Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I really don't see a little confusion as such a big deal, even in the POTUS, when the alternative was such a volatile, deranged narcissist.
Addressing the VP as President seems such a minor infringement of sanity when his predecessor was earnestly advising Americans to introvenously self-medicate against Covid using domestic cleaning products.
It's the narrative though: the leader of the Free World can't walk upstairs unaided. He is the perfect metaphor for America In Decline. Do you think China, Putin are looking at Biden and thinking "If we push the boundaries on our power, is he going to stand firm - when he can't stand up?"
Dan Hodges made the point that you have to go back to Gerald Ford to find a president who hasn’t tripped on some official photocall. Several have tripped on the steps of AF1 apparently.
That in itself is one hell of an irony, bearing in mind the narrative at the time was Ford couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time.
Anyway, I can't be done with metaphors at this time in the morning. So I will consider my Boris Johnson metaphors later in the day.
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I really don't see a little confusion as such a big deal, even in the POTUS, when the alternative was such a volatile, deranged narcissist.
Addressing the VP as President seems such a minor infringement of sanity when his predecessor was earnestly advising Americans to introvenously self-medicate against Covid using domestic cleaning products.
It's the narrative though: the leader of the Free World can't walk upstairs unaided. He is the perfect metaphor for America In Decline. Do you think China, Putin are looking at Biden and thinking "If we push the boundaries on our power, is he going to stand firm - when he can't stand up?"
What narrative is this exactly? Biden’s approvals are sky high.
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I think Biden could survive physical issues - look at FDR. He made an effort not to flaunt his disability, but it was well-known, and people voted for him anyway. Obviously if he was senile that wouldn't work, but the evidence seems slim - if everything you say is filmed, sometime you'll be caught mis-speaking, and he used to do that a decade or more ago.
AOC could well be the king/queenmaker - her endorsement (whether or not she'd run herself) would be worth its weight in gold for the nomination. I'm reading Obama's excellent new book - quite introspective and very thoughtful and balanced - and it makes clear the same problem that Biden now has - he has just this year to get the stuff he really needs through Congress before House Democrats start worrying about re-election and tackling to hostile winds.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
For anyone wanting to keep track of how things are going to go in Mainland Europe, I'd suggest these two.
People most vulnerable to COVID is people who have not had a single dose, and also to some extent people who have not had the condition.
Either way, a lot of people will be dying soon, especially in the absence of pretty vicious lockdowns until perhaps May when another three or four times as many people have had a dose. A lot of people dying are locked in already by high case numbers, as we know from UK experience over Dec-Feb.
The greatest tragedy of the EU's Covid response is they appear to have learned nothing from the UK's experience this winter. It would have mitigated the overall picture of UK deaths if the EU had said "The last thing we want is to look like the UK, but 3 months later...." But instead, our winter deaths look to have been in vain - merely providing a blue-print for what to now expect.
Not tempted by the bets but thanks for the header.
I think AOC highly electable. She's articulate and authentic (back story of tending bar is solid american dream).
She's the one candidate I think that has the Obama magic.
It’s possible that AOC refreshes the parts other candidates cannot reach. But she’s a risky choice, as rather leftwing by US standards (albeit she would be a moderate Labourite of the Rosena mould here).
Wee Krankie is safe as houses. She’ll just tough it out blaming bias opposition in hysterical election mode.
It's not the opposition in front of her that's the problem, it's the enemy behind her.
She'll survive the week and the election. But the tide within her party does appear to have turned against her. She's lost the sheen of competence and invincibility, and it does appear to be when rather than if. I'm reminded of Blair in 2005 - a fairly comfortable election win but clearly heading to the exit door.
I think you have hit the nail on the head, is she losing support in party and in voters.
If the best opponents can come up with is the impregnable sheen is now off, politicians have a habit of coming back from that.
The thing to watch for is not just there needs to be a slide in her popularity within party and country, but what happens to it when this story burns up and blows away?
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
Wasn't it said that the Puritans in the 17thC objected to bear-baiting, not because it was painful for the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
AOC is a Trump-style politician (in terms of dogmatism, arrogance, rudeness, contempt for democracy etc) with female genitals. She might well run but God help us all if she is the best the USA can come up with.
If the left are looking for a young standard bearer a more realistic one, not mentioned here, would be Jon Ossoff. He has more campaigning experience than Buttigieg, more appeal than Harris and certainly he’s demonstrated his ability to reach out to voters to win against the odds.
But my instinct is it will be Harris, quite possibly as a one-year incumbent.
While ideological, since entering Congress, she appears to be considerably more pragmatic than you suggest. And no ruder (and usually with every bit as good justification) than you are. I’m not sure where you get the contempt for democracy thing ? Or indeed the Trump comparison.
I don’t share her politics, but she’s the smartest socialist I’ve seen for a long time.
I think we're maybe making two mistakes here (three, if you include me not making the other two in the opinion piece).
The first is that US parties do not pick their candidates as if it were bigwigs doing it at a convention (actually, when it *was* that, they still didn't necessarily use just electability and capacity in office as the main metrics - far more base metrics were equally prominent).
But primaries are a different ball game altogether. If you can get around 30% of the low turnout of the restricted part of the electorate voting to back you in the early rounds - maybe only 3-4% of the adult population; less still in the caucuses - you stand a good chance of winning. What matters is not necessarily broad appeal but a dedicated core of activists and voters. Sure, many voters *will* pick who they think is most electable but those votes can easily be spread. The fact that Trump won his nomination and Sanders twice came so close to doing so should tell us enough there.
And secondly - but relatedly - there is no need for these candidates to trim to the centre; certainly not in the primaries anyway, which is what this thread's primarily concerned with. But as with Trump (or Corbyn, or Le Pen, or Syriza, or others), the nature of the individual and the movement is that she may well not do much trimming even if she won the nomination. At the edges, on issues that don't matter much to her, yes; but as a values-politician who has just been elected *because* of those values? I doubt it.
As I've said, I don't think there's any value in her current odds but we should take her chances seriously all the same.
Wee Krankie is safe as houses. She’ll just tough it out blaming bias opposition in hysterical election mode.
It's not the opposition in front of her that's the problem, it's the enemy behind her.
She'll survive the week and the election. But the tide within her party does appear to have turned against her. She's lost the sheen of competence and invincibility, and it does appear to be when rather than if. I'm reminded of Blair in 2005 - a fairly comfortable election win but clearly heading to the exit door.
I think you have hit the nail on the head, is she losing support in party and in voters.
If the best opponents can come up with is the impregnable sheen is now off, politicians have a habit of coming back from that.
The thing to watch for is not just there needs to be a slide in her popularity within party and country, but what happens to it when this story burns up and blows away?
Indeed, which it will. Nobody has a clue what the story is about! Sure, the mood music is taking some of the froth off her support, but it’s unwise to underestimate her: she is by far the most able leading politician on these islands.
I can't see AOC holding Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan if she does get the democratic nomination. And she'd possibly lose more on top, unless Trump runs again.
She's short because she has a high profile on social media and makes memorable speeches and interventions. A lucid and charismatic RLB. That doesn't a winner make, even if the base love it.
Clear lay.
Your assuming that A N Other republican will be more popular than Trump? I don't think that is guaranteed.
I’m no expert on septic politics but surely there is a great unknowable in this market. There seems a strong chance of Biden stepping down before fulfilling his term. But none of us can know how that would play out with voters.
Would they feel cheated by Harris if it came to light that she and the rest of the Biden team pulled the wool over voters’ eyes in 2020, irreparably tainting her?
Or would there be an outpouring of sympathy and she does a solid enough job in whatever time to make the Dem nomination virtually uncontested.
75% chance Biden steps down, call it 50-50 odds on those subsequent outcomes.
Personally if it’s the former, I’d say AOC looks the strongest contender for the nomination, given she would be untainted by any perceived scandal and has a social media brand the like of which we’ve rarely seen. Stronger than 16-1 most likely but it’s a long way out.
Would she win if she gets the nomination? 66-1 seems ludicrously generous to me. If Trump or a family member gets the nomination and faced AOC you’d find the map probably look a bit odd the morning after the election.
Morning all. Let's just feel some contentment in the knowledge that there is a very good chance that Bozo feels absolutely shite this morning after his dose of AZ yesterday.
I look forward to feeling just as rough on Tuesday.
My experience was it was just over 24 hours later when it hit.
The tweet of PM went out yesterday evening, so I reckon he'll start to feel shit sometime in the 2nd half of the rugby.
Note how the PM was jabbed on a Friday evening. So weekend to recover at Chequers?
Yes they timed it for Friday for feet up weekend. Sensible.
And if you previously had COVID you can feel even worse after a jab?
Is the continents third wave coming here?
No. Why would it? We're still practically in lockdown and the number of cases that could be imported from abroad is trivial compared with the number already here, given the lack of travel; meanwhile, vaccinations will reduce 'natural R' greatly as the virus has much less chance to spread, even with looser restrictions, and to do less damage still even where it can spread.
As long as we keep up the vaccinations and ease restrictions slowly, we'll be fine.
Wee Krankie is safe as houses. She’ll just tough it out blaming bias opposition in hysterical election mode.
She is not at all safe. The Eck faction is not going to lie down and let her get on with it.
There’s various factions sure, but as time is passing it’s looking to the majority of people she was in a very difficult position when Eck came asking for help, but from there she steered it quite adeptly straight down the middle, considering it’s a situation where there could be no issue for her.
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I really don't see a little confusion as such a big deal, even in the POTUS, when the alternative was such a volatile, deranged narcissist.
Addressing the VP as President seems such a minor infringement of sanity when his predecessor was earnestly advising Americans to introvenously self-medicate against Covid using domestic cleaning products.
It's the narrative though: the leader of the Free World can't walk upstairs unaided. He is the perfect metaphor for America In Decline. Do you think China, Putin are looking at Biden and thinking "If we push the boundaries on our power, is he going to stand firm - when he can't stand up?"
Isn't that why Blinken has had a public spat with China, though? Making the point that he's duly authorised and no pushover.
Also, I don't see the relevance of your point to the Democratic nomination. If Biden stands, he'll get it. He might well not stand, but the reason isn't going to be that Russia and China respect him less than he'd like.
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I really don't see a little confusion as such a big deal, even in the POTUS, when the alternative was such a volatile, deranged narcissist.
Addressing the VP as President seems such a minor infringement of sanity when his predecessor was earnestly advising Americans to introvenously self-medicate against Covid using domestic cleaning products.
It's the narrative though: the leader of the Free World can't walk upstairs unaided. He is the perfect metaphor for America In Decline. Do you think China, Putin are looking at Biden and thinking "If we push the boundaries on our power, is he going to stand firm - when he can't stand up?"
Dan Hodges made the point that you have to go back to Gerald Ford to find a president who hasn’t tripped on some official photocall. Several have tripped on the steps of AF1 apparently.
I guess Biden is just unlucky then, to have done so in his first couple of months in office....
Doesn't address the issue that the US media is already bitching that Biden is being hidden away. They are already questioning why - and making up their own narrative.
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I think Biden could survive physical issues - look at FDR. He made an effort not to flaunt his disability, but it was well-known, and people voted for him anyway. Obviously if he was senile that wouldn't work, but the evidence seems slim - if everything you say is filmed, sometime you'll be caught mis-speaking, and he used to do that a decade or more ago.
AOC could well be the king/queenmaker - her endorsement (whether or not she'd run herself) would be worth its weight in gold for the nomination. I'm reading Obama's excellent new book - quite introspective and very thoughtful and balanced - and it makes clear the same problem that Biden now has - he has just this year to get the stuff he really needs through Congress before House Democrats start worrying about re-election and tackling to hostile winds.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
I agree. It's weak sauce indeed. The Saudi Arabia thing is more off-putting to me.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
Wasn't it said that the Puritans in the 17thC objected to bear-baiting, not because it was painful for the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
I can't see AOC holding Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan if she does get the democratic nomination. And she'd possibly lose more on top, unless Trump runs again.
She's short because she has a high profile on social media and makes memorable speeches and interventions. A lucid and charismatic RLB. That doesn't a winner make, even if the base love it.
Clear lay.
At those odds, probably.
But at some point building inter-generational unfairness will break into politics, and when that happens the fallout could be dramatic. Given the its aged current political class, the US could easily go first.
I can't see AOC holding Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan if she does get the democratic nomination. And she'd possibly lose more on top, unless Trump runs again.
She's short because she has a high profile on social media and makes memorable speeches and interventions. A lucid and charismatic RLB. That doesn't a winner make, even if the base love it.
Clear lay.
Your assuming that A N Other republican will be more popular than Trump? I don't think that is guaranteed.
While the Rino's are, or appear to be, fairly quiet now, there is surely a significant body of Republican opinion which is very hostile to Trump. Does that suggest either a very, very nasty primary campaign or a Republican split. Both, particularly the latter, would surely mean a Dem 'landslide', smile;ar to what happened her in 1983.
I think we're maybe making two mistakes here (three, if you include me not making the other two in the opinion piece).
The first is that US parties do not pick their candidates as if it were bigwigs doing it at a convention (actually, when it *was* that, they still didn't necessarily use just electability and capacity in office as the main metrics - far more base metrics were equally prominent).
But primaries are a different ball game altogether. If you can get around 30% of the low turnout of the restricted part of the electorate voting to back you in the early rounds - maybe only 3-4% of the adult population; less still in the caucuses - you stand a good chance of winning. What matters is not necessarily broad appeal but a dedicated core of activists and voters. Sure, many voters *will* pick who they think is most electable but those votes can easily be spread. The fact that Trump won his nomination and Sanders twice came so close to doing so should tell us enough there.
And secondly - but relatedly - there is no need for these candidates to trim to the centre; certainly not in the primaries anyway, which is what this thread's primarily concerned with. But as with Trump (or Corbyn, or Le Pen, or Syriza, or others), the nature of the individual and the movement is that she may well not do much trimming even if she won the nomination. At the edges, on issues that don't matter much to her, yes; but as a values-politician who has just been elected *because* of those values? I doubt it.
As I've said, I don't think there's any value in her current odds but we should take her chances seriously all the same.
I agree with much of that - though in the unlikely event of her actually becoming President, she would have to do a considerable amount of trimming if she wanted to get anything through Congress. Executive powers, of course, are a different matter.
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I really don't see a little confusion as such a big deal, even in the POTUS, when the alternative was such a volatile, deranged narcissist.
Addressing the VP as President seems such a minor infringement of sanity when his predecessor was earnestly advising Americans to introvenously self-medicate against Covid using domestic cleaning products.
It's the narrative though: the leader of the Free World can't walk upstairs unaided. He is the perfect metaphor for America In Decline. Do you think China, Putin are looking at Biden and thinking "If we push the boundaries on our power, is he going to stand firm - when he can't stand up?"
Dan Hodges made the point that you have to go back to Gerald Ford to find a president who hasn’t tripped on some official photocall. Several have tripped on the steps of AF1 apparently.
I guess Biden is just unlucky then, to have done so in his first couple of months in office....
Doesn't address the issue that the US media is already bitching that Biden is being hidden away. They are already questioning why - and making up their own narrative.
As I say, any such narrative (and you are massively overplaying this) isn’t hurting him. His approval ratings are sky high.
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I really don't see a little confusion as such a big deal, even in the POTUS, when the alternative was such a volatile, deranged narcissist.
Addressing the VP as President seems such a minor infringement of sanity when his predecessor was earnestly advising Americans to introvenously self-medicate against Covid using domestic cleaning products.
It's the narrative though: the leader of the Free World can't walk upstairs unaided. He is the perfect metaphor for America In Decline. Do you think China, Putin are looking at Biden and thinking "If we push the boundaries on our power, is he going to stand firm - when he can't stand up?"
Dan Hodges made the point that you have to go back to Gerald Ford to find a president who hasn’t tripped on some official photocall. Several have tripped on the steps of AF1 apparently.
I guess Biden is just unlucky then, to have done so in his first couple of months in office....
Doesn't address the issue that the US media is already bitching that Biden is being hidden away. They are already questioning why - and making up their own narrative.
I can't see AOC holding Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan if she does get the democratic nomination. And she'd possibly lose more on top, unless Trump runs again.
She's short because she has a high profile on social media and makes memorable speeches and interventions. A lucid and charismatic RLB. That doesn't a winner make, even if the base love it.
Clear lay.
She will never be nominee. Too divisive.
It’s AOBs socialism that actually cost Dems a bigger win in 2020.
Yes, divisive candidates never win. Whatever happened to that Trump guy?
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I really don't see a little confusion as such a big deal, even in the POTUS, when the alternative was such a volatile, deranged narcissist.
Addressing the VP as President seems such a minor infringement of sanity when his predecessor was earnestly advising Americans to introvenously self-medicate against Covid using domestic cleaning products.
It's the narrative though: the leader of the Free World can't walk upstairs unaided. He is the perfect metaphor for America In Decline. Do you think China, Putin are looking at Biden and thinking "If we push the boundaries on our power, is he going to stand firm - when he can't stand up?"
Dan Hodges made the point that you have to go back to Gerald Ford to find a president who hasn’t tripped on some official photocall. Several have tripped on the steps of AF1 apparently.
I guess Biden is just unlucky then, to have done so in his first couple of months in office....
Doesn't address the issue that the US media is already bitching that Biden is being hidden away. They are already questioning why - and making up their own narrative.
As I say, any such narrative (and you are massively overplaying this) isn’t hurting him. His approval ratings are sky high.
Media are just happy they are no longer caught on the Trump twitter hamster wheel.
Wee Krankie is safe as houses. She’ll just tough it out blaming bias opposition in hysterical election mode.
It's not the opposition in front of her that's the problem, it's the enemy behind her.
She'll survive the week and the election. But the tide within her party does appear to have turned against her. She's lost the sheen of competence and invincibility, and it does appear to be when rather than if. I'm reminded of Blair in 2005 - a fairly comfortable election win but clearly heading to the exit door.
I think you have hit the nail on the head, is she losing support in party and in voters.
If the best opponents can come up with is the impregnable sheen is now off, politicians have a habit of coming back from that.
The thing to watch for is not just there needs to be a slide in her popularity within party and country, but what happens to it when this story burns up and blows away?
Politicians don't really have a habit of coming back when the sheen is gone.
They can hang around for months, sometimes years. But you underestimate how much power is a con trick. When you're no longer the future, people look elsewhere and authority drains away. It's really hard to get back, and you're a prisoner - in office, but not in power.
May in 2017, Blair in 2005. They'd passed the tipping point and it took a while but you rarely get it back.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I think Biden could survive physical issues - look at FDR. He made an effort not to flaunt his disability, but it was well-known, and people voted for him anyway. Obviously if he was senile that wouldn't work, but the evidence seems slim - if everything you say is filmed, sometime you'll be caught mis-speaking, and he used to do that a decade or more ago.
AOC could well be the king/queenmaker - her endorsement (whether or not she'd run herself) would be worth its weight in gold for the nomination. I'm reading Obama's excellent new book - quite introspective and very thoughtful and balanced - and it makes clear the same problem that Biden now has - he has just this year to get the stuff he really needs through Congress before House Democrats start worrying about re-election and tackling to hostile winds.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
The problem they now have is political. Have you listened to Any Questions? Having a leading party figure (and there will be others) saying you are unfit to be the candidate is dooming the campaign before it starts.
Wee Krankie is safe as houses. She’ll just tough it out blaming bias opposition in hysterical election mode.
It's not the opposition in front of her that's the problem, it's the enemy behind her.
She'll survive the week and the election. But the tide within her party does appear to have turned against her. She's lost the sheen of competence and invincibility, and it does appear to be when rather than if. I'm reminded of Blair in 2005 - a fairly comfortable election win but clearly heading to the exit door.
I think you have hit the nail on the head, is she losing support in party and in voters.
If the best opponents can come up with is the impregnable sheen is now off, politicians have a habit of coming back from that.
The thing to watch for is not just there needs to be a slide in her popularity within party and country, but what happens to it when this story burns up and blows away?
Politicians don't really have a habit of coming back when the sheen is gone.
They can hang around for months, sometimes years. But you underestimate how much power is a con trick. When you're no longer the future, people look elsewhere and authority drains away. It's really hard to get back, and you're a prisoner - in office, but not in power.
May in 2017, Blair in 2005. They'd passed the tipping point and it took a while but you rarely get it back.
Yet again Boris called it right. Circuit breakers were okay in theory impotent in practice.
It is entirely possible that the only way to avert another death tsunami would've been to lock everyone up in a repeat of the first lockdown (or, at best, the first lockdown but with schools) and leave us all to rot for the entire period from October to March, to get both vaccinating the vulnerable and the miserable Winter weather out of the way.
With the benefit of hindsight that could be argued to have been the least worst course of action available, but one can have some measure of sympathy for the predicament in which the Government found itself. Never mind the effect on many businesses, six full months of tight house arrest would've risked driving the whole country loopy.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
AOC is a Trump-style politician (in terms of dogmatism, arrogance, rudeness, contempt for democracy etc) with female genitals. She might well run but God help us all if she is the best the USA can come up with.
If the left are looking for a young standard bearer a more realistic one, not mentioned here, would be Jon Ossoff. He has more campaigning experience than Buttigieg, more appeal than Harris and certainly he’s demonstrated his ability to reach out to voters to win against the odds.
But my instinct is it will be Harris, quite possibly as a one-year incumbent.
While ideological, since entering Congress, she appears to be considerably more pragmatic than you suggest. And no ruder (and usually with every bit as good justification) than you are. I’m not sure where you get the contempt for democracy thing ? Or indeed the Trump comparison.
I don’t share her politics, but she’s the smartest socialist I’ve seen for a long time.
Puerto Rico.
Please explain.
She has said, in effect, that Puerto Rico should not be allowed to explore statehood despite voting for it I think four times. Indeed, she is currently trying to force it to seek independence instead.
Now, a decent case could be made that all those referendums were flawed (especially the one that was boycotted). Nevertheless, those are the results and it can hardly be argued that four on the spin is a fluke. Therefore, a democrat would say the option should be the one discussed under the principle of self determination.
However AOC seems to think that as in her personal view, as a Puerto Rican, they are a colony they can only be given independence. Even though that is not what they have voted for, and the overwhelming evidence is that she is very much in a minority (a great many opponents of statehood prefer the status quo).
I mean, in a sense it’s understandable that the Republicans are opposed. Nobody thinks of them as a democratic party now anyway, so ignoring self determination isn’t a surprise.
But to suggest that because of a frankly muddle headed dogmatism that artificially conflates anti-imperialism with independence statehood should not be the main option under discussion is both ridiculous and anti-democratic.
It is like HYUFD and his infamous obsession with invading Scotland. Or, given she is herself Puerto Rican, it would perhaps be like Malcolm declaring that even though Scotland had voted for devomax in multiple referendums (not that they have, but as an example) independence is still the only option because he wants it and he knows better than these other idiots.
Her mealy mouthed hypocrisy on the issue is not endearing.
That’s despite her being right on say, healthcare. Just as Corbyn’s madder policies were not balanced by his being right about the need to renationalise the railways.
I have no doubt Boris did not want to lock down and errors were made though when Drakeford did a two week lock down here in Wales and then released the economy it was a disaster
However, polls are now almost 50/50 on accepting HMG has performed well in the crisis and of course this change is entirely due to the spectacular success of the vaccination programme and most people give Boris the credit for that
Indeed Boris's approval ratings have been growing recently and at this moment in time, with the Sturgeon fiasco, and also the disaster that is Europe and it's politicians, it is hard to believe but Boris looks the sane one
Malta and Hungary being the two exemplars of giving up on the EU procurement system and bolstering it with their own purchases, of course.
Malta is also a microstate, so it's not by any means inconceivable that it will eventually overtake us on the dose per capita metric, as has already happened with a number of the UK overseas territories.
Wee Krankie is safe as houses. She’ll just tough it out blaming bias opposition in hysterical election mode.
It's not the opposition in front of her that's the problem, it's the enemy behind her.
She'll survive the week and the election. But the tide within her party does appear to have turned against her. She's lost the sheen of competence and invincibility, and it does appear to be when rather than if. I'm reminded of Blair in 2005 - a fairly comfortable election win but clearly heading to the exit door.
I think you have hit the nail on the head, is she losing support in party and in voters.
If the best opponents can come up with is the impregnable sheen is now off, politicians have a habit of coming back from that.
The thing to watch for is not just there needs to be a slide in her popularity within party and country, but what happens to it when this story burns up and blows away?
Indeed, which it will. Nobody has a clue what the story is about! Sure, the mood music is taking some of the froth off her support, but it’s unwise to underestimate her: she is by far the most able leading politician on these islands.
Bl***y hell we are in agreement. As a poster not looking to be an influencer with avalanche of pushy posts, just a devil’s advocate to explore different points of view, I’ve failed this morning. 😕
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I think Biden could survive physical issues - look at FDR. He made an effort not to flaunt his disability, but it was well-known, and people voted for him anyway. Obviously if he was senile that wouldn't work, but the evidence seems slim - if everything you say is filmed, sometime you'll be caught mis-speaking, and he used to do that a decade or more ago.
AOC could well be the king/queenmaker - her endorsement (whether or not she'd run herself) would be worth its weight in gold for the nomination. I'm reading Obama's excellent new book - quite introspective and very thoughtful and balanced - and it makes clear the same problem that Biden now has - he has just this year to get the stuff he really needs through Congress before House Democrats start worrying about re-election and tackling to hostile winds.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
The problem they now have is political. Have you listened to Any Questions? Having a leading party figure (and there will be others) saying you are unfit to be the candidate is dooming the campaign before it starts.
But if it came down to it, who is going to run against him in a primary campaign?
Malta and Hungary being the two exemplars of giving up on the EU procurement system and bolstering it with their own purchases, of course.
Malta is also a microstate, so it's not by any means inconceivable that it will eventually overtake us on the dose per capita metric, as has already happened with a number of the UK overseas territories.
Wait until all of the EU surrogates proclaim Malta as evidence for the EU's success when that happens at some point in April.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
Picking his son, who was a nice enough chap but hardly Lord Protector material, as his successor wasn't by any means a good move.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
AOC is a Trump-style politician (in terms of dogmatism, arrogance, rudeness, contempt for democracy etc) with female genitals. She might well run but God help us all if she is the best the USA can come up with.
If the left are looking for a young standard bearer a more realistic one, not mentioned here, would be Jon Ossoff. He has more campaigning experience than Buttigieg, more appeal than Harris and certainly he’s demonstrated his ability to reach out to voters to win against the odds.
But my instinct is it will be Harris, quite possibly as a one-year incumbent.
While ideological, since entering Congress, she appears to be considerably more pragmatic than you suggest. And no ruder (and usually with every bit as good justification) than you are. I’m not sure where you get the contempt for democracy thing ? Or indeed the Trump comparison.
I don’t share her politics, but she’s the smartest socialist I’ve seen for a long time.
While you can disagree with her vehemently on this (and I don’t agree with her approach, either), it’s a stretch to call it a contempt for democracy. .... The Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act of 2020 proposes creating a "status convention" made up of delegates elected by Puerto Rican voters who would come up with a long-term solution for the island’s territorial status — whether that be statehood, independence, a free association or any option other than the current territorial arrangement.
"What the convention negotiates and puts forth would then be voted on in a referendum by the people of Puerto Rico before presentation to the U.S. Congress," Ocasio-Cortez and Velázquez said in an opinion piece for NBC News Think....
Note the bill got 70 votes in the House of Representatives. Rejected by a very large margin, but not utterly without support.
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I think Biden could survive physical issues - look at FDR. He made an effort not to flaunt his disability, but it was well-known, and people voted for him anyway. Obviously if he was senile that wouldn't work, but the evidence seems slim - if everything you say is filmed, sometime you'll be caught mis-speaking, and he used to do that a decade or more ago.
AOC could well be the king/queenmaker - her endorsement (whether or not she'd run herself) would be worth its weight in gold for the nomination. I'm reading Obama's excellent new book - quite introspective and very thoughtful and balanced - and it makes clear the same problem that Biden now has - he has just this year to get the stuff he really needs through Congress before House Democrats start worrying about re-election and tackling to hostile winds.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
Lucky they aren't running one of those polls in the Essex seats. They'd really struggle
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
Picking his son, who was a nice enough chap but hardly Lord Protector material, as his successor wasn't by any means a good move.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
It wasn't a good move, but given 10 more years either a better option may have presented, the balance between the various factions may have been different or, given the experience of many autocratic 'republics' in the modern age, he would have still have picked his son but the regime may have been more secure even if Richard was not any better suited - plenty of mediocre to crappy monarchs managed to make it through without the system falling.
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I think Biden could survive physical issues - look at FDR. He made an effort not to flaunt his disability, but it was well-known, and people voted for him anyway. Obviously if he was senile that wouldn't work, but the evidence seems slim - if everything you say is filmed, sometime you'll be caught mis-speaking, and he used to do that a decade or more ago.
AOC could well be the king/queenmaker - her endorsement (whether or not she'd run herself) would be worth its weight in gold for the nomination. I'm reading Obama's excellent new book - quite introspective and very thoughtful and balanced - and it makes clear the same problem that Biden now has - he has just this year to get the stuff he really needs through Congress before House Democrats start worrying about re-election and tackling to hostile winds.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
The problem they now have is political. Have you listened to Any Questions? Having a leading party figure (and there will be others) saying you are unfit to be the candidate is dooming the campaign before it starts.
But if it came down to it, who is going to run against him in a primary campaign?
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Puritanism predates Oliver Cromwell of course, being strong in Tudor times, and I would suggest is the spiritual ancestor of the Non-conformist Churches so influential in the development of English Socialism.
North of the border (in both our islands) Puritanism remained the dominant ideology, indeed the work ethic of Presbyterianism is what made Scotland great, not least by mandating free education so that all could read the Bible.
Yes, it is easy to mock the Puritans, but it is a resilient strand of political and religious thought. We also see it in Islamic Fundamentalism internationally now, and Communism in the Twentieth Century.
Wee Krankie is safe as houses. She’ll just tough it out blaming bias opposition in hysterical election mode.
It's not the opposition in front of her that's the problem, it's the enemy behind her.
She'll survive the week and the election. But the tide within her party does appear to have turned against her. She's lost the sheen of competence and invincibility, and it does appear to be when rather than if. I'm reminded of Blair in 2005 - a fairly comfortable election win but clearly heading to the exit door.
I think you have hit the nail on the head, is she losing support in party and in voters.
If the best opponents can come up with is the impregnable sheen is now off, politicians have a habit of coming back from that.
The thing to watch for is not just there needs to be a slide in her popularity within party and country, but what happens to it when this story burns up and blows away?
Politicians don't really have a habit of coming back when the sheen is gone.
They can hang around for months, sometimes years. But you underestimate how much power is a con trick. When you're no longer the future, people look elsewhere and authority drains away. It's really hard to get back, and you're a prisoner - in office, but not in power.
May in 2017, Blair in 2005. They'd passed the tipping point and it took a while but you rarely get it back.
Biden after Kinnockgate....
Biden was a candidate, not a leader at that point.
So he could terminate his campaign and rebuild his career from the relative anonymity of being a Senator for a tiny state.
That just isn't an option for a First Minister or Prime Minister. You are the boss and have to go on.
My point isn't that nobody can survive a scandal... plainly politicians do. It's that it's incredibly hard to rebuild when you're in the hot seat and the vultures around you have the whiff of slow death in their nostrils.
Kate Bingham: ‘At the moment there is 100 per cent protection against death, across all the vaccines and across all the variants,’
Telegraph interview.
That seems a little bit over egging it. We see from Israel that while most deaths are in the unvaccinated, there are some in the fully vaccinated.
How many of those are deaths with COVID rather than of COVID though. Sometimes a 94 year old dies of old age...
Well quite. Under the 28 day rule, it is entirely possible that people who are not protected from infection and test positive, but never develop significant symptoms, will nonetheless be counted as Covid deaths having croaked from some other cause.
Someone could probably make an educated guess at the number of false Covid deaths per day or week that one would expect to be reported in a vaccinated population, but it involves too many variables (amongst them likelihood of infection; likelihood of infection being confirmed by test; likelihood of subsequent death from the illness within a month; likelihood of subsequent death from any other cause within a month; and how these factors vary by age) for me to be bothered to give it a try.
Not tempted by the bets but thanks for the header.
I think AOC highly electable. She's articulate and authentic (back story of tending bar is solid american dream).
She's the one candidate I think that has the Obama magic.
I agree; I think she's great. But I don't expect her to run in 2024. We'll need to wait for 2028 or, more likely, 2032 for President AOC. She'll be 43 by then, and will have worked out how to win through pragmatism as well as radicalism.
Morning all. Let's just feel some contentment in the knowledge that there is a very good chance that Bozo feels absolutely shite this morning after his dose of AZ yesterday.
I look forward to feeling just as rough on Tuesday.
My experience was it was just over 24 hours later when it hit.
The tweet of PM went out yesterday evening, so I reckon he'll start to feel shit sometime in the 2nd half of the rugby.
Note how the PM was jabbed on a Friday evening. So weekend to recover at Chequers?
Don’t say that. Wife and I got ours 19 hours ago, and so far nothing but a bit of a sore arm...
Had mine last Tuesday (AZ). No side effects at all, not even a sore arm. Beginning to feel I’ve missed out ...
Morning all. Let's just feel some contentment in the knowledge that there is a very good chance that Bozo feels absolutely shite this morning after his dose of AZ yesterday.
I look forward to feeling just as rough on Tuesday.
My experience was it was just over 24 hours later when it hit.
The tweet of PM went out yesterday evening, so I reckon he'll start to feel shit sometime in the 2nd half of the rugby.
Note how the PM was jabbed on a Friday evening. So weekend to recover at Chequers?
Don’t say that. Wife and I got ours 19 hours ago, and so far nothing but a bit of a sore arm...
Morning all. Let's just feel some contentment in the knowledge that there is a very good chance that Bozo feels absolutely shite this morning after his dose of AZ yesterday.
I look forward to feeling just as rough on Tuesday.
My experience was it was just over 24 hours later when it hit.
The tweet of PM went out yesterday evening, so I reckon he'll start to feel shit sometime in the 2nd half of the rugby.
Note how the PM was jabbed on a Friday evening. So weekend to recover at Chequers?
Don’t say that. Wife and I got ours 19 hours ago, and so far nothing but a bit of a sore arm...
Had mine last Tuesday (AZ). No side effects at all, not even a sore arm. Beginning to feel I’ve missed out ...
I've got mine this afternoon - had no side effects from the flu jab - apart from feeling a bit ropey 10 days later - but that could just have been random.
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I think Biden could survive physical issues - look at FDR. He made an effort not to flaunt his disability, but it was well-known, and people voted for him anyway. Obviously if he was senile that wouldn't work, but the evidence seems slim - if everything you say is filmed, sometime you'll be caught mis-speaking, and he used to do that a decade or more ago.
AOC could well be the king/queenmaker - her endorsement (whether or not she'd run herself) would be worth its weight in gold for the nomination. I'm reading Obama's excellent new book - quite introspective and very thoughtful and balanced - and it makes clear the same problem that Biden now has - he has just this year to get the stuff he really needs through Congress before House Democrats start worrying about re-election and tackling to hostile winds.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
Lucky they aren't running one of those polls in the Essex seats. They'd really struggle
Wasn’t there a nationwide sexiest MP survey (male and female) quite recently? IIRC Lisa Nandy won the ladies race with Rosena runner up. Can’t remember the gents’ rankings.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
Fanciable and MILF are NOT the same.
Are you really so dense that you can't understand that a porn grouping is offensive?
Not least, the underlying sub-text is Mums are not worth shagging after giving birth, they are too ancient and haggard, but even so here is a MILF, one I'd like to fuck.
MILF might be excusable if said by a sad-sack , teenage virgin ... but by a Labour PPC, no way.
After a few years of wokeness, we are unfortunately back to 'Iraq War' Palmer, justifying the unjustifiable on pb.com because it is the Labour party doing it.
Not tempted by the bets but thanks for the header.
I think AOC highly electable. She's articulate and authentic (back story of tending bar is solid american dream).
She's the one candidate I think that has the Obama magic.
I agree; I think she's great. But I don't expect her to run in 2024. We'll need to wait for 2028 or, more likely, 2032 for President AOC. She'll be 43 by then, and will have worked out how to win through pragmatism as well as radicalism.
Not sure about that - I think Democrats can do well with young, potentially inexperienced candidates. The longer she sticks around Congress the more she gets tarnished as just another politician.
Whether she will run or not I don't know. She may prefer to drive legislative change rather than try to become President.
Not tempted by the bets but thanks for the header.
I think AOC highly electable. She's articulate and authentic (back story of tending bar is solid american dream).
She's the one candidate I think that has the Obama magic.
I agree; I think she's great. But I don't expect her to run in 2024. We'll need to wait for 2028 or, more likely, 2032 for President AOC. She'll be 43 by then, and will have worked out how to win through pragmatism as well as radicalism.
While AOC is ambitious and talented, I am not convinced that she wants to be President. She seems to be enjoying herself as a Representative at the moment.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
Picking his son, who was a nice enough chap but hardly Lord Protector material, as his successor wasn't by any means a good move.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
It wasn't a good move, but given 10 more years either a better option may have presented, the balance between the various factions may have been different or, given the experience of many autocratic 'republics' in the modern age, he would have still have picked his son but the regime may have been more secure even if Richard was not any better suited - plenty of mediocre to crappy monarchs managed to make it through without the system falling.
Cromwell opposed hereditary monarchs and was succeeded by his son tells you most of what you need to know. Napoleon in parvo
Not tempted by the bets but thanks for the header.
I think AOC highly electable. She's articulate and authentic (back story of tending bar is solid american dream).
She's the one candidate I think that has the Obama magic.
I agree; I think she's great. But I don't expect her to run in 2024. We'll need to wait for 2028 or, more likely, 2032 for President AOC. She'll be 43 by then, and will have worked out how to win through pragmatism as well as radicalism.
While AOC is ambitious and talented, I am not convinced that she wants to be President. She seems to be enjoying herself as a Representative at the moment.
Speaker. As I said downthread it is the natural position for her and the electorate for that position in the Democratic party is way better than the US as a whole. It is a position of real power and she could make it even more so, Newt Gingrich style.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
No, that's a cardboard cutout. Foxy has it.
To understand the mind of the Puritan I would say read Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress or Grace Abounding. There is an emotional side combined with a rigid self-discipline. Canterbury Tales are a good contrast to show Catholic "style" imo.
Puritanism was partly about a democratisation of priest-style spirituality away from the priesthood.
For modern politics, my chosen comparison would be the doctrinaire side of Militant. Dave Nellist and similar, with a strong link between belief and personal practice. For a community the most recent I would compare would be the Boer Voortrekkers, though I am sure there are many contemporary similars.
There are a couple of intriguing MPs who self-consciously lived simply rather than engage in expenses-farming a few years ago. They may be of a similar spirit.
As a titbit, as far as I am aware it was a Non-conformist Minister who first defended freedom of conscience for atheists, just after 1600.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
Picking his son, who was a nice enough chap but hardly Lord Protector material, as his successor wasn't by any means a good move.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
It wasn't a good move, but given 10 more years either a better option may have presented, the balance between the various factions may have been different or, given the experience of many autocratic 'republics' in the modern age, he would have still have picked his son but the regime may have been more secure even if Richard was not any better suited - plenty of mediocre to crappy monarchs managed to make it through without the system falling.
Cromwell opposed hereditary monarchs and was succeeded by his son tells you most of what you need to know. Napoleon in parvo
Though refused the Crown himself.
He fundamentally altered the relationship between Parliament and Monarch, ruling from within Parliament. After the Restoration, it was the Commons who remained in control of government.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
Fanciable and MILF are NOT the same.
Are you really so dense that you can't understand that a porn grouping is offensive?
Not least, the underlying sub-text is Mums are not worth shagging after giving birth, they are too ancient and haggard, but even so here is a MILF, one I'd like to fuck.
MILF might be excusable if said by a sad-sack , teenage virgin ... but by a Labour PPC, no way.
After a few years of wokeness, we are unfortunately back to 'Iraq War' Palmer, justifying the unjustifiable on pb.com because it is the Labour party doing it.
My aunt (71) has caught COVID, post vaccination. She has no significant symptoms and is isolating. She's got a few pre-existing conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, overweight etc....
I'd consider her life as saved by the vaccine. I'm almost certain that she'd have died had she caught it without being vaccinated.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
Fanciable and MILF are NOT the same.
Are you really so dense that you can't understand that a porn grouping is offensive?
Not least, the underlying sub-text is Mums are not worth shagging after giving birth, they are too ancient and haggard, but even so here is a MILF, one I'd like to fuck.
MILF might be excusable if said by a sad-sack , teenage virgin ... but by a Labour PPC, no way.
After a few years of wokeness, we are unfortunately back to 'Iraq War' Palmer, justifying the unjustifiable on pb.com because it is the Labour party doing it.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
Picking his son, who was a nice enough chap but hardly Lord Protector material, as his successor wasn't by any means a good move.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
It wasn't a good move, but given 10 more years either a better option may have presented, the balance between the various factions may have been different or, given the experience of many autocratic 'republics' in the modern age, he would have still have picked his son but the regime may have been more secure even if Richard was not any better suited - plenty of mediocre to crappy monarchs managed to make it through without the system falling.
Cromwell opposed hereditary monarchs and was succeeded by his son tells you most of what you need to know. Napoleon in parvo
That wasn't really the point. As we have seen ostensible republics can become, or seek to become, de facto heriditary monarchies, for the pretty obvious reason that autocratic leaders consider who they trust to succeed them, and people naturally fall back on family.
The issue was not whether being succeeded by his son was hypocritical - I think Cromwell is a fascinating and very conflicted person generally - but whether it might have worked if there'd been more time to settle things. The whole system had become more monarchical and at least sought to return to bicameralism even with official rejection of the crown, and that was within 5 years of replacing the Rump.
I'm someone surprised not to have stumbled across an alternative history series based on the premise he lived another 10 years and we remained a republic (in name under a Cromwell dynasty or otherwise).
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
Picking his son, who was a nice enough chap but hardly Lord Protector material, as his successor wasn't by any means a good move.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
It wasn't a good move, but given 10 more years either a better option may have presented, the balance between the various factions may have been different or, given the experience of many autocratic 'republics' in the modern age, he would have still have picked his son but the regime may have been more secure even if Richard was not any better suited - plenty of mediocre to crappy monarchs managed to make it through without the system falling.
Cromwell opposed hereditary monarchs and was succeeded by his son tells you most of what you need to know. Napoleon in parvo
Though refused the Crown himself.
He fundamentally altered the relationship between Parliament and Monarch, ruling from within Parliament. After the Restoration, it was the Commons who remained in control of government.
No, the King still appointed Ministers who were answerable to him in his Closet. They managed the Commons on his behalf, but they were very much his servants. The balance of power tilted slowly over the centuries, but it was very much an organic process not an event, and Cromwell, by promoting the Royalist reaction in the 1660s and 1670s, may even have slowed it. Charles II was usually much more secure on his throne than his father had been (except during the Exclusion Crisis). And so was his idiot brother in the first year of his reign, until he threw it all away in 1686-8.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
No, that's a cardboard cutout. Foxy has it.
To understand the mind of the Puritan I would say read Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress or Grace Abounding. There is an emotional side combined with a rigid self-discipline. Canterbury Tales are a good contrast to show Catholic "style" imo.
Puritanism was partly about a democratisation of priest-style spirituality away from the priesthood.
For modern politics, my chosen comparison would be the doctrinaire side of Militant. Dave Nellist and similar, with a strong link between belief and personal practice. For a community the most recent I would compare would be the Boer Voortrekkers, though I am sure there are many contemporary similars.
There are a couple of intriguing MPs who self-consciously lived simply rather than engage in expenses-farming a few years ago. They may be of a similar spirit.
As a titbit, as far as I am aware it was a Non-conformist Minister who first defended freedom of conscience for atheists, just after 1600.
Must be Saturday .
The really extraordinary aspect of PP is it’s a masterpiece that has the Bible as just about its sole intertext, as though Bunyan had literally read nothing else. Chaucer’s Tales has an infinitely richer field of reference.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
Picking his son, who was a nice enough chap but hardly Lord Protector material, as his successor wasn't by any means a good move.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
It wasn't a good move, but given 10 more years either a better option may have presented, the balance between the various factions may have been different or, given the experience of many autocratic 'republics' in the modern age, he would have still have picked his son but the regime may have been more secure even if Richard was not any better suited - plenty of mediocre to crappy monarchs managed to make it through without the system falling.
Cromwell opposed hereditary monarchs and was succeeded by his son tells you most of what you need to know. Napoleon in parvo
Though refused the Crown himself.
He fundamentally altered the relationship between Parliament and Monarch, ruling from within Parliament. After the Restoration, it was the Commons who remained in control of government.
I'm no expert, but I do wonder why Richard was named as his father's deputy, given that there's little or no evidence that he either particularly wanted the job, or was suitable for it. Indeed neither of Cromwell's sons who survived into 'full' adulthood (one son died at 22) seem to have been particularly fit for Government.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
Picking his son, who was a nice enough chap but hardly Lord Protector material, as his successor wasn't by any means a good move.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
Lambert would have been the best option IMO, but he was out of politics at the time having fallen out with Noll. He did rejoin the government on Tumbledown Dick's removal but by then they obviously didn't want another Protector.
Interesting that it was not until the Americans did it that western revolutionaries struggled to find a stable form of non-monarchical government. The English and French revolutionaries didn't manage it and the Dutch Republic quickly effectively became a House of Orange monarchy (William III's Dutch title was Stadhouder, technically an appointed position, and by province, although the head of the House of Orange tended to hold several provincial Stadhouderships simultaneously).
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
Fanciable and MILF are NOT the same.
Are you really so dense that you can't understand that a porn grouping is offensive?
Not least, the underlying sub-text is Mums are not worth shagging after giving birth, they are too ancient and haggard, but even so here is a MILF, one I'd like to fuck.
MILF might be excusable if said by a sad-sack , teenage virgin ... but by a Labour PPC, no way.
After a few years of wokeness, we are unfortunately back to 'Iraq War' Palmer, justifying the unjustifiable on pb.com because it is the Labour party doing it.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
Picking his son, who was a nice enough chap but hardly Lord Protector material, as his successor wasn't by any means a good move.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
It wasn't a good move, but given 10 more years either a better option may have presented, the balance between the various factions may have been different or, given the experience of many autocratic 'republics' in the modern age, he would have still have picked his son but the regime may have been more secure even if Richard was not any better suited - plenty of mediocre to crappy monarchs managed to make it through without the system falling.
Cromwell opposed hereditary monarchs and was succeeded by his son tells you most of what you need to know. Napoleon in parvo
Though refused the Crown himself.
He fundamentally altered the relationship between Parliament and Monarch, ruling from within Parliament. After the Restoration, it was the Commons who remained in control of government.
No, the King still appointed Ministers who were answerable to him in his Closet. They managed the Commons on his behalf, but they were very much his servants. The balance of power tilted slowly over the centuries, but it was very much an organic process not an event, and Cromwell, by promoting the Royalist reaction in the 1660s and 1670s, may even have slowed it. Charles II was usually much more secure on his throne than his father was. And so was his idiot brother in the first year of his reign, until he threw it all away in 1686-8.
I think that's slightly unfair reading. I've always taken the view that you cannot simply go back to the way things were after a major event, however much people try. The restoration, well, restored things and the King was in charge again and Parliament was not the master, but that whole period was under the shadow of the terrible events of the preceding decades. Everyone will have been aware what was possible if a King went too far in the eyes of many. People will not have wanted a return to the bloodshed and turbulence of the 40s and 50s, but everyone knew the potentials that existed.
That's why things could then change again so quickly and reformulate the nature of that royal-parliament relationship (adding in the religious issues of course).
On that paper, it's absolutely galling that my wife, who has no scientific or medical education, was able to make the link while supposedly top scientific regulators across Europe weren't. Honestly wtf kind of processes to they have?
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
Picking his son, who was a nice enough chap but hardly Lord Protector material, as his successor wasn't by any means a good move.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
Lambert would have been the best option IMO, but he was out of politics at the time having fallen out with Noll. He did rejoin the government on Tumbledown Dick's removal but by then they obviously didn't want another Protector.
Interesting that it was not until the Americans did it that western revolutionaries struggled to find a stable form of non-monarchical government. The English and French revolutionaries didn't manage it and the Dutch Republic quickly effectively became a House of Orange monarchy (William III's Dutch title was Stadhouder, technically an appointed position, and by province, although the head of the House of Orange tended to hold several provincial Stadhouderships simultaneously).
Even ignoring the American Civil War, the Swiss had stable non-monarchical government centuries before the Americans did.
My aunt (71) has caught COVID, post vaccination. She has no significant symptoms and is isolating. She's got a few pre-existing conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, overweight etc....
I'd consider her life as saved by the vaccine. I'm almost certain that she'd have died had she caught it without being vaccinated.
That’s great news for her. Vaccines work, and it’s being seen in the rapid fall in deaths and hospitalisation since the most vulnerable groups started to be vaccinated.
As you say, someone in their seventies with a pile of conditions could have been expected to end up in hospital or worse before the vaccines came along.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
Picking his son, who was a nice enough chap but hardly Lord Protector material, as his successor wasn't by any means a good move.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
It wasn't a good move, but given 10 more years either a better option may have presented, the balance between the various factions may have been different or, given the experience of many autocratic 'republics' in the modern age, he would have still have picked his son but the regime may have been more secure even if Richard was not any better suited - plenty of mediocre to crappy monarchs managed to make it through without the system falling.
Cromwell opposed hereditary monarchs and was succeeded by his son tells you most of what you need to know. Napoleon in parvo
Though refused the Crown himself.
He fundamentally altered the relationship between Parliament and Monarch, ruling from within Parliament. After the Restoration, it was the Commons who remained in control of government.
I'm no expert, but I do wonder why Richard was named as his father's deputy, given that there's little or no evidence that he either particularly wanted the job, or was suitable for it. Indeed neither of Cromwell's sons who survived into 'full' adulthood (one son died at 22) seem to have been particularly fit for Government.
It's been so long since I studied any of it, and it was only at university, so absent any particular justification I've always assumed it was a combination of the natural human instinct to trust your children to follow you, and the hope that a Cromwell could straddle the line between military and civilian political powerbrokers and factions. But lacking his dad's army record, that seems like a forlorn hope.
What about Ireton? Major figure in the army and Cromwell's son in law, could have been interesting but of course died long before then.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
Fanciable and MILF are NOT the same.
Are you really so dense that you can't understand that a porn grouping is offensive?
Not least, the underlying sub-text is Mums are not worth shagging after giving birth, they are too ancient and haggard, but even so here is a MILF, one I'd like to fuck.
MILF might be excusable if said by a sad-sack , teenage virgin ... but by a Labour PPC, no way.
After a few years of wokeness, we are unfortunately back to 'Iraq War' Palmer, justifying the unjustifiable on pb.com because it is the Labour party doing it.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
Fanciable and MILF are NOT the same.
Are you really so dense that you can't understand that a porn grouping is offensive?
Not least, the underlying sub-text is Mums are not worth shagging after giving birth, they are too ancient and haggard, but even so here is a MILF, one I'd like to fuck.
MILF might be excusable if said by a sad-sack , teenage virgin ... but by a Labour PPC, no way.
After a few years of wokeness, we are unfortunately back to 'Iraq War' Palmer, justifying the unjustifiable on pb.com because it is the Labour party doing it.
Go on, say it Nick, it was just bantz.
Seems overly harsh to me.
Perhaps the judgment as to whether "Mum I'd Love to Fuck" is offensive should be left to mothers ?
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
No, that's a cardboard cutout. Foxy has it.
To understand the mind of the Puritan I would say read Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress or Grace Abounding. There is an emotional side combined with a rigid self-discipline. Canterbury Tales are a good contrast to show Catholic "style" imo.
Puritanism was partly about a democratisation of priest-style spirituality away from the priesthood.
For modern politics, my chosen comparison would be the doctrinaire side of Militant. Dave Nellist and similar, with a strong link between belief and personal practice. For a community the most recent I would compare would be the Boer Voortrekkers, though I am sure there are many contemporary similars.
There are a couple of intriguing MPs who self-consciously lived simply rather than engage in expenses-farming a few years ago. They may be of a similar spirit.
As a titbit, as far as I am aware it was a Non-conformist Minister who first defended freedom of conscience for atheists, just after 1600.
Must be Saturday .
“No, that's a cardboard cutout. Foxy has it.‘.
Gloves off straight away. My understanding of history is cardboard cut out. 😦
Puritan is Protestant - Protest movement against how the Catholic Church has lost its way, become corrupt. It’s defined by not wanting to be associated with the Catholic Church, the Civil War itself inspired by a drift in Churches towards Catholic worship.
And was the Protectorate not weak and wobbly? What was it actually for. Did it actually want to behead the King, was it for that? Would it have happened if the King had been less determined to die a martyr? We can see from the Putney Debates and the violence against radicals that followed, the protectorate had no interest in going radical. And through its diplomacy it was quite happy to build bridges with Catholic powerhouses across Europe. If it had lasted another 10 years, where was it actually going?
Wee Krankie is safe as houses. She’ll just tough it out blaming bias opposition in hysterical election mode.
It's not the opposition in front of her that's the problem, it's the enemy behind her.
She'll survive the week and the election. But the tide within her party does appear to have turned against her. She's lost the sheen of competence and invincibility, and it does appear to be when rather than if. I'm reminded of Blair in 2005 - a fairly comfortable election win but clearly heading to the exit door.
I think you have hit the nail on the head, is she losing support in party and in voters.
If the best opponents can come up with is the impregnable sheen is now off, politicians have a habit of coming back from that.
The thing to watch for is not just there needs to be a slide in her popularity within party and country, but what happens to it when this story burns up and blows away?
Politicians don't really have a habit of coming back when the sheen is gone.
They can hang around for months, sometimes years. But you underestimate how much power is a con trick. When you're no longer the future, people look elsewhere and authority drains away. It's really hard to get back, and you're a prisoner - in office, but not in power.
May in 2017, Blair in 2005. They'd passed the tipping point and it took a while but you rarely get it back.
Sturgeon managed the trick of rising above the daily political hurly-burly. She set herself apart. Cool trick.
Now she is down thrashing in the shit-pit with the rest. No showering that away.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
Fanciable and MILF are NOT the same.
Are you really so dense that you can't understand that a porn grouping is offensive?
Not least, the underlying sub-text is Mums are not worth shagging after giving birth, they are too ancient and haggard, but even so here is a MILF, one I'd like to fuck.
MILF might be excusable if said by a sad-sack , teenage virgin ... but by a Labour PPC, no way.
After a few years of wokeness, we are unfortunately back to 'Iraq War' Palmer, justifying the unjustifiable on pb.com because it is the Labour party doing it.
Go on, say it Nick, it was just bantz.
Seems overly harsh to me.
Perhaps the judgment as to whether "Mum I'd Love to Fuck" is offensive should be left to mothers ?
I don't think whether it is offensive matters a great deal (nor did I say it was inoffensive). I don't think someone having used a term that is offensive at some point is itself particularly offensive as people are not automatons. Because it is twitter offensive things will be more visible, but everyone will have said or done something offensive before. He'd probably say he regrets that, and means it, so case closed. There are also degrees of offensiveness.
And I don't believe you really think we should leave that judgement up to mothers, because I have zero doubt some mothers could be found who don't think it is offensive, with whom you would disagree as is perfectly reasonable to do whether you or I are mothers or not.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
Fanciable and MILF are NOT the same.
Are you really so dense that you can't understand that a porn grouping is offensive?
Not least, the underlying sub-text is Mums are not worth shagging after giving birth, they are too ancient and haggard, but even so here is a MILF, one I'd like to fuck.
MILF might be excusable if said by a sad-sack , teenage virgin ... but by a Labour PPC, no way.
After a few years of wokeness, we are unfortunately back to 'Iraq War' Palmer, justifying the unjustifiable on pb.com because it is the Labour party doing it.
Go on, say it Nick, it was just bantz.
A fellow Puritan speaks!
I think his basic cockup was not to understand where his externally imposed boundaries were, and where they had moved to. That sort of conversation happens in all sorts of circles all the time amongst both sexes, and all genders.
"Take care before saying in private anything that you could not bear being said in public."
Though I think Shami's flapping is very political, and has a lot to do with rehabilitating herself by being outraged alongside others.
Totally disagree. Biden will not be the 2024 candidate. He is already being hidden away from press questions. He referred to Harris as the President this past week. He slipped 3 times on the steps to Air Force 1 - also this week. That after he had set off purposefully with his mind set on one thing - "just make it up those steps..." It was painful to watch.
2 months into his term, 46 more to go. 46 gruelling, get-me-outta-here months. (Although I expect it to be Acting President Kamala Harris under the 25th at some point within those 46...)
I really don't see a little confusion as such a big deal, even in the POTUS, when the alternative was such a volatile, deranged narcissist.
Addressing the VP as President seems such a minor infringement of sanity when his predecessor was earnestly advising Americans to introvenously self-medicate against Covid using domestic cleaning products.
It's the narrative though: the leader of the Free World can't walk upstairs unaided. He is the perfect metaphor for America In Decline. Do you think China, Putin are looking at Biden and thinking "If we push the boundaries on our power, is he going to stand firm - when he can't stand up?"
Dan Hodges made the point that you have to go back to Gerald Ford to find a president who hasn’t tripped on some official photocall. Several have tripped on the steps of AF1 apparently.
I guess Biden is just unlucky then, to have done so in his first couple of months in office....
Doesn't address the issue that the US media is already bitching that Biden is being hidden away. They are already questioning why - and making up their own narrative.
As I say, any such narrative (and you are massively overplaying this) isn’t hurting him. His approval ratings are sky high.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
No, that's a cardboard cutout. Foxy has it.
To understand the mind of the Puritan I would say read Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress or Grace Abounding. There is an emotional side combined with a rigid self-discipline. Canterbury Tales are a good contrast to show Catholic "style" imo.
Puritanism was partly about a democratisation of priest-style spirituality away from the priesthood.
For modern politics, my chosen comparison would be the doctrinaire side of Militant. Dave Nellist and similar, with a strong link between belief and personal practice. For a community the most recent I would compare would be the Boer Voortrekkers, though I am sure there are many contemporary similars.
There are a couple of intriguing MPs who self-consciously lived simply rather than engage in expenses-farming a few years ago. They may be of a similar spirit.
As a titbit, as far as I am aware it was a Non-conformist Minister who first defended freedom of conscience for atheists, just after 1600.
Must be Saturday .
“No, that's a cardboard cutout. Foxy has it.‘.
Gloves off straight away. My understanding of history is cardboard cut out. 😦
Puritan is Protestant - Protest movement against how the Catholic Church has lost its way, become corrupt. It’s defined by not wanting to be associated with the Catholic Church, the Civil War itself inspired by a drift in Churches towards Catholic worship.
And was the Protectorate not weak and wobbly? What was it actually for. Did it actually want to behead the King, was it for that? Would it have happened if the King had been less determined to die a martyr? We can see from the Putney Debates and the violence against radicals that followed, the protectorate had no interest in going radical. And through its diplomacy it was quite happy to build bridges with Catholic powerhouses across Europe. If it had lasted another 10 years, where was it actually going?
Surely it was more that the early Stuarts wanted to re-assert the divine right of kings, and were so relieved at having an apparently fairly pliant population as against the somewhat turbulent lot their forebears had had to deal with that they went too far.
AOC (she even has a 'brand') has absolutely stellar social media engagement numbers and is the Queen of Clapback. That's probably going to matter even more in 2024 than it did in 2020. She'd be a good Veep pick for Harris.
Aren’t they too similar?
Female lawyers from urban coastal states with minority background (I’m assuming for AOC).
On that paper, it's absolutely galling that my wife, who has no scientific or medical education, was able to make the link while supposedly top scientific regulators across Europe weren't. Honestly wtf kind of processes to they have?
Why on Earth wouldn’t they look for things like that?
Do they not look at the demographics of the people with the same issue, nor ask them if they are taking any other medication?
The lady who did my vaccine (young junior doctor) asked a load of questions in the couple of minutes we were in the room together.
This discussion cements my view that the Dems look very week going into 2024.
There is a certain tendency to assume that the players in 2024 will be the same as 2020.
Sure we had heard of Biden in 2016, and Sanders, Warren too, but who had heard of Buttigeig, O'Rorke, Harris or Klobuchar?
It isn't quite true that there are no second acts in American lives, but second chances are rare.
I was just going to say what a good idea to use a selfie as your avatar and then you changed it
Just feeling a bit more Puritanical this morning, in the long and honourable tradition of English Radicalism. 🙂
What did I read Puritanism defined as the other day - the desperate fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having fun? Or is that socialism?
Anyway, hopefully it will pass for you.
No, Puritanism is about the inner life, standing apart from the corruption of the world.
There are a lot of secular Puritans now, particularly but not exclusively on the Left and Greens.
It is a contrasting strand of English tradition to the aristocratic cavaliers. Different labels now but the same tradition. One of my favourite Cromwell quotes on the subject:
"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else."
And that is how he won...
He lost. A wobbly Protectorate very much in office but not in power (financially hamstrung and living in likelihood of of counter revolution in other words) unsustainable after his death. The radicals and socialist who helped put him there he thoroughly stitched up and used his militia to hunt down.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
Something falling apart after the lead figure goes does not mean they lost. Indeed, it shows their personal importance to their own victories, that is, how much they personally won.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
Picking his son, who was a nice enough chap but hardly Lord Protector material, as his successor wasn't by any means a good move.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
Lambert would have been the best option IMO, but he was out of politics at the time having fallen out with Noll. He did rejoin the government on Tumbledown Dick's removal but by then they obviously didn't want another Protector.
Interesting that it was not until the Americans did it that western revolutionaries struggled to find a stable form of non-monarchical government. The English and French revolutionaries didn't manage it and the Dutch Republic quickly effectively became a House of Orange monarchy (William III's Dutch title was Stadhouder, technically an appointed position, and by province, although the head of the House of Orange tended to hold several provincial Stadhouderships simultaneously).
Are we into Pretenders?
I once got laughed all the way out of school by not-quite-remembering Perkin Warbeck, and calling him Marvin Purbeck in class by mistake.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
Fanciable and MILF are NOT the same.
Are you really so dense that you can't understand that a porn grouping is offensive?
Not least, the underlying sub-text is Mums are not worth shagging after giving birth, they are too ancient and haggard, but even so here is a MILF, one I'd like to fuck.
MILF might be excusable if said by a sad-sack , teenage virgin ... but by a Labour PPC, no way.
After a few years of wokeness, we are unfortunately back to 'Iraq War' Palmer, justifying the unjustifiable on pb.com because it is the Labour party doing it.
Go on, say it Nick, it was just bantz.
Seems overly harsh to me.
Perhaps the judgment as to whether "Mum I'd Love to Fuck" is offensive should be left to mothers ?
Further congratulations. You've now won first prize for the two least attractive posts since early SeanT (but without his wit)
Perhaps he just got his decimal in the wrong place?
That's rather similar to the simple type of error that drove the 8% newspaper thing.
Though if using the incidence of CVST in younger women as the numerator, then the same population needs to be the denominator. How many women in this age range were immunised, then developed the Thrombocytopenia/CVST in the 2 weeks post immunisation?
Comments
I think AOC highly electable. She's articulate and authentic (back story of tending bar is solid american dream).
She's the one candidate I think that has the Obama magic.
Anyway, I can't be done with metaphors at this time in the morning. So I will consider my Boris Johnson metaphors later in the day.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/joe-bidens-job-approval-ticks-upward-after-stimulus-win-100m-vaccines-distributed/ar-BB1eLIBE
AOC could well be the king/queenmaker - her endorsement (whether or not she'd run herself) would be worth its weight in gold for the nomination. I'm reading Obama's excellent new book - quite introspective and very thoughtful and balanced - and it makes clear the same problem that Biden now has - he has just this year to get the stuff he really needs through Congress before House Democrats start worrying about re-election and tackling to hostile winds.
By the way, as a thoroughly woke leftist, I'm struggling to understand what critics think is so terrible about the centrist Hartlepool candidate having talked about Tory MILFs who he fancied 10 years ago. I remember the Nottingham Post doing a poll on Most Fanciable East Midlands MP" (yeah, was a slow news week) - IIRC I came second (to Alan Simpson in the not very challenging contest and was amused rather than insulted. The MILF term is a bit crude but not really objectifying.
If the best opponents can come up with is the impregnable sheen is now off, politicians have a habit of coming back from that.
The thing to watch for is not just there needs to be a slide in her popularity within party and country, but what happens to it when this story burns up and blows away?
The first is that US parties do not pick their candidates as if it were bigwigs doing it at a convention (actually, when it *was* that, they still didn't necessarily use just electability and capacity in office as the main metrics - far more base metrics were equally prominent).
But primaries are a different ball game altogether. If you can get around 30% of the low turnout of the restricted part of the electorate voting to back you in the early rounds - maybe only 3-4% of the adult population; less still in the caucuses - you stand a good chance of winning. What matters is not necessarily broad appeal but a dedicated core of activists and voters. Sure, many voters *will* pick who they think is most electable but those votes can easily be spread. The fact that Trump won his nomination and Sanders twice came so close to doing so should tell us enough there.
And secondly - but relatedly - there is no need for these candidates to trim to the centre; certainly not in the primaries anyway, which is what this thread's primarily concerned with. But as with Trump (or Corbyn, or Le Pen, or Syriza, or others), the nature of the individual and the movement is that she may well not do much trimming even if she won the nomination. At the edges, on issues that don't matter much to her, yes; but as a values-politician who has just been elected *because* of those values? I doubt it.
As I've said, I don't think there's any value in her current odds but we should take her chances seriously all the same.
Would they feel cheated by Harris if it came to light that she and the rest of the Biden team pulled the wool over voters’ eyes in 2020, irreparably tainting her?
Or would there be an outpouring of sympathy and she does a solid enough job in whatever time to make the Dem nomination virtually uncontested.
75% chance Biden steps down, call it 50-50 odds on those subsequent outcomes.
Personally if it’s the former, I’d say AOC looks the strongest contender for the nomination, given she would be untainted by any perceived scandal and has a social media brand the like of which we’ve rarely seen. Stronger than 16-1 most likely but it’s a long way out.
Would she win if she gets the nomination? 66-1 seems ludicrously generous to me. If Trump or a family member gets the nomination and faced AOC you’d find the map probably look a bit odd the morning after the election.
As long as we keep up the vaccinations and ease restrictions slowly, we'll be fine.
Also, I don't see the relevance of your point to the Democratic nomination. If Biden stands, he'll get it. He might well not stand, but the reason isn't going to be that Russia and China respect him less than he'd like.
Doesn't address the issue that the US media is already bitching that Biden is being hidden away. They are already questioning why - and making up their own narrative.
"Very tenacious, the Evangelicals."
But at some point building inter-generational unfairness will break into politics, and when that happens the fallout could be dramatic. Given the its aged current political class, the US could easily go first.
Both, particularly the latter, would surely mean a Dem 'landslide', smile;ar to what happened her in 1983.
Executive powers, of course, are a different matter.
They can hang around for months, sometimes years. But you underestimate how much power is a con trick. When you're no longer the future, people look elsewhere and authority drains away. It's really hard to get back, and you're a prisoner - in office, but not in power.
May in 2017, Blair in 2005. They'd passed the tipping point and it took a while but you rarely get it back.
Puritanism is basically just protest to what they saw as a Catholic faith which had lost its way and a religion needing reform to the degree of a reset. Defined by not what it is, but by what it’s determined not to be.
https://www.politico.eu/coronavirus-in-europe/
With the benefit of hindsight that could be argued to have been the least worst course of action available, but one can have some measure of sympathy for the predicament in which the Government found itself. Never mind the effect on many businesses, six full months of tight house arrest would've risked driving the whole country loopy.
Failed to build a sustainable position for when they were gone is another matter. It is very interesting to think what might have happened had he lived another 10 years.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/new-aoc-vel-zquez-bill-puerto-rico-s-status-sparks-n1238192
Now, a decent case could be made that all those referendums were flawed (especially the one that was boycotted). Nevertheless, those are the results and it can hardly be argued that four on the spin is a fluke. Therefore, a democrat would say the option should be the one discussed under the principle of self determination.
However AOC seems to think that as in her personal view, as a Puerto Rican, they are a colony they can only be given independence. Even though that is not what they have voted for, and the overwhelming evidence is that she is very much in a minority (a great many opponents of statehood prefer the status quo).
I mean, in a sense it’s understandable that the Republicans are opposed. Nobody thinks of them as a democratic party now anyway, so ignoring self determination isn’t a surprise.
But to suggest that because of a frankly muddle headed dogmatism that artificially conflates anti-imperialism with independence statehood should not be the main option under discussion is both ridiculous and anti-democratic.
It is like HYUFD and his infamous obsession with invading Scotland. Or, given she is herself Puerto Rican, it would perhaps be like Malcolm declaring that even though Scotland had voted for devomax in multiple referendums (not that they have, but as an example) independence is still the only option because he wants it and he knows better than these other idiots.
Her mealy mouthed hypocrisy on the issue is not endearing.
That’s despite her being right on say, healthcare. Just as Corbyn’s madder policies were not balanced by his being right about the need to renationalise the railways.
However, polls are now almost 50/50 on accepting HMG has performed well in the crisis and of course this change is entirely due to the spectacular success of the vaccination programme and most people give Boris the credit for that
Indeed Boris's approval ratings have been growing recently and at this moment in time, with the Sturgeon fiasco, and also the disaster that is Europe and it's politicians, it is hard to believe but Boris looks the sane one
Malta is also a microstate, so it's not by any means inconceivable that it will eventually overtake us on the dose per capita metric, as has already happened with a number of the UK overseas territories.
One of the 'right' things that the Monarchists did when the took over was letting Tumbledown Dick live out his life in decent obscurity.
.... The Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act of 2020 proposes creating a "status convention" made up of delegates elected by Puerto Rican voters who would come up with a long-term solution for the island’s territorial status — whether that be statehood, independence, a free association or any option other than the current territorial arrangement.
"What the convention negotiates and puts forth would then be voted on in a referendum by the people of Puerto Rico before presentation to the U.S. Congress," Ocasio-Cortez and Velázquez said in an opinion piece for NBC News Think....
Note the bill got 70 votes in the House of Representatives. Rejected by a very large margin, but not utterly without support.
North of the border (in both our islands) Puritanism remained the dominant ideology, indeed the work ethic of Presbyterianism is what made Scotland great, not least by mandating free education so that all could read the Bible.
Yes, it is easy to mock the Puritans, but it is a resilient strand of political and religious thought. We also see it in Islamic Fundamentalism internationally now, and Communism in the Twentieth Century.
So he could terminate his campaign and rebuild his career from the relative anonymity of being a Senator for a tiny state.
That just isn't an option for a First Minister or Prime Minister. You are the boss and have to go on.
My point isn't that nobody can survive a scandal... plainly politicians do. It's that it's incredibly hard to rebuild when you're in the hot seat and the vultures around you have the whiff of slow death in their nostrils.
Someone could probably make an educated guess at the number of false Covid deaths per day or week that one would expect to be reported in a vaccinated population, but it involves too many variables (amongst them likelihood of infection; likelihood of infection being confirmed by test; likelihood of subsequent death from the illness within a month; likelihood of subsequent death from any other cause within a month; and how these factors vary by age) for me to be bothered to give it a try.
https://twitter.com/Andrew_Adonis/status/1373196347428454400
Are you really so dense that you can't understand that a porn grouping is offensive?
Not least, the underlying sub-text is Mums are not worth shagging after giving birth, they are too ancient and haggard, but even so here is a MILF, one I'd like to fuck.
MILF might be excusable if said by a sad-sack , teenage virgin ... but by a Labour PPC, no way.
After a few years of wokeness, we are unfortunately back to 'Iraq War' Palmer, justifying the unjustifiable on pb.com because it is the Labour party doing it.
Go on, say it Nick, it was just bantz.
The longer she sticks around Congress the more she gets tarnished as just another politician.
Whether she will run or not I don't know. She may prefer to drive legislative change rather than try to become President.
To understand the mind of the Puritan I would say read Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress or Grace Abounding. There is an emotional side combined with a rigid self-discipline. Canterbury Tales are a good contrast to show Catholic "style" imo.
Puritanism was partly about a democratisation of priest-style spirituality away from the priesthood.
For modern politics, my chosen comparison would be the doctrinaire side of Militant. Dave Nellist and similar, with a strong link between belief and personal practice. For a community the most recent I would compare would be the Boer Voortrekkers, though I am sure there are many contemporary similars.
There are a couple of intriguing MPs who self-consciously lived simply rather than engage in expenses-farming a few years ago. They may be of a similar spirit.
As a titbit, as far as I am aware it was a Non-conformist Minister who first defended freedom of conscience for atheists, just after 1600.
Must be Saturday
He fundamentally altered the relationship between Parliament and Monarch, ruling from within Parliament. After the Restoration, it was the Commons who remained in control of government.
I'd consider her life as saved by the vaccine. I'm almost certain that she'd have died had she caught it without being vaccinated.
The issue was not whether being succeeded by his son was hypocritical - I think Cromwell is a fascinating and very conflicted person generally - but whether it might have worked if there'd been more time to settle things. The whole system had become more monarchical and at least sought to return to bicameralism even with official rejection of the crown, and that was within 5 years of replacing the Rump.
I'm someone surprised not to have stumbled across an alternative history series based on the premise he lived another 10 years and we remained a republic (in name under a Cromwell dynasty or otherwise).
Indeed neither of Cromwell's sons who survived into 'full' adulthood (one son died at 22) seem to have been particularly fit for Government.
Interesting that it was not until the Americans did it that western revolutionaries struggled to find a stable form of non-monarchical government. The English and French revolutionaries didn't manage it and the Dutch Republic quickly effectively became a House of Orange monarchy (William III's Dutch title was Stadhouder, technically an appointed position, and by province, although the head of the House of Orange tended to hold several provincial Stadhouderships simultaneously).
Some might speculate that Nick would have triumphed were he still in Parliament.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8969595/Britains-SEXIEST-MPs-revealed-Dishi-Rishi-Sunak-beats-Keir-Starmer-crowned-hottest-male.html
That's rather similar to the simple type of error that drove the 8% newspaper thing.
That's why things could then change again so quickly and reformulate the nature of that royal-parliament relationship (adding in the religious issues of course).
As you say, someone in their seventies with a pile of conditions could have been expected to end up in hospital or worse before the vaccines came along.
What about Ireton? Major figure in the army and Cromwell's son in law, could have been interesting but of course died long before then.
Gloves off straight away. My understanding of history is cardboard cut out. 😦
Puritan is Protestant - Protest movement against how the Catholic Church has lost its way, become corrupt. It’s defined by not wanting to be associated with the Catholic Church, the Civil War itself inspired by a drift in Churches towards Catholic worship.
And was the Protectorate not weak and wobbly? What was it actually for. Did it actually want to behead the King, was it for that? Would it have happened if the King had been less determined to die a martyr? We can see from the Putney Debates and the violence against radicals that followed, the protectorate had no interest in going radical. And through its diplomacy it was quite happy to build bridges with Catholic powerhouses across Europe. If it had lasted another 10 years, where was it actually going?
Now she is down thrashing in the shit-pit with the rest. No showering that away.
And I don't believe you really think we should leave that judgement up to mothers, because I have zero doubt some mothers could be found who don't think it is offensive, with whom you would disagree as is perfectly reasonable to do whether you or I are mothers or not.
"Take care before saying in private anything that you could not bear being said in public."
Though I think Shami's flapping is very political, and has a lot to do with rehabilitating herself by being outraged alongside others.
Female lawyers from urban coastal states with minority background (I’m assuming for AOC).
Do they not look at the demographics of the people with the same issue, nor ask them if they are taking any other medication?
The lady who did my vaccine (young junior doctor) asked a load of questions in the couple of minutes we were in the room together.
I once got laughed all the way out of school by not-quite-remembering Perkin Warbeck, and calling him Marvin Purbeck in class by mistake.