Ex-HP boss Carly Fiorina sacked one week into new job Carly Fiorina's astonishing career trajectory into oblivion remains on target tonight after her bid to be US Vice President was cut mercifully short. Just seven days ago, the ex-HP boss was chosen to be the running mate of Texan senator and Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz. On Tuesday evening, crushed into a sad paste …
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Trump 2016: Making Republicans unelectable again
Trump trails Clinton by around 6% in polls and trails significantly in the electoral college system by around 250 vs 170 based on expected voting patterns with projections showing 300+ for Clinton.
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@TRT "Great America" is the name of a huge, loud, expensive amusement park in Gurnee, Illinois USA. Entry is expensive, the rides are spectacular but the wait times for them are onerous. Food overpriced and not nutritionally balanced. Seems to be very much in keeping with the USA as a whole, and the Trump campaign in particular.
AC because I live in a very Republican area. I am a Bernie Sanders supporter, but don't have a bumper sticker on my car. I don't want to have the car keyed, or attract the intense scrutiny of local law enforcement, since they will assume I am a dangerous drug-toting terrorist on that basis.
I don't really know what Trump is all about and as I have no vote in this election I don't really need to.
But the impression I get is best communicated by Kenny Everett's General Cheeseburger:
First, its a bit ingenuous to say she was sacked 1 week in to a new job. She didn't have a job until Cruz won the nod and he didn't. So it was a tentative offer at best.
Second, Kasich is still in the race. He's the anybody but Trump. Take Cruz, Rubio and Kasich's delegates, and he's a lot closer to Trump than you think.
Both Kasich and Sanders will have had the election stolen from them.
Sanders because HRC will be indicted and the DNC will parachute in a Biden / Warren ticket at the last minute.
Kasich because he's been completely ignored by the Press from day one. He won Ohio and if its a contested election between him and Trump, he has a very good chance. But the media finds a "GOP pundits eat crow" story more appealing than talking about candidates.
That's the sick thing about the US and probably other Governments. We don't know how much our opinions are influenced by the press.... er... actually we do, thanks to Facebook who experimented on their pleebs....
Go figure. I wonder if NZ or AU are far enough away to survive this potential melt down....
We're utterly dependent upon the media for the factoids upon which we are forced to act. They in turn actually just want attention, and depend on anyone who will tell them something startling, preferably while making it seem nearly plausible. If it involves the end of the world, even better (I'm thinking of ISIS, not 'civilization' drowning; the first is war, the second is real and with real inertia). For all we know, Trump is actually a computer-generated joke half the time. 42
When is the next ship to Mars, I want off this rock as fast as fekkin possible.
*FacePalmGroan*
This planet is doomed. We're all screwed. Doomed & screwed, screwed & doomed.
I'd run around singing the Gir "Doom" song but this shite isn't even remotely amusing anymore.
Is that ship ready yet? FFS I'll even go on the B Ark if that's the only thing available.
Vogons, we're being ruled by Vogons.
Go ahead and say it: President and Supreme Commander Donald Trump.*
As to the next ship to mars you might want to get in touch with SpaceX:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/02/spacex_adds_mars_haulage_to_its_price_list/
* Yes, the phrase "May you live in interesting times" is indeed a curse.
I'm not sure why everyone is so worried about Donald Trump. He's just doing what every other presidential candidate does. He's saying whatever it takes to get elected, he means none of it, and we're none the wiser as to what his policies actually are.
He's no different to Hilary, except that Goldman Sacks are not funding his campaign.
I'm still hopeful he picks Sarah Palin as his running mate. That would be really funny.
He won't of course. Everyone saw the look of disgust on his face as he watched her endorse him.
He's saying whatever it takes to get elected, he means none of it, and we're none the wiser as to what his policies actually are.
I'm not sure what the scariest aspect of that is -- that people elect candidates that they know to be lying, that the things Donald Trump has been saying are appealing to the electorate, or that people elect candidates whose true policies they do not know.
Or, for that matter, that DT may not actually have any policies, but just wants to lie his way into the job and wing it from there.
There has been quite a few interviews where people are saying things along the lines of, "yeah he says a lot of crazy things but I'm sure he will calm down when he gets elected". It seems they have the opinion that once you elect a politician he becomes less of a shit. Refreshing change of attitude, nuts admittedly.
There has been quite a few interviews where people are saying things along the lines of, "yeah he says a lot of crazy things but I'm sure he will calm down when he gets elected". It seems they have the opinion that once you elect a politician he becomes less of a shit. Refreshing change of attitude, nuts admittedly.
Ok, at the risk of invoking Godwin's law, I'm pretty sure that is what they said when they elected Chancellor Schicklgruber in the 1930's
Being a "'Merican," I hear folks discuss who they're supporting for president a fair bit. I like to listen to WHY they prefer a certain candidate. Most Trump supporters I've heard aren't for him because they expect him to dig a moat between the US and Mexico, set up death camps for illegal immigrants or invade Canada, etc. I mainly hear two reasons for supporting Trump:
1) He has enough money of his own that he can't easily be bought.
2) People are so sick of our federal government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations that they feel it might not be a bad idea to smash it up and start over. They think that Trump might make a good wrecking ball.
To me (1) seems somewhat reasonable, but as for (2), I think Trump would find that Washington has a lot more inertia than one person can overcome. If he wins in November, I guess we'll see -- we'll certainly have to HOPE that he's been talking a lot of bollocks.
1) He has enough money of his own that he can't easily be bought.
It used to be that politicians were mostly self-made, independently-wealthy people, meaning they were less likely to be "bought". However that's no guarantee as you have to look at someone's history to see how they came by their wealth and weather it was made by having certain connections. Trump may not be as clean and independent as you think.
"I'm still hopeful he picks Sarah Palin as his running mate. That would be really funny.
He won't of course. Everyone saw the look of disgust on his face as he watched her endorse him".
It was like watching the AntiChrist trying to endorse the Devil.
WOO !!! SATAN !!! WOO !!! HOTTER SULPHUR PITS FOR ALL !!! WOO !!! GO SATAN !!!
Trump won't pick Palin for a running mate for two simple reasons;
- she's a she.
- she has almost as big a deluded ego as he has. And if there's one thing a deluded egotist can't stand is another deluded egotist.
If she was only one of the above she might have been in with a chance. But two? No chance.
Trump will pick a female non-entity who he thinks appeals to to the little women-folk, and exceeds in the ability of making herself scarce once the voting is over. .. Hang on.. doesn't that sound like..
I'm not sure why everyone is so worried about Donald Trump. He's just doing what every other presidential candidate does. He's saying whatever it takes to get elected, he means none of it, and we're none the wiser as to what his policies actually are.
The scary thing is, people truly believe this in spite of the evidence that politicians actually keep a majority of their promises, suggesting they're not quite as disingenuous as we all think they are. I'm not sure what I'm more scared of in this case, that Trump is lying about everything and we have no idea what he would actually do as el prez, or that he's telling the truth. Either way, Trump 2016 makes me long for Canada 2017.
(Recent analysis of politicians and their promises to support my comment here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trust-us-politicians-keep-most-of-their-promises/)
Staying with the HHG theme: this just proves that those people who most want to rule people are ipso facto those least suited for the job. So maybe the president's job is to distract people from where the actual power is. Donald Trump could be as successful as Zaphod Beeblebrox in that case.
Yes, it would have been preferable to have a nut-free choice, as lots of people have allergies and such, but one takes what one can get.
Does remind me of the HHGttG
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
@Chris King - I followed your link, luckily not at work, and I'm impressed: you've put together what looks like an exact copy of an amazon.com page, except it's the most disturbing, creepy and unsettling I've seen.
You earn additional hacking skillz points for somehow getting that page under the amazon.com domain too. And showing a similarly fake Trump book as another recommendation for me is comic genius, albeit of a dark and sick nature. I salute you, sir, and have upvoted accordingly.
That's the only possible explanation isn't it? Because no-one who considers themselves part of the human race would create, sell or buy a Ted Cruz colouring book. They just wouldn't. It's wrong.
"Tell the Truth - Tell it Often"
Sadly, we'll have to file this under "Shit You Can't Make Up".
It's for real (and it's not the only one he's had published), but if nothing else, it proves that dinosaurs still walk the Earth.
What I find confusing is people are offering that colouring in book in the used section. Surely buying a used colouring in book defeats the object - unless you've run out of crayons or colouring in is a bit too challenging (as it probably is for the target demographic).
I have a vague memory from times gone by that it was also possible to buy a "pre assembled" jigsaw puzzle. So you could frame it, and hang it on the staircase in between the portaits of the Queen and Margaret Thatcher.
It's the decor equivalent of having a wet nurse to do all that icky breast feeding.
They elected Ronald Reagan, they elected George Bush (Jr), they will elect Trump. Then when he turns out to be the Boris Johnson of US politics ( including suitable mop-top ) the Americans will stand about saying, "How the f**k did this happen?! How the hell did we not see this coming?!".
I'm not a fan of Reagan's policies, and his mental faculties do seem to have diminished noticeably by the end of his second term; but we know from the extensive documentation of his political career, such as his private notes, that he was a policy wonk with a deep and broad understanding of numerous areas of government. He was neither a fool nor a figurehead.
We are, after all, talking about a man who used to do radio announcing of baseball games that he wasn't present for. He'd sit in a room with a ticker-tape machine that fed him real-time information like who was at bat and what happened with the most recent play, and he'd invent, on the spot and out of whole cloth, a description of the players and action. As it happened. You need a certain agility of mind to pull that trick off.
Trump has never demonstrated anything like that kind of intelligence in public. Nor has he shown any indication of having any understanding whatsoever of any policy issue. Reagan was worth a thousand Trumps.
Bush the Elder was basically a job-hopping civil servant. He wasn't suited for the public aspects of the office. Again, though, while I don't agree with his politics, he was largely competent at actual policy, aside from that idiotic war in Iraq. (And I understand why that happened.)
Even Bush II had some sort of vaguely sane plans, and he knew how to delegate to people who weren't completely mad - only partly mad, and for the most part wildly incorrect in their theories about what was achievable and how. Without 9/11 he might have ended up being fairly forgettable.
Trump is a demagogue who is either lying constantly or utterly deluded (or both). There were good arguments to vote for Reagan, and understandable ones to vote for the Bushes. There are none in Trump's case.
That doesn't mean he won't be elected (dumber things have happened), but the comparison isn't very meaningful.
Luckily, we in the UK don't directly choose our *Prime Minister*. We only get to vote for our local MP (kinda like a senator) and the leader of the party which gets most MPs (senators) gets to be PM.
That said, I can forgive the US confusion on this, since most UK citizens also haven't got a fucking clue how UK democracy works.
Another Churchill quote:
No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time
Democracy is great if your preferred candidate is elected. Otherwise, it's corrupt, rigged, wrong, broken etc.
Except that he didn't send it back, he had it moved to his private residence because he has a lot of respect for Churchill.
You've had 8 years already, but I'll say it again in the hope it will penetrate your tiny little brain: He's black, get the fuck over it you cretin.
We don't directly choose our President either. We have these things called "electors" who actually choose the President. In theory they are pledged to vote for a particular candidate but the reality is that they are largely free to cast their vote for anybody they wish. It's a rather screwy process especially given the original process was equally screwy and led to the 12th Amendment. I suppose this is where it needs to be explained that in another turn to that screwiness is that each state makes it's own process for figuring out how electors are chosen and how they are apportioned/winner take all.
I see Vermin Supreme is running again - "Screw World Peace. I Want A Pony !"
Yes, his website has a pink background and looks like something that escaped the GeoCities shutdown, but he's probably still more sane than Trump !
And YES, that IS a boot he's wearing on his head.
(Speaking of potty headgear, whatever happened to that other guy who always used to campaign wearing a WWII Wermacht helmet ?)
"...destroyed what was once a truly great **IT** company."
You must have spelled **Test Equipment** incorrectly.
I've lost track of their spun-off name, Agisight or Keylent or something. I have no idea...
HP is an IT company, but was never a "great" IT company. Arguably Compaq once was, but HP just made them worse. Now they're just caught up in scandal and waste in the Big Iron market, and 'friends don't let friends buy HP laptops'. Their desktops aren't bad.
" Arguably Compaq once was..."
Nope, had a contract for Compaq HQ in Germany, trying to sort out their invoice program. They'd bought the source to their MRP system (ManMan in Fortran), customised it by country and then lost the source to the customisations. The Italian one would, on random occasions, spray updates through the payments dataset rather than puting them into a particular record. Dreadful to work for as they had a Dickensian attitude to contractors speaking to each other in the office during work hours. They had the least compatible PC HW ever, they started screwing around with the 'standard' way of connecting stuff long before Dell thought of it, and their 'quality' was a sticker applied to dents and scratches to hide the crash evidence.
"HP is an IT company, but was never a "great" IT company."
Depends what you mean by great. The industrial computers they built to work with their test equipment were quite impressively reliable and well made. I've worked with one balanced on the breech of a tank, at the end of a 100M extension lead, and the oil exploration industry loved them for their ability to stand up to the conditions.
> Arguably Compaq once was
Funny that.
I've worked in that sphere since the HP/Compaq merger. I've probably asked over a thousand engineers "So are you guys pre-merger HP or pre-merger Compaq" and I've never had anyone reply with "pre-merger Compaq". I've had lots of "I'm pre-merger DEC", I've had a few "Compaq? who are they?"
America is a continent of which the United states is but one country. Sorry to be a pedant here but they don't own the whole frikkin' continent - let's not play to their ego please by giving them the whole place - I like Canada.
Aside from that, totally thumbs up to you at the incredulity of the situation - jaw-dropping.
> ... seriously the best you can come up with to run your country?
Hmmm ...
At this point in history, most every one knows/should know by now, that the US is not run by it's elected president, has not been so since the mid 20th. century (at least, maybe before that).
The US is run by it's most important corporations with the people they put in government offices and important posts, elected or nominated.
They use democracy and the illusion of freedom to get to power while at the same time keeping the idea of the existence of democratic institutions more or less intact, at least in the general public's view.
And if the person put in place as president does not 'get it', the problem gets fixed quick enough.
Take JFK, for example and see how everything in the US started to go the other way within days of LBJ assuming office.
The rest is just a show.
Later on, they make a movie or two.
Cheers,
Resident alien viewpoint:
The Dems have had Hilary in waiting, so there weren't many runners and she's only really had competition from Sanders.
But for the Republicans, the primary system causes a bit of a problem because there's a lot of loud crazies, in the conservative and libertarian wings. It's hard for a moderate voice to be heard in a party where people tend to hold strong, fixed views (contrasted with the more pragmatic Democrats). There were a number of potentially politically-moderate candidates, but in the shouting match Jeb Bush and Kasich were ignored, early-leading-moderate Rubio was destroyed in a debate by Christie, but Christie was being out-loudmouthed by Trump and couldn't get any traction. Kasich outlasted the other moderates, but it was all too late.
"are these candidates seriously the best you can come up with to run your country?"
Nope, they're the best we can get to run for the office.
The previous two centuries are dotted with people (Various governors, statesmen, military types) that were thought to be excellent candidates for President.
Almost unanimously, their reply was, "Nope, no fuckin' way! Do I look like an idiot?"
Seriously, I don't blame Cruz. He was desperate and tried to introduce a game-changer. I'm reminded of Churchill's famous phrase, as he wanted to open a new front in Europe and so 'change the game', 'We intended to land a tiger in Anzio, instead we only beached a whale.'
But what was Fiorina thinking? It's way too early for a VP pick, doing it now was an obvious sign of desperation and Fiorina should have known that. Now she's the woman who...
Got fired from HP for being embarrassingly bad. Lost to Barbara Boxer by a huge margin. Failed to have any impact on the GOP Primaries. Held a VP-slot for a couple of days and produced mass indifference.
Was this ever going to end in anything other than flaming disaster?
Check recent Icelandic history. Since jailing the dodgy bankers they've fallen for another right wing government. For all you know, if you spoke Icelandic you'd probably find out they sounded just like Trump.
There are a few Swiss cantons but they aren't exactly accessible to ordinary people.
Point of information Mr Chairman:
A candidate cannot really have a running mate until they are a presidential candidate.
What Ted Cruz was doing was saying that CF would be his running mate when he got enough delegates to derail the public choice and grab the nomination by insider back-room dealing with the delegates themselves.
The irony here is manyfold, starting with Ted Cruz's insistance that he is not a Washington Insider yet he knows well and good how to steal the nomination from the (bewilderingly dim) people's choice using the inside workings of his party machine.
A good portion of America sees this for what it is: high comedy and desparation.
but mosty UK and Canada.
It will be President HRC, not President Tramp. There are far too many silent, and not so silent, people fully opposed to this fucking retard Tramp and his ill-favored look. Women, Hispanics, Blacks, LGBT community, etc. will be out in FORCE come October, just verifying what I already know. Yes, this is thing I know and will come to pass. That indeed our choice in HRC is not super great, but considering the alternative, we will have a very high voter turnout just to stop this tramp once and for all in November. I'll go out on a limb and say we might get up to 40% turnout. That's my only guess in this post.
The facts are these:
1. It doesn't matter who's the President. The congress, house and other factions produce the changes to our daily life in the USA, not the residing President. The President is almost a useless figurehead and merely helps their own party in some of the power struggles, but overall the message is clear; Whoever becomes the President of the USA will NOT have any real, immediate effect on our daily lives. NONE WHATSOEVER. The voices crying for "Making America <this/that> Again" are outright retarded. America is a very nice country to live in. Not as nice and fair as AUS, in my opinion, but right up there, disregarding those cunts at the NSA/CIA/FBI. I have almost zero after HS education, I think you chaps in the UK call them O-levels, and as far as A-levels go I have none. Get this though; I'm now at a top company doing fantastic work and gained a relatively new title of Devops guy. Telling me this country isn't great is like telling me my ice cream isn't as good as having a rock in a sugar cone. How can a country that "has yet to be great" allow someone like me to succeed, and succeed very well? 100% of those idiots crying about poor conditions did that to themselves. 100%. When you don't read any other book than the bible, expect to have shit jobs and no future in your waste of a life. Period.
B. I've not seen Donald Tramp's Birth Certificate! WHERE OH WHERE IS THIS GUY FROM?! I am wondering this. Let's see some papers, Donny?! Sound familiar? It will when it starts to become a daily talking point on the campaign trail. Again, mark my words, fellow nerds and geeks. I hear his family immigrated here from the fine country of Scotland, but the people of Scotland hate this prick more than I do. Wish we had that "wall" when this fucking prick's family thought it wise to leave Scotland. How did that golf course turn out for Don? No sale? Good. Again, the world already knows this asshole's track record. And that speaks for itself.
3. The Silent Majority. The people you see on TV, doing interviews and "speaking their mind" are all assholes who are out of work and have tons of time on their hands to polish their guns, read some bible quotes, then hit the protest or convention circuit. Personally, why can't these pricks take their guns onto the GOP Convention floor? Let them all shoot each other and solve many problems all at once? To reiterate; the Silent Majority has real work to do, we have jobs, real money to make, and we're not at all concerned one way or the other about who end's up as President of the USA because by all accounts it will be the person who is least evil. Not good, just less evil. Sort of like Google, but less effective in their own business.
4. Donny Tramp isn't a tory. He isn't a republican in the strict sense. He's a part-time republican who claims association when there is some power or money to grab. I've seen this idiot trying to make a name for himself for many, many years. Did you know he wrote an awful book that sold fairly well, but expressed zero new ideas or any relevant info other than to be a vanity book? Did you know he had a custom version of Monopoly built for him? And don't forget that fucking awful reality TV show he was the host of. Never watched 1 second of it, but I'll tell you it sucked to high heaven. This is a fact. ;) And his fucking stupid Tweets, and his insistence on seeing Obama's birth certificate just to cause trouble. Not ever caring for the outcome, just to cause some shit. He was a frequent guest on the very popular Howard Stern radio show from New York. Frequent guest! This isn't a tame show for your football moms, tory dads, and kids to listen to, it's a highly ribald show and as guest Trampy was all in for all sorts of wackiness, not any of which would be considered by a true uptight, conservative, grandpa. Like 99% of the GOP is. This guy is completely abortion friendly and by all accounts he does NOT have a $10B estate, probably not even near $5B. And lest we forget his "table of Tramp Products"; Tramp Water is just a label, Tramp Wine was not even his own brand (their website disavows any relation to him, they just have the same name), Tramp Steaks, purported to be sold from high-end and now out-of-business gadget seller The Sharper Image reported that they sold "almost no Tramp Steaks". Where does the "man" begin and the bullshit end? I can't see "him" from here.
Like I said, I've got better things to do that pay attention to the silly fucking campaign for becoming a leader in the category of Useless Figurehead of the middle of the Continent of America. Anyone who claims that Useless Figurehead is not a suitable description of the real world aspects of this low-paying, high-power job are fucked in the fucking head. Go get some help, if that is your case.
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