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Nikki Haley now clear second favourite for the GOP nomination – politicalbetting.com
Nikki Haley now clear second favourite for the GOP nomination – politicalbetting.com
With just a month to go before the first Primary in the 2024 presidential election, there has been a clear move in the GOP nomination betting to Nikki Haley the former governor of South Carolina.
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Well it's rather reassuring to hear for once from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade. She's been so quiet of late I was beginning to wonder whether she was still amongst us. And of course there has been every reason to hear from her. She is the Minister currently in charge of the Post Office, so you might imagine that she would have something to say about the parade of liars, rogues, charlatans and crooks appearing on behalf of the PO at the Inquiry into the biggest public scandal of my lifetime.
Instead, silence.
I do not believe this is judicious restraint whilst the Inquiry gets on with its work. It is tacit support for the PO's policy of obstructing and delaying that work. Her Government owns the PO. It could tell its Board to stop acting the goat and start cooperating. You can draw your own conclusions from its failure to do so.
Is Kemi complicit, or is she merely lazy, incompetent, and indifferent?
Surely an 80% chance is "odds on" by definition (i.e. more likely than evens)?
This GOP flap about Hunter Biden. They want a closed doors inquisition. He says "I have nothing to hide, lets do this in public". They say his action is "obstruction".
Unless there is a national security angle - stop laughing - there is no reason for a closed session. So what do the GOP have to hide?
🚨NEW Westminster Voting Intention
📈17pt Labour lead
🌹Lab 43 (=)
🌳Con 26 (-2)
🔶LD 10 (-1)
➡️Reform 9 (+2)
🌍Green 4 (+1)
🎗️SNP 3 (=)
⬜️Other 4 (=)
2,079 UK adults, 8-10 December
(chg 1-3 December)
How does she find the time?
“All living things are our brothers and sisters”. Amen
This simple speech is actually pretty good: as an entire philosophy of life
https://x.com/durhamwasp/status/1679272195627917313?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
On topic - Trump still looking like the red hot fav.
Related - 538 used to do a long run approval rating for presidents. Can't find it any more, perhaps it's gone with the ABC takeover.
Edit Here it is:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Not great for Joe, sub 40...
Clearly, in calling it an epidemic, Badenoch was indeed likening it to a disease. The liar is Badenoch.
BREAKING: Conservative MP Scott Benton faces a 35 day suspension from the Commons following a newspaper sting that found him allegedly offering to lobby on behalf of the gambling industry.
Another potential by-election looms, this time in Blackpool South.
https://x.com/paulbranditv/status/1735225389700579491?s=61&t=c6bcp0cjChLfQN5Tc8A_6g
Notably the Lib Dem numbers are much more stable across the different companies, implying they're either all wrong or they are correctly sampling Lib Dems. I suspect that's because LD voters are more similar to Labour or Tory voters, i.e. more mainstream and easier to sample.
Given criminal cases are being pursued against Biden Jnr, Congress holding any kind of hearing targeted at him is problematic.
There's a big separation of powers issue, since politicians are effectively front running a criminal case. And Hunter Biden has never held public office.
So far they've presented zero evidence with regard to impeachment of President Biden, which might give some excuse for their behaviour.
Indeed what evidence that has come out is actually against the Trump administration - his state department cancelling the corruption investigation into Burisma, for example.
He is the reason why are schools are failing. Imagine getting taught by that roaster.
Performative nonsense on both sides, whichever one you might tend to sympathise with. (Very much not Badenoch, in my case.)
Badenoch in her mind was not likening it to a disease.
Osborne in her mind took the words as likening it to a disease.
In which case neither is actually lying, they just have differing interpretations of the language and it is a miscommunication. Or equally plausible, one or both of them are being a touch mendacious. Let them get on with it, bigger things to be worried about.
I 100% guarantee he wasn't nicknamed "Grumpy Gullis".
Iowa is a bit of a comedy show. Many candidates have won there then flopped, or lost there and gone on to win the nomination. Winning it is usually a question of having motivated activists willing to go out for hours on a freezing cold evening in the MidWest and advocate for their choice.
So who has the more devoted followers, and by how much, and by how many? Trump, surely. By miles.
Haley is decent value as second-favourite in a 'meh, she'll do' sense if Trump falls. But she ain't beating him.
"I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos"
Top guy that Kenneth Clark.
They'll win it vey easily.
Ugh
And the cruelty we inflict on animals: eeesh. They are our brothers and sisters, born at the same moment of Creation. I now eschew red meat unless it can be absolutely and ethically sourced, otherwise I eat sustainable fish, game, veg
On the other hand I’m all up for a hard right populist government ready to deport everyone to Burundi. So it’s swings and roundabouts
How stupid do these Tories think people are?
"...I believe in justice, I believe in vengeance, I believe in getting the bastards..." (NMA, 1983)
Blackpool was built around cotton town holidays. But the old-fashioned guest houses aren't what people want, neither is Blackers. So its been a perfect place to dump the people that nowhere else wants.
No wonder people started voting Tory. Please rescue us from this malaise. Problem is that after promising big and delivering little, these voters have had a lesson in how cruel the blues are. Labour may have done three parts of diddly but at least they aren't performatively cruel.
Putin says there will be peace with Ukraine "only when we achieve our goals [...] and those goals have not changed."
They still include the "de-Nazification" and "demilitarization" of Ukraine – i.e. a total capitulation to Russia.
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1735228284391092582
We're not expecting an apology from the former Immigration Minister, but hopefully he'll reflect privately that Labour's calculations were correct - the barge does indeed cost the taxpayer £41,000 per day, as confirmed in HASC committee today.
https://twitter.com/SKinnock/status/1735000616789827644
"The final moments of the final episode of Civilisation by Kenneth Clark", Literature Today - and Yesterday..., May 30, 2015, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XofkKmPrYA
I think you're a little unfair with the "meh". In a Trump-less contest, Haley would be a genuinely interesting GOP pick in a way DeSantis wouldn't.
Better life than a battery chicken
Part 1
0:00 At this point I reveal myself in my true colours
0:03 as a stick-in-the-mud! I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by
0:10 the liveliest intellects of our time:
0:12 I believe that order is better than chaos
0:17 Creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness
0:24 to violence; forgiveness to vendetta.
0:27 On the whole
0:30 I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure
0:35 that human sympathy is more valuable than
0:38 ideology. I believe
0:41 that in spite of recent triumphs of science
0:45 men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years
0:49 and in consequence, we must still try to learn from history:
0:54 History is ourselves.
1:00 I also hold one or two beliefs that are more difficult to put shortly:
1:03 For example, I believe in courtesy - the ritual by which we avoid
1:08 hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos
1:13 And I think we should remember that we are part of a great whole -
1:18 which for convenience
1:20 we call Nature -
1:23 All living things are our brothers and sisters.
1:42 Above all
1:42 I believe in the God-given
1:46 genius of certain individuals and I value a society that makes their existence possible.
1:55 [choral music]
Part 2
3:00 These programmes have been
3:01 filled with great work of genius: in architecture, sculpture and painting,
3:07 in philosophy, poetry and music; in science and engineering
3:10 There they are -
3:13 you can't dismiss them and they're
3:17 only a fraction of what Western man has achieved in the last 1000 years -
3:21 often after setbacks and deviations
3:25 at least as destructive as those of our own time.
3:29 Western Civilisation has been a series
3:32 of rebirths. Surely, this should give us confidence in ourselves.
3:41 I said at the beginning of the series that it's lack of confidence more than anything else
3:44
3:45 that kills a civilisation: we can destroy ourselves by
3:49 cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.
3:56 Fifty years ago, W.B. Yeats
3:57 who was more like a man of genius than anyone I've ever known...
4:00 wrote a prophetic poem - and in it he said: [Adopts Yeatsian accent]
4:05 "Things fall apart;
4:07 the centre cannot hold; Mere
4:11 anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,
4:16 and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned;
4:23 The best lack all conviction
4:26 while the worst are full of passionate
4:29 intensity."
4:32 Well, that was certainly true between the wars - and it damn nearly destroyed us.
4:40 Is it true today?
4:42 - Not quite because
4:44 good people have convictions - rather too many of them.
4:47 The trouble is that there is still
4:50 no centre. The moral and intellectual failure of Marxism
4:56 has left us with no alternative to heroic materialism
5:00 and that isn't enough. One may be optimistic
5:06 but one can't exactly be
5:08 joyful at the prospect before us.
As you say though, Trump's legal woes are likely to strengthen his support with the GOP base - which is primarily what the primaries are about. And those woes don't even kick in properly until the race is well underway in voting terms. Health remains a concern but the actuarial risk continues to diminish week by week and we're very close to the starting line now (indeed, we're over it in terms of early voting).
It sounds awful but bizarrely, I am actually really enjoying it. Tried the Zoe recipe for Bircher muesli today. Normally, I'd avoid such things like the plague but.. it was bloody lovely!
What's happening to me?!
(*Is Zoe Nutrition any good? I'll let you know in 6 months)
The card had a counterfeit stamp on it because the person who sent it bought them from Amazon
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/scott-benton-mp-suspension-blackpool-by-election-v7hnqngvk (£££)
The problem with the 2019 intake of MPs is that they are amateur grifters badly imitating what other MPs do way more competently (I.e. they know the quid pro quo will appear eventually but at some time in the distant future).
The advanced language skills on display here as usual. Using 'old school' in its lesser known but still perfectly valid meaning of 'not really'.
Edit: The BBC's DVD issue in 2005 has remained in the catalogues, and Clark's accompanying 1969 book has never been out of print.
They were at cross purposes.
- the clinics still largely work on paper and are reluctant to cooperate with research, in part due to feeling - not entirely unjustifiably* - that there's a bit of a witch hunt against them
- some advocate groups have encouraged - due to a perception that the aim is to close down these services* - people who have attended clinics to exercise their opt-out rights so their data are not used in research
So, researchers can't really get to the data they need and even if able to do so the sample may (this cannot be determined as they'd know nothing about those missing) be dominated by those with bad outcomes if those with good remove their data.*Sajid Javid (or others - I think it was 'sources close to the health secretary' or similar) leaked this intention to the press - that the research was to show how bad the Tavistock and endocrine clinics were - when he was on manoeuvres for the Tory leadership
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Not defending the class of 2019 in particular, but it isn't clear they've been uniquely scandalous.
Incidentally @Andy_JS, the whole Civilisation series is on YouTube
Ep 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMpoGi1MckQ
Ep 2-13: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waoEyjE_dtU&list=PL4dFk7XpP5b5R0c_7kCLYdvcdE-nVVaMa
https://x.com/harryenfield6/status/1735242298034708576?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/ia/2024_iowa_republican_presidential_caucus-8164.html
- Cost of postage recovery fee
- Cost of fake stamps
- Cost of time to re-tender procurement for replacement stamps
- Responsible desposal costs for rest of fake stamps
- Replacement cards for all items sent using counterfeit stamps (as some recipients may not collect)
- Damage to relationship with recipients due to undelivered/late cards
- Time dealing with Royal Mail and pursuing the claim against Amazon
- Damage to your and sender's reputation for being associated with counterfeit goods
- Legal fees related to all the above
Get to four figures at least pretty quickly, I should think?I can think of 2 arguments. Defamation in an image, which clearly wasn't the case here and potential copyright as the images will have been generated from other images, but that seems unlikely to be an issue here also particularly with these sort of images.
Or are you trying to prevent such a situation arising?
Badenoch isn't establishment to anyone but Braverman and Truss fans like Dorries, Sunak, Hunt and Barclay are Tory establishment. Badenoch isn't
https://www.axios.com/2023/08/03/republicans-vote-trump-prison-poll-jan-6-trial