Best Of

Issues in the US election: Few Democrats had anything to say about the problem of synthetic opioids. That's understandable, because so many Democrats in big cities are of the "tune in, turn on" persuasion.

But synthetic opioids are our biggest public health problem, and the main reason US life expectancy began to decline in the last year or two of the Obama administration.

Opioids are a much bigger problem in the USA than other western countries. I wonder why that is.

The American Pain Foundation: which was a "not for profit" entirely funded by US pharmaceutical companies that produced research and pressured doctors to prescribe more opiates.

There are - I'm sure - "charities" that are net negatives to the sum of human happiness. But I doubt many come close to the American Pain Foundation for evil inflicted on the world.

Every few months, a poster breathlessly comments about NEW AND IMPORTANT INFORMATION about ALIENS or UFOs.

And a couple of other posters (usually the same ones...) chime in about how it's going to be the BIGGEST WORLD-CHANGING NEWS!!!!

And every time, the information that was so important turns out to be a nothingburger.

Rather than being such a smug know it all, you should open your mind and go and read last year’s Schumer-Rounds amendment, written by the office of the Senate Majority Leader (so implicitly endorsed by the Biden White House) and sponsored and passed on a bipartisan basis, with the approval of Senate Gang of 8 leaders.

They are privy to much that we are not and thought it a priority to try and pass what must count as the most bizarre bill in US democratic history. Why? Then watch Schumer’s speech on the floor after Mike Turner and Mike Rogers killed it in House Committee, for confirmation of how high passions ran.

There is more than one answer to the question of wtf is going but it amazes me how unfascinated you are by the question. If the accusation was an equivalently sized criminal conspiracy in govt about any other area of public policy I suspect your interest level would differ.

I think part of the reason is that it has become an article of faith that UAP/UFO issues are for crazies, and that that cultural framing is very hard to overcome, particularly in a very often statistically-focused community like PB.

But recent political developments on UAP's, with the level of senior admissions of uncertainty, don't bear this out; this simply has yet to filter through to most of the media or wider public, though, because the social stigma on it, and worry of mockery, is still strong.

Get back to us when there's an Identified Flying Object.

https://x.com/campbellclaret/status/1856357133299671371


ALASTAIR CAMPBELL
@campbellclaret
Nothing I have seen or heard about the Smyth case has changed my view that
@JustinWelby
is a good man with a good heart, strong values and a commitment to public service. He was assured the police and other authorities were properly on the case. Yes, as he admits, he could have been more curious and checked in with exactly what was being done. He has apologised and I think many reasonable people will accept that. However he has chosen what all too few public figures do these days which is accept institutional responsibility. Ps for some reason I am getting calls from journalists who have been told I am handling his PR. I am not. I suspect that is being put around by those ultra conservative forces who have long wanted him gone, and who are aware that I see him from time to time.

That would have been a thoughtful and compassionate post except for the last line...

Alistair Campbell is a lying scumbag who has a problem coming to terms with the fact that people think he is a lying scumbag. People think that because he is proven, lying, scumbag.

And now he pops up to defend someone who tried to overrule and obfuscate….

We've actually had complaints from a number of lying scumbags about how unfair it is that they're grouped together with Alastair Campbell.

"Trump gained support from every racial group except white people, where he lost one percentage point when compared to 2020. You're going to chalk that up to racism?"

https://samharris.substack.com/p/the-reckoning

The Sam Harris piece is good, in particular his comment "everyone is in danger of believing that their pet issue explains everything that happened on Tuesday". Advice which he then goes on to ignore...

There's an old saying the success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.

Reality is very different. Look at almost any disaster (like the the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill): there wasn't one thing that went wrong, there many things that contributed. We all love simple explanations, [x] because of [y], but the reality is that many things contributed to the Democrats loss:

1. Economics / inflation
2. Border chaos
3. Identity politics
4. Biden's obvious infirmity (and who knew what when)
5. The lack of a clear message (other than Not Trump) for what the Democrats stood for
6. The Republicans generally better campaign
7. Fear of Trans
8. Harris being an average candidate (with the proviso that I think Newsom would have been worse)

Of these, I suspect that the first is the biggest issue (and I find it astonishing that since the 2022 Hungarian election, I can't find a single incumbent government that has gained votes), but they all played a role.

The actual Dem campaign as opposed to the version being constructed by all the aftertimers.

The Serfs (youtube.com/theserftimes)
@theserfstv
"If what you want is a centrist campaign that's quiet on trans issues, tough on the border, distances itself from Palestinians, talks a lot about law and order, and reaches out to moderate Republicans, that candidate existed and she just lost"
~John Oliver on dems moving right
1:13 am · 12 Nov 2024

https://x.com/theserfstv/status/1856143282998284697

So we should disregard everything someone says or does before the official election campaign begins?

Harris wasn't "quiet on trans issues". She bragged about changing the policy in California to fund gender reassignment surgery for prisoners and illegal immigrants in detention and previously said that she would use her executive authority as president to do the same for federal prisoners and detainees.

.

The actual Dem campaign as opposed to the version being constructed by all the aftertimers.

The Serfs (youtube.com/theserftimes)
@theserfstv
"If what you want is a centrist campaign that's quiet on trans issues, tough on the border, distances itself from Palestinians, talks a lot about law and order, and reaches out to moderate Republicans, that candidate existed and she just lost"
~John Oliver on dems moving right
1:13 am · 12 Nov 2024

https://x.com/theserfstv/status/1856143282998284697

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56516332

US President Joe Biden has put Vice-President Kamala Harris in charge of controlling migration at the southern border following a big influx of new arrivals.

Mr Biden said he was giving her a "tough job" but that she was "the most qualified person to do it".

And the Harris campaign was about what would be, not what has gone. The Dems were certainly promising to be tough on the border for all the good it did them.

You can't run on that as the incumbent party lol.

As the Tories found to their cost earlier this year.