AP (via Seattle Times) - Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election
ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”
Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.
“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.
I suspect everyone they wish to use against Trump will be offered (and accept) a plea bargain.
Leaving the final case to be all the original defendants offering evidence against Trump and Rudy...
Yet he is still the 2.9 fav for the WH. That price, for me, is one of the wonders of the world. I can sit looking at it for hours.
What can actually damage Trump electorally though? His supporters treat him as a god, and the independents dont like Biden or the direction of the country.
The only shifts I expect are for swing voters based on the economy and household finances, which could go either way. The rest is noise.
I'm taking a different view. I think it's not tenable (even in this crazy world) to have as a candidate for US president a guy who is likely going down for election fraud and racketeering, and I think this will dawn on enough people (and in time) such that come November he won't be on the ballot. I realize I'm almost alone on here with this but that's all the better so long as I'm right. And I really am confident about it. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. We will see. The next year will be fascinating.
So no specific event? Just a general feeling of had enough?
Maybe an event. Or maybe that thing whereby something absurd (in this case Donald Trump back in the White House) finally starts to look absurd to a critical mass of people and then, kaboom, things change quite quickly. It can appear sudden even though it's been building for a while. I have a couple of mental images: emperor's new clothes, and the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a while stays in mid air, legs pumping, defying gravity before he succumbs to reality and falls. That's Trump for me, one of those.
There are lots of examples of unstable equilibriums, where things move quite quickly. If (a) a non-Trump figure were to emerge as the clear challenger, at the same time as (b) serious doubts being thrown onto Mr Trump's electability in the General, then yes, I could see someone else becoming the Republican nominee.
Right now, however, neither of those has happened.
I would suggest that Trumps tactics make (a) stable. As soon as anyone gets above 10% he calls them a rino and their popularity plateaus or dips encouraging those on 5% to keep carrying on.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Absolutely! The problem is that Dave didn't want to be seen as mincing European romantic and enrage the tough guys on the British Right, who only ever responded to the prospect of a scrap. Cold, hard-nosed economics was his only option; anything else was insufficiently butch.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
The remain campaign was: They're right: Europe is terrible but Britain is too wee, too poor, too stupid. Nothing positive about the EU.
It was a dreadful campaign. So negative and dismal
It should have been self confident and even exuberant, as I say
But they were hamstrung by the fact they’d spent 40 years conveniently blaming everything bad on the EU without ever actually offering us a choice on it via a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht etc
They presumably felt they couldn’t suddenly turn around and say Yeah actually the EU is great
Twats. The europhiles destroyed themselves with four decades of corrosive hypocrisy
The British people who love the EU the most would be appalled by the suggestion that Europeans are more civilised than the rest of the world.
They might be appalled to hear it said out loud, but it captures their sentiments exactly.
If they’d said it out loud I might have voted for them. Because it is patently true
With the possible exception of Japan, a few tiny pockets of East Asia and the USA, and maybe Anglophone outliers like Oz, then Europe is the most civilized place on earth, and certainly the most beautiful
AP (via Seattle Times) - Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election
ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”
Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.
“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.
I suspect everyone they wish to use against Trump will be offered (and accept) a plea bargain.
Leaving the final case to be all the original defendants offering evidence against Trump and Rudy...
Yet he is still the 2.9 fav for the WH. That price, for me, is one of the wonders of the world. I can sit looking at it for hours.
What can actually damage Trump electorally though? His supporters treat him as a god, and the independents dont like Biden or the direction of the country.
The only shifts I expect are for swing voters based on the economy and household finances, which could go either way. The rest is noise.
I'm taking a different view. I think it's not tenable (even in this crazy world) to have as a candidate for US president a guy who is likely going down for election fraud and racketeering, and I think this will dawn on enough people (and in time) such that come November he won't be on the ballot. I realize I'm almost alone on here with this but that's all the better so long as I'm right. And I really am confident about it. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. We will see. The next year will be fascinating.
So no specific event? Just a general feeling of had enough?
Maybe an event. Or maybe that thing whereby something absurd (in this case Donald Trump back in the White House) finally starts to look absurd to a critical mass of people and then, kaboom, things change quite quickly. It can appear sudden even though it's been building for a while. I have a couple of mental images: emperor's new clothes, and the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a while stays in mid air, legs pumping, defying gravity before he succumbs to reality and falls. That's Trump for me, one of those.
There are lots of examples of unstable equilibriums, where things move quite quickly. If (a) a non-Trump figure were to emerge as the clear challenger, at the same time as (b) serious doubts being thrown onto Mr Trump's electability in the General, then yes, I could see someone else becoming the Republican nominee.
Right now, however, neither of those has happened.
I would suggest that Trumps tactics make (a) stable. As soon as anyone gets above 10% he calls them a rino and their popularity plateaus or dips encouraging those on 5% to keep carrying on.
While he does do that, he is not all powerful. Other people have agency, and it is far from impossible that Ms Haley - for example - manages to separate herself from the pack.
He is close to all powerful within the world of the Republican nominee. If Republican congressmen had agency he would have been impeached and in prison by now. It is the Trump party.
Yes it is all theoretically possible but feels closer to just theoretically possible than even plausible to me.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
AP (via Seattle Times) - Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election
ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”
Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.
“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.
I suspect everyone they wish to use against Trump will be offered (and accept) a plea bargain.
Leaving the final case to be all the original defendants offering evidence against Trump and Rudy...
Yet he is still the 2.9 fav for the WH. That price, for me, is one of the wonders of the world. I can sit looking at it for hours.
What can actually damage Trump electorally though? His supporters treat him as a god, and the independents dont like Biden or the direction of the country.
The only shifts I expect are for swing voters based on the economy and household finances, which could go either way. The rest is noise.
I'm taking a different view. I think it's not tenable (even in this crazy world) to have as a candidate for US president a guy who is likely going down for election fraud and racketeering, and I think this will dawn on enough people (and in time) such that come November he won't be on the ballot. I realize I'm almost alone on here with this but that's all the better so long as I'm right. And I really am confident about it. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. We will see. The next year will be fascinating.
So no specific event? Just a general feeling of had enough?
Maybe an event. Or maybe that thing whereby something absurd (in this case Donald Trump back in the White House) finally starts to look absurd to a critical mass of people and then, kaboom, things change quite quickly. It can appear sudden even though it's been building for a while. I have a couple of mental images: emperor's new clothes, and the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a while stays in mid air, legs pumping, defying gravity before he succumbs to reality and falls. That's Trump for me, one of those.
There are lots of examples of unstable equilibriums, where things move quite quickly. If (a) a non-Trump figure were to emerge as the clear challenger, at the same time as (b) serious doubts being thrown onto Mr Trump's electability in the General, then yes, I could see someone else becoming the Republican nominee.
Right now, however, neither of those has happened.
I would suggest that Trumps tactics make (a) stable. As soon as anyone gets above 10% he calls them a rino and their popularity plateaus or dips encouraging those on 5% to keep carrying on.
While he does do that, he is not all powerful. Other people have agency, and it is far from impossible that Ms Haley - for example - manages to separate herself from the pack.
His greatest pillar of support is of course Biden. Given the Democrats seem keen on wheeling him out again (possibly literally) then Trump has to be a favourite in the rematch.
Trump as a president wasn't the disaster we imagined, and no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time. What he does though is totally undermine the whole apparatus of state in the US. (Biden is guilty of this too)
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
The remain campaign was: They're right: Europe is terrible but Britain is too wee, too poor, too stupid. Nothing positive about the EU.
It was a dreadful campaign. So negative and dismal
It should have been self confident and even exuberant, as I say
But they were hamstrung by the fact they’d spent 40 years conveniently blaming everything bad on the EU without ever actually offering us a choice on it via a referendum on Lisbon or Maastricht etc
They presumably felt they couldn’t suddenly turn around and say Yeah actually the EU is great
Twats. The europhiles destroyed themselves with four decades of corrosive hypocrisy
The British people who love the EU the most would be appalled by the suggestion that Europeans are more civilised than the rest of the world.
I don't want to be in a party where the leader of the party, Keir Starmer is a Zionist who hates Muslims and openly supports Israeli genocide against Palestinians. He allowed a Shadow Minister to attend and speak at a pro Israel rally but all MPs, Elected Members and ordinary members were banned from attending pro Palastinian rallies. As a Muslim I will never again vote Labour and I will do my very best to encourage other Muslims not to vote Labour or Conservative either.
I have been a lifelong Labour supporter and a Trade unionist and a former Branch Secretary. The time has now come where Muslim voters up and down the country need to find alternative solutions to just blindly voting Labour just because it was the thing to do. I hope and pray that all those gutless Muslim MPs up and down the country who chose not to resign lose their seats in the upcoming General Election.
I would also like a pro rata refund of my membership fee please.
Thank you for the opportunity to make my feelings clear on the very important matter of the freedom of Palestine. Its quite clear to me that Mr Starmer and Mr Sunak are two sides of the same coin when it comes to murdering Palestinians in the guise of Israel having the right to defend itself yet Palestinians have not had any rights for the past 75 years.
There must be a reasonable amount of seats where the Muslim vote could be critical for labour if there is a drift away from them due to their pro Israeli stance. 20 or 30.
I don't know how many of these there are, but the votes Labour loses are not going to the Tories, and I suspect most of them are Labour strongholds. If some sort of Hizb ut-Tahrir party were to make headway and win seats it will be a different story.
Importantly, if Labour took the position our Bolton brother wanted them to take, several million centrist votes (and mine) would become available to other parties. Centrists of all shades would do well to rally behind Sir K who, along with his shadow cabinet, are in an impossibly difficult position; but our country needs at least one party that is non-populist, electable and centrist.
Even now I would grit my teeth and vote Tory if Labour was led by Corbyn.
AP (via Seattle Times) - Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election
ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”
Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.
“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.
I suspect everyone they wish to use against Trump will be offered (and accept) a plea bargain.
Leaving the final case to be all the original defendants offering evidence against Trump and Rudy...
Yet he is still the 2.9 fav for the WH. That price, for me, is one of the wonders of the world. I can sit looking at it for hours.
What can actually damage Trump electorally though? His supporters treat him as a god, and the independents dont like Biden or the direction of the country.
The only shifts I expect are for swing voters based on the economy and household finances, which could go either way. The rest is noise.
I'm taking a different view. I think it's not tenable (even in this crazy world) to have as a candidate for US president a guy who is likely going down for election fraud and racketeering, and I think this will dawn on enough people (and in time) such that come November he won't be on the ballot. I realize I'm almost alone on here with this but that's all the better so long as I'm right. And I really am confident about it. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. We will see. The next year will be fascinating.
So no specific event? Just a general feeling of had enough?
Maybe an event. Or maybe that thing whereby something absurd (in this case Donald Trump back in the White House) finally starts to look absurd to a critical mass of people and then, kaboom, things change quite quickly. It can appear sudden even though it's been building for a while. I have a couple of mental images: emperor's new clothes, and the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a while stays in mid air, legs pumping, defying gravity before he succumbs to reality and falls. That's Trump for me, one of those.
There are lots of examples of unstable equilibriums, where things move quite quickly. If (a) a non-Trump figure were to emerge as the clear challenger, at the same time as (b) serious doubts being thrown onto Mr Trump's electability in the General, then yes, I could see someone else becoming the Republican nominee.
Right now, however, neither of those has happened.
Yes that's what I'm expecting. And I think (b) will produce (a).
AP (via Seattle Times) - Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election
ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”
Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.
“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.
I suspect everyone they wish to use against Trump will be offered (and accept) a plea bargain.
Leaving the final case to be all the original defendants offering evidence against Trump and Rudy...
Yet he is still the 2.9 fav for the WH. That price, for me, is one of the wonders of the world. I can sit looking at it for hours.
What can actually damage Trump electorally though? His supporters treat him as a god, and the independents dont like Biden or the direction of the country.
The only shifts I expect are for swing voters based on the economy and household finances, which could go either way. The rest is noise.
I'm taking a different view. I think it's not tenable (even in this crazy world) to have as a candidate for US president a guy who is likely going down for election fraud and racketeering, and I think this will dawn on enough people (and in time) such that come November he won't be on the ballot. I realize I'm almost alone on here with this but that's all the better so long as I'm right. And I really am confident about it. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. We will see. The next year will be fascinating.
So no specific event? Just a general feeling of had enough?
Maybe an event. Or maybe that thing whereby something absurd (in this case Donald Trump back in the White House) finally starts to look absurd to a critical mass of people and then, kaboom, things change quite quickly. It can appear sudden even though it's been building for a while. I have a couple of mental images: emperor's new clothes, and the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a while stays in mid air, legs pumping, defying gravity before he succumbs to reality and falls. That's Trump for me, one of those.
There are lots of examples of unstable equilibriums, where things move quite quickly. If (a) a non-Trump figure were to emerge as the clear challenger, at the same time as (b) serious doubts being thrown onto Mr Trump's electability in the General, then yes, I could see someone else becoming the Republican nominee.
Right now, however, neither of those has happened.
I would suggest that Trumps tactics make (a) stable. As soon as anyone gets above 10% he calls them a rino and their popularity plateaus or dips encouraging those on 5% to keep carrying on.
While he does do that, he is not all powerful. Other people have agency, and it is far from impossible that Ms Haley - for example - manages to separate herself from the pack.
His greatest pillar of support is of course Biden. Given the Democrats seem keen on wheeling him out again (possibly literally) then Trump has to be a favourite in the rematch.
Trump as a president wasn't the disaster we imagined, and no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time. What he does though is totally undermine the whole apparatus of state in the US. (Biden is guilty of this too)
I don't know that 'no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time' can be true, given the second paragraph. If someone undermines the apparatus of state, then that is a disaster.
It is true that life did not end for the four years of his presidency, he did many things that plenty hated but were within the range of, well, political preference. But there's no getting away from the fact that he helped instigate an attempt to violently keep him in power, despite all his legal challenges having been thrown out. That is a line crossing that completely transforms what might be overdone concern about what his day to day policies will be, to what he will do when he does not have the people who worked for him last time who stood up to him at the final moment. If Pence, or the White House Counsel and the DOJ, if the members of congress who were willing to finally say no to him are not there next time, what might he do then?
I don't want to be in a party where the leader of the party, Keir Starmer is a Zionist who hates Muslims and openly supports Israeli genocide against Palestinians. He allowed a Shadow Minister to attend and speak at a pro Israel rally but all MPs, Elected Members and ordinary members were banned from attending pro Palastinian rallies. As a Muslim I will never again vote Labour and I will do my very best to encourage other Muslims not to vote Labour or Conservative either.
I have been a lifelong Labour supporter and a Trade unionist and a former Branch Secretary. The time has now come where Muslim voters up and down the country need to find alternative solutions to just blindly voting Labour just because it was the thing to do. I hope and pray that all those gutless Muslim MPs up and down the country who chose not to resign lose their seats in the upcoming General Election.
I would also like a pro rata refund of my membership fee please.
Thank you for the opportunity to make my feelings clear on the very important matter of the freedom of Palestine. Its quite clear to me that Mr Starmer and Mr Sunak are two sides of the same coin when it comes to murdering Palestinians in the guise of Israel having the right to defend itself yet Palestinians have not had any rights for the past 75 years.
There must be a reasonable amount of seats where the Muslim vote could be critical for labour if there is a drift away from them due to their pro Israeli stance. 20 or 30.
I don't know how many of these there are, but the votes Labour loses are not going to the Tories, and I suspect most of them are Labour strongholds. If some sort of Hizb ut-Tahrir party were to make headway and win seats it will be a different story.
Importantly, if Labour took the position our Bolton brother wanted them to take, several million centrist votes (and mine) would become available to other parties. Centrists of all shades would do well to rally behind Sir K who, along with his shadow cabinet, are in an impossibly difficult position; but our country needs at least one party that is non-populist, electable and centrist.
Even now I would grit my teeth and vote Tory if Labour was led by Corbyn.
Saying the quiet part out loud if the first objection to Keir Starmer is being 'a Zionist' (i.e. believing Israel has a right to exist and shouldn't be ethnically cleansed).
It is just over a week since my GP sent me directly to A & E where I spent an uncomfortable overnighter before seeing the A & E doctor who immediately admitted me with a suspected substantial DVT which was confirmed by an ultrasound scan
The hospital team have been wonderful and caring, and I have my own dedicated nurse if required. I understand I am on a six month treatment plan and may need blood thinners indefinitely.
Coupled with some other health issues, and my dear wife catching a really bad dose of covid, notwithstanding our 7th vaccination on the 2nd October these events have had a sobering effect on myself and my family
I simply have lost interest in the day to day arguments in politics and to be honest see no way back for the conservatives who have self destructed and in my opinion handed Sunak the short straw which he has obviously struggled with
I wish Starmer and labour well but they have a extraordinary task, indeed even an impossible task, facing them but the demand for change is overwhelming
I have popped in and out of the forum and enjoyed the vast topics discussed, including how to cook rice, and the more somber Israel war and will continue to do so but maybe not contribute as much as I used to
PB must be cherished by everyone using it as it is an exceptional discussion forum, even though some get over overexcited, and it is a great credit to those responsible for it
I did want to provide an update as I am still here, and fighting against the grim reaper
And as an aside my son and his colleagues feature in a rescue by Llandudno RNLI on Thursday on BBC2 saving lives at sea documentary
AP (via Seattle Times) - Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election
ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”
Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.
“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.
I suspect everyone they wish to use against Trump will be offered (and accept) a plea bargain.
Leaving the final case to be all the original defendants offering evidence against Trump and Rudy...
Yet he is still the 2.9 fav for the WH. That price, for me, is one of the wonders of the world. I can sit looking at it for hours.
What can actually damage Trump electorally though? His supporters treat him as a god, and the independents dont like Biden or the direction of the country.
The only shifts I expect are for swing voters based on the economy and household finances, which could go either way. The rest is noise.
I'm taking a different view. I think it's not tenable (even in this crazy world) to have as a candidate for US president a guy who is likely going down for election fraud and racketeering, and I think this will dawn on enough people (and in time) such that come November he won't be on the ballot. I realize I'm almost alone on here with this but that's all the better so long as I'm right. And I really am confident about it. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. We will see. The next year will be fascinating.
So no specific event? Just a general feeling of had enough?
Maybe an event. Or maybe that thing whereby something absurd (in this case Donald Trump back in the White House) finally starts to look absurd to a critical mass of people and then, kaboom, things change quite quickly. It can appear sudden even though it's been building for a while. I have a couple of mental images: emperor's new clothes, and the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a while stays in mid air, legs pumping, defying gravity before he succumbs to reality and falls. That's Trump for me, one of those.
There are lots of examples of unstable equilibriums, where things move quite quickly. If (a) a non-Trump figure were to emerge as the clear challenger, at the same time as (b) serious doubts being thrown onto Mr Trump's electability in the General, then yes, I could see someone else becoming the Republican nominee.
Right now, however, neither of those has happened.
I would suggest that Trumps tactics make (a) stable. As soon as anyone gets above 10% he calls them a rino and their popularity plateaus or dips encouraging those on 5% to keep carrying on.
While he does do that, he is not all powerful. Other people have agency, and it is far from impossible that Ms Haley - for example - manages to separate herself from the pack.
His greatest pillar of support is of course Biden. Given the Democrats seem keen on wheeling him out again (possibly literally) then Trump has to be a favourite in the rematch.
Trump as a president wasn't the disaster we imagined, and no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time. What he does though is totally undermine the whole apparatus of state in the US. (Biden is guilty of this too)
I don't know that 'no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time' can be true, given the second paragraph. If someone undermines the apparatus of state, then that is a disaster.
It is true that life did not end for the four years of his presidency, he did many things that plenty hated but were within the range of, well, political preference. But there's no getting away from the fact that he helped instigate an attempt to violently keep him in power, despite all his legal challenges having been thrown out. That is a line crossing that completely transforms what might be overdone concern about what his day to day policies will be, to what he will do when he does not have the people who worked for him last time who stood up to him at the final moment. If Pence, or the White House Counsel and the DOJ, if the members of congress who were willing to finally say no to him are not there next time, what might he do then?
Those are not baseless questions anymore.
Yes. You make good points. I've certainly no insight as to how far Trump might go, and as to how robust the system is. I certainly see him trying to revisit the term limit.
I find it interesting that DeSantis is finally starting to go after Trump a little bit, now he's already effectively lost.
I get that taking the Christie route of criticising Trump from the get go was not going to be a path to win over Trump voters, but he seemed to have no plan (beyond waiting it out I guess?) and so just sat there whilst Trump bashed him for month after month, looking weak and silly as a result. Others might have gotten away with it more since they were not so often the focus of early attacks.
Ultimately he was going to have to go after Trump at some point, and I guess he was trying to pick his moment, and now he's already missed it he hsa nothing much to lose?
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
That sounds a bit fascist.
What, a bit fascist to say your home - however you define it - is any any way any good? That's a very very very very low bar for fascism. And what's the counter-argument? That Europe isn't the most beautiful and civilised place in the world? That seems a hard case to make. You can, I'm sure, pick out individual counterexamples - but on average I'm sure it's true.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
As others will have noted, it is getting harder to escape the conclusion that the GOP rather wishes it had not won a majority in the 2022 midterms. How much easier would things have been for them simply railing against the alleged incompetencies of a Democrat controlled House?
Granted, they'd not have had the chance to dip their toes into impeachment etc, but the trade off for a 2024 campaign would presumably be worth it.
I find it interesting that DeSantis is finally starting to go after Trump a little bit, now he's already effectively lost.
I get that taking the Christie route of criticising Trump from the get go was not going to be a path to win over Trump voters, but he seemed to have no plan (beyond waiting it out I guess?) and so just sat there whilst Trump bashed him for month after month, looking weak and silly as a result. Others might have gotten away with it more since they were not so often the focus of early attacks.
Ultimately he was going to have to go after Trump at some point, and I guess he was trying to pick his moment, and now he's already missed it he hsa nothing much to lose?
Presumably the DeSantis plan was to inherit Trump's supporters after The Donald was locked up or at least disqualified over 6th January. This would explain why he'd not attacked Trump for fear of alienating the MAGA crowd. His problem now is that even if Trump is disbarred, which seems unlikely, DeSantis is no longer the heir apparent.
The SCOTUS has placed USA states in the same position as in the UK: it's a matter for voters and legislators. Voters who disagree with what their state has done know exactly what to do about it. The row is somewhat confected and overdone.
The SCOTUS should of course do the same with guns, where only a perverse reading of the constitution allows the present malign set up.
Should they do the same with slavery? (Obviously not but I am pointing out the flaw in that thinking)
No strong views on that, and no idea if slavery is specifically outlawed by the USA constitution. In the UK it is a matter for voters and legislators, as is the legalisation of torturing children for fun (currently, happily illegal).
Abortion both in principle and in detail is a profoundly contested matter among serious people; slavery isn't. As in the UK it should be a matter for voters and legislators.
So if it isn't a profoundly contested matter you would be fine for it to be decided by the individual states? It is certainly a unique position to hold.
How about race rights? How about gay rights? You are content for the states to decide all these things for themselves?
AP (via Seattle Times) - Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election
ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”
Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.
“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.
I suspect everyone they wish to use against Trump will be offered (and accept) a plea bargain.
Leaving the final case to be all the original defendants offering evidence against Trump and Rudy...
Yet he is still the 2.9 fav for the WH. That price, for me, is one of the wonders of the world. I can sit looking at it for hours.
What can actually damage Trump electorally though? His supporters treat him as a god, and the independents dont like Biden or the direction of the country.
The only shifts I expect are for swing voters based on the economy and household finances, which could go either way. The rest is noise.
I'm taking a different view. I think it's not tenable (even in this crazy world) to have as a candidate for US president a guy who is likely going down for election fraud and racketeering, and I think this will dawn on enough people (and in time) such that come November he won't be on the ballot. I realize I'm almost alone on here with this but that's all the better so long as I'm right. And I really am confident about it. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. We will see. The next year will be fascinating.
So no specific event? Just a general feeling of had enough?
Maybe an event. Or maybe that thing whereby something absurd (in this case Donald Trump back in the White House) finally starts to look absurd to a critical mass of people and then, kaboom, things change quite quickly. It can appear sudden even though it's been building for a while. I have a couple of mental images: emperor's new clothes, and the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a while stays in mid air, legs pumping, defying gravity before he succumbs to reality and falls. That's Trump for me, one of those.
There are lots of examples of unstable equilibriums, where things move quite quickly. If (a) a non-Trump figure were to emerge as the clear challenger, at the same time as (b) serious doubts being thrown onto Mr Trump's electability in the General, then yes, I could see someone else becoming the Republican nominee.
Right now, however, neither of those has happened.
I would suggest that Trumps tactics make (a) stable. As soon as anyone gets above 10% he calls them a rino and their popularity plateaus or dips encouraging those on 5% to keep carrying on.
While he does do that, he is not all powerful. Other people have agency, and it is far from impossible that Ms Haley - for example - manages to separate herself from the pack.
His greatest pillar of support is of course Biden. Given the Democrats seem keen on wheeling him out again (possibly literally) then Trump has to be a favourite in the rematch.
Trump as a president wasn't the disaster we imagined, and no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time. What he does though is totally undermine the whole apparatus of state in the US. (Biden is guilty of this too)
I don't know that 'no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time' can be true, given the second paragraph. If someone undermines the apparatus of state, then that is a disaster.
It is true that life did not end for the four years of his presidency, he did many things that plenty hated but were within the range of, well, political preference. But there's no getting away from the fact that he helped instigate an attempt to violently keep him in power, despite all his legal challenges having been thrown out. That is a line crossing that completely transforms what might be overdone concern about what his day to day policies will be, to what he will do when he does not have the people who worked for him last time who stood up to him at the final moment. If Pence, or the White House Counsel and the DOJ, if the members of congress who were willing to finally say no to him are not there next time, what might he do then?
Those are not baseless questions anymore.
Yes. You make good points. I've certainly no insight as to how far Trump might go, and as to how robust the system is. I certainly see him trying to revisit the term limit.
I suspect the system is a bit more robust than many suggest it is. I think Jan 6th made it look a bit wobblier than it actually was. The constitution is quite clear Trump only gets two terms max, for instance. The bar for him to clear to change that is too high.
In my view the danger comes less from Trump trying to game the system and more from the risk of the system completely collapsing (unlikely, but this is where discrediting the political process creates the risk). In that situation the only people that can fill the vacuum are the military. And who knows what happens then.
AP (via Seattle Times) - Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election
ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”
Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.
“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.
I suspect everyone they wish to use against Trump will be offered (and accept) a plea bargain.
Leaving the final case to be all the original defendants offering evidence against Trump and Rudy...
Yet he is still the 2.9 fav for the WH. That price, for me, is one of the wonders of the world. I can sit looking at it for hours.
What can actually damage Trump electorally though? His supporters treat him as a god, and the independents dont like Biden or the direction of the country.
The only shifts I expect are for swing voters based on the economy and household finances, which could go either way. The rest is noise.
I'm taking a different view. I think it's not tenable (even in this crazy world) to have as a candidate for US president a guy who is likely going down for election fraud and racketeering, and I think this will dawn on enough people (and in time) such that come November he won't be on the ballot. I realize I'm almost alone on here with this but that's all the better so long as I'm right. And I really am confident about it. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. We will see. The next year will be fascinating.
So no specific event? Just a general feeling of had enough?
Maybe an event. Or maybe that thing whereby something absurd (in this case Donald Trump back in the White House) finally starts to look absurd to a critical mass of people and then, kaboom, things change quite quickly. It can appear sudden even though it's been building for a while. I have a couple of mental images: emperor's new clothes, and the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a while stays in mid air, legs pumping, defying gravity before he succumbs to reality and falls. That's Trump for me, one of those.
There are lots of examples of unstable equilibriums, where things move quite quickly. If (a) a non-Trump figure were to emerge as the clear challenger, at the same time as (b) serious doubts being thrown onto Mr Trump's electability in the General, then yes, I could see someone else becoming the Republican nominee.
Right now, however, neither of those has happened.
I would suggest that Trumps tactics make (a) stable. As soon as anyone gets above 10% he calls them a rino and their popularity plateaus or dips encouraging those on 5% to keep carrying on.
While he does do that, he is not all powerful. Other people have agency, and it is far from impossible that Ms Haley - for example - manages to separate herself from the pack.
His greatest pillar of support is of course Biden. Given the Democrats seem keen on wheeling him out again (possibly literally) then Trump has to be a favourite in the rematch.
Trump as a president wasn't the disaster we imagined, and no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time. What he does though is totally undermine the whole apparatus of state in the US. (Biden is guilty of this too)
I don't know that 'no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time' can be true, given the second paragraph. If someone undermines the apparatus of state, then that is a disaster.
It is true that life did not end for the four years of his presidency, he did many things that plenty hated but were within the range of, well, political preference. But there's no getting away from the fact that he helped instigate an attempt to violently keep him in power, despite all his legal challenges having been thrown out. That is a line crossing that completely transforms what might be overdone concern about what his day to day policies will be, to what he will do when he does not have the people who worked for him last time who stood up to him at the final moment. If Pence, or the White House Counsel and the DOJ, if the members of congress who were willing to finally say no to him are not there next time, what might he do then?
Those are not baseless questions anymore.
Yes. You make good points. I've certainly no insight as to how far Trump might go, and as to how robust the system is. I certainly see him trying to revisit the term limit.
He has 'joked' about that of course. Given his age and general air of befuddlement I'd assume despite his personal arrogance he'd try to appoint one of his kids heir apparent, but despite best efforts I don't think any of them really capture the hearts of the base like the man himself. There would be many more Trumpy than Trump candidates once he is off the scene.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
That sounds a bit fascist.
What, a bit fascist to say your home - however you define it - is any any way any good? That's a very very very very low bar for fascism. And what's the counter-argument? That Europe isn't the most beautiful and civilised place in the world? That seems a hard case to make. You can, I'm sure, pick out individual counterexamples - but on average I'm sure it's true.
Depends what your post-Brexit vision of Britain is.
If Brexit is about buccaneering out into the world, living off our wits and making alliances with dubious friends across the world. Spectator Brexit, if you like... Then yes, the relative, imperfect but real niceness of Europe is a card to play against the idea.
If, on the other hand, Brexit is about pulling up the drawbridge, locking the door, having a nice cup of tea and putting that nice Ken Bruce on the radio, the argument doesn't work as well. Even Europe is too much abroad and too scary.
Besides, the nice Vote Leave people promised us that Brexit wouldn't dilute the nice bits of being European.
The SCOTUS has placed USA states in the same position as in the UK: it's a matter for voters and legislators. Voters who disagree with what their state has done know exactly what to do about it. The row is somewhat confected and overdone.
The SCOTUS should of course do the same with guns, where only a perverse reading of the constitution allows the present malign set up.
Should they do the same with slavery? (Obviously not but I am pointing out the flaw in that thinking)
No strong views on that, and no idea if slavery is specifically outlawed by the USA constitution. In the UK it is a matter for voters and legislators, as is the legalisation of torturing children for fun (currently, happily illegal).
Abortion both in principle and in detail is a profoundly contested matter among serious people; slavery isn't. As in the UK it should be a matter for voters and legislators.
So if it isn't a profoundly contested matter you would be fine for it to be decided by the individual states? It is certainly a unique position to hold.
How about race rights? How about gay rights? You are content for the states to decide all these things for themselves?
I'm not sure you can have a system which is democracy, but only if you agree with the pre-prepared answers.
The SCOTUS has placed USA states in the same position as in the UK: it's a matter for voters and legislators. Voters who disagree with what their state has done know exactly what to do about it. The row is somewhat confected and overdone.
The SCOTUS should of course do the same with guns, where only a perverse reading of the constitution allows the present malign set up.
Should they do the same with slavery? (Obviously not but I am pointing out the flaw in that thinking)
No strong views on that, and no idea if slavery is specifically outlawed by the USA constitution. In the UK it is a matter for voters and legislators, as is the legalisation of torturing children for fun (currently, happily illegal).
Abortion both in principle and in detail is a profoundly contested matter among serious people; slavery isn't. As in the UK it should be a matter for voters and legislators.
So if it isn't a profoundly contested matter you would be fine for it to be decided by the individual states? It is certainly a unique position to hold.
How about race rights? How about gay rights? You are content for the states to decide all these things for themselves?
I'm not sure you can have a system which is democracy, but only if you agree with the pre-prepared answers.
I honestly don't understnad the point you are making.
AP (via Seattle Times) - Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election
ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”
Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.
“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.
I suspect everyone they wish to use against Trump will be offered (and accept) a plea bargain.
Leaving the final case to be all the original defendants offering evidence against Trump and Rudy...
Yet he is still the 2.9 fav for the WH. That price, for me, is one of the wonders of the world. I can sit looking at it for hours.
What can actually damage Trump electorally though? His supporters treat him as a god, and the independents dont like Biden or the direction of the country.
The only shifts I expect are for swing voters based on the economy and household finances, which could go either way. The rest is noise.
I'm taking a different view. I think it's not tenable (even in this crazy world) to have as a candidate for US president a guy who is likely going down for election fraud and racketeering, and I think this will dawn on enough people (and in time) such that come November he won't be on the ballot. I realize I'm almost alone on here with this but that's all the better so long as I'm right. And I really am confident about it. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. We will see. The next year will be fascinating.
So no specific event? Just a general feeling of had enough?
Maybe an event. Or maybe that thing whereby something absurd (in this case Donald Trump back in the White House) finally starts to look absurd to a critical mass of people and then, kaboom, things change quite quickly. It can appear sudden even though it's been building for a while. I have a couple of mental images: emperor's new clothes, and the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a while stays in mid air, legs pumping, defying gravity before he succumbs to reality and falls. That's Trump for me, one of those.
There are lots of examples of unstable equilibriums, where things move quite quickly. If (a) a non-Trump figure were to emerge as the clear challenger, at the same time as (b) serious doubts being thrown onto Mr Trump's electability in the General, then yes, I could see someone else becoming the Republican nominee.
Right now, however, neither of those has happened.
I would suggest that Trumps tactics make (a) stable. As soon as anyone gets above 10% he calls them a rino and their popularity plateaus or dips encouraging those on 5% to keep carrying on.
While he does do that, he is not all powerful. Other people have agency, and it is far from impossible that Ms Haley - for example - manages to separate herself from the pack.
His greatest pillar of support is of course Biden. Given the Democrats seem keen on wheeling him out again (possibly literally) then Trump has to be a favourite in the rematch.
Trump as a president wasn't the disaster we imagined, and no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time. What he does though is totally undermine the whole apparatus of state in the US. (Biden is guilty of this too)
I don't know that 'no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time' can be true, given the second paragraph. If someone undermines the apparatus of state, then that is a disaster.
It is true that life did not end for the four years of his presidency, he did many things that plenty hated but were within the range of, well, political preference. But there's no getting away from the fact that he helped instigate an attempt to violently keep him in power, despite all his legal challenges having been thrown out. That is a line crossing that completely transforms what might be overdone concern about what his day to day policies will be, to what he will do when he does not have the people who worked for him last time who stood up to him at the final moment. If Pence, or the White House Counsel and the DOJ, if the members of congress who were willing to finally say no to him are not there next time, what might he do then?
Those are not baseless questions anymore.
Yes. You make good points. I've certainly no insight as to how far Trump might go, and as to how robust the system is. I certainly see him trying to revisit the term limit.
He has 'joked' about that of course. Given his age and general air of befuddlement I'd assume despite his personal arrogance he'd try to appoint one of his kids heir apparent, but despite best efforts I don't think any of them really capture the hearts of the base like the man himself. There would be many more Trumpy than Trump candidates once he is off the scene.
He has fallen out with one of them because he is 6 ft 8 and therefore they cant be seen together in public in case the photo makes the Don look less than bigly.
Orban does actualy participate in the organisation of Turkic states.
Hungary only participates as an Observer State.
Just like India is an Observer State of the Arab league.
Modern Hungarian ethnicity/identity/nationality does have Turkic elements, but Hungarian "Turianism" (see link below) is mostly/predominately a species of eastern-European hyper-nationalism.
The SCOTUS has placed USA states in the same position as in the UK: it's a matter for voters and legislators. Voters who disagree with what their state has done know exactly what to do about it. The row is somewhat confected and overdone.
The SCOTUS should of course do the same with guns, where only a perverse reading of the constitution allows the present malign set up.
Should they do the same with slavery? (Obviously not but I am pointing out the flaw in that thinking)
No strong views on that, and no idea if slavery is specifically outlawed by the USA constitution. In the UK it is a matter for voters and legislators, as is the legalisation of torturing children for fun (currently, happily illegal).
Abortion both in principle and in detail is a profoundly contested matter among serious people; slavery isn't. As in the UK it should be a matter for voters and legislators.
So if it isn't a profoundly contested matter you would be fine for it to be decided by the individual states? It is certainly a unique position to hold.
How about race rights? How about gay rights? You are content for the states to decide all these things for themselves?
I'm not sure you can have a system which is democracy, but only if you agree with the pre-prepared answers.
I honestly don't understnad the point you are making.
It's pretty tough to say that a state can't make their own rules by democratic process.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
AP (via Seattle Times) - Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election
ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”
Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.
“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.
I suspect everyone they wish to use against Trump will be offered (and accept) a plea bargain.
Leaving the final case to be all the original defendants offering evidence against Trump and Rudy...
Yet he is still the 2.9 fav for the WH. That price, for me, is one of the wonders of the world. I can sit looking at it for hours.
What can actually damage Trump electorally though? His supporters treat him as a god, and the independents dont like Biden or the direction of the country.
The only shifts I expect are for swing voters based on the economy and household finances, which could go either way. The rest is noise.
I'm taking a different view. I think it's not tenable (even in this crazy world) to have as a candidate for US president a guy who is likely going down for election fraud and racketeering, and I think this will dawn on enough people (and in time) such that come November he won't be on the ballot. I realize I'm almost alone on here with this but that's all the better so long as I'm right. And I really am confident about it. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. We will see. The next year will be fascinating.
So no specific event? Just a general feeling of had enough?
Maybe an event. Or maybe that thing whereby something absurd (in this case Donald Trump back in the White House) finally starts to look absurd to a critical mass of people and then, kaboom, things change quite quickly. It can appear sudden even though it's been building for a while. I have a couple of mental images: emperor's new clothes, and the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a while stays in mid air, legs pumping, defying gravity before he succumbs to reality and falls. That's Trump for me, one of those.
There are lots of examples of unstable equilibriums, where things move quite quickly. If (a) a non-Trump figure were to emerge as the clear challenger, at the same time as (b) serious doubts being thrown onto Mr Trump's electability in the General, then yes, I could see someone else becoming the Republican nominee.
Right now, however, neither of those has happened.
I would suggest that Trumps tactics make (a) stable. As soon as anyone gets above 10% he calls them a rino and their popularity plateaus or dips encouraging those on 5% to keep carrying on.
While he does do that, he is not all powerful. Other people have agency, and it is far from impossible that Ms Haley - for example - manages to separate herself from the pack.
His greatest pillar of support is of course Biden. Given the Democrats seem keen on wheeling him out again (possibly literally) then Trump has to be a favourite in the rematch.
Trump as a president wasn't the disaster we imagined, and no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time. What he does though is totally undermine the whole apparatus of state in the US. (Biden is guilty of this too)
I don't know that 'no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time' can be true, given the second paragraph. If someone undermines the apparatus of state, then that is a disaster.
It is true that life did not end for the four years of his presidency, he did many things that plenty hated but were within the range of, well, political preference. But there's no getting away from the fact that he helped instigate an attempt to violently keep him in power, despite all his legal challenges having been thrown out. That is a line crossing that completely transforms what might be overdone concern about what his day to day policies will be, to what he will do when he does not have the people who worked for him last time who stood up to him at the final moment. If Pence, or the White House Counsel and the DOJ, if the members of congress who were willing to finally say no to him are not there next time, what might he do then?
Those are not baseless questions anymore.
Yes. You make good points. I've certainly no insight as to how far Trump might go, and as to how robust the system is. I certainly see him trying to revisit the term limit.
He has 'joked' about that of course. Given his age and general air of befuddlement I'd assume despite his personal arrogance he'd try to appoint one of his kids heir apparent, but despite best efforts I don't think any of them really capture the hearts of the base like the man himself. There would be many more Trumpy than Trump candidates once he is off the scene.
He has fallen out with one of them because he is 6 ft 8 and therefore they cant be seen together in public in case the photo makes the Don look less than bigly.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
Seattle Times ($) - FBI: Off-duty Alaska pilot declared, ‘I’m not OK,’ then tried to shut down engines
An off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot accused of attempting to shut off engines during a Sunday evening Horizon Air flight out of Everett’s Paine Field has been charged in federal court.
Joseph Emerson, 44, was charged Tuesday with one count of interfering with flight crew members and attendants. Emerson, who was riding in a flight deck jump seat behind the pilots, is accused of attempting to activate a fire suppression system that would have cut fuel supply to the plane’s engines.
Emerson was arrested when the plane, which had been heading to San Francisco, made an emergency landing at Portland International Airport.
Emerson was booked at the Multnomah County Detention Center in Portland on suspicion of 83 counts of attempted murder, 83 counts of recklessly endangering another person and one for endangering an aircraft. He was booked just after 4 a.m. Monday.
According to an FBI investigator’s statement, about halfway between Astoria, Oregon, and Portland, after engaging the pilots in casual conversation, Emerson, then sitting in the cockpit jump seat, said, “I’m not OK.”
One of the Horizon pilots then observed Emerson reaching up and grabbing the red fire handles and pulling them down. The handles would have activated the aircraft fire suppression system used to extinguish aircraft engine fires, and would have shut off the fuel supply to the engines.
After a brief physical struggle with the pilots, Emerson exited the cockpit.
Flight attendants handcuffed Emerson and seated him in the rear of the plane. During the flight’s descent, Emerson tried to grab the handle of the emergency exit, but a flight attendant stopped him by placing her hands on top of his.
Emerson will be arraigned in Portland on Tuesday afternoon.
A Federal Aviation Administration notice distributed to all U.S. airlines on an alert network Monday morning gave further detail in what the FAA called a “significant security event.”
Emerson, a California resident with ties to Seattle, has been a commercial airline pilot since 2001 and has flown with Alaska since 2016. . .
Alaska said late Monday that “throughout his career, Emerson completed his mandated FAA medical certifications … and at no point were his certifications denied, suspended or revoked.”
SSI - According to at least one passenger, the alleged attempted airplane crasher walked out of the cockpit unescorted down the center aisle of the plane, before finally being restrained.
Ah, the pleasure of frequent (or even infrequent) flying.
This is a really useful thread header. I agree with a lot of it, but I think the overall thrust is wrong. Understandably the topic is quite emotionally loaded and the header seems to be coming from a desire to define terrorism based on whether it is justified/unjustified or to put it in simpler terms, right or wrong. To me, this question is an orthogonal one (and a hard one to answer a lot of the time) to a definitional question of what terrorism is. In my view it is important to focus on the word "terror" - terrorism should be seen as a form of psychological warfare, designed to achieve specific political goals through acts of violence. The IRA's goal was to make the British public question the British state's involvement in Ireland. Al Qaeda's goal was to make the West disengage from the Middle East. Hamas's goal is to make the Israeli public question their state's actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and to inflame Arab opinion against Israel to keep the issue on the front page and prevent Arab states from concluding peace deals with Israel that don't address the Palestinians' concerns. Terrorism tends to be carried out by non state actors because it is a form of asymmetrical warfare that tends to be carried out by the weaker partner in the conflict. The stronger partner has other means at their disposal. Israeli attacks on Gaza are therefore not terrorism. Similarly, the bombing of Hamburg or Hiroshima are not terrorism. Whether they are war crimes is a different issue. Whether any of these things are right or wrong is a third question altogether, and one I'm always surprised at how many people feel themselves qualified to answer. In many conflicts it's hard to divide the two sides into good guys and bad guys. Rather than seeking elusive moral clarity we should focus our efforts on helping both sides to de-escalate and find a lasting peace that removes the underlying causes of the conflict.
While in many conflicts it is surprisingly easy to divide the two sides into good guys and bad guys. plus in those situations the "source of the conflict" is the fact that the bad guys want conflict. Eg Ukraine was at peace, before Russia invaded. Eg Israel had stopped occupying Gaza and was helping the Palestinians build the Port of Gaza to aid their development before Hamas took over. We can divide some conflicts by saying democratic Ukraine good, authoritarian Russia bad. Similarly democratic Israel good, Islamofascist Hamas bad.
Rather than seeking elusive "de-escalation" in those situations, we should be seeking to aid victory for our allies who are good over those who would do them harm and in victory they can maybe have a lasting peace.
Israel had stopped occupying Gaza, but has been continuing to blockade it. The Netanyahu government has had no interest in Gaza being able to function anything like a normal state, and it was past Israeli administrations that supported Hamas to destabilise the PLO. Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and to build settlements on occupied territory in contravention of international law. Israel continues to discriminate against Arab Israelis and non-citizen Palestinians. And Israeli democracy has been deteriorating under Bibi!
Hamas is, in part, a consequence of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. This is not to condone Hamas's actions, but it is moral naivety not to recognise this context. It is the official policy of the UK government and that of most of our allies that we do not condone Israel's actions in Palestine, that we recognise continued settlement building as being contrary to international law and contrary to hopes for a lasting peace.
Except the facts don't back up that whatsoever. Netanyahu wasn't even in power when Hamas took over Gaza, Ehud Olmert was.
Israel wasn't blockading Gaza prior to the rise of Hamas, quite the opposite. From 2005 to 2007 (when Hamas took over) Israel was not only not blockading Gaza, they were encouraging the development of the Port of Gaza to help Gaza get developed.
Unfortunately then Hamas took over, so the blockade became necessary and was instituted by Olmert in a reversal of his and Sharon's prior plans to encourage the development of Gaza without an Israeli occupation.
If anything Netanyahu is a response to Hamas rather than the other way around, and even then he's only barely been able to be elected even with Hamas.
You appear to have misread what I wrote. I said, "it was past Israeli administrations that supported Hamas to destabilise the PLO". I didn't say it was Bibi.
You, as usual, completely skip over the continued settlement building in the West Bank.
How far past are you going? Decades before it was known what Hamas was or would become?
Prior to Bibi, Sharon and Olmert were trying to disengage from Gaza and encourage development in Gaza without an Israeli occupation. Prior to that there was a sustained period of trying to work with the PLO and Arafat, until Arafat rejected peace.
Israel like almost all democratic nations wants peace and has voted for peaceful regimes time and again, they've agreed peace with Egypt and other former enemies. If only there was a Palestinian leadership that was equal to them. Its not Israel keeping Palestinians down, its Hamas and Palestinian leadership over decades.
As for continued settlement building, I've addressed it repeatedly. Its not ideal, but considering that the Palestinians have rejected the proposed borders and the Camp David process says that final borders are up for "negotiations", Israel is entirely in its rights to respond to suicide bombers etc being sent into its territory to move the border one way by instead using settlements to put pressure on to move it the other way.
Want to stop settlements? Agree a peace treaty with a fixed border, culminate the negotiations.
Incidentally Israel has a history of respecting negotiations once an agreement is made and either dismantling or handing over settlements in response, see what happened in Sinai, Sharm el Sheikh etc.
Israel has been in military occupation of the West Bank since 1967. Yes, it is Israel keeping Palestinians down.
When you say Israel is entirely in its rights to move the border one way or the other, could you lay out which rights those are? Are these rights written down somewhere? That’s not what international law says. We don’t say Russia is within their rights to move the border one way or the other. We didn’t say Iraq was. Settlements on occupied territory are illegal under international law. That is what the UN says. That is what the US says. That is what the UK says.
The UN is wrong, and you're categorically wrong about what the US says and what international law does too.
Israel gained Gaza and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in a defensive war, just as Germany lost land in WWII. Egypt relinquished its claim on Gaza in the Egypt/Israel peace treaty following the Camp David Accords in the 1970s.
The Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO of 1993 quite explicitly do not define a border between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state. The 1967 border is explicitly not the border between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state.
The PLO agreed in the Oslo Accords that the future border is subject to future negotiations.
Unless you think the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Accords are not international law, they matter far more than any vote by the UN.
The US as the primary facilitator of peace talks at both Camp David under Jimmy Carter and throughout decades of peace processes including the Oslo Accords under Bill Clinton respects that the border is an issue for future negotiations. It does not prejudge those negotiations.
The PLO has tried to back its negotiators up by sending suicide bombers into Israel to pressure Israel into giving up more land. I respect sending builders and construction crews in more than suicide bombers.
AP (via Seattle Times) - Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election
ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”
Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.
“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.
I suspect everyone they wish to use against Trump will be offered (and accept) a plea bargain.
Leaving the final case to be all the original defendants offering evidence against Trump and Rudy...
Yet he is still the 2.9 fav for the WH. That price, for me, is one of the wonders of the world. I can sit looking at it for hours.
What can actually damage Trump electorally though? His supporters treat him as a god, and the independents dont like Biden or the direction of the country.
The only shifts I expect are for swing voters based on the economy and household finances, which could go either way. The rest is noise.
I'm taking a different view. I think it's not tenable (even in this crazy world) to have as a candidate for US president a guy who is likely going down for election fraud and racketeering, and I think this will dawn on enough people (and in time) such that come November he won't be on the ballot. I realize I'm almost alone on here with this but that's all the better so long as I'm right. And I really am confident about it. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. We will see. The next year will be fascinating.
So no specific event? Just a general feeling of had enough?
Maybe an event. Or maybe that thing whereby something absurd (in this case Donald Trump back in the White House) finally starts to look absurd to a critical mass of people and then, kaboom, things change quite quickly. It can appear sudden even though it's been building for a while. I have a couple of mental images: emperor's new clothes, and the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a while stays in mid air, legs pumping, defying gravity before he succumbs to reality and falls. That's Trump for me, one of those.
There are lots of examples of unstable equilibriums, where things move quite quickly. If (a) a non-Trump figure were to emerge as the clear challenger, at the same time as (b) serious doubts being thrown onto Mr Trump's electability in the General, then yes, I could see someone else becoming the Republican nominee.
Right now, however, neither of those has happened.
I would suggest that Trumps tactics make (a) stable. As soon as anyone gets above 10% he calls them a rino and their popularity plateaus or dips encouraging those on 5% to keep carrying on.
While he does do that, he is not all powerful. Other people have agency, and it is far from impossible that Ms Haley - for example - manages to separate herself from the pack.
His greatest pillar of support is of course Biden. Given the Democrats seem keen on wheeling him out again (possibly literally) then Trump has to be a favourite in the rematch.
Trump as a president wasn't the disaster we imagined, and no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time. What he does though is totally undermine the whole apparatus of state in the US. (Biden is guilty of this too)
I don't know that 'no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time' can be true, given the second paragraph. If someone undermines the apparatus of state, then that is a disaster.
It is true that life did not end for the four years of his presidency, he did many things that plenty hated but were within the range of, well, political preference. But there's no getting away from the fact that he helped instigate an attempt to violently keep him in power, despite all his legal challenges having been thrown out. That is a line crossing that completely transforms what might be overdone concern about what his day to day policies will be, to what he will do when he does not have the people who worked for him last time who stood up to him at the final moment. If Pence, or the White House Counsel and the DOJ, if the members of congress who were willing to finally say no to him are not there next time, what might he do then?
Those are not baseless questions anymore.
Yes. You make good points. I've certainly no insight as to how far Trump might go, and as to how robust the system is. I certainly see him trying to revisit the term limit.
I suspect the system is a bit more robust than many suggest it is. I think Jan 6th made it look a bit wobblier than it actually was. The constitution is quite clear Trump only gets two terms max, for instance. The bar for him to clear to change that is too high.
In my view the danger comes less from Trump trying to game the system and more from the risk of the system completely collapsing (unlikely, but this is where discrediting the political process creates the risk). In that situation the only people that can fill the vacuum are the military. And who knows what happens then.
If the military were really behind Trump they would have backed his attempted coup on Jan 6th 2021 and he would still be President
AP (via Seattle Times) - Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election
ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”
Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would have not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.
“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.
I suspect everyone they wish to use against Trump will be offered (and accept) a plea bargain.
Leaving the final case to be all the original defendants offering evidence against Trump and Rudy...
Yet he is still the 2.9 fav for the WH. That price, for me, is one of the wonders of the world. I can sit looking at it for hours.
What can actually damage Trump electorally though? His supporters treat him as a god, and the independents dont like Biden or the direction of the country.
The only shifts I expect are for swing voters based on the economy and household finances, which could go either way. The rest is noise.
I'm taking a different view. I think it's not tenable (even in this crazy world) to have as a candidate for US president a guy who is likely going down for election fraud and racketeering, and I think this will dawn on enough people (and in time) such that come November he won't be on the ballot. I realize I'm almost alone on here with this but that's all the better so long as I'm right. And I really am confident about it. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. We will see. The next year will be fascinating.
So no specific event? Just a general feeling of had enough?
Maybe an event. Or maybe that thing whereby something absurd (in this case Donald Trump back in the White House) finally starts to look absurd to a critical mass of people and then, kaboom, things change quite quickly. It can appear sudden even though it's been building for a while. I have a couple of mental images: emperor's new clothes, and the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a while stays in mid air, legs pumping, defying gravity before he succumbs to reality and falls. That's Trump for me, one of those.
There are lots of examples of unstable equilibriums, where things move quite quickly. If (a) a non-Trump figure were to emerge as the clear challenger, at the same time as (b) serious doubts being thrown onto Mr Trump's electability in the General, then yes, I could see someone else becoming the Republican nominee.
Right now, however, neither of those has happened.
I would suggest that Trumps tactics make (a) stable. As soon as anyone gets above 10% he calls them a rino and their popularity plateaus or dips encouraging those on 5% to keep carrying on.
While he does do that, he is not all powerful. Other people have agency, and it is far from impossible that Ms Haley - for example - manages to separate herself from the pack.
His greatest pillar of support is of course Biden. Given the Democrats seem keen on wheeling him out again (possibly literally) then Trump has to be a favourite in the rematch.
Trump as a president wasn't the disaster we imagined, and no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time. What he does though is totally undermine the whole apparatus of state in the US. (Biden is guilty of this too)
I don't know that 'no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time' can be true, given the second paragraph. If someone undermines the apparatus of state, then that is a disaster.
It is true that life did not end for the four years of his presidency, he did many things that plenty hated but were within the range of, well, political preference. But there's no getting away from the fact that he helped instigate an attempt to violently keep him in power, despite all his legal challenges having been thrown out. That is a line crossing that completely transforms what might be overdone concern about what his day to day policies will be, to what he will do when he does not have the people who worked for him last time who stood up to him at the final moment. If Pence, or the White House Counsel and the DOJ, if the members of congress who were willing to finally say no to him are not there next time, what might he do then?
Those are not baseless questions anymore.
Yes. You make good points. I've certainly no insight as to how far Trump might go, and as to how robust the system is. I certainly see him trying to revisit the term limit.
He has 'joked' about that of course. Given his age and general air of befuddlement I'd assume despite his personal arrogance he'd try to appoint one of his kids heir apparent, but despite best efforts I don't think any of them really capture the hearts of the base like the man himself. There would be many more Trumpy than Trump candidates once he is off the scene.
He has fallen out with one of them because he is 6 ft 8 and therefore they cant be seen together in public in case the photo makes the Don look less than bigly.
The SCOTUS has placed USA states in the same position as in the UK: it's a matter for voters and legislators. Voters who disagree with what their state has done know exactly what to do about it. The row is somewhat confected and overdone.
The SCOTUS should of course do the same with guns, where only a perverse reading of the constitution allows the present malign set up.
Should they do the same with slavery? (Obviously not but I am pointing out the flaw in that thinking)
No strong views on that, and no idea if slavery is specifically outlawed by the USA constitution. In the UK it is a matter for voters and legislators, as is the legalisation of torturing children for fun (currently, happily illegal).
Abortion both in principle and in detail is a profoundly contested matter among serious people; slavery isn't. As in the UK it should be a matter for voters and legislators.
So if it isn't a profoundly contested matter you would be fine for it to be decided by the individual states? It is certainly a unique position to hold.
How about race rights? How about gay rights? You are content for the states to decide all these things for themselves?
States could certainly decide on gay marriage as well as abortion time limits
> Republicans are going on a break now as Tom Emmer meets with holdouts individually and in small groups. He wants to secure the necessary 217 votes behind closed doors before bringing his nomination to a vote on the floor.
> A majority of the two dozen or so holdouts against Tom Emmer are members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, and many of them continue to say they will vote for Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right chairman of the Judiciary Committee who failed to win the speakership last week.
SSI - Freedom Caucus = expelled Marjorie Taylor Greene from their ranks, on grounds she's a libtard Rhino.
Not sure the mass transportation of Jews won't be seen as an ignoble measure.
Israel is almost exactly the same size as Wales. I know this because a friend once looked at the board for a wargame of the Six Days war, and said, looks about the size of Wales. And he was right.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
That sounds a bit fascist.
Geez, don't be ridiculous.
I agree with Leon on this. The Remain campaign cast Britain as unable to survive independent from the EU, and so people would just have to lump it. But there's so much that's great about being in the EU and Europe, and so that should have been celebrated.
> Republicans are going on a break now as Tom Emmer meets with holdouts individually and in small groups. He wants to secure the necessary 217 votes behind closed doors before bringing his nomination to a vote on the floor.
> A majority of the two dozen or so holdouts against Tom Emmer are members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, and many of them continue to say they will vote for Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right chairman of the Judiciary Committee who failed to win the speakership last week.
SSI - Freedom Caucus = expelled Marjorie Taylor Greene from their ranks, on grounds she's a libtard Rhino.
Or was it the other way around?
What's the endgame here?
The 'burn it all down' nutters won't back an 'establishment' candidate.
The 'moderate' nutters draw the line at Jordanesque poseurs who have no interest in governing.
None of them would vote for the Democrat or make a concession to get the vote of a Democrat.
Just bring back McCarthy, Gaetz and his crew have made their point already.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM?
They design the cores that power smartphones. Other people license these core designs, and use them in their own semiconductors. ARM gets a tiny cut out of (almost) every smartphone sold in the world.
Great business; albeit they are just getting the first smidgen of competition from RISC-V.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
Oh, I could probably write a few hundred pages on what ARM does, and did ...
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
A fair amount if its current EUV tech is of US origin, though, from the merger with Cymer.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
SAP: software designed by an angry and inflexible German to DO EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'S YOUR FAULT NOT THE SOFTWARE
The SCOTUS has placed USA states in the same position as in the UK: it's a matter for voters and legislators. Voters who disagree with what their state has done know exactly what to do about it. The row is somewhat confected and overdone.
The SCOTUS should of course do the same with guns, where only a perverse reading of the constitution allows the present malign set up.
Should they do the same with slavery? (Obviously not but I am pointing out the flaw in that thinking)
No strong views on that, and no idea if slavery is specifically outlawed by the USA constitution. In the UK it is a matter for voters and legislators, as is the legalisation of torturing children for fun (currently, happily illegal).
Abortion both in principle and in detail is a profoundly contested matter among serious people; slavery isn't. As in the UK it should be a matter for voters and legislators.
So if it isn't a profoundly contested matter you would be fine for it to be decided by the individual states? It is certainly a unique position to hold.
How about race rights? How about gay rights? You are content for the states to decide all these things for themselves?
Not quite sure of the point you are making; but my general position is that voters and legislators are in the best place, in a well functioning democracy, to decide and legislate. Courts exist to decide on disputed matters which require decision and can be overruled by legislators in the end; constitutions exist to lay the foundations and boundaries within which all this occurs. (The right to have a gun for example should be no part of it).
In the USA what matters are for states and what matters are for the USA legislators is for them to decide.
Race? Gays? Progress here on the whole has been made by activists, votes and legislators.
This is a really useful thread header. I agree with a lot of it, but I think the overall thrust is wrong. Understandably the topic is quite emotionally loaded and the header seems to be coming from a desire to define terrorism based on whether it is justified/unjustified or to put it in simpler terms, right or wrong. To me, this question is an orthogonal one (and a hard one to answer a lot of the time) to a definitional question of what terrorism is. In my view it is important to focus on the word "terror" - terrorism should be seen as a form of psychological warfare, designed to achieve specific political goals through acts of violence. The IRA's goal was to make the British public question the British state's involvement in Ireland. Al Qaeda's goal was to make the West disengage from the Middle East. Hamas's goal is to make the Israeli public question their state's actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and to inflame Arab opinion against Israel to keep the issue on the front page and prevent Arab states from concluding peace deals with Israel that don't address the Palestinians' concerns. Terrorism tends to be carried out by non state actors because it is a form of asymmetrical warfare that tends to be carried out by the weaker partner in the conflict. The stronger partner has other means at their disposal. Israeli attacks on Gaza are therefore not terrorism. Similarly, the bombing of Hamburg or Hiroshima are not terrorism. Whether they are war crimes is a different issue. Whether any of these things are right or wrong is a third question altogether, and one I'm always surprised at how many people feel themselves qualified to answer. In many conflicts it's hard to divide the two sides into good guys and bad guys. Rather than seeking elusive moral clarity we should focus our efforts on helping both sides to de-escalate and find a lasting peace that removes the underlying causes of the conflict.
While in many conflicts it is surprisingly easy to divide the two sides into good guys and bad guys. plus in those situations the "source of the conflict" is the fact that the bad guys want conflict. Eg Ukraine was at peace, before Russia invaded. Eg Israel had stopped occupying Gaza and was helping the Palestinians build the Port of Gaza to aid their development before Hamas took over. We can divide some conflicts by saying democratic Ukraine good, authoritarian Russia bad. Similarly democratic Israel good, Islamofascist Hamas bad.
Rather than seeking elusive "de-escalation" in those situations, we should be seeking to aid victory for our allies who are good over those who would do them harm and in victory they can maybe have a lasting peace.
Israel had stopped occupying Gaza, but has been continuing to blockade it. The Netanyahu government has had no interest in Gaza being able to function anything like a normal state, and it was past Israeli administrations that supported Hamas to destabilise the PLO. Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and to build settlements on occupied territory in contravention of international law. Israel continues to discriminate against Arab Israelis and non-citizen Palestinians. And Israeli democracy has been deteriorating under Bibi!
Hamas is, in part, a consequence of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. This is not to condone Hamas's actions, but it is moral naivety not to recognise this context. It is the official policy of the UK government and that of most of our allies that we do not condone Israel's actions in Palestine, that we recognise continued settlement building as being contrary to international law and contrary to hopes for a lasting peace.
Except the facts don't back up that whatsoever. Netanyahu wasn't even in power when Hamas took over Gaza, Ehud Olmert was.
Israel wasn't blockading Gaza prior to the rise of Hamas, quite the opposite. From 2005 to 2007 (when Hamas took over) Israel was not only not blockading Gaza, they were encouraging the development of the Port of Gaza to help Gaza get developed.
Unfortunately then Hamas took over, so the blockade became necessary and was instituted by Olmert in a reversal of his and Sharon's prior plans to encourage the development of Gaza without an Israeli occupation.
If anything Netanyahu is a response to Hamas rather than the other way around, and even then he's only barely been able to be elected even with Hamas.
You appear to have misread what I wrote. I said, "it was past Israeli administrations that supported Hamas to destabilise the PLO". I didn't say it was Bibi.
You, as usual, completely skip over the continued settlement building in the West Bank.
How far past are you going? Decades before it was known what Hamas was or would become?
Prior to Bibi, Sharon and Olmert were trying to disengage from Gaza and encourage development in Gaza without an Israeli occupation. Prior to that there was a sustained period of trying to work with the PLO and Arafat, until Arafat rejected peace.
Israel like almost all democratic nations wants peace and has voted for peaceful regimes time and again, they've agreed peace with Egypt and other former enemies. If only there was a Palestinian leadership that was equal to them. Its not Israel keeping Palestinians down, its Hamas and Palestinian leadership over decades.
As for continued settlement building, I've addressed it repeatedly. Its not ideal, but considering that the Palestinians have rejected the proposed borders and the Camp David process says that final borders are up for "negotiations", Israel is entirely in its rights to respond to suicide bombers etc being sent into its territory to move the border one way by instead using settlements to put pressure on to move it the other way.
Want to stop settlements? Agree a peace treaty with a fixed border, culminate the negotiations.
Incidentally Israel has a history of respecting negotiations once an agreement is made and either dismantling or handing over settlements in response, see what happened in Sinai, Sharm el Sheikh etc.
Israel has been in military occupation of the West Bank since 1967. Yes, it is Israel keeping Palestinians down.
When you say Israel is entirely in its rights to move the border one way or the other, could you lay out which rights those are? Are these rights written down somewhere? That’s not what international law says. We don’t say Russia is within their rights to move the border one way or the other. We didn’t say Iraq was. Settlements on occupied territory are illegal under international law. That is what the UN says. That is what the US says. That is what the UK says.
The UN is wrong, and you're categorically wrong about what the US says and what international law does too.
Israel gained Gaza and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in a defensive war, just as Germany lost land in WWII. Egypt relinquished its claim on Gaza in the Egypt/Israel peace treaty following the Camp David Accords in the 1970s.
The Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO of 1993 quite explicitly do not define a border between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state. The 1967 border is explicitly not the border between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state.
The PLO agreed in the Oslo Accords that the future border is subject to future negotiations.
Unless you think the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Accords are not international law, they matter far more than any vote by the UN.
The US as the primary facilitator of peace talks at both Camp David under Jimmy Carter and throughout decades of peace processes including the Oslo Accords under Bill Clinton respects that the border is an issue for future negotiations. It does not prejudge those negotiations.
The PLO has tried to back its negotiators up by sending suicide bombers into Israel to pressure Israel into giving up more land. I respect sending builders and construction crews in more than suicide bombers.
And yet the existence of Israel is based on UN resolutions not the Camp David or Oslo Agreements. And when Israel wanted to invade Lebanon they cited UN resolutions for justification not the Camp David or Oslo Agreements.
> Republicans are going on a break now as Tom Emmer meets with holdouts individually and in small groups. He wants to secure the necessary 217 votes behind closed doors before bringing his nomination to a vote on the floor.
> A majority of the two dozen or so holdouts against Tom Emmer are members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, and many of them continue to say they will vote for Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right chairman of the Judiciary Committee who failed to win the speakership last week.
SSI - Freedom Caucus = expelled Marjorie Taylor Greene from their ranks, on grounds she's a libtard Rhino.
Or was it the other way around?
What's the endgame here?
The 'burn it all down' nutters won't back an 'establishment' candidate.
The 'moderate' nutters draw the line at Jordanesque poseurs who have no interest in governing.
None of them would vote for the Democrat or make a concession to get the vote of a Democrat.
Just bring back McCarthy, Gaetz and his crew have made their point already.
I said before that I really wouldn’t be surprised if this continues all the way to the next election in 2024. It feels like there is no way of breaking the deadlock.
There may in time be a small contingent who are happy to empower the temporary speaker to get urgent business like the budget and military aid through. But I honestly think the House agenda is now dead until they have an election to break the deadlock.
Pity they can’t have an emergency election a la Westminster systems really.
The SCOTUS has placed USA states in the same position as in the UK: it's a matter for voters and legislators. Voters who disagree with what their state has done know exactly what to do about it. The row is somewhat confected and overdone.
The SCOTUS should of course do the same with guns, where only a perverse reading of the constitution allows the present malign set up.
Should they do the same with slavery? (Obviously not but I am pointing out the flaw in that thinking)
No strong views on that, and no idea if slavery is specifically outlawed by the USA constitution. In the UK it is a matter for voters and legislators, as is the legalisation of torturing children for fun (currently, happily illegal).
Abortion both in principle and in detail is a profoundly contested matter among serious people; slavery isn't. As in the UK it should be a matter for voters and legislators.
So if it isn't a profoundly contested matter you would be fine for it to be decided by the individual states? It is certainly a unique position to hold.
How about race rights? How about gay rights? You are content for the states to decide all these things for themselves?
I'm not sure you can have a system which is democracy, but only if you agree with the pre-prepared answers.
I honestly don't understnad the point you are making.
It's pretty tough to say that a state can't make their own rules by democratic process.
I seem t remember they fought a whole war on just such a question. And States Rights lost.
Edit: Though that wasn't the point I was making. I was just checking how far algarkirk would take his states rights idea and apparently it is all the way to the Confederacy.
> Republicans are going on a break now as Tom Emmer meets with holdouts individually and in small groups. He wants to secure the necessary 217 votes behind closed doors before bringing his nomination to a vote on the floor.
> A majority of the two dozen or so holdouts against Tom Emmer are members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, and many of them continue to say they will vote for Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right chairman of the Judiciary Committee who failed to win the speakership last week.
SSI - Freedom Caucus = expelled Marjorie Taylor Greene from their ranks, on grounds she's a libtard Rhino.
Or was it the other way around?
What's the endgame here?
The 'burn it all down' nutters won't back an 'establishment' candidate.
The 'moderate' nutters draw the line at Jordanesque poseurs who have no interest in governing.
None of them would vote for the Democrat or make a concession to get the vote of a Democrat.
Just bring back McCarthy, Gaetz and his crew have made their point already.
I said before that I really wouldn’t be surprised if this continues all the way to the next election in 2024. It feels like there is no way of breaking the deadlock.
There may in time be a small contingent who are happy to empower the temporary speaker to get urgent business like the budget and military aid through. But I honestly think the House agenda is now dead until they have an election to break the deadlock.
Pity they can’t have an emergency election a la Westminster systems really.
You need a credible third party option for swing races in 10% of the seats to keep the rest more afraid of a General Election than a party primary.
No one lives forever. Though if it's a really slow train, it might feel like it.
No, I’ve reached my destination. Ortygia. The island of Siracusa. It’s like a dream of the perfect little Mediterranean Sea-city
The Aeolian Islands are worth a trip, if you haven't been and can fit it in. You can (or could, when I was there ~ten plus years back) wander around quite freely on Vulcano and Stromboli, though that may have been tightened up since then.
I did a blissful fortnight in the Aeolians for the Gazette years back
I got lucky coz Stromboli was erupting - way more than normal, causing a river of lava to tumble to the sea; we went out on a boat at night to see her and it was like a cataract of giant orange diamonds, exploding when they hit the waves
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
SAP: software designed by an angry and inflexible German to DO EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'S YOUR FAULT NOT THE SOFTWARE
Hey! My best mate is paid an absolute fortune by SAP to fix their software which doesn't work. Can't have her out of work.
The SCOTUS has placed USA states in the same position as in the UK: it's a matter for voters and legislators. Voters who disagree with what their state has done know exactly what to do about it. The row is somewhat confected and overdone.
The SCOTUS should of course do the same with guns, where only a perverse reading of the constitution allows the present malign set up.
Should they do the same with slavery? (Obviously not but I am pointing out the flaw in that thinking)
No strong views on that, and no idea if slavery is specifically outlawed by the USA constitution. In the UK it is a matter for voters and legislators, as is the legalisation of torturing children for fun (currently, happily illegal).
Abortion both in principle and in detail is a profoundly contested matter among serious people; slavery isn't. As in the UK it should be a matter for voters and legislators.
So if it isn't a profoundly contested matter you would be fine for it to be decided by the individual states? It is certainly a unique position to hold.
How about race rights? How about gay rights? You are content for the states to decide all these things for themselves?
I'm not sure you can have a system which is democracy, but only if you agree with the pre-prepared answers.
I honestly don't understnad the point you are making.
It's pretty tough to say that a state can't make their own rules by democratic process.
I seem t remember they fought a whole war on just such a question. And States Rights lost.
It does seem pretty arbitrary what is determined to be for states and what is not, and likely to shift based on politics in any case.
A cartoon which would have more bite were it not trotted out after a horrific massacre.
Proportionality could still be argued about the level of their response, but the implication in the cartoon is Israel should have no fear, and that is just plain nonsense.
So any potentially valid point is lost due to the lie.
This is a really useful thread header. I agree with a lot of it, but I think the overall thrust is wrong. Understandably the topic is quite emotionally loaded and the header seems to be coming from a desire to define terrorism based on whether it is justified/unjustified or to put it in simpler terms, right or wrong. To me, this question is an orthogonal one (and a hard one to answer a lot of the time) to a definitional question of what terrorism is. In my view it is important to focus on the word "terror" - terrorism should be seen as a form of psychological warfare, designed to achieve specific political goals through acts of violence. The IRA's goal was to make the British public question the British state's involvement in Ireland. Al Qaeda's goal was to make the West disengage from the Middle East. Hamas's goal is to make the Israeli public question their state's actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and to inflame Arab opinion against Israel to keep the issue on the front page and prevent Arab states from concluding peace deals with Israel that don't address the Palestinians' concerns. Terrorism tends to be carried out by non state actors because it is a form of asymmetrical warfare that tends to be carried out by the weaker partner in the conflict. The stronger partner has other means at their disposal. Israeli attacks on Gaza are therefore not terrorism. Similarly, the bombing of Hamburg or Hiroshima are not terrorism. Whether they are war crimes is a different issue. Whether any of these things are right or wrong is a third question altogether, and one I'm always surprised at how many people feel themselves qualified to answer. In many conflicts it's hard to divide the two sides into good guys and bad guys. Rather than seeking elusive moral clarity we should focus our efforts on helping both sides to de-escalate and find a lasting peace that removes the underlying causes of the conflict.
While in many conflicts it is surprisingly easy to divide the two sides into good guys and bad guys. plus in those situations the "source of the conflict" is the fact that the bad guys want conflict. Eg Ukraine was at peace, before Russia invaded. Eg Israel had stopped occupying Gaza and was helping the Palestinians build the Port of Gaza to aid their development before Hamas took over. We can divide some conflicts by saying democratic Ukraine good, authoritarian Russia bad. Similarly democratic Israel good, Islamofascist Hamas bad.
Rather than seeking elusive "de-escalation" in those situations, we should be seeking to aid victory for our allies who are good over those who would do them harm and in victory they can maybe have a lasting peace.
Israel had stopped occupying Gaza, but has been continuing to blockade it. The Netanyahu government has had no interest in Gaza being able to function anything like a normal state, and it was past Israeli administrations that supported Hamas to destabilise the PLO. Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and to build settlements on occupied territory in contravention of international law. Israel continues to discriminate against Arab Israelis and non-citizen Palestinians. And Israeli democracy has been deteriorating under Bibi!
Hamas is, in part, a consequence of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. This is not to condone Hamas's actions, but it is moral naivety not to recognise this context. It is the official policy of the UK government and that of most of our allies that we do not condone Israel's actions in Palestine, that we recognise continued settlement building as being contrary to international law and contrary to hopes for a lasting peace.
Except the facts don't back up that whatsoever. Netanyahu wasn't even in power when Hamas took over Gaza, Ehud Olmert was.
Israel wasn't blockading Gaza prior to the rise of Hamas, quite the opposite. From 2005 to 2007 (when Hamas took over) Israel was not only not blockading Gaza, they were encouraging the development of the Port of Gaza to help Gaza get developed.
Unfortunately then Hamas took over, so the blockade became necessary and was instituted by Olmert in a reversal of his and Sharon's prior plans to encourage the development of Gaza without an Israeli occupation.
If anything Netanyahu is a response to Hamas rather than the other way around, and even then he's only barely been able to be elected even with Hamas.
You appear to have misread what I wrote. I said, "it was past Israeli administrations that supported Hamas to destabilise the PLO". I didn't say it was Bibi.
You, as usual, completely skip over the continued settlement building in the West Bank.
How far past are you going? Decades before it was known what Hamas was or would become?
Prior to Bibi, Sharon and Olmert were trying to disengage from Gaza and encourage development in Gaza without an Israeli occupation. Prior to that there was a sustained period of trying to work with the PLO and Arafat, until Arafat rejected peace.
Israel like almost all democratic nations wants peace and has voted for peaceful regimes time and again, they've agreed peace with Egypt and other former enemies. If only there was a Palestinian leadership that was equal to them. Its not Israel keeping Palestinians down, its Hamas and Palestinian leadership over decades.
As for continued settlement building, I've addressed it repeatedly. Its not ideal, but considering that the Palestinians have rejected the proposed borders and the Camp David process says that final borders are up for "negotiations", Israel is entirely in its rights to respond to suicide bombers etc being sent into its territory to move the border one way by instead using settlements to put pressure on to move it the other way.
Want to stop settlements? Agree a peace treaty with a fixed border, culminate the negotiations.
Incidentally Israel has a history of respecting negotiations once an agreement is made and either dismantling or handing over settlements in response, see what happened in Sinai, Sharm el Sheikh etc.
Israel has been in military occupation of the West Bank since 1967. Yes, it is Israel keeping Palestinians down.
When you say Israel is entirely in its rights to move the border one way or the other, could you lay out which rights those are? Are these rights written down somewhere? That’s not what international law says. We don’t say Russia is within their rights to move the border one way or the other. We didn’t say Iraq was. Settlements on occupied territory are illegal under international law. That is what the UN says. That is what the US says. That is what the UK says.
The UN is wrong, and you're categorically wrong about what the US says and what international law does too.
Israel gained Gaza and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in a defensive war, just as Germany lost land in WWII. Egypt relinquished its claim on Gaza in the Egypt/Israel peace treaty following the Camp David Accords in the 1970s.
The Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO of 1993 quite explicitly do not define a border between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state. The 1967 border is explicitly not the border between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state.
The PLO agreed in the Oslo Accords that the future border is subject to future negotiations.
Unless you think the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Accords are not international law, they matter far more than any vote by the UN.
The US as the primary facilitator of peace talks at both Camp David under Jimmy Carter and throughout decades of peace processes including the Oslo Accords under Bill Clinton respects that the border is an issue for future negotiations. It does not prejudge those negotiations.
The PLO has tried to back its negotiators up by sending suicide bombers into Israel to pressure Israel into giving up more land. I respect sending builders and construction crews in more than suicide bombers.
And yet the existence of Israel is based on UN resolutions not the Camp David or Oslo Agreements. And when Israel wanted to invade Lebanon they cited UN resolutions for justification not the Camp David or Oslo Agreements.
So even Israel apparently doesn't agree with you.
When talking about UN Resolution its important to be clear, do you mean UNSC Resolutions, which are quasi-law, or UNGA Resolutions? Which are definitively not.
The existence of Israel is not simply because of the UN Resolutions at the time because Israel accepted the UN Resolution at the time but Egypt and Transjordan did not and invaded seeking to wipe out Israel - and succeeding in wiping out the land assigned to the Palestinians. Egypt and Transjordan did that, not Israel, not the UN.
Egypt subsequently made peace with Israel, a peace the UNGA rejected, but the UNGA is not law.
Please specify any UNSC Resolution made after the Oslo Accords that reject the Oslo Accords principle that the borders are a matter for future negotiations? I am not aware of any. The Oslo process is international law, whether you like it or not is immaterial.
> Republicans are going on a break now as Tom Emmer meets with holdouts individually and in small groups. He wants to secure the necessary 217 votes behind closed doors before bringing his nomination to a vote on the floor.
> A majority of the two dozen or so holdouts against Tom Emmer are members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, and many of them continue to say they will vote for Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right chairman of the Judiciary Committee who failed to win the speakership last week.
SSI - Freedom Caucus = expelled Marjorie Taylor Greene from their ranks, on grounds she's a libtard Rhino.
Or was it the other way around?
What's the endgame here?
The 'burn it all down' nutters won't back an 'establishment' candidate.
The 'moderate' nutters draw the line at Jordanesque poseurs who have no interest in governing.
None of them would vote for the Democrat or make a concession to get the vote of a Democrat.
Just bring back McCarthy, Gaetz and his crew have made their point already.
Like many a similar legislative standoff, this is a war of attrition by other means.
Gonna drag out a while longer. Still think that Steve Scalise is most likelly to end up next Speaker.
Perhaps in the House by Christmas!
ADDENDUM - and the GOP moderates (relatively speaking anyway) are NOT nutters.
Instead, they've finally grown themselves some nuts - no longer spineless, "squishy" sponges.
The SCOTUS has placed USA states in the same position as in the UK: it's a matter for voters and legislators. Voters who disagree with what their state has done know exactly what to do about it. The row is somewhat confected and overdone.
The SCOTUS should of course do the same with guns, where only a perverse reading of the constitution allows the present malign set up.
Should they do the same with slavery? (Obviously not but I am pointing out the flaw in that thinking)
No strong views on that, and no idea if slavery is specifically outlawed by the USA constitution. In the UK it is a matter for voters and legislators, as is the legalisation of torturing children for fun (currently, happily illegal).
Abortion both in principle and in detail is a profoundly contested matter among serious people; slavery isn't. As in the UK it should be a matter for voters and legislators.
So if it isn't a profoundly contested matter you would be fine for it to be decided by the individual states? It is certainly a unique position to hold.
How about race rights? How about gay rights? You are content for the states to decide all these things for themselves?
I'm not sure you can have a system which is democracy, but only if you agree with the pre-prepared answers.
I honestly don't understnad the point you are making.
It's pretty tough to say that a state can't make their own rules by democratic process.
I seem t remember they fought a whole war on just such a question. And States Rights lost.
Edit: Though that wasn't the point I was making. I was just checking how far algarkirk would take his states rights idea and apparently it is all the way to the Confederacy.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
SAP: software designed by an angry and inflexible German to DO EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'S YOUR FAULT NOT THE SOFTWARE
Hey! My best mate is paid an absolute fortune by SAP to fix their software which doesn't work. Can't have her out of work.
Many years ago, I was involved in choosing an ERP system for an organisation.
We had two contenders - SAP and Oracle.
My comment was: SAP - make the business fit the system Oracle - make the system fit the business.
> Republicans are going on a break now as Tom Emmer meets with holdouts individually and in small groups. He wants to secure the necessary 217 votes behind closed doors before bringing his nomination to a vote on the floor.
> A majority of the two dozen or so holdouts against Tom Emmer are members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, and many of them continue to say they will vote for Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right chairman of the Judiciary Committee who failed to win the speakership last week.
SSI - Freedom Caucus = expelled Marjorie Taylor Greene from their ranks, on grounds she's a libtard Rhino.
Or was it the other way around?
What's the endgame here?
The 'burn it all down' nutters won't back an 'establishment' candidate.
The 'moderate' nutters draw the line at Jordanesque poseurs who have no interest in governing.
None of them would vote for the Democrat or make a concession to get the vote of a Democrat.
Just bring back McCarthy, Gaetz and his crew have made their point already.
Like many a similar legislative standoff, this is a war of attrition by other means.
Gonna drag out a while longer. Still think that Steve Scalise is most likelly to end up next Speaker.
The Georgia Supreme Court reversed a Fulton judge’s ruling that the state’s anti-abortion law was void because Roe v. Wade was in effect when the law passed in 2019. The decision was 6-1 in favor, with Justice Ellington dissenting. https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1716795158086430748
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
SAP: software designed by an angry and inflexible German to DO EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'S YOUR FAULT NOT THE SOFTWARE
Hey! My best mate is paid an absolute fortune by SAP to fix their software which doesn't work. Can't have her out of work.
Many years ago, I was involved in choosing an ERP system for an organisation.
We had two contenders - SAP and Oracle.
My comment was: SAP - make the business fit the system Oracle - make the system fit the business.
We had to change from academic 'terms' to 'semesters' in order to fit in with an Oracle system.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
SAP: software designed by an angry and inflexible German to DO EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'S YOUR FAULT NOT THE SOFTWARE
Hey! My best mate is paid an absolute fortune by SAP to fix their software which doesn't work. Can't have her out of work.
Many years ago, I was involved in choosing an ERP system for an organisation.
We had two contenders - SAP and Oracle.
My comment was: SAP - make the business fit the system Oracle - make the system fit the business.
At great cost, if Birmingham City Council is any indication.
> Republicans are going on a break now as Tom Emmer meets with holdouts individually and in small groups. He wants to secure the necessary 217 votes behind closed doors before bringing his nomination to a vote on the floor.
> A majority of the two dozen or so holdouts against Tom Emmer are members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, and many of them continue to say they will vote for Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right chairman of the Judiciary Committee who failed to win the speakership last week.
SSI - Freedom Caucus = expelled Marjorie Taylor Greene from their ranks, on grounds she's a libtard Rhino.
Or was it the other way around?
What's the endgame here?
The 'burn it all down' nutters won't back an 'establishment' candidate.
The 'moderate' nutters draw the line at Jordanesque poseurs who have no interest in governing.
None of them would vote for the Democrat or make a concession to get the vote of a Democrat.
Just bring back McCarthy, Gaetz and his crew have made their point already.
Like many a similar legislative standoff, this is a war of attrition by other means.
Gonna drag out a while longer. Still think that Steve Scalise is most likelly to end up next Speaker.
Perhaps in the House by Christmas!
Aren't they shutting down soon?
Mid-November. BUT if still no Speaker, methinks a way will be found to get around that difficulty.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
SAP: software designed by an angry and inflexible German to DO EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'S YOUR FAULT NOT THE SOFTWARE
Hey! My best mate is paid an absolute fortune by SAP to fix their software which doesn't work. Can't have her out of work.
Many years ago, I was involved in choosing an ERP system for an organisation.
We had two contenders - SAP and Oracle.
My comment was: SAP - make the business fit the system Oracle - make the system fit the business.
Though a lot of the time (not specifically with these specific examples), fitting the system rather than the system fitting the business is the right way to operate.
A lot of organisations can run with off the shelf, or relatively off the shelf software. With a bit of training to work with the system that is tried, testing and works.
A very large proportion of the time (but not always) anyone saying they have "bespoke" needs is begging to be ripped off and spend a fortune on software that will never quite deliver.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
SAP: software designed by an angry and inflexible German to DO EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'S YOUR FAULT NOT THE SOFTWARE
Hey! My best mate is paid an absolute fortune by SAP to fix their software which doesn't work. Can't have her out of work.
Many years ago, I was involved in choosing an ERP system for an organisation.
We had two contenders - SAP and Oracle.
My comment was: SAP - make the business fit the system Oracle - make the system fit the business.
We had to change from academic 'terms' to 'semesters' in order to fit in with an Oracle system.
Ymmv.
To me those mean two totally different things though. There's three terms in a year, and 2 semesters in a year.
> Republicans are going on a break now as Tom Emmer meets with holdouts individually and in small groups. He wants to secure the necessary 217 votes behind closed doors before bringing his nomination to a vote on the floor.
> A majority of the two dozen or so holdouts against Tom Emmer are members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, and many of them continue to say they will vote for Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right chairman of the Judiciary Committee who failed to win the speakership last week.
SSI - Freedom Caucus = expelled Marjorie Taylor Greene from their ranks, on grounds she's a libtard Rhino.
Or was it the other way around?
What's the endgame here?
The 'burn it all down' nutters won't back an 'establishment' candidate.
The 'moderate' nutters draw the line at Jordanesque poseurs who have no interest in governing.
None of them would vote for the Democrat or make a concession to get the vote of a Democrat.
Just bring back McCarthy, Gaetz and his crew have made their point already.
Like many a similar legislative standoff, this is a war of attrition by other means.
Gonna drag out a while longer. Still think that Steve Scalise is most likelly to end up next Speaker.
Perhaps in the House by Christmas!
Aren't they shutting down soon?
Mid-November. BUT if still no Speaker, methinks a way will be found to get around that difficulty.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
SAP: software designed by an angry and inflexible German to DO EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'S YOUR FAULT NOT THE SOFTWARE
Hey! My best mate is paid an absolute fortune by SAP to fix their software which doesn't work. Can't have her out of work.
Many years ago, I was involved in choosing an ERP system for an organisation.
We had two contenders - SAP and Oracle.
My comment was: SAP - make the business fit the system Oracle - make the system fit the business.
Though a lot of the time (not specifically with these specific examples), fitting the system rather than the system fitting the business is the right way to operate.
A lot of organisations can run with off the shelf, or relatively off the shelf software. With a bit of training to work with the system that is tried, testing and works.
A very large proportion of the time (but not always) anyone saying they have "bespoke" needs is begging to be ripped off and spend a fortune on software that will never quite deliver.
I've been mildly amused (or displeased) down the years at the number of 'OMG! We can't possibly function without this weird edge case being covered!!!' things I've had to implement. Then a central 'take it or leave it' system has been imposed that doesn't cover any edge cases at all - and not a murmur.
> Republicans are going on a break now as Tom Emmer meets with holdouts individually and in small groups. He wants to secure the necessary 217 votes behind closed doors before bringing his nomination to a vote on the floor.
> A majority of the two dozen or so holdouts against Tom Emmer are members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, and many of them continue to say they will vote for Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right chairman of the Judiciary Committee who failed to win the speakership last week.
SSI - Freedom Caucus = expelled Marjorie Taylor Greene from their ranks, on grounds she's a libtard Rhino.
Or was it the other way around?
What's the endgame here?
The 'burn it all down' nutters won't back an 'establishment' candidate.
The 'moderate' nutters draw the line at Jordanesque poseurs who have no interest in governing.
None of them would vote for the Democrat or make a concession to get the vote of a Democrat.
Just bring back McCarthy, Gaetz and his crew have made their point already.
Like many a similar legislative standoff, this is a war of attrition by other means.
Gonna drag out a while longer. Still think that Steve Scalise is most likelly to end up next Speaker.
Perhaps in the House by Christmas!
Aren't they shutting down soon?
Mid-November. BUT if still no Speaker, methinks a way will be found to get around that difficulty.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
SAP: software designed by an angry and inflexible German to DO EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'S YOUR FAULT NOT THE SOFTWARE
Hey! My best mate is paid an absolute fortune by SAP to fix their software which doesn't work. Can't have her out of work.
Many years ago, I was involved in choosing an ERP system for an organisation.
We had two contenders - SAP and Oracle.
My comment was: SAP - make the business fit the system Oracle - make the system fit the business.
We had to change from academic 'terms' to 'semesters' in order to fit in with an Oracle system.
Ymmv.
To me those mean two totally different things though. There's three terms in a year, and 2 semesters in a year.
Or has that changed?
Yep - three semesters now due to fitting in with Oracle.
With respect to gay marriage compared to legal abortion, note that US conservatives (of varying factions for various reasons) have basically given up on the former while still fighting about the later.
Why? Because whereas many regard gay marriage as perverted, they do NOT consider that as bad as murder, or manslaughter, which is how they regard abortion.
True, there's lots of bruhaha re: trans and related, but THAT's about > genuine concern for children & perhaps women; and > political desire to appeal to died-in-the-wool homophobes.
No real political will OR mileage in taking on, let alone taking down, gay marriage.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
SAP: software designed by an angry and inflexible German to DO EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'S YOUR FAULT NOT THE SOFTWARE
Hey! My best mate is paid an absolute fortune by SAP to fix their software which doesn't work. Can't have her out of work.
Many years ago, I was involved in choosing an ERP system for an organisation.
We had two contenders - SAP and Oracle.
My comment was: SAP - make the business fit the system Oracle - make the system fit the business.
I have a slightly different version of that.
A consultant says to their client, "you have two choices, SAP and Oracle. If you choose SAP, you will need to change your business in a myriad different ways, so that everything is done the SAP way, of it just won't work. If you choose Oracle, then you don't need to change your business. Whatever you do, the software just won't work."
This is a really useful thread header. I agree with a lot of it, but I think the overall thrust is wrong. Understandably the topic is quite emotionally loaded and the header seems to be coming from a desire to define terrorism based on whether it is justified/unjustified or to put it in simpler terms, right or wrong. To me, this question is an orthogonal one (and a hard one to answer a lot of the time) to a definitional question of what terrorism is. In my view it is important to focus on the word "terror" - terrorism should be seen as a form of psychological warfare, designed to achieve specific political goals through acts of violence. The IRA's goal was to make the British public question the British state's involvement in Ireland. Al Qaeda's goal was to make the West disengage from the Middle East. Hamas's goal is to make the Israeli public question their state's actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and to inflame Arab opinion against Israel to keep the issue on the front page and prevent Arab states from concluding peace deals with Israel that don't address the Palestinians' concerns. Terrorism tends to be carried out by non state actors because it is a form of asymmetrical warfare that tends to be carried out by the weaker partner in the conflict. The stronger partner has other means at their disposal. Israeli attacks on Gaza are therefore not terrorism. Similarly, the bombing of Hamburg or Hiroshima are not terrorism. Whether they are war crimes is a different issue. Whether any of these things are right or wrong is a third question altogether, and one I'm always surprised at how many people feel themselves qualified to answer. In many conflicts it's hard to divide the two sides into good guys and bad guys. Rather than seeking elusive moral clarity we should focus our efforts on helping both sides to de-escalate and find a lasting peace that removes the underlying causes of the conflict.
While in many conflicts it is surprisingly easy to divide the two sides into good guys and bad guys. plus in those situations the "source of the conflict" is the fact that the bad guys want conflict. Eg Ukraine was at peace, before Russia invaded. Eg Israel had stopped occupying Gaza and was helping the Palestinians build the Port of Gaza to aid their development before Hamas took over. We can divide some conflicts by saying democratic Ukraine good, authoritarian Russia bad. Similarly democratic Israel good, Islamofascist Hamas bad.
Rather than seeking elusive "de-escalation" in those situations, we should be seeking to aid victory for our allies who are good over those who would do them harm and in victory they can maybe have a lasting peace.
Israel had stopped occupying Gaza, but has been continuing to blockade it. The Netanyahu government has had no interest in Gaza being able to function anything like a normal state, and it was past Israeli administrations that supported Hamas to destabilise the PLO. Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and to build settlements on occupied territory in contravention of international law. Israel continues to discriminate against Arab Israelis and non-citizen Palestinians. And Israeli democracy has been deteriorating under Bibi!
Hamas is, in part, a consequence of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. This is not to condone Hamas's actions, but it is moral naivety not to recognise this context. It is the official policy of the UK government and that of most of our allies that we do not condone Israel's actions in Palestine, that we recognise continued settlement building as being contrary to international law and contrary to hopes for a lasting peace.
Except the facts don't back up that whatsoever. Netanyahu wasn't even in power when Hamas took over Gaza, Ehud Olmert was.
Israel wasn't blockading Gaza prior to the rise of Hamas, quite the opposite. From 2005 to 2007 (when Hamas took over) Israel was not only not blockading Gaza, they were encouraging the development of the Port of Gaza to help Gaza get developed.
Unfortunately then Hamas took over, so the blockade became necessary and was instituted by Olmert in a reversal of his and Sharon's prior plans to encourage the development of Gaza without an Israeli occupation.
If anything Netanyahu is a response to Hamas rather than the other way around, and even then he's only barely been able to be elected even with Hamas.
You appear to have misread what I wrote. I said, "it was past Israeli administrations that supported Hamas to destabilise the PLO". I didn't say it was Bibi.
You, as usual, completely skip over the continued settlement building in the West Bank.
How far past are you going? Decades before it was known what Hamas was or would become?
Prior to Bibi, Sharon and Olmert were trying to disengage from Gaza and encourage development in Gaza without an Israeli occupation. Prior to that there was a sustained period of trying to work with the PLO and Arafat, until Arafat rejected peace.
Israel like almost all democratic nations wants peace and has voted for peaceful regimes time and again, they've agreed peace with Egypt and other former enemies. If only there was a Palestinian leadership that was equal to them. Its not Israel keeping Palestinians down, its Hamas and Palestinian leadership over decades.
As for continued settlement building, I've addressed it repeatedly. Its not ideal, but considering that the Palestinians have rejected the proposed borders and the Camp David process says that final borders are up for "negotiations", Israel is entirely in its rights to respond to suicide bombers etc being sent into its territory to move the border one way by instead using settlements to put pressure on to move it the other way.
Want to stop settlements? Agree a peace treaty with a fixed border, culminate the negotiations.
Incidentally Israel has a history of respecting negotiations once an agreement is made and either dismantling or handing over settlements in response, see what happened in Sinai, Sharm el Sheikh etc.
Israel has been in military occupation of the West Bank since 1967. Yes, it is Israel keeping Palestinians down.
When you say Israel is entirely in its rights to move the border one way or the other, could you lay out which rights those are? Are these rights written down somewhere? That’s not what international law says. We don’t say Russia is within their rights to move the border one way or the other. We didn’t say Iraq was. Settlements on occupied territory are illegal under international law. That is what the UN says. That is what the US says. That is what the UK says.
The UN is wrong, and you're categorically wrong about what the US says and what international law does too.
Israel gained Gaza and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in a defensive war, just as Germany lost land in WWII. Egypt relinquished its claim on Gaza in the Egypt/Israel peace treaty following the Camp David Accords in the 1970s.
The Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO of 1993 quite explicitly do not define a border between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state. The 1967 border is explicitly not the border between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state.
The PLO agreed in the Oslo Accords that the future border is subject to future negotiations.
Unless you think the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Accords are not international law, they matter far more than any vote by the UN.
The US as the primary facilitator of peace talks at both Camp David under Jimmy Carter and throughout decades of peace processes including the Oslo Accords under Bill Clinton respects that the border is an issue for future negotiations. It does not prejudge those negotiations.
The PLO has tried to back its negotiators up by sending suicide bombers into Israel to pressure Israel into giving up more land. I respect sending builders and construction crews in more than suicide bombers.
And yet the existence of Israel is based on UN resolutions not the Camp David or Oslo Agreements. And when Israel wanted to invade Lebanon they cited UN resolutions for justification not the Camp David or Oslo Agreements.
So even Israel apparently doesn't agree with you.
When talking about UN Resolution its important to be clear, do you mean UNSC Resolutions, which are quasi-law, or UNGA Resolutions? Which are definitively not.
The existence of Israel is not simply because of the UN Resolutions at the time because Israel accepted the UN Resolution at the time but Egypt and Transjordan did not and invaded seeking to wipe out Israel - and succeeding in wiping out the land assigned to the Palestinians. Egypt and Transjordan did that, not Israel, not the UN.
Egypt subsequently made peace with Israel, a peace the UNGA rejected, but the UNGA is not law.
Please specify any UNSC Resolution made after the Oslo Accords that reject the Oslo Accords principle that the borders are a matter for future negotiations? I am not aware of any. The Oslo process is international law, whether you like it or not is immaterial.
Its not a matter of whether I like it. It is a matter of whether or not Israel thinks it is law. And given they launched an invasion of another country based on those resolutions (or rather on Labanon's claimed breach of them) it appears you are disagreeing with Israel as well as most of the rest of the world as well. Of course if you are an international law expert then maybe you might have a point and you can tell Israel they were wrong. But we all know you are not and Israel would probably tell you excatly where to stick your opinions.
Not sure the mass transportation of Jews won't be seen as an ignoble measure.
Israel is almost exactly the same size as Wales. I know this because a friend once looked at the board for a wargame of the Six Days war, and said, looks about the size of Wales. And he was right.
Yep,
Wales = 21,218 sq. km. (8,192 sq. miles) Israel = 20,770 sq. km. (8,019 sq. miles), on its 1967 borders.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
SAP: software designed by an angry and inflexible German to DO EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'S YOUR FAULT NOT THE SOFTWARE
Hey! My best mate is paid an absolute fortune by SAP to fix their software which doesn't work. Can't have her out of work.
Many years ago, I was involved in choosing an ERP system for an organisation.
We had two contenders - SAP and Oracle.
My comment was: SAP - make the business fit the system Oracle - make the system fit the business.
We had to change from academic 'terms' to 'semesters' in order to fit in with an Oracle system.
Ymmv.
To me those mean two totally different things though. There's three terms in a year, and 2 semesters in a year.
Or has that changed?
Yep - three semesters now due to fitting in with Oracle.
That's great etymology, so there's now three times six months in a year.
This is a really useful thread header. I agree with a lot of it, but I think the overall thrust is wrong. Understandably the topic is quite emotionally loaded and the header seems to be coming from a desire to define terrorism based on whether it is justified/unjustified or to put it in simpler terms, right or wrong. To me, this question is an orthogonal one (and a hard one to answer a lot of the time) to a definitional question of what terrorism is. In my view it is important to focus on the word "terror" - terrorism should be seen as a form of psychological warfare, designed to achieve specific political goals through acts of violence. The IRA's goal was to make the British public question the British state's involvement in Ireland. Al Qaeda's goal was to make the West disengage from the Middle East. Hamas's goal is to make the Israeli public question their state's actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and to inflame Arab opinion against Israel to keep the issue on the front page and prevent Arab states from concluding peace deals with Israel that don't address the Palestinians' concerns. Terrorism tends to be carried out by non state actors because it is a form of asymmetrical warfare that tends to be carried out by the weaker partner in the conflict. The stronger partner has other means at their disposal. Israeli attacks on Gaza are therefore not terrorism. Similarly, the bombing of Hamburg or Hiroshima are not terrorism. Whether they are war crimes is a different issue. Whether any of these things are right or wrong is a third question altogether, and one I'm always surprised at how many people feel themselves qualified to answer. In many conflicts it's hard to divide the two sides into good guys and bad guys. Rather than seeking elusive moral clarity we should focus our efforts on helping both sides to de-escalate and find a lasting peace that removes the underlying causes of the conflict.
While in many conflicts it is surprisingly easy to divide the two sides into good guys and bad guys. plus in those situations the "source of the conflict" is the fact that the bad guys want conflict. Eg Ukraine was at peace, before Russia invaded. Eg Israel had stopped occupying Gaza and was helping the Palestinians build the Port of Gaza to aid their development before Hamas took over. We can divide some conflicts by saying democratic Ukraine good, authoritarian Russia bad. Similarly democratic Israel good, Islamofascist Hamas bad.
Rather than seeking elusive "de-escalation" in those situations, we should be seeking to aid victory for our allies who are good over those who would do them harm and in victory they can maybe have a lasting peace.
Israel had stopped occupying Gaza, but has been continuing to blockade it. The Netanyahu government has had no interest in Gaza being able to function anything like a normal state, and it was past Israeli administrations that supported Hamas to destabilise the PLO. Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and to build settlements on occupied territory in contravention of international law. Israel continues to discriminate against Arab Israelis and non-citizen Palestinians. And Israeli democracy has been deteriorating under Bibi!
Hamas is, in part, a consequence of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. This is not to condone Hamas's actions, but it is moral naivety not to recognise this context. It is the official policy of the UK government and that of most of our allies that we do not condone Israel's actions in Palestine, that we recognise continued settlement building as being contrary to international law and contrary to hopes for a lasting peace.
Except the facts don't back up that whatsoever. Netanyahu wasn't even in power when Hamas took over Gaza, Ehud Olmert was.
Israel wasn't blockading Gaza prior to the rise of Hamas, quite the opposite. From 2005 to 2007 (when Hamas took over) Israel was not only not blockading Gaza, they were encouraging the development of the Port of Gaza to help Gaza get developed.
Unfortunately then Hamas took over, so the blockade became necessary and was instituted by Olmert in a reversal of his and Sharon's prior plans to encourage the development of Gaza without an Israeli occupation.
If anything Netanyahu is a response to Hamas rather than the other way around, and even then he's only barely been able to be elected even with Hamas.
You appear to have misread what I wrote. I said, "it was past Israeli administrations that supported Hamas to destabilise the PLO". I didn't say it was Bibi.
You, as usual, completely skip over the continued settlement building in the West Bank.
How far past are you going? Decades before it was known what Hamas was or would become?
Prior to Bibi, Sharon and Olmert were trying to disengage from Gaza and encourage development in Gaza without an Israeli occupation. Prior to that there was a sustained period of trying to work with the PLO and Arafat, until Arafat rejected peace.
Israel like almost all democratic nations wants peace and has voted for peaceful regimes time and again, they've agreed peace with Egypt and other former enemies. If only there was a Palestinian leadership that was equal to them. Its not Israel keeping Palestinians down, its Hamas and Palestinian leadership over decades.
As for continued settlement building, I've addressed it repeatedly. Its not ideal, but considering that the Palestinians have rejected the proposed borders and the Camp David process says that final borders are up for "negotiations", Israel is entirely in its rights to respond to suicide bombers etc being sent into its territory to move the border one way by instead using settlements to put pressure on to move it the other way.
Want to stop settlements? Agree a peace treaty with a fixed border, culminate the negotiations.
Incidentally Israel has a history of respecting negotiations once an agreement is made and either dismantling or handing over settlements in response, see what happened in Sinai, Sharm el Sheikh etc.
Israel has been in military occupation of the West Bank since 1967. Yes, it is Israel keeping Palestinians down.
When you say Israel is entirely in its rights to move the border one way or the other, could you lay out which rights those are? Are these rights written down somewhere? That’s not what international law says. We don’t say Russia is within their rights to move the border one way or the other. We didn’t say Iraq was. Settlements on occupied territory are illegal under international law. That is what the UN says. That is what the US says. That is what the UK says.
The UN is wrong, and you're categorically wrong about what the US says and what international law does too.
Israel gained Gaza and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in a defensive war, just as Germany lost land in WWII. Egypt relinquished its claim on Gaza in the Egypt/Israel peace treaty following the Camp David Accords in the 1970s.
The Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO of 1993 quite explicitly do not define a border between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state. The 1967 border is explicitly not the border between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state.
The PLO agreed in the Oslo Accords that the future border is subject to future negotiations.
Unless you think the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Accords are not international law, they matter far more than any vote by the UN.
The US as the primary facilitator of peace talks at both Camp David under Jimmy Carter and throughout decades of peace processes including the Oslo Accords under Bill Clinton respects that the border is an issue for future negotiations. It does not prejudge those negotiations.
The PLO has tried to back its negotiators up by sending suicide bombers into Israel to pressure Israel into giving up more land. I respect sending builders and construction crews in more than suicide bombers.
And yet the existence of Israel is based on UN resolutions not the Camp David or Oslo Agreements. And when Israel wanted to invade Lebanon they cited UN resolutions for justification not the Camp David or Oslo Agreements.
So even Israel apparently doesn't agree with you.
When talking about UN Resolution its important to be clear, do you mean UNSC Resolutions, which are quasi-law, or UNGA Resolutions? Which are definitively not.
The existence of Israel is not simply because of the UN Resolutions at the time because Israel accepted the UN Resolution at the time but Egypt and Transjordan did not and invaded seeking to wipe out Israel - and succeeding in wiping out the land assigned to the Palestinians. Egypt and Transjordan did that, not Israel, not the UN.
Egypt subsequently made peace with Israel, a peace the UNGA rejected, but the UNGA is not law.
Please specify any UNSC Resolution made after the Oslo Accords that reject the Oslo Accords principle that the borders are a matter for future negotiations? I am not aware of any. The Oslo process is international law, whether you like it or not is immaterial.
Its not a matter of whether I like it. It is a matter of whether or not Israel thinks it is law. And given they launched an invasion of another country based on those resolutions (or rather on Labanon's claimed breach of them) it appears you are disagreeing with Israel as well as most of the rest of the world as well. Of course if you are an international law expert then maybe you might have a point and you can tell Israel they were wrong. But we all know you are not and Israel would probably tell you excatly where to stick your opinions.
I am far too polite to do so.
Security Council resolutions, not General Assembly ones.
You are aware of the difference aren't you? Israel sure is, as is almost everyone else.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
ARM: top quality British tech brilliance SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
SAP: software designed by an angry and inflexible German to DO EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'S YOUR FAULT NOT THE SOFTWARE
Hey! My best mate is paid an absolute fortune by SAP to fix their software which doesn't work. Can't have her out of work.
Many years ago, I was involved in choosing an ERP system for an organisation.
We had two contenders - SAP and Oracle.
My comment was: SAP - make the business fit the system Oracle - make the system fit the business.
Though a lot of the time (not specifically with these specific examples), fitting the system rather than the system fitting the business is the right way to operate.
A lot of organisations can run with off the shelf, or relatively off the shelf software. With a bit of training to work with the system that is tried, testing and works.
A very large proportion of the time (but not always) anyone saying they have "bespoke" needs is begging to be ripped off and spend a fortune on software that will never quite deliver.
What often happens if a business doesn't quite fit their system, and no adjustment is made for one to fit the other, is that people create poorly-documented ridiculous bodge fixes that destroy productivity, are a huge source of bad quality data, the details of which are known only to one person, and invariably involve the devil's own software, Excel.
They should have gone straight for the visceral emotional appeal
A sequence of soaring, sublime shots of places like Ortygia, and Venice and Barcelona and the Dolomites and the Matterhorn, and the Hebrides - and magnificent cathedrals like Durham and Milan and Seville and Chartres and York - and cosy English pubs and delightful Parisian bistros and beer halls in Bavaria and tavernas under the plane tree in the Zagoriou mountains - with a sonorous voice over saying THIS, THIS IS YOUR HOME, EUROPE IS YOUR HOME, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND CIVILISED PLACE ON EARTH - why wouid you leave such a home?? Stay and defend it! Celebrate it! You are the luckiest person in the world: a EUROPEAN
That would have won by a canter
Britain is sliding down into slum-hood, but that is what was voted for. Hells bells @Leonyou voted for it.
It is up to you to ensure that Britain's decline into a footnote is a success and I have every confidence in you and all Leavers that you will accomplish your goal.
Well done
Kind regards
An EU citizen
The EU sometimes seems too busy slapping itself on the back to notice the ways in which it is slipping behind.
While the US's tech sector is undoubtedly massively bigger, the Datastream numbers use primary stock market listing to allocate companies to countries. That means that the following companies are considered US, when they are in fact not:
- ARM ($53bn), which is British - SAP ($162bn), which is German - ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch - Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
ASML is the current lynch pin. Without it all the cutting edge chip foundries would close. That is why ASML is banned from supplying the Chinese foundries.
ASML is absolutely Europe's leading tech company. What's amazing, though, is that unless you're in that industry, you'll never have heard of it.
I can confirm that. I have at least heard of ARM and SAP, though I don't know what the former does.
Originally ARM was "Acorn's RISC Machine" a type of special low-power, high performance chip designed by Acorn Computers in Cambridge - the same Acorn that designed and built the BBC micro.
They wanted a successor chip to the 8 bit 6502 (a lovely chip with a great assembly language that was a delight to program in) but there was nothing on the market except the 68000 series (wound up in early Apples) or the ponderous Z8000 which was horrendous in terms of power consumption and cost.
So they designed their own chip. Very low power, very high performance. And nowadays it powers every smartphone on the planet.
A consultant says to their client, "you have two choices, SAP and Oracle. If you choose SAP, you will need to change your business in a myriad different ways, so that everything is done the SAP way, of it just won't work. If you choose Oracle, then you don't need to change your business. Whatever you do, the software just won't work."
That probably explains why we ended up with both...
The SCOTUS has placed USA states in the same position as in the UK: it's a matter for voters and legislators. Voters who disagree with what their state has done know exactly what to do about it. The row is somewhat confected and overdone.
The SCOTUS should of course do the same with guns, where only a perverse reading of the constitution allows the present malign set up.
Should they do the same with slavery? (Obviously not but I am pointing out the flaw in that thinking)
No strong views on that, and no idea if slavery is specifically outlawed by the USA constitution. In the UK it is a matter for voters and legislators, as is the legalisation of torturing children for fun (currently, happily illegal).
Abortion both in principle and in detail is a profoundly contested matter among serious people; slavery isn't. As in the UK it should be a matter for voters and legislators.
Comments
https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1716870151667351873
With the possible exception of Japan, a few tiny pockets of East Asia and the USA, and maybe Anglophone outliers like Oz, then Europe is the most civilized place on earth, and certainly the most beautiful
Yes it is all theoretically possible but feels closer to just theoretically possible than even plausible to me.
Trump as a president wasn't the disaster we imagined, and no doubt won't be the feared disaster next time. What he does though is totally undermine the whole apparatus of state in the US. (Biden is guilty of this too)
Importantly, if Labour took the position our Bolton brother wanted them to take, several million centrist votes (and mine) would become available to other parties. Centrists of all shades would do well to rally behind Sir K who, along with his shadow cabinet, are in an impossibly difficult position; but our country needs at least one party that is non-populist, electable and centrist.
Even now I would grit my teeth and vote Tory if Labour was led by Corbyn.
It is true that life did not end for the four years of his presidency, he did many things that plenty hated but were within the range of, well, political preference. But there's no getting away from the fact that he helped instigate an attempt to violently keep him in power, despite all his legal challenges having been thrown out. That is a line crossing that completely transforms what might be overdone concern about what his day to day policies will be, to what he will do when he does not have the people who worked for him last time who stood up to him at the final moment. If Pence, or the White House Counsel and the DOJ, if the members of congress who were willing to finally say no to him are not there next time, what might he do then?
Those are not baseless questions anymore.
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/richard-nixon-watergate-era-button-1871823153
(In reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre )
Tom Emmer: Crypto’s dream speaker
The Minnesota Republican has been Capitol Hill’s top cryptocurrency advocate for years.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/24/tom-emmer-crypto-00123152
Get well soon!
I get that taking the Christie route of criticising Trump from the get go was not going to be a path to win over Trump voters, but he seemed to have no plan (beyond waiting it out I guess?) and so just sat there whilst Trump bashed him for month after month, looking weak and silly as a result. Others might have gotten away with it more since they were not so often the focus of early attacks.
Ultimately he was going to have to go after Trump at some point, and I guess he was trying to pick his moment, and now he's already missed it he hsa nothing much to lose?
And what's the counter-argument? That Europe isn't the most beautiful and civilised place in the world? That seems a hard case to make. You can, I'm sure, pick out individual counterexamples - but on average I'm sure it's true.
- ARM ($53bn), which is British
- SAP ($162bn), which is German
- ASM Lithography ($240bn), which is Dutch
- Infineon ($40bn), which is German
There are probably other examples, but those are the ones I could think off of the top of my head.
Granted, they'd not have had the chance to dip their toes into impeachment etc, but the trade off for a 2024 campaign would presumably be worth it.
Best wishes to @Big_G_NorthWales
How about race rights? How about gay rights? You are content for the states to decide all these things for themselves?
In my view the danger comes less from Trump trying to game the system and more from the risk of the system completely collapsing (unlikely, but this is where discrediting the political process creates the risk). In that situation the only people that can fill the vacuum are the military. And who knows what happens then.
If Brexit is about buccaneering out into the world, living off our wits and making alliances with dubious friends across the world. Spectator Brexit, if you like... Then yes, the relative, imperfect but real niceness of Europe is a card to play against the idea.
If, on the other hand, Brexit is about pulling up the drawbridge, locking the door, having a nice cup of tea and putting that nice Ken Bruce on the radio, the argument doesn't work as well. Even Europe is too much abroad and too scary.
Besides, the nice Vote Leave people promised us that Brexit wouldn't dilute the nice bits of being European.
So naturally just the ticket for Viktor Orban.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Turanism
An off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot accused of attempting to shut off engines during a Sunday evening Horizon Air flight out of Everett’s Paine Field has been charged in federal court.
Joseph Emerson, 44, was charged Tuesday with one count of interfering with flight crew members and attendants. Emerson, who was riding in a flight deck jump seat behind the pilots, is accused of attempting to activate a fire suppression system that would have cut fuel supply to the plane’s engines.
Emerson was arrested when the plane, which had been heading to San Francisco, made an emergency landing at Portland International Airport.
Emerson was booked at the Multnomah County Detention Center in Portland on suspicion of 83 counts of attempted murder, 83 counts of recklessly endangering another person and one for endangering an aircraft. He was booked just after 4 a.m. Monday.
According to an FBI investigator’s statement, about halfway between Astoria, Oregon, and Portland, after engaging the pilots in casual conversation, Emerson, then sitting in the cockpit jump seat, said, “I’m not OK.”
One of the Horizon pilots then observed Emerson reaching up and grabbing the red fire handles and pulling them down. The handles would have activated the aircraft fire suppression system used to extinguish aircraft engine fires, and would have shut off the fuel supply to the engines.
After a brief physical struggle with the pilots, Emerson exited the cockpit.
Flight attendants handcuffed Emerson and seated him in the rear of the plane. During the flight’s descent, Emerson tried to grab the handle of the emergency exit, but a flight attendant stopped him by placing her hands on top of his.
Emerson will be arraigned in Portland on Tuesday afternoon.
A Federal Aviation Administration notice distributed to all U.S. airlines on an alert network Monday morning gave further detail in what the FAA called a “significant security event.”
Emerson, a California resident with ties to Seattle, has been a commercial airline pilot since 2001 and has flown with Alaska since 2016. . .
Alaska said late Monday that “throughout his career, Emerson completed his mandated FAA medical certifications … and at no point were his certifications denied, suspended or revoked.”
SSI - According to at least one passenger, the alleged attempted airplane crasher walked out of the cockpit unescorted down the center aisle of the plane, before finally being restrained.
Ah, the pleasure of frequent (or even infrequent) flying.
Israel gained Gaza and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in a defensive war, just as Germany lost land in WWII. Egypt relinquished its claim on Gaza in the Egypt/Israel peace treaty following the Camp David Accords in the 1970s.
The Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO of 1993 quite explicitly do not define a border between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state. The 1967 border is explicitly not the border between Israel and a potential future Palestinian state.
The PLO agreed in the Oslo Accords that the future border is subject to future negotiations.
Unless you think the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Accords are not international law, they matter far more than any vote by the UN.
The US as the primary facilitator of peace talks at both Camp David under Jimmy Carter and throughout decades of peace processes including the Oslo Accords under Bill Clinton respects that the border is an issue for future negotiations. It does not prejudge those negotiations.
The PLO has tried to back its negotiators up by sending suicide bombers into Israel to pressure Israel into giving up more land. I respect sending builders and construction crews in more than suicide bombers.
https://twitter.com/Bushra1Shaikh/status/1716421487467409659/photo/1
Not sure the mass transportation of Jews won't be seen as an ignoble measure.
> Republicans are going on a break now as Tom Emmer meets with holdouts individually and in small groups. He wants to secure the necessary 217 votes behind closed doors before bringing his nomination to a vote on the floor.
> A majority of the two dozen or so holdouts against Tom Emmer are members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, and many of them continue to say they will vote for Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the hard-right chairman of the Judiciary Committee who failed to win the speakership last week.
SSI - Freedom Caucus = expelled Marjorie Taylor Greene from their ranks, on grounds she's a libtard Rhino.
Or was it the other way around?
https://twitter.com/MicaSoellnerDC/status/1716882246190161951
I agree with Leon on this. The Remain campaign cast Britain as unable to survive independent from the EU, and so people would just have to lump it. But there's so much that's great about being in the EU and Europe, and so that should have been celebrated.
The 'burn it all down' nutters won't back an 'establishment' candidate.
The 'moderate' nutters draw the line at Jordanesque poseurs who have no interest in governing.
None of them would vote for the Democrat or make a concession to get the vote of a Democrat.
Just bring back McCarthy, Gaetz and his crew have made their point already.
What other horror do they want to propose? Move them to Barnsley?
They design the cores that power smartphones. Other people license these core designs, and use them in their own semiconductors. ARM gets a tiny cut out of (almost) every smartphone sold in the world.
Great business; albeit they are just getting the first smidgen of competition from RISC-V.
SAP: Godawful stupid software hell
https://x.com/michaelpforan/status/1716890767632060480?
A decision that appears to be annoying all the right people….
In the USA what matters are for states and what matters are for the USA legislators is for them to decide.
Race? Gays? Progress here on the whole has been made by activists, votes and legislators.
So even Israel apparently doesn't agree with you.
There may in time be a small contingent who are happy to empower the temporary speaker to get urgent business like the budget and military aid through. But I honestly think the House agenda is now dead until they have an election to break the deadlock.
Pity they can’t have an emergency election a la Westminster systems really.
Edit: Though that wasn't the point I was making. I was just checking how far algarkirk would take his states rights idea and apparently it is all the way to the Confederacy.
https://volcano.si.edu/images/bulletin/211040/211040_BGVN_212.jpg
My best mate is paid an absolute fortune by SAP to fix their software which doesn't work.
Can't have her out of work.
Proportionality could still be argued about the level of their response, but the implication in the cartoon is Israel should have no fear, and that is just plain nonsense.
So any potentially valid point is lost due to the lie.
The existence of Israel is not simply because of the UN Resolutions at the time because Israel accepted the UN Resolution at the time but Egypt and Transjordan did not and invaded seeking to wipe out Israel - and succeeding in wiping out the land assigned to the Palestinians. Egypt and Transjordan did that, not Israel, not the UN.
Egypt subsequently made peace with Israel, a peace the UNGA rejected, but the UNGA is not law.
Please specify any UNSC Resolution made after the Oslo Accords that reject the Oslo Accords principle that the borders are a matter for future negotiations? I am not aware of any. The Oslo process is international law, whether you like it or not is immaterial.
Gonna drag out a while longer. Still think that Steve Scalise is most likelly to end up next Speaker.
Perhaps in the House by Christmas!
ADDENDUM - and the GOP moderates (relatively speaking anyway) are NOT nutters.
Instead, they've finally grown themselves some nuts - no longer spineless,
"squishy" sponges.
We had two contenders - SAP and Oracle.
My comment was: SAP - make the business fit the system
Oracle - make the system fit the business.
https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1716795158086430748
Ymmv.
A lot of organisations can run with off the shelf, or relatively off the shelf software. With a bit of training to work with the system that is tried, testing and works.
A very large proportion of the time (but not always) anyone saying they have "bespoke" needs is begging to be ripped off and spend a fortune on software that will never quite deliver.
Or has that changed?
Why? Because whereas many regard gay marriage as perverted, they do NOT consider that as bad as murder, or manslaughter, which is how they regard abortion.
True, there's lots of bruhaha re: trans and related, but THAT's about
> genuine concern for children & perhaps women; and
> political desire to appeal to died-in-the-wool homophobes.
No real political will OR mileage in taking on, let alone taking down, gay marriage.
A consultant says to their client, "you have two choices, SAP and Oracle. If you choose SAP, you will need to change your business in a myriad different ways, so that everything is done the SAP way, of it just won't work. If you choose Oracle, then you don't need to change your business. Whatever you do, the software just won't work."
I am far too polite to do so.
Wales = 21,218 sq. km. (8,192 sq. miles)
Israel = 20,770 sq. km. (8,019 sq. miles), on its 1967 borders.
You are aware of the difference aren't you? Israel sure is, as is almost everyone else.
They wanted a successor chip to the 8 bit 6502 (a lovely chip with a great assembly language that was a delight to program in) but there was nothing on the market except the 68000 series (wound up in early Apples) or the ponderous Z8000 which was horrendous in terms of power consumption and cost.
So they designed their own chip. Very low power, very high performance. And nowadays it powers every smartphone on the planet.
You have a BBC micro in your pocket