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Posted

Trump doubles down, calling McCabe's contemporary memos that detailed his interactions with Trump "fake", along with Comey's: https://theweek.com/speedreads/761644/trump-accuses-mccabe-fabricating-memos-gave-mueller-call-fake-memos

Quote

How I have existed fills me with horror. For I have failed in everything - spelling, arithmetic, riding, tennis, golf; dancing, singing, acting; wife, mistress, whore, friend. Even cooking. And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of 'not trying'. I tried with all my heart.

In my dreams, I am not crippled. In my dreams, I dance.

Posted

Vladimir Putin re-elected. About as inevitable as death, taxes and western media trying to say that it's all a fix and Alexei Navalny's 3% support should actually have won. Or the turn out in Chechnya being 118% with 120% voting for Putin.

 

Big electoral change though, for once Zyuganov- who should have been President in 1996, if the US hadn't blatantly interfered- didn't come second and Zhirinovsky 3rd, the commies put up a younger billionaire (?!) candidate this time.

 

(My favourite media complaint this cycle is that Russians are being encouraged to go and vote. Somehow coverage of Australian elections never slights them for people being legally obligated to vote and fined for not doing so, and we'd had heaps of encouragement to vote at our elections last year without it being an assault on democracy.)

Posted

What I quite liked was that when Putin was asked about Russian involvement with the nerve agent assassination in Salisbury... His comment was not "As if Russia would do this" but rather, "As if Russia would do this before a Presidential election and the World Cup."

"Cuius testiculos habeas, habeas cardia et cerebellum."

Posted

The fix isn't so much the 97% vote margin, the fix is a system where one person can dominate the political scene again and again. Of course having two parties that just trade off power isn't much better, but there are some pretty dramatic swings between the executive cabinet every 4-8 years in the US.

Posted

More worrying is that Putin has no obvious successor. If he drops dead tomorrow it will not be fun times at all, for anyone. Putin, despite the criticism*, is a competent leader so him staying in power is fine so far as it goes, it's mostly a problem when he does go or if he ends up incapacitated in some way.

 

*and in some ways the criticism reinforces his competence. Being in the G8 or whatever didn't help Yeltsin be taken seriously; and he got a minute proportion of the international criticism Putin does despite Yeltsin being objectively incompetent in every respect.

Posted

The fix isn't so much the 97% vote margin, the fix is a system where one person can dominate the political scene again and again. Of course having two parties that just trade off power isn't much better, but there are some pretty dramatic swings between the executive cabinet every 4-8 years in the US.

 

Dramatic swings in rhetoric perhaps. No too much swing otherwise.

  • Like 1
Posted

More worrying is that Putin has no obvious successor. If he drops dead tomorrow it will not be fun times at all, for anyone. Putin, despite the criticism*, is a competent leader so him staying in power is fine so far as it goes, it's mostly a problem when he does go or if he ends up incapacitated in some way.

 

*and in some ways the criticism reinforces his competence. Being in the G8 or whatever didn't help Yeltsin be taken seriously; and he got a minute proportion of the international criticism Putin does despite Yeltsin being objectively incompetent in every respect.

 

Yeltsin being drunk probably didn't help with credibility.

Posted

virumor is meming again, she's the Prosecutor General of Sevastopol (or Crimea in general, I forget which), and is most famous for looking like a real life anime tsundere (or summat, I'm not fluent in weeaboo) so has an enormous and semi random fan club.

 

And yeah, Medvedev would be successor formally, but he was largely picked by Putin as not being a threat and not because of his competency- not that he's a complete idiot but he almost completely lacks Putin's gravitas and would almost certainly be a lame duck.

 

 

 

Yeltsin being drunk probably didn't help with credibility.

 

 

Yeah, while that wouldn't help anyone's credibility he certainly couldn't even be called a high functioning alcoholic.

 

Yeltsin is one of the very few recent leaders about whom I cannot think of a single positive; and he's completely destroyed the concept of 'western liberalism' in Russia for at least a generation which is a definite shame. Not entirely his fault to be sure, but not that far off it.

Posted (edited)

......Yeltsin is one of the very few recent leaders about whom I cannot think of a single positive....

 

He was probably good for a couple rounds of flip cup.

 

 

 

Which is more positive than I can give some other "leaders", like Merkel.

 

 

Thought: It might be fun to make a list of 'leaders' and what their positives might be, as actual leadership is a quality often missing in the average world 'leader' these days.

 

Edited by Valsuelm
Posted

Always scares me when authoritarians talk about „leadership qualities“.

Everybody knows the deal is rotten

Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton

For your ribbons and bows

And everybody knows

Posted (edited)

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/379049-trump-to-release-plan-addressing-opioid-epidemic-on-monday
 

During his speech on it, he said he told China and Mexico to "stop sending it", heh.  Kind of funny watching people clap for drug dealers getting the death penalty.  Also touting "great commercials" to scare kids off drugs :lol:

 

Trump needs Adderall, from this speech. 

Edited by Malcador
  • Like 2

Why has elegance found so little following? Elegance has the disadvantage that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

Posted

Yikes at the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica connection. Those revelations just aired today, and the British police are raiding their offices right now.

Quote

How I have existed fills me with horror. For I have failed in everything - spelling, arithmetic, riding, tennis, golf; dancing, singing, acting; wife, mistress, whore, friend. Even cooking. And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of 'not trying'. I tried with all my heart.

In my dreams, I am not crippled. In my dreams, I dance.

Posted

Interesting document if someone is interested (its quite long). Quite onesided but still having some truth to it. I expected it to be more phylosophical - I quite can believe there is a lack of some future goal to asspire to

 

  • Like 1

I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. I'm the kinda guy that likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs with the side-order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol! I wanna eat bacon, and butter, and buckets of cheese, okay?! I wanna smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section! I wanna run naked through the street, with green Jell-O all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly may feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiene"

Posted

Interesting document if someone is interested (its quite long). Quite onesided but still having some truth to it. I expected it to be more phylosophical - I quite can believe there is a lack of some future goal to asspire to

 

 

I agree it's one-sided. I personally feel a lot of the tech innovation can be leveraged for more good than evil, that drastically off-sets the bad. Still... if people don't fight to create the system they want to live in then certainly surveillance and "economic-levers" might become quite tyrannical. I don't see any of those outcomes as permanent or irreversible. Though we might experience another 20th Century but within the digital space instead.

 

It's quite interesting but inter-state cyber-warfare is quickly becoming to be viewed as seriously as atomic weaponry.

Posted (edited)

Unfortunately I can't watch it in my country, here is an IMDB link, it may help people to source it elsewhere. The first review I read, gave me the impression it's too slanted to take seriously though.

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6156350/post-185618-0-95469000-1521529311_thumb.jpg

Edited by Fiach

Thanks for shopping Pawn-O-Matic!

Posted

Unfortunately I can't watch it in my country, here is an IMDB link, it may help people to source it elsewhere. The first review I read, gave me the impression it's too slanted to take seriously though.

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6156350/attachicon.gif1 IMG_20180320_065959_451.JPG

 

Yes its slanted but it got some interesting insights

I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. I'm the kinda guy that likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs with the side-order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol! I wanna eat bacon, and butter, and buckets of cheese, okay?! I wanna smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section! I wanna run naked through the street, with green Jell-O all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly may feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiene"

Posted (edited)

Interesting document if someone is interested (its quite long). Quite onesided but still having some truth to it. I expected it to be more phylosophical - I quite can believe there is a lack of some future goal to asspire to

 

But that's Curtis.

He has interesting view of our times but the way he connects facts and events smacks of over-intellectualized conspiracy theory.

 

But the way he does narration is worth seeing:

Edited by pmp10
  • Like 2
Posted

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbeOCKZFfQ

 

Ukrainian girls hnnngggggggghh

the Ukraine girls really knock me out, they leave the west behind

 

And Moscow girls make sing and shout

 

That Georgia’s always on my my my my my my mind

  • Like 1

Everybody knows the deal is rotten

Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton

For your ribbons and bows

And everybody knows

Posted

 

 

Ukrainian girls hnnngggggggghh

the Ukraine girls really knock me out, they leave the west behind

 

And Moscow girls make sing and shout

 

That Georgia’s always on my my my my my my mind

 

 

I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. I'm the kinda guy that likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs with the side-order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol! I wanna eat bacon, and butter, and buckets of cheese, okay?! I wanna smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section! I wanna run naked through the street, with green Jell-O all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly may feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiene"

Posted

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbeOCKZFfQ

 

Ukrainian girls hnnngggggggghh

the Ukraine girls really knock me out, they leave the west behind

 

And Moscow girls make sing and shout

 

That Georgia’s always on my my my my my my mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_rqAZd13Cc

wait, are the girls wearing sexualised pioneers uniforms?

Everybody knows the deal is rotten

Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton

For your ribbons and bows

And everybody knows

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