Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[Rhossydd]

Electric cars may seem a good idea, but unless you live in a house with its own driveway, how do you charge them up?

Whilst drive ownership and, better, a roof full of PV make EVs a no brainer, increased range and and the continually increasing number of public charging points make EV ownership quite viable in the UK even if you haven't a private drive. Yes, for some it would be very difficult, but for a vast majority an EV will be a practical choice very soon.

[Robert Roaldi]

Keep this up, and it could happen that having a US presence becomes more bother than it's worth. Ford makes no more  cars, only Mustangs and trucks; is there much of a domestic car production market left, or does the US only want hillbilly transportation with a gunrack in the back?

In Europe and the UK, camera prices have, historically, been higher than in the US; perhaps the new Trump US prices will mean that more stock is now sent to Europe... as for cars, well, here, price-wise, we are doing our best anyway to make them unobtanium. Electric cars may seem a good idea, but unless you live in a house with its own driveway, how do you charge them up? I live in an apartment, and there is no way; it's difficult enough finding a parking space. Public points? I know of six: two in a street, two in a public car park and two in the yacht club. The policy is to end the sale of fossil-fueled cars in ten years... better go to the gym - and the cobbler's shop.

More and more they'll incorporate this into new buildings, but it will take some doing to retrofit older buildings. When we want something badly enough though, we pay for it willingly. There are gasoline stations more or less everywhere now, there didn't used to be. We buy lots of armaments, even countries with limited resources. We found ways to deliver contraband drugs all over the planet. We even found ways to get social media content almost anywhere, so it's not all good.

[Robert Roaldi]

Putin continues to hit Ukraine hard, shows how worried he must be about Trump. What is the response of the "leader of the free world", he's making noises again about having the right to Canadian water. He hadn't talked about that for a while now, must be its turn back at the top of the distraction rolodex. Greenland is due for a refresh soon, I'd think. Or maybe a rant about EVs, haven't heard about that for a while.

They seem to have released some documentary evidence about an Epstein b-day card signed by Trump. Oh yeah, big reveal that. Oh gee, he lied about it, noooo, say it ain't so. Imagine, Trump may be a lousy human being, boo hoo. FFS, he has never been anything else. That's why MAGATS love him, Americans might need to face the fact that they are not regarded as a nice people. But worse than that, it's looking more and more that no one is very afraid of them either. No need to worry about the American military might around the world when all you have to do to own Trump is to buy a few meme coins.

So Israel entered Qatari air space to take out some Hamas officials. And Poland shot down some Russian drones that invaded Polish air space. Good thing Trump is on watch, except that these things didn't happen with Biden or Obama.

[MattBurt]

Regarding the birthday card:

• It doesn't exist.
• It's a Democrat hoax (somehow performed 22 years in the past).
• That's not his signature (reject the evidence of your eyes).
• He doesn't even "write drawings".

Surely it will all just blow over.

[Robert Roaldi]

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Surely it will all just blow over.

Already discounted. If a masked ICE army kidnapping people on the street doesn't bother people, why would a sex scandal.

 

[digitaldog]

Regarding the birthday card:

• That's not his signature (reject the evidence of your eyes).

Donald Trump: 'What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening'
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-44959340

[Rob C]

Wouldn't it be a much nicer world if there existed a true, absolutely impartial and believable source for political information?

Perhaps the human condition is simply as is: we neither can always be truthful nor, for that matter, can we always know the truth when it stares us in the face. In short, our lives are based on uncertainty, faith and ultimate ignorance of the bigger picture. Maybe as a species we are still, metaphorically speaking, climbing our way out of that sea of primordial soup.

[kers]

Putin continues to hit Ukraine hard, shows how worried he must be about Trump.
...

Don't understand why Trump is so gentle in handling Russia...
I have the feeling Putin has some video tapes of Donald Trump that wll not look good...
Or he looks up against the real dictators of our time like Kim Jong-Un...
His diplomatic achievement with N-Korea was that he got warm letters...

[Robert Roaldi]

Don't understand why Trump is so gentle in handling Russia...
I have the feeling Putin has some video tapes of Donald Trump that wll not look good...
Or he looks up against the real dictators of our time like Kim Jong-Un...
His diplomatic achievement with N-Korea was that he got warm letters...

Maybe he's just an incompetent twit.

[Robert Roaldi]

Wouldn't it be a much nicer world if there existed a true, absolutely impartial and believable source for political information?

Perhaps the human condition is simply as is: we neither can always be truthful nor, for that matter, can we always know the truth when it stares us in the face. In short, our lives are based on uncertainty, faith and ultimate ignorance of the bigger picture. Maybe as a species we are still, metaphorically speaking, climbing our way out of that sea of primordial soup.

We had that. It was called the free press. It wasn't always 100% accurate in every detail every day, but it was mostly reliable and when it wasn't, the competitors pointed it out. Most could tell the difference between a real newspaper and the National Enquirer.

[Rob C]

Well, to an extent, I'd tend to agree with you.

However, in hindsight and examining my own psyche, I have come to the conclusion that even those newspapers with which I imagined I had some kind of rapport were, in truth, equally slanted as my own perceptions of reality.

If an old cat's conclusions mean much, account to more than a hill of beans, then those conclusions would suggest that in an imperfect world such as this is, all is ultimately flawed.

[Robert Roaldi]

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.However, in hindsight and examining my own psyche, I have come to the conclusion that even those newspapers with which I imagined I had some kind of rapport were, in truth, equally slanted as my own perceptions of reality.
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Well yeah, but so what. There were choices about what to read, so you could balance off the slants against each other.  We were never meant to accept everything we're told without some skepticism, but throwing up one's hands and replacing that info with propaganda is not an improvement.

[degrub]

Well, to an extent, I'd tend to agree with you.

However, in hindsight and examining my own psyche, I have come to the conclusion that even those newspapers with which I imagined I had some kind of rapport were, in truth, equally slanted as my own perceptions of reality.

If an old cat's conclusions mean much, account to more than a hill of beans, then those conclusions would suggest that in an imperfect world such as this is, all is ultimately flawed.

Yeah, but it is all about striving, not achieving it.

[Rob C]

Yeah, but it is all about striving, not achieving it.

That sounds dangerously like the carrot on a piece of string, and you know what they inevitably ask about a piece of string! ;-)

[Rob C]

I note that haranguing the gullible now requires the services of an armoured screen.

Nice bit of direct “hate speech” was employed during the course of the events, but of course, when you’ve stacked the courts, nothing can stop you. Justice is not only blind, but presumably selectively deaf, too. Amazing bit of tragedy being written for the Land of the Free. I wonder if historians will look back at this era and scratch their heads, or simply be redundant and, therefore, scratch their bums instead?

[degrub]

Democracies are like large ships  - they take a long time to turn around. The Japanese did us a favor back in '41. Twelve months we were cranking it out.

[Robert Roaldi]

There was a funny political cartoon in a French language Quebec newspaper the other day. I don't know which paper, I saw the cartoon in an online feed. In the first frame, a guy was reading a headline about how various online quotes by Charlie Kirk were taken out of context. In the second frame, the guy says, "So I read them in context, and it's WORSE".

I didn't know who Kirk was until he was murdered. I take it he was well known for riling up university students in "debates". Honestly, it doesn't take much to rile up university students. I was at McGill Univ in the early 1970s, and things were then much as they are now. People are rarely good at debating in public, takes a while to learn so it's no surprise that emotional students don't do it well.

One of the quotes of his that I saw online was about how "women should submit to their husbands" or something akin to that. Does Melania? Do either MTG or Laura Boebert? The statement is very difficult to take seriously. To my mind he was bating people, the way comedians do.

The latest is that Trump doesn't think it's proper for comedians to poke fun at him. He should issue an executive order about it. He also wants the DOJ to go after some of his political opponents. Unfortunately, the DOJ can't show that they committed any crimes, so he wants them to try harder. This sounds like farce, but it's not.

At a presser yesterday, Trump declared that it was his feeling that people should not take the MMR vaccine, that they should instead take separate vaccines for the 3 illnesses. That's how I understood the quote. I don't think he expressed any reason for thinking this, only that it was his feeling. Okaaay. He and RFK Jr also claimed that Tylenol (or acetaminophen more generally) was linked to autism. The medical establishment argues that there is no evidence for this claim. The administration claimed to have sunken a third Venezuelan boat carrying illegal drugs. There must be thousands of boats out there, how do they know which ones to hit? If their intel is that good, why can't they stop the illegal drug trade?

[Rob C]

Stop it? Why would they?

[Jonathan Cross]

Whilst drive ownership and, better, a roof full of PV make EVs a no brainer, increased range and and the continually increasing number of public charging points make EV ownership quite viable in the UK even if you haven't a private drive. Yes, for some it would be very difficult, but for a vast majority an EV will be a practical choice very soon.

Have just come back in our EV to UK from France.  There are loads of chargers, often very rapid, i.e. 20-25 mins, more than in UK and at 1/3 to 2/3 UK price.  Work places in UK are starting to put chargers in for employees, and Sainsbury's supermarkets are installing rapid ones that will charge while doing a shop.

Someone wrote to the Times newspaper that he does not suffer range anxiety in his EV as he gets bladder anxiety first.

Jonathan

 

[Rhossydd]

Someone wrote to the Times newspaper that he does not suffer range anxiety in his EV as he gets bladder anxiety first.

He ought to get a PSA test then.