Halloween Weekend

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I like to think that Airbnb management does care about improving their relations with hosts, even if they’re sometimes misguided. This is a privately managed independent host forum, its very existence is to act as a place for us to commiserate and share our thoughts on Airbnb’s policies. If we didn’t complain about the dumb things Airbnb did, we’d only have guests to complain about and what’s the fun in that?

Airbnb just asked me to become an “Airbnb Ambassador” so they seem to like what I’m doing.

Perhaps you should relax, try to be more open minded yourself, and spread a little more positive energy rather than criticize those of us who share our minds (and our gripes). You’re already going to be stressed out enough when Biden loses tomorrow. :laughing:

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Woah guys. I just needed a rant. No need to complain about “poorer” kids invading your territory or go political. Its just unnecessary!

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Lol, yes. Rant away, things do tend to go sideways around here!

RR

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I should have said “is very popular with families from poorer ones”, which is the actual sense of it, because my neighbors love doing it for kids from other areas. Families from poorer neighborhoods come here because they know they are welcomed, and because we have several folks that really go over the top with Halloween and Christmas displays (but not this year).

This neighborhood has a strong sense of social conscience, and supports a lot of local charities and social services throughout our community.

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I put a table by the sidewalk with a selection of “semi-healthy” items – rice krispie bars, fruit jellies and goldfish crackers in individual packages. Plus a bottle of hand sanitizer. I did a brisk business and had to resort to oh-so-undesirable organic granola bars by 8 pm. And (of course!) somebody took the hand sanitizer.

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Trick or Treat! :wink: :sweat_smile: :joy: :rofl: :cowboy_hat_face: :face_with_monocle: :alien: :ghost: :skull: :robot: :female_detective: :guardswoman: :vampire: :merman:

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Mr. Ambassador, your great insight has aged about as well as most of your posts.

And, as I’ll be doing with Trump, I’ll take the opportunity to mute you from any further discourse; You are both now irrelevant.

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Aw, give him a break. He’s Canadian, no way to sense what was coming given the conservative bias of the media. :wink:

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LOL, the fact that I’m Canadian makes it easier for me to understand your corrupt political system without having to actually choose between the lesser of two evils. I’m a left-libertarian and I’m mostly just sad to see so many people are happy to destroy the integrity of the system just to replace one pro-establishment politician with another. You think Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are going to make your life better? Good luck with that.

It was easy to see what was coming; Democrats have been working for years to loosen the rules around voting because they know it benefits them. Legalized ballot harvesting, no ID requirements, unmonitored ballot drop boxes, no postmarking requirements for mail-in ballots, these are all things that muddy the waters enough so that local Democrat organizers would have free reign to stack the vote. Then COVID came along which was the perfect excuse to allow widespread mail-in voting, which has no secure chain of custody in many states. It becomes almost impossible to verify the legitimacy of individual ballots, especially when the envelopes are opened. It’s almost like they intentionally degraded the integrity of the voting system in those states. Here in Canada you need ID and proof of address to vote, and mail-in ballots need to be physically mailed in directly to the official elections office. Ballot watchers from all parties observe the counting.

At this point I’ll just say that it ain’t over until it’s over, my friends. You have lawsuits, state governors, and the supreme court to deal with. Try not to gloat too much, remember Bush vs. Gore? I do. Even if Biden wins in the end, you’ve managed to alienate 71 million voters who will spend the next four years repeating those three words you loved to say so much: “Not My President”.

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No, I don’t believe you do. There is tons of peer reviewed scholarly work on this and the integrity of elections is not just about government control of the process. Voter fraud is a small problem. Lack of participation is large problem. Voter suppression is a large problem.

It’s true that happens. But increasing access to the ballot is one way to move away from that.

My life, just me personally? Probably not. My taxes might go up. But I do care about things outside my life like systemic racism and climate change and a Democratic administration is going to be much closer to my views than any Republican.

In the US we don’t have national elections. States run the elections. In my state of TX you need ID to vote, mail ballots are limited to people over 65 and a few other cases, there was only one drop location per county (and some counties are HUGE) and ballot harvesting isn’t permitted. You had to show ID if you dropped your ballot at the county office downtown. Ballot watchers from both parties are permitted in all states.
Despite the efforts of TX to limit voting Trump only got 52.2% of the vote in TX.

The electoral college which is an archaic vestigal remnant of a slavery past needs to be abolished. The voters of every state should be equally important, not just the voters of each cycle’s perceived swing states.

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Out of curiosity, are you more the anarchist and anti-private property, or more the personal freedom within private-property and capitalist structure left libertarian? Do you decline or would you decline Canada’s social welfare benefits, such as Employment Insurance, OAS, or Health Canada benefits?
States in the U.S., not the federal government, determine their election rules, and they can be challenged in court for voter fraud reasons (practically nonexistent in practice) or voter suppression reasons (more of these cases have prevailed).
U.S. ballots counting is also observed by ballot watchers. if mail-in ballots are not dropped in a designated ballot box or hand carried to the polling place, they are mailed directly to the official elections office.

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About this, there’s really no comparison. 2000 hinged on a single state with a narrow issue: the margin was within the recount parameters but each county had a different method for recounting. The recount started but since it might favor Gore the Bush team wanted to stop the recount. The Supreme Court found in favor of Bush on narrow grounds and took the extraordinary step of saying the decision was just for that case and that it was not to be taken as a precedent. And, had the recount gone on somehow, Gore still lost.

This time Trump is simply challenging the result in every state he lost. There is no narrow principle with a consistent remedy. He wants to keep counting, stop counting and do recounts. Some supporters (Sean Hannity) have even argued for the completely ludicrous idea of a do over election. It’s beyond parody. Even if the Supreme Court were inclined to help Trump if at all possible there is no legal basis for them to do so. If it were close like 2000 I would very much be wary of Supreme Court intervention but it’s not close.

Well, Trump alienated even more voters so what’s your point? Trump didn’t get a majority in 2016 and didn’t get a majority in 2020. Since job approval ratings began during FDR Trump is the only President to never, not once in 4 years have a quarterly approval rating over 50%. That said, I suspect that the only reason he lost is due to his catastrophic mismanagement of the pandemic. He put the pieces in place to take the election but the one thing he couldn’t control and refused to plan for overtook him. He is the worst president in US history by far and it’s quite shocking that over 40% of the population seemingly voted for him. If there was fraud I suspect it’s in his favor but that’s for the historians to tell later.

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Also, since you are a student of our system, hope this helps:

gerrymandering

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More personal freedom with private property and capitalism, but with strong legislation ensuring fair competition and preventing large corporate monopolies. I would love to opt out of employment insurance, as the premiums are quite high due to a large number of seasonal workers claiming benefits every single year. I’m good with Canada Pension Plan (our social security equivalent) as the money is actually kept in a segregated pool and invested in the market, and I do believe that public health insurance is the way to go. A social safety net is ideal, but not one that’s so generous that people are happy to stay home and collect welfare (or that penalizes them for working by clawing back benefits). In the Democratic primaries I liked what Andrew Yang was saying, at least directionally-speaking. Joe Biden is a senile and corrupt hair-sniffing ex-racist creep, and Kamala Harris really is a nasty woman based on her prosecutorial record.

I am quite familiar with the US election system, and find it so strange that some states are seemingly unable to run an election properly. All the stories of “computer glitches”, lost drop boxes, etc. make me extremely suspicious that shenanigans are afoot.

There’s also more garden variety election stacking, whereby local organizers sign up as many people as possible even if those people barely understand what it is they’re supporting. I used to be involved in local Liberal party politics here, for party nomination contest it was standard practice to gather busloads of students or seniors, get them all fired up by mischaracterizing our policies or our opponents, and drive them to the polling station en masse to ensure victory. I personally support some sort of civics test before one is allowed to vote, and in my more misanthropic moods I’d say that universal suffrage is probably one of the worst things that ever happened to western democracies. It’s all over when people learned they could vote for bread and circuses!

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That’s because Democrats have learned to flood the zone, this election was death by a million cuts for Trump. Every town has it’s own partisan officials trying to tip the scales ever so slightly against Trump. Like seriously, Philadelphia? Detroit? Milwaukee? Elected officials are democrats from top to bottom in those cities. I read that they literally had a “drop off your votes” party in a park in Milwaukee sponsored by the city government, the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I think a do-over is a great idea, it would certainly settle any arguments if they had a clean vote in those states. No mail-in ballots, voter ID required. As it is you’re going to have a huge number of people who feel that the election was stolen from them. To speak in rhetorical terms, what are the Democrats afraid of? A free and fair election? What are they hiding?

I agree with most of what you wrote; it’s really just unfortunate that the democrats continue to nominate these pro-corporate, pro-outsourcing jobs, pro-war candidates. If they actually cared about common people they could have easily destroyed Trump this election. The fact that ~40% of the population voted for a guy like Trump should tell you something.

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It does but it doesn’t tell me the same thing it tells you.

Anyway, cheers.

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This is a common and false narrative often spouted by those with your political leanings.

There are very few people who prefer to sit home and collect welfare than be productive. Some people are simply unemployable- they either lack sufficient education, they have mental or emotional issues, etc. or they get discriminated against when applying for work. Or they are in a situation which precludes having the time or life situation for a full-time job.

I was a welfare recipient for many years in Canada- I was a single mom with 3 kids. My days were spent getting kids off to school, shopping, doing laundry, cleaning the house, attending to the yard and garden, canning food, cooking, picking kids up from school, ferrying them to their soccer games, spending quality time with them, etc, etc. I also did community volunteer work. There were never enough hours in the day and I can assure you I wasn’t sitting around watching soap operas or spending the welfare money on beer.

I can also assure you that the welfare payments weren’t “generous”, unless you consider them just barely covering the mortgage payment, the utilities, and putting food on the table to be a disincentive to working. There wasn’t any money for any extras, no dinners out, no designer jeans for the kids, no going out to the movies.

And you know what? Because I was there for my kids, instead of out all day at some minimum wage job, sticking them in after-school daycare, or having them be unsupervised latch-key kids, coming home burnt out with no time or energy for them, all three turned out to be responsible members of society, who made good choices in their education and life partners, have good jobs, pay taxes and have never been in any sort of trouble or been any burden on society. Quite the opposite.

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I have no words…Actually I do, but will bite my tongue. :nauseated_face:

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It’s not worth the energy to type out sometimes.

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Nor worth the energy constantly having to get back up on the naughty step…

JF

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