't let him do this, though. the constitution is pretty clear that the prime minister has to pick the justices.
dale mcrobie
This is unfair to unilingual Canadian! Just because one only speaks one language they should not be penalized!
jessica amber murray
how do you expect a unilingual judge to hear a case in french? this is a common sense requirement.
Michael Chong
first off they do not individually sit as judges for each case,it's a group sitting. Also why not just get language translators. If ambassadors who are sitting at the UN have them why not Canada.?
jessica amber murray
so, the fiscal conservatives want to hire translators instead of just appointing a bilingual judge. curious.
with something like the supreme court, i'd suggest that we don't want translators getting in the way in the interpretation of language. rulings can turn on interpretations. so, i think it's a functional requirement that the court can understand a ruling out of quebec natively, and be able to translate it independently.
jessica amber murray
i voted for a liberal prime minister. so, i want a liberal prime minister to appoint a liberal judge.
Cindy Fordyce
I want a Liberal gov't to appoint the best person who meets the qualifications to be appointed.
Politics is not an Olympic sport and should never be made so.
jessica amber murray
you're incoherent. you say you want a competition over who's "the best", then you say it's not a competition. but, you can't possibly define what "the best person" who has "the best" qualifications even *is*.
all politics is bias. and all law is politics. it's basic critical legal theory.
there is no meritocracy. there's simply a party apparatus. and, you can appoint somebody that upholds your biases or somebody that upholds somebody else's.
a part of the responsibility of the prime minister is to appoint the supreme court justices. this is a political process, meaning it's a part of the prime minister's mandate. not only is this process obviously unconstitutional, but it's a rejection of one of the prime minister's core job functions: to determine the justice in such a way that reflects the popular will, which is necessarily a partisan process.
the previous election was about wiping the conservatives out of power. where did all this bipartisan or nonpartisan stuff come from? there's no mandate for this.
i'm an evangelical atheist and everything, but a part of me kind of wants this to be retribution.
if some sadistic god does exist, however unlikely, i'd like to think it has an altruistic streak that would take a community like this (where virtually everybody is employed by the tar sands industry) out.
jessica amber murray
why does he keep appointing conservatives?
the election results were not ambiguous. it's kind of counter to his mandate to keep stacking all these reform bodies with conservatives.
if we wanted conservatives, we would have voted for them. we voted against them. so, why is he doing this?
Lori Cameron
Did you mean, why does he keep appointing those whom he believes are the best qualified for the given positions?
jessica amber murray
i'm not sure how anybody comes to the conclusion that kim campbell is best qualified for anything, besides a lecture on how to preside over the worst electoral defeat in canadian history.
a supreme court advisory is not a meritocratic position, it's a partisan position. i really don't want a conservative body determining the composition of the next supreme court, and it's frankly downright enraging to see a liberal prime minister put such a thing in motion.
ironically, i don't think that this is constitutional.
Tim Saucier
What disqualifies Kim Campbell from the job, aside from being "Conservative"?
jessica amber murray
considering that we elected an overwhelming liberal majority, i think that's enough.
"we would like to announce our new strategy to defeat isis: a dance-off!. get on your dancin' shoes, osama. we're gonna prance you back to the dark ages."
where's john fucking travolta when you need him, anyways?
you know, this is the thing, right - it gives clinton almost infinite leeway. she seems to want to run her campaign like an evil dead outtake. but, he's possibly worse.
i'm even willing to concede that people will play along with a little good theatre. but, the level of disrespect these dipshits have for voters has reached levels that just can't even be dealt with any more.
i'm a little more productive today, but i'm still dragging. i just spent a while dropping the relevant vlogs on to the facebook page.
if i actually had any fans, they couldn't complain. it's a lot of content.
i've also closed the door to the other room, which has the effect of both eliminating the air conditioning from my main living space and turning it on in the recording studio. that may actually turn out relatively well, in both ways. but, i haven't really tested it yet.
the tracklisting was finalized and uploaded on the morning of the 31st. i was hoping to get the bureaucracy done yesterday, but it was just a wash. i should get it done by the time i fall asleep, today.
i should get a call from the doctor's today. i'm going to avoid checking email until tomorrow.
the cbs and cnn polls are both reporting reliable methodologies, although i'm not certain that the cbs poll is using live interviewers (live interviewers are more reliable than robocalls). those are the first two sets of reliable polling results, so far.
again: i'm not convinced that the convention had anything to do with trump's temporary bump, or clinton's recovery. i think there's a pattern that suggests he gets temporary bumps on terrorist activity and that they fade when people get over their anger and regain the use of their brains. we'll have to see how that develops.
i'm sorry, but i don't at all see why the question of sacrifice is remotely important. if i were trump, i would have said that i haven't made any sacrifices and aggressively asked why it's important to make sacrifices. this is a free society. living in it is about advancing self-interest, not about making sacrifices. so, i don't know where this is coming from. is it in islam? calvinism? but, i don't identify with it.
"Public Policy Polling surveyed 1,276 likely voters on July 29th and 30th. The margin of error is +/-2.7%. 80% of participants, selected through a list based sample, responded via the phone, while 20% of respondents who did not have landlines conducted the survey over the internet through an opt-in internet panel."
you can throw them in the trash, too. i'm still waiting for a good firm to present itself.
with something like this, it just opens up the possibility that that 20% is being used to falsify the results. 1,000 people is a large enough sample this early in the race. there's no reason to bring this opt-in panel in other than to fuck with the results.
so, i don't want to naively accuse them of polluting the sample. no. they're doing it on purpose.
if they'd like to release just the real polling data separately, that would shut me up. don't count on it.
the logic underlying bernie or bust - that we're better off abstaining, under the hope that trump leads to collapse - appears to be disintegrating.
clinton increasingly looks like the better bet for collapse.
if you want a system of rationing and austerity, markets are far more effective than centralized governments at restricting access to goods.
i wasn't able to get a straight answer out of anybody at the radiology
department regarding why the second mri was requested, so i've cancelled
it. i was specific: do you think you might see a tumour? do you think
you might see a lesion? all i could get was "the doctor is requesting a
second mri". an appeal to authority is simply not convincing to me.
i
have verified at least that the information was sent to the referring
doctor, so i will call them on tuesday for further exploration of the
issue.
while it is possible that the radiologist was just
incompetent with his notes - that he has a good reason that he didn't
specify because he's lazy - my reading of the situation is that he's
just looking for a way to bill me twice, and that that's actually
probably a good sign because it probably at least rules out the tumour.
as mentioned previously, i'm leaning more towards lyme disease at this point. but, i'm going to need to see the scans myself....
ok, i just woke up. i had checked my inbox, half asleep, during a
mid-morning urination awakening and they want to inject me with some
isotope of something...?
what it does is make the tumor
or lesion more visible in the scan. that seems to indicate that there
is a tumor or lesion. but, i need to know what it is, first, before i
make any decisions. injecting me with some kind of metal seems kind of
reckless, unless it's a mitigating factor. harm reduction. i'm not there
yet.
are they lesions? if so, i'd rather get a blood
test for lyme disease. and, i mean, there's not really any treatment for
ms, anyways. i'll just take the diagnosis to my nearest odsp office and
otherwise forget about it. no, really. so, i have ms. what does
injecting me with a heavy metal for an mri accomplish? but, what if i
only have lyme disease? there's safer ways to determine this.
do they think they found a tumour? how aggressive do they think it is? this is the one situation where i may consent to this...
....but
i also need to see the existing scans first. apparently, it was the
radiologist that requested the second scan. who is what? a technician?
"oh, i'm not a doctor."
two things i'm worried about.
1)
all industry exists for the purpose of maximizing profit. even in
canada, people get paid. and, what that actually means is that we have a
lot of unnecessary procedures done because somebody gets paid. on first
glance, too much health care might seem better than not enough. but,
this is one of those circumstances where too much may be worse. i'm not
ruling the procedure out on principle, i just want to make sure that
we've gone through the safer - less expensive - options first.
2)
i talk a lot of shit in a lot of places. i keep pointing out that i'm
harmless, but i'm not sure i'm winning that argument. would somebody go
out of their way to get rid of me? it's not impossible. it *is*
outrageous. it *is* ridiculous. but, the world we live in is outrageous
and ridiculous. i just need to be a little bit more careful than the
average bear, i think.
so, i'm going to go call them
back and tentatively cancel the appointment. i need to have them
articulate exactly what they're looking for, and confirm that they've
actually sent the results to the doctor that referred me. i also want to
know when i can see the scans, myself.
i'm sleeping mornings this week. we'll see if there's something in my inbox when i wake up.
if i can sleep...
i initially noticed facial tics around my left ear some time around ten years ago. i had an mri done but i didn't hear anything back and i forgot about it. it was kind of just a mild annoyance. at the time, i was thinking something more along the lines of heavy metal poisoning from living on a busy street with a lot of truck traffic (bronson avenue) than anything else.
the issue of the facial tics would come and go, but never really got out of hand as anything more than an annoyance until a little over a yea ago when i noticed i was having an extended period of difficulty swallowing (dysphagia) that has yet to really resolve itself. i initially brought this up with a nurse at the camh here, who did not take me seriously. i asked several times for an mri, and he kept telling me we'll talk about it later. it never happened.
the first few years i was here, i was struggling to find a doctor willing to prescribe me hormones. i was able to finally find a family doctor last fall that was willing to not just prescribe but also to increase my dosage, and that has had some positive effects. he has also finally taken my concerns about dysphagia seriously. while he suggested i should see a neurologist, i insisted on seeing an ear doctor to start and then graduating to a neurologist as the issue resolved or complicated itself.
the ear doctor initially did not take me seriously, either. however, i pushed for a hearing test - which discovered some loss in the affected ear. she still refused to take the situation seriously, suggested that the test was just error and insisted that i take it again. i instead pushed for an mri - which i had on monday.
i felt the mri would be the best idea because it could determine three things:
1) is my jaw crooked? in 2006, i fell of my bike and landed terribly on my face. the tic and resulting dysphagia could be the result of a skeletal abnormality, which could either be broken back in place or just dealt with. it would be useful to know, one way or the other.
2) do i have brain lesions? if i do, are those lesions more consistent with something like ms or more indicative of something like lyme disease?
3) is there maybe a tumor in there? i'm considering this possibility to be extremely remote due to how long i've had the issue for. one does not have a malignant tumor in their head for over ten years. i'd be dead by now.
i just checked my email and realized that somebody called me on the saturday of the long weekend to book a second mri. while i will not know the reasons for this request until i call back, i'm considering this to be somewhat ominous. it is possible that there was some error and they need to redo it, but i would think that a request for a second mri indicates that they found something that shouldn't be there. is it a lesion or a tumor?
i think they open at 6:00 am.
i was very young when i decided not to have children. a child, myself, really. 12. 13. of course, you don't want to rule the idea out entirely. there's always that possibility. but, i'd already made up my mind before i got to high school. there was never really any doubt about it.
i just want to point out that with ohio, i don't think it's about trade or about abortion, i think it's more about nascar - it's cultural. that's why bush won twice. most of ohio is really a southern state. this is where mccain and romney coming across as out of touch elitists hurt them, and where clinton's status as an elite hurts her.
if anything, the abortion thing is going to make what should be a walk for trump a lot closer as it's going to get the vote out in the northern part of the state. but, trump wins here for the same reasons that bush did.
she has a better chance in florida. but, i think you'll see the same basic dynamic assert itself on a slightly lower level. the north of florida is the south; while anti-trump feeling will likely increase turnout in the south, it's cultural affinities will overpower in ways that romney and mccain couldn't orchestrate. again: bush won florida. twice.
due to recent demographic changes, north carolina is maybe a wildcard. but, i think it's a stretch to argue it's a swing state. one win in the modern era does not a swing state make. indiana is not a swing state, either.
the map technically has her less than 270, but that doesn't really put the election in play. if she wins virginia, she wins. if she wins missouri, she wins. if she wins both iowa and nevada, she wins. what are the chances of none of that happening? of trump carrying 3 of those 4 states? they're not very high.
