Hi Rich
wondering how you are surviving the State-wide lock-down "ordered" by your "overlord"?
I hope you are getting lots of shed time while you shelter in place.
look after yourself.
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Hi Rich
wondering how you are surviving the State-wide lock-down "ordered" by your "overlord"?
I hope you are getting lots of shed time while you shelter in place.
look after yourself.
For once I'm doing what I'm told.
My son has advised to keep my BAC up. LOL.
It seems that the LA Metro area's biggest problem is arrivals at LAX and in the ports. And the statistics, oh the statistics. Yes, we have, at this minute, 32,000 cases and 400 deaths NATIONWIDE. But percentage wise of the population is minuscule. If there were 400 deaths in the North Dakota shale oil camps, it would a major disaster.
We're able to go out and get food and such. The stupidity of the hoarders is amazing. I'm willing to bet that some of them have a 10 year supply of Toilet Paper and they are still buying more. By mid summer I'll be shopping garage sales for Toilet Paper and buying it for a dime on the dollar. (That's ten cents on the dollar or a 90% discount.)
Our misinformation source has been on TV for the last couple of hours pontificating about how great he has been handling the problem. NOT!
The lock down for us old pharts (Both late 70s.) is difficult. We really don't cook anymore. We tend to buy prepared meals and food to go. So it puts a kink in our life style.
OMG. We only have 12 rolls of TP left! Does anybody know where I can buy some? LOL :)
Thanks for asking.
We've already experienced lockdown for 6 weeks (broken ankle and SWMBO with Vertigo so neither of us can drive). We had relatives delivering groceries for a couple of weeks and then used online grocery shopping until it stopped being available last week but at least I can now drive. However falling my GPs advice were self isolating as much as possibleQuote:
Originally Posted by rrich
I drive SWMBO to the store and stay in the car while SWMBO does the shopping, she's also much better than I am at sanitising etc. About once a week we buy in prepared food but we both cook (SWMBO is an excellent cook - any style, chinese, Italian, japanese, baked goods [unfortunately can't have much of these]) so its no big deal if the takeaway services stops. We have two Vet appointments this week, one for one of the dogs and another for SWMBO's horse, so Im driving and staying in the car and SWMBO is dealing with the animals.
not being too picky, but is reshoeing SWMBO's horse an "essential" activity?Quote:
Originally Posted by BobL
About as essential and as risky in terms of COVID19 as me taking SWMBO to the bottle shop to buy Gin.:oo:Quote:
Originally Posted by ian
Anyway the horse is not being reshoed, its special orthotic shoes are being removed for the duration.
Sorry, miss-read the title and thought we were discussing local state 'lockdowns'.
I head off tomorrow on 1600K round trip to replenish my timber supplies. hopefully get this done by Thursday.
Wife has specific instructions, this is an essential trip and unless she gets a copy of my death certificate she is not to sell anything.
She smiled and said ..."yes dear, and how soon can I arrange your death?"
Tonyz, that's a big trip. Are you sure it's wise?
It looks like TSHTF and borders are locked down.
The fuzz might think poorly of your timing.....
OK. No comments are really necessary but this is really a "Holy Bat Poop" moment. And no, you can't make things like this up.
Idiot child actually said this today:
"We are having people die that have never died before."
Everyone has my permission to have three shots of the whisky of their choice.
The child is profound.Quote:
Originally Posted by rrich
There is this Very Good Crack at bending the rules: https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...e-appeal-iowa/
:)
Hi EvanQuote:
Originally Posted by woodPixel
That Washington Post article appears to be behind a firewall.
Can you post a summary?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ian
Apologies for that. I use Firefox with quite a few plugins that block... well, everything. I've found the internet so toxic that without adblockers, popup blockers, content blockers, paywalls and other infuriating BS that its become unusable..... so here is a copy-paste :)
An inmate claimed his life sentence ended when he died and was revived. Nice try, court rules.
</section>Quote:
Benjamin Schreiber is very much alive. But that hasn’t stopped him from arguing that he died four years ago.
<section>
After the convicted murderer collapsed in his prison cell in 2015, doctors restarted his heart five times. Recovering back at the Iowa State Penitentiary, Schreiber filed a novel legal appeal. Because he died before he was resuscitated, he had technically fulfilled his life sentence, he claimed.
</section> <section>Judges, however, aren’t buying it. Dying for a brief amount of time doesn’t amount to a get-out-of-jail-free card, the Iowa Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday, saying that the 66-year-old will remain in prison until a medical examiner determines that he is dead for good.
“Schreiber is either alive, in which case he must remain in prison, or he is dead, in which case this appeal is moot,” Judge Amanda Potterfield wrote.
Schreiber has been behind bars since 1996, when he was charged in the death of John Dale Terry, a 39-year-old whose bludgeoned body was found near an abandoned trailer in rural Agency, Iowa. Prosecutors contended that Schreiber, then 43, had plotted with Terry’s girlfriend before clubbing the man to death with the wooden handle of a pickax. A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, and in 1997 he was sentenced to life without parole.
Nearly two decades later, Schreiber was hit with severe septic poisoning. According to court records, he had developed kidney stones that were so large they “caused him to urinate internally.” On March 30, 2015, he fell unconscious and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors brought him back to life by administering epinephrine through an IV.
In April 2018, Schreiber filed for post-conviction relief, claiming that he was being held in prison illegally. His sentence was supposed to end with his death, he argued, which had taken place three years prior, when his heart stopped.
A district court judge wasn’t convinced by his creative attempt to find a loophole in the law, saying that Schreiber’s argument was “unpersuasive and without merit.” The fact that Schreiber was able to file a legal motion petitioning for his release, the judge added, “in itself confirms the petitioner’s current status as living.”
The inmate took his quest to the Iowa Court of Appeals, which was similarly unpersuaded. In an opinion published Wednesday, the panel of judges didn’t attempt to reckon with the spiritual or medical definition of “death,” a philosophical question that has generated intense legal wrangling and complex debates over medical ethics elsewhere. Instead, they zeroed in on what “life in prison” means.
“We do not believe the legislature intended this provision [ …] to set criminal defendants free whenever medical procedures during their incarceration lead to their resuscitation by medical professionals,” Potterfield wrote.
Noting that they couldn’t find any case law that would back Schreiber’s position, the appeals court judges also ruled that he couldn’t have it both ways — claiming to be dead as far as the criminal justice system was concerned while simultaneously going on with his life.
In his appeal, Schreiber had also argued that doctors violated his rights by failing to follow his “do not resuscitate” order when they pulled him from the brink of death. According to court records obtained by the Des Moines Register, hospital staffers made the decision after conferring with Schreiber’s brother, who only consented to giving him medicine to ease his pain. The panel declined to address that question because a lower court has yet to rule on it.
Schreiber remains incarcerated at the Iowa State Penitentiary in rural Lee County. His attorney could not immediately be reached for comment late Thursday night, and it’s unclear if he plans to take his fight to a higher court
I don't disagree that the Trumpwit is an idiot of the first order, but at least for once what he said is actually true........'cept he didn't actually say it:Quote:
Originally Posted by rrich
Did President Trump Say 'People Are Dying Today That Have Never Died Before'?
Don't get me wrong, I'd love it to be true! (that people can die more than once, I mean)
Actually SWMBO and I were watching CNN when he said that or something very, very similar.Quote:
Originally Posted by FenceFurniture
CNN ? Fake news!
Just remember you got Trump because of Hilary. If the democrats had fielded an electable candidate they would have won at a canter. How utterly deluded do you have to be to stand up at a podium in the middle of an election and call the electorate a basket of deplorables ?
I guess it's all just symptom of how stupid the electorate and how far politics has fallen...next it'll be Paris Hilton running against Rosanne Barr...
Most cowards die before their death
At the annual Christmas gathering 2016, my oldest son (To be 51 this year) and I got into it over Trump / Hillary. (Remember he is the one that refused to take UCLA tuition money from me because "I don't want to be controlled by you." You can not imagine how difficult it was to exit that conversation without bursting out laughing.) I told him that I voted for the Libertarian candidate. To that he blew up and retorted "I voted for Hillary and I'm proud of it." When I said Hillary is the reason that we have Trump for president, he blew up and had to go outside for a walk to calm down.Quote:
Originally Posted by damian
So here we are almost 4 years later and someone from half way around the planet so accurately understands the stupidity of the American electorate. I congratulate you for that.
Thanks but it's the same all over. Politics is REALLY simple. The problem is the people who are into it overthink it.
Republicans will always vote for the republican candidate, democrats the democrat candidate. Doesn't matter if they are a pedophile they will still get that vote. Elections are won and lost by swing voters/moderates in marginal jurisdictions. These people are only about 4 - 8% of the population. There are of course more of them across the country (your country or mine) but only about 1/3 of jurisdictions are ever in play.
So to understand who will win an election you just have to understand these people. The left are systematically losing power throughout the western world because over the last decade or so their demands have become ever more unreasonable, their protests more shrill. They, like the extreme right, have withdrawn into echo chambers and become ever more overtly extreme and intolerant. When HC made that speech she was playing to her base. She had completely forgotten that her base don't matter and that she had to hold on the the center to win. She committed one of the cardinal sins of campaigning, she attacked the electorate. Even if a moderate doesn't think the comment is directed at them, calling any group of electors worthless, inferior etc makes you a non option.
I watched what friends (rational people) in the USA were putting on the interweb while that election developed. It was fascinating. So many were lamenting they had no one to vote for, but when she said that the mood turned instantly.
She thought she couldn't lose. Labor in australia thought that at the last election and campaigned on new taxes. Their much hated leader didn't help but they really presented an un-electable proposal. They thought they had it in the bag.
This isn't helped by hopelessly broken polling. The pollsters are not accounting for sample bias properly. Conservatives, and quite a few moderates, won't engage with them anymore so their samples are overwhelmingly left leaning. This leads the left to false hope before elections.
I'm seeing a swing to the right throughout society. It's been developing for a while. Unfortunately it's already ugly and will get worse. I'm a moderate, I don't like either extreme, but the middle just doesn't seem to be an option...
I was joking with my son just before the last election. An interesting party called FLUX asked me to run/organise the electorate for here (I had to decline). The idea is absolutely brilliant.Quote:
Originally Posted by damian
As an IT guy, AI enthusiast, libertarian and anarchist* it seemed very good.
When AI kicks in, this is how it will be. The party system will be destroyed (good) and The People will finally get a word in (yay).
We joked about starting a party called "No" or None-Of-The-Above. The candidates would veto all legislation, block every bill, frustrate every process, kill anything that can be killed, rip up rules, rip up bureaucracy and attempt to poison the entire system from within. The mandate was simple, one rule.... "No". The answer would ALWAYS be no. No to anything and everything.
The idea interested me :)
* Freedom OF/FROM big government type, not pitchforks in the streets kind.
Completely agreed Damian. It was well demonstrated that SmirKo's mob completely understood the principle with their Sports Rorts Pork Barrelling. The money only went to marginal electorates (of either flavour), where the swing voters can actually make that difference.Quote:
Originally Posted by damian
A couple of points to make though:
1. non-compulsory voting in the USA really throws a spanner in the works because I suspect that many of the swing voters might just stay at home, particularly because...
2. ....their elections go for sooooo long that they must surely get election fatigue
3. The Electoral College appears to be completely undemocratic. Dumb as she might have been, HC still had 3mill more votes than Trumpwit. That's the same effect as a nationwide gerrymander.
You'd have to think that the voters that swung over to Trumpwit in 2016 would now largely desert him - he was all talk before the election - but he still is only talk. Never seen anyone talk so much about themselves and how outstanding they are, in the face of the brutal reality that they are not!
Time will tell of course. Just because (supposedly) 60% of Americans approve of his crisis handling so far does not mean his luck will last once the poo REALLY starts hitting the fan in a week or two. I wonder where that sample was taken. Couldn't have been many NY or Weezyanna folks in it....
Your prejudices are showing, you might want to tuck those back in. Calling people names isn't clever. politicians are not the problem, they are a symptom. The electorate who put them there is the problem.
Do you honestly think the coalition at the last election invented pork barreling ? Lord knows I remember the disgraceful carry on in the Hawke years.
But you have overlooked a far bigger factor. Australians NEVER vote governments in, they vote them out. Whitlam lost the 75 election in teh biggest landslide in Australia's federal history. Fraser was the most hated man in Australia yet the electorate gave him 75% of the seats in the lower house because Whitlam had made such a monumental f'up of government the people were actually afraid of how much worse it could get. In 83 with Whitlam finally well and truly gone Fraser's boat people policies p'd enough people off to give Hawke a go. He tortured us from day 1 but teh coalition, specifically Howard and Peakcock, ensured the coalition were utterly unelectable. Finally in 96 the put forward an electable proposition and Keating was out on his ear for all the sins he'd committed. In 07 Howard's government went mad particularly with their industrial relations reforms and people took a punt on Kevin07. Despite the cataclysm of the Rudd/Gillard years people were more scared of an Abbott government than Gillard so she scraped through on a lie and Abbott made sure second time around to put the stake right through the heart.
There was no such chaos last election. Morrison didn't have to do anything except avoid scandal, media fodder. He shut them down and made himself the single line of communication. Meanwhile every time Shorten put his face in front of a camera labors hopes sank, but they really put the knife to their own throats with their economic package. Morrison won because there was no good reason to chuck him out and the alternative looked heaps worse. Simplz.
As for Trump, he is the opposite of Obama, and will have a much more favorable legacy because of it. Presidents have 2 jobs. 1 is the pr side, setting the mood of the nation. Obama was great, Trump is terrible. The second is getting legislation through and actually doing the administration. Obama will be remembered as a do nothing president, and what he did do was disastrous. Trump will be remembered for achieving more of his campaign promises than any president in recent history. Sure I don't like his agenda, but he went to the election with a laundry list (which Obama didn't) and he has bullied kicked and stabbed his way through it. He achieved more in the first 2 years than Obama did in 8.
Non compulsory voting does complicate things slightly, but only because sometimes if they care enough the 4th group bother to turn up. Fact is left leaning are the more likely to stay home with non mandatory voting, always has been. Lately there is a trend for younger voters not to bother.
The electoral college is a gerymander, always has been. Republicans have always needed less than half the votes to win. Doesn't matter. you might as well complain about mandatory preferential voting. reminds me of racers telling stories of how they would have won if only the wheel hadn't fallen off on the last lap. Fact is if the voting is that close the people do not endorse either candidate overwhelmingly. Imagine if Gore had won against Bush! FFS....do you really think the Americans, or us for that matter, would have been better off with that *** running the show ?
Trump will win this year. No doubt about it. Unless he does something absolutely catastrophic he will win comfortably. In fact I can just about spell out the campaign for you...
Moderates don't drop out because of campaign fatigue. They mostly don't tune in until a week before the election, check which side has the biggest barrel or pork and vote accordingly.
Woodpixel: Philosophically I am with you but AI will f the lot of us, it won't make anything better. I suggest reading about the Athenian empire. People like to BS that it fell because it was a popular democracy, but actually it's spectacular rise and fall was for exactly the same reasons representative democracies do well and poorly. It's valuable because they are sufficiently remote that we can view them somewhat objectively.
I have a far more basic approach. Most of what the government does harms us. I always vote for minor parties and independents, doesn't really matter who. If enough people do this they get the balance of power. This slows down the government. The more time they spend fighting among themselves the less they have to f us over. The best we can hope for. The most dangerous times for us federally are when the government hold majorities in both houses. Hung senates are there to save us from their excesses.
I must go look and see who won my council ward yesterday...
Pretty much my political philosophy. It doesn't matter who gets in, as long as they only just get in. This applies to individual candidates and parties. Also, I vote for independents as long as they aren't complete nutters, in the hope that it will eventually encourage someone like Ted Mack or John Hatton to stand and get in.Quote:
I have a far more basic approach. Most of what the government does harms us. I always vote for minor parties and independents, doesn't really matter who. If enough people do this they get the balance of power. This slows down the government. The more time they spend fighting among themselves the less they have to f us over. The best we can hope for. The most dangerous times for us federally are when the government hold majorities in both houses. Hung senates are there to save us from their excesses.
Fair point.Quote:
Originally Posted by damian
I have never voted for somebody: Only against, which means default to the alternative: Fundamental problem is that there is a distinct dearth of talent out there amongst all political parties. In particular we need some honourable men or women. Where is that Brutus fellow when you need him?
Oh, that's right, wiping the knife clean :( .
Regards
Paul
Are you honourable enough to stand?
Ray
Who? Me?
Nah. See my catch phrase at the foot. Perhaps everybody goes that way eventually and it is just a case of how long it takes to get there. People begin to believe their own lies and self importance.
What did I hear you say? ....A little bit cynical :rolleyes: . The reality is that if you put up your hand for politics you are under scrutiny and you should perform. Fall down for any reason and you are out.
Regards
Paul
Quote:
Originally Posted by damian
Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexS
you do realise that with Australia's compulsory preferential system of voting your vote is ultimately going to one of the two major parties? At present I think there are but two (out of 151) House of Reps members who are truly independent. Wilkie in Tasmania and ?? in Indi (Victoria). Zali Stegal (did I spell her name correctly) is really a middle ground liberal compared to Tony Abbott.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bushmiller
(It's one of the reasons the Electoral Commission reports the two party preferred outcome.)
I understand the voting system but you are't quite right anymore. They changed the federal senate so you only have to vote for X number of candidates then your vote can expire. So you have that option. We had partial preferential in queensland for a while, and we had partial preferential in the council elections last weekend. Also it is not publicized but if you get a certain number right then spoil the rest of the ballot the first few preferences are in fact counted, the vote is not discarded. So if you have 9 options you can vote say 1-7 then mark the last couple 8 or whatever and the first numbers will count. Mind I'm explaining the system. It would be illegal for me to suggest anyone deliberately spoil their ballot.
We have rubbish candidates because we treat them like rubbish. The electorate behave like spoiled brats the whole time. Why would any decent person put themselves up for that ? The media invade your privacy looking for a scandal and the public just whinge you aren't giving them enough for nothing.
I also like to point out that in the 60's the PM got 1.5 times the average salary, now it's 6 times. People who argue pay peanuts get monkey are arguing that the politicians we have today are 4X better than those in the 60's. Anyone want to take up that argument ? :D
I believe the high salaries have a detrimental effect. They give the incumbent a sense of superiority and entitlement. I believe if the salary was set in the constitution as a low multiple of the national average we would get BETTER candidates.
It doesn't matter if the independents are nutters, they don't have enough power to put the country off the rails. They are disrupters, and nutters are good disrupters :D
I'm still waiting for the "surface to surface missiles on your roofrack" party. They get my vote...fn brisbane drivers....
Has anybody worked out a way to vote against ALL of the f/w pollies.:buttkick:Quote:
Originally Posted by Bushmiller
Now there is a thought. Some elections might end up, "there was not a suitable candidate this time so we didn't appoint anybody."Quote:
Originally Posted by Bohdan
Umm.. That might be most elections.
Regards
Paul
Yes, I understand that that's the way the system works, but as the saying goes, they can screw you, but they can't make you love the child.Quote:
you do realise that with Australia's compulsory preferential system of voting your vote is ultimately going to one of the two major parties?
Damian, it is indeed illegal to encourage anyone not to complete all squares on their ballot paper, but if anyone wishes to read how this can be done and still have a vote count, I suggest casting a glance at the case of Langer v the Commonwealth. Not that I would suggest that anyone do this, of course, as Mr. Langer found out.
Hi AlexQuote:
Originally Posted by AlexS
my recollection is that Langer was done for contempt of court for breaching what was probably a dubious injunction that acted to suppress his rights to vote as he pleased, including clearly expressing a non-opinion on the merits of the various candidates
It is also my recollection that after Langer's advocacy the Commonwealth Electoral Act was changed to automatically count a "Langer vote" -- voting 1-2-3-3-3, etc -- as an informal vote. To be formal a House of Reps vote must be numbered consecutively -- I'm not sure if using prime numbers 1-2-3-5-7-11, etc or a Fibonacci sequence (1-2-3-5-8, etc) would constitute a formal vote.
Might be interesting to give it a try.
As to senate voting -- Damien's post #27 -- numbering the Senate boxes above the line gave back to the voter the ability to assign preferences as they wished -- rather than have those preferences distributed as was agreed by "back-room party deals".
There are vote-saving provisions in the Electoral Act that allow some ballot papers to be included in the count even though the voting rules have not been fully met.
For House of Representatives ballot papers the requirement for a formal vote is that every square must contain a consecutive number for all candidates on a ballot paper to be a formal vote (see section 240 of the Electoral Act). This is the instruction that is printed on these ballot papers. However, there is a vote-saving measure that can operate where one square is left blank and where preferences for all other candidates have been marked with a consecutive number (see paragraph 268(1)(c)).
For Senate ballot papers the requirement for a formal vote is that when voting above the line, at least the numbers 1 to 6 shall be marked in the squares on the ballot paper (see subsection 239(2)). For voting below the line, the requirement is that at least the numbers 1 to 12 are marked in the squares printed on the ballot paper (see subsection 239(1)). However, there is a vote savings measure that can operate where only one square is marked above the line (see section 269), or where voting below the line, at least six squares have been marked 1 to 6 using consecutive numbers (see section 268A).
Counting the votes – Frequently Asked Questions - Australian Electoral Commission
Looks like they changed the rules (again). It used to be some number, say the first 3 had to be consecutive then if you spoiled the rest it'd still count (house of reps). They seem to have reined that in. Pity we can't demand partial preferential, it really is the best of all worlds....
The latest lock down status:
Something got into SWMBO yesterday. This morning all is OK. She went to the supermarket and picked up milk and eggs +.
No mayhem nor murder yet. :)