history is actually really clear on this point, though: if you elect the conservatives, they won't actually balance the budget, they'll just cut taxes even further and make the problem even worse.

and, when the imf comes banging on the door looking for your pensions because you spent your whole life avoiding taxes, and are now too old to fend for yourself, don't expect your kids to rally around you, and don't say we didn't warn you.

the bourgeoisie has been living for free for years....

party's over, guys.

conservatives are going to want to frame this as though we spent too much and now we need to tighten our belts.

rather, it was conservative policy that created a structural deficit that allowed taxpayers to avoid paying into the system, and now it's time to send out the bills; it's time to pay up.

government spending is definitely not too high in this country. if anything, the raft of social issues we have in front of us indicate that spending is nowhere near what it should be. and, let's be clear here - markets don't solve problems, they just make everything worse.

if there's a dramatic disconnect between revenue and spending, it's because taxes are way too low to cover the spending we need to undertake to balance out inequalities and make everybody's lives liveable.

there's lots of smart ways to raise taxes. we could undo the stupid gst cut that harper did, for starters, and that created a structural deficit that's never really been addressed. we could bring in a transaction tax on internet purchases, to try to adjust to the changes in consumer behaviour. i'm an advocate of an increase in property taxes to help municipalities. corporate taxes have been moving in the wrong direction for decades, and need to be brought back. and, taxes on the wealthy are obscenely low.

if the conservatives really care about the budget deficit, that is what needs to be done - not further cuts in a society that has already been cut to the bone, and is leaking marrow, as it is.

you know, we could erase this tomorrow at the stroke of a pen.

i've been saying for years that nobody cares, and i still think that's true, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing. i'm not running over this again, but it's just a question of keeping the imf away.

and, to the extent that i do care, i want to see higher taxes to offset the spending, not cuts in spending to reduce the deficit.

https://www.mitchelladvocate.com/opinion/kurl-lessons-for-erin-otoole-canadians-care-about-the-deficit-but-they-care-about-covid-impact-more/wcm/7ea11443-7369-46a9-9702-4fbe8cce1fc1

actually, i think it's ridiculous that people are giving nancy pelosi a hard time about getting a fucking haircut.

she's obviously wearing a wig, for starters.

yes, i can present an obvious source of the error in the modeling, otoh, and that's actually with black voters.

now, i'm just hypothesizing this; i'll leave it to somebody else to look it up. but, black turnout in 2008 was through the roof, and he got more than 99% of it. i can't imagine any modelling that would have given any candidate 99% of anything, or at least not anywhere west of moscow.

and, that might be an ironic part of the answer - it could be that a part of the reason the wilder effect didn't show up with obama is because he overpowered it with exceedingly strong black support.

you'd have to look at the old models and crunch the numbers and figure it out, but i'd guess you can get a substantive amount of the discrepancy that way, without even looking at whether white voters lied to pollsters or not.

if obama was whatever you wanted him to be, and black voters wanted him to be black, and conservatives wanted him to be a conservative, and anti-war activists wanted him to be anti-war and ....

....then why wouldn't white liberals want him to be one of their own, and see him that way, as well?

i'm sure that the internet just imploded.

listen - he's the only blackish looking candidate i know of, ever, that made sure to tell everybody he was half white, every time he spoke. generally, black politicians run as being black, and embrace their blackness, and make it a part of their campaign. obama didn't do that - he ran as biracial, and put it at the very front of his messaging.

so, at the least, it's an apples and oranges comparison, because he really wasn't like somebody like jesse jackson, who was 130% black and wouldn't go five minutes without asserting it.

a lot was written about obama being a blank slate - voters projected what they wanted on to him. so, he was a socialist, if you wanted him to be, and a conservative if you wanted that, too - or he was what you most feared, if you leaned towards the opposing team.

i don't think it's such a stretch to think that a substantive number of white voters took his arguments for post-racialism, and his biography as growing up the son of a white woman from kansas, the way they wanted to, and projected an essentially white image of him.

you can agree with me or not, but i think it should be acknowledged, at least, that obama was different than virtually any other black politician in terms of his identity, and it makes a great deal of sense to tie things like an absence of the bradley effect to that rather clear matter-of-fact.

and, what kind of bradley effect can we expect with kamala harris, an indian-jamaican-american female?

you'd be the worst bigot in the world if you didn't vote for her!

why didn't the bradley effect apply to obama?

i don't know.

one hypothesis is that, at least in the primary, clinton's own bradley effect (as a woman) was actually more powerful, and that the sexism overpowered the racism. that might actually be true, but you're stacking hypotheticals. who knows, really.

another thing to point out is that the nature of obama's coalition was hard to poll, in the first place. my memory of 2008 was that obama's vote was incredibly efficient, so you just might end up accidentally undoing a bradley effect by weighting the polls badly, in trying to peg his support, which was very intensely concentrated in urban regions.

a third suggestion is that he was just an enigma; every rule has exceptions.

but, i'm actually going to throw this out there: barack obama is actually white. well, it's true - he's white in almost every way. you have to bring in jim crow laws to decide he's black. i know a lot of people won't really like this analysis, but the fact is that he massively played up his kansas roots & his white mother, and while he can "pass as black" when he has to, he's more comfortable in an essentially culturally white exterior.

so, it could be that the bradley effect didn't apply to obama because voters didn't really interpret him as black.

"western capitalism is almost a better product than heroin." - the now late genesis p'orridge

i might alter that somewhat - western capitalism is almost the same product as heroin.

"before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”

it's a cliche, and one of the first memes i saw back in the day.

but, it's true.

and, i'm pretty sure my problem is the latter, not the former.

so, i don't need drugs; i need a safe place to exist, where i never have to deal with other people ever again...

i should post the record.

and, maybe it'll chill me out a little.

this is kind of a lost classic. somebody might correct me, but i believe this is the first thing that the singer from skinny puppy did after the band imploded c. 1995. there was a slew of key/goettel releases directly after goettel died....of a heroin overdose....but ogre was quiet for a while. he may have been on tour with ministry and/or pigface...kmfdm, even?

this was with martin atkins, mostly, although mark walk was also involved.

it's a concept record that is critical of ritalin use in children.

and, then, when you have kids that act like kids, they'll push crack on them, to turn them into zombies - until they can get hooked on heroin, too!

heroin for all!

we need to tell people to shut up and suffer, sometimes.

and, we need to get people conditioned to the necessity of suffering in existence, if anything to prove that we're real.

we live in a very, very, very sick world.

the doctors are all drug pushers and heroin dealers.

and, the political system wants to facilitate it.

i could have walked out of there with an rx for vicodin or oxycontin, virtually on demand.

they would have been happy to give it to me.

we should probably actually be making it harder for low-life doctors to prescribe this stuff, not easier to find it.

take a walk through downtown windsor some time and put 2 & 2 together.

it's easy to see why we have such a problem with opiates in this country: the doctors prescribe it like it's candy, even when people vehemently scream that they don't want it.

that wasn't the first time that er tried to give me opiates.

it wasn't even the second.

it was actually the third.

and, you'd have to tie me down and inject it, because that's one of the very few ways to generate violence in me; i'm a passive, non-violent person, but you put that shit near me, and you'd better be wearing head gear, cause i'm going to react like a hungry cougar and go for your eyes and your neck...

great health care system, huh?

even at the 50% dosage, i'd say there's a 75% chance i'm going to harm myself.

but, i have to do it before they'll react.

and they'll just give me heroin when they do.

i am not going to be a friendly person for the next little while, as i'm going to be dealing with hormonal changes that i don't want and don't expect i'll be able to process without fits of violence.

but, what the hospital is telling me is that i have to actually have a reaction before it will treat me, that it won't act preventatively.

...because they're a bunch of fucking idiots.

and, i hope every single one of them dies a horrible death. and soon.

the emergency supply of testosterone blockers was at half the dosage i've been taking since june. it's not going to be enough, and i'm going to need to act aggressively to get the surgery; in the meantime, i should expect severe levels of depression as a result of the rising t-levels that i've been trying to avoid.

and, i can only hope that it's enough to survive until i can chop them out and sacrifice them to demeter.

that ritual will happen, btw - i will get these horrible things in a jar, and take them to a field and burn them.

i don't want acceptance; i don't want to be let in.

i want an escape. i want a way out...

join the community. integrate. fit in.

no - it's your community that makes me want to hang myself.

again: i don't think i suffer from a physical form of depression.

but, people bum me out; i can't deal with the selfishness, the stupidity and the ignorance. it just makes me want to roll up in a ball and cry.

what i need is a way to avoid people, and all of the treatment options are built around trying to get me to interact with them.

i'm as happy as i can be when i don't have to deal with the consequences of other people's stupidity. so, if i could build an isolation chamber that was big enough to hold my things, and prevented me from interacting with everybody else in the world in any way, i'd be ecstatic, really.

it's not realistic, obviously.

all i can do is yell and scream and create conflict and piss people off enough that they do what i need; it's the only way to exist in a society like ours, where everybody's such a piece of shit.

i have a story to write...

so, i've got my head in too many places at once and trying to do everything and succeeding at nothing. i've been eating, typing and cleaning, without much of a clear plan; i do that when i'm in shock, or otherwise weirded out, and i think that's the right way to describe reality right now. i thought i had to get downtown to present myself for the ticket, but of course it's closed and operating over email instead, so i should be inside until i have to get more estrace mid-month.

i'll need to make some calls on monday regarding a number of things.

i want to do some major cleaning in here, but it's pointless if the pig is smoking. i'm not going to do laundry and scrub down the walls if it's just going to emit more pollution, what's the point? i'll be cleaning 20 hours a day, with no end. i'd might as well sit in my own filth, instead.

i at least got some fans set up in here, and it's making somewhat of a difference, but i'm going to need to wait until the temperature comes way, way down before i'm able to do a serious overturn. it was nice for a few weeks in the late spring but, as it is, opening the window in this neighbourhood just makes things worse.

so, i feel like i'm tied to my bedpost with no meaningful way out. it's deeply depressing.

i should try to get back to what i was doing and react to the pollution from upstairs as it presents itself. it may mean running the shower for long periods, but so be it.

once i've got that under control, i can make an analysis regarding what to do about cleaning in here, and whether i think it's a waste of time or not.

this article is overthinking it, i think.

i don't think anybody thinks biden is responsible for the looting, or that trump could do much to stop it, either. i mean, what could trump do? he could declare martial law, that's about it. i don't think wisconsites want that.

it's more of a question of how people organize and separate on the ground; you vote with or against your uncle, or your friends on facebook, and these sort of group mentalities take over, in absence of any really clear logical answer. i mean, what's the answer here? nobody's talking about that, they're just concerned about the fallout, and for good reason; it's not clear what you actually do about this. i'd like to get rid of the cops, but i know that's unlikely, and that trying is full of likely potential pitfalls that could make the issue far worse.

it consequently doesn't help for biden to distance himself from the situation if people are ultimately voting against that frenemy on facebook that, to them, represents biden, rather than against biden, himself.

and, like i say: you only need small numbers of defectors to be decisive in close races, especially given that what's happening is so unlikely to swing voters from trump to biden. like the bet soros made so many years ago, trump has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

i stated before that this isn't biden's fault, but i don't think what he's doing is going to help much.

biden's best tactic here is neither to distance himself from nor align himself with these protests, but to try to change the topic to something he has an advantage in, like health care.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/what-biden-understands-left-does-not/616000/

hydro has some issues, but we can fix them, and it is legitimately clean & renewable when done well. it's also a major potential export. it's baffling that this resource has been left undeveloped for so long.

nuclear, oil, coal, etc have issues that can't be fixed.

and wind & solar are useful as supplementary, but not primary, sources.

if we get fusion or anti-matter one day, great; for now, hydro is the best thing we've got.

so, you wanna talk about a children's crusade?

fine.

let's add slaughter-house five to the pandemic reading list.

we need some indignant liberals this cycle, clearly.

it's actually a hitchensian argument.

what kind of cosmic despot is this? one that must be overthrown, and beheaded in the square.

let's send joe and the democrats a message: he may be willing to sacrifice his own son for this empire of greed and exploitation, but we're not willing to sacrifice ours.

it's an old story, told many times, in various different ways.

this interpretation seems to be most similar to kirkegaard's.

but maybe it's time for the left to chop off it's own hand - before we make a terrible mistake.

so, yeah.

if you want to sacrifice your kids at the altar of corporate greed, neo-liberalism and imperial domination, maybe joe's your boy. maybe you don't love them much, anyways.

if you'd rather they live, if you'd rather they have a future, maybe he's not.

he sent his own fucking son to die, and then claimed it was justified as some kind of "sacrifice".

if he'll ritually murder his own, he'll ritually murder yours, too.

but, think this through, carefully.

if biden was willing to send his own son to die, how likely do you think he is to send yours?

he died of cancer at an absurdly young age.

if the cause of his cancer was ultimately some kind of exposure in iraq - something that is noted by researchers but poorly understood - then that would make him about as stupid a person as has ever existed, given he had no reason to put himself at that kind of risk, as the son of a sitting senator and eventual vice-president.

i don't know if i'd call him a sucker..

i think i'd give him a darwin award, though.

and, yes - biden's son was a fucking dipshit, too, clearly.

i mean, what kind of senator raises his son to go fight in a war? what kind of absent parenting leads to that?

that's what poor kids are for...

if you judge a man by the company he keeps, biden's friendship with mccain is pretty devastating.

"john mccain was my friend" - joe biden

exactly.

they should dig up his corpse and send it to jail.

and, if you're too young to remember how much of a piece of shit john mccain really was, just look at his daughter.

that should be enough.

here's some takedowns of mccain from the left:

1) https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/08/john-mccain-was-not-hero-obituary-war-racism-sexism
2) https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:B0q8mquH_7YJ:https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/john-mccain-death-legacy-trump-us-senator-vietnam-war-a8511441.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca
3) https://www.commondreams.org/news/2008/10/07/mccain-linked-private-iran-contra-group

if you think i'm supposed to get teary-eyed about a viciously misogynistic, racist, lying, crooked, war mongering piece of shit like john mccain...

bomb-bomb-bomb...bomb-bomb-bomb his grave.....

this is what john mccain should really be remembered for:

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

john mccain was a loser, though.

he was a whiner, too.

and a crook, on top of it.

right.

so, we're all going to have to adapt, now.

you can't hide in your basement from the bogeyman, forever - you need to go out and face the world and take risks.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/quebec-provides-list-of-47-schools-with-covid-19-cases

algebra's just for the feeble-minded.

i don't need it - i can find the unknowns on my own.

calculus is just a bunch of hopey-changey nonsense, and you don't need it to understand physics.

you're better off using your intuition to work this out, like aristotle did.

game theory is how educated people study conflict in the modern world.

don't let a bunch of idiots and demagogues try to convince you otherwise.

conversely, approaching conflict without the language of game theory, by claiming life is more important than a game or some other stupid thing, is like trying to solving a physics problem while rejecting calculus as "hopey changey".

it's stupidity.

...simply stated.

game theory is a widely used branch of mathematics, like calculus or algebra.

and, rejecting or disparaging it in it's legitimate use is just anti-intellectualism, plain and simple.

"progressives" are so fucking ignorant....

game theory is not about "playing games". in fact, it's of almost no use, whatsoever, in trying to win things like poker, or do well with stocks. the right branch of mathematics to maximize your chances in competitive sports tournaments is probability theory.

what game theory does is mathematically model conflict between two or more actors, and it's mostly used in the fields of applied psychology, political science, economics and evolutionary biology.

all that a "progressive" is telling you when they say "they don't play games" when game theory is invoked to study any sort of conflict is "i'm too ignorant to follow the conversation, and i'm too uneducated to understand the language you're utilizing".

they literally don't understand the words being said to them, it's that simple.

but, when a trained economist reacts that way, they're merely being disingenuous, because they do understand the language, and so should be labeled dishonest rather than ignorant - and cast aside as a demagogue, trying to confuse you. that is, the economist knows full well why that kind of response is just base ignorance - but they think you don't, and are trying to confuse or mislead you with lies.

that said - and i've said this a few times - i understand that i'm arguing in favour of a strawman.

i'm still expecting an austerity budget at it's core, and that any attempts to address climate change will, while attacked vehemently by the right, ultimately be of minimal actual impact.

this government has been trying to walk a line on this, and ultimately has neither succeeded in assuaging conservatives nor in subduing environmentalists. they're just squeezing themselves out....

i'm open-minded, and i'd like to see what they say before i react. but, my expectations are startlingly low, and i don't expect to be able to support the budget at all.

ford did not win due to the electricity fiasco, although it didn't help. ford won by swinging muslim votes in key ridings, due to the sex ed curriculum.

but, there is indeed a stark warning, and that stark warning should be heeded: lies often win over truth.

don't expect truth to win by default - you have to fight the liars at every turn.

i've been clear that i support renationalizing the grid in ontario, and going back to selling it to us at cost.

the way forward in this province is properly designed hydro-electric power systems, that are created in a way that minimizes or eliminates concerns for wildlife in the surrounding areas. this is perfectly feasible, it just needs to be done correctly, in ensuring that the priorities of all species up and down stream are accounted for, at the expense of profiting from the system.

energy production in ontario should belong to ontarians and be produced for ontarians' use-value, not belong to corporations and be produced for surplus-value for elites and foreigners.

the idea that energy costs in ontario increased due to the embrace of windmills & solar panels as a source into the system is a lie pushed by the right.

the reason that prices have gone up is that the system was deregulated and privatized, and the villain is mike harris, not dalton mcguinty.

prices are set by the ontario energy board and not by the market, and ford himself has demonstrated as much by legislating stronger controls (something wynne should have done, but chose not to; she brought in rebate programs to target the most vulnerable and let the wealthy take it on the chin, instead).

prices have increased due to greed by the corporate sector, and they just blamed it on the environmentalists as an easy scapegoat.

it's just greed.

that is all.

however, there is a cautionary tale for the liberals, here, in how lies spread through media can become compelling, if they are not properly countered. and, that warning is indeed stark: if they allow the dirty-oil backed media to frame a false narrative, they could see history repeat itself.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7316275/justin-trudeau-spending-throne-speech/

small sample sizes.

poor sampling methods.

high margins of error (or no way to calculate one at all).

an obvious bradley effect.

wait before you react.

if you have a liberal arts degree, or lower, it's important to ensure that you get somebody that knows how to read the polls to read them for you.

don't just read the headlines in the paper - they're frequently misleading. and, don't think you can wing it. you can't.

if you failed grade 10 math and haven't tried since, even if you're a lawyer, then step back and defer.

remember the cliche: lies, damned lies....and statistics.

i'm offering this service for free because i'm an altruist, because i believe in general public education (maybe i've read too much dawkins.) and because i have nothing better to do.

listen: the only people supporting this shit are psychologically damaged people. this isn't black v white, or right v left; it's sane v crazy.

most of the activists on the ground don't even support what's happening.

and, as mentioned, you just need a very minor swing to be decisive - 1%. that's it.

so, if you're going to throw an internet poll at me that completely counter-intuitively has biden up by 6% (with an 8% margin of error) in the presence of an obvious bradley effect, i'm just going to shrug it off and tell you to wait for better data.

again: i'm going to point to the low quality of the polling right now, more than anything else.

but, when polling white liberals in states like wisconsin around things like race riots, you have to understand a concept called a bradley effect. that is, most white liberals are not as honest as i am - white liberals tend to tell white lies when confronted with issues around race.

this is a well established phenomenon, and one that is still very real. i suspect it's happening right in front of you with the polling you're seeing, but you need an actual ballot before you can diagnose it; otherwise, it's just an educated guess to try to make sense of numbers that don't really add up. this is really an obvious classic bradley effect! it's just that you have to do the experiment to be sure.

the most recent measurable bradley effect we saw was in the 2019 canadian election, where last minute polling registered a "surge" for the ndp that was completely absent on the actual ground. this led to poor modelling predictions that should have really been caught by a savvy analyst.

if biden's numbers have improved upon the democratic party's numbers in the region since 2016, it's because he walked into this more appealing to white liberals than clinton was. and, if he wants to flip these states, he needs to do so by holding on to that white liberal support.

anything that has the potentiality to erode that support is going to hurt him in these states - and this has a tremendous potential to, even if respondents have been conditioned by the media to feel ashamed about it, and lie when asked about it.

wait.

might the magician have been odin, himself?

it's interesting to note that the earliest inscription for the "pied piper" uses the latin term magus, meaning magician - or, pagan. he's not called a merchant....and the idea of being sold into slavery takes a hit, due to the specificity of the term.

if they were led out of town by a "magus", that would suggest they were taken away by pagans, whatever the context.

that it was at the solstice would indeed reasonably be of some significance.

we know they could write.

we just don't have anything that they wrote, that survived.

at least, we don't think we do; we've been able to trace technical roman documents about seafaring and agriculture to pre-roman carthaginian sources. they exist, to us, simply in latin. but, we can decode them, and figure out where they came from.

there may be things that we only know from latin that are ultimately translated german or celtic works, we just haven't figured it out yet.

to clarify a misunderstood point...

the germans and celts had a writing system, we just have almost no record of it. so, you hear christians say things like "the germans left us without a history", but this is a deeply misleading statement. what seems to be more true is that the romans completely eradicated any trace of their writing in the areas they conquered (much as they did with the carthaginians), leaving only scattered remnants in areas that never saw direct roman control, like the ogham scripts in ireland, the norse sagas in iceland and the gothic runes in the east.

so, it's true that virtually everything we know about the celts & germans was written by the romans, but it is actually rather dubious that it's because nothing was written - and more likely because their own history, as they wrote it, was eradicated as an intentional act of genocide.

it's a good example of how blurry our own history is. this isn't pre-history; it's roughly contemporary with aquinas, and marco polo. but, the christians destroyed everything...

on first glance, it sounds like a sanitation of a devshirme raid, but it seems too early for that. would the christians have rounded up kids like this? well, look at the residential school system in canada (and australia and south africa) for a parallel; it's not that crazy, but i don't know of any comparisons directly in europe. generally, the christians had the good sense to realize they could brainwash the young ones, and only killed off the adults.

could they have been sold off into slavery by italian merchants? that's not too outlandish, in this period.

but, my gut tells me that this is a late example of human sacrifice, perhaps in reaction to a lengthy period of drought. and, some cursory research does tell me that there were frequent droughts in this area of europe at the time.

sadly, we'll never know our own history, because it was purposefully destroyed or overwritten by the religious authorities. we can only guess, and warn others of the dangers of abrahamic colonization.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200902-the-grim-truth-behind-the-pied-piper

this seems to be what we're going to be fighting biden the hardest on, the return of militarism to the white house.

so, instead of using phrases like "brave men and women in uniform", i want to see phrases like "scared little boys and girls sent to die".

i may have been the person that invented anti-choice as a replacement for pro-life many years ago, and the reasoning underlying the shift in language was that conservatives are massive hypocrites in their rejection of abortion and their support for war.

if they were really pro-life, they'd be anti-war, too - and against the death penalty.

and, so, i allowed some christian pacifists to use the term, and started calling dime a dozen conservative anti-abortion activists anti-choice. it picked up after that.

i would like to present a similar shift in language around military service; stopping calling them men and women.

start calling then boys and girls, instead.

i don't know who is worse.

and, i'm more confused now than i was four years ago.

not much has changed, huh?

hey, here's some more:

as always, jello had the right answer 35 years ago.

yes: i support programs that give young, working class boys better options than becoming serial killers.

hrmmn.

sounds like something i might say, frankly.

the president is the commander-in-chief, so he can't be talking like that, even if the sentiment is essentially correct, and one i broadly share.

fuck the troops....

and, guess what gi joe? you don't wanna get blown up fighting for corporatism and the upper class, then don't sign up for combat. you won't see a tear from me, when you die - you fascist scum.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-said-us-soldiers-injured-and-killed-in-war-were-losers-magazine-reports/2020/09/03/6e1725cc-ee35-11ea-99a1-71343d03bc29_story.html

here's the new complaint against the police:

======

i attended the emergency room at the windsor hospital due to suicidal feelings on the afternoon of august 31st, and was removed violently from the premises around 20:30, and then placed in a holding cell. upon release, before 00:00, i was charged with trespassing, but i went right back because i required immediate care. i was arrested around 3:00, held until 8:30 and ticketed a second time, after that.

it is true that the doctor claimed i was not really suicidal, but merely a disgruntled welfare recipient looking to manipulate the system and insisted i be removed from the premise rather than treated. but, this is a position that has no basis in law, and there is a human rights complaint that will address that concern.

regarding the conduct of the officer, my position is that he had no authority to remove me from the hospital when i was there to seek treatment, and used a disproportionate amount of force to do so. this left me with a sprained leg, bruises and general soreness for several days. when an individual is experiencing a mental health episode, officers should transport them to the hospital for care, not remove them from the hospital kicking and screaming. the officer should have told the doctors that they did not have the authority to remove me from the premises when i was there to seek treatment, rather than act as hired guns to remove me on demand.

medical records & video of the incident will be available from the hospital as they are disclosed. there were also plenty of witnesses who can be identified from the video and asked to testify.

our hospitals cannot function as ongoing milgram's experiments, and cannot be run like detention centres. the rule of law must be asserted, here, and the people responsible for violent outbursts must be held accountable.

here's my new file number:
https://complaint.oiprd.on.ca/OIPRD.Estatus/check_en.aspx?number=E-202009041028022934

hrmmn.

https://books.google.ca/books/about/Edison_s_Environment.html?id=yEXyswEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

polluters should pay.

and, the inventor of the light bulb should get one of the biggest fines of them all.

they should posthumously charge edison with crimes against the environment, and force his family to pay into a fund to address climate change.

they didn't finish the job, sadly, but it was a good start.

and, i'm glad they burned down the wall street in oklahoma, btw.

we should burn down the ones in new york, london and toronto, too.

i mean, you know a guy is out of touch when he starts talking about how great of a contribution to civilization that incandescent light bulbs were, in the year 2020. the guy seems to think it's the 60s, or something.

i want to talk about how we get rid of incandescent light bulbs, not about who invented them.

well, the fact is that edison actually invented the light bulb, even if latimer offered a technical improvement to it. what biden is referring to is a pseudo-science called afrocentrism that makes all kinds of outlandish, and easily debunked, claims about the primacy of blackness to civilization.

but, what i want to actually know is this:

who fucking cares what the skin colour of the person that invented the light bulb was?

it's not a question of "rewriting history".

this is a completely irrelevant, absolutely inconsequential question.

it does not matter if the inventor of the light bulb was white, brown, black, yellow....or orange. the orange used to be the silly colour, 'cause nobody was orange. alas.

what matters is that we need to phase lightbulbs out, because they're contributing to the destruction of the planet.

the problem with the system here isn't political; we largely have that part figured out.

but, the quality of the doctors themselves, it's absolutely rock bottom.

so, i just filed a human rights case.

i'll write a first person blog narrative tonight or in the morning.

========

I feel it's necessary to produce some background information. That is, I'm going to tell you the whole story...

I am a male to female transgendered person that has been on hormones for most of the last twenty years and checks levels roughly once a year. I also have a diagnosed stress disorder; initially i was diagnosed with ptsd, which was later altered to social anxiety disorder, but the differences between these things are not entirely clear. what is clear is that i suffer from stress and anxiety in profound enough ways that i am considered to be unable to work, and currently live on odsp. Unfortunately, I have been noticing that my testosterone levels have been creeping up over the last several years due to the onset of tolerance to the testosterone-suppressing medication (cyproterone acetate), which has been decreasing the efficacy of the estrogen (the feminizing hormone) and having a general masculinizing effect that i've been taking steps to try to undo. In addressing this concern, i've run up against the problem of already being prescribed a high level of testosterone suppressors, and needing to take some other kind of approach to get testosterone levels down to full suppression.

It was decided at my 2017 appointment that, because i was already taking such a high dosage of cyproterone in the context of gender transition, it would be better to have my testicles removed than to try to increase the dosage; while the drug is considered clinically safe at relatively high dosages, and i still had a ways to go before concerns became relevant, if i were to continue to increase my dosage of this medication indefinitely, i'd eventually run up against the potential of damaging my organs, like my liver. it was just time to take the next step in transition, which is removing the source of bodily testosterone, allowing for a reduction of a drug that can have longterm consequences, rather than increase it at the potential of eventual harm, one day.

I saw a urologist in 2017, but he refused to remove my testicles as an elective surgery for what seemed to be religious reasons. While i considered launching a claim at that time, i was in a conflict with my landlord over second hand smoke (i had recently quit smoking) that preoccupied my time, and i ended up with little choice but to put the process off. it wasn't until my 2019 appointment that we made a more serious attempt to have the testicles removed, but when i returned for my 2020 appointment, i learned that the funding request got lost in the office (i had called several times to ask for the status, and was told in error that it was in process).

I also learned at the 2020 appointment, which was at the beginning of june of this year, that my testosterone levels had doubled over the last year, which was consistent with what i was feeling. Given the realities of elective surgery around the pandemic, and the fact that my funding request had been lost, i found myself in a crisis point and suggested that the dosage of cyproterone acetate be increased to prevent the onset of further remasculinization. My doctor instead suggested i try spironolactone if i was unhappy with the cyproterone, and i accepted a prescription, but when i got home and did research into it, i learned that (1) the spiro is less effective than the cyproterone (so switching didn't make sense) and (2) the spiro has more severe complications at lower dosages, indicating that it would make more sense to double my dosage of cyproterone, if what i was concerned about was primarily the safety of the drug. i also double checked that my new dosage was safe by checking the data sheet for it, and learned that i was moving from 33% to 66% of the maximum safe dosage. so, i cancelled the new prescription and sent a fax to my family doctor to double the rx of the initial prescription. as i was confident in my own research, i just merely assumed he would act upon my request, and went ahead and started doubling up, assuming that the new rx would be available for me on my next renewal.

however, when i went to renew, i found that the doctor had faxed back the initial rx for the dosage i was previously on, without explanation. i assumed this was an error. so, i asked the pharmacy to fax back a request for a doubling of the rx a second time, and continued with the increased dosage. i also received a letter in july, indicating that my funding request for testicular removal had been granted; by that time, however, i'd already increased the dosage and decided to stick with it until i could see the doctor next. this carried forwards until the end of august, when my rx ran out and i tried again - with the same result. i took my last cyproterone dosage at 00:00 on august 31st; i needed to find another dosage by noon.

on the evening of the 30th, my pharmacy informed me that, while my rx was still valid, i would no longer be able to bill my insurance company for it because i'd already used up the rx until mid october. i would either need to pay out of pocket (an impossibility, considering my disability status) or ask the doctor to double the rx, to conform to what i'd been taking since early june. worse, my appointment with my family doctor had been postponed at this point, apparently because he was out of the office until mid-september, so i would be unable to speak with him directly.


the pharmacy sent another request on the morning of the 31st, and received back exactly the same response, confirming the initial rx.

baffled by this, i went into the dr's office and spoke with a doctor that was covering for him, who told me that the reason they kept sending back the initial dosage was that there were treatment guidelines that would not allow for a dosage beyond what i was taking. that is, i was already maxxed out on the cyproterone. i explained the situation to him, but he told me his hands were tied - he was *unable* to increase the dosage without exposing himself to liability, and would not do so. while he agreed that the dosage i requested was technically safe in the short term, he insisted it should only be prescribed to prostate cancer patients, and was not moved by my insistence that it was short term, until i could have my testicles removed, as a cancer patient might. he told me i'd have to pay out of pocket, knowing i could not.

so, faced without options, and feeling suicidal, i took myself to the er to explain the scenario - after twenty years of being female-identifying, that is essentially my entire waking life, i was forced with the inevitability of imminent detransition, without there being anything i could do about it. while i did not want to kill myself, i was fully cognizant that the effects of remasculinization would be too much for me to bear, and that i needed immediate intervention to prevent myself from falling into a downward spiral of depression that would have no conceivable endpoint besides me taking my own life. this was a very stressful realization; as mentioned, i suffer from a stress disorder, so an episode of some sort was inevitable, and the er was the right place for me to be while it was happening.

while waiting in the emergency room at the ouelette campus of the windsor hospital, i found myself badly triggered by the temperature. i was wearing a tight-fitting pink tshirt and a pair of stretchy jeans; i would have needed a winter jacket and a toque to feel comfortable in the temperature in the waiting room. while my inability to climatize to even the slightest amount of air conditioning is a known condition for me, i was not able to prevent myself from becoming episodic, and found myself engaging in erratic behaviour to try to warm up - running back and forth across the er room, running on the spot, swaying side to side, and sort of bicycling in motion while sitting in the chair. this attracted the attention of security, who demanded i stop, and this is where the complaint begins.

while this behaviour may have been slightly annoying, it was not threatening to the people around me, and i felt that preventing myself from falling ill due to the cold - something that i know from experience was of serious concern - was of greater importance than stopping some of the other patients from feeling annoyed. i know that i've been in er rooms where patients were experiencing far more annoying symptoms, due to schizophrenia or even mental retardation, than i was; dealing with people having mental breakdowns in whatever capacity is a part of the experience of going to the er, and they'd just have to suffer the minor inconvenience, which is all that it was.

the security guard, however, took it upon himself to get very aggressive with me at this point. first, he asked triage to discharge me without being seen by a doctor, which was granted by the nurse - who i had told moments earlier i was suicidal and episodic. so, i need to get that point across: i told the nurse that i suffered from anxiety and was at the er because i was suicidal and episodic, and she discharged me for being episodic. so, i was asked to leave for displaying the behaviour that brought me to the er in the first place.

rather than leave on request, i cited the canada health act and insisted i had the right to see a doctor when suicidal under stress from anxiety. the security guard on duty, who i later learned was named ryan, denied the universality clause in the canada health act and called the police to remove me from the property instead.

initially, the police attempted to remove me by force, but when i resisted they realized that i was having a mental health episode and relented. after all, when the police are faced with an individual in a mental health crisis, what they do is bring them to the hospital, which is where i already was. after some discussion and debate that i only vaguely remember due to being episodic, but that i recall was at times very heated, the police left the premises. i was called into the hospital shortly after that, but what follows is a continuation of the initial point of conflict, as security clearly felt i should have been removed.

the nurse i saw after triage was the one bright point of all of this and rather kind, as she realized i was shivering due to the air conditioning and brought me some warm blankets. the episode left me both physically and mentally exhausted, and i found myself falling asleep once i got under them - first it was two blankets, and then it was three more, and i could have used another ten to really warm up. this just demonstrates the extent of the situation, and how cold i really was.

i spoke very briefly with a dr. attan, who told me he could prescribe me a dangerous opiate (which i refused), but would not take my request for cyproterone seriously. he told me he'd take a look at my file, and did not return to speak with me. instead, i was asked by the nurse to provide blood & urine samples, and then eventually falsely accused of being under the influence of methamphetamines (something i've never taken before in my life!).

so, to recap: a patient who is diagnosed with a stress order (myself) entered the hospital in a suicidal state due to fear of detransitioning, and when she demonstrated symptoms of that stress disorder due to a real fear of an inevitable traumatic event, she was refused serious treatment, offered opiates as a treatment option instead and then told she must be on methamphetamines, instead of acknowledging the trauma she was experiencing.

if that was not outrageous enough, a psychiatrist (who's name i did not pick up) then appeared to try to talk me through the meth addiction. he asked me a number of questions, including whether i suffered from depression, and if i would take anti-depressants; i told him that i am diagnosed with anxiety, not depression, and would not take drugs for something i have no diagnosis for, and little suspicion i suffer from. further, i felt the best treatment for the anxiety was access to the testosterone suppressant, given the totality of the situation. what the psychiatrist essentially told me was that i should get used to detransitioning, and while he would prescribe me medication to deal with it (an opiate, or an ssri), he would not do anything to prevent it. when i told him that i did not want to detransition, he became agitated, accused me of manipulating the system for my benefit, told me i was lying when i claimed i was episodic and suicidal and then discharged me without further concern, insisting it was my choice if i killed myself over the effects of detransitioning.

at that point, this was all too much to take, and i decided i would starve to death, on the spot; the psychiatrist demanded that i immediately leave the premises, and called the police back in when i refused.

when the police arrived, i told them that i would not leave, and they could do with me what they will, as i no longer had any will to live. the police repeated the accusation that i was lying, as presented by the psychiatrist, and insisted that i was trespassing after having been discharged, and i could go die somewhere else if i insisted. at one point, i was told point blank by security, who was called into help remove me, that they didn't care if i killed myself or not.

some combination of security & the police (four large men, all and all) then handcuffed me and dragged me out of the er, yelling and screaming, and brought me to a holding cell in the windsor police station, where i was ticketed with trespassing on hospital property and released within a few hours. the ticket says 8:53 pm; i made it home a little after 00:00 on september 1st. the sergeant seemed pontius-like; he didn't think i did anything wrong, but felt the obligation to obey the requests of hospital staff.

as it was now after midnight, and i was still without access to the testosterone suppressors, and consequently still suicidal, i felt little choice but to make sure i had a sweater this time and go back to the hospital, to try again. what else was i going to do? what i hoped was that the staff had turned over, and i would be able to get a second opinion.

while the staff had indeed turned over - there was a new security guard, and new nurses at triage - i did not make it in to see a doctor the second time. instead, the police were called in to remove me from the waiting room before i was allowed to see a doctor. when i told the police i was suicidal, they seemed to take me more seriously than the doctors did, but they ultimately had to defer to the diagnosis that i was making it all up, and lying to manipulate them into prescribing, forcing me into making the choice to have to actually make an attempt to kill myself to prove the psychiatrist wrong, rather than have them react rationally to try to prevent me from actually doing that. i was arrested a second time at about 3:00 on the morning of the 1st and held in a cell until 8:30 am, when i was ticketed a second time and told i'd be charged criminally if i went back to the er, presumably leaving me to my own devices to die on the street.

while i intended to go back to the er, i did not doubt that they would arrest me a third time if walked right back in, so i decided to try a different approach; my family doctor was now open, as it was the morning of the next day, so i walked to his office and presented myself to reception, who told me he was not in the office. i told the receptionist that i would not leave as i had no other options surrounding existence, and asked her to make a decision to either call an ambulance to take me to the er (would they arrest me if i came in in an ambulance called by a physician's office?) or call the police to have me removed. the receptionist refused to make that choice, as she was not a doctor, and suggested i ask a walk-in clinic to make the choice instead. i decided that this was more likely to get me to the hospital in an ambulance, which was the choice i wanted made, and went to the closest clinic - which was closed, due to the pandemic. i tried a few more, and they were all closed as well. so, i decided to go home and make some calls to see what the best way to get into the hospital was, or maybe to try the other er campus (the met campus) in town. i first sent a fax to the windsor hospital when i got home, and then called my pharmacy to inquire as to the price of a very small supply - as i had now been off suppressors entirely for nearly 36 hours, and was starting to feel the effects. if i could buy a week's worth, it could prolong my life until i could convince somebody to prescribe...

thankfully, i got some empathy from the pharmacist, who fronted me a month, and that ended the crises for that time. it remains to be seen if i can either quickly have the surgery i need (which is now the priority) or find an appropriate doctor to overprescribe until i can.

while i take some responsibility for user error, as it is, the reaction by the security staff, the initial doctor and then the psychiatrist were outrageous, and there is little doubt in my mind that i would have been treated differently if i were a ciswoman seeking comparable treatment. neither the psychiatrist nor the doctor accepted my stress disorder as real or saw hormone replacement as an acceptable outcome - they both wanted to treat me as a drug addict, and ultimately prescribe me drugs for depression, instead (would they receive royalties for that?). this refusal to accept the premise of gender dysphoria as an existing condition at all, and clear insistence that i accept detransition instead, was a blatant demonstration of bias and an overt example of discrimination.

it could be many years before i'm able to approach the health care system in the same way again, if i ever can at all.

======

well, i was threatened with arrest three times and arrested twice for the crime of presenting myself to the health care system under extreme duress in the middle of a suicidal episode, and accused of lying about it by two doctors in order to manipulate the system, as a welfare recipient. i then spent roughly eight hours in a holding cell, instead of receiving medical care. this has severely shaken my faith in the health care system, and left me unclear as to how to react the next time that i suffer from my stress disorder, to the point that i have suicidal thoughts. will i be told i'm lying and arrested? put in jail? sent to county? i feel like i've been barred from receiving care, due to being transgendered. it's deeply traumatic, but they'll just tell me i'm lying if i push the point. while the past cannot be undone, and i will always live with the trauma of what happened, i feel that some kind of lesson needs to be learned, and some kind of changes need to be made. further, i feel that i should be compensated for what i went through.

=====

again: i'm not going to be doing in depth polling analyses this cycle.

but, is biden really competitive in states like arizona and georgia, all of a sudden?

what i'm going to say is this: not only is it early, but the quality of the polling at this point is fairly poor. i'm not going to make a sophomoric argument about "reverting to the mean", and you should mostly throw away articles that are making that argument, as it isn't really applicable to popular opinion, in general. humans don't obey physical laws like that; we can get up and do whatever we want, there's really no reason to think we're going to revert to anything, in any scenario, at all. but, the polls we're getting at the moment are internet polls, or fox news polls, or polls that were bought and paid for by the parties, themselves.

that doesn't mean they're wrong, exactly.

it just means that you should have very low confidence in them, especially when they make very little sense.

if biden is going to win arizona, he's going to have to do exceedingly well with latinos, and there's little reason to take that idea seriously, given that he was deputy deporter-in-chief. he did terribly with them in the primaries. it's hard to believe that latin-speakers on the border are going to see this election as offering much of a substantive choice. so, it's a very, very tall order.

and, you could say the same thing about his chances in texas. i'm also going to throw a wrench in that argument - if biden does exceedingly poorly with apathetic latinos, who may also find themselves up against even more serious restrictions in their ability to actually vote than usual this cycle, we could see some surprises in some states around arizona that have leaned democratic recently, namely nevada, new mexico and colorado, which at the least may be a little closer than expected.

it's not that targeting latinos in this region is a bad strategy; to the contrary, i'd recommend it. and, i've been vocal about the need to build some kind of working class coalition between migrant workers in the south and factory workers in the north, which is what nafta was designed to prevent. the problem is biden; the blacks like him, but the hispanics do not, and the party should be focusing on damage control and holding what they have this cycle, not pretending that biden can win arizona or texas. a different candidate could potentially be competitive this cycle, but not one with the baggage in the migrant community that biden has.

sadly, this is a blown opportunity, as you could have run just about anything against trump on the border and beat him in the latino community.....except biden. i would expect low turnout, in the end, and trump to hold those states and do better than expected in the ones around them....

and, what about georgia? the carolinas? florida?

again: much of the polling is low quality, and the polling that is better quality seems to suggest that it's not close enough for biden to overpower the systemic biases that exist in these states, that make it difficult for blacks, specifically, to vote. if the polling in georgia is a toss-up, that's not good enough - he needs to be clearly ahead, outside of the margins, or voter suppression will hand the win to the republicans, across the board. hispanics in florida also tend to lean republican anyways, and i wouldn't expect biden to be very appealing to them, either. if biden is going to win florida, he's going to do it by sweeping retirees, who appear to be dying in large numbers. i don't seriously think any of these regions are in play.

i understand that the party wants to find some other way to win besides winning in the upper midwest, but biden is pretty much the worst candidate imaginable if you're trying to win hispanics, and while he is winning blacks rather comfortably, the margins are not just lower than obama's, but lower than clinton's too. it's not enough to flip anything.

he has to get white liberals out to vote to actually tip - and that's as true in georgia as it is in michigan. they're the demographic that was most important in 2018, they're what actually won biden the primary and they're the demographic that is most important, now, too.

...whether you like it or not.

we'll see if that changes in 2022 or 2024, but if it does, it doesn't help biden win just right now.

o, i called at exactly 13:00 and let it ring almost 20 times before the line disconnected. did you hear it ring?

you mentioned we'll figure something out. ok. these are the facts:

1) there's no way to reach me directly over the phone.

2) i can call out in theory, but can't reach you at this exact # for some unknown reason.

3) while i would really like a date for an appointment to be clarified, i am comfortable waiting for a bit until in-person appointments resume. i was previously under the impression that dr. ===== could do something for me that i now understand he cannot.

i am not a mask wearer (and i think the statistics are indicating that they are not working very well, anyways, given that people are not trained to use them properly. even the politicians on tv take the masks off with their bare hands and put them in their pockets, defeating the point. it's a symbolic thing, really, that is all. and, i'm reminded of the image of a mutually masked kamala harris and joe biden lifting their hands up into the air together, as a symbolic demonstration of how mask use can lead to overconfidence in self-defeating ways), but i am essentially self-quarantining and have been for months. i haven't been anywhere except stores and hospitals since march. i'm pretty low risk, even as a silent spreader.

another idea would be to communicate over email or some kind of chat software. as you can see, i type a fair amount.

otherwise, we could perhaps just direct a request to dr. ===== to put me in to see an endocrinologist and/or a urologist that is willing to talk about over-prescribing (and i understand *now* that i am requesting an over-prescription that dr. =====  himself cannot prescribe). that as the first thing.

further, i could perhaps even call around myself and find somebody willing to do the operation. that was the second thing. this is a procedure that should only take ten minutes and doesn't even actually require a visit to a hospital, it's just that few doctors seem willing to actually do it. if i can get that scheduled soon, the medication issue resolves itself.

it would be very useful to me to have a concrete date in mind to firm both of these things up, but i'm otherwise flexible, and will take the initiative to do what i can on my own and fax the information to the office as it becomes available, given the continuing bizarre state of reality around us.

but, erin.

you gotta answer me this question, cause i could never get a straight answer from your buddy, stephen.

you know that economic action plan?

was it a four year plan or a five year plan?

gorbachev vs the dauphin.

"i'll glasnost your head, motherfucker."
"pfft. you're too busy pere-stroking it...."

this o'toole guy actually seems to have this ditherish, gorbachevish veneer to him that is a potential comic gold mine.

listen: i wear a lot of hats, and it's clear i have a very silly court jester one in the pile.

and, i can see a good punchline from a great distance.

if i were the aging dauphin, i would not consider him a serious threat. the liberals could conceivably flip back a few seats they lost last time in places like downtown calgary, as this guy is not going to be seen well by westerners, either.

the liberals should be more concerned about their support on the left unravelling.

hi.

jessica....

i'm sorry about the late response, but the last few days have been confusing.

this is of course an absurd way to communicate, but there is simply not a number you can reach me at. i just don't need a phone, so i don't want to pay for one.

and, i don't understand why calling your office just rings. it could be that there's no number, maybe? the number i give you is a voip box, which is different than the way i call out, which is over google voice, and is not connected to a number at all. i'm essentially calling you from my gmail address.

so, i'm happy to do a phone appointment in principle, and the date and time are fine, but you have to give me a number to call that actually connects or it's not going to work.

but, i have an idea, because i do suspect that when i call it is ultimately getting screened, and discarded as a telemarketer or something.

i will call you today from google voice at exactly 13:00. you will know it's me because i've told you ahead of time. it may say "unknown number" or some other weird thing, but that's because it's over the internet, and there is actually no number to come up.

if that connects, we can talk about what to do when it does.

if it does not, the only way this can work is if you give me a number to call.

the disgusting pig upstairs has been smoking all morning, again. ugh.

the rental market in windsor is currently driven very dominantly by international students at the diploma mill under the bridge, most from india. so, i may have a brief time window to get out of here mid-semester.

i'll need to check soon...

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-colleges-universities-expecting-large-financial-losses-from-drop-in/

....and when white liberals stay home because they have no interest in voting for the most conservative democrat since andrew jackson, thereby handing the election to trump a second time, the whole world will denounce them as racists for doing it.

because that's the level of discourse, sadly.

but, nothing's going to change until the democrats pull their heads out of their asses and realize that they need this demographic to win, whether they like it or not.

the democrats have completely abandoned white liberals.

we don't want to vote for donald trump, and we're not going to become republicans.

but, they don't seem to have learned the lesson in 2016, and are going to have to lose again in 2020 to get it, it seems.

the country needs a third party option to the left of biden.

not tomorrow. not next cycle.

now.

and, yes: they can decide that they don't care about white liberals, and leave us disenfranchised, in a continuing attack against workers, and a continuing divide and conquer strategy to keep the working class divided and the wall street bankers in charge.

but, they're going to be in for a long period of republican governance if they do that.

they might not even care.

but, you should.

white liberals need a new party if they don't want to get ignored altogether. it's been clear for years. and, right now is exactly the time to do it.

biden should publicly reject rick snyder's endorsement, and denounce him for inaction in flint.

maybe the democrats have managed to confuse themselves with their own propaganda...

see, according to the democrat intelligentsia, the reason michigan swung to trump is that it's full of racists. despite the fact that it voted for obama twice, and voted against clinton - largely due to extreme apprehension about clinton's role in pushing through nafta, and similar concerns about the tpp.

so, if you follow the democrat intelligentsia, they lost votes because they weren't racist....meaning the way to win back votes is to be more racist, and generally appeal to conservative voters.

but, it wasn't conservative voters that stayed home in 2016, it was white and black liberals that balked at both options and said "fuck it, the wings are on". as it is a primarily white liberal state (albeit a little less white than wisconsin or minnesota), trying to win michigan by appealing to racist conservatives, when the opponent is their wet dream, is really barking up the wrong tree.

so, not only does seeking rick snyder's endorsement not help with the important white liberal demographic, or with the largely not-in-play trump voters, but it's also going to create apathy in black voters. i mean, they just got rid of this guy a few months ago, and they fought hard to do it. now, he's endorsing the democratic candidate for president?

i'm imagining the following bumper stickers:

biden for president - he'll bring back snyder!

if you ask michael moore, who knows a thing or two about michigan, apathy surrounding the inaction in flint was a primary factor in the state swinging.

did biden ask for the endorsement of the guy responsible for that?

or was it unrequited?

did anybody ask him to do this, or did he decide to do it himself?

this is not going to help biden win in michigan; amongst other things, snyder is widely seen as a vicious, horrible racist.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/03/rick-snyder-why-im-voting-joe-biden-even-republican-column/5696508002/

early reich is difficult and esoteric, i get it.

this, however, is a little bit of an overlooked classic that came out in the late 90s and was intended as a more accessible tribute to reich. if you don't recognize some of these names, realize that most of them were well regarded djs or electronic musicians from the 90s, and some of them were also very popular.

i'd recommend this highly for kids of all ages. it's one of my favourite records....

it's gonna rain came first, but from what i've read (my parents were both under the age of 10.), it was come out that first turned heads, and is actually exceedingly topical in a few ways right now.

and, if you knew this was next, give yourself a cookie.

i'm ok. i can walk. a few bruises on my arms. nothing like this.

it's gonna rain.

how many thermals fans got that?

i've been living in detroit for a while now, but i know the actual history.

this guy right here is the actual first dj ever.

my head's coming back, and i'm not calming down.

i'm mad as hell.

let's go.

here's the future for the rest of us: it's gonna rain.

maybe it'll clear out some of the smoke, at least.

you can still find people in their 60s or older that deny that smoking causes cancer.

it's all propaganda, they say. nonsense. lies.

smoking is good for them - they saw it in the ads, it was in the papers, on the tv. what changed?

that's your future, potheads: denial. denial. denial...

medical tobacco was really, seriously a thing, you know.

they prescribed alcohol as a cure-all, as well.

and, we think marijuana is different because...?

because we don't learn. we're fucking idiots, collectively...

it should ultimately be the security guard's job to clear out the smokers, one would think.

it would help if he wasn't the worst offender of them all...

and, he seems to think his job is arresting queer people that might upset the elderly and religious in triage.

but, now...

...i've said too much...

nowadays, they give you marijuana or opiates instead.

windsor - where it's still 1955, all the time!

this is truly the place that time forgot.

i wonder which brand the doctors at the emergency room at the windsor hospital recommend?

wear a mask while having sex.

yeah. brilliant.

don't forget to have a heart attack when your breathing is constricted, too - or not to breathe too hard, because it's a fucking 1/32" mask that you can in truth sneeze through if it comes to it.

what an absolutely moronic suggestion....

but, it's really reflective of everything else we've seen from health officials all around. and, if it were up to me, that would be the last suggestion we hear from this particular official; that would be just about enough from her.

i view "safe" (lol.) consumption sites as a necessary evil - i don't like them, and i'd rather they didn't exist, but i realize that it's more cost effective for a national health service to at least provide for clean needles, to reduce the spread of diseases like aids, which are exceedingly expensive to treat - and which everybody is entitled to treatment for. this is actually a fiscally conservative position, and it's on that basis that i support it.

but, i know better than to think it will ever help.

it doesn't - because nothing does. and, that is the sad truth: addicts are almost always beyond help, and there's generally absolutely nothing that anybody can do but step away and let them die on their own terms.

what i support is an open door, and a government policy that ensures that barriers to care are eliminated as much as possible. as rare as it may be, when addicts make the choice to seek treatment, everything that can be done to help should be done.

but, active attempts to proselytize to addicts in any way should be rejected as government policy, for the simple reason that it just doesn't work, and that means accepting the tough reality that almost all addicts will die as a result of their addiction.

prevention is where the focus should be, and that includes both reasonable attempts to restrict the supply and very aggressive attempts to reduce the demand.

you only die once, too.

trudeau does not appear to have been being disingenuous when he argued that laws against marijuana were not effective in reducing use, and that "controlling and restricting" the supply was a better idea to socially engineer reduced usage.

but, yolo. right?

his position is consistent, and he'd be wise to hold to it, to contrast his party against the ndp, and increasingly the greens. while the issue is a health issue primarily, it is unconscionable to support decriminalizing the sale of substances that permanently addict people for life on first use.

if you really, seriously support decriminalization, you should vote for the libertarian party. i have always been and will remain in support of more subtle approaches to the issue as a health crises that maintain serious penalties for suppliers of these toxic substances, which have no valid use in any context.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7313090/trudeau-drug-decriminalization-coronavirus/

dear msm,

i know that you think that running an article a day on whatever conservative has defected back to the democrats (as they are the country's traditional conservative party) is presenting the idea of a big tent and building solidarity, but what you're actually doing is caving what's left of the party's base in and scaring voters off.

it's the irony of it: every article at the washington post or some other paper that presents somebody like colin powell or henry kissinger as endorsing joe biden is producing voter apathy on the left that is going to severely harm biden, in the end.

but, maybe that's the point?

always just a little confused,
jessica

"hi. my name is erin, and i come from a long line of tools."

so, he knows his name literally translates to "erin, the tool", right?

it's fitting.

really.

this is a track i tend to find whenever i need to recover or regroup in some way. it's both general and specific enough that it works in pretty much any imaginable context, so long as you need to sit and rest for a while.

I think I'll quit to the valley
Regain my strength and start again

that's today.

back to the struggle, tomorrow.

so, i told you there's a story coming. what am i doing today?

first, i'm going to allow for some reflection before i react. when you go through something that is objectively baffling, it is often a good idea to stop to think before you act. so, i'm processing.

i will at least confess that i've done grocery shopping for the month, and i had put off eating for a bit leading up to late yesterday. so, i've got a few days to catch up on.

and, i told you i was sore...

so, i'm resting my aching body, for right now, catching up on eating and more or less waiting until i stop hurting before i decide what to do next.

i'll have something written up when i'm ready. it won't be more than a few days.

this is the right way to deal with conflicts in freedom of expression - you let both sides yell at each other, and declare the loudest screamers the winners. that's the demos asserting itself, that is democracy, and that is what is right.

the police have been criticized for protecting this bigot, but just remember: while they are there to serve and protect, it's just not to serve or protect you. it's to serve patriarchy, and protect property.

what's important is that everybody yelled at each other instead of using force against each other. while the police presence could have perhaps been less, from what i've seen, this is otherwise a model of how this sort of thing ought to be done.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/west-end-vancouver-lgbtq-protest-david-lynn-1.5707395

but, note the absolutely stupid coverage from the corporate fascists and religious bigots at ctv/global, which is consistently an embarrassment to the country:
https://globalnews.ca/news/7309794/angry-crowd-anti-lgbtq-preacher-david-lynn-vancouver/

this is why the headlines at google news are about a relatively small protest in a tactically positioned, but otherwise unimportant, country that acts as a buffer state between germany and russia.

what's happening in belarus doesn't appear to be that different than what's happening in portland, so some perspective is required, and i would consider sanctions to be largely counter-productive.

the russians are trying to get him to push through some constitutional reform packages, which is a far more productive approach to the situation.

i'm not a fan of lukashenko, and i would like to see him resign, but the likelihood that what's happening in belarus is going to lead to a change in government is about on the same order that trump is going to resign over racism protesters - it's a strange narrative picked up by western propaganda outlets, usually largely as a distraction tactic, but it's not remotely reflective of reality.

the fact that they are, in fact, mostly allowed to protest (something that would not be true in most of the middle east) really speaks for itself.

belarus is in the russian sphere, and the russians need to deal with it, which means bringing in some kind of constitutional system that allows for democracy and a long overdue change of government - or submitting to an eventual violent overthrow, some day in the distant future, if they refuse to adjust to what people actually want.

i would advocate statements of solidarity with democracy and non-interference, at this time.

this is my major criticism of much of the mainstream environmental discourse around things like "new deals" - if you let the capitalists take the lead on this, they'll just turn it into another scheme to make money with.

we saw this with carbon trading which, when not done right, is just another way to trade derivatives, and defraud governments and institutions out of money. it's just one example...

we need direct government spending, and we need to take the profit motive out of it, or it will never actually work at reducing anything except wealth equality.

i recently suggested that carbon capture was going to be inevitable, whether we like it or not, but we want to avoid turning it into an industry, and this report from a usually reliable left of centre source is consequently very disappointing. the purpose of any carbon capture proposal should not be to make money or create jobs, to the point that any approaches towards it should specifically be budgeted in such a way so that they create structural deficits - this should be unprofitable by design, so as to avoid creating an enterprise around the process, and to prevent anybody from profiting from it. we should be looking at this the same way that we look at health care, not as another way to exploit the environment to maximize accumulation.

so, they want to talk about essentially building factories that eliminate carbon from the air and operate essentially as power plants. i promise you that this will increase total emissions, and if you buy into this you're just a useful idiot.

generally speaking, if you're approaching the climate crisis as a way to "greenify capitalism", you're just running on the spot. we need to get beyond capitalism, and we've run out of time to play footsie with the capitalists and hope we can seize ownership in the long run.

https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/august-2020/canada-cant-achieve-climate-goals-without-supercharging-carbon-removal/

better ideas would be around planting trees, and creating other structures that essentially act like trees, even if they're not trees. so, we could engineer materials that trap carbon from the air and line them up on the roads, or all over our buildings. there's been work with materials that are sponge-like (to increase surface area) and are a better way forward than a power plant masquerading as ccs.

green may refer to the environment.

it could also refer to greenbacks...

as these issues become more prominent, it is important that we only accept post-capitalist solutions that are likely to actually work and are clear in rejecting and turning away capitalists that want to talk about jobs and gdp, and are ultimately just using it as another angle to make money.

this is something not many people know about.

but, the germans were so intent on stopping us from landing in europe, that they sent subs to montreal to sink the ships before they got there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_St._Lawrence

ugh.

can we nationalize this already, please?

fuck...

https://www.cp24.com/news/u-s-firm-makes-bid-for-cogeco-rogers-to-get-canadian-assets-1.5089164

we know who we are.

don't tell us we don't.

i want to clarify a point.

the russians & chinese were, by far, the most damaged nations in the anti-nazi alliance. it's not even close.

but, of the five eyes nations and satellites in africa and south america, as well as india, canada was hit harder and contributed more than any other nation.

we fucking hated the nazis, and we fought hard to wipe them out.

while we should be sombre and reflective - and are - it's also a justified point of pride, and if you ask canadians, it comes out, when pushed.

canada's response to the war very much mirrored the americans, in terms of increased industrial capacity, and we came out of the war as a relatively strong military power, which seems to have scared the americans. with the onset of the cold war, and the realization that we'd be caught in the middle of it, our focus shifted to trying to stop active conflict between the major powers, and the embrace of a system of global governance to maintain stability.

this is actually widely written about, so i'm not really sure what he's talking about.

but, the truth is also that the role that canadian soldiers played in the war was largely as pawns and cannon fodder for the imperial states, like britain and, later on, the united states. canadian solders (along with australian soldiers) actually did much of the heaviest fighting, and assumed much of the highest casualty rates, in both theatres of the war. our national myth does exist, and is around things like the massacre at dieppe and similar massacres that occurred in the pacific; while our soldiers were seen as disciplined and well trained, and were consequently actually feared more than most others in the alliance by the enemy, the high casualty rates we experienced no doubt contributed to our character as a nation after the war, and the realization of how much more badly we would suffer, should this happen again - as we'd be the ones actually fighting the war on the ground, not the americans or the british.

so, it is very much true that canada is what it is today due to trauma from the second world war, and perhaps that has something to do with mr. cook not liking the way we talk about it.

but, we do talk about it - we just do so a little bit differently, and perhaps in a more adult manner, than you see in hollywood films like saving private ryan.

we suffered and sacrificed more than any other country in the western alliance, and the rest of the world knows that, and so do we - it's why we're a little different than the yankees to the south.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ww2-second-world-war-pacific-japan-anniversary-1.5708496

it was at least an absolutely beautiful day here yesterday, even if it ended in a ridiculous torrential downpour.

and, the story has a happy ending.

but you'll need to wait for it.

the kind of masculinity that comes out of these situations when you're forced to get what are at their core exceedingly macho guys, some of which are more comfortable with their sexuality than others, interact with 120 pound transwomen in tight or revealing clothing is often confusing and contradictory, because one minute they're grab-handing you like you're a dude, and the next minute they're telling you to make a sandwich.

everything else aside, the story of the night was a really stark experience of coming face-to-face with sheer patriarchy.

the story will come in time as my head is still blurry, but i was actually told by one of the better cops i was dealing with at about 3:00 am on tuesday morning to go home and make sandwiches.

and, i don't even think he realized what he said.

"liz is not a republican....

anymore.

i don't think.

hopefully.

hey, look over there."

i would, however, support kennedy if he primaried warren, and i hope he does, and i hope he beats her, and i hope she rejoins the republicans when he does, because that what she really always has been.

markey, while low key, is just about the best senator out there.

shhh.