This is the News!

[The Legendary Shark]

My Mum's 80 as well but she thinks the internet is something to do with unisex underwear.

[Funt Solo]

BBC brief: Vintage Marvel comic collection sells for £13k

[Funt Solo]

Rogue Trooper gets criticized for its naming conventions: the guy in the bag is Bagman etc. It seems too unrealistic, they say.

But a man called "Bankman-Fried" just got 25 years for running a crypto-Ponzi scheme. The most famous case before that was Bernie Madoff (who made-off with other people's money). Lou Pearlman stole everyone's pearls. Gerald Payne got 27 years, which had to hurt. Don't even get me started on Charles Ponzi!

[Proudhuff]

Rogue Trooper gets criticized for its naming conventions: the guy in the bag is Bagman etc. It seems too unrealistic, they say.

But a man called "Bankman-Fried" just got 25 years for running a crypto-Ponzi scheme. The most famous case before that was Bernie Madoff (who made-off with other people's money). Lou Pearlman stole everyone's pearls. Gerald Payne got 27 years, which had to hurt. Don't even get me started on Charles Ponzi!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9664000/9664697.stm

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Brayan Talbot no less appears in this BBC tribute to his comic longevity.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wear-68712698

[rogue69]

Donald Trump's ego at work in his latest campaign ad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbOUSn_pN8o

[Funt Solo]

Donald Trump's ego at work in his latest campaign ad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbOUSn_pN8o

Ack! I've vomited!

I was watching a bizarre documentary - The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem - which posits the notion that Trump's rise to power is directly attributable to 8chan and Gamergate. While this may seem (and feels) like an ego-stretch, the way it's portrayed in the doc is fairly persuasive.

[Funt Solo]

++Nothing to see here++

[JayzusB.Christ]

Good god. I'm genuinely dreading this year's US election. You might have a better insight than I do, Funt, living stateside- what the hell do people see in him?  As far as I can see he hasn't got a single redeeming quality.

[Funt Solo]

Well, it's complicated. I live in the east of Washington state, which is a blue (Democratic) state. We haven't voted red (Donald/Republican) since 1984. Also, I live in a relatively built up area pretty near to the big cities. That generally means people are a bit more open-minded and liberal, which is kinda what the Dems represent. More or less. If you go east you get to the more sparsely populated areas - and that means farms, and that means people like Republican things like racism, privatization, a maximum of two genders, THE BIBLE, and so on. Again, generally. More or less.

Look, here's a map of our state from the last election:



Red seems to take up more space, but there are literally fewer brains there.

---

None of this answers very well why people vote for Trump, because (in all fairness) it's not in anyone's best interest to vote for a fascist who would happily bulldoze you if you looked at him funny. He would throw anyone at all under the bus if it would promote his own interests - as has been made abundantly clear over time by his actions. And yet! Even those who he has personally thrown under a moving bus (e.g. Pence) still lickspittle up to him because they survived, and there's still the smell of power lingering around the Orange C*nt.

---

I still haven't answered it. They're disenfranchised and he promised he would franchise 'em, and (crucially) they believe him. The Christian Fundies love him, because he's managed to stock the Supreme Court with a bunch of 'em and now they're all set to enslave women as walking baby-factories, and make being gay illegal. The white supremacists love him, because he's a racist, father. The gun-nuts love him because he doesn't give a fuck if a bunch of kiddies get shot as long as there's some profit in it (and some of them are so bored that civil war sounds kind of like a hoot). 8chan love him because of the Q-lulz. Conspiracy nuts love him because his existence feeds their need for meaning.

I realize you could read this as "farmers are backwards, racist, misogynistic, fuck-heads", and be all like "Funt, man, I know a nice farmer", but look at the map. It's farmers. White ones.

[Art]

You kind of need population density on a map like that too, to show just how much a lot of red areas are just a dozen shitheads and some cows.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Thanks Funt, appreciate the comprehensive answer to my question.  And yeah, I suppose I'm a bit stuck in my Liberal bubble and shy away from the reality that there are a lot of bigots and / or gullible people out there.

The people I know on this side of the Atlantic who like him, Christ help us all, generally fall into the gullible camp (though of course there's no shortage of bigotry here either).  They've either gone down QAnon-style internet rabbit holes about paedophilia cover-ups, or bought into the idea that 'woke'='bad' and the Democrats are somehow all about spreading woke ideology.  Or they believe the Democrats are somehow far-left Marxists, even though they're to the right of the most right-wing mainstream parties here. Though we're catching up, sadly.

[Angry Vince]

Thanks for explaining Funt. It makes way to much sense.

Now, I would like to say, as a right-leaning kiwi*: Fuck Trump and tricycle he rode in on. If narcassism had a colour, it would be orange. The election this year is likely to be a freaking shit show.


*in fairness, a right-leaning kiwi is usually very left of a left-leading American.

[Angry Vince]

Thanks for explaining Funt. It makes way to much sense.

Now, I would like to say, as a right-leaning kiwi*: Fuck Trump and tricycle he rode in on. If narcassism had a colour, it would be orange. The election this year is likely to be a freaking shit show.


*in fairness, a right-leaning kiwi is usually very left of a left-leading American.

It's been a while, so I can't remember the forum rules around politics and swearing. In fairness though, the guy is a prolapsed anus with an orange tan, so I'll let my comment stand until told otherwise.

[Jim_Campbell]

You kind of need population density on a map like that too, to show just how much a lot of red areas are just a dozen shitheads and some cows.

Of course, a big part of the problem with the US political system is the disproportionate weighting it gives to those rural shitheads, both through the electoral college (which means that one person's presidential election vote in, say, Wyoming, counts the same as four people's votes in California) and the Senate (Wyoming, population 576,000 = two senators; California, population 39,000,000 = two senators).