Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[Alan Klein]

Be grateful that at least your little dalliance with populism is (hopefully) soon in the rear view mirror. Ours is in ful flood, and like the virus it has helped spread, will likely become worse before it gets better.  Our democratic institutions have failed to protect us - the House of Lords is stuffed with non-elected friends of the Tories, the press is supine beyond belief (there is no CNN, no NYT, no Wapo to hold the powers to account) and the House of Commons is more interested in whether an MP is wearing a tie than in what he is actually saying about public health (watch the video below).

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/31/the-view-from-europe-uk-taken-over-by-gamblers-liars-clowns-and-their-cheerleaders

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zcSBH4WxI8

With a Democrat elected, those very same media will protect Biden.  It's going to get worse here too. If the Republicans lose the Senate, the Democrats will change the government to assure continue Democratic victories in the future.  They'll do this by making Puerto Rico and Washington DC states.  That will assure 4 more democrat senators and a few more Democrat representatives.  They could pack the Supreme court with 6 liberal justices.  But Biden might not want to go that far.  We'll see.

[faberryman]

That's also bad news for Canadian snow birds. No point trying to get better by going south just to get infected. Besides, the US/Canadian border crossing by car is still not allowed and who knows when the ban will be lifted.

Stay in Canada where it is safe.

I was walking my dogs yesterday, and I passed by my elderly neighbor who waves and yells out that he has COVID and just got his shot of Regeneron. Naturally he wasn't wearing a mask.

[faberryman]

Be grateful that at least your little dalliance with populism is (hopefully) soon in the rear view mirror. Ours is in ful flood, and like the virus it has helped spread, will likely become worse before it gets better.  Our democratic institutions have failed to protect us - the House of Lords is stuffed with non-elected friends of the Tories, the press is supine beyond belief (there is no CNN, no NYT, no Wapo to hold the powers to account) and the House of Commons is more interested in whether an MP is wearing a tie than in what he is actually saying about public health (watch the video below).

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/31/the-view-from-europe-uk-taken-over-by-gamblers-liars-clowns-and-their-cheerleaders

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zcSBH4WxI8

A dress code is very important. You may have read that schools over here have admonished parents and students alike to be in dress code appropriate attire while participating online as virtual students. They give you demerits or something in you log on in your pajamas. The natural result of this is the collapse of the pajama industry. Well, at least the pajama top industry. Apparently pajama bottoms are selling like hotcakes.

[John Camp]

With a Democrat elected, those very same media will protect Biden.  It's going to get worse here too. If the Republicans lose the Senate, the Democrats will change the government to assure continue Democratic victories in the future.  They'll do this by making Puerto Rico and Washington DC states.  That will assure 4 more democrat senators and a few more Democrat representatives. They could pack the Supreme court with 6 liberal justices.  But Biden might not want to go that far.  We'll see.

What a great idea! Is there somewhere I can give money to support this?

[Robert Roaldi]

With a Democrat elected, those very same media will protect Biden.  It's going to get worse here too. If the Republicans lose the Senate, the Democrats will change the government to assure continue Democratic victories in the future.  They'll do this by making Puerto Rico and Washington DC states.  That will assure 4 more democrat senators and a few more Democrat representatives.  They could pack the Supreme court with 6 liberal justices.  But Biden might not want to go that far.  We'll see.

Why shouldn't Puerto Rico and DC be states? The founding fathers didn't limit the number to 50, did they?

[Alan Klein]

What a great idea! Is there somewhere I can give money to support this?

Save your money.  You're going to need it by the time the government stops printing.

[Robert Roaldi]

A dress code is very important. You may have read that schools over here have admonished parents and students alike to be in dress code appropriate attire while participating online as virtual students. They give you demerits or something in you log on in your pajamas. The natural result of this is the collapse of the pajama industry. Well, at least the pajama top industry. Apparently pajama bottoms are selling like hotcakes. Of course all the guys are wondering if the girls are wearing any bottoms at all. You've got to have something to think about while staring at the computer screen all day.

Sorry, I beg to differ. Going into grade 3, my parents transferred me to a different school, a bilingual French/English school instead of the unilingual English school I was in at the time. In hindsight that was a very good decision. However, the new school insisted on ties. Because of that arbitrary silliness I became, and remain, rabidly anti-uniform and even migrated to jobs in adulthood where dress was casual. I no longer own a suit that fits and don't care. I continue to wear running shoes and I'll be 70 in a few years. Some people believe that discipline in clothing instills discipline in living. I've never seen any evidence whatsoever to support this. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

[Robert Roaldi]

I was walking my dogs yesterday, and I passed by my neighbor who waves and yells out that he has COVID and just got his shot of Regeneron. Naturally he wasn't wearing a mask.

Geez.

My wife's aunt died of Covid two days ago. Her retirement residence neighbour dropped in a for a visit just before xmas. Neither wore masks, even after the visitor lady mentioned that she had visited with her adult kids, a few of whom were infected. Both ladies got Covid, don't know if they infected anyone else in the building, and both were admitted to hospital. The visitor lady was released a couple of day before my wife's aunt died.

[Robert Roaldi]

With a Democrat elected, those very same media will protect Biden.  It's going to get worse here too. If the Republicans lose the Senate, the Democrats will change the government to assure continue Democratic victories in the future.  They'll do this by making Puerto Rico and Washington DC states.  That will assure 4 more democrat senators and a few more Democrat representatives.  They could pack the Supreme court with 6 liberal justices.  But Biden might not want to go that far.  We'll see.

Packing the court with liberals after McConnell just spent years packing courts with "conservatives" seems like the new normal to me. You've politicized the courts and the Supreme Court. Are you happy now? Is the country better off?

So if Biden packs the Supreme Court with 6 new "liberal" judges, next time the GOP gets in, they can re-pack with a few of their own faves. If this keeps up, you won't have 9 Justices anymore, you'll have 20 or 30. Going to take a long time to read all those judgements.

[Robert Roaldi]

"“My information from reliable source is that Roberts arranged an illegal adoption of two young children from Wales through Jeffrey Epstein,” Wood tweeted. “I think we can all agree that Epstein knows pedophilia.”  “If only Jeffrey Epstein was still alive . . . Wouldn’t that be something?” he wrote."

At least it didn't happen in a pizza joint this time.

[jeremyrh]

Save your money.  You're going to need it by the time the government stops printing.

Eh?  I suppose that's Alan-logic!!

[faberryman]

Sorry, I beg to differ. Going into grade 3, my parents transferred me to a different school, a bilingual French/English school instead of the unilingual English school I was in at the time. In hindsight that was a very good decision. However, the new school insisted on ties. Because of that arbitrary silliness I became, and remain, rabidly anti-uniform and even migrated to jobs in adulthood where dress was casual. I no longer own a suit that fits and don't care. I continue to wear running shoes and I'll be 70 in a few years. Some people believe that discipline in clothing instills discipline in living. I've never seen any evidence whatsoever to support this. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

Obviously you were emotionally scarred at a young age. I didn't have to start wearing a tie at school until the 7th grade. I had to wear a tie in college too. I had to get a new suit to attend my niece's wedding a couple of years ago. I still had plenty of ties, but I bought two new ties anyway. You can never have too many ties. Trump is an idiot. He has one red tie. I don't know why he thinks he is seven feet tall.

[Peter McLennan]

I haven't heard peep from the person that said "wake me up when it reached 60,000".

Exactly. Reference: my post about the right never admitting they've been wrong about anything.

[digitaldog]

Eh?  I suppose that's Alan-logic!!

The printing as he calls it, that's OK when it's directed at his social security payments. 

[faberryman]

So Trump is cutting his vacation short and returning to the White House early. He must really hate those renovations Melania did down at Mar-A-Lago. I wondered what Mar-A-Lago means so I looked it up. It is Spanish for Sea-to-Lake. I bet Hilaria Baldwin knew that. She is Spanish, you know. That's why she forgot the English word for cucumber on that cooking show.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/31/trump-melania-will-return-to-white-house-and-skip-mar-a-lago-new-years-bash.html

Remember I was telling you about the bomber guy who believed in alien lizard people. Well, I looked it up because I am always interested in learning new facts, and there is a whole Wikipedia article on it.  What caught my eye was that there was a poll done in 2013 and 4% of registered voters believed in alien lizard people. I had no idea so many people knew about them. I am a little curious why they limited the poll to registered voters though. I wonder if Trump is an alien lizard person. It might explain why he wears that hairdo.

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

Speaking of hairdo, I looked up whether the word hairdo is hyphenated or not. I didn't want to appear to be an idiot or anything by misspelling it. So it turns out it is one word. Naturally, Google, in addition to returning a dictionary site, also returned hairdo.com. Who wouldn't be intrigued by that just one click away, so I checked it out. Did you know they have wigs for kids? I guess it makes sense. Some kids have leukemia and the treatment causes their hair to fall out, so kid wigs seems like a good idea. Their line of kid wigs is brought to you by HairUWear, "internationally recognized as the global leader in alternative hair for over 50 years." Alternative hair? I wonder if KellyAnne Conway has alternative hair. I looked at a few photos of her and it is not beyond the realm of possibility.

https://hairuwear.com/hairdo/kidz/

[chez]

Save your money.  You're going to need it by the time the government stops printing.

Don't worry China will step in and help you out.

[faberryman]

This seems like an observation that is both accurate and ominous. Certainly, we are witness to it.

"The single most worrisome political fact in America right now is that a significant portion of the Republican Party lives in a fantasy world, a place where facts and truth don’t hold sway, where “owning the libs” is an end in itself, and where seceding from reality is a symbol of tribal loyalty, rather than a sign of mental illness. This is leading the party, and America itself, to places we’ve never been before, including the spectacle of a defeated president and his supporters engaging in a sustained effort to steal an election."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/cowards-are-destroying-the-gop/617534/

[Frans Waterlander]

The printing as he calls it, that's OK when it's directed at his social security payments. 

So now you blame Alan, and many of us, including me, for getting Social Security payments? We paid for it. It's not a gift, but an "investment" with a lousy return. The government didn't invest the contributions but spent it, so now the system will go into the red soon. Who's to blame for that?

[faberryman]

So now you blame Alan, and many of us, including me, for getting Social Security payments? We paid for it. It's not a gift, but an "investment" with a lousy return. The government didn't invest the contributions but spent it, so now the system will go into the red soon. Who's to blame for that?

Relax. As much as you would like to be, you are not a victim. Nobody is blaming anybody for anything except Alan, who is blaming Republicans and Democrats alike for deficit spending and running up the national debt and causing inflation and going off the gold standard and printing money and generally being socialist. Andrew was just pointing out that unless we did all those things Alan wouldn't be getting his social security check because the country is bankrupt. I look at it a little differently: if China wasn't loaning us money Alan wouldn't be getting his social security check, and I guess you wouldn't be either. So take the money and spend it as quickly as possible before it becomes completely worthless. That's what has happened in Venezuela you know. And be grateful that at least you are getting something for having paid in all those years. Those coming behind you may not be so lucky.

[digitaldog]

So now you blame Alan, and many of us, including me, for getting Social Security payments?

I blame only the hypocrites also getting Social Security payments.