when i was a little kid, back in the mid 90s, i wrote a song called "circus". i remixed, rewrote, reapproached and rerecorded this track a few different ways, but it's the original demo i recorded in my basement studio in 1997 that has the vocal section that has tended to confuse a lot of people.

i've clarified this a few times but feel the need to do so again.

the song is a critique of media, and i don't know how anybody could not realize that this is obvious. it's built on a dropped-d riff-out of the byzantine circus theme, which like much of byzantine culture ended up lost to history everywhere except in russia. you'll know it when you hear it, but you might not know it as byzantine circus music, you might associate it more with dancing bears. the dropped d riff through digital distortion (played on an ibanez with an awful bridge locking mechanism) made sense in 1997.

i am not suggesting that i actually want to be like the menendez brothers or like the unabomber in the sense of wanting to copycat their crimes, i'm mocking the media coverage and it's tendency to turn criminals into media stars. it's a similar message to a movie released in the 90s called "natural born killers", with woody harrelson and juliette lewis, that is also a critique of the media and that a lot of stupid people didn't understand.

you can hear a lot of who i turned into as an adult, as written into this site, on this track that i recorded as a kid. my media critique is a little more sophisticated than it was then, but basically the same.

in 1997, my biggest lyrical influences came from punk rock singers like dexter holland, greg graffin and jello biafra. i was also massively influenced by college rock singers like michael stipe and bono that were punk rock musicians in disguise. as such, i want to insert the disclaimer from the 4th offspring record, as narrated by jello biafra, before i post the song.

please try hard to understand. it's a sarcastic media critique. it's not a sick fantasy.

now, here's the song:

should there be federal standards for education?

there should, in principle; the shrinking of the world would imply more standards and not less. facts are not different in idaho than they are in new york. however, it's extremely difficult to enforce and uphold them.

in some states, deferring to local agencies is likely to be an extremely retarding process that severely harms young children. in some states, greater freedom to modernize and advance the curriculum will be used to great betterment.

there's good and bad in this and how it turns out depends on what the people in these states let and don't let happen. i'm reminded of the backlash against the abortion ruling.

this decision could very well cost republicans the house.

but why would canada want to cut off oil exports to the united states when it can increase the price instead?

the reason these pipelines don't exist is that there's no business case for them. alberta oil is high cost, dirty and low quality. we export it all to the united states because nobody else wants it. further, cutting supply to the united states will increase profits for venezuela and saudi arabia, and cut us out. 

there's a saying about cutting one's nose off to spite one's face.

it's an utterly stupid idea.

the correct tactic is an export tax.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/two-cross-country-pipelines-couldve-diverted-38-4-billion-from-the-u-s-new-study-finds

this is nonsense.

increasing taxes can cause inflation, but this tax is so small that the level of inflation has been measured at 0.25%.

decreasing taxes never reduces prices and those arguing it does are stating what amounts to a religious belief taken on faith that has been thoroughly debunked by decades of empirical science.

nothing gets cheaper on april 1st, except mark carney's credibility as an economist.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/cheaper-after-carbon-tax-cut

in canada, education is solely the responsibility of the provinces.

s 93, constitution act, 1867.

we do not have and have never had any sort of federal department of education.

trump's issue with canada is that trudeau made him feel inadequate. it's personal.

it'll blowover like a bad combover.

the flip flop in the presidency has perhaps obscured the fact that this is trump's second term and he's a lame duck on arrival. he has at most three years, probably less. there are midterms in 2026, which is now a year and a half away.

is trump going to conquer canada in six months?

further, the likelihood of this policy surviving trump is essentially nil. the reason mark rutte laughed is because it actually is a joke, although i happen to remember mr. rutte in his previous job, and this is not uncharacteristic of him, as an individual. mr. rutte is a longstanding asshole. he also laughed when bush invaded iraq.

you never know with trump. maybe it's an elaborate loyalty test. i think that would be giving him too much credit. however, we see that there is a subset of the elite in canada that did not require much of an incentive to abandon north america as a project, of which we are a part of, as a sovereign country.  

canada should look in the mirror and see itself for what it is and understand the truth; trump is accusing us of being a bad ally and to a large extent we're proving him right. it is true that we have values that are different than theirs and we can't allow them to be compromised. we should absolutely be telling them to fuck off and spitting in their face if they want to put tariffs on us. defence contracting should be on the table, at least. we have to demonstrate via empirical fact that we're not the 51st state and expect them to get it when we do. however, talking about supplying weapons to military alliances in opposition to the united states that would put us in direct conflict with the united states military is too much and needs to be rejected - that's not in our self-interest and not what's going to happen. voices calling for this outcome should be identified and isolated for what they are, which is stupid and dangerous and borderline treasonous.

the chinese are not communists, they're the most vicious capitalists in the history of the planet and arguably have tipped over into fascism. workers in china not only do not control the means of production but have absolutely no rights at all. i've been over this before - china is unique in the world as being the singular standing non-greek culture. all of europe is greek, all of the regions colonized by europe are greek, the russians are the most greek, the muslims are greek, the indians are greek and most of southeast asia is even greek, too, as the furthest extension of greek colonialism. what's left is the very bottom of subsaharan africa,  but it is emerging from colonialism as functionally greek, and the far east of asia, which was massively influenced by greek thought via the spread of buddhism (which we know today was invented and spread by greek colonists tailgating on alexander), but which retained it's unique identity - china, korea and japan. japan and korea are under massive american military occupation. only the chinese are left standing as a non-greek cultural force that is alien to the rest of the world.

the chinese neither view the american continents as competitors or as adversaries, but as half empty lands awaiting colonization. the west needs to understand the chinese as an alien race with a unique culture, because they see us an inferior race to be replaced by chinese colonial expansion. if the chinese get their way, they will do to america and canada what the europeans did to the native americans. i don't want to get into it, but covid may have been a 21st century smallpox blanket, and it may have worked better than we realize.

this isn't about ideology. it's not a clash of civilizations....although it is. it's about race and it's about race because the chinese have made it about race.

trump is a goof and his policies won't survive him. we need deeper thinking that can see more than a foot in front of us and can plan for more than two years in the future, when a new president comes in and completely reverses course. however, there's a kernel of truth in recognizing the need for north american defence because the chinese are coming and we will need to work with the americans to stop them.

the thing we should be on the lookout for is chinese expansion in north eastern asia, which is nominally russian but historically chinese. there were previous skirmishes between russian and chinese emperors around the amur river, but the japanese had a brutal and genocidal occupation of manchuria during world war two (which collapsed the chinese state entirely) and the soviets annexed it in the process of driving the japanese out, thereby stealing a large area of and from historical china. in recent years, the russians have largely ceded sovereignty over greater manchuria back to beijing and they have in the process allowed chinese capital to move in, which is exporting raw resources to china without giving moscow a cut. all evidence suggests that they're just taking over with the intention of annexation. they're aggressively moving north up the coast very quickly. it will be when we find ourselves face to face with chinese jets rather than russian jets running chicken runs into alaska that we will know the day of conflict is upon us, and the chinese are ready to go.

the canadian policy needs to be to find a way to juggle it's need for sovereignty with it's need to help the americans contain the chinese by slowing them down. detente with russia would help us do this and should be seen as in our self-interest.

further, our massive border with russia should be strongly incentivizing us to support trump in minimizing tensions with the russians. our support for ukraine has been self-defeating and stupid - it's not at all in our interest to stoke tensions with the russians like this. you have to remember that trudeau is a failed actor that grew up on 80s blockbuster films full of anti-russian propaganda, and he saw russia as an enemy for that reason. he was not a deep thinker and this is not a well thought through policy for canada. he also had chrystia freeland, who is ukrainian, nipping at his heels like a chihuahua about it. we have a big border with the united states that is undefended; i believe our border with russia is actually bigger and less defended. the best way to protect ourselves from russian incursions is to become friends with the russians, which has been how we've defended ourselves from american incursions. for decades, it was the americans that were stopping us from doing that. if trump is seeking detente, and detente survives him, which it might, we should be taking advantage of that, not fighting it. turning russia into a friend will prevent our need to defend ourselves against them and potentially open up very lucrative markets across the arctic.

i know this got dumped on our lap, but we need better thought out policy than knee-jerking into a position where we define ourselves as enemies of the americans. i know they tend to piss us off. that's not a reason to shoot ourselves in the foot.

whatever policy positions are preferable to us, smart, enlightened leadership right now would begin with the realization that trump is a lame duck and that we should avoid rash overreactions. unless we ourselves decide otherwise, which would be very foolish, it is exceedingly likely that this is a blip in time and we'll look back and laugh at it.

the war in ukraine is not in america's interest, nor in russia's interest and not in europe's interest. it is only in china's interest.

canada will remain in the ukusa alliance.

starmer will likely not last very long.

but a neonazi germany could very well find friends in china that help it out of under the american jackboot and it should be a primary strategic goal of canadian government policy to help make sure that can't happen.

i mean, how did we get to the point where we have politicians like chrystia freeland, whose grandparents were nazis, telling us the germans are our allies?

the germans are not our allies.

the germans are our enemies; the russians are our allies, to help us fight the germans.

at the end of this, we're not going to be aligned with the germans.

we're going to end up fighting the germans.

again.

about the only rational explanation i can think of for the existence of an article like the one i just posted at the canadian state media outlet is infiltration by chinese influences, which could mean buying out the reporter or could be more structural and sinister than that.

the chinese have infiltrated mainstream western media very badly. i don't exactly want to call for a mccarthyite purge of media, but i would have tentative support for an investigation to figure out the depth of it.

more important than that is that, as readers and analysts of western media, individuals should be constantly on the lookout for pro-chinese biases.

china's official eu policy is support for "EU strategic autonomy.", which means helping it free itself from american occupation.

as i pointed out yesterday, the american occupation of europe is necessary to prevent it from returning to fascism, and the europeans will be nazis again in ten minutes if the americans ever leave.

talk of the europeans aligning against the united states is somewhat premature given the 100,000 american troops on the continent in major bases like rammstein in germany.

so, the reaction to trump's tariffs should be that canada should become a colony of europe, again.

no thanks.

worse, this is pre-modern carbon/industrial age thinking. we should take advantage of the opportunity to build a post-carbon economy and increase trade networks with south america, not turn into a factory to send tanks to neo-nazi germany. 

what is underlying this kind of thinking is actually a desire to build an alliance with china, which europe may very well find itself in. while the americans are intelligently looking for detente in russia, the chinese are looking to steal europe, and the european elite has a lot to benefit from aligning with the chinese, especially if it expects china to win.

when the shit hits the fan and war breaks out with the chinese, and it is inevitable, the russians will be more reliable allies than the french, if they can be. the truth is that europe is the weakest link, as it is not in their self-interest to remain under the american jackboot, and it never has been.

europe is not our friend and we need to stop pretending that it is.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-allies-europe-trump-1.7486978

have all you people opposed to "bank bailouts" not yet figured out that they were loans?

do you know what happens to your savings when they're put into a bank that goes bankrupt?

it was franklin roosevelt - not ronald reagan - that legislated the lender of last resort, to ensure that people didn't lose their savings and their mortgages when their banks collapsed, due to no fault of their own. this is a good and necessary policy, and it's why we have government, and what government is for.

this is the continued legacy of world war two (which ended with the occupation of japan, germany, italy and the uk) and it's offshoot, the korean war. 

these occupation forces remain required.

if winston churchill were alive today, the bnp would think he was too right wing and refuse to nominate him.

trump's pretty tame, in comparison.

the ceasefire in ukraine isn't a deal, but it's an agreement to keep talking about getting to a deal.

the russians have been pushed around for decades. they withdrew from east germany and handed over poland without a fight in return for security assurances about the expansion of nato that have been repeatedly broken. nato has a history of breaking it's promises and taking up a return to aggressive positions partly because there's a change in leadership every four to eight years. the russians can't stand this - they demand and need certainty and predictability. the russians hate chaos, chance, randomness. they are themselves extremely predictable, in turn.

there was a coup in ukraine in 2014, followed by a shifting of nato military assets into eastern europe. biden then immediately pulled out of afghanistan and the middle east and dropped everything in eastern europe. any observer would clearly conclude that biden was planning an attack on russia via militarizing ukraine as cannon fodder. so, putin hit first. the outcome has not been pretty, and russia has demonstrated a distinct level of operational incompetence, but it was a calculated move that was probably correct.

the russians moved into ukraine to block nato advances and are demanding their reversal to pull out. it's consistent, it's clear and it's rational. that's their position - to ensure their defenses cannot be breached by a swift nato offensive. their primary fear ought to be german rearmament.

the media is framing this as something like "putin will agree to a ceasefire if ukraine eliminates it's defenses" and are presenting that as unacceptable. they are deducing that trump has failed. this is dangerous and unhelpful as it's trying to prolong a war that's got us on the brink. this is because trump is a republican; they wouldn't frame the issue this way if trump were a democrat.

what is the truth here? the proposals being put forth by nato to defend ukraine include positioning offensive weapons systems in ukraine (labelled as defensive) and occupying ukraine with nato soldiers, called "peacekeepers". the nato peace proposals have consistently been ways to strategically move deeper into the iron curtain. nato must know that the russians know that they're bullshitting them.

yes, the price of peace will need to be an acknowledgement that ukraine - whose very name means buffer zone - will need to be abandoned. if nato will not abandon or partition ukraine, it is telling the russians it continues to plan to march eastwards. the russians have no choice but to put on their hats and say "nyet. enough. you stop here.".

will trump agree to this? i'm going to suggest he has to. 

i have repeatedly pointed out that it is necessary for the united states to occupy germany. we've completely forgotten this, somehow. the russians have not forgotten this. it was trump that shifted american troops eastward in order to enforce a protection racket, and as soon as america lifted one pinkie toe off their jackboot on the german neck, the spectre of german fascism instantly returned. 

it is more important that america occupy germany than that it try to conquer pockets of russia via ukraine, and the russians have proven that nato forces are not getting through the russian defences. they should give putin what he wants because they have to. the alternative is endless trench warfare and millions more dead for a few more inches of land, like world war one. we said never again, but here we are.

but i know my history and i know you want the russians on your side in a world war or protracted conflict. you don't want to fight the russians; that doesn't generally work out well. churchill was an asshole, which is why stalin got along with him.

the world's not a disney cartoon. there's bad people running worse empires. i want putin and russia to fight with the west in the imminent apocalypse and not against it; we need them, we can't win without them. in the long run, only the chinese win by a continuing russian-american hot or cold war.

i want detente.

only trump is crazy enough to do it.

they really should not do this.

they should rather remind everybody that the united states is a functioning democracy, in case some people need reminding.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-democracy-report-1.7486317

i appear to have had a post disappear around 13:17 this afternoon. weird. if that's the case, i don't remember what it was about. i was responding to emails and housing ads at the time.

(actually, i think t was an unwritten post about trump getting charged with criminal contempt. yeah. ok. i opened it but got distracted and didn't write it. the point i wanted to make was in determining responsibility, and it wouldn't be assigned to trump at all.)

this is another example of real world data completely debunking the religion of market theory, but it won't deter the faithful.

the religion says that if you cut consumption taxes the businesses will pass on the savings to the consumer. you take that on faith. in fact, they seem to have just increased prices and pocketed the difference, which actually makes far more sense and is far more rational and should have been predicted with a moment's though. it turns out it was a tax cut for businesses, not for consumers.

i actually don't blame them. it would have been a pain in the ass to change everything for a few weeks and the liberals seemed to be clueless about it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/february-inflation-1.7486370

i could get a lump sum soon.

i had an extremely solid legal argument to overhaul the landlord and tenant board, but they threw a right-wing libertarian judge at me, and her order is entirely incoherent. she ignored my legal argument entirely, speciously claimed i was arguing about facts, inserted demonstrably wrong "facts" from the initial order that are being disputed on review and then used a judicial review argument to quash an appeal, which is all wrong. i did everything right; she even told me my presentation was outstanding, but she wasn't responding to the argument, but trying to generate a predetermined outcome, and i don't know if there was money involved. the judge actually openly admitted to conversing with the lawyer over twitter, which is not allowed and demonstrates the point. so i have to appeal it to a panel of three judges in london, ontario and am trying to schedule it for april. there's no other way to appeal it faster or better (i tried and got blocked by the court of appeal in a case i'd probably win on appeal but don't have the self-interest to push. the rules say i can do what i tried to do, but there's apparently a convention not to. fuck conventions. the court of appeal is supposed to be a creature of statute. if the convention contradicts the statute, you do away with the convention, but you have to get the supreme court to do it and the point is i wanted a faster appeal path not 15 years fighting a supreme court case). in the mean time, i'm fighting off an imminent eviction on april 1st and preparing for a major hearing on april 3rd where i should be awarded major damages for the harassment i've suffered through over the last two years. i'm trying to get an urgent injunction of the bullshit order in place on the grounds that the facts it relies on are demonstrably false, but the court staff appears to have been instructed to send everything to the gatekeeper, and she's just shutting me right down. i'm not being allowed to win this case. i don't know the extent of it.

now, there's a new gatekeeper. i need to try to get some things to him this morning.

if i can get a large enough award on april 3rd, looking for a cheap bungalow or small house in windsor for under 200K might be the most affordable and smartest option. i went over this a few months ago; it's actually cheaper to buy a house right now than it is to rent an apartment because the hike in interest rates got shifted to renters. as a renter, i'm being forced to pay the interest rate hike on the apartment i'm looking to rent, and i can't. it makes more sense to try to cut the middleman out if you're on the very bottom of the market. if you can sign a 40 year mortgage with enough of a downpayment. your mortgage will be less than market rent, on the same or comparable properties. but i need enough to put down.

i don't think the analysis gets it right, and i think the tariffs are only a part of it. i do agree that the tariffs are contributing to and may extend and deepen the downturn. however, i was expecting this and planned around it before the tariffs were announced. it's partly due to gravity - there's a vicious bubble in canada's housing market that just won't burst and prices have to come down - but partly due to the changes in immigration policy. a lot of these sales, especially in student markets, are indian or chinese or arab investors selling houses they can't rent to students. they will cram 30 kids into one house, and they get here and don't understand how awful that is; to them, it's just like home. if you can't own this old rickety mouldy house in downtown wherever at 0% interest and rent it out at 5000% profit to failing immigrant students anymore, what's the point? you sell it at whatever price you can, just to get rid of it, so somebody else can do maintenance on it. and that's good - these are the kinds of properties we needed back on the market to create more low income housing and the outcome that the shift in immigration policy was intended to create. when doug ford or justin trudeau talks about building housing, they mean building mansions in suburbia, and that's not what we need right now at all, we need more basement apartments, more apartment buildings, etc.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11085333/canada-spring-housing-market-tariffs/

this is why the bankers and investors and capitalist class always wins, they get us fighting each other, and repeatedly brainwash and trick us into choosing nationalism over worker solidarity.

it's divide and conquer.

read the constitutional papers. it's baked into the system to get the black slaves and the white servants fighting each other instead of the landholding class, which, if you look into it, were largely literally european aristocrats. divide and conquer of the working class is the actual foundational principle america is founded on, not democracy or freedom or even property rights. if you want a secondary source, read howard zinn (or listen to a youtube video of chomsky paraphrasing zinn for you).

not only should the auto workers in canada and the united states be standing in solidarity with each other to fight the capitalists, but they should be trying to build solidarity with auto workers in mexico and china, too. the actual solution to the issues trump brings up, to the extent they are valid, lies in unionizing the workforce in china to eliminate their absolute advantage in labour costs, which will of course also benefit chinese workers, which american workers should see as a primary policy goal. stop competing. it's stupid. when we compete against each other, only the bankers win.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/uaw-trump-tariffs-canada-unifor-why-1.7483459

why is shopper's drug mart, now owned by loblaws, being allowed to charge a fee to get a pharmacist to extend a prescription? of course they're cramming that down our throats and trying to position their pharmacists as replacements for doctors, as it converts the process of prescribing medication to a for-profit service on the market. if you give capital a foot in the door like this, it will exploit and abuse it, which is why they lobbied for it.

no, i don't want to pay a pharmacist to renew my prescription. shut the fuck up and call my doctor, you fucking vampire.

marketing access to pharmacists as a paid service outside of the structure of ohip should be against the law and punishable with jail time. if this is allowed to continue, it's going to eat away at and dissolve the existing system until there's nothing left of it, as successive services that we assign to doctors in the monopolized insurance structure get taken over by less qualified people that can be paid less to provide it on the market and largely sell it in department stores as a commodity. the universality clause in our healthcare system gets converted to a McHealthCare run by multinational corporations for profit.

the progressive conservatives and liberals are collaborating on a race to the bottom to get to a market failure in healthcare delivery.

they should abolish this "servers wage".

servers should make minimum wage, and that should result in higher prices for meals.

https://financialpost.com/personal-finance/majority-canadians-tips-too-high

so, stop retaliating by putting punishing import taxes on your own people.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/17/donald-trump-trade-wars-global-growth-inflation-oecd-uk-tariffs

trump is overseeing the most closeted gay cabinet in american history.

a coder named "big balls" is clearly a gay man. i think you're all missing the point.

look at who trump surrounds himself with - bearded mean, athletes, religious perverts.

they're a bunch of fags.

no wonder they're so homophobic.

i found south africa's case against israel at the icc to be distasteful, and i realize that land reform in south africa is, like land reform in the united states, complicated by the low levels of education and high levels of poverty experienced by poor white south african farmers, which have parallels to the origins of the populist movement in the united states (which makes trump's musk directed reaction that much more confusing, given his ideological alignment with the forces that would crucify those farmers on a cross of gold), but south africa's strategic value to the united states is of extreme importance and the main, major, substantive beneficiary of a breakdown in american-south african relations is china. there's a better way to deal with this that isn't so alienating; expelling the south african diplomat into the open arms of the chinese is just blatantly foolish.

i also curiously note that trump just shut down voice of america. that is a very weird thing to do.

it makes you wonder.

at the least, let me interject with this suggestion: can you take the time to talk to your advisors before you listen to musk, don coyote?

as a consumer, my concern about american dairy is the growth hormones. i would avoid purchasing american dairy very intentionally.

look for this symbol when you buy dairy in canada.

so long as this is maintained, as a consumer, i would be less concerned about import and export taxes collected by the state. i would just avoid american dairy by checking the labels.

i actually suspect that canadian dairy may develop a market in the united states on the basis of it being additive free if there was a more open market and it were labelled that way. it's a powerful selling point. however, the supply management remains essential to the canadian dairy industry and can't be up for negotiation.

https://dairyfarmersofcanada.ca/en/canadian-goodness/blue-cow-spotter/look-blue-cow-logo

i think they should tax all churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and other places people go to mumble at the wall.

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2025-03/churches-in-canada-concerned-by-proposed-changes-to-tax-status.html

i instantly suspected this.

"51st state" is how canadians mockingly describe ourselves.

i bet almost everything trump has said is repeating what trudeau said to him.

"I’ll tell you how that came about," Rubio said of promoting the annexation of Canada. "OK, he’s in a meeting with Trudeau, and Trudeau basically says that if the U.S. imposes tariffs on Canada, Canada couldn’t survive as a nation state, at which point the president said, 'well, then you should become a state.'"

Trump, Rubio said, "made an argument for why Canada would be better off joining the United States from an economic perspective and the like."

"He’s made that argument repeatedly," Rubio continued. "And I think it stands for itself."

i'm probably too old to worry about this, but i'd have fled the country or gone to jail before i allowed some fascist government to enlist me as a trained murderer.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/how-canada-wins-mandatory-service

the delusional phoney loser sean hansel continues to try and trick people into thinking he's a member of rabit is wolf and that he wrote my music, which is false.

i've updated the official bandcamp site.

rabit is wolf was a rare collaborative project that also included a different person named sean as a guest vocalist and stunt noise generator. the rabit is wolf bandcamp site documents sean's contributions to my discography for the purposes of clarifying exactly what sean contributed in order to clear up various confusions.

this sub-bandcamp site is both comprehensive and maximal; it is exhaustive. if something does not appear there, it is because sean wasn't involved with it. at all. let there be no ambiguity.

as of 2025, i've been forced to officially kick sean out of rabit is wolf because he's being a phony piece of shit asshole for taking credit for music i wrote and performed. sean is now no longer a member of rabit is wolf, which now has only one remaining member, jessica murray/parent. this is largely irrelevant because there has not been any rabit is wolf material since 2002 and there has not been any chance of rabit is wolf reforming since 2010 at the latest, and in truth more like since 2005.

rabit is wolf existed from 2001-2003, but mostly over 2002. the picture of sean and i (and two other people) that is used for cover art was taken by sarah in early 2003.

https://rabitiswolf.bandcamp.com

the british have also realized this about mark carney.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/jul/11/how-economics-became-a-religion

joe's good at this stuff.

better than i am.

listen to him.

https://economicsociology.org/2014/06/11/free-markets-as-a-religious-belief/

peer reviewed empirical economic studies have suggested that the consumer carbon tax contributed to on the order of 0.25% or less of the inflation we were experiencing, which was nearing 10% at some points. i would expect mark carney to explain that to people, not to parrot ignorant talking points by his opponents and in the process severely damage his credibility as a talking head and economic manager.

conversely, his import tax policy is going to lead to 25% or higher increases on staples like orange juice, across the board.

it is predictable that the replacement of the intentionally very progressive consumer carbon tax with an intentionally very regressive consumption tax on imports will lead to a 100% or higher increase in inflation on staple goods, and you should expect that to be the consequence of this very stupid and economically ignorant shift in tax and fiscal policy.

if this is designed to win votes, make it backfire - do not vote for the banker. make the fuckers pay.

in fact, this is going to decrease my income by about 3%, which is substantive given how poor i am and is about the dumbest thing he could possibly do, if his intention is to benefit low income canadians. the carbon rebate was extremely beneficial for poor canadians. this will severely harm affordability measures for those with the lowest incomes.

further, this will have no discernible effect on inflation and carney should be embarrassed for parroting the overwhelmingly ignorant and economically specious and false argument that carbon taxes were responsible for inflation. people should take note of that, as it undoes his credibility as an economics expert and reduces him to a populist buffoon running on ignorant policies with no basis in empirical science. however, his replacement import taxes on american goods actually are a tax on everything that will increase the price of everything, and are coming without any sort of attempt to offset their extremely regressive nature. this is a double whammy on poor people, as it takes away something we rely on and then kicks us in the gut with a huge inflationary price hike immediately afterwards.

the result is more inflation and less money to offset it for those that need it. this will have real consequences for disabled people, for the working poor and for child poverty.

it seems like the conservatives have already won and we're already back to the ignorant backwardsness of ideological market economics, which is not a science but a religion. high priest carney is going to enforce his faith in markets on all of us, whether we share his belief system or not. i'm not in a liberal riding, i'm in an ndp riding, but i certainly won't be voting for them.

i'm going to have to vote for the green party on principle, and i hope carney loses. there's no difference between the liberals and conservatives at this point; when that happens, you have to stop voting for the liberals, to force them out of office and make them refocus. if the liberals are going to position themselves as indiscernible from the conservatives, i'd rather see the conservatives win and the liberals be sent into opposition.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-carney-drops-carbon-tax-1.7484290

i've updated the super mega total genesis discography for 1964-1969. because everything always begins with the beatles. pun intended.

i've become rather convinced that most of the synthesizer parts in the classic genesis records were played by david hentschel, and that brian eno was almost solely responsible for the ambient sections that dot genesis records through the mid 70s. this has ramifications for how i complete the super mega total genesis discography.

my understanding is that john burns was an engineer and that the lamb lies down on broadway should really say produced by brian eno. this would have actually been his first major production job, before the berlin trilogy, and even before his solo career even started.

mr. banks still has time to prove me wrong, but his solo material is distinctly lacking across the board.

i'm tired of reading about the awful but necessary things being done by israel in gaza, but the truth remains what it is, they won't release the hostages.

can the arab world get the idiots to release the fucking hostages, before there's nobody left to kill? or is that what they actually want?

i want to deconstruct the logic on this scurvy-generating policy of slapping import taxes on american orange juice (how many indigenous kids are you going to send to the hospital over this?), and then rationalizing it by saying you can buy orange juice from mexico or brazil instead. this naive application of market theory is going to argue that orange juice imported from mexico or brazil will remain lower in cost because it's not being taxed, while orange juice from the united states will price itself out of the market. this will harm american producers, who will no longer be able to compete in the canadian market.

is that what's going to happen?

well, that's not what i learned in school about markets or how markets work.

rather, what i learned about markets in school is that the orange juice industry is an oligopoly (bananas are a monopoly. have you ever seen the price of bananas vary from store to store by more than a cent? the banana industry is so controlled, it's like an organized crime syndicate. the upside is that inflation is low. the only commodity that's experienced less inflation than bananas is marijuana. shrinkflation aside, it's still $10/gram, right?) and that orange juice producers inside the oligopoly will consequently cooperate to set prices in a way that is consistent. what that means is that a modern, evidence-based, non-naive, non-ideological analysis of how the orange juice industry actually works in the real world (really existing market theory) would rather predict that if you put an import tax on american orange juice then manufacturers of orange juice from brazil or mexico would react by cooperating with american producers and increase their prices proportionally to maintain price consistency. mexican orange juice producers would not seek to compete with american orange juice producers, as that would not be in their self-interest, which is to maintain high prices to maximize profits for investors. in an oligopoly, competition is destructive and harmful and to be avoided at all costs, as a primary corporate objective.

oligopolies can be upset by the introduction of new manufacturers seeking to enter the market by undercutting the oligopoly, but it's hard to see where that's going to happen, unless we start growing oranges in greenhouses in southern ontario and the okanagan valley, which is not the worst idea i've ever heard. that may force the oligopoly to compete, until the new manufacturer can enter the oligopoly, or be targeted by it for destruction, dismantling or hostile takeover.

the result is that this attempt to minimize inflation by choosing commodities with replacements is naive and a poor understanding of how markets actually function in the real world. the import taxes, as regressive consumption taxes, will simply be inflationary across the board in the commodities being targeted. they will not harm american producers, they will just lead to inflation in the targeted commodities. further, this deconstruction of the orange juice oligopoly would apply to most other commodities being imported and most other industries, which are oligopolies or cartels in the real world, and which don't want to compete with each other, but want to avoid competing with each other. that's why we have huge government departments trying to force companies to compete with each other to salvage the facade of the make believe ideology of market economics - they don't want to compete, they realize competing is dumb. markets that have competition are called unstable; that's a definition. an unstable market is defined as a market that has competitive firms. all unstable markets tend to oligopolies as stable outcomes, which you can derive using differential equations, by using game theory (the nash equilibrium) or by just taking as an analogy to blackbody radiation or any other steady-state equation. markets tend towards equilibrium between producers and consumers; they don't tend towards competition, but towards the abolition of competition. then, the government has to step in and kick them in the ass and yell at them "start fucking competing.".

if we had real anarchy in the colloquial sense, the real end of government, the first thing that would happen is that this naive government creation we call the market economy would completely evaporate, and be replaced by feudal cartels and landowners colluding with each other to reduce everyone around them to slavery, leaving the workers and slaves and serfs and migrants to organize to try to survive. from that origin point, the workers could start building the kinds of societies that anarchists in the technical sense have long imagined and desired, by starting from the bottom up in collectives and communes, intended to size control from the oligopolies and feudal lords and cartels. markets cannot exist without governments to define, oversee and ultimately regulate them, as nobody would agree to these contrived and often childish rules that are in nobody's self-interest without an organized system of violence and control threatening them to behave via a monopoly on violence. no government means no markets.

that's what i learned in school, anyways.

if what carney ends up doing is reducing or cancelling the relatively progressive (in the sense that the wealthy pay more) consumer carbon tax and replacing it with a regressive consumption tax on imports by wrapping himself in the flag to sell it (and from this point on, i will refrain from using the word "tariff" or the terminology of "retaliatory tariff". i will instead strictly use the terminology of "import tax" or "regressive consumption tax"), that will work out to a massive shift in the tax burden from the wealthy to the poor, which is exactly the kind of policy that bankers love and have been pushing for the last sixty years. since 1970, we've seen an astronomical downloading in the tax burden, and continuing that shift seems to be the entire point of carney's fiscal strategy. he's also calling for a cancelling of the carbon tax rebate and to replace it with income tax cuts on the "middle class", which in liberal party terminology is just code for the rich. it's a massive shift upwards in wealth, consistent with and an extension of everything else that has defined the neo-liberal era, fiscally. i've been nailing trudeau for ten years for being too right-wing on economics, but he seems like a socialist in comparison to carney.

worse, he wants to balance the budget. this is not the time to concern yourself with the irrelevance of balanced budgets. nobody cares about balanced budgets, and to the extent that it concerns your average voter, most people just hear "cuts in services" when politicians talk about balancing budgets. canada is not in the poor fiscal position it was in in the 90s, and we have no motives to incur the kind of difficult cuts in government spending that we had to endure through the 90s to chase off the vampires at the imf, which mark carney is basically one of. the issues we have in front of us are poor healthcare delivery, mass poverty, a housing crisis, drug addiction, environmental degradation, climate change....we should be talking about dramatically increasing government spending as a percentage of gdp to deal with these massive problems we have in front of us that are in a large sense a consequence of previous attempts at budget balancing, not talking about balancing the budget. the imf isn't on our ass right now at all. in that sense, carney is very much the wrong person at the wrong time. shifts in the tax burden from the rich to the poor and cuts in services to balance the budget is not what canada needs at this time, but what canadians should be rallying around each other and strenuously fighting to avoid. that prescription will severely harm us, make us weaker and make us easier to invade.

i'm not going to support these shifts in fiscal and tax policy.

rather, i'm going to aggressively campaign against them and do everything i can to explain them to low income people so that they understand what the proposals are and don't vote against their own interests.

the simple analysis is that mark carney is a banker and his fiscal and tax policies reflect that fact. they're exactly what you'd expect from a banker. do you want to vote for a banker? does that sound like a smart choice to you?

"counterpunch"?

we're punching ourselves.

ugh.

this is what they want. we walked right into it.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/trumps-tariffs/article/canada-hits-back-at-trumps-latest-tariffs-with-298b-countermeasures-live-updates-here/

who should pay for the tariffs?

america should pay for the tariffs!

bizarrely, increasing consumption taxes might be popular in canada, right now.

but it's not a good policy and not an effective response, and it will just hurt low income canadians, while inflicting minimal harm on american capital. the real winner is the federal government, which gets a new revenue stream.

if they really wanted to fight back, they'd bring in export taxes, not so-called retaliatory tariffs.

that said, there's a relatively easy way to fix the regressive part of the tariff tax hike, and it's to send out tariff rebate checks, like they send out gst rebate checks.

it doesn't make it a good or effective policy, but it at least makes it less regressive, as a consumption tax increase.

broadly speaking, these retaliatory tariffs will have little effect on purchasing decisions by canadians and therefore have little effect on foreign suppliers. rather, they are just a means for the government to generate revenue, and are in a real sense an undoing of the gst decision in the 80s, which shifted import taxes to sales taxes. we're bringing back the tax importers used to pay before mulroney abolished it and converted it into a sales tax.

if that's what we're doing, can we cut the gst, then, too?

if it's just a revenue generating mechanism, which is what it is, it should be strenuously opposed as a cynical way to introduce a tax increase. why should canadians pay for this? let the americans pay for it. tax them, not us.

i'm not an economist. i have a math degree, some experience solving economics problems in calculus and algebra courses, a few economics themed math courses (third year linear programming was very economics focused, 4th year automata theory is a computer math course with applications in economics and linguistics, 4th year game theory had major applications in economics, i took a number of courses in differential equations from 2nd-5th year which are used in engineering and economics, etc), economics 101/102, a three year sociology of law degree and some experience reading policies, as a 44 year old. the number of math courses i took that were cross-referenced as economics courses, together with economics 101/102, would give me enough credits for a minor in economics, if i applied for it. that's it.

i would also have a minor in physics if i applied for it due to the number of math courses i took that were cross-referenced as physics courses, on top of the degrees in math, computer science and sociology of law. i am a little bit short on minors in music and english lit, but not by much. i have only taken a total of two history courses, both in greek history (classical and byzantine). then, there's a lot of topics where i have a credit or two  - biology, chemistry, psychology, philosophy, etc.

so, it doesn't take much education or very deep reasoning to figure out that these supposed "retaliatory tariffs" will have no meaningful effect on american suppliers and are just a regressive tax increase on canadian consumers.

if you paid 30% more for florida sourced tropicana instead of mexican sourced walmart orange juice, you'll pay an extra 25%, too. etc. these aren't major price hikes per unit, it's a dollar per orange juice jug, or a couple of extra bucks for a 40 of whiskey. it's just a regressive, revenue generating consumption tax, and we're being suckered into it by politicians wrapping themselves in the flag to promote it.

i don't support this at all.

consumption taxes are regressive.

tax them, not me.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/politics/2025/03/12/canada-to-announce-298-billion-in-retaliatory-tariffs-on-us-official-tells-reuters/

see, this is why i didn't want ford talking to trump.

ford thinks that by lifting the export tax he's making progress towards a resolution that can benefit both sides.

in trump's mind, he just tricked the fatass dummy ford into removing the export tax, and then suckered him with a 25% tariff. and, basically, trump is right, that's exactly what he did. trump then defines that as being "smart" and "good negotiating". he "wins". further, he's proven that canada is weak and stupid and easy to take advantage of, so he will therefore continue to take advantage of canada in the future.

that's how america operates and has operated for 250 years.

if trump actually understood tariffs, he'd be dangerous.

but ford is a buffoon and he couldn't negotiate himself out of a parking ticket. he should at least send a trade negotiator. he won't, he'll go himself.

the feds need to lock him in a closet and tell him not to come out until they're done.

this is extremely alarming.

this can't continue.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/federal-report-deems-it-racist-to-criticize-canadian-anti-israel-activists

trudeau's government seemed to be intentionally exceedingly pro-muslim, and that seems to come from a personal interest in the religion from the man himself, who was famously photographed in blackface as an arab sheikh before he became prime minister and seems to view the aga kahn exceedingly fondly, perhaps as result of his mother having had an affair with him, as one of the dozens of women he was sleeping with as a young british aristocrat. 

justin trudeau has a far greater resemblance to the aga kahn than he does to pierre trudeau.

google "young aga kahn".

margaret was in the right place at the right time. the public line is that she was friends with his sister. right.

this is going to have to be addressed and moderated one way or another. it would be helpful if carney can set that in motion, even if he doesn't last very long in office.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/ivison-mark-carney-donald-trump-tariffs

well, we have to have a reason to think we're not americans and for a lot of people, the government of the country at most levels as the primary example, that's lacking. if canada wants to have the same culture, follow the same ideology, use the same laws, etc as the americans, then why not just become american? an american citizenship card is a valuable item.

i don't want to support a canadian government if it just wants to be all about free markets. if carney and ford and smith want to work a room by pushing market theory and competition, they may find a muted response. those are american ideas. one of the basic differences between canada and the united states has been that canada is a more socialist country, more willing to use government to solve problems, and less interested in market economies. if you ask a canadian on the street to come up with a reason they don't want to be americans, besides a beer commercial, the first and last thing a lot of us will say is we don't want to lose our healthcare.

there's an opportunity to enforce this, but the governments we've elected recently aren't aligned with historical canadian values. it was nice to hear chretien talk on sunday, as he might have been the last truly canadian prime minister and, at 91, he might represent the end of a culture and be the last of his people, so to say. yoda, indeed. justin trudeau, mark carney, chrystia freeland, michael ignatieff, stephen harper, doug ford, danielle smith, etc have their differences, but they all share the characteristic that they are culturally american and have spent their entire political careers wanting canada to be america lite, either as some kind of california north or as some kind of more enlightened texas. that's not going to work with a lot of people, who are going to wonder what the point is.

if we remember that being canadian means using government, and use it to retreat from the reliance on market-based solutions we've seen dominate politics since the turn of the century, we might find more people want to remain canadian. if we keep copying america, we might find people think there's less purpose to it, and they may start to look at the positives of the alternative.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-annexation-destabilizing-canada-1.7479890

jean chretien called for export taxes in his speech to liberals on sunday night. like i said before,

chretien is this weird yoda character that speaks broken english and is somehow always right about everything, despite coming off as not very bright.

if there's a keeper of the canadian swamp, it remains mr. chretien. none shall pass.

if this is the policy being written up - export taxes on potash, aluminum, oil, electricity - trump had better back off before he gets hurt.

think of it like this: instead of having our workers build commodities to export to the united states, let's have them focus on building housing for current and future canadians to live in, in a massive make work project, like we haven't seen since the 70s.

this is what our government would do if it was actually socialist. it will probably not do any of this, it will make us pay more for oranges instead, which is stupid and pointless.

i'm actually surprised that ford slapped the tax on electricity, but hey. i'll take it.

it would be reasonable to put a 50% export tax on oil exports until the american president stops the flow of illegal guns into canada. they're killing us; gangsters and thugs.

we also need to get really tough on the amount of firearms entering canada from the united states.

this is unacceptable and needs to stop. now.

let's understand what trump did.

ontario put a 25% tax on electricity going to the us, in response to the tax that trump placed on his own people to buy canadian goods. trump's taxes are not targeted, and make no sense. he's not trying to protect industries. he's not trying to help businesses. he's just trying to dissuade american consumers from buying canadian products, broadly. it's not intended to help america in a specific way, it's intended to hurt canada in a broad way. it's the economic equivalent of a terrorist randomly shooting rounds into a crowded shopping mall, which is a fitting analogy for an american president.

what canada is saying is "if you want to tax your people to buy our products, we're also going to tax your people to buy our products, but we're going to tax the items that you have to buy from us, because you don't have any choice, and we're going to use it to mitigate the job losses resulting from your attempts to hollow out our industries".

in response, trump increased the taxes on his own people even higher.

well, we should increase our taxes on them even higher, too, then - but ensure those taxes are targeted on goods that they can't find an alternate supplier for. 

in fact, the feds should slap a 50% export tax on aluminum, too. 

they have nowhere else to get it. they'll have to pay it.

take the money generated from the export taxes and use it to build subsidized housing and more hydro plants, with labour supplied by construction workers laid off in the steel mills.

i want to clarify that canadian governments should mostly choose materials that are purchased by businesses to put export taxes on. the idea is to transfer the costs to american companies, because that is what trump is doing, he's targeting canada's corporate sector for hostile takeover.

some steel workers may benefit from retraining. we have a housing crisis - tell them to become construction workers. i mean, it's the most obvious keynesian make work plan in the world sitting in front of us - take the laid off workers and tell them to build houses. in terms of sterile, by the book economic metrics that nobody actually cares about, boosting housing makes everything look better on paper.

steel is a gross, dirty industry, anyways. i would rather offshore steel production. let the americans ruin their lakes.

that's fine. the export tax will mitigate it. that's the point.

an export tax on nickel would also work, as the americans get almost all of their nickel from us.

trump has no idea what he's doing. he legitimately thinks canadians pay the tariffs.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/11/trump-raises-canadian-steel-aluminum-tariffs-to-50percent-in-retaliation-for-ontario-energy-duties.html

if i was a conservative voter, and i was asked to pick between pierre polievre and mark carney, that would be a no brainer; i would pick carney in a second. polievre would be roundly defeated if carney were to primary him in the conservative party.

however, i'm not a conservative, i'm a socialist on the far left of the liberal party, and my ballot choice - which does not consider polievre, but is between carney, singh and may - makes me rather unenthusiastic about voting for the liberals. 

i'm going to suggest that you're going to see a lot of volatility in the polls, as the right abandons the goof polievre for the far more acceptable carney and the left finds itself in a crisis point, as it clearly doesn't want to vote for singh, for good reasons. he's a religious nut, and not in line with the left's tendency to embrace secularism, which is a longstanding issue with the ndp, which has always had this very undesirable religious streak that has sent secular leftists to the liberals instead.

a few months ago, this looked like a yawny election where little would change. i know the liberals were polling badly, but i didn't take that seriously. now, it looks like the conservatives might find themselves cockblocked by the liberals, who may just end up teetering to another minority, as they cave to the greens. 

i could only vote green or not at all at this point.

the outcome may not look much different in terms of seat counts, but it would be an upending of the political spectrum that is long overdue. the conservatives keep electing goofs and running them for prime minister, and conservative voters have long been looking for some escape mechanism. they don't have another harper to save them from the goofery, apparently. carney is exactly what they want. conversely, left-liberals have become increasingly frustrated and alienated by trudeau and the switch to carney - at 86% of the vote, apparently, according to the liberal politburo - may indicate they've given up and moved on.

good.

now, can we ditch the tariff on orange juice, before we all end up with fucking scurvy?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-electricity-tariffs-ford-trump-1.7479180

this was a shady process and you probably shouldn't take it seriously but he is going to be prime minister, at least for now.

86% huh?

that's almost as good as putin.

putin got 87.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68592781

i'd just like to remind everybody that afghanistan has one of the largest mineral reserves in the world and that the chinese are intending to leverage it.

that's reversible.

with minimal effort.

the only prime minister i would give absolute power to is optimus.

and the only prime minister i would take directions from is the prime directive.

i'm more concerned about carney's apparent authoritarian streak. he didn't want to be finance minister, he wanted to be prime minister. he has to be the boss, in control, but it seems to be more about his ego.

he's probably better off as a bankbencher economic advisor, but he wouldn't do it, because it's all about him and his legacy.

he can't break things the way biden did, and he does legitimately know what he's doing on monetary policy. yet, when people seek absolute power like carney is, it's almost always a good idea to stop them from getting it.

"handling" trump is not the right approach.

the right approach is adapting to trump. 

personally, i would argue that that is the one issue where carney is clearly best qualified, by a large margin. it's everything else that i don't like about carney, and which i'm far more concerned about, given that trump has 2 years max and carney might be in office for a while.

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/bell-who-can-handle-trump-sure-as-hell-not-mark-carney-says-danielle-smith

i haven't seen any good polling on the liberal leader vote, and the process appears to be fairly shady.

neither carney nor freeland were remotely impressive in the debate.

don't be surprised if there's a surprise.

there's some articles up suggesting trump wants to invade canada for the reasons putin invaded ukraine, which would be difficult to defend against a strong analyst. is canada inviting chinese troops into the country?

but, the history is the other way around. canada is not a lost province of the us; the us is a lost province of canada. the united states declared independence from canada in 1776.

maybe, one day, we'll get them back.

israel does what he says and is a useful ally.

ukraine should stop whining and start learning. most presidents have and will act more like trump and less like biden.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/06/trump-israel-gaza-ukraine

if the us picked a fight with some block in europe, would canada come to europe's defence?

no.

in fact, a foundational shift in the trudeau government was to kiss washington's ass. it was decided that pushing back on iraq and cuba wasn't worth it. if trudeau were in office when bush invaded iraq, he would have signed up for it because fighting it in principle wasn't worth it.

we see how foolish that is now, and how right chretien was. chretien is this weird yoda character that speaks broken english and is somehow always right about everything, despite coming off as not very bright. he wrote most of the legislation we give the elder trudeau credit for. it was utterly stupid to intentionally flip the policy and bail on the global south. we may now suffer tremendously for that.

asking europe to pick between america and canada isn't going to help us. that is clear, and they shouldn't be faulted for it.

does donald trump think he's thomas paine all of a sudden, or something? he keeps talking about common sense, as though he even knows what that even means.

i bet that your average trump voter would guess that thomas paine is ringos starr's new wrestling name, tommy pain.

they'd let him use his sticks in the ring, right? 

i don't understand what the intent or purpose of "cutting off" things to the united states is. is it supposed to be "punitive"?

they're our only market in many cases. they can buy things elsewhere, and in fact want to; we don't want them to. we want market access and they're trying to take it away. "cutting off" things us what they want.

if i was in a fight with somebody and i was given the choice between denying them access to goods or services at my own cost or increasing the price of goods and services, it is clear that my self interest would be the latter. i would always choose raising prices over denying access, every time, without serious debate.

perhaps the obvious truth should be considered: if the behaviour of canadian politicians aligns more closely with american interests than canadian interests, as has often been the case since mulroney and the fta, maybe that's what the truth actually is. perhaps this is a charade and the truth is that ford, trudeau, the bulk of the old tory media and the rest of the punditry-political-industrial complex are actually working for american lobbyists and that is why they are talking about "cutting off" trade with the americans at our own demise and cost and their actual longterm benefit, rather than maintaining it by aggressively trying to cash in on it by introducing export taxes.

when some deduction doesn't make sense, perhaps the axioms should be questioned and reanalyzed.

it would actually be very helpful for trump and the region if he'd put aside a few hundred million dollars to fight drug trafficking and take on the armed thugs running central america.

has it crossed trump's mind that 30 million dollars for social cohesion in nicaragua or 50 million dollars for social engineering in uganda or 70 million dollars to stamp out a civil war in mali might actually help to reduce illegal migration?

i watched part of the state of the union. it wasn't that different than previous ones.

this is what i want to say: trump is worth opposing, but not on the grounds the democrats want to oppose him on, which are mostly the small number of things he should be supported on. in fact, the democrats are going to largely avoid opposing trump on the things he should be opposed on, because they actually agree with him.

trump comes off as uncouth, granted. people criticize him for not really being rich because of how he acts and talks. further, he has some ideas that we haven't heard in a while, and some of them are bad and some of them are less bad. however, fundamentally, i don't see a break from the status quo neo-liberal washington consensus, where the democrats and republicans agree on everything i'm opposed to, and they argue about things i either don't care much about (gun rights) or actually think the republicans are right about (russia).

do you think that colbert looking guy running the house of representatives sitting behind trump supports tariffs on canada? he doesn't. he hates it. he's waiting trump out. the bankers do this from time to time in history, and it exposes what the truth is, which is that trump is the puppet, and the real oligarchs are using him to sit on power and get what they want done, which appears to be an end to this stupid war with russia first and more tax cuts second.

i will eventually pick a side and align with a party, but it's not going to be in the next four years. what i see is the same thing i've seen since the end of clinton, which is my entire adult life - two parties that i disagree equally with in their core principles, which they largely share, and can equally support 10-20% of the policies of, albeit my support would be for different policies on either side. i would disagree with 90% of what democrats support and 90% of what republicans support, but would agree with random policies pushed by either party.

i'm going to largely agree with what trump does as commander in chief, which is his actual job, amidst howls by the democrats, which i will mostly ignore or flat out criticize. i was vehemently opposed to biden's foreign policy, which i thought was catastrophic and brought us to the brink of nuclear war. i will strongly disagree with trump on his economic and tax policies, which democrats will probably actually vote for. i had minimal support for some of biden's domestic policies, but i largely thought he was too right-wing on economic issues and his legislation had no chance of accomplishing what it purported to accomplish because it relied strictly on voluntarism and the use of market theory, when he should have been passing laws about emissions levels and then sending people to jail for breaking them.

i missed this yesterday.

this is the smart approach.

*applause*.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/us-commerce-secretary-calls-premier-ford-as-ontario-plans-to-put-export-tax-on-electricity/

i sample a small section of the good neighbour policy speech in my 2004 symphonic work, "interplanetary isomorphism". 

this composition is complete, but the recording/ep remains unfinished. i have been intending to complete a remaster of this track for years, which would close the ep, but i've been fighting off all kinds of bullshit and haven't been able to.

it is featured as the centrepiece of my upcoming eighth record, {e}, which will be backdated to 2005 when it can be finalized.

all sound in all trivial group material created by the identity element, the one. that's the point. it's solely me; strictly me. nobody else is ever invited. any attempt to participate would be violently stricken. 

the missing link between inri and the trivial group is pythagoras, and i've created an akousmatic project to fill that in, but it's still in sketch stages because i simply can't get any work done. i was reading reconstructions of pythagorean philosophy in 2004. via pythagorean philosophy, which may have had indo-iranian origins via thracian influences, the trivial group is the origin point of the platonic tragic hero, jesus, which inri is named after. 

there are three official inri lps and one official deny everything lp, two official jjjjjjjjj lps and one official ftaa lp between the inri project and the trivial group project, which culminates in a 2xlp set. all of these projects in the main sequence (inri, deny everything, jjjjjjjjj, ftaa, trivial group, cycles per second, tetris, pi, proverbs) only include me as a member, but may include guest contributions from others. not the trivial group; if it's filed as trivial group, it is me and only me and strictly me and nobody else ever at all. otherwise, it's not the trivial group, it's some other group that is isomorphic to c2 or c3 or c4 or k4. there are also some side projects (rabit is wolf, cynicide collaboration, throatmotor, etc) with others, but mostly with an old acquaintance named jon that was reliant on me for bass for a few years. 

see, the reality is that this is going to cave in the cost of rent here in south detroit. windsor is going to be hit harder than it's been hit since nafta, which was extremely hard.

this is in my self-interest.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11064749/donald-trump-tariffs-ontario/

canada will not find friends or solidarity in europe. that's why i've been arguing against supporting them. that's the point.

if what trumps wants is hemispheric dominance, which is the monroe doctrine and not "manifest destiny", and he's looking to make a deal with the russians to get it, then the solution is to look towards other actors in our own hemisphere, not to poke monroe in the eye and pine for a return of colonialism by calling the french back into louisiana. vive la nouvelle-orleans et saint-louis libre? let us instead advance the good neighbour policy of fdr, retooled for canada, and look to make friends in the south.

the reality is that almost everything we buy from the united states could be grown or manufactured in mexico and already is and is already on our shelves. i guess it depends where you shop. i'm poor, so i do almost all of my shopping at walmart, and they don't import anything from the united states, it's entirely from mexico.

there are large countries in south america with advanced economies: peru, argentina, chile. brazil has a lot of the same problems as america, except far worse, but is a very populous nation with tremendous potential. it might be a secret nuclear power.

we are better off waiting this out and expecting it to be short-lived, but if this goes on for a while and the americans really want a new civil war for control of the hemisphere then we'll have to understand that and build alliances in the hemisphere to contain them with. right now, it's a little too early for the canadian government to be talking about an american containment strategy, but it needs to be ready, as a contingency plan.

right now, we should just slap massive export taxes on the giffen goods and perfectly inelastic commodities to try to milk them of their own stupidity and wait it out.

how much long term damage is trump going to do to the republican party?

could the republican senate even vote to impeach him, to remove him from office?

Ford has previously warned that a 25 per cent tariff on most Canadian goods at the Canada-U.S. border could result in the loss of 500,000 jobs in Ontario.

so, what happens if you shut down nickel and electricity exports? you just make it worse; you just create more job losses. you reduce revenue streams coming from taxes. you create a negative multiplier that is recessionary, especially in northern ontario. this could devastate northern cities; this is retarded.

the americans are shooting themselves in the foot and, in response, we're shooting ourselves in the groin. that'll show 'em, right?

but, if you keep the industries running and hike the price via export taxes, you save those jobs and create a revenue stream to help the workers in the industries that do get shut down by the tariffs.

ugh.

retards. everywhere. you have to be a retard to want to run for office because you have to be a retard to actually want to make decisions for others and control others and implement power over others. what do we do?

the greeks used to pick their leaders in the assembly, and force them to serve against their will, not let them volunteer to run, as they knew that allowing politicians to volunteer self-selects for retards that want power and dominance and control.

no. when i call you retarded, that doesn't mean i think you should be forcibly sterilized. it just means i think you're a fucking moron and should be called out publicly for your worthless, abject fucking stupidity, and i think that calling people out for being complete idiots is necessary and required and positive.

i ultimately don't like people telling me what words i'm allowed to use. i'll decide how i want to speak, not you, and you can go fuck yourself if you don't like it. i have no remote concerns about your feelings; i'm strictly concerned with my rights to free expression, and if you want to restrict my right to expression in any way, you are my enemy and must be smitten and destroyed.

until relatively recently, i would generally avoid calling somebody a retard because it was unnecessarily rude and tended to reduce the quality of the discourse. it was just unnecessary to resort to specious ad hominems; i could insult your position, instead of insulting you directly. it was more effective to merely imply you were a retard, and not helpful to actually point it out. it made me sound brash and uncouth. i have a better vocabulary than that. really. however, when these retards on the fake left (they're actually the far right. the left doesn't restrict speech, only the far right restricts speech) started trying to tell me i couldn't use the word, i felt it necessary to start using it just to assert the fact that i can and i won't be told otherwise.

what this is about is rebelling against an authoritarian culture trying to tell people what they can and can't say and how they can and can't think. people of all ages and all political alignments don't like that and are likely to spit in the faces of people trying to control them through policing their language, and kick them down the stairs and tell them to fuck off.

it is actually one of the basic principles of ideological liberalism to reject authoritarian control structures trying to police language or create categories of thought crimes. i consider my insistence on the right to call you a retard to be a left-wing position and those institutions trying to shut me down to be on the far right.

it does not align me with any of these groups at all, and i'd like to see more socialists be more vocal about this. the politics of restricting free expression is a losing political position, and these guys (they are 95% men) have co-opted a foundational principle of the left that the left needs to aggressively and assertively take back from them. this is our policy and you can't have it; fuck off.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/03/r-word-right-wing-rise

carney wants to cancel the carbon rebate and replace it with a tax cut for the rich, which he calls the "middle class", which would be a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

well, he's a banker in the neo-liberal era.

what else would you expect?

chrystia freeland's plan to "outwit trump" is to copy doge and mimic elon musk in order to dramatically reduce the size of the public service. this will save canadians money. supposedly. 

ok.

delete. delete. cancel. x. burn. burn. burn.

shipping oil to the eastern seaboard is not forward thinking. the carbon era is ending, trump will be gone in a few years, and it's generating a gigantic ecological threat for minimal economic gain over a short time frame. they should just leave the system in place and implement massive export taxes. the governor of michigan is trying to shut down the existing eastward movement of fossil fuels, and i fully support her in doing that.

this idea that transporting oil by pipe is safer than by boat or train (or plane) is missing the point. activists opposing pipelines are trying to stop the movement of oil altogether; we want to keep it in the ground.

canada still has massive undeveloped hydroelectric potential. i understand that some environmentalists oppose developing hydroelectric dams because they're conservationists (right-wing environmentalists, conservatives) that want to keep nature untouched. i support sustainable development that uses the science of ecology to develop a holistic relationship with the environment that allows for the continuation of development and industry in a way that doesn't generate a negative impact. we can reroute rivers in a way that is safe and doesn't harm the species that live in them. we should be focusing less on mining and moving dirty oil for the old economy and more on generating clean electricity for the new economy.

i don't want to own a vehicle, i want access to an efficiently run publicly owned electrified transportation system that connects the entire windsor-quebec corridor as a giant megalopolis.

an export tax on oil is also a carbon tax, remember. it's worth supporting strictly on that ground alone.

no. this is stupid.

instead, create a massive export tax, collect it on sales and redistribute the wealth from american businesses to ontarian workers.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/doug-ford-threatens-to-stop-nickel-shipments-to-us-on-eve-of-trade-war/

industries will also find ways to adjust to the tariffs. 

have you noticed that the price of coffee has doubled in the last few years? there are apparently climate issues with the production of coffee, but the increase in cost is due to the tariff taxes on the cost of aluminum. the tariffs increased the cost of producing the tins, and the costs got passed on.

in response, walmart has started selling it's coffee in cardboard containers instead, and they are selling their house brand at 50% the cost of the cheaper coffee (maxwell house) and a third to a quarter the price of the premium brand. they are going to completely undercut and rive maxwell house out of business unless they adjust, and i'd expect they will. these cardboard containers are made from recycled cardboard and are more sustainable as well.

coffee is an essential good for many people, including myself. coffee is food. i'd like to start growing it here indoors in a a circular, sustainable manner. removing the large amount of aluminum in the manufacturing process is actually a good thing, long term. 

i fully support the carbon rebate, will be dramatically harmed if it is taken away and am extremely disappointed that the liberals are promising to take the rebate away.

the right move for canada to make next is to slap large export taxes - 100%-200% - on items that the united states gets from us and can't find another source for, such as oil, uranium, potash, aluminum, nickel, gold, canola and electricity.

it is stupid to threaten to cut off the electricity like ford is doing.

he should jack up the price, instead.

then, you take that money generated by the export taxes and use it to help the workers harmed by the tariffs.

i'm still watching the liberal debate.

now is not the time to balance the budget, but three out of four candidates are insisting on doing it. let's remember back to 2015. the ndp were the opposition, and mulcair was running way ahead of trudeau, but then he promised to balance the budget, and trudeau promised to run deficits. trudeau ending up leapfrogging mulcair and winning a majority.

it's not the 90s anymore, but it's not as though chretien ran on balancing the budget. in fact, he faced major pushback for it. balancing the budget was what a very large number of people voted against in 1993. he ran on cutting the gst.

i'm consequently not entirely sure what these people are thinking.

canada is going to need to run large deficits to mitigate the effects of these tariffs. i don't want to hear about balancing the budget, i want to hear about the government absorbing the costs.

none of the candidates are impressing me but three of them are right of centre, and it leaves the remaining candidate - karina gould - as the only option, by default, although she seems to be rather flawed, as well. i'd rather put carney in a technical or finance role than make him prime minister; he doesn't strike me as a good candidate for that role.

the canadian liberals do this every few years, they swing to the fiscal right and run these technocratic candidates, and they can never generate popular support because it's not what people want. the banker is going to become leader, but he won't last long.

the idea that canada can mitigate it's problem with the americans by retreating back to the british empire is delusional. the british need to maintain lapdog status with the americans and will not stand up for us. further, the americans are militarizing the pacific to try to contain china, and will need to aggressively position forces in australia. 

the only way that we're going to escape washington is to conquer it, and if you follow the narrative, that's actually what the americans are worried about. they're afraid of us. that's the point.

we need to find some way to work with the americans, and politicians suggesting otherwise should be seen as insane. it's geography. it's unavoidable.

everybody needs to calm down. trump is a lame duck president, and an anomaly on canada. he's not overseeing a shift in policy, he's a loose cannon. we should avoid reacting rashly, as this won't last, and we don't want to create more damage than is necessary, when we seek to undo this with the next president. 

so, hamas should release the hostages if it wants to receive aid. why is anybody sending these thugs anything in the first place? cutting off aid until they release the people they're holding hostage is entirely reasonable.

zelensky says he's not playing cards, but he doesn't understand.

trump has stopped playing monopoly and has started playing risk. he has the cards. zelensky doesn't.

but trump will make him a deal for some better cards.

 

based on the results of the ontario election, it would appear unlikely that chrystia freeland is going to win her own riding, let alone win an election for prime minister.

that would be the correct outcome. she should not be rewarded for the stunt she pulled.