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I just saw an article saying that China is trying to interfere with the election to help Biden, and Russia is trying to interfere to help Trump. I’m skeptical, for a couple of reasons, but wouldn’t completely rule it out.
First of all, I tend not to believe anything that starts “U.S. intelligence says…” because we know that they just lie all the damned time, and for the most part aren’t even intelligence agencies, just propaganda agencies. If they just paid a bit more attention to information that’s publicly available on the internet, they’d probably have a better idea of what’s going on than they get by relying on their network of inept spies.

According to NPR: William Evanina, who leads the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said that the U.S. government has assessed that China prefers President Trump losing the election, because Beijing considers him unpredictable, while Russia is working to undermine Democrat Joe Biden.

“Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters’ preferences and perspectives, shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people’s confidence in our democratic process,” he said.
However, he goes on to admit that he’s seen no actual evidence of that. So, he’s just guessing.
I suppose it is possible, although Russia and China (like the U.S. and every other country) also have domestic issues to worry about, which probably preoccupies most of their attention.
The U.S. is actually the nation most likely to interfere in another nation’s electoral process. (see Bolivia, just for the most recent example)
In any event, the governments of Russia and China at the moment, as well as most of the American people, are probably watching these elections and saying “What the actual fuck is going on here?” You have two mentally challenged, clearly incompetent individuals, competing to be the most powerful man on Earth, and either one will be a disaster. Russia and China, most probably, are just watching in amazement as America collapses.
I doubt they’re lifting a finger because they don’t actually need to.

The problem with a dumb statement like “The Black Community isn’t diverse like the Latino community” is that it gets people talking about it and they forget that two days ago he called a reporter a junkie (except he pronounced it ‘joney’ and he also had a great deal of difficulty with the word ‘fitness’) as he was busy dodging a question about why he wouldn’t take a simple Alzheimer’s test which Trump has already taken, and that in turn shifts attention away from that time he said “If you don’t vote for me, you ain’t Black” which in turn shifts attention away from the time he forgot the word ‘constitution,’ which in turn shifts attention away from the time he talked about how much little black kids loved touching his hairy legs and how he just loves kids sitting on his lap.
It’s a Trump thing, as long as people are talking about the dumb thing you said yesterday, they stop talking about the dumb thing you said two days ago.
Now, the weird thing is, I know what he meant when he said the Latino community is more diverse than the black community. They come from different nations, speak Spanish with different accents, and don’t think of each other as all belonging to the same culture.
But, it was a godawful stupid thing to say, there was no real reason for it, and I’m enjoying watching him flounder.

Yesterday Helena drove Isabel out to a lake where she’ll be spending a few days with her friend and her friend’s family, and Sam was working, so I had the flat largely to myself which, of course, meant Netflix binge day.
I watched three films, one by plan (Enemy at the Gates) and the other two on a whim, just because they popped up on the screen and I was curious, and then the 1st episode of season 2 of the Umbrella Academy, which I’ll give a chance but I suspect it may have already jumped the shark and this might be as bad as season 2 of Stranger Things.
Enemy at the Gates was a good movie. I think it might have been even better if it had been made in Russian, with Russian actors, for added realism, but that’s O.K. It was Hollywood, it was not a documentary. If you like war movies, and have nothing else better to do, and haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth watching. Otherwise, it’s not. No new ground broken, no historical views changed. War is hell, but watching it is fun. We are a horrible species.
Star Trek, the one with Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto which is just called Star Trek, which I think is pretty darned arrogant considering that none of the other Star Trek movies dispensed with a subtitle, not even the very first one, which was at least Star Trek: the Motion Picture.
Believe it or not, I hadn’t seen this one, although I enjoyed ‘Into the Darkness’ very much. And I still haven’t seen the last one.
It was a great film and I think Chris Pine makes a far better Captain Kirk than Shatner ever did. I also like Zachary Quinto’s version of Spock. Not that I think he’s a better actor than Nimoy. I think the part was better written. He’s far more developed. Not just a sidekick. Like most things Star Trek, I give it multiple thumbs up, as much as the timeline will allow.
The third film just popped up on my Netflix feed and I figured “eh, what the hell.” It was a Seth Rogen thing, and I’m not a big fan of Seth Rogen. He’s sort of like today’s version of Woody Allen and not in the best way, but in the way of “total loser dude hooks up with girl who’s way out of his league and this could only possibly happen because he wrote the movie,” and that’s exactly what happened here. Charlize Theron played the Secretary of State and presidential candidate who fell for him. But, it did have some good laughs, some attempts at social commentary which weren’t more over the top than other films of this genre, and Bob Odenkirk (best known as Jimmy McGill) was funny as the totally clueless president. I’m still not a Seth Rogen fan, but the scene where he gets her stoned and then she has to negotiate a hostage release was pretty comical, in a Cheech and Chong sort of way. On a scale of 10, I’ll give it a 6.5.

The vbnmw people’s argument for voting for Biden hasn’t changed, it is still, and always, and only ‘he’s not Trump.’ We pressed them to come up with a single argument why we should actually vote for Biden and not just against Trump, on many threads, and I’ve never yet seen one of them come up with a good answer. For a while, a lot of them were saying ‘the Supreme Court,’ but I haven’t actually seen that one for a while, maybe because they got tired of the way every time they said it, one of us irritating little Berniebots would remind them of how Biden was chairman of Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings, with all the Long Dong Silver and pubic hair on a Coke can jokes, and so he’s not only O.K. with being shitty to women, he’s not real likely to give us a liberal Supreme Court, either.
Now, when I say I’m voting Green and have my sights set on 2024, a lot of them are saying “You have to vote for Trump, or there might not BE an America in 2024,” which is hyperbolic nonsense.
We are 75 years after the end of WWII, yet Germany and Japan continue to exist. The Black Plague reduced Europe’s population by about 25%, but there is still a Europe. Rome was weakened by corrupt, mentally incompetent emperors, sacked by the Huns, and a whole bunch of other shit, but there is still a Rome.
The central swathe of North America is not going to sink into the ocean. If they mean that America as a democratic nation, a beacon unto the world, a land of hope and optimism will be finished after 4 more years of Trump, then I think they are deluded as to what America is. That boat sailed long ago. The Statue of Liberty no longer lifts a lamp beside the golden door, because most Americans are pants shitting scared of people who were born in other countries. It is no longer the land of the free OR the home of the brave. It is no longer a place (if it ever was)where everybody’s vote counts, where the best man (or woman) wins.
The 2020 elections are over. The bad guys won another round. America will continue to exist, but it will be a long time, if ever, before it regains the reputation it once had.
I’m voting Green because, even though I know it’s happening, I don’t have to accept it.

I don’t often do these Facebook name games, but I was bored this morning so I did. I’m not too worried about Facebook harvesting my information because they do that anyway and I just don’t put any of the bad stuff on Facebook, so we’re cool.
It reminds me a bit of a pub outside of which we used to smoke pot, which we’d bought in the pub, in the men’s room. I imagine the ladies’ room worked much the same. Anyway, there were cameras out there, we all knew exactly where they were, but we also knew that it was accepted as a smoking pub and the cops weren’t going to bother us.
Anyway, that wasn’t my point. These games just chug out some random shit which clearly shows they know nothing about your personality. I’ve seen astrology columns which came closer to understanding me. It’s all in good fun, I suppose.
I don’t mind being placed in Ravenclaw, that would actually be my first choice, and the only reason Hermione wasn’t in Ravenclaw was because that would have complicated the plot too much. And I’m pretty happy with Luna Lovegood as a BFF, but Draco Malfoy as my soulmate? Voldemort as my life coach? A cat as my Patronus? (I don’t hate cats, and don’t intend to insult cat people, but there are a lot of animals which would make a better Patronus for me. Not a cat person, at all)
It’s totally random. My point is, Facebook could be doing so much better – or so much worse, I suppose, as the downside to it is pretty clear. But if they were really analyzing our information, checking our posts and comments for content, seeing who we associate with, where we travel and what we do, what music we listen to and films we like, instead of just counting clicks with their terribly underused algorithms, they really could have a clear and frighteningly insightful psychological profile of everyone who uses their service.
I suppose we can all be grateful that Mark Zuckerberg is simply a computer geek without any real understanding of the latent power of this monster he has unleashed upon the Earth.