I AM BORED.....when will house arrest end?

[Cranky]

By closing home depot, I can't paint.

I can't do any plumbing work.

I can't do any gardening.

Basically Ford has put us under house arrest with privileges.

I get the shut down, I support the shutdown, but this is too long and too much.

Worse, I think Ford likes the licking he's getting from the press and much like a puppy, he's taking that licking as positive reinforcement.

Sorry, but he can't keep this up for several months because if he think it's going to be bad now, it will be a damn deep depression if he keeps it closed until fall.

[Willie Dog]

Right now the weather blows, wait until it gets nice, then you'll see people breaking the rules.

[jkr]

Apr 15, 2020 12:27:18 GMT -5 Cranky said:

By closing home depot, I can't paint.

I can't do any plumbing work.

I can't do any gardening.

Basically Ford has put us under house arrest with privileges.

I get the shut down, I support the shutdown, but this is too long and too much.

Worse, I think Ford likes the licking he's getting from the press and much like a puppy, he's taking that licking as positive reinforcement.

Sorry, but he can't keep this up for several months because if he think it's going to be bad now, it will be a damn deep depression if he keeps it closed until fall.

I thought Home Depot was open for curbside delivery.

[Cranky]

Apr 15, 2020 16:21:42 GMT -5 jkr said:

Apr 15, 2020 12:27:18 GMT -5 Cranky said:

By closing home depot, I can't paint.

I can't do any plumbing work.

I can't do any gardening.

Basically Ford has put us under house arrest with privileges.

I get the shut down, I support the shutdown, but this is too long and too much.

Worse, I think Ford likes the licking he's getting from the press and much like a puppy, he's taking that licking as positive reinforcement.

Sorry, but he can't keep this up for several months because if he think it's going to be bad now, it will be a damn deep depression if he keeps it closed until fall.

I thought Home Depot was open for curbside delivery.

You have to order online to get the product. What I want is out of stock online.

[Cranky]

This is one of the very best articles I have read about deliberate and thought out action by politicians. One may not agree to their action, but there is no doubt they have thought through as a plan.

Sweden, Taiwan, South Korea.....actually intelligent politicians....

‘Life Has to Go On’: How Sweden Has Faced the Virus Without a Lockdown

The country was an outlier in Europe, trusting its people to voluntarily follow the protocols. Many haven’t, but it does not seem to have hurt them.

STOCKHOLM — She stood leaning on her cane, briefly resting among dozens of bubbly young Swedes out enjoying one of the first sunny spring days of the year.

“I’m trying not to get too close to people,” said Birgit Lilja, 82, explaining that she had left her house to pick up a new identity card in person. “But I trust them to be careful with me.”

Trust is high in Sweden — in government, institutions and fellow Swedes. When the government defied conventional wisdom and refused to order a wholesale lockdown to “flatten the curve” of the coronavirus epidemic, public health officials pointed to trust as a central justification.

Swedes, they said, could be trusted to stay home, follow social distancing protocols and wash their hands to slow the spread of the virus — without any mandatory orders. And, to a large extent, Sweden does seem to have been as successful in controlling the virus as most other nations.

www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/world/europe/sweden-coronavirus-herd-immunity.html

The most important takeaway? Righg ir wrong, it's an actual political policy instead of wishful thinking. Locking EVERYONE DOWN without a plan to test and isolate and return will not make the virus disappear. It will simply delay and increase the damage to the economy.

[Cranky]

This article is from a moderately right wing site. So try to ignore the names and insert "Canadian content".

The reason that I'm starting to agree and concerned is that politicians are starting to like the power they yield and the favorable press from the left. All of a sudden, SOME right wing politicians are loving 70% approval and re-election more then hard line thinking of how to combat the virus, run the economy and find a balance.

I'm not surprised at the almost universal extra stupid behind the eight ball displayed by most politicians. Nor their new found lust for power so easily achieved. What I'm anxiously waiting to see if the nanny state is a new norm and accepted by the majority.

The reality slap....no matter how self serving and popular, no matter "comforting ", no nanny state can change economic and virus realities. Sooner rather then later, the grim economic reaper will visit every checkbook virus warrior-politician and "I don't want to be blamed for any death" vote licker politician.

Neither the virus nor economic realities have feelings...and embracing 1984 goosestep nanny state by the collective will not stomp out a solution to either. .

Our Dress Rehearsal for a Police State


All my life, I have dismissed paranoids on the right ("America is headed to communism") and the left ("It can happen here" -- referring to fascism). It's not that I've ever believed liberty was guaranteed. Being familiar with history and a pessimist regarding the human condition, I never believed that.

But the ease with which police state tactics have been employed and the equal ease with which most Americans have accepted them have been breathtaking.


People will argue that a temporary police state has been justified because of the allegedly unique threat to life posed by the new coronavirus. I do not believe the data will bear that out. Regardless, let us at least agree that we are closer to a police state than ever in American history.

"Police state" does not mean totalitarian state. America is not a totalitarian state; we still have many freedoms. In a totalitarian state, this article could not be legally published, and if it were illegally published, I would be imprisoned and/or executed. But we are presently living with all four of the key hallmarks of a police state:

No. 1: Draconian laws depriving citizens of elementary civil rights.

The federal, state, county and city governments are now restricting almost every freedom except those of travel and speech. Americans have been banned from going to work (and thereby earning a living), meeting in groups (both indoors and outdoors), meeting in their cars in church parking lots to pray and entering state-owned properties such as beaches and parks -- among many other prohibitions.

No. 2: A mass media supportive of the state's messaging and deprivation of rights.

The New York Times, CNN and every other mainstream mass medium -- except Fox News, The Wall Street Journal (editorial and opinion pages only) and talk radio -- have served the cause of state control over individual Americans' lives just as Pravda served the Soviet government. In fact, there is almost no more dissent in The New York Times than there was in Pravda. And the Big Tech platforms are removing posts about the virus and potential treatments they deem "misinformation."

No. 3: Use of police.

Police departments throughout America have agreed to enforce these laws and edicts with what can only be described as frightening alacrity. After hearing me describe police giving summonses to, or even arresting, people for playing baseball with their children on a beach, jogging alone without a mask, or worshipping on Easter while sitting isolated in their cars in a church parking lot, a police officer called my show. He explained that the police have no choice. They must respond to every dispatch they receive.

"And why are they dispatched to a person jogging on a beach or sitting alone in a park?" I asked.

Because the department was informed about these lawbreakers.

"And who told the police about these lawbreakers?" I asked.

His answer brings us to the fourth characteristic of a police state:

No. 4: Snitches.

How do the police dispatchers learn of lawbreakers such as families playing softball in a public park, lone joggers without face masks, etc.? From their fellow citizens snitching on them.

The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, set up a "snitch line," whereby New Yorkers were told to send authorities photos of fellow New Yorkers violating any of the quarantine laws. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti similarly encouraged snitching, unabashedly using the term.

It is said that about 1 in every 100 East German citizens were informers for the Stasi, the East German secret police, as superbly portrayed in the film "The Lives of Others." It would be interesting, and, I think, important, to know what percentage of New Yorkers informed on their fellow citizens. Now, again, you may think such a comparison is not morally valid, that de Blasio's call to New Yorkers to serve a Stasi-like role was morally justified given the coronavirus pandemic. But you cannot deny it is Stasi-like or that, other than identifying spies during World War II, this is unprecedented in American history at anywhere near this level.

This past Friday night, I gathered with six others for a Shabbat dinner with friends in Santa Monica, California. On my Friday radio show, I announced I would be doing that, and if I was arrested, it would be worth it. In my most pessimistic dreams, I never imagined that in America, having dinner at a friend's house would be an act of civil disobedience, perhaps even a criminal act. But that is precisely what happens in a police state.

The reason I believe this is a dress rehearsal is that too many Americans appear untroubled by it; the dominant force in America, the left, supports it, and one of the two major political parties has been taken over by the left. Democrats and their supporters have, in effect, announced they will use state power to enforce any law they can to combat the even greater "existential" crisis of global warming.

On the CNN website this weekend, in one of the most frightening and fanatical articles in an era of fanaticism, Bill Weir, CNN chief climate correspondent, wrote an open letter to his newborn son. In it, he wrote of his idealized future for America: "completely new forms of power, food, construction, transportation, economics and politics."

You cannot get there without a police state.

If you love liberty, you must see that it is jeopardized more than at any time since America's founding. And that means, among other things, that at this time, a vote for any Democrat is a vote to end liberty.

www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/28/our_dress_rehearsal_for_a_police_state_143056.html

Oh.. and before I forget....the newly minted Ontario nanny state has not laid off a single nanny state worker. Not one. Amazing that they all, down to librarians became essential workers for the state.

[jkr]

The exceptions he lists in point #2 -are very big exceptions. Fox news is the cable news leader in the states and has been consistently on the side of Trump. And the WSJ is one of the largest papers in the U.S. by circulation.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_Street_Journal

Pretty big outlets to have on your side.


As far as the police go, yes some are over zealous but I have read stories in American media of sheriffs that refuse to enforce new state rules. Hee is one example, there are others.

www.foxnews.com/us/michigan-sheriffs-wont-strictly-enforce-stay-at-home-order

I would be more worried if I lived in a country that was veering towards dictatorship, such as Hungary.