Saturday, June 2, 2018
it's not clear at this point whether voting for the liberals will split the vote or even if voting for the ndp will, in the riding you're in.
this is very much the nightmare scenario that critics of strategic voting tend to point to. there is some data suggesting that the ndp are way ahead, but there's data suggesting otherwise as well, and it's fluctuating fairly frequently. we have imperfect methods with small sample sizes and little consistency.
i was analyzing one poll.
and, i think wynne's announcement was actually premature.
my request to horwath & the ndp still stands - be careful. i suppose that also applies to the liberals, but it's a different context. and, to the rest of the electorate, beware: if you want to play this game this year, there's a chance you're going to get burned.
try to find riding polls; do the best research you can, and prepare for the possibility that you might be wrong.
but, keep this in mind, as well - in general, the strategy promoted by critics of strategic voting is to vote with your heart.
there's still four days of polling left to come in.
this is very much the nightmare scenario that critics of strategic voting tend to point to. there is some data suggesting that the ndp are way ahead, but there's data suggesting otherwise as well, and it's fluctuating fairly frequently. we have imperfect methods with small sample sizes and little consistency.
i was analyzing one poll.
and, i think wynne's announcement was actually premature.
my request to horwath & the ndp still stands - be careful. i suppose that also applies to the liberals, but it's a different context. and, to the rest of the electorate, beware: if you want to play this game this year, there's a chance you're going to get burned.
try to find riding polls; do the best research you can, and prepare for the possibility that you might be wrong.
but, keep this in mind, as well - in general, the strategy promoted by critics of strategic voting is to vote with your heart.
there's still four days of polling left to come in.
so, what are we going to do about these tariffs?
well, i guess we'll have to find new markets and new importers, right? perhaps we could take advantage of that ceta that came into force recently. and, i'd still like to see a bilateral agreement with japan.
if america doesn't want to trade with the rest of the world, we can't force them to. but, the rest of the world can increase trade with itself.
well, i guess we'll have to find new markets and new importers, right? perhaps we could take advantage of that ceta that came into force recently. and, i'd still like to see a bilateral agreement with japan.
if america doesn't want to trade with the rest of the world, we can't force them to. but, the rest of the world can increase trade with itself.
and, again: the media seems to think, across the board, that having your votes distributed in the least populous areas makes your vote more efficient.
that's ridiculous.
the guy's own numbers say the ndp are running over 50% in toronto & in southwestern ontario, which together comprise roughly 60 seats. the conservatives may be running higher in more subregions, but these are the most sparsely populated areas and have the least seats.
it's maybe fitting that doug ford's people don't understand what the word 'efficiency' means, but you'd think the pollsters would get it right, even if the media doesn't.
those numbers suggest the most efficient vote is with the ndp.
that's ridiculous.
the guy's own numbers say the ndp are running over 50% in toronto & in southwestern ontario, which together comprise roughly 60 seats. the conservatives may be running higher in more subregions, but these are the most sparsely populated areas and have the least seats.
it's maybe fitting that doug ford's people don't understand what the word 'efficiency' means, but you'd think the pollsters would get it right, even if the media doesn't.
those numbers suggest the most efficient vote is with the ndp.
but, is the idea of toronto flipping clean from red to orange implausible? we're talking 40 seats moving the same way all at once, here. is that kind of mass groupthink realistic?
it might be more expected in quebec. but, we're sibling provinces, upper and lower; it's just a language difference.
and, i think you want to think it's going to happen all at once or not at all - that there's a tipping point where it flips. certainly, wynne has been going out of her way to alienate torontonians, hasn't she?
i've been talking about the liberal base being hard to move, but i've also been talking about it being pragmatic and less tied to ideology. i just didn't want to make that choice for it without seeing any actual data. and, it hasn't moved in a very long time, either. but, if toronto has decided that it can't let ford win, and horwath is the way to do it, it's not so crazy to think the whole city could flip together at the same time, at all.
unprecedented, perhaps. historic. but not crazy.
that would leave wynne with a few seats hanging around outside the 905, and a few in ottawa.
i look forward to seeing more data framed like this. but, again, regardless of what frank says, the ndp should be happy about those numbers.
it might be more expected in quebec. but, we're sibling provinces, upper and lower; it's just a language difference.
and, i think you want to think it's going to happen all at once or not at all - that there's a tipping point where it flips. certainly, wynne has been going out of her way to alienate torontonians, hasn't she?
i've been talking about the liberal base being hard to move, but i've also been talking about it being pragmatic and less tied to ideology. i just didn't want to make that choice for it without seeing any actual data. and, it hasn't moved in a very long time, either. but, if toronto has decided that it can't let ford win, and horwath is the way to do it, it's not so crazy to think the whole city could flip together at the same time, at all.
unprecedented, perhaps. historic. but not crazy.
that would leave wynne with a few seats hanging around outside the 905, and a few in ottawa.
i look forward to seeing more data framed like this. but, again, regardless of what frank says, the ndp should be happy about those numbers.
ok, this has the kind of sampling frames i wanted to see.
the first three frames are not unexpected - and it may even be a bit of good news for the ndp, at the expense of the conservatives. those are powerful numbers for the ndp in ridings they probably weren't expecting to win. they may be benefiting massively from strategic voting, and that's good - nobody thought the liberals could compete here.
i'm going to presume that the grand river valley means the kitchener-waterloo-guelph tricity area, which is an education & technology hub. it's hard to know exactly what that means, but i don't think there's a big surprise on the three-way split, either. if that's right, the liberals could maybe hold some seats there - but it's just a handful of them in play. nor have the liberals been competitive in niagara or hamilton proper for a very long time, either, although 4% seems kind of obscene. and, it's hard to know where niagara starts and the "grand river valley" ends - which is important given the difference between 30 and 4. i'm suspecting small sample sizes, here. nonetheless, if those numbers are even close to right, don't be surprised if the liberals hold some seats on the end of the horseshoe, there. but, none of this is really that earth-shattering - excluding that 4%, which may end up more like 14% in the end. the shape is not surprising.
but, those numbers in halton/peel are hard to comprehend. the races in halton are traditionally conservative-liberal. it's a wealthy suburb of toronto - the kind of place the ndp just don't do well in. peel, on the other hand, is usually an ndp-liberal race. again: combining these together is tricky. it could mean that the conservatives are running away with halton and the ndp are running away with peel, or it could be obscuring closer races in aggregate. what i'm going to say is that this is weird - and that i don't like the way it's presented, as it suggests you're looking at the pcs v the ndp over a large region, when you're probably actually looking at each of them v the liberals separately in two distinct regions - and it's not clear how close it is. frank, man what are you up to?
http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/full_report_june_1_2018b.pdf
i don't have any particular rejection of the brampton numbers, but it's only 3-4 seats. brampton is the kind of demographic that would swing from red to blue under ford. and, those numbers are not particularly bad for the liberals in york/durham, either, where there are a couple of conservative strongholds and a couple of conservative/liberal swing ridings.
at this point, after the first eight frames, this doesn't look like a weird election, and the seat count doesn't look likely to flip much. what's different here is the next two frames...
i accidentally cut the bottom off, but the next two frames are central and suburban toronto and those are powerful numbers that are suggestive of an ndp majority. i don't know what frank is smoking, suggesting otherwise. if the ndp can poll close to 50% over toronto in the end, that's suggestive of a clean sweep - which is 35-40 seats. that would be a near complete absorption of the liberal party by the ndp.
in the east & ottawa, again, the numbers are not exactly surprising. it's not clear what is ottawa and what is east, but the conservatives always dominate the rural east and the liberals usually do well in ottawa. with the liberals running over 30, it might suggest that they may lose a seat or two to the conservatives on the edges of the city.
i've been saying the same thing over and over again - this is about the 416.
and, despite what frank says, if those numbers are correct, you'd be looking at something like the following:
ndp ~65
conservatives ~30
liberals ~15
the first three frames are not unexpected - and it may even be a bit of good news for the ndp, at the expense of the conservatives. those are powerful numbers for the ndp in ridings they probably weren't expecting to win. they may be benefiting massively from strategic voting, and that's good - nobody thought the liberals could compete here.
i'm going to presume that the grand river valley means the kitchener-waterloo-guelph tricity area, which is an education & technology hub. it's hard to know exactly what that means, but i don't think there's a big surprise on the three-way split, either. if that's right, the liberals could maybe hold some seats there - but it's just a handful of them in play. nor have the liberals been competitive in niagara or hamilton proper for a very long time, either, although 4% seems kind of obscene. and, it's hard to know where niagara starts and the "grand river valley" ends - which is important given the difference between 30 and 4. i'm suspecting small sample sizes, here. nonetheless, if those numbers are even close to right, don't be surprised if the liberals hold some seats on the end of the horseshoe, there. but, none of this is really that earth-shattering - excluding that 4%, which may end up more like 14% in the end. the shape is not surprising.
but, those numbers in halton/peel are hard to comprehend. the races in halton are traditionally conservative-liberal. it's a wealthy suburb of toronto - the kind of place the ndp just don't do well in. peel, on the other hand, is usually an ndp-liberal race. again: combining these together is tricky. it could mean that the conservatives are running away with halton and the ndp are running away with peel, or it could be obscuring closer races in aggregate. what i'm going to say is that this is weird - and that i don't like the way it's presented, as it suggests you're looking at the pcs v the ndp over a large region, when you're probably actually looking at each of them v the liberals separately in two distinct regions - and it's not clear how close it is. frank, man what are you up to?
http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/full_report_june_1_2018b.pdf
i don't have any particular rejection of the brampton numbers, but it's only 3-4 seats. brampton is the kind of demographic that would swing from red to blue under ford. and, those numbers are not particularly bad for the liberals in york/durham, either, where there are a couple of conservative strongholds and a couple of conservative/liberal swing ridings.
at this point, after the first eight frames, this doesn't look like a weird election, and the seat count doesn't look likely to flip much. what's different here is the next two frames...
i accidentally cut the bottom off, but the next two frames are central and suburban toronto and those are powerful numbers that are suggestive of an ndp majority. i don't know what frank is smoking, suggesting otherwise. if the ndp can poll close to 50% over toronto in the end, that's suggestive of a clean sweep - which is 35-40 seats. that would be a near complete absorption of the liberal party by the ndp.
in the east & ottawa, again, the numbers are not exactly surprising. it's not clear what is ottawa and what is east, but the conservatives always dominate the rural east and the liberals usually do well in ottawa. with the liberals running over 30, it might suggest that they may lose a seat or two to the conservatives on the edges of the city.
i've been saying the same thing over and over again - this is about the 416.
and, despite what frank says, if those numbers are correct, you'd be looking at something like the following:
ndp ~65
conservatives ~30
liberals ~15
i mean, this was always the issue with trudeau, he had to prove he wasn't a moron.
having him slow down and talk like cletus the slack-jawed yokel to appeal to idiot albertans is going to reinforce the criticism that he isn't very bright and cave him in the urban centres.
canada is very big, but in terms of population density, it's one of the most urbanized countries in the world.
whoever told him to do that should be immediately fired.
having him slow down and talk like cletus the slack-jawed yokel to appeal to idiot albertans is going to reinforce the criticism that he isn't very bright and cave him in the urban centres.
canada is very big, but in terms of population density, it's one of the most urbanized countries in the world.
whoever told him to do that should be immediately fired.
why is justin trudeau all of a sudden speaking at a pace suggestive of the idea that somebody snuck into his room when he was sleeping and gave him a lobotomy?
that forty minute speech of his would have taken ten if he was speaking at a normal pace.
is he trying to appeal to rural voters, or something?
bad idea: he sounds like a retard. that's going to kill him with educated voters, who are already playing lesser evil with him.
that forty minute speech of his would have taken ten if he was speaking at a normal pace.
is he trying to appeal to rural voters, or something?
bad idea: he sounds like a retard. that's going to kill him with educated voters, who are already playing lesser evil with him.
i'm not sure there's any good answers in here, but it's an interesting read, and maybe a reality check if you live in canada.
i think i'm clear about what i want, even if i don't have a good name for it. i tried to do a google search for "post-culturalism", but i didn't get any hits. culture, to me, in the sense of it being an ethnic identity (rather than a synonym for art) ought to be looked at entirely derisively, as a relic of the past. but, i want to avoid this term 'cosmopolitanism', because it doesn't come attached to any actual set of rules. it's the right idea, but i want to attach it to science and logic and reason specifically, and it doesn't do enough to make that clear.
but, i have no interest in relativism, and no interest in respecting the rules that exist in different cultures, especially if they are oppressive or require some concept of relativism to tolerate. i'm perfectly comfortable with being the anarchist that wants to rip all these structures apart, and send the religious groups the bill for the damage. i have no qualms at all with looking a religious minority in the eye and telling them their religion is wrong and they should change their views, or abandon their beliefs. and i would actually like to see more people be pro-active about it; to me, this kind of evangelical atheism is actually a valid and needed form of social activism.
it's less that i want to undo the immigration, exactly, and more that i want some more aggressive approaches to ensuring that the society remains entirely secular - and that agents of any kind that want to undo this are more vigorously and more comprehensively opposed.
http://afrasia.ryukoku.ac.jp/english/publication/upfile/WP19.pdf
i think i'm clear about what i want, even if i don't have a good name for it. i tried to do a google search for "post-culturalism", but i didn't get any hits. culture, to me, in the sense of it being an ethnic identity (rather than a synonym for art) ought to be looked at entirely derisively, as a relic of the past. but, i want to avoid this term 'cosmopolitanism', because it doesn't come attached to any actual set of rules. it's the right idea, but i want to attach it to science and logic and reason specifically, and it doesn't do enough to make that clear.
but, i have no interest in relativism, and no interest in respecting the rules that exist in different cultures, especially if they are oppressive or require some concept of relativism to tolerate. i'm perfectly comfortable with being the anarchist that wants to rip all these structures apart, and send the religious groups the bill for the damage. i have no qualms at all with looking a religious minority in the eye and telling them their religion is wrong and they should change their views, or abandon their beliefs. and i would actually like to see more people be pro-active about it; to me, this kind of evangelical atheism is actually a valid and needed form of social activism.
it's less that i want to undo the immigration, exactly, and more that i want some more aggressive approaches to ensuring that the society remains entirely secular - and that agents of any kind that want to undo this are more vigorously and more comprehensively opposed.
http://afrasia.ryukoku.ac.jp/english/publication/upfile/WP19.pdf
when you have a small, homogeneous state like kansas or new brunswick, the assumptions in the modelling should work out fine for whatever kind of outcome you want.
but, when you have a big, heterogeneous region like ontario - which is at least four very distinct regions with totally different everything - all you're doing by aggregating and modelling is polluting sample.
data from kenora or sarnia is worse than completely useless in modelling brampton, it's actually distorting and misleading.
you can do this right using distinct and mutually exclusive sampling frames, but nobody does it. and, how accurate you are depends on how precise the frames are.
but, when you have a big, heterogeneous region like ontario - which is at least four very distinct regions with totally different everything - all you're doing by aggregating and modelling is polluting sample.
data from kenora or sarnia is worse than completely useless in modelling brampton, it's actually distorting and misleading.
you can do this right using distinct and mutually exclusive sampling frames, but nobody does it. and, how accurate you are depends on how precise the frames are.
there are certain areas in toronto that horwath ought to actually avoid, as an ndp bump is more likely to swing a red seat blue than orange.
i'm sure she has better riding data than i do.
so, i would put out a call to the ndp campaign to consult it very carefully - and to avoid taking modelling data seriously.
just briefly...
what the models do is they take data from across the province and try and squeeze it into specific ridings. so, if i'm talking to lawyers here, they're taking data that is overly broad and trying to force it into very specific scenarios that ignore the specifics, like incumbency and turnout and demographics.
personally, i'm going to argue that the whole idea is flawed - that the premise of modelling is overly broad and should be struck down as unconstitutional (the constitution being the predicate calculus, i suppose). but, that defence is untested.
riding polls ask people in the riding - it's directly empirical. much better. but, watch out for small sample sizes...
i'm sure she has better riding data than i do.
so, i would put out a call to the ndp campaign to consult it very carefully - and to avoid taking modelling data seriously.
just briefly...
what the models do is they take data from across the province and try and squeeze it into specific ridings. so, if i'm talking to lawyers here, they're taking data that is overly broad and trying to force it into very specific scenarios that ignore the specifics, like incumbency and turnout and demographics.
personally, i'm going to argue that the whole idea is flawed - that the premise of modelling is overly broad and should be struck down as unconstitutional (the constitution being the predicate calculus, i suppose). but, that defence is untested.
riding polls ask people in the riding - it's directly empirical. much better. but, watch out for small sample sizes...
Friday, June 1, 2018
to be clear: it's not that she's saying one thing in one language and something different in another. that's not the problem, in principle.
it's that she's advertising herself on the right in specific communities that lean that way, essentially selling out the party's value system for votes - and that this is a potentially serious problem in a country that is experiencing an immigration-based value shift to the right. it's opening up debates that i don't want opened.
it was hash. ok. but, it could have been sex-ed. it could have been abortion.
i need to hear the liberal party stand up for liberal values, not pander to ethnic conservatives using right-wing talking points. and, i know that's what she was doing anyways, but she didn't make it that explicit - she just sounded like she was floundering. by targetting explicitly, she exposes a strategy that i must reject in the most vehement terms as divisive, backwards and racist.
so, i'm explicitly rejecting the kind of coalition between white liberals and brown conservatives that exists in the united states. i don't want the liberal party to be that, i don't want to vote for that and i don't want to be governed by that. i want a coalition of white liberals and brown liberals and purple liberals and green liberals, and i want to tell conservatives of all colours and creeds to fuck off and join the conservative party if they don't like liberal party policies.
sorry.
it's that she's advertising herself on the right in specific communities that lean that way, essentially selling out the party's value system for votes - and that this is a potentially serious problem in a country that is experiencing an immigration-based value shift to the right. it's opening up debates that i don't want opened.
it was hash. ok. but, it could have been sex-ed. it could have been abortion.
i need to hear the liberal party stand up for liberal values, not pander to ethnic conservatives using right-wing talking points. and, i know that's what she was doing anyways, but she didn't make it that explicit - she just sounded like she was floundering. by targetting explicitly, she exposes a strategy that i must reject in the most vehement terms as divisive, backwards and racist.
so, i'm explicitly rejecting the kind of coalition between white liberals and brown conservatives that exists in the united states. i don't want the liberal party to be that, i don't want to vote for that and i don't want to be governed by that. i want a coalition of white liberals and brown liberals and purple liberals and green liberals, and i want to tell conservatives of all colours and creeds to fuck off and join the conservative party if they don't like liberal party policies.
sorry.
i mentioned early in the campaign that i would withdraw support - perhaps on a long-term basis - if i saw one of the pseudo-left parties trying to appeal explicitly to wandering ethnic minorities by using right-wing messaging. it's not about the hash exactly, it's the tactic. it could have been pushing for opening up sex ed, or it could have been something else. this is just crossing a red line, for me.
this party is dancing with the devil in the pale twilight; i can't support this, and i can't support this trajectory.
i was more worried about the ndp doing this.
it doesn't change my electoral analysis: if the liberals can hold their base in toronto, they will maintain a voice in parliament, and could even still win. the polls outside toronto to a large extent don't matter a lot.
but, they've dealt their hand on where they're moving if they do win, and i'm not voting for it.
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/06/01/liberals-raise-doug-ford-drug-allegations-in-campaign-ads.html
this party is dancing with the devil in the pale twilight; i can't support this, and i can't support this trajectory.
i was more worried about the ndp doing this.
it doesn't change my electoral analysis: if the liberals can hold their base in toronto, they will maintain a voice in parliament, and could even still win. the polls outside toronto to a large extent don't matter a lot.
but, they've dealt their hand on where they're moving if they do win, and i'm not voting for it.
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/06/01/liberals-raise-doug-ford-drug-allegations-in-campaign-ads.html
broadly speaking, when political parties suggest that there may be vote rigging, it usually means they're up to something.
this should be interpreted as a red flag that doug ford is trying to rig the election.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/pc-concerns-ontario-voting-machines-1.4686946
this should be interpreted as a red flag that doug ford is trying to rig the election.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/pc-concerns-ontario-voting-machines-1.4686946
the contemporary idea amongst liberals - which nobody on the left considers to be on the left - is that you should implement this idea of multiculturalism, where you have all of these tribal identities in coexistence with each other, and i guess they just ignore their differences and live in harmony (even when evidence is clear that they don't).
but, that's not the abolition of racism. that is the definition of a society that has institutionalized and normalized racism. and, i'm not going to write this essay - i'm just going to ask you to think it through carefully.
when you have a society where muslims and jews and christians and atheists are all segregated, that is what racism is. and, that is the multicultural model in canada: the institutionalization and normalization of racism under the banner of 'multiculturalism'. and, so it's natural that you attack the anti-racist activist as a racist. that's the world we live in, today.
what abolishing racism means is abolishing race as a concept, which science has already done. but, that's impossible when you have these ethno-religious identities enforcing it from childbirth and the state sanctioning it or looking the other way.
the leftist vision is not one where we pretend to ignore our differences, it's one where we evolve past them together; it's not a world where we accept each other's superstitions, but one where we leave them behind and move forward together.
again: i'm not telling you what to think. not exactly. we can have competing visions and try to convince each other of their correctness. but, i'm asking you to be more careful in how you categorize yourself, and more careful in how you categorize others.
but, that's not the abolition of racism. that is the definition of a society that has institutionalized and normalized racism. and, i'm not going to write this essay - i'm just going to ask you to think it through carefully.
when you have a society where muslims and jews and christians and atheists are all segregated, that is what racism is. and, that is the multicultural model in canada: the institutionalization and normalization of racism under the banner of 'multiculturalism'. and, so it's natural that you attack the anti-racist activist as a racist. that's the world we live in, today.
what abolishing racism means is abolishing race as a concept, which science has already done. but, that's impossible when you have these ethno-religious identities enforcing it from childbirth and the state sanctioning it or looking the other way.
the leftist vision is not one where we pretend to ignore our differences, it's one where we evolve past them together; it's not a world where we accept each other's superstitions, but one where we leave them behind and move forward together.
again: i'm not telling you what to think. not exactly. we can have competing visions and try to convince each other of their correctness. but, i'm asking you to be more careful in how you categorize yourself, and more careful in how you categorize others.
no.
listen.
religion = racism = nationalism = tribalism = exclusion. religion is racist, by definition - they're the same thing. or, that's what leftists think, anyways. if that sounds crazy to you, stop calling yourself a leftist!
leftists believe that all religion is inherently racist.
but, further, understand that, as a leftist, i can't make any sense of your claim that i'm racist for not accepting any specific religion, because rejecting all religion is the definition of abolishing racism. to a leftist, fighting racism and fighting religion are the same thing.
i'm an anti-racist activist because i'm an atheist, not in spite of it.
now, i understand that people are going to get upset by this. they're going to argue i'm attacking their identity - and they're right. but, in attacking their identity, i'm attacking the tribalist, exclusivist, nationalist basis of it - because their identity is incompatible with an egalitarian future. put in more contemporary terms: tolerance does not mean accepting intolerance, and the root of all intolerance is religion.
of course, as a leftist, i understand agency. i want to argue with you, not force you. i don't want to convert you by sword or threat, but i want to convince you that apostasy is the way forward.
and, if i can't convince you of this, i have to come to terms with the reality of it - that you are my political opponent, and that we will be in conflict with each other until you relent and denounce your tribalism.
listen.
religion = racism = nationalism = tribalism = exclusion. religion is racist, by definition - they're the same thing. or, that's what leftists think, anyways. if that sounds crazy to you, stop calling yourself a leftist!
leftists believe that all religion is inherently racist.
but, further, understand that, as a leftist, i can't make any sense of your claim that i'm racist for not accepting any specific religion, because rejecting all religion is the definition of abolishing racism. to a leftist, fighting racism and fighting religion are the same thing.
i'm an anti-racist activist because i'm an atheist, not in spite of it.
now, i understand that people are going to get upset by this. they're going to argue i'm attacking their identity - and they're right. but, in attacking their identity, i'm attacking the tribalist, exclusivist, nationalist basis of it - because their identity is incompatible with an egalitarian future. put in more contemporary terms: tolerance does not mean accepting intolerance, and the root of all intolerance is religion.
of course, as a leftist, i understand agency. i want to argue with you, not force you. i don't want to convert you by sword or threat, but i want to convince you that apostasy is the way forward.
and, if i can't convince you of this, i have to come to terms with the reality of it - that you are my political opponent, and that we will be in conflict with each other until you relent and denounce your tribalism.
again: i'm the leftist. leftists reject religion; it's really the fundamental aspect of being a leftist. if you don't reject religion, you're not a leftist.
religion correlates on the right with authoritarianism, capitalism, hierarchy, heteropatriarchy and class division. that's what religion is. you can't separate it from these things, and it's the reason capitalism is so reliant on it to enforce itself.
atheism correlates with anti-authoritarianism, communism, egalitarianism, feminism and democracy. that's the point of being an atheist. and, you can't get to ideas like democracy or feminism without tearing down religion, first.
so, i'm perfectly happy to argue with you if you want to stand up for religion, but i'm always doing it from the left, and you're always defending yourself from the right - whether your spectrum is restricted or not.
religion correlates on the right with authoritarianism, capitalism, hierarchy, heteropatriarchy and class division. that's what religion is. you can't separate it from these things, and it's the reason capitalism is so reliant on it to enforce itself.
atheism correlates with anti-authoritarianism, communism, egalitarianism, feminism and democracy. that's the point of being an atheist. and, you can't get to ideas like democracy or feminism without tearing down religion, first.
so, i'm perfectly happy to argue with you if you want to stand up for religion, but i'm always doing it from the left, and you're always defending yourself from the right - whether your spectrum is restricted or not.
i made a quip about doug ford being the offspring of homer simpson & an orangutan - in fact, a retarded orangutan - so i ought to say something about roseanne.
first, i wasn't exactly a fan of the show. whether roseanne is roseanne or not, roseanne is pretty obnoxious, and that was obvious to me, even as a child. i'm not obnoxious; i'm wry. there's a difference, there really is. it's the difference between good british wit and simple american barbarism.
for example.
anyways, is my comment racist? well, i'd probably have been a little more careful if ford was black. i might have suggested he was the offspring of homer simpson & an enlightened bull, instead - an enlightened bull being of roughly the same cognitive abilities as a retarded orangutan, or at least that's a reasonable hypothesis. i guess it's an empirical question, really.
see, now here's the tricky part: i'm telling you i know better than to make ape jokes about black people. i'm just not doing that. but, if i can make an ape joke about doug ford when he's white, do i have a defense of making the same joke when he's black, and then telling you to imagine he's white? or pointing out that it really shouldn't fucking matter - while acknowledging it absolutely does? it's just something to think about.
i meant to say that doug ford doesn't come off as having very evolved policy positions, and i think that's clear enough.
and, what i'm going to say about the roseanne quip is that i don't actually have the insight into valerie jarrett's politics to get my head around what roseanne said. is valerie jarrett a fundamentalist muslim with unevolved policy positions? i don't know; i get the impression it's unlikely, but i don't know. so, i don't know if it was racist, or if it was witty.
...although i might have advised her against forcing people to try and figure that out.
i think it's clear enough that it was pretty stupid, whether it was racist or not.
first, i wasn't exactly a fan of the show. whether roseanne is roseanne or not, roseanne is pretty obnoxious, and that was obvious to me, even as a child. i'm not obnoxious; i'm wry. there's a difference, there really is. it's the difference between good british wit and simple american barbarism.
for example.
anyways, is my comment racist? well, i'd probably have been a little more careful if ford was black. i might have suggested he was the offspring of homer simpson & an enlightened bull, instead - an enlightened bull being of roughly the same cognitive abilities as a retarded orangutan, or at least that's a reasonable hypothesis. i guess it's an empirical question, really.
see, now here's the tricky part: i'm telling you i know better than to make ape jokes about black people. i'm just not doing that. but, if i can make an ape joke about doug ford when he's white, do i have a defense of making the same joke when he's black, and then telling you to imagine he's white? or pointing out that it really shouldn't fucking matter - while acknowledging it absolutely does? it's just something to think about.
i meant to say that doug ford doesn't come off as having very evolved policy positions, and i think that's clear enough.
and, what i'm going to say about the roseanne quip is that i don't actually have the insight into valerie jarrett's politics to get my head around what roseanne said. is valerie jarrett a fundamentalist muslim with unevolved policy positions? i don't know; i get the impression it's unlikely, but i don't know. so, i don't know if it was racist, or if it was witty.
...although i might have advised her against forcing people to try and figure that out.
i think it's clear enough that it was pretty stupid, whether it was racist or not.
i've been kind of bed-ridden the last few days, reading a lot, but i'm coming back to and building a plan around things.
as mentioned a few times, i'm close to a hook-up on the rebuild, and i kind of want to get there. i'm at may 7th; the hook up is june 19th. so, i think i can finish that before monday. and i'm staying in this weekend...
so, i'm going to try to blitz over that for a bit, and then do some cleaning when it's done.
and, then i'll put a dominant focus on looking for a better place.
how's the stench, anyways?
well, i spent much of the weekend in detroit; i was out midday on the 25th and come back early in the morning on the 29th. while i slept here in between, and even stayed in on sunday, my complaints were muted. the reality is that i smelled bad myself, from partying. i'll reiterate that i was not smoking inside, or even going out for smokes when i was here, but i was smoking when i was in detroit partying. that said, i noticed the smell of marijuana pretty much every day and every night. i just wasn't upset about it at that particular time.
that's not a pass by any means, it's just a truth statement. the precise situation this pisses me off in is when i'm trying to read and i can't because i'm stoned from the second-hand smoke or when i can't keep my eyes open because i'm burnt out from it and don't want to be; the smell itself is rank, but when it's hot like this i keep the windows open and sit in my own sweat, so in the broader scope of things i might care a lot less if it wasn't having a physical effect on me. if i'm between parties, or nursing a hangover, the effects are kind of bordering on trivial...
of course, i eventually come out of those hangovers and want to be clear-minded. that's the difference between the tenant downstairs and i - i like to have fun with intoxicants, sure, but i deeply value the long stretches of sobriety that i have in between. i even call those stretches of sobriety life. the tenant downstairs wants to be stoned 24/7 and seems to go into "panic attacks" (called withdrawals.) when she gets sober. as marijuana builds tolerance with frequent use, she smokes more drugs in a day than i might in an average three or four month season. and i'm not exaggerating.
but, while i'm nursing a hangover? yeah - i could smell it. sure. i could smell it all weekend, and i could smell it all week. but, i actually haven't smelled anything yet tonight. note that it's the end of the month. so, it's got me wondering if i got lucky and she left...
but, am i some kind of hypocrite? i don't think so. smoking isn't binary; i think a lot of people have a hard time getting their head around this because it's presented to us that way so often. you smoke or you don't, right? but that's not true. just because i like to smoke a little at the bar once in a while doesn't forfeit my right to sobriety and clean air for the other 25 or 27 days of the month, and the idea that it does is really just ridiculous. if you like a glass of wine at christmas does that make you an alcoholic? so, why do we have these weird ideas about smoking? i don't see anything inconsistent or disingenuous about this. and, i might even argue that i'd stil have the right to complain even if i was a habitual smoker, if the amount coming up from downstairs was legitimately bothering me.
i think the key point is showering. i haven't showered since i got back on tuesday morning; it's now been about 55 hours since i woke up on tuesday afternoon. i've been sleeping, napping, sweating, drinking water, typing, reading, eating - but i haven't really gotten up and out of bed for any substantive purpose, yet. it's time to start thinking about that shower. and, once i get out of it, i'll be wanting to have that focus on sobriety again for the next 10-15 days or so, and not be dragged down by the second-hand smoke.
the tenant downstairs may be getting very frustrated by the heat in the unit, and the inability of her a/c to work properly when i have the windows open like this. well, it's the same basic problem. there's no flooring. so, the a/c is no doubt useless down there for the same reason the smoke comes right up - it's like running an a/c in an open barn with all the doors open. was that enough to get her out? well, i'll be here all summer, anyways, at the very least...
like i say: right now, i want to get a bunch of that rebuild done. let's hope i can get season 6 done before the sun comes up.
as mentioned a few times, i'm close to a hook-up on the rebuild, and i kind of want to get there. i'm at may 7th; the hook up is june 19th. so, i think i can finish that before monday. and i'm staying in this weekend...
so, i'm going to try to blitz over that for a bit, and then do some cleaning when it's done.
and, then i'll put a dominant focus on looking for a better place.
how's the stench, anyways?
well, i spent much of the weekend in detroit; i was out midday on the 25th and come back early in the morning on the 29th. while i slept here in between, and even stayed in on sunday, my complaints were muted. the reality is that i smelled bad myself, from partying. i'll reiterate that i was not smoking inside, or even going out for smokes when i was here, but i was smoking when i was in detroit partying. that said, i noticed the smell of marijuana pretty much every day and every night. i just wasn't upset about it at that particular time.
that's not a pass by any means, it's just a truth statement. the precise situation this pisses me off in is when i'm trying to read and i can't because i'm stoned from the second-hand smoke or when i can't keep my eyes open because i'm burnt out from it and don't want to be; the smell itself is rank, but when it's hot like this i keep the windows open and sit in my own sweat, so in the broader scope of things i might care a lot less if it wasn't having a physical effect on me. if i'm between parties, or nursing a hangover, the effects are kind of bordering on trivial...
of course, i eventually come out of those hangovers and want to be clear-minded. that's the difference between the tenant downstairs and i - i like to have fun with intoxicants, sure, but i deeply value the long stretches of sobriety that i have in between. i even call those stretches of sobriety life. the tenant downstairs wants to be stoned 24/7 and seems to go into "panic attacks" (called withdrawals.) when she gets sober. as marijuana builds tolerance with frequent use, she smokes more drugs in a day than i might in an average three or four month season. and i'm not exaggerating.
but, while i'm nursing a hangover? yeah - i could smell it. sure. i could smell it all weekend, and i could smell it all week. but, i actually haven't smelled anything yet tonight. note that it's the end of the month. so, it's got me wondering if i got lucky and she left...
but, am i some kind of hypocrite? i don't think so. smoking isn't binary; i think a lot of people have a hard time getting their head around this because it's presented to us that way so often. you smoke or you don't, right? but that's not true. just because i like to smoke a little at the bar once in a while doesn't forfeit my right to sobriety and clean air for the other 25 or 27 days of the month, and the idea that it does is really just ridiculous. if you like a glass of wine at christmas does that make you an alcoholic? so, why do we have these weird ideas about smoking? i don't see anything inconsistent or disingenuous about this. and, i might even argue that i'd stil have the right to complain even if i was a habitual smoker, if the amount coming up from downstairs was legitimately bothering me.
i think the key point is showering. i haven't showered since i got back on tuesday morning; it's now been about 55 hours since i woke up on tuesday afternoon. i've been sleeping, napping, sweating, drinking water, typing, reading, eating - but i haven't really gotten up and out of bed for any substantive purpose, yet. it's time to start thinking about that shower. and, once i get out of it, i'll be wanting to have that focus on sobriety again for the next 10-15 days or so, and not be dragged down by the second-hand smoke.
the tenant downstairs may be getting very frustrated by the heat in the unit, and the inability of her a/c to work properly when i have the windows open like this. well, it's the same basic problem. there's no flooring. so, the a/c is no doubt useless down there for the same reason the smoke comes right up - it's like running an a/c in an open barn with all the doors open. was that enough to get her out? well, i'll be here all summer, anyways, at the very least...
like i say: right now, i want to get a bunch of that rebuild done. let's hope i can get season 6 done before the sun comes up.
Thursday, May 31, 2018
this actually isn't the first time this has happened, either.
the reality is that this kind of paranoia is baked into the structure of the american right. it's not just trump. and, the nixon=trump comparison is apt, but it's not just that, either.
check the annals of history: due to his opposition to star wars, and general reluctance to partition the world into two parts, reagan actually honestly believed that the elder trudeau was a communist spy. like, that he was working for the kremlin. taking orders. a useful idiot. maybe he could have helped them write a constitution? but, it's not a joke, it's a historical fact. and, there's good evidence that it's the actual reason he stepped down.
it's also widely believed in canada that jean chretien was pushed out under heavy republican pressure for his refusal to go into iraq.
then, there was the time that lyndon johnson beat up lester pearson (who had years earlier won a nobel peace prize) for criticizing the american role in vietnam.
nobody remembers that igor guy anymore.
so republicans (and some democrats.) have had a hard time dealing with canadian liberals, and have often tended to view them as suspicious, as foreign agents, as communist sympathizers. trump is cartoonish, but he's not an isolated example.
the reality is that this kind of paranoia is baked into the structure of the american right. it's not just trump. and, the nixon=trump comparison is apt, but it's not just that, either.
check the annals of history: due to his opposition to star wars, and general reluctance to partition the world into two parts, reagan actually honestly believed that the elder trudeau was a communist spy. like, that he was working for the kremlin. taking orders. a useful idiot. maybe he could have helped them write a constitution? but, it's not a joke, it's a historical fact. and, there's good evidence that it's the actual reason he stepped down.
it's also widely believed in canada that jean chretien was pushed out under heavy republican pressure for his refusal to go into iraq.
then, there was the time that lyndon johnson beat up lester pearson (who had years earlier won a nobel peace prize) for criticizing the american role in vietnam.
nobody remembers that igor guy anymore.
so republicans (and some democrats.) have had a hard time dealing with canadian liberals, and have often tended to view them as suspicious, as foreign agents, as communist sympathizers. trump is cartoonish, but he's not an isolated example.
is canada a national security threat to the united states?
i can think of one thing, and you need to use this funny corporate logic about lost profits again, and that comes down to the oil exports.
i've made many arguments over many years that the americans consider canada's oil resources to be a strategic asset that belongs to them, and that they view any effort to export it as a threat. further, they consider the reserve to be of longterm strategic importance. that is, they wish to save our oil for later.
from the perspective of america's leadership, all of the pipelines and all of the geography and all of the export destinations are to be interpreted strictly through a national security filter around access to a strategic resource, rather than through an environmental filter or even through a profit motive. and, you know america is serious about something when it's more important than profits for shareholders.
if you think i'm crazy, mentally remove yourself from your body and float over north america for a moment. look out at the chaos and dominance projected by american hard power for the purpose of controlling the flow of oil. look at the bloodshed. look at the violence. look at the destruction of property. and, ask yourself: would america merely shrug as canada twins pipelines to export a resource it considers it's own to it's dominant competitor, in china?
and, who are these political leaders in canada facilitating this?
it's funny corporate logic. but, it's real, if you're in the pentagon, or the state department - or the white house.
i can think of one thing, and you need to use this funny corporate logic about lost profits again, and that comes down to the oil exports.
i've made many arguments over many years that the americans consider canada's oil resources to be a strategic asset that belongs to them, and that they view any effort to export it as a threat. further, they consider the reserve to be of longterm strategic importance. that is, they wish to save our oil for later.
from the perspective of america's leadership, all of the pipelines and all of the geography and all of the export destinations are to be interpreted strictly through a national security filter around access to a strategic resource, rather than through an environmental filter or even through a profit motive. and, you know america is serious about something when it's more important than profits for shareholders.
if you think i'm crazy, mentally remove yourself from your body and float over north america for a moment. look out at the chaos and dominance projected by american hard power for the purpose of controlling the flow of oil. look at the bloodshed. look at the violence. look at the destruction of property. and, ask yourself: would america merely shrug as canada twins pipelines to export a resource it considers it's own to it's dominant competitor, in china?
and, who are these political leaders in canada facilitating this?
it's funny corporate logic. but, it's real, if you're in the pentagon, or the state department - or the white house.
should nafta be renegotiated every five years?
well, it makes sense to me to suggest it should be re-evaluated on some regular basis of time, yes - although i don't know how important a five year interval is, or how appropriate the term "renegotiate" is.
one of the weird things about this process is how much pomp it's requiring, and we may be the ones going the furthest overboard. i understand why the government of canada is a little reluctant to have it's ministers of trade & foreign policy tied up in permanent trade negotiations with it's closest ally. the government is handling this at it's highest level because it sees it as of the utmost importance. but, maybe periodic reviews could be handled by the ambassador in the future, or even delegated to a separate department. there are going to be corruption & capture issues present, but we know the ministers are relying very heavily on their aides, anyways; enough that the necessity of this layer of formality is maybe up for some question.
that said, the american side is really not projecting the kind of trust required to institutionalize something that probably ought to be, at this point. trump may be technically right to make the request, but trudeau's reaction is not irrational, and the nature of it is, in large part, trump's actual own fault. i know trump likes to try and push his "partners" around. but, as a sovereign country, we would like to trust our allies and other partners we make agreements with - and i think that's reasonable.
if some resolution to the current reciprocity dispute presents itself soon, there will no doubt be further discussions again at some point in the future, and i would actually support periodic review being implemented at that time on something like a fifteen or twenty year period - but certainly not a less than eight year period, or one that appears to be designed for the american election cycle.
well, it makes sense to me to suggest it should be re-evaluated on some regular basis of time, yes - although i don't know how important a five year interval is, or how appropriate the term "renegotiate" is.
one of the weird things about this process is how much pomp it's requiring, and we may be the ones going the furthest overboard. i understand why the government of canada is a little reluctant to have it's ministers of trade & foreign policy tied up in permanent trade negotiations with it's closest ally. the government is handling this at it's highest level because it sees it as of the utmost importance. but, maybe periodic reviews could be handled by the ambassador in the future, or even delegated to a separate department. there are going to be corruption & capture issues present, but we know the ministers are relying very heavily on their aides, anyways; enough that the necessity of this layer of formality is maybe up for some question.
that said, the american side is really not projecting the kind of trust required to institutionalize something that probably ought to be, at this point. trump may be technically right to make the request, but trudeau's reaction is not irrational, and the nature of it is, in large part, trump's actual own fault. i know trump likes to try and push his "partners" around. but, as a sovereign country, we would like to trust our allies and other partners we make agreements with - and i think that's reasonable.
if some resolution to the current reciprocity dispute presents itself soon, there will no doubt be further discussions again at some point in the future, and i would actually support periodic review being implemented at that time on something like a fifteen or twenty year period - but certainly not a less than eight year period, or one that appears to be designed for the american election cycle.
Nowhere else in Ontario are Kathleen Wynne's Liberals polling
worse than in southwestern Ontario. That makes the region a microcosm of
the entire election — with the PCs dominant in the rural parts, the New
Democrats well-positioned to pick up urban Liberal seats and the
overall winner to be decided between the two.
this is the exact wrong analysis.
the fact that the liberals are polling worse in southwestern ontario than they are anywhere else makes the projections there inapplicable to places that they are polling better. when you see a situation where a party is doing worse in a specific area than they are anywhere else, you don't take that as the rule and extrapolate it, you eliminate it as an outlier. grenier is merely exposing his own biases, but that is the status quo in this election: the entire media establishment decided the liberals were hopeless before the writ even dropped.
if the liberals are underperforming their average in the southwest then that necessarily implies that they're overperforming it elsewhere, doesn't it eric? yeah. that's right. it does, doesn't it?
if you look at the graph in the article, it seems to me like a lot of liberals are voting strategically to defeat the pcs in areas that are both historically strong pc ridings and ridings where liberals are currently being seen as distant and toronto-centric. i've talked to some people in windsor, and while the logic is often blurry, the basic idea is that they think the liberal party doesn't care about the region and the ndp will spend more money here. the people here seem to feel abandoned by capital flight, are attaching that to liberal policies, are concluding that liberals only care about toronto, are feeling personally distraught by this and are concluding, for whatever specious reason, that the ndp have a deeper personal investment in ensuring the region thrives. unfortunately, it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the liberals really do need to focus entirely on toronto, because it's the only place they can win.
if the result of a 20% swing from the liberals to the ndp in southern ontario is that a handful of seats swing from red to orange, that's going to skew the polls pretty hard - but not make a really big difference at queen's park.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-southwestern-ontario-1.4684641
this is the exact wrong analysis.
the fact that the liberals are polling worse in southwestern ontario than they are anywhere else makes the projections there inapplicable to places that they are polling better. when you see a situation where a party is doing worse in a specific area than they are anywhere else, you don't take that as the rule and extrapolate it, you eliminate it as an outlier. grenier is merely exposing his own biases, but that is the status quo in this election: the entire media establishment decided the liberals were hopeless before the writ even dropped.
if the liberals are underperforming their average in the southwest then that necessarily implies that they're overperforming it elsewhere, doesn't it eric? yeah. that's right. it does, doesn't it?
if you look at the graph in the article, it seems to me like a lot of liberals are voting strategically to defeat the pcs in areas that are both historically strong pc ridings and ridings where liberals are currently being seen as distant and toronto-centric. i've talked to some people in windsor, and while the logic is often blurry, the basic idea is that they think the liberal party doesn't care about the region and the ndp will spend more money here. the people here seem to feel abandoned by capital flight, are attaching that to liberal policies, are concluding that liberals only care about toronto, are feeling personally distraught by this and are concluding, for whatever specious reason, that the ndp have a deeper personal investment in ensuring the region thrives. unfortunately, it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the liberals really do need to focus entirely on toronto, because it's the only place they can win.
if the result of a 20% swing from the liberals to the ndp in southern ontario is that a handful of seats swing from red to orange, that's going to skew the polls pretty hard - but not make a really big difference at queen's park.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-southwestern-ontario-1.4684641
i was initially flabbergasted that wynne thought that she might gain any insight into the existing situation by studying the last american election, but as i'm going through my notes on the rebuild, i'm realizing that the parallel is actually rather stark, you just need to be a little abstract to get it.
the 2018 ontario election may have a similar trajectory to what the 2016 american election would have been like had bernie sanders run. i'm seeing a number of parallels come up, including sanders starting to swing clinton's core supporters near the end.
i think bernie peaked too early, though.
the 2018 ontario election may have a similar trajectory to what the 2016 american election would have been like had bernie sanders run. i'm seeing a number of parallels come up, including sanders starting to swing clinton's core supporters near the end.
i think bernie peaked too early, though.
corporate tax rates have never been demonstrated to have any effect on job creation or the broader economy at all, whatsoever. that's some class a flunkie harpernomics, is what that is.
kathleen wynne knows better than this. why is she doing this to herself?
this is one of those political questions that an empirical analyses tends to write off as irrelevant. horwath's plan to boost the tax rate by a single measly percent is likely to help in servicing the debt and have little other consequence, but do you want to help service the debt? why? i don't mind paying out interest on bonds to seniors. if you're going to cut that, you need to shift money into social services, and she's doing it. but, this is all just juggling, really, to try to appeal to a somewhat shallow understanding of things. this is just pointless emotional masturbation, at the end of the day: maybe it makes somebody feel good to stick it to the banks by voting for a 1% tax increase, or it makes somebody feel good to stand up for "free enterprise" by rejecting that.
but, there will not be any measurable consequence, one way or the other. it's just an empty endorphin rush.
i must have a personal preference? no. i'm a robot. if there's no consequence, it doesn't matter. but, some of the lateral movements might matter - you might prefer things juggled a specific way.
i have no interest in the topic.
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/05/29/wynne-pledges-to-pump-another-900-million-into-helping-companies-expand-and-create-jobs-over-the-next-decade.html
kathleen wynne knows better than this. why is she doing this to herself?
this is one of those political questions that an empirical analyses tends to write off as irrelevant. horwath's plan to boost the tax rate by a single measly percent is likely to help in servicing the debt and have little other consequence, but do you want to help service the debt? why? i don't mind paying out interest on bonds to seniors. if you're going to cut that, you need to shift money into social services, and she's doing it. but, this is all just juggling, really, to try to appeal to a somewhat shallow understanding of things. this is just pointless emotional masturbation, at the end of the day: maybe it makes somebody feel good to stick it to the banks by voting for a 1% tax increase, or it makes somebody feel good to stand up for "free enterprise" by rejecting that.
but, there will not be any measurable consequence, one way or the other. it's just an empty endorphin rush.
i must have a personal preference? no. i'm a robot. if there's no consequence, it doesn't matter. but, some of the lateral movements might matter - you might prefer things juggled a specific way.
i have no interest in the topic.
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/05/29/wynne-pledges-to-pump-another-900-million-into-helping-companies-expand-and-create-jobs-over-the-next-decade.html
i actually liked the instant run-off voting.
i know. it's crazy. i voted liberal...and...get this....i did so because i liked their ideas.
that's right. i knew that the liberals support irvs, or stvs, and i knew the ndp supported pr. and, i voted for the liberals! because i supported the irv!
well, it wasn't a single issue thing, but you get the point.
then, to my confusion, when the liberals win, all anybody is talking about is the ndp's ideas. bizarre, that. i thought the ndp lost, and the liberals won?
i think, in the end, the liberals realized that the stv would help the ndp at the expense of the conservatives and decided that was a bad idea.
too bad.
i know. it's crazy. i voted liberal...and...get this....i did so because i liked their ideas.
that's right. i knew that the liberals support irvs, or stvs, and i knew the ndp supported pr. and, i voted for the liberals! because i supported the irv!
well, it wasn't a single issue thing, but you get the point.
then, to my confusion, when the liberals win, all anybody is talking about is the ndp's ideas. bizarre, that. i thought the ndp lost, and the liberals won?
i think, in the end, the liberals realized that the stv would help the ndp at the expense of the conservatives and decided that was a bad idea.
too bad.
i don't think that giving parties the right to appoint people to the legislature is in any remote way described using the word "democracy".
that's a system of oligarchy that removes any concept of accountability.
the funny thing about it is that the ndp supports abolishing the senate. but, what they really want to do is abolish the house and replace it with the senate, isn't it? the way that a system like this works itself out is that you get appointed in return for financial contributions of some sort. it's a way to put these seats up for sale.
i'd like to see a move towards more direct democracy, not towards a more technocratic concept of government. we need more accountability, not less of it; we need more power for people, and less power for so-called representatives.
this is the third try at this. canadians are clear that they don't like the status quo. but, hopefully the ndp is on the cusp of starting to understand that pr isn't the right path towards substantive democratic reform.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-bc-unveils-its-proposed-question-for-voters-in-electoral-reform/
that's a system of oligarchy that removes any concept of accountability.
the funny thing about it is that the ndp supports abolishing the senate. but, what they really want to do is abolish the house and replace it with the senate, isn't it? the way that a system like this works itself out is that you get appointed in return for financial contributions of some sort. it's a way to put these seats up for sale.
i'd like to see a move towards more direct democracy, not towards a more technocratic concept of government. we need more accountability, not less of it; we need more power for people, and less power for so-called representatives.
this is the third try at this. canadians are clear that they don't like the status quo. but, hopefully the ndp is on the cusp of starting to understand that pr isn't the right path towards substantive democratic reform.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-bc-unveils-its-proposed-question-for-voters-in-electoral-reform/
this is a good start; let's hope that, whatever happens after the election, the idea gets picked up on a little further.
if they can get highrises composting first, that's a natural first step to a green bin. this government is incrementalist; that's a constant.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/building-code-changes-ban-on-landfill-organics-aimed-at-condos-apartments-1.4661100
if they can get highrises composting first, that's a natural first step to a green bin. this government is incrementalist; that's a constant.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/building-code-changes-ban-on-landfill-organics-aimed-at-condos-apartments-1.4661100
but, it really is laughable, the whole line of thought - the idea that the conservatives have a more efficient vote, or that they're going to make the government more efficient, against all empirical historical evidence to the contrary.
if i was doug ford, i'd be more concerned about the efficiency of my liver.
if i was doug ford, i'd be more concerned about the efficiency of my liver.
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
do the tories have better "vote efficiency"?
no. not even close. they have no chance in most urban ridings, and the riding maps people are using seem to be stuck in the 50s - as ford's campaign, itself, is.
these are people that think the 905 is 'rural'; it hasn't been anything of the sort for decades. suburban, perhaps. but not rural. and, the cities in the region are actually growing very quickly. the liberals swept the 905 last time around for the exact reason that it's urban.
what the conservatives do have is an advantage in geography, as they do do better in rural areas, and that does give them more safe seats. but, if you take a look at that closely, inefficient is a better term to use than efficient. they're going to get 70% in some of these ridings, then get 12% in half of toronto. they need huge swings to win a mere handful of seats; whether they run at 25 or 35 is likely only a small difference in seats exchanged.
the liberals have the opposite problem - they're uncompetitive outside toronto - but they have what could be described as efficiency, and they're the party that this idea of vote efficiency should be applied towards. pulling them down 15% might seem catastrophic, but if it's all in ridings they'll never win anyways, it doesn't matter.
so, then, are the ndp inefficient? the reality is that they win a lot of close races. the disadvantage they've had is that they don't have a similar-sized base, so they need to rely on efficiency to win. i suspect this is in the process of changing.
the fact is that the exact same people made the exact same error in 2015, and it's probably rooted in a geography error rather than a mathematics one - if it isn't the internalization of campaign propaganda. go take a drive through the 905 and tell me it's "rural" in 2018.
people are living in london and working in toronto, nowadays.
no. not even close. they have no chance in most urban ridings, and the riding maps people are using seem to be stuck in the 50s - as ford's campaign, itself, is.
these are people that think the 905 is 'rural'; it hasn't been anything of the sort for decades. suburban, perhaps. but not rural. and, the cities in the region are actually growing very quickly. the liberals swept the 905 last time around for the exact reason that it's urban.
what the conservatives do have is an advantage in geography, as they do do better in rural areas, and that does give them more safe seats. but, if you take a look at that closely, inefficient is a better term to use than efficient. they're going to get 70% in some of these ridings, then get 12% in half of toronto. they need huge swings to win a mere handful of seats; whether they run at 25 or 35 is likely only a small difference in seats exchanged.
the liberals have the opposite problem - they're uncompetitive outside toronto - but they have what could be described as efficiency, and they're the party that this idea of vote efficiency should be applied towards. pulling them down 15% might seem catastrophic, but if it's all in ridings they'll never win anyways, it doesn't matter.
so, then, are the ndp inefficient? the reality is that they win a lot of close races. the disadvantage they've had is that they don't have a similar-sized base, so they need to rely on efficiency to win. i suspect this is in the process of changing.
the fact is that the exact same people made the exact same error in 2015, and it's probably rooted in a geography error rather than a mathematics one - if it isn't the internalization of campaign propaganda. go take a drive through the 905 and tell me it's "rural" in 2018.
people are living in london and working in toronto, nowadays.
one of the polls released yesterday is more interesting than the others.
this is an actual poll:
https://innovativeresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/OntarioThisMonth_WhatDoThePhonesSay.pdf
...and what does it say?
undecideds are at 13%.
now, let's keep in mind that this is a low ball and that the margin of error puts the range for the pcs up to 31%. but, nobody is going to vote for doug ford at the last minute. so, some recent evidence is forcing me to concede a point i wasn't previously - the pcs may actually be finally starting to actually lose ground. or, to put it another way, they may be having difficulty merely holding the support from the last election, when they got 31%.
ford may be looking at leading the pcs to a decrease in popular support. well, he talks to people like they're fucking idiots...
that would indicate that essentially all of the movement that's happening right now is from the liberals to the ndp, and then you need to get worried, because most of the ridings in this province are battles between the liberals and the conservatives.
the liberals weren't going to win very many seats outside of toronto, anyways, so it doesn't matter what they're running at in most of the province. the key indicator is not the 905 but the 416.
and...
see, this is more believable than the mainstreet data, but you have to keep in mind that the margins of error start getting very high when you're dealing with small sample sizes (like 101). and, it's hard to know exactly what to make of this. the liberals are clearly down substantively, but it would seem as though the conservatives are as well. based on this poll, at least, it would seem as though the concern is less about the liberals splitting the vote with the ndp and more about the liberals splitting the vote with the conservatives: this would indicate that it's the conservatives that are losing the most ground in toronto, at the expense of the ndp (which is also picking up support from the liberals). i'm left to conclude that the liberals and ndp have a week to wage the battle of toronto - and that ford doesn't matter much.
if the liberals are going to hold toronto, they're going to need to rely on their ground game, which means they need good brand recognition.
liberals seem to prefer horwath over wynne, at this point - and the media has been beating the snot out of her for forever, so it's not surprising. but, they still call themselves liberals, when asked. and, those numbers should be skewed higher in toronto.
based solely on this poll - an actual poll, but one that doesn't fit the media narrative - i would not expect the tories to win any more seats than they already have, and for the liberals to hang on relatively well around toronto.
if the ndp & liberals split the undecided vote you end up with something like:
ndp: ~50 (35%)
tories: ~30 (27%)
liberals: ~30 (23%)
...and the ndp are going to be working on razor thin pluralities that could easily see the seat totals with the liberals flipped, even if the vote totals end as suggested. there will be more than 20 liberal-ndp fights that swing on a few points.
(just based on this one poll...)
this is an actual poll:
https://innovativeresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/OntarioThisMonth_WhatDoThePhonesSay.pdf
...and what does it say?
now, let's keep in mind that this is a low ball and that the margin of error puts the range for the pcs up to 31%. but, nobody is going to vote for doug ford at the last minute. so, some recent evidence is forcing me to concede a point i wasn't previously - the pcs may actually be finally starting to actually lose ground. or, to put it another way, they may be having difficulty merely holding the support from the last election, when they got 31%.
ford may be looking at leading the pcs to a decrease in popular support. well, he talks to people like they're fucking idiots...
that would indicate that essentially all of the movement that's happening right now is from the liberals to the ndp, and then you need to get worried, because most of the ridings in this province are battles between the liberals and the conservatives.
the liberals weren't going to win very many seats outside of toronto, anyways, so it doesn't matter what they're running at in most of the province. the key indicator is not the 905 but the 416.
and...
if the liberals are going to hold toronto, they're going to need to rely on their ground game, which means they need good brand recognition.
based solely on this poll - an actual poll, but one that doesn't fit the media narrative - i would not expect the tories to win any more seats than they already have, and for the liberals to hang on relatively well around toronto.
if the ndp & liberals split the undecided vote you end up with something like:
ndp: ~50 (35%)
tories: ~30 (27%)
liberals: ~30 (23%)
...and the ndp are going to be working on razor thin pluralities that could easily see the seat totals with the liberals flipped, even if the vote totals end as suggested. there will be more than 20 liberal-ndp fights that swing on a few points.
(just based on this one poll...)
you don't really think you know somebody all that well after you talk to them in a smoking section at a bar, do you?
i'm trying to project myself as who i feel i am. you might get a wrong first impression, and i can't fix that. but, i can reinforce that your first impression is wrong and that i'm sure i'm making the right choice.
i hope i'm at least projecting that i'm comfortable with myself, i'm at ease and i'm having a good time. you might want to think about whether or not that would be true if i was presenting myself differently, before you start drawing conclusions from faulty first impressions.
you might find my "male side" is actually a lot less friendly, very nervous and not a lot of fun at all, actually. at least, that's the lesson people in my past should have learned.
i'm trying to project myself as who i feel i am. you might get a wrong first impression, and i can't fix that. but, i can reinforce that your first impression is wrong and that i'm sure i'm making the right choice.
i hope i'm at least projecting that i'm comfortable with myself, i'm at ease and i'm having a good time. you might want to think about whether or not that would be true if i was presenting myself differently, before you start drawing conclusions from faulty first impressions.
you might find my "male side" is actually a lot less friendly, very nervous and not a lot of fun at all, actually. at least, that's the lesson people in my past should have learned.
i'm going to say this again.
i'm not ideologically opposed to tariffs. not rigidly, at least. although, if i was an american, i wouldn't want to put tariffs on europe - i would want to trade with europe. i would want to put tariffs on countries like china and mexico that have lower wage standards. this could in theory be used to protect american capital.
if america is putting steel tariffs on europe, it is neither to increase production in america nor to create jobs in the united states but to decrease labour benefits in europe. this is using tariffs for the reasons that free trade is usually used: as an attack on workers.
if you're an american capitalist, and you're not smart enough to be a fordist (which is the case for essentially all capitalists nowadays), your aim is always to reduce the amount paid to workers because this is seen as a reduction in profit. you would reduce workers to slaves, if you only could - because you're too short-sighted to care about the sustainability of the system and are blinded by immediate profit.
it would follow that you would want "free trade" with mexico because it would decline the labour standards in your own country, and you would also want tariffs with europe because it would decline the labour standards on that continent - which you're no doubt just as invested in.
today, capital is not multinational but transnational. it accepts no national boundaries. it has no allegiance to any value system, nor does it have any attachment to the workers in any specific country.
and, if you're a really savvy capitalist, and you've got a good stooge in office that the uneducated workers think is on their side, you can get away with this - by telling them that the tariffs are there to protect their jobs, when they're actually there to hurt the people they should be in solidarity with: workers across the ocean.
so, we have two problems with this. the first is that these tariffs will not help american workers, and are not intended to; they're designed to help european capital. this is the layer of governance where nato really exists: transnational capital flowing across the atlantic.
the other problem is that tariffs are hard. in this particular circumstance, you should expect european capital to attack it's workers rather than retaliate. people in europe are going to lose hard-fought for benefits. this is the collusion that is happening, and american shareholders will be the biggest winners in the end. but, in a different situation, where the tariffs are real, you need an economic general to co-ordinate the process, and trump is not the person - nor does he have these people around him.
the saddest part is that american steelworkers will support this, because they really are that ignorant, and because capital won the fundamental battle with nafta: it taught workers to see each other as competitors across national boundaries, rather than as comrades that need to stand in international solidarity with a common cause.
trump is not undoing nafta, he's spearheading the next attack in the class war.
i'm not ideologically opposed to tariffs. not rigidly, at least. although, if i was an american, i wouldn't want to put tariffs on europe - i would want to trade with europe. i would want to put tariffs on countries like china and mexico that have lower wage standards. this could in theory be used to protect american capital.
if america is putting steel tariffs on europe, it is neither to increase production in america nor to create jobs in the united states but to decrease labour benefits in europe. this is using tariffs for the reasons that free trade is usually used: as an attack on workers.
if you're an american capitalist, and you're not smart enough to be a fordist (which is the case for essentially all capitalists nowadays), your aim is always to reduce the amount paid to workers because this is seen as a reduction in profit. you would reduce workers to slaves, if you only could - because you're too short-sighted to care about the sustainability of the system and are blinded by immediate profit.
it would follow that you would want "free trade" with mexico because it would decline the labour standards in your own country, and you would also want tariffs with europe because it would decline the labour standards on that continent - which you're no doubt just as invested in.
today, capital is not multinational but transnational. it accepts no national boundaries. it has no allegiance to any value system, nor does it have any attachment to the workers in any specific country.
and, if you're a really savvy capitalist, and you've got a good stooge in office that the uneducated workers think is on their side, you can get away with this - by telling them that the tariffs are there to protect their jobs, when they're actually there to hurt the people they should be in solidarity with: workers across the ocean.
so, we have two problems with this. the first is that these tariffs will not help american workers, and are not intended to; they're designed to help european capital. this is the layer of governance where nato really exists: transnational capital flowing across the atlantic.
the other problem is that tariffs are hard. in this particular circumstance, you should expect european capital to attack it's workers rather than retaliate. people in europe are going to lose hard-fought for benefits. this is the collusion that is happening, and american shareholders will be the biggest winners in the end. but, in a different situation, where the tariffs are real, you need an economic general to co-ordinate the process, and trump is not the person - nor does he have these people around him.
the saddest part is that american steelworkers will support this, because they really are that ignorant, and because capital won the fundamental battle with nafta: it taught workers to see each other as competitors across national boundaries, rather than as comrades that need to stand in international solidarity with a common cause.
trump is not undoing nafta, he's spearheading the next attack in the class war.
they're claiming the tories are on the brink of a majority, and the liberals are likely to get less than ten seats, but that's a dramatic misrepresentation of the data.
to begin with, they're using this screwy online polling data, which is just damaging the model. garbage in, garbage out. then they're aggregating it without compensating for time, essentially ruining it altogether.
based on what he's come up with here, i think it's pretty clear that you can expect the liberals to hold on to at least 20 seats - maybe 30 - and that the only plausible outcome right now remains a tory minority.
again: if reliable data comes in pushing a reliable liberal collapse in the 416, that changes. but, i'm not currently convinced that the liberals have lost their base.
the floor is probably 20. that's probably the worst that the liberals will ever do. ever.
http://maps.lispop.ca/ontario_projections/
to begin with, they're using this screwy online polling data, which is just damaging the model. garbage in, garbage out. then they're aggregating it without compensating for time, essentially ruining it altogether.
based on what he's come up with here, i think it's pretty clear that you can expect the liberals to hold on to at least 20 seats - maybe 30 - and that the only plausible outcome right now remains a tory minority.
again: if reliable data comes in pushing a reliable liberal collapse in the 416, that changes. but, i'm not currently convinced that the liberals have lost their base.
the floor is probably 20. that's probably the worst that the liberals will ever do. ever.
http://maps.lispop.ca/ontario_projections/
i actually got out of that weekend feeling pretty healthy.
no blackouts. no substantive hangovers. not even that tired. well, not after that initial crash, anyways.
one of the key indicators is how my gastrocnemius feels. it is often the case that after several long days of dancing or walking, enough strain gets put on the back of my calves that they seize up a little - and i can get some sharp pains in there that i have to deal with by stretching. nothing this weekend...
maybe it's because the bicycle eliminated the walking. and, if i had walked it would have added an extra hour, at least, to each of the three nights. but i think i just paced myself well.
i crashed this morning, so i'm not going to get any apartment hunting done. i'm going to get something to eat and hit the reconstruction.
june will likely be a little bit quiet in terms of the party schedule. we'll see, though.
no blackouts. no substantive hangovers. not even that tired. well, not after that initial crash, anyways.
one of the key indicators is how my gastrocnemius feels. it is often the case that after several long days of dancing or walking, enough strain gets put on the back of my calves that they seize up a little - and i can get some sharp pains in there that i have to deal with by stretching. nothing this weekend...
maybe it's because the bicycle eliminated the walking. and, if i had walked it would have added an extra hour, at least, to each of the three nights. but i think i just paced myself well.
i crashed this morning, so i'm not going to get any apartment hunting done. i'm going to get something to eat and hit the reconstruction.
june will likely be a little bit quiet in terms of the party schedule. we'll see, though.
i don't know why my firefox started multiprocessing all of a sudden, but i've got it back off, now.
i purchased this laptop, refurbished, in mid-2009. it's a model from 2006. it runs, and technically with multiple cores, but it can't handle multiple instances of firefox that want to take multiple gb of ram at the same time. that's just going to make the machine unusable.
i will not be connecting expensive hardware to the internet in the future. i will be keeping all desktops completely offline. when this laptop machine eventually dies, i'll replace it with something cheap from a pawn shop and use it as a sacrificial offering of an access point.
the internet is simply not safe and there's nothing anybody can do about it except avoid taking nice things into it.
anyways. back to what i'm doing..
i purchased this laptop, refurbished, in mid-2009. it's a model from 2006. it runs, and technically with multiple cores, but it can't handle multiple instances of firefox that want to take multiple gb of ram at the same time. that's just going to make the machine unusable.
i will not be connecting expensive hardware to the internet in the future. i will be keeping all desktops completely offline. when this laptop machine eventually dies, i'll replace it with something cheap from a pawn shop and use it as a sacrificial offering of an access point.
the internet is simply not safe and there's nothing anybody can do about it except avoid taking nice things into it.
anyways. back to what i'm doing..
conservatives don't think before they vote. they don't care.
they vote c. always. no matter what. which means it doesn't actually
matter what they do in office, conservatives always hold their base.
and, liberals don't want to vote for conservatives.
so, when liberals run on the right, they get squeezed.
it doesn't matter if the conservative candidate is a beer-swilling idiot that wants to run deficits and may literally not be able to count to 100 (in french). conservatives will vote for this person, anyways. they don't care. they don't think. they just vote.
it looked like an angle, but it wasn't. it never was. it's a trap. and, wynne fell right into it.
and, liberals don't want to vote for conservatives.
so, when liberals run on the right, they get squeezed.
it doesn't matter if the conservative candidate is a beer-swilling idiot that wants to run deficits and may literally not be able to count to 100 (in french). conservatives will vote for this person, anyways. they don't care. they don't think. they just vote.
it looked like an angle, but it wasn't. it never was. it's a trap. and, wynne fell right into it.
i want to be clear: i thought wynne had a perfectly good chance going into this thing.
and, she could still hold the base in toronto.
and i still like her policies the best.
but, she's run the worst campaign i've ever seen. every day, almost, she's holding a press conference to push some stupid right-wing talking point. and, she's just unloading ammunition into her feet. every time you tell her she's shooting herself, she shoots harder. by the end, she's going to be like the black knight.
it's just a flesh wound.
they need to force her out, like, minutes after the election is done.
and, she could still hold the base in toronto.
and i still like her policies the best.
but, she's run the worst campaign i've ever seen. every day, almost, she's holding a press conference to push some stupid right-wing talking point. and, she's just unloading ammunition into her feet. every time you tell her she's shooting herself, she shoots harder. by the end, she's going to be like the black knight.
it's just a flesh wound.
they need to force her out, like, minutes after the election is done.
the russian narrative is probably bunk. they're probably upgrading their own collection worms.
but, what you want to do is keep your encryption algorithms up to date. it's hard to know what the state really has operating; terrabyte chips in parallel at data centres? it's just brute force. a quantum computer should be able to rip apart any existing encryption system, but if you get enough chips in parallel, you've got the same thing.
unless you're a mob boss yourself, you should be less concerned about the state decrypting your data, and more concerned about making life harder for people trying to steal your credit card #.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4237529/fbi-reboot-router-russian-malware/?utm_source=Other&utm_medium=MostPopular&utm_campaign=2014
but, what you want to do is keep your encryption algorithms up to date. it's hard to know what the state really has operating; terrabyte chips in parallel at data centres? it's just brute force. a quantum computer should be able to rip apart any existing encryption system, but if you get enough chips in parallel, you've got the same thing.
unless you're a mob boss yourself, you should be less concerned about the state decrypting your data, and more concerned about making life harder for people trying to steal your credit card #.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4237529/fbi-reboot-router-russian-malware/?utm_source=Other&utm_medium=MostPopular&utm_campaign=2014
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
ontario did have a stable tory majority up until 1985.
that was over 30 years ago.
since then, we've undergone a major generational change. and, today, there are wide swaths of the province where there are less native-born citizens than immigrants. in 1968, the country was almost totally white; today, there are wide swaths of toronto where white people are literal minorities.
the canada that exists today has essentially no meaningful connection to the canada that existed in the past. and, one is being generous as pointing to patriation as a new starting point; i wouldn't even bother looking at data from before the last referendum. canada as we know it today is really a creation of the last generation.
again: i prefer the sitting government's policies. and, i'm savvy enough to know that i'm watching politics. but, in tapping into this rather trumpian concept of moral indignation and self-righteous conservatism (traits usually associated with progressivism, not liberalism), wynne is trying to appeal to a past that not only never existed, but never existed in a country that no longer exists; she's selling a fantasy reality to voters that don't exist, and never existed.
again: causality is hard to determine. i'm pointing a lot at the media. but, at the very least wynne is not helping herself at all - and hasn't been since day one.
this is a co-ordinated strategy of potentially disastrous miscalculation.
that was over 30 years ago.
since then, we've undergone a major generational change. and, today, there are wide swaths of the province where there are less native-born citizens than immigrants. in 1968, the country was almost totally white; today, there are wide swaths of toronto where white people are literal minorities.
the canada that exists today has essentially no meaningful connection to the canada that existed in the past. and, one is being generous as pointing to patriation as a new starting point; i wouldn't even bother looking at data from before the last referendum. canada as we know it today is really a creation of the last generation.
again: i prefer the sitting government's policies. and, i'm savvy enough to know that i'm watching politics. but, in tapping into this rather trumpian concept of moral indignation and self-righteous conservatism (traits usually associated with progressivism, not liberalism), wynne is trying to appeal to a past that not only never existed, but never existed in a country that no longer exists; she's selling a fantasy reality to voters that don't exist, and never existed.
again: causality is hard to determine. i'm pointing a lot at the media. but, at the very least wynne is not helping herself at all - and hasn't been since day one.
this is a co-ordinated strategy of potentially disastrous miscalculation.
"fuck tha police" is a cultural slogan, it's not a threat to power or a statement of defiance. it's a multi-million dollar industry. it's the status quo.
what this actually is is just another example of kathleen wynne putting her foot in her mouth. and, the more she insists on appealing to some imaginary concept of a silent majority, the more her numbers collapse.
the reality is that her moral indignation at a "fuck tha police" sign probably just cost her 3-5 points in downtown toronto, where she needs to win to avoid annihilation. and, she probably doesn't understand why she sounds racist when she says what she's saying.
sadly, the dog whistles are coming from kathleen wynne this election, not from doug ford. and, there's some sad underlying truth to it: the liberals are the party of upper-class white torontonians, and don't seem to really understand the world from outside of their bubble.
they've been doing this since before the election. and i pointed out here quite a while ago that the party has this weird conservative streak, and that it could very well be a wildcard in the election.
wynne needs to be trying to win the votes of the people she just alienated by attacking a slogan at the heart of their movement. and, she's not remotely cognizant of what she just did.
what this actually is is just another example of kathleen wynne putting her foot in her mouth. and, the more she insists on appealing to some imaginary concept of a silent majority, the more her numbers collapse.
the reality is that her moral indignation at a "fuck tha police" sign probably just cost her 3-5 points in downtown toronto, where she needs to win to avoid annihilation. and, she probably doesn't understand why she sounds racist when she says what she's saying.
sadly, the dog whistles are coming from kathleen wynne this election, not from doug ford. and, there's some sad underlying truth to it: the liberals are the party of upper-class white torontonians, and don't seem to really understand the world from outside of their bubble.
they've been doing this since before the election. and i pointed out here quite a while ago that the party has this weird conservative streak, and that it could very well be a wildcard in the election.
wynne needs to be trying to win the votes of the people she just alienated by attacking a slogan at the heart of their movement. and, she's not remotely cognizant of what she just did.
i agree. this is terrible.
he's got the preposition definite article completely wrong. it's despicable. like he's never even heard the fucking song.
could we could all consult our album covers for a second?
so, we're in agreement: fuck tha police. not fuck "the" police. like you're some tight-ass, grammar correcting, fucking cracker or something.
he's got the
could we could all consult our album covers for a second?
so, we're in agreement: fuck tha police. not fuck "the" police. like you're some tight-ass, grammar correcting, fucking cracker or something.
there is now a 0% chance that i'm going to vote for the liberals in the next federal election.
sorry.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4238702/ottawa-buy-trans-mountain-pipeline-project-4-5b/?utm_source=Article&utm_medium=MostPopular&utm_campaign=2014
sorry.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4238702/ottawa-buy-trans-mountain-pipeline-project-4-5b/?utm_source=Article&utm_medium=MostPopular&utm_campaign=2014
this isn't a poll.
and it's just regurgitating tory media talking points.
so, don't take this very seriously...
....but, it's still putting the liberals ahead in the 416.
the mainstreet data is more reliable. but, this pushes home the point: that if the liberals can find a way to sweep toronto again, in the end, then it doesn't matter if they're running at 7% in the rest of the province.
toronto has roughly half the province's population. (7 + 35)/2 = 21. so, if they are running at 21 percent provincially, and are running at 7% outside of toronto, that means they must be running in the mid to high 30s in toronto.
they are the toronto party. they've been that way for years. they still win, though.
like i say: i trust the mainstreet data better. i'm just pointing out it could be wrong and the results are potentially profound if it is.
and it's just regurgitating tory media talking points.
so, don't take this very seriously...
....but, it's still putting the liberals ahead in the 416.
the mainstreet data is more reliable. but, this pushes home the point: that if the liberals can find a way to sweep toronto again, in the end, then it doesn't matter if they're running at 7% in the rest of the province.
toronto has roughly half the province's population. (7 + 35)/2 = 21. so, if they are running at 21 percent provincially, and are running at 7% outside of toronto, that means they must be running in the mid to high 30s in toronto.
they are the toronto party. they've been that way for years. they still win, though.
like i say: i trust the mainstreet data better. i'm just pointing out it could be wrong and the results are potentially profound if it is.
the beer test.
is that what ford's focus on beer-o-nomics is really about? i dunno.
i think i can understand why some out of touch tory elitists might think ford wins beer tests, but, it's a pretty bizarre understanding of the ontario electorate. i bet doug ford could win a beer test in wisconsin, or maybe upstate new york, but in downtown toronto?
doug ford is the guy that wants to buy me a beer, and that i try to get away from all night.
so, would i rather have a beer with one of the other two, then?
i might rather smoke a joint with andrea horwath, rather than have a beer with her. i have no idea what her habits are. but, beer drinking is more about talking about the weather, whereas toking is when you get into the fun intellectual discussions and poke at each other's ideas a little bit.
kathleen wynne is like the person at the other end of the bar, and while i wouldn't doubt that she's enjoying her beer (or glass of wine, or margarita, as it may be), any discussion would be likely to be terse and maybe a little awkward. it's a class thing, actually.
but, the point i wanted to make is this: if this is really about beer tests, the tories have an insulting and downright outdated concept of ontarians.
is that what ford's focus on beer-o-nomics is really about? i dunno.
i think i can understand why some out of touch tory elitists might think ford wins beer tests, but, it's a pretty bizarre understanding of the ontario electorate. i bet doug ford could win a beer test in wisconsin, or maybe upstate new york, but in downtown toronto?
doug ford is the guy that wants to buy me a beer, and that i try to get away from all night.
so, would i rather have a beer with one of the other two, then?
i might rather smoke a joint with andrea horwath, rather than have a beer with her. i have no idea what her habits are. but, beer drinking is more about talking about the weather, whereas toking is when you get into the fun intellectual discussions and poke at each other's ideas a little bit.
kathleen wynne is like the person at the other end of the bar, and while i wouldn't doubt that she's enjoying her beer (or glass of wine, or margarita, as it may be), any discussion would be likely to be terse and maybe a little awkward. it's a class thing, actually.
but, the point i wanted to make is this: if this is really about beer tests, the tories have an insulting and downright outdated concept of ontarians.
so, this is what i was looking for: some actual data. don't misunderstand me: i'd like a larger sample size. but, aggregating data doesn't work like you think it does.
the most important bar here is the number for toronto. this is the first data i've seen that suggests that the fortress in toronto is cracking. trying to determine causality in context is perilous, but i'm going to suggest that all of the media telling people that the liberals can't win is finally seeping into the base - and they've flipped over to the ndp in droves.
if i'm right, and the media strategy was to prop the ndp up to try to split the vote, then this appears to have backfired. and, it may provide an answer to a long-running dispute that i've had with right-leaning liberal party supporters, who argued that ignatieff got beat by strategic voters moving to the conservatives to stop the ndp. that was the most transparent pile of bullshit from the start.
one of the things the media is forgetting to tell you is that the liberals have been uncompetitive outside of toronto (and ottawa) for years, anyways - and that there are enough seats in toronto that they could win by being the toronto party. they did that in 2014. so, this narrative isn't a new development. but, what is a new development is that idea that they're running in third in toronto, and, if that's true, they're going to get decimated pretty badly.
i know not to put everything into one poll, but we only have one poll.
and, i'm still skeptical about how well this polling is doing in measuring the breadth of the movement that's happening, or in modelling actual turnout on the ground.
https://www.mainstreetresearch.ca/ndp-surge-past-pcs-into-the-lead/
the most important bar here is the number for toronto. this is the first data i've seen that suggests that the fortress in toronto is cracking. trying to determine causality in context is perilous, but i'm going to suggest that all of the media telling people that the liberals can't win is finally seeping into the base - and they've flipped over to the ndp in droves.
if i'm right, and the media strategy was to prop the ndp up to try to split the vote, then this appears to have backfired. and, it may provide an answer to a long-running dispute that i've had with right-leaning liberal party supporters, who argued that ignatieff got beat by strategic voters moving to the conservatives to stop the ndp. that was the most transparent pile of bullshit from the start.
one of the things the media is forgetting to tell you is that the liberals have been uncompetitive outside of toronto (and ottawa) for years, anyways - and that there are enough seats in toronto that they could win by being the toronto party. they did that in 2014. so, this narrative isn't a new development. but, what is a new development is that idea that they're running in third in toronto, and, if that's true, they're going to get decimated pretty badly.
i know not to put everything into one poll, but we only have one poll.
and, i'm still skeptical about how well this polling is doing in measuring the breadth of the movement that's happening, or in modelling actual turnout on the ground.
https://www.mainstreetresearch.ca/ndp-surge-past-pcs-into-the-lead/
it was a long day and i crashed hard at the end.
there was a moment when i stopped drinking - around 4:00 - where i had to sit down for a minute due to overheating. it was like 40 degrees, and highly humid, in the second club. i eventually went out for some fresh air around 6:00 and then couldn't acclimatize back to it, so i left. but, the night is clear all the way through.
i'll update this post after i get my habitual nachos.
(it is now after 3:00 on the 30th)
====
this night was meant to be very long, starting at about 14:00 on monday and going until early on tuesday - 6? 7? 8? it wasn't clear how this was going to work....
it was more like 15:30 when i got to the actual bar, which was somewhere i hadn't been to before. i figured if i'm going to the tv lounge i should dress in drag, right?
(i'm not a transvestite, and i don't dress in drag)
the fact is that it was so hot out that i didn't have to use the washroom at all, for the entire 10 hours i was there, despite drinking seven beers over the period. again: 7 drinks in ten hours isn't excessive at all, it's just a long day drinking. i guess my body decided it didn't have any extra fluid to excrete.
the reason i went to this party is that it was supposed to focus on 'german techno', which is somewhat of an unclear description, as it could refer to anything. i think i was expected something a little more atmospheric and electro-gazey, tangerine dream set to a hard beat sort of thing, but instead walked into what was essentially a dungeon somewhere in east germany that was playing very minimalist digital hardcore at a fast bpm. i kind of felt like blixa bargeld should have come out of nowhere and hit me over the head with a gong, before preceding to the light the place on fire - or that david bowie should have appeared as an apparition and complained that that fucking wanker eno was getting all of the credit for his work. i went in there a few times early in the night and had some fun doing aerobics, but it became pretty clear early on in the night that the actual party was happening outside. staub, itself, appeared to be pretty much dead.
the fact is that it was fucking beautiful outside. 30+ degrees well into the night. the humidity was still thick in the air when i left at around 1:30. not a cloud in the sky. just fucking perfect weather. who wants to spend a night like that locked in a dungeon doing cardio when there's a well-populated dance party happening on a patio a few feet away?
that said, i would have probably stayed in the german techno club if one of two things were true: (1) if the music outside sucked or (2) if the party inside picked up. i could be wrong, but i don't think the party inside ever picked up. and, the music outside had a sparse, british feel to it that i'd actually usually prefer over anything german. i picked up a few autechre samples.
it seems like the party outside was actually partially organized by some kids from pittsburgh, so i seem to have gone to a detour records festival as much as the german techno festival i meant to go to. but, listen: i should be happy that i had an escape from an empty party.
staub may want to think about publishing line-ups in the future.
the first set i got into was marc lansley, who seems to be a little obscure, but something i want to take a closer note of because i actually found it to be one of the most interesting sets i've heard in real time. he did something i wish more people did, which was play with the syncopation. so, he had us dancing to 16th note articulations on shuffle beats, and what not. it was less exquisite, and more just awkward - cracked out beats for lack of a better term. samples crashing into each other and creating a mess. and, while a couple of people were looking around wondering how they got to this strange place, i found the deviation from orthodoxy to be rather exhilarating. detroit has no market for art techno, but if there are people listening, let it be known that i'd love to see more sets like this. i can't find anything substantive online.
the next two sets were the kids from pittsburgh, and it was a little looser and a bit funkier. a bit more soul. i danced a bit, but i was in and out of the dungeon - and left to get smokes around 21:30. i didn't go back in the dungeon after i got back.
i caught most of the next set, and spent the bulk of it dancing. i'm going to claim it wasn't particularly memorable, but that i had a good time with it nonetheless. it got me moving without making me cringe...
i was in the yard there for much of the last set, but i spent a good deal of it sitting. it was a little funkier, more soul, and i tend to interpret that as sort of cringey.
i got to the second bar a little before 2:00 and think i got most of all of the sets. i only bought one drink here and finished it a little after 4:00 and had to sit down around 4:30-4:40-ish; what i was doing was sweating, and i was less drunk and more dehydrated. i just had to let the wave pass. you get that or you don't. but i was legit drenched by the time i stood up. so, i caught whatever was on from 2:00-4:30. again: it got me dancing with no clear complaints. asher perkins kicked me on the way past me, presumably to "wake me up", and i caught what i think was the bulk of his set, after 5:00. i've seen him spin enough that he did actually seem to kick me to get up, which is a lot i guess, and what i'll say is he's definitely filling out his sound a little: there's just more and more stuff happening. he really filled the place up. i was out around 6:00, then back in, and then out again around 6:30 - after experiencing some fresh air, my body told me to stay out and breathe it in. i just wasn't getting enough oxygen in there. and, this party ended at 7:00...
so, if i was there from 2:00-6:30 i must have caught most of everything, even if i'm not totally sure if i was actually a foot away from antwon faulkner for an hour or not. it was dark. and i was dancing...
there was a moment when i stopped drinking - around 4:00 - where i had to sit down for a minute due to overheating. it was like 40 degrees, and highly humid, in the second club. i eventually went out for some fresh air around 6:00 and then couldn't acclimatize back to it, so i left. but, the night is clear all the way through.
i'll update this post after i get my habitual nachos.
(it is now after 3:00 on the 30th)
====
this night was meant to be very long, starting at about 14:00 on monday and going until early on tuesday - 6? 7? 8? it wasn't clear how this was going to work....
it was more like 15:30 when i got to the actual bar, which was somewhere i hadn't been to before. i figured if i'm going to the tv lounge i should dress in drag, right?
(i'm not a transvestite, and i don't dress in drag)
the fact is that it was so hot out that i didn't have to use the washroom at all, for the entire 10 hours i was there, despite drinking seven beers over the period. again: 7 drinks in ten hours isn't excessive at all, it's just a long day drinking. i guess my body decided it didn't have any extra fluid to excrete.
the reason i went to this party is that it was supposed to focus on 'german techno', which is somewhat of an unclear description, as it could refer to anything. i think i was expected something a little more atmospheric and electro-gazey, tangerine dream set to a hard beat sort of thing, but instead walked into what was essentially a dungeon somewhere in east germany that was playing very minimalist digital hardcore at a fast bpm. i kind of felt like blixa bargeld should have come out of nowhere and hit me over the head with a gong, before preceding to the light the place on fire - or that david bowie should have appeared as an apparition and complained that that fucking wanker eno was getting all of the credit for his work. i went in there a few times early in the night and had some fun doing aerobics, but it became pretty clear early on in the night that the actual party was happening outside. staub, itself, appeared to be pretty much dead.
the fact is that it was fucking beautiful outside. 30+ degrees well into the night. the humidity was still thick in the air when i left at around 1:30. not a cloud in the sky. just fucking perfect weather. who wants to spend a night like that locked in a dungeon doing cardio when there's a well-populated dance party happening on a patio a few feet away?
that said, i would have probably stayed in the german techno club if one of two things were true: (1) if the music outside sucked or (2) if the party inside picked up. i could be wrong, but i don't think the party inside ever picked up. and, the music outside had a sparse, british feel to it that i'd actually usually prefer over anything german. i picked up a few autechre samples.
it seems like the party outside was actually partially organized by some kids from pittsburgh, so i seem to have gone to a detour records festival as much as the german techno festival i meant to go to. but, listen: i should be happy that i had an escape from an empty party.
staub may want to think about publishing line-ups in the future.
the first set i got into was marc lansley, who seems to be a little obscure, but something i want to take a closer note of because i actually found it to be one of the most interesting sets i've heard in real time. he did something i wish more people did, which was play with the syncopation. so, he had us dancing to 16th note articulations on shuffle beats, and what not. it was less exquisite, and more just awkward - cracked out beats for lack of a better term. samples crashing into each other and creating a mess. and, while a couple of people were looking around wondering how they got to this strange place, i found the deviation from orthodoxy to be rather exhilarating. detroit has no market for art techno, but if there are people listening, let it be known that i'd love to see more sets like this. i can't find anything substantive online.
the next two sets were the kids from pittsburgh, and it was a little looser and a bit funkier. a bit more soul. i danced a bit, but i was in and out of the dungeon - and left to get smokes around 21:30. i didn't go back in the dungeon after i got back.
i caught most of the next set, and spent the bulk of it dancing. i'm going to claim it wasn't particularly memorable, but that i had a good time with it nonetheless. it got me moving without making me cringe...
i was in the yard there for much of the last set, but i spent a good deal of it sitting. it was a little funkier, more soul, and i tend to interpret that as sort of cringey.
i got to the second bar a little before 2:00 and think i got most of all of the sets. i only bought one drink here and finished it a little after 4:00 and had to sit down around 4:30-4:40-ish; what i was doing was sweating, and i was less drunk and more dehydrated. i just had to let the wave pass. you get that or you don't. but i was legit drenched by the time i stood up. so, i caught whatever was on from 2:00-4:30. again: it got me dancing with no clear complaints. asher perkins kicked me on the way past me, presumably to "wake me up", and i caught what i think was the bulk of his set, after 5:00. i've seen him spin enough that he did actually seem to kick me to get up, which is a lot i guess, and what i'll say is he's definitely filling out his sound a little: there's just more and more stuff happening. he really filled the place up. i was out around 6:00, then back in, and then out again around 6:30 - after experiencing some fresh air, my body told me to stay out and breathe it in. i just wasn't getting enough oxygen in there. and, this party ended at 7:00...
so, if i was there from 2:00-6:30 i must have caught most of everything, even if i'm not totally sure if i was actually a foot away from antwon faulkner for an hour or not. it was dark. and i was dancing...
Monday, May 28, 2018
but, to be clear. a few points.
1) i don't think the pcs are collapsing. i've been arguing for months that they were never running that high in the first place, but that the inflated numbers are a relic of the process, given that the conservatives have the most dedicated base; i told you from the start that the numbers would come down as the numbers fill in. all of the polling everywhere says that conservatives of all types in canada have almost no potential to swing anybody. so, when you see these between election polls that have the conservatives at 45%, all it really means is that everybody else actually looks at evidence before they make a voting decision, rather than decide what brand they want to vote for two or three years away from making the actual choice.
the conservatives were running in the mid-30s the whole time.
2) millennial voters may have been unreliable voters when they were younger, as gen x voters and baby boomer voters were when they were younger, too. but, understand that if you were born in 1980 then you're 38 years old, now. this year should be the first batch of voters born in the twenty-first century. millennials aren't the youth vote anymore. you should expect them to start voting more reliably, now - and focus your scorn on the younger generation. but, what that means is that we may be seeing the creation of a rigid ndp base and, if that is true, the same processes would apply to the ndp that do to the conservatives, and their vote would also be inflated.
i believe that the ndp numbers are currently being inflated and that they are running in the high 20s.
3) liberals are just feeling frustrated & disenfranchised. the factors that are inflating the totals of conservatives & dippers must also be under-estimating the totals of liberals. that's zero-sum.
i think the liberals are currently running in the mid 20s.
this is about what we've got right now, then:
conservatives: 33
ndp: 29
liberals: 25
undecided: 9
greens: 4
1) i don't think the pcs are collapsing. i've been arguing for months that they were never running that high in the first place, but that the inflated numbers are a relic of the process, given that the conservatives have the most dedicated base; i told you from the start that the numbers would come down as the numbers fill in. all of the polling everywhere says that conservatives of all types in canada have almost no potential to swing anybody. so, when you see these between election polls that have the conservatives at 45%, all it really means is that everybody else actually looks at evidence before they make a voting decision, rather than decide what brand they want to vote for two or three years away from making the actual choice.
the conservatives were running in the mid-30s the whole time.
2) millennial voters may have been unreliable voters when they were younger, as gen x voters and baby boomer voters were when they were younger, too. but, understand that if you were born in 1980 then you're 38 years old, now. this year should be the first batch of voters born in the twenty-first century. millennials aren't the youth vote anymore. you should expect them to start voting more reliably, now - and focus your scorn on the younger generation. but, what that means is that we may be seeing the creation of a rigid ndp base and, if that is true, the same processes would apply to the ndp that do to the conservatives, and their vote would also be inflated.
i believe that the ndp numbers are currently being inflated and that they are running in the high 20s.
3) liberals are just feeling frustrated & disenfranchised. the factors that are inflating the totals of conservatives & dippers must also be under-estimating the totals of liberals. that's zero-sum.
i think the liberals are currently running in the mid 20s.
this is about what we've got right now, then:
conservatives: 33
ndp: 29
liberals: 25
undecided: 9
greens: 4
last night is absolutely clear. no blurry moments. well paced.
although, i enjoyed the reaction from the bartender when i went to get a last beer at the very end of the night.
"yeah. right."
she just wanted to go home. understandable.
i think it was more about how well i was standing after drinking & dancing all night than anything else, it was an expression of disbelief, but you have to understand how much exercise i get anyways - i'm just kind of healthy at a sort of bionic level. if my bac spikes, it spikes. but it's a separate process than my actual ability to really effortlessly push myself all night, on pretty much any night. i can dance or bike or walk essentially at will. if i have to stop, it's going to be because my feet get sore, not because of exhaustion.
but, for the record: i had two shots of jager about 10:30, a tall can of mike's at about 11:30 and then slowly drank seven beers (by my best count) over what was in total about a 12 hour party. that's 11 drinks in 12 hours, although the drinking took part mostly over the first 9. that's not excessive by any definition, it's just a long night.
i picked the texture after party because the line-up was stacked; if you have tastes similar to mine, that was the line-up of the weekend kind of thing. i don't follow djs the way i follow rock musicians, or even electronic composers, so i'm not going to pretend i have a deeper understanding of things than i do, but the sets last night were dark and minimal and a little bit noisy - they were the proper crossover for somebody into old industrial music and the dirtier side of hardcore, trying to find an appropriate party at a house festival. the floor was a little packed at first but started to clear out nicely for the last two sets. so, the dancing was good for the last half of the night.
i stayed at the bar late to catch the billed artists, but the party largely moved to the park a little after four. i made it there eventually, and spent a few hours there before i went home. it was gospel when i left...
a fun night...
i made it home about noon, and i've been up and down, sleeping without sleeping. it's like a sauna in here; i love it. keeping me up, though. i more listened to the debate than watched it. tomorrow is an even longer day - about 20 hours of mostly straight dancing - so i'd better get ready for it by sleeping a little bit this morning.
although, i enjoyed the reaction from the bartender when i went to get a last beer at the very end of the night.
"yeah. right."
she just wanted to go home. understandable.
i think it was more about how well i was standing after drinking & dancing all night than anything else, it was an expression of disbelief, but you have to understand how much exercise i get anyways - i'm just kind of healthy at a sort of bionic level. if my bac spikes, it spikes. but it's a separate process than my actual ability to really effortlessly push myself all night, on pretty much any night. i can dance or bike or walk essentially at will. if i have to stop, it's going to be because my feet get sore, not because of exhaustion.
but, for the record: i had two shots of jager about 10:30, a tall can of mike's at about 11:30 and then slowly drank seven beers (by my best count) over what was in total about a 12 hour party. that's 11 drinks in 12 hours, although the drinking took part mostly over the first 9. that's not excessive by any definition, it's just a long night.
i picked the texture after party because the line-up was stacked; if you have tastes similar to mine, that was the line-up of the weekend kind of thing. i don't follow djs the way i follow rock musicians, or even electronic composers, so i'm not going to pretend i have a deeper understanding of things than i do, but the sets last night were dark and minimal and a little bit noisy - they were the proper crossover for somebody into old industrial music and the dirtier side of hardcore, trying to find an appropriate party at a house festival. the floor was a little packed at first but started to clear out nicely for the last two sets. so, the dancing was good for the last half of the night.
i stayed at the bar late to catch the billed artists, but the party largely moved to the park a little after four. i made it there eventually, and spent a few hours there before i went home. it was gospel when i left...
a fun night...
i made it home about noon, and i've been up and down, sleeping without sleeping. it's like a sauna in here; i love it. keeping me up, though. i more listened to the debate than watched it. tomorrow is an even longer day - about 20 hours of mostly straight dancing - so i'd better get ready for it by sleeping a little bit this morning.
Sunday, May 27, 2018
i thought you were supposed to forfeit the argument when you bring up a frivolous hitler comparison? but, that's kind of a fascist rule, isn't it. no debate for you.
the condescension coming from ford, who is now taking advantage of poorly thought through negative trump comparisons by actually aping his whole schtick, is starting to get painful. he's using the kind of verbal sales techniques that they train people to use in pyramid schemes, which is perhaps even an apt comparison. it would be painfully transparent if you were to bump into somebody in a store trying to sell you a warranty plan on a vacuum cleaner by talking to you like that, but watching him extrapolate that unsavoury experience to a camera broadcasting in prime time was physically nauseating; i felt embarrassed for conservative supporters, embarrassed for ford nation and a little embarrassed for the province. i want to be clear that the really cringey part isn't where he's taking the level of discourse, which is down several grade points, but the dripping contempt for voters' intelligence that is exposed in the process of doing so. doug ford doesn't just think you're stupid, he thinks you're a hopeless fucking idiot that can't even figure out google; it must be hard for us to type with those knuckles dragging through the sand, but the kids use alexa instead of google nowadays anyways, right?
hey, alexa. what's a demagogue?
wynne held her own, and drew attention to some of the weird parts in the ndp platform, or just about the ndp over all. i don't think the ndp are actually going to ban back-to-work legislation. horwath's reaction was pretty terrible for a nominal socialist; she reacted to a question about class conflict with an appeal to class harmony. as though electing the ndp will finally put an end to that pesky class war with a group hug and an appeal to solidarity as humans. people are people, too. maybe somebody gave her a copy of reflections on the revolution and told her it was das kapital. the root cause of labour conflict is the accumulation of profit, andrea. i'm all for getting to that root cause, but it's an end, not a means to it. it was actually an absolutely classically conservative approach to labour. but, even so, it was disingenuous: of course the ndp is going to use back-to-work legislation at some point. where wynne came off well in this exchange is that she forced horwath to defend what is really an indefensible position that she can't go off message on.
as i've said, my understanding of the election right now is that liberal voters don't know what to do. i don't know if it works or not, but i think wynne won a few points tonight.
the condescension coming from ford, who is now taking advantage of poorly thought through negative trump comparisons by actually aping his whole schtick, is starting to get painful. he's using the kind of verbal sales techniques that they train people to use in pyramid schemes, which is perhaps even an apt comparison. it would be painfully transparent if you were to bump into somebody in a store trying to sell you a warranty plan on a vacuum cleaner by talking to you like that, but watching him extrapolate that unsavoury experience to a camera broadcasting in prime time was physically nauseating; i felt embarrassed for conservative supporters, embarrassed for ford nation and a little embarrassed for the province. i want to be clear that the really cringey part isn't where he's taking the level of discourse, which is down several grade points, but the dripping contempt for voters' intelligence that is exposed in the process of doing so. doug ford doesn't just think you're stupid, he thinks you're a hopeless fucking idiot that can't even figure out google; it must be hard for us to type with those knuckles dragging through the sand, but the kids use alexa instead of google nowadays anyways, right?
hey, alexa. what's a demagogue?
wynne held her own, and drew attention to some of the weird parts in the ndp platform, or just about the ndp over all. i don't think the ndp are actually going to ban back-to-work legislation. horwath's reaction was pretty terrible for a nominal socialist; she reacted to a question about class conflict with an appeal to class harmony. as though electing the ndp will finally put an end to that pesky class war with a group hug and an appeal to solidarity as humans. people are people, too. maybe somebody gave her a copy of reflections on the revolution and told her it was das kapital. the root cause of labour conflict is the accumulation of profit, andrea. i'm all for getting to that root cause, but it's an end, not a means to it. it was actually an absolutely classically conservative approach to labour. but, even so, it was disingenuous: of course the ndp is going to use back-to-work legislation at some point. where wynne came off well in this exchange is that she forced horwath to defend what is really an indefensible position that she can't go off message on.
as i've said, my understanding of the election right now is that liberal voters don't know what to do. i don't know if it works or not, but i think wynne won a few points tonight.
see, this is a good projection of the narrative constructed by the corporate media in canada, which has been been brutally ripping apart kathleen wynne for months.
it's the articles that summarize the points that give away that there's a storyteller. and, something similar is being constructed for justin trudeau - an orderly collapse through trips to india and equity rights, things that ought to seem like crowd pleasers, beyond their absolute irrelevance.
i'm going to say this again: the liberal party of canada has to do something about the conservative media monopoly.
http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/marin-wynne-took-herself-and-the-liberals-down
it's the articles that summarize the points that give away that there's a storyteller. and, something similar is being constructed for justin trudeau - an orderly collapse through trips to india and equity rights, things that ought to seem like crowd pleasers, beyond their absolute irrelevance.
i'm going to say this again: the liberal party of canada has to do something about the conservative media monopoly.
http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/marin-wynne-took-herself-and-the-liberals-down
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