they keep downgrading it.

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

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

it is there in relative terms, though.

this image gets it:

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

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

the issue is statistical more than meteorological, in that they're using outdated averages that are getting overrun by global warming.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

what does that mean?

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

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

but, the idea is as follows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

we feel your pain, sweetie.

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

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

donald trump,

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

he looks like a fucking bum.

thanks,

j

haaretz is a mildly right-of-centre publication.

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

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

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

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

matt gaetz is actually now unemployed. 

funny how that turned out for the best.

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

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

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

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

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

i want to hear hulk hogan do a dean scream.

 

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

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

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

the donation button's on the side.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

seattle bucks the trend and has actually increased since 2020.

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

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

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

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

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

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

that is the opposite of the election narrative, right? 

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

is it all because of liz cheney?

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

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

drop the low turnout excuse. it's bullshit.

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

big demographics changes have happened since 2020.

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

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

what was turnout in these regions?

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

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

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

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

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

i found this in philadelphia:

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

.

.

.

Philadelphia’s population has declined in recent years.

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

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

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

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

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

this is detroit:

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

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

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

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

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

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

sad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

go forth and get this done.

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

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

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

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

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

thanks for the free coffee, guys.

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

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

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

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

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

the premiers should sue his stupid ass in federal court.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the difference, the deciding factor, was harris herself.

the fact that the democrats won senate seats in nevada, arizona, wisconsin and michigan indicates that the states were winnable and could have been won with a better presidential candidate.

forget about trans people.

forget about wokeness.

forget about inflation.

the candidate was not liked. she was unpopular. it's not the electorate, it's her.

what should the democrats do about this attack on trans rights?

nothing.

basic polling has demonstrated that it had little actual effect. given the amount of money spent on it, that suggests it will backfire in key states, if they keep doing this.

you'll note that democrats won senate seats in wisconsin, michigan, arizona and nevada, all states that the republicans won, and also that the margin of victory in minnesota and new mexico was greater for the senate candidate than the electoral college pickup. the margin in the senate race in ohio was also closer than the presidential margin, but ohio was a seat the democrats were bound to lose. the margin in pennsylvania was also closer in the senate than the president.

this suggests that support for harris was weaker across the board, everywhere, and substantively, than support for the party. she substantively underperformed her party everywhere. she is probably directly responsible for losing the seat in pennsylvania.

the problem was her; individually, personally, as an unusually poor candidate.

let the republicans speak freely on the trans issue and make asses of themselves to the electorate; it will hurt them in the long run, as nobody actually supports attacking us.

i am no fan of netanyahu. if i thought there were grounds to arrest him for war crimes, i would support it.

i don't think there are grounds to charge netanyahu with war crimes, and i think this "warrant", which is from an extra-legal body, is clearly political rather than legal. the timing of the announcement, which was clearly delayed quite a long time to be announced after the election, is also clearly political.

i would like for their to be a serious world court but the reality is that this body is a politicized one and that every trial it's ever conducted has been strictly political in scope and this doesn't appear to be different. that this is unfolding in the context of anti-semitic mobs roaming through european capitals is cause of serious concern. the order itself is not anti-semitic in scope, it's just specious in content, which does give accusations of anti-semitism some validity, in context.

the united states has frequently been criticized for not participating in the court under grounds that it thinks it's above the law, and i have participated in those criticisms, but the conduct of this court over the last several decades has frequently been suspect and the united states' criticisms of the court, which once seemed hollow, have increasingly been upheld by the facts. it is still a better idea for the united states to try to influence the direction of the court than ignore it, but it's longstanding concerns that it's a political rather than a legal body have been exposed as fully valid.

given the court's actual jurisdiction and composition, the body should rename itself to the european court and seek to limit it's jurisdiction to the european union, of which israel is not yet a part and may never be a part, even if it should be a part for historical and cultural reasons. likewise, while the idea of palestinian statehood is widely (if incoherently) recognized, palestine is not recognized as a state by the un and is, empirically speaking, not a state under any rigorously applied definition of the term that makes any sense. the court does not have jurisdiction for this arrest.

the canadian government's position is incoherent. canada does not recognize palestine as a state, and should therefore not recognize the jurisdiction of the court in the state of the region it does recognize, which is israel, which is not a party to the rome statute. nor do most countries in europe recognize palestine as a state, and they should not be recognizing the jurisdiction of the court, either.

at this point, we've heard every possible explanation of why trump won (often framed as "why harris lost", which demonstrates the perennial fact that democrats are sore losers) except the correct one, and you're going to have to handle the truth, even though i already know you can't fucking handle the truth.

1. trump is a popular, well-liked tv personality. people like donald trump. he increased his vote totals everywhere, swung states and made major gains in previously uncompetitive democratic strongholds. sometimes, the other candidate is simply better liked by more people and you lose not because you did something wrong but because the other guy was more popular.

2. that said, kamala harris was a female trying to appeal to minority voters as her base voting demographic and what the outcome demonstrated - and you'll have to handle the truth - is the well understood reality that black, hispanic/catholic, muslim/arab and other minority males have less equal views towards women of any colour than white men do. they were never going to vote for a black women.

3. further, kamala harris was a black person trying to hold on to majority white and rural states.

4. worse, kamala harris was completely unqualified to be president.

5. even worse, kamala harris had no substantive executive experience.

kamala harris occupies the intersection of {inexperienced, unqualified, black, female} and had to deal with compounding problems that had to do with all four of those concerns, and how they intersect with each other.

i stated on the day she was nominated that she was the worst candidate imaginable (that you couldn't imagine a worse candidate if you wrote a work of fiction about it) and that she was obviously going to get blown out. she had no remote chance of success, whatsoever. the results clarify that there was, as i suspected, somewhat of a bradley effect in the polling, for the first few weeks, before it wore off.

what could harris have done differently, then? she should have avoided running for president until she got more experience to become more qualified, and she should have been less black and less female. she could try going back to the senate for a while or running for governor of california, first. however, i think her career is over and she should retire; her 15 minutes are up.

the united states will probably eventually elect a female president, and may elect a black female president, but that female candidate is going to need to claw her way to the top on her own merits, not by being parachuted in as vice president after getting bludgeoned in the primaries as unqualified or by riding the coattails of her husband, as the candidate from 2016 tried to do. the eventually successful female candidate will need to be a two term governor or perhaps spend a lot of time in the senate. nancy pelosi would have been a more likely choice, if she wasn't already too old by the time she got into politics and if she wasn't herself also terrible. she will have to have a clear legislative record that people are comfortable with and support. she will have to aggressively prove that she is qualified by building experience that demonstrates it to everybody and she will be at a disadvantage in doing so; her bars will be set higher, and she'll have to meet those higher standards. that's not fair, but it's too fucking bad.

kamala harris, like hillary clinton, was simply a terrible candidate and she got beat by somebody that was better liked and more popular than her, but the fact that they were both terrible candidates allowed the republicans to capitalize on the overwhelming misogyny that is endemic in immigrant communities and on the latent racism in rural white america.

them's the facts.

deal with it.

tax cuts on beer and popcorn, huh?

i'm actually offended that they would do this on saturnalia, as well. our culture has moved past christianity. when will the government stop trying to enforce these religious ideas that our culture is no longer interested in?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-gst-vacation-christmas-1.7389206

like, apparently he wants to go after polyunsaturated fats.

which are actually very good for you, at least according to science.

apparently, he's concerned that they have estrogen but, in fact, estrogen is extremely good for lowering bad cholesterol and the estrogenic effect in the pufa is no doubt responsible for it's positive effects on cholesterol levels. do you want to see my blood cholesterol? it's shocking. i have higher levels of good cholesterol (hdl) than bad cholesterol (ldl), which is unheard of, and it's due to the estrogen.

i mean that absolutely. literally. it's not a ratio. my hdl > ldl. or, if you want to take ratios, the ratio is <1, usually around 0.8. doctors tend to ask people to aim for 2:1, as a goal.

but it might make you less likely to want to break stuff.

which is bad.

apparently.

obviously, i don't want rfk messing with vaccine regulations or taking fluoride out of the water, but whether i'm in support of his healthy food agenda is a different question.

i need him to answer the following question, and i hope it comes up in the senate.

sir, do you believe that ketchup is a vegetable? if not, would you settle for it being a fruit?

i will base my further analysis on his answer to that question.

this just in!

the ndp are indicating that they won't support the liberals in the next confidence motion unless the liberals pick up their plan to double sodium consumption in canadians under 40 and triple processed sugar consumption in canadians over 50.

the liberals have indicated that they'll need to send the proposal to committee to find a way to amend it to appeal to the sikh community first, but they're otherwise open to the idea.

maybe they should just privatize healthcare while they're at it, if they're so concerned about starving the beast. these are valid sources of government income.

they should be introducing a new a tax on junk food to fight obesity, not removing taxes on this garbage pre-packaged, over-processed non-food they're talking about to get fat and lazy people to vote for them.

it's a sad state of affairs when this is what passes as a fake left in this country. as i've said before, you have three choices: you can vote for stephen harper in a blue shirt, or you can vote for stephen harper in a red shirt or, if you don't like that, you can vote for stephen harper in an orange shirt, too.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trudeau-to-announce-temporary-gst-relief-on-select-items-heading-into-holidays-1.7118120

this is a terrible idea.

if it actually succeeded, it would remove the gst from a small number of items that few people pay and replace it with inflation on everything. instead of paying 13% on non-essential services that most poor people rarely purchase, we'll see a return to high inflation that affects everything. the reason is that corporations will increase prices to adjust to the tax on profits.

as a poor person, about the last thing in the world that i'm concerned about is a tax on luxury goods like cable tv or cell phones. these are items purchased by wealthy people, not by poor people. the policy reflects the fact that the ndp's voting base is actually the upper middle class.

surely jagmeet singh is aware that there are no taxes on grocery store food. i have no idea what he's talking about when he claims there's gst on grocery store food; that's absolutely false.

frankly, i think the idea of taxing luxury items like cell phones to pay for services is a good idea and i would vote in favour of it, not against it. this the kind of basic "progressive taxation" policy you expect the ndp to support, not oppose. this is in truth an extremely right-wing proposal. what side of the spectrum is the ndp coming down on?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jagmeet-singh-writes-premiers-gst-cut-1.7388318

i think taylor swift is intending to create music for very young girls and that these middle aged or older women at her shows are really not her target demographic, even if they are largely responsible for her obscene wealth.

listen, i'm just too old to listen to taylor swift. i remember britney spears, but i thought i was too old for that, even. i did like the spice girls, but i didn't tell anybody.

in fact, i had a bunch of madonna records in the 80s and 90s and that would be my actual age group, which makes me two or three generations removed from taylor swift, in terms of little girl or tweenage girl pop.

i would argue that watching a middle aged woman dance to and sing taylor swift songs at a baseball stadium like she's an eight year-old is sort of sad and pathetic and something that really belongs in the bathrooms and closets of the world rather than in giant stadiums for exorbitant prices, but i also have no real concept of what tiktok even is, which just exacerbates the generation gap.

so, i'm sorry, but i'm too old for taylor swift, and i'm not interested in having a midlife crisis or on holding on to being a tween into my 50s or on pretending i am.

i grew up in the 80s. i didn't watch or care about wrestling myself (i very correctly realized it was idiotically stupid), but i had to sit on the bus with little boys that did and it was actually somewhat traumatizing for some of them to learn the truth, as it unfolded.

you know wrestling is fake, right?

no! no!

they're all actors. paid. it's bullshit.

no! it's real!

i think a lot of americans are in truth like those little boys on the bus, and at some point they'll have to face the truth of it. it's been obvious since reagan, at the least. i can't comment on anything before that at this level, as i can't understand this by reading about it. trump has just utterly dropped the bullshit.

you know the elections are fake right?

no! no! they're real!

trump's tendency to pick actors, personalities and news hosts for cabinet rather than politicians or executives may perhaps suggest that he's setting up his administration like an entertainment event.

are the elections in the united states any less fake than wrestling? fake news? fake president?

on some level, what these people actually do is just read lines anyways. is being a fox news host substantively different than being the secretary of defence? shockingly, it might not be.

the open question left to answer in my view is whether trump is setting up a reality tv show to be orchestrated from the oval office, and this is all being coordinated as a form of entertainment, or if these actors and news hosts were chosen precisely because they're trustworthy agents of the deep state that will read what they're told without any push back.

it's been clear for quite a while that the real reason biden got pushed out is because he thought he knew better than the generals and he wouldn't listen. the system is designed to give the president authority, but the president is also a civilian leader, and any president that isn't retarded should know to defer; biden was clearly on an ego trip and he may have started world war three in the process. the comparisons to lbj are longstanding, but he seems to have been removed for the same reasons that kennedy was, although they did it the gentle way this time. he was unstable and not somebody that the pentagon could leave with his finger on the button.

the corollary of that is that empty suits repeating talking points is actually exactly what the pentagon wants and exactly what the pentagon has wanted for years. they don't want these civilians walking in and thinking they know better; and, clearly, almost no president has ever been qualified, and especially can't be now due to the shifts in technology since the 18th century. the last president that was qualified to be commander in chief was eisenhower.

we'll have to see how this unfolds; it's not currently clear. are these employees of the trump reality show, or were they picked because they wouldn't talk back?

yeah, he would.

it's almost kind of like that time that putin wasn't president for a few years because smiley face dmitri was, but then he was president again after.

we're not so different.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mlp5p4lvko

this is reasonable, and i would support it, but how is this enforced?

the un won't enforce it, it's proven it. the french won't enforce it.

the only way to enforce it is for israel to occupy the region south of the litani and will hezbollah agree to that?

what israel appear to be trying to do is actually push hezbollah north of the awaali river, which is north of not just the ancient hebrew-canaanite city of tyre but also the ancient hebrew-canaanite city of sidon. it's not clear if they intend to occupy up to the litani and demand demilitarization between the litani and awaali or actually push all the way to the awaali, but how can you blame them for pushing beyond the previous un resolution when the previous un resolution was not enforced?

should they ask for another un resolution that won't be enforced?

whether what they do is supportable in the end will depend on the precise actions but i actually have a hard time criticizing israel for annexing any region that is historically considered to be phoenecia because while the arguments are obtuse and arcane and awkward, they're also basically correct. the phoenecians were basically jews, which is why the romans treated the jews so poorly, which has set off centuries of persecution.

i just wish they'd try to assimilate the palestinians back into israel rather than try to get rid of them. they're closer to the ancient hebrews than anybody else.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanon-hezbollah-agree-us-proposal-ceasefire-with-israel-lebanese-official-says-2024-11-18/

i had and have a strong case on appeal, but this awful bitch decided to show up and "manage" my case, and she's actually horribly mismanaging it by producing emotional responses to filings she doesn't like, etc. this woman seems to suffer from a mental imbalance of some sort, but i have no ability to get rid of her.

i'm going to need to appeal on procedural grounds in an attempt to throw her off the case.

but it's clear enough that i'm not getting through this bitch to an actual court date and that's putting the situation in jeopardy.

to be clear: i haven't had anything heard in court yet. a number of motions have been rescheduled. i think i'd win a hearing. but, this justice is behaving improperly in attacking me out of spite because she doesn't like my filings, on an emotional or ideological level, and is basically engineering a situation that i can't win, forcing me to try to get around her.

if i can't get around her, i don't have another solution; i'm going to have to pack up and get this stuff out of here into storage and sleep in a hotel for a while.

the liberal government insists on attacking india for cracking down on terrorism, but has no qualms signing a trade agreement with indonesia without mentioning a thing about the fact that it's one of the worst human rights abusers on the planet.

why?

because indonesa is an example of ongoing islamic colonialism, and india is still recovering from the effects that islamic imperialism had on it.

the only thing that's surprising about it is how heavy-handed the hypocrisy is and how blatant the policy of preference towards islamism as a valid socio-political ideology is. 

this is something that canadians have every right to be concerned about. this is a valid issue.

trump's cabinet picks are actually exemplifying the split personality nature of the two-headed monster, from my perspective. 

yes, these are people that i could find a lot of ways to disagree with about a lot of things, particularly their support for government interference in a number of basic civil rights issues. 

however, these are also not particularly bad picks, in simple pragmatic terms, and i may find myself in general agreement with them on the exact files they're being asked to take on.

tulsi gabbard, for example, is somebody that i could definitely get in a lot of arguments with about a lot of things, but i know she has no patience for muslim extremism (due in no small part to the fact that she's an independent female), and i actually think the united states needs to reorient itself on this particular issue, as it has fallen too far into cultural relativism. i actually think she's a pretty good choice for the office she's being asked to take over.

likewise, while i would be mortified to see mike huckabee appointed as attorney general, i have been clear enough that i think we need to move on from the palestine question and leave the palestinians behind. they deserve basic civil rights as full citizens of israel, including some kind of compensation for the eminent domain seizures of their land. getting to that point means getting over the sovereignty question as a 20th century issue that's no longer relevant.

both of these picks demonstrate the basic fact that the democratic party is stuck in the past and needs to be dragged out of it, kicking and screaming.

conversely, matt gaetz seems to be an astonishingly poor pick that might not get approved by a republican senate. i don't think rfk jr has the slightest chance of getting confirmed. further, is elon musk going to put his investments in a blind trust, or what? is he going to step down from tesla, twitter and space x? did he think this through at all? does he even know what a conflict of interest is?

what i've been saying for years now is that i disagree equally with the republican and democratic parties, i just disagree with them in different ways. i disagree with about 80% of what both of the parties want, and i have about 20% support for either of them, and there's no intersection in the policies i support from the two parties. this makes sense by noting that i'm a libertarian socialist, and that the democrats in truth have only a small policy base that would appear to a liberal while the republicans have only a small policy base that would appeal to a libertarian.

as far as i'm concerned, the democrats and republicans are both conservative parties and two sides of the same coin.

but, faced with the real world in front of us today right now, gabbard and rubio are likely better foreign policy choices than anthony blinken or jake sullivan, and i may actually like more of what gets done under this new direction than the existing one. i have never heard of pete hegseth before and cannot produce an educated comment about him, i'll have to wait and see. my initial analysis would be that he might not get confirmed.

i would ask rubio to tone it down on cuba. i will probably disagree with him on that.

but we actually need a good round of bombing in key regions right now (yemen, especially) to take out some problems that the biden administration refused to address and i hope these guys actually go out and do it.

kamala harris convincingly lost the election.

making her president for a day would be an act of contempt for the wishes of the voting public and the most undemocratic thing i could possibly think of.

which is exactly why the democrats will probably actually do it.

my 80s and 90s cassettes all sound absolutely terrible. it's a deficit of the technology, which is now past it's expiry date.

i may be a little late, but i'm consequently now officially declaring the era of the cassette to be permanently over.

your cassettes, if you still have any, are now officially garbage and should be thrown away.

i'm listening to old cassettes. this is a scan of my insert for bush' sixteen stone.

i've always known this was rare, but i wonder how rare nowadays.

this is a canadian release manufactured before the x was inserted. no x on the spine either.

oddly, there is an x on the cassette itself, which is the intc-9000 version with the extra acoustic tracks and not this 92531 sleeve version, which is identical to the us release.

the cassette was purchased on import in a corporate music store in very early 1995, in the brief period between when bush hit it huge in the united states and they more slowly got into rotation on muchmusic. there was a time lag in bush getting placed into rotation in canada. my interest in bush before they were beamed from tvs everywhere was that i had a subscription to guitar world, and they had a tab for everything zen, which wasn't a hit here. so i bought this in that brief period of time when these weren't actually being massively produced yet and the copyright issue hadn't yet clicked in.

i don't know how many of these there actually are.

it's something to take note of as a i sort through this disparate media collection.

while trump may actually be stricter on netanyahu than biden, it won't be because he's pro-arab or pro-muslim, it will be for his own considerations. israel is an asset if it's kept in line, but it's a liability when it's not.

trump's iran policy will also be stricter and it needs to be stricter but it's not because he's pro-israel it's because iran has demonstrated itself as a dangerous actor in need of regime change.

anybody that voted for donald trump expecting him to be pro-arab or pro-muslim should be laughed at for being stupid, but my perception is that this is a figment of the arab lobby's imagination and that while you may find some isolated anecdotes you couldn't isolate a statistically defined sample.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769

somebody that is concerned about rights issues in the west bank should be arguing that palestinians need civil rights inside of the israeli state, not holding to the 20th century delusion that the west bank is ever going to be a sovereign state.

this is a false narrative that is out of touch with reality and created by people that haven't kept up with events for the last 30 years.

it's already done.

the west bank is already annexed.

writing it down on paper and declaring it law is a meaningless and overdue formality, but actually doing it would be helpful so we can move on and leave the issue behind.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/us/politics/israel-trump-administration.html

besides oil and oil derivatives, which together make up something like 40% of our export gdp to the united states, our biggest exports to the united states are marijuana and hockey players.

and they tax our lumber. illegally. and won't stop.

canada used to have a top 5 global economy. today, we keep going to these g7 meetings, but we barely qualify for the g20 and we're probably going to fall out of it in the next 5-10 years.

canada has become an attractive destination for foreign capital and wealthy foreigners, like a mediterranean resort city-state, but we are the largest country in the world, geographically, and our actual real economy has completely collapsed. we're on the brink of becoming a failed state.

we're going to have to walk into these trade negotiations with a reduced sense of pride and a newfound respect for the facts, which are not in our favour.

the elder trudeau warned us that nafta would hollow the country out, and standing here 40 years later, it's clear he was right. we have no industry of any sort, except raw exports. even our cultural industry, which did well into the mid 00s, has entirely disappeared.

economically speaking, we've retreated back to becoming a colony of europe and the united states, while we're increasingly being colonized by the middle east.

canada is actually going to have to come to terms with the fact that mexico is an actual trading partner with the united states and has a two-way flow of goods, while canada's trade relationship with the united states has been little more than food-for-oil since the 1980s, when we signed the canada-us free trade deal.

that makes mexico a partner of the united states and canada more akin to a colony.

thankfully, trump seems to know better than to put rfk jr or elon musk in actual government roles, although i do think it would be helpful to let rfk jr make an ass of himself.

first they came for your dogs...

if you have a runt, don't let it out late at night. kristi's coming for it with the uncool dog police.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/us/politics/kristi-noem-homeland-security-secretary-trump.html

i really think the world should be criticizing the arab countries for abandoning gaza, not attacking israel for walking into this existential crisis where it's come face to face with the need to feed it's enemies, and is having difficulty with it.

he's clueless.

the americans have more trade with mexico than with canada. the mexicans are a more valuable trading partner.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ontario-ford-cusma-agreement-1.7380890

the ontario liberals are taking a hard shift to the right that is going to render them irrelevant.

i would strongly oppose a cut to the heating oil tax, as it acts as a disincentive on use. if people are complaining that it's expensive, they should find a different way to heat their home.

the ontario liberal party is increasingly emerging as a bc liberal party, and i don't know what the point is. just merge with the conservatives, then.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/ontario-liberal-leader-bonnie-crombie-will-pledge-tax-cut-on-home-heating-fuels/article_f7707202-a05f-11ef-a683-c7ae529eeda8.html

in fact, israel is the only country in the world that does provide aid to gaza.

think about that.

that's not sustainable.

the egyptians and saudis ought to be making a deal to airlift people out.

was turnout suppressed in wayne county?

marginally, and it bucks the trend, but 2-3% either way is a rounding error.

if you do the basic math,

1) the democrats received 60,589 less votes

2) turnout was down by 13,899 votes

3) if every single one of those people that didn't vote were democrats, there are still 60589-13899 = 46690 votes to account for.

4) the republicans received 24,225 more votes - in wayne county. strictly.

5) if every single one of those were biden voters in 2020, that leaves 46690-24225 = 22465 voters that are unaccounted for and i suppose must have voted for jill stein.

if we do some naive math that is probably loosely right using that number of 60589 less votes in wayne county (detroit), it follows that:

1) 24,225 moved from biden to trump

2) 22,465 moved to stein (or another third party candidate)

3) 13,899 refrained from voting

almost twice as many voters switched from biden to trump than stayed home; depressed turnout would be the least of detroit's worries.

and they should not delude or confuse themselves as it will breed complacency and that is a problem in detroit. they need to face the facts: even in detroit, they lost votes to trump, explicitly.

this is naive math because it could instead be that:

1) trump got 24,225 brand new voters to get off the couch to vote for him, in detroit, explicitly.

2) all of the 60,589 voters that voted for biden but didn't vote for harris abstained or voted for stein.

stein's vote total went up by about 30,000, which is more than 23,000, so there is some evidence that some of trumps's increase in votes was due to new voters (around 7,000-8,000), but also that most of it wasn't. the green party has long argued that it registers new voters, especially young and first time voters, so it's also naive (and no doubt wrong) to assume that all of those 30,000 voters were biden voters. the libertarian party vote went down by the same amount that rfk went up, and it's naive to connect that together, but it washes it out, nonetheless.

there's lots of ways to put this together, certainly, but none of it supports the idea that harris lost because turnout was low; rather, it supports the idea that trump won because he increased turnout in his favour.

does he call donald "boss"?

i'm imagining he ought to.

he's technically slovenian, but he looks like something right out of an italian mob film, with the sunken eyes and the fitted suits and the apparent fact that he's 7 feet tall.

barron trump constantly looks like a low level hitman when he shows up on stage with trump.

"which one of these guys am i taking out, boss?"

don't listen to the liberal media when it tells you harris lost due to low turnout.

https://www.mlive.com/politics/2024/11/michigan-sets-voter-turnout-record-but-turnout-declined-in-every-democratic-county.html

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/06/wisconsin-vote-totals-2024-election-record-president-trump-harris/76098668007/

in pennsylvania, total turnout seems to have been marginally up, not down, but it was roughly flat. total votes increased by around 50,000. it would probably technically be record turnout, given that turnout in 2020 was high everywhere, but i can't find an article stating as much.

trump won by getting non-voters off the couch and he did that by creating an inspiring message of hope and change that resonated in key demographic groups.

i don't want them to give up their customs. i don't care what they eat or how they mumble at the wall.

what i want is for them to respect my customs, and the growing problem as they increase in numbers is that they increasingly don't respect my customs, and that they're increasingly aggressive about it when they don't.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/one-quarter-of-canadians-say-immigrants-should-give-up-customs-poll

this argument is not supported by the data.

trump won by getting non-voters out not just in high numbers but in record numbers. trump did not suppress turnout or win by breeding apathy. there was in fact record turnout.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/americans-didnt-embrace-trump-they-rejected-biden-harris.html

i was born in 1981, but i don't identify as a millennial and admit that i frankly don't understand millennials very well.

i'm the last gen xer.

i nonetheless think the point i'm making about charli xcx is correct: this isn't music that adults of any generation would listen to, this is music for little kids. people in their 20s hanging on to this may be likely to have developmental disorders.

i would also classify taylor swift as being "music for children", but she seems to have retained an unusual amount of the audience that liked her as children into adulthood, which i actually don't understand well. i've heard a fair amount of taylor swift, and it definitely strikes me as something that hyper-targets the preteen market. i don't know if it's that a lot of millennials are hanging on to their childhood longer than they should or if it's more of a cultural thing, or even if it's that people are taking their kids to the shows, but you'd think that at least half of the people going to these shows ought to have outgrown her years ago.

i actually get the impression that taylor swift has even outgrown herself.

beyonce may be better targeted at people old enough to vote, but probably just barely.

i haven't seen statistics, but i would assume that charli xcx is geared towards about 12-15 year olds and people in their 20s would largely prefer music that is more mature than that.

when i was in my 20s, i would have considered that kind of music immature and anybody my age that still listened to it to be immature.

there's some information coming out that it actually cost harris a lot of money to get on stage with all of these celebrities everywhere, and that her research wasn't very focused on relevant demographic groups.

if they can get stallone to run, they should call the campaign rocky VII.

yes.

rocky, now an old man, comes out of retirement yet again under popular pressure because he's the only candidate that can win pennsylvania for the democrats. 

they should film it as a reality media mockumentary and make it heavily centered in philadelphia and heavily integrated with actual voters in real life.

that's how you beat a reality tv star, with more reality media. and, stallone is actually an underrated director, he could do this and do it well.

my father was about 25% or less italian, although he never told me until i was much older, and i eventually discovered the uncomfortable reality that i'm related to the gotti clan via a dna test. i was able to determine that his y-dna (direct paternal, male over male lineage) is austrian celt. the gottis were actually germans that moved south into italy; the name gotti appears to basically be the same word as 'goth', which is a generic medieval italian slur for germanic person that ultimately stems from a swedish group that migrated into northern italy from ukraine as they fled attila the hun.

i actually really, seriously appear to be relatively closely related to the gottis.

my father's mother was adopted because her parents were killed when they were "accidentally" hit by a train. one of my aunts did the research, and it seems like they were both tied to the tracks. people don't accidentally get tied to the railroad tracks, at least not outside of bugs bunny cartoons. it would seem like it was a mob hit.

that is legitimately all i know - my father's mother's parents were killed in an obvious mob hit in ottawa, canada and she was raised by a french family in ottawa's franco-ontarian community.

i don't really want to know much else.

but he knew he was part italian, and he made me watch all of the movies when i was a kid: all of the de niro, all of the pacino, all of the stallone. i'm actually about twenty years too young to remember this stuff otherwise, but it was seen as some kind of educational process.

i have actually long suspected that he knew more about the mob connection than he ever told me or ever told anyone else. he didn't want me to know, and i don't want to know.

i mean, there's an assumption that trump won't run for a third term.

that convention has been broken before.

i'm not predicting it, exactly, but i'd be ready for it.

trump also has a long-running feud with stallone, apparently.

you see where i'm going with this.

i'm just trying to help you win, s'all.

or, they could run anthony hopkins, and have him threaten to eat trump for breakfast when he wins.

(alas, no. hopkins was not born in the united states.)

de niro is old enough to run for president, at least.

that was fifty years ago.

it's not that de niro was type cast.

it was just a really good film.

you kids should sit down with it if you haven't seen it.

i think de niro would be an outstanding president. as a non-american, my primary concern is always foreign policy.

i could imagine de niro confronting putin.

eh. you lookin' at latvia? huh?

c'mere bitch.

you lookin' at finland?

huh?

don't you let me fucking catch you looking at poland.

people are having a hard time understanding how people could vote for donald trump on the basis of "the economy" by analyzing issues, and they're missing the point.

what does "the economy" even mean, exactly? it's a vague, undefined term.

the actual reason that such a large number of americans tell you that the right, not just trump, is good for "the economy" is that they've been bombarded with advertising telling them as much for their entire lives. what these exit polls are measuring is advertising reach rather than any kind of deconstructible economic logic.

i want to step in on the statistics that democrats are pushing, though.

gdp is worthless to an average person, and i'll cite joseph stiglitz on that point. the premise that increases in gdp and increases in growth benefit the average worker is the definition of trickle down economics. gdp per capita is better, but it's skewed by the inequality gap. measuring wages vs inflation actually obscures the inequality problem due to the way that real wages are measured as an average.

"The average personal income in the United States is about $54,000. But that number is significantly bumped up by the small number of people who make significantly more. The median personal income, on the other hand, is just under $36,000. This means that more than half of people in the US make less than $36,000, a significant drop from the $54,000 average. This difference is even more pronounced when you look at wealth. The median net worth of US households is $121,700, yet the average net worth is a whopping $748,800."

https://patrioticmillionaires.org/perspectives/statistics-matter-why-averages-arent-useful-when-talking-about-the-american-economy/

the harrisites are trying to argue that people were misled by fox news, but it's actually the democratic party statistics that are off base with reality. i am barely old enough to remember stiglitz having this exact argument with the clintonites during gore v bush. people didn't get it and it's because the statistics they were using sucked. worse, democratic voters have been trained to believe what they see on msnbc with as much faith as republican voters have in fox. there's no critical analysis; they just absorb it and repeat it, which is by design.

we all think we're better than the other guys. most of us are actually exactly the same.

if you inflate average wages using wonky averages then it looks like real wages increased faster than inflation, but tell that to the mother of three working at walmart that's had her mortgage doubled by an interest rate hike and seen the price of groceries go up 500%. that statistic is meaningless to that person.

that is not a "perception", that is a fact and it is a fact that the stats being thrown around do not and cannot capture at all.

i think i can convince most people of the basic truth of this, that the standard economic stats used are for investors and not workers and have no relevance to real people (even these so-called real wages, which are skewed by high income earners and would by the definition of what is being measured be skewed the most during periods of inflation, as high income earners would tend to benefit from inflation, as they get the profits from the higher profits, either directly through ownership or via investments like shares). stiglitz really is a really good source on this.

i was able to find an article at brookings that examines this issue, for popular consumption:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/has-pay-kept-up-with-inflation/

using this far more real statistic,

median real wages adjusted for inflation to 2023 dollars in q1 2021: $1136

median real wages adjusted for inflation to 2023 dollars in q4 2023: $1130

that is a decrease of $6 from biden's inauguration until the end of 2023, and then you need to factor in interest rates.

so, that's the actual empirical reality: the statistics you see on msnbc are propaganda, just like the stats you see on fox news. if you ask some more honest people, they'll present a different picture to you.

if we can agree that the cost of living right now is difficult, and that "the economy" is not working for normal people, how then do we get to the logical conclusion that trump is the better option?

the answer is that you don't, it's just advertising. maybe the advertising doesn't work as well when people aren't struggling, but it's just advertising. most people don't know how to write policies to better their material conditions and would not have an informed opinion if given a direct vote.

what they know is:

1. right now, this objectively and empirically sucks.

2. the tv says republicans are better for the economy.

3. therefore, vote republican.

you are making a mistake if you are trying to probe deeper into the thought process than this.

worse is that this record turnout data suggests that trump won because he's a tv star and there isn't anything more to it than that. republicans have figured this out: trump, arnie, reagan himself. celebrities get people off the couch, and trump got the zombies out to vote in record numbers.

the actual smart analysis is that the democrats should run an actor, like de niro or clooney. according to tarantino, clooney is washed up, so why not let him run for office himself? he'd probably win in a landslide.

they could also convert the process of picking your vp choice into a reality show like the bachelor. that would get people voting for sure.

the united nations is claiming that israel is responsible for feeding gazans, and this is a position that has no logic to it.

claims that israel is starving gaza have, to this point, been without evidentiary basis. to the contrary, israel has taken the unusual step of feeding it's enemies. dismantling the aid agency may, for the first time, actually result in the outcome of gazans dying of hunger, but there is no legal basis to pin their starvation on israel's dismantling of the agency.

i don't support the starvation of gazans, but i need to call on other countries to fill the gap. it was always unreasonable to expect israel to feed it's enemies, and it is abundantly clear at this point that somebody else needs to step in, or they actually are going to starve, and it will be everybody except israel's legal fault due to their failure to respond.

how do you end the war in ukraine?

there was a referendum in each of the states that seceded from ukraine. ukraine should be expected to accept the democratic will of the people in these regions and pull out of them and the united states should tell them that.

yes, there are questions about the referenda, but they also appear to be reflective of the will of the people in these provinces, or oblasts.

this would be a shift in us policy, but it's actually not one that requires a lot of mental gymnastics, and the previous administration's policy should, quite frankly, be viciously criticized for what it was, which is undemocratic.

this is indeed shocking and frightening and baffling.

i can't open the main site:

https://www.theaustraliatoday.com.au/

the best way to demonstrate you've lost an argument is to censor your opponents.

https://www.opindia.com/2024/11/canada-bans-diaspora-media-outlet-australia-today-mea-says-it-highlights-canadas-hypocrisy/

a very seamless choice that is outside of government and could fill in would be dalton mcguinty, although he may be too old now. i would like to see that direction applied nationally.

the liberals need to hold a leadership race. the sooner the better.

any backroom-appointed candidate will lose and probably badly. frankly, it's a job few people should want right now.

christy clark should run, but for the conservatives. i'd never vote for her.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/who-should-lead-the-liberals-none-of-the-above-poll-finds-1.7103700

nafta wasn't the kind of election issue in 2024 that it was in 2016. that's an almost ten year difference.

i wouldn't expect trump to care much about canada over the next four years at all, and my advice would be that the canadian government should stand back and wait. if you don't draw attention to yourself and don't pick fights that trump probably doesn't want, he might not even notice we're here at all.

they can't find la nina.

did they call for it? i'd suggest two attempts to call for la nina:

1) to the tune of 'la bamba'. la nina will like that. lala lala lala niiinnya. if la nina is around at all, it will respond.

2) using ernie's call and response, ala that time he went fishing with bert. heeeere lanina lanina lanina lanina lanina lanina. if la nina is around, it'll jump right out of the southern oscillation and into the research science boat, immediately.

at the end of the day, though, if la nina cannot be found, perhaps it doesn't want to be found.

my serious question is this: given the obvious reality of climate change and the observable effect of record increases in ocean temperatures, why were they looking for la nina at all?

la nina will return, but you'll have to recalculate her.

in the mean time, we will probably have several decades of schrodinger's la nina.

it's not entirely clear why the liberal media thinks trump is pro-netanyahu or even pro-israel other than that it is the liberal media.

trump is the isolationist. biden/harris were the global policeman.

i don't think trump is going to be really pushing to escalate at all and may succeed in restraining and better focusing netanyahu where biden failed.

the one upside of trump winning is that american foreign policy will hopefully take a return to sanity after the insane war mongering of the biden years, although biden left such a mess that it could take most of the next 4 years to fix it. the liberal media has really lost the plot and needs to reconnect with the facts in front of them.

to be clear: historically, candidates like trump tend to accidentally win because nobody really bothers to vote.

on face value, at least, trump is the opposite; he's winning by convincing those that don't vote to go vote.

that's hard to analyze, other than to rely on the last two elections, which is what i did, but i thought the black vote would actually overpower in detroit and that was my one miscalculation.

like, i even got the weakly democratic leaning states dead on - new mexico, minnesota, new hampshire, virginia. i missed new jersey.

was i wrong about michigan?

i was right about everything else.

the weird thing about michigan is that turnout went up again. i'm not aware of a large movement of people into michigan, recently; generally, the trend is leaving. that would suggest that trump dramatically succeeded in mobilizing non-voters.

i penciled michigan as leaning blue because while the data was a little sketchy i decided black turnout for harris would be decisive. what i didn't see coming was startlingly high turnout in rural michigan and i wonder how much voted against harris rather than for trump. rural michigan is as racist or more racist than anywhere in the country.

or maybe they stuffed the ballots. i dunno.

one day, a candidate will get 133.7% of the vote.

for now, whatever the truth, trump got that vote out almost impossibly well and it is the singular state i missed.

joe biden thinks he has immunity if he shoots trump, though.

trump isn't president again just yet.

i hope we're not subjected to too much barking from vice president fido.

joe biden won arizona, georgia, pennsylvania, michigan and wisconsin.

kamala harris lost every one of those states.

joe biden won the senate. kamala harris took down capable incumbents with her.

kamala harris was the first out in the primaries because democrats - not independents. democrats. - didn't like her.

harris vote total: 68 million votes

biden vote total: 81 million votes

without factoring in population growth, harris lost 13 million votes. that's a lot.

harris is a loser.