Luggage fans, need a suggestion

Alaska Airlines' new carry-on size limit is 22" x 14" x 9" including the wheels and handles. Which means I need to get a new bag.

What's good, fits in those dimensions, and is not outrageously expensive - say, $150 max?

Thoughts about Trump's speech

NPR has the transcript; googling “NPR Trump speech transcript” will take you right there.

Trump’s thesis is, “the Border is completely unsecured, so hard drugs and illegal immigrants are flocking across it and it’s all the Democrats’ fault.”

Throw in a lot of jerking on your heartstrings with a bulldozer, and that’s Trump’s speech in a nutshell.

At one point Trump fell back on the old “what about if it was your daughter” strawman. Problem is, for seventeen people in Parkland, Florida, it WAS their son, daughter or husband and Trump didn’t do a damn thing.

Let’s dissect Trump’s thesis, shall we?

POINT 1: The Border is completely undefended.
REALITY: Of all the international borders in the world, the only ones that are more heavily defended than the one in question have land mines. In fact, there’s already a wall there everywhere a wall can be built. Certainly we can tear down the old wall and build a new one, but how that’s supposed to do anything besides funnel tax dollars to Trump’s contributors is a question best not asked two hours before I normally wake up.

POINT 2: All the bad things we don’t want in this country won’t come in if we have a wall.
REALITY: Criminals are creative. If Trump manages to create a barrier so sturdy not one seed can possibly get through, they’re not going to scream, in a bad Middle Eastern accent, “no drugs for you!” They’ll find other paths, like loading the drugs into sacks of coffee beans or flying them through San Juan, Puerto Rico. And since those routes are already well established...

POINT 3: It’s all the Democrats’ fault.
REALITY: Trump believes our party wants “open borders,” or at least he claims to. The mass of legislation signed and sponsored by Democrats to secure that border puts that theory in question. If Trump would have come in and said, “I want more officers, better sensors, a better border law, maybe some more detention facilities to hold border crossers while waiting for deportation,” there’s a good chance we would have worked with him. “I want to replace a wall that’s not working with a bigger one that won’t work and pay for it with savings on illegal migration” - especially since “this expensive thing will pay for itself” seems to be the GOP’s theme music - isn’t going to garner much interest.

Two other points that have already been discussed ad nauseum: if Congress wanted to give him a wall they would have done it when the whole body was under Republican control, and Trump has no credibility in this matter because we keep finding illegals on his payroll.

The only proper Democratic response to Trump's word salad

"We have decided Rashida Tlaib was right. Tomorrow morning we're going to impeach the motherfucker for false official statements and dereliction of duty."

Damn Lucas!

Please, please, I implore of you

Do not, whatever you do, attempt to turn Trump's speech into a drinking game.

Now, I will be the first to admit that "drink every time Trump attempts to blame the shutdown on the Democrats" sounds like a pretty sweet game. Given that, it would be far too easy to drink yourself to death doing this. We already have too few Democrats as it is, and we don't need you offing yourselves.

Have a good time out there, but be safe.

How to make a totally effective border barrier for next to nothing

1. Call Lamar Advertising (one of the biggest billboard companies that is not Clear Channel) and have them erect a series of double billboards with 48-foot advertising panels and solar-powered lights. Place them roughly one mile apart with the advertising panels pointed toward Mexico.

2. Place on the left-hand panel on each billboard a huge picture of Trump with the motivational message, "Este pendejo sigue siendo presidente. Vete a casa, por favor."

3. Lamar can sell the other panel to make money for maintenance.

It is time for all Trump haters to follow NASCAR

And the car to follow this season, my fellow DUers, is the 41 of Stewart-Haas Racing.

"Why should I do that?" you might ask. "Don't those guys just drive fast and turn left?"

Yup, but this year there's an incentive: Following the 41 will REALLY piss Trump off - because a Mexican driver is behind the wheel.

https://www.nascar.com/news-media/2019/01/06/daniel-suarez-stewart-haas-racing-2019/

Daniel Suarez is a really nice kid. He won the second-tier Xfinity championship in 2016, he won a pole last year, and this year he's driving for one of the top teams in NASCAR. And just imagine the tweetstorms that will erupt when he wins races.

I believe in a connected world, but this is ridiculous

This is a WiFi-enabled mouse trap with its own app.

https://www.amazon.com/Victor-M1-Smart-Kill-Wi-Fi-Electronic/dp/B078H55CVJ

And if that's not big enough, they also have a WiFi-enabled rat trap.

https://www.amazon.com/Victor-M2-Smart-Kill-Wi-Fi-Electronic/dp/B07875MKM7/ref=pd_day0_hl_86_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07875MKM7&pd_rd_r=a70dd9ea-122a-11e9-b758-758822b5fe94&pd_rd_w=l8iFN&pd_rd_wg=ppJle&pf_rd_p=ad07871c-e646-4161-82c7-5ed0d4c85b07&pf_rd_r=XA20W01XX256CRJSQKNH&psc=1&refRID=XA20W01XX256CRJSQKNH

Should the question be "what the fuck does the world need that for? When I was a kid we had to go around checking mouse traps ourselves, and we LIKED it!" or "if you're going to build a $30 mouse trap that sends you an app alert when it catches a mouse, shouldn't there be a holding bin and a sweeper in it so you could catch a dozen mice before you had to get up and dump the thing?"

I thought of a counter to the "your doors have locks, right?" talking point

The new Fox News Approved Talking Point to try to shame liberals into supporting the Monument to Stupidity is "your doors have locks, right?" Because obviously if you think we don't need a wall (we don't) to protect "America's house" you should also think that your own house doesn't need to be protected.

Suggested response:

"Yeah, the door on my southern wall has a lock...but to make my house like the US border I'd have to tear down the north, east and west walls so people could come in that way, tear down half the southern wall because the Mexican border ends at Texas, cut 48 holes in the southern wall big enough for people to walk through, remove the roof so people could come in by air, and pass out little pieces of paper that say 'it's okay for you to come in any time you want' to anyone who wants one. Now...since making the US border like your home is such a priority to you, you've done all those things, right?"

The wall is not about security

It is about destroying the Democratic Party.

If we give in, we may as well just fold our tents and go home; the GOP will demand we give Trump everything he wants.

If we don’t give him the wall he will blame the continued shutdown on us and some of his cult will believe it.

The only solution is to impeach the motherfucker before he causes any more damage.