more like space

the time has come

2020-09-17T13:15:00.000-04:00

so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu...

i've made a decision that this blog will officially cease operation. that's not an easy thing for me to write because i've really loved having this space for my brain dumps over the last fifteen [dear god, really? yup, fifteen] years but i think it's pretty obvious that i just am not giving it the attention that i was and that has become the norm rather than a temporary blip.

it's not that i don't have anything more to say. i've jotted down notes for dozens if not hundreds of posts and while some of those are no longer relevant [time moves fast and stands still these days], many of them remain things i'd like to see realized. i just no longer think that this is the place to do that. furthermore, the longer i let this garden sit unattended, the more pressure i feel [internally, no one is putting pressure on me] to make the things i put here substantive. it's been years since i was content posting a funny meme and a couple of sentences of commentary in the name of keeping the flow here going. if i put something here, i want it to be worth reading and it's reached the point where that in itself has become inhibitory. i'm so intimidated by the idea of writing well that i don't write at all.

i am a communicator by nature and writing is part of my soul. however, i feel that i've reached the limits of what i can accomplish in this format. having a zany, omnibus blog is fun and easy, or at least it was, but the fact is that most effective communication takes place in arenas where it occurs in context and for an audience that shares a specific set of interests. the sort of presentation you see here is entirely dependent on the appeal and outreach of the author as an individual and that is the sense in which i have hit my limits. i am not a public figure and i am not fond of promoting myself. so if and when i return to this sort of format, it will either be because i've come up with a better way to unite all the things i talk about under one roof or because i've become embroiled in some sort of weird public incident that makes people inclined to look for information about me anyway. i'm kind of hoping it's the former.

over the years, there are many people who've reached out to me through the site or through social media on various topics and i want to take the opportunity to thank you once again for doing so. finding out that what i've said has made an impact or spurred a discussion has been the best part of this experience for me.

i'll leave things up here for a couple of days but sometime in the next week, this site will go away. same goes for the facebook page.

thank you all for your support and indulgence over the years!

love,

kate

interesting and pointless

2020-06-25T20:56:00.001-04:00

occasionally i find things on my computer that i know i've written that i'd forgotten about. [i also occasionally find things that i know i haven't written, but that's another story.]

today, i happened across the piece below. it's not a story, or even the beginning of a story. i mean, i guess that it's possibly a very cryptic story, cryptic enough that i don't know what the hell i was banging on about any more than you will. the frustrating bit is that i'm very certain from the tone and some of the phrasing that i was banging on about something. the document information tells me that i created this in 2011. a quick perusal reveals that this strange little snippet includes some of my favourite words, which indicates to me that i was having a bit of fun writing it. on the other hand, the general tone tells me that i wasn't in the best frame of mind. [i doubt anyone else would pick up on this. i know myself well enough to see some telltale signs of angst and anxiety.] the combination of those two things leads me to believe that i was probably trying to cheer myself up. trust me on this one. it's what i do.

so why should i bother sharing it here?

well, obviously, this is my little space in the virtual world to be egotistical and do what i want. but also, i think that sometimes it helps to rediscover little things that you've done, inconsequential things, things that may tell you something about your state of mind at a particular point in time, things that may speak to you even though their moment has passed, or just things that have a charming value as a curiosity.

so here's one of mine [in a very rough form]. have fun discovering your own.

***

If they knew what we were doing here, they’d have thrown us out months ago, but as far as they’re concerned, they’ve given the prince the run of the castle in their absence. As far as they know, you keep a half-distracted eye on the kingdom to make sure no slaves escape or grow unruly and spend the rest of your time holding court with your colourful court, that harmless entourage they assume to be the folly of your youth. They do not like us although and because they do not know us. If they knew us…

And so we keep the fires of the castle hot and we run rampant through its endless rooms and we fill this place with more and more faces, painted strange and laughing, choking smiling, howling faces familiar or not, we cannot always tell because our palace balls are always masked. We burn through the rooms and leave sparks and embers in our wake. We know nothing of this life, but we lift its trophies and clutch its trinkets and raise our chins as if we had been here all our lives, as if we were born to this. And perhaps we were, in some idle, sidelined world.

When they return, we are quite unprepared and the guests must quickly steal out like thieves and frauds or don sweet smiles and play the faithful serfs relieved by the masters’ return. We’ve heard about these benevolent rulers and you are, after all, their scion. Yes, our game is over, but now we prove that we deserve to play for real, I do most of all. So why is it you who runs white-lipped back and forth, asking the air what to do?

I go to greet them with offerings of early honey, not because they need- they rise into view heavy with lucre- but because they should know that the gesture of gentility is universal. And they turn their eyes on me, faded in my blue dress, arms extended and awaiting the response, and lock in place as if they cannot believe what I am doing.

This is the first we see of them, those of us from the outside, the first we see of their bodies, those bodies that have mined every hole in the earth to scrape out the rocks that encrust their seal-brown carapaces.

making faces :: eyes without a face

2020-05-20T17:48:00.000-04:00

these are indeed strange times, my friends. no one living has ever seen anything like this because there has never been anything close to the current set of circumstances in the modern world. sure, people will make the comparison with the spanish flu epidemic of 1918-20 but the fact is that things were very different then and those differences are not limited to the technology we now have available. that has an effect, of course, but consider the other factors: the world had just been through the most destructive war in its history. aside from the fact that millions had died, millions returned home injured in body and mind and there was little in the way of a social safety net to protect any of them. in many countries, "peace" was hardly peaceful because the political fallout of the great war plunged many nations into civil wars. so in that way, we're in a better position now because we don't have an entire generation of people walking around who are already severely ill. likewise, the rise of the labour movement in the early twentieth century meant that many workers in highly developed countries saw an improvement in their working conditions and fewer people in those countries were forced to work in dangerous conditions. the global population has never been healthier on average and while averages on that scale can be deceiving, it is reasonable to assume that more bodies are capable of dealing with a pathogen of this nature.

on the other hand, there have never been so many of us and that means that we have massive urban centres that serve as breeding grounds for contagious diseases and covid-19's most frightening quality is how incredibly contagious it is. [that becomes even more of an issue if, as some reports indicate, having the virus does not make one immune to catching it again.] i remember hearing a quote many years ago that the intelligence of individuals in a crowd can be determined by taking the combined i.q. of the group and dividing that by the number of people in it. there's no science behind that, of course, but i think the underlying message has some merit anyway: the average intelligence isn't going to fluctuate a lot, which means that the larger the crowd, the stupider the people in it are going to get. so with more people concentrated in more places, we are collectively stupider than we've ever been. [side note :: stupid does not mean uneducated. we're collectively more educated than ever and have greater access to information than ever. but that doesn't seem to be helping.]

all this is a very long way of saying that while comparisons with the spanish flu can be instructive, they're limited and we need to learn to accept the crazy we're living right now. not just accept it, though. we should indulge it. indulging doesn't mean acting like an idiot but i think it does mean finding ways to make things enjoyable and funny and at the same time survivable. which is where we get to the makeup because this is a "making faces" post, rather than one more "politics" post.

most experts are now saying that wearing a mask in public is at least going to limit transmission, which is not exactly shocking. one of the arguments i've heard [most recently from comedian/ podcast host joe rogan, who's smart enough to know better but arrogant enough not to reflect on his reflex reaction] is that people protesting "shelter in place" orders are angry because they don't understand why going to the grocery store is safe but going to the park isn't. let's be clear: no one is saying that going to the grocery store is safe. what informed people are saying is that certain things, like going to the grocery store, are necessary for most people and that on those occasions when going outside is truly necessary, you need to take precautions. and one of the simplest precautions you can take is wearing a mask.

numerous clothing companies, particularly small ones who can turn designs around quickly, are offering masks that are whimsical, humorous or beautiful. if you can afford one of those, go for it. [mark my words: masks are not going to be a passing thing. come winter you're going to see people pulling them out again as protection from cold and germs and there will be a significant minority of people who continue to don them for large public gatherings.] but the supply of basic paper masks has become greater and pretty cheap. you can find masks.

i've tried to make wearing a mask a bit more fun by using it as an excuse to get more playful and dramatic by giving my face, or my eyes, different characters to wear with them. after all, if all people are going to be seeing are your eyes, you might as well make a show of it. i also find that doing this adds a dash of fun at a time when we desperately need it. while others celebrate the ability to wear sweatpants [or no pants] every day and reject the tyranny of grooming, i find myself playing around more. after all, i have more time on my hands than ever, so i might as well dedicate a portion of that to something unnecessary that makes me smile.

so here are a few things i've tried out to complement the bottom of my face being mostly invisible. [i've also included photos of my face without the mask because i haven't yet gone so far as to literally apply half a face of makeup but i've kept the bottom part pretty light.]

the basic smoky eye

imma be honest: this was an obvious one and i figured i'd try to make it a little interesting by doing a more daytime friendly version but i find it to be the dullest and least successful thing i've tried. in retrospect, i wish i'd just gone for a full-on, night-out smoky look because this one isn't cutting it. i used the usual greys [primarily burberry "storm grey"] and tried to spice things up with some olive tones [mac "sumptuous olive"] but i feel like what i ended up with was... mud. maybe it's the fact that i used a tinted moisturizer [nude by nature sheer glow cream] rather than a proper foundation, which means that the contrast between skin and eye is less marked than it should be. or maybe the blush combination [mac "her own devices" beauty powder + "darkly my dear" blush, both limited but closely duped by "tenderling" + "blushbaby", which are part of the permanent assortment] is a little too muted. with the mask off, the lipstick [mac "plink!"] works but i feel like the bottom half makes the eyes look worse. definitely better with the mask on, which i guess isn't such a bad thing under the circumstances.

metal queen

silver eyeshadow is something that's difficult for a lot of people to pull off. even very cool-toned people can struggle with it because it is just sooooo cold that it ends up looking a bit harsh. [even the coldest of true winter faces has traces of warmth because human colouring is never entirely cold while we're alive. we're not made of marble.] but for those who do have chilly complexions, i think that the most perfect silver ever created is mac's platinum pigment. how perfect is it? despite the fact that a single container of pigment is normally enough to last a lifetime with enough left over to bequeath to your makeup-loving children, i am on my second container. that's how fucking much i use this.

they eye look you're seeing here is 90% platinum with a hint of mac black tied in the outer angles to provide some depth. [obviously, there's a black liner as well.] photographing this was a real bugger because with the mask, the overall lightness and reflectiveness made the camera freak out. but i assure you, it looked as sharp and fresh as it does in the full face pictures here. [the full face pictures also feature mac powder blush in "her blooming cheek" a bold magenta that was limited but isn't too far off the permanent [?] shade "azalea" and mac lipstick in "petals and peacocks", another limited shade that is fairly similar to "show orchid".]

spring pastels

i mean, it is spring after all, right? so what's more appropriate than these typically spring-like colours? i'm not generally a pastel girl but done the right way, i do enjoy them. "the right way" in this case involves shades from the kat von d [or kvd beauty as they're now known] on the inner and outer lids, namely "doom", the bright cyan blue on the inner corner and "clementine", the gorgeous peachy orange, on the outer one. they're united in the centre by the light pink shade "studio" from the "tenant" eye shadow palette from urban decay's jean-michel basquiat collection. on the lower lids you have "star" from the "pastel goth" palette and "exu" from "tenant". the finishing touches are mac "alpha girl" beauty powder [really a blush] on the cheeks and... jesus f christ why didn't i write this down?... i'm not quite sure on the lips. i think it might be dior "rose chic", in which case it doesn't really matter because it's been discontinued for years and i've never really found a good substitute for it. sowwy.

hot. fucking. pink.

lots of people are scared of pink eye shadow but not me. i fucking love it. in fact, the brighter the better. which is why one of the first things i tried when coming up with striking eye shadow combinations was this look that features almost nothing but. it's almost all mac pigments here: "new fixation" [a pink-toned red that was limited edition that i've found difficult to duplicate], "bright fuchsia" [not sure if this one is still available, although it used to be permanent] and "pink opal". there's a touch of "black tied" eye shadow in the outer corners, once again to add some depth. and black eyeliner. [if you're wondering, i use either pixi or marcelle's "velvet gel" formula for most of my standard eyeliner shades.] i went soft [too soft?] with the rest of the face, using becca "foxglove" and chanel "notorious" [a cool lavender-taupe contour] on the cheeks with a touch of "pink opal" to highlight and mac "phlox" a very sheer pink shade on the lips. [i don't know a good dupe for "phlox" offhand, but a neutral pink-tinged balm will likely do the trick.]

cleopatra

nothing is as established in the annals of dramatic eye makeup as the "cleopatra" eye. the look is mostly based on elizabeth taylor's look from the 1963 film cleopatra, which drew some inspiration from ancient egyptian hieroglyphs of gods with thick black lines around their eyes. it also has some basis in the kohl-lined eyes of northern african women so fetishized during the period when "orientalism", the phenomenon described so eloquently by edward said, was in vogue. our modern interpretation has a lot more to do with 60s beauty standards, when the neutral cut crease made popular in the previous decades became more sharply defined and started to incorporate bold colours, particularly blues and greens. i'm not quite up to the challenge of a colour block of sky blue like taylor wore but i am happy to incorporate a burst of colour to set off an otherwise neutral eye. in this case, the pop of colour comes from mac "bio green", while the neutrals are anastasia "legand" and "suede" with a sharp line of mac "showstopper" in the crease. once again, the coal black liner plays a major role, shaping the eye, providing width and shape. the cheek combination is a little fuzzy for me here but it involved physicians formula butter bronzer "light" and hourglass ambient lighting powder in "luminous light". i'm just not entirely sure what's providing the actual cheek colour. [i suspect it's hourglass "dim infusion" but i'm not sure.] i am 100% certain that the lipstick i'm wearing is nars "vibeke". it's another limited shade and, sorry once again, i can't think of a great dupe for it.

so that's how i've been making masks fun. and those are just the most basic kind of masks. if you want to accent your look with more interesting designs, there are many, many options. i personally love the designs done by micah ulrich [and i love his artwork generally] but i guarantee there are options to suit any aesthetic.

now, before i leave you, i would like to impart a wee bit of wisdom on getting through these strange times. i'm doing this because i'm someone who's lived as a full-time caregiver for an immune-compromised person, working from home for several years, which means that a lot of what's new to people now is old hat for me. these aren't tips based on any kind of medical expertise, just a lot of trial and error and general experience.

basic courtesy :: wear a fucking mask. this one isn't based on experience but i feel the need to include it. we're living with a deadly pathogen that can cause serious long-term effects in those who survive it. it can trigger underlying conditions and cause major health complications that aren't accounted for in official statistics. wearing a mask is not an imposition. the homeless crusty punks washing windshields at the intersection down the street from me are wearing masks and even maintaining social distancing. you're reading a blog post online from a comfortable location with modern conveniences like reliable internet. if you're not taking basic precautions, you're being an asshole.

walks not parks :: i'm convinced that one of the things that is making people go weird right now is that they're just not burning off their excess energy. even the basic shifts between home and work, as sedentary as they may be, aren't happening. as a result, whenever they're told that it's legal [if not advisable] to go outside, people flock to parks and beaches like some sort of suicidal lemming phalanx. don't be a lemming [even though the suicidal thing is a myth]. exposing yourself to groups is still really fucking dangerous, especially if you have a compromised immune system or live with someone who does. instead, go for a walk. walk around the side streets. soak in that vitamin d. keep your distance from others. you're getting exercise and fresh air but you're minimizing your risk. congratulations, you clever so-and-so.

walk generally :: you're not in a hurry to get anywhere, so why bother taking your car? if you can, walk to the grocery store or the pharmacy or wherever you have to go. there have already been significant improvements in air pollution just from people not having to commute. let's keep that going. and you're getting exercise, both by walking and carrying bags of groceries and other necessities.

business hours :: humans are creatures of habit and locking us in quarantine doesn't change that all at once. as someone who's maintained a healthy "old lady" shopping schedule for years, there are certain times when crowds are at their thinnest and the current situation hasn't changed that. evenings and weekends are still the busiest times. you want isolation and minimum waiting times? monday through wednesday, through the midday hours, are your butter zone. whatever necessary shopping you can get done during those times, do it. you will never have a more chilled out retail experience.

think small :: it's definitely convenient to shop at huge grocery stores or hypermarkets but take a moment to consider the pros of smaller, more specialized shops. if you live in a large city, there are often independently [locally] owned fruit and vegetable markets, many of which have products that aren't available in more "mainstream" locations. these shops are rarely crowded, even at times when shopping is at its peak. going to a big grocery store with sixty people in it and going to four shops with fifteen people each means you have the same exposure.

make a list, check it twice :: i cannot emphasize this enough. write down everything you need to do. without the daily structure you're used to, you're going to forget things. you're going to forget everything. seriously, you'd be amazed just how much you forget because you feel like you have so much time to get everything done. whatever you need to do, whatever you need to buy, whatever you need to think about, write it down. no matter how important it seems, you're going to forget about it. if it's something that needs to happen by a certain deadline, program it into your phone or computer or whatever device you usually keep with you. make sure you set as many reminders as you can. you're going to forget about it.

permission to chill the fuck out :: when you have lots of time on your hands, there's a tendency to think about all your problems at once. stop that shit. focus on the things that you can deal with relatively quickly. then try to plan for the things that you can accomplish over a slightly longer period of time. as for the larger, more existential problems? fuck 'em. no, i'm not joking. six months ago, did you see yourself in the position you are now? no, you didn't. the fact is that none of us know what's going to happen in the medium to long term. you're living life day-to-day. we all are. that's actually how 99.9% of the life on earth exists. we're the unnatural ones with our long term planning. and yes, i realize that a lot of people don't have the luxury of being able to defer payments forever and do need to worry about when money is coming in so that they can maintain the lives that they have. but your time worrying might be better spent looking into what laws are on your side. many governments have moved to block utilities from cutting off service. even before this pandemic, there were laws in place that required landlords to wait a certain amount of time before they could even file a claim with the rental authority. even big banks [gasp!] aren't looking to foreclose on properties where mortgage payments aren't met and will work with you to get through the current crisis. [this isn't because they're kind-hearted people. it's because they don't want to be publicly shamed for kicking helpless people out of their homes during a pandemic. keep that in mind: negative publicity for any large company is your friend right now.]

ponder the future you want :: yes, the current circumstances are unique in our lifetimes... to this point. the fact is that we've been lucky to avoid a crisis like this for a long time. for the last forty years, most "developed" nations have been quietly gouging away at the programs that brought them health and prosperity in the wake of the second world war. the argument is that governments simply couldn't afford the deficits they were incurring by maintaining comprehensive social safety nets while hiding the fact that they were quietly shifting public wealth into the hands of private corporations, otherwise known as small groups of greedy individuals. [corporations are not people, however, they are run by people, and if we're going to discuss the evils that corporations have inflicted, we need to deal with the fact that that means human beings have willingly, happily, inflicted harm on larger numbers of human beings so that they could increase their own wealth.]i truly believe that more and more of us are seeing this for the utter bullshit it is. it has become apparent that the very existence of billionaires carries the taint of immorality. furthermore, the wealthy people who have stepped up to raise and donate money in order to help those in need are not the very wealthiest, but a tier lower. billionaires aren't donating anything like a fair proportion of their income. millionaires, particularly those who are "first-generation" millionaires [lady gaga, trevor noah, etc.] have actually stepped up. so perhaps putting a cap on wealth means that the richest people are a more diverse group and are also a lot closer to the "common person" than they are now. [if you don't think that a millionaire is any closer to the common person than a billionaire, consider this: one million seconds is equivalent to about 11.5 days; one billion seconds is a little under 32 years. so now think of what it would take a millionaire to deplete their fortune compared to a billionaire. and that's not counting things like interest.]

so thanks for reading this buckshot kind of post. yes, it's about makeup and fun, but it's also about just getting through this epic weirdness and coming out the other side better. i urge you, hell, i beg you, to think about the "better than ever" bit; we have an unprecedented opportunity to evaluate the way that the whole world works. and the fact is that it wasn't working very well for the majority of us. the goal we should keep in mind is not to get back to the way things were, but to establish a new norm that makes things better.

so keep your makeup brushes and swords sharp, my friends.

p.s. :: the photo at the top of this post is me as i appear when i go out in public at the moment. as some of you know, i'm literally allergic to the sun. no, i'm not a full-on vampire who retreats to her crypt during the day, however, when we get the shift from "ok with a sweater or light jacket" to "perfectly comfortable in short sleeves", my body hits crisis mode. every year, i have to manage my sun/ heat exposure, keeping myself covered for the first couple of weeks, gradually reducing the layers while being careful to remain in the shade and to limit exposure during the brightest hours of the day, until, usually around july, i can stand in direct sunlight with exposed skin for up to about fifteen minutes at a time without breaking out in a rash and developing flu-like symptoms. coronavirus isn't the only thing we have to fear.

do you not know what you do not not know?

2020-03-31T15:13:00.001-04:00

i've been meaning to get back on the blogging bandwagon for ages but i've been lousy at focusing. i mean, i'm never great at focusing but it's been particularly bad lately. i've also made the horrific mistake of following the news too closely, not just in the last few weeks but in the past several months. i realize now that that isn't healthy. [no pun intended.] my head has been so wrapped up in politics that shifts from moment to moment, half-baked debates about social policy, trying to track what's happening behind the smoke and mirrors of the biggest news stories because we all know that those are the things that are really going to affect how we live. there are few things worse for anxiety than knowing that your dark fears about the chaos of the world are actually pretty close to the truth; and the thrill that comes from being able to say "i told you so" is remarkably short-lived.

however, it's pretty much impossible to deny that we're living in a unique time. deadly pandemics have occurred throughout history and it's fair to say that we only know about the biggest ones until the very recent past. the ones that we can remember most clearly- ebola, sars [i got to live through that one in toronto, which was basically ground zero], swine flu- would have been nothing but blips on the map in terms of their death toll when compared to the plagues of old. [then again, the death tolls would have been much higher without the advent of modern medicine.] the one massive pandemic that we've seen in our lifetimes [some of us were around for more of it than others] is aids. this often isn't perceived as a pandemic because its effects were spread out over decades but the death toll is pretty shocking, even for those of us who remember when the syndrome was in the news almost daily. this nifty little infographic has been making the rounds and it helps put into perspective how damaging the great pandemics of history have been.

it's not surprising that covid-19 barely warrants a mention in terms of its death toll at the moment; even compared to the smaller pandemics that we've witnessed in the last decades, its death toll and the ratio of people killed or seriously incapacitated to those infected is low. proportionately, sars was far more deadly. the terrifying thing about this coronavirus is how incredibly virulent it is. transmission occurs easily from one person to another and the fact that it does so often present with mild or even no symptoms makes it fiendishly difficult to contain without the sort of extreme measures we're now seeing around the globe. the other dangerous thing about covid-19 is its surprising robustness on surfaces. normally, viruses die quickly when they aren't attached to a living host. their outer shell breaks down and regular cleaning is usually able to remove them. even around sick people, a little increased vigilance about hygiene and cleanliness goes a long way. this bastard, however, can survive an unheard-of length of time on open surfaces. with most viruses, you're talking about a few hours before the thing is dead, whether you've disinfected or not. covid-19, however, can live for fucking days. how many days? the estimate from the u.s. national institutes of health is two or three. some of you are old enough to remember the safe sex campaign that was launched in the thick of the aids pandemic, reminding people that having unprotected sex was like having sex with everyone your partner had ever slept with. well touching anything right now is like touching everyone that has been in contact with the same surface in the last three days. and if that isn't enough for you, covid-19 can survive in the air for up to three hours. anywhere you go, if someone with this coronavirus breathed or especially coughed in that space within three hours, the virus is hanging around. forget feeling comfortable sleeping with every sexual partner your lover has ever had; how do you feel about inhaling the same air as everyone who's been in the same space where you stand for three hours? [side note :: i have absolutely no medical training. i'm putting this in the most basic way possible because it's the way that i can understand it and the way that i think most non-experts can understand it. if you want more detail and more informed analysis, please read through the resources linked in this paragraph.]

so while covid-19 might not be as dangerous as a proportion of total persons infected, it's more dangerous because it's much easier for people to become infected. to take some random but easy-to-process numbers, a virus that kills 5% of the people it infects and reaches 1,000,000 people will kill 50,000 people. a virus that kills 1% of the people it infects and reaches 100,000,000 people will kill 100,000. double the fatalities but only 20% the rate of fatality. there are currently nearly 800,000 cases of covid--19 worldwide and the number is skyrocketing every day. the virus still hasn't taken hold in the parts of the world where health care is the weakest. furthermore, the number of cases is likely understated. by a lot.

that last point is important because we're all being inundated with information and it is the best information available but it's also pretty questionable. it's extremely difficult to establish a baseline for what constitutes "proper" testing. we all hear a lot about how bad the testing procedure has been in certain areas [united states, italy] compared to how good it's been in others [south korea is usually the example given]. but parsing what numbers are reliable and applicable to most other countries is a bloody nightmare. as the epicentre of the outbreak, we look to china, and particularly to wuhan province, for guidance in determining the "shape" of the pandemic- the speed of the spread, the effectiveness of containment procedures, the period of stabilization and, finally, the time until the number of the immune is high enough that the virus loses its potency within the population. however, the chinese government started off lying about the virus, which is seen as a contributing factor in the spread of the disease originally. some countries, notably japan, have seemed to keep their infection numbers low, but they've been accused of "sweetening" their numbers by limiting the number of tests they conduct and deploying them strategically.

there is also a good chance that the mortality rate of the virus may be worse than we've been lead to believe because countries have different ways of calculating the death toll: france and italy, for instance, have only been counting deaths that occurred in hospitals. and no one is conducting post mortem testing, so there are almost definitely some people dying of coronavirus without ever knowing they had it.

at the other end of the spectrum, you have places like norway or my current home, the province of quebec. norway appears to have a shocking number of cases given their tiny population of 5.4 million. [seriously, there are many cities, even some in sparsely populated canada, that compete with norway in size.] however, as of march 20, norway had conducted just shy of 44,000 tests. the united states, with over sixty times their population, had conducted 104,000. it seems pretty clear that norway isn't experiencing some sort of massive containment failure; it's being more diligent about identifying, tracking and treating cases. they were also quick to implement social distancing protocols to prevent the virus from spreading unchecked. [and this seems to be yielding results: despite the apparently high number of cases, the mortality rate falls below that of most other countries.]

the most shocking aspect of this pandemic is the massive shutdowns that are occurring throughout the world. this is something none of us has witnessed before. there have been specific areas that have had to go into temporary hibernation but nothing on this scale or for this long. how long? well, that's another thing we don't really know. of all of the countries that have implemented lockdowns to combat the spread of covid-19, only one has subsequently lifted them. the worst hit region is still under quarantine [76 days and counting] and the chinese government hasn't exactly distinguished themselves in terms of transparency and accuracy with regards to this infection. if we can assume just for the moment that the chinese model is a good gauge for lockdowns, then that means that most of us [who've gone into quarantine in the last two weeks] can expect to re-emerge in mid- to late may. of course, in the interim, we're going to learn things about the disease that are likely to affect whether or not the chinese average of 59 days in lockdown remains a standard.

i've just deployed a lot of words and information to illustrate how a lot of words and information about the covid-19 pandemic are being deployed and making things more confusing. at least irony isn't in any danger of shutting down. but now that i've expended all that effort and both of our time, allow me to make things worse in the name of making things better: the stuff that we do know is way more useful than what we don't know.

we know that vigilant hygiene helps. we know that social distancing helps. and putting that knowledge into practice helps a lot more than even the most accurate data. yes, data is important but it's not as important as knowing how to keep safe and to a large degree, there's not a lot we need to learn. covid-19 is a new strain of coronavirus but there are lots of others. sars is a coronavirus. and while each new variant might require a new vaccine, the tactics for stemming the spread of this sort of virus are pretty well understood. as i mentioned earlier, the trickiest thing about this one is that it's a resilient little bastard that gets passed around more easily than others in the corona family. but the most effective measures against it are still washing your hands and keeping your distance.

[side note :: this is just my theory but i think that one of the reasons that these measures seem so extreme to us is that we're not used to being asked to follow these rules ever. people with infectious diseases and those living with them should really be isolating until they're no longer contagious even for regular illnesses like the flu. and when there are outbreaks, we should all be conditioned to practice better hygiene and allowing everyone some personal space in order to prevent the spread of illness. but we are conditioned only to react if we are regularly in the presence of someone who is already symptomatic and never to self-isolate unless we're sick enough to be admitted to hospital. the current quarantine should seem like an extreme version of rules we follow every day but they seem like something from another planet because we've done such a lousy job of encouraging healthy, responsible behaviour when there isn't a pandemic.]

my point here is this: we really don't know a lot of the things that we think we know about this pandemic. but it's important to know that we don't need to know the things that we thought we knew but don't actually know, because the things that we definitely do know are the best things we can know to help us through the current crisis. so now you know.

p.s. :: am i the only one who wants to see what happens if we just shut the stock markets down for a few days?

p.p.s. :: being forced to hunt for a new apartment during a pandemic is a surreal experience.

the post-iowa raucous

2020-02-11T19:13:00.000-05:00

in the words of a better-known canadian: why'd ya have to go and make things so complicated?

seriously, political people of iowa, there is something seriously wrong with the way that you vote and count and make decisions based on your counting. you've now had three bloody elections to sort out your shit [after the republican mess of 2012 and the democratic clusterfuck of 2016] and it kinda looks like things are getting worse. making the bizarre process of the caucus a little more transparent actually served to make it seem more open to corruption as we all tried to figure out the "delegate math" that saw pete buttigieg, who ran second in both rounds of voting, get the largest number of delegates.

is it that bloody difficult to have people mark a piece of paper with a pencil?

i'm still not sure that we know the final story in iowa as we roll right on into new hampshire but we did have a debate on friday to distract our attention.

i skipped covering the last debate because it just felt inconsequential. that's not to say that there weren't issues discussed that are important, it just felt like it was a pretty even performance from everyone and at some point it just gets exhausting coming up with different ways of saying "you did fine" and "you could have done better". coming on the heels of the iowa vote-a-thon and staring down the barrel of the first proper primary of the electoral season ["come to new hampshire, we have pencils!"], this last debate felt like it had higher stakes and that it had the potential to move the needle. [as i'll discuss shortly, it has.]

going into the night, there was already a sense of change in the air: as much as the iowa muddle still hung over the proceedings, it was very clear that there had been a change in front-runners. where joe biden had dominated early debates on the basis of national polls, the results from iowa showed that it was actually bernie sanders and pete buttigieg who are the frontrunners in the american heartland. biden still occupied the central position on stage [because of his strong performance in national polls] but the comportment of all candidates left no doubt that his importance in the field is flagging.

for once, i don't have a lot of comments to share about the overall event. it was... well, it was. linsey davis was great and has received just praise for her refusal to accept a politician's answer from buttigieg on the issue of racial justice in south bend under his watch. other than that, i'd just like to point out that having issues of race addressed only under the larger subject of criminal justice reform is in itself racist. elizabteh warren, amy klobuchar and tom steyer deserve credit for trying to push beyond that one issue.

so having gotten that out of the way, let's dive into the individual performances. once again, rather than divide people up into groups of who did themselves good or bad, i'm just evaluating everyone with a description and letter grade. candidates are listed in alphabetical order.

joe biden

grade :: b-

this probably has occurred to me before but it really had me confounded on friday: i don't understand why joe biden talks so loudly so much of the time. even when he was making some good points, i felt like he was yelling at me. i know that there are those who equate volume with strength but most of those people support trump, don't they?

to me, biden sounded like someone legitimately worried that his campaign was faltering and trying to correct that problem by performing combativeness. he didn't really have anything new to say, and while i assume he was going for "feisty", it came off as more irritable. it's like he feels entitled to the nomination and doesn't understand why others [particularly pete buttigieg on this night] are trying to jump the queue. as the night wore on, he visibly lost the pugilistic energy he started with and seemed to fade as a factor in the last half hour.

what's strange is that there were moments where biden showed that he's very capable of grace, humility and humour. him hugging bernie sanders when sanders' ability to work with his peers was questioned looked genuine. coming out of the debate, it does feel like biden is a person who can do a lot of the work needed to help reunite the democratic party. it just doesn't feel like he should be doing it as the presidential nominee.

pete buttigieg

grade :: b

the longer mayor pete remains popular, the more people are going to question how tight his grasp on the issues really is. he talks a great game and much of his performance was as smooth as ever tonight but he still darts around getting into specifics on any of his policies. on the one hand, you can say that he's keeping an open mind, or that he's aware that policy questions often ignore context. on the other hand, he's being featured a lot more and it's getting difficult to figure out where he stands on anything. going up against a man who's absolutely sure where he stands on everything even though he doesn't know anything about it, he runs the risk of coming off as weak. but we haven't even made it that far and unless buttigieg ups his game from what we saw friday, we're not going to.

that's because the moment of his that everyone is going to remember from the debate is where linsey davis practically had to whack him over the head with a microphone to get him to answer a question about the rise in marijuana-related charges and convictions among african americans in south bend during his tenure as mayor. buttigieg has done well in the past because he's come in knowing what criticisms people were going to make and been able to give effective answers. not only did he seem unprepared to answer the question- a totally reasonable one given his popularity with african-americans is about on par with trump- he continued trying to clumsily dodge it for what felt like about an hour and a half before finally stumbling his way through an explanation that might have been acceptable if it had come out of his mouth the first time he tried answering. it wasn't rick perry blanking on a federal department he wanted to cut bad, but it was certainly weaker than anything we've seen from him thus far.

amy klobuchar

grade :: a

not since kamala harris's performance at the first debate has the media been as unanimous in declaring a winner. but i didn't need their approbation to come to that conclusion. i think that klobuchar has put in pretty strong performances across the board and friday's debate just proved that she continues to flourish in a shrinking field. people were a little shocked when the new york times chose both her and elizabeth warren to endorse and again when she seemed to treat a fifth-place finish in iowa as a kind of victory but her confident, articulate debate performance might be an indicator that her team senses that they're close to a tipping point when it comes to public opinion.

klobuchar is competing for the same base as biden and buttigieg and she managed to come off as a balance between the two: she has experience but she's not part of the washington machine, plus she has a way of coming off as far more direct than either of them. on this particular night, she managed to work in stories from her moving personal history, her folksy, fargo-esque humour and her ability to identify and exploit chinks in her opponents' armour without coming off as mean-spirited.

polls conducted after the debate and even interviews with voters confirm that senator klobuchar has made herself part of the conversation. [admission: i almost subtitled this post "chasing amy" but ultimately opted

bernie sanders

grade :: a-

bernie's gonna bernie but i thought that he bernie'd particularly well this night. he made his points, showed his dry humour, called out his opponents on their inconsistencies and didn't stab anyone when they acted like his brand of democratic socialism was exactly the same thing that stalin believed. [i should be exaggerating and in terms of what happened during the debate, i am, but immediately afterward, msnbc host chris matthews did start comparing sanders to the dictators of iron curtain-age europe and vietnam. i hope matthews is feeling ok because that was... special.]

with fewer people on the stage, sanders is able to put a little more meat on his answers, so he no longer sounds like he's just coughing up slogans. it's still tricky because running a country is complicated so you can't just expect a performance at a debate to cover every detail of offering comprehensive health care to 350 million people. perhaps next time will be the debate where the moderator looks at their notes and decides to scratch asking bernie if he's a stalinist in favour of asking one of the centrist candidates why they think that the united states is so uniquely incompetent that it can't offer the sort of health care that literally every other highly developed country does.

until then... you do you, bernie. it's working. [according to polls, it's even working with people it hasn't before: the vermont senator has seen his popularity rising with african-americans and latinos, especially younger people.]

tom steyer

grade :: c+

the billionaire not named bloomberg is a quandary for democrats: he's definitely bought his way onto the national stage but he's also one of the more progressive candidates in the running and he doesn't feel much differently about the billionaire class than bernie sanders. his record of accomplishments is pretty impressive and, no doubt, he called for impeachment way before anyone else on the debate stage.

however, his performance on the night served to reinforce the idea that not everyone who's smart and capable and decent should be a national leader. steyer has great priorities and a strong understanding of the issues, it's rare he says anything that i completely disagree with. i think that public life would be better if he played a large role in it. but he just doesn't have that capacity to unite and motivate people that a leader needs to have. i sympathize, sir. i don't have it either. neither of us is going to be president.

elizabeth warren

grade :: b

if i had the time and money, i think i'd like to find all the people who pushed for a detailed health care plan from senator warren then freaked out and said it wouldn't work the second that she did. i'd like to bring them to a nice hotel and book a conference room with lovely snack trays and a cute gift bag of local artisanal products and have us all sit down together. then i'd like to ask them to show me some instances of where they pressed other candidates for that sort of detail on any policy. and anyone who couldn't show me that they'd applied the same rigour to other candidates would get a smack upside the head with a large shovel. [the hardest smacks would go to those who insisted on narrowing the discussion to whether or not taxes would increase while refusing to allow her to explain that tax increases could be offset by savings in expenditures. because that happened a lot.]

ever since the great health care pile-on of '19, elizabeth warren has struggled. she's never regained the momentum that her campaign had built [new york times endorsement notwithstanding] and it's becoming more difficult to see how she might regain it. it doesn't help that the tension between her and bernie sanders over a comment he may or may not have made or that may have been interpreted wrong or not properly thought through has soured many of his supporters on her. when she was on the ascendant, it was clear that she was most successful at winning over progressives who would naturally fall to sanders but who might want someone different.

as with almost every debate, she came off as knowing more about policy and history than anyone else on the stage and that should have helped. but she didn't have a "moment", something memorable where she was able to reassert herself as one of the top candidates. such moments are usually fleeting and often inconsequential when it comes to policy and governing but unfortunately, it feels like warren needs one of those to give her a spark. otherwise, she's likely to remain the very smart, well-informed person who people know would be good but who just never seems to get the win.

andrew yang

grade :: c*

i'm giving this an asterisk because i honestly feel like i can't properly evaluate yang's performance. he's always been squeezed for time on the debates but as the field narrowed, it looked like we were finally turning a corner with that. so how did yang end up getting less time to talk than in the previous debate and why was he given so few questions? i understand that he's at a disadvantage because no one is namechecking him, which would give him an automatic right to respond but for crying out loud, he's on the stage. cory booker, kamala harris, and jay inslee are gone but andrew yang's support has been solid enough to keep him in the running.

tonight's performance wasn't anything like his top-notch showing from december. it seemed more like his early appearances where he just kept saying everyone was getting $1,000 a month and nothing else. but i don't know if i can really blame yang for that when he was given so little time. more than ever, i find myself wanting to see more of him, to find out what it is that's allowed him to develop such a loyal following made up of such an unexpected coalition. this debate isn't helping the candidate or the voters.

ok, i shall cut this short now because there's little i have to add that hasn't been said and, you know, new hampshire is happening...

sh*t no one tells you about being a caregiver

2020-01-16T21:06:00.002-05:00

i've been a full-time caregiver for close to six years. that makes it sound like it's a full-time job, which it is and also like it's full-time employment, which it isn't. the difference i'm making between those is how the work is valued by society as a whole: a job is something that needs to be done; a job becomes employment when it's important enough that we're willing to pay someone to do it. as much as canadians take pride in the medical care we provide citizens and permanent residents, our positive results are often built on an institutionalized fudging of numbers that hides who's really doing the work.

when it comes to caring for those with ongoing medical needs, the vast majority of care [roughly 75%] is provided by unpaid workers. 8.1 million people in a country of 37.59 million offer unpaid caregiving services at some point. some of those unpaid caregivers are lucky, in that they can afford the time it takes to look after someone else without having to significantly compromise their way of life. but the truth is that many have to make a lot of compromises without ever being compensated or even acknowledged. paying people to actually do this work would cost between $24 and $31 billion, or at least that's the best guess, because the government is so adamant about ignoring the problem that they haven't revisited the data since 2012.

one of the most pernicious things about denying that unpaid healthcare labour exists is that it means those who do it live in a vacuum, unable to properly gauge what's normal and fair. but what the hell, i have some experience in this regard and i've built myself a little virtual shack on the internet where i can sound off, and i am here to tell you that feeling overwhelmed is not a sign of failure, at least not on your part. there are lots of things about being a caregiver that no one tells you in advance and that most people don't even suspect happens.

now, i want to preface this by saying that i consider myself very lucky to have a supportive group of friends who have been willing to step up to help when needed. anyone who is put in the situation of having to care for a loved one full-time is going to need help whether they get paid for their work or not. money and social programs do not remove the need for people to care about each other. what follows is a list of things that i've noticed [from my own experience and that of others] and that i think could be helpful for others in this situation to know.

the government help that you and your loved one receive is as good as the people assigned to help your case.

people with long-term disabilities are assigned caseworkers and medical professionals as needed and as appropriate to their condition. dom and i have an amazing worker who visits at least once a month and stays in regular touch. he is tireless in looking for benefits to which we might be entitled that could make our lives even a little easier. i'm able to appreciate him all the more because the first caseworker dom was assigned was almost the exact opposite. we were lucky to see her at all outside of the annual visit she would make to go through a three-hour questionnaire that was ostensibly used to evaluate the annual progression/ improvement of dom's condition. [but was really used as a tool to evaluate her fulfillment of basic tasks.] his current caseworker identified more opportunities for help in one month than the first one did in four years.

the thing is, we had no way of knowing that until we got assigned the second caseworker. before, we just thought that we were getting all the help that was offered. this is where that ability to connect with others is so important: it helps you establish a baseline for what you're entitled to. information on what you're eligible to receive is frequently guarded as if it was the bloody nuclear football because every new thing you discover costs the government money and eventually [as those services add up] affects their ability to look like sound financial managers.

you're not the one they're there to help

whatever resources the government is willing to give, it's important to remember that those resources are for the sick person in the home only. dom was recently assigned a general practitioner who can come to our apartment, do blood tests, give shots, renew prescriptions [even without coming here], check any injuries and, you know, just take care of the basics one goes to a doctor for. however, even if he wanted to, that doctor is not allowed to treat me. there are arguments and counter-arguments over whether this is a good approach but the important thing to know is that all the care goes to the client/ patient.

i mention this because the language that's used is often inclusive and can leave the impression that support workers are there to support the patient and the caregiver. some workers can identify opportunities for things like tax breaks for a caregiver [assuming that they have an income where this would apply] or offer services that have a benefit for the caregiver as well as the patient [e.g., assistance with house cleaning] but they are not able to help you separately. so if you need something like, say, counselling [a lot of caregivers will need that] you can't go to them for help. this doesn't mean that they don't want to help. please don't blame them. they can get in real trouble for breaking the rules.

[side note :: here's an example from my personal experience that illustrates what i'm talking about: last year i slipped on the ice and hit my head. it was clear almost immediately that i'd sustained a concussion, so the next day i went to a nearby clinic to verify this and get advice on the best method of dealing with it. as i was bundling myself up to go to the clinic, there were literally four medical professionals in my bedroom, sent there to give dom a battery of badly needed blood tests, reflex tests, etc. but they were literally not allowed to so much as a cursory evaluation of my condition. is that an efficient use of resources? no. but if every medical professional assigned to a chronically ill person is expected to serve the same role for a caregiver, that could be a huge problem.]

it's not a job, it's a lifestyle

i've had people close to me, or at least close to dom, question why caring for him should be such a big deal. after all, it's not like i'm providing emergency services every minute of every day. i don't have to keep him breathing. i'm not performing surgery. i'm not obliged to run around with him on my shoulders all day. indeed, my days tend to be marked by short periods where i'm needed, separated by longer spaces where i'm not actively required to do anything. since more of my time is "down" rather than "up" or "engaged", that means that i have plenty of time to take it easy, right?

my response to this is to draw a parallel with firefighters: firefighters do not spend all, or even most, of their time fighting fires. but we expect that they are working, able to be called in on a moment's notice when needed. no one would argue that firefighters aren't working in the hours when they're not standing in front of a five-alarm blaze and only a fool would say that they were truly relaxed during those hours. they might have ways to distract themselves to pass the time but the fact is that they go through every shift aware that they have to be ready at a second's notice to deal with stressful and dangerous situations.

it's much the same for a caregiver. you can spend your "down" time doing whatever you want [although undertaking large projects can be tricky because you don't ever know how long you're going to have] but you are acutely aware that the time isn't actually your own. you're at the ready always because if you're a caregiver, you don't get off shift. you are the lone firefighter in town with an arsonist on the loose.

you are developing a whole lot of skills you won't ever get credit for having

being a full-time caregiver is a great introduction into a career as an emt, nutritionist, or therapist among other things. too bad that doing those things for years won't ever help you get a paying job in those fields. i'm not saying that someone who learns to do these things because they have to has the same knowledge as someone who's studied the subject. but it always does strike me as strange that there is literally no space for people who have only partial/ practical experience to use that experience to earn themselves a little money and perhaps take some pressure off the system. [side note :: i am in no way advocating that people be thrown into this with personal experience and no additional training. that would be idiotic.]

everything is a life or death situation, except more complicated.

doesn't that sound just ridiculous and dramatic? when you have a sick or disabled person depending on you, the most innocuous situations can escalate really quickly. lots of people slip on the ice every winter. lots of people sustain injuries that way and their lives are more difficult and unpleasant because of it. if i fall and break my hand, i'll have those same problems. i will also have to come up with a plan for getting things like groceries brought to the house and transforming those groceries into meals. and i will have to come up with ways of modifying our budget to compensate for the fact that a broken hand would prevent me from doing any of the paid contract work i'm able to do. likewise, i would have to figure out how i can still offer the physical support that dom needs without putting either of us in danger.

you aren't literally being threatened with death all the time but you do develop the habit of approaching everything in your life as if you were competing on american ninja warrior. your fight-or-flight response is on a hair-trigger all the time, which isn't good for you or your loved ones.

you're a shitty friend, even though you never mean to be.

making plans? sure, as long as you have adequate time to plan in advance. spontaneity does not exist. i don't mean the sort of spontaneity that happens when you decide to take advantage of a last-minute travel deal; i mean the sort of spontaneity where you're out running errands and think it would be great if you could stop and grab yourself a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

and even if you're able to make plans, good luck keeping them. there are so many things that can go wrong, so many bad turns that your loved one can take that threaten to derail your life in some way that it's a minor miracle when you don't end up having to cancel. oh, and on those rare occasions when the planets align and everything works out... there's a really good chance you're going to feel too tired, too physically run down, or too guilty about taking time for yourself and you'll just cancel at the last minute anyway.

you don't have the time or energy to help friends when they hit rough patches. for the reasons outlined above, you can't be depended on for anything. you'll forget their birthdays, you'll forget what's going on in their lives, hell, you'll forget to even respond to them when they send messages checking in on you or asking if you'd like to do something. and chances are, you'll still have to ask them for help.

you're never sick, except that you are.

thank god you're unlikely to ever be the sickest person in your house. but that doesn't mean that you don't get sick. it just means you end up powering through any illness or just ignoring things that you should get checked. most of the time, no one's telling you to do that and chances are that you know it's a bad idea. but it's just so much easier because if you start having to schedule appointments and get treatments for yourself, it's one more thing that you have to make room for in your schedule. if you deal with your own health, it becomes an active source of stress. if you ignore it, it's a passive form of stress and passive things don't interfere with your immediate challenges.

if your caregiving involves having to offer physical support to another adult, you're going to end up with bumps and bruises and chances are you'll never think of them as anything but. there's a good chance you'll walk around with sprains and strains that won't heal properly because it's not like you can't move your limbs or feed yourself. you're not that bad off.

and the chances that you're getting adequate, restful sleep are basically non-existent. despite the fact that there are mountains of evidence about the detrimental health effects of poor sleep [hell, there have been studies conducted on the effects of sleep deprivation on professional caregivers which seems like it could be relevant] it is highly unlikely that you'll get anything close to the amount of deep sleep you need. being sleep deprived makes you get sick, slows your healing processes, increases the likelihood that you'll injure yourself and others by accident, and impairs your cognitive function. oh, and it takes years off your life if it gets bad enough.

you probably have a mental disorder.

sleep deprivation on its own can be enough to trigger mental disorders, even to the point of psychosis. but you don't have to go to that extreme: the process of taking care of someone full-time is likely to result in clinical depression, anxiety disorders, and more. many doctors reserve comment on the extent of this problem because they feel it is so grossly underreported that there is no way to get reliable data. what data we do have indicates that caregivers commit suicide at a rate four times that of the rest of the population. how much of a problem is that? in many cases, it's higher than the rate of people diagnosed with chronic illnesses themselves. [side note :: exact figures on this subject are difficult to come by. chronic illnesses are defined differently and are not equally debilitating. suicide rates of people who have sustained traumatic brain injuries, for instance, far exceed those of any other group evaluated on the basis of health and i absolutely do not wish to dimish anyone's suffering. here's a sample article on suicide rates among the chronically ill.]

i could go on but i think that list is scary enough as it is.

i'm not suggesting that unpaid caregiving shouldn't happen: of course it should. if we refuse to care for those we say we love, we have lost any claim to being empathetic beings.

what i am suggesting, what i'm saying straight up, is that we have become cravenly over-reliant on services provided for free. the canadian government among others has a vested interest in keeping this labour invisible because it makes them look like they are providing a higher level of service than they are and for less money. pretending the problem doesn't exist, or that it is much less serious than it is, for instance by refusing to study it in-depth, keeps caregivers isolated and unable to evaluate their own health and capacity to function and carry out the work they've taken on.

most nations that score highest on the human development index have ageing populations and declining birth rates, so this issue is going to get nothing but more serious. some of the realities of caring for a chronically ill loved one are very scary; they may be scary enough to make some people decide they're just not able to do it. and that is a fucking good thing. if we're not honest with people about the demands of the work, we're placing the lives of our most vulnerable in the hands of people who are not capable of handling it.

by the same token, there is a critical need to improve the situation for unpaid caregivers and in order to do that, we need to factor in the importance of their role when we make any decisions about long-term healthcare. '

the image at the top of this post is taken from the dreamwalker tarot, which can be viewed in its entirety here. image copyright belongs to the artist.

debate-a-thon 2019: the very last democratic debate of the decade!

2019-12-21T19:16:00.001-05:00

source

yes, i took a debate off. there was a democratic candidates' meeting in november and not only did i watch it but i made notes about it. i still have the notes. but i never did get around to writing up a post because stuff happens and while there were some interesting political points discussed, the november debate never felt terribly consequential; everyone on the stage did fine, no one really did a lot better than that. was last night's debate more earth-shaking? i wouldn't say so. but it was notable for having only seven people on the stage, meaning that everyone got to talk more. how much more varies by candidate but every candidate who made it onto the stage got to speak for longer than they had in any previous debate.

i'll say off the top that i don't think anyone had a bad night. no one got caught floundering for an answer, losing their temper or misstating something they or another candidate had said. i thought that the questions were substantive and issues were addressed in ways that they hadn't been before. seeing seven people on the stage rather than ten, twelve, or forty-six made it easier to focus on what each candidate had to say and so i've modified how i've ranked people, giving them individual scores rather than grouping them into positive/ neutral/ negative categories.

but, as usual, here are a few general thoughts and observations:

mansplaining :: tim alberta, what were you thinking? the only question of the night on women had to do with barack obama's recent comments on the need for more women, people of colour and youth to be elected in america. it's important to note that obama's comments particularly stressed the importance of electing women because they would run things differently [debatable, but we'll leave that aside for now]. so this was the only question about women on the entire night and someone figured that the best person to ask it was the one male moderator, tim alberta. and who does he direct the question to? first to bernie sanders and then to joe biden. didn't we learn anything about refusing to give precedence to people within a group or community when asking about that group or community? remember when kamala harris had to fight to be allowed to answer a question about race despite being the only racial minority on the dais? apparently, politico, pbs and tim alberta fast-forwarded through that section of the first debate. amy klobuchar rightly gave him a verbal knuckle-rap and could have done worse. personally, i think that she and elizabeth warren deserve a round of applause for not walking down and punching alberta square in the nose.

left unsaid :: there are a few glaring facts that are being left out of the debates and it's beyond ridiculous:

on the question of medicare for all, no one bring up how literally every other developed country- and some that are a lot less developed than the united states- has figured out how to provide healthcare to its citizens. how is it possible that the wealthiest country in the history of the world can't make that happen? seriously, i'm starting to wonder if anyone in the united states is aware that healthcare is a thing in every country.
related to the above point, and i've mentioned this one before, the greatest challenge to getting medicare for all in america is not paying for it, it's implementing it. there are more than 600,000 people employed in the health insurance industry, jobs which are often well-paying and relatively stable. insurance companies, most of which are publicly traded, employ 2.7 million others and pump more than a trillion dollars into the american economy every year. you cannot just wipe the slate clean. candidates have plans to deal with this and that is something that's worth discussing.
i cannot for the life of me figure out why no one brings up the importance of immigrants and temporary workers to the farming industry. a lot of people know about the work of immigrants and temporary residents in harvesting fruits and vegetables, especially in california, but there are plenty of immigrants who work in the dairy and meat industry in the midwestern "flyover" states as well. sure, continue making the case that immigrants are valuable people who deserve respect and make america better, but while you're doing that, drive home the point that a massive crackdown on immigration and undocumented workers will cost the american economy billions and drive up the cost of food for everyone. people are selfish and arguments that appeal to that selfishness work.

healthcare and education for all :: one of the key arguments against universal healthcare and free college tuition for all is people with less money end up paying for those who can easily afford to pay their own way. buttigieg, in particular, makes this point when he argues against universality. but here's the thing: rich people can already go to public hospitals, send their children to public schools, drive on public roads, etc. so let's stop pretending that the wealthy don't already benefit from public programs.

sorry ladies :: the night's final question gave candidates the opportunity to either offer a gift or an apology to another person on the stage. both women offered apologies and all the men offered gifts. nothing more to say on that but it broke my heart.

and now, here's the report card by candidate:

joe biden
grade :: a-

the former vice president's best performance by a mile. he looked and sounded presidential and kept his performance up throughout the night, whereas he's exhibited a bad tendency to get irritable and clumsy as debates wore on in the past. straight off the bat, he nailed the answer to a tricky question on whether or not he would forego the economic upswings that had come from the oil and gas industry in the name of safeguarding the environment. the idea that moving away from fossil fuels will cost jobs and harm the economy is and has always been a specious one but not enough people treat it that way. biden coolly brushed the argument off the table and into the trash, where it belongs.

one thing that struck me was that biden seemed less concerned with trying to make himself appealing to everyone, which in turn made him sound a lot more straightforward. some of his policies- like increasing militarization in the south china sea and around asia in general- trouble me. but after last night's performance, i at least feel like i know what his damn policy is, which is more than i can say from watching him in previous debates.

his experience will always be a double-edged sword and i still think that he's too eager to placate republicans who have espoused sexism, racism, lying and hypocrisy. but the polls show that he is still the candidate with the best shot at beating trump next year and for the first time he struck a balance between statesmanlike and affable that made me see why that might be.

pete buttigieg
grade :: b

welcome to the hot seat, pete. it's never fun being the one with momentum and last night it was the indiana mayor's turn to go on the defensive. that said, it was clear that he came prepared for the volleys he was going to have to withstand and he was able to respond to them. as a result, the sparring that occurred seemed much more like robust discussion than fighting. oh goddamnit, does he have to be good at everything? [spoiler alert: he isn't, but he's still irritatingly good at a lot of things and makes me feel insecure.]

on the plus side, engaging with warren on campaign donations, i was impressed at how unapologetic and rational he was. someone with his net worth cannot mount a national campaign without raising a lot of money and he has not had the time to develop the network on the ground that others have. you can disagree with him courting wealthy donors but that doesn't mean he's wrong. where he could do better is in addressing how things could change: what needs to happen so that the wunderkind mayor of a town of 55,000 can run for president without needing to woo billionaires in a wine cave.

amy klobuchar fared better than any of the others against him, which i think is a recognition of the fact that not only is he the one in the ascendant, but that the two of them are competing for the same wing of the party. she criticized him openly for diminishing the experience of other candidates as ineffectual and took some indirect digs that did make him look just a little too junior for the job of president.

ultimately, though, i felt like the mayor's worst wounds were self-inflicted. he was evasive on israel, which was all the more evident because bernie sanders had just given a very strong answer. early on, he made a point that politicians aren't supposed to talk about the poor, but about the middle class. people like sanders talk about the poor anyway but pete is right: politicians and campaign workers are told explicitly to avoid using terms like "poor" and "ordinary" to describe people because that's not how people want to think of themselves. his point was that poverty and poor people need to be discussed but, as with the issue of wealthy campaign donors, he stopped short of offering a path forward. to that end, what would help is a definition of "working poor" that lets people who are employed, some of whom are treading water in a middle-class lifestyle, but who are nonetheless in a very precarious position.

the mayor sounds inspirational, but if he can't start articulating solutions alongside ideals, then his lovely words start to ring a little hollow.

amy klobuchar
grade :: a

the consensus this morning seemed to be that senator klobuchar edged out the field on a night where most people had reason to feel they did pretty well. she probably doesn't want to think about it like this but i feel that she benefitted from the absence of kamala harris. the two women are both moderates who have engaged with an criticized the progressive wing of the party in varying measures. without harris there, klobuchar has the experienced, pragmatic, centrist, female space to herself. and did she ever own it last night.

she still leans too heavily on the fact that she won in an area that voted overwhelmingly for trump and she doesn't talk enough about the policies she wants to enact, but she still manages to communicate the kind of candidate she is. on issues like healthcare and education, she supports the same sort of partial measures as buttigieg, which is why she's never going to win over progressives. and she is clearly of the school that elections are won and lost by wooing centrist midwestern voters, rather than by motivating those who don't normally get out to vote.

where she was masterful in this debate was in playing the role of the adult in the room, able to rise above the squabbling and to show an instinct for separating political wheat from chaff. the best example of this was when she swooped in to break up the back and forth between buttigieg and warren about campaign donors. her immediate reaction was to say that this wouldn't even be an issue under her presidency because she'd support whatever was needed to overturn citizens united, the disastrous court decision that equated money with free speech. bernie sanders, who has built two campaigns on staying away from big money [and is still the only candidate of the top seven who has], must have been fuming that klobuchar stole the moment and i can't blame him. but sometimes part of being a good politician and a good leader is knowing exactly when you need to act.

the other aspect of klobuchar's performance, the one that puts her slightly ahead of everyone else in my evaluation, is that she really did manage to land some blows on her opponents. buttigieg is the obvious example and while he did respond well, her points still resonated. she has been effective against sanders and warren, which hasn't helped her so much as it's weakened their support. however, off the back of a performance where she didn't have to fight as hard to stay in the spotlight, it's possible more people will give her a longer look.

bernie sanders
grade :: b+

the thing that surprises me most about bernie's debate performance is that he spoke more than any other candidate. even a cursory analysis of mainstream media outlets confirms the accusation that he's been denied the coverage that candidates with less support have received. since he isn't as strong in debates as some of his colleagues, television hasn't been especially friendly to him. but tonight, he turned in a strong performance, hammering home the core principles of his campaign as he always does and at the same time showing his affable charm, which he hasn't had the time to do in some previous debates.

with all due respect to senator warren, bernie owns the subject of medicare for all. that's not a criticism of her policies- it's just that he is so effective at putting the issue at the forefront and talking about why it is desirable and quite possibly necessary. responding to the same arguments that warren faced on the subject last time around, he had stronger answers than she did and pushed back harder. [side note :: i think that if warren had pushed back in this way, it would have been perceived as a negative for her. the media would have said she was being too forceful, too argumentative, etc.]

the other spot where i thought sanders was particularly strong was on the subject of israel. [somehow, the moderators were able to figure out that directing this question first to the one jewish person on the dais was the right way to go, even if they couldn't quite figure that out when it came to women.] one can believe that israel has the right to exist as a nation and still be pro-palestinian. you can be pro-israel and still think the current government is repugnant. this issue doesn't get nearly the coverage it should, especially leading up to an election against someone who has been needlessly and shamelessly provocative to the palestinians and who has exhibited craven loyalty to a prime minister who has literally been indicted as a crook.

the weakest part of sanders' debate was the on the one issue that's plagued both of his campaigns: his understanding of issues related to race and those of other minorities. i may have physically flinched when he immediately responded to a question on racial inequality by returning to the subject of climate change and how it will affect low-income communities largely populated by racial minorities. yes, black and brown people will be disproportionately affected by climate change. but there are also a lot of issues that they face [and that lgbtq americans face and that women face...] that whites just don't. and the question was about those issues. he's a smart man and i know he realizes what those challenges are but for some reason he cannot stop walking into the wall when he's making public statements on the issues. the end result is that he seems like he's just not taking the concerns of racial and other minorities seriously.

tom steyer
grade :: b-

the issue of billionaires being able to buy their way into the presidential race has rightly come up in relation to steyer and michael bloomberg and so tom was always going to seem like the slightly unwelcome guest in this regard. and while it's true that he's certainly made his way up in the polls because he's been able to buy public visibility, he doesn't deserve to get dismissed for that reason alone. his policies are worth thinking about and the man can legitimately claim to have been active in fighting against trump and right-wing figures like the koch brothers for a lot longer than he's been running for president. he's very strong on environmental issues and supports a constitutional amendment to make clean water a guaranteed right. he's in favour of eliminating marijuana convictions, reducing the racial disparity in sentencing for other drug offences, eliminating private prisons and has perhaps the strongest views on gun reform of any candidate still in the race. and, call it hypocritical if you want, he does support campaign finance reform to limit the amount of money spent during elections.

and steyer did a decent job of communicating his beliefs and explaining that, despite his lack of political experience, he had done a lot of work on important issues. like fellow outsider andrew yang, his views can be refreshing: they sound like he understands aspects of political problems and challenges that politicians don't necessarily grasp.

but whatever he said and however well he said it, it was never going to overcome the suspicion that he's allowed his ego to push him to a presidential run and that his money would have been better spent in helping congressional and senate candidates so that the party can win both houses in 2020.

steyer should ask santa to make sure that michael bloomberg makes it onto the next debate stage because no one will see steyer as an ego-driven billionaire if bloomberg is in the room with him.

elizabeth warren
grade :: b

you run a perfect campaign for months, you make steady inroads all around the country and release well thought out policy documents at a regular pace. you release one policy document on medicare for all that the business media hates and voilà, all those carefully won gains are gone. ok, it's not like warren isn't to blame for her own downfall, to some extent; she has been too vague on both the details and the implementation plan for medicare for all, which has led people on the right to say that she's lying about the true costs and about raising taxes while people on the left say that she doesn't really plan to implement full medicare at all.

but the fact is that warren has been punished for the fact that a lot of people, particularly upper-middle-class and wealthy people who get good coverage from their employers, are shit-scared of paying a cent more in taxes. and those people/ voters really hate the idea that there are people out there who are poorer than them that will benefit from the new program more than they will. i said it before: people are selfish.

warren's performance in debate number six was strong, although perhaps not as authoritative as previous ones. she came out strong against buttigieg and his wine cave cabal only to have him spin it back on her pretty effectively by pointing out that her opinions on accepting big donations have evolved since she joined the senate. that's a particularly dangerous space for warren because the major issue that left-wing elements in the party have with her compared to bernie sanders is that she hasn't always been the progressive powerhouse she is today. she used to be a republican. [to which i personally say: so what? don't believe that people who've come around to certain views later in life can ever have the conviction of those who have always held them? go talk to some born again christians.]

there weren't any missteps here but she didn't seem to have the same edge as in earlier debates. i did love her line about being the youngest woman ever sworn in as president, as did the media.

andrew yang
grade :: a-

yang straight-up said that he expected that a lot of americans were probably asking why he's still up on the stage [when other, more experienced candidates aren't]. my dude, after tonight, we're all wondering where we can hear more from you because you were on fire. from his introductory remarks where he showed that he took the responsibility of being the only racial minority in the debate to the final question where he sheepishly thanked a fellow candidate for reading his book [something which almost all his male competitors imitated to diminishing effect], yang was more charismatic than most of us imagined he could be.

at the same time, he expanded his talking points well beyond the $1,000/ month guaranteed basic income plan that is the centre of his platform. and as it turns out, some of his ideas warrant further exploration. there's an uncomfortable whiff of racism around the tacit assumption that yang must know a lot about china but his business experience there did make for a view that was different from what the politicians were saying. [no surprise, he's focused more on using trade-based diplomacy and less on the military.] in every debate, there are moments when yang just seems to be aware of things that the more experienced political candidates aren't and that kept coming up tonight- on china, on nuclear power, on the need to prepare for the practical and structural effects of climate change that can't be avoided.

where i think his presidential bid ultimately comes up short is that he just doesn't seem to have the nuts-and-bolts knowledge, let alone experience, to run the country. i'm not saying that you need to have political experience in order to govern, but if you don't have it you need to present a hell of a case that you're able to make up for it and yang isn't there yet.

that said, i want this guy to stick around in some capacity. his ideas absolutely have a place in the public sphere and i think he could be pretty effective in cabinet. i also love the idea of him being a democratic surrogate during the presidential campaign because the contrast between mean-spirited, angry child trump and charming, optimistic, smart yang would be... delicious.

the first caucus of the nomination process takes place in iowa on february 3rd. there is one more debate before then [january 14th], for which five candidates [biden, buttigieg, klobuchar, sanders and warren] have already qualified. it seems likely that yang, steyer and michael bloomberg will make it as well. that would mean that the next debate would have one candidate more than this one, which is not the direction in which things are supposed to be going but this is the world we live in. [personally, i'm also unhappy that neither corey booker nor julian castro seems likely to make the cut.]

klobuchar, sanders, and warren, as well as booker and michael bennett have an added hurdle: all are likely to have to take time off the campaign trail in order to sit as jurors in the impeachment trial of donald trump. that's a hard pill to swallow because it effectively takes them out of the public view for weeks just for doing their jobs. it's very possible that at least some will be able to get more media appearances from it but a lot of early state momentum is determined by ground game. we'll see how that comes in to play.

in parting, until we meet again, i'd just like to take a moment to share a little thought that i had:

very late last night, i heard the telltale sounds of a cat expelling something noxious. i turned on a light and headed to clean up the mess right away. i was greeted with a pretty impressive hairball, which was really more a cigar than a ball but that's not the important thing. as i reached down with my paper towel and disinfecting cleaner, i was struck by the realization that i was in the presence of something that would make a better president than what's in the white house now. that's not to say that president yacked-up-hair-cigar would be successful; it's just a statement on where the bar stands for finding a replacement.

so as we get into the "shit's about to get real" stretch of the democratic nomination campaign, i feel like we should all take a moment to remember that there is going to be one candidate chosen [maybe sort of two if another candidate gets the v.p. nod] and that we are all going to have our own reasons why that candidate will be unsatisfactory. those of us who supported other candidates may feel like the wrong choice was made, or even that our candidate was treated unfairly. this holiday season, let's all take a few moments to prepare ourselves for those feelings and how we can deal with them. let's do it before we start to get angry and hurt. and in that moment, i would like all thinking americans to come to grips with the fact that literally any of the people currently running for the democratic nomination would be better than what they'd be running against- yes, even that candidate. you know the one. don't you just hate that candidate? still better than donald trump.

so brace yourselves for the fact that you might have to hold your nose next november but that you'll do so in the service of the greater good.

too many cooks

2019-10-27T19:03:00.001-04:00

ok, i missed commenting on the last democratic debate by some length. part of that is actually because i started another post related to the american election and was focused on that during the time that i had free for the blog. another reason is that last week we had a federal election in canada and that took a fair bit of my attention even though i didn't write about it. it's become a sort of a thing that i don't have time to write about the things that i'm following because i'm too busy following them. and no, i'm not just talking about politics, as any skimming through the past of this blog when i actually wrote more on it will reveal, but it's hard to deny that the political world has morphed into some sort of warp-speed nightmare. it's getting so that no one writing for anything other than a daily newspaper has any hope of being able to keep up with everything that's going on unless they want to limit commentary to twitter length or shorter. seriously, i've started to roll my eyes at news stories that are more than six hours old because you just know that shit has been superseded by something even more bizarre.

this doesn't mean that i didn't have thoughts on the last democratic debate, of course. so this afternoon i'm taking some time to make soup because the weather is atrocious and i don't have work that i have to complete and the writing projects that i'm working on aren't on a deadline and dammit, i just want to talk about what i saw. plus, i've had the luxury of twelve days to reflect, which means that this review is going to be a little different in tone than those that have preceded it: after all, we've been able to see during the intervening time what the real effects have been on different candidates, which is basically nothing, but we can still talk about what was said.

in terms of the overall impression i had, there are a few things that stood out:

environmental disaster :: now-former candidate jay inslee was the first to remark on the absence of questions about the environment. by the end of the night, i imagine inslee [who is likely a shoo-in for head of the epa if a democrat is elected in 2020] must have been apoplectic and i was as well. there is no greater problem facing america or the world than the creeping spectre of climate change and i don't care how often it's been discussed, it needs to feature prominently at every single debate and town hall. a candidate who doesn't have a strong strategy for this is a waste of time. and shame on the media across the board for not illustrating how climate change is linked to other issues, such as the flight of people from central america towards the united states.
this is getting old :: it's time to stop asking candidates if they feel their advanced age is an impediment to doing the job of president. yes, it does look like the current guy has some serious static in the attic going on but that was evident in the 2016 campaign and people still voted for him. the oldest candidate on the democratic stage, senator bernie sanders, has the greatest support among young people. if they don't think it's an issue and the senator doesn't think it's an issue, then it isn't a fucking issue. one of the moderators brought up that former president jimmy carter said that he doesn't think he could have taken on the burden of being president in his seventies? that's great but guess what? not everyone is the same. i do happen to think that it's time to start transitioning away from the elder statespeople, given that millennials now outnumber them and have a greater stake in the future. but if these men and women think that they have the energy and acumen to be president, we need to take them at their word until their behaviour tells us otherwise. insisting that it's something that should be considered an issue is ageist. [hat tip to tulsi gabbard for calling this out.]
hot stuff :: i don't know what the deal was with the stage and the lighting but i really did not need to see three hours of upper lip sweat. this was a recurring problem in the republican 2016 debates and i did not miss it. the bloom of sweat evident on many candidates made them look shifty [although not outright ill, the way it did some republicans four years ago] and that doesn't help anything. turn up the bloody air conditioning. put fans around the stage [put them near the ground if your worried about hair malfunctions]. shove ice packs in these poor people's pants if you have to.
bernie blackout :: ok, media, this is just getting stupid. all of the discussions focused on biden versus warren when sanders is either a close third or second behind biden in national and local polls. yet the only thing that's been covered in any detail about his campaign is the goddamn heart attack. we get it, believe me, big media owners don't like bernie or his success. but when you have someone talking solely about the biden-warren race standing in front of a screen that shows that sanders is a completely viable candidate, it's just insulting.
we talked about this :: back when the bar was sufficiently low to allow twenty candidates to qualify for debates, i thought we all agreed that having ten people on a stage was no way to allow proper discourse to take place. i'm thrilled that the democratic party has made the debate stage accessible. i'm thrilled that the rules allow a lot of voices in. but for the love of god, did you have to pile everyone in one night? this was literally the opportunity for you to give candidates a real opportunity to express themselves in-depth, which everyone has agreed has not happened thus far. but oh no... having whittled the number of qualifiers down, the party just had to go with a one-night presentation, rather than spreading things out over two nights. why??? why???? and more importantly: why????? no one wants to watch three hours of a dozen people competing for the title of "best soundbite". put this in a format that educates us on the candidates' positions or don't have the debates at all.

and now, onto the candidates, with an additional look at how they've fared in the wake of the debate and a look at the media reaction.

did themselves good

bernie sanders :: i'm often unable to muster the energy and wits that the senator from vermont had on the night and i haven't had a heart attack. if you needed an example of why the question about age was a load of crap, you need only have kept your eye on sanders. i've said several times that debates aren't his thing but this is the strongest performance i think he's ever given. he hammered on his key points, chiefly universal healthcare and was more effective than his progressive rival elizabeth warren in terms of explaining the implementation of a progressive agenda. his takedown of joe biden over his support for the iraq war was just savage and the media has missed the resonance of that comment with younger voters. and by "younger" i mean everyone from eighteen-year-olds to middle-aged gen x'ers. the young voters who opposed the iraq war when it started are now in their forties and their opinion hasn't grown more charitable with time. nor have subsequent generations felt any better about it. heart trouble? what heart trouble? bernie's heart and head seem in fine working order and he was straight fire, even though the media still refuses to give him the air time his position in the race so richly deserves. the man who addressed tens of thousands in his first major rally since his health scare didn't seem in any way concerned about the lack of media attention, though. he seemed like a champion.

andrew yang :: he's not always at his best on the debate stage but yang was as on his game as he's ever appeared on this night. the chief reason was that he seemed really on the ball in areas where his opponents just weren't: he was able to give a cogent, effective argument for why wealth taxes haven't worked in other countries and why other countries have had more success with value-added taxes. others can beat the drum of doom over tax increases [more on that later] but someone who's able to talk about what works in the real world, particularly someone who's had the sort of business success that yang has, seems like a breath of fresh air. yang also showed some real guts in his answer on foreign interference in american elections by calling out the fact that the united states itself has interfered in foreign elections. if it's wrong, it's wrong and if the u.s. is going to point the finger at russia, it also needs to acknowledge that it's done some pretty heinous things. he also showed some real acumen on the subject of america's drug problem and the need to reclassify it as a health rather than a criminal issue. once again, he seemed to know what had been done in other places in the world, which is a perennial weak point for american politicians. but andrew yang's greatest impact wasn't something that came from him at all; it actually came from the mouths of his opponents. julian castro, elizabeth warren and tulsi gabbard all talked about the concept of guaranteed basic income and no one in the media batted an eye. ubi has become a serious consideration and a topic of public interest and that is 100% because of andrew yang. it's not like he's alone in thinking this is a plan whose time has come: robert reich, an economist and former secretary of labour under bill clinton, has said that it's not just feasible but necessary, and other ubi supporters include nobel prize-winning economists milton friedman and peter diamond, ebay founder pierre omidayar, twitter founder jack dorsey, facebook founder and general pariah mark zuckerberg, and george h.w. bush cabinet members james baker and henry paulson. yang hammers on this idea the way that bernie hammers on medicare for all. both are important ideas but it's arguable that yang is the one who's breaking new ground.

amy klobuchar :: the prime directive for the night for every candidate whose initials weren't "e.w." was clearly to score a major hit against elizabeth warren. almost everyone took their shot but the only one who really seemed to put a chink in the massachusetts senator's armour was klobuchar. [i'd also like to take this opportunity to apologize for the fact that i have spelled senator klobuchar's name wrong in every instance of every post thus far.] her slightly goofy jokes still don't land but the overall impression is of a woman who is both down-to-earth and shrewd. while she has always presented herself as a candidate for the centre, someone who has been successful in trump country, she hasn't really explained what that means in terms of policy. nor has she been able to explain how she is different than other centrist candidates kamala harris, pete buttigieg and especially jor biden. this time, however, she was able to come up with some solid examples. whether or not you agree with her opinions is a matter of choice but no one did a better job than klobuchar of illustrating what the choice was. [her vulnerable point is that democrats in the "naturally moderate" states actually gravitate towards bernie sanders, but that's a discussion for a different time.]

came out even

julian castro :: i'm starting to feel like i'm the only person who thinks this guy is really good. i personally felt like he had one of the stronger performances of the night, but what he says just never seems to land. he doesn't even have the support of the latinx community in the southwest, which you would think would be easy. [that's not to say that people are just going to vote along racial lines but i have to think that his story has resonance for many latinx people in the region and that it represents the aspirations of many new and first-generation americans. plus, of course, he's from there.] castro is clearly flagging, having failed to get traction with any demographic, and this performance seemed like more of an audition for elizabeth's warren's running mate than anything else. but what can i say? he makes a good case for that, too. his comment that trump is putting children in cages at the border while letting isis fighters go free should have been the most reported sound bite of the night. the world just isn't fair.

elizabeth warren :: i personally think this woman is a bloody steamroller and the only reason i'm saying she came out even as opposed to doing herself good is that she's already showing such an upward trajectory that i just think that the debate didn't matter. news organizations leapt on the fact that she dodged [well...] the question of whether or not her medicare for all plan would result in a tax increase for middle-class americans. admittedly, she did struggle with the answer, which is simple enough: taxes will go up but this will be more than offset by the decrease in healthcare costs. i thought she missed a golden opportunity to say that her opponents [and the moderators] just didn't understand how universal healthcare works: by fixating on tax rates, they are playing into the hands of private insurers. the healthiest, happiest countries on earth are the ones with robust public healthcare. there is no excuse for america not implementing it other than being beholden to insurance companies. but she really wasn't able to articulate that and it's been the one stumble she's had in the entire campaign. the media's subsequent fixation on this is more indicative of their own support of insurance companies that buy advertising from them but it's sadly the only portion of her debate performance that got significant airplay. [her far more interesting take on why automation is at least partially a straw man when it comes to the fear of losing jobs- which it absolutely is- got no airplay.] biden may still be ahead in the polls but warren was the clear target in this debate. despite tough questioning, particularly from amy klobuchar, warren handled the position as perceived [although not literal] front-runner far better than biden had in the previous two meetings. despite the media's insistence that she'd had a major fall on healthcare, her polling numbers continue to move upwards.

joe biden :: what can i say? the man treads water like a pro. he benefitted greatly from not having to deflect attacks from all the other candidates, which gave him the chance to talk about what he actually believes. his commentary on gun control and why he supports it was both persuasive and incredibly moving, probably his strongest moment in any of the debates. at the same time, the most experienced person on the stage has a unique ability to make his experience seem like a liability. yes, bernie helped emphasize that with his comment on making the iraq war happen but biden generally doesn't need help in this department. after four years of incompetence, knowing what to expect and how to deal with it should be the most attractive quality in a candidate. now, biden is still leading in polls and in at least one poll conducted after the debate, had his widest lead thus far. but his recent fundraising letter highlights the problem he's having: people are ok with supporting him but they're not enthusiastic. [biden also seems to miss or discount the fact that some of his key points, such as trump spelling the end of nato, have literally no resonance for younger voters and may actually serve to harden them against him.]

tulsi gabbard :: this is a case of two extremes balancing enough to meet in the middle. now, the only thing that the media reported about gabbard was that she self-owned on the subject of syria and russia by bringing up the fact that the new york times indictment of her as a russian asset. that's been amplified in the last week by former candidate hillary clinton saying that gabbard is a russian asset who may screw up the 2020 election by mounting a third-party bid. [honestly, i think that idea is hogwash. presidential bids are expensive. gabbard doesn't have anything like that kind of money behind her and can't even reach the modest standards of support required to make the democratic debate stage, let alone the presidential stage. even if she were to join the green or libertarian party- the only even slightly viable third parties- it's highly unlikely that she would gain enough traction to get real visibility. and neither of those parties is likely to accept her views, although for differing reasons.] personally, i thought that representative gabbard performed reasonably well. the media seized on her position [and has revisited this in light of her public conflict with clinton] that america was involved in a "regime change war" in syria. many have been quick to point out that america did not get involved in syria with the aim of securing regime change. the thing is, that's a very grey area. america has for decades sought to diminish and depose the assad family and their involvement in the current war, while they may not have backed any particular group, it was clear that they did not want bashir al-assad returned to power. furthermore, while the u.s. might not have initiated this conflict, a civil war is by its nature a regime change war. now, that said, it's beyond dispute that gabbard has parroted russian government talking points in a number of interviews. if she's doing it on purpose, that does make her a russian asset, no matter how farfetched former secretary clinton's claims may have seemed. if this is something she's doing because she's naive and uninformed, gabbard has no business getting anywhere near the oval office. she's a strange candidate, stranger than voters are willing to accept.

cory booker :: he was there. he's always sincere, always hits his points about his fellow candidates fulfilling trump's wishes by arguing among themselves, always has an emotional appeal based on his experience as a citizen and mayor of an urban american centre. made the second most persuasive case for consideration as a vice presidential candidate after castro. his likability seems to have resulted in an increased number of media appearances but that's it.

beto o'rourke :: was also there. a little less than two weeks later, i can't remember a damn thing he said beyond the fact that he tag-teamed well with andrew yang on drug policy. [and seriously, that's a subject where basically the entire field is pretty solid.]

tom steyer :: this was most people's first exposure to the man who's been trying to get trump impeached for longer than anyone. steyer's appearance was less about trying to score points against his opponents and more about trying to justify his position on the stage. did he succeed? meh. many people, myself included, would have been happier to see him put his money into helping democratic candidates further down the ticket. on the other hand, his position as the nation's conscience for the last four years might give him the right to be heard. the idea of a billionaire hedge fund manager who saw the light and has determined that unfettered capitalism is a bad thing might play as either convenient ["you're happy to denounce it now that you've got yours"] or inspiring ["you got everything you dreamed of and realized it wasn't enough"]. i feel like steyer lasting power is entirely based on his ability to fund his campaign. he could stay in a long time or he could step back, help win the house and quite possibly end up in a position in an administration where he could bring about the changes that he seems to want.

did themselves harm

pete buttigieg :: and this is where the wheels started to come off. actually, the wheels started to come off a few days before the debate when buttigieg gave an interview dismissing small donors as being equivalent to pocket change in a national campaign. yes, many democrats are taking money from well-funded political action committees, including the reviled super-pacs, but insulting small donors is fucking heresy in this day and age and one would expect the perennially savvy mayor pete to know that. indeed, this debate saw him take on elizabeth warren and lose. by trying to position himself as the candidate of practicality and moderation, buttigieg once again ended up saddled with defending the status quo on healthcare and taking the soft road on gun control. these aren't views that he's just developed but it's the first time when he's really had to put himself out there and present himself as an alternative to the progressive wing of the party. the result? amy klobuchar did it much better. the biggest concern that people have had about the silver-tongued mayor has been his lack of governing experience. his performance at this debate showed that the concern is completely legitimate, as he was unable to articulate how he would actually implement a lot of his policies. so, yes, the man has some learning to do and the statements he's made since the debate have only served to reinforce this idea. my completely unsolicited advice to him is that he should drop out sooner rather than later. if he gets out while he still has some of his shine, his endorsement becomes a prize, especially in light of the fact that the endorsement of alexandra ocasio-cortez, almost inarguably the greatest prize on the progressive side, is already given.

kamala harris :: a lot of people looked at harris in this debate and still saw someone presidential, clever, witty and intellectual. i don't disagree with them. the thing is, i also saw someone who was trying to recreate her breakthrough moment from the first debate by taking on elizabeth warren and it didn't go well. her strongest attack on warren was over the issue of whether or not the latter believed donald trump should be banned from twitter because of his outrageous statements and dishonesty. sure, that's an argument you can have but it is absolutely not an issue of pressing concern to anyone in the united states with the possible exception of donald trump. the more people have time to reflect on harris's takedown of biden a few months ago and the more of her they see, the more contrived that spectacular moment looks. does that make it less powerful? no, not really. but does it help her that she always seems to be chasing after that tv moment, that soundbite that people will remember? absolutely not.

i feel the need to emphasize that despite my dividing of candidates into positive, neutral and negative groupings, i don't feel like this debate moved the needle at all. in fact, i believe that it has had less impact on the public imagination than either of the previous two debates. i feel a bit badly for saying that because i also think that this was the forum where moderators demanded the most from participants in terms of hard policy. unfortunately, that's not what people respond to, so even within the hierarchy of winners and losers [in anyone's opinion, not just mine] there was a tendency to hear what one wanted to hear, meaning that the debate served to entrench support for every candidate. the number of candidates- too fucking many to appear on one stage- and the [probably correct] perception that there are a lot of democrats who are open to changing their support are both reasons for a lot of candidates to stay in the race; things could break for them at any second and a wave of momentum could happen out of nowhere. the thing is, with so many candidates involved and being forced into a forum where they're all talking at the same time, it's difficult for any wave to create more than a ripple.

imperfect ten

2019-09-14T19:54:00.001-04:00

who here would make a better president than donald trump?

whatever you've heard about the democratic contenders' debate that happened thursday, i would hereby like to tell you to ignore it and, if you have the time, go and watch as much of it as you can [stand]. the biggest story coming out of the debate should really be the appalling talking points that the mainstream media have latched onto, especially the ten-second battle between julian castro and joe biden over healthcare. that literally might have been the least consequential thing that happened all night and i'm including the ad breaks.

ten candidates is still ~~too many~~ a lot but this is the first time that we've had the heaviest hitters all hitting each other. at the same time, they also took somewhat stronger shots at donald trump than they had before [some more than others]. the debate was a full three hours but, unlike the cnn debates where i spent the last half hour or so throwing money at my television in a desperate bid to bribe the moderators to wrap it up quickly, this one held my attention for the duration. i feel like the credit for this goes to the organizers and the moderators [more on that in a moment]. it also makes me retroactively more critical of the teams behind the first two debates, although i still maintain that criticism of them was overblown.

in the midst of watching and tweeting and talking to people about what was being said, i didn't end up taking notes. i figured that my notes had just been a little boost and that i'd remember everything that needed to be said but... you can see where this is going. so my commentary isn't quite as detailed as i like it to be. the greatest impression left on me was that with all the strongest performers on stage, they battled to a draw. the mainstream media has zeroed in on the castro insult as a disaster and others have pointed to an underreported response from biden but it's difficult to argue that anyone was seriously off their game throughout. on the other hand, this likely means that even the slight fluctuations we saw in the wake of the first two debates won't materialize after this one.

i'll get to the candidates in a minute but as has become my custom, here are a few general observations:

the a-team :: a round of applause to the abc moderation team, in particular, linsey davis and jorge ramos. the questions in this debate were much more substantive and they generally avoided the detestable habit of trying to pit one candidate against another in order to ginn up arguments. although they did shut down candidates who used more than their allotted time, they seemed less disruptive about doing so. it wasn't perfect, of course, but it was a noticeable improvement. it would be shocking if ramos didn't make appearances in future debates but please make sure that davis does as well, dnc.
down in flames :: i can't even imagine how abc greenlit an ad that featured the image of alexandria ocasio cortez being set on fire. it would be gross at the best of times but when you have open death threats being levelled against women like her and ilhan omar, it is also grossly irresponsible. the ad didn't actually air in canada so imagine my confusion when, as i was thinking about how much better the debate was this time around, i saw #boycottabc trending on twitter. but now that i know, those tweeters had a point. hey, abc, if you're going to open your airwaves to this sort of thing, i expect to hear you give kathy griffin a huge apology for being part of the backlash against her when she posed for a photo with a fake severed trump head.
barks and bites :: we all know that the 24-hour news world has made news shallower rather than more comprehensive and that the sound bite rules the roost more than ever. [seriously, there are more substantive things being written in twitter threads than are appearing on a lot of cable news outlets.] but the aftermath of this debate has made one thing clear: the media make no distinction between sound bites that express something profound or informative in a concise way and those that are what i call "sound barks", that are just about the noise being made and have no weight but are designed to make the news cycle. beto o'rourke saying that he's coming for your ar-15s and ak-47s is a key moment; kamala harris telling the president to go back to watching fox news is not. both statements are perfectly acceptable in a debate but that doesn't mean they deserve to be repeated on a loop.

now this next part is tricky. as i said before, i don't think any candidate made any major headway and i find that the media coverage has really missed the mark on this one. that said, media coverage often has as much or more to do with the reactions of the wider public, so i've tried to at least accommodate that into my comments.

did themselves good

beto o'rourke :: now this is the guy that had people all excited in texas last year. although he spoke less than anyone except for andrew yang, he made the most of every second. beto originally emerged as a popular figure by taking on the nra and political obsequiousness to them, so it's no surprise that he owned the topic on the night. he still strikes me as a bit of a lightweight when it comes to policy overall but you definitely got a better sense of why he inspired people in his home state. this is one where the media and i seem to be in agreement. is he going to win? no. but he makes a strong case that he should be in the conversation for the future. although he's ruled out running for the other texas senate seat [damn him] i wouldn't be entirely surprised to see him take a crack at the governorship when it comes up. more presidents have been former governors than former senators.

elizabeth warren :: i've said it before and i'll say it again: this woman is the embodiment of the expression "slow and steady wins the race". although a lot of people [men] find her tone a little too school-teacher-y, i think there are a lot of people who appreciate that she sounds calm. we need calm. it's not an accident that biden was more focused on her than on bernie sanders, even though it's sanders who's closest to him in polls. her biggest accomplishment on the night may be that she was better able to articulate her policies than sanders, without ever having to take him on directly. the media are finally coming around to the idea some of us noticed a while ago: she is running a perfect campaign and isn't getting too bothered about what anyone else is doing.

cory booker :: struck a good balance between sharp and compassionate. no one in the race speaks as sensitively about the experience of urban america and america has an increasingly urban population. [the whole world does, actually, which is a problem but not one there's room to discuss right now.] although he's clearly a centrist candidate, his centrism isn't that of a biden or a klobouchar, who are more focused on the heartland. i find that he relies too heavily on his charm and not enough on his policies but that may be enough to keep him in the race for longer than his current polling would have one believe. he's the best at condensing what needs to be said into sound bite form [although he's also guilty of frequent "sound barks"] and that means that when he does well, the media responds.

came out even

amy klobouchar :: on the bubble between holding her own and doing herself some good, i just didn't feel the candidate most proud of being a moderate made enough of an impression to get a major boost and at this point, she really needs one. she's polling low in iowa and that is the exact sort of place where she should be doing her best. she landed literally the only palpable hit against bernie sanders by calling out issues that existed with his own healthcare bill. whether you think these are legitimate issues depends more on where you already stand on healthcare than on the candidates themselves but sanders has been nearly bulletproof to date. the thing working against her is that she doesn't get that declaring oneself a "moderate" now sounds a bit old-fashioned. harris, buttigieg and booker are all moderates but they appear to be fresher and more exciting because they don't push the idea that they're part of a continuum that's existed for ages. the voters who like hearing that someone is a moderate are older and are going to gravitate to biden.

pete buttigieg :: this may sound repetitive but i feel like i have to grade the mayor on a curve. far and away the most articulate speaker on the stage whenever he's appeared and rivalling warren for the title of smartest person in the room, he rarely makes a misstep. i did feel that he made one tonight when he came way too close to embracing the status quo on healthcare. he had a strong moment that has gotten media play [more than it really deserves] when he reined in his fellow candidates, tutting them for arguing too much among themselves. media pundits have stressed the importance of candidates defining themselves relative to one another but when everyone is shouting at once, that's not helping define anything. the youngest candidate on the stage continues to look like an adult in the room.

bernie sanders :: all the vermont senator ever has to do at these debates is deliver a solid, unexceptional performance and he'll be just fine. he's not the strongest debater, especially in a field with so many other candidates, where he has to spit out his thoughts in short blurbs. bernie is at his best when he's either giving longer-form speeches or distilling them into easy-to-remember catchphrases. doing a minute or two at a time hides both his intelligence and his humour. that said, his supporters know at this point that this isn't where he shines and he can generally get enough of his views across to keep interest and curiosity at a healthy level. and that's good because that's all he's getting out of these debates. mainstream media coverage of him is virtually non-existent. after the debate, msnbc treated audiences to a breakdown of polling numbers for joe biden and elizabeth warren, despite the fact that it's sanders, not warren, who's polling second and has been for the entire time that all three candidates have been in the race. that's not just obnoxious, it's manipulative and it's dangerous. it is literally fake news by omission. the mainstream media hate candidates who break their comfortable moulds; they did the same thing with ron paul in 2012. acting like such candidates don't exist, however, reinforces the feeling among their supporters that everyone is lined up against them. that's a disgusting sentiment for a media outlet to push.

kamala harris :: i found myself of two minds about senator harris on thursday. she is very much at ease in a debate. she comes in looking prepared and poised and is extremely sharp at picking apart her opponents when their arguments don't pass muster. she must have been terrifying in a courtroom. i feel like no one has done a better job of convincing me that she could take down trump in a debate or on the campaign trail, even though other people are perceived as more electable. on the other hand, she seemed hamstrung by some of the tougher questions she got. her attempt at explaining why she rejects sanders' healthcare bill when she previously co-sponsored it and her answer about the contradictions between her current position on criminal justice reform and her actions as a prosecutor and attorney general were weak. she sounded like the sort of vacillating politician who changes policies depending on the audience, which is exactly the thing that people have come to loathe. she had several lines that were catchy but contrived and it remains to be seen how most people perceived them. [i lean towards contrived.] so which kamala harris ruled the night? well, she benefits from the fact that both of her worst moments don't fit easily into sound bites, so they aren't likely to get a lot of attention or repeat plays from the media. that said, she did nothing to ease the concerns of black and latinx voters, for whom her record as a prosecutor is a major stumbling block.

did themselves harm

andrew yang :: after being frozen out of the first debate almost entirely, the entrepreneur acquitted himself very well in the second. this time around, he was allotted less time than any of the others but that might have been a good thing for him. once again, he hammered on his issue of guaranteed basic income, which is a very solid idea, but he made it seem too gimmicky and game show-like by announcing that he was going to run his own pilot project with ten random american families. making his campaign seem more like a game show is a bad look for someone who presents himself as the opposite of donald trump. although he can be charismatic, some of his humour seemed uncomfortable and awkward. most damaging, however, was the fact that he was so clearly out of his depth when he had to talk about issues outside of his immediate area of expertise.

joe biden :: no matter what the party brass and the media say, biden had a bad night. early on, he was solid enough but the wheels started to come off as time wore on. he might have gained some sympathy when julian castro hinted that he was losing his memory but his later response talking about record players and radio seemed to make castro's point seem pretty on the mark. but his biggest mistake might be one that the mainstream media missed entirely in their post-game analysis: the substance of that bizarre "record player" answer was that he was saying poor families, especially poor black families, weren't capable of taking care of their children without government assistance. and it wasn't just that his language was rambling: there is literally no other way to interpret what he said. luckily for all of us, while the mainstream media congratulated him on his strongest performance to date, a few journalists on social media, particularly anand giridharadas, heard the comments loud and clear and wasted no time calling biden out. giridharadas said that biden's statement should be disqualifying on its own it was so bad. although it was missed/ ignored at first, biden's show of passive racism actually seems to be getting more traction by the hour. that said, biden enjoys a huge advantage with both black and latinx voters and it's unclear if they are pissed off enough to shift their support to another candidate. in polls, biden still looks like the best bet to beat trump and that is the number one priority for a lot of democrats. biden's biggest problem is that he seems to have no potential for growth. if he's going to remain in the lead, he needs both sanders and warren to stay in the race as long as possible and for them to start doing damage to each other. if he can't win people over, his strong polling against trump is going to be of limited use.

julian castro :: it pains me to put him here because 95% of his performance was excellent, even if he didn't do quite enough to distinguish himself from the likes of booker and harris. but all you're going to hear about is the two seconds where he asked joe biden whether he had forgotten what he said just minutes before. the media gleefully pounced on the fact that castro's recollection of what biden said was incorrect, meaning that he's the one who couldn't remember. and they've been a lot more eager to get angry at castro for being ageist than they to castigate biden for being racist. they've also conveniently left out the fact [both in terms of commentary and in terms of editing] that castro's original criticism was that biden was invoking barack obama's name when it was advantageous but brushing off wrong-headed policies as being obama's alone. and that was something biden literally had said just moments before [but which isn't getting any airplay]. i'm not defending castro's veiled accusation of senility: i don't care if biden did show some evidence of it himself later on, such language has no place in civilized debate and introducing it on a national platform is to start the descent to trump level. given the chance to walk the comment back a little, the former cabinet secretary has stood by his words, which is worse than the original statement. but castro is a far better person and a far better candidate than he's being framed as in the wake of that comment. it's too bad no one's going to give him the chance to show that going forward.

i think we can expect that the field will be winnowed further down before the fourth debate, which is scheduled for next month. i wouldn't necessarily count on anyone who was on the stage tonight backing down, however. it may seem like too many cooks are still working on the political broth but it's questionable if any of them has really dealt a death blow to their chances. that may change if any of the ten fails to make it to the next debate but for now, there's not a lot of reason for any of them to outright call it quits.

worldwide wednesdays :: peace and prosperity through... socialism?

2019-09-11T11:00:00.000-04:00

every year an organization called the institute for economics and peace produce a highly regarded report that rates 163 countries on their relative level of peacefulness: the global peace index. i happened across an online post about this year's report that made me do a double-take. although i'm a frequent critic of the united states, i am aware that they are one of the most developed countries in the world; nearly all americans of all are functionally literate, most have access to healthcare, most have access to potable water, freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution, etc. many, many countries can't boast these things. so imagine my shock when i saw in the summary of the report that the united states ranked 118th of 163 countries. i couldn't imagine how that was true and, indeed, it was wrong.

they rank 128th.

how the hell is it possible that the united states is less peaceful than countries like honduras [consistently one of the most violent places in the world due mostly to ingrained corruption and the central american drug trade], rwanda [which still suffers aftershocks from the genocide of 1994] and papua new guinea [where rape is pretty much a national health emergency]? for that answer, it's important to look at what's actually being reported.

first and foremost, peacefulness is not the same as safety. much of the reporting on the gpi report conflates the two terms but "peacefulness" includes factors beyond those affecting security of the person and property. if you want to evaluate just the safety of a particular country, you could look at the united nations data on global homicide rates. [write ups and interactive data tool] while homicide is hardly the only safety concern in the world, but it is the most basic measure when people think of how safe a country is. looked at from that perspective, the united states fares much better, with a homicide rate around that of kenya. ok, that might not sound great [especially considering that areas of kenya have seen terrorism and domestic conflicts spill over from neighbouring somalia] but it's at least better than finishing 128th out of 163.

among wealthy nations and regions, the united states has far and away the highest homicide rate, more than 50% higher than their closest "competitor". but they generally fare much better than lower-income countries. however, as the wealthiest country in the world [in terms of gdp], you would expect it to have one of the lowest [if not the lowest] homicide rates in the world. why? because according to the u.n., poverty is the single most common contributing factor to homicide in the world. now, it doesn't necessarily line up but other than the united states*, wealth [again, calculating by total gdp, see earlier link] does generally correspond to fewer murders. so why is the u.s. punching, stabbing and shooting so far above its weight in terms of homicides? the answer to this is linked to why the u.s. has such a terrible performance on the peace index.

class, i would like you all turn scroll to page 13, figure 1.2 of your global peace index. there you will find a list of the factors taken into consideration when calculating the relative peacefulness of a state. homicide rates, terrorist activity and internal conflicts- the things that many of us think of when we wonder how safe a place is- are among the criteria. and if you looked at those factors only, the united states wouldn't fare too badly. however, it's easy to identify places where the u.s. just tanks:

possession of nuclear and heavy weaponry
involvement in external conflicts
access to small arms
military expenditure as a percentage of gdp
armed forces enrollment rate
incarceration rate*

the u.s. outperforms basically everyone in those categories. america might not be as involved in foreign conflicts as it was during the cold war but that's a pretty low bar. there's iraq and afghanistan, of course, but they also contribute troops to a large number of ongoing conflicts and security threats and they continue to play the role of team america: world police both because they want to and because others want them to. [and by "others" i mean not just other nations but other players like large corporations.] these conflicts and the importance of military involvement to the overall economy drives up the rate of investment in the military and drives the need for higher recruitment. so right there, you have a trifecta of things that drag america's rating down.

the number of people in american prisons, especially young men and even more especially young african-american and latino men, is a national embarrassment. other countries imprison people less often and for shorter periods of time and they still have lower crime rates. a criminal record excludes people from certain types of employment and can limit their ability to find housing. and the prison system in the united states is a whole ass mess that we can't get into here but the important thing is that it is not structured to break the cycle of poverty and crime or to prevent recidivism.

and that brings us to the guns. ok, if you look at other posts on this blog tagged "gun control" you'll be able to find a lot of things i've written on the subject. it's pointless for me to go through all the reasons that having easy access to firearms [and many would say that access doesn't end with "small arms"] is dangerous. and the u.s. wants everyone to have guns. blind people? check. crazy people? check. people on terrorist watchlists? yup, that too. firearms account for the majority of homicides in the u.s. [see p. 20 of the u.n. report linked above] and no one is surprised.

but how do those things make a country less peaceful?

i'm glad you asked. [they didn't, you just want to write about it. -ed.]

being involved in foreign conflicts makes enemies. people in other countries start to hate you and people in your own country hate people they think come from countries where americans are getting killed. canada has an increasing problem with domestic terrorism in the form of white nationalist groups but our reputation abroad is generally pretty solid because we haven't involved ourselves in external conflicts very often and when we have, it's often been in the form of relief and rebuilding work. yes, we did manage to fuck that up a bit in the 90s but not too many people around the globe stay up at night dreaming of how to punish canada for its transgressions. america can't say the same.

the so-called "prison-industrial complex" perpetuates cycles of poverty and makes little effort to rehabilitate criminals. both of those things make it more likely that people who commit one crime will commit others. ergo, the country is less peaceful [and less safe].

and yeah, a country where everyone is encouraged to have their own personal arsenal is going to be a country where people are a bit edgy about getting shot. [remember, the statistics above are only for homicides. they don't include accidental deaths by firearm.]

this presents an interesting conundrum: the united states is relatively safe, especially compared to less developed areas of the world, but it is not peaceful. in a way, this is a warning call that america will become less safe over time. the areas where the country takes a hit in terms of peacefulness are the areas that will ultimately make its people less safe. as things get less peaceful, of course, it's reasonable that people will start to feel edgier and threatened. [if you look at the gpi report, they specifically mention that people tend to judge peacefulness pretty accurately; they feel tense because they have reason to be tense. but that doesn't mean they understand what's making them feel that way, especially when they have supposed leaders who want to direct their fear and anger in a way that benefits their own agenda.

while researching this post, i came across another report, the legatum prosperity index, that touched on comparative safety and security around the world. this report touches on many issues, including things like the climate for business. interestingly, though, their view of prosperity isn't just about money; it includes a lot of information about elements of the social safety net that connect to a happier, healthier population. i found it particularly interesting because it gives a perspective on what elements tend to go together and what elements don't necessarily relate. [the linked page allows you to see each ranking by category, which is really cool.]

continuing our focus on security, it probably shouldn't surprise anyone that a nordic/ scandinavian country tops the list: norway. the biggest surprise may be that the other nordic countries only rank 9th through 12th. japan and singapore, home to the safest cities in the world, finish second and third. in fact, if you look at all of the prosperity measures, they are dominated by what i like to call "the usual suspects": the five nordic countries [norway, sweden, finland, denmark and iceland] and new zealand, with honourable mentions to canada and australia. [i'm increasingly convinced that statistics of this sort could be compiled into a book called "scandinavians are just better than the rest of us".] when you compare these figures to the gdp per capita, it's clear that wealth is a major factor: norway and iceland, for instance, have among the highest gdp per capita in the world. personal freedom also seems to help: canada, new zealand, iceland, norway, and sweden are all in the top ten in that category. looking at overall prosperity, every single one of the "usual suspects" is in the top ten except iceland, who rank 11th.

so what doesn't necessarily correlate? a business-friendly environment. the united states wins this category, which should come as no surprise. they're all about being open for business. but when all factors are taken into consideration, they only finish 17th. consider that for a moment: the country with the most wealth ranks 17th in terms of prosperity. in their defence, the americans are fond of saying that it's the country is wealthy because they are business-friendly and because they reject the sort of socialist programs that exist in countries like norway, sweden, canada, etc. but look at the rankings for business-friendliness: every one of the "usual suspects" [including canada and australia] rank in the top fifteen overall and only two [sweden and iceland] are outside of the top ten. and when you look at the overall economic quality, which takes into account things like foundations for growth, every single one of the five nordic/ scandinavian countries outperforms the united states. new zealand finishes only one place below them [still in the top fifteen]. so far from being weighed down by the chains of socialism, the countries with the most socialist policies in the world are both prosperous and relatively business-friendly. the united states, which has placed all its eggs in the business-friendly basket, fails in other areas.

it's worth noting that it's the category of "economic quality" that takes into account the potential for future prosperity. once again, the most socialist countries own this category, meaning that even business people see more opportunity there than in the united states. [that should scare every american politician.] what's clear here is that catering to business interests isn't enough: in order to be prosperous, you need to lead in a range of categories. moreover, being a capitalist haven that's set up to favour private business doesn't make you safe: countries that are safe tend to take care of their own. they avoid getting bogged down in foreign conflicts, imprison fewer people and they don't make firearms readily available to the general population. the result? those countries are both more peaceful and more prosperous**.

the bottom line here is that the united states is not at all peaceful and, given the size of their economy, not particularly prosperous. its people should absolutely demand more but to do that, it's important that they have the proper information. i highly encourage anyone reading this to share the reports i've linked here but here's my statement on the matter:

america, your economy is larger than any other country's but there are still more than a dozen nations where people are better off than you are. what's more, those countries lean more towards socialism; i don't mean communist russia and china, either. people are happier, healthier and more able to enjoy their after-tax income because the money they give back to the government is used to fund programs that make their lives easier. you're going to hear a lot in the coming months about "socialism". the fact is that there isn't a single socialist running for the presidential nomination in either major party but those who lean towards what your president and his party call "socialism" espouse views that reflect those of countries whose citizens are the happiest and healthiest on earth. and those countries don't stifle business and innovation: they prioritize it, it's just that it isn't the only thing they prioritize. so if you're sick of hearing about how scandinavia just does absolutely everything better, think about the benefits of being a social democrat. it works.

* let's bash on someone other than the u.s. for a moment: in terms of large economies with high homicide and incarceration rates, a number of sources [like this one] call into question the statistics provided by china. the fact that the world's second-largest economy is lying about its internal security and peacefulness does not let the united states off the hook for its failings. however, it is at least worth knowing that china's rankings should bear an asterisk like the one at the beginning of this paragraph.

** if americans want a country to look at for the future, they might want to consult their first lady rather than their president: slovenia leads the pack in terms of environmental measures and performs exceptionally well in education. it finishes in the top twenty in terms of security, personal freedom and "social capital", which measures things like the quality of community relationships and personal networks. despite being a tiny and still relatively new country, slovenia finishes just one place below the united states in the overall prosperity rankings.

it continues... [part two]

2019-08-02T18:12:00.001-04:00

i'm a day late on my latest review of liberal-con 2020 because i fell asleep at four o'clock yesterday afternoon and woke up at seven this morning. yes, folks, if you've ever wondered how i deal with chronic insomnia without going [more] insane, the answer is that every now and again, i sleep for basically an entire fucking day. poof. now i'm good for another six months of lying in the dark staring at my ceiling misery.

of course, now i'm back and [i think] conscious and, of course, i have things to say about part two of debate two: the moderatathon.

the key word i had in mind after watching the proceedings on wednesday night was: surprising. i felt that, for all the hype about biden vs. harris two, the spotlight very much shifted to other parts of the stage. the other surprising thing was that i felt like the overall performances were strong with most people doing no harm to their aspirations. but, as is my custom, let me start with a few overall points.

peanut gallery :: yes, there were flaws in the debate and the questions asked were not adequate to provide sufficient detail. and yes, people should be making these criticisms. however, some people need to chill the fuck out. seriously, the criticism is way over the top for something that should be treated only as an opportunity to sample the goods on offer, not as a way of plumbing the depths of each candidate's qualifications and policies. one of the things that annoyed me most on wednesday night was the twitter freakout over the fact that the topic of america's wars was brought up only at 10:15; the topic of gun violence wasn't brought up at all. which one is it that kills more americans per year? not once at any of the debates has the topic of food vulnerability among the poor or the dangers of repealing epa standards been broached. and discussions about issues like immigration [the number one issue for many voters] and healthcare have been woefully inadequate. you know why? because it's a bloody two-to-three-hour debate and you want to touch on as many topics as possible. if you went into significant depth on every subject, the debates would each be four days long. is that how you want to make your decision? who can stand on their feet and not go insane for four sleepless days? so yes, voice the criticisms. but calm the hell down and remember the framework in which moderators are forced to work. if you want to compare more detailed plans, check out the candidates' websites. [side note :: msnbc has been making a concerted effort to give air time to as many different candidates as they can. seriously, they have at least one candidate on per day. this includes time where they're interviewed as a candidate in order to give their broader policies and when they're called in to comment on specific issues. so watching a lot of msnbc, a practice endorsed by dom and me, is another way of getting to know the gang.]
lemon entry :: let me make a startling confession: i like don lemon. i liked him before he got in trouble a few years back for some admittedly stupid comments when people were portraying him as literally the worst thing on cable news. my feeling on him has always been that he's not an asshole and is a smart guy but that his brain-to-mouth filter is just made of wider mesh than most. stuff slips through when it shouldn't and people rightly criticize him. but those sudden bursts of truth are also what make him appealing. for every time he does something like ask a victim of bill cosby why she didn't fight back, there are twenty cases where he's said something about trump and conservatives that most people have shied away from. i don't know about others but i'm ok with that ratio. so i was a little excited to see him included in the moderators' panel this week because you just knew that he was going to drop something. and the man did not disappoint. in this case, it wasn't an excited slip of the tongue, either. in a scripted question, he flat-out called the president's notorious tweets and statements racist [which they are but the media has been unwilling to say as much]. trump went off on him for the statement [from the first night]. don's response? he said the exact same fucking thing on night two. i like don lemon. i stand by that statement.
the culling is coming :: as of today, fewer than half the current candidates have met the qualifications for the third debate, which takes place in september. i quite like the way that the democrats have structured their debates, gradually increasing the minimum requirements and basing it on a number of factors. there are a few candidates who are on the bubble and will probably sneak in but we can expect that, whether or not the candidates are still in the race, the next debate [also booked for two nights] will have a much more slimmed-down look.
saint obama :: i really wish people would stop talking as if the candidates were truly attacking barack obama without context. lawrence o'donnell hit the nail on the head when he said that the criticism is best perceived as an acknowledgment that the party can do better than it has in the past and that this is a hallmark of the democrats. [and should be a priority more than it is.] people tear the clintons apart because of "don't ask don't tell" [which was well-intentioned at the time] and the horrible criminal justice reform bill. criticizing mass deportations during the obama years is no different. if you're not challenging yourselves to be better, what the hell are you doing in politics?
joy to the world :: msnbc anchor and democratic party insider joy reid made a great point this week that needs to be amplified: black voters, especially in the south, are extremely pragmatic. they didn't support barack obama until they really started to believe he could win. so take joe biden's tremendous advantage with that demographic with a grain of salt. [sorry, this isn't strictly debate related but like i said, it deserves to be amplified.]

so, as to the candidates themselves...

did themselves good

cory booker :: that whole harris/ biden confrontation? well, it happened, but it was so overshadowed by booker-biden that no one is likely to remember it. booker was on fire for the bulk of the debate, even though he seemed to contradict himself by calling for unity within a breath of calling out biden. nevertheless, the man had an answer for everything and showed a solid knowledge of the history and platforms of his opponents. he also just seemed brimming with excitement and energy that the others lacked, while never getting over the top. he also dealt gracefully with the fact that his first answer was interrupted and momentarily drowned out by chants of protest against another candidate, which had nothing to do with him. the warm moment between him and governor jay inslee over the two of them being selected as the candidates with the strongest environmental policies was genuinely encouraging and made his comments about wanting to come together seem more authentic as a result. richly deserves to be included in the leadership conversation more than he has been.

andrew yang :: if likability were the principal quality required, the search would be over. yang is a ridiculously personable man and, after the stiffness of the first debate, he fully showed why he's developed a dedicated following known as the "yang gang". but aside from being funny and charming, he also did an inspired job of making the case for universal basic income in a way that's likely to turn the heads of even those who think such a plan sounds crazy. more than any other candidate, his supporters and his platform represent a real mix of democratic party ideas. he's one of the candidates who's on the verge of being invited to the next debate. i sincerely hope he makes it because, although he may present as a one-issue candidate, he's not wrong when he suggests that his issue has the power to transform america. [side note :: he's also not wrong when he suggests that the opposite of donald trump is an asian guy who loves math. although there are a number of total opposites to donald trump in this regard.]

tulsi gabbard :: i sincerely hope that joe biden sent congresswoman gabbard a big bouquet of flowers and an expensive box of chocolates because, insofar as progress was made against kamala harris in this debate, gabbard was the one who made it. she showed an awesome knowledge in particular of the issues many voters have with harris: her record as attorney general in california in prosecuting cases that many would now view as unfair and even racist. she was calmer and more articulate across the board and, while she didn't necessarily seem informed on all issues, she handled her weak areas better than before. [side note :: i'd also give points to the stylist who told her to show up in all white. as they doubtless expected, it made her stand out to even the most casual glance. plus it gave her a bit of a princess leia of the business world vibe. not germane to discussions of policy but a clever way to catch attention.]

kirsten gillibrand :: i'm glad that someone made it clear to her that she can't just shout over people and expect to appear like a leader. this time around, her sharp tone and dynamism came off as strong. she also appeared to have a much firmer grasp of a wider variety of issues, as well as being smarter, quicker on her feet, and tougher than she had before. her ability to throw a well-timed barb or relate a relevant story showed a charisma that's normally the purview of men- the wink and the smile- but she just bloody owned it.

came out even

jay inslee :: wisely focused on the environment, which is his key issue, and his record of accomplishments in this regard [and a few others]. most viewers, however, think of washington state as nothing but the hipster seattle area and will miss the fact that much of the state is rural and extremely right-wing, sharing more ideologically with adjacent idaho. that perception makes his accomplishments seem less impressive than they actually are. like a lot of politicians who have been successful at a state level, he lacks the charisma necessary to capture a wider audience, which is too bad, since he's obviously an intelligent and capable man. the bottom line is that he's not presidential material [at least for the moment] but if a democrat wins the white house in 2020 and he isn't made either director of the epa or secretary of the interior, it will be a travesty.

michael bennet :: as well as he presented himself in the first debate, this performance seemed like a rehash of a number of key points from that event and they lost effectiveness this time around. bennet does best when he's seen next to some or all of the "centrist cluster", where it becomes obvious that his concerns about straying to far to the left have a better grounding than the others. but with the wholesale meltdown of the centrists the night before, he just seems like a nice guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

julian castro :: although he technically had more minutes to speak in this debate than in the first, he made a lot less of an impact with them. he was oddly flat, with only one truly memorable moment, when he told joe biden that "some of us have learned from our mistakes" on immigration and deportation. it was the epitome of the phenomenon i mentioned earlier of democrats choosing to evolve. castro is intelligent, articulate and capable [side note :: also devastatingly handsome, not that that should count] but he may be just a little to cool and casual to stir strong feelings in many voters. he's another candidate who's on the cusp of qualification for the next round of debates and i sincerely hope he makes it.

kamala harris :: i quite honestly vacillated about whether she held her own or caused herself harm in this debate. clearly, she was nowhere near as strong and as commanding as in her first performance but it's not like she had some kind of critical failure. her weakest moment came when she gave a classic non-response to tulsi gabbard's well-researched criticism of her work as attorney general. the most important factor for her may have been the fact that joe biden just hadn't done the work he needed to really pin her down on difficult issues. the two of them debating healthcare policy, as important as it is, would have been lost on the vast majority of the audience who weren't familiar with the details of either candidate's plan. however, what came through loud and clear was that harris is no advocate for universal healthcare, at least in the short term, and that in itself is going to prove a difficult sell to a voter base who have increasingly looked abroad and thought "why the hell can't we have what they have?"

did themselves harm

bill di blasio :: i don't think that di blasio necessarily did his moribund campaign any harm here but his entire role seemed to be acting as a fourth moderator who only posed questions to joe biden. the tension between the two of them was literally the opposite of the feel-good moment between booker and inslee: borderline painful to watch. while he might have been responsible for some deservedly tough moments for biden, those will benefit other candidates because the fact is, he seemed more occupied with tearing down biden than with presenting his own case for the nomination. lost in the fray was a reasonable if not bulletproof explanation for why he had not taken action to fire officer daniel pantaleo, who murdered eric garner. [side note :: an internal nypd investigation has today recommended that pantaleo be fired.] di blasio was a fool to jump in at this time and does damage to himself the longer he stays in.

can't be evaluated

joe biden :: oh kate, is this the ultimate fucking cop out? no, it isn't. anyone who talks about whether joe biden did himself good or harm or stayed even in this debate is an idiot because the fact is that, despite having the most time to speak, the vast majority of it was spent on the defensive, which can't be said for any other candidate. the difference between what biden had to do and what anyone else had to do was so great that it barely qualifies as the same skill set. the man is the front-runner, so he went in with a target on his back. he has a far longer record than any other candidate, which means he's had more time to create solid accomplishments [which he has] and more time to make mistakes [which he has]. on the whole, i'd say that the night ended on more of a down note for him, particularly because of some devastating takedowns from castro [mentioned earlier], booker [especially where he chastised biden for using obama's name when it was convenient] and a perfect double team between harris and gillibrand. on the other hand, no candidate came anywhere near having to defend themselves as much or as often as he did. how well you think he did is entirely dependent on your feelings about him going in. certainly, his performance early on showed the feisty biden that fans will love, right down to him invoking "malarkey", the term that had us all bowing before him in his 2012 debate against paul ryan. according to the first post-second-debate poll released today, biden maintained and possibly extended his lead. but to me, that means that this round of debates left people even more uncertain who to choose and that they've therefore decided to park their vote with the former vice president. no one's support is more vulnerable but no one looks as safe a bet.

and so ends the long, hot summer of political foreplay. the next time we meet is mid-september and much will have changed by then. or not. with so many players on the field, even those with single-digit polling have a case to forge ahead, especially considering that it's unclear if the two leading candidates are the true choices or just indicators of where the democratic voter base is trending [centrist vs progressive]. the candidates now have six weeks to get down to it and/ or make asses of themselves [although this will be tricky, given what's in the white house]. the next round of debates, though, will likely be crucial to the futures of many candidates, not least because there's a genuine chance we get them all on one night. that means that we get to have the standoff that the party needs: sanders/ warren vs biden/ harris/ klobouchar. it's also likely to include candidates who for various reasons don't easily fit easily into either the centrist or progressive mould [booker, buttigieg, castro, yang]. and it might also feature marianne williamson. [side note :: i wouldn't mind seeing billionaire philanthropist tom steyer get a chance on stage. he's a legitimately interesting non-politician candidate who was wwwaaaaaaaaayyyyyy out ahead of anyone else on the subject of impeachment. he also has an argument for being the opposite of trump in that he's a new yorker from a privileged- although nowhere near as privileged as trump- background who made it financially big- bigger than trump and certainly more by his own work. but having been one of those big scary financier types, he's re-evaluated his life and turned his mind and his wealth to making the world a better place. i see his voice as being more interesting than any of the current centrists.]

the important thing for all interested supporters to keep in mind is this: any one of these people will make a far better leader than the orange turd that currently befouls the white house. [i support kirsten gillibrand's clorox policy for the oval office. i'd also suggest an exorcism.] there are lots of interesting debates to be had and not just those that happen on television.

p.s. :: i've fielded a few questions about who my preferred candidate is. the truth is that i don't know. as a "far-left" progressive according to most online surveys i've taken, you can figure out whose policies i agree with. however, i'm also a bit of a pragmatist and i realize that electing a centrist is less of a threat if one elects more progressives to congress and the senate. seriously, a centrist democrat in the white house becomes something different depending on what they have to work with. [yes, it's true that they run the risk of losing ground if they try too hard to appease centrist conservatives but let's be honest: there are no more centrist conservatives. even if you limit yourself to considering who hasn't retired, you're left with the people who have supported trump's most odious policies and that means that every single one of them is vulnerable to a grassroots campaign that galvanizes voters who might otherwise stay at home. this is where criticism of the obama administration is richly deserved: the importance of maintaining a majority in the house and senate was ignored in favour of maintaining support for the president in every election from 2008 to 2016.]

it continues... [part one]

2019-07-31T16:48:00.000-04:00

together forever?

so we're back at it with the democratic debates. last night saw cnn take their first crack at presenting ten candidates on one stage after msnbc led the charge last month. a lot of people were critical of the first debate because it seemed there were moments when moderators got such tunnel vision about keeping things moving that they stopped thinking about what was happening on stage. [the prime example being kamala harris having to insist that she be allowed to speak on the issue of racism, being the only person of colour on stage.] the other problem that many identified was that the time given to candidates wasn't even close to equal. i feel like cnn wasn't a lot better with the former, although they avoided any serious gaffes, and that they did an excellent job of fixing the latter. [that said, some of the outlying candidates might be wishing they hadn't had as much time as they did.] as with last time, i'll start off with a few general observations.

how important is length, really? one of the reasons that cnn was able to give candidates more time was that the debate itself was longer. giving everyone more time to talk about policies is important if your goal is to allow the public to make an informed choice and at least we dispensed with those questions where candidates were being asked their plans on complex issues in two words or less. so those are good ideas... in theory. last month, the two msnbc debates were each a tight two hours, whereas last night, things stretched until around ten-thirty. i don't know if i'm alone in this but i felt every damn second of those additional thirty minutes. i like to think i'm engaged but towards the end even i was only half there, more focused on a text conversation about a completely different topic. this brings me back to rachel maddow's comment from last time, that managing a debate with ten people at once was a prescription for failure. i fear she might be right. the democrats need to hope that some candidates drop out before the next round.

mean girls. "hey elizabeth, tim ryan says that you lay really smelly farts when you have pasta for lunch. what do you say to that?" i swear, that's the kind of question i was expecting by the end of the show. yes, there was a lot of policy discussed but the framing of the questions was often juvenile. mentioning one candidate in a question to another automatically triggered the rule that says a candidate has the right of rebuttal if their name is brought up. i realize that that's part of the reason that candidates got more time but the much easier and classier way to approach things would just have been to address questions to two candidates at a time.

so how did everybody do?

did themselves good

bernie sanders :: of the ten who were on last night, gets my vote for the person who learned the most from his mistakes in the first debate. while it helped that sanders had more time in this round, the real key was that he came out of the gate spitting fire. observers might make "crotchety old man" jokes but the fact is that this is the bernie that gets people excited. furthermore, a lot of his ire was directed at chopping away outdated tropes about social programs vs. financial responsibility. no one who went head to head with him came out a winner and a couple of his most pointed barbs are already among the most-replayed moments. in fact, only one person seemed to have a lock on how to keep pace with bernie last night...

elizabeth warren :: a lot of the pregame buzz was about whether the two top progressive candidates, longtime friends and allies, would be forced to turn on each other in order to consolidate the left-wing vote behind them. the short answer: no. the longer answer: could hardly have been further from the truth. rather, the two of them ran the show like a tag team, backing up each other's statements, calling bullshit when centre-right candidates distorted their arguments and more importantly, calling out when the moderators' questions were predicated on republican talking points. an image of the two of them embracing just after the debate circulated widely on twitter and reddit with captions like "this is the ticket" or just "please". personally, i don't think that a presidential ticket of two seventy-something white people from the northeast of the country is a great idea but watching the performances last night, i know that i want both of them involved in the next democratic government.

marianne williamson :: say what? yeah, the one dismissed as the hippie kook brought it to the second debate. unlike the first debate, where she came off as a little unhinged, this time she seemed to be an oddball with some real smarts. when she's on, her answers have a sort of laser clarity that is quite disarming. her real star moment for me came when she upended a question scripted to portray her as a typically entitled white lady; as the only candidate to have not just backed reparations to african americans but to have attached a figure to her promise, she was asked what gave her the right to make this decision without broad consultation. i assume she's been waiting to be asked that question for a while because her response, both in terms of justifying reparations and in terms of how she calculated the total range she proposed. [it's based on extrapolating the promise of "forty acres and a mule".] the answer got the biggest crowd reaction of the night outside of the introductions and google reported that her name was the most searched of any of the candidates over the course of the night. given the past statements and views that those searches are going to turn up, i suspect her golden aura is not long for this world, but she has at the least pretty much locked down a position at the next debate if she chooses to stay in the race.

amy klobouchar :: the sole woman presenting herself as a centrist candidate fared way better than the men last night. she wisely avoided confrontations with sanders and warren, choosing instead to articulate her own policies and once again point out that she wins with trump voters. although visibly nervous at first, she settled in well and made her case in a way that showcases her best qualities: pragmatism, determination, toughness. perhaps most crucially, she presented herself as running for something and not simply as an alternative of left-wing progressive.

came out even

pete buttigieg :: when it comes to the mayor, i almost feel the need to grade his performances on a curve because he's just such a strong speaker. at this point, i feel like the expectations are so high for his performances that he can be as good as he was here and it just seems average. along with sanders and warren, he smartly got in on the message that the party cannot cede the terms of the debate to the republicans, quipping that republicans were going to call them a bunch of socialists no matter what, so they shouldn't even dignify the invoking of the term with a response. although it was clear he was using the trifecta of his youth, military experience and christian faith to gain currency with different voting groups, it's not like those things aren't part of his life. he continues to stand out for his ability to answer questions straight on [e.g., if he would pull u.s. troops from afghanistan], which is a breath of fresh air in the world of politics. he often channels the comfortable ease of "no drama obama" which made his emotional [but never maudlin] answer on gun violence particularly effective.

beto o'rourke :: the good news for beto is that julián castro wasn't on the stage with him last night. the bad news was that pete buttigieg was. along with some unforced errors on o'rourke's part, his candidacy has been hampered by the fact that mayor pete has all the attributes that brought people to beto, but he just seems to handle things better. thus it was last night. o'rourke did fine. the fact that castro wasn't there to take him on meant that he sounded good on questions of immigration. his points were solid on a number of issues. at the end of the show, though, i was left thinking that i'd heard less from him than from any other candidate on the floor and i'm not sure if that's because he actually spoke less or because a lot of what he was saying seemed so very banal. [side note :: it would have to be the latter because, while o'rourke spoke less than he did in the first debate, he was right in the middle of the pack in terms of minutes allocated in the second.]

steve bullock :: a popular democratic governor from montana? bullock squeezed onto the stage courtesy of eric swalwell's exit and i was interested to see what he brought to the table. the answer was a lot of volume. i suspect that reactions to his performance will split based on whether or not people perceived his aggressiveness as strong or belligerent. i heard people voicing both opinions afterward. he was the only candidate from the party's right-wing smart enough to present his liberal bona fides up front: pro-choice, pro-healthcare, union-friendly. if a centrist candidate is going to carry the day, they're going to need to address the concerns of progressives. that said, if a centrist is going to carry the day, it's not going to be him.

did themselves harm

john delaney :: at times, it seemed like delaney's sole purpose was to serve as elizabeth warren's punching bag. then he'd take a punch from sanders. a proud centrist and critic of things like universal medicare, delaney has now shown us twice that he's probably the least equipped of the field to carry that banner forward. he's the flipside of beto o'rourke, in that i felt like i heard a hell of a lot from him last night and i didn't like any of it. in particular, he fell back on his discredited claim from the first debate that thousands of hospitals would close under a universal healthcare plan, and got rightly dismantled for it.

tim ryan :: second only to delaney in terms of shots taken for team centrist. just as he gifted tulsi gabbard a lifeline with a boneheaded response on al qaeda in the first debate, he stuck his foot in it by telling bernie sanders that he didn't understand a piece of legislation that sanders himself had authored. the sole bright spot for him is that it's sanders' response ["i wrote the damn legislation"] that will be remembered and not who he was talking to. well, that and the fact that delaney got more time to look bad than he did.

john hickenlooper :: remember what i said a few paragraphs back about grading pete buttigieg on a curve? i feel like i'm doing the same thing with hickenlooper. i went back and forth on whether he belonged in this category or the one previous because he wasn't terrible but when i look at his impressive record as colorado governor, i feel like he should come off as a hell of a lot stronger than he was here. instead, he tends to appear shallow, hung up on republicans using the term "socialist" to describe the democratic party and weirdly vague about actual policies despite having a history of implementing them. ultimately, his only memorable moment in the debate was an exchange with sanders that resulted in both of them throwing their arms in the air. other than that, people just didn't care.

the big takeaway from last night for me was that the party's progressive wing took every round against the centrists. that's not entirely surprising when you look at who was representing both "sides" [it's really more of a spectrum]. the centrist heavyweights- biden, harris and booker- will be taking the stage tonight. but i wouldn't expect part two to be about policy to the extent of last night's. once again pitting joe biden against kamala harris and adding cory booker to the mix is seen as a recipe for fireworks. [side note :: that may in itself be faint damnation: why should policy dominate only when progressives are on stage? why shouldn't the others have the same dedication to talking about how they would govern?]

ultimately, though, this field has got to get a lot thinner before people start to be able to make their final choice.

it begins [part two]

2019-06-28T23:56:00.001-04:00

it seems that most people have decided that last night's second installment of the great democratic debate was the empire strikes back of political debate sequels: still in the same established universe but more complex, more engaging, and overall better than what preceded it. [don't @ me. i'm right about empire.] the first night was lacking a true focal point or major fireworks. the moment between julian castro and beto o'rourke was the high tension point of the night but it was highly technical, having to do with which sections of the law needed to be repealed or removed and which sections protected which people. made castro look great and, of course, the subject is meaningful to him as the grandson of mexican immigrants and the sole latinx vying for a presidential nomination, but it wasn't the sort of thing that resonates with people on a gut level. last night, shall we say, had one of those moments.

the decision of which candidates would appear on which night was apparently made through a random draw, which meant that last night already looked to be more of a draw than the first because the two frontrunners in the race were both there. now, if you're a candidate who hasn't managed to gain traction yet, you were probably happier to have landed on night one because you knew going in that there was a good chance the big names would dominate the available time. and indeed, that was the case. if you were a potential primary voter, however, this gave you the opportunity to see the two men most likely to win the nomination [although most pundits will tell you that polls this far out mean sweet f*%k all] without having to commit yourself to four hours over two nights. [you watched at least an hour of pre-show and an hour and a half of post-debate analysis on each night. the debates barely represent half of the time you committed to this. -ed.] [yes, but i'm nuts. -kate]

first off, let's talk about a few points on the proceedings themselves:

mission impossible. moderator rachel maddow said after the debate that having ten people on a stage at once was a crazy idea and one that should never be attempted by humans again. i can understand why she said that and i don't think that it's apparent to viewers how difficult it is to keep things moving on schedule in that sort of environment. at the same time, i don't know how else they could have organized things. spreading it out over more than two nights would have made it seem interminable [even for me]. i don't have an easy solution for this.
a word or two. having candidates try to answer policy questions in one or two words ["what's your first priority when you get into office?"] is a bad idea. none of them respected the limit and even with one or two sentences, there wasn't one person who came out looking good. moderators might as well have been asking the candidates to say what kind of tree they'd be. by comparison, republicans got asked in 2016 to say what woman they'd put on the u.s. $10, which is absolutely a question that can be answered quickly and requires very little explanation.
fair and balanced. candidate andrew yang reportedly believes that his microphone was shut off at one point. while that sounds a little conspiratorial, i can completely understand where he'd get the idea. i'm pretty certain i heard nothing from him between the first fifteen minutes and his closing statements. it's been reported that he got a total of three minutes debate time over two hours. again, i don't know how you fix that but it is completely unfair.

and now... the candidates:

did themselves good

kamala harris :: unlike the night before, thursday produced a very clear winner. i feel like kamala gave us a teaser of what we could expect at her speech to democrats over the weekend but i didn't hear anyone predicting that she'd command the stage in the way that she did. she started off getting out some good soundbites but things really started to take off when she took command of her unruly peers and cautioned that voters weren't interested in a "food fight" but in how candidates would help them put food on their tables. it was a fine zinger but more importantly, she came across as a strong leader, able to calm things down. and let's face it, we all want things to be calmer.

but nothing on either night compared to her showdown with vice president joe biden. it started off with her sharply telling chuck todd that, as the one african-american on the stage, she was bloody well going to speak on the subject of race when he tried to move on. and then... well, the video is everywhere and nothing i say is going to do it justice. it was clearly a rehearsed moment but it was delivered with such passion that it never seemed contrived. i imagine that even she was surprised at how well her punches landed.

no one came close to her performance and her biggest challenge at this point may be living up to the standard she's established for herself.

pete buttigieg :: mayor pete had lost a bit of his shine recently because of his handling of an officer-involved shooting in his town of south bend. however, the man with the trickiest name of the bunch did a great job of reminding everyone why he'd attracted so much attention. he spoke spanish briefly without seeming to pander to the audience. [the telemundo moderator addressed him in spanish and he responded. only castro seemed to have a better hold of the language among the candidates.] buttigieg's intelligence and articulateness were in full effect and when asked which international relationship he'd look to repair first, his "god knows who he will have pissed off in two years" was hilarious, as much because of his cool delivery as the line itself. he made a fantastic case for the progressive left reclaiming christian morality without seeming preachy.

but his big moment was when he was questioned about the shooting in south bend because he did something politicians rarely do: he owned up and took responsibility. i know that in the past americans have not appreciated this sort of reaction, seeing it as an admission of weakness. times have changed, though, and his straight-up admission of culpability seems to have been met with widespread praise and a sense of awe that a politician would actually do that. while he didn't escape without taking a couple of hits, his honesty made more of an impression.

i suspect he'll stick around for a while and he has to be a favourite to be picked as a vice presidential candidate because, let's face it, what we all want to see is him vs mike pence.

eric swalwell :: landed the earliest blow against biden with his story about hearing the former vice president talk about how it was time for his generation to pass the torch. there is absolutely no way back from that. the power of the next generation was a major theme of his answers and he made some cogent points but i wonder if what he was saying benefitted him or buttigieg. policy-wise, his debating didn't seem up to the standard of his appearances on msnbc and cnn. he wasn't bad, exactly, but he seemed out of his depth.

michael bennett :: sort of an odd choice here but, of the lesser known candidates, bennett is the one over both nights about whom i felt i learned the most. his emotions sometimes seemed a little forced but not totally. do i think he has the best policies? no i do not. but he inserted himself into the mix and his voice was heard. in his position, that's the best thing that he could have accomplished. significantly outperformed his fellow coloradoan [?] john hickenlooper.

came out even

bernie sanders :: debating has never been sanders strong point both because he is a more natural speech-giver and because it's rare that he has opponents who approach subjects in the way that he does. that said, this was a very flat performance. his claim that for things to really change, there will need to be a sort of revolutionary change in thinking is correct, but that isn't something that can happen from the president down. when he was pressed on specific policies, he wasn't weak but he didn't have anything to draw people in that he didn't have four years ago. four years ago, he didn't have to square off against elizabeth warren and after her performance on wednesday, she seems like she has a better grasp of how to make progressive policies a reality. sanders supporters are unlikely to leave him in droves but he did himself no favours here.

kristen gillibrand :: early in the night, i thought that the new york senator was going to crash and burn. she seemed hell-bent on proving that interrupting and shouting people down was no longer the purview of men. thankfully, she got that impulse under control and stands out as the only person over two nights to talk about how to manage the transition from private to public healthcare in the united states. [hey, didn't i just say something about that?] much like swalwell, she seemed a little out of her depth as she kept awkwardly trying to turn the conversation back to women's advancement, her strongest issue, but with kamala killing it two positions away, it seemed weird.

john hickenlooper :: notable as the guy who warned against socialism but didn't really know where to go with that sentiment. i rate him as coming out even because he went in with so little buzz that his lacklustre performance didn't do him any harm. strangely, having struggled to define himself well during the course of the debate, he rattled off a really impressive-sounding list of accomplishments from his time as colorado governor at 10:52. would have helped if he'd worked more of that into his actual answers rather than his wrap up.

did themselves harm

joe biden :: when you're on the top, there's nowhere to go but down and since the idea of biden always seems better than the reality of biden, i think that people generally expected that the former vice president would take a few hits as he was targeted by his peers. now, biden is an excellent debater and for the majority of the night, while you could argue that he relied too heavily on recapping his accomplishments [sort of the reverse hickenlooper] at the expense of talking about his plans for the future, he remained pretty solid. unfortunately for him, that solidity made him sink like a proverbial rock when push came to shove.

it's hard to encapsulate the absolute tone-deafness of his responses to kamala harris calling him out for taking pride in his ability to work with racists and for opposing federally mandated school desegregation. he seemed completely unable to understand what she was saying and made him look like exactly what people have said about him with regards to this: an old white man who just doesn't listen. he seemed completely unprepared for the subject to come up, which is just ridiculous.

biden's chief strength has been his strength against donald trump. tonight, harris looked like the person best positioned to do that. if she can chew through biden like that, trump doesn't stand a chance.

andrew yang :: if the chief element of your platform is a type of guaranteed basic income, you should be able to present a compelling case for it and to be able to explain what it is. yang struggled to do either of those things and had little to say any other time he was called on. hate to say it, but msnbc might have done him a favour if they did turn off his mic.

marianne williamson :: what can i say? the four candidates who didn't make it to the debate must have felt cheated when they heard what she had to say. the "spiritual advisor" ranged from ineffectual to vaguely scary [and she didn't even get into her views on vaccines]. she had no business being up there. there's an actual governor who didn't make it into the debates but this loon did. for shame.

the biggest takeaway from the second night was that there was a far greater gulf between the best performances, one in particular, and all the others. it also saw the two frontrunners encounter serious roadblocks. i don't know that biden and sanders will experience a precipitous drop but neither can rest on their laurels any longer.

let the games begin...

it begins [part one]

2019-06-27T17:23:00.001-04:00

despite the fact that i've been lax about posting here, i really can't resist flexing my blogging muscles to talk about the thing that will increasingly occupy my mind over the next [checks calendar]... year and a half: the 2020 american election. [you do realize that there's a canadian federal election in october, right? -ed.] last night, we saw the first real salvo in the upcoming battle. of course, dom and i tuned in, hot with anticipation to see the first chance to see ten of the twenty-four candidates running for the democratic party presidential nomination. [actually, it wasn't anticipation. it was friggin' hot here yesterday.]

tonight will see the ten others who qualified for the initial debate stage addressing the issues. i'd like to congratulate the democratic party on finding a way to deal with a huge crowd of candidates without resorting to the humiliation of the "kids table" the way that the republicans did in 2016. ten people is still a hell of a lot to handle in one night but i ended yesterday's debate feeling like i'd at least gotten a little bit of a look at all the candidates and at least i had a sense of their background and roughly where they stood on the scale of "centrist to socialist" that seems to define the race this cycle. also, when i was making my notes for this blog post, i remembered all of their names without having to double-check. that's more than i went in with.

given how far out we are from a vote being cast, i never thought that last night was an opportunity for one candidate to rise above all others and force themselves to the front of the line. [i may have been slightly off on that prediction, which i'll discuss shortly.] on the other hand, there was a significant threat that a candidate could go down in flames, effectively ending their candidacy. did that happen? well, will look at that. but first, a few words on the structure and presentation of the debate.

sounds abound. the one thing that everyone, including the odious cretin in the white house, landed on was the weird audio malfunction at the midpoint of the debate. it was an extremely obvious problem since moderators rachel maddow and chuck todd literally had to stop proceedings to get it fixed. even msnbc did some gentle mocking of their own issues today. to that i say: who gives a fuck? it was a problem that lasted two to three minutes and almost provided a breather in a long night. yes, audiences expect a high standard of professionalism during these events. they expect that they will unfold flawlessly. but if you're tuning in to a political debate for the quality of the audio and video, i'm sorry, you're an idiot. yeah, things went wrong. in 2016, donald trump and ben carson ended up hanging out in the entrance area because the latter didn't realize that he should go out when his name was announced and the former showed an exceptionally rare moment of sympathy by standing with him so that he didn't look like a complete and utter fool. [joke's on trump: carson proved more than capable of making a fool of himself on stage.]
chuck up. i can't say that any of the night's questions were exactly tough but it was hard not to compare chuck todd's policy questions to his soft lobs when he interviewed the president this past weekend. his obsequious behaviour towards trump looks all the worse when compared to his [slightly] more probing questions during the debate.
dump on trump. one of the biggest criticisms i've heard of all the candidates last night was that they didn't go after the trump administration as strongly as they should have. to that i say: seriously? it's true that registered democrats are most concerned with who can beat trump but come on; to beat trump, you need to best trump and any fool can see that the electoral successes of 2018 came from those who spoke to the issues most important to voters. moreover, this was the first opportunity that most candidates had to introduce themselves and their ideas. there will be loads of time to attack trump. this early on, the focus has to be on establishing the strategies candidates have that can be parlayed into victory. calm the fuck down. [side note :: the loudest voices criticizing candidates for not coming down hard enough on trump are those of disaffected republicans who have found asylum in the world of media commentary. it's important to remember that these people are a tiny minority even within their own party: trump enjoys the support of 80% or more of self-declared republicans but since media pundits tend to be given equal footing as democrats, it's easy to overstate how resistant republicans are to his policies.]
ask the f*%king question. i am a die-hard, immoveable supporter of universal healthcare. i've taken the time to study systems and outcomes around the world and all i've learned has convinced me of one thing: the more robust and accessible healthcare is, the happier and healthier the population. you will never convince me that government funds should prioritize anything else because you'll never find the data to back you up. [fight me.] if your argument is that such programs require higher taxation rates, my response is "so what?" the [north] american view of taxes as a kind of penalty is tragically uninformed. countries with well-developed social safety nets view taxes [correctly] as a way of pooling resources to pay for important programs. and the more resources there are to pool, the better the potential benefits for the general population. [seriously, who's going to get a better deal from pharmaceutical companies: an insurance company boasting 5 million paying subscribers or a national government with 30 million? pharma companies are bloody desperate to deal with governments that provide public healthcare because 1. they have the biggest pencils, representing the largest number of people; and 2. it's a one-and-done system. once you're approved, you're golden.] now, in view of what i just said, i want to present a view that may seem antithetical to public healthcare in the united states: the health insurance industry is a massive source of employment and economic growth in america. candidates can talk until they're blue in the face about the advantages of a single-payer system [and they'd be right]. but the crucial question that is literally never being asked is: how do you handle the transition from private to public? this isn't a right v left question. it's a question that progressive candidates absolutely need to address and no one is asking it. as much as candidates can present excellent arguments for public healthcare, you can't just erase everything and start from ground zero. it's ridiculous that this question isn't being asked. sorry.

and now, let's talk about the candidates' performances, shall we? we shall.

did themselves good

julian castro :: a candidate who in any other cycle would be the democratic party's wet dream, castro had struggled to establish himself as a serious candidate thus far. earlier this week, he spoke to a democratic conference and did appear to come alive in a way that he hadn't before and last night he was even better. there wasn't one stumble in his performance and at the same time, he never looked insincere. he always appeared to have a good grasp of policy and reality and he owned the topic that has been front and centre in recent weeks: immigration. his answers on issues of police overreach and racist violence were far and away the best of the night and are likely to pique the interest of black and latinx voters. i wish there had been a camera on him as other candidates spoke in spanish to appeal/ pander to the latinx audience. he rightly made people wait until the very end of the debate to show off exactly how far ahead of them he was. at the same time, he never looked arrogant about it. despite his diminutive size, he seemed ten feet tall. no one helped their campaign more.

elizabeth warren :: almost unanimously perceived as the night's winner, i rate her second only because she went in as the candidate with the highest momentum. nevertheless, getting her message out to a wider audience helps her. she seemed more prepared than any of the others to answer questions on a broad range of topics. while i saw online opinion divided on whether or not she was getting her fair share of time and, as the only candidate who had visited one of the border concentration camps [yes that's what they are and if you don't believe me, go read about the history of the fucking term], she should have been afforded the opportunity to speak on the subject. she still came off as the smartest person in the room. a number of people have opined that she lost some steam as the debate wore on but it's questionable whether this was because of her answers or because moderators started to favour other candidates. i've greatly admired her "slow and steady wins the race" approach, focused on presenting policies on a regular basis rather than on scoring points against who she's facing in the democratic race or on donald trump. [side note :: part of me thinks that despite her first-hand experience, she dodged a bullet by not addressing the question of immigration. it meant that she avoided being in the race to compete to be a distant second to julian castro on the issue.]

cory booker :: a few years ago, he seemed to be the golden boy of the democratic party but in the last two years, he's done himself a considerable amount of harm. people have been quick to point out his links to wall street and big pharma. [he voted against a bill that would have allowed americans to buy cheaper drugs from canada rather than being limited to the united states and explained his decision with the ridiculous assertion that he was worried about fda regulations not being respected. it's fucking canada, dude, and our standards for approving drugs are in many cases more stringent than in america.] last night, he managed to remind people why he was seen as such a hot prospect. interestingly enough, he addressed the issues of his ties to big money almost off the top and did a good job of it. although his emotional and compassionate delivery runs the risk of seeming maudlin, he stayed on the right side of the line throughout the debate. his answers on gun control were probably the strongest of any candidate, combining personal experience with policy knowledge. likewise, his response on lgbtq rights was the only one that seemed to recognize the real threats facing that community. the worst thing i can say about him is that he very much came across as a candidate for the urban vote. gerrymandering means that urban centres don't have the power they should have in federal elections.

amy klobuchar :: if you accept that 2020 is going to be a fight to see who can win the souls [and votes] of those in the midwest and "rust belt", no other candidate came close to presenting as strong a case. klobuchar was the one who mentioned donald trump the most but in almost every case it was to point out that she had won districts that trump won by double digits in the 2016 election. her more moderate policies came off less as compromises [*cough* biden *cough*] and more as shrewd thinking. presidential elections work in a four-year cycle and having someone who seems focused on what she can accomplish in that time, as opposed to looking at more idealistic plans, gives people reason to think. she also delivered some of the best sound bites of the night, which can only help her gain traction in the media. her ideas seemed distinct from those of her competitors without veering too close to the neo-liberal world. the accusations that she's a terror to work with have largely been forgotten and at the same time, a lot of people might have been left thinking that maybe a hard-ass woman with her experience would be a perfect antidote to trump. bonus points for being the one who pushed back on chuck todd's assertion that buyback programs on guns were a type of confiscation.

came out even

tulsi gabbard :: the most reviled and divisive candidate in the field was wooden and came off as insincere through 90% of the debate and never seemed to have a solid grasp on policy. she was a forgettable series of talking points but then, at almost the tail end of the proceedings, she was gifted a lifeline by tim ryan. her sharp reprimand in response to his statement that the united states needed to be "engaged" in areas like afghanistan, followed by her opportunity to pounce on his very obvious foreign policy mistake gave her a strong sound bite moment that has been featured on media recaps of the debate. considering that this is all that the vast majority of voters will see of her performance last night [and that what they will hear about her will always mention her military service] she can feel like she salvaged a tiny rose from a pile of shit.

tim ryan :: the male amy klobuchar has the unfortunate distinction of making possibly the stupidest statements of the night regarding the taliban vs al qaeda. that's too bad because up until this misstep, he wasn't doing badly for himself. he put greater emphasis on the need to win back centrist midwestern voters than klobuchar did, although he didn't seem to be able to flesh that out in terms of policy. that being the case, he said enough that he's gotten himself some media traction- not just from his disastrous exchange with gabbard. he gets bonus points from me for multiple mentions of mental health, an issue that's too often overlooked. that places him ahead of some others who got no coverage or who got entirely negative coverage.

did themselves harm

beto o'rourke :: as much as his anecdotal style might seem charming in smaller settings or in a state where a more relaxed type of communication is valued as more human, the great white hope of the democratic party a year ago floundered on a national stage. almost unanimously chosen as the debate's clear loser, beto came off as a real policy lightweight. his fiery exchange with julian castro on immigration has been featured a lot as an example of where candidates differ but [even if the media don't want to mention it in order to make it appear that things are more competitive than they actually are] castro showed a much better grasp of the law. beto benefitted from the large and growing latinx population in texas in his senate run but last night's performance likely shifted attention to castro.

jay inslee :: the candidate of the environment seemed surprisingly light on environmental commentary. i'm assuming that this is because he wanted to make himself seem like more than a one-issue candidate but the vast majority of voters hasn't even heard of his position on that one issue. failed to make cogent arguments on policy but at the same time didn't make any major missteps. his performance has been winnowed down to his getting the biggest audience pop of the night by saying that donald trump was the biggest threat facing america. that might satisfy news organizations and an ardent audience but it's an idiotic statement; trump is a symptom of a larger problem but he is far from the greatest threat. further hobbled by another idiotic assertion, that he was the strongest advocate for women's healthcare, including access to abortion. got rightly owned by amy klobuchar for that one.

john delaney :: it's hard to think of a man languishing in the depths of the polls as doing himself harm but delaney nonetheless managed. he actually started out fairly strong with his bipartisan message but that started to crumble the second he said that a majority of american hospitals would close if national public healthcare was implemented. while he might have received less time than he was due, his habit of shouting over others was irritating. the most circulated clip of his performance is one where he seemed flummoxed that he had to deliver a closing statement.

bill di blasio :: i'll start this off by saying that opinion is somewhat divided on this one. some pundits, notably msnbc host chris matthews, felt that di blasio came out as fiery and committed. i, on the other hand, felt that he was obnoxious and self-important. he shouted over or shouted down others, which placed him in stark contrast to the women on the stage, who were notable in their respect for others' time. msnbc pundit nicole wallace noted that reaction to his performance was likely going to be divided on gender lines and i believe she's right. men might perceive his performance as strong but women will likely perceive it as rude. if you believe that the battle is for swing votes largely in the centre of the country, then women are absolutely the constituency that candidates should be trying to reach. furthermore, while di blasio's experience as the mayor of new york city might speak to his ability to manage a diverse population and an often conflicted administration, it's also going to cast him as a candidate of the east coast elites, a death sentence in the current climate.

i'm looking forward to round two tonight, which will see the two current front-runners, joe biden and bernie sanders, square off for the first time. biden is an excellent and experienced debater, however, his campaign has been notably light on policy initiatives and has stressed his experience as a uniter. that is both a benefit and a detriment to his campaign, as evinced by his recent assertion that he managed to work with democratic segregationists in the past. [side note :: this doesn't necessarily seem to have harmed him among african american voters in states like south carolina, who attribute it to the requirements of the job but it will absolutely damage him with millennial voters. the question is, will millennial voters actually bother to show up- they generally haven't- in either the primaries or the general election?] bernie sanders is what he is and the most telling thing about his candidacy will be whether or not he's able to articulate a platform that's broader than his domestic financial plans. in 2016, he was unable to do so. [sorry, bernie fans, it's true. his answers during the debates on foreign policy were stunning in how poorly informed they were. that doesn't mean that hilary's were good; it means that he wasn't able to present a credible alternative. he does seem to have upped his game in this regard but the debate will be his first real test.]

despite the fact that biden and sanders are clearly the front-runners in all democratic polls thus far, tonight's focus is likely to be on two candidates perceived as having the potential to surge in the coming months: kamala harris and pete buttigieg. harris was presented as a five-star candidate but has fallen short of that billing. this week, her speech to a democratic party audience turned that shit around. she was the quintessential leader and delivered the best speech by a country mile. [julian castro did finish a respectable second, imho.] to my mind [and dom's] the debate is her chance to shine or fade. she has recent momentum on her side and has recently been able to play up her experience as a prosecutor- held against her by many progressives- as a positive.

mayor pete benefitted hugely from making himself available to the media from the time that he announced his candidacy. his thoughtful and articulate style made many sit up and take notice, myself included. from being a person whose candidacy confused even seasoned media pundits, he emerged as an articulate, intelligent option with oration skills that hearkened back to... yes, it's true... barack obama. more recently, he's come in for serious criticism over his handling of possible police overreach in south bend, where he is still the mayor. on that issue, contrary to what we've seen thus far, he's appeared judgmental and a little immature. tonight's debate is both a chance to show people that he lives up to his surprising hype and to redeem himself for recent missteps. [side note :: my "sleeper" pick for the night is andrew yang. his central policy push is a type of universal basic income and i suspect that the appeal of that is less of a niche than the media would have us think. never scoring above single digits in polls, i feel like he has little to lose tonight and quite possibly the most to gain.]

i'll be back tomorrow [i hope] to report on events of debate part two. i feel that, given the heavy-hitters involved, there will be fewer chances for lesser-known candidates to stand out but i've been wrong about that before.

drive-by musings

2019-06-21T23:03:00.000-04:00

i've written a fair bit on this blog about being a writer who waits for inspiration to strike her out of nowhere versus being a writer who puts serious work in on a daily basis and in doing so cultivates those precious lightning strikes and bottles them. i believe in and strongly encourage people to employ the latter method, as does pretty much every writer [or creative person] who is successful at this sort of thing. there have been stretches where i've been very good at this but the fact is that i slack off a lot and my brain has a tendency to grasp at multiple ideas at once without being able to relinquish any of them. basically, my brain is like someone who hasn't eaten in three days arriving at a buffet. everything looks good but the end result is that you end up with a bizarre combination of all of it that isn't nearly as satisfying as sticking to one flavour palette. [don't you dare tell me that cheese sticks go with sushi, because i will end you.]

i've tried various methods to kickstart my creative juices: exercising them regularly, listening to the words of people who are better at this shit than i am, taking time to just allow myself to think in silence with no other distractions, reviewing things i've written but not completed, taking notes of phrases or broad ideas i might want to incorporate... and each of these has worked to some degree.

the problem is that, no matter how hard you work to cultivate creativity, sometimes it just doesn't click. sometimes, you end up with a whole lot of drivel that just doesn't go anywhere and, if you're being really honest with yourself, it all sounds exactly the same even though you swore the ideas were very different from one another. i have a long string of heroes and heroines who have found themselves in nightmarish, occasionally surrealistic situations that seem very similar, even though one of them is a trapeze artist and one of them is an accountant.

and then, something just comes to you. as much as you've been trying to cultivate creative orchids, you find yourself harvesting a bumper crop of dandelions and you realize that dandelions are pretty awesome. [side note :: dandelions are awesome. even though there is limited scientific research to confirm it- a common problem with natural remedies- dandelions are said to have medicinal benefits for a variety of conditions, plus they are edible, healthy and delicious, plus they're beneficial for the soil they grow in. stop treating them like unwanted pests.] and the thing about dandelions is that you don't have to try and grow them. they just come to you because you have the right combination of ingredients. they just arrive and do what they do and presto you have a brilliant yellow and green carpet.

in the last week, i got a case of the dandelions. i had an idea that just took over my brain. it needed little help from me and, in fact, came to my cerebral garden in such an advanced state that i barely had to take notes. i did write an outline [not a particularly detailed one] just to make sure i didn't forget anything but when i sat down to write, i barely consulted it. it was all nicely organized in my brain, this project that i'd never thought about until a few days before, that i had many of the actual lines fully formed. my active role in this process was twofold and pretty simple:

1. get the damn thing written down
2. provide some "padding" to link the bits that had been delivered to my brain print-ready

a week ago, i started to write this out. i wrote until i quite literally fell asleep at my computer [which lead to a weird experience but that's a whole other story]. i worked on it as i could over the next few days, which culminated in me getting up late wednesday night because i knew i couldn't live with myself if i didn't finish it before sleeping. [or, more accurately, i knew i wasn't going to be able to sleep knowing that i'd left it so close to being finished.]

by wednesday night [technically very early on thursday morning but it was still hours before sunrise so to me it was wednesday], the project that i'd started the previous friday was roughly 123 pages, over 36,000 words and it was finished. well, a draft was finished. in terms of finished product for time spent, that is the fastest i've completed anything, ever. tricky, which at 61,000+ words remains the longest single thing i've ever completed by some margin, started as a short story that just grew and grew took me between three and four months to pound out a first draft. at the time, that rate seemed insane. i could barely believe that i was at once building a story that long and that it was coming to me that quickly. the script for conversion was completed in two weeks [albeit over christmas, which might have slowed my progress a little- visitors and cooking and all that] is my second-longest piece but is considerably shorter at a little over 20,000 words. the two longest of my short stories, the tower and end of shift fall just above and below 13,000 words respectively. each of them came out of me fairly quickly but i don't believe that i completed either in less than a week. [slight caveat: the tower is something that's been rewritten a half dozen times and the original was lost in a moving accident. when i say that i wrote it quickly, i'm going from my impression of the very first time i wrote it, which is a pretty hazy memory at this point. despite the original having been lost, subsequent versions have been extremely faithful, with no major changes to the plot and the addition of one scene in the final, published, version. the bottom line is that i know i wrote it damn quickly.] over 36,000 words in five days is a much faster rate than anything i've ever done.

as you might be able to deduce, however, there is a subtext: all of the longest pieces i've completed have come out in what you might call record time. the reason for that is that they all arrived more or less fully formed* and just tumbled out of me. shorter pieces that i've written, where i actually had to figure out what to do as i went along, have taken me a longer time. and that's just the ones that i've finished. i have a tremendous backlog of work on my ageing computer that started off well, of ideas that i worked to hone and research in advance of committing to writing them that i just haven't been able to push through. [that would include a definable moment in time, which started as a serial on another blog a dozen years ago, which at almost 92,000 words is easily the longest thing i've ever written but which remains unfinished. i have never thought of it as abandoned; i just haven't gotten around to finishing it yet.]

*side note :: "end of shift" came to me as a complete idea but in the middle of writing it, something weird happened: i had an entirely separate idea for a related story that spoke to the motivations of the central character. so that particular story would have been much shorter but for the fact that it has a short story within it. i've never had anything like that happen before or since. it was written during an extremely productive period in my life, although i can't swear those things are linked.

if you're a creative person, you live in fear that at some point, your inspiration could just dry up. we all try to fight that fear by convincing ourselves that keeping our muse close by is a matter of continuous effort and dedication. and that is why the sort of feverish, nearly maniacal sort of inspiration i went through in the last week can be both exhilarating and frightening. yes, every creative person loves feeling that rush where they just know what they want to do. on the other hand, when you have that sort of rush out of the blue, it's a reminder that maybe the work you do to cultivate your own creativity is useless: maybe you are just the lucky recipient of some periodic of mental gifts and the major works that you produce are governed more by a capricious universe than by your own method. if that's true then we artistic types are in a vulnerable position: we don't know when our creative number will be up and we get to live with the nagging fear that any time we get possessed to work could be the last time that ever happens. i mean, there are no rules for muses. they can come and go as they please and you don't ever know if they're going to come back to you.

so, huzzah, i accomplished something kind of remarkable this week.

at the same time... i really want to know that i'll be able to accomplish something like that again. and my experience this week tells me that that might not be within my power to control.

sounds familiar

2019-05-22T20:09:00.000-04:00

one week from today marks the sixth anniversary of the death of dr. henry morgentaler. the doctor lived to the age of ninety, no mean feat for most people but almost unbelievable in his case. born in poland in 1923, the future doctor's early life was blighted by the second world war. he and his family were trapped in the warsaw ghetto. his father was killed by the nazis for his participation in the general jewish labour party. his sister died at treblinka, having been arrested for joining the warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. by the time his sister died, however, henry, his mother golda, and brother abraham [cited in some sources as michael] had themselves been taken to auschwitz. mother and sons were separated on arrival and golda was executed in the gas chambers. the boys remained alive, barely, and were eventually shipped to a camp that was part of the dachau complex. they were saved from certain death when the american army liberated the camp in 1945. he and his brother had been surviving on the ration of one bowl of soup a day and had stayed alive because abraham had managed to steal items like potato peels from the garbage. when they were rescued, morgentaler, a man of twenty-two years by that time, weighed seventy pounds.

after the war, morgentaler and his first wife, the poet chava goldfarb, were refugees dependent on the good will of the allied liberators who rushed in to keep postwar germany from disintegrating into total chaos. [side note :: this can be interpreted as either a power grab by both sides of the brewing cold war seeking to bring central europe into their sphere of influence or a much-belated acknowledgement that the failure to establish some type of stable governance in germany after wwi was a principal contributor to wwii. of course, the dichotomy i've set up there is actually false now that i see it written out; both of those things are true.]

the young couple ultimately emigrated to canada and settled in montreal. by 1953 henry had completed a medical degree at the french-language université de montréal and in 1955, he had a practice in the east end of the city. it wasn't long before he began down the path that would define his career and his life: the absolute right of women to control how and when they bore children. although he remained in general practice for over a dozen years, morgentaler became known because he would prescribe birth control pills, insert intrauterine devices and, for the gentlemen, provide vasectomies. many doctors at the time wouldn't do any of those things but by the late sixties, morgentaler took things a step further: he opened a private clinic where he would provide abortions.

before opening the clinic, morgentaler would refer women looking to terminate a pregnancy to two doctors in the city who provided the service. when those two men became unavailable, he was so disturbed at the news of women showing up in emergency wards as a consequence of botched home or underground abortions that he decided to take on the challenge himself.

just before that, in 1967, he had spoken to the canadian parliament about the need to offer women access to safe abortions. perhaps surprisingly for the time, his words did not fall on deaf ears; justice minister and future prime minister pierre trudeau. trudeau introduced a massive bill to amend several sections of the canadian criminal code. one of those amendments was that abortion, which had previously been legal only in cases where the life of the mother was threatened, to a procedure that could be given with the approval of a medical committee. [side note :: that proved to be an overly optimistic plan. although it was technically required by law that hospitals have a committee, the vast majority did not comply. the committees were almost exclusively made up of men, many would rarely meet and some would not even hear directly from applicants.]

the abortions that morgentaler continued to provide in his own clinic remained illegal because they were never submitted to a duly constituted committee. in 1970 he was arrested in quebec and charged with performing illegal abortions. he decided that he would use this as an opportunity to challenge canada's abortion laws, pled not guilty and headed to court. he was acquitted, then had his acquittal overturned on appeal, then had his acquittal overturned on appeal and was sentenced to ten months in prison, then had the appeal decision overturned. in the process, he upended the legal system, although not in the way that he intended: pierre trudeau, by then the prime minister, amended the criminal code so that appeals courts were no longer allowed to impose a new verdict and sentence when they overturned an acquittal. this is still known as the "morgentaler amendment". the doctor did, however, go to prison and served the full ten-month sentence, suffering a heart attack during that time. [side note :: in 1972, in the midst of this legal controversy, morgentaler even ran for election as an independent in the montreal riding of saint denis. he finished a distant fourth but had he waited a little longer, he might have done better. the riding was altered and subsumed into adjacent papineau in 2006 but remains the home of montreal's gentrified-hip plateau mont-royal. it has been represented by current prime minister justin trudeau since 2008.]

that didn't dissuade federal prosecutors from trying for a conviction. morgentaler was tried a second time and indeed a third. every time the jury agreed with him that the law itself was wrong. he was looking down the barrel of a fourth trial when the parti québecois swept to power in 1976. the new, progressive-leaning government set aside those plans and announced that it wasn't going to pursue charges against morgentaler or any other abortion providers, federal laws be damned. later that year, the provincial government made abortions performed in private clinics legal.

morgentaler still had issues with the federal government and in 1976 his case against the laws reached the supreme court. the court sided with the government but even at that point, he had initiated a tectonic shift.

in 1982, the trudeau government introduced a new charter of rights and freedoms, something which inadvertently paved the way for morgentaler's greatest success. charged with providing illegal abortions in ontario in 1983. this was very much what the doctor had intended when he began opening clinics in different provinces. by that time, public opinion had shifted massively to the side of morgentaler and abortion rights activists: nearly three-quarters of canadians believed that the choice to terminate should be solely that of the pregnant woman in consultation with her doctor. morgentaler was once again acquitted in his initial trial in ontario by a jury that accepted his argument that the laws themselves were rotten. however, the long term strategy was to see another case sent to the supreme court and the ontario appeals court was happy to oblige. the appeals court set aside the not guilty verdict and morgentaler was on his way to the supreme court again.

the case was adjudicated in 1988 and this time the country's highest court sided with morgentaler. they agreed with his argument that denying women access to abortion ran contrary to the guarantee of life, liberty and security of the person guaranteed under the 1982 bill of rights. the appeals court's decision was set aside and, more importantly, the court declared the existing laws on abortion to be unconstitutional. with one beat of the gavel, the supreme court and henry morgentaler had totally changed the landscape of women's health in canada.

that didn't entirely stem the problem. in 1989, in my home province of nova scotia, the provincial government passed a draconian law that restricted access to abortion, their argument being that healthcare was a provincial responsibility. morgentaler was there to fight them. in 1994, new brunswick tried a similar approach. both were kicked back by their own provincial supreme courts.

by that time, though, the argument was over. in 1991, under the left-leaning new democratic party, the ontario provincial government introduced legislation that all abortions, whether conducted in a hospital or a private clinic, would be covered under the provincial public health plan. ontario and quebec between them are home to well over half of the canadian population. while other provinces might resent it, the two of them essentially dictate national policy because no government can maintain power without a significant power base in both.

in the eighties, i was in the process of moving from child to young adult. i remember how prevalent debates about abortion were. i also remember that i was a very early supporter of abortion rights. i don't remember exactly what pushed me in that direction [or even if there was anything specific that pushed me in that direction] but it's one issue on which i have never, ever wavered.

[side note :: there was undoubtedly one factor that cemented my decision, which was that my only exposure to contrary opinions was the footage of hysterical anti-choice activists on television. my mother was reflective and quietly supportive of abortion rights. more surprising was the reaction of my father, who is one of those people who rarely says anything good about anyone, but who held morgentaler in a sort of reverence that i hadn't ever seen before. a friend of his worked without any kind of steady pay, as the receptionist at morgentaler's halifax clinic. she was the one who got to field the bomb threats and death threats, who got to usher in the terrified women, often no more than girls, and reassure them that they'd come to the right place, that everything was going to be fine. my father had opinions on just about everything and was never afraid of voicing them. in this case, though, he never expressed a personal view. he would almost never defer to anyone's views but he would quietly do so for morgentaler. he was deeply moved by the man's dedication to his cause and that, to him, was reason enough to trust that the doctor knew what was right.]

for me, the fight for a woman's right to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term and become a mother will always be linked with dr. henry morgentaler. he was the crusader and sacrificial lamb in the battle for those rights at the time when i was just learning what they meant. to this day, i marvel at the fact that a man who faced the cruellest death at the hands of the barbarous nazi regime would so willingly place himself in very real danger by dedicating his life to one of the most divisive issues of the twentieth century. on a personal level, morgentaler had rather turbulent relations with women, which he attributed ultimately to his insecurity regarding the love of his own mother. he believed passionately that children should be loved and that it was entirely up to women to decide when they were ready to offer that kind of love.

unless you've been living in a distant cave for several months [and i totally understand if you have, although i'm curious as to how you found your way to this blog post], you've seen news coverage of the shocking policies currently being enacted in a number of american states that are specifically designed to prevent women from accessing abortion and even birth control. in some of those laws, the interdiction extends to women impregnated by forced intercourse- incest and rape- and to women whose lives are endangered by their pregnancies. the "president" of the united states has subtly backed such laws by asserting, falsely, that fully viable babies are being torn from their mother's uterus and murdered as part of a completely dispassionate decision between mother and doctor. if you scan back a few [ok, several] paragraphs, you'll see that these laws are more restrictive than those that existed before the reforms occasioned by the rise of feminism in the 1960s. making america great again doesn't mean turning the cultural clock back to the imagined idyll of the postwar years, it means turning it back to the age where women and minorities were ineligible to vote [or where their right to do so was obstructed].

people may cling to the religious argument that christian scripture forbids abortion but even that argument is pretty specious. the bible doesn't mention abortion per se and even in the case of a fetus, it's not abundantly clear what the bible is saying. there are some passages that indicate that life is carried in the blood. the fetus is not infused with blood immediately upon conception. others link the beginning of life with breath [literally with god breathing life into the infant]. in the parlance of the time, that meant that the baby wasn't a human being until it started breathing, i.e., when it was out of the womb entirely. in modern times, we've expanded the "breath" rule to include fetuses that are viable, whether or not they come out on their own. so in fact, modern medicine has given us both improved abortions and a broader definition of when life begins.

the clearest biblical word on human life compared to fetal life occurs in exodus. it relates a story of a pregnant woman killed in a siege. her death is recognized as a murder, punishable by death [an eye for an eye sort of thing]. the death of her fetus, however, is deemed illegal but is treated differently. it demands that reparations be paid but that puts the fetus on the level of something like livestock. they are categorically not the same sort of life.

in contrast, the passages of the bible invoked by the anti-choice characters [i refuse to call them pro-life because they aren't] are much more ambivalent. there are numerous mentions of people being formed in the womb but that's not the same as saying that, while in the womb, they were fully human. if i build only the frame of a house, no one is going to argue that it is an actual house; it is a house in progress.

to be clear [and it is utter bullshit that i should feel the need to explain this]: being pro-choice does not force anyone into having an abortion or to believing that abortions are moral. you can be opposed to the idea of having an abortion. being pro-choice means that you don't get to impose your worldview on everyone else. as strange as it sounds, implementing legislation that requires access to abortion is a way of keeping government out of your business. it establishes that this is a personal choice. [for a much more eloquent expression of this idea, i return to former prime minister pierre trudeau. when introducing new laws that decriminalized homosexuality, six years before the psychiatric community agreed to remove it from their list of mental disorders, trudeau declared "there is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation". it is considered one of the most iconic quotes in canadian history and represented a massive ideological and demographic shift in the country.]

the united states does not have a henry morgentaler and more's the pity. despite the fact that there are vociferous arguments being voiced against the current tide of terrifying new laws, the movement lacks a true spokesperson. dr. leana wen, president of planned parenthood, is an articulate and sympathetic figure. but planned parenthood has to be very careful because they depend on government funding that many zealots are trying to eliminate, despite the fact that the organization is forbidden from using federal funds for abortions. dependence makes them vulnerable. there are many. many voices being raised in opposition to these extremist new laws but as someone who remembers this debate from the eighties, i know it helps when you have one focal point, one person willing to carry the standard into battle.

[side note :: that's particularly the case in the united states, where a shocking number of middle-class white people seem to be willing to forgive almost anything, even child molestation if you consider the alabama senate race, if they think it's going to get them a tax break. and i'd like to take this moment to address my fellow white women: jesus fucking christ what is wrong with you? do you think that your rights are so well protected that you don't even have to pay attention to them? ladies, a hundred years ago we weren't allowed to vote. a hundred years ago. think that seems like a long time? there are a lot of laws, not just the big ones about murdering and such, that predate that. do you seriously believe that men who talk about "legitimate rape" and "consensual rape"- even if they back away from those statements later- want to defend any of your rights at all? do you think that those men are going to go to the wall for you when it comes to your property rights? or your workplace rights? almost half of you voted for trump, who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy and who has been faithless to all three of his wives. the majority of you voted for roy moore after multiple accusers emerged to say that he was in the habit of molesting teenage girls. you are supposed to be wives and mothers and workers and leaders. instead, you're making excuses for the worst sorts of male behaviour. ladies, excuse the way this sounds, but fucking grow a pair. think of the world you're building for your children and especially for your daughters. do you want your ten- or eleven-year-old forced to bear the child of her rapist? of the person close to your family who's been molesting her? that's what these laws order her to do. this sort of behaviour is loathsome in anyone but in women it's unforgivable.]

it's unnerving for a woman of my vintage to hear the exact same irrational, hysterical [i use the word in full awareness of all its connotations] arguments being repeated literally decades after i thought the debate was legally settled. [and for those who think that this is solely an american problem, let me remind you that sam oosterhoff, a member of the legislature for the governing conservative party, gave his word that the party wants to make abortion "unthinkable in our lifetime".] instead, i am confronted with views that are more hateful and less factual than even the extremes of the debate in the eighties. [e.g., there was significant debate over abortions performed in the third trimester, despite the fact that these have always represented a minuscule number of abortions and those are generally performed because the mother's health is endangered or because the fetus was non-viable. no one, however, was talking about removing live babies from the womb and deciding whether or not to kill them.]

but while the rhetoric of the opposition may have gotten more extreme, i can't help but think that this is the same sort of thing that i heard back when i was still in a chrysalis waiting to assume my final form. there is no logic, no facts to back up any of the anti-choice arguments. they've become more strident in their rhetoric and that is all. the real truth is that the current wave of laws is born of vitriolic hatred of women's rebellion against traditional norms. don't believe me? the law passed in alabama that denies women access to abortion even in cases of rape or incest doesn't apply to fertilized eggs outside of a woman's body. it isn't the embryonic life that's important; it's the ability to dictate whether or not a woman has control.

i can tell you that i exhausted myself arguing with conservatives who lectured me on religious law while enjoying the benefits of a living in a secular country. but that won't stop me from fighting tooth and nail against this latest batch of psychopaths who want to see my rights made "unthinkable". henry morgentaler fought for decades for those rights. he went to jail for those rights. he did that knowing the full horror of what could be done to anyone who opposed government power. if he managed that, speaking out on the subject is the least i can do.

p.s. :: here's a wonderful piece written by morgentaler's son about the lessons that he learned from his father.

white trash

2019-05-07T18:28:00.000-04:00

yes, my lovelies, i have returned from the dead, at least for the time it takes me to write this post. this is not just another piece of observational drivel about how i haven't been taking care of the blog lately, although i clearly haven't. on that front, though, the principal cause of my absence has actually been due to me trying to get another, somewhat related project, off the ground. unfortunately, that project has met with some frustrating delays which means that anyone who follows this blog [perhaps there are still a few of you who haven't entirely given up] would understandably be left with the impression that i'd simply forsaken more like space to marvel at the complexity of my own belly button lint. [it's possible you had that impression even before i disappeared.]

ok, enough with that. i have a subject i wanted to discuss with you, in the sense that i will want and encourage you to respond with questions, concerns and criticism in the comments or by emailing me. the subject is one of those small things that is actually a big thing. a big evil thing. air pods.

dom sent me an article yesterday that you can find here. it's a bit scattered in execution, which makes it less effective than it should be, but it's worth reading. the author makes a compelling case for her theory that air pods are a tragedy: their manufacturing process is built on the misery of thousands in the developing world, their price and fragility [in terms of both their shelf life and the fact that they are easy to use] make them a symbol of wealth and entitlement ["i can afford to spend money on these frivolous objects while others live in a permanent state of food insecurity!"] and their components make them an environmental nightmare that will last a thousand years.

her research is well-documented with links to credible sources but even if those sources weren't connected, much of what she's addressed is already pretty well established, it's just that it hasn't been drawn together in such a way as to reveal the full horror of their impact on the world. [and there are a few areas in which she may even be understating the full scope of the problem. for instance, while apple has received approbation from the likes of amnesty international for their efforts to buy cobalt from countries with better humanitarian records than the democratic republic of congo, they are also trying to corner the world's cobalt supply. the biggest offenders in terms of inhumane cobalt sourcing are actually car manufacturers and there remain many tech companies, like microsoft, who are still listed as major offenders. these companies have not taken adequate action to address the cobalt problem and, if apple is successful in locking down a huge portion of the world's cobalt supply, they won't be able to. one company controlling supply will also drive up the price of the element which will in turn drive up the price of all related products, increasing their status as "rich kid toys".]

all of the problems she raises are true and fair and awful but i'd like to suggest another, more esoteric issue: air pods will kill music.

sure, music isn't on the level of human life, but it is something that is unique to human life [as far as we can tell]. it is something with no practical purpose [at its root], something that gives us joy and beauty and awe. sure, you can argue that music has been repackaged as a commodity and you would not be wrong. but that's because we've lost the ability to conceive of anything outside of its financial value, which is a whole other [but related] discussion.

consider the air pods: they do not offer great sound; it is disposable for all intents and purposes; its construction will have a tendency to distract from whatever sounds are coursing through it because they're going to loosen in the ear or fall out entirely, or start to malfunction before their time if they are taken outdoors. every one of these factors diminishes the ability of the listener to engage with music. they won't get the full effect of the sound spectrum in use. they won't hear the production touches conceived to heighten the experience. what they'll hear is a flattened, simplistic version of music that will ultimately render all music disposable. After all, if there's no detail that can be distinguished, it's hard to argue that music is anything but background noise.

music has already become largely disposable. there are so many things that are encouraging about its democratization in the internet age and the shift of power from the curators of publicly available sounds [principally music labels] to the music makers themselves. at the same time, it means that actually following anything that's happening in the world of music has become a staggering and often frustrating challenge. there's just so goddamn much of it out there that it becomes difficult to find the gems among the stones. and the more we listen to, the less we absorb of any of it. there is always more coming out that begs our attention, as opposed to years ago when fans of any genre might expect a dozen releases a year to really stand out. [to be clear, i'm not advocating for the glory of the "good old days". those days were fraught with problems, for instance, the unwillingness of many music labels and distributors to stray outside the established parameters of a specific genre. my point is that more music presents challenges that even the most ardent music fans weren't prepared to face, especially in light of the fact that the change has been rapid and profound.]

when you add to that the fact that these newfangled devices allow you only a shallow appreciation for the music you listen to, the problem of too much input is multiplied.

is there a solution? well sure. you can spend even more money on a sound system that gives you the full experience of the music you're hearing. you can invest in much higher end headphones. but these solutions mean that music itself becomes the property of the wealthiest class; who else can afford the gadgets required to listen to music on this level? and the wealthiest class overwhelmingly subscribe to the tropes of the dominant culture. [don't believe me? name a billionaire who's voiced their admiration for power electronics or black metal. i'll wait.] how exactly do subcultures thrive in that sort of setting? spoiler alert: they don't. the most groundbreaking music, therefore, gets choked off because listeners are unable to appreciate it on a meaningful level.

and i'll take it one step further: bougie toys like air pods severely limit the space in which people can enjoy music. i listen to music at home but i listen to it nearly as much when i'm walking around, running errands or just getting outside. air pods aren't built for walking or any activity that might cause them to be jostled around. they aren't built for exposure to the elements. they're built for short ventures outside followed by stretches of time in a vehicle [like a car or school bus]. you can't legally use them in a car. you can only use them at home if you're comfortable shutting yourself off from anyone who shares the space. air pods are an invitation to limit the places where you can enjoy music. because music is frivolous and disposable, right? because if you want to be serious about music, you should be willing to shell out for a proper sound system, right?

as i said earlier, this is not a concern that comes close to the level of importance of human rights or the environment. you could certainly argue that making the case for being able to enjoy music is a signal of first world privilege and i would absolutely support you in that. but that doesn't mean that it's entirely unimportant. music is unique in that it is both an artifact of art and pop culture. it can express cultural identity and it can also express cultural exchange. there are few things that can connect to our essential humanity in the way that music does. and embedded in the technology of the air pod is the demand that we dismiss its larger role. and that is a tragedy of a different sort.

caroline haskins is right: a thousand years from now, people [assuming they still exist] will marvel at the air pod as part of the trash of capitalism. and it's possible that they'll do so as beings who have no real experience of the power of music.

so what the hell happened here?

2019-03-21T18:21:00.000-04:00

even i'm shocked at the fact that i haven't written a blog post in a month and a half. and i'm confused by it, which many of you may not be because, hey, blogs are dead, right? well, i don't know if they're dead dead. this place gets a surprising number of daily views considering that there have been no new posts since early february. and if you're one of the regular readers who might have been checking in to see which of my regular subjects i'd be tackling next, i'm going to have to disappoint you: this post is just going to be some meaningless blather.

first of all, i didn't intend to step back from the blog- not for a month and a half, not at all. i figured i'd just keep motoring on much as i had been for the last dozen or so years, if for no other reason than it had become as natural to me as breathing or reading stuff on the internet that made me angry.

so why haven't i written anything here?

it's not because i've lacked subject matter. politics alone has furnished a rich cauldron of topics. and i've continued with my language learning and genealogical studies and i've been writing more than i have in quite a while [although not enough to justify ignoring this space the way i have]. the one major difference there's been is that since the beginning of the year, i've been on a "surprise no buy" when it comes to cosmetics. i'll eventually have to replace some staples but thus far, i haven't parted with a cent. that wasn't something i'd planned but as i was reorganizing my collection, i realized that there are a lot of things that i should be using more. once i went down that rabbit hole, it became difficult to think about adding more.

that's not to say that there haven't been a few things that have captured my eye; in particular, viseart's coy palette looks stunning and marc jacobs' steeletto palette [along with its accompanying eyeliners] appears to be the cool-toned neutral selection of my dreams. i'll get around to them, eventually. in the meantime, i haven't had much to say on the subject. the face continues to be painted. this continues to be a ritual that makes me irrationally happy. but it's not terribly interesting for anyone else.

and so, dear readers, i am left writing a blog post about how i haven't written a blog post in a long time. because that is clearly of great interest to you.

is this my way of saying that i plan on being a good blogger who doesn't ignore this space for a month or more and creates new and engaging content? well, no. the fact is that my muddled head has been creeping in a number of different directions, the current result of which is that i have a few projects in various stages of completion. and i'd like to make sure that at least some of those see the light of day. i've also had some creeping health issues [nothing alarming] that i need to take care of and that has to take priority.

so, er, what's the point of this bloody post?

to let you know that i'm thinking of you, dear readers. and to let you know that i will, at some point, be back, although i can't commit to exactly when. and if there's something you'd like to see me write about more in the meantime, please feel free to let me know. i'm all ears. except that i'm not because then i would look kind of weird.

i'm definitely someone altogether different

2019-02-05T17:39:00.003-05:00

about a hundred years ago, i remember having a partner who told me that, rather than writing the sort of ambiance-oriented crap [he didn't say crap, i'm saying it] that i was naturally driven to write, i should just compose something like the harry potter books. this wasn't out of any sense of challenging me to do new things but because of the desperate hope that my love of writing could be parlayed into something profitable.

my reaction at the time was "i just can't". and that was honestly how i felt because i didn't believe that that kind of story was in me. for the record, i still don't think that anything like the potter-hogwarts universe is in me. i'm not a fan of fantasy literature generally speaking and i feel like there's a richer experience to be examined in looking at our experience as regular humans being part of the rational, limited, everyday world and at the same time being able to feel connected to something that, for lack of a better term, is magical or spiritual. this is why i write a lot about things that i get from my dreams. i wake up with that sense that what i've seen there, things that have no connection to consensus reality, is somehow more real than what i go through every day. i mean, if i feel it more deeply, if it elicits more powerful emotions [good and bad], if i can remember it more vividly than i can remember the "real" things that happen to me in the course of the week, if i feel more connected to certain people as a result... how is it a less meaningful level of experience?

and i am a literature snob. i did an honours-level [read: extra year and a few "advanced" classes] bachelor's degree in english literature. many of my all-time favourite books, hell, the book that i would single out as my number one favourite [any guesses?], are ones that i encountered during that time. what i was reading wasn't any kind of popular or genre fiction; it was "serious" literature and as a result, i've always maintained a distance between the two. that doesn't make me right, although i do believe that the "lighter" works of fiction that i've read haven't had the weight of those that truly made an impression. when i think of moments where books have made me pause and gasp at their power, i think of the shocking and inscrutable death of svidrigailov in crime and punishment and not the reveal of lisbeth salander's history in the the girl who played with fire.

so part of my negative reaction to being told i should just write something like the harry potter series was a rejection of genre fiction in general. i'm not like that. i don't think in those terms.

flash forward to years later and dom talked to me about his experience writing [screenplays] in genres that he hated. it was a test of creativity that came from a very different approach. rather than starting from a point of simply not being able to bring himself to write certain things or assuming he couldn't because he found them distasteful or irrelevant, he made himself to do something in spite of his reflexive resistance. the difference is an extremely important one: where i formed a statement ["i can't], he formed a question [can i?].

and rather than saying i should write the next billion-dollar franchise, he presented me with a different proposition: challenging myself to do something uncomfortable. i can put on whatever airs i want about my writing being difficult to define or cryptic, but can i marshall my creative forces in the service of something very different?

i find that this gets to the heart of the writer's [or, if i want to be truly pretentious, the artist's] conundrum: is creative inspiration something that simply strikes like lightning? or is it something that can be cultivated like a novel species of orchid? i have preached the gospel of the latter but the truth is that until i truly push my boundaries, i'm being a bit of a hypocrite. because if i can control my creative impulses, i should be able to channel them into doing something i wouldn't normally do. that doesn't mean that i should be writing something i hate, although that is an interesting exercise, but something that just takes what i have in my head and points it in another direction. i'm in charge, right? i should be able to do that.

the difference between capturing inspiration and forging [not forcing] it into a new shape versus waiting for it to come to me in a perfect form is the difference between being an artisan and being a dilettante. or, if you want to use stronger terms, being active and being passive. being an "artist" is something that hovers above that continuum. stieg larsson may be less of an artist than dostoevsky because his writing is concrete, simple and without pretension to loftier themes but he is not less of an author. the fact is that the literary world is great enough for both to exist without having to be in competition.

all this is a way for me to tell you that my recent weeks of silence haven't been about having nothing to say but rather about having something to say that isn't yet ready for public consumption. it's about trying something different and more restricted than usual, about forcing myself to conform to the norms of an established style rather than simply letting my creativity do what it wants. because if i'm not the one in charge of those impulses, then i'm just an occasional vessel for ideas that could come from aliens for all i know. bending those impulses to will is the power of the magician and not the possessed.

thanks dom.

i'm not the person i was before

2019-01-22T17:16:00.000-05:00

can you see the family resemblance?

i've just had an experience that brings new meaning to the phrase "new year, new you". as i mentioned in an earlier post, i took a genetic test from 23 and me a little while back and while it confirmed everything that i thought about the vast majority of my dna strands emanating from pasty countries, i found that there was also a trace amount of dna from the middle east/ northern africa region. as i mentioned at the time, this provided a tantalizing possibility for explaining a noticeably dark-skinned line in my family that persists from the earliest photos we have [dating from the nineteenth century] to the present day.

i noted in the previous post that i knew my results would change as 23 and me got a larger sample population and, indeed, on january 3rd of this new year, they did. they just changed rather more than i was expecting.

the breakdown of my european heritage got a little more... broken down. there's less that falls into the umbrella of "broadly european" or even "broadly northwestern european". that's because the database has grown to the size where more of me can be assigned to more specific regions of europe. interestingly, that also means that there are parts of europe in my genetic makeup that weren't there before. i now have a small chunk that comes from southern europe. now, i knew that there was some spanish and basque in there, but that's just a little too far back to register on this sort of test. and as it happens, the other changes may be instructive in this regard.

as of 2019, i have a significant chunk of genetic material that can now be classified as "greek and balkan" and an equal amount that is "sardinian". that's the nice thing about islands. their isolation yields some pretty distinctive genetic quirks. i have no idea where any of this stuff enters my family tree, but that's partly because i haven't ever looked for links to either of those places. i've been busy looking for some clue to the source of the arab dna which, as of the new report, is no longer there.

that's right. my mysterious progenitors from the levant or the maghreb have been eliminated by science and a larger sample size.

now, there is some wiggle room there. those southern european bits reflect the dna of people who had trade and tribal links to the middle east and north africa. so maybe what looks like north african dna at first glance looks more like the admixture you get in southern europe on further reflection. what's interesting is that the combination of broadly southern european, greek/ balkan and sardinian elements are far larger than the middle eastern/ north african part. so it's not a straight "swap". the totality of the result was re-analyzed based on more information and a bunch of my genetic crumbs were reconstituted into a new dna dumpling.

the takeaway? i don't so much show traces of an arab [broadly speaking] ancestor so much as i have a portion of a fairly recent southern european ancestor who passed on traces of their own arab ancestor considerably further back.

so now i've found more rabbits to chase down their various historical holes.

the good news is that when i reviewed my new and improved genetic breakdown, i noticed something that both explained part of the breakdown and lent some credibility to its findings. part of my genetic composition was listed as "french and german", enough to be indicative of a relative from that region some time in the last 200-250 years. i was a little unsure about this, since i know a lot of my family heritage going that far back and the only person who could have fit the bill was a relative with a french name but who probably came from the island of jersey*. however, looking at the details and maps again, i noticed that "french and german" in genetic terms includes the low countries of belgium, luxembourg and the netherlands. as it happens, i do know of a single relative who fits the bill in that case, a dutch woman who was likely born in massachussets to recent immigrants. i swear it's a coincidence that i discovered this scant days after mentioning the benelux countries in a completely unrelated post.

[*side note :: funnily enough, the new and improved dna report had a wee bit of increased detail on the british and irish components of my family. they were able to say with reasonably good confidence that i do not show genetic traits from the island of guernsey. but still nothing to confirm or refute the theory that part of my family emigrated to canada from the adjacent island of jersey.]

so now, if you'll excuse me, i'm off to reorient my search for family members and to find out what it is that makes sardinians so genetically peculiar. does it mean i'm actually part sardine? because i really like the ocean and i really like fish. that's what it means, isn't it, 23 and me? one of my ancestors bumped uglies with a sardine. this is me in 2019.

presidenting is hard :: nato

2019-01-16T21:23:00.000-05:00

i'm as surprised as you are

oh donald, i've been slacking on my promise to help you out with your duties as president. [yes, you may take a moment to giggle at the word "duties". but make it quick.]

it's not because i think you don't need the support; you are every bit as ignorant and inept as i'd feared/ expected and the erstwhile presence of "adults in the room" hasn't made you any better. it's just as well that you've dispatched of them. you weren't listening to what they said 95% of the time and on those few occasions when you did try to listen, you didn't understand what they were saying. increasingly, we're getting to see you for the complete intellectual non-entity you are and to see how someone who knows nothing about history, geography, culture or military tactics addresses the challenges of foreign policy.

the latest development on that front is that i've heard that you're planning on leaving nato. we all know that you've never been fond of the organization and you talked about walking away from it even when you were campaigning for the republican nomination. the aforementioned "adults" from the military you appointed to your cabinet were adamantly opposed to this and they appeared to have a moderating effect, if not on your opinion, then at least on your public stance. but that influence has waned and now you're back to wanting to dump nato like a playboy model you hooked up with.

donald, i'm going to tell you something that most others are not, something you don't hear very often, if ever: you might not be entirely wrong on this one.

that is not to say, donald, that you have any appreciation for the complexities of the issues involved. no one thinks that. but it's also just barely possible that even your thought process in this matter isn't entirely wrong. your pervasive sense of victimization has led you to believe that everyone else in nato is taking advantage of the united states and for once, that's kind of true. the first secretary general of nato, the british lord ismay, was pretty clear on his [and his country's] aims when the organization was born in 1949: he wanted "to keep the russians out, the americans in, and the germans down."

although it's generally disparaged [with good reason] as a tool of american imperialism, nato was not an american thing; it spawned from cooperative agreements after world war ii between the united kingdom and france, joined soon thereafter by the benelux countries, and eventually by others in western europe. [the same series of agreements is also responsible for bringing us the european union. and no, "benelux" is not a vacuum cleaner. i promise.]

the purpose of these agreements was to allow the proud but bankrupt countries of western europe to form a common front against the threat of russian/ soviet communism. and even at the time, that wasn't a new thing. no sooner was the bloodletting of the great war over when winston churchill was telling fellow englishmen to "kill the bolshie, kiss the hun", i.e., just put that whole war thing out of your head because the germans are our friends now and we'd like the russians who fought with us to burn in hell as quickly as possible. [in fact, the british army was actively involved in war against the new russian government, as was the united states, which, when you think about it, means that stalin wasn't entirely paranoid about the western powers wanting to overthrow him. so you see, donald, even someone like stalin was a little bit right some of the time, just like you. you should make a point of telling people that. josef stalin was just like you in some ways.]

the thing is, by the time that wwii was over, regular people in western europe were so fucking done with war that they probably would have reacted to a russian invasion by telling them to make themselves at home as long as they didn't smash all the relics of history and steal all the cheese. so the british, french and electroluxers needed someone to step in and do a lot of the actual military stuff they knew they'd never be able to convince their own people to do. [side note :: or that they didn't have the people to do to begin with. after six years or thirty-one years of war, depending on how you define it, western europe needed everyone at home making babies, stat, or else their economies were going to completely collapse.] that's where the united states came in.

by 1945, the american military was the envy of the world and the western europeans knew that nothing they could muster would put the fear into the communists in the same way. so the united states was persuaded to make a deal whereby they would act as western europe's big, tough best friend, pushing back against the mean old bolsheviks.

the thing was that america decided it really liked being the big tough guy and spent the next seventy years showing just how big and tough it was by beating up a lot of people who were smaller, less powerful and more vulnerable. even after the soviet union imploded, america kept right on pounding down on people [meaning countries] that got out of line [meaning did things that america didn't want it to do]. but doing all that cost america a lot of money and while it still has more money and a stronger military than any country ever, the government [and therefore the military] has less access to that money because taxes have decreased and now the wealth is in a smaller number of private hands. tiny little hands like yours, donald.

so now you find yourself in a situation where america is spread thin, both militarily and financially [sort of]. but you still have this legacy of being part of nato and protecting people in western europe, most of whom now despise you and treat you like they're just so much better than you because their from old manhattan families and you're the son of a couple of tough, cheap immigrants from queens who doesn't know how to behave in their posh ways like that's so important and they don't even have gold toilets... ahem. so now america is stuck with military bases all over the world that are protecting people from communists who aren't even there anymore. no other country has bases abroad like that. not russia, not china, not benelux. ergo, it is totally reasonable for you to question whether or not an organization like nato is still needed. [and by the way, you don't need to pretend that this is about demanding that nato members honour their commitment to spend 2% of their budgets on defence. it's not ever going to run at a profit for you and if you thought that you'd be able to operate it as a kind of international protection racket, you need to clear those cobwebs out of your addled head.]

the argument during the cold war was that a united front like nato held the soviet union in check. the argument that people are likely to use on you now is that the same thing needs to be done in order to keep russia in check. but here's something that you likely already know: there is a big difference between the amount of wealth that russia now has and the amount of money its government can access. wouldn't you know it, there are a small number of russians with tiny hands holding on to most of the money there, just like in america. so yes, russia can make a military stand against countries like georgia or even ukraine, but they aren't going to ride roughshod over an entire continent. even if europe [which now includes parts of eastern europe, even though the shots are still really being called by western europe and germany in particular, which is ironic considering that one of the main points of all these western european nations cooperating to begin with was to insure that germany would never again be able to become a dominant economic, military and cultural power ever again] is afraid that russia is going to turn them all into vassal states and take all their cheese, that is their problem. with all the people, wealth and infrastructure they have, those people should have figured out a plan for taking care of themselves that doesn't involve shouting "i'm friends with america and they're going to beat you up if you're mean to me!"

[side note :: you could point out that maybe russia wouldn't even be so hostile if nato didn't insist on building military bases and recruiting new members right inside russia's fucking nostrils. even western european countries didn't support the idea of recruiting new nato members from former soviet states because they thought it was an unnecessary provocation. even the americans who did push for such aggressive expansion, like former secretary of state james baker, have admitted that they might have gone too far. the thing is, those countries really want to be part of nato because they want the security of that "an attack against one is an attack against all" clause if and when russia does send its tanks in.]

arguments about why nato is still needed include things like the ability to share information on cyber-warfare and data among members, the ability to pressure member states to resolve conflicts that would otherwise threaten the larger economy, and most importantly, that nato can discourage potential enemies before they are even able to establish themselves. and those people have a case to make. but there's no reason for them to make it unless someone is out there saying "maybe this is all just old and tired and we should all go do our own thing".

other people, people who think [as i do] that you are one dna strand removed from an ambulatory poop emoji, would argue that the brutish, bullying history of nato itself has made the world a sadder and more dangerous place. those aren't the arguments you actually care about, of course, because they have to do with nato's moral failings rather than what it costs, but hey, as long as people are agreeing with you, you might as well try to incorporate their arguments when making your case. when you were on the campaign trail, you shrugged off criticism of your hero vladimir putin by saying that criticizing him for using violence was hypocritical since the united states has also used state violence throughout its history. what you meant was that you didn't think violence was a big deal because everyone was doing it, but i think that if you shifted your argument a little to imply that america should move away from using state violence before criticizing others for employing it, you might actually win a few allies. [side note :: i don't know how to explain to you, a champion of bullying in every way, that violence isn't usually a good thing. try to picture if someone walked into the white house and started punching you and kicking you and pulling your hair and no one would come and help you and somehow that person made you hand over all the money and possessions you have in the world and people just laughed and didn't care and that person threw you out of the white house to live in the streets and kept all your money and power and... shit... now i'm feeling more ambivalent about violence. just trust me on this, ok? violence is usually bad.]

the larger point is this: even if you aren't saying that you want to scrap nato with the same passion that you want to build your border slats, you are doing something important even by floating the idea that maybe nato doesn't have to be eternal. and even if it is to continue, there are arguments from across the political spectrum that raise good points about the amount of money it costs the united states and whether that money could be better spent in other ways.

do you understand me donald? i'm telling you that you are actually making an important contribution to public discourse. i don't even think you know what that means but it involves me saying something more or less nice about you.

just to be clear, i think that you're far too stupid and ignorant to be able to make the case for this in any public forum and certainly you're too thick to be able to match wits with the kind of people who are proclaiming that you're a fool for even suggesting this. but for what it's worth, this is not even one of the top ten stupidest ideas i've heard out of your administration in the last few weeks. and for just 2% of the money america spends on its military, i will be the person who makes your case to the media on this issue. [given your prospects for the 2020 election, if you even make it that far, i am going to have to ask for 50% up front.] think about it, big guy.

making faces :: written in the stars, in lipstick [part three]

2019-01-09T14:10:00.001-05:00

and lo the earth has completed another journey 'round the sun, passing through all of the signs of the zodiac. well, in lipstick terms, it won't have completed its journey until later this month when it moves from capricorn to aquarius, which is where bite beauty chose to start its turn of the wheel last year. i still feel a little unnerved that they followed the calendar rather than the astrological year [which would have meant starting their astrology collection in march with the sign of aries] but i suspect that that's because their financials also follow the calendar.

after some truly infuriating times early in the calendar and collection year, bite was able to get their inventory issues sorted, which means that all four of the lipsticks reviewed here are still available through bite's website, sephora, or both. hallelujah.

i have some thoughts on the overall collection that i'll share afterwards, but let's just get started on the final four shades of the bite zodiac...

libra

this was always going to be a difficult one for me, since it's my native sign, and even though i know that not everything is about me, i was always going to evaluate this shade on how well it worked for me in particular. the truth is that the earthy brown that bite chose for libra is something that would work very well on celebrity libra kim kardashian [i saw someone comment on temptalia a while back that several of the bite shades seemed to take inspiration from celebrities whether they admitted it or not and i feel like there's something to that, especially here]. it's a rich, dark neutral with a slightly olive tone that makes it nicely balanced between warm and cool.

libra

the formula here is exquisite. it applies perfectly with a satiny finish, or perhaps a little more than satiny- glossy almost. i find that lipsticks pull closer to matte on me than they do on many people, so the fact that i continued to see a noticeable sheen on this one for hours means that most will probably have a healthy shine.

the colour itself is a rich olive-toned brown, the sort of yellowy brown that bite staked their claim to with their edgy neutrals collection of 2017. 95% of the brown shades you find are going to have red undertones, which makes them pull quite warm. this one is more suitable to a range of skin tones, even though, being brown, it does lean more warm and muted overall.

not surprisingly, the closest shade i have in my collection is "porcini" from the edgy neutrals collection. it's lighter and softer but it's definitely part of the same family.

t to b :: libra, porcini

i understand bite's urge to have a "balanced" colour for libra which is, after all, the sign of the scales, but i feel like they missed a strong component of the libra personality here: libras are romantic, traditionally "feminine", creatures driven by imagination and fantasy. a brown, even one that respects their obsession with balance and evenness, is too earthy and too grounded. i said that i was nervous about libras getting saddled with a pastel shade and i'm glad that bite took a different route. i just feel like what they chose missed the mark.

scorpio

this was a shade that caused some serious ripples online. in part, it's because the colour choice was a real shock. anyone who knows anything about astrology knows that scorpios are the dark souls of the zodiac; they are always described with words like "mysterious", "intense", and "brooding". halloween falls in the first third of their sign and that is very fitting. much like a bold orange-red [or red orange] was a no-brainer for the battering ram, a vampy near-black was the only choice for the scary, sexy scorpion.

or not.

scorpio

bite chose a nearly blinding safety vest orange and, while orange is also associated with late autumn and halloween, this isn't the shade that springs to mind. "scorpio" the lipstick is a little drier than the absolute best amuse bouche lipstick shades but it is not drying. rather, the finish is a little closer to matte than the creamiest examples for the formula. it applies and wears similar to "aries". and that's the other issue that people had.

l to r :: mac neon orange, scorpio, aries

it's one thing if customers just wanted to buy the lipstick for their own sign but for those who wanted to own the whole collection, "scorpio" was uncomfortably close to "aries". seen side by side "scorpio" is clearly less red and more orange and on skin tones that lean to the cool side of neutral [like mine] that difference is evident on the lips even from a distance. however, for warmer-toned beauties and for those who don't necessarily gravitate towards bright shades, the difference is going to be pretty minimal. this problem is even more glaring because bite had the exact same issue just a few months before with "taurus" and "cancer". there aren't a lot of shades that have never been done before but bite didn't come close to having the full spectrum in this collection. if they wanted to avoid the stereotypical vampy choice, maybe a smoky mid-tone purple, or a medium reddish-brown would have worked.

sagittarius

now this is one where i feel like they did do a good job of capturing the bold, energetic, often exaggerated character of the sign in question. "sagittarius" is a screaming bright pink that could stop traffic. i'd call it a barbie pink.

sagittarius

the formula is excellent, similar to "scorpio" in that its rich pigmentation makes it feel a little drier going on but not at all drying when worn. it is immediately opaque and wears well. it's not the sort of colour that will be at home in an accounting office, perhaps, but for those who dare...

l to r :: sagittarius, mac candy yum yum

it's a little darker and, as improbable as this seems, brighter than mac "candy yum yum" their cult shade that previously occupied the event horizon of bold lips. i love how it takes the cliche of "girly pink" and pushes it to an extreme that turns it into something else entirely. from the starting point of the idealized feminine of past eras- sweet, delicate, soft- it creates something that's loud, assertive and very modern. wear with confidence and very little else.

capricorn

i know a lot of people thought that this should have been the colour assigned to the sign of scorpio and i wouldn't have objected. that said, i think that serious, hard-working, conservative capricorn is just as deserving of a near-black lip colour. i'm not sure whether to call this a blackened purple or a black with a purple undertone. the truth is that it doesn't really matter because what you're going to see is just darkness. it's like looking into the depths of outer space: cold and dark and awesome.

capricorn

to be fair, "capricorn" isn't the darkest lipstick in my collection; it has a creaminess that brightens it a little compared to the flat matte "blackmail" from urban decay. it is darker than le metier de beauté's "kona", though, which is a pretty intense vampy shade. what makes "capricorn" quite distinctive is its cool undertone. if you smudge just a little bit on, you can see that it's a very blue purple, almost indigo, whereas other similar shades [like the aforementioned two] pull more red.

l to r :: lmdb kona, capricorn, urban decay blackmail

the formula on this one is exceptional, especially because very dark lipsticks are fiendishly tricky: the increased amount of pigment required makes the product drier, meaning that most manufacturers have to choose between something that can be difficult to apply and potentially uncomfortable to wear and adding more emollients which can make application streaky and cause feathering. this one just nails the fine balance needed. [i do recommend completely removing the colour and wiping lips clean after eating, because oils from food will upset that balance.]

so how does this last crop work in practice? well, let's take a look...

here's a look at "libra" that i included in an earlier post. the shades on the eyes are a mix of viseart's cashmere theory palette and urban decay's original naked palette.

i've tried using "libra" as a muted partner to more colourful eye looks but on my skin, i find it's too dark to work as such. neutral doesn't mean a shade is lacking in pigment and for me, this works best when paired with warm, muted shades or warmer metallics like gold and bronze [but not copper, which reads as too colourful on my skin]. on darker complexions, i think that this will function more as an "everyday" neutral but i still think it will have too much "presence" to work with bright shades.

and this is an example of what i meant about "scorpio" being an orange shade that doesn't jive with the kinds of orange you see in the fall. instead, i think it blends very well with spring tones: nude colours or slightly softened brights.

in this case, i went for a couple of my staple mac greens, "aquavert" and "lucky green" with anastasia's "legend" used to blend them together in the centre. the blush is an bold orange [although i've applied it lightly] with its own built-in gold highlighter called "my paradise", a limited item from mac's 2011 summer collection.

the safe thing to do with "sagittarius" would be to wear it with almost nothing else on the face but i decided to push the envelope a little by combining it with pat mcgrath's la vie en rose mthrshp palette and i have to say that i quite liked the results. just having this combination on my face makes me feel a little zany.

the blush is dior's "pareo", which was limited edition for reasons i will never understand, combined with hourglass ambient lighting powder in "diffused light".

finally, as predictable as it may seem, here is "capricorn" paired with some understated taupe shades. nars "stud" is in there, along with burberry "storm grey" and mac "innuendo", plus there's a bit of sparkly highlight added by rouge bunny rouge "alabaster starling". the cheeks are all neutral as well: mac "next to skin" as a light contour" and nars "nico" as a low-key highlight.

yes, there are more imaginative things i could have done than pair a vampy lip with tamped-down neutrals. i could point out that the eyeshadows clearly have some heavy shimmer going on, which obviously makes things just outrageous, but the truth is that this kind of combination of colours is predictable because it is such a great way to show off a dark lip. one woman's cliché is another woman's classic.

since this marks the end of our astrological journey, i figured that a little recap was in order. despite the early inventory issues, this collection kept my interest because the quality of the lipsticks was so consistently high. the amuse bouche formula, already excellent, seems to be improving with each new launch and if you're interested in more than a couple of the shades, it's probably worth your while to pick up the set of minis so you can have the whole thing. [plus, the shades for "gemini" are included as two separate lipsticks, which is even better.]

if you want to buy one or two and aren't necessarily just looking to have the colour corresponding with your own zodiac sign, here are my recommendations, based on a few different factors:

best overall :: virgo, pisces
weakest overall :: gemini, leo*

*i'm only including leo because the formula is quite different and i know it divided a lot of fans. personally, i love it.

most original :: pisces, libra, leo
most dupe-able :: taurus, cancer, aries

best matches to zodiac sign :: aries, leo, aquarius, sagittarius
worst matches to zofiac sign :: gemini, scorpio, libra

i promised a little while ago that i was going to work on a new "lip for all seasons" post with recommendations for all twelve different sci/art seasons. i haven't completed that yet but in the meantime, i figured why not make some recommendations just from this collection. obviously, the colours weren't designed with this in mind, so i've broken them down a few different ways:

best matches for springs :: scorpio, pisces, aries
best matches for summers :: taurus, cancer
best matches for autumns :: leo, libra, gemini
best matches for winters :: capricorn, sagittarius, virgo, aquarius

brightest :: aries, scorpio, sagittarius
softest :: taurus, cancer, pisces

warmest :: leo, libra, scorpio
coolest :: aquarius, virgo, capricorn

lightest :: pisces, cancer
darkest :: aquarius, virgo, capricorn

as i mentioned earlier, many of the single lipsticks and the miniature collection are available through bite's website. tracking down the earlier single shades might be a bit trickier but there's no harm in looking, right?

once the early bumps in the road were smoothed over, this became a very fun collection to follow. of course, i now need to look very seriously at my collection of lipsticks because clearly bringing home this many means i need to clear out some that just don't make the grade anymore. but that's another story. bite has raised the bar on lip products to the point where every other brand is having to play catch-up. well done. i see great things in the future.

p.s. :: if you'd like to see the other parts of this series you can find them here [aquarius, pisces, aries, taurus] and here [gemini, cancer, leo, virgo]

a case for homicide?

2018-12-14T14:04:00.002-05:00

source

last week a seven-year-old child died of dehydration and exhaustion at a facility run by the u.s. department of homeland security. the child was in government custody for seven hours before she died but no one seems to have checked on her or offered any assistance to her until she had a seizure and was admitted to hospital with a fever of nearly 106 degrees. it's not clear whether she was given water, food or a medical exam, which is standard for people turning themselves in at the border and throwing themselves on the mercy of the dhs.

death by dehydration [or the toxic shock caused by it] takes about three days for an average adult. for a child, especially one who had been walking in the heat for long periods of time, it can happen much faster. the preliminary report on her death indicates that she had not eaten in about a day. that will be confirmed by the final report [which is not due for a few weeks] but it's important that we understand that the government assertion that she was hiking through northern mexico without water for days is suspect: she may have been dehydrated for days, but it's medically unlikely that she'd had absolutely no water. the purpose of this framing is to make it appear as if her condition was already terminal by the time that she arrived at the border.

dehydration progresses through a number of stages before it becomes a medical emergency. at some point, this child did get beyond the point where giving her water to drink would have solved the problem. however, before she reached that point, she would have been delirious and visibly weak. not everyone would have known what was wrong but that's what you have medical staff on site for. and considering the conditions in which most people arrive, it is reasonable to assume that all personnel who come into contact with asylum seekers and migrants should be trained to recognize the symptoms of common problems. [side note :: some of you reading this might disagree because you think it's unfair to ask overworked border guards to check each person they deal with for dehydration. but dehydration isn't the only issue. much though i hate to give any kindling to the dumpster fire that is the argument that asylum seekers are bringing diseases, these are people who have been struggling through the rough countryside for days and weeks. mosquitoes carry diseases. rats and mice carry diseases. some of these people may have contracted illnesses in their travels and they need medical attention in order to prevent those from spreading to others. the fact that they might arrive sick isn't grounds for refusing them entry. it's grounds for treating them so that a contagion isn't accidentally released into the people working at the border crossing and beyond. so having staff trained to recognize common afflictions to prioritize those needing medical care is a matter of self-interest.]

the government's reaction has been predictably gross. aside from the specious statement mentioned earlier, we should pay attention to their use of the word "juvenile" [see the al jazeera article linked in the first sentence] to describe her. technically speaking, there's nothing incorrect with describing a child of seven as a juvenile. that's how they're referred to in legal proceedings. however, that statement wasn't issued to a court, it was issued to the public and the public usually hears the word "juvenile" in the context of criminal conduct: "juvenile delinquent". insofar as the word is commonly used, it's used to describe minors who are usually teenagers and sometimes dangerous. now, the general public isn't likely to find out about this case through government statements and the media has characterized this as a child dying. still, it's an interesting window into the case that the dhs is building for itself.

dhs secretary kristen nielsen has made it clear that, as far as the administration is concerned, this whole thing is the fault of the girl's family. she's characterized it as being just something that can happen when you try to flee your impoverished, violent country for the united states. this has been [rightfully] decried as insensitive but it's more than that: it's a legal defence in the making.

although i highly doubt that the government will ever have to defend themselves in court, because i cannot foresee a situation in which a u.s. attorney would bring charges against americans to get justice for a child from another country who'd entered america illegally, i think that there is at least a plausible case to be made for people to face criminal charges.

first, there are many, many examples of parents or guardians being charged with causing the death of a child through neglect. indiana, home state of vice president mike pence, recorded that there were 59 substantiated cases of children dying from neglect in the state in 2016 and 77 the year prior. a west virginia couple were charged with starving their 21-month old son to death just last month. in august, a couple in michigan were brought up on felony homicide and child abuse charges when their infant died of dehydration and malnutrition. nor are mitigating circumstances an automatic defence: this wisconsin couple was charged when they allowed their son to die during a religious fast. this illustrates the primary importance society places on the care of children: even the constitutional right to freedom of religion does not automatically supercede it.

and that leads to the question of guardianship: this status is assumed to fall to the parent unless there is a specific legal arrangement that states otherwise. the little girl who died last week was presumably in the legal custody of her father, however, both of them were in the custody of the department of homeland security. ultimately, they were free to act only as allowed by the authorities and therefore, de facto guardianship passed to the border staff. if a child dies during surgery to which her parents have agreed, the parents don't get charged if that child dies when the surgery is botched. the law recognizes that there are situations where a parent isn't the one actively protecting the child. i'm not a lawyer, but i think it's possible to argue that this is such a situation.

now, in many jurisdictions, it's not illegal to delay or outright refuse life-saving measures. that would appear to absolve the border patrol but there are different rules for medical staff. that's where the timeline of the child's death becomes important. if she was seen by a doctor or nurse before her condition became irreversible then they do bear some legal responsibility for what happened. and even the border staff are potentially open to charges of child endangerment or abuse since, as we've seen, neglect of basic needs meets the legal threshold for abuse.

"yes," i hear you say, "but both the girl and her father entered the country illegally, so they had no business being there in the first place. any help offered to them by government employees should be seen as a kindness, not a requirement." personally, i think this makes you a pretty risible excuse for a human being, but my opinion doesn't matter. what does matter is that the law isn't necessarily on your side: there are a number of cases [here are five] where a burglar was able to successfully sue the owner of the home they were breaking into because they were injured during the course of their break-in. those are civil cases, not criminal, which have a lower standard for determining culpability and i am in no way defending the rights of criminals to re-victimize the people they've already hurt. but those decisions indicate that the law can be ambiguous. when kristen nielsen says that death by dehydration is a foreseeable consequence of crossing the border illegally, the legal ground she's standing on is shakier than she wants to acknowledge.

homeland security has started an investigation into the case, however, since the head of the department has already indicated her indifference to the matter, that investigation is suspect from the beginning. even if it is thorough, you have to wonder how comfortable people there would feel about going to the boss, let alone the public, with "bad news". no one in the trump administration believes that this death was their fault and they don't want to hear otherwise. [think that's exaggerated? consider their reaction to their own scientists telling them about the reality and dangers of climate change.]

i've made it clear that i'm not a lawyer. i'm not trying to make a legal case so much as i'm trying to point out that there are legal issues that deserve consideration. this little girl's death happened while she was in federal custody but homicide and child endangerment laws are administered by the state. so i don't even know who has jurisdiction over the case. i would be shocked if this case could be successfully prosecuted but i still think that it behooves the justice system to give it a shot. this was not an accidental death. it was preventable. american law has established that adults are held to a high standard when it comes to the protection of children and shrugging it off when the child is poor, or a member of a minority, or even in the country illegally is tantamount to saying that the law is only applied selectively. some children are more equal than others.

case closed.

speaking ill of the dead

2018-12-07T19:08:00.001-05:00

the passing of george h. w. bush last week has occasioned a lot of discussion about legacy and decorum. this usually attends the passing of influential people, politicians in particular, and the argument is something like this:

position one :: a person who influenced our lives and our world has passed and out of respect we should remember the good and remarkable things that he [less often she, at least for now] accomplished. now is not the time to revisit controversies.

position two :: not everyone is hitler, but that doesn't make them saints, either. a person has died and while we don't want to cause undue pain to their family, they had a long, healthy life and that is more than can be said for many of the people touched by their influence. however sympathetic they may have looked later in life, we need to say that the things that they did we horrible.

personally, i have some sympathy for both positions when it comes to a figure like bush41. given my political leanings, it's unsurprising that i find many of his actions fall on the scale of troubling to repulsive. on the other hand, there are things that he did that i would never expect of a republican president and not just because he was better than the republicans that followed him.

the good parts are ones that people like me often missed but which are being discussed a great deal now: canadian scientists and politicians had been pushing against a wall to try to get the united states to cooperate on capping emissions that caused acid rain. bush opened the door wide and signed a historic update to the clean air act that lowered harmful emissions by 40%. he took on the nra through a partial ban of semiautomatic weapons and returned his lifetime membership when the group opposed him. while still staunchly pro-israel, he was more moderate than many others to occupy that office and encouraged israel to incorporate palestinians into the political process and into parliament. [he later became more conservative in this regard, cutting ties with the palestinian liberation organization.] the americans with disabilities act was passed on his watch.

he deserves credit for those things especially because they were stands against many in his own party and not necessarily in keeping with the times. environmental regulation was a political non-starter and criticized as a burden on business. support for gun reform was lower then than it is today. palestinians were still seen largely as terrorists. republicans do not support greater government regulation, even when it protects the vulnerable, as a general rule.

the bad parts, though, are pretty significant and don't just relate to his time as president. he spent a year at the head of the central intelligence agency in the wake of shocking disclosures of their malfeasance at home and abroad. much of his time there was spent fighting to keep congress from taking action against either the agency or its employees and protecting many of those employees from prosecution. later, as president, he used his power to pardon them. these are people who were involved in domestic spying and who helped install and prop up governments they knew were committing atrocities. the pardons also protected him from having to give testimony on the iran-contra affair. republicans now excoriate the government and people of iran, blithely ignoring the fact that their party illegally armed them in the eighties.

that didn't stop him from committing violence against iranians, though: when the american military shot down an iranian passenger jet, killing hundreds of civilians, he angrily defended the action, insisting he would never apologize for america. [this defence was later echoed by republicans who termed barack obama's more moderate stance his "apology tour".]

his open homophobia and refusal to act in the face of the aids epidemic until the pressure against his inertia meant that thousands of americans died of the disease.

the "revolving door prison" ad that he ran against his 1988 opponent michael dukakis is widely credited with kickstarting the age of the brazen attack ad. there is a line that dates from that ad to the gross behaviour of donald trump. bush is responsible for lowering the level of political discourse and for accelerating its decline like no other.

and speaking of the decline of civil discourse, that ad continued and amplified the scapegoating of blacks for violent crime in america. bush41 was a champion of the disastrous "war on drugs" that saw thousands of african-americans imprisoned, often for relatively minor offences, while whites often walked free. the ad's subtext was clearly that if americans elected dukakis, they were all going to be raped and murdered by black men. it was exactly the sort of dog whistle that he and his family have criticized trump for using.

he steadfastly refused to condemn the apartheid government of south africa, despite the fact that their racist policies were well known. in fact, he sent money to a movement aligned with them who were fighting a civil war against the left-leaning government of angola.

donald trump likes to pin the troubles caused by nafta on bill clinton but clinton only signed it. bush was an architect. nafta can be debated but there is no getting around the fact that it gutted the american rust belt, which has never recovered.

he hypocritically turned the might of the american military against manuel noriega, a dictator whose regime his cia previously backed, acting as if he were the greatest threat to democracy in the world. noriega wasn't even the greatest threat to democracy in central america. the interference in panama started in the reagan administration but bush was extremely involved in that as well, more than most vice presidents would have been.

but the thing that bush41 will be remembered for the most is iraq. although his son was the bush who jumped in to destroy the hussein regime more than a decade later, it was the father who moved on them first. iraq invading the tiny emirate of kuwait in 1990, under the pretext that it was a rebellious province that should have been part of iraq. the united states declared that they would defend democracy in kuwait and started a ridiculously one-sided war in 1991. both sides were full of the worst kind of shit: both wanted to control kuwait's precious oil reserves and the iraqis were further angered by kuwait's refusal to forgive the debt iraq owed them as a result of their eight-year war with iran.

despite the fact that the gulf war, as it was called, was successful and popular [in a country still smarting from defeat in vietnam], it ultimately lead to the implosion of much of the middle east with no end to the carnage in site nearly thirty years later. hundreds of thousands of iraqis have died in the violence and deprivation that has resulted from wars and sanctions and have received little sympathy from anyone in the bush family or their collaborators. over a million have been displaced and are unlikely to ever return home.

there was at least a fair chance that saddam hussein's regime would have been toppled and the country thrown into chaos from within. it was not a "natural" country; it was one designed by committee in europe. but the presence of american soldiers and arms made the situation far worse and poisoned the view of america in the minds of the arab world, possibly forever.

i'd say that that tips the scales pretty substantially to the negative, especially when you consider that his administration only lasted four years. [sort of. most of the people around bush41 reappeared in senior positions with bush43. -ed.] but my point isn't to make a final historical judgment. i'm biased. my point is that all of these things need to be discussed. they need to be discussed in an honest and direct manner, without sugar-coating or cautious omissions out of "respect for the dead".

bush41's legacy, from his pardons to his attack ads to his feckless war-mongering, is one marked by a total lack of any sense of responsibility. and refusing to criticize his record perpetuates that. he is responsible for a humanitarian disaster in iraq and he is responsible for massive reductions in toxic emissions. almost every leader's record will be like that and we shouldn't be intimidated into glossing over the bad on the pretence that it's impolite. george h. w. bush is dead. he will be discussed less and less over time, so if there isn't serious discussion of his accomplishments and failings now, chances are that there never will be.

that's not to say that the discussion has to be vicious. bush41 was a human being. his family are human beings. throwing around judgments that he was evil before his body is in the ground is hurtful but more importantly, it damages the argument. a refusal to acknowledge that bush did anything helpful or progressive is ahistorical. and it ignores some questions that really should be asked:

bush41 valued the environment. he wanted to protect vulnerable groups like the disabled. while it wasn't the case all the time, he showed that he wasn't afraid to stare down powerful lobbies when he felt they were wrong. although it was late and under enormous public pressure, he did eventually act to protect victims of aids and to stop the escalation of the epidemic. how could a man with his level of intelligence and moral fibre have been so callously indifferent to the suffering of people in other parts of the world?

given that he showed he was more than capable of standing up to lobbyists, why did he not do so when negotiating nafta? it's not like the consequences for america were a surprise when they started to happen. but he chose to protect the needs of big business over those of the people who elected him.

he was more than capable of reaching across the aisle to work with democrats and even preferred doing so to working with his own party at times. that didn't mean that there was no discord. he felt hamstrung by the democratic congress as much as anyone. but he wasn't intransigent. so how did he convince himself that winning at any cost, by grossly distorting the truth and turning that into a slick media campaign, was acceptable? sure, we all want to win, but at what point should a man like him have stopped? and why didn't he at least apologize for the ad with its racist theme later on? there was nothing to lose once he was out of office.

talking about these things is what allows us to grasp how people function as politicians and how they end up making the decisions they do. it gives us insight into what characteristics predispose someone to violence against foreign countries, inaction on important issues, or the ability to work with people they don't agree with. we need this discussion to gain a deep understanding of history. we need it to evaluate future candidates for president or any political office. we need it to ward off the complacency that comes from having a president of the united states who is so obvious about everything. subtlety matters. subtlety has dominated political life. and subtlety makes for complicated history.

george h. w. bush was the man and the president that he was. he didn't apologize for that and seemed generally comfortable with his decisions. talking about all that that encompassed isn't disrespectful, it's quite the opposite. he was proud of much of what he did as president, vice president and head of the cia. why should we be cherry-picking what accomplishments we continue to mention? how does that help anything?

it helps nothing. it's antithetical to truth. and ultimately, our discomfort in discussing the difficult parts of bush41's legacy says a lot more about how he and others like him have conditioned us to avoid responsibility for our past.

making faces :: journal of the plague week [with pat mcgrath]

2018-12-06T15:25:00.000-05:00

hand me my eyeshadow, ere i die!

i've been lax about posting before but this time i have a very good excuse: i've had the plague. well, maybe not the plague. close enough to the plague! this started on the 21st of november. i can say that with certainty because the very first symptom was a small cold sore on my chin. since i tend to track what makeup i wear, i can see that the sore appeared on the 21st, whereas before my skin was happy and clear, my body blissfully unaware of what was about to happen to it.

the plague began with a cough and muscle aches that were very nearly crippling. the aching subsided after a couple of days but the cough got worse and worse, keeping me up at night even when medicated and ripping my throat up something fierce. then the pain came back, centred on my head. and there was fatigue that i haven't experienced in years. walking to the bathroom was enough to exhaust me to the point where i needed a nap. which is awkward when you have to summon the energy to walk back...

the symptoms have gradually faded but my energy level is still pretty low and fighting off the virus/ bacteria/ evil spirit appears to have left me with a sinus infection. during the worst of it, i was a little surprised that i wasn't congested at all. then, as i got better, i started getting a bit stuffed up. nothing too serious, just enough to be noticeable. i'm still not congested to the point where i need to carry tissues with me like a child's safety blanket but i'm experiencing some significant pain in my sinuses, bad enough that it occasionally messes up my vision and bad enough that it's visible on my face.

which is a very long-winded way of saying that i haven't had the energy or brain power to blog or do much of anything lately. on days when i've felt really ambitious, however, i pulled out a new makeup toy i didn't have a chance to enjoy before succumbing to the plague. putting on makeup was enough to physically exhaust me in and of itself but it also had the effect of making me feel a little more human. and at least it was something i could actually do, unlike pretty much every other activity.

i picked up pat mcgrath's mthrshp subliminal: dark star palette as part of the annual sephora 20% off sale. it's one of three six-shadow palettes released as part of her holiday "opulence" collection, which also includes a full size [ten-shadow] mothership palette in tones of red and bronze, versions of popular colours of her mattetrance lipstick in special packaging [that matches the three smaller palettes] and a new lipstick formula, blitztrance, which walks the line between heavy shimmer and glitter. [everything sparkles right now.]

dark star is a really fascinating mix of warm and cool colours in medium to deep tones. it's the sort of mix that most people will probably use by incorporating some shades with other items already in their collection, as it can be a touch difficult to come up with cohesive looks by using dark star alone. [i did it anyway, because one has to try.] the six shades are:

entice :: a heavily shimmered gold with a light copper undertone. this is the lightest shade in the palette but it's going to read as a pale medium tone on all but the darkest skin. it is very reflective, so it can work as a glitzy highlight on the centre of the lid or towards the inside. the consistency is quite thick and creamy, which is in keeping with my [limited] experience of pat mcgrath's shimmer-heavy shades. i got some fallout with this one when i was applying it [you can see some of that littering the palette in the above photos] but not afterward. without a primer, i saw a few stray sparkles towards the end of the day and with a primer there were none. although it's quite a warm shade, the high-beam reflectiveness makes it more wearable on neutral-to-cool skin. right off the bat, this is my favourite of the six shadows. i love the warm/ neutral flexibility of it. i love the fact that it doesn't just fall from my eyes like so many glittery shades. i love how creamy and easy to work with it is. a winner all around.

deep space :: this is a gorgeous satiny grey with a cool blue undertone. i found this one took a little bit of layering to get it perfect on the eye because it didn't spread quite as evenly as a shimmery shade. on the other hand, once it was perfect, it was the most perfect perfect. satin finishes are probably my favourite in general because i love the subtle sheen they have. this one is a fantastic example. smoothed onto the lid, it has enough lustre that it gives itself a subtle highlight, while it can be built up to nearly [but not quite] black. you can do a nice smoky eye with this shade alone, which is quite a feat. without a primer, i did find that this faded after a few hours. [i feel that i should add the caveat that this occurred when i was at my unhealthiest, which can't have helped.]

enraptured :: every pat mcgrath palette features one [at least one!] stunning medium gold. they're not strikingly different but each is unique. in this case, it's an orange-toned metallic shade with rich colour payoff no matter how little you use. it's a real powerhouse that you'll want to use sparingly. although there's a lot of heavy metal shimmer, i didn't get any fallout from this shade whether i used a primer or not. the one slightly surprising thing was that i didn't find it was the easiest to blend. well, it spread smoothly for certain, but i found that it had a tendency to separate if i used a brush to meld it with other colours. although i could apply it with either a brush or my fingers, i found the trick to blending it best was to go with fingers and sort of "smoosh" it into the adjacent colours. this works well with very creamy formulas like mcgrath's, but not as much with regular powders, which are thinner and will just fade when smooshed. that said, it's the kind of shade that could be worn alone and stop traffic. and it does blend very nicely with "entice". also in keeping with my experience of ms. mcgrath's knockout golds, this one lasted forever, with or without primer.

l to r :: entice, deep space, enraptured

dark matter :: a stunning satiny black. it has wonderful colour payoff that's visibly more than matte and a slight softness compared to an intense black like "fin" [le metier de beauté]. it leans just a little cool, which makes it pair perfectly with "deep space" but the softness in tone means that it blends pretty well with the warmer shades in the palette if used judiciously. [if it's built up, the coolness becomes more apparent.] black eyeshadows aren't difficult to come by, but satin-finish blacks are, so this one is just that much more exciting. in terms of lasting power, i found that it benefitted from a primer, like "deep space" but the difference wasn't as marked.

metroplis :: this was an odd one on me. it's a near-black burgundy-purple colour, too warm to be called an eggplant purple but too dark to be compared to anything else. it has a beautiful, smooth frost finish and the formula is almost unbelievably good. it goes on rich, smooth and even and blends seamlessly with other colours. [even "enraptured".] what i found odd was that, for such an intense colour, it seemed extremely changeable depending on what colours were around it. combined with the golden shades in the palette, it read as brown. you could see the reddish tones, but nothing of the purple. worn with the cooler shades- "dark matter" and "deep space", it looked like a purplish burgundy colour. in the pan, it looks purple. on my skin, it read warmer unless it was basically placed by itself. how much warmer varied a surprising amount. the lasting power was fantastic and, no matter how red, brown or purple it looked at the outset, it maintained that through the entire day.

interstellar :: this is likely the shade that's going to draw most people to this palette. it's a sparkly, medium-deep periwinkle blue with a purple undertone that puts the "star" in dark star. formula-wise, it's very different than the other shades. it's drier and semi-sheer, which makes it work well as a layering colour. it's buildable to semi-opaque but not more, which makes it tricky to use as anything but a layering colour. since the base of the shade doesn't ever get opaque, it needs to be blended over something or it will look patchy. the interesting thing about it is that once it is added, it pops. even adding a small amount, i was surprised at how visible it was- not just the sparkle, but the blue colour. this was especially true in photos or, more accurately, in any place where the light was a little brighter. applied lightly, it was nigh on invisible in the shadows. then, when you step into the light, it jumps up to greet you. despite the thinner texture, the lasting power of "interstellar" was great. would i have preferred to be able to get it fully opaque? you bet your ass. but as it is, it's a very interesting option in a formula that's like little i've seen before.

l to r :: dark matter, metropolis, interstellar single pass/ built up

at first, i thought i was less in love with dark star than i was with la vie en rose. on reflection, i'm not so sure. the lack of a light-to-medium matte shade makes it more difficult to work with this palette on its own, however, i wouldn't sacrifice one of the shades on offer for such a thing. there is something in my "makeup programming" that makes me think that a palette should be its own cohesive, self-contained universe. but the fact is that highlight shades and medium blending colours are everywhere and if you're going to dish out for a premium palette, it's nice to get a set of really original, top-notch colours rather than ones that can be easily duplicated.

like a lot of shimmer-dominated palettes, with shades that run deeper i find that this one can look a bit heavy on its own. on the other hand, the two satin shades are incredible for a smoky eye and you can get a nearly infinite number of beautiful looks by pairing these shadows with others.

to that end, i have a bevvy a of looks to show you, which also happen to provide a road map of my recent illness, boils and all.

"first signs"

the base
urban decay all-nighter foundation "1.5"
marcelle flawless concealer "fair"
pixi correction concentrate "awakening apricot" [this stuff is a bloody miracle if you have dark circles, which i always do, plague or no.]
urban decay velvetizer powder

the eyes
pat mcgrath "interstellar" [inner lid]
pat mcgrath "entice" [middle lid]
pat mcgrath "metropolis" [outer lid, crease, lower lash line]
pat mcgrath "dark matter" [lower lash line]
mac "dazzlelight"
pixi endless silky eye pen "black noir"
stila huge extreme lash mascara

the cheeks
benefit "galifornia"
hourglass ambient lighting powder "diffused light"

the lips
nars audacious lipstick "brigitte"

you can just see that nasty cold sore, the beacon of what is to befall me. even though the concealer does an admirable job, it can't entirely disguise it. [abreva works. it's the only thing that works.] but it's not too bad because the jewel-like eyes and fresh peachy-pink colours give a more or less healthy impression. this is as opaque as i can get "interstellar" to be without sacrificing texture for colour. built up more than this and it starts to look flaky. i do think that this looks nice and bright for a colour occupying minimal space.

"nadir"

the base
urban decay all-nighter foundation "1.5"
marcelle flawless concealer "fair"
pixi correction concentrate "awakening apricot"

the eyes
pat mcgrath "interstellar" [inner lid]
pat mcgrath "deep space" [halo placement in an arc around the centre of the lid, lower lash line]
pat mcgrath "dark matter" [outer "v", lower outside crease, lower lash line]
viseart bijoux royale silver [centre of lid]
mac "crystal avalanche"
pixi endless silky eye pen "black noir"
nyx retractable eyeliner "silver"
stila huge extreme lash mascara

the cheeks
chanel joues contraste "notorious"
nars "nico"

the lips
bite beauty "enoki"

oh gawd. i needed something to remind me that things could be better because my body had given up hope. you can see that i not only have the original boil, but it has a friend in the corner of my mouth. oh, and by the way, the inside of my mouth somehow managed to get all raw and sliced up while this was going on. i didn't have the energy or coordination to be bothered with placement so i just sort of slapped the colours on and hoped for the best. "interstellar" was extremely subtle in person but when i went to take photos [in the brightest room in our apartment, which isn't saying much at this time of year], you can see that it stepped up. this look definitely saw some fading before i took it off but it still looked less wretched than i felt.

"exhaustion"

the base
the ordinary serum foundation "1.0ns"
marcelle flawless concealer "fair"
pixi correction concentrate "awakening apricot"

the eyes
pat mcgrath "entice" [inner lid]
pat mcgrath "enraptured" [middle lid]
pat mcgrath "metropolis" [outer lid and crease]
mac "dazzlelight" [brow highlight]
pixi endless silky eye pen "black cocoa"
pixi extre eye bright liner
stila huge extreme lash mascara

the cheeks
nars "deep throat"

the lips
bite beauty "sagittarius"

my scars are healing. i am starting to crawl towards the light. but there is nothing to be done with the flabby pouches under my eyes or the dull skin except distract and hope for the best. i think this look does a good job of illustrating how not purple "metropolis" looks when paired with gold. normally i wouldn't wear so much colour on eyes and lips at once but i wanted something cozy [eyes] and something bold and inspiring [lips] plus i wanted not to look as undead as i did when i woke up in the morning.

"recovery"

the base
nude by nature flawless liquid foundation "ivory" + "soft sand"
marcelle flawless concealer "fair"
pixi correction concentrate "awakening apricot"
nude by nature perfecting eye primer

the eyes
pat mcgrath "entice" [middle lid]
pat mcgrath "enraptured" [outer lid]
makeup forever "pinky nude" [inner lid]
makeup forever "pearl" [brow highlight]
nars eye paint "black valley
pixi extre eye bright liner
stila huge extreme lash mascara

the cheeks
charlotte tilbury filmstar bronze & glow
benefit "galifornia"

the lips
nyx pin-up pout "cocktail hour"

hallelujah! praise ceiling cat and the flying spaghetti monster! my wounds have healed and i was feeling as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as i had in weeks. so i reverted to makeup that's a little more typical of me. i wanted something more light and bright because i hadn't been sleeping terribly well in days, which might be a side effect of having taken medication to ease my symptoms and then stopping it. i don't take otc meds very often because i don't want to put more chemicals in me than is necessary and i already have to take a couple of prescriptions every day. but the drugs that relaxed my cough enough to allow me to fall asleep for a couple of hours got my muscles used to their assistance. as a result, i've been getting spasms and pain since i stopped taking them and that prevents me from sleeping. but that doesn't matter because yesterday i finally felt more like myself for a change. i had originally intended to use "enraptured" and "pearl" only on the lid but i just could not get "enraptured" to blend smoothly. so i added a little of "entice" and used my "smooshing" technique.

"relapse"

the base
joe fresh illuminating primer "pure glow"
nude by nature flawless liquid foundation "ivory" + "soft sand"
marcelle flawless concealer "fair"
pixi correction concentrate "awakening apricot"
nude by nature perfecting eye primer

the eyes
pat mcgrath "deep space" [all over mobile lid, lower lash line]
pat mcgrath "dark matter" [outer corner, upper and lower lash lines]
pat mcgrath "metropolis" [patted on centre of lid, on top of "deep space"]
mac "electra" [inner corner]
inglot matte "351" [brow highlight]
pixi endless silky eye pen "black noir"
stila huge extreme lash mascara

the cheeks
mac "my highland honey"

the lips
armani rouge ecstasy shine "506/ sepia"

so... little... sleep... although i thought i'd flushed my sinus problems yesterday, the pain and pressure have returned to wreak havoc. last night was the worst bout of insomnia i've had in... two or three nights. so i'm so exhausted that it feels a bit like my face is going to cave in. but that won't stop me from putting something on my face. contrary to common wisdom, i find that a smoke eye makes for great camouflage on days when i'm not well rested or when i've been crying. and joe fresh's primer is a favourite for a reason: it really does make the complexion look lovely, whether used as an all-over base [as i have here, generously] or as a spot highlighter. "metropolis" definitely looks more red and less brown in this look than it did in the one i've called "exhaustion" but still not purple.

i cannot tell a lie: i seriously feel like i need to take a nap. i don't know if i can, because i have work to do, invoices to send, dinner to cook and more. but i did want to take a few moments to introduce you all to the friend who helped remind me of the beautiful things even when i was feeling pretty ugly inside. dark star is a wonderful reminder and it's a lot of fun to work with. is it perfect? no. is it a "one and done" item? definitely not. but it is special in the way that ms. mcgrath's palettes all seem to be special: it encourages experimentation by offering a thrilling set of colours and a range of textures that perform wonderfully.