In WVa GOP primary for Governor, appears that 3rd-place Chris Miller may (emphasis on conditional) be taking votes from 2nd-place Moore Capito, to the advantage of 1st-place Patrick Morissey.
Andy_JS asked: It's interesting that this overdose problem seems to have happened so much more seriously in the United States than any other western country. It does exist in Canada, UK, Australia, etc, but on a much smaller scale than in the USA. Why is that?"
Andy, I can only offer you speculations, since I don't have details on what other nations did. Family and community decline may have advanced further in the US, than in other western nations. Other nations did not have leaders who admitted/boasted about their drug use as young men. Other nations did not have the Sacklers. Other nations were not the pinrcipal target of the ChiComs. The US has more money to spend on recreation, including drugs. And I could add others.
But, let me repeat, those are just speculations. You might get some insights by looking at the variations within the US, especially between states like Texas and California.
West Virginia Republican Primary - with 6% reporting
for GOVERNOR (open seat race with incumbent Jim Justice winning GOP primary for US Senator) Patrick Morrisey 47,555 33.8% Moore Capito 40,284 28.6% Chris Miller 26,709 19.0% Total reported 140,903
SSI - Patrick Morrisey has been holding about +5% lead all night over Moore Capito, and looks to me that PM wins GOP nomination.
Strong regional component to WVa Gov race in GOP primary tonight with 78% of vote reporting (source NYT)
> Patrick Morrisey (33.4% statewide) is carrying his home base in outer DC burbs, with 66% in Jefferson Co (Harpers Ferry), also rest of eastern panhandle AND the northern panhandle (Wheeling) plus clusters of counties in northern and southeastern WV.
> Moore Capito (28.1%) is winning his home base in Kanawha Co (Charleston the state capital) state's biggest county with 38% to 21% for Morrisey, plus Harrison Co (Clarksburg) and cluster of rural northern counties.
< Chris Miller (19.9%) is carrying HIS home county of Cabell (Huntington) with 44% along with cluster of nearby counties in southern WV; clearly out of the running, but has likely been spoiler versus Moore Capito; note that the two are neck-and-neck in suburban Putnam Co, midway between Charleston and Huntington.
Trump's party is now openly as contemptuous of the constitution and rule of law as is he. The potential consequences of his re-election are very clear; the constraints on him last time round won't be there. Were he to win, a Republican controlled House, Senate along with the highly conservative Supreme Court are quite likely.
On Mr Trump, a comparison between senior Elected Republican Congressmen turning out to help interfere with the Criminal Justice system (one admitting he is Trump's 'surrogate', and the three Senior Republican politicians who went to the White House in 1974 to tell Richard Nixon he faced impeachment.
On Mr Trump, a comparison between senior Elected Republican Congressmen turning out to help interfere with the Criminal Justice system (one admitting he is Trump's 'surrogate', and the three Senior Republican politicians who went to the White House in 1974 to tell Richard Nixon he faced impeachment.
On Mr Trump, a comparison between senior Elected Republican Congressmen turning out to help interfere with the Criminal Justice system (one admitting he is Trump's 'surrogate', and the three Senior Republican politicians who went to the White House in 1974 to tell Richard Nixon he faced impeachment.
That was in the days when the Republicans went after criminals rather than lauded them.
The only way they don't resemble the Mafia these days is the Mafia are waaaaay more competent.
For the life of me I can’t understand the Republican Party’s fear of Trump. By all means keep your head down, but no need to prostitute yourself.
And the dissonance between polling in the US and the results of actual elections is stark. Haley still pulling in 20% of the R Primary vote in many states, despite no longer being in the race, is a big problem for Trump. And Democrats are routinely beating the polls significantly in special elections.
I honestly don’t think it will be that close in Nov. Trump may win GA back, maybe AZ, but I don’t see it happening in WI, PA or MI. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see Biden take NC.
Enough, as far as I’m concerned. Bring them back into public ownership, at least for now, and make them accountable to the taxpayer.
Starmer is missing a trick if he continues to say he won’t do it. Public support will be there.
Why? They need to be accountable to the regulator. There needs to be stronger regulation. Ownership structures are a huge and expensive red herring.
Yep - strengthen the regulator - emphasis that the rules aren't changing simply that they will be enforced and let the private owners handle the investment costs.
and if they fail to meet them - let them go bankrupt and purchase them cheaply from the administrators.
Andy_JS asked: It's interesting that this overdose problem seems to have happened so much more seriously in the United States than any other western country. It does exist in Canada, UK, Australia, etc, but on a much smaller scale than in the USA. Why is that?"
Andy, I can only offer you speculations, since I don't have details on what other nations did. Family and community decline may have advanced further in the US, than in other western nations. Other nations did not have leaders who admitted/boasted about their drug use as young men. Other nations did not have the Sacklers. Other nations were not the pinrcipal target of the ChiComs. The US has more money to spend on recreation, including drugs. And I could add others.
But, let me repeat, those are just speculations. You might get some insights by looking at the variations within the US, especially between states like Texas and California.
Thanks for the reply.
It's because US Doctors prescribed them like smarties (m&ms) and they're incredibly addictive.
FWIW, I really don't know whether current presidential polling is anywhere near reality, or not.
I have heard it suggested the polling does not have adequate coverage in Democratic-heavy urban areas... If you want a "competitive race" to cover, that's one way to get it.
To judge from the Radio 4 news item on the Trump trial, Michael Cohen is an awful witness and there's a strong chance Trump will be acquitted.
Were the BBC in court?
The BBC's US reporting is some of their least informed or balanced. It's a strange thing.
Not currently helped by having Justin Webb fronting their election coverage, but the problem seems more systemic.
Their UK reporting is going that way too. They seem terrified of the government and I’ve no idea why.
Exhibit A, their bizarre coverage of today’s new section 28 on sex education at schools. It’s the sort of Sharia-compliant rule George Galloway might introduce if he were the new education secretary. But the Beeb? Just a completely normal day in policy making.
Andy_JS asked: It's interesting that this overdose problem seems to have happened so much more seriously in the United States than any other western country. It does exist in Canada, UK, Australia, etc, but on a much smaller scale than in the USA. Why is that?"
Andy, I can only offer you speculations, since I don't have details on what other nations did. Family and community decline may have advanced further in the US, than in other western nations. Other nations did not have leaders who admitted/boasted about their drug use as young men. Other nations did not have the Sacklers. Other nations were not the pinrcipal target of the ChiComs. The US has more money to spend on recreation, including drugs. And I could add others.
But, let me repeat, those are just speculations. You might get some insights by looking at the variations within the US, especially between states like Texas and California.
Thanks for the reply.
Something missed in Sackler story so far - advertising and profit for the doctors.
Something that surprises Americans outside the US is the *lack* of medical advertising. We get a few ads for Bupa - they get an incessant storm of medical advertising. Many of the ads are for particular drugs.
Doctors were paid to prescribe - perhaps the key action in this. Everyone in the chain made a profit on every pill rolled.
Enough, as far as I’m concerned. Bring them back into public ownership, at least for now, and make them accountable to the taxpayer.
Starmer is missing a trick if he continues to say he won’t do it. Public support will be there.
Why? They need to be accountable to the regulator. There needs to be stronger regulation. Ownership structures are a huge and expensive red herring.
Put simply I don’t have any faith that a new regulator will fix the problem. The companies will simply put up the bills and say it’s due to new regulations, and then continue to do as little as possible. The infrastructure needs proper, targeted and strategic oversight now and the best way to do that is to remove the profit motive.
I’ve moaned about it a lot but I keep going back to the Today Programme because it’s a habit of 30 years but this morning has absolutely killed me. I really like Emma Barnett as a presenter and interviewer. I like Amol Rajan when he isn’t constantly dropping being a father into every conversation.
I was looking forward to it being not as good as I remember it but still a good start to the day, hoping somehow they would get a change of editor who wouldn’t have some f-ing teenage need for music segments every day to show how switched on they are on their magazine programme and instead get a new editor who would return it to a serious news programme with good longer form interviews about politics and events.
What do we get today, a five minute segment on Blinken singing a Neil Young song in Ukraine and then me thinking I had entered some time warp and was catching an older episode of Women’s Hour where Emma Barnett is reading out listeners comments on the new sex education rules.
Fuck off Today Editor. If people want pointless sections on music then they have loads of BBC stations to listen to. If they want to hear the public’s views from their tweets and texts on a relatively minor story then there is Radio 5. Why is there this absolutely pointless need to change everything and fuck up things that work perfectly well. All that is happening is Today is going to end up a mirror of R5 with more southern accents.
Farming Today had a really good interview this morning with Sunak and people involved in Food to Fork this morning that knocked any political commentary on Today into a cocked hat which says it all really.
He's ungenerous and attracted by the most unpleasant of the 'deep' Tories. Patel Braverman and Jenrick. He lacks the ingredient that makes you want to engage with him on any level. Something even Starmer has got.
You may want to revise your opinion - Suella has come out for scrapping the 2 child benefit cap, making her officially more compassionate and left wing than Kier Starmer.
This is a great example of the double-standards that prevail within British political debate.
If a similar figure in Labour had advocated for such a change of policy the discussion about it would be dominated by recurring all the times they had voted for the 2 child benefit cap, ridiculing them for the u-turn.
When a Tory makes such a shift then the debate is all about how Labour have been outmanoeuvred.
On this particular issue we've had years of it being a sign of how Labour aren't serious about controlling welfare spending, of Labour being on the side of slackers, while the Tories were on the side of strivers. Now that a single Tory pulls a 180 on the policy and Labour are still in the wrong.
British political debate is dominated by people for whom Labour is always wrong, regardless of the conditions the commentator has to pull on the issues of the day. It gives us a shallow debate dominated by Oxford Union debating points, where the game is always the same: "This House believes that on issue x the Labour Party are wrong."
I'd love to discuss why some Tories are now changing their mind on this policy, and what the benefits of dumping it would be.
I think you means
British political debate is dominated by people for whom Labour/Conservatives [delete as appropriate] is always wrong, regardless of the conditions the commentator has to pull on the issues of the day
No, "conditions" was a typo from my phone keyboard. It has an annoying habit of changing words in arrears, because it doesn't agree with my erratic use of grammar. It should be "contortions".
it is fair that there are some people who will always say that the Tories are always wrong, but they have a relatively fringe role in British political debate. And so I think the debate as a whole is dominated by those who interpret everything through the prism of Labour always wrong.
I don't think that's true.
Remember there are real people who go around with T-Shirts saying they've "Never Kissed A Tory".
Yeah, I know those people exist. I'm talking about the political debate as framed by the national media.
Perhaps it's just been a long time since Labour were in government, and what I'm thinking of is a product of some of the media being overly deferential to the party of government. But I have my doubts.
The media landscape you describe isn't one I recognise. Have you heard of the BBC? And yes, I recognise that there is still a right wing print media. But the importance of the print media nowadays is a tiny fraction of what it was 30 years ago.
Granted, the BBC is sometimes critical of SKS. I don't think that changes the fact that on balance it leans heavily left. And I am confident that when Labour come in, it will largely criticise them from the left.
I don't dispute that they BBC has a liberal metropolitan bias - but that wasn't my point.
Yoir point appeared to be that the media is biased towards the Conservatives. To which my response is a)perhaps the print media is, but the print media is now jist background noise, and b) the non-print media - which in this country is mainly the BBC, though Sky, ITN, are also relevant - skews heavily leftwards. (I notive this less with ITN, I'd say), and c) this isn't just a matter of favouring one party or the other, and many of the criticisms of Labour are criticisms from the left.
My point is more nuanced than that. It's not the same stale argument about a simple bias. It's specifically about framing news stories in a particular way. Lots of people on the left do it too, to frame a story as bad for Labour both ways.
I had some more thoughts about this which I haven't quite made coherent. I think partly it's about the way in which people on the Left understand why they are one the Left, and the way in which people on the right have a different understanding of the way in which opinions are formed.
Comments
Donald J. Trump
59,951 74.7% = 37 delegates
Nikki Haley
20,265 25.3% = 0
Addendum - race has been called for Trump by AP; they've also called GOP primary for US Senate for Larry Hogan who currently has 68.2%
VERY tight open-seat race for US Senate (source NYT)
Angela Alsobrooks (Prince George Co Executive)
95,401 48.6%
David Trone (US Representative)
93,428 47.6%
Joseph Perez
1,418 0.7%
ADDENDUM - for POTUS, Biden 90%, uncommitted 7%
for GOVERNOR (open seat race with incumbent Jim Justice winning GOP primary for US Senator)
Patrick Morrisey
47,555 33.8%
Moore Capito
40,284 28.6%
Chris Miller
26,709 19.0%
Total reported
140,903
SSI - Patrick Morrisey has been holding about +5% lead all night over Moore Capito, and looks to me that PM wins GOP nomination.
> Patrick Morrisey (33.4% statewide) is carrying his home base in outer DC burbs, with 66% in Jefferson Co (Harpers Ferry), also rest of eastern panhandle AND the northern panhandle (Wheeling) plus clusters of counties in northern and southeastern WV.
> Moore Capito (28.1%) is winning his home base in Kanawha Co (Charleston the state capital) state's biggest county with 38% to 21% for Morrisey, plus Harrison Co (Clarksburg) and cluster of rural northern counties.
< Chris Miller (19.9%) is carrying HIS home county of Cabell (Huntington) with 44% along with cluster of nearby counties in southern WV; clearly out of the running, but has likely been spoiler versus Moore Capito; note that the two are neck-and-neck in suburban Putnam Co, midway between Charleston and Huntington.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1790485101966487881
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-speaker-mike-johnson-court-09aef3de395fa77843f2600f40da6ac3
..It was a remarkable moment in modern American politics: The House speaker amplifying Trump’s defense and turning the Republican Party against the federal and state legal systems that are foundational to the U.S. government and a cornerstone of democracy...
Trump's party is now openly as contemptuous of the constitution and rule of law as is he.
The potential consequences of his re-election are very clear; the constraints on him last time round won't be there.
Were he to win, a Republican controlled House, Senate along with the highly conservative Supreme Court are quite likely.
Brexit border IT outages delay import of perishable items to UK by up to 20 hours
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/15/brexit-border-it-outages-delay-import-of-perishable-items-to-uk-by-up-to-20-hours
What else has the BBC covered up?
You’d think she’s the victim from this.
https://x.com/channel4news/status/1790100258732597282?s=61
Scrap the license fee.
Let it compete for its revenue.
Nixon resigned the next day.
https://youtu.be/y6yPkzS1fuM?t=45
(Glenn Kirchner - 7 minutes) A review of the article linked below.
https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_gop-unlikely-reprise-role-it-played-nixons-1974-exit/6177114.html
The only way they don't resemble the Mafia these days is the Mafia are waaaaay more competent.
And wrist; finger; off; leg; top or back ?
They're tossing it right up.
And the dissonance between polling in the US and the results of actual elections is stark. Haley still pulling in 20% of the R Primary vote in many states, despite no longer being in the race, is a big problem for Trump. And Democrats are routinely beating the polls significantly in special elections.
I honestly don’t think it will be that close in Nov. Trump may win GA back, maybe AZ, but I don’t see it happening in WI, PA or MI. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see Biden take NC.
UK owned United Utilities remains probably the most polluting water company in the country.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv266nqq48xo
Starmer is missing a trick if he continues to say he won’t do it. Public support will be there.
Need more evidence to doubt the reliability of polling? Take a glance at the Democratic Senate primary in Maryland tonight.
Trone was leading in 99% of pre-election polls and maintained a 2-point advantage in the overall average before today.
Yet, in actual election results tonight, Alsobrooks leads by a significant 10 points! Yes, ten!...
https://twitter.com/ChrisDJackson/status/1790564049429672253
FWIW, I really don't know whether current presidential polling is anywhere near reality, or not.
Not currently helped by having Justin Webb fronting their election coverage, but the problem seems more systemic.
and if they fail to meet them - let them go bankrupt and purchase them cheaply from the administrators.
Exhibit A, their bizarre coverage of today’s new section 28 on sex education at schools. It’s the sort of Sharia-compliant rule George Galloway might introduce if he were the new education secretary. But the Beeb? Just a completely normal day in policy making.
NEW THREAD
Something that surprises Americans outside the US is the *lack* of medical advertising. We get a few ads for Bupa - they get an incessant storm of medical advertising. Many of the ads are for particular drugs.
Doctors were paid to prescribe - perhaps the key action in this. Everyone in the chain made a profit on every pill rolled.
I was looking forward to it being not as good as I remember it but still a good start to the day, hoping somehow they would get a change of editor who wouldn’t have some f-ing teenage need for music segments every day to show how switched on they are on their magazine programme and instead get a new editor who would return it to a serious news programme with good longer form interviews about politics and events.
What do we get today, a five minute segment on Blinken singing a Neil Young song in Ukraine and then me thinking I had entered some time warp and was catching an older episode of Women’s Hour where Emma Barnett is reading out listeners comments on the new sex education rules.
Fuck off Today Editor. If people want pointless sections on music then they have loads of BBC stations to listen to. If they want to hear the public’s views from their tweets and texts on a relatively minor story then there is Radio 5. Why is there this absolutely pointless need to change everything and fuck up things that work perfectly well. All that is happening is Today is going to end up a mirror of R5 with more southern accents.
Farming Today had a really good interview this morning with Sunak and people involved in Food to Fork this morning that knocked any political commentary on Today into a cocked hat which says it all really.
I've never been convinced there's anything vaguely Conservative about her.
I had some more thoughts about this which I haven't quite made coherent. I think partly it's about the way in which people on the Left understand why they are one the Left, and the way in which people on the right have a different understanding of the way in which opinions are formed.
Need to think about this some more.