Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[Peter McLennan]

Thanks Peter for that info. 

So just to expand a little. Is there only one person in each party that is slated to be voted the PM by that party should that party get a majority of popular votes? Or can another member become PM as they argue about it especially if the party did not win a majority of the votes and there have to be arrangements made among a number of parties?

Also, do the voters vote before an election, who the PM candidate is in each party?   Or is that selection process only among the Ministers of Parliament of the party?

Do your own further research, Alan.  (See below: "attention seeking")

Turnabout is fair play: Here's a trolling question for you, Alan: Have you ever asked yourself why all the other rightists on this forum have bailed?

All of them. Except you and the Turd Depositer.  There used to be many.  Now, two.

Why?

[Robert Roaldi]

To save Alan from “wasting his time” (his term, not mine) doing research and to save us from further rabbit holes:

In Canada, in Federal elections, you vote for your local Member of Parliament.   The party with the majority of elected MPs forms the government.  The Prime Minister is the leader of the party that won the majority.  The PM is not elected directly by the voters.  In addition to being the party leader, The PM is also an MP in his or her “riding”, or electoral district.

This had already been explained, it's just that he didn't read it.

[PeterAit]

Yeah.  Great job. 


Inflation surges 9.1% in June, most since November 1981
U.S. consumer prices in June accelerated at the fastest annual pace since November 1981.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index (CPI) reflected a year-over-year increase of 9.1% last month, up from the prior 40-year high of 8.6% in May. Economists were expecting June's reading to show an 8.8% increase, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/june-cpi-preview-inflation-likely-surged-to-new-40-year-high-last-month-215233961.html

You keep citing inflation stats as a way to knock Biden but refuse to see that the president has almost no control over it. If you have evidence to the contrary please present it.

[Peter McLennan]

From the UK...

Excellent Jonathan.  Nearly identical to the Canadian system.

FWIW, Americans, our elections are completed and tabulated in one day.  No voting machines and results are available in the evening of the same day.

Election campaigns last a few weeks.

[Alan Klein]

Do your own further research, Alan.  (See below: "attention seeking")

Turnabout is fair play: Here's a trolling question for you, Alan: Have you ever asked yourself why all the other rightists on this forum have bailed?

All of them. Except you and the Turd Depositer.  There used to be many.  Now, two.

Why?

Because of your comments such as above and similar ones from others.  Not only the "rightists" have left, but 70% of the apolitical people too.  They had it also with the name calling.  Why Josh Reichmann puts up with the destruction of his father's site, now his, is beyond me.   

[Alan Klein]

You keep citing inflation stats as a way to knock Biden but refuse to see that the president has almost no control over it. If you have evidence to the contrary please present it.

Biden re-hired the Fed Chairman who was wrong about inflation calling it transient,  He should have fired him and hired someone who knew what he was doing.  Interest rates should have been raised a year ago and printing should have been stopped then as well.   They were printing $120 billion a month.

Second, Biden wants to spend another trillion dollars on top of the trillions he spent last year.  That's all adding to inflation because the Fed has to print more to cover deficit spending.  That's on Biden and the Democrats in Congress. Note that there's already a trillion dollars in deficit spending this year. 

[TechTalk]

Because of your comments such as above and similar ones from others.  Not only the "rightists" have left, but 70% of the apolitical people too.  They had it also with the name calling.  Why Josh Reichmann puts up with the destruction of his father's site, now his, is beyond me.   

Why you weren't banned for your completely false claim attributing racist remarks to another member and egregious accusations of racist thoughts to members like myself, I'll never know. But as the French say... c'est la vie.

[Alan Klein]

Why you weren't banned for your completely false claim attributing racist remarks to another member and egregious accusations of racist thoughts to members like myself, I'll never know. But as the French say... c'est la vie.

I apologized a long time ago for all racist or other insults I made.  I do not recall any comments I made to you about race.  But if I did, then I apologize to you as well. I should not have made them.

 If we all don't clean up our posts, no one's going to stay.  LuLa's dying because of it.    But who wants to stay around when so many degrading comments are made.  There are a lot of other photo sites that are managed better and reduce if not eliminate caustic comments.

[TechTalk]

After claiming for months that you did nothing wrong, your pervious apology was of the sort: If I said anything that upset someone, I apologize — without ever acknowledging what you actually said and did. One of those nonspecific half-of-an-apology, non-apologies.

A couple of members left because of it and never returned. The rest of us moved on. You continued to play the victim.

You're not going to change the nature of human beings or of heated debate, so you can either learn to live with it or keep crying about it.

As for forums... you continually claim that this site is dying because of what you have perceived as insults (which, more often than not, have not been insults at all). The fact is... other forms of social media like Twitter and Facebook have come along to occupy people's time. You may not have noticed.

[TechTalk]

This is the first time I spoke of having Congressional hearings in secret.  That way Congress could gather all the facts first and not embarrass people with political innuendo.  Then they could issue a report based on better evidence. Or they could then have public hearings. Or make recommendations to Attorney General for him to follow up.

That is exactly what the committee has done. Exactly. You have simply ignored pretty much everything that has happened and just kept on barking the same tune at the same moon.

Timeline:

• February, 2021- Republican Senator Lindsey Graham calls for a 9/11 style independent bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6th attack and invasion of the Capitol "to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again". Democratic Senator Chris Coons joins with Graham in calling for an independent commission. Other senators also voice agreement with the proposal.

• February 15, 2021 - Nancy Pelosi announces plans to create a 9/11-type commission to investigate the January 6th attack on the Capitol. She proposed that it have no members of Congress and be an outside bipartisan commission.

• May, 2021 - House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Republican ranking member, John Katko, announce that they have reached an agreement on the creation of a commission. House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House Freedom Caucus, and Trump announce opposition to the bipartisan commission.

• The Commission is to have 10 members from outside of the federal government. Democrats and Republicans will appoint an equal number of members. Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell will each appoint two members. The Democratic leaders will appoint the commission chair and the Republican leaders will appoint the vice-chair. The commission is to file a report by the end of 2021 and end 60 days after filing.

• May 14, 2021 - Representative Bennie Thompson introduces a bill entitled the "National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex Act". It passes the House of Representatives five days later.

• May 28, 2021 - Passage of the act is blocked by Senate Republicans with a vote of 54–35 to end the Republican filibuster. This is 6 votes short of the 60 needed to stop the Republican filibuster and move forward on the bill.

• June 30, 2021 - A resolution to form a select committee to investigate the Capitol attack passes by a vote of 222-190. All of the Democratic House members along with only two Republican members, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, vote in favor of the committee. Sixteen other Republican members choose not to vote.

• The resolution gives to Nancy Pelosi the appointment of 8 members and Kevin McCarthy the recommendation of 5 additional members in consultation with Pelosi. Pelosi says that she will name a Republican as one of her appointments.

• July 1, 2021 - Pelosi appoints 7 Democrats and Republican Liz Cheney to the "Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol" with Bennie Thompson as chairman. McCarthy recommends Republican members Jim Banks as Ranking Member along with Jim Jordan, Rodney Davis, Kelly Armstrong, and Troy Nehls.

• July 21, 2021 - Pelosi informs McCarthy that she would reject the recommendations of Jordan and Banks due to "concern about statements made and actions taken" by those members and to insure respect for the integrity of the committee's investigation. She approves the other recommendations made by McCarthy. McCarthy threatens to name no one to the committee unless all are approved. They aren't and McCarthy withdraws all of his recommendations.

• July 25, 2021 - Pelosi appoints Republican Adam Kinzinger to the select committee. Pelosi also hires former Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Republican from Virginia, as an outside committee advisor.

• August, 2021 - The committee hires investigative staff with former CIA Inspector General David Buckley as staff director. The staff begins interviewing and taking depositions from hundreds of witnesses and collecting, cataloging, and reviewing reams of documents, videos, recordings, and other evidence.

• August, 2021 to June, 2022 - Staff investigators continue over 9 months to collect evidence and interview witnesses out of public view. The committee meets behind closed doors to review and discuss evidence collected by staff. This is how committee investigations routinely work.

• June 8, 2022 - The Associated Press reports that: "The House Jan. 6 committee has interviewed more than 1,000 people who were directly or indirectly involved in the U.S. Capitol insurrection as it probes the violent attack and former President Donald Trump’s unprecedented efforts to overturn his election defeat.

Several will return for a series of public hearings starting Thursday as the committee begins to present its findings to the public. The panel is expected to bring in some of its most informative and revelatory witnesses as it recounts Trump’s efforts to pressure state officials, members of Congress and his own vice president to reject President Joe Biden’s victory."

• June 9, 2022 - After several months of closed door investigations, the first public hearing is held by the committee. New evidence is presented and the first witnesses testify before the public.

Bottom Line: The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, nearly a year after it was formed and began its investigative work, finally began a series of public hearings last month because the public has a right to know and Congress has a duty to inform them.

You may continue to ignore all of it and keep singing the same tune if that's what you wish to do. If you see that as fulfilling your responsibilities as an engaged citizen of a democratic republic which had its Capitol attacked and invaded by a mob seeking to block the peaceful transfer of power, that's up to you. No one will force you to pay any attention, but don't expect any more efforts to bring you up to speed. I'd say that we've all done quite enough to answer your demands for information.

[Alan Klein]

After claiming for months that you did nothing wrong, your pervious apology was of the sort: If I said anything that upset someone, I apologize — without ever acknowledging what you actually said and did. One of those nonspecific half-of-an-apology, non-apologies.

A couple of members left because of it and never returned. The rest of us moved on. You continued to play the victim.

You're not going to change the nature of human beings or of heated debate, so you can either learn to live with it or keep crying about it.

As for forums... you continually claim that this site is dying because of what you have perceived as insults (which, more often than not, have not been insults at all). The fact is... other forms of social media like Twitter and Facebook have come along to occupy people's time. You may not have noticed.

That's not true.  I was told one of the members left because he felt insulted by what I said.  I apologized here and sent him a personal email of apology.  I try to keep my comments to the topic. In the heat of battle, I may have drifted once or twice and for that I was wrong.  There are many here who constantly throw around name calling and personal insults.  I left for two months because of it.  That might happen again.  Having said this, I'm on other sites.  If you want everyone to think alike, then afterward there will be little for anyone to come back to.  That's why this site is dying.   

[Peter McLennan]

That's why this site is dying.

The site is dying because of the political threads?  Really?  Don't you think they'd end them if that were true?

How do you know the "site is dying"?  Got proof ?  Or is this just another one of your reading-between-the-lines intuitions?

[Alan Klein]

That is exactly what the committee has done. Exactly. You have simply ignored pretty much everything that has happened and just kept on barking the same tune at the same moon.

Timeline:

• February, 2021- Republican Senator Lindsey Graham calls for a 9/11 style independent bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6th attack and invasion of the Capitol "to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again". Democratic Senator Chris Coons joins with Graham in calling for an independent commission. Other senators also voice agreement with the proposal.

• February 15, 2021 - Nancy Pelosi announces plans to create a 9/11-type commission to investigate the January 6th attack on the Capitol. She proposed that it have no members of Congress and be an outside bipartisan commission.

• May, 2021 - House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Republican ranking member, John Katko, announce on that they have reached an agreement on the creation of a commission. House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House Freedom Caucus, and Trump announce opposition to the bipartisan commission.

• The Commission is to have 10 members from outside of the federal government. Democrats and Republicans will appoint an equal number of members. Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell will each appoint two members. The Democratic leaders will  appoint the commission chair and the Republican leaders will appointing the vice-chair. The commission is to file a report by the end of 2021 and end 60 days after filing.

• May 14, 2021 - Representative Bennie Thompson introduces a bill entitled the "National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex Act". It passes the House of Representatives five days later.

• May 28, 2021 - Passage of the act is blocked by Senate Republicans with a vote of 54–35 to end the Republican filibuster. This is 6 votes short of the 60 needed to stop the Republican filibuster and move forward on the bill.

• June 30, 2021 - A resolution to form a select committee to investigate the Capitol attack passes by a vote of 222-190. All of the Democratic House members along with only two Republican members, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, vote in favor of the committee. Sixteen other Republican members choose not to vote.

• The resolution gives to Nancy Pelosi the appointment of 8 members and Kevin McCarthy the recommendation of 5 additional members in consultation with Pelosi. Pelosi says that she will name a Republican as one of her appointments.

• July 1, 2021 - Pelosi appoints 7 Democrats and Republican Liz Cheney to the "Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol" with Bennie Thompson as chairman. McCarthy recommends Republican members Jim Banks as Ranking Member along with Jim Jordan, Rodney Davis, Kelly Armstrong, and Troy Nehls.

• July 21, 2021 - Pelosi informs McCarthy that she would reject the recommendations of Jordan and Banks due to "concern about statements made and actions taken" by those members and to insure respect for the integrity of the committee's investigation. She approves the other recommendations made by McCarthy. McCarthy threatens to name no one to the committee unless all are approved. They aren't and McCarthy withdraws all of his recommendations.

• July 25, 2021 - Pelosi appoints Republican Adam Kinzinger to the select committee. Pelosi also hires former Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Republican from Virginia, as an outside committee advisor.

• August, 2021 - The committee hires investigative staff with former CIA Inspector General David Buckley as staff director. The staff begins interviewing and taking depositions from hundreds of witnesses and collecting, cataloging, and reviewing reams of documents, videos, recordings, and other evidence.

• August, 2021 to June, 2022 - Staff investigators continue over 9 months to collect evidence and interview witnesses out of public view. The committee meets behind closed doors to review and discuss evidence collected by staff. This is how committee investigations routinely work.

• June 8, 2022 - The Associated Press reports that: "The House Jan. 6 committee has interviewed more than 1,000 people who were directly or indirectly involved in the U.S. Capitol insurrection as it probes the violent attack and former President Donald Trump’s unprecedented efforts to overturn his election defeat.

Several will return for a series of public hearings starting Thursday as the committee begins to present its findings to the public. The panel is expected to bring in some of its most informative and revelatory witnesses as it recounts Trump’s efforts to pressure state officials, members of Congress and his own vice president to reject President Joe Biden’s victory."

• June 9, 2022 - After several months of closed door investigations, the first public hearing is held by the committee. New evidence is presented and the first witnesses testify before the public.

Bottom Line: The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, nearly a year after it was formed and began its investigative work, finally began a series of public hearings last month because the public has a right to know and Congress has a duty to inform them.

You may continue to ignore all of it and keep singing the same tune if that's what you wish to do. If you see that as fulfilling your responsibilities as an engaged citizen of a democratic republic which had its Capitol attacked and invaded by a mob seeking to block the peaceful transfer of power, that's up to you. No one will force you to pay any attention, but don't expect any more efforts to bring you up to speed. I'd say that we've all done quite enough to answer your demands for information.

Unfortunately, the Democrats who control the agenda are picking witnesses for the public portion that smear Trump and the Republicans.  It's why Republicans refused to be part of the circus.  The only two Republicans on the committee are Democrat dupes who hate Trump because he tried to destroy them politically.  All the investigations before the public hearing were to cull out every innuendo that could be used to smear Republicans during the public portion.  The public hearings were timed as late as they could to get as close to the midterm elections in the hope that the electorate would favor Democrats with votes by voting against supposed Republican malfeasance.

Engaged American citizens are trying to live from paycheck to paycheck during these times of high inflation and rising prices. They're having trouble making ends meet. They're not interested in the political circus in Washington,  They want to know why Washington is not helping them economically and would rather play political games. The fact the polls show the country is only on the right track at about 19% and give Biden 40%- approval rating supports this view.  Even Democrats know they're in trouble. 

[Alan Klein]

The site is dying because of the political threads?  Really?  Don't you think they'd end them if that were true?

How do you know the "site is dying"?  Got proof ?  Or is this just another one of your reading-between-the-lines intuitions?

Whenever I log on and click on new posts, there seem to be much fewer than in the past.  I don't have a click counter, but it would interesting to see what they've been over the years.  The political forums with all their insults and controversy add a lot of clicks and posts that add a lot I believe to the total count.  Maybe that's why Josh allows them to continue. 

[PeterAit]

Do your own further research, Alan.  (See below: "attention seeking")

Part of the problem is that Alan, like so many conservatives, does not really know how to do his own research. Another part is that he is not looking for the truth but for "information" to support what he alreasdy thinks is true.

[TechTalk]

The site is dying because of the political threads?  Really?  Don't you think they'd end them if that were true?

How do you know the "site is dying"?  Got proof ?  Or is this just another one of your reading-between-the-lines intuitions?

Since the introduction of Facebook Groups, online forums have lost some of their audience particularly among younger users. The reasons are obvious. a) There are only so many hours in a day. b) There are billions of people who are logging into their Facebook accounts every day, multiple times per day, and they gravitate toward using what they already are familiar with and are currently using for their business and social contacts.

The explosion in the growth of social media platforms is not exactly news and their pull from other forms of online communication ain't exactly rocket science. It just doesn't fit Alan's preferred narrative.

[TechTalk]

Part of the problem is that Alan, like so many conservatives, does not really know how to do his own research. Another part is that he is not looking for the truth but for "information" to support what he alreasdy thinks is true.

Yes, but he believes that everyone is as rigid, narrow, and biased as himself. That's his immediate and unchanging reaction to any criticism of his behavior which he views as a personal attack and immediately dismisses without any further consideration of the possible validity of the criticism.

He has no self-awareness and engages in no introspection to moderate his views or behavior. Basically, he's trapped in a very rigid circular thought process, yet believes he's a free and critical thinker.

There is only so much that anyone can do to try to get through the wall that protects that kind of inflexible and unreflecting self-image. He has said that there is no truth, only opinions, and his are just as valid as anyone else's. Welcome to the new post-truth world.

[TechTalk]

Unfortunately, the Democrats who control the agenda are picking witnesses for the public portion that smear Trump and the Republicans.

How would you know when you've told us that you've watched "very little"? What are the "smears" you've observed? What have they presented that isn't factual and informative?

[TechTalk]

...It's why Republicans refused to be part of the circus...

You made a suggestion about how the committee should be run. That "Congress could gather all the facts first" and "they could then have public hearings". I went to considerable time and effort to reply directly to what you wrote showing that a) There was bipartisan effort in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection to appoint a bipartisan commission of citizens, without any members of Congress, to investigate. That bipartisan effort was blocked by senate Republicans. b) I laid out in detail a timeline showing the committee, which followed the failed attempt at a bipartisan commission, has done exactly what you suggested they should do.

Staff and members investigated for months behind closed doors before they began public hearings to inform the public of what they have learned. By your comments, you appear to have been unaware of this, which is why I provided a concise detailed timeline.

Your "reply" doesn't directly address what I believe was a reasonably thoughtful and certainly detailed response to your assertion that Congress should "gather all the facts first" and "then have public hearings". Instead you deflect to a host of other topics like inflation, economics, polls, midterm elections, and toss in unsupported accusations of smears as an additional distraction.

Your "reply" is an insult to my time, energy, and patience. An insult because when someone makes the effort to respond directly to what you've written, you "reply" with whatever you happen to feel like talking about instead. Why do you do this? Do you think that you encourage open and honest dialogue this way?

You demand detailed facts; but when presented with facts, you blow them off with a litany of unrelated talking points. It's enough to make one open a bottle of French wine and celebrate Bastille Day. [Thank you Robert for the reminder]

[Peter McLennan]

Welcome to the new post-truth world.

Wow.  Thanks for THAT link.

Carl Sagan, a famous astronomer and science communicator, argued in his work The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark:

Carl Sagan:
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

Talk about prescient!

The link describes among other things, the modern appearance of the post-truth world.  Its arrival timing is instructive: circa 2016

The term was named Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year in 2016, after the term's proliferation in the 2016 United States presidential election and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.

If there's one thing I loathe Trump for more than anything else, it's the literal destruction of the word truth.  Thanks to him, there is no more truth.  It's now a word without meaning. 

Others have better termed it "Truth Decay"