>why Republicans have any relevancy at all

That is mostly due to the christian-nationalists and the hundred dollariares who simp for the billionaires they fantasize about being while doing an endless grind into obscurity with their daily lives.

I am an odd mix of contrarian and geek so im gonna ignore the social convention of sticking to your qualifiers and comment regardless,lol. Have human industries had and continue to have an effect on the weather and climate? Sure OfC they impact it. Overall though will it end all life on the planet? Nah, we have had 20 degree swings before in either direction.

Sure it would wreck island nations and coastal communities, thats not new either. We have to adapt, pursue newer technologies as they become viable..AS LONG AS THEY ARE NOT AS DESTRUCTIVE AS THE ONES THEY REPLACE! ( sorry pet peeve there ).. and then eventually get off the planet if we are serious about REALLY saving it.

Can we please stop the damn gate keeping BS?! I WANT to know that 40% of the commenters LOVE dogs, and i want to hear from those like me who think they are...over rated to be kind,lol. I want to know that if someone i care about comes out as LGBT where they can find community and where they prob. should go in stealth mode. How to make the places we live in better cause the SOB's we elect never seem to do a GD thing to help main street out.

Let everyone speak, screw the fake internet point BS.

It is the same apologist BS we see with major religions, There are always the 'good' ones that are held up as beards for the broken/power-mongers who exploit the systems they live within. Do i wish the GOP was full of Scott's? yeah that would be an improvement but unless they reversed course and started making their much esteemed Capitalism work for the common person regardless of ones skills or grit or what-have-you/exploitability id still vote for Democrats generally speaking.

There used to be yearly or bi yearly high school building trades projects that would use hs students to build a house complete from start to finish. Granted these programs were not present in every school district i went to but many had them. idk the details of those programs in particular but friends and acquaintances were in them and it always struck me even back then that this should be widespread to combat homelessness. We could do a half dozen tiny homes in every county seat for the cost of a few dozen hotel vouchers.

Even an EMP would still be regional, it takes careful placement to cover an area as large as the CONUS. Any entity that wanted to do so would realistically need at least 2 and 3 would be best if they wanted to to hit the entire country at low altitudes.

> this is a national issue and we need to discuss it and address it as such.

Well yes and no. You are right in that it is a nation-wide problem and needs national scale resources to get solved. Id prob agree that some work at and reform at the federal level desperately needs to happen too. The solutions are going to have to come from as close to the local level as possible though imo.

I have to wonder what happened to those building trades hs projects of the 90's and before? Did those programs stop? I hate to even mention it because it reeks of exploitation but has anyone considered bringing back the 'poor farms' of yester-year? These are solutions that can only come from local action backed by federal funding.

So is Make Exile Great Again the archaic catchphrase of this upcoming election cycle? I'm not so sure id be ok with that considering we have sorta run out of planet to claim. This could monkey's paw pretty fast if codified into law.

This thread is full of individual reasons for any rational person to dislike the residents of this state at large regardless of which side of this conversation they are on.

IIRC they require folks to have something like $30K/year for HFH to help in addition to the sweat equity. That part is buried in the details though and not part of the PR hype around them. Still not a bad group but you are right, the religious affiliation makes it..well good people doing good deeds for their own reasons ..not just because its the Right thing to do.

Kirby/stj/lyndon: -31 on my therm. outside..no idea what the feels like is but thankfully there wasnt any wind when i went out about quarter to. Brr indeed!

OTOH everything after this is gonna feel like spring!

So far i have only lost the hot water line that runs under my tub in the BR. That space got skipped when i ran the water cause it was at the end of the day..Man i regret that choice every winter,lol. Been cycling the faucets every hour or so except for that nap i took from like 1230-2..and thats when it froze up ofc, lmao. Oh well it SHOULD thaw pretty quick after it gets above 0.

Tbh im more upset that i have to replace the baffle plate in my woodstove ASAP. After a decade of heavy use its finally bowed down like it all but melted. Ive had it filled 6" of full on glowing coals 2 times so far over night... might write Brrrr in the driveway come daybreak with all the ashes. Stay warm folks!

Yeah i think the table-flipping Jesus would have a word or two for the christian conservatives of today. we would live in an almost utopia if both Americans in general and Christians lived up to the mythology they are raised on.

Well its not like The General Welfare is declared anywhere in our founding docu...Oh! Well that's awkward,lol.

Gosh if only there was a worldwide organization that was all about serving the poor and had property in nearly every town and village. Guess such groups if they exist have other priorities though, too bad. it would be great PR.

These are the kind of temps that make one go from is the wood seasoned enough to if its not covered in snow/ice throw it in and i will sweep the pipe when it warms up! I dont mind a night or 2 like this, we have been seriously spoiled this year so far, its the foot of snow then a week of subzero BS that kills me.

Somehow i missed this conversation the first time around but i have to say that i agree with OP. The problem is bigger than this one contract. LEO occupy a certain place of privilege in society out of necessity. Dont get me wrong, i think the justice system itself has became all but criminal and 2 tiered at least. We have too many laws and too many more that are selectively enforced.

Which brings me back to my point; LEO should be barred from working any type of second job like security that puts them in potential conflict with the rest of us. Do they lose the legal protections they have as LEO when they are on the clock for private entities? If not then they would be a ready made mercenary force ( harsh and over the top wording i know,but i can see some events that could go sideways easily ) that could act with impunity given their protected status. Both seem like Very bad ideas to me.

Just ban them from working these jobs and make the promoters hire private security that are not LE. They have chosen to be LEO, they can always quit and become private sector security guards but it has to be a choice one way or the other imo.

I am torn because i both agree and disagree with your points. I have engaged with this person on other platforms and without any doubt they absolutely have a political bias and agenda. I disagree with saying this stuff has no place here though. I have had more than a few points brought to my attention in .. charged conversations from posts like this far more often than i have in the ones that occur in the field and stream/***spam posts,lol.

Granted the opposing POV's i have encountered did F-all to change my mind but they did show me where many of my fellow Vermonters stand on issues. Again you all would never have revealed that in the kind of posts that you seem to want to cultivate here and i think that would be a dis-service to public discourse.

I would love to see the nightmare this would be in modern times if it was sim'd out in like Cities Skylines or something like it. VT looks perfect for rail for a reason, It built this state when it was the best option. My father and grandparents rode the rails for the last few decades of their use up here.

Others have pointed out some issues so i wont do more than touch on them in passing. It would def. take Elon or Bezo's kind of FU money to revitalize light/passenger rail in any effective way. It would also take a huge increase in population OR migration to make it viable $-wise. The infrastructure to move all those people doesnt stop at the railstation, they need last mile transport, hospitality services for a few hours or longer sometimes, and run-times that work for both white and blue collar workers.

TBH if starting from scratch id go underground straight from Newport to a split just north of Ben. and Brat. Id split off from that to the county seats and build out the second string infrastructure from there. Yeah.. prob looking..30B? and a whole lot of court actions,lol.

I followed the links and i have to say.. They paid him for that? To each their own i guess. That does bring up the point though, he got paid. That is where the rights transfer from one person to another and the school would have been within their rights to black it out the next day imo.

I used to love playing around with vector based letters like that..just to irk folks like this,lol. You hit that uncanny valley of fonts and it drives the eye crazy trying to figure it out.

RCV is the only way that third party candidates will ever be able to compete with the 2 major parties as things are currently structured.

Wont change the fact that im NEVER voting Republican again, they lost me when they chose theocracy over democracy.

What a wonderful choice the next election season will be presenting Vermonters. Now we dont have to worry about all those pesky issues that affect Main Street VT. I for one look forward to deciding if i want to vote in the party that has been shifting towards both theocracy and facism or the party that wants to leave me defenseless against both a broken LE/Criminal Justice system combination.

It is Past Time That Vermonters write and repeal their own GD laws!

I think you will find that most Vermonters will bend themselves AND their neighbors over backwards to make you feel comfortable here. There are some areas of the state where folks have not had much experience around POC so the language will be full of the accidentally racist kind of things that brings, trying to correct them is a coin flip on how it will go.

Air BnB.