Tag: US election

Politician’s election promise actually comes true

Posted on

I know. I know! A politician’s election promise coming true. Incredible scenes.

Politicians are known for being somewhat dishonest and duplicitous at the best of times, but when there’s an election coming up, it’s easier just to take everything they say with a large shovel of salt. Especially when they are unlikely to win the election, and therefore don’t have to deliver on the fanciful promises that they made in the run up to the vote.

The recent US election was actually very close (until it wasn’t), with wild pledges and assurances being flung around by everyone concerned.

[An aside: there are numerous examples of people believing election promises (or believing that those election promises didn’t apply to them) on this subreddit. So many heartaches, so much schadenfreude.]

But how about this? One of the surely more outlandish claims from the eventual losing candidate has actually come to pass! She didn’t make an election promise for herself to deliver upon, though. She told us what the other guy was going to do. And the right-leaning press said it was nonsense:

Yeah, I mean, it does seem a bit much.

But then what we think of as reality has been horrifically skewed and rearranged over the last few months.
And yesterday, the orange shitgibbon said this:

He then went on to praise the National Guard for restoring order in LA before they’d even got there:

I love the line “For those keeping track”, because to be fair, a lot of people have understandably given up on that right now.

But then they did get there:

…fulfilling Harris’ election promise.

I know. I know! A politician’s election promise coming true. Incredible scenes.

Voting for Donald: I’m swung!

Posted on

Ask any political commentator and they’ll tell you that the only states that matter in the United States right now are the swing states. And look for any Presidential candidate right now, and they’ll be in one of those swing states, trying to swing it their way.

North Carolina is one of those swing states, and yesterday, Republican candidate [checks notes] “Donald Trump” was there trying to swing it his way.

It’s worth remembering that this is a tough ask. The candidates for the two main parties are pretty much neck and neck, and of course they would be, since they are the best two people that America could find to choose between for the biggest job in the country and one of the biggest jobs on the planet.

And because these candidates are the best, because the job is so big, and because the race is so tight, literally every word counts. Everything will be analysed, broken down, fact checked and reported.
The voters think that they’ve heard it all before, and so it’s going to take something exceptional to put either one of the big guns into the all important driving seat.

With all that in mind, please enjoy Donald Trump’s closing remarks in Gastonia, NC this weekend:

“When I say insane asylums, and then I say, Doctor Hannibal Lecter, does anybody know? They go crazy they say, oh, he brings up these names out of – well, that’s genius, right, Doctor Hannibal Lecter.

There’s nobody worse than him. Silence of the Lambs. Who the hell else would even remember that? I have a great memory but they always hit me. I don’t bring it up too much because they have to take such a – he brought up Hannibal Lecter. What does that have to do with this? What is it? It has everything to do with it, right? He was – that’s who we are allowing into our country and we can’t allow it in our country.

So I’ve done something for you for you that I haven’t done in 20 speeches, I brought up Doctor Hannibal Lecter and we’re allowing him, you watch, you watch these fake people will say again, he brought up Hannibal Lecter has absolutely nothing to do. You know I do the weave, right, the weave it’s genius. You bring up Hannibal Lecter, you mention insane asylum. Hannibal Lecter. You go out, now there’ll be a time in life where the weave won’t finish properly at the bottom and then we can talk.

But right now it’s pure genius hey, I have an uncle, my uncle, Uncle John, my father’s brother, 41 years at MIT longest serving professor has so many degrees he didn’t know what the hell to do with them all in the most complicated, I understand a lot of this stuff, you know, I believe in that. Like, I mean, Jack Nicklaus is not gonna produce a bad golfer. Right you know, that’s the way it works it’s just one of those things and it’s in the family and it’s whatever.”

I know, right?

For me, it’s obviously right up there with MLK Jr.’s I Have A Dream or Churchill’s We Shall Fight On The Beaches. And thus, it will surely take its rightful place as the most inspired – and most inspiring – political monologue of the 21st Century. And I suppose that I could add “so far” on the end of that sentence, but really, who amongst us honestly believes that this will be outdone in the next 76 years?

Literally all of America has been crying out for something… anything: some sign or indication as to who should lead their country for the next 4 years. And if you read those words above and the answer isn’t clear to you… well… then I don’t know what needs to be done.

Of course, the real issue here is that North Carolina needed swinging, and so Trump came out with this absolute shitshow of rambling, nonsensical drivel in front of his supporters at the event – and all across America – and they will still choose to vote for him.

“Doomed” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Day 224 – No-one missed anything

Posted on

I haven’t written a blog post today, because I’ve been chasing about all over the place. Fortunately, there is an election thing happening somewhere overseas, and so I don’t think anybody noticed my absence.

On that note, might I point you in the direction of the video for DJ Shadow’s Nobody Speak as the perfect representation of the current chaotic state of play in the US?

I’m not going to put it on here, because it breaks a lot of my family-friendly rules as far as NSFW language goes, but here’s the link if you want to see what I’m on about. Mute it if you don’t want to hear the naughty words, although I actually quite like some of them.

The pig is (obviously) great and the flung stack papers against the falling white dove is actually really clever.

Don’t blame Donald

Posted on

Some of the adjectives used to describe Donald Trump in the lead up (and now aftermath) of the US Election have been… “choice”, shall we say?

But what if there was a hidden side to President Elect Trump?
What if his seemingly angry, outward persona is merely as a result of deep, lasting trauma?

I’m certainly not saying that the manifestation of that persona is excusable, merely that it might be more understandable if we could pin it on some difficult experience he had suffered.

I’m talking about this photo, obviously.

4ebbc8ab-1334-4759-b388-46f59f49acac

This is the side of Donald Trump that no-one has ever seen. This is the moment that has scarred him for life. See how he tries to pose for the cameras, tries to appear cool, attempting to grasp a probably-wriggling beagle.
See how it refuses to look anything but profoundly disappointed.
See how it has (almost certainly) chewed something important of his.

This isn’t behaviour specific to its proximity to Donald Trump.
We’ve all been there.

And these things can affect a man. I don’t profess to wanting to build a big wall or have individuals of a certain religion removed from my presence. And I’m certainly not defending those views. Not at all.

I’m merely suggesting that being near a beagle can change a person.
And not in a good way.

Those commentators concerned over Trump’s new democratically-given access to the “Big Red Button” controlling America’s significant nuclear arsenal (and the implications thereof) would do well to glance to the bottom right of the image above and the wide selection of baseball bats. None of which he has used on the beagle. This sort of evidence of extreme restraint will obviously come as some comfort to you hysterical individuals.

Like it or not (and I suspect I could likely gauge the majority public response from my readers) Donald Trump is the new POTUS.

But don’t ever be fooled: the beagles are still in charge.

How utterly terrible is Hillary Clinton?

Posted on

I’m no fan of the indestructible Donald Trump. But honestly, how utterly terrible is Hillary Clinton?

I say this because virtually everywhere I look, I’m repeatedly informed what a wicked, despicable, loathsome, misogynistic, untruthful, predatory, distasteful, repugnant, narcissistic, dreadful human being  Trump is.

And yet, with little more than 24 hours to go to the 2016 Presidential Election, in this Bloomberg poll, Hillary leads Donald by 3%:

pollNote that small print: “Margin of error +/- 3.5 percentage points.”
And note that bottom bar “Don’t want to tell 4%”, too.
That against a 3% lead. Astounding.

It’s been an eye-opening campaign for me to observe as an outsider, with no axe to grind and no significant interest in the outcome. I’ve never seen such a huge outpouring of insults and incessant dragging down of one candidate in the majority of the media.
It’s become cool to insult Trump. And talking of insults, the NYT took a two page spread to publish a list of all the people Trump has insulted over the last year or so. And yes, as we’ve been told, the fact that he’s insulted so many individuals is a demonstration of what an appalling person he is, but what an unprecedented step for a newspaper to take.
Equally, there seems to be something of a general unspoken agreement to overlook any shortcomings from anything or anyone to do with the Democratic campaign. The recent vandalism of Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was near celebrated in the international media. And then there’s the media concentrating on the n lies Trump told in a TV debate while ignoring the n-10 (or whatever) untruths Clinton came out with. Yes, he’s awful, but how low do your standards have to be that you’re willing to completely overlook the deceit of someone who wants to be the President of your country simply because someone else was allegedly more deceitful on the same evening?

And yes, of course, there are news outlets working on completely the opposite agenda too, but they are hopelessly outnumbered. Still, this isn’t “rigging” the election, as Trump has contended. This is merely editors and media bosses exercising their right to freedom of opinion.
But it is overwhelming.

And so, let’s go back to the title of this post and ask again – with all that media support and with all those hugely-influential, loud-mouthed celebrities on her side – just how utterly terrible must Hillary Clinton be to only be “3% ahead” against “the most dangerous” and “the most orange” (sigh) man in the world?

I don’t know who’ll win – the corrupt autocrat or the corrupt socialist – but the fact that the latter might only just scrape past the former, despite the former being… well… being Donald Trump, should be ringing alarm bells – and not just in America.