kgwilson

One thing that always intrigues me is that Americans consider themselves to have the greatest democracy in the world when in fact they rank No 25 under the EIU world democracy index and are actually considered a flawed democracy. The way their system works seems pretty flawed to me as well although I have not researched the Economic Intelligence Units process of determining this. Trump seemed determined to move towards Authoritarianism by garnering support from a fanatical group who cared little for truth and justice but the majority of republicans who voted for him were more concerned about the enemy of Socialism than they were of Trump so turned a blind eye. I was surprised to find out that about 100 million Americans are evangelical Christians and almost all are exclusively republican. This puts them in the same boat as fundamentalist muslims or any other fanatical religious nut job religions. What goes on inside the vocal beer bbq & guns mob heads is a mystery as well. Most Americans I have come to know and those I was in business with when I was there were fine people but there was always an undercurrent that I did not get close to, nor did I want to.

I just listened to Biden speak and he spoke with confidence, humility, dignity and clarity although his stutter did show itself a couple of times. What a breath of fresh genuine air that has not been heard in the past 4 years from the POTUS. If his lead in Pennsylvania gets beyond the 0.5% margin requiring a recount (currently it is at 0.4%) I think he will declare victory. Trumps legal challenges have all been thrown out so far bar the one to get a bit closer to the counters in Philly. I wonder if Trump will try to pardon himself as he reckons he can between now & Bidens inauguration. That will be funny to watch.

I think a landslide victory depends on how you define it. If Biden wins in Pennsylvania and Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, the number of Electoral college votes will be well in his favour by 304 to 229 & even North Carolina is in doubt so if Biden got that as well it would be 319 to 214. That looks like a landslide to me. With several million votes still to count Biden has received the most votes in American history and is 4 million ahead of Trump. Trumps pathological lying has made him the architect of his own demise. He declared months ago that the election was going to be rigged & told everyone postal voting was fraudulent & told his supporters to vote on the day ignoring all health concerns. Biden encouraged postal voting specifically for health reasons. Guess what, early counting favoured Trump as in person on the day votes are counted first. Postal votes are favouring Biden by a margin of about 4 to 1. As is often said, a good horse always comes from behind.

Another factor in the disunited states is the absolute fear of anything considered socialist especially among those with lower education living in the mid west and southern states. McCarthyism is alive and well here. Trump has seized upon this fear and fed it well. The fact that such things as free healthcare would benefit these people immensely, they associate it with communism and lack of what they see as freedom. In a way it is not surprising that the rate of Covid infection has mushroomed when it costs $150.00 to get a test and the average annual wage in the US is $US33,000.00. The other is the absolute refusal to believe published statistics by the MAGA brigade & even educated Trump supporters who believe emphatically that Trumps record on the economy is unprecedented. Obamas job creation program is the longest in American history at 74 months straight averaging 199,000 a month, GDP growth exceeded 4% four times during Obamas time. Trump has never achieved 4% once. Obama inherited 10% unemployment & brought it down to 4.7%. The major reason for the economy going well during Trumps first 3 years were policies put in place by the Obama regime. Now due to Trumps failure to deal with the pandemic the US is in a way worse position than it could have been with a proper response. And yet the election is on a knife edge. Trump should have been thrown out but that hasn't happened although in all likelihood Biden will get there with Trump screaming and kicking BS all the way. If Trump ends up being prosecuted for even half the things he could be done for he will still be in court (or jail) in 4 years time. That is unless he manages to leave the country to skip all the debts he has to repay.

Well OT you are on the money so far as at 10:23 pm EDT. Trump & republicans have done as you say & Biden may just get over the line gaining Arizona & leading in Wisconsin. Pennsylvania is the key now I'd say.

It is also not that hard to modify a semi automatic to become a fully automatic machine gun.

The Trump campaign is getting really desperate now asking for more donations saying Biden must pay for his Treasonous plot of spying on his campaign & blaming it on the Russians. Trump says he wants to make a statement so big that even the fake new won't be able to ignore it & if the donation is made in the next hour (8/10 6.30pm) it would be 825% matched. It gets crazier by the hour there.

Personally I think making voting compulsory is undemocratic. Why force people to go to a voting place & then they just put in a blank sheet or spoil the paper. It would never work in the US. They have this idea of freedom that even a health pandemic can't deal with so some consider it their right not to comply or wear masks and also their right to pass on whatever they have to anyone else. Voting is not compulsory in NZ but they regularly get very high voter turnouts. I think it comes down to social responsibility. There is very little of that in the US. Each state has a different voter registration system and eligibility is a major issue as in most cases you have to have resided at the same address for a year to register so it works against the young, the less well off and the black population.

We will have to reduce our numbers by several billion to make a difference. 2.5 Billion in 1950 when I was born, now there are 7.8 billion. Even WW2 that killed over 50 million didn't stop the growth. Officially Covid has killed just over a million in 10 months, not even a gnats hair chink in the planets population surge. Trump got back to the White house today, still contagious & immediately took his mask off & aides were seen milling about also without masks. He says he feels better than even 20 years ago (lie 21,000 and something) & urged everyone to get back to normal. Winter is not far off & the infection rate is surging again so deaths in the US will hit 300,000 fairly soon. Most of the White House staff will have it by now and a lot republican senators & congressmen are becoming infected also. Crazy times in the craziest place on earth.

After his election in 2016 I spoke to a number of people who thought he was the best thing for America in years. I've not met anyone in the past 2 or 3 years who thinks he is anything but a raving lunatic hell bent on destroying America so long as he looks good (to him) all the way through it.

Penny Wong is probably the only politician in Australia since I have been here (15 years now) who would be a true leader if given the opportunity even though she says she doesn't want it. I think that like Jacinda she would be able to command respect and provide empathy in any of the crises there have been and are yet to come. She always seems calm and with just a few well chosen words seems able to disarm loudmouth critics with ease. The transition to a renewable energy economy would actually be led by government rather that individuals and companies. Such leadership is rare in the world of today with populist fossil fueled loudmouths getting far more attention than they deserve hastening the climate tipping point that Covid has so conveniently slowed in the last 6 months.

I wonder if this was a decision by the military to counter Trumps attitude towards the other NATO countries saying they weren't contributing enough. The cost of this stunt with 65 year old aircraft is probably equal to the annual contribution of the smaller NATO members. Fuel capacity is almost 48,000 US gallons with a ferry range of 8,700 NM so they are thirsty beasts. The fact that they are still flying is impressive. Their use as a promo probably not unreasonable as they are pretty big & slow at 440 knots so easy to spot. As a deterrent though they are almost completely useless unless they are carrying Nukes.

Also Kelly Anne Conway his original campaign manager & special adviser has resigned. Not altogether surprising given he called her husband a whack job among other insults when he started the Lincoln group although the reason is given as more time with the family which seems to be the standard if you don't want to get a string of insulting derogatory tweets from the Orange dork. Plus 27 former republican members of congress including 3 former Senators have banded together to announce their support for Biden. The writing is on the wall.

Like all Generals Monty made mistakes. Probably his biggest was Operation Market Garden. But he also had many successes. He was though a very good leader and his men followed him willingly. Patton on the other hand was the complete opposite.

It was Boeings arrogance and failure to deal with its problems & not Covid that they ended up with heaps of 737 Max's that has now been exacerbated by the pandemic. The engineers knew it along with most of their employees. The board and senior executives thought they could sort it all out as they'd been able to do for the past 20 years with impunity but the chickens eventually came home to rest.

These are old photos based on an article published in May 2014. It had photos mostly from a 2009 Getty Images collection & although real don't depict the current situation. There is no evidence to suggest this is currently happening. See https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/unsold-cars/ and https://www.hoax-slayer.net/unsold-car-stockpile-images/

And that is one of the reasons why the USA is considered a "Flawed Democracy" and is ranked 25th in the world. The first 22 are considered full democracies. Norway is at No 1, NZ No 4 and Australia No 9.

Less that 40% of those eligible actually vote. Part of the problem is registering to vote as you have to have resided at the same address for a year to be able to even register. And then there is the process of the Electoral College so you don't even actually vote for a president. The rest of the problem is, well, just being American. They seem to be brought up on a diet of racist patriotism, guns and their unique view of freedom and many have a very jaded view of any form of social justice. Their education system is actually not one but more than 50 systems so to degree where you live determines how ignorant of the world you are. Americans who travel are far more informed than the many I met in the mid west who had no idea where Australia was.. You just have to look at a few Youtube clips to get an idea. On one 70% could not name 3 countries in Europe and many could not name states in the US when pointed to on a map, some getting them wildly wrong.

I love techno stuff having spent 30 years in the IT/IS industry retiring in 2005. Since then of course the change has been massive & I try to keep up. I enjoy bamboozling Millennials in particular Gen Zers. They are really good at using technology at the top end but most can't work out details of the operating system. Most operating systems like Apples iOS, Googles Android/Chrome and Microsofts Windows/DOS all have their origins rooted in UNIX originally developed by AT&T in the 60s/70s & the code eventually being written in C programming language. Unix became Open Source which meant anyone could use it and modify it for their own purpose. So I always find out how to access the root directory structure of anything I have like my mobile phone to get rid of bloatware installed by the brand & free up storage space. When I retired I was given a new Dell D600 laptop which was a top line Laptop in its day 15 years ago. Most of these have now been scrapped as they can't run current modern software & got to be so slow as to be virtually unuseable. But yes they can. I installed Lubuntu a light version of Ubuntu which is a version of Linux which is a version of UNIX. I now have a 15 year old laptop that runs as fast as the latest Apple or Windows or Chromebook laptops with a complete Office suite, web browsing, email, messaging, games, the list is endless & it is all free. There is a huge Ubuntu/Lubuntu group of enthusiasts and forums for troubleshooting, tweaking and application development. But then most people are not like me and struggle with a lot of new technology. The most frustrating thing is with Government systems where they develop an on line application for the general public and don't (or appear not to) do any User acceptance testing by their target market. An example is Centrelink with it's Superannuation/ Pension software. Clients are at least 65 & they have bug ridden software with hopeless user interfaces that even their own staff can't use properly. How the hell they expect 85 year only Auntie Flo to use this stuff is beyond belief especially when it fools Centrelink staff as well.

The biggest pests on this planet are human beings. There are now 7.8 billion of us so anything that is around us and interferes with our life is a pest in the eyes of many, whether it is part of the natural ecosystem or not. Of course where this involves money it only accentuates the problem.

The attitude of the breauracy beggars belief. Lets get rid of them , they're not endangered. Well bureaucrats aren't endangered either so lets get rid of them. There are 1.4 million Roos in Victoria & they culled 136,000 last year. There are nearly 5 million people in Melbourne which is about 2 million too many. We could start culling the bureaucrats here. We have Eastern Greys here. We took over their habitat & they used to wander up the street. No-one I know was ever offended or wanted them removed. They have moved over the past 10 years and mainly graze the sports grounds, caravan park and cleared areas on the bush line. Everyone seems to like having them around. Luckily the authorites are not complete Fxxxwits like they have in Lillydale.

Just like companies when the in thing was to decentralise, then recentralise usually 2 - 3 times over a decade. We did that & also put Vaxes at all the factory sites which is something I project managed at the time. I had insulated container style prefabricated self contained computer rooms made complete with UPS , aircon, comms & power interfaces. They were set up, tested & trucked out & plonked on the factory sites next to the admin building & were fully operative on the same day. We trained the office staff to instal & replace the removable backup disk stacks every day. The DEC salesman made a killing out of that short lived project.

I was a dyed in the wool DEC VMS man and didn't embrace Unix for quite some time. I began with VMS on DEC PDP 8s then 11s and then the VAX series and finally the DEC ALPHA. When our company built a new head office in the 80s the ground floor had a purpose built computer room with duplicate air conditioning systems, false floor with a large glass front so you could see all the disk stacks, processors, comms racks, printers, UPS etc & all the flashing LEDs. It looked very space age at the time. Prior to this the company had used a bureau and we did own some of the machines there but most were owned and managed by the bureau. The big VAX installed (can't remember the model No) was huge and had a massive 2 mb of memory. DEC pioneered Ethernet and Decnet networking so we had company wide email albeit character based from the beginning of the 80s. DEC also created hardware clustering and RAID which everyone takes for granted now. DECs space was being quickly eroded by the rise of microcomputer technology and Unix. The final foray with the Alphaserver & its 64bit RISC architecture and VMS operating system was quickly eroded by the rise and rise of Unix open source. The Alphaserver running OpenVMS, Gembase with Oracle & SQLServer databases with Renaissance CS ERP is still operating today more than 15 years after I took the redundancy path.

So was Blackpool originally called Dublin & renamed so there wouldn't be any confusion?

The Washington Post has been keeping a tallly of Trumps lies. As at 9 July the total stands at 20,055 in 1267 days an average of 15.8 a day but over the pat 14 months the average has been 23 a day. The one he has made the most is the US economy being the best in history (360 times) & No 2 that the border wall is being built (261 times). Doesn't faze his supporters though. Ask any one of them & they'll say it is true. The media though have largely failed to call him out in interviews. If they try he usually accuses them of being "False News" or he walks out. The 2 exceptions are recently on Fox News (his favourite TV channel that he now has discarded) and the Australian journalist Jonathan Swann when he had Whitehouse cherry picked charts that he did not understand & was unable to counter when called out by the interviewer