Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Lord Liaden]

You, Hermit, we know are just joking; but I've actually met the American tourists with skis atop their car, in June.

 

I was working at a McDonalds in downtown Montreal in 1976, during the Olympics, when we had tourists from all over the world. One day I was approached by a tall middle-aged gentleman in a Stetson, asking for directions. He introduced himself with, "'Scuse me, do you speak Amurican?"

 

Luckily McDonald's trained us to speak to customers respectfully, because what I really wanted to answer was, "Well, hell fahr, yeah, boy. Watcha wanna know?"

[assault]

2 hours ago, Badger said:

My mother's invalid niece (well they were near in age, mother being youngest of 11 kids) died.   No, not from the virus, but from a long bout of Parkinson's (been kind of expecting it the last 6 months, to be honest)

 

It just sucks with the current situation, we cant have a proper funeral, as my mother would've really like to have properly said goodbye in that way.

 

I was in exactly the same situation with my father about a month ago. It sucks.

That said, at the time, the non-funeral I had was probably the least stressful thing for me.

[assault]

On 5/8/2020 at 1:49 PM, Hermit said:

 

If I won a small lottery I'd be real tempted to move to a blue state, not that I'd agree with  ALL things any state's governments, but it would be nice to have my vote count for more than school board. Beyond that? I've heard lovely things about Nova Scotia, Canada or Queensland, Australia. 

 

 

Queensland is sometimes referred to as Australia's Deep North.

 

However, that mightn't be a drawback for someone used to the south of the US.

[Hermit]

1 minute ago, assault said:

 

Queensland is sometimes referred to as Australia's Deep North.

 

However, that mightn't be a drawback for someone used to the south of the US.

I get the feeling it would still be a strong shift to the left on some politics Also.. had a friend who went to Australia for a time. She fell in love with Queensland. She said part of it was like the smokies with an ocean nearby

[Lord Liaden]

If you had the opportunity to move to Canada, I myself would be in British Columbia if I had my choice. Upsides: pleasant climate (snow is rare), gorgeous scenery, clean, culturally diverse and cosmopolitan, neither overwhelmingly urban nor rural. Downsides: frequent rain, housing is very expensive even compared to the rest of Canada, and the southern part of the province is near a major tectonic fault line like California.

[TrickstaPriest]

4 hours ago, Badger said:

My mother's invalid niece (well they were near in age, mother being youngest of 11 kids) died.   No, not from the virus, but from a long bout of Parkinson's (been kind of expecting it the last 6 months, to be honest)

 

It just sucks with the current situation, we cant have a proper funeral, as my mother would've really like to have properly said goodbye in that way.

 

That's awful, even so.  You have my sympathies.

[Badger]

22 hours ago, Hermit said:

Teasing aside... maybe I should start a thread where Canadians suggest provinces/cities to Americans to visit/tour or move to long term. 

 

I have noticed some Canadians RELISH telling we Americans where to go

 

Well, we can tell them to do anatomically improbable things to do to themselves.

[Badger]

19 hours ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

That's awful, even so.  You have my sympathies.

well, they did get visitation, split into 3 parts  (immediate family,  the niece's sisters-2, and my mother and her remaining sisters-effectively likely my mother only, since her 2 remaining sisters, one lives hundreds of miles away, and the other is 90, and in later stages of dementia.  I forget the 3rd part, I think husband's extended family).  Husband did apologize to my mother, that I couldn't visit.  But, I don't do funeral home visitations.  

 

I think they are having a graveside service for the immediate family  (husband, 2 grandchildren, 2 sisters, son).  I guess, for me, I want have to worry about being a pallbearer and dropping the casket (yeah, always my weird fear).   But, I would have preferred to have had the chance, out of family loyalty.

[DShomshak]

I've visited a little bit of British Columbia: a wonderful beach called Kye Bay on Vancouver Island. Nearest town was, IIRC, Comox. The family used to vacation there when I was young. Once a week, the motel owner did an excellent pancake breakfast. I wonder what happened to that place.

 

OTOH all I remember from the passing through Vancouver, BC is a maze of one-way streets and forced turns designed by a deranged sadist.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Hugh Neilson]

Vancouver is five smaller cities which grew into one another - having multiple streets with the same name, for example, makes it challenging to navigate.

[Matt the Bruins]

On 5/9/2020 at 11:06 PM, Lord Liaden said:

I was working at a McDonalds in downtown Montreal in 1976, during the Olympics, when we had tourists from all over the world. One day I was approached by a tall middle-aged gentleman in a Stetson, asking for directions. He introduced himself with, "'Scuse me, do you speak Amurican?"

 

"Sorry old chap, I only speak the Queen's English. Still, it's possible the two may have enough similarities for the purpose of simple communication."

[Lawnmower Boy]

15 hours ago, DShomshak said:

I've visited a little bit of British Columbia: a wonderful beach called Kye Bay on Vancouver Island. Nearest town was, IIRC, Comox. The family used to vacation there when I was young. Once a week, the motel owner did an excellent pancake breakfast. I wonder what happened to that place.

 

OTOH all I remember from the passing through Vancouver, BC is a maze of one-way streets and forced turns designed by a deranged sadist.

 

Dean Shomshak

It sounds to me like you guys tried to turn off the main drag into the posh Shaughnessy neighbourhood. The street grid has been designed to keep you lot out, thank you very much.

 

For some reason two major north-south bike routes and one east west are threaded through the same area, and that's fine. I don't get it, but I do enjoy the quiet commute through the nice houses. 

[Pariah]

49 minutes ago, Matt the Bruins said:

"Sorry old chap, I only speak the Queen's English. Still, it's possible the two may have enough similarities for the purpose of simple communication."

 

The United States and the United Kingdom, two great nations separated by a common language.

[Zeropoint]

20 hours ago, Badger said:

I guess, for me, I want have to worry about being a pallbearer and dropping the casket (yeah, always my weird fear).

 

I can see why you'd worry about that. I was a pallbearer for my maternal grandmother not that long ago and . . . yeah, it feels like something you don't want to mess up.

[assault]

1 hour ago, Pariah said:

 

The United States and the United Kingdom, two great nations separated by a common language.

 

That reminds me of the joke about Brexit, that with the UK leaving, the main English speaking country in the EU is Ireland.

So, naturally, Irish English should become the official version of English used in the EU.

[Lord Liaden]

In grammar and syntax, there's Standard English. Everything else is regional accents and colloquialisms.

[wcw43921]

While I believe in a right to self-defense, there are times when I think the gun rights advocates, more than anything else, are arguing for the right to inflict severe and lethal injury on people.

 

This is one of those times.

[Pattern Ghost]

2 hours ago, wcw43921 said:

While I believe in a right to self-defense, there are times when I think the gun rights advocates, more than anything else, are arguing for the right to inflict severe and lethal injury on people.

 

I guess it depends on if you see them as primarily guns rights advocates or  [insert fringe group or militia du jour here], with guns rights going along with some other primary agenda like white nationalism masquerading as originalism.  I think it's more of the latter, personally. The guns rights crowd has its fair share of goobers, but I don't think that's the primary focus of the groups mentioned in the article.

[Zeropoint]

I'm a liberal gun owner (yes, we exist) but I don't really like to associate with other gun owners because of this stuff. I don't understand why enjoying some dangerous toys has to come bundled with . . . all those problematic political views.

[BoloOfEarth]

On 5/9/2020 at 11:20 AM, wcw43921 said:

Why Trump Is Back To Normal--And You're Not

 

I would argue that Trump is not now, nor has he ever been, normal.  And isn't likely to become normal any time in the near future.

[Badger]

On 5/10/2020 at 12:20 AM, assault said:

 

I was in exactly the same situation with my father about a month ago. It sucks.

That said, at the time, the non-funeral I had was probably the least stressful thing for me.

 

Yeah, I'm not much on funerals.  I figure funerals are more for the living, and I am not one of those that gets a particular comfort out of funerals.  I guess, I think of it more as a family duty, that they were there for me, so I can be there for them one more time.  Somwething like that.

[DShomshak]

23 hours ago, Zeropoint said:

I'm a liberal gun owner (yes, we exist) but I don't really like to associate with other gun owners because of this stuff. I don't understand why enjoying some dangerous toys has to come bundled with . . . all those problematic political views.

 

My brother says he's never liked guns, or the sort of people who fetishize them. But he now admits he has a better idea of why a sane and responsible person would want to own one.

 

My mother still owns the little farmhouse where she grew up. She hopes to pass it to my sisters when she dies. My brother visits every couple weeks to do mow the grass and do other maintenance, though sometimes it's not possible for more than a month. The house's neighbors know him by now.

 

Last September, we got a letter from one of those neighbors asking, "Someone's living in your house. He acts strange. He says he inherited it. Is this true?"

 

No, it wasn't. We had a squatter: a felon who'd been in jail for several years on several charges, including drug abuse, with mental issues as well. Turns out the sheriff's department knew him well. They said they'd actually been out to the house before, at the neighbor's request, but the man -- I'll just use his initials, J. P. -- gave a story about inheriting the property, with names of our relatives, and no obvious criminal activity was taking place, so they left him. With our assurance that no, J. P. did not have our permission to live there, the deputies eventually caught him on the premises and arrested him.

 

When my brother drove out, he found that J. P. had tossed the house, stolen a bunch of stuff, and ripped up floorboards and part of the attic. Items stolen included the LPs and record player he brought there. Realizing there was only one place nearby those could be sold, he went to the local antique store and, yup, there were his records and a bunch more of the stolen items. J. P. had invited the store owner in to buy whatever he wanted. Fortunately, my brother also knew the owner for many years from buying used records, so we were able to get most of the items back.

 

But the shop owner was able to explain why J. P. was tearing up floorboards. He thought there was Klondike gold hidden somewhere iun the house!

 

Still, J. P. was under arrest, caught red-handed. Problem solved, right?

 

Wrong. A judge released him the next day. Over the next few months he returned to the house to fish in the cesspit with a magnet, dig up flowerbeds, steal the chunks of opalized petrified wood my sister used to mark the graves of her dead cats, move the cross and statue of St. Francis, hack at one of the chimneys, and otherwise intrude. At least he can't get in the house anymore -- my niece and nephew-in-law changed the locks and installed an alarm system.

 

Despite the overwhelming evidence of J. P.'s continued trespass, though, the cops say there's no point in arresting him again. He'll just be out the next day because the charges aren't serious enough. J. P. was arraigned, but God only knows when the trial will be held. At the time, the county D.A. said, J. P. was already awaiting trial for other charges from 2018.

 

It's really discouraging when cops tell you, "The system is broken."

 

My brother still makes his visits to tend the property, but he does not feel safe doing so. It's hard to feel safe when you know there's a deranged drug addict who thinks that your house is his house, and reportedly boasted that he's going to take over the neighborhood with his weapons and live there with his girlfriend. And any cops are a half hour away.

 

And that's why my brother says he understands why people own guns.

 

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

(And yes, it has been suggested to us that we should rent out the house so J. P. can't try moving in again. That's not the point. We thought we lived in a country where your property is your property even when you aren't there personally to guard it. Apparently not.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

There absolutely are good and valid reasons for a private citizen to own some kind of gun, and any gun regulation should make allowances for them. Personally I don't think just liking guns is enough reason to have an arsenal in your home.

[ScottishFox]

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

My brother still makes his visits to tend the property, but he does not feel safe doing so. It's hard to feel safe when you know there's a deranged drug addict who thinks that your house is his house, and reportedly boasted that he's going to take over the neighborhood with his weapons and live there with his girlfriend. And any cops are a half hour away.

 

And that's why my brother says he understands why people own guns.

 

I've lived far enough out in the country in the past that it wasn't even up for discussion.  The police are literally 30 minutes away.

 

You have guns for critters and you have guns for people that are going to do things the police can't help you with for 30 minutes.

 

When I was 10 my parents went to the neighbors house (more than a mile away) and left me with a loaded rifle and instructions to not let anyone in but them while I was in charge of my 6 year old sister.

It is VERY different in the country and city rules don't make sense for country people and vice versa.