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The Trump case – latest YouGov US polling – politicalbetting.com
The Trump case – latest YouGov US polling – politicalbetting.com
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The Trump case – latest YouGov US polling – politicalbetting.com
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You benefited from a stable society while growing up, one that provided an education and (for a while) free bed and board courtesy of Her Majesty. Roads, healthcare, rubbish collection, security, etc.
Now that you are a success don’t you have a moral obligation to pay something towards allowing others to enjoy those advantages?
(I’ve known a few people over the years who have chosen the life style you are talking about. They all end up… desiccated)
Oh, and good luck selecting a jury.
I just wish our taxes were much lower, and the supremely wealthy and big corporates paid their far share, and so I vote accordingly.
With the exception of London and the S.E (plus other highly educated pockets - Edinburgh, East Cheshire etc) the country is full of low paid, low skilled jobs, and many of these at recipients of 'in work benefits'.
So it really doesn't matter a great deal if tax rates go up or down that much in this environment.
Most expensive such contest in history.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/04/04/andrew-bailey-pulls-out-flagship-dinner-as-cbi-reels-rape/
and this is the result of 30 years of addiction to low paid immigration. No need for productivity or innovation we'll just knock money off the wage bill.
In the 90s the UK used to want a high wage high productivity economy but no longer.
New Justice sounds like her decision making process will be "Republican bad, Democrat good".
Still, a £2m ring isn't too shabby.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/04/rupert-murdoch-ann-leslie-smith-engagement-off/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/03/revealed-new-claims-of-sexual-misconduct-and-toxic-culture-at-cbi?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
The death of democracy was Trump’s decision to commit widespread electoral fraud and the Republicans’ decision to back him. Not the Democrats getting uppity about it.
America is very lucky that they proved so incompetent at it. If De Santis who is not incompetent went down the same path, they would be in real trouble.
Thirteen men have appeared in court charged with more than 50 offences as part of an investigation into child sexual exploitation in Bolton.
They are accused of offences against numerous girls, aged between 14 and 17, from 2016 to 2018 in the Blackrod area of Bolton and the nearby village of Adlington.
The men, who range in age from 21 to 34, were arrested as part of Operation Pavarotti, a Greater Manchester police investigation into child sexual exploitation following numerous allegations.
The accused were brought into court in groups of three or four for brief hearings at Bolton magistrates’ court.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bolton-grooming-gang-case-13-men-charged-with-more-than-50-offences-0wv6zlbmv
However, I think you need to check up on your History to see why Trump could do this. The filibuster was abolished for SCOTUS appointments after Mitch McConnell retaliated post-Harry Reid abolishing the filibuster for Cabinet positions and federal judges. McConnell warned at the time that is what would happen if Reid's plans went ahead and it exactly happened that way.
The GOP POTUS would simply expand the court to ensure there was a GOP majority.
And have you got sources for Protasiewicz's decision making process being "Republican bad, Democrat good"?
It was likely the recent Supreme Court Dobbs decision on abortion which swung this race.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/04/five-takeaways-from-liberals-big-election-night-win-in-wisconsin-00090519
...a liberal court is widely expected to knock down an 1840s era abortion ban that’s been on the books and only revived after Roe v. Wade fell last summer...
You comment as though this contest happened in a vacuum. It didn't.
Wisconsin is a state where Biden won the popular vote (by a very slim majority). You'd expect the state government to reflect that.
Instead, Republicans have a supermajority in both state houses; Wisconsin is one if the most heavily gerrymandered states in the US.
So forgive me if I'm unimpressed by your moralising.
That may bugger up Trump's plans if he has to be in NYC during the trial.
ETA Older PBers might remember the GOP Senate refusing even to conduct confirmation hearings for Obama's Supreme Court candidate Merrick Garland.
Prejudging a case based on someone’s political affiliation is wrong. It is troubling that you don’t recognise that
And the Republicans would lap it up...
*This is true incidentally, less because he's an electoral threat than because he's a wannabe dictator.
That just haven’t shared it with you
As to your views, they are mirrored on the opposite side of the fence. Republicans think Democrats are cheats, engage in widespread election fraud (especially in the big cities) and rig the process. Your absolutism is matched by the other side.
You should read 'Why Nations Fail'. One of the key points it says is needed for a successful democracy is that both sides accept defeat. Trump didn't, which is why he is entirely unsuitable as the next candidate. But your views are equally dangerous.
You happily argue tit for tat and justify it. But neither dems or reps have a clean record.
I regret to say this nonsense ends up being imitated back in the UK and if the Sates cant hold the line were all headed down the rabbit hole with them in say 5-10 years time.
When Democrat Tony Evers won election as governor in 2018, Democrats won all four statewide races. They also won 53% of the votes for state assembly — 203,000 more votes than the Republicans did — but because of gerrymandering, the Democrats got just 36% of the seats in the legislature. The Republicans there immediately held a lame duck session and stripped powers from Evers and Democratic attorney general Josh Kaul. Then they passed new laws to restrict voting rights. The legislature went on to block Evers’s appointees and block his legislative priorities, like healthcare, schools, and roads.
Polls showed that voters opposed the lame duck session by a margin of almost 2 to 1, and by 2020, 82% of Wisconsin voters had passed referenda calling for fair district maps.
But when it came time to redistrict after the 2020 census, the Republican-dominated legislature carved up the state into an even more pro-Republican map than it had put into place before. Ultimately, the new maps gave Republicans 63 out of 99 seats in the assembly and 22 out of 23 in the state senate. They came within two assembly seats of having a supermajority that would enable them to override any vetoes by the governor, essentially nullifying him, although Evers had been reelected by 53.5% of the vote – a large margin for Wisconsin.
https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/heather-richardson/republicans-rigged-system-pretense-election-used-hostile-take-wisconsins-democracy/
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/breaking-ten-men-charged-child-26380337
Plenty of calls in the last 48 hours for Republicans to start playing the same game, wrt Biden, the Clintons, and their associates - this sort of thing is traditionally what separates major democracies from third-world dictatorships and theocracies.
The worrying thing is that it’s difficult to see how things get better over there, before they get worse. Potentially a lot worse.
Your maths doesn't seem to add up.
There is a large disparity though nowhere close to your claim) between the candidates, but overall it's closer.
WisPolitics review: Spending in Supreme Court race surpasses $45 million
https://www.wispolitics.com/2023/wispolitics-review-spending-in-supreme-court-race-nears-45-million
...Of that, $$24.4 million has been spent by liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz and the groups backing her. That includes the $2.2 million that the Dem group A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund spent opposing Jennifer Dorow in the four-way primary, a move that insiders saw as a play to help fellow conservative Daniel Kelly advance to the April election.
Meanwhile, more than $19.2 million has been spent backing Kelly or opposing Protasiewicz since the beginning of the race. That number also includes anti-Dorow ads run in the primary by conservative groups...
..The biggest spender on the liberal side beyond Protasiewicz has been A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund. That group has reported nearly $6.2 million in independent expenditures since the race began.
The biggest spenders on the pro-Kelly side have been Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Issues Mobilization Council at $5.8 million, according to a source tracking media buys, and Fair Courts America, which has filed reports detailing nearly $5.2 million in spending...
Hostage message from the Home Office PR people?
That is fine in a football game, it is a horrendous in politics.
I am not as fearful as you re the UK becoming like the US - I think we have checks that the US doesn't (especially on appointment of judges). But this tendency to politicise everything is toxic.
How would you feel if I was to declare that all historians were guilty as charged? As a category they obviously can’t be trusted because they tell stories about the past.
I could equally say that you're urging unilateral surrender for liberals.
Both would be empty rhetoric.
The reason why the Democrats lost so many NY seats was because the NY Supreme Court said the gerrymandering was so extreme by the Democrat supermajority that it threw out their plan and imposed an independent adjudicator that came up with a more balanced split.
If you want an example of even more extreme Democrat gerrymandering, look at Illinois.
Not to say it has happened, just that you don't know that it hasn't.
However, banning parties doesn't usually solve the problem. The real key is to work out what the issues are. And unfortunately for the USA the problems go wider then the Republican Party. Their daft Constitution. The weaknesses of state and federal government. The lawlessness and violence. The antediluvian healthcare system that costs a fortune but is still hopelessly inadequate.
Republicans may think what they like, and clearly do. I am neither a member or a supporter of the Democrats. I am just calling facts. As follows:
1) The Republicans engaged in massive fraud, including but not limited to voter suppression, intimidation, misuse of funds, vexatious court cases and deliberate misstatements on procedure. The Democrats did not.
2) When this failed, they turned to violence to try and overturn an election result. The Democrats did not.
3) They are now trying to block criminal investigations into various matters, including serious criminal actions for personal gain, by their leadership. The Democrats have not.
Now, I'm happy to say that in your simplistic and not so far cited claim that this judge will rule as 'Democrats good, Republicans bad' that means the latter is a statement of fact. It is genuinely alarming if you are so dim you can't see this. But I would advise you if you are genuinely are that stupid not to try to patronise anyone by making false assumptions about what they have or have not read.
If we ever do go down the route of elected prosecutors and judges they should be independent and non-party affiliated.
Good morning PB.
Overall, Illinois does not set off statistical alarms for partisan gerrymandering. Illinois has multiple opportunity-to-elect districts, drawn under the guidance of state law, the Voting Rights Act, and the Constitution.
https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/reforms/IL
If the "adults" in the US cant manage to put the genie back in the bottle then the States is in deep shit and we'll follow them.
I'm still of the view that the Dems can quite happily defeat Trump in a straighforward contest without the judicial jiggery pokery. Maybe they are less sure but then they have to get their act together.
Additional capacity unfortunately takes time, but the current sites are humming
But you are right that without US support Ukraine will be in a very difficult position. That is a fact of life - it’s a strategic weakness that will take years to address so it’s not just a question of “contingency planning”
The only UK case of political prosecution that immediately springs to mind, was the Electoral Commission vs Darren Grimes - which was eventually resolved in the young man’s favour, by an independent judiciary.
Meanwhile, more than $19.2 million has been spent backing Kelly or opposing Protasiewicz since the beginning of the race. That number also includes anti-Dorow ads run in the primary by conservative groups...
as part of Dorow’s total. Suspect a more granular analysis would have a different result
One thing I have to give the coalition is the way they kept raising the thresholds and taking the lowest earners out of tax from 2010 to 2015. Things have slipped in that regard recently.
The snag is, there isn't really another way around it unless judges are appointed independently- but even that isn't really acceptable in a democracy (and there have been enough accusations of political bias in this country anyway).
However, if the Republicans are angry (and their supporters on here clearly are) maybe they should reflect perhaps it wasn't the smartest idea to put perjured ideologues on the Supreme Court to start with. Or to jerrymander the state legislature of Wisconsin almost as badly as the city of Londonderry was in the 1960s. Or to try and stage a violent coup in a presidential election.
Sure, we could talk about the mistakes the Democrats have made too. The protests after Clinton's defeat, or Gore's manoeuvres in 2000, both spring to mind without much trouble. They were not wise. They did set American democracy on a dark and unfortunate path which we are seeing the culmination of. But these had been seen before - e.g. in the compromise of 1877, or the States Rights split of 1948 - and did not lead to what's happened now. Nobody forced the Republicans to travel it further.
I don't see too many good outcomes here for America. Which is bad news for us given its economic and strategic importance (read - vital) for the world.
1. Good for being honest and saying a ban would be acceptable.
2. Re your facts, as I stated, the other side would claim the same. Romney in 2012 considered fighting Obama's win because his team believed the Democrats had committed fraud in major cities that swung the vote but decided not to because of the ramifications (Nixon ditto in 1960),
3. There are many types of coup ('A Very British Coup' sums this up). I would argue one candidate paying for false material to be dug about the other, using that false information to persuade a domestic intelligence agency to get a court order to wire tap the opposing candidate and then making claims that their election victory was illegitimate due to the 'massive' electoral interference from a hostile power was another type of attempted coup.
4. I am stupid, as I take Socrates' maxim that we are all stupid as we cannot know everything and cannot be right on everything. One thing I can recognise though is an arrogant prick who bathes in their own self-righteousness.
The reality is that even if Europe increased its spending to the agreed levels (as it should) the US spending on technologically advanced kit is vast. So European countries face a choice between a complementary but not a standalone capability (the route the UK is going) or a more generic but less impactful approach (Germany and France).
I’m not convinced that the UK approach is “freeloading” but it does assume/require US alignment
3) That was fiction. I'm talking facts.
4) Kudos to you for admitting it, but I do love the irony of your last sentence. Was it intentional?
It is hardly fair, but what do people expect if they vote for them.
I pointed out that to do that she would have to sleep with him.
She thought hard and agreed no money was worth that...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/15/us/politics/illinois-democrats-gerrymander.html
Wisconsin is a state where the minority have imposed their will on the majority by tampering with democracy to a sufficient extent to give themselves nearly two thirds of the seats in the state legislature on just under half of the popular vote.
You're effectively saying the the Democrats should just be good sports about that.
And if the Presidential election comes down to Wisconsin (entirely possible), the only thing stopping the state legislature from appointing state electors in defiance of the popular vote might be the State Supreme Court.
Though Republicans have a possible run around that, too, with the so called "independent state legislature" theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_state_legislature_theory
...The independent state legislature theory or independent state legislature doctrine (ISL) posits that the Constitution of the United States delegates authority to regulate federal elections within a state to that state's elected lawmakers without any checks and balances from state courts, governors, or other bodies with legislative power...
That all said, I do think the difference between a Democrat and a Republican in the White House, will be one of semantics more than action.
Biden will stand up proudly and say “Here I give $50bn in military aid to Ukraine”
Trump will stand up proudly and say. “Here I announce $50bn of new weapons systems to protect our great country, securing 100,000 skilled jobs, and showing to the world how great is America. Meanwhile, the old, obsolete systems that these great new weapons replace, will be given to our closest NATO allies. We will also spend $1bn on new ammunition for these old systems”.
But the actual differences, not a lot.
It's not their fault that the British electorate couldn't give two hoots about them and turnout is low teens.
But that wasn’t Trump’s point - he was focused on aggregate spending and ammunition stocks don’t move the dial
Any comparison with Wisconsin is more than a stretch.
And this coming from the poster who thinks it is entirely acceptable to outlaw one of the two major political parties in the United States.
Now go off and polish your jackboots. Make sure you trim that toothbrush moustache of yours as well.
Fortunately, it's also not very effective, but that could easily change.
Would banning the Republicans as suggested by KitchenCabinet be the answer? Possibly - even probably - not. That organisation might transfer to a new party, as the old FreeSoil movement did to the Republicans.
And it certainly wouldn't deal with the many other problems unless during the temporary eclipse of the right the Democrats were able to at least host a constitutional convention, which (a) seems unlikely given their starry-eyed love of the constitution and (b) might not be the best outcome anyway given they are also highly partisan.
Realistically the one chance for America is that a candidate who isn't mad like Trump, malign like De Santis or compromised like Pence emerges as the Republican candidate, wins, takes on the base and then wins that battle too. Trouble is, I can't see who that might be. Haley could do the second part but has little chance of winning the nomination.
Which means - it's headed a dark way.
By the way - what was your source for the false claim about election spending? Or indeed, for 'Republicans bad, Democrats good?'