Neo-Nazis and Other Trump Fans Accuse Microsoft of Rigging the Iowa Caucuses

@ bluecat

Nothing so pleasant unfortunately.

Ohlmann was close. Same initial and you can use some of the letters. Ironically she’d take the b-word as a massive compliment. She genuinely thinks animals are better people than human people and she loves the fur kids.

As to London zoo, it’s entirely a matter for you? They do do some great conservation work. I try never to judge people (myself included) unless there’s a really good reason to. I grew up loving Jonny Morris (and I’m sure the animals loved him). It’s oh so complicated. Wish there was a simple, answer (I think there is with sea world and the like).

You’re a decent person and you know the issues involved. I don’t see the harm in taking the grandsprogs and you can use it as a springboard for talking about animals generally, as someone highlighted above. Be interesting to hear what they think actually, kids often have surprising insight into such matters.

(The Yorkshire part of me is compelled to point out that you can see a bit of the zoo for free from the park!)

Aww, he looks like Bagpuss.

I would love a cat sometime. Then I remember I have trouble taking care of plants already.

@Alan

Who? :p

@Ohlmann

Cats are MUCH easier. You need to clean their litter boxes, but if you forget they’ll remind you by peeing elsewhere. You need to give them food and water, but if you forget they’ll remind you by meowing in your ear non-stop. You need to cuddle them, play with them and love them, but there’s no way you could ever forget doing any of those things. And that’s all there is to it!

I think cats are easier to care for then plants too.

Anyway, even though policy wise, I’m more aligned with Sanders, I kind of hope Clinton wins, just for the male (and feMRA) tears. There will be buckets and buckets of them.

Slightly off-topic, but I was watching some of the coverage last night and they interviewed a Trump supporter. He was 19, so it was his first election. He had opted to skip the caucus so that he could get in line to get a good spot for Trump’s speech later that night.

He voluntarily did not vote just so that he could be at the front of the room for the speech.

This is pretty funny, but I’m sad to see that Trump has enough cross-generational appeal to entice a 19 year old into going to see his speeches.

This whole conspiracy theory is yet another reason I’m so glad we don’t use voting machines up here. Pencils are notoriously hard to accuse of being rigged. Why do you folks use the machines? Are there just too many voters in the States for the votes to be counted by hand?

They think the vote was rigged in favour of the guy who came in third.
Christ, Trump supporters are stupid.

And who the fuck is Gary Forbes?!

Alan:

You familiar with the theory that Bagpuss is a commentary on 1970s trade unionism? The mice are the workers, Madeline is the bourgeoise middle class, Gabriel is the aspiring self employed, Professor Yaffle is an upper class Marxist intellectual etc.

Interesting. If you want to go down that route, what about Ivor the Engine? I’m sure there was something in there about rail nationalisation, and Idris is a Welsh dragon who sets fire to stuff, an obvious reference to Meibion Glyndŵr terrorism!

Thinkpad Cat has a look of “you shall not pass”. Nobody is hitting CTRL+ALT+DELETE without a fight.

Well, I think this cartoon eloquently summarizes the overblown rhetoric and fawning congratulatory tone of the Trumpies.

Oh myyyy, that was…HIDEOUS. It’s like Milo’s main fanboy really loves him those scary-haired blondish dudes, eh?

I love, too, how the doodler couldn’t tell the blindingly obvious difference between the Dems and the Repukes. Or that the Donald IS a Repuke.

I also sincerely doubt Der Donald be caught dead in a fedora, even a badly drawn one, because it would totally wreck his comb-over. And we all know how he is about his coiffure…

Oh. And Judgy B is busy playing Daesh female enforcer, on Twitter, pushing that women shouldn’t vote.

Well, women like her definitely shouldn’t. They’d only go against their own best interests. So her idea actually has merit, at least as far as her own limited coterie goes. Leave it to those of us who actually UNDERSTAND the issues, Andrea dear.

where you’d only vote yes or no, but you had to work on translating and understanding the legalese, and some initiatives are deliberately designed to trick you

I know, right? “Do you agree that this measure, which was enacted without a vote of the people, shouldn’t not have been upheld?”

@kupo Where I was the ur-example was the San Francisco rent control bill. A couple of decades ago an initiative was put on the ballot to help protect nonprofits in the city centre that were being priced out of their spaces–I forget the details, and this was pre-popular internet, so I’m not sure I can locate more accurate information online. Anyway, Willie Brown, who was mayor at the time, opposed the measure but instead of straightforwardly objecting to it he put an almost identically worded initiative on the ballot which would undermine the original one. So people were going around saying ‘yes on J and no on K? or was that yes on K and no on J?’

@newt A friend of mine, who has a PhD and is active in the Labour Party, says this is the best explanation she’s ever seen for preferential voting–and that it was what convinced her that it was a good idea:

Professor Yaffle is supposed to be based on an uncle of Oliver Postgate’s – definitely an upper-class intellectual.

I think it was GDH Cole, but I don’t have Postgate’s memoir to hand.

Young Oliver was once occupied building a dog kennel. Cole – Uncle Douglas – wandered in and was very puzzled. How will the dog know what it’s for, he asked. You won’t be able to explain it to him.

When the kennel was finished, the dog understood immediately what it was for, and was very pleased with it.