Chewbacca Defense

I would definitely recommend taking a trip out of country if you get the chance. I have been to Japan, Spain, France, UK, and of course Canada. I could see living in Canada. I absolutely LOVED Spain, what an amazing country and culture. Japan is also amazing, but too much of a culture shift to try and live there, but if someone said "hey I need you to move to Japan" I wouldn't fight it too hard. France can stick it up their cheese eating surrender monkey asses, although I was only in Paris, I've heard that once you get our of Paris, you get a completely different perspective. UK/Scotland is amazing, especially Scotland. I could easily see settling in there and being happy. Super friendly people, amazing culture and proud of their heritage. At the end of the day, I am too late in life to be making a change like that. I don't really tick any boxes to immigrate to another country (unless I could get my company to move me). And, I don't think that I would pay enough into their pensioners system to be able to collect benefits. I only have 15-20 years of working left in me, and I do not have enough retirement built up to survive without the government dole chipping in. So, I am probably stuck here, and if the ship is going down, you'll find me topside playing the violin as we sink into the icy waters.

Man and I accused @MossMan of being a real hoot at parties, but as much as I have disagreed with you in the past, I agree with most of what you are saying here. It is rather scary and depressing to see where things are going, and not sure what in the heck it will take to right the ship. I work for an international company, and my wife has looked at me on more than one occasion and said "there any job openings in the UK you can take?" Not that the UK is perfect, but we went over to Scotland for our 20th wedding anniversary and absolutely loved it, plus my grandmother on my dad's side was British, so I guess I am not too far removed from the "motherland" I have to remind her...60%+ tax rate, $8/gallon for petrol. We had a little Toyota diesel wagon when we were over there, and I burned thorough about a tank of gas while we were there, and it was about 80 USD to fill it up (about 12 gallons).

I know I am not 100% on the numbers, but I read that Wisconsin is so bad with the gerrymandering that something like 55-60% of the state is considered "democrat" but Republicans hold more than 60-65% of the state legislative seats. I need to figure out where the hell I saw that because its pretty telling.

I'm sure we can give it a retroactive participation trophy...can't we? That's a thing now right?

Though not quite as serious as this, it is kinda funny to hear about some of the unintended consequences of these puritan measures such as the Bible getting flagged as inappropriate in Utah, and Desantis' book getting flagged as inappropriate. Limited governments, "Muh Freeydums", personal responsibilities and all that.... Also have to chuckle to the legal maneuvering Disney did in advance of DeSantis hijacking the Reedy Creek Improvement District. It was pretty f*cking hilarious to watch the video of the board meeting where they fully recognize what was done.....King Charles rule.....CLASSIC!

I saw the liberals won back the Supreme Court in Wisconsin, and the Republicans with their shiny new super-majority are already planning to impeach one of the liberal judges. I had no idea how badly the Republicans had gerrymandered that state, but I caught a story that reported that 60-ish percent of the population voted democrat, but Republicans held about 55-60-ish percent of the legislative seats. Something pretty rotten going on there, but its okay, its the party of integrity and personal responsibility.

Just watched a video by Beau of the fifth column on this not 5 minutes ago, and I love one of his closing statements...."it goes to show money doesn't buy class." Very powerful letter.

Oh goodie, the Republican wingnuts that have come out of the woodworks are now inspiring the Democratic wingnuts to come out of the woodworks. What a fu*king idiot..just what we need, let's bring measles, polio and all of those other super fun illnesses back. My step-daughter was on the anti-vax/autism bandwagon until her son turned up with autism. He is fully vaxxed now I don't see Kennedy getting too far being an environmental lawyer, big business ain't got not time for that kinda sh*t! It will create quite the quandary for the liberals, they'll love him for his environmental chops, but all but the most extreme libs will struggle with the anti-vax nonsense.

If Biden is guilty of something, I'm sure the Republican led house will get to the bottom of it, they are hell bent on roasting him.... Oh wait....they are even more hell bent on trying to protect Trump and prove the so called "stolen" election.....so....never mind. I agree, the whole lot of them needs to go away. The best thing that could happen for this country is term limits....and figuring out how to keep special interest money out of politics. We will have a cure for cancer and a pill that will make us immortal before that happens though.

you forgot the Hunter Biden laptop, if you are going to hit the MAGA dog whistles, gotta be sure to include that one. And a President can't just think "it's declassified" and that changes the classification status of a document. All seriousness though, the whole thing with the classified documents with Trump is not that he had them, its that he refused to hand them over for over a year, and deliberately tried to hide them. We didn't even hear about it for the longest time as the government tried to work with Trump behind the scenes. I think that once it became apparent that they were going to take more "drastic" measures (physically retrieving it themselves) they started making public the issues they were having. For Biden and Pence, the documents were discovered and the proper authorities were immediately contacted and the documents retrieved. Given the timing, it would not surprise me if the government contacted the other administrations and had them look, or maybe they took it upon themselves to check. At the end of the day, if Biden, Pence, or anyone else is found to be deliberately trying to keep and hide classified information they shouldn't have, then they should face consequences as well. I've heard several interviews from security experts that said this happens more often than anyone realizes. The difference is that the issues is immediately rectified. Had Trump done the same, its quite possible we wouldn't even know about it. I am curious why we haven't heard anything about Obama or Gee-Dub, as it seems to be a process problem. I can see where it would be tricky, the outgoing President lives in the residence up until the very last minute. They still have to run the government up until that last minute take the time to do a hand-off to a new administration, then BOOM, all his crap has to be shoved out and all the new President's crap has to shoved in within a matter of hours.

My thought was *only* 34 felony counts?? Also, that's just from New York, we haven't even gotten to Georgia, the classified documents investigation or the January 6th investigation, if those can get to this point. Sounds like Georgia and the classified documents cases are pretty close, the January 6th case is a lot more complicated...a lot of layers on that one.

Just saw that, also saw that he is planning a speech/press conference tomorrow night after he gets back to Mar a Lago... Might be hard to do if they hit him with that order....it's going to be an interesting couple of days...

The ironic thing is that it would be very much in Trump's best interest to get this gag order, he is his own worst enemy. That said he has plenty of mouthpieces to spew his nonsense. Just saw a video of the NY mayor called out MTG by name and asked her to behave herself. As I am typing this, it just occurred to me that the whole point of her trip there may very well be to get herself arrested and thus make herself a "martyr"

When I briefly worked in the oil and gas industry, we had absolutely horrible healthcare, in fact I negotiated a much higher starting salary because of it (I told them what I had at my previous job was). The previous job I had in aerospace paid about $400 a month for $30 doctor co-pays and $15-20 prescription co-pays for my family. I think the deductible was $1,000 and the out of pocket max was $4,000 for the family. The Oil and gas had the same payroll deduction, but it was for a high deductible plan. We jumped over to my wife's plan. Back in Aerospace now, and on a good health plan. Just thinking back to what health insurance looked like when I was younger...I think we probably paid $60/month for the family. When we had our kids in the mid-90's we paid a $20-50 co-pay and that covered everything....all of the doctor's visits, tests, all of the expenses related to the actual childbirth. Not sure if it is that way now, I would be surprised if that was the case.

Man I'll bet you are an absolute HOOT at parties!

I have several friends/former fellow coworkers who are British and it is the same way there. You have free healthcare for all, but you can get private insurance for a higher level of care. Doesn't sounds like all that bad of a system if you ask me. I am admittedly a bit salty about our current healthcare system after being straddled with some pretty hefty medical bills from my wife's cancer scare, and we have good insurance.

Never said he did, but we have all of these MAGA froot loops out there acting like he is the second coming of Christ (assuming he was even here the first time). He is gonna fix all of this country's problems and...and....and.....its all a load of crap.

LOL OOPS! https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2023/03/22/utah-parent-says-bible-contains/

MAGA!! Manipulating All Gullible Americans It still baffles my mind how many people he has fooled...unless you are among the top 1% or a authoritarian dictator he does not give a GD F*CK about you.

As long as we protect the kids right? I'm personally getting sick of all the kids being killed by drag queens reading books to them. Then there's the perspective of the presumptive nominee for the Republican VEEP in 2024 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/marjorie-taylor-greene-nashville-shooting-more-guns-kids-1234704343/ She and her Republican colleagues who are so overly concerned with protecting our children do have some really good valid points....Give the kids armored backpacks and fill the schools with more good guys with guns because, NOBODY EVER shoots at a good guy with a gun......right?? MAGA!! Manipulating All Gullible Americans

Eh.....hasn't been all that great up here in Whatcom County...granted we had the one big event, and then a small one that lasted about a day but that's it. I have had a couple of days with wet snow in the air but it melted on contact. Been kinda underwhelming here in the context of what folks are seeing from Arlington to points south. We just haven't been getting the moisture up here with the cold.

Whet schnou is falling IMBY @ 325' I didn't think we would see anything with this system, color me surprised. Currently 35

If he is arrested, I think he can still run, it's not until he gets convicted (if that were to happen)....if he were convicted of a felony, maybe not? In theory a felon cannot vote (though I think states are starting to change that unfortunately), so I would venture to guess they would not be able to hold federal office, but I am too tired to go diving into the constitution tonight. As for "DC will do anything to eliminate him" I am sorry but I am going to have to call complete bullsh*t on this. It's becoming increasingly evident that a VAST majority of Republican want him gone, have wanted him gone, and recognize that their life would be so much easier without Trump. Just go back to the interviews right after Jan 6, were the only people supporting Trump were the wingnuts like MTG and Boebert and worthless sacks of sh*t like Jim Jordan, Josh Hawley, and Matt Gaetz. I'm still recovering from the whiplash from trying to keep track of McConnell, McCarthy and Graham's extreme flip-flopping on Trump. And....they had their chance to be rid of him....if they had impeached him or invoked the 25th amendment, he would be out of their hair. But the Republican leadership were too scared of Trump's supporters and showed their true spineless colors.

Tempting....though in the end I've been coping with the pessimism of anything actually happening to change now. The one thing that makes it tempting is that it sounds like city, state and federal law enforcement are "having discussions" in preparations of something happening as soon as the coming week. It also sounds like some discussions are starting to happen between the Secret Service and New York officials. Sounds like the USS is taking the position of "whatever you guys do with him, we will be by his side at all times." Fair enough, it is a protection afforded to all former presidents. Now, if the question is whether or not he will do a "perp walk" to the courthouse or wherever he surrenders himself, that absolutely will not happen. While I don't think he deserves that exception, it is probably for the best. Enough wingnuts will come unhinged without watching their deity being paraded in front of the cameras in bracelets.

Don't be naive. There was a time when Russia had term limits but Putin took care of that REAL quick. We are sadly getting enough MTG, Boebert, Gaetz type wingnuts in office, not to mention the SC, its not too far of a stretch for Trump to do the same. The biggest problem for Trump being able to see it through is his age and his health. At some point his heart is going to explode from all of those Big Mac's and Diet Cokes!