Appropos of nothing, I do like that I was rewatching some old Last Week Tonight, and in its very second episode, one of the first gags involved Biden interrupting a press conference by walking out with an open robe. Not sure they at least saw him as a credible candidate post Obama.
I'm halfway through a documentary on the downfall of Mrs Thatcher whose YT uploader in 2014 used Trump Casino shots.
Appropos of nothing, I do like that I was rewatching some old Last Week Tonight, and in its very second episode, one of the first gags involved Biden interrupting a press conference by walking out with an open robe. Not sure they at least saw him as a credible candidate post Obama.
I'm halfway through a documentary on the downfall of Mrs Thatcher whose YT uploader in 2014 used Trump Casino shots.
Appropos of nothing, I do like that I was rewatching some old Last Week Tonight, and in its very second episode, one of the first gags involved Biden interrupting a press conference by walking out with an open robe. Not sure they at least saw him as a credible candidate post Obama.
I'm halfway through a documentary on the downfall of Mrs Thatcher whose YT uploader in 2014 used Trump Casino shots.
This really is bizarre. Maybe Trump has a point but it just looks like hurling a bunch of unrelated points at the wall to see what sticks. It is undignified, irrational and probably counterproductive.
If you don't understand any of it then I think every additional piece of flim-flam is added in your mind as part of a great wall of evidence, so even if part of it was refuted the rest would stand. This seems to be effective in persuading MAGA enthusiasts to keep believing and donating.
In other news Azerbaijan has declared victory in its conflict with Armenia, after it signed a ceasefire deal with Russia. Did Armenia's PM sign this deal? Reportedly yes, but by the looks of it Russia was signing it on his behalf whether he wanted to or not. It is likely to see the end of his government. It is a surrender.
Russian peacekeepers move into Nagorno Karabakh, probably never to move out and it looks like Azerbaijan keeps the locations its conquered. Its like a the old days of grand strategy and carving up lands.
GOP is seeking relief in a Pennsylvania filing of err... chucking all of Pennsylvania's electoral college votes out. I seriously hope that one heads all the way to SCOTUS actually.
Are you sure? It would certainly be a yes from Kavanagh.
I think it would be a step too far for Kav actually.
Presumably they would vote as a pack?
i.e. only vote for Trump if they have 5 votes, voting for Trump as a dissenter must be the worst place to be for the judges. So its either Trump wins 6-3, 5-4 with Roberts in the 4 or by far the most likely 9-0 loss.
That's good analysis.
The Supreme Court has (a) tended to make political decisions 9-0, (b) not been that much of a friend of Trump this electoral cycle, and (c) is full of people with their eyes on the history books.
The GOP hack move here is just decline to hear the case and leave it to the states, let the riled-up GOP base organize to put fewer liberals and more conservative conservatives on swing state courts.
The Republican party seem to have two choices right now. One is to dump Trump. The other is to stick with him. Both those look like terrible choices, from the point of view of keeping their coalition together. (One of them is clearly better from the point of view of accounting for your actions in the hereafter, but that's another matter.) A third way of studied neutrality might have worked, but it's rapidly getting too late for that, surely?
(And as for Fox, Rupe's global business would presumably take a massive hit if Fox went from backing a dodgy right-winger to backing someone seeking to cancel the result of an election?)
Trumps support is sort of unique. We shouldn’t presume it’s a vote to be inherited by any Republican. Would Mitt Romney have got that blue collar coalition of support out to those levels this election? To get a Trump vote you need to be Trump.
But we shouldn’t presume now Trumps support will be in same place over the next four years. For one thing it was based on fear, of his opponents being socialists, or incompetent on the economy, arguments they can take away from him. Also his own reputation could take a hit, a succession of revelations hollowing him and his family out.
AG Bill Barr authorizes federal prosecutors across the US to pursue 'substantial allegations' of voting irregularities before the 2020 presidential election despite very little evidence of fraud as he tears up the rule book
AG Bill Barr authorizes federal prosecutors across the US to pursue 'substantial allegations' of voting irregularities before the 2020 presidential election despite very little evidence of fraud as he tears up the rule book
As time goes by, and provided sleepy Joe and Kamala keep their message steady this story will slowly die, each day Trump's Presidency drifts into history and Fox etc are helping by not giving it publicity.
Trumpers convinced themselves he's going to win the recount and/or get enough illegal votes thrown out to win? TBF they do have a shady GOP-hack kind of supreme court, so it's a bit less ridiculous than PA.
So I made the mistake of putting "Arizona" into Twitter search and it's full of excited Maga enthusiasts screenshotting CNN's electoral vote map showing Arizona in grey and saying CNN just uncalled it. CNN never called Arizona.
24% of voters expect the vote to be overturned. Only 45% of Republicans think its unlikely to be overturned. This isnt some fringe idea, however crazy that might sound in the safety of the UK.
Interesting. This is what it's like in 3rd world countries. You can see how quickly trust can ebb away. Europe has a lot to be thankful for.
AG Bill Barr authorizes federal prosecutors across the US to pursue 'substantial allegations' of voting irregularities before the 2020 presidential election despite very little evidence of fraud as he tears up the rule book
Barr is a disgrace to his office. It’s perhaps worrying that principled prosecutors seem to be resigning in protest. I’d rather they stated in place to resist any illegal orders. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/09/william-barr-vote-irregularities-donald-trump-electio ... Within hours of the news, the New York Times reported that the justice department official overseeing voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, had resigned from his position.
“Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications,” Pilger reportedly told colleagues in an email, “I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes Branch.”
Doubts about Barr’s intentions were heightened after it was reported that a few hours before the letter to prosecutors was disclosed, he met with Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader...
I wonder if it's suddenly dawned on McConnell that he's going to lose both seats in Georgia.
One of them got 49.7% or thereabouts, could they really lose? I mean, even if the GOP begin tearing themselves apart that looks a tough ask. Would be fun though.
Not sure how fair it was, but I recall a Maldives election where a guy got 47% in the first round (well ahead of the next placed guy), but failed to win the second round.
Leoffler loses in the head to head polling with Warnock.
Leoffler and Perdue have coronavirus related scandals and Georgia is entering its THIRD wave.
The Dems have an effective vote by mail operation setup, the GOP do not.
Depends on the poll, however if the Democrats did take the Senate by the narrowest of margins by making it 50 50 with VP Harris having the casting vote it would likely spell midterm disaster for them in 2022 and be the most pyrrhic of victories as with a Democratic Congress the radical far left would take control of the Biden agenda which would lead to a huge GOP turnout in the 2022 midterms and most likely the Democrats losing both the House and the Senate back to the GOP.
If the GOP held on in the Senate it would ensure the compromises America needs under a pragmatic Biden presidency are made
The “far left” aren’t going to take control of anything in that scenario where everything passed requires full support, full attendance and the casting vote of a relatively moderate VP.
F1: calendar to be revealed later today, apparently, but it seems Vietnam is off for 2021. The Brazilian Grand Prix is set to remain at Interlagos, for now.
I wonder if it's suddenly dawned on McConnell that he's going to lose both seats in Georgia.
One of them got 49.7% or thereabouts, could they really lose? I mean, even if the GOP begin tearing themselves apart that looks a tough ask. Would be fun though.
Not sure how fair it was, but I recall a Maldives election where a guy got 47% in the first round (well ahead of the next placed guy), but failed to win the second round.
Leoffler loses in the head to head polling with Warnock.
Leoffler and Perdue have coronavirus related scandals and Georgia is entering its THIRD wave.
The Dems have an effective vote by mail operation setup, the GOP do not.
Depends on the poll, however if the Democrats did take the Senate by the narrowest of margins by making it 50 50 with VP Harris having the casting vote it would likely spell midterm disaster for them in 2022 and be the most pyrrhic of victories as with a Democratic Congress the radical far left would take control of the Biden agenda which would lead to a huge GOP turnout in the 2022 midterms and most likely the Democrats losing both the House and the Senate back to the GOP.
If the GOP held on in the Senate it would ensure the compromises America needs under a pragmatic Biden presidency are made
More overnight gibberish from HYUFD I see.
You got the 2020 Presidential election totally wrong and you're totally wrong about this.
It's pathetic, to be frank, to witness this playground attempt to drag some semblance of satisfaction out of Trump's defeat.
Don't follow your hero. Be gracious in defeat. It starts with a pause. A look in the mirror. And an honest acknowledgment that this time. You. Got. It. Wrong.
Mr. JohnL, if Conservative MPs have their heads screwed on right they'll axe Boris Johnson's premiership before that happens.
I don't think they will.
Boris might still retire next year, having achieved Brexit and the end, or at least the normalisation, of the pandemic. His health will not have improved, nor his wealth, and he will have established his place in the history books.
I wonder if it's suddenly dawned on McConnell that he's going to lose both seats in Georgia.
One of them got 49.7% or thereabouts, could they really lose? I mean, even if the GOP begin tearing themselves apart that looks a tough ask. Would be fun though.
Not sure how fair it was, but I recall a Maldives election where a guy got 47% in the first round (well ahead of the next placed guy), but failed to win the second round.
Leoffler loses in the head to head polling with Warnock.
Leoffler and Perdue have coronavirus related scandals and Georgia is entering its THIRD wave.
The Dems have an effective vote by mail operation setup, the GOP do not.
Depends on the poll, however if the Democrats did take the Senate by the narrowest of margins by making it 50 50 with VP Harris having the casting vote it would likely spell midterm disaster for them in 2022 and be the most pyrrhic of victories as with a Democratic Congress the radical far left would take control of the Biden agenda which would lead to a huge GOP turnout in the 2022 midterms and most likely the Democrats losing both the House and the Senate back to the GOP.
If the GOP held on in the Senate it would ensure the compromises America needs under a pragmatic Biden presidency are made
More overnight gibberish from HYUFD I see.
You got the 2020 Presidential election totally wrong and you're totally wrong about this.
It's pathetic, to be frank, to witness this playground attempt to drag some semblance of satisfaction out of Trump's defeat.
Don't follow your hero. Be gracious in defeat. It starts with a pause. A look in the mirror. And an honest acknowledgment that this time. You. Got. It. Wrong.
A prediction. The next poll in the UK will show a drop in support for Johnson. He's already looking like yesterday's fish and chip paper.
The vaccine news might help Boris if there is a national surge of relief.
However fragrant a product if you mix it with a turd it'll never end up smelling of roses.
The credit will go elsewhere
Yes the credit will go elsewhere but it is a bit more subtle than that. If a vaccine means the pandemic is no longer an issue then voters can move on from blaming Boris for the government's inadequate, confused and even corrupt response so far. It will be yesterday's fish and chip wrappers and the electorate will move on.
An opinion poll on remaining or leaving the EU would be interesting.
Even the most primitive neanderthal in Hartlepool must now see how important it is and that now is the worst time possible to be casting ourselves adrift from the cultural and economic stability it offers.
America's quite a technically advanced country, pretty sure they can work out how to pack something in liquid nitrogen and store it for a few days.
Good morning everyone. After a pretty bleak year, perhaps a couple of chinks of light. On the vaccine front, I'm expecting to see a fleet of refrigerated vans touring the country. There's, after all, a network of pharmaceutical wholesalers in UK, with deliveries pretty well nationwide twice a day.
There is a real danger here that we get widespread civil unrest in America. There has always been an undercurrent of the right who fundamentally distrust the US government as an institution. In their heads Trump rescued the government for them and now the government is trying to steal it back.
We have already seen Trump whipping up armed militias. If - and it remains an if - this drags on then what happens? It won't just be Trump digging in against the thieves in the DNC and the traitors at Fox News and the cowards in the courts. It will be a significant portion of the 70m who voted for him in record numbers. And they are armed. Heavily armed.
I don't think we are yet at the moment of clarity. The President can seek legal challenge no matter how laughable that is. The challenges will be dismissed. At that point if the man digs in and encourages others to do so then things get very dangerous very quickly. The very legitimacy of the American system and American institutions are being attacked by the man in the White House, fuelling the anger of people who barely thought it legitimate to start with.
A prediction. The next poll in the UK will show a drop in support for Johnson. He's already looking like yesterday's fish and chip paper.
The vaccine news might help Boris if there is a national surge of relief.
However fragrant a product if you mix it with a turd it'll never end up smelling of roses.
The credit will go elsewhere
Yes the credit will go elsewhere but it is a bit more subtle than that. If a vaccine means the pandemic is no longer an issue then voters can move on from blaming Boris for the government's inadequate, confused and even corrupt response so far. It will be yesterday's fish and chip wrappers and the electorate will move on.
They say that the public doesn't do gratitude and that is somewhat true but if the second wave here is better than the rest of Europe, plus we get a vaccine soon while news from Europe isn't good then that could affect competency ratings.
There should be a block on foreign travel until this is resolved though.
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
There is a real danger here that we get widespread civil unrest in America. There has always been an undercurrent of the right who fundamentally distrust the US government as an institution. In their heads Trump rescued the government for them and now the government is trying to steal it back.
We have already seen Trump whipping up armed militias. If - and it remains an if - this drags on then what happens? It won't just be Trump digging in against the thieves in the DNC and the traitors at Fox News and the cowards in the courts. It will be a significant portion of the 70m who voted for him in record numbers. And they are armed. Heavily armed.
I don't think we are yet at the moment of clarity. The President can seek legal challenge no matter how laughable that is. The challenges will be dismissed. At that point if the man digs in and encourages others to do so then things get very dangerous very quickly. The very legitimacy of the American system and American institutions are being attacked by the man in the White House, fuelling the anger of people who barely thought it legitimate to start with.
The plan includes a series of big Trump rallies where he will stoke the audience up. You are making the mistake of seeing danger and violence as an unwanted by-product of the coup. It is instead a part of the plan.
There is a real danger here that we get widespread civil unrest in America. There has always been an undercurrent of the right who fundamentally distrust the US government as an institution. In their heads Trump rescued the government for them and now the government is trying to steal it back.
We have already seen Trump whipping up armed militias. If - and it remains an if - this drags on then what happens? It won't just be Trump digging in against the thieves in the DNC and the traitors at Fox News and the cowards in the courts. It will be a significant portion of the 70m who voted for him in record numbers. And they are armed. Heavily armed.
I don't think we are yet at the moment of clarity. The President can seek legal challenge no matter how laughable that is. The challenges will be dismissed. At that point if the man digs in and encourages others to do so then things get very dangerous very quickly. The very legitimacy of the American system and American institutions are being attacked by the man in the White House, fuelling the anger of people who barely thought it legitimate to start with.
You paint a very bad picture but let us hope that the unthinkable does not happen
Joe Biden is a breath of fresh air offering conciliatory noises to the Republicans and this has to be the way forward, not just in the US but also here in the UK as we enter 2021
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
Money doesn't buy you retweets.
The problem with social media is that it *isn't* defined by who spends the most on it. Any fool can start a half baked conspiracy theory and if it's popular enough, a million other fools will spread it across the globe within minutes. No money required.
So what do you do? Censor your platform? Aside from the obvious freedom of speech concerns, censor it enough and people will move elsewhere (Bitchute now hosts most of the rabid conspiracy vids YouTube took down, Parler could replace Twitter if Twitter banned Trump, etc).
Given the behaviour of the GOP/Trump who is to say they haven't stuffed a load of ballot boxes along with the rest of their cheating ? Biden is probably winning the most rigged election in US history
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
No speech must never be regulated. That is an authoritarians ideal dream. Imagine if a Barr equivalent was regulating social media? No thank you.
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
No speech must never be regulated. That is an authoritarians ideal dream. Imagine if a Barr equivalent was regulating social media? No thank you.
No but Facebook have continually tweaked their algorithim to boost the visibility of fringe right wing sites in their recommendation algorithms.
There is a real danger here that we get widespread civil unrest in America. There has always been an undercurrent of the right who fundamentally distrust the US government as an institution. In their heads Trump rescued the government for them and now the government is trying to steal it back.
We have already seen Trump whipping up armed militias. If - and it remains an if - this drags on then what happens? It won't just be Trump digging in against the thieves in the DNC and the traitors at Fox News and the cowards in the courts. It will be a significant portion of the 70m who voted for him in record numbers. And they are armed. Heavily armed.
I don't think we are yet at the moment of clarity. The President can seek legal challenge no matter how laughable that is. The challenges will be dismissed. At that point if the man digs in and encourages others to do so then things get very dangerous very quickly. The very legitimacy of the American system and American institutions are being attacked by the man in the White House, fuelling the anger of people who barely thought it legitimate to start with.
Democrats have guns too if it comes to that, and they're more concentrated in the cities whereas the provisional MAGA army is more spread
If the Lisbon referendum hadn't been fictional, we'd almost certainly still be in...
Disagree, the referendum would have rejected the treaty and the skeptics would have said "At every opportunity the voters have to vote on the EU they've voted against it, time for a referendum on membership", and pushed the Tories into doing the same thing they ultimately did. The Brexit campaign didn't turn on anything in the Lisbon Treaty, so it's not as if Leave voters would have voted for the pre-Lisbon EU but not the post-Lisbon EU.
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
No speech must never be regulated. That is an authoritarians ideal dream. Imagine if a Barr equivalent was regulating social media? No thank you.
Free speech is being able to say what you want, not being free to pay to say one thing to household x who dislike high taxes and another thing to household y who want high taxes.
This truly puts a nail in the notion that political betting markets are good predictors. And long may that continue.
Except the price reflects the probability the Republicans are trying to steal the election, in which case it's short...
Bill Barr is writing letters to federal prosecutors confirming he is fully on board to overturn the election.
Is he though? Or is the Attorney General (Barr) merely following a CYA strategy? It might depend how you read the word "substantial".
Barr told prosecutors that "fanciful or far-fetched claims" should not be a basis for investigation and that his letter did not indicate the Justice Department had uncovered voting irregularities affecting the outcome of the election.
Evidence from the court cases so far dismissed is that the Republicans so far have no "substantial" cases.
It is easy to see that a coup was planned or at least prepared for but it looks like Biden won too many states. It would be easy for the Supreme Court to overturn one result but not half a dozen. Barr's move might mean that if the Trump campaign has any evidence then the DoJ will run with it but so far there has been nothing that cannot be called "fanciful or far-fetched". Too real to steal, as they say.
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
No speech must never be regulated. That is an authoritarians ideal dream. Imagine if a Barr equivalent was regulating social media? No thank you.
No but Facebook have continually tweaked their algorithim to boost the visibility of fringe right wing sites in their recommendation algorithms.
Facebook is not a neutral platform.
I'd like to see evidence of that, rather than the fringe sites are good at boosting their appeal or "like"ability.
There is a real danger here that we get widespread civil unrest in America. There has always been an undercurrent of the right who fundamentally distrust the US government as an institution. In their heads Trump rescued the government for them and now the government is trying to steal it back.
We have already seen Trump whipping up armed militias. If - and it remains an if - this drags on then what happens? It won't just be Trump digging in against the thieves in the DNC and the traitors at Fox News and the cowards in the courts. It will be a significant portion of the 70m who voted for him in record numbers. And they are armed. Heavily armed.
I don't think we are yet at the moment of clarity. The President can seek legal challenge no matter how laughable that is. The challenges will be dismissed. At that point if the man digs in and encourages others to do so then things get very dangerous very quickly. The very legitimacy of the American system and American institutions are being attacked by the man in the White House, fuelling the anger of people who barely thought it legitimate to start with.
You paint a very bad picture but let us hope that the unthinkable does not happen
Joe Biden is a breath of fresh air offering conciliatory noises to the Republicans and this has to be the way forward, not just in the US but also here in the UK as we enter 2021
How can a 78 year old machine politican be a breath of fresh air ? He's simply more of the same.
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
No speech must never be regulated. That is an authoritarians ideal dream. Imagine if a Barr equivalent was regulating social media? No thank you.
Free speech is being able to say what you want, not being free to pay to say one thing to household x who dislike high taxes and another thing to household y who want high taxes.
In this country the Liberal Democrats made a habit of doing precisely that very successfully until 2010.
Free speech is about being able to say what you want - if what you want is different things to different audiences then free speech also allows people to reveal that hypocrisy.
If there wasn't free speech then Trump would have put someone with all the integrity of Barr in charge of regulating speech. That is not a good thing.
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
Money doesn't buy you retweets.
The problem with social media is that it *isn't* defined by who spends the most on it. Any fool can start a half baked conspiracy theory and if it's popular enough, a million other fools will spread it across the globe within minutes. No money required.
So what do you do? Censor your platform? Aside from the obvious freedom of speech concerns, censor it enough and people will move elsewhere (Bitchute now hosts most of the rabid conspiracy vids YouTube took down, Parler could replace Twitter if Twitter banned Trump, etc).
There's no easy answers.
Taxing collection of personal data is one solution recommended on the excellent "Social Dilemma" Netflix film.
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
No speech must never be regulated. That is an authoritarians ideal dream. Imagine if a Barr equivalent was regulating social media? No thank you.
Free speech is being able to say what you want, not being free to pay to say one thing to household x who dislike high taxes and another thing to household y who want high taxes.
In this country the Liberal Democrats made a habit of doing precisely that very successfully until 2010.
Free speech is about being able to say what you want - if what you want is different things to different audiences then free speech also allows people to reveal that hypocrisy.
If there wasn't free speech then Trump would have put someone with all the integrity of Barr in charge of regulating speech. That is not a good thing.
There is no potential for revealing hypocrisy when they can micro message different people with opposite messages. People never know what everyone else is hearing.
Democracy is simply not sustainable without some shared understanding of the world.
There is a real danger here that we get widespread civil unrest in America. There has always been an undercurrent of the right who fundamentally distrust the US government as an institution. In their heads Trump rescued the government for them and now the government is trying to steal it back.
We have already seen Trump whipping up armed militias. If - and it remains an if - this drags on then what happens? It won't just be Trump digging in against the thieves in the DNC and the traitors at Fox News and the cowards in the courts. It will be a significant portion of the 70m who voted for him in record numbers. And they are armed. Heavily armed.
I don't think we are yet at the moment of clarity. The President can seek legal challenge no matter how laughable that is. The challenges will be dismissed. At that point if the man digs in and encourages others to do so then things get very dangerous very quickly. The very legitimacy of the American system and American institutions are being attacked by the man in the White House, fuelling the anger of people who barely thought it legitimate to start with.
You paint a very bad picture but let us hope that the unthinkable does not happen
Joe Biden is a breath of fresh air offering conciliatory noises to the Republicans and this has to be the way forward, not just in the US but also here in the UK as we enter 2021
The Internal Market Bill puts the government on a collision course with the incoming Biden Administration and leaves the UK isolated and irrelevant in a way that we have not been for decades. The only way out is either withdrawing the clauses rejected by the Lords last night or a trade deal with the EU that would involve a serious climbdown. Both are politically impossible for Johnson to concede. He has allowed Cummings to dig him a very deep hole. Once again, the internal dynamics of the Conservative party - which, quite bizarrely, claims to be a patriotic party - will leave us all paying a heavy price.
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
No speech must never be regulated. That is an authoritarians ideal dream. Imagine if a Barr equivalent was regulating social media? No thank you.
No but Facebook have continually tweaked their algorithim to boost the visibility of fringe right wing sites in their recommendation algorithms.
Facebook is not a neutral platform.
I'd like to see evidence of that, rather than the fringe sites are good at boosting their appeal or "like"ability.
Not a neutral publication on this given their general 'lean' and the fact they saw their Facebook traffic crater after one of the algorithm tweaks but they link out to WSJ and other sources.
If the Lisbon referendum hadn't been fictional, we'd almost certainly still be in...
Disagree, the referendum would have rejected the treaty and the skeptics would have said "At every opportunity the voters have to vote on the EU they've voted against it, time for a referendum on membership", and pushed the Tories into doing the same thing they ultimately did. The Brexit campaign didn't turn on anything in the Lisbon Treaty, so it's not as if Leave voters would have voted for the pre-Lisbon EU but not the post-Lisbon EU.
It’s often forgotten that one of the parties of government from 2010 to 2015 had an in-out referendum in its manifesto. Perhaps if they had gone through with it then the result might have been different.
Biden's lead in Arizona continues to drop - now 14,746, or 0.44%. The estimate here is that Trump needs to get 63.8% of the remaining ballots, and is achieving 58.7%, which would suggest Biden's lead might drop to around 5,000. But of course that does depend on the accuracy of the estimate of the number of ballots still to come.
On the other hand, it looks as though Trump faces an uphill struggle in Georgia, where the last estimate has him needing 695% of the remaining ballots ;-)
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
No speech must never be regulated. That is an authoritarians ideal dream. Imagine if a Barr equivalent was regulating social media? No thank you.
Free speech is being able to say what you want, not being free to pay to say one thing to household x who dislike high taxes and another thing to household y who want high taxes.
In this country the Liberal Democrats made a habit of doing precisely that very successfully until 2010.
Free speech is about being able to say what you want - if what you want is different things to different audiences then free speech also allows people to reveal that hypocrisy.
If there wasn't free speech then Trump would have put someone with all the integrity of Barr in charge of regulating speech. That is not a good thing.
There is no potential for revealing hypocrisy when they can micro message different people with opposite messages. People never know what everyone else is hearing.
Democracy is simply not sustainable without some shared understanding of the world.
Yes there is potential for revealing hypocrisy because people can reveal what message they're hearing and because sharing messaging can be done so easily.
Targetting people with differing messages has been done for decades, long before social media existed. "Vote for me to stop Labour" if you're talking to centre-right, "Vote for me to stop the Tories" if you're talking to centre-left . . . what is your problem with the Liberal Democrats that you want to regulate them out of existence?
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
No speech must never be regulated. That is an authoritarians ideal dream. Imagine if a Barr equivalent was regulating social media? No thank you.
No speech ever? So are you in favour of repealing all libel laws everywhere, all laws against incitement of any kind etc?
That might prove to be a very profitable investment for the taxpayer. But irrespective of that, the relationship between this government and select individuals in the private sector seems to go well beyond cozy.
I'd like to know what these "appropriate mitigations" are.
Social media simply must be regulated - no idea how you do it but the principle should be you can still say what you want, but money doesnt give you the right to convince everyone else of political lies.
No speech must never be regulated. That is an authoritarians ideal dream. Imagine if a Barr equivalent was regulating social media? No thank you.
Free speech is being able to say what you want, not being free to pay to say one thing to household x who dislike high taxes and another thing to household y who want high taxes.
In this country the Liberal Democrats made a habit of doing precisely that very successfully until 2010.
Free speech is about being able to say what you want - if what you want is different things to different audiences then free speech also allows people to reveal that hypocrisy.
If there wasn't free speech then Trump would have put someone with all the integrity of Barr in charge of regulating speech. That is not a good thing.
There is no potential for revealing hypocrisy when they can micro message different people with opposite messages. People never know what everyone else is hearing.
Democracy is simply not sustainable without some shared understanding of the world.
Yes there is potential for revealing hypocrisy because people can reveal what message they're hearing and because sharing messaging can be done so easily.
Targetting people with differing messages has been done for decades, long before social media existed. "Vote for me to stop Labour" if you're talking to centre-right, "Vote for me to stop the Tories" if you're talking to centre-left . . . what is your problem with the Liberal Democrats that you want to regulate them out of existence?
My problem is 70% of Republicans believe Trump won the election.
The rest of Western democracies will be in similar positions soon enough unless action is taken.
There is a real danger here that we get widespread civil unrest in America. There has always been an undercurrent of the right who fundamentally distrust the US government as an institution. In their heads Trump rescued the government for them and now the government is trying to steal it back.
We have already seen Trump whipping up armed militias. If - and it remains an if - this drags on then what happens? It won't just be Trump digging in against the thieves in the DNC and the traitors at Fox News and the cowards in the courts. It will be a significant portion of the 70m who voted for him in record numbers. And they are armed. Heavily armed.
I don't think we are yet at the moment of clarity. The President can seek legal challenge no matter how laughable that is. The challenges will be dismissed. At that point if the man digs in and encourages others to do so then things get very dangerous very quickly. The very legitimacy of the American system and American institutions are being attacked by the man in the White House, fuelling the anger of people who barely thought it legitimate to start with.
You paint a very bad picture but let us hope that the unthinkable does not happen
Joe Biden is a breath of fresh air offering conciliatory noises to the Republicans and this has to be the way forward, not just in the US but also here in the UK as we enter 2021
The Internal Market Bill puts the government on a collision course with the incoming Biden Administration and leaves the UK isolated and irrelevant in a way that we have not been for decades. The only way out is either withdrawing the clauses rejected by the Lords last night or a trade deal with the EU that would involve a serious climbdown. Both are politically impossible for Johnson to concede. He has allowed Cummings to dig him a very deep hole. Once again, the internal dynamics of the Conservative party - which, quite bizarrely, claims to be a patriotic party - will leave us all paying a heavy price.
Why do we need to be "relevant" ? Relevant to what exactly ? Major is right in saying the UK will slowly sink down the league of powers and the sooner we come to terms with it the better. The idea that we are going to force UK values onto an 10 year old African child is for the birds.
There is a real danger here that we get widespread civil unrest in America. There has always been an undercurrent of the right who fundamentally distrust the US government as an institution. In their heads Trump rescued the government for them and now the government is trying to steal it back.
We have already seen Trump whipping up armed militias. If - and it remains an if - this drags on then what happens? It won't just be Trump digging in against the thieves in the DNC and the traitors at Fox News and the cowards in the courts. It will be a significant portion of the 70m who voted for him in record numbers. And they are armed. Heavily armed.
I don't think we are yet at the moment of clarity. The President can seek legal challenge no matter how laughable that is. The challenges will be dismissed. At that point if the man digs in and encourages others to do so then things get very dangerous very quickly. The very legitimacy of the American system and American institutions are being attacked by the man in the White House, fuelling the anger of people who barely thought it legitimate to start with.
You paint a very bad picture but let us hope that the unthinkable does not happen
Joe Biden is a breath of fresh air offering conciliatory noises to the Republicans and this has to be the way forward, not just in the US but also here in the UK as we enter 2021
How can a 78 year old machine politican be a breath of fresh air ? He's simply more of the same.
What has age got to do with anything? Mandela was 77. I am inspired that you can make a difference in your 70s. Biden does not appear to be a machine anything.
A prediction. The next poll in the UK will show a drop in support for Johnson. He's already looking like yesterday's fish and chip paper.
The vaccine news might help Boris if there is a national surge of relief.
However fragrant a product if you mix it with a turd it'll never end up smelling of roses.
The credit will go elsewhere
Yes the credit will go elsewhere but it is a bit more subtle than that. If a vaccine means the pandemic is no longer an issue then voters can move on from blaming Boris for the government's inadequate, confused and even corrupt response so far. It will be yesterday's fish and chip wrappers and the electorate will move on.
They say that the public doesn't do gratitude and that is somewhat true but if the second wave here is better than the rest of Europe, plus we get a vaccine soon while news from Europe isn't good then that could affect competency ratings.
There should be a block on foreign travel until this is resolved though.
The current travel ban doesn't look to be being enforced.
Comments
https://www.fastcompany.com/90566189/trumps-failed-atlantic-city-development-is-being-demolished
Good chance that's how it'll pan out.
Russian peacekeepers move into Nagorno Karabakh, probably never to move out and it looks like Azerbaijan keeps the locations its conquered. Its like a the old days of grand strategy and carving up lands.
But we shouldn’t presume now Trumps support will be in same place over the next four years. For one thing it was based on fear, of his opponents being socialists, or incompetent on the economy, arguments they can take away from him. Also his own reputation could take a hit, a succession of revelations hollowing him and his family out.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8931713/Barr-OKs-election-probes-despite-little-evidence-fraud.html
6,000 votes split Biden 49, Trump 51. However max number of votes remaining fell by 21,000.
This leaves Biden leading by 14,746 with max of 54,283 remaining.
Trump needs 63.8% - or more if some of the remaining votes aren't actual votes.
https://alex.github.io/nyt-2020-election-scraper/battleground-state-changes.html
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.170367742
Around 1am Trump came in to 9.8 (for Next President).
In the four hours since, he 's gone back out to 15.5, then come back in to 11 and now at the time of writing this post he is back out to 13.5.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/525223-most-republicans-avoid-challenging-trump-on-election
Pence to attend Senate GOP lunch on Tuesday
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/525242-pence-to-attend-senate-gop-lunch-on-tuesday
It’s perhaps worrying that principled prosecutors seem to be resigning in protest. I’d rather they stated in place to resist any illegal orders.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/09/william-barr-vote-irregularities-donald-trump-electio
... Within hours of the news, the New York Times reported that the justice department official overseeing voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, had resigned from his position.
“Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications,” Pilger reportedly told colleagues in an email, “I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes Branch.”
Doubts about Barr’s intentions were heightened after it was reported that a few hours before the letter to prosecutors was disclosed, he met with Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader...
Ladbrokes have paid out the Biden winnings. Thanks again to NigelB for the tip I followed at 36.
https://twitter.com/autosport/status/1325923165860671489
I don't think they will.
https://variety.com/2020/politics/news/stacey-abrams-2020-election-all-in-documentaries-1234826048/
You got the 2020 Presidential election totally wrong and you're totally wrong about this.
It's pathetic, to be frank, to witness this playground attempt to drag some semblance of satisfaction out of Trump's defeat.
Don't follow your hero. Be gracious in defeat. It starts with a pause. A look in the mirror. And an honest acknowledgment that this time. You. Got. It. Wrong.
https://twitter.com/ThatTimWalker/status/1325904935431630848
The credit will go elsewhere
This is madness. Oh to have a much large betting balance.
But no.
This truly puts a nail in the notion that political betting markets are good predictors. And long may that continue.
Even the most primitive neanderthal in Hartlepool must now see how important it is and that now is the worst time possible to be casting ourselves adrift from the cultural and economic stability it offers.
Surrrrrrrrrrrrrrre.
You have got to be shitting me.
Has the coup started?
We have already seen Trump whipping up armed militias. If - and it remains an if - this drags on then what happens? It won't just be Trump digging in against the thieves in the DNC and the traitors at Fox News and the cowards in the courts. It will be a significant portion of the 70m who voted for him in record numbers. And they are armed. Heavily armed.
I don't think we are yet at the moment of clarity. The President can seek legal challenge no matter how laughable that is. The challenges will be dismissed. At that point if the man digs in and encourages others to do so then things get very dangerous very quickly. The very legitimacy of the American system and American institutions are being attacked by the man in the White House, fuelling the anger of people who barely thought it legitimate to start with.
There should be a block on foreign travel until this is resolved though.
17k early in person votes
23k Hand delivered by-mail votes
The rest true vote by mail.
This reduces the split needed from 73/27 to 68/32.
Neither Biden nor Gross will be close.
Joe Biden is a breath of fresh air offering conciliatory noises to the Republicans and this has to be the way forward, not just in the US but also here in the UK as we enter 2021
The problem with social media is that it *isn't* defined by who spends the most on it. Any fool can start a half baked conspiracy theory and if it's popular enough, a million other fools will spread it across the globe within minutes. No money required.
So what do you do? Censor your platform? Aside from the obvious freedom of speech concerns, censor it enough and people will move elsewhere (Bitchute now hosts most of the rabid conspiracy vids YouTube took down, Parler could replace Twitter if Twitter banned Trump, etc).
There's no easy answers.
Biden is probably winning the most rigged election in US history
The VBM volume has only doubled in Alaska. Biden would need to capture 95% of the extra to take it.
Facebook is not a neutral platform.
Barr told prosecutors that "fanciful or far-fetched claims" should not be a basis for investigation and that his letter did not indicate the Justice Department had uncovered voting irregularities affecting the outcome of the election.
But he did say he was authorizing prosecutors to "pursue substantial allegations" of irregularities of voting and the counting of ballots.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/barr-tells-prosecutors-probe-allegations-011253308.html
Evidence from the court cases so far dismissed is that the Republicans so far have no "substantial" cases.
It is easy to see that a coup was planned or at least prepared for but it looks like Biden won too many states. It would be easy for the Supreme Court to overturn one result but not half a dozen. Barr's move might mean that if the Trump campaign has any evidence then the DoJ will run with it but so far there has been nothing that cannot be called "fanciful or far-fetched". Too real to steal, as they say.
Free speech is about being able to say what you want - if what you want is different things to different audiences then free speech also allows people to reveal that hypocrisy.
If there wasn't free speech then Trump would have put someone with all the integrity of Barr in charge of regulating speech. That is not a good thing.
Democracy is simply not sustainable without some shared understanding of the world.
I'd have fired her right there.
Don't forget this is someone who has described herself as having no specialist knowledge about vaccines.
Not a neutral publication on this given their general 'lean' and the fact they saw their Facebook traffic crater after one of the algorithm tweaks but they link out to WSJ and other sources.
https://alex.github.io/nyt-2020-election-scraper/battleground-state-changes.html#
Biden's lead in Arizona continues to drop - now 14,746, or 0.44%. The estimate here is that Trump needs to get 63.8% of the remaining ballots, and is achieving 58.7%, which would suggest Biden's lead might drop to around 5,000. But of course that does depend on the accuracy of the estimate of the number of ballots still to come.
On the other hand, it looks as though Trump faces an uphill struggle in Georgia, where the last estimate has him needing 695% of the remaining ballots ;-)
Targetting people with differing messages has been done for decades, long before social media existed. "Vote for me to stop Labour" if you're talking to centre-right, "Vote for me to stop the Tories" if you're talking to centre-left . . . what is your problem with the Liberal Democrats that you want to regulate them out of existence?
I'd like to know what these "appropriate mitigations" are.
The rest of Western democracies will be in similar positions soon enough unless action is taken.
Hence the old joke that there was no pravda in Izvestia and no izvestia in Pravda...
Any signs of tanks heading to Wilmington Delaware ??
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/travel-ban-no-sign-enforcement-britains-busiest-airport/