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Biden slips sharply in the WH2024 betting after more memory lapses – politicalbetting.com
Biden slips sharply in the WH2024 betting after more memory lapses – politicalbetting.com
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He deserves re-election, given the opposition before him.
Does life get any better?
Trump's criminal cases also start next month, if he is convicted things could soon look different
I fear Biden is going to ruin a deserved reputation of competence by continuing in the belief that he is 'the one' who is singularly able to beat Trump. I reckon anyone with a decent background and able to campaign will beat Trump especially if they tack to the centre.
The Man (Live From Paris): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3aXpa1rQEY
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/en/politics/usa-presidential-election-2024/democratic-nominee-betting-1.178163685
At that point it really would be 'cat, meet pigeons.'
In fairness we are going to be equally unenthused choosing between Sunak and Starmer (and we won't even bother mentioning Davey). Why can't we do better than this?
Let’s have this out, Nico, so you can please correct me where I am wrong.
let’s start at the beginning with some honest truth. The Conservative Government record on climate change for most the last 14 years till recently, was rather good, actually. They could have taken it into the coming election as a positive, till they saw the opportunity to win re-election, by attacking Labours £140B Green Jihad on the motorist, public finances and tax payers pocket, so trashed their own brand and messaging for this clear blue water.
Until yesterday Labour had a green policy deal of £28B extra a year (£140B over term of parliament) paid for from an inherited economy maxxed out on tax intake, maxxed out on borrowing, £1Trilion a year public sector bill for crumbling public services, not least Health, Education and defence, and barely a feather of growth for ages, also until yesterday its £28B spending commitment was completely vague on what items they intended to actually buy with £28Billion a year of additional public spending on this one department alone.
Yet, you come along with such wisdom to argue Labour should have left it completely alone? not touched this at all before putting it in the manifesto? not rationalised it to something more clear and sane and affordable? Okay… So exactly how from inherited position of maxxed out tax intake, maxxed out on borrowing, with crumbling public services, not least Health, Education and defence, and barely a feather of growth for ages, are you suggesting that £140B was remotely going to be paid for? Remember, there hasn’t been a realistic and achievable spending commitment in the whole history of politics, that didn’t come with a realistic funding mechanism attached - and those that don’t are a gift to your opponents, cost you seats and power. In today’s real world Labours £24B plan of today has question marks over its funding - how much windfall tax, how much more on borrowing. Do you know?
Which Labour supporter doesn’t want a manifesto that puts the country living within its means, first and foremost? 🤷♀️
Meanwhile, even more incredible really, Sunak and PB Tories are arguing that this example - this conscious act of Labours top team to rationalise the “unfundable splurge” down to something actually vaguely sane, vaguely fundable for a manifesto - is all the proof you now need that Labour are UNFIT for office? 😶
🤣
PM: Mercury
CoE: Barlow
Foreign sec: Bono
Home sec: Morrissey
Justice: Glitter
Health: Winehouse
Education: Waters
Transport: Rea
DEFRA: Sharkey
Defence: Blunt
Business: Tennant
International development: Geldof
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Bush
I know there are various others but that’ll do.
Actually you get far better leaders in democracies than autocracies. In a democracy a bad leader who has overstayed their welcome can be turfed out, while you're lumped with the same douchebag you had nearly a quarter of a century ago.
Steven Edginton
@StevenEdginton
Exclusive: Whistleblower exposes Home Office's asylum system:
"I work in the Home Office deciding whether to grant people asylum, and I am terrified that one day one of my cases will end up on the news.
There has been no internal communication about the recent acid attack case. Nothing. Not even an email telling us that they are looking into how it could have been allowed to happen.
Instead we are bombarded with emails that celebrate things like “World Hijab Day’’ at the same time as I deal with cases of women claiming they cannot go back to Iran otherwise they will be forced into wearing these items.
Asylum seekers will be coached, often by legal representatives or through friends and family (some of whom may have been granted asylum in the past), to concoct a reason they might be persecuted in their home country. They “convert” to Christianity, often coming with evidence of recent baptisms, or say they are gay and take pictures in gay nightclubs to prove it (some of these photos look as though they are very uncomfortable being there).
In one instance a male claimed that he was gay, only to drop the assertion halfway through his asylum interview because he felt so disgusted by the idea.
In one interview the claimant insisted that he was being persecuted in his home country due to his political beliefs. I asked him to name the leader of his nation’s opposition party and he couldn’t answer. He asked for a break and came back ten minutes later knowing everything about the political situation.
The Home Office is hostile to those who speak up internally, unless their complaint is about diversity or discrimination or some other civil service obsession.
Home Office directives and pressure to clear the backlog of asylum cases has caused caseworkers to cut corners. The default is now to err on the side of accepting people. For example, we have been told to cut down the time it takes to conduct asylum interviews, which has led to confusion and a lack of clarity over some cases.
Even as someone who is sceptical of many applications, internal targets and incentives mean that I feel under huge pressure to accept people. It takes less than half an hour to accept a case, while it takes around a day to write up a report to reject someone (this is because you have to lay out the evidence as to why you rejected it for legal reasons, which is a timely process).
The top brass have told us to be on the lookout for applications (even citing a string of recent cases), that use the same wording, or similar stories, and are often submitted by people using the same immigration lawyer. We know that many law firms tell applicants to submit the same hokum that has been proven to work previously but we have not been told to stop granting asylum in these cases."
5:10 PM · Feb 9, 2024"
https://twitter.com/StevenEdginton/status/1756002642084454686
I was almost sure of it, and have bet accordingly. I'm all green on Betfair's Dem nominee market - but to the tune of only £2 for Biden. Which works out at about a penny an hour, given the time I've put into it. He's always been the favourite, and still is - currently at 1.46.
But he's still there. It's too late. It's him or Trump. What's the plausible path towards it being anyone else?
The world is a lot weirder than even my current job has taught me. Its amazing it works at all really.
I think Newsom is a bubble, but at least he's clearly running.
Remember this speech when he was running for the nomination?
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/09/politics/joe-biden-bridge-new-generation-of-leaders/index.html
Biden says he’s a ‘bridge’ to new ‘generation of leaders’
Former Vice President Joe Biden called himself a “bridge” to future Democratic leaders Monday night as he campaigned with Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
“Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said. “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”
There will be the occasional diamond in the rough, like LKY. Its worth noting that Lee was very adamantly anti-corruption and was throughout his entire, long, period in office which is exceptionally unusual in autocracies.
Still however most democratic leaders are better than most non-democratic leaders.
Which - of course - is very interesting in that it is a tacit acknowledgement that this really is a war of territorial expansion, rather than merely defanging a country which posed a threat. (Which was the message Putin and co repeated ad nauseum at the start of the invasion.)
the first place in 2020, he
declined to run in 2016
despite being incumbent VP to let Hillary run and Trump beat her
Just pointing out that she's an absolutely huge star even in historical terms - even outstripping big stars of the past who weren't quite as ubiquitous or commercially dominant over such a long period.
One reason I think she's become so big is that she's effectively kept building and building an audience. From country music to pop, and then across generations. It's rare, possibly unprecedented, for a pop artist to still be the most popular with 15-year-olds and the 35-year-olds who were around at the start of their career.
Part of the reason for that maybe her music being slightly bland but perfectly crafted and with lyrics laser-guided to appeal to the emotional side of teens and young adults.
Michelle Obama clearly isn't.
Again that might be a bit unfair on Biden.
And a Max-Min strategy is almost certainly a winning one. Simply bad leaders do a lot more damage than good leaders do good.
I’ve previously mentioned a relative - educated to PhD level, wrote some serious papers that are still quoted, coached a sport at national level, started a business from a 1 man band up to the level that he can take time for other things.
As he puts it - why take a pay cut for such an awful, pointless job?
For what it is worth it seems to me that the current plan is to let Ukraine fight out a stalemate which reduces the threat posed by Russia by detaining it in mutually destructive conflict. This itself has many moral problems.
For all the reasons going for Biden, such as economy will align perfectly for voting day, the more centre ground moderate platform compared to Trumps extremism, this being the far stronger administration than the Trump mess, but minus the disadvantages of the ailing Biden - if I was to say I think Harris would beat Trump, why am I wrong?
Also the weirdly symmetrical thing that keeps popping up in history books - thought they were to have first female President but it was killed off by Trump, then election of first female President kills off Trumps political career.
The radio would say "put on a happy face" to encourage tourism and, as a child, you would have an entire bus load of people smiling at you somewhat inanely. And none of them would sit down until you chose a seat.
Another campaign was getting fitter. The music would blast out and everyone, including the grannies, would be out on their verandas doing exercises together almost north Korean style.
These things weren't happening without someone keeping a very close eye on anyone that was not complying. And I would not like to have been them. Not a society I would like to have been a part of for all their economic success.
History suggests that - in those circumstances - the defender has the advantage, because it's their homeland.
The attacker, by contrast, has to consciously choose to keep sending their young men off to die on a foreign field for the ambitions of the leader. And at some point the cost of that becomes prohibitive.
Talking about banging fists on the table and the C of E, this was quite startling especially in view of the recent discussion on PB of the liabilities of parish church council members:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/09/c-of-e-urged-to-tackle-aggressive-behaviour-at-local-church-meetings
'A separate paper to the synod describes the bullying of clergy as a “grievous stain on the life of the church” and calls for church legislation to allow the disqualification of church wardens, PCC members and other lay officers. It points out that a priest who is found guilty of bullying can be disciplined and removed from their post but there is no equivalent penalty for lay officers.'
Oh, er, yeah... I see what you mean.
Geldof is actually quite supportive of his local C of E Parish church and knows the Vicar well who we also know
There's lots of good reasons for that, including that it's difficult to be the best critic of your own work. Leaders may come to power correctly diagnosing what is wrong with the government of the day, but ten years into power something else will have gone wrong and it's probably partly their fault, intentional or not. A fresh pair of eyes is typically better at that point.
What autocracy/dictatorship does is separate leaders into:
1) Useless leaders who would be rubbish under any system, but now have the job for life. Picture Truss as our eternal leader for another two decades.
2) Initially competent leaders who fail under the passage of time. Think Blair, Cameron, Thatcher.
3) Leaders who remain excellent for decades at a time. No UK examples there.
Dictatorships are a gamble that a given person ends up being the frankly mythical third type of person.
And that's why they (almost always) end up failing miserably.
The 'chaos' of democratic governance is a strength not a weakness, it enables rapid mutations and evolution by adopting what works and dumping what does not.
Whereas autocracies tend to get increasingly bad under stale leaders most of the time, then lurch when the leader changes.
You can tell a lot about a country from the passport control. I remember one week going from a few days in Beijing to a brief trip to São Paulo and the sense of relief, the dropping of the shoulders and exhalation as I handed my passport to a gum chewing border policewoman with a nose ring in a chaotic arrivals area was palpable.
Will the ICO be taking action against the Telegraph?
Trump: 45%
Biden: 44%
https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/crosstabs_Biden_and_Trump_Issue_Handling_20240209.pdf
At least someone isn't suffering from our record high tax rates. My effective tax rate must be north of 40%, on a much lower income. I am so sick of these jokers taking us for mugs.