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Tag: dealing with idiots

A brief review of the elections

Posted on November 8, 2020November 10, 2020 By admin

It’s been a hell of a ride!

First there was the whole #stopthecount thing. But only in some states (where he is winning) but not others (where he’s trailing). Except that advisors told Drumpf that this would cost him the election there and then, so the counting continued.

Then there was Greta Thunberg’s revenge tweet that was a year in the making.

Then there was the whole “if they only count the legal votes, I win” delusion – where in Drumpfland the only legal votes are for him, and anything else is illegal and shouldn’t count. Except that this is not how democracy works, and some of the saner republicans start pointing this out.

Then the some media channels actually cut him off mid-rant because they couldn’t deal with the lies anymore and CNN’s Anderson Cooper said, on live TV, a quote that I hope will forever be associated with the Drumpf presidency.

Then even Fox News declared Biden president-elect, and the #maga mob lost it – turning on Foz news like a pack of hunting dogs and declaring it anathema, and mainstream media-ish. Drumpf supposedly contacted Rupert Murdoch directly to complain about the coverage. So sad.

And now Drumpf, showing his standard colours, refuses to concede and is threatening to unleash the dogs of War, er litigation, come Monday and sue everyone and everything in sight. But so far, no substantive evidence has been presented, some lawsuits have already been dismissed and the experts seem to say that this will not be a repeat of 2000/Florida because the results of several states would need to be reversed – the legal standing of such challenges being shaky and dubious. Still, who the fuck knows what will happen.

The electoral college is supposed to vote on Dec 14th. Let’s see if we can survive this coming week without bloodshed… And this is only in the last 3 days!

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That cat has issues

Posted on October 2, 2020October 6, 2020 By admin

For as long as we have had her, Reenie manages to find the oddest, most uncomfortable sleeping spots. In the summer, she’ll routinely use the patio door doorframe guide rail as a pillow. This morning? Her (full) water bowl.

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2020 in a nutshell

Posted on October 1, 2020 By admin

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Troll level: librarian

Posted on August 27, 2020 By admin

The prime minister’s address to the nation’s children as they prepare to return to classrooms was upstaged by Twitter tongues wagging over a school librarian with a sense of humour. As Boris Johnson told children at Castle Rock school in Coalville, Leicestershire, that exam results had almost been derailed by “a mutant algorithm”, eyes turned to the bookshelves behind him.

Lining the shelf just behind his head were titles with rather unflattering associations for any political leader, including “The Twits”, “The Subtle Knife”, “The Resistance”, and “Betrayed”.

And sticking out like a sore thumb was “Fahrenheit 451”, a dystopian novel about a society where books are banned.

If you look closely, “Guards! Guards!”, a Terry Pratchett novel, whose plot centers around a secret brotherhood to overthrow a corrupt patrician and install a puppet king.

Then comes “Hero.Com: Crisis Point” – part of an Andy Briggs series where “super powers carry super responsibilities”?

Did you spot “Glass Houses”? Granted, this one is a vampire novel. But could the famous proverb – “those who live in glass houses should not throw stones” – be a comment on Boris’ harsh criticism directed at the exam regulator?

And could Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”, famous for its heartbreaking line: “Please, sir, I want some more”, be tactically placed on Boris’ left to remind us of the government’s free school meals U-turn?

Somebody, perhaps, felt they had a story to tell the nation today. And all behind the PM’s back.

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Three-word slogan

Posted on August 3, 2020December 11, 2022 By admin

Hands. Face. Space. Get a test. And self-isolate. If you have symptoms.

As slogans go, it is perhaps the most confusing of Boris Johnson’s lockdown soundbites – which is saying something for a campaign whose previous tripartite offerings include the widely derided “Stay alert, control the virus, save lives”, the disappointing sequel to “Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives”.

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The cynicism, it burns

Posted on July 31, 2020August 3, 2020 By admin

Critics denounced the timing of Trump’s election comments as a distraction that came amid the disastrous economic report and hours ahead of the funeral of the revered civil rights and voting rights leader Congressman John Lewis. It also coincided with the preparations for a retreat by federal law enforcement agents from Portland, Oregon.

1st headline:

Quickly followed by:

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UK response to covid

Posted on July 20, 2020 By admin

In a nutshell…

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How very un-Swiss

Posted on June 6, 2020 By admin

Katy and I were walking into town, just ambling side-by-side on the sidewalk. We see another couple coming towardssta us, on the same side of the road. I scooch over towards Katy to let them by, but the dude doesn’t move at all and basically shoulder-checks me so I bump into Katy. I turn around to face him and my auto-Canadianism starts to apologise, when the guy just point-blank says “I was in my lane”. WTF? Rudeness? Very un-Swiss. Katy was more upset than I wals. If he truly needs to assert his masculinity this way, I’m a firm believer in karma for this sort of thing.

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The world has loved, hated and envied the U.S. Now, for the first time, we pity it.

Posted on May 1, 2020 By admin

Writing in the Irish Times, Fintan O’toole says:

“Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

“It is hard not to feel sorry for Americans,” he states. “Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

“It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time — willfully, malevolently, vindictively,” he added. “It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

“The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.”

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I thought it was a joke

Posted on March 9, 2020 By admin

but no. Drumpf actually retweeted this…

Nero, according to ancient tradition, climbed to the top of his city walls and fiddled as Rome burned. While the historical accuracy can be questioned, the moral of the story is typically used to criticize someone for doing something trivial and nonsensical in the midst of a crisis.

So Drumpf’s retweet of his social-media manager’s tweet showing him playing a fiddle couldn’t be more timely, considering the continued spread of the coronavirus (which will all be sorted in a week, because the US has the best, most beautiful, testing kits) and the fact that the Dow Jones plunged more than 2,000 points early in start of week trading and triggered the stop-breakers.

You can’t make this shit up. Up is down, left is right, the world is going mad…

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Quote of the day

In the second scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly: "Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?" Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!" And Clodpool went away, satisfied.
--(Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time)

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