General chat – Nov 1

Saw the online version. Common CH7, give us a break.

I figured it was an MKR ad, because my teeth were already grinding. It’s another cast of rude idiots who monologue at length about how great their culinary skills are, despite never have set foot in a kitchen before in their lives. The promo I saw on Facebook was advertising this year’s angry, aggressive team who are the self-proclaimed awesome chefs … which means they’ll go home first.

And there’s only one Jordan Bruno, sniff … 😉

I saw an ad last night. It seemed to be playing up the possibility that some, if not most, of the couples are again arrogant twats who think they are God’s gift to kitchens everywhere, while actually having the skills of a one-handed baboon.

The show hasn’t even started and already I feel pissed off with it.

Sigh.

Get well soon, Mr Juz.

I am watching, then not watching Bob.

The frustrating thing about the whole business is that we can’t do anything about it. We’re not eligible to vote in American elections, we just have to sit back and watch this play out.

I was chatting to a couple of American friends of mine late last week, but even they didn’t seem too concerned. Both of them were definitely more in Hillary’s camp (although one of them said, “I’m not fan of her. Every time she opens her mouth, it’s like Rita Repulsa”), and one of them was a black man. And even he didn’t seem too worried. The impression I got from both my friends was that Trump probably really doesn’t care about ruining the western world, he’s just big-noting himself and wants the feather in his cap of being president. He’s just really just in this for himself, and if he does actually make it, he’ll be told by his party to enjoy the fancy office while they actually make the important decisions.

Hearing that (from someone who actually lives there) helped a little bit, but not much.

You guys don’t know me that well, I confess. I find that I’m quite politically conservative on a lot of social issues (not all, but more than half), and I find the man a monster. If the election comes down to the lesser of two evils, then so be it. It’s better than the alternative.

And I think, for me, the thing I don’t understand is how people twist themselves into logical knots trying to justify not only voting for him but defending him. I think that says bad things, not just about his supporters, but about everyone. This is what politics in the 21st century has become. This is vicious and selfish and indulgent and intolerant, but that’s just how we do things these days, and I think that’s a damning indictment on everybody, everywhere. Maybe he’s the leader of the western world that the western world *deserves*, you know? I think spite has had far more of an impact in people’s decisions than it should.

You know, he brags about sexual assault (if I walked up to a straight guy and just started groping him, I’d be lucky if he didn’t try to kill me, right? And fair enough, because that’s really gross) and that doesn’t seem to be a deal-breaker. He admitted to never paying taxes, all the while complaining about how the last few administrations have screwed up the economy. The man’s so awful with money that he can’t keep a casino profitable (you know, casinos? The businesses that are designed to be pure profit?), and people want to trust him with a trillion-dollar economy? Meanwhile, his solution to social problems is to blame an ethnic group and decide to round them up and put them somewhere … how that’d go in Germany in the 1930s? Because it didn’t end well then, for anybody.

But all of these things are small potatoes, apparently.

It’s like, I don’t get it.

But I feel like textbooks will be written for decades about the state of the world in the early 21st century, and the American election is the purest example of how fucked up planet Earth is, right now.

False alarm, apparently.

There’s also the green party candidate. However it’s really between Trump and Clinton so it’s someone with mental issues who is also a hypocrite vs someone who lies. Which one is the lesser of two evils? Which one will cause the least harm? The prediction is that Clinton will win at least from this source.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-here-s-our-final-electoral-map-of-the-1478473458-htmlstory.html

Regardless of the idiocy of nominating Trump, both parties will need to look very carefully at the issues that gave Trump such traction. Much as some would like to just dismiss these people as uneducated, the things that they believe Trump was speaking honestly on, are real concerns for the ordinary people. There can be a tendency for educated people on one side of politics to think that the views of those they consider “uneducated” can be safely ignored.

That was the Brexit mistake – the assumption that what the politically-active, highly educated people think, is representative of all people, when it isn’t. Those politically-active people need to lower their eyes a bit, and see what the ordinary person sees.

If the Republicans can do that, and nominate someone with integrity who will address those issues, they should romp it in (in the future).

Dave, I will if you will. Although it’s early days yet – maybe we should wait until, uh, lunchtime?

Just heard that there has been a shooting at a polling place somewhere in California. How sad this whole election has been.

Sorry, Bob, for calling you by the wrong name.

I went back to bed for a little while and have just turned the tv back on. Jesus, this is getting scary.

It doesn’t make any sense and they shouldn’t start reporting until all of the polling places are closed in every state. I wonder if Hillary will state that the voting was rigged if she loses (which is what Trump was going to do 🙂 )and right now it looks like it is going to be a Trump win. Don’t get how anyone could vote for him but maybe that is their way of showing that they are sick and tired of the way things have been handled by the U.S. govt.

Actually, the eastern states (Aus) starting counting and reporting back to the divisional offices as soon as the doors close at 6pm. So there is reporting of trends before WA closes the doors. It is usually after 8pm, though, before enough counting is done to send in any figures. And, of course, with compulsory voting, WA people have to turn up to vote even if they have heard snippets from the east coast.

Re the US election, there was some comment by Anthony Green that he is allowed to predict because he is outside the US, but inside the US they are not allowed to because of the risk of voters not bothering. In this social media age, I don’t know how that makes a difference.

Further to the voting process, apparently in the US they call a lot of states based on exit polling, rather than actual vote counting. Seems a bit hit-and-miss to me, but presumably it has worked in the past, so they keep doing it. I would hate to see it done that way here.

Those poor people who believed him are going to be devastated when he doesn’t deliver any of his promises. He will blame someone else, of course.

Stock markets around the world are in freefall. And the british/european ones haven’t even woken up yet.

Small correction: Ireland is already EU and not member of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland is.^^ (Sorry, have to put that straight being European and having lived in Ireland for a few years)
And I do not believe that Northern Ireland will split from the UK and reunite with Ireland to stay in the EU. Neither will Scotland, even though Nicola Sturgeon was pushing for independence and so staying in the EU.

It does kind of feel like waking up in a dream (well, a nightmare, but you get what I mean).

I keep thinking, is this actually real?

Apparently so.

Well I suppose that’s something.
Not necessarily good but I am assuming that means that if you smoke, you are not a criminal? And if you are sick, it can be used for medicinal purposes?
I wonder if you are allowed to smoke and drive? And you can grow it in your backyard and sell it? Gives a new definition to home based work.
My head is going to explode with questions.

I couldn’t watch that, and I’m switching channel whenever he appears.

I think, living overseas, we never really got much of a sense of how many people *despised* Hillary. Trump was a walking headline (for all the wrong reasons, but at least we could see what a vile human being he is). But Hillary is really, really hated, by apparently lots and lots of people.

I heard the statistic on the radio this morning, that although white male voters didn’t care for her much, even amongst white female voters, the support between Trump and Hillary was split 50/50. That was the demographic that were *supposed* to be supporting her, and she could only swing half of them. It wasn’t that they were giving him a free pass (particularly with all the awful things he’s said), but somehow, they still saw him as the *lesser* evil. I find that staggering, but y’know, he won.

And I imagine that, living overseas, we just weren’t getting any of that at all.

Huh? We had B&B.

I’m hoping he will manage to impeach himself in a very short time.

It was rigged.

Smythe, this looks too much like a Blink angel (Doctor Who fans will know what I mean) and that is appropriately scary on this inauspicious day

It was slow, so Woolif gave up, but I didn’t mind the 1st episode. I think it needed to be slow paced for that setting. It reminded me slightly of outlander.

I have it recorded, Daisy, so I will be interested to see. The trailer looked very dark. I gather that it is a famous book, somewhere, but I had never heard of it.

Westworld. I might check it out.

They’ve been advertising that a lot on Foxtel for anyone else who has it. Not my cuppa tea!

Don’t worry Bob. It is General chat afterall.

I read that the voting turnout wasn’t as much as they expected. Hillary did win the popular vote. Some states very close and surprised there was no request for a recount. Protests across USA with shouts of “Not my President.”

Still don’t understand how most woman could vote for a Trump-Pence ticket.

Don’t be sorry, Bob. I have the same addiction and read every newspaper today, watched Obama’s and the concession speeches, and generally immersed myself in the horror that is sociopath Trump as president-elect of the US. That is truly frightening and deserves some notice and thought, I think, even though none of us live there and don’t have to live under his presidency.

Commentators today are saying his hate-spewing was probably electioneering and he doesn’t really think that way. And pigs might fly. Maybe Trump will have an epiphany, realise he doesn’t have any qualifications to be in that office and decide to concede to Hillary. Again, airborne pork.

And, Malcolm, your speed at crawling up Trump’s butt makes me want to slap you.

My fiend way back at school in the 70’s went to the Adelaide airport to meet Jethro Tull’s singer Ian Anderson and got his autograph. Widely voted then in UK as the “rock star you’d least like your daughter to marry”

Jethro Tull live , fantastic , I’ve seen them perform the song daisy posted here. Always a concert highlight. The album has achieved mythical status but great records came out every week then and not even Mr Trump can make that great again.

The Rolling Stones refused to meet Trump and Jagger has already tweeted some displeasure at their music being used at Trump rallies. He used Queen’s music without approval , too.

What is really embarrassing is Turnbull, $horten ,and world leaders lining up to crawl up Donald’s khyber. Fail. They all delighted in bagging him in recent months. Now they’re eating $hit.

Racism, sexism, classism, seems everyone wants to blame some other group for their problems. We aren’t blame-free here, but, damn, America, you got nasty this time. And will reap what you sowed.

I hope you are right, but I can’t help but feel that regardless of specific events, America’s place as the “world leader” will be gone, and I fear which country will rise in it’s place.

I hope they don’t reap what they sow because the majority of voters did not sow this. Clinton won the popular vote AND they are still counting votes in CA. It’s the antiquated electoral college that is a big part of the problem, IMHO. How can Trump get all the electoral votes in a state where she got 48% of the vote and he got 49% of the vote and this was repeated in more than one state. This is not representative of the voters.
In fact the distribution of electorates is not representative of the state population or specifically the number of registered voters in states. The number of electoral votes, for example, in CA should be higher.
I thought this map creating 50 new states with equal populations so that electoral votes could be equal was interesting:
http://fakeisthenewreal.org/reform/

Ha ha. On topic.
My brother was the AC fan with School’s Out and Billion Dollar Babies. He was more of the heavy metal fan of the family.

Well well. Young Eliza. 😁😁😁😁 Good for you being bold.

Great comment in that quote. It is probably the essence of the rebellion against the left.

I think issues of morality were part of this. People who support loosening of moral values tend to present themselves as “progressive” and are quite dismissive of those with opposing views, using all those ism, ist and phobe statements. I imagine that there is a proportion of Americans who are somewhat alarmed by the path that their country has chosen to take.

Unfortunately, some of these people have not been able to see that Trump will have no hope of achieving any of the changes he campaigned on, and that he will soon be shackled by the parliamentary system.

I liked Merkel’s response. That was classy. And I reckon there’s steel behind it, too. If I was Turnbull (which, obviously, I’m not. Because if I was, the first thing I’d do is put through the same-sex marriage legislation. How else am I supposed to marry Jordan Bruno and help him on his road to nation-wide culinary success?), I’d be saying the exact same thing. “We look forward to working with him in the future, but …”

The thing that strikes me about racism, that I think a lot of people can forget?

This is nothing new. The Romans were having trouble integrating other cultures and peoples into the Roman Empire, and that was 2000 years ago. If there was an easy fix to that problem, someone would’ve figured it out by now. It’s an unfortunate fact of human nature that people are more comfortable around people who act and think like them. Fear of the unknown is a very deep part of the collective human consciousness, and I really don’t think there’s an easy way around that. But for all this, “evil white lower-class American” or “evil white Australia”, these problems are very human ones. The Middle East was a hotbed of chaos and death long before America needed oil, you know?

Well said, Zhee. Gosh, if we were all world leaders, solving all these problems would be easy. (LOL)

Just one comment. I think that the Democrats had some good reasons for pushing Hillary – she certainly had the experience needed for the job, and they could reasonably assume that as soon as there was a half-way acceptable woman nominated then all the women would vote for her, just to get a woman president. Maybe there was some ageism (yet another ism!) there against Bernie Sanders.

So, in contrast, their mistakes were;-
1. ignoring the avalanche of bad publicity Hillary had attracted over a long time.
2. assuming that women will vote for a person with the same reproductive apparatus, regardless of how they perceive that person. It should be a great achievement for feminism, that women felt quite comfortable with judging Hillary on her merits rather than her gender.
3. assuming that the qualities that politically-engaged people value, like experience and economic management, are the qualities that ordinary people value.
4. not realising that by ridiculing Trump, they were sending a message to his supporters that their views were also ridiculous.

Looks like it is not just the Republicans who will need to take a hard look at their campaign strategies.

I just read up about their process and I do agree, it is odd and should be fixed.

The US needs some massive changes in healthcare and education which are areas I will always lean left on. Who doesn’t benefit from these? It is bad what is currently starting to happen here in these areas too and reasons why I am not a Liberal (right) supporter but again we don’t have much option either.

I think the continuous comments about liberals (left) being the “educated” ones does them no favours and is insulting. I don’t consider myself liberal but am by no means uneducated. I understand where the generalisation comes from with the working class who did not attend college/uni etc.

I think we are in a time of the extreme left and right growing. For myself, both sides are getting further and further away from me that I feel like there must be more out there like myself that struggle to identify with either side. I believe there is danger on both sides and long for a time, if it comes, where there can be a move toward a middle ground. It is definitely scary that the rebellion to the left is pushing things too far right and no, we don’t need the horrendous attitudes of the past repeating but I also think the left needs to listen more to the middle man and be more accepting of views that may not totally line up with theirs, before they start labeling them.

Better a wall of text than a wall around Mexico is what I say.

Nooooo. Oh no. I am so sad.
In reversal mode. Moving back from acceptance to denial over the direction of the world. My favourite singer/songwriter evha.

2016 claims another victim.

Let’s just cancel 2016 and move straight on into 2017, at least for the sake of our seriously-endangered celebrities.

*sigh*

Because advocating a murder is a great way to take the moral high ground.

*double sigh*

Twitter has exploded with stories of Muslims and Hispanics being told that they were going to be raped or beaten before being sent back to “where they came from”. As a generalisation it seems to be young white men directing their comments at young women.
Hopefully it’s just a section of the population thinking they are being funny. And before you cringe, I have heard a couple of people say something similar followed immediately by “just joking”.
And hopefully it is all exaggerated by the use of social media.

Not the kind of “sit-ins” we had in the 60s.

Hats off to the guy for creating his own movement….The Turd Amendment.

Gun control , you say? How about bowel control in this example of liberty?