well, maybe should have tempered it a bit, 'cause was a bit disturbed about some of the things I've been reading...

1) https://news.yahoo.com/montana-lawmaker-suggested-she-d-182144655.html (some seriously sick stuff)

2)https://www.npr.org/2023/06/27/1184461263/iowa-meteorologist-harassment-climate-change-quits (loons being led by power lushing putz)

3)https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/26/garth-brooks-texas-greg-abbott-twitter-booed-satire (the stupidity and pride in ignorance is stupefying. also being ass hurt that trans people like a (horrible) beer?! lord have mercy...ate at a steak house, at the same table 'W' used previously. didn't put me off enjoying the t-bone. or revisiting the place if'n was in the area again. *did make me think "G** D*** it! why did the waitress tell me that!*)

4) https://news.yahoo.com/6-dead-including-3-children-161756984.html red flag af & TN will do nill

5) https://www.vice.com/en/article/ak3kz5/moms-for-liberty-hitler-quote (MFL were more upset w/asscoation then the message. The lack of self-awareness & irony - unreal)

6) & too many women dying from the abortion ban(s). don't get killing the living for the unborn if the unborn are d.o.a. & take mom w/them. lunacy.

a couple of those are pushing the limit. the lack of benignancy being a value among the right - just - ain't - right.

bob the parrot's stormtrooper comment lit the fuse. my gawd. even people in the middle ages had a sense of genetics. greeks, 3k years ago, knew androgyny was a thing. so why can't bobo's buds not bone up on the idea of biology?

it's not a choice, but living well is.

possible the putz was being pedantic. 'heh heh 500ft heh heh'
kvetching about the details is missing the point; the gun was meant for combat - not killing school children. his knowledge of the weapon was adequate.

as an example: beto didn't know the guy's actual name - but he called him what everyone else would. i.e. close enough

but the people w/abbott signs? what is so powerful about protesting a peaceful meeting? wouldn't sitting, listening, and asking tough questions make more of an impression than holding up signs that people read as: "oh, lord. a dimwit."


in short: beto took the feathers out of that peacock.

Nice work. Come on in. Cigars are over there by your new Abbott Club Chair.

Get you drink?

I think it's not so much not being able to tell them apart but not being willing to investigate them beyond their labels. I spend some time in other online communities with people from the US and the sense I get is Clinton is generally seen as corrupt and criminal and Trump as perhaps sexist / racist but a good businessman. I would argue both labels are to some extent misleading and false.

I don't see much discussion that goes beyond those labels. In both cases from the snippets I've seen of US TV and of some online tabloids, that's about as deep as the discussion goes. To really understand the problem with both candidates you need to read good editorial work from more reputable / long form media (weekly publications, newspapers that aren't tabloids) and frankly I think very few have been willing to do that.

Much of it comes down to politics being treated as entertainment and reading long written articles simply isn't entertaining. Unfortunately it's going the same way here in Australia. Everyone is obsessed about opinion polls. We might have short periods of formal election campaigning (unlike the epic US election process), but because of only 3 years between elections for our Prime Minister (and the fact that he or she can and does get replaced within those 3 years by Parliament, unlike the US President), we have constant personal political battles and recrimination rather than deliberation over policy.

I mean right now, we have a prime minister (Turnbull, re-elected earlier this year), who unseated a previously elected prime minister (Abbott, in the previous term) by a vote of no confidence. Abbott himself (several parliamentary terms before) had successfully unseated Turnbull as minority leader (when another party held the prime minister-ship). Now there are rumors that Abbott wants to challenge Turnbull. And that's just one of our political parties.

Sure, there are plenty of incompetents in office around the world, but at least in the western world, there isn't anyone even close to Trump (Tony Abbott in Australia was getting there though).

And "most corrupt politician since Nixon"?? I've seen no evidence of that. She's a US politician, no better or worse than most. If you think she's more corrupt than Cheney or Rumsfeld or even Obama. You'll need some pretty solid evidence. And no, I really don't give a fuck about "emailgate", that was stupidity, not corruption

$14k is more than a business class airfare, but less than first class return to Europe... I would guess that the speaker went first class and her staff went business class. The $5k was for a helicopter charter, not ground transport... it's only an hours drive, so not more than $200 for a taxi or a government car.

I am equally bewildered about Abbott and Harper. All I can say is that I think my countrymen were rather naive... it was obvious to me that the claims he was making prior to the election were so ridiculous that the best thing for the country was for him to simply turn around after the election and say "I lied!"... and he has pretty much gone back on every claim, only without actually admitting he lied.

I'm not sure what happened to Canada, either.

Maybe one day I'll have to move to New Zealand...

- In Merkel's defence, she's never been elected for her track record of empathy.

- Your gulag is the envy of the "civilized" world. Out of sight, out of mind. Quite frankly, between letting people rot on godforsaken islands and marauding bands of Nazis setting their shelters on fire, I think our two nations got the entire spectrum of despicable behaviour covered.

- 14k on airfares per person, almost 5k for ground transport -- just what did they travel in? Then again, that picture looks like she's desperatly trying to fit in with the blue blooded elites.

- I don't get Abbott. Steven Harper neither, for that matter. How can a reasonable people float this kind of person to the top? There are plenty of loonies around, but always with a solid base of loonies behind them (eg Berlusconi or Cameron). But not Abbott & Harper...

I agree with your 70%

It sounds better than we have here, we have the incumbents who want to wage war on the poor and not tax the rich, and Labor who want to stay very quiet until the election because Abbott and co are doing such a fine job of selling them (or at least burying themselves).

I used to think that the UK would be a nice place to live until it turned into a police state a few (?) years ago.

Works fine in NZ. Maybe Tony Abbott doesn't like John Oliver anymore

http://videosift.com/video/LWTwJO-Tony-Abbott-President-of-the-USA-of-Australia

In terms of the Brisbane G20 summit referenced in this video, very little came out in favour of coal The G20 Leaders Communique came out saying that Gas is an increasingly important energy source, that the G20 reaffirms its committment to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.

The petition above has 2498 signatures out of its goal of 4000.

The Grauniad saw it like this - http://goo.gl/lnU8mC (well, First Dog on the Moon saw it like that, he also had one on coal powered electicity generation - http://goo.gl/MbNMfO ).

Mr. Abbott is left looking very out of touch and stuck in the past after lobbying to keep climate change out of the leaders communique, and then two days before the summit the U.S. and China came out with a joint announcement promising action on CO₂ emissions - http://goo.gl/MvG1I5

*downunder

Putin was interviewed by a German public broadcaster. A video of it can be found here, but it's in Russian/German, unsurprisingly. As of now, RT is the only source I found for a proper English translation of the entire interview.

Anyway, it is quite disturbing to once again see just how different it sounds from what is being reported about him. The press make him sound like a power-crazed looney, yet of all the heads of state, this old spook is just about the only stable, calm, composed and diplomatic entity in the entire discussion. They call him out for an apparent unwillingness to talk, yet there he is, offering one olive branch after another.

Poroshenko is talking about getting ready for total war, yet to the media, and to folks like Abbott and Cameron, everything bad about the situation can be traced back to Putin.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: the way the press and some state officials are pushing for an open conflict with Russia, a century after the start of the First World War, 75 years after the start of the Second World War, sends chills down my spine. It is pure madness on a scale I thought we had overcome by now.

Funny Australian protest due to Abbott leaving climate change off the agenda at G20

Well it takes about 10 fucking seconds with google to find out the truth here. Arnold Abbott (whose name should be in the title/tags/description/somewhere imo) was cited for violating the new city ordinance against feeding the homeless in a public space. There was NO "food safety" violation whatsoever. And the last time this happened he sued Ft. Lauderdale and won. But they changed the law now to make it worse. They don't want the homeless people there. That's all there is to it. This is why you see other heartless cunt towns giving homeless people free bus tickets. They just want the homeless out. Don't feed them. Just get them the fuck out of there. To hell with solving the problem or treating them like human beings.

Here's an update (because he's done it again) with includes all the parties involved (police, the accused and the cunt mayor):

http://khon2.com/2014/11/06/90-year-old-florida-man-cited-again-for-feeding-homeless-facing-jail-time/

And it wasn't "apparently catered". Where do you get that and why would it even matter? I don't even know what it means. Any food hot on a table with some sternos is a catered event?

Honestly, they should just give all the homeless they are trying to serve a penny. Then set up their "catered" event and charge the homeless one penny to eat. Now they're not giving it away.