The Waiting Man

Playing on the Wall

A collection of seesaws that briefly allowed children on both sides of the US-Mexico border wall to play together has won a prize from London's Design Museum

Not what the Great Pumpkin intended, I'm sure...

Just suppose, for one moment... forgetting all logic & likelihood... that the Great Pumpkin is right & that the Election has been 'stolen' from him. Suppose that, somehow, the Democrat Party has managed to convince people in all 50 States (okay, maybe not all 50, but enough to not make it look obvious), from County to Governor, to engineer the results to favour Joe Biden. Suppose that they have managed to do that & make it impossible to prove & that nobody has any record of any such deal or process ever being mentioned, let alone actually done

Imagine the amazing amount of organisation & intelligence it would take to pull it off. The incredible, intricate attention to detail that made sure every little thing went without a hitch. The galaxy-sized amount of money it would take to get it done & to ensure the ongoing silence of those who did it

And finally, suppose that the people capable of such a feat would think the Great Pumpkin was worth all that effort & money - that he wouldn't just fuck it all up on his own

If the Democrats have people like that, or are in league with people like that, then wouldn't you want them to be in power? After all, they were in power for 8 years, not so long ago & the most controversial thing they did was to enable affordable health care for low-income people & their families... Definitely something sinister there, right? Provided, of course, that you further suppose they're not some international paedophilic cabal who have done all of this just so they can keep fiddling with kids

Imagine people with the reach, means, capital & capability to not only run the country, but shape the world, feeling so threatened by an egomaniacal failed businessman, his troupe of sycophantic coat-tail riders & a bunch of backwoods hicks...

Can I have my microchipped vaccine/sedative now please, Mr Gates? And how about a USB port in the back of my head for future upgrades..?

For someone whose main claim to 'fame' was reality television, the Great Pumpkin has obviously lost his grip on actual reality - preferring his scripted version of it where he can't lose

This latest act of desperation is akin to him arguing with the show's producers... except it's a Secretary of State he's trying to bully into lying. And a Republican one at that. Surely that's some kind of Federal offence... or surely it should be - intimidating a public official? Except, from the transcript, it doesn't sound like Brad Raffensperger was very intimidated... no matter how many lawyers were listening in

At least & at last, it shows that even the Republican Party is emerging from under the Great Pumpkin's thrall. Can't we just lock the buffoon in a safe & soft location, with a mobile phone that has no network connections, which he can write his Tweets on & some actors who can assure him that he's still President? He'd probably fire a few each week, but there's no shortage of out-of-work actors at the moment who'd jump at the chance to be in this modern re-interpretation of King Lear

So Trump has infected the USA with another disease... as if Covid19 isn't enough

Now there are many people displaying worrying symptoms of sophophobia - a fear of learning, or education

Combine it with the sexism that the outgoing President has normalised during his entire 4 year term & you have the current kerfuffle over First Lady-Elect Jill Biden's use of the word 'Doctor' in front of her name, as she has a doctorate in, of all things, education!!

The manufactured outrage over someone who dared to study further & has the audacity to use the word 'Doctor' "when she hasn't even delivered a baby!!" is also reminiscent of what I thought was a peculiarly Australian tradition - Tall Poppy Syndrome - the tendency to cut down those who stick their head above the common crop. "What makes you think you're so special?!? You're no better than the rest of us!!!" - an ugly result of our convict & working class origins... well those of us who are of Anglo-Saxon descent anyway (Let me tell y'all what it's like, being male, middle-class & white!!) - now spreading globally like a... well, like a virus

Given that the kerfuffle started with an 'opinion piece' in the Wall St Journal & has since been backed up by an 'editorial' from the same newspaper, it can be argued that it's just an exercise in that all-American pastime 'Free Speech'... the same supposed right that all bigots, sexists, fear-mongers, racists & conspiracy theory loonies hide behind when they spray their bile in public. But freedom of speech is NOT freedom from its consequences, which is why those on the aforementioned list howl in such outrage when someone disagrees with them & takes them to task for their inflammatory oratory. To those people, freedom of speech shouldn't be granted to anyone who disagrees with them. From there, it just dissolves into name-calling & abuse, based on & fuelled by the aforementioned list. Then the street protests... then the rallies.... then... you wind up with a President who does & says these sorts of things with impunity, which, of course, then emboldens those with similar views to express them even more loudly & vehemently. Repeat the cycle until your country loses its respect around the world, your population dies in massive numbers from a disease whose spread can be mostly managed with simple, preventative measures, which the aforementioned list politicise & demonise to the point of ineffectiveness, all the while claiming it's a hoax as the bodies pile up & your economy wobbles towards collapse

That's not a long bow to draw, it's a simple game of falling dominoes... you know - the things the military were so afraid of during the Cold War. Funny how that's so credible when you can point at an enemy who's "over there", but is apparently nonsense when the enemy is within your own society...

As for the whole Dr Biden outrage, I think it was best summed up by Doug Emhoff, who tweeted the obvious "This story would never have been written about a man"

Give it up, you orange buffoon. You lost. It's over. Get out

No matter how many baseless claims of electoral 'fraud' you make, the 'real' world is able to effortlessly refute them. And now you're getting desperate - claiming voting machines are owned by the Democrats & the Venezuelan government?!?!?!?!?!? Even your (hair)- dyed-in-the-wool clueless lawyer is starting to show signs of being stressed about defending this crap... So much so, he's using quotes from My Cousin Vinny to back up his claims. Ironic, really - given that was a movie about a lawyer hopelessly out of his depth & only a Hollywood ending (and a smarter woman) could save him. Time to get Marisa Tomei on the line Rudy...

"In Georgia, where a laborious hand-recount of votes is taking place, the Republican Secretary of State told the Washington Post that counties are already reporting that the hand recount of paper ballots matches the Dominion numbers perfectly.

The agency that oversees election security — the US Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — joined a national coalition of government agencies in putting out a statement unequivocally denying the claims.

"There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," the statement reads. They characterised the election as "the most secure in American history".

As for Trump's claims that Dominion is owned by Democrats — the company did make a one-time philanthropic donation to Bill and Hillary Clinton's non-profit in 2014, but the company's lobbyists have also donated to Republicans like Mitch McConnell. The Clintons have zero stake in Dominion's operations, both companies confirmed to The Associated Press.

Election security officials have been warning against using machines for years, not because there's documented evidence to show they've been used to tamper with election results, but because any glitches could lead to distrust in the system.

It's one reason why most precincts still rely on paper ballots and, even counties that do use technology, have options for post-vote, human audits.

Ahead of the 2020 election, the Democratic party led a charge in the Senate to increase federal oversight of election vendors like Dominion. The Republican party blocked the bill.

The vulnerabilities to the US voting system may be real, but the exploitation of those vulnerabilities isn't happening quite like Trump says."

I'm sure I linked to this at the time it came to light, but you need to see this, to remember what a slimy ego-maniac he was... IS!!!



And, of course, it hasn't taken the good netizens of the world long to stick it to him, now he's LEGALLY gone. The tantrum in the play centre is just pure gold...

Another waiting song... one for the Proud Boys



May you Boys be waiting a loooooooooooooooong time...

Okay, USA... you know what to do... in fact, many of you have done it already. Let's hope you did it right

Here's a reminder of why you should not only do it, but do it RIGHT!!!

The rest of the world is watching & waiting...

If the Great Pumpkin can be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, then that's it... anyone can have one

Can I get one for mediating an argument between my Sister & Mother? At least I did that on my own, without a team of experienced diplomats, negotiators, advisors & a couple of useless relations contributing nothing useful from the sidelines...

The Great Pumpkin has laid out his election strategy... Don't give the Post Office essential funding, because of mail-voting "Fraud". For "Fraud" read - votes for Democrat candidates

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, this is what he'll pursue once the November polls go against him - all the way to the Supreme Court which, let's not forget, is full of judges he appointed

Joe Biden will die of old age before he ever gets to sit in the Oval Office...

Tragically, yet not unexpectedly a teenager has died after contracting Covid19

Whammy 1. She caught it at a church gathering, with no masks or social distancing

Whammy 2. Her parents dosed her with hydroxychloroquine, instead of taking her to hospital

Whammy 3. When they eventually took her to hospital, her parents refused to allow intubation, until it was too late to put her on life support

An open message to the ambulance-chasing law fraternity of the United States: You know who's to blame for those whammies... serve him with papers in November

But then, I wouldn't be surprised, if the parents are naïve enough to swallow the lies about whammies 1 & 2, if they still vote for the fuckwit who perpetuated them

I said I wouldn't... I know it won't make a bit of difference... I can't let this one go by without drawing attention to it - even if it's just my own

"stop testing so much, you're finding too many cases!!"

The Great Pumpkin has told medical authorities to scale back their Covid19 testing rates, as they're finding too many cases... I mean, where do you even start with such a stupid thing to say, let alone the, for want of a better word, 'thought' process behind it. Sure, he wants the reported cases to go down, so he can spin that into a claim he's winning the war against the virus, so his ignorant redneck supporters can wave their flags & shoot their guns & so his fatcat Republican buddies can continue their business of raping the land & the economy for another 4 years...

Why?? Honestly... Why can't his opponents cut through & call out this puerile bullshit? Why can't even the most ignorant, dyed in the woolly brain, redneck fuck-knuckle see that they're being taken for fools, for a ride, to the cleaners??

Rhetorical... as always

A 19-year-old man has been shot and killed in Detroit after an unknown gunman opened fire on protesters after days of unrest in the city.

The teen was killed after an unknown person in a Dodge Durango approached a group of protesters and police in Detroit's Greektown entertainment district on Friday and opened fire, according to reports.

Look, I know it's resorting to stereotypical thinking, but I can't help assigning a skin colour to the victim & the shooter. And no, they're not the same colour. To be honest, the victim could well be white, or Latin American, or Asian... being angry about police murdering unarmed people is not an exclusively black thing & deserves to be supported & amplified by anyone with a functioning brain. But... I would bet a significant amount of money on the shooter being white... because, as pointed out in the Betoota Advocate today, the white people who think these riots are an over-reaction, are the same ones who took AR-15 rifles to a protest about not being able to get a haircut when they wanted to...

Dear USA - you've just lost 100,000 people to a disease which other similarly developed countries have managed to control by listening to scientists & co-operating with each other, resulting in much lower death rates than yours. The man who allowed all your fellow citizens to die, through callous neglect & spectacular pig-headedness is getting away with it... & you're shooting unarmed protesters instead??!!??

Like most disasters or crime scenes, the rest of the world is standing by, just looking on. We can't do anything to stop it... we know it's going to be horrible... yet we can't look away

Well, it's been about a week since I touched on this subject - give or take a day...

Are you a 'smug liberal', or a 'reckless republican'?

Some highlights... or lowlights, more accurately...

I’ve heard of Muslim women in America being taunted for wearing hijabs, I’ve heard of Jewish men being mocked for wearing yarmulkes and now I’ve heard it all: A friend of mine was cursed by a passing stranger the other day for wearing a protective mask.

When the president visited Phoenix a week ago, some residents who’d turned out to see him harangued journalists in masks, “saying how we’re only wearing masks to instill fear,” BrieAnna Frank, a reporter with The Arizona Republic, told Tom Jones of Poynter. Frank posted a Twitter thread with videos in which journalists were loudly accused of being “on the wrong side of patriotism” and “like communists.”

Outside the State Capitol in Sacramento two days later, a woman held a sign that said: “Do you know who Dr. Judy Mikovits is? Then don’t tell me I need a silly mask.”

Mikovits is a discredited scientist whose wild assertions and scaremongering regarding vaccines have made her a hero to conspiracy theorists and a social media and YouTube star. Naturally, masks factor into her repertoire. She has claimed that “wearing the mask literally activates your own virus.”

How has this virus become so incredibly politicised in the USA, to the point where people would rather die, than practise common consensus?!?!