You make great points, but some of the dehumanizing advantages used in the Middle East would me much less affective here…Canadians are just north of us, and not on the other side of the world. Their customs, traditions, religions, and holidays are similar to ours, and they look just like us. I’d bet that a good number of Americans have Canadian relatives. I live in VA, and my neighbors wife has dual US/Canadian citizenship, as she’s originally from Canada.

I’m originally from Erie, PA - going up to Niagara Falls was a regular day trip we’d do several times per year. Funny enough, I’ve never been to the American side of the falls. I’ve seen it grow from a destination where you could simply parallel park your car next to the railing looking over the falls, to the tourist trap destination it is today.

The good thing about the education system is that no matter how they try to defend and dumb it down, our people still have to compete with the global, population. We can’t import all of our mental talent. Schoolmaster the only place where people gain an education. Kids are smart, resilient, and can often see past the ill-will of adults, no matter how many toys and candies they have.

The great thing about trump may be that he’s so fucking terrible, that he may end up pushing people (voters) to make better, more sensible decisions at the voting booth, more than any other politician possibly can. What he’s doing, is not only about values, ideas, and hate anymore. He’s actually affecting the bank accounts and livelihood of the people who voted for him, and nothing about any of his policies will result in them not being damaged in at least some way. He is so fucking terrible that he may actually be the catalyst to snap the US out of this “conservative populist march towards fascism.”

Bernie Sanders is an Independent - one of the reasons he’s treated so badly by the DNC. There should be more Independents, as far as that goes.

I just see a lot of our military not being into invading Canada. There is a lot of gray space between aggressively applying 100% to a mission and outright desertion. As a person who’s spent a career in the military - I don’t really know about the infantry-based guys, but the people I served with are not simple order-following automatons - regardless of oathes to follow orders…doing the wrong thing is doing the wrong thing.

Maybe I’m out to lunch, but I’d bet there would suddenly be a lot of broken equipment, and a lot of injured personnel, along with a demand that the children of our political leadership, be among the first of the “cannon-fodder” and “bullet-cushions” to cross into “enemy” territory. I’d also bet that you could say goodbye to our all-volunteer military recruitment numbers. Logistics would likely be another nightmare, as our civilian population would likely have to be violently forced to allow the military use of the roads to transport themselves north. Unlike our previous military campaigns and wars, where Allied ports were made available to mass our troops and supplies, there would be no friendly ports outside our own borders.

I’m not saying it couldn’t be done - our military is larger than the next 13 largest militaries combined, after all. I’m suggesting that between the troubles of invasions in themselves, we’d also be dealing with near civil war conditions within our own borders, massive resignations of key people, desertions & AWOLs, protests and civil disobedience, equipment sabotage, and voluntary military ascession falling off a cliff.

There are plenty of military members who would absolutely, with full faith and dedication, follow any order given to them. I’m sure that there are at least some members of our military who (for some reason) would love to invade Canada. But between the domestic troubles, the half-hearted effort of those who would appear to be participating, and the pain of going to war in the first place. Nah, trump is just sabre rattling…it won’t happen.

The old moderate Democrats are not going to change…they keep trying to reach conservatives in a “middle” that keeps moving right. I’d say getting Democrats elected, then replacing them with better democrats in future elections would be the way to go, but there’s something to be said for getting nowhere with the same.old.people.in.the.same.old.positions.election.after.election.and.never.gaining.a.meaningful.majoritye. Either the positions or the people need to change. Since the existing people are not willing to change their positions on the issues, people must be the next thing to change. The party needs to progress into the future, with younger, more vital blood.

And look at them both, dwarfed by the 6 foot 9 inch first Lady! She should play basketball!

So, in the state where it’s completely OK to sacrifice an innocent child, because the vaccine has “bad stuff” in it - most likely the people saying that could not list ingredients, of course, while other pregnant women who’ve lost their pregnancies are regularly suspected of sabotaging, or otherwise finding ways to abort their pregnancies. The same state that’s also trying to extradite a doctor from NY over sending abortion medication to a TX resident.

So, the lesson here is to not abort an unwanted pregnancy, but instead, let the child be born, then decide you have an issue with vaccinations, before tossing your child into parks, play dates, and the brick & mortar petri-dish all parents know schools to be? I’m just trying to figure out the rules here…so a fetus is a person, but a child is not? Or maybe women don’t get to make choices with their bodies, but parents get to make choices for their children’s bodies? Of course parents make choices on their children’s behalf every day, but these choices?

Oh, and lets not forget, that meanwhile, Catholic Health Initiatives-Iowa, a faith-based health care provider, is arguing in a medical malpractice case that the loss of an unborn child does not equate to the death of a “person” for the purpose of calculating damage awards. Gee, what an awfully convenient twist in the rules, when money enters the scene - depending upon how this all plays out.

But…but…aren’t we exceptional? 🙄

I’m in the US and have a 1970 Fiat 500. That little car can handle quite a few of my needs. I sometimes use it for work, when I only have estimates. Normally I drive a full size Ford E150 van.

I appreciate the Fiat because it’s so different from everything on the roads here, just fun to drive, (I’m 54, so at an age where things like lumbar support and other creature comforts are nice) and it’s just uncomfortable enough to make me really appreciate our more modern and larger vehicles (the For van, a Mercury Cougar convertible, a Dodge 2500 4x4, and a Volvo XC70).

The only real bad side is that between it’s age and the fact that they were never freaky imported into the US, parts aren’t readily available. The last time I used it for work, it broke down.

Wow! How long until “the man” starts collecting passports, and requiring working immigrants to work off the debt of being allowed to work the fields, before allowing them access to their passports to be allowed to leave - likely with an ICE escort?

We were told at the time, that the Brits has a surface group in the area, and didn’t want a sub submerged in the same area. Neither we, nor our radar saw anything. But in 21 years spent in the navy, I’ve never seen seas like in that 1st deployment. Modern subs, with round hulls, are optimized for submerged steaming, only cruising on the surface when arriving/departing ports or when operationally necessary (i.e. shallow waters or transferring personnel).

I’ve probably been out in seas just as bad as that 1st deployment - when the boat is rocking at 600-800 feet submerged depth, it has to be really, really bad on the surface, but being submerged, I really didn’t get to see it on those occasions.

My first deployment in a fast-attack submarine, in the fall of 1991. We were working under British operational control, and they ordered us to cruise surfaced, in the North Sea. I was standing watch as a lookout, with another lookout and the Officer of the Deck (OOD), in the sail superstructure of the boat. We were wearing body harnesses and lanyards, clipped into the superstructure - normal procedure.

I was a sailor aboard USS SUNFISH (SSN549), a Sturgeon Class boat, where the sail superstructure was 25 feet tall. We were in 48 foot seas.

The 3 of us on watch that night were washed overboard more than 10 times each. Often all 3 of us at the same time… flung overboard, hanging by our lanyards, trying to roll around and grab onto the ladder rungs, or one another, to get back into the bridge pooka. None of us broke any bones or lost any teeth, but we were pretty battered and bruised by the end of it.

That was the first time I got to see the entire boat out of the water… at the top of the wave, I could see the stem planes, stabilizers, the end of the towed-array housing, and the propeller. At the bottom of each trough, we’d see just a tiny hole of sky, through the water, as it all crashed down upon us, and we all hold on, trying to stay inside the superstructure.

We pulled into the Navy Base at Rosyth Scotland the next afternoon. The windshield, booked in for surface operations, was completely missing, as well a the port running light. We sustained damage to our observation periscope and main communications antenna as well.

The experience was both scary and exhilarating.

What! I’ve been waiting for my “trickle-down” check to come in the mail since 1990. I’m starting to think it’s never going to come. If it takes too much longer, I may have to reevaluate my faith in trickle-down economics. 🙄

LOL! Other than in here and in person, I keep my political views to myself. I can’t believe the number of business people with political stickers on their trucks.

I’ve owned a franchise business, which is HQ’d in Canada for 14 years now, and it’s been a great experience, in no small part, due to the great colleagues up there. There have been annual seminars/conferences the entire time, held in various locations throughout the US and Canada, so nobody has to travel excessively far. I’ve enjoyed the break of a solitary road trip for several of them. This year it’s only up in Canada or via Zoom. I was actually planning on visiting some friends in Western VA, then seeing some family in PA, then more family in SD - and to drop off some (too big/expensive to ship) stuff, followed by a visit to some family in ND, then finally to the conference in Calgary.

Based on how troublesome things have gotten with the “47 shades of orange” guy, I guess it’ll be better to just stay home, and certainly cheaper. The only thing worse than having to live under the shadow of a talking Orange Julius, would be to become the victim of a crime in Canada due to my VA tags (probably not that likely), or to have difficulty returning to the US.

I’d sure love to see Canada and the UK simply shut X down within their borders. There were some grumbling awhilemago, in the UK Parliament of naming Musk as an extremist, based on his ability to not only buy influence, but his ability through X to promote or censor speech as he likes, influencing elections, or even overthrowing governments.

I love how a billionaire “puppet master” can think so low of everyone, like nobody is intelligent to think for themselves, instead, relying on some unnamed “puppet master.” Yet he cannot name any alleged puppet master leading the over 1000 protests. What a freaking Muppet. Sorry - I don’t mean to insult the Muppets.

Says the man who has a maid, a butler, a staff waiting with a coffee and strudel for him at work. Every conference call is set up and waiting on him to start. Everyone is lined up to lick his boots at all time, to ensure the person who’s time is “the most valuable” never has to spend an extra second listening to anyone or anything they don’t want to. Give me a break.

The thing is that they don’t govern. The MAGA crowd does nothing. There’s no constructive legislation. Everything proposed is to remove some imaginary barrier that keeps society from running well, but they make things worse. Even with good legislation, some people are wronged, and get left behind. Conservatives use the bad stories to justify doing nothing good.

The whole narrative with firing “unelected government bureaucrats” who are ruining our lives is BS from the start. The “unelected government bureaucrats” are simply employees doing the bidding of our elected officials. Trump has every right to pursue an agenda of shutting down institutions and culling the herd of government employees - he won the election. The correct way is through Congressional legislation. The problem is, that he and Musk/Doge DO NOT have the support of the people. The MAGATS know the legislation would never pass with the approval of the people, through their elected representatives - so they go about doing things illegally.

I’ve enjoyed Linux since Windows MEllennium Edition convinced me that I didn’t like paying a lot, in money and time, to be an unpaid product testing guinea pig. A work friend put Windows 2000 on that laptop when ME went bad. I used it until a got a blue screen of death one day, and switched to Linux. The 1st was a $230 ePC that could be had with Windows XP or XanderOS (a flavor of Linux). I chose the latter, and had a great time of it. I’ve since used Mint and Ubuntu.

I’m permanently banned from Reddit. I don’t like Lemmy nearly as much, but it’s probably just that I’m less familiar and haven’t figured it all out. Finding subs that I liked in Reddit was much easier, but there’s the obvious moderator issues with Reddit - mainly that I’m banned.