They ousted the main conservative party after 16 years in power at a Federal election just 2 years ago.
Does not bode that well for Starmer, albeit most likely on current polls it would be another CDU and SPD coalition given the AfD remain beyond the pale in Germany despite polling over 20% in most polls
Given that Starmer isn't the chancellor of the exchequer and deputy prime minister in the current government the situation isn't very similar.
Also the SPD were polling in the teens at the equivalent point in the last German parliament.
Union+Greens is a bit more likely than Union+SPD, although it's possible neither would actually get a majority on current polling.
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
For maximum LOL and political fury, not to mention work for lawyers, how about Trump wins the popular vote next year but loses the electoral vote.
A Dem President you say ?
But wait, this then comes into play:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.[2][3] Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The amount of mind changing on how elections should be decided would be hilarious.
Why would come into play? They don't have enough states for it to come into effect.
Not legally - though I imagine lawyers would get involved.
But it would morally.
That would be the LOL part as states which have loudly declared that the national vote should be the deciding factor now change their mind. And vice versa.
And what would happen if GOP states adopted the convention after the result but before the electoral votes had been counted - so giving enough states for it to come into effect ?
Who knows but lots of sound and fury and lawyers getting richer.
Why would they change their minds, assuming their opinion isn't going to actually retroactively change who wins the election?
I think the electoral college system is very stupid, and should be replaced by just saying the winner is the person who gets most votes. My opinion won't change if the current system has the fortunate result of keeping Trump out this time. Sympathy for disgruntled Trump voters will be somewhat tempered by the fact that Trump was the beneficiary in 2016.
Trump himself of course did change his mind on the electoral college, bitterly complaining about how unfair and undemocratic it was in 2012 (before the election) when it looked like Obama might lose the national vote but win in the electoral college.
The Electoral College system was, I believe, designed to stop one or two very heavily populated states out-voting the rest, thus ensuring that whoever was elected President had support across the country. I doubt that the Founding Fathers envisioned the polarisation which has now taken place, and which is concurrent with a potential dictatorship.
'MPs who lose their seat at the next general election are set to get taxpayer-funded help with finding a new job, the BBC can reveal.
Under a proposed "career transition" scheme, they could receive free advice with tasks such as writing a CV from a designated career coach..One academic survey of those leaving Parliament after the 2010 election found almost half of those aged under 65, who responded, took at least three months to find a new job, with one in 10 taking a full year.
I'm not opposed to this - even if you are expecting it, it must be a pretty sharp jolt to go from being an MP to being a citizen. Those who had trades and skills before becoming MPs may be at an advantage but those for whom politics has been all they know it will be a shock.
I know it's not the same but jockeys have the JETS (Jockey Employment Training Scheme) into which all jockeys pay a sub and which provides help for those jockeys contemplating retirement and those who are forced to retire through injury. Calling it PETS may be asking for trouble but not everyone will move into the City or even find work as a translator (sorry, @NickPalmer).
Almost certainly the right thing to do; it's what all good employers should do for innocent ex-employees.
But the optics are terrible. Maybe political parties should be funding it?
They already get three months’ salary and expenses as a redundancy payment, this is simply hiring a small team (half a dozen?) of careers advisors for a few weeks, probably costs £75k tops, and is normal in the private sector when large numbers of redundancies are made.
For maximum LOL and political fury, not to mention work for lawyers, how about Trump wins the popular vote next year but loses the electoral vote.
A Dem President you say ?
But wait, this then comes into play:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.[2][3] Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The amount of mind changing on how elections should be decided would be hilarious.
Why would come into play? They don't have enough states for it to come into effect.
Not legally - though I imagine lawyers would get involved.
But it would morally.
That would be the LOL part as states which have loudly declared that the national vote should be the deciding factor now change their mind. And vice versa.
And what would happen if GOP states adopted the convention after the result but before the electoral votes had been counted - so giving enough states for it to come into effect ?
Who knows but lots of sound and fury and lawyers getting richer.
Why would they change their minds, assuming their opinion isn't going to actually retroactively change who wins the election?
I think the electoral college system is very stupid, and should be replaced by just saying the winner is the person who gets most votes. My opinion won't change if the current system has the fortunate result of keeping Trump out this time. Sympathy for disgruntled Trump voters will be somewhat tempered by the fact that Trump was the beneficiary in 2016.
Trump himself of course did change his mind on the electoral college, bitterly complaining about how unfair and undemocratic it was in 2012 (before the election) when it looked like Obama might lose the national vote but win in the electoral college.
The Electoral College system was, I believe, designed to stop one or two very heavily populated states out-voting the rest, thus ensuring that whoever was elected President had support across the country. I doubt that the Founding Fathers envisioned the polarisation which has now taken place, and which is concurrent with a potential dictatorship.
Was that the original reason for the electoral college? I heard a different story
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
Interesting thread on the current state of the drone war.
I just read a. piece about how without bobr the Russian military would not have skilled drone operators. This just isn’t true. While bobr is their most famous drone unit, it is far from their only group. And they aren’t the best. Russia developed a lot of talented FPV groups. https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1733483280471613594
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
20:59 ...in his essay [Valerii Zaluzhnyi, CIC Ukraine] the 21:02 general highlights not only areas where 21:04 Ukraine needs to play catchup like EW 21:07 but also ways of using tech to bring the 21:08 fight to Moscow. This includes heavy 21:10 investment in drones: so many drones that 21:12 they can be sent out in massive waves 21:14 that overwhelm Russia's air defenses. 21:16 That's going to be a hard task: Moscow is 21:18 pumping insane amounts into 21:19 mass-producing cheap drones. You could 21:21 see the efforts of this in the headline 21:23 of a recent Reuters piece speaking to 21:24 Ukrainian operators...
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
For maximum LOL and political fury, not to mention work for lawyers, how about Trump wins the popular vote next year but loses the electoral vote.
A Dem President you say ?
But wait, this then comes into play:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.[2][3] Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The amount of mind changing on how elections should be decided would be hilarious.
Why would come into play? They don't have enough states for it to come into effect.
Not legally - though I imagine lawyers would get involved.
But it would morally.
That would be the LOL part as states which have loudly declared that the national vote should be the deciding factor now change their mind. And vice versa.
And what would happen if GOP states adopted the convention after the result but before the electoral votes had been counted - so giving enough states for it to come into effect ?
Who knows but lots of sound and fury and lawyers getting richer.
Why would they change their minds, assuming their opinion isn't going to actually retroactively change who wins the election?
I think the electoral college system is very stupid, and should be replaced by just saying the winner is the person who gets most votes. My opinion won't change if the current system has the fortunate result of keeping Trump out this time. Sympathy for disgruntled Trump voters will be somewhat tempered by the fact that Trump was the beneficiary in 2016.
Trump himself of course did change his mind on the electoral college, bitterly complaining about how unfair and undemocratic it was in 2012 (before the election) when it looked like Obama might lose the national vote but win in the electoral college.
The Electoral College system was, I believe, designed to stop one or two very heavily populated states out-voting the rest, thus ensuring that whoever was elected President had support across the country. I doubt that the Founding Fathers envisioned the polarisation which has now taken place, and which is concurrent with a potential dictatorship.
Was that the original reason for the electoral college? I heard a different story
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
Surely GTA 6 will be most of the training that will be required?
Nope, because a video game doesn’t kill real people. It took the USAF a long time to understand that their drone pilots were just as mentally vulnerable as the pilots actually deployed in the theatre of war, in many cases even more so.
In theatre, they at least spend the time off shift with the other pilots, rather than each with his own wife - who had no idea of what went on that day, and often weren’t allowed to talk to them about it.
For maximum LOL and political fury, not to mention work for lawyers, how about Trump wins the popular vote next year but loses the electoral vote.
A Dem President you say ?
But wait, this then comes into play:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.[2][3] Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The amount of mind changing on how elections should be decided would be hilarious.
Why would come into play? They don't have enough states for it to come into effect.
Not legally - though I imagine lawyers would get involved.
But it would morally.
That would be the LOL part as states which have loudly declared that the national vote should be the deciding factor now change their mind. And vice versa.
And what would happen if GOP states adopted the convention after the result but before the electoral votes had been counted - so giving enough states for it to come into effect ?
Who knows but lots of sound and fury and lawyers getting richer.
Why would they change their minds, assuming their opinion isn't going to actually retroactively change who wins the election?
I think the electoral college system is very stupid, and should be replaced by just saying the winner is the person who gets most votes. My opinion won't change if the current system has the fortunate result of keeping Trump out this time. Sympathy for disgruntled Trump voters will be somewhat tempered by the fact that Trump was the beneficiary in 2016.
Trump himself of course did change his mind on the electoral college, bitterly complaining about how unfair and undemocratic it was in 2012 (before the election) when it looked like Obama might lose the national vote but win in the electoral college.
The Electoral College system was, I believe, designed to stop one or two very heavily populated states out-voting the rest, thus ensuring that whoever was elected President had support across the country. I doubt that the Founding Fathers envisioned the polarisation which has now taken place, and which is concurrent with a potential dictatorship.
Was that the original reason for the electoral college? I heard a different story
Which was? Always willing to learn.
“The Founding Fathers established the Electoral College in the Constitution, in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.” https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/history
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
20:59 ...in his essay [Valerii Zaluzhnyi, CIC Ukraine] the 21:02 general highlights not only areas where 21:04 Ukraine needs to play catchup like EW 21:07 but also ways of using tech to bring the 21:08 fight to Moscow. This includes heavy 21:10 investment in drones: so many drones that 21:12 they can be sent out in massive waves 21:14 that overwhelm Russia's air defenses. 21:16 That's going to be a hard task: Moscow is 21:18 pumping insane amounts into 21:19 mass-producing cheap drones. You could 21:21 see the efforts of this in the headline 21:23 of a recent Reuters piece speaking to 21:24 Ukrainian operators...
The Ukrainian war is lost in terms of regaining invaded territory. We’d better get used to it
The best we can do is advise them to sue for a frozen peace then arm them to the teeth for round 2
And Europe needs to double defence spending especially on drones and autonomous AI war: that is the future
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
Surely GTA 6 will be most of the training that will be required?
Nope, because a video game doesn’t kill real people. It took the USAF a long time to understand that their drone pilots were just as mentally vulnerable as the pilots actually deployed in the theatre of war, in many cases even more so.
In theatre, they at least spend the time off shift with the other pilots, rather than each with his own wife - who had no idea of what went on that day, and often weren’t allowed to talk to them about it.
This is why you make the drones autonomous AI units that decide for themselves who to kill
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
Surely GTA 6 will be most of the training that will be required?
Nope, because a video game doesn’t kill real people. It took the USAF a long time to understand that their drone pilots were just as mentally vulnerable as the pilots actually deployed in the theatre of war, in many cases even more so.
In theatre, they at least spend the time off shift with the other pilots, rather than each with his own wife - who had no idea of what went on that day, and often weren’t allowed to talk to them about it.
This is why you make the drones autonomous AI units that decide for themselves who to kill
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
Surely her holiness Saint Sanna Marin, who bailed as soon as she lost power to join the ex politician mediocrity gravy train, has secured them a berth in NATO which makes this unlikely.
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
20:59 ...in his essay [Valerii Zaluzhnyi, CIC Ukraine] the 21:02 general highlights not only areas where 21:04 Ukraine needs to play catchup like EW 21:07 but also ways of using tech to bring the 21:08 fight to Moscow. This includes heavy 21:10 investment in drones: so many drones that 21:12 they can be sent out in massive waves 21:14 that overwhelm Russia's air defenses. 21:16 That's going to be a hard task: Moscow is 21:18 pumping insane amounts into 21:19 mass-producing cheap drones. You could 21:21 see the efforts of this in the headline 21:23 of a recent Reuters piece speaking to 21:24 Ukrainian operators...
The Ukrainian war is lost in terms of regaining invaded territory. We’d better get used to it
The best we can do is advise them to sue for a frozen peace then arm them to the teeth for round 2
And Europe needs to double defence spending especially on drones and autonomous AI war: that is the future
I'm inherently rejective of "there's nothing we can do": wars don't proceed in straight lines and just as RUS adapts to UKR and overcomes, UKR can in turn adapt to RUS and overcome. One one level wars are very methodical: it's all about finding and killing the other side. So from that pov the war can still be done
But the political side of things is also important. A war that does not have the support of the population is eventually lost. This is why I was so insistent on attacking in Kharkiv Oblast, theorising that a string of small victories would maintain hope. (I keep bringing up UK forces in North Africa during WW2 as an example of this, but people disbelieve me).
So although I recognise you are correct, I don't think we should give up or cease support just yet
(on a postcript, we are ignoring the possibility of a Russian breakthrough. The Ukranians should be mining their side of the lines like billy-o)
For maximum LOL and political fury, not to mention work for lawyers, how about Trump wins the popular vote next year but loses the electoral vote.
A Dem President you say ?
But wait, this then comes into play:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.[2][3] Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The amount of mind changing on how elections should be decided would be hilarious.
Why would come into play? They don't have enough states for it to come into effect.
Not legally - though I imagine lawyers would get involved.
But it would morally.
That would be the LOL part as states which have loudly declared that the national vote should be the deciding factor now change their mind. And vice versa.
And what would happen if GOP states adopted the convention after the result but before the electoral votes had been counted - so giving enough states for it to come into effect ?
Who knows but lots of sound and fury and lawyers getting richer.
Why would they change their minds, assuming their opinion isn't going to actually retroactively change who wins the election?
I think the electoral college system is very stupid, and should be replaced by just saying the winner is the person who gets most votes. My opinion won't change if the current system has the fortunate result of keeping Trump out this time. Sympathy for disgruntled Trump voters will be somewhat tempered by the fact that Trump was the beneficiary in 2016.
Trump himself of course did change his mind on the electoral college, bitterly complaining about how unfair and undemocratic it was in 2012 (before the election) when it looked like Obama might lose the national vote but win in the electoral college.
The Electoral College system was, I believe, designed to stop one or two very heavily populated states out-voting the rest, thus ensuring that whoever was elected President had support across the country. I doubt that the Founding Fathers envisioned the polarisation which has now taken place, and which is concurrent with a potential dictatorship.
The real problem is the Senate. The electoral college is at least in theory proportional. It's just narrow losses/wins in the wrong or right states can scupper you. And there are odd tipping points. For example, if Texas ever did go blue/purple - as it's threatened to without ever really being a true nailbiter -while the current hyper-marginal mid-western states stayed the same, then the GOP would either have to change or face a struggle to ever win the Whitte House. As it is, the Dems are penalised for racking up huge numbers in big states they win, while being close but not close enough in the larger red states to realistically flip them except in exceptional years. It's in theory not that much worse than our FPTP seat system. Though in practice can throw up odd results (as can FPTP).
Whereas 2 Senators from each state - whether they contain 500,000 people or 50 million, is frankly absurd. And the consequences far more harmful to the idea of American democracy in the long-term since the country became polarised. Given it means even when are the party with significantly larger popular support, the Dems struggle to scrape a 50/50 split that enables them to actually govern properly, while the Republicans know they can play wreckers and pitch to their base safe in the knowledge that they'll never be far off power.
Moreover, we've seen the importance of this in recent years when the GOP have used Senate control to rig the Supreme Court by blocking Democrat nominees and rushing through GOP ones even against precedent.
The House should be representative, but gerrymandering has put paid to that.
Yes , he looked a winner from the first skills test.
I said to her holiness he would win. I was rooting for Kasae but he was a worthy winner.
I’m not sure he made one major error
I was rooting for the other two because they have such harder backgrounds - motherless, fatherless etc - and he comes from such a happy supportive family
But in terms of sheer cooking he had to be the winner. And just 24?!
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
Surely GTA 6 will be most of the training that will be required?
Nope, because a video game doesn’t kill real people. It took the USAF a long time to understand that their drone pilots were just as mentally vulnerable as the pilots actually deployed in the theatre of war, in many cases even more so.
In theatre, they at least spend the time off shift with the other pilots, rather than each with his own wife - who had no idea of what went on that day, and often weren’t allowed to talk to them about it.
This is why you make the drones autonomous AI units that decide for themselves who to kill
It's inevitable. isn't it?
It may not be all bad. In the end we might extract humanity from warfare altogether. It will be drone v drone and AI v AI and the most tech advanced nation will win
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
IMO the best plan for the Western Allies remains to make sure that a) does not happen.
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
Surely GTA 6 will be most of the training that will be required?
Nope, because a video game doesn’t kill real people. It took the USAF a long time to understand that their drone pilots were just as mentally vulnerable as the pilots actually deployed in the theatre of war, in many cases even more so.
In theatre, they at least spend the time off shift with the other pilots, rather than each with his own wife - who had no idea of what went on that day, and often weren’t allowed to talk to them about it.
This is why you make the drones autonomous AI units that decide for themselves who to kill
It's inevitable. isn't it?
It may not be all bad. In the end we might extract humanity from warfare altogether. It will be drone v drone and AI v AI and the most tech advanced nation will win
We could play Ashes series in the same way. And ping pong.
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
Surely GTA 6 will be most of the training that will be required?
Nope, because a video game doesn’t kill real people. It took the USAF a long time to understand that their drone pilots were just as mentally vulnerable as the pilots actually deployed in the theatre of war, in many cases even more so.
In theatre, they at least spend the time off shift with the other pilots, rather than each with his own wife - who had no idea of what went on that day, and often weren’t allowed to talk to them about it.
This is why you make the drones autonomous AI units that decide for themselves who to kill
It's inevitable. isn't it?
It may not be all bad. In the end we might extract humanity from warfare altogether. It will be drone v drone and AI v AI and the most tech advanced nation will win
We could play Ashes series in the same way. And ping pong.
Isn’t there a science fiction story with this theme?
All war is enacted IN THEORY by two competing AI systems. Between them they decide who will inevitably win, by drawing on all available data (far more than any human could do), then the winner wins without a shot being fired - either by man or by drone
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
This has to end. We have to tell the fucking pensioners (of which I will soon be one) that the mollycoddling is over. We cannot afford a welfare state as we’ve known it. We need defence spending of 5% to stop everyone being killed
For maximum LOL and political fury, not to mention work for lawyers, how about Trump wins the popular vote next year but loses the electoral vote.
A Dem President you say ?
But wait, this then comes into play:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.[2][3] Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The amount of mind changing on how elections should be decided would be hilarious.
Why would come into play? They don't have enough states for it to come into effect.
Not legally - though I imagine lawyers would get involved.
But it would morally.
That would be the LOL part as states which have loudly declared that the national vote should be the deciding factor now change their mind. And vice versa.
And what would happen if GOP states adopted the convention after the result but before the electoral votes had been counted - so giving enough states for it to come into effect ?
Who knows but lots of sound and fury and lawyers getting richer.
Why would they change their minds, assuming their opinion isn't going to actually retroactively change who wins the election?
I think the electoral college system is very stupid, and should be replaced by just saying the winner is the person who gets most votes. My opinion won't change if the current system has the fortunate result of keeping Trump out this time. Sympathy for disgruntled Trump voters will be somewhat tempered by the fact that Trump was the beneficiary in 2016.
Trump himself of course did change his mind on the electoral college, bitterly complaining about how unfair and undemocratic it was in 2012 (before the election) when it looked like Obama might lose the national vote but win in the electoral college.
The Electoral College system was, I believe, designed to stop one or two very heavily populated states out-voting the rest, thus ensuring that whoever was elected President had support across the country. I doubt that the Founding Fathers envisioned the polarisation which has now taken place, and which is concurrent with a potential dictatorship.
The real problem is the Senate. The electoral college is at least in theory proportional. It's just narrow losses/wins in the wrong or right states can scupper you. And there are odd tipping points. For example, if Texas ever did go blue/purple - as it's threatened to without ever really being a true nailbiter -while the current hyper-marginal mid-western states stayed the same, then the GOP would either have to change or face a struggle to ever win the Whitte House. As it is, the Dems are penalised for racking up huge numbers in big states they win, while being close but not close enough in the larger red states to realistically flip them except in exceptional years. It's in theory not that much worse than our FPTP seat system. Though in practice can throw up odd results (as can FPTP).
Whereas 2 Senators from each state - whether they contain 500,000 people or 50 million, is frankly absurd. And the consequences far more harmful to the idea of American democracy in the long-term since the country became polarised. Given it means even when are the party with significantly larger popular support, the Dems struggle to scrape a 50/50 split that enables them to actually govern properly, while the Republicans know they can play wreckers and pitch to their base safe in the knowledge that they'll never be far off power.
Moreover, we've seen the importance of this in recent years when the GOP have used Senate control to rig the Supreme Court by blocking Democrat nominees and rushing through GOP ones even against precedent.
The House should be representative, but gerrymandering has put paid to that.
The two senators per state is probably the single best check and balance in the whole US governance system. Without it, the US would be governed for the coastal elites and the flyover states would want to leave. For a long time (I think it’s the 17th amendment) the Senators were elected by the State legislators, rather than directly by the people.
The two things the founding fathers didn’t expect, one was the two-party system, the other the very extreme polarisation in recent years.
I think we all agree that the Gerrymandering of House seat boundaries is a bad thing. Only half a dozen States have what Brits might recognise as an indepentent Boundary Commission.
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
Surely GTA 6 will be most of the training that will be required?
Nope, because a video game doesn’t kill real people. It took the USAF a long time to understand that their drone pilots were just as mentally vulnerable as the pilots actually deployed in the theatre of war, in many cases even more so.
In theatre, they at least spend the time off shift with the other pilots, rather than each with his own wife - who had no idea of what went on that day, and often weren’t allowed to talk to them about it.
This is why you make the drones autonomous AI units that decide for themselves who to kill
It's inevitable. isn't it?
It may not be all bad. In the end we might extract humanity from warfare altogether. It will be drone v drone and AI v AI and the most tech advanced nation will win
We could play Ashes series in the same way. And ping pong.
For maximum LOL and political fury, not to mention work for lawyers, how about Trump wins the popular vote next year but loses the electoral vote.
A Dem President you say ?
But wait, this then comes into play:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.[2][3] Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The amount of mind changing on how elections should be decided would be hilarious.
Why would come into play? They don't have enough states for it to come into effect.
Not legally - though I imagine lawyers would get involved.
But it would morally.
That would be the LOL part as states which have loudly declared that the national vote should be the deciding factor now change their mind. And vice versa.
And what would happen if GOP states adopted the convention after the result but before the electoral votes had been counted - so giving enough states for it to come into effect ?
Who knows but lots of sound and fury and lawyers getting richer.
Why would they change their minds, assuming their opinion isn't going to actually retroactively change who wins the election?
I think the electoral college system is very stupid, and should be replaced by just saying the winner is the person who gets most votes. My opinion won't change if the current system has the fortunate result of keeping Trump out this time. Sympathy for disgruntled Trump voters will be somewhat tempered by the fact that Trump was the beneficiary in 2016.
Trump himself of course did change his mind on the electoral college, bitterly complaining about how unfair and undemocratic it was in 2012 (before the election) when it looked like Obama might lose the national vote but win in the electoral college.
The Electoral College system was, I believe, designed to stop one or two very heavily populated states out-voting the rest, thus ensuring that whoever was elected President had support across the country. I doubt that the Founding Fathers envisioned the polarisation which has now taken place, and which is concurrent with a potential dictatorship.
The real problem is the Senate. The electoral college is at least in theory proportional. It's just narrow losses/wins in the wrong or right states can scupper you. And there are odd tipping points. For example, if Texas ever did go blue/purple - as it's threatened to without ever really being a true nailbiter -while the current hyper-marginal mid-western states stayed the same, then the GOP would either have to change or face a struggle to ever win the Whitte House. As it is, the Dems are penalised for racking up huge numbers in big states they win, while being close but not close enough in the larger red states to realistically flip them except in exceptional years. It's in theory not that much worse than our FPTP seat system. Though in practice can throw up odd results (as can FPTP).
Whereas 2 Senators from each state - whether they contain 500,000 people or 50 million, is frankly absurd. And the consequences far more harmful to the idea of American democracy in the long-term since the country became polarised. Given it means even when are the party with significantly larger popular support, the Dems struggle to scrape a 50/50 split that enables them to actually govern properly, while the Republicans know they can play wreckers and pitch to their base safe in the knowledge that they'll never be far off power.
Moreover, we've seen the importance of this in recent years when the GOP have used Senate control to rig the Supreme Court by blocking Democrat nominees and rushing through GOP ones even against precedent.
The House should be representative, but gerrymandering has put paid to that.
Good points. Is the solution to change the system…… eg 4 Senators for California ….. or split the most populated States? The level of gerrymandering in the House is quite frankly absurd. Given what goes on it’s questionable as to whether the US has the right to call itself a democracy.
Possibly on topic: George Will says that both American parties are irresponsible in their proposals to deal with our fiscal challenges: large deficits now and looming problems for Social Security and Medicare.
And, while explaining that "tax the rich" is insufficient to solve the problems, he passes on this nugget: "Primarily because of cuts to lower- and middle-class income taxes (essentially half of all families are off the federal income tax rolls), the income tax has become “sharply more progressive” over the past 40 years and is the most progressive of the 38 developed nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2023, the bottom 40 percent of earners will pay, collectively, no income tax and will receive a $123 billion tax rebate. The middle-earning quintile will pay an effective rate of 2.2 percent. The top-earning quintile (at least $686,100 for a two-person family) pays 90 percent of all income taxes. The top 1 percent pays 40 percent of all income taxes — not self-evidently an unfairly small share." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/08/republicans-democrats-government-spending/
(I should mention, for those unfamilar with the US tax system, that taxes on wages to support those giant programs are not progressive.)
Now why might this column be relevant? Because Nikki Haley has been, bravely, discussing the need for reforms in social security to keep the program solvent. (Speaker Mike Johnson has proposed a bipartisan "debt" commission, which would almost certainly propose reforms.)
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
Surely GTA 6 will be most of the training that will be required?
Nope, because a video game doesn’t kill real people. It took the USAF a long time to understand that their drone pilots were just as mentally vulnerable as the pilots actually deployed in the theatre of war, in many cases even more so.
In theatre, they at least spend the time off shift with the other pilots, rather than each with his own wife - who had no idea of what went on that day, and often weren’t allowed to talk to them about it.
This is why you make the drones autonomous AI units that decide for themselves who to kill
It's inevitable. isn't it?
It may not be all bad. In the end we might extract humanity from warfare altogether. It will be drone v drone and AI v AI and the most tech advanced nation will win
We could play Ashes series in the same way. And ping pong.
Yes , he looked a winner from the first skills test.
I said to her holiness he would win. I was rooting for Kasae but he was a worthy winner.
I’m not sure he made one major error
I was rooting for the other two because they have such harder backgrounds - motherless, fatherless etc - and he comes from such a happy supportive family
But in terms of sheer cooking he had to be the winner. And just 24?!
He will be a Michelin starred chef within 3 years
I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s seriously talented and, like you say, I cannot remember him ever putting a foot wrong all through the show.
What I liked about Kasae was she had travelled and picked up different influences to put into her cooking. Hers was the food I’d want to eat. But the right person won.
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
This has to end. We have to tell the fucking pensioners (of which I will soon be one) that the mollycoddling is over. We cannot afford a welfare state as we’ve known it. We need defence spending of 5% to stop everyone being killed
Yep, the state pension age needs to be raised and means-tested.
"Western elites loathe their voters. Their contempt is palpable Politicians can barely hide their true views for long enough to beg for your vote. It’s no wonder populism is surging Janet Daley"
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
This has to end. We have to tell the fucking pensioners (of which I will soon be one) that the mollycoddling is over. We cannot afford a welfare state as we’ve known it. We need defence spending of 5% to stop everyone being killed
Every NATO state needs defence spending of 5% to fully contain Putin, the UK alone wouldn't be enough
Yes , he looked a winner from the first skills test.
I said to her holiness he would win. I was rooting for Kasae but he was a worthy winner.
I’m not sure he made one major error
I was rooting for the other two because they have such harder backgrounds - motherless, fatherless etc - and he comes from such a happy supportive family
But in terms of sheer cooking he had to be the winner. And just 24?!
He will be a Michelin starred chef within 3 years
I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s seriously talented and, like you say, I cannot remember him ever putting a foot wrong all through the show.
What I liked about Kasae was she had travelled and picked up different influences to put into her cooking. Hers was the food I’d want to eat. But the right person won.
He reminds me of the Scottish Masterchef finalist Adam Handling - who should have won - who is now a Michelin starred chef and a culinary luminary. Pure natural talent AND flawless technique
They ousted the main conservative party after 16 years in power at a Federal election just 2 years ago.
Does not bode that well for Starmer, albeit most likely on current polls it would be another CDU and SPD coalition given the AfD remain beyond the pale in Germany despite polling over 20% in most polls
Given that Starmer isn't the chancellor of the exchequer and deputy prime minister in the current government the situation isn't very similar.
Also the SPD were polling in the teens at the equivalent point in the last German parliament.
Union+Greens is a bit more likely than Union+SPD, although it's possible neither would actually get a majority on current polling.
The only combination which would have a majority on current polling is Union + AfD but even Merz, despite being right of Merkel, has ruled that out at Federal level
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
This has to end. We have to tell the fucking pensioners (of which I will soon be one) that the mollycoddling is over. We cannot afford a welfare state as we’ve known it. We need defence spending of 5% to stop everyone being killed
Every NATO state needs defence spending of 5% to fully contain Putin, the UK alone wouldn't be enough
Yes I agree. It will have to happen and it’s gonna be extremely painful. But there we are
For maximum LOL and political fury, not to mention work for lawyers, how about Trump wins the popular vote next year but loses the electoral vote.
A Dem President you say ?
But wait, this then comes into play:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.[2][3] Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The amount of mind changing on how elections should be decided would be hilarious.
Why would come into play? They don't have enough states for it to come into effect.
Not legally - though I imagine lawyers would get involved.
But it would morally.
That would be the LOL part as states which have loudly declared that the national vote should be the deciding factor now change their mind. And vice versa.
And what would happen if GOP states adopted the convention after the result but before the electoral votes had been counted - so giving enough states for it to come into effect ?
Who knows but lots of sound and fury and lawyers getting richer.
Why would they change their minds, assuming their opinion isn't going to actually retroactively change who wins the election?
I think the electoral college system is very stupid, and should be replaced by just saying the winner is the person who gets most votes. My opinion won't change if the current system has the fortunate result of keeping Trump out this time. Sympathy for disgruntled Trump voters will be somewhat tempered by the fact that Trump was the beneficiary in 2016.
Trump himself of course did change his mind on the electoral college, bitterly complaining about how unfair and undemocratic it was in 2012 (before the election) when it looked like Obama might lose the national vote but win in the electoral college.
The Electoral College system was, I believe, designed to stop one or two very heavily populated states out-voting the rest, thus ensuring that whoever was elected President had support across the country. I doubt that the Founding Fathers envisioned the polarisation which has now taken place, and which is concurrent with a potential dictatorship.
However, most of the Founding Fathers were still live and kicking in the late 1790s - less than a decade after the US Constitution was written and ratified - when political polarization in the infant Republic was rife, concurrent with . . . wait for it . . . a potential dictatorship.
"Western elites loathe their voters. Their contempt is palpable Politicians can barely hide their true views for long enough to beg for your vote. It’s no wonder populism is surging Janet Daley"
“There is a mass global movement from the unfree world to the free one. The values and lifestyles that are being treated with such casual disdain, or even contempt, by their rightful inheritors in the West are obviously thought worth risking your life for in the less privileged corners of the globe.
“Something has gone very wrong with the understanding that should exist between those who govern (or would hope to govern) the democratic nations and their electorates.”
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
Surely GTA 6 will be most of the training that will be required?
Nope, because a video game doesn’t kill real people. It took the USAF a long time to understand that their drone pilots were just as mentally vulnerable as the pilots actually deployed in the theatre of war, in many cases even more so.
In theatre, they at least spend the time off shift with the other pilots, rather than each with his own wife - who had no idea of what went on that day, and often weren’t allowed to talk to them about it.
This is why you make the drones autonomous AI units that decide for themselves who to kill
It's inevitable. isn't it?
It may not be all bad. In the end we might extract humanity from warfare altogether. It will be drone v drone and AI v AI and the most tech advanced nation will win
Has anyone else been noticing, how in the past weeks YouTube (at least my feed) is featuring more and more (of what I will characterize as) happy crap from Russia?
Q1 - Is this yet another Putinist media strategem?; and
Q2 - Has anyone at YouTube HQ noticed . . . or give a blind fiddler's final farewell feck?
Has anyone else been noticing, how in the past weeks YouTube (at least my feed) is featuring more and more (of what I will characterize as) happy crap from Russia?
Q1 - Is this yet another Putinist media strategem?; and
Q2 - Has anyone at YouTube HQ noticed . . . or give a blind fiddler's final farewell feck?
We haven't had our regular Russian troll for a while though. Just the odd brief appearance.
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
This has to end. We have to tell the fucking pensioners (of which I will soon be one) that the mollycoddling is over. We cannot afford a welfare state as we’ve known it. We need defence spending of 5% to stop everyone being killed
Alternatively, give a bunch of F35s to the Saudis in exchange for pumping oil, with the intention of starving Putin of money. MBS is also looking for $100bn of FDI for his big line project. Encourage the hedgies to give it to him.
Don’t Biden and Sunak realise, that the oil price is very closely correlated with their re-election chance?
Has anyone else been noticing, how in the past weeks YouTube (at least my feed) is featuring more and more (of what I will characterize as) happy crap from Russia?
Q1 - Is this yet another Putinist media strategem?; and
Q2 - Has anyone at YouTube HQ noticed . . . or give a blind fiddler's final farewell feck?
We haven't had our regular Russian troll for a while though. Just the odd brief appearance.
Suspect that Putin uses/used PB for training purposes.
Makes WAY more sense, than assuming this board is/was targeted for it's (alleged) political influence.
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
Surely GTA 6 will be most of the training that will be required?
Nope, because a video game doesn’t kill real people. It took the USAF a long time to understand that their drone pilots were just as mentally vulnerable as the pilots actually deployed in the theatre of war, in many cases even more so.
In theatre, they at least spend the time off shift with the other pilots, rather than each with his own wife - who had no idea of what went on that day, and often weren’t allowed to talk to them about it.
This is why you make the drones autonomous AI units that decide for themselves who to kill
It's inevitable. isn't it?
It may not be all bad. In the end we might extract humanity from warfare altogether. It will be drone v drone and AI v AI and the most tech advanced nation will win
Yes , he looked a winner from the first skills test.
I said to her holiness he would win. I was rooting for Kasae but he was a worthy winner.
I’m not sure he made one major error
I was rooting for the other two because they have such harder backgrounds - motherless, fatherless etc - and he comes from such a happy supportive family
But in terms of sheer cooking he had to be the winner. And just 24?!
He will be a Michelin starred chef within 3 years
I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s seriously talented and, like you say, I cannot remember him ever putting a foot wrong all through the show.
What I liked about Kasae was she had travelled and picked up different influences to put into her cooking. Hers was the food I’d want to eat. But the right person won.
He reminds me of the Scottish Masterchef finalist Adam Handling - who should have won - who is now a Michelin starred chef and a culinary luminary. Pure natural talent AND flawless technique
Didn’t know he’d been on Masterchef. I recognise him from Great British Menu. He’s brilliant. Of we ever go up to Scotland we’d definitely try to get into his place, whatever it cost.
For maximum LOL and political fury, not to mention work for lawyers, how about Trump wins the popular vote next year but loses the electoral vote.
A Dem President you say ?
But wait, this then comes into play:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.[2][3] Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The amount of mind changing on how elections should be decided would be hilarious.
Why would come into play? They don't have enough states for it to come into effect.
Not legally - though I imagine lawyers would get involved.
But it would morally.
That would be the LOL part as states which have loudly declared that the national vote should be the deciding factor now change their mind. And vice versa.
And what would happen if GOP states adopted the convention after the result but before the electoral votes had been counted - so giving enough states for it to come into effect ?
Who knows but lots of sound and fury and lawyers getting richer.
Why would they change their minds, assuming their opinion isn't going to actually retroactively change who wins the election?
I think the electoral college system is very stupid, and should be replaced by just saying the winner is the person who gets most votes. My opinion won't change if the current system has the fortunate result of keeping Trump out this time. Sympathy for disgruntled Trump voters will be somewhat tempered by the fact that Trump was the beneficiary in 2016.
Trump himself of course did change his mind on the electoral college, bitterly complaining about how unfair and undemocratic it was in 2012 (before the election) when it looked like Obama might lose the national vote but win in the electoral college.
The Electoral College system was, I believe, designed to stop one or two very heavily populated states out-voting the rest, thus ensuring that whoever was elected President had support across the country. I doubt that the Founding Fathers envisioned the polarisation which has now taken place, and which is concurrent with a potential dictatorship.
No, it was designed to try and insulate the presidency from the people. If the intent had been to stop the biggest states from dominating, they wouldn't have weighted it as it is, on a near-proportional basis (yes, small states do get a slightly bigger say pro rata but barely). That the first six presidents all came from either Virginia or Massachusetts tells its own story. Indeed, allowing states to consolidate a block vote is the definition of big state power - more so than a popular vote, unless voters voted *as* a state (which they didn't, though clearly there was the potential for North and South to vote as Sections).
That said, the rapid development of factions and parties meant that the Electoral College was simply filled with proxies for the candidates so the popular vote thing - albeit on a state-by-state level - played out anyway.
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
This has to end. We have to tell the fucking pensioners (of which I will soon be one) that the mollycoddling is over. We cannot afford a welfare state as we’ve known it. We need defence spending of 5% to stop everyone being killed
Alternatively, give a bunch of F35s to the Saudis in exchange for pumping oil, with the intention of starving Putin of money. MBS is also looking for $100bn of FDI for his big line project. Encourage the hedgies to give it to him.
Don’t Biden and Sunak realise, that the oil price is very closely correlated with their re-election chance?
The whole point of the line is for the shysters to extract monies from Saudi hubris not to give them stuff for it. Can you imagine actually investing in Neom or that line? You'd be better of buying 'shares' in Chinese house builders.
"Now look along the right-hand column and see what left them dead or damaged on the battlefield. On this single day, at least 45 large pieces of mobile equipment were immobilized by drones that probably maxed out in price at around $1,000."
Whilst ammunition, specifically 155mm shells, remain key you frankly have to wonder how much our somewhat dilapidated kit would be worth if tested in battle.
We do need to be alert to this. The consensus, which I have shared, is that the Russian army is being destroyed in Ukraine and will not be a threat in the foreseeable. But, just maybe, they will develop an army that makes ours look like they are still using muskets.
More than that. The combat is increasingly developing into drone on drone warfare.
At some point, a more technically proficient adversary will develop combat swarms. Which will need to operate free of human intervention for greatest effectiveness. The next slippery slope.
Indeed. There were rumours months ago that such a swarm had been used to take out targets in Libya by the Americans but they have remained very quiet. Increasingly, and rapidly, the prospects of flesh and blood surviving on a battlefield are diminishing.
The Americans are still struggling to recruit drone pilots, at least for the big drones. A few years back, they’d turn up at their base in Nevada, kill a few Afghans or Iraqis, then go back home to the wife and kids.
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
Surely GTA 6 will be most of the training that will be required?
Nope, because a video game doesn’t kill real people. It took the USAF a long time to understand that their drone pilots were just as mentally vulnerable as the pilots actually deployed in the theatre of war, in many cases even more so.
In theatre, they at least spend the time off shift with the other pilots, rather than each with his own wife - who had no idea of what went on that day, and often weren’t allowed to talk to them about it.
This is why you make the drones autonomous AI units that decide for themselves who to kill
It's inevitable. isn't it?
It may not be all bad. In the end we might extract humanity from warfare altogether. It will be drone v drone and AI v AI and the most tech advanced nation will win
On topic, I wouldn't write off an upset but if there is one, it'll be a candidate with very devoted and well-organised supporters i.e. people much more likely to turn out for hours on a cold winter evening than the norm. I don't really see why that wouldn't be Trump, whose followers have an almost religious belief in him. It certainly won't be any of the Generic Joe GOP types. Ramaswamy might be most likely, despite being bonkers.
Has anyone else been noticing, how in the past weeks YouTube (at least my feed) is featuring more and more (of what I will characterize as) happy crap from Russia?
Q1 - Is this yet another Putinist media strategem?; and
Q2 - Has anyone at YouTube HQ noticed . . . or give a blind fiddler's final farewell feck?
No, but I have noticed that my comments on Twitter are getting an odd number of likes from pretty but under-dressed young women, which is not a group that has previously demonstrated such a high interest in political comment and analysis (and occasional bad jokes and so on).
To be fair, Liverpool have been absolutely dreadful against shit quality teams this season, look at today and last Wednesday, so guessing only 2-0 v Man Utd.
Has anyone else been noticing, how in the past weeks YouTube (at least my feed) is featuring more and more (of what I will characterize as) happy crap from Russia?
Q1 - Is this yet another Putinist media strategem?; and
Q2 - Has anyone at YouTube HQ noticed . . . or give a blind fiddler's final farewell feck?
Can you give an example of the kind of thing you think is being pumped to you from the Kremlin?
On the US electoral college: Remember that, if no presidential candidate wins a majority, the decision goes to the House of Representatives, and that, originally, the man with the second highest number of votes became vice president. (The vote in the House is by states, with each state having one vote.)
What I conclude from those original provisions is that the electoral college was seen, originally, as more of a nomination than an election. Everyone knew Washington would win the first election, so they didn't think about the problems as thoroughly as they should have.
For maximum LOL and political fury, not to mention work for lawyers, how about Trump wins the popular vote next year but loses the electoral vote.
A Dem President you say ?
But wait, this then comes into play:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.[2][3] Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The amount of mind changing on how elections should be decided would be hilarious.
Why would come into play? They don't have enough states for it to come into effect.
Not legally - though I imagine lawyers would get involved.
But it would morally.
That would be the LOL part as states which have loudly declared that the national vote should be the deciding factor now change their mind. And vice versa.
And what would happen if GOP states adopted the convention after the result but before the electoral votes had been counted - so giving enough states for it to come into effect ?
Who knows but lots of sound and fury and lawyers getting richer.
Why would they change their minds, assuming their opinion isn't going to actually retroactively change who wins the election?
I think the electoral college system is very stupid, and should be replaced by just saying the winner is the person who gets most votes. My opinion won't change if the current system has the fortunate result of keeping Trump out this time. Sympathy for disgruntled Trump voters will be somewhat tempered by the fact that Trump was the beneficiary in 2016.
Trump himself of course did change his mind on the electoral college, bitterly complaining about how unfair and undemocratic it was in 2012 (before the election) when it looked like Obama might lose the national vote but win in the electoral college.
The Electoral College system was, I believe, designed to stop one or two very heavily populated states out-voting the rest, thus ensuring that whoever was elected President had support across the country. I doubt that the Founding Fathers envisioned the polarisation which has now taken place, and which is concurrent with a potential dictatorship.
The real problem is the Senate. The electoral college is at least in theory proportional. It's just narrow losses/wins in the wrong or right states can scupper you. And there are odd tipping points. For example, if Texas ever did go blue/purple - as it's threatened to without ever really being a true nailbiter -while the current hyper-marginal mid-western states stayed the same, then the GOP would either have to change or face a struggle to ever win the Whitte House. As it is, the Dems are penalised for racking up huge numbers in big states they win, while being close but not close enough in the larger red states to realistically flip them except in exceptional years. It's in theory not that much worse than our FPTP seat system. Though in practice can throw up odd results (as can FPTP).
Whereas 2 Senators from each state - whether they contain 500,000 people or 50 million, is frankly absurd. And the consequences far more harmful to the idea of American democracy in the long-term since the country became polarised. Given it means even when are the party with significantly larger popular support, the Dems struggle to scrape a 50/50 split that enables them to actually govern properly, while the Republicans know they can play wreckers and pitch to their base safe in the knowledge that they'll never be far off power.
Moreover, we've seen the importance of this in recent years when the GOP have used Senate control to rig the Supreme Court by blocking Democrat nominees and rushing through GOP ones even against precedent.
The House should be representative, but gerrymandering has put paid to that.
Good points. Is the solution to change the system…… eg 4 Senators for California ….. or split the most populated States? The level of gerrymandering in the House is quite frankly absurd. Given what goes on it’s questionable as to whether the US has the right to call itself a democracy.
None will happen - as the very system you need to change blocks it from being done. But I gather the preferred solution would be DC and Puerto Rican statehood. In normal times it would be a useful fudge. Gives the Dems four more likely senators in new smaller states to help balance the number of tiny GOP states, plus addresses an existing anomaly whereby those places don't have full representation.
But not going to happen as it would mean playing fair and co-operating when it's not entirely in your interest - which the GOP are never going to do.
There will need to be 28 Tory rebels to sink the bill; he seems to think it's unlikely that the One Nation caucus has the numbers (many are Ministers anyway), and he seems to be hinting that the ERG and affiliated groups probably will not oppose? Maybe that's overstating his prediction. Certainly Redwood himself seems to indicate that he will vote 'for'. So we might see an unexpected show of Tory unity.
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
This has to end. We have to tell the fucking pensioners (of which I will soon be one) that the mollycoddling is over. We cannot afford a welfare state as we’ve known it. We need defence spending of 5% to stop everyone being killed
Every NATO state needs defence spending of 5% to fully contain Putin, the UK alone wouldn't be enough
Yes I agree. It will have to happen and it’s gonna be extremely painful. But there we are
TBH I think "painfuL" is overstating it a bit.
NATO economies have 45% of world GDP. Russia has just over 3%.
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
This has to end. We have to tell the fucking pensioners (of which I will soon be one) that the mollycoddling is over. We cannot afford a welfare state as we’ve known it. We need defence spending of 5% to stop everyone being killed
Every NATO state needs defence spending of 5% to fully contain Putin, the UK alone wouldn't be enough
Yes I agree. It will have to happen and it’s gonna be extremely painful. But there we are
I'm not convinced by that 5%.
Let's start at 3%, competently organised.
And actually givinbg Ukraine the weapons they need, at the time they need them.
TBH I think a great political blow for Putin's dream would be Donald Trump's consignment to prison for 25 years or so.
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
This has to end. We have to tell the fucking pensioners (of which I will soon be one) that the mollycoddling is over. We cannot afford a welfare state as we’ve known it. We need defence spending of 5% to stop everyone being killed
Alternatively, give a bunch of F35s to the Saudis in exchange for pumping oil, with the intention of starving Putin of money. MBS is also looking for $100bn of FDI for his big line project. Encourage the hedgies to give it to him.
Don’t Biden and Sunak realise, that the oil price is very closely correlated with their re-election chance?
I think Line would be an effective way of getting the Saudi's to tip their money into a wasteful black hole. It's completely bonkers.
Off now to cook for first Christmas visitors - have a good evening all.
Fish pie and corn on the cob, followed by plum crumble with cream. Yum.
United simply do not play as a team. Sometimes one or two players play well but there is no team. Our highest scorer is a defensive midfielder that Ten Hag wanted to get rid of in January. Recently our best player has been Maguire. Ditto. The entire forward line accumulated at great expense seems to have almost no threat at all. It just won't do.
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
This has to end. We have to tell the fucking pensioners (of which I will soon be one) that the mollycoddling is over. We cannot afford a welfare state as we’ve known it. We need defence spending of 5% to stop everyone being killed
Alternatively, give a bunch of F35s to the Saudis in exchange for pumping oil, with the intention of starving Putin of money. MBS is also looking for $100bn of FDI for his big line project. Encourage the hedgies to give it to him.
Don’t Biden and Sunak realise, that the oil price is very closely correlated with their re-election chance?
Why on earth does he feel he needs 100bn of other peoples' money? What's the point of being the KSA if you don't already have the money? It's the most bizarre idea I've come across today.
United simply do not play as a team. Sometimes one or two players play well but there is no team. Our highest scorer is a defensive midfielder that Ten Hag wanted to get rid of in January. Recently our best player has been Maguire. Ditto. The entire forward line accumulated at great expense seems to have almost no threat at all. It just won't do.
2 disallowed and hit the post too. Could have been more.
United simply do not play as a team. Sometimes one or two players play well but there is no team. Our highest scorer is a defensive midfielder that Ten Hag wanted to get rid of in January. Recently our best player has been Maguire. Ditto. The entire forward line accumulated at great expense seems to have almost no threat at all. It just won't do.
I reckon he might go if you get knocked out of the CL next week.
United simply do not play as a team. Sometimes one or two players play well but there is no team. Our highest scorer is a defensive midfielder that Ten Hag wanted to get rid of in January. Recently our best player has been Maguire. Ditto. The entire forward line accumulated at great expense seems to have almost no threat at all. It just won't do.
I reckon he might go if you get knocked out of the CL next week.
If? we are playing Bayern. It is inevitable and frankly our performances in the CL do not deserve progression.
Is there any possibility that the question ('The holocaust is a myth') contains concepts that are difficult for younger people. 'Holocaust' is absolutely familiar to me, and no doubt most PBers both from religious traditions and 20th century history, but is not a simple word. 'Myth' is itself a highly contested term, including whether or not it means 'untrue'. All this may puzzle the under 30/40s.
What about asking 'Is it true that the Nazis under Hitler killed gigantic numbers of Jewish people in gas chambers and elsewhere in the 1940s'. Would you get the same result?
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
This has to end. We have to tell the fucking pensioners (of which I will soon be one) that the mollycoddling is over. We cannot afford a welfare state as we’ve known it. We need defence spending of 5% to stop everyone being killed
Every NATO state needs defence spending of 5% to fully contain Putin, the UK alone wouldn't be enough
Yes I agree. It will have to happen and it’s gonna be extremely painful. But there we are
To prevent a conflagration in the Baltics, NATO would have to convince Putin that it is prepared to put skin in the game if he started to press forward. I think this is recognised. Hence the deployment of NATO battle-groups to vulnerable eastern members. For example the UK has "adopted" Estonia. See:
his forward presence was first deployed in 2017, with the creation of four multinational battalion-size battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, led by the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and the United States respectively. In the southeast, a tailored presence on land, at sea and in the air contributed to increased Allied activity in the region, enhancing situational awareness, interoperability and responsiveness.
United simply do not play as a team. Sometimes one or two players play well but there is no team. Our highest scorer is a defensive midfielder that Ten Hag wanted to get rid of in January. Recently our best player has been Maguire. Ditto. The entire forward line accumulated at great expense seems to have almost no threat at all. It just won't do.
I reckon he might go if you get knocked out of the CL next week.
If? we are playing Bayern. It is inevitable and frankly our performances in the CL do not deserve progression.
Whilst United were losing 3 nil to Bournemouth Bayern Munich lost 5-1 to Eintracht Frankfurt.
They have already qualified for the the knockout stages.
United simply do not play as a team. Sometimes one or two players play well but there is no team. Our highest scorer is a defensive midfielder that Ten Hag wanted to get rid of in January. Recently our best player has been Maguire. Ditto. The entire forward line accumulated at great expense seems to have almost no threat at all. It just won't do.
I reckon he might go if you get knocked out of the CL next week.
If? we are playing Bayern. It is inevitable and frankly our performances in the CL do not deserve progression.
Whilst United were losing 3 nil to Bournemouth Bayern Munich lost 5-1 to Eintracht Frankfurt.
They have already qualified for the the knockout stages.
A lot of chippy Man U fans were denying a crisis today as they were “only three points behind City”. By the end of next Sunday, a mere “football week”, they could be 9 behind. With an even bigger minus goal difference.
Yes , he looked a winner from the first skills test.
I said to her holiness he would win. I was rooting for Kasae but he was a worthy winner.
I’m not sure he made one major error
I was rooting for the other two because they have such harder backgrounds - motherless, fatherless etc - and he comes from such a happy supportive family
But in terms of sheer cooking he had to be the winner. And just 24?!
He will be a Michelin starred chef within 3 years
I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s seriously talented and, like you say, I cannot remember him ever putting a foot wrong all through the show.
What I liked about Kasae was she had travelled and picked up different influences to put into her cooking. Hers was the food I’d want to eat. But the right person won.
He reminds me of the Scottish Masterchef finalist Adam Handling - who should have won - who is now a Michelin starred chef and a culinary luminary. Pure natural talent AND flawless technique
Didn’t know he’d been on Masterchef. I recognise him from Great British Menu. He’s brilliant. Of we ever go up to Scotland we’d definitely try to get into his place, whatever it cost.
Wrong direction, I think? Perhaps better chances on one of your Cornubian holidays, surely. Or has he opened another up here?
For maximum LOL and political fury, not to mention work for lawyers, how about Trump wins the popular vote next year but loses the electoral vote.
A Dem President you say ?
But wait, this then comes into play:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.[2][3] Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The amount of mind changing on how elections should be decided would be hilarious.
Why would come into play? They don't have enough states for it to come into effect.
Not legally - though I imagine lawyers would get involved.
But it would morally.
That would be the LOL part as states which have loudly declared that the national vote should be the deciding factor now change their mind. And vice versa.
And what would happen if GOP states adopted the convention after the result but before the electoral votes had been counted - so giving enough states for it to come into effect ?
Who knows but lots of sound and fury and lawyers getting richer.
Why would they change their minds, assuming their opinion isn't going to actually retroactively change who wins the election?
I think the electoral college system is very stupid, and should be replaced by just saying the winner is the person who gets most votes. My opinion won't change if the current system has the fortunate result of keeping Trump out this time. Sympathy for disgruntled Trump voters will be somewhat tempered by the fact that Trump was the beneficiary in 2016.
Trump himself of course did change his mind on the electoral college, bitterly complaining about how unfair and undemocratic it was in 2012 (before the election) when it looked like Obama might lose the national vote but win in the electoral college.
The Electoral College system was, I believe, designed to stop one or two very heavily populated states out-voting the rest, thus ensuring that whoever was elected President had support across the country. I doubt that the Founding Fathers envisioned the polarisation which has now taken place, and which is concurrent with a potential dictatorship.
No, it was designed to try and insulate the presidency from the people. If the intent had been to stop the biggest states from dominating, they wouldn't have weighted it as it is, on a near-proportional basis (yes, small states do get a slightly bigger say pro rata but barely). That the first six presidents all came from either Virginia or Massachusetts tells its own story. Indeed, allowing states to consolidate a block vote is the definition of big state power - more so than a popular vote, unless voters voted *as* a state (which they didn't, though clearly there was the potential for North and South to vote as Sections).
That said, the rapid development of factions and parties meant that the Electoral College was simply filled with proxies for the candidates so the popular vote thing - albeit on a state-by-state level - played out anyway.
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
That I think depends on
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine. b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
Such an attack really would change everything, being the first such attack since NATO was formed. Compared with such a step the rest of the conflicts around are little local difficulties. Any future unpredictable. If Trump were in charge, doubly so as the UK and France would need to check their matches are not damp, the password is written on a slip of paper and they can remember the key safe combination number.
I don't know what France are doing, but very little viewable beyond the end of Rishi Sunak's nose is imo being done in the UK before the Election.
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
This has to end. We have to tell the fucking pensioners (of which I will soon be one) that the mollycoddling is over. We cannot afford a welfare state as we’ve known it. We need defence spending of 5% to stop everyone being killed
Alternatively, give a bunch of F35s to the Saudis in exchange for pumping oil, with the intention of starving Putin of money. MBS is also looking for $100bn of FDI for his big line project. Encourage the hedgies to give it to him.
Don’t Biden and Sunak realise, that the oil price is very closely correlated with their re-election chance?
Why on earth does he feel he needs 100bn of other peoples' money? What's the point of being the KSA if you don't already have the money? It's the most bizarre idea I've come across today.
If there is one thing we see over and over again with the super rich, it is that they still prefer to have other people pay for things if they can possibly help it.
Re Iowa. Haley will take a good second place, win South Carolina and then first again in New Hampshire. From then it will be a shoe in. When she is President will she pardon Trump???
Yes , he looked a winner from the first skills test.
I said to her holiness he would win. I was rooting for Kasae but he was a worthy winner.
I’m not sure he made one major error
I was rooting for the other two because they have such harder backgrounds - motherless, fatherless etc - and he comes from such a happy supportive family
But in terms of sheer cooking he had to be the winner. And just 24?!
He will be a Michelin starred chef within 3 years
I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s seriously talented and, like you say, I cannot remember him ever putting a foot wrong all through the show.
What I liked about Kasae was she had travelled and picked up different influences to put into her cooking. Hers was the food I’d want to eat. But the right person won.
He reminds me of the Scottish Masterchef finalist Adam Handling - who should have won - who is now a Michelin starred chef and a culinary luminary. Pure natural talent AND flawless technique
Didn’t know he’d been on Masterchef. I recognise him from Great British Menu. He’s brilliant. Of we ever go up to Scotland we’d definitely try to get into his place, whatever it cost.
Re Iowa. Haley will take a good second place, win South Carolina and then first again in New Hampshire. From then it will be a shoe in. When she is President will she pardon Trump???
I wonder how Trump would do as an independent against Biden and Haley.
Re Iowa. Haley will take a good second place, win South Carolina and then first again in New Hampshire. From then it will be a shoe in. When she is President will she pardon Trump???
I wonder how Trump would do as an independent against Biden and Haley.
One up on Perot and actually win a few states? Surely beat Haley in some.
Re Iowa. Haley will take a good second place, win South Carolina and then first again in New Hampshire. From then it will be a shoe in. When she is President will she pardon Trump???
I wonder how Trump would do as an independent against Biden and Haley.
Probably take about 20% of the vote and hand the election to Biden and he would almost certainly run as an Independent in the unlikely event he is not nominee
Re Iowa. Haley will take a good second place, win South Carolina and then first again in New Hampshire. From then it will be a shoe in. When she is President will she pardon Trump???
It would make no difference if she did - many of the crimes he is accused of are state crimes, unaffected by a presidential pardon.
I do hope you're right about Haley though. She will probably be a disappointment in office but she's sane and not aged 165. Two ways she scores over Trump and one over Biden.
Re Iowa. Haley will take a good second place, win South Carolina and then first again in New Hampshire. From then it will be a shoe in. When she is President will she pardon Trump???
I wonder how Trump would do as an independent against Biden and Haley.
He can't. Having filed for the Republican primaries he can't now run as an independent if he flunks the nomination.
Donald Trump will, I suspect, win Iowa handily, with around 60% of the vote.
The big question is, can Hayley be second by a large margin?
And I think she can. In the Iowa Caucuses, if you're not at the threshold, you need to alternative vote yourself. And I think a lot (maybe essentially all) of the not-Trump vote is going to coalesce around Hayley.
If she is second, and pulls out a 30+% number, then the race for who is against Trump is over. It is Hayley versus Trump.
And suddenly, she has a lot of attention, and the fact she is polling better against Biden, comes into play.
New Hampshire is next. And there independents can vote (and there is, effectively, no Democratic primary). On forced choice, independents break heavily for Hayley over Trump. And if Democratic leaning independents - who are fearful of a second Trump Presidency - go out and cast their vote for her, she can win.
Trump has a very - errr - hard 40%. But his next 20% is soft. Make it one-on-one, and make it so that his opponent polls better against Biden, and the race is suddenly (if not wide open) then much more exciting.
All this, of course, depends on Hayley having an excellent ground game in Iowa (and I have no idea if she does). And on independents in New Hampshire.
What are the odds on Hayley for Republican nominee again?
Has anyone else been noticing, how in the past weeks YouTube (at least my feed) is featuring more and more (of what I will characterize as) happy crap from Russia?
Q1 - Is this yet another Putinist media strategem?; and
Q2 - Has anyone at YouTube HQ noticed . . . or give a blind fiddler's final farewell feck?
We haven't had our regular Russian troll for a while though. Just the odd brief appearance.
Suspect that Putin uses/used PB for training purposes.
Makes WAY more sense, than assuming this board is/was targeted for it's (alleged) political influence.
I'd suspect a weird goof over either of those scenarios.
"Western elites loathe their voters. Their contempt is palpable Politicians can barely hide their true views for long enough to beg for your vote. It’s no wonder populism is surging Janet Daley"
Donald Trump will, I suspect, win Iowa handily, with around 60% of the vote.
The big question is, can Hayley be second by a large margin?
And I think she can. In the Iowa Caucuses, if you're not at the threshold, you need to alternative vote yourself. And I think a lot (maybe essentially all) of the not-Trump vote is going to coalesce around Hayley.
If she is second, and pulls out a 30+% number, then the race for who is against Trump is over. It is Hayley versus Trump.
And suddenly, she has a lot of attention, and the fact she is polling better against Biden, comes into play.
New Hampshire is next. And there independents can vote (and there is, effectively, no Democratic primary). On forced choice, independents break heavily for Hayley over Trump. And if Democratic leaning independents - who are fearful of a second Trump Presidency - go out and cast their vote for her, she can win.
Trump has a very - errr - hard 40%. But his next 20% is soft. Make it one-on-one, and make it so that his opponent polls better against Biden, and the race is suddenly (if not wide open) then much more exciting.
All this, of course, depends on Hayley having an excellent ground game in Iowa (and I have no idea if she does). And on independents in New Hampshire.
What are the odds on Hayley for Republican nominee again?
Re Iowa. Haley will take a good second place, win South Carolina and then first again in New Hampshire. From then it will be a shoe in. When she is President will she pardon Trump???
I wonder how Trump would do as an independent against Biden and Haley.
He can't. Having filed for the Republican primaries he can't now run as an independent if he flunks the nomination.
Comments
Also the SPD were polling in the teens at the equivalent point in the last German parliament.
Union+Greens is a bit more likely than Union+SPD, although it's possible neither would actually get a majority on current polling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtwe3l-AXXw&ab_channel=ZeihanonGeopolitics
It's been reported elsewhere that the Finns, themselves, have concluded that both countries are acting as bad actors.
If Putin consolidates in Ukraine and moves on to the Baltic states - former Soviet republics - then Finland, a former Russian Grand Duchy, would be next on the list. Will the Baltics become the next Balkans?
I doubt that the Founding Fathers envisioned the polarisation which has now taken place, and which is concurrent with a potential dictatorship.
I just read a. piece about how without bobr the Russian military would not have skilled drone operators. This just isn’t true. While bobr is their most famous drone unit, it is far from their only group. And they aren’t the best. Russia developed a lot of talented FPV groups.
https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1733483280471613594
"Ukraine's Counteroffensive Has Failed...", Warographics, Nov 16, 2023, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHNLzAV5Xso
Excerpt below is gotten from the transcript at 20:59, see https://youtu.be/IHNLzAV5Xso?si=h0h6pOIyTrfhBFBR&t=1259
20:59 ...in his essay [Valerii Zaluzhnyi, CIC Ukraine] the
21:02 general highlights not only areas where
21:04 Ukraine needs to play catchup like EW
21:07 but also ways of using tech to bring the
21:08 fight to Moscow. This includes heavy
21:10 investment in drones: so many drones that
21:12 they can be sent out in massive waves
21:14 that overwhelm Russia's air defenses.
21:16 That's going to be a hard task: Moscow is
21:18 pumping insane amounts into
21:19 mass-producing cheap drones. You could
21:21 see the efforts of this in the headline
21:23 of a recent Reuters piece speaking to
21:24 Ukrainian operators...
Somwheat understandably, that got awfully stressful really quickly for most of them.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/17/former-us-military-personnel-letter-us-drone-pilots
In theatre, they at least spend the time off shift with the other pilots, rather than each with his own wife - who had no idea of what went on that day, and often weren’t allowed to talk to them about it.
https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/history
The best we can do is advise them to sue for a frozen peace then arm them to the teeth for round 2
And Europe needs to double defence spending especially on drones and autonomous AI war: that is the future
a) Putin winning or drawing his war in Ukraine.
b) Whether Europe, including Western Europe, can present a credible deterrence, or a clear prospect of a credible deterrence, at the point when he wants to make his move.
But the political side of things is also important. A war that does not have the support of the population is eventually lost. This is why I was so insistent on attacking in Kharkiv Oblast, theorising that a string of small victories would maintain hope. (I keep bringing up UK forces in North Africa during WW2 as an example of this, but people disbelieve me).
So although I recognise you are correct, I don't think we should give up or cease support just yet
(on a postcript, we are ignoring the possibility of a Russian breakthrough. The Ukranians should be mining their side of the lines like billy-o)
Whereas 2 Senators from each state - whether they contain 500,000 people or 50 million, is frankly absurd. And the consequences far more harmful to the idea of American democracy in the long-term since the country became polarised. Given it means even when are the party with significantly larger popular support, the Dems struggle to scrape a 50/50 split that enables them to actually govern properly, while the Republicans know they can play wreckers and pitch to their base safe in the knowledge that they'll never be far off power.
Moreover, we've seen the importance of this in recent years when the GOP have used Senate control to rig the Supreme Court by blocking Democrat nominees and rushing through GOP ones even against precedent.
The House should be representative, but gerrymandering has put paid to that.
I was rooting for the other two because they have such harder backgrounds - motherless, fatherless etc - and he comes from such a happy supportive family
But in terms of sheer cooking he had to be the winner. And just 24?!
He will be a Michelin starred chef within 3 years
It is quite notable that Germany doubled its support for Ukraine for 2024 vs 2023 in November - if, presumably, it can make it through the paperwork system.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-set-double-its-ukraine-military-aid-under-scholz-plan-bloomberg-news-2023-11-12/
Both UK defence spending, and UK committed support for Ukraine, have been cut in real terms recently, and the latest analsyses have identified gaping holes in future funding for basic programmes.
We'll be lining up firmly behind Poland.
All war is enacted IN THEORY by two competing AI systems. Between them they decide who will inevitably win, by drawing on all available data (far more than any human could do), then the winner wins without a shot being fired - either by man or by drone
Sounds preferable to actual war as we’ve known it
The two things the founding fathers didn’t expect, one was the two-party system, the other the very extreme polarisation in recent years.
I think we all agree that the Gerrymandering of House seat boundaries is a bad thing. Only half a dozen States have what Brits might recognise as an indepentent Boundary Commission.
The level of gerrymandering in the House is quite frankly absurd. Given what goes on it’s questionable as to whether the US has the right to call itself a democracy.
And, while explaining that "tax the rich" is insufficient to solve the problems, he passes on this nugget:
"Primarily because of cuts to lower- and middle-class income taxes (essentially half of all families are off the federal income tax rolls), the income tax has become “sharply more progressive” over the past 40 years and is the most progressive of the 38 developed nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2023, the bottom 40 percent of earners will pay, collectively, no income tax and will receive a $123 billion tax rebate. The middle-earning quintile will pay an effective rate of 2.2 percent. The top-earning quintile (at least $686,100 for a two-person family) pays 90 percent of all income taxes. The top 1 percent pays 40 percent of all income taxes — not self-evidently an unfairly small share."
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/08/republicans-democrats-government-spending/
(I should mention, for those unfamilar with the US tax system, that taxes on wages to support those giant programs are not progressive.)
Now why might this column be relevant? Because Nikki Haley has been, bravely, discussing the need for reforms in social security to keep the program solvent. (Speaker Mike Johnson has proposed a bipartisan "debt" commission, which would almost certainly propose reforms.)
You could see he was the likely winner from the beginning of the semis. Kept acing everything
What I liked about Kasae was she had travelled and picked up different influences to put into her cooking. Hers was the food I’d want to eat. But the right person won.
Sorry.
Politicians can barely hide their true views for long enough to beg for your vote. It’s no wonder populism is surging
Janet Daley"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/09/western-elites-loathe-their-voters-their-contempt-palpable/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Handling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts
“Something has gone very wrong with the understanding that should exist between those who govern (or would hope to govern) the democratic nations and their electorates.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon
A fair chunk of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail is about a virtual war.
Q1 - Is this yet another Putinist media strategem?; and
Q2 - Has anyone at YouTube HQ noticed . . . or give a blind fiddler's final farewell feck?
Don’t Biden and Sunak realise, that the oil price is very closely correlated with their re-election chance?
Makes WAY more sense, than assuming this board is/was targeted for it's (alleged) political influence.
That said, the rapid development of factions and parties meant that the Electoral College was simply filled with proxies for the candidates so the popular vote thing - albeit on a state-by-state level - played out anyway.
{Drinks tea in a sinister manner}
3-0.
Anybody remember what happened last time?
@OliverCooper
·
7h
Jaw-dropping polling, where one in five young Americans think the Holocaust didn’t happen.
https://twitter.com/OliverCooper/status/1733417650649247863
What I conclude from those original provisions is that the electoral college was seen, originally, as more of a nomination than an election. Everyone knew Washington would win the first election, so they didn't think about the problems as thoroughly as they should have.
The presidential election of 1824 exposed some of the problems with that original design:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1824_United_States_presidential_election
Well, this is daft.
Bruno Fernandes is booked for chirping at the ref - and that rules him out of next weekend's trip to Liverpool.
A fifth yellow card of the season for the Red Devils skipper.
But not going to happen as it would mean playing fair and co-operating when it's not entirely in your interest - which the GOP are never going to do.
There will need to be 28 Tory rebels to sink the bill; he seems to think it's unlikely that the One Nation caucus has the numbers (many are Ministers anyway), and he seems to be hinting that the ERG and affiliated groups probably will not oppose? Maybe that's overstating his prediction. Certainly Redwood himself seems to indicate that he will vote 'for'. So we might see an unexpected show of Tory unity.
NATO economies have 45% of world GDP. Russia has just over 3%. I'm not convinced by that 5%.
Let's start at 3%, competently organised.
And actually givinbg Ukraine the weapons they need, at the time they need them.
TBH I think a great political blow for Putin's dream would be Donald Trump's consignment to prison for 25 years or so.
Off now to cook for first Christmas visitors - have a good evening all.
Fish pie and corn on the cob, followed by plum crumble with cream. Yum.
United simply do not play as a team. Sometimes one or two players play well but there is no team. Our highest scorer is a defensive midfielder that Ten Hag wanted to get rid of in January. Recently our best player has been Maguire. Ditto. The entire forward line accumulated at great expense seems to have almost no threat at all. It just won't do.
Could have been more.
What about asking 'Is it true that the Nazis under Hitler killed gigantic numbers of Jewish people in gas chambers and elsewhere in the 1940s'. Would you get the same result?
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_136388.htm
his forward presence was first deployed in 2017, with the creation of four multinational battalion-size battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, led by the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and the United States respectively. In the southeast, a tailored presence on land, at sea and in the air contributed to increased Allied activity in the region, enhancing situational awareness, interoperability and responsiveness.
They have already qualified for the the knockout stages.
Very respectful too. Mr Corbyn.
https://www.frogbyadamhandling.com/
I do hope you're right about Haley though. She will probably be a disappointment in office but she's sane and not aged 165. Two ways she scores over Trump and one over Biden.
Donald Trump will, I suspect, win Iowa handily, with around 60% of the vote.
The big question is, can Hayley be second by a large margin?
And I think she can. In the Iowa Caucuses, if you're not at the threshold, you need to alternative vote yourself. And I think a lot (maybe essentially all) of the not-Trump vote is going to coalesce around Hayley.
If she is second, and pulls out a 30+% number, then the race for who is against Trump is over. It is Hayley versus Trump.
And suddenly, she has a lot of attention, and the fact she is polling better against Biden, comes into play.
New Hampshire is next. And there independents can vote (and there is, effectively, no Democratic primary). On forced choice, independents break heavily for Hayley over Trump. And if Democratic leaning independents - who are fearful of a second Trump Presidency - go out and cast their vote for her, she can win.
Trump has a very - errr - hard 40%. But his next 20% is soft. Make it one-on-one, and make it so that his opponent polls better against Biden, and the race is suddenly (if not wide open) then much more exciting.
All this, of course, depends on Hayley having an excellent ground game in Iowa (and I have no idea if she does). And on independents in New Hampshire.
What are the odds on Hayley for Republican nominee again?
There is only one 'y' in 'Haley.'
*Pedant hat OFF*
Northern Lights award for Welsh photographer Mathew Browne
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67663096