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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The British Trump – the similarities between the President and the Leader of the Opposition
On the eve of the 2016 US Presidential election Charlie Falconer, in Italy giving a tour d’horizon of politics to a group of distinguished lawyers, said he thought that Trump would win – it felt a lot like Brexit. He was resigned to it. And right. Farage wasted no time in getting himself photographed with Trump boasting about his special relationship with him. Yet, 3 years on, arguably it is another British politician who has a better claim to be the British Trump: our PM In-All-But-Name (© Alastair Campbell) – Jeremy Corbyn.
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Excellent article, Ms Free.
One thing I've noted in the past is that there is a common 'playbook' for nasty people in power: popularised by Putin, it covers some of the areas you mention. Telling the domestic public untruths, controlling the media, infringing on the rights of opponents.
Erdogan in Turkey seems to have copied this playbook to a certain extent, and Trump seems to have learned some lessons from it as well (although he is thankfully more constrained in what he can do). I'd argue Orban has been studying this way of running a country as well.
In fact the Washington post called Sanders the Trump of the left, I think it just means outside the consensus in those terms, where Trump and Corbyn/Sanders separate is their words and goals. When people criticise Corbyn (as a very bad person) they usually assign some cynical or evil goal beyond what he is actually proposing or saying. There is no need to do that with Trump.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/03/pete-buttigieg-northeastern-university-1254963
Though 19-year-old Milton Posner shares the progressive views of candidates like Sanders and Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California, he said Buttigieg’s “pragmatic solutions” would be easier to achieve than “lofty goals” or taking “one massive swipe” on issues. Warren, for example, calls for making “systemic change” in Washington on the campaign trail. Sanders often calls for a political revolution.
“I’m struggling to remember a time I was more impressed by a politician,” Posner said. “This was a ‘wow’ kind of thing.”...
In other news, it appears that Boeing's woes with the 737 Max are, if anything, getting deeper. Leaks from the investigation into the second crash indicate that the flight crew at least initially tried to follow the directive Boeing released after the first crash, but ended up giving up on it.
Meanwhile, others are saying that the directive was, in some cases, *not* a fix: the plane could easily get into a position where it would not work. That might have happened to those pilots.
Also, the same might be true for their previous NG plane wrt runaway elevator: if not caught in time, you may not manually 'unwind' the elevator due to aerodynamic pressure. If you have altitude you can trade that off to reduce the pressure - but if you're just a few thousand feet up you don't have that luxury.
If true, then ooops...
(from the linked article)
Sanders’ campaign collected $18.2 million from 525,000 donors — most of them under age 39
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On American news and linking in with Corbyn comparisons... They are both outside the mainstream but the message of Sanders and Corbyn is a different one to Trump's which is why it appeals to the younger generations.
But what really strikes me is he is consciously defining himself as a millennial. Perhaps we are starting to see the first sign of generational backlash. I don't think we have any prominent millennial politicians in the UK, but perhaps that's an angle that's available for someone to exploit.
Which is why he's going to win. Millennials plus.
* Or son
Jeremy Corbyn discusses his talks with the Prime Minister on the radio, and says this:
'There was no deal on her side, and there was no deal on our side.'
See why politicians should not open their mouths...
Ultimately, the key point to bear in mind is that Trump, Chavez, Tsipras, Modi, Orban and to a lesser extent Putin are populists who will say and do whatever it takes to get enough of the electorate to vote for them to win. That doesn't even mean they have to be popular (Trump isn't!) but it does mean that anything they say will be a lie, and anyone who criticises them will be demonised and bullied. Corbyn certainly fits that mould very well. But it's also fair to point out that it's served him pretty well electorally over the last five years, far better than we all expected.
It’d make him far less dangerous.
And if it is, will Boeing go the way of de Havilland?
The first no: this issue is much more egregious than the Comet's issues with fatigue, and is very much an own-goal. It shows up massive flaws in the processes within both Boeing and the FAA. It's mind-boggling how MCAS even got through testing.
The second no: Boeing is a massive company, with many different product lines, in civil yet alone military sectors. And they're also too big to fail: there's no other US civil aircraft maker who can take over, and the Yanks won't want to lose that. And the airlines want them because they want competition: a sole major supplier of airplanes in that size would be terrible for them.
Expect "lessons have been learnt." and a lot of ass-covering.
Sounds like you are describing the Conservative party you vote for rather than Corbyn's Labour there in the populist bit to be honest. The Trump Brexit comparisons probably ring more true. After all Trump promised Brexit plus plus (maybe another plus)
Although it is entertaining Conservative voters accusing the opposition of being Trump like in every comparison the Conservatives are the British Republicans not Labour, arguably Boris is our Trump but they are still largely dancing to his tune.
Have a great morning y'all, must be off.
No to the second question.
That said, I still think Trump is favourite to win if he stands for re-election because:
1) However loathed he is by younger voters and minorities, they are not a majority and tend not to vote anyway;
2) His vote is efficiently distributed, the Democrats' is not;
3) He has a nice long time to campaign to voters while the enormous number of hopefuls knock lumps off each other while simultaneously preaching to the choir;
4) Unless the economy goes south (1932, 1980, 1992) it's quite rare for incumbent presidents who run in the actual election (not forgetting 1952 and 1968) not to be re-elected. I think the last time it happened for reasons other than a financial crash (leaving Ford aside) was Taft in 1912, and I see no Roosevelt to shred the Republican vote this time.
So the odds are in his favour, which is not the same as saying he will win.
NASA is where the real whistleblowers go.
2000 Elect opposite of Clinton
2008 Elect opposite of Bush
2016 Elect opposite of Obama
2020/24 Elect opposite of Trump?
And unfortunately you have just shown the most striking similarity between Labour and the Tea Party - their attempts to distract from their own lies with reference to their opponents. We had this last night too: 'Corbyn supports mass murderers and Holocaust deniers? That's nothing, the government's chums with Saudi Arabia!'
Have a good morning with whatever you are doing
Edit - I don't 'support' the Conservative party although I did vote for them at the last election. I voted Labour in 2015 but I don't vote for Nazi apologists on manifestos based on a pack of lies.
That also unfortunately is out of the Trump/Orban playbook - 'if you're not with us, you must be a Tory/millennial/Jew.'
who reject the status quo but that does not make them alike. They are both bad in their own ways and have their own collections of prejudices, biases and idiocies which don't overlap.
They're all spaced out.
(De Havilland was eventually first taken over by Hawker and eventually nationalised because of numerous problems, of which the Comet was the most dramatic and best known. That might happen to Boeing, although I agree it's unlikely.)
That’s not what I expected at all, as I assumed much of it was hot air.
That should be taken into account when trying to understand the passion of his base.
Labour's was costed, and when you say it was made up, that appears to be based on your own made up version of its social care policy. You might disagree with its policies, or even find its costings over-optimistic but at least they were there.
Let's drop the pretense, the reason you support our Republicans is because you don't mind the Americans republicans either. The tea party was UKIP which has migrated to its new home of the Conservatives where your vote is right at home.
A bit of confusion in your edit as well, the Nazi apologists don't like Labour, about as much as you actually, it is why the far right copy the lines, much like people like you come out with actually. Coincidence I'm sure that you and the Nazi's hate Labour for similar reasons.
It's a disturbing reflection on democracy though that people swallow such bullshit.
The fact you now have to actually smear me by calling me a Nazi myself just because I have caught Corbyn out is I fear very telling.
The reason I hate Corbyn - not Labour - is because of his long track record of dishonesty and bullying, and the company he keeps. Get rid of him, and there's every chance Labour will get my vote again.
As for your first invitation - I'm sure you're charming, but really you're not my type.
Or is it?
Trump sees the Presidency as a promotional arm for his wider business interests. His term(s) will serve him well later on when still promoting Brand Trump. That brand will continue on through his family*
Farage has no brand to sell. He's just some gobby bloke, raking in what he can from the system he supposedly despises.
*presuming always they aren't in jail
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2018/07/05/the-sick-rose-the-disease-in-the-english-hard-right-and-the-failure-of-the-rest-of-the-right-to-confront-it/
To go back to @cyclefree's theme what they do have in common is that our news media have not been able to dent them. Pointing out the lies, the fantasies, the failures, the bigotry, none of it seems to work. The more I think about that the more I think that the real problem is that our complete distrust of and willingness to disregard the self appointed "truth tellers" means no one is holding them to account. No one is holding the ring anymore.
I'm revising my views. It must be 7.30 at night if you're running off down making libellous remarks without realising it.
Or was it an all-nighter?
The Comet 1 carried 36 to 44 passengers. The equivalent (but later) DC-8 initially had well over double that, and so did the 707. Even without the Comet-1 crash, it is unlikely that the British would have gone for the mass market in the same way as the Americans did.
You can argue that the Comet-1 was a world-beating aircraft that was ultimately going for the wrong market - and it would have been hard to just cram many more seats in without significant changes.
But it still can't really be called 'world beating' given what happened.
There’s actually nothing wrong with artificial stability, if implemented well. Boeing’s egregious error was to try graft a patch onto flight control software designed for the previous airframe. Doing it properly would have taken much more time - and required properly qualifying pilots to fly a new system, which would have been a big cost in time and money for their customers.
The problem is the House of Commons cannot see this because there are too many on all sides chasing their personal unicorns of Remain, No Deal, or standing on your head riding a unicycle while whistling Ode to Joy (OK, I made that up).
My semi-educated guess is that Boeing were startled by the success of Airbus' competitor, the A320NEO. They wanted something in the air quick. To get sales, they told airlines their pilots would not need any simulator time for difference training when moving from the 737NG to the 737Max - which reduces the airlines' cost significantly.
As the engineering progressed, they realised that they had issues with the aerodynamics. Rather then make changes to the plane that would invalidate their promises to airlines wrt training, they retrofitted MCAS, which was already on military refuelling aircraft, to the civilian 737 Max. After all, it worked fine on the military planes, didn't it?
Yet to prevent retraining requirements and make the Max like the NG, they had to omit some of the features the military planes had - like using two sensors instead of one ...
It's unbelievable that Boeing have got into such a mess. Their specification and software validation must be virtually non-existent.
Have a good morning. At least - what I hope is morning!
Bit like when you used to go into a pub and “MaxZap” had 6 of the top 10 scores and there was no shifting him.
It’s a legacy of a sort...
But what it also shows, for all I disagree with what she has done here, is what a poor choice Labour made in Corbyn instead of Cooper. To achieve this as a back bencher is something truly remarkable, unprecedented as I understand it. If May had 1/5th of her ability to build a consensus around a position we would not be in this mess.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have learnt nothing from 2016 and are determined to double down.
Why shouldn’t he win?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/opinion/brexit-news.html
But I think he will.
If I were in the market for a fleet of jets, I'd have some penetrating questions when I finally got to Boeing - after quizzing Airbus at length on their ability to meet delivery deadlines with all this new demand....
Corbyn cannot afford to reach a deal without keeping a PV in play (a guarantee at least of a free Commons vote), and I don't see how May could concede that and stay in her job.
Already they are both in the room trying to work out how to blame the other for an already scripted failure.
Now it hangs on Monday in the House. The Cabinet will have to participate for the first time, exposing their fault lines for all to see.
Or is this just the kind of Brexit cascade reaction that we can look forward to as hackles rise and tempers fray? I refer you all back to my public safety as a candidate post of earlier.
However it turns out that sometimes these interests are in just-so stories about the world that have little grounding in reality, and we can see that the web makes cult-like behaviour much easier to fall into. A little bit of a cult is a good thing - the confidence that derives from being part of a like-minded group, the feeling of fellowship, etc - but too much is not good for us.
It would take someone smarter than me to find a way to strike the right balance.
The Dems need a good candidate, but surely not Sanders or Biden? both should be pensioned off.
One other point: do we really need another article demonising Corbyn? The Paras are using him for target practice, and one Labour MP has already been murdered by the far right. Like him or loath him, he is the legitimate leader of Britain's largest political party, he is the leader of her majesty's loyal opposition and has worked inside democratic politics his whole life. Words have consequences, and personally I think some of the anti-Corbyn rhetoric on this site is not only absurd and melodramatic, it is also dangerous.
I have to say I am very impressed with Yvette Cooper and compare and contrast her responsible attitude with Mark Francois furious response to the ERG defeat quoting Jesus saying
'Forgive them Lord, they know not what they do'
I had no idea prior to Brexit that my party contained so many unpleasant mps
https://www.instagram.com/p/BvuMPl9h3xg/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=4zzptgfyb4eb
I used to manage graduate students (which was funny, because I wasn't a graduate). One of the things I'd tell them was a lesson I'd picked up from an old NASA anecdote: always ask yourself "How does it fail?"
How something works is important. If you are working on anything that is critical, particularly for life, then as much, if not more, effort has to be put into failure. When it fails (and it will), what are the effects and consequences?
In this case, they didn't (or worse, as you say, ignored), the simple question of what would happen if an AoA vane gave incorrect values at low altitude. This seems such an obvious failure mode that it is staggering it was not addressed.
Brexit has made so many so intolerant to others views and it will go down in the nations history as a deeply destablising period that brought condemnation of the whole political and media class
If no extension (which seems unlikely) it will be revoke followed by a coupon election with both parties all over the place and resulting in a coalition with ref2 as the price.
Talks with Labour were really only a gambit to get MV4 passed next week by frightening the horses but it is pretty obvious that has backfired. If there is a long extension Tories have to get a new leader and then an election which leads to the same outcome as above.
I thought for a long time the peoples vote strategy of last man standing was wrong - but it was me who was wrong all along.
Then the 27 have to decide whether to let the irritation drag on inconclusively or to set Ireland on fire. I think they'll say, "OK, do what you like but don't bother us again for at least 18 months."
Asking that question, and putting in a few safeguards, could save themselves and the public a great deal of hassle.
Monday depends on the voting system (there is some talk of using AV to narrow the options), whether the "composite" options being prepared by MPs (notably CU+PV) prove more popular or less popular than their elements separately, and the extent of whipping. Given how close some of the options have become, getting a decision isn't out of the question.
The issue then becomes whether, if for example, the House goes for CU or CM2 on Monday, it is still feasible to aim for 22 May or whether a longer delay is now inevitable? I had assumed the latter but there has been some talk of still being able to leave quickly.