Bartimaeus

The alternative is that there are multiple people who act like utter lunatics, constantly contradicting themselves while frequently making absurd assertions like "I am a hardcore leftist [...] that hates leftists [...] that loves Russia." Gee, I can't imagine why people aren't treating you seriously. Really, it doesn't really matter if you're not called a troll/alt, because you'll be treated just as seriously when people think of you as a complete nutjob. So pick your poison, as it were...or, if you're an actual person instead of some guy wasting all our collective times playing a character, put a little effort into making a lick of sense.

You are correct - I had to actually go look up the stupid controversy on Wikipedia because apparently I had forgotten. Edited the post.

That's like the Twilight Zone version of my grandparents disagreeing over something. If it were them, there'd have been lots of name-calling, "I don't want to get into it"s, "I didn't say"s, and "I told you so"s. They've been together for sixty years, and from what I can tell, they've been fighting for every minute of it. Glad to hear your marriage is a little more happy, .

Disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti found guilty in Nike extortion trial Anybody remember when this piece of crap was mulling a presidential run off of the good publicity of Trump's prostitution affair scandal? (e): fixed 'cos of what KaineParker said below

If nothing else, it's such an obvious and pathetically desperate attempt at distortion that it makes it obvious to everyone in here what Sharp_One really is, .

An administration, whether this one or the last, imposing its will in ways that are unpopular with >=60% of the population should receive a serious civil response - but a combination of cheering for one's own team, being used to and apathetic to or overwhelmed by it, being afraid of potential consequences, or being too busy to do anything about it has apparently robbed most of us of our voices. We are indeed getting the kakistocracy we deserve. It's not any one person's fault as to how we got to this point, but ultimately we collectively did vote these jokers in.

It looks like we're headed straight for a brokered convention, between these random rises and falls and Bernie unable to strengthen his coalition leading to no-one (important) wanting to drop out. Still early, so something could change, but it's not looking good.

Seems like it has both good critic and audience scores (80s for both), so that might actually be kind of a shame (although not necessarily or probably even likely related to sexism).

The only two movies I've had a chance to watch in like the past two months have been When the Wind Blows and the Bee Movie. It hasn't been a great two months. Might as well make Parasite the next, especially seeing as I know absolutely nothing about it.

New Hampshire Primary Polls: Voters Would Rather a Giant Meteor Kill Humankind Than See Trump Re-elected lmao, Trump's bad, but he's not "let's destroy the world" bad, New Hampshire! Even when sports fans say "I hope a meteor hits the stadium than either teams win!", they aren't including the rest of the world in it...

me still waiting for iowa to officially declare a winner apparently it's supposed to come monday after they correct the est. 100 precinct errors

I'm not sure how many people were calling or desiring for him to be shot in the street, but the criteria for "decent Republican to a Democrat" has certainly shifted from years ago. Less about "on what issues does this Republican not follow their party line and how does that actually translate to votes" (there was, after all, once upon a time Democrats liked and supported moderates such as Susan Collins to a degree) and more "can this Republican do anything publicly of any substance whatsoever to suggest they aren't in the golden cow cult like the rest"? As far as senators and representatives go, only McCain, Romney, and Amash have earned any distinction there (that I'm aware of anyways).

Yeah, I'd prefer to attribute it to stupidity and incompetency rather cheating, but the amount of weird stuff has been insane. Hire a group of nobodies that are connected to Pete Buttigeg to make an app that doesn't work even a little bit, then release a batch of votes that just barely suggests suggest that he'll win, then slowly release the rest of the votes over the next few days showing them to be about evenly distributed until you get to the very last 10% which coincidentally went strongly in favor of Sanders. That's not even mentioning the people keeping track of where the votes are coming in and noticing voting errors that keep going against Sanders. The entire thing about Iowa is the media boost (case in point, Buttigieg has now received a huge polling boost in New Hampshire). What the hell, Iowa? (e): On an unrelated note, it is startling to realize how different the GOP is today than it was when Obama was elected president - maybe not necessarily in terms of policy, but certainly in loyalties. Both McCain and Romney are despised by what is now the core GOP voter base for "treasonous" acts against their king...they were, probably not coincidentally, the GOP's two previous presidential nominees.

It turns out Bernie might have a last second delegate victory in Iowa after all. He's for sure winning the vote, but him and Buttigieg are virtually tied for delegates with 3% left to go. Good thing Buttigieg got 90% of the media attention already when only 60% was counted and it was too close to call, and it's very odd how the remaining votes from since then have favored Bernie in this very strange Iowa primary.

Wow at Romney voting to convict. Knew he supported witnesses, but I figured it was gamesmanship - being the first senator from the same party to vote to convict a president, even if purely a symbolic gesture, is a bit more grand than that. I know he's been slighted many times by Trump before, but still.

Yeah, I thought it was great as well. Don't know if season 2 will ever be coming out at this point.

Fun fact: I can't name a single Iowan city. Fun fact: Is Iowan even the correct adjective form of Iowa? Fun fact: The previous fun fact wasn't a fun fact. We apologize for the error.

me waiting for iowa:

It sounds like the massive delay now is *because* they're checking all the paper ballots (which they had to do because their garbage app that everyone said was garbage way in advance was predictably garbage!). What a mess. Some of these state parties are so badly run.

We've run you through all the troubleshooting steps, unfortunately, so there's nothing to really "give a go" to. Thing is, if it were my machine, I'd have a bunch of different computers to swap out parts with. I'd swap the GPU and PSU at the very least of it and another machine and see if the issues continue or switch to the other machine or neither. If you can't do that, though, I can't really think of anything else to recommend to try.

Political pundits are suggesting that Bernie and Buttigieg did the best...based on the fact that they're the most happy and communicative about the whole thing, while the Biden campaign has been apparently very withdrawn. Yes, this is now how we're deciding elections - just based on the confidence exuded by the campaign. (e): Bernie's people supposedly collected an incomplete (40%) dataset: Biden placing a distant 4th (near 5th!) would be shocking, to say the least.

me waiting for iowa results:

When I've not pirated streams, I've always changed the channel for half-time performances in protest. This time, I just muted it.

Good stuff.

Difference is Trump is clearly and obviously corrupt to his very core and everyone but maybe his cultists knows it (that and the people attempting to completely ignore virtually everything politics-related that they hear, which there are also a lot of these days) so it's kind of small potatoes relative to everything else. Trump is held to a different standard than everyone else just because of how much he's done and already gotten away with (it's part of his appeal, I guess!), whereas it's a lot easier to grasp onto the *one* thing Biden may have been corrupt about and repeat it until it virtually becomes a meme. And hey, Biden's a politician (a lately pretty unpleasant one at that, too) - I'm sure he's done corrupt things that we don't know about it, just like most politicians. Legalized bribery is still around at least, after all.