I don't even know where my overflowing anger is going. This is unprecedented.
I don't think you're going to enjoy "Wildly over-praise a mediocre white Republican who did the absolute bare minimum to avoid complicity in a coup but actively supported Trump for four years" Day.
Yes, I just called my terrible, but apparently not as terrible as he could be, republican representative and thanked him for not voting to overthrow the election. Really just buttering him up so he would be more amenable to my request to vote for impeachment.
1,2: I don't suppose either of you will draw much encouragement from the fact that, per the 538.com polling average, Trump's approval rating has dropped 2 full points.
God I am loving all the viral videos of shocked folks getting plucked off of planes.
If you keep calling them terrorists, well by golly when they actually do something violent that will just be your fault won't it?
If we outlaw storming the capitol and trying to kill or kidnap politicians, only outlaws will storm the capitol and try to kill or kidnap politicians.
Okay, this is weird timing against the ongoing coupsurrection, but I'll give it a go. Over the holidays I took a couple weeks off work; we weren't traveling and this was really the first time in years that life-as-emergency paused enough to allow any reflection. Around the new year I had a chance exchange online, and over the next few days realized that despite having been assigned male at birth and having more or less put up with being male for decades, I seem to be (with at least two-sigma confidence) transgender and to identify as female.
So, quite a thing to discover in your early forties. I thought everything along these lines would have been settled a long time ago? It explains a lot of the past, and I guess I've felt queer in some sense at least since puberty, but since my Gedankenexperiments on being attracted to men never went anywhere (there were no real-life experiments), I figured that closed the case and whatever was up with me was something completely idiosyncratic. It's only with transness being now so much more visible that I finally got the memo on gender identity and sexual preference being independent-ish variables. In an alternate world I would have grown old and died without ever figuring this out, and it certainly makes me wonder about those 0.3-0.6% incidence statistics that get cited.
I really want to thank Tia, though maybe she's not reading right now, for incredibly humane and helpful contributions to some recent threads.
I've told three people, my two oldest friends and my spouse. Spouse lives as a cis woman but is, thank God, wholly uninvested in labels for herself or anyone else, and has my back on this. Did I ever marry right. She was quite surprised (apparently my man act has become convincing over the decades), and though I can reassure her that this has no impact on my being attracted to women in general and her in particular, she understandably would like to know where it's all going. I have no idea where it's all going. I have privilege to burn; I'm white, have a prestige job with a very LGBT-friendly employer in a very LGBT-friendly metro area, and could take public steps without much fear of repercussion. I have no current plans to take public steps. We have one grade-school kid, who has a strong soul and could probably roll with it, but I don't know where to start. I looked at an online resource guide for trans parents and immediately choked on the label: what is this guff, I'm not a "trans parent." I guess I'm a trans parent. I guess there's a pun in there about having been opaque to myself my whole life.
Just a relief to articulate this in a context where no one's going to drop their jaw.
Hey, congratulations on making some huge breakthroughs in shaking off our collective upbringing and identifying your real self! I hope you feel like you're glowing.
I certainly haven't managed any self reflection since covid.
Heebie, I loved the new holiday "card" format.
I work, I do family stuff, I rage, I drink, and then I sleep for seven hours before repeating.
Plus worry. Can't forget the worry.
9: That's a ton to process. Congratulations!
Just filled out my university's vaccine sign up form. Based on my answers to the questionnaire, I believe I'm pretty much last in line.
I certainly haven't managed any self reflection since covid.
Ha! I've avoided self reflection way longer than that.
14: Yay!!! I had so much fun making it. (If anyone wants one, shoot me an email. Some of you used to receive cards from me until you maybe moved?)
I've avoided self reflection way longer than that.
Same here.
6. My wife called this one to my attention. It's geared toward Goodfellas fans.
Congratulations, Jacinda; that's huge!
18: I could have gotten it soon but I'm not comfortable with that. I normally work on the hospital campus, but I'm remote right now. If wanted to get tit, I could by being not 100% remote and going in every other week or so to a practice location where patients are seen. That felt like stretching the rules too much.
I had a choice to get tit, but declined as well. But this was years ago.
In case people weren't keeping abreast of the news.
I'm sure everyone's to-do list is totally stacked.
I don't open unfogged on my work laptop, so all of these comments are typed on my iPad. :)
9: Congratulations! Getting clear within yourself about that must have been a relief.
Wow, Jacinda, I'm so happy for you that your life is unfolding in a way that honors your deepest sense of self. I hope you continue to find the people and communities who can support you and your family. Please know that you have my good wishes and support on your journey.
Three cheers for midlife self-discovery!
(And may I say: Excellent choice of pseudonym.)
Wow, Jacinda, I'm so happy for you that your life is unfolding in a way that honors your deepest sense of self. I hope you continue to find the people and communities who can support you and your family. Please know that you have my good wishes and support on your journey.
Three cheers for midlife self-discovery!
(And may I say: Excellent choice of pseudonym.)
Congratulations Jacinda! Inchoate and presumptuous thoughts follow:
I'm glad your privileges are what they are and you're clearly mindful and grateful for them, but from everything I've seen over the past 3 decades, being openly trans is still really, really hard under the "best" conditions. Sometimes... I don't know. It makes sense to acknowledge privilege in a forum like this, where you don't know who's listening and you want to be respectful. I think to some extent, we (privileged online people) have conditioned ourselves to recite the litany as an exercise that is supposed to encourage risk-taking. But there's also a self-soothing quality to it, and the lure of safety is profound. The desire to retreat is so strong... sometimes I think talking and thinking a lot about how insulated you are can have the effect of stalling the advance.
I guess what I'm saying is: disaffiliate! Be revolutionary! Okay, maybe not really. But if the system has been good to you, you've probably also been good to it, and part of being true to yourself means being ready to nip the hands that feed you. (While also being openly feminine, I suppose, with teeth bared. It's a trip!) Anyway, very best of luck to you and your family, and know that this community will always have your back by immediately making a ton of "get tit" puns.
We might have been doing that anyway
Thanks, you all! I've often had reason to be glad this blog is around, but especially just now.
It's basically pretty joyous. Over the last week I've been playing my musical instruments of choice more and louder than in many years (family has been tolerant about this too).
lurid: thanks for the advice and the aspirational Mononoke. I don't know what comes immediately next, but I do seem to suddenly understand what Pinterest is for.
Congratulations, Jacinda, that sounds like a remarkably useful period of introspection. Wishing you the best as you figure out the next steps.
30 & 32 are both wise.
All that and you saved your country from COVID too.
Well, I might actually be getting the vaccine now and not, ER, enhancements, because I might be getting redeployed. Yay, MA surge. Thanks Baker. Argh.
34: If it's helpful having a place to talk about things, keep us updated with how things are going for you. I wouldn't expect any useful advice because you know what it's like around here, but we'll come through with dumb jokes at least.
this has no impact on my being attracted to women in general and her in particular
Wait, this doesn't sound like it's even theoretically increasing the number of commenters I could creep on.
Nevertheless, all the best!
Don't limit yourself, ogged, it is absolutely possible to creep on a woman who doesn't return your interest. Indeed, nonmutuality of interest is almost definitionally an aspect of creeping.
Best wishes, Jacinda, and congratulations.
You're right and I'm ashamed not to have seen it.
Congratulations, Jacinda! Whichever way this ends up going, I wish you the best of luck in the rest of your journey.
Loving the confluence of the 'get tit' typo and the announcement in 9. Jacinda: I've obtained trans health care in two major metropolitan areas in the US, so if you want to know my experiences in those cities, I'm happy to share.
Oh, ogged, you card.
38: Thanks! As long as these check-in threads are a recurring institution, I might show up dressed like this from time to time. Also I wouldn't sell the blog short on useful advice; it seems to me that the ATM discussions do pretty often yield pearls of wisdom in between the titties hooray, as it were.
Congratulations Jacinda; that sounds like hard introspection for vacation times! It sounds like you've got exciting exploration ahead, including the music making.
43: Ponder, thank you, that's generous! Email me at the address here?
Oh, ogged, you card.
You mock me...just like a woman.
Hey, JA, that's great. Good luck in whatever comes next.
pearls of wisdom in between the titties hooray
Who says Unfogged's best days are behind it?
Jacinda, it's nice to see some joy in this world. Enjoy your new life, changing life, instrument of choice. And thanks for sharing it here.
Sheldon Adelson dead. Earth's loss is hell's gain.
And no need for NMM admonition.
And to buy the US Ambassador's residence in (near?) Tel Aviv.
Honestly, he looked dead for quite a while.
Congrats Jacinda!
I really want to thank Tia, though maybe she's not reading right now, for incredibly humane and helpful contributions to some recent threads.
I just told Tia about your post and read that line to her and she was very moved.
Joining the chorus of jubilation for Jacinda. Self discovery is a beautiful thing, and even more so to be supported in who you are.
Going offline, probably for quite a while.
I'm attending dull workshops. Is this a thing for people to say "planful"? As in intentional, mindful, planful? I've heard it from more than one person recently.
I've been using "planful" as a joke the last couple of years, but I couldn't tell you where it came from. This is straightfaced??
you're saying this is all your fault?
49: Pretty hard to do that from behind.
$5 says "planful" is an evangelical Christian buzzword. It has that sound.
66: It just takes practice.
68: I don't know, it didn't work out too well for the Cylons.
60: Aw, thanks for passing on, Barry! (Thanks again all.)
67: Based on a Google search it seems like it's being used more in corporate/finance speak. Investment companies want you to know that they are planful.
69.2 -- Damn, I hadn't made that connection with Q, but now it's so obvious. Someone should lead crowd chants of lyrics from all along the watchtower at the next coup attempt.
For Moby, the Inqy has already identified PA State Senator Doug Mastriano as a participant in the January 6 rally outside the Capitol. So whoever his opponent is, that's a race you can help with to vent your ire on local Republicans.
I want to take over at least one chamber. Venting is later.
That's wonderful, Jacinda!!
We're still sick. I am mildly congested (I should note that I am always congested from allergies so it's possible that my sense of mild is skewed), head-achy, but the main symptom for me is extreme fatigue. But things are getting done around the house (we're cooking, the basic chores are done, etc) and I'm working a few hours a day so it's not extreme. And fortunately we avoided infecting my father-in-law, which was a major worry. We're sure we got it from a coworker of my husband's; while they wore masks most of the time they did take them off for tea and such while keeping their distance - that clearly wasn't enough with the new more virulent strain. (Am I using virulent correctly? Too lazy to check.)
It has been a really crazy month and a half for me and I'm still not really sure what's going on with my mental health - at this point, I think I'm just getting through it and the rest will have to be unpacked later. That's not to say I feel depressed, but that I can tell I've bottled up my feelings on my dad's death for the time being. I sometimes approach it and then back way off because there's just too much feeling there for now. The overall chaotic feeling of the last six weeks isn't helping my anxiety. (Nor is, like, the state of the world, of course.) But I am so fortunate that we can take the time to be sick and recover, and that it's not worse.
||
NMM to Julie Strain. Seriously.
|>
In the previous thread people were asking about thorn. I can say that she's still around. Not sure how much detail I should get into. She's had a rough year, mostly for the obvious reasons, and just found this place more stressful than not.
In the previous thread people were asking about thorn. I can say that she's still around. Not sure how much detail I should get into. She's had a rough year, mostly for the obvious reasons, and just found this place more stressful than not.
Thanks for sharing; sorry to hear that.
Late to the thread, but congrats Jacinda!
I have been heartened by my older kid's coming out as NB being drama-free in their peer group. I'm sure they'll face asshat challenges someday, but so far so good--and in the adult world I haven't had a single colleague or other person I have had cause to mention kid's gender to give me even the slightest issue beyond the tired trope around pronouns--and even that is more expressing that it's hard to train oneself to use them consistently (which it can be!). So expressing your gender to the broader world may be less traumatic than you may fear.
I wish you a joyous expression of your true self, however you decide to do it!
My aunt, currently in hospital in TO with COVID-19, has an apparently 'mild' case of pneumonia, and they're now giving her oxygen. I spoke with her this morning; and she did not sound at all well, and then the conversation was cut short when she had an uncontrollable coughing fit...
She has been almost totally isolated since last March, her only forays into the wider world having to do with her medical appointments. No contact with her children, no contact with her grandchildren, no contact with her nephews and nieces and cousins and other relations.
And now she lies, alone and frightened, in some godforsaken hospital bed in downtown Toronto, dreading the outcome of her disease while still gamely hoping for the best...
This virus is evil.
80: Tim's great aunt lives in a condo in Victoria. It's a one- floor house on a property with a man-made ond and shared gardening. She's about 96. She still drives and does her own grocery shopping. People there all wear masks and other than that she stays home. She says she's not in a hurry to get inoculated, because she can stay isolated, but reports like that make me nervous. I think BC is in better shape than Ontario, but still.
Cyrus - thanks for the update, and please let her know we care. My e-mail is linked if there's anything we can do to help offline.
76 part 1. Is that right? There seem to be conflicting reports.
83: Thanks, I will.
84: I think it's right. Apparently the confusing thing is that there were false reports of her death almost exactly a year ago. But wikipedia seems more sure of it now for whatever that's worth.
After the Tanya Roberts thing, they just stake them.
I think BC is in better shape than Ontario,
Ontario is a shitshow, just truly a load of pure shite, because we basically have a Trump-lite government in charge; and thanks a lot, all of you NDP purity voters who refused to vote Liberal because your delicate, and carefully curated, consciences didn't direct you to do the obviously correct and socially-conscious thing...
Not that the US has any way to criticize, but the three-party first-past-the-post systems in England and Canada seem very clunky and hard to coordinate voters within. In England, one hears about the obligation of anti-Tory voters to research their district to figure out if it's more strategic to vote Labour or Lib Dem. In Canada, similar between Liberals and NDP, except that the more-left party is the smaller one, so it's like the Greens.
A more vote-transferring or proportional system like in Scotland and the whole of Ireland Ireland would work a lot better, but if course the UK muffed it in 2011.
*like the Greens/Dems perennial argument in the US, to be clearer.
I remember there being a few months where everyone thought the NDP would win the next election, I don't know what happened there.
87: JPJ, not to hijack the thread to debate Ontario politics, but that is not even remotely how we ended up with DoFo as Premier. If anything it's the reverse. The NDP far outperformed the Liberals in the last election; they won 40 seats on 30% of the vote, compared to the Liberals' 7 seats at 20%.
I'm happy to criticize purity voting, but Wynne was not going to win last time, and in fact she's the one who tried to dissuade Lineral purity voters from strategically voting NDP.
Sorry, 34% of the vote. A 70% larger vote share.
Doesn't that highlight exactly the coordination problem I described? Liberals went from 39% in 2014 to 20%; NDP went from 24% to 34%; meaning strategic voting would have previously meant going Liberal (in most places), but then suddenly in 2018 it would have meant going NDP. That's a big shift to get the word out about - and even it's only true if it was fully knowable by polls or whatever before the election that the shift was happening.
Without FPTP, this wouldn't be an issue.
Yes, the problem in general is that we have a FPTP system with 3 parties to the left of the Cons and 0 to the right of them.
But JPJ's claim was that within that context the 2019 election outcome could be blamed specifically on NDP purity voters refusing to hold their nose and vote Liberal. Now, it's probably true that we can blame such voters for some previous Con governments, but there's a certain brand of 'natural ruling party' Liberal who thinks that ANY election a Liberal doesn't win can be blamed on champagne socialist NDPers. And whatever the merits of that view in general,it's a funhouse mirror interpretation of the 2019 Ontario election.
I have never heard "planful" and think it sounds kind of dumb, but I have heard the kind of people who need to make their relationship with Jesus my business substitute "prayerfully" for "hopefully" since I guess you don't need to hope for things when the Big Guy is taking requests.
It's reminiscent of "Quiverfull", I think is part of it.
"Quiverfull" sounds like a pornhub category.
I am not sleeping well. So damn tired and struggling to concentrate.
Neither am I. Woke up at 2 am and couldn't sleep, stayed in bed till noon when I dropped off and got up around 4pm. Not good.
I'm sleeping very well and struggling to concentrate.
NDP purity voter here echoing MattD's point. Check out this graph:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Ontario_general_election#Campaign_period_2
The orange line is the NDP, blue is PCs, and red is Liberals. The safe anti-Tory vote in 2018 was NDP across the province. The provincial Liberals were never going to win the 2018 election. The PCs absolutely had it in the bag until they rat-fucked Patrick Brown, and hard. The Ford gamble almost didn't pay off. If only a few more Liberals in a few more ridings had managed to hold their noses and vote NDP... but I kid.
On purity voting: I did vote Liberal once, federally, because the Tory candidate was so completely odious I thought it was worth compromising my precious principles. That Tory ended up going to jail for election fraud. In that case my delicate, carefully-curated conscience lost to some pretty good gut instincts, I guess?
97-99: I definitely haven't been sleeping well over the past week.
I have been working a little harder over the past week and playing a lot less World of Warcraft than I was, say, eight weeks ago. Not sure if I'd attribute this to stress, or my job being busier, or the game being less fun, or finally after all this time learning the self-discipline or whatever that I'd need to have a chance of doing well working from home. But I still think it's worth mentioning here because I remember two different times last week when I thought something like, "I may not be able to focus on one thing, but if I'm going to be doing two things at once, it's going to be work and reading the news, not WoW." Yay for me, I guess.
My parents got first dose of Moderna because their local hospital had extra and she knew someone there who called her and said come get one of the extra doses. My brother already got it because he's an EMT. I'm feeling left out.
I wouldn't worry. Aside from safely avoiding death or continuing infirmity, there's nothing great about vaccination.
There are a lot of things wrong with our system, but I think having all the leftward parties in a single coalition, and then letting coalition voters decide on a riding by riding basis which candidate in the coalition gets to go up against the PC in the general would be better at keeping the PC out of power. Presumably, you'd have needed up with way more folks from the NDP faction than the Lib faction running in the general, but you wouldn't have the same branding problem.
Allowing your PC to wield power isn't as catastrophically bad as allowing our Republicans to have power, but it's been shown, seems to me as a stranger, to be bad enough.
Oh, it's definitely plenty bad.
My own preference is electoral reform, but provincially referenda on it have mostly failed, including in Ontario. Federally, the Liberals ran on a promise of electoral reform, won a majority, and then promptly abandoned the promise. So it's dead at the Federal level for the next generation.
Beyond that I'd like the NDP and the Liberals to merge, and I say this as tribal identity NDPer. But the intense partisan hatred between the two parties despite minimal platform and policy differences makes that almost impossible. As bad as the infighting is between the wings of the Democratic Party, they mostly recognize that they all play for the same team come election day, even though the policy differences between, say, AOC and Munchin are way bigger than between the NDP and Liberals.
Which party would Red Green vote for?
Sorry! Didn't mean the hijack the thread in the direction of some tedious discussion of the minutiae of Ontario politics. And clearly I am wrong about the most recent Ontario provincial election.
but there's a certain brand of 'natural ruling party' Liberal who thinks that ANY election a Liberal doesn't win can be blamed on champagne socialist NDPers.
Guilty as charged, when it comes to federal elections, at any rate; except that I would also include the Bloc Québécois in my 'if you're not voting Liberal, you're not voting for Canada' indictment. And if you're not including Québec in your calculations, you maybe live a province west of Ontario, and you apparently don't get the importance of Québec at all, at alll.
Well, NW Ontario is NDP territory. But Red Green is a rural small business owner who's bad at his job. That's the Conservative base right there. So hard to tell. Not Liberal.
105: Beyond that I'd like the NDP and the Liberals to merge, and I say this as tribal identity NDPer.
I wouldn't. But not because I think the NDP can or should ever form the government. It's impossible to govern from the left. The NDP exists to push minority Liberal governments around every 10-15 years. Tommy Douglas did it to Trudeau, Jack Layton did it to Paul Martin, and Singh is kinda sorta doing it to Trudeau now. If the Liberals & the NDP merged, I would probably not vote for that party's candidates.
107: Didn't mean the hijack the thread in the direction of some tedious discussion of the minutiae of Ontario politics
Oh why not. It's a slow news week.
107: So, sure, I understand the complaint about voting NDP in a riding where they finish a distant 3rd and the Liberals and Cons are close. But are you really suggesting that actually electing NDP MPs is voting 'against Canada'?
There are a lot of things wrong with our system, but I think having all the leftward parties in a single coalition, and then letting coalition voters decide on a riding by riding basis which candidate in the coalition gets to go up against the PC in the general would be better at keeping the PC out of power.
I woudln't vote for a united lib-NDP party. I wouldn't object to some kind of election cooperation where the parties agree to stand-down in competitive seats. No Liberal challenge where the NDP is second, and vice-versa.
The Liberal party isn't a 'leftward' party. If it ate the NDP, I don't think it'd be beneficial because it'd drive many voters away (like me) and cause others to shift allegiances to the Tories. Ca m'est égal, except then we don't have a (nominal) workers' party.
Oops. 112 to 109, but really better just disregarded.
111.1 The problem with an agreement like that is that someone has to enforce it. Our system puts that on primary voters, which is a very blunt instrument to be sure. I guess in your parlance it'd be a combined nomination process, with no power by either party to appoint an incumbent. You'd still have separate parties, but they'd both agree that the winner of the combined nomination process gets to stand with both flags.
108: I always assumed, from the subtext, that he was a very successful gigolo using the handyman stuff as a front.
I'm bummed to realize you're talking about a particular individual and not some Canadian version of a rot-grün ecosocialist coalition.
Germany has red-red and red-red-green (i.e., Left, Social Democrats, and Greens) coalitions at the state level, but only in the East. In the West, attempts to form those coalitions have failed in the state legislatures, sometimes by a single secret-ballot vote. That's because the Social Democrats remember when the Left was the ruling party in East Germany and put Social Democrats in the camps not long vacated by the Nazis. In some cases, it was actual relatives of the SPD state legislators who had been interred.
Unsurprisingly, red-red is still anathema at the federal level. Equally unsurprisingly, the Greens are cozying up for potential coalition with the Christian Democrats next September. CDU-Green coalitions have been running Hesse (think Frankfurt) since 2014 and Baden-Württemburg (think Stuttgart) since 2016. More interestingly, Merkel's decision on refugees in 2015 has brought into the CDU (or at least won as voters if not party members) a large number of people who come from immigrant families. This is new territory for a German conservative party, to put it mildly, and they are not entirely sure what to do.
If you think of the Greens as leftish, then Germany has a structural majority that is left of center (Left, SPD, Green) that can't form a majority, and so the country will continue to have a conservative Chancellor. Unless of course the Greens pull in more votes than the CDU, which I think unlikely (although the state premier in Baden-Württemburg is a Green) but would make things very interesting.
This is your Thursday-morning German electoral minutiae.
A year or so ago it looked like the Greens were on the point of pulling ahead of the CDU/CSU and might even already have done so with regard to the CDU strictly speaking, in Germany outside Bavaria. However, the virus has thrown all the cards up in the air, giving both the CDU and CSU a big boost thanks to their respective leaders' (ie Merkel and Markus Söder) perceived good showing. Merkel, though, won't be running and a huge issue is who they pick as leader. One of them at least (Merz) won't be remotely able to cope with the idea of foreigners being his major new constituency or Greens his coalition partner out of sheer poker-arsed spießbürgerlichkeit. Spahn, Laschet, or even Söder in his new improved version who totally isn't that guy screaming about immigrants no not me sir would all jump at the idea out of some combination of principle and it's-good-to-be-king.
The deciding factor is really to what extent the Merkel era changes have taken in the deep party. A year to 18 months ago I would have said the key issue is that they haven't. But a year-long demonstration of Merkelian authority has probably had some impact.
Important note: Ralph Brinkhaus, the CDU parliamentary leader, said earlier this week it was still possible for another candidate to emerge. He's the guy who fired the starting gun on replacing Merkel, so this is a significant statement.
I read 105.3, and I found it hard to imagine that NDP and the Liberals hate each other so much. But then I read 111, and was enlightened.
115: Well the idea is they'd agree to just not really contest elections where it's clear the other candidate is going to finish a distant third or fourth against a Tory. There'd still be a candidate for each party in each riding. The Liberals would never agree to this for many reasons.
At any rate, the Liberal party manages to form governments provincially and federally all the time even with the NDP pulling between 10-25% of the vote, depending on the province or year. Where Liberals fail to do so I guess it's comforting to blame the third party. I'm actually sympathetic to Jane Not Jane's feelings (if there were no Liberal party, the NDP would eat up all those delicious votes!) but I think left-ish Liberals underestimate the degree to which they're in a coalition party with committed centrists who have absolutely no interest in the party drifting leftward.
122 was me. There's a reason I rarely comment.
121: Oh, the hate is real. And I think that 107.3 gives the flavour even more clearly that 111.
An added complication is that the Liberals win almost no seats between the Ontario-Manitoba border and Vancouver. In most ridings in Western Canada, if anyone is going to beat the Cons it's the NDP. The idea that progressives should happily vote Liberal is Ontario-centric.
But this is all a product of a bad electoral system that gives us unsolvable coordination problems, rather than because one faction or the other is objectively right-thinking or more Canadian or more naturally suited to governing.
foreigners being his major new constituency
Can you unpack this? Not Metz, but foreigners. Did they turn to the CDU for perceived competence?
125: yes, and the explicit choice of welcoming the 2015 refugee wave.
When my wife and I were rained in on vacation a few months ago, we spent an hour going over the Wikipedia page on how New Zealand moved to proportional representation. There were a few starts and stops, but it was pretty fast and orderly. Once people had done it once, they liked it well enough that they were resistant to going back to the old way. Worked well for Ardern. (Probably not for Jacinda upthread, unless she's also an antipodean left-of-centre pol.) It's a simple, easy-to-understand system, unlike Ireland's STV (which I love very much, but still). There's no reason it couldn't be used throughout the Anglosphere. And yet.
It's just amazing how bad FPTP. Setting aside US peculiarities, it's like the last zombie remnant of the rotten borough system.
But are you really suggesting that actually electing NDP MPs is voting 'against Canada'?
No. No, of course not. I am an unapologetic Liberal, sure, but my main goal is always to defeat the Conservative. And if it's voting NDP that will defeat the Conservative, I will happily, enthusiastically, vote NDP. Would that some NDP voters had extended the same courtesy during the last federal election; but too many of them bought into the overheated rhetoric that a 'minority govt for the Liberals' would teach those Liberals a lesson, would be a very good thing. Admittedly, we didn't know about the coronavirus when we last went to the hustings; but now that we DO know about COVID-19, I think we can all agree that an actually functioning govt (and yes, it's the Liberals who can provide such an actually functioning gov't) is actually quite important.
My aunt is not doing well; her situation has deteriorated. She is now under palliative care, and has signed both DNR and DNI orders.
Jane, how scary and awful. I am so, so sorry.
133: Jane, I am so sorry about your aunt. This virus really is horrid.
I'm so sorry, Jane. Let us know if there's anything we can do that would be supportive or comforting.
I mentioned my good, decent brother-in-law died of cancer a few months ago. His good, decent mother just died of covid.
Oh that's awful MC.
So sorry Jane.
Oh, very sorry, Mossy. And best thoughts, Jane.
Wow, sorry Mossy and Jane, that's horrible.
141: That's heart wrenching. Is that your sibling's spouse?
That's awful. Sympathies for both of you JPJ and MC.
Can I drop some asshattery in here? I wouldn't HAVE to if the FPP would give us a new comment thread.
Here's a text message thread between me and the elementary school nurse. Recall that Rascal is 6 years old, and in kindergarten. Pokey is 10, in 4th grade.
Nurse: I have needed to send for Rascal every day for his meds. I asked his brother to remind him thinking it would help but it didn't. Would you mind speaking with him.
[Why on earth is anyone's plan to have the 6 year old remember his own med? What planet is this?]
Me: Could we loop in his teacher? Remembering his meds is probably beyond his skillset right now.
Nurse: I have. I will also see if she has any suggestions. The sticker on his water bottle seemed to help before the break.
[I haven't yet responded. To make matters worse, in the weeks before break, Rascal wasn't supposed to get his afternoon meds. So from his point of view, meds are something that happen erratically and unpredictably. There's just no way this isn't a very solved problem between nurses and teachers all over this great country of ours.)
Also, how is Pokey supposed to remind him? They're not in the same class.
Exactly!! Honestly I'm just impressed that Pokey is apparently remembering his own meds.
If in the same building, just give him a vuvuzela and instructions on when to blow it. Probably shouldn't take more than twenty minutes of sound.
MC, that's just awful. This goddamn virus.
151: Could either of them take a one-a-day extended release med with which the school nurse would not need to be involved?
Thanks everyone for the kind words. JPJ, my best wishes for your aunt. And also for anyone else I missed while I was away.
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I just submitted my public Service Loan Forgiveness Application. This is going to be such a hassle. I have dotted every i and crossed every t. I certified all of my employment annually and even certified a couple of months ago, so that the services Fedloan would only need to verify 2 months of of eligibility.
I got 2 crazy form letters.
One says that I was being rejected, because my employer didn't say I was still working for them, even though they clearly checked that box.
The second says that they have transferred me to administrative forbearance (not the COVID one) until July even though a I did not check the box on the form requesting that. They have a new form. previously you had to request that they not do that.
The account summary has pictures of my loans showing 120 payments with trophies.
I sent a secure message but then decided to e-mail their ombudsman. The Escalated e-mail. I suspect that I'll have to go to the Department of ED, but I'm going to wait until after the inauguration to do that. And I may wind up contacting my Senator.
I swear they have been told to reject people automatically. Argh.
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I heard of participation trophies, but not that.
I know, but I followed all of the rules to a T. This isn't the complexity of the program. It's the incompetence of the servicer. I will get it eventually, but it will be more work than it should be.
The last time a I submitted for certification, they processed it as an application for final forgiveness, so of course I was rejected, because I wasn't eligible, so I'm in the 99% twice.
