Monzanator

2 minutes ago, dcro said:

Single mixed relays don't allow any new nations on the podium. It's just the cliche excuse. They only allow the rich to get richer, as do all other team events...

Estonia would probably disagree with you

But it could be an exception from the rule. Any team event favors the big nations by default

5 minutes ago, SalamAkhi said:

 

Earn the bronze*

When there's a change of positions from several seconds back after the last shooting it's always a steal   It's not like they came in together.

Samuelsson meltdown and France will steal the bronze.

Italy on the penalty loop. Game over for them.

France is even struggling on skis here. 0+4 but over 20 secs. behind.

Tomasz Sikora going sentimental and says how David Panyik's father finished one place behind him in the 1994 WOG sprint

Assange is a Russian mole and everyone knows that. However Wikileaks used to be a darling of the liberal left (esp. after the Afghanistan war leaks) and it's so difficult for them to swallow that pill

9 minutes ago, LowerSaxony said:

 

All people want to look into a bright future with more wealth. It's a question whether the expectations are realistic. The EU can give money, but in the end the state government is (mostly) responsible on how those money is spend. Still, Poland is the biggest net receiver of the EU (12 Billions in 2018). By the way, maybe a higher share in Germany can afford two family holidays per year, but that is absolutely non-standard here, too. My family did not belong to that share, when I was a kid (90'/00's).

Poland is the 5th most populous EU member. We have roughly the same population as Romania, Greece and Czech Republic combined. That's a lot of pissed off voters if you tell them: "Nope, we don't have any money so if you wanted to improve your status after 1989 you were all wrong"

Quite frankly this is what the Civic Platform finance minister said in 2015 ("There is no budget money and there will be none") right before they got removed from power and have struggled ever since.

Single mixed relay squads have been announced.

(Olsbu & JTB) and (Wierer & Hofer) in full gold medal mode.

(Preuss & Lesser) and (Bescond & Jacquelin) will be menacing though.

(Zuk & Nedza-Kubiniec) will be lucky to get a Top 12 finish IMO.

8 minutes ago, LowerSaxony said:

I totally agree on that and I never said it is an exclusive problem of the Polish society. However, a different thing is that there is a political party in Poland which uses this fears and actually runs the government - that is the problem.

The problem in Poland dates back to the 90s when 1% (or even less) of our population cashed in on just about 100% of the state-owned assets in the privatisation process leaving millons of blue-collars feeling betrayed and quite frankly poor per modern standards.

3 minutes ago, LowerSaxony said:

 

Really, I do understand, it's just no good excuse. To a far lesser extent, we have the same in Germany with the "new" federal states, formerly GDR. The AfD (somewhere between right-wing populism and fascism light) has 25% in some of those states, while they are at 6% in some "old" federal states. I understand their problems and history, but it is no excuse to vote for Nazis.

Yeah, exactly the former DDR lands have the same problem though their issues only dates to post WWII. However it doesn't matter whether the excuse is valid, if someone feels like the wealthy capitalists haven't helped them enough to make up for the years of communist regime, they will turn to anyone who offers them a better future.

Civic Platform has dismissed millions of blue-collars who lost their jobs after the state-owned companies went belly up after 1989. A small percentage of wiseguys made enormous profit but millions of people didn't really feel their economical situation got all that better. We've waited 30 years to cash in on overthrowing the communism and it's not happening. Yeah, everyone can buy a car these days but two holiday family trips to Soelden or Canary Islands per year? Hell, that's still beyond most of Pole's economical resources. Forget Canary Islands, some parents can't afford to send their kids on the Baltic shore. I was lucky enough my father's mine funded three weeks of seaside holiday in the summer for the employers' kids like me. Now it's obviously gone.

Martin Fourcade becomes the first 4x World Champion in the individual.

Vladimir Melanin, Alexander Tikhonov and Heikki Ikola have won it three times.

32 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

Conservatives play to people’s fears and lack of understanding. I think there is a place for conservative politics (and there should be), but modern populist conservatism is wrong. People will always be willing to throw someone under the bus. Yesterday it was the blacks, then the Jews, and now today it’s the immigrants. I think it stems from a lack of understanding, lack of strong foundations in education, and belief in misinformation. 

People do most things out of fear. Politics has simply embraced the psychology.

Btw, Polish Newsweek run an article last week about Finnish speaking Swedes in Finland and showed how divided that community is. Swedes living in Finland obviously want to speak Swedish in private and there's a clear divide between native Finns and Swedes. And the conclusion is Finland hates immigrants too - in this case the Swedes. And Newsweek is the chief liberal/progressive newspaper here so it's not like some conservative morons came up with such an idea to make the liberal Scandinavia look bad. There are xenophobic behaviour everywhere under the sun, not just the outdated and conservative Poland.

18 minutes ago, LowerSaxony said:

Pis constantly uses the narrative of the EU that has nothing else to do than pushing gender LGBT rights. That is hilarious! Of course EU has some guidelines regarding decriminalizing and stopping discrimination of LGBT, but the complete jurisdiction regarding gay marriage etc is obliged to the states. The EU doesn't give a shit if the member states legalize gay marriage or whatever. PIS just insinuates that EU pushes the member states to do. Unbelievable.

 

And that is the answer to my question: Poland (i.e. Polish government) stays in the EU because PiS can use their well-known narratives of being the only defender of Polish home country against EU liberal LGBT multicultural bureaucrats.

Gay marriage is still forbidden in Poland. You can't run before you learn to walk. Even the liberal Civic Platform who ruled for 8 years was too scared to push with LGBT rights since deep down they are pretty conservative.

You have to remember over the last 225 years Poland has enjoyed pure freedom & independence for 20 years between 1918-1939 and since 1989. So that's basically 175 years of Germany, Russia, Austria & Soviet Union telling us what to do and punishing us for keeping the Polish spirit alive. That's why it's very easy for the current government to put EU in the same category. Some damn politicians from foreign country tell us what to again. It's no coincidence Czech Republic and Hungary have a similar strong anti-EU political representative. The siege mentality is very real over here and it's something the old EU members from the West simply don't understand.

10 minutes ago, LowerSaxony said:

 

But that is the deal when joining the EU. So, what's the reason Poland is still in when the EU money is not that important? In general, I am VERY happy with Poland being part of the EU, but what PIS does is simply bigotry. Enjoying all advantages including the EU money, at the same time seeding hatred against EU whenever it is opportune.

Poland simply isn't a multi-cultural country and never will be one (not in this century anyway). 98% of white population, 88% Catholics (and it doesn't matter 60% of them doesn't go to church). 

EU is the easy way to blame for the government's shortcomings espeically that some of these Brussels morons play the race & climate change card. That's not moving any needle in Poland. Outside of the big cities like Warsaw, Wroclaw and Gdansk nobody cares about LGBT rights or stuff like that. And you can't win any elections in Poland winning just the big cities. And that's the problem. Rural areas win the elections and Law & Justice appeases them which means it directly contradicts the EU mainstream policy of appeasing LGBT and ethnic & religious minorities.

First time since March 2008 two men score WC points in the same race!

Lukasz Szczurek in 37th (his first points since 2011 and Ruhpolding individual). Does anyone even remember we had individual races in Ruhpolding?

Andrzej Nedza-Kubiniec in 39th (his first points finish ever, previous best was 48th in Poklujka individual last season).

Just now, Agger said:

 

There's just something beautiful about taking money while moving away from the principles accepted when joining.

Well, Yalta conference & Iron Curtain cast a very long shadows

Just now, Agger said:

 

But they surely enjoy the money from EU

Everyone does. But if it came down to taking less money from EU but to stop Brussels from telling Law & Justice what to do, they'd be very happy with it.

Andrzej Nedza-Kubiniec threatening to score points? Hold the damn phone!

5 hours ago, Agger said:

 

The thing is. I'm a social liberal, not a socialist or a liberalist. I'm proud of our system (and before you write the same thing you do every single time, I do NOT believe that it can be copied 1:1 to a big country like the US), but I'm in no way a socialist (though some right wing people would surely say that I am, while others say just the opposite). In fact back in the days my most likely 2nd choice would have been the conservatives.

I know that in most countries it's Socialism vs conservatism, but making liberalism the same as socialism is really wrong.

 

And you're blaming the liberalists or progressives for the decline of the liberal democracy. The ones disassembling the liberal democracies (some faster than others) are conservatives like in Hungary and to some extent Poland.

Yes, my stance on inability of copying the Scandinavian system into USA is quite clear and obvious.

As for conservatives being responsible for all the evil in the world, how do you explain the rise of AfD in Germany directly after Angela Merkel opened the doors for millions of immigrants? As for Poland, well, our government wants a return of the authoritarian rule and it's doing whatever it can to distance themselves from the EU bureaucrates in Brussels The very same bureaucracy basically caused Brexit already.

Fak lost 25 secs to Landertinger on the last lap and probably the medal with that

None of the titles from the steroids era was vacated so I see no point why that would happen now.

3 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

We didn’t true, but the inequality, class struggle, and terrible economies are the same.

Because no political system will fix it. There will always be class struggle, reach & poor, white collars and blue collars and so on. The only difference is the percentage of people who belong to which class.

1% of the world's population owns 80% of its material wealth or sth like that. Yep, it's as inequal as it gets regardless of the political system

31 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

Capitalism and Socialism are just one in the same with the different people in charge 

Not really. I don't recall USA having ration stamps during peacetime like Poland between 1976-1989  

7 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

I’m expecting an amazing debate between Bernie and Bloomberg. I also can’t wait to see how Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Biden, and Warren factor into that fight. If I had to guess:

Bloomberg goes after Sanders’ supporters known as “Bernie Bro’s” (internet trolls)

Sanders goes after Bloomberg’s wealth and “stop and frisk”

Overall, if the debate gets “fun”, it will show the true divide between moderates, liberals, and progressives (and that would be so, so awesome).

 

I do think this infighting only increases Trump’s chance of victory. Battle lines are being drawn. Moderates won’t support Sanders, and progressives won’t support any but. People will rally around the winner, but will their still be enough energy to beat Trump?

I've said this like seven-eight months ago. I guess you've seen the light now? The only one profiting from Dems in-fighting is Trump. Warren and Klobuchar should be cut as dead weight long before the Iowa primary. It was a Biden vs Sanders race with Bloomberg as the spoiler. Buttigieg was a nice gay candidate from a small town story but if he's drawing dead among the blacks and Latinos then he's a sitting duck in the big picture. No Dems candidate can ever win an election without the ethnic minorities support IMO.

1 hour ago, Agger said:

 

I feel like you're using liberal as liberally as the conservatives in the US use socialist or communist...

I could have used the word progressive too   You're from Scandinavia so you think sociallism is a good thing, right? It seems like majority of Scandinavia is ruled by the democratic sociallists but hey, I'm from Poland and sociallism is the evil of years gone by

USA has never been ruled by a sociallist or a communist so these Sanders fanboys have no idea what they wish for IMO.