A plan! Mind you, who the feck is expecting the English to be nice?
The English aren’t the ones who want to end the Treaty of Union and all that came with it.
I think I can remember being told 7 years ago about quite a big thing that came with it, and guess what, it turned out that it didn't cos the English had changed their minds.
Don't worry everyone. The Global Financial Crisis was Labour trashing the finances National debt of 65% was crippling and we almost went bankrupt National debt of 100% and rising is affordable
Perhaps some consistency may help PB Tories going foreard
National debt wasn't the issue in 2010. The deficit was the issue in 2010.
Hypothetically it would be much better to a national debt of 110% with a structural 1% surplus than a national debt of 70% with a structural 10% deficit.
I can see through your smoke and mirrors.
No smokes and mirrors. The issue in 2010 was always (by those who know what they're talking about) the deficit.
Only an idiot who didn't understand economics ever said debt in 2010.
Surely the analogy used by Osborne about "paying off the nation's credit card" was exclusively refencing the debt.
Was he wrong, or are you rewriting the narrative?
No, debt was never going to be repaid. The credit card is the deficit.
Credit cards are good for current expenditure so long as you pay them off in full each month. That is having no deficit. Credit cards are ruinous if you can't repay leading to escalating debt, charges and ultimately penury.
He never said paying off the nation's mortgage, student loan and other long term debts. That's debt.
Yes, you have indeed changed the narrative.
No I've not. Closing the deficit is about paying off the current expenditure (credit card).
Its not paying off the mortage.
That you can't tell the difference between short-term unaffordable debts like credit card/payday loans/deficit and long-term structural ones like mortgages/student loans/national debt says more about your ignorance than it does me or Osborne.
That is cobblers! The 2008 and ever since, Conservative narrative has been the unaffordability of the DEBT. and the implicit growth of the debt through shortfalls in the deficit. Osborne's austerity narrative was to gradually repay the "credit card" debt down by reducing the deficit. The point was that not only did we need to pay the monthly minimum payment, but we needed room to pay a bit of the debt down each month too. It was a bollocks argument, but voters loved it and understood the maths behind it. Because Boris Big Balls has racked up an eye watering debt (and you would say it's not really a debt anyway we are just printing new money) you are now saying "the DEBT doesn't matter any more, we have no intention of paying it anyway, we just need to keep up with the minimum monthly payments".
If that isn't changing the narrative, I don't know what is.
That's complete and utter cobblers. We were never going to pay off the debt. By 2015 the UK debt was £1.5 trillion - Osborne never had any intention of running a budget surplus of £1.5 trillion to pay off the debt.
Osborne never sought to repay the debt, he sought to stop living off the credit card and to pay our current payments annually without a deficit, not trillions of surplus. And it wasn't a bollocks argument, it was entirely correct.
We don't need to pay the minimum monthly payments, we need to pay the full amount. Which is eliminating the deficit, eliminating the deficit is paying it off.
Your argument is tangential to mine!
Nobody mentioned the "mortgage". The term used by Conservatives as a political weapon to cleverly undermine Brown and Darling was "we have maxed out the nation's credit card and we need to pay it down". The narrative was simplistic nonsense, but the voters thought they understood what was meant, and bought into it.
You are wibbling on about about the difference between the debt and the deficit. My point wasn't about any economic argument, and you are right I am ignorant, because you've totally lost me now, it was Osborne's rather clever use of a political device, vis a vis, the nation's imaginary credit card.
We did need to pay down the nation's credit card.
The nation's credit card is the deficit.
You're the one trying to pretend the debt is the credit card. It was always the deficit.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
On the US kit left in Afghanistan, neither it nor the captured Afghan armed forces equipment is in itself significant from a power perspective. As an assistance to mobility and fighting a counter insurgency its quite handy becauses thats essentially what the Afghan military was equipped to do.
I always chuckle when I see the number of Mil Mi-8 helicopters shown in the recent footage of "US kit left behind"
From the footage on the news tonight from Kandahar it looks like they've got at least one Black Hawk flying.
A plan! Mind you, who the feck is expecting the English to be nice?
The English aren’t the ones who want to end the Treaty of Union and all that came with it.
I think I can remember being told 7 years ago about quite a big thing that came with it, and guess what, it turned out that it didn't cos the English had changed their minds.
It was Salmond who said (and Sturgeon still says) “the CTA will stay”. Then there’s the fatuous “it’s our pound too”. When are the SNP going to come up with a plan?
Don't worry everyone. The Global Financial Crisis was Labour trashing the finances National debt of 65% was crippling and we almost went bankrupt National debt of 100% and rising is affordable
Perhaps some consistency may help PB Tories going foreard
National debt wasn't the issue in 2010. The deficit was the issue in 2010.
Hypothetically it would be much better to a national debt of 110% with a structural 1% surplus than a national debt of 70% with a structural 10% deficit.
I can see through your smoke and mirrors.
No smokes and mirrors. The issue in 2010 was always (by those who know what they're talking about) the deficit.
Only an idiot who didn't understand economics ever said debt in 2010.
Surely the analogy used by Osborne about "paying off the nation's credit card" was exclusively refencing the debt.
Was he wrong, or are you rewriting the narrative?
No, debt was never going to be repaid. The credit card is the deficit.
Credit cards are good for current expenditure so long as you pay them off in full each month. That is having no deficit. Credit cards are ruinous if you can't repay leading to escalating debt, charges and ultimately penury.
He never said paying off the nation's mortgage, student loan and other long term debts. That's debt.
Yes, you have indeed changed the narrative.
No I've not. Closing the deficit is about paying off the current expenditure (credit card).
Its not paying off the mortage.
That you can't tell the difference between short-term unaffordable debts like credit card/payday loans/deficit and long-term structural ones like mortgages/student loans/national debt says more about your ignorance than it does me or Osborne.
I'd take a 40% mortgage and 3% overdraft over a 100% mortgage and 1% overdraft any day of the week - if we insist on these household finance comparisons.
A deficit isn't an overdraft.
A deficit is a failure to pay your bills by that percentage of your income - which adds up, unlike a an overdraft. I'd rather a 100% mortgage and an ability to pay my mortgage in full every month, than a smaller mortgage percentage but having a shortfall of 10% of my annual income in critical expenditure meaning I can't pay my mortgage and am going to default on it leading to foreclosure and homelessness.
If I had a 1% overdraft last year and a 1% overdraft this year, I still have a 1% overdraft. If I accrued debts of 10% of my income last year, and 10% of my annual income this year, then I've increased my debts now by 20% of my annual income.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
Indeed and the Democrats have a majority now and the Presidency, so they really ought to be nominating more Justices to even up the scales.
If the government tries to impose another lockdown then I think @contrarian will have been proved right. But I don’t expect it to happen, because all the government can do is shutdown the economy. Trying to stop household mixing would be a waste of time.
There’s also the issue of public finances. They’ll take care of themselves if the government doesn’t do so in an orderly fashion.
Zero chance of another lockdown. Zero chance of contrarian being proved right on the tiniest detail of anything to do with Covid. He wouldn't know what to do if he were to be right about something. The shock would probably kill him.
That's a hostage to fortune. If Covid mutated into the Omega variant with a 10% CFR, beats current vaccine protection but a small vaccine tweak gives 100% protection I'd definetely take evens that we would have a full fat lockdown.
But the fact that we did have another lockdown would show that contrarian was wrong given he didn't think pubs would be open right now.
My comment relates specifically to the current virus. Yes, what you describe would be a game changer, but I’m talking about the next six months or so.
Also, I think vaxports are wrong full stop, but I would be even more appalled if antivaxxers like @Dura_Ace are given a free pass on the basis of beliefs.
@Dura_Ace is a left-wing anarcho-libertarian misanthrope.
There's probably not much distance between him and Contrarian to be honest.
Literary style and sense of humour ? The gulf is vast.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand Trump and the GOP are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
Don't worry everyone. The Global Financial Crisis was Labour trashing the finances National debt of 65% was crippling and we almost went bankrupt National debt of 100% and rising is affordable
Perhaps some consistency may help PB Tories going foreard
National debt wasn't the issue in 2010. The deficit was the issue in 2010.
Hypothetically it would be much better to a national debt of 110% with a structural 1% surplus than a national debt of 70% with a structural 10% deficit.
I can see through your smoke and mirrors.
No smokes and mirrors. The issue in 2010 was always (by those who know what they're talking about) the deficit.
Only an idiot who didn't understand economics ever said debt in 2010.
Surely the analogy used by Osborne about "paying off the nation's credit card" was exclusively refencing the debt.
Was he wrong, or are you rewriting the narrative?
No, debt was never going to be repaid. The credit card is the deficit.
Credit cards are good for current expenditure so long as you pay them off in full each month. That is having no deficit. Credit cards are ruinous if you can't repay leading to escalating debt, charges and ultimately penury.
He never said paying off the nation's mortgage, student loan and other long term debts. That's debt.
Yes, you have indeed changed the narrative.
No I've not. Closing the deficit is about paying off the current expenditure (credit card).
Its not paying off the mortage.
That you can't tell the difference between short-term unaffordable debts like credit card/payday loans/deficit and long-term structural ones like mortgages/student loans/national debt says more about your ignorance than it does me or Osborne.
That is cobblers! The 2008 and ever since, Conservative narrative has been the unaffordability of the DEBT. and the implicit growth of the debt through shortfalls in the deficit. Osborne's austerity narrative was to gradually repay the "credit card" debt down by reducing the deficit. The point was that not only did we need to pay the monthly minimum payment, but we needed room to pay a bit of the debt down each month too. It was a bollocks argument, but voters loved it and understood the maths behind it. Because Boris Big Balls has racked up an eye watering debt (and you would say it's not really a debt anyway we are just printing new money) you are now saying "the DEBT doesn't matter any more, we have no intention of paying it anyway, we just need to keep up with the minimum monthly payments".
If that isn't changing the narrative, I don't know what is.
That's complete and utter cobblers. We were never going to pay off the debt. By 2015 the UK debt was £1.5 trillion - Osborne never had any intention of running a budget surplus of £1.5 trillion to pay off the debt.
Osborne never sought to repay the debt, he sought to stop living off the credit card and to pay our current payments annually without a deficit, not trillions of surplus. And it wasn't a bollocks argument, it was entirely correct.
We don't need to pay the minimum monthly payments, we need to pay the full amount. Which is eliminating the deficit, eliminating the deficit is paying it off.
Your argument is tangential to mine!
Nobody mentioned the "mortgage". The term used by Conservatives as a political weapon to cleverly undermine Brown and Darling was "we have maxed out the nation's credit card and we need to pay it down". The narrative was simplistic nonsense, but the voters thought they understood what was meant, and bought into it.
You are wibbling on about about the difference between the debt and the deficit. My point wasn't about any economic argument, and you are right I am ignorant, because you've totally lost me now, it was Osborne's rather clever use of a political device, vis a vis, the nation's imaginary credit card.
We did need to pay down the nation's credit card.
The nation's credit card is the deficit.
You're the one trying to pretend the debt is the credit card. It was always the deficit.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
As a PBer has commented, I forget who, that's as much use as an Epping councillor wanting to vote in a Holyrood election, as it is a very unusual woman who knows she is pregnant that soon.
It is still technically not an attempt to ban abortion outright contrary to Roe v Wade
Texas's law is more than a bit weaselly though, isn't it? Even if it's not a ban, it probably makes abortions virtually impossible; indeed that's the point.
For a start, a six week limit really doesn't give much time to make an enact a decision. Then, there's the whole "state officials can't enforce the act" thing. And assuming that the history here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Texas is accurate, it's hardly the case that the movement in recent decades has been pro-choice.
And then there's the bigger question. It's probably the case that these laws are popular. Texas splits 55:45 Rep:Dem; not quite the accursed ratio, but a bit close for comfort. But is simple majority support the right way to judge this sort of thing?
It’s a free license for vexatious litigants, and explicitly penalises defendants monetarily whether or not they prevail in court. As such it ought to be struck down under the due process clause, and any sane SC would do so.
Don't worry everyone. The Global Financial Crisis was Labour trashing the finances National debt of 65% was crippling and we almost went bankrupt National debt of 100% and rising is affordable
Perhaps some consistency may help PB Tories going foreard
National debt wasn't the issue in 2010. The deficit was the issue in 2010.
Hypothetically it would be much better to a national debt of 110% with a structural 1% surplus than a national debt of 70% with a structural 10% deficit.
I can see through your smoke and mirrors.
No smokes and mirrors. The issue in 2010 was always (by those who know what they're talking about) the deficit.
Only an idiot who didn't understand economics ever said debt in 2010.
Surely the analogy used by Osborne about "paying off the nation's credit card" was exclusively refencing the debt.
Was he wrong, or are you rewriting the narrative?
No, debt was never going to be repaid. The credit card is the deficit.
Credit cards are good for current expenditure so long as you pay them off in full each month. That is having no deficit. Credit cards are ruinous if you can't repay leading to escalating debt, charges and ultimately penury.
He never said paying off the nation's mortgage, student loan and other long term debts. That's debt.
Yes, you have indeed changed the narrative.
No I've not. Closing the deficit is about paying off the current expenditure (credit card).
Its not paying off the mortage.
That you can't tell the difference between short-term unaffordable debts like credit card/payday loans/deficit and long-term structural ones like mortgages/student loans/national debt says more about your ignorance than it does me or Osborne.
That is cobblers! The 2008 and ever since, Conservative narrative has been the unaffordability of the DEBT. and the implicit growth of the debt through shortfalls in the deficit. Osborne's austerity narrative was to gradually repay the "credit card" debt down by reducing the deficit. The point was that not only did we need to pay the monthly minimum payment, but we needed room to pay a bit of the debt down each month too. It was a bollocks argument, but voters loved it and understood the maths behind it. Because Boris Big Balls has racked up an eye watering debt (and you would say it's not really a debt anyway we are just printing new money) you are now saying "the DEBT doesn't matter any more, we have no intention of paying it anyway, we just need to keep up with the minimum monthly payments".
If that isn't changing the narrative, I don't know what is.
That's complete and utter cobblers. We were never going to pay off the debt. By 2015 the UK debt was £1.5 trillion - Osborne never had any intention of running a budget surplus of £1.5 trillion to pay off the debt.
Osborne never sought to repay the debt, he sought to stop living off the credit card and to pay our current payments annually without a deficit, not trillions of surplus. And it wasn't a bollocks argument, it was entirely correct.
We don't need to pay the minimum monthly payments, we need to pay the full amount. Which is eliminating the deficit, eliminating the deficit is paying it off.
Your argument is tangential to mine!
Nobody mentioned the "mortgage". The term used by Conservatives as a political weapon to cleverly undermine Brown and Darling was "we have maxed out the nation's credit card and we need to pay it down". The narrative was simplistic nonsense, but the voters thought they understood what was meant, and bought into it.
You are wibbling on about about the difference between the debt and the deficit. My point wasn't about any economic argument, and you are right I am ignorant, because you've totally lost me now, it was Osborne's rather clever use of a political device, vis a vis, the nation's imaginary credit card.
We did need to pay down the nation's credit card.
The nation's credit card is the deficit.
You're the one trying to pretend the debt is the credit card. It was always the deficit.
Ahhgg!! F****** ***l!!!
Name one speech of Osborne's where he refers to the credit card analogy where what he has to say makes sense by reading it as "paying off the debt".
It always makes sense by reading it as "closing the deficit" because that is literally what it means and it makes sense.
You're struggling with the concept because you misunderstood it. That's not the game being changed. You made a mistake, just accept that and move on.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
The problem is a minority of Democrats and slim margins. They don't really have a choice with Manchin in West Virginia, but they absolutely primary Sinema.
Also the Senate is an undemocratic monstrosity. So is the House. Dems should scrap the filibuster, add states and ban gerrymandering.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
h For the record, this didn't even make it to the Supreme Court and it wouldn't have mattered who was on it.
Alito - whose jurisdiction this is - simply declined to stay the law, and to bring it before the entire SC. It will undoubtedly still make it to the SC, but until then abortion has been criminalized in Texas.
It’s not Alito’s sole jurisdiction. A liberal majority would have issued a stay, Alito or not.
A plan! Mind you, who the feck is expecting the English to be nice?
I'm sure it will be incredibly bitter and hostile, and we'll see a lot of people switching their logic on the positions of a leaving side and the former union side from previous debates.
I dare say there'll be a lot of bitching and carping between the politicians if they go. The reality of separation for the great mass of the people may be rather different.
Taking the elites out of the equation, it's certainly a vastly bigger deal in Scotland than it is in England, because Scotland is so much smaller. Indeed, the fundamental inequality of the Union is probably the primary driver behind secession, when you drill down into it. Scotland is home to 8% of the UK's population; England to 84%. How can the Union be anything other than lop-sided, in some important respects at least?
The end of the Union, should it eventually come, will be an upheaval (and possibly a major one) for the Scottish population. Most of the English will either offer expressions of regret, breathe a quiet sigh of relief that it's over, or not care at all. Such is life.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
If and when another vacancy arises on the court however you can be sure the Democrats will ram a liberal through regardless, as PT correctly states that is politics
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
What's all this about states' rights? I thought that the whole point of Roe v Wade was that abortion rights were established as applicable, at the federal level and throughout the Union, and not subject to veto by the states? So, frankly, who cares whether or not Texas has a "pro-life" legislature? You'll be arguing that it has the right to call a referendum on independence next...
The Texan measures constitute an effective total ban. A large proportion of pregnant women aren't even aware of their status in time to take advantage of the six week limit, and in any event the law has declared open season for vexatious law suits by private citizens against abortion practitioners. They'll all be compelled to shut up shop.
We know where this will end: the way it always does, and the way it always did in the past. Almost no foetuses will be spared by this law, whilst a substantial number of women and girls will suffer and die unnecessarily. It'll just mean abortion tourism to neighbouring jurisdictions for the rich, and desperate acts with kebab skewers and other such implements for the poor. The legislation is so restrictive that it doesn't even contain exemptions for pregnancies started by sexual violence. It effectively defends men's right to procreate by rape.
It's all more than a little Taliban, just done in the name of a different deity.
Texan voters favour banning abortion after 6 weeks by 48% to 42% with 68% of Republican voters backing such a law and Republicans control the Texas state legislature as well as the governor's mansion. It is a socially conservative state and if the SC wants to respect its right to implement that social conservatism into law fine
If the government tries to impose another lockdown then I think @contrarian will have been proved right. But I don’t expect it to happen, because all the government can do is shutdown the economy. Trying to stop household mixing would be a waste of time.
There’s also the issue of public finances. They’ll take care of themselves if the government doesn’t do so in an orderly fashion.
Zero chance of another lockdown. Zero chance of contrarian being proved right on the tiniest detail of anything to do with Covid. He wouldn't know what to do if he were to be right about something. The shock would probably kill him.
That's a hostage to fortune. If Covid mutated into the Omega variant with a 10% CFR, beats current vaccine protection but a small vaccine tweak gives 100% protection I'd definetely take evens that we would have a full fat lockdown.
But the fact that we did have another lockdown would show that contrarian was wrong given he didn't think pubs would be open right now.
My comment relates specifically to the current virus. Yes, what you describe would be a game changer, but I’m talking about the next six months or so.
Also, I think vaxports are wrong full stop, but I would be even more appalled if antivaxxers like @Dura_Ace are given a free pass on the basis of beliefs.
@Dura_Ace is a left-wing anarcho-libertarian misanthrope.
There's probably not much distance between him and Contrarian to be honest.
Literary style and sense of humour ? The gulf is vast.
I doubt Contrarian has completed the entire 117 miles of the M25 in less than an hour either.
Don't worry everyone. The Global Financial Crisis was Labour trashing the finances National debt of 65% was crippling and we almost went bankrupt National debt of 100% and rising is affordable
Perhaps some consistency may help PB Tories going foreard
National debt wasn't the issue in 2010. The deficit was the issue in 2010.
Hypothetically it would be much better to a national debt of 110% with a structural 1% surplus than a national debt of 70% with a structural 10% deficit.
I can see through your smoke and mirrors.
No smokes and mirrors. The issue in 2010 was always (by those who know what they're talking about) the deficit.
Only an idiot who didn't understand economics ever said debt in 2010.
Surely the analogy used by Osborne about "paying off the nation's credit card" was exclusively refencing the debt.
Was he wrong, or are you rewriting the narrative?
No, debt was never going to be repaid. The credit card is the deficit.
Credit cards are good for current expenditure so long as you pay them off in full each month. That is having no deficit. Credit cards are ruinous if you can't repay leading to escalating debt, charges and ultimately penury.
He never said paying off the nation's mortgage, student loan and other long term debts. That's debt.
Yes, you have indeed changed the narrative.
No I've not. Closing the deficit is about paying off the current expenditure (credit card).
Its not paying off the mortage.
That you can't tell the difference between short-term unaffordable debts like credit card/payday loans/deficit and long-term structural ones like mortgages/student loans/national debt says more about your ignorance than it does me or Osborne.
That is cobblers! The 2008 and ever since, Conservative narrative has been the unaffordability of the DEBT. and the implicit growth of the debt through shortfalls in the deficit. Osborne's austerity narrative was to gradually repay the "credit card" debt down by reducing the deficit. The point was that not only did we need to pay the monthly minimum payment, but we needed room to pay a bit of the debt down each month too. It was a bollocks argument, but voters loved it and understood the maths behind it. Because Boris Big Balls has racked up an eye watering debt (and you would say it's not really a debt anyway we are just printing new money) you are now saying "the DEBT doesn't matter any more, we have no intention of paying it anyway, we just need to keep up with the minimum monthly payments".
If that isn't changing the narrative, I don't know what is.
That's complete and utter cobblers. We were never going to pay off the debt. By 2015 the UK debt was £1.5 trillion - Osborne never had any intention of running a budget surplus of £1.5 trillion to pay off the debt.
Osborne never sought to repay the debt, he sought to stop living off the credit card and to pay our current payments annually without a deficit, not trillions of surplus. And it wasn't a bollocks argument, it was entirely correct.
We don't need to pay the minimum monthly payments, we need to pay the full amount. Which is eliminating the deficit, eliminating the deficit is paying it off.
Your argument is tangential to mine!
Nobody mentioned the "mortgage". The term used by Conservatives as a political weapon to cleverly undermine Brown and Darling was "we have maxed out the nation's credit card and we need to pay it down". The narrative was simplistic nonsense, but the voters thought they understood what was meant, and bought into it.
You are wibbling on about about the difference between the debt and the deficit. My point wasn't about any economic argument, and you are right I am ignorant, because you've totally lost me now, it was Osborne's rather clever use of a political device, vis a vis, the nation's imaginary credit card.
We did need to pay down the nation's credit card.
The nation's credit card is the deficit.
You're the one trying to pretend the debt is the credit card. It was always the deficit.
Aahhgg!! F****** ***l!!!
The deficit is the extra spending each month. The debt is the credit card balance.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand Trump and the GOP are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
It appears to be a foundational belief for HYUFD that a majority in the legislature, irrespective of whether it represents a majority of the electorate, is sufficient justification for doing anything the rules can be pretzelled into.
He is a hard line majoritarian. I think you have to understand that.
Don't worry everyone. The Global Financial Crisis was Labour trashing the finances National debt of 65% was crippling and we almost went bankrupt National debt of 100% and rising is affordable
Perhaps some consistency may help PB Tories going foreard
National debt wasn't the issue in 2010. The deficit was the issue in 2010.
Hypothetically it would be much better to a national debt of 110% with a structural 1% surplus than a national debt of 70% with a structural 10% deficit.
I can see through your smoke and mirrors.
No smokes and mirrors. The issue in 2010 was always (by those who know what they're talking about) the deficit.
Only an idiot who didn't understand economics ever said debt in 2010.
Surely the analogy used by Osborne about "paying off the nation's credit card" was exclusively refencing the debt.
Was he wrong, or are you rewriting the narrative?
No, debt was never going to be repaid. The credit card is the deficit.
Credit cards are good for current expenditure so long as you pay them off in full each month. That is having no deficit. Credit cards are ruinous if you can't repay leading to escalating debt, charges and ultimately penury.
He never said paying off the nation's mortgage, student loan and other long term debts. That's debt.
Yes, you have indeed changed the narrative.
No I've not. Closing the deficit is about paying off the current expenditure (credit card).
Its not paying off the mortage.
That you can't tell the difference between short-term unaffordable debts like credit card/payday loans/deficit and long-term structural ones like mortgages/student loans/national debt says more about your ignorance than it does me or Osborne.
That is cobblers! The 2008 and ever since, Conservative narrative has been the unaffordability of the DEBT. and the implicit growth of the debt through shortfalls in the deficit. Osborne's austerity narrative was to gradually repay the "credit card" debt down by reducing the deficit. The point was that not only did we need to pay the monthly minimum payment, but we needed room to pay a bit of the debt down each month too. It was a bollocks argument, but voters loved it and understood the maths behind it. Because Boris Big Balls has racked up an eye watering debt (and you would say it's not really a debt anyway we are just printing new money) you are now saying "the DEBT doesn't matter any more, we have no intention of paying it anyway, we just need to keep up with the minimum monthly payments".
If that isn't changing the narrative, I don't know what is.
That's complete and utter cobblers. We were never going to pay off the debt. By 2015 the UK debt was £1.5 trillion - Osborne never had any intention of running a budget surplus of £1.5 trillion to pay off the debt.
Osborne never sought to repay the debt, he sought to stop living off the credit card and to pay our current payments annually without a deficit, not trillions of surplus. And it wasn't a bollocks argument, it was entirely correct.
We don't need to pay the minimum monthly payments, we need to pay the full amount. Which is eliminating the deficit, eliminating the deficit is paying it off.
Your argument is tangential to mine!
Nobody mentioned the "mortgage". The term used by Conservatives as a political weapon to cleverly undermine Brown and Darling was "we have maxed out the nation's credit card and we need to pay it down". The narrative was simplistic nonsense, but the voters thought they understood what was meant, and bought into it.
You are wibbling on about about the difference between the debt and the deficit. My point wasn't about any economic argument, and you are right I am ignorant, because you've totally lost me now, it was Osborne's rather clever use of a political device, vis a vis, the nation's imaginary credit card.
We did need to pay down the nation's credit card.
The nation's credit card is the deficit.
You're the one trying to pretend the debt is the credit card. It was always the deficit.
Aahhgg!! F****** ***l!!!
The deficit is the extra spending each month. The debt is the credit card balance.
Credit Cards should never be used for long-term debt.
Don't worry everyone. The Global Financial Crisis was Labour trashing the finances National debt of 65% was crippling and we almost went bankrupt National debt of 100% and rising is affordable
Perhaps some consistency may help PB Tories going foreard
National debt wasn't the issue in 2010. The deficit was the issue in 2010.
Hypothetically it would be much better to a national debt of 110% with a structural 1% surplus than a national debt of 70% with a structural 10% deficit.
I can see through your smoke and mirrors.
No smokes and mirrors. The issue in 2010 was always (by those who know what they're talking about) the deficit.
Only an idiot who didn't understand economics ever said debt in 2010.
Surely the analogy used by Osborne about "paying off the nation's credit card" was exclusively refencing the debt.
Was he wrong, or are you rewriting the narrative?
No, debt was never going to be repaid. The credit card is the deficit.
Credit cards are good for current expenditure so long as you pay them off in full each month. That is having no deficit. Credit cards are ruinous if you can't repay leading to escalating debt, charges and ultimately penury.
He never said paying off the nation's mortgage, student loan and other long term debts. That's debt.
Yes, you have indeed changed the narrative.
No I've not. Closing the deficit is about paying off the current expenditure (credit card).
Its not paying off the mortage.
That you can't tell the difference between short-term unaffordable debts like credit card/payday loans/deficit and long-term structural ones like mortgages/student loans/national debt says more about your ignorance than it does me or Osborne.
That is cobblers! The 2008 and ever since, Conservative narrative has been the unaffordability of the DEBT. and the implicit growth of the debt through shortfalls in the deficit. Osborne's austerity narrative was to gradually repay the "credit card" debt down by reducing the deficit. The point was that not only did we need to pay the monthly minimum payment, but we needed room to pay a bit of the debt down each month too. It was a bollocks argument, but voters loved it and understood the maths behind it. Because Boris Big Balls has racked up an eye watering debt (and you would say it's not really a debt anyway we are just printing new money) you are now saying "the DEBT doesn't matter any more, we have no intention of paying it anyway, we just need to keep up with the minimum monthly payments".
If that isn't changing the narrative, I don't know what is.
That's complete and utter cobblers. We were never going to pay off the debt. By 2015 the UK debt was £1.5 trillion - Osborne never had any intention of running a budget surplus of £1.5 trillion to pay off the debt.
Osborne never sought to repay the debt, he sought to stop living off the credit card and to pay our current payments annually without a deficit, not trillions of surplus. And it wasn't a bollocks argument, it was entirely correct.
We don't need to pay the minimum monthly payments, we need to pay the full amount. Which is eliminating the deficit, eliminating the deficit is paying it off.
Your argument is tangential to mine!
Nobody mentioned the "mortgage". The term used by Conservatives as a political weapon to cleverly undermine Brown and Darling was "we have maxed out the nation's credit card and we need to pay it down". The narrative was simplistic nonsense, but the voters thought they understood what was meant, and bought into it.
You are wibbling on about about the difference between the debt and the deficit. My point wasn't about any economic argument, and you are right I am ignorant, because you've totally lost me now, it was Osborne's rather clever use of a political device, vis a vis, the nation's imaginary credit card.
We did need to pay down the nation's credit card.
The nation's credit card is the deficit.
You're the one trying to pretend the debt is the credit card. It was always the deficit.
Aahhgg!! F****** ***l!!!
The deficit is the extra spending each month. The debt is the credit card balance.
That isn't what Philip is arguing. He was going on about some random mortgage.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
It wouldn’t be. The US constitution specifically allows it.
Though of course the Democrats do not have a majority in the Senate who would vote for it, as they have yet to transform into the entirely partisan caucus that was the Republican majority.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand Trump and the GOP are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
It appears to be a foundational belief for HYUFD that a majority in the legislature, irrespective of whether it represents a majority of the electorate, is sufficient justification for doing anything the rules can be pretzelled into.
He is a hard line majoritarian. I think you have to understand that.
If the government tries to impose another lockdown then I think @contrarian will have been proved right. But I don’t expect it to happen, because all the government can do is shutdown the economy. Trying to stop household mixing would be a waste of time.
There’s also the issue of public finances. They’ll take care of themselves if the government doesn’t do so in an orderly fashion.
Zero chance of another lockdown. Zero chance of contrarian being proved right on the tiniest detail of anything to do with Covid. He wouldn't know what to do if he were to be right about something. The shock would probably kill him.
That's a hostage to fortune. If Covid mutated into the Omega variant with a 10% CFR, beats current vaccine protection but a small vaccine tweak gives 100% protection I'd definetely take evens that we would have a full fat lockdown.
But the fact that we did have another lockdown would show that contrarian was wrong given he didn't think pubs would be open right now.
My comment relates specifically to the current virus. Yes, what you describe would be a game changer, but I’m talking about the next six months or so.
Also, I think vaxports are wrong full stop, but I would be even more appalled if antivaxxers like @Dura_Ace are given a free pass on the basis of beliefs.
@Dura_Ace is a left-wing anarcho-libertarian misanthrope.
There's probably not much distance between him and Contrarian to be honest.
Literary style and sense of humour ? The gulf is vast.
I doubt Contrarian has completed the entire 117 miles of the M25 in less than an hour either.
Don't worry everyone. The Global Financial Crisis was Labour trashing the finances National debt of 65% was crippling and we almost went bankrupt National debt of 100% and rising is affordable
Perhaps some consistency may help PB Tories going foreard
National debt wasn't the issue in 2010. The deficit was the issue in 2010.
Hypothetically it would be much better to a national debt of 110% with a structural 1% surplus than a national debt of 70% with a structural 10% deficit.
I can see through your smoke and mirrors.
No smokes and mirrors. The issue in 2010 was always (by those who know what they're talking about) the deficit.
Only an idiot who didn't understand economics ever said debt in 2010.
Surely the analogy used by Osborne about "paying off the nation's credit card" was exclusively refencing the debt.
Was he wrong, or are you rewriting the narrative?
No, debt was never going to be repaid. The credit card is the deficit.
Credit cards are good for current expenditure so long as you pay them off in full each month. That is having no deficit. Credit cards are ruinous if you can't repay leading to escalating debt, charges and ultimately penury.
He never said paying off the nation's mortgage, student loan and other long term debts. That's debt.
Yes, you have indeed changed the narrative.
No I've not. Closing the deficit is about paying off the current expenditure (credit card).
Its not paying off the mortage.
That you can't tell the difference between short-term unaffordable debts like credit card/payday loans/deficit and long-term structural ones like mortgages/student loans/national debt says more about your ignorance than it does me or Osborne.
That is cobblers! The 2008 and ever since, Conservative narrative has been the unaffordability of the DEBT. and the implicit growth of the debt through shortfalls in the deficit. Osborne's austerity narrative was to gradually repay the "credit card" debt down by reducing the deficit. The point was that not only did we need to pay the monthly minimum payment, but we needed room to pay a bit of the debt down each month too. It was a bollocks argument, but voters loved it and understood the maths behind it. Because Boris Big Balls has racked up an eye watering debt (and you would say it's not really a debt anyway we are just printing new money) you are now saying "the DEBT doesn't matter any more, we have no intention of paying it anyway, we just need to keep up with the minimum monthly payments".
If that isn't changing the narrative, I don't know what is.
That's complete and utter cobblers. We were never going to pay off the debt. By 2015 the UK debt was £1.5 trillion - Osborne never had any intention of running a budget surplus of £1.5 trillion to pay off the debt.
Osborne never sought to repay the debt, he sought to stop living off the credit card and to pay our current payments annually without a deficit, not trillions of surplus. And it wasn't a bollocks argument, it was entirely correct.
We don't need to pay the minimum monthly payments, we need to pay the full amount. Which is eliminating the deficit, eliminating the deficit is paying it off.
Your argument is tangential to mine!
Nobody mentioned the "mortgage". The term used by Conservatives as a political weapon to cleverly undermine Brown and Darling was "we have maxed out the nation's credit card and we need to pay it down". The narrative was simplistic nonsense, but the voters thought they understood what was meant, and bought into it.
You are wibbling on about about the difference between the debt and the deficit. My point wasn't about any economic argument, and you are right I am ignorant, because you've totally lost me now, it was Osborne's rather clever use of a political device, vis a vis, the nation's imaginary credit card.
We did need to pay down the nation's credit card.
The nation's credit card is the deficit.
You're the one trying to pretend the debt is the credit card. It was always the deficit.
Aahhgg!! F****** ***l!!!
The deficit is the extra spending each month. The debt is the credit card balance.
Credit Cards should never be used for long-term debt.
If the government tries to impose another lockdown then I think @contrarian will have been proved right. But I don’t expect it to happen, because all the government can do is shutdown the economy. Trying to stop household mixing would be a waste of time.
There’s also the issue of public finances. They’ll take care of themselves if the government doesn’t do so in an orderly fashion.
Zero chance of another lockdown. Zero chance of contrarian being proved right on the tiniest detail of anything to do with Covid. He wouldn't know what to do if he were to be right about something. The shock would probably kill him.
That's a hostage to fortune. If Covid mutated into the Omega variant with a 10% CFR, beats current vaccine protection but a small vaccine tweak gives 100% protection I'd definetely take evens that we would have a full fat lockdown.
But the fact that we did have another lockdown would show that contrarian was wrong given he didn't think pubs would be open right now.
My comment relates specifically to the current virus. Yes, what you describe would be a game changer, but I’m talking about the next six months or so.
Also, I think vaxports are wrong full stop, but I would be even more appalled if antivaxxers like @Dura_Ace are given a free pass on the basis of beliefs.
@Dura_Ace is a left-wing anarcho-libertarian misanthrope.
There's probably not much distance between him and Contrarian to be honest.
If the government tries to impose another lockdown then I think @contrarian will have been proved right. But I don’t expect it to happen, because all the government can do is shutdown the economy. Trying to stop household mixing would be a waste of time.
There’s also the issue of public finances. They’ll take care of themselves if the government doesn’t do so in an orderly fashion.
Zero chance of another lockdown. Zero chance of contrarian being proved right on the tiniest detail of anything to do with Covid. He wouldn't know what to do if he were to be right about something. The shock would probably kill him.
That's a hostage to fortune. If Covid mutated into the Omega variant with a 10% CFR, beats current vaccine protection but a small vaccine tweak gives 100% protection I'd definetely take evens that we would have a full fat lockdown.
But the fact that we did have another lockdown would show that contrarian was wrong given he didn't think pubs would be open right now.
My comment relates specifically to the current virus. Yes, what you describe would be a game changer, but I’m talking about the next six months or so.
Also, I think vaxports are wrong full stop, but I would be even more appalled if antivaxxers like @Dura_Ace are given a free pass on the basis of beliefs.
I also think there's almost zero chance of legally mandated vaxports in this country. It's rhetoric to encourage vaccination.
I just spent 30 minutes talking to an anti vaxxer in our municipal sauna. She won't get the vaccine, because she is terrified of vaccine passports. This seems to have led her in to the world of conspiracy theories; ie that the vaccine and vaccine passports are part of a new totalitarian world order.
The policy of threatening vaccine passports may have nudged some people in to getting the vaccine, but it has also done a lot of harm, as it is hardening opposition by a committed minority.
I’m marginally against domestic vaxports, not least because they will be almost impossible to administer in pubs etc, but one thing these anecdotes always make me wonder is how such people make a living. Sauna lady seems to lack the basic sense to manage her own life.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Don't worry everyone. The Global Financial Crisis was Labour trashing the finances National debt of 65% was crippling and we almost went bankrupt National debt of 100% and rising is affordable
Perhaps some consistency may help PB Tories going foreard
National debt wasn't the issue in 2010. The deficit was the issue in 2010.
Hypothetically it would be much better to a national debt of 110% with a structural 1% surplus than a national debt of 70% with a structural 10% deficit.
I can see through your smoke and mirrors.
No smokes and mirrors. The issue in 2010 was always (by those who know what they're talking about) the deficit.
Only an idiot who didn't understand economics ever said debt in 2010.
Surely the analogy used by Osborne about "paying off the nation's credit card" was exclusively refencing the debt.
Was he wrong, or are you rewriting the narrative?
No, debt was never going to be repaid. The credit card is the deficit.
Credit cards are good for current expenditure so long as you pay them off in full each month. That is having no deficit. Credit cards are ruinous if you can't repay leading to escalating debt, charges and ultimately penury.
He never said paying off the nation's mortgage, student loan and other long term debts. That's debt.
Yes, you have indeed changed the narrative.
No I've not. Closing the deficit is about paying off the current expenditure (credit card).
Its not paying off the mortage.
That you can't tell the difference between short-term unaffordable debts like credit card/payday loans/deficit and long-term structural ones like mortgages/student loans/national debt says more about your ignorance than it does me or Osborne.
That is cobblers! The 2008 and ever since, Conservative narrative has been the unaffordability of the DEBT. and the implicit growth of the debt through shortfalls in the deficit. Osborne's austerity narrative was to gradually repay the "credit card" debt down by reducing the deficit. The point was that not only did we need to pay the monthly minimum payment, but we needed room to pay a bit of the debt down each month too. It was a bollocks argument, but voters loved it and understood the maths behind it. Because Boris Big Balls has racked up an eye watering debt (and you would say it's not really a debt anyway we are just printing new money) you are now saying "the DEBT doesn't matter any more, we have no intention of paying it anyway, we just need to keep up with the minimum monthly payments".
If that isn't changing the narrative, I don't know what is.
That's complete and utter cobblers. We were never going to pay off the debt. By 2015 the UK debt was £1.5 trillion - Osborne never had any intention of running a budget surplus of £1.5 trillion to pay off the debt.
Osborne never sought to repay the debt, he sought to stop living off the credit card and to pay our current payments annually without a deficit, not trillions of surplus. And it wasn't a bollocks argument, it was entirely correct.
We don't need to pay the minimum monthly payments, we need to pay the full amount. Which is eliminating the deficit, eliminating the deficit is paying it off.
Your argument is tangential to mine!
Nobody mentioned the "mortgage". The term used by Conservatives as a political weapon to cleverly undermine Brown and Darling was "we have maxed out the nation's credit card and we need to pay it down". The narrative was simplistic nonsense, but the voters thought they understood what was meant, and bought into it.
You are wibbling on about about the difference between the debt and the deficit. My point wasn't about any economic argument, and you are right I am ignorant, because you've totally lost me now, it was Osborne's rather clever use of a political device, vis a vis, the nation's imaginary credit card.
We did need to pay down the nation's credit card.
The nation's credit card is the deficit.
You're the one trying to pretend the debt is the credit card. It was always the deficit.
Aahhgg!! F****** ***l!!!
The deficit is the extra spending each month. The debt is the credit card balance.
Credit Cards should never be used for long-term debt.
I agree with you Philip re the credit card analogy.
We need a stiff hard regime of tax increases to clear the credit card balance ie tax properly those who have gained from the COVID but will Rishi be allowed to do it?
As @SebastianEPayne story suggests there are options to go quickly. A temporary move to US seems most likely, while they build at huge cost and complication south of the border. Further improving the English view of post-independence Scotland...
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Trump won the EC in 2016 by more than any Republican since Bush Snr in 1988, he lost 3 key swing states in 2020 by less than 1% so that would be a bit complacent.
Plus if Democrats pack the court with liberal justices when they are in power, Republicans could pack the court with conservative judges when they are in power
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Trump won the EC in 2016 by more than any Republican since Bush Snr in 1988, he lost 3 key swing states in 2020 by less than 1% so that would be a bit complacent.
Plus if Democrats pack the court with liberal justices when they are in power, Republicans could pack the court with conservative judges when they are in power
That's what I said, and Aslan has put us both right, if only you had read his post.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
What's all this about states' rights? I thought that the whole point of Roe v Wade was that abortion rights were established as applicable, at the federal level and throughout the Union, and not subject to veto by the states? So, frankly, who cares whether or not Texas has a "pro-life" legislature? You'll be arguing that it has the right to call a referendum on independence next...
The Texan measures constitute an effective total ban. A large proportion of pregnant women aren't even aware of their status in time to take advantage of the six week limit, and in any event the law has declared open season for vexatious law suits by private citizens against abortion practitioners. They'll all be compelled to shut up shop.
We know where this will end: the way it always does, and the way it always did in the past. Almost no foetuses will be spared by this law, whilst a substantial number of women and girls will suffer and die unnecessarily. It'll just mean abortion tourism to neighbouring jurisdictions for the rich, and desperate acts with kebab skewers and other such implements for the poor. The legislation is so restrictive that it doesn't even contain exemptions for pregnancies started by sexual violence. It effectively defends men's right to procreate by rape.
It's all more than a little Taliban, just done in the name of a different deity.
Texan voters favour banning abortion after 6 weeks by 48% to 42% with 68% of Republican voters backing such a law and Republicans control the Texas state legislature as well as the governor's mansion. It is a socially conservative state and if the SC wants to respect its right to implement that social conservatism into law fine
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Trump won the EC in 2016 by more than any Republican since Bush Snr in 1988, he lost 3 key swing states in 2020 by less than 1% so that would be a bit complacent.
Plus if Democrats pack the court with liberal justices when they are in power, Republicans could pack the court with conservative judges when they are in power
That's what I said, and Aslan has put us both right, if only you had read his post.
He hasn't because he wrongly assumes there is no current pathway to a majority for the current GOP, Trump did not win the EC in 2016 because of gerrymandering or voter suppression.
The GOP also won landslides in the 2010 and 2014 midterms fair and square
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Unless they win more senate seats in 2022, that really isn’t a possibility. There are Democrats other than Manchin who have said they would not vote for it.
If the government tries to impose another lockdown then I think @contrarian will have been proved right. But I don’t expect it to happen, because all the government can do is shutdown the economy. Trying to stop household mixing would be a waste of time.
There’s also the issue of public finances. They’ll take care of themselves if the government doesn’t do so in an orderly fashion.
Zero chance of another lockdown. Zero chance of contrarian being proved right on the tiniest detail of anything to do with Covid. He wouldn't know what to do if he were to be right about something. The shock would probably kill him.
That's a hostage to fortune. If Covid mutated into the Omega variant with a 10% CFR, beats current vaccine protection but a small vaccine tweak gives 100% protection I'd definetely take evens that we would have a full fat lockdown.
But the fact that we did have another lockdown would show that contrarian was wrong given he didn't think pubs would be open right now.
My comment relates specifically to the current virus. Yes, what you describe would be a game changer, but I’m talking about the next six months or so.
Also, I think vaxports are wrong full stop, but I would be even more appalled if antivaxxers like @Dura_Ace are given a free pass on the basis of beliefs.
@Dura_Ace is a left-wing anarcho-libertarian misanthrope.
There's probably not much distance between him and Contrarian to be honest.
If the government tries to impose another lockdown then I think @contrarian will have been proved right. But I don’t expect it to happen, because all the government can do is shutdown the economy. Trying to stop household mixing would be a waste of time.
There’s also the issue of public finances. They’ll take care of themselves if the government doesn’t do so in an orderly fashion.
Zero chance of another lockdown. Zero chance of contrarian being proved right on the tiniest detail of anything to do with Covid. He wouldn't know what to do if he were to be right about something. The shock would probably kill him.
That's a hostage to fortune. If Covid mutated into the Omega variant with a 10% CFR, beats current vaccine protection but a small vaccine tweak gives 100% protection I'd definetely take evens that we would have a full fat lockdown.
But the fact that we did have another lockdown would show that contrarian was wrong given he didn't think pubs would be open right now.
My comment relates specifically to the current virus. Yes, what you describe would be a game changer, but I’m talking about the next six months or so.
Also, I think vaxports are wrong full stop, but I would be even more appalled if antivaxxers like @Dura_Ace are given a free pass on the basis of beliefs.
I also think there's almost zero chance of legally mandated vaxports in this country. It's rhetoric to encourage vaccination.
I just spent 30 minutes talking to an anti vaxxer in our municipal sauna. She won't get the vaccine, because she is terrified of vaccine passports. This seems to have led her in to the world of conspiracy theories; ie that the vaccine and vaccine passports are part of a new totalitarian world order.
The policy of threatening vaccine passports may have nudged some people in to getting the vaccine, but it has also done a lot of harm, as it is hardening opposition by a committed minority.
I’m marginally against domestic vaxports, not least because they will be almost impossible to administer in pubs etc, but one thing these anecdotes always make me wonder is how such people make a living. Sauna lady seems to lack the basic sense to manage her own life.
What makes them think that he has done anything in the last 4 months?
I said six month ago (ish) that Liz Truss was doing more for Britain and for foreign affairs in her role than the actual Foreign Secretary.
Nothing has changed that opinion.
Her department described as "Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V" by Whitehall mandarins for the copy and paste continuation deals being touted as new.
Ignoring the last four words of your post for a minute, isn't that literally her job for the time being? And wasn't part of the argument against Brexit that we wouldn't be able to secure equally attractive terms on our own merits, without the EU's greater buying/negotiating power? In which case she is doing a smashing job in rolling them forwards.
Sure! We needed to roll over the trade deals we left when we exited the EU. Nobody is saying that she shouldn't be doing this.
What I think they are referring to is her claim that these are new deals. Whilst they are a new bilateral agreement they are not new trading arrangements. And yet the claim is made repeatedly that they are.
You mentioned yesterday that you hoped to be selected for the lib dems and I did ask if you would campaign for the union
I would be interested in your reply
I don't understand the question. I am a member of a federalist party. I campaigned for them against the SNP government this year. We want to sustain the union by replacing the failed current union with a new written federal UK constitution that both encompasses national parliaments and as much local devolution (to Mayors for example) as people want.
Will I campaign to preserve the status quo? No. Do I want scottish independence? No. But we WILL end up independent unless the union is made fit for the future. Westminster choosing to expel NI from the free trade zone and telling Scotland their votes count for nothing imperils the whole shebang.
Seems a complex way of saying you agree with lib dem policy in support of the Union and you will campaign against independence
Its a simple way to point out that "the union" as you define it - the current constitutional settlement - is not something we support. So no, I will not be campaigning to preserve this union, but for the creation of a new one.
So will you refuse indyref2
No! It is the expressed will of the Scottish people! A record turnout in a Holyrood election and a record number of pro-independence MSPs elected in a clear majority.
To deny indyref2 is to deny democracy - and accelerate Scotland voting to leave.
Scottish LD policy is to oppose indyref2, if you are now a LD candidate you are obliged to support LD policy
Don't be silly. My party is wrong on this subject. And we have a healthy debate on policy issues every year at conference.
Its hardly like every candidate and elected representative at every level of every party wholeheartedly agrees with every policy that party has.
If you stand on a party ticket you should support that party's manifesto otherwise you are confusing voters
Do you agree with every aspect of the Conservative manifesto ?
He can hardly join the SNP being a unionist and all that.
I thought Rochdale favoured Sindy now?
I favour holding the referendum that is the clearly expressed will of the Scottish people. I do not favour Scotland gaining independence. It will happen though unless we face into the wreck of this union and try to fix it.
Ah ok. Yes the vote needs to happen. If it doesn't we'll see a (Westminster) 'PARLIAMENT vs the PEOPLE' atmosphere develop and we know how that ends. This is why - oddly - I think a vote now rather than later is better for Unionists than for Nats. They'd be favourites and another No to Sindy would take it off the table.
I concur. The Tank Commander and his neo-Unionist fellow travellers are shooting themselves in the feet.
This particular Unionist has no issue with Indyref2 and I agree with @kinabalu
However, the first problem the SNPs has is calling indyref2 before the majority of Scots are ready for it , and secondly it would be very brave without a majority in favour of independence
Additionally I really cannot understand Nicola agreeing a deal with the Greens as it was not necessary
How many times do we have to do this? 1. Scottish voters are ready for the referendum having voted for parties to deliver it 2. A comfortable majority of MSPs pledged to deliver it were elected in a record turnout
We cannot have a "votes cast count, seats elected don't count" argument without also accepting that the Labour / LibDem / Green / SNP group won the UK election.
As many times as you need to understand
The composition of seats in Westminster does Ś Want s The composition of seats in Holyrood does not determine whether there will be a referendum because it is not within their sphere of competence
It is purely a political argument that the UK government has been willing to ignore. A clear majority of votes cast would be more compelling to demonstrate that there is a demand from the voters of Scotland
I am not making an argument as to whether such a thing is a devolved matter or not (and it isn't) so most of your post is irrelevant.
The latter point is fascinating though. If members elected is not the correct measure and votes cast is, then Jeremy Corbyn would be prime minister as the Labour / LD / SNP / Green block received more votes than the Tory / Brexit / UKIP / DUP one
No, it’s a totally different thing.
The election of representatives is, for Westminster, on an FPTP basis
Indyref2 is about a clear desire to change the rules of the game. That needs polpukar support. There was a referendum recently so the 50 point something than SNP+Greens achieved in the Holyrood elections isn’t - in my view - sufficient but it’s a political tussle: there’s no right or wrong
I hear you. Don't change the rules of the game. So in Scotland the game is Holyrood and the rules are the electoral system. In May two parties ran on a manifesto pledge to hold a new referendum. A record turnout of voters elected a record number of MSPs to that pledge with a clear majority.
This is popular support. As mandated by the electoral system. Yet you want to now negate this result and propose a different bar set by opinion polls. This is somehow more democratic than actual elections.
You want to keep the union? So why are you working so hard to cement the case for independence?
Holyrood MSPs have no authority over the topic so the number is irrelevant.
The votes cast at the Holyrood elections is relevant. But was only marginally in favour of independence supporting parties.
So if MSPs are irrelevant why are votes cast for MSPs relevant?
Again. "MSPs are irrelevant" is not an argument to maintain union. It is the opposite.
MSPs are irrelevant in this specific situation because it is outside the scope of their powers.
Votes cast for MSPs are relevant because it is the most recent datapoint on popular support for a second indyref.
marginally over 50% of votes were cast for Indyref supporting parties but not an overwhelming level of support so easy to dismiss.
Ever heard the concept of a majority? You know, like the Brexit referendum?
Sure.
But this wasn’t a vote on the topic.
This is a political argument: “give us a second vote now because the people of Scotland are demanding it!”
50.1% is a lot less impressive than 70% or 60% support for a second referendum. So Boris can just say no.
FPT
- a majority of seats at Westminster - ditto Holyrood - a majority of the vote at the latter
All for an independence referendum (not even demanding actual independence)
The more you come out with stuff like that, the more you delegitimise the standing of your own party.
t
No - not delegitimising. Disagreeing with you. They are different.
Fundamentally the law is clear. It is a matter for the Westminster parliament. Not the Scottish MPs. Not Holyrood MSPs. All Westminster MPs. So two of your claimed metrics are irrelevant.
Essentially you need to convince the Westminster parliament / Uk government there is an overwhelming case for a second vote. This is a political debate. The best argument in my view is there is a clear majority of the Scottish population that is demanding a second vote now.
You can’t demonstrate that convincingly. The best data point you have is a slight majority of votes in the Holyrood election. But it’s not a large enough difference to overcome the “we already had a vote a few years ago argument”. May be in 2040, but not today
A plan! Mind you, who the feck is expecting the English to be nice?
I'm sure it will be incredibly bitter and hostile, and we'll see a lot of people switching their logic on the positions of a leaving side and the former union side from previous debates.
I dare say there'll be a lot of bitching and carping between the politicians if they go. The reality of separation for the great mass of the people may be rather different.
Taking the elites out of the equation, it's certainly a vastly bigger deal in Scotland than it is in England, because Scotland is so much smaller. Indeed, the fundamental inequality of the Union is probably the primary driver behind secession, when you drill down into it. Scotland is home to 8% of the UK's population; England to 84%. How can the Union be anything other than lop-sided, in some important respects at least?
The end of the Union, should it eventually come, will be an upheaval (and possibly a major one) for the Scottish population. Most of the English will either offer expressions of regret, breathe a quiet sigh of relief that it's over, or not care at all. Such is life.
A lot of people in Scotland will, when pressed, decide that they don't want to give up the opportunity of living and working in England. Nor do they want a hard border. None of these problems were given serious consideration in 2014, the reality of Brexit has completely changed that.
What makes them think that he has done anything in the last 4 months?
I said six month ago (ish) that Liz Truss was doing more for Britain and for foreign affairs in her role than the actual Foreign Secretary.
Nothing has changed that opinion.
Her department described as "Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V" by Whitehall mandarins for the copy and paste continuation deals being touted as new.
Ignoring the last four words of your post for a minute, isn't that literally her job for the time being? And wasn't part of the argument against Brexit that we wouldn't be able to secure equally attractive terms on our own merits, without the EU's greater buying/negotiating power? In which case she is doing a smashing job in rolling them forwards.
Sure! We needed to roll over the trade deals we left when we exited the EU. Nobody is saying that she shouldn't be doing this.
What I think they are referring to is her claim that these are new deals. Whilst they are a new bilateral agreement they are not new trading arrangements. And yet the claim is made repeatedly that they are.
You mentioned yesterday that you hoped to be selected for the lib dems and I did ask if you would campaign for the union
I would be interested in your reply
I don't understand the question. I am a member of a federalist party. I campaigned for them against the SNP government this year. We want to sustain the union by replacing the failed current union with a new written federal UK constitution that both encompasses national parliaments and as much local devolution (to Mayors for example) as people want.
Will I campaign to preserve the status quo? No. Do I want scottish independence? No. But we WILL end up independent unless the union is made fit for the future. Westminster choosing to expel NI from the free trade zone and telling Scotland their votes count for nothing imperils the whole shebang.
Seems a complex way of saying you agree with lib dem policy in support of the Union and you will campaign against independence
Its a simple way to point out that "the union" as you define it - the current constitutional settlement - is not something we support. So no, I will not be campaigning to preserve this union, but for the creation of a new one.
So will you refuse indyref2
No! It is the expressed will of the Scottish people! A record turnout in a Holyrood election and a record number of pro-independence MSPs elected in a clear majority.
To deny indyref2 is to deny democracy - and accelerate Scotland voting to leave.
Scottish LD policy is to oppose indyref2, if you are now a LD candidate you are obliged to support LD policy
Don't be silly. My party is wrong on this subject. And we have a healthy debate on policy issues every year at conference.
Its hardly like every candidate and elected representative at every level of every party wholeheartedly agrees with every policy that party has.
If you stand on a party ticket you should support that party's manifesto otherwise you are confusing voters
Do you agree with every aspect of the Conservative manifesto ?
He can hardly join the SNP being a unionist and all that.
I thought Rochdale favoured Sindy now?
I favour holding the referendum that is the clearly expressed will of the Scottish people. I do not favour Scotland gaining independence. It will happen though unless we face into the wreck of this union and try to fix it.
Ah ok. Yes the vote needs to happen. If it doesn't we'll see a (Westminster) 'PARLIAMENT vs the PEOPLE' atmosphere develop and we know how that ends. This is why - oddly - I think a vote now rather than later is better for Unionists than for Nats. They'd be favourites and another No to Sindy would take it off the table.
I concur. The Tank Commander and his neo-Unionist fellow travellers are shooting themselves in the feet.
This particular Unionist has no issue with Indyref2 and I agree with @kinabalu
However, the first problem the SNPs has is calling indyref2 before the majority of Scots are ready for it , and secondly it would be very brave without a majority in favour of independence
Additionally I really cannot understand Nicola agreeing a deal with the Greens as it was not necessary
How many times do we have to do this? 1. Scottish voters are ready for the referendum having voted for parties to deliver it 2. A comfortable majority of MSPs pledged to deliver it were elected in a record turnout
We cannot have a "votes cast count, seats elected don't count" argument without also accepting that the Labour / LibDem / Green / SNP group won the UK election.
As many times as you need to understand
The composition of seats in Westminster does not determine Switzerland’s foreign policy because it is not within their sphere of competence no matter how interesting it might be
The composition of seats in Holyrood does not determine whether there will be a referendum because it is not within their sphere of competence
It is purely a political argument that the UK government has been willing to ignore. A clear majority of votes cast would be more compelling to demonstrate that there is a demand from the voters of Scotland
I am not making an argument as to whether such a thing is a devolved matter or not (and it isn't) so most of your post is irrelevant.
The latter point is fascinating though. If members elected is not the correct measure and votes cast is, then Jeremy Corbyn would be prime minister as the Labour / LD / SNP / Green block received more votes than the Tory / Brexit / UKIP / DUP one
No, it’s a totally different thing.
The election of representatives is, for Westminster, on an FPTP basis
Indyref2 is about a clear desire to change the rules of the game. That needs polpukar support. There was a referendum recently so the 50 point something than SNP+Greens achieved in the Holyrood elections isn’t - in my view - sufficient but it’s a political tussle: there’s no right or wrong
I hear you. Don't change the rules of the game. So in Scotland the game is Holyrood and the rules are the electoral system. In May two parties ran on a manifesto pledge to hold a new referendum. A record turnout of voters elected a record number of MSPs to that pledge with a clear majority.
This is popular support. As mandated by the electoral system. Yet you want to now negate this result and propose a different bar set by opinion polls. This is somehow more democratic than actual elections.
You want to keep the union? So why are you working so hard to cement the case for independence?
Holyrood MSPs have no authority over the topic so the number is irrelevant.
The votes cast at the Holyrood elections is relevant. But was only marginally in favour of independence supporting parties.
So if MSPs are irrelevant why are votes cast for MSPs relevant?
Again. "MSPs are irrelevant" is not an argument to maintain union. It is the opposite.
MSPs are irrelevant in this specific situation because it is outside the scope of their powers.
Votes cast for MSPs are relevant because it is the most recent datapoint on popular support for a second indyref.
marginally over 50% of votes were cast for Indyref supporting parties but not an overwhelming level of support so easy to dismiss.
Ever heard the concept of a majority? You know, like the Brexit referendum?
Sure.
But this wasn’t a vote on the topic.
This is a political argument: “give us a second vote now because the people of Scotland are demanding it!”
50.1% is a lot less impressive than 70% or 60% support for a second referendum. So Boris can just say no.
FPT
- a majority of seats at Westminster - ditto Holyrood - a majority of the vote at the latter
All for an independence referendum (not even demanding actual independence)
The more you come out with stuff like that, the more you delegitimise the standing of your own party.
It does not matter if the SNP and Greens got 100% of the vote and seats at Holyrood, the future of the union is a matter reserved to Westminster and the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998.
This government has made clear it will not grant indyref2 before the next general election and polling shows most Scots do not want an independence referendum before the next general election and until 2026 anyway
If the SNP got 100% of the *vote* that would be a compelling argument for a referendum
"Nearly every malodorous myth about the Great War can be traced back to the literary septic tank that is Lloyd George’s War Memoirs."
An article in the Express that is interesting and amusing?!!??
End Times....
It describes Grey's school, Winchester, as "the thinking boy's Eton"!
I've got Lewis-Stempel's book, Six Weeks – the short and gallant life of the British officer in the First World War. It is mainly about the subalterns, iirc, the Lieutenant Georges in Blackadder terms.
Wykehamists tend to be less posh than Etonians but more intellectual
Didn't Rishi Sunak go there?
He did, he is less posh by background than Boris and Cameron but more intellectual.
Geoffrey Howe and Hugh Gaitskell were also prominent postwar Wykehamist politicians and both intellectuals too.
Winchester is also technically older than Eton, founded in 1382, Eton was only founded in 1440
Soil was specially brought from Winchester for the foundation of Eton.
I have never heard that. Eton was initially seeded, as you might say, with Wykehamists (the thickest ones, according to Wykehamists), and I think you may be taking a metaphor for that, literally?
No - it's literal. Pretty sure I first read it in Cook, Firth, Leach, or Moberly - I can't remember which. Probably Leach. It was one of the older sources, so not Sabben-Clare. Have seen it confirmed elsewhere too. Not metaphorical. Wolffe gives it an IMO unlikely to be correct prosaic twist in his biography of Henry VI. A couple of commentaries say it's not clear why the soil was brought. Nobody denies it was brought.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
And also I see HYUFD logic:
Texas takes control against central Federal laws = good.
Scotland wants to take control against central Westminster laws = bad.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Unless they win more senate seats in 2022, that really isn’t a possibility. There are Democrats other than Manchin who have said they would not vote for it.
Yes, because Democrats are crap at political strategy. Too many full on their own egos.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Trump won the EC in 2016 by more than any Republican since Bush Snr in 1988, he lost 3 key swing states in 2020 by less than 1% so that would be a bit complacent.
Plus if Democrats pack the court with liberal justices when they are in power, Republicans could pack the court with conservative judges when they are in power
Because the electoral college is an undemocratic monstrosity. And his election was funded by corporate donations. And there is heavy voter suppression in several states. If Puerto Rico and residential DC were made states, plus voter suppression banned plus corporate donations banned, he would be screwed.
A plan! Mind you, who the feck is expecting the English to be nice?
I'm sure it will be incredibly bitter and hostile, and we'll see a lot of people switching their logic on the positions of a leaving side and the former union side from previous debates.
I dare say there'll be a lot of bitching and carping between the politicians if they go. The reality of separation for the great mass of the people may be rather different.
Taking the elites out of the equation, it's certainly a vastly bigger deal in Scotland than it is in England, because Scotland is so much smaller. Indeed, the fundamental inequality of the Union is probably the primary driver behind secession, when you drill down into it. Scotland is home to 8% of the UK's population; England to 84%. How can the Union be anything other than lop-sided, in some important respects at least?
The end of the Union, should it eventually come, will be an upheaval (and possibly a major one) for the Scottish population. Most of the English will either offer expressions of regret, breathe a quiet sigh of relief that it's over, or not care at all. Such is life.
A lot of people in Scotland will, when pressed, decide that they don't want to give up the opportunity of living and working in England. Nor do they want a hard border. None of these problems were given serious consideration in 2014, the reality of Brexit has completely changed that.
Why would we have a hard border on the Tweed but not on the Foyle? Why would we have free movement of labour with Ireland but not Scotland?
These issues were indeed discussed: you could bracket them as the West Tyrone Question.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Trump won the EC in 2016 by more than any Republican since Bush Snr in 1988, he lost 3 key swing states in 2020 by less than 1% so that would be a bit complacent.
Plus if Democrats pack the court with liberal justices when they are in power, Republicans could pack the court with conservative judges when they are in power
Because the electoral college is an undemocratic monstrosity. And his election was funded by corporate donations. And there is heavy voter suppression in several states. If Puerto Rico and residential DC were made states, plus voter suppression banned plus corporate donations banned, he would be screwed.
Suppose the moon were made of cheese... It might change many things. Its also about as likely as all the factors in American politics you list changing.
Its also worth nothing that both sides are well into gerrymandering, voter suppression, pork barreling etc. If in the blink of an eye it could all be eliminated, I'm not sure I'd like to guess which side gets the net advantage.
And because, for better or worse, the system was explicitly designed so that the big states couldn't dominate the smaller ones, by the very design of the system its still going to be possible for presidents to win office whilst loosing the popular vote - that's not a bug but a feature.
A plan! Mind you, who the feck is expecting the English to be nice?
I'm sure it will be incredibly bitter and hostile, and we'll see a lot of people switching their logic on the positions of a leaving side and the former union side from previous debates.
I dare say there'll be a lot of bitching and carping between the politicians if they go. The reality of separation for the great mass of the people may be rather different.
Taking the elites out of the equation, it's certainly a vastly bigger deal in Scotland than it is in England, because Scotland is so much smaller. Indeed, the fundamental inequality of the Union is probably the primary driver behind secession, when you drill down into it. Scotland is home to 8% of the UK's population; England to 84%. How can the Union be anything other than lop-sided, in some important respects at least?
The end of the Union, should it eventually come, will be an upheaval (and possibly a major one) for the Scottish population. Most of the English will either offer expressions of regret, breathe a quiet sigh of relief that it's over, or not care at all. Such is life.
A lot of people in Scotland will, when pressed, decide that they don't want to give up the opportunity of living and working in England. Nor do they want a hard border. None of these problems were given serious consideration in 2014, the reality of Brexit has completely changed that.
Why would we have a hard border on the Tweed but not on the Foyle? Why would we have free movement of labour with Ireland but not Scotland?
If an independent Scotland were in the EU then such arrangements wouldn't be allowed. There'd be no GFA-style international treaty that would have to be respected alongside Euro treaties. An iScotland could seek to negotiate one but Germany Brussels would tell them to take a hike where the idea of applying to join the EU was concerned. The day after a referendum victory for indy, the SNP would of course wheel right round and admit for the first time in its existence that the most important country for Scotland to have harmonious and friendly relations with was England Rump Britain. But they'd look awfully like supplicants. Wait until you hear the English Rump British response. What, no Armalites?
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
As a PBer has commented, I forget who, that's as much use as an Epping councillor wanting to vote in a Holyrood election, as it is a very unusual woman who knows she is pregnant that soon.
It is still technically not an attempt to ban abortion outright contrary to Roe v Wade
Texas's law is more than a bit weaselly though, isn't it? Even if it's not a ban, it probably makes abortions virtually impossible; indeed that's the point.
For a start, a six week limit really doesn't give much time to make an enact a decision. Then, there's the whole "state officials can't enforce the act" thing. And assuming that the history here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Texas is accurate, it's hardly the case that the movement in recent decades has been pro-choice.
And then there's the bigger question. It's probably the case that these laws are popular. Texas splits 55:45 Rep:Dem; not quite the accursed ratio, but a bit close for comfort. But is simple majority support the right way to judge this sort of thing?
It’s a free license for vexatious litigants, and explicitly penalises defendants monetarily whether or not they prevail in court. As such it ought to be struck down under the due process clause, and any sane SC would do so.
Quite right.
The law is an utter monstrosity, which (if allowed to stand) would render the Supreme Court's decisions moot across the country.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Unless they win more senate seats in 2022, that really isn’t a possibility. There are Democrats other than Manchin who have said they would not vote for it.
Yes, because Democrats are crap at political strategy. Too many full on their own egos.
The Democrat in question is Joe Manchin. He won by 3% in a state where Biden lost to Trump by 39%. So I'd say he's good at political strategy.
Don't worry everyone. The Global Financial Crisis was Labour trashing the finances National debt of 65% was crippling and we almost went bankrupt National debt of 100% and rising is affordable
Perhaps some consistency may help PB Tories going foreard
National debt wasn't the issue in 2010. The deficit was the issue in 2010.
Hypothetically it would be much better to a national debt of 110% with a structural 1% surplus than a national debt of 70% with a structural 10% deficit.
I can see through your smoke and mirrors.
No smokes and mirrors. The issue in 2010 was always (by those who know what they're talking about) the deficit.
Only an idiot who didn't understand economics ever said debt in 2010.
Surely the analogy used by Osborne about "paying off the nation's credit card" was exclusively refencing the debt.
Was he wrong, or are you rewriting the narrative?
No, debt was never going to be repaid. The credit card is the deficit.
Credit cards are good for current expenditure so long as you pay them off in full each month. That is having no deficit. Credit cards are ruinous if you can't repay leading to escalating debt, charges and ultimately penury.
He never said paying off the nation's mortgage, student loan and other long term debts. That's debt.
Yes, you have indeed changed the narrative.
No I've not. Closing the deficit is about paying off the current expenditure (credit card).
Its not paying off the mortage.
That you can't tell the difference between short-term unaffordable debts like credit card/payday loans/deficit and long-term structural ones like mortgages/student loans/national debt says more about your ignorance than it does me or Osborne.
That is cobblers! The 2008 and ever since, Conservative narrative has been the unaffordability of the DEBT. and the implicit growth of the debt through shortfalls in the deficit. Osborne's austerity narrative was to gradually repay the "credit card" debt down by reducing the deficit. The point was that not only did we need to pay the monthly minimum payment, but we needed room to pay a bit of the debt down each month too. It was a bollocks argument, but voters loved it and understood the maths behind it. Because Boris Big Balls has racked up an eye watering debt (and you would say it's not really a debt anyway we are just printing new money) you are now saying "the DEBT doesn't matter any more, we have no intention of paying it anyway, we just need to keep up with the minimum monthly payments".
If that isn't changing the narrative, I don't know what is.
That's complete and utter cobblers. We were never going to pay off the debt. By 2015 the UK debt was £1.5 trillion - Osborne never had any intention of running a budget surplus of £1.5 trillion to pay off the debt.
Osborne never sought to repay the debt, he sought to stop living off the credit card and to pay our current payments annually without a deficit, not trillions of surplus. And it wasn't a bollocks argument, it was entirely correct.
We don't need to pay the minimum monthly payments, we need to pay the full amount. Which is eliminating the deficit, eliminating the deficit is paying it off.
Your argument is tangential to mine!
Nobody mentioned the "mortgage". The term used by Conservatives as a political weapon to cleverly undermine Brown and Darling was "we have maxed out the nation's credit card and we need to pay it down". The narrative was simplistic nonsense, but the voters thought they understood what was meant, and bought into it.
You are wibbling on about about the difference between the debt and the deficit. My point wasn't about any economic argument, and you are right I am ignorant, because you've totally lost me now, it was Osborne's rather clever use of a political device, vis a vis, the nation's imaginary credit card.
We did need to pay down the nation's credit card.
The nation's credit card is the deficit.
You're the one trying to pretend the debt is the credit card. It was always the deficit.
Aahhgg!! F****** ***l!!!
The deficit is the extra spending each month. The debt is the credit card balance.
Credit Cards should never be used for long-term debt.
What makes them think that he has done anything in the last 4 months?
I said six month ago (ish) that Liz Truss was doing more for Britain and for foreign affairs in her role than the actual Foreign Secretary.
Nothing has changed that opinion.
Her department described as "Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V" by Whitehall mandarins for the copy and paste continuation deals being touted as new.
Ignoring the last four words of your post for a minute, isn't that literally her job for the time being? And wasn't part of the argument against Brexit that we wouldn't be able to secure equally attractive terms on our own merits, without the EU's greater buying/negotiating power? In which case she is doing a smashing job in rolling them forwards.
Sure! We needed to roll over the trade deals we left when we exited the EU. Nobody is saying that she shouldn't be doing this.
What I think they are referring to is her claim that these are new deals. Whilst they are a new bilateral agreement they are not new trading arrangements. And yet the claim is made repeatedly that they are.
You mentioned yesterday that you hoped to be selected for the lib dems and I did ask if you would campaign for the union
I would be interested in your reply
I don't understand the question. I am a member of a federalist party. I campaigned for them against the SNP government this year. We want to sustain the union by replacing the failed current union with a new written federal UK constitution that both encompasses national parliaments and as much local devolution (to Mayors for example) as people want.
Will I campaign to preserve the status quo? No. Do I want scottish independence? No. But we WILL end up independent unless the union is made fit for the future. Westminster choosing to expel NI from the free trade zone and telling Scotland their votes count for nothing imperils the whole shebang.
Seems a complex way of saying you agree with lib dem policy in support of the Union and you will campaign against independence
Its a simple way to point out that "the union" as you define it - the current constitutional settlement - is not something we support. So no, I will not be campaigning to preserve this union, but for the creation of a new one.
So will you refuse indyref2
No! It is the expressed will of the Scottish people! A record turnout in a Holyrood election and a record number of pro-independence MSPs elected in a clear majority.
To deny indyref2 is to deny democracy - and accelerate Scotland voting to leave.
Scottish LD policy is to oppose indyref2, if you are now a LD candidate you are obliged to support LD policy
Don't be silly. My party is wrong on this subject. And we have a healthy debate on policy issues every year at conference.
Its hardly like every candidate and elected representative at every level of every party wholeheartedly agrees with every policy that party has.
If you stand on a party ticket you should support that party's manifesto otherwise you are confusing voters
Do you agree with every aspect of the Conservative manifesto ?
He can hardly join the SNP being a unionist and all that.
I thought Rochdale favoured Sindy now?
I favour holding the referendum that is the clearly expressed will of the Scottish people. I do not favour Scotland gaining independence. It will happen though unless we face into the wreck of this union and try to fix it.
Ah ok. Yes the vote needs to happen. If it doesn't we'll see a (Westminster) 'PARLIAMENT vs the PEOPLE' atmosphere develop and we know how that ends. This is why - oddly - I think a vote now rather than later is better for Unionists than for Nats. They'd be favourites and another No to Sindy would take it off the table.
I concur. The Tank Commander and his neo-Unionist fellow travellers are shooting themselves in the feet.
This particular Unionist has no issue with Indyref2 and I agree with @kinabalu
However, the first problem the SNPs has is calling indyref2 before the majority of Scots are ready for it , and secondly it would be very brave without a majority in favour of independence
Additionally I really cannot understand Nicola agreeing a deal with the Greens as it was not necessary
How many times do we have to do this? 1. Scottish voters are ready for the referendum having voted for parties to deliver it 2. A comfortable majority of MSPs pledged to deliver it were elected in a record turnout
We cannot have a "votes cast count, seats elected don't count" argument without also accepting that the Labour / LibDem / Green / SNP group won the UK election.
As many times as you need to understand
The composition of seats in Westminster does not determine Switzerland’s foreign policy because it is not within their sphere of competence no matter how interesting it might be
The composition of seats in Holyrood does not determine whether there will be a referendum because it is not within their sphere of competence
It is purely a political argument that the UK government has been willing to ignore. A clear majority of votes cast would be more compelling to demonstrate that there is a demand from the voters of Scotland
I am not making an argument as to whether such a thing is a devolved matter or not (and it isn't) so most of your post is irrelevant.
The latter point is fascinating though. If members elected is not the correct measure and votes cast is, then Jeremy Corbyn would be prime minister as the Labour / LD / SNP / Green block received more votes than the Tory / Brexit / UKIP / DUP one
No, it’s a totally different thing.
The election of representatives is, for Westminster, on an FPTP basis
Indyref2 is about a clear desire to change the rules of the game. That needs polpukar support. There was a referendum recently so the 50 point something than SNP+Greens achieved in the Holyrood elections isn’t - in my view - sufficient but it’s a political tussle: there’s no right or wrong
I hear you. Don't change the rules of the game. So in Scotland the game is Holyrood and the rules are the electoral system. In May two parties ran on a manifesto pledge to hold a new referendum. A record turnout of voters elected a record number of MSPs to that pledge with a clear majority.
This is popular support. As mandated by the electoral system. Yet you want to now negate this result and propose a different bar set by opinion polls. This is somehow more democratic than actual elections.
You want to keep the union? So why are you working so hard to cement the case for independence?
Holyrood MSPs have no authority over the topic so the number is irrelevant.
The votes cast at the Holyrood elections is relevant. But was only marginally in favour of independence supporting parties.
So if MSPs are irrelevant why are votes cast for MSPs relevant?
Again. "MSPs are irrelevant" is not an argument to maintain union. It is the opposite.
MSPs are irrelevant in this specific situation because it is outside the scope of their powers.
Votes cast for MSPs are relevant because it is the most recent datapoint on popular support for a second indyref.
marginally over 50% of votes were cast for Indyref supporting parties but not an overwhelming level of support so easy to dismiss.
Ever heard the concept of a majority? You know, like the Brexit referendum?
Sure.
But this wasn’t a vote on the topic.
This is a political argument: “give us a second vote now because the people of Scotland are demanding it!”
50.1% is a lot less impressive than 70% or 60% support for a second referendum. So Boris can just say no.
FPT
- a majority of seats at Westminster - ditto Holyrood - a majority of the vote at the latter
All for an independence referendum (not even demanding actual independence)
The more you come out with stuff like that, the more you delegitimise the standing of your own party.
It does not matter if the SNP and Greens got 100% of the vote and seats at Holyrood, the future of the union is a matter reserved to Westminster and the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998.
This government has made clear it will not grant indyref2 before the next general election and polling shows most Scots do not want an independence referendum before the next general election and until 2026 anyway
If the SNP got 100% of the *vote* that would be a compelling argument for a referendum
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Not only that but people will cast scorn on those of us who won't wear cloth masks anymore, as we're double-vaccinated and its bloody pointless and uncomfortable, as being "selfish" or other nonsense. Quite a discussion with that kind of attitude coming through from a few people earlier today.
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Not only that but people will cast scorn on those of us who won't wear cloth masks anymore, as we're double-vaccinated and its bloody pointless and uncomfortable, as being "selfish" or other nonsense. Quite a discussion with that kind of attitude coming through from a few people earlier today.
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
This research isn't about the FFP3 ones IIUC, they're getting decent results from normal cheap disposable surgical masks, which are comfortable to wear and available cheaply from many excellent manufacturers such as Unicharm. Kind of seems like a dick move not to wear them around other people since there's still a pandemic and they seem to be moderately helpful to yourself and other people at pretty much no cost to the wearer.
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Not only that but people will cast scorn on those of us who won't wear cloth masks anymore, as we're double-vaccinated and its bloody pointless and uncomfortable, as being "selfish" or other nonsense. Quite a discussion with that kind of attitude coming through from a few people earlier today.
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
This research isn't about the FFP3 ones IIUC, they're getting decent results from normal cheap disposable surgical masks, which are comfortable to wear and available cheaply from many excellent manufacturers such as Unicharm. Kind of seems like a dick move not to wear them around other people since there's still a pandemic and they seem to be moderately helpful to yourself and other people at pretty much no cost to the wearer.
Its a dick move to expect others to wear face masks when they're pretty useless and we're post-vaccinations.
Wear one if you want, but don't expect others to do so. Especially if you can't be arsed to wear an FFP3 one.
A plan! Mind you, who the feck is expecting the English to be nice?
What's a clean rapid break on defence? No NATO membership for Scotland and rope in some volunteers to help load all the kit from Faslane on to flat-bed lorries for dumping a short way south of Gretna? Clean and rapid, it's got to be? Iain Martin should think a bit before he hits "send".
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Not only that but people will cast scorn on those of us who won't wear cloth masks anymore, as we're double-vaccinated and its bloody pointless and uncomfortable, as being "selfish" or other nonsense. Quite a discussion with that kind of attitude coming through from a few people earlier today.
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
This research isn't about the FFP3 ones IIUC, they're getting decent results from normal cheap disposable surgical masks, which are comfortable to wear and available cheaply from many excellent manufacturers such as Unicharm. Kind of seems like a dick move not to wear them around other people since there's still a pandemic and they seem to be moderately helpful to yourself and other people at pretty much no cost to the wearer.
Its a dick move to expect others to wear face masks when they're pretty useless and we're post-vaccinations.
Wear one if you want, but don't expect others to do so. Especially if you can't be arsed to wear an FFP3 one.
I didn't mean to tread on a flogging-a-dead-horse culture war thing which I don't suppose will make any progress but I don't know where you're getting this "they're pretty useless" idea from.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Trump won the EC in 2016 by more than any Republican since Bush Snr in 1988, he lost 3 key swing states in 2020 by less than 1% so that would be a bit complacent.
Plus if Democrats pack the court with liberal justices when they are in power, Republicans could pack the court with conservative judges when they are in power
Because the electoral college is an undemocratic monstrosity. And his election was funded by corporate donations. And there is heavy voter suppression in several states. If Puerto Rico and residential DC were made states, plus voter suppression banned plus corporate donations banned, he would be screwed.
Suppose the moon were made of cheese... It might change many things. Its also about as likely as all the factors in American politics you list changing.
Its also worth nothing that both sides are well into gerrymandering, voter suppression, pork barreling etc. If in the blink of an eye it could all be eliminated, I'm not sure I'd like to guess which side gets the net advantage.
And because, for better or worse, the system was explicitly designed so that the big states couldn't dominate the smaller ones, by the very design of the system its still going to be possible for presidents to win office whilst loosing the popular vote - that's not a bug but a feature.
Actually, while the Democrats were (and probably still are) heavily involved in gerrymandering, I'm not sure they are so involved in voter suppression. I can't think of a single measure they've supported which is designed to prevent their opponents supporters votes from being recognised.
Personally, I think it's time the US split.
Simply, the gap is too big now. I would suggest that we keep it very simple - the Confederate and the United States should go their own ways. And each state can vote which one to go with. It should generate a map that looks not entirely unlike the Civil War map, with slaver states (plus probably the Dakotas, Montana, Missouri, Wyoming and Idaho) joining the Confederate United States, while the North East, the Great Lakes, and the West join the United States (along with Maryland, Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico).
I don't know which way Ohio, Georgia, Nevada or Arizona would go - they really could go either way.
I think both the Confederate States and the United States would be happier with this arrangement.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Trump won the EC in 2016 by more than any Republican since Bush Snr in 1988, he lost 3 key swing states in 2020 by less than 1% so that would be a bit complacent.
Plus if Democrats pack the court with liberal justices when they are in power, Republicans could pack the court with conservative judges when they are in power
Because the electoral college is an undemocratic monstrosity. And his election was funded by corporate donations. And there is heavy voter suppression in several states. If Puerto Rico and residential DC were made states, plus voter suppression banned plus corporate donations banned, he would be screwed.
Suppose the moon were made of cheese... It might change many things. Its also about as likely as all the factors in American politics you list changing.
Its also worth nothing that both sides are well into gerrymandering, voter suppression, pork barreling etc. If in the blink of an eye it could all be eliminated, I'm not sure I'd like to guess which side gets the net advantage.
And because, for better or worse, the system was explicitly designed so that the big states couldn't dominate the smaller ones, by the very design of the system its still going to be possible for presidents to win office whilst loosing the popular vote - that's not a bug but a feature.
Firstly, Democrats absolutely do not do voter suppression. Secondly, gerrymandering overwhelmingly boosts the GOP. Thirdly, original design is irrelevant. The system was originally designed to have slaves count as three fifths of a person. We should focus on what is good, not what was originally designed. Fourthly, the electoral college WASN'T designed for doing that anyway. It was designed to stop populist demagogues getting to power and it clearly fails in that purpose, given the last president.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Trump won the EC in 2016 by more than any Republican since Bush Snr in 1988, he lost 3 key swing states in 2020 by less than 1% so that would be a bit complacent.
Plus if Democrats pack the court with liberal justices when they are in power, Republicans could pack the court with conservative judges when they are in power
That's what I said, and Aslan has put us both right, if only you had read his post.
He hasn't because he wrongly assumes there is no current pathway to a majority for the current GOP, Trump did not win the EC in 2016 because of gerrymandering or voter suppression.
The GOP also won landslides in the 2010 and 2014 midterms fair and square
Of course, since 1992, the Republicans have only won the popular Presidential vote... what... once?
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Not only that but people will cast scorn on those of us who won't wear cloth masks anymore, as we're double-vaccinated and its bloody pointless and uncomfortable, as being "selfish" or other nonsense. Quite a discussion with that kind of attitude coming through from a few people earlier today.
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
This research isn't about the FFP3 ones IIUC, they're getting decent results from normal cheap disposable surgical masks, which are comfortable to wear and available cheaply from many excellent manufacturers such as Unicharm. Kind of seems like a dick move not to wear them around other people since there's still a pandemic and they seem to be moderately helpful to yourself and other people at pretty much no cost to the wearer.
Its a dick move to expect others to wear face masks when they're pretty useless and we're post-vaccinations.
Wear one if you want, but don't expect others to do so. Especially if you can't be arsed to wear an FFP3 one.
I didn't mean to tread on a flogging-a-dead-horse culture war thing which I don't suppose will make any progress but I don't know where you're getting this "they're pretty useless" idea from.
How about that link you just shared for starters?
Vaccinations work. FFP3 masks work. Cloth masks on strangers is a comfort blanket.
And this isn't a culture war thing. Cloth masks made sense pre vaccines and when FFP3 masks weren't available. But that time has passed.
But if others want to wear cloth masks that's on them, I don't care. Just don't expect me to.
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Not only that but people will cast scorn on those of us who won't wear cloth masks anymore, as we're double-vaccinated and its bloody pointless and uncomfortable, as being "selfish" or other nonsense. Quite a discussion with that kind of attitude coming through from a few people earlier today.
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
This research isn't about the FFP3 ones IIUC, they're getting decent results from normal cheap disposable surgical masks, which are comfortable to wear and available cheaply from many excellent manufacturers such as Unicharm. Kind of seems like a dick move not to wear them around other people since there's still a pandemic and they seem to be moderately helpful to yourself and other people at pretty much no cost to the wearer.
Its a dick move to expect others to wear face masks when they're pretty useless and we're post-vaccinations.
Wear one if you want, but don't expect others to do so. Especially if you can't be arsed to wear an FFP3 one.
I didn't mean to tread on a flogging-a-dead-horse culture war thing which I don't suppose will make any progress but I don't know where you're getting this "they're pretty useless" idea from.
How about that link you just shared for starters?
Vaccinations work. FFP3 masks work. Cloth masks on strangers is a comfort blanket.
Cloth masks do work in their primary goal: they reduce the chance that someone with Covid will spread it, because they lower the velocity at which water droplets leave the mouth and nasal passages, and they ensure than some proportion of them get trapped.
Now, are they as good as paper or N95 or whavever masks? Nope. But they are still extremely effective at stopping people with Covid spreading it to others.
In Japan even before Covid, it was considered polite for people with coughs or colds to wear masks on public transport. That simple precaution meant that (even pre vaccines), Covid never really got the hold in Japan it got elsewhere.
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Not only that but people will cast scorn on those of us who won't wear cloth masks anymore, as we're double-vaccinated and its bloody pointless and uncomfortable, as being "selfish" or other nonsense. Quite a discussion with that kind of attitude coming through from a few people earlier today.
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
This research isn't about the FFP3 ones IIUC, they're getting decent results from normal cheap disposable surgical masks, which are comfortable to wear and available cheaply from many excellent manufacturers such as Unicharm. Kind of seems like a dick move not to wear them around other people since there's still a pandemic and they seem to be moderately helpful to yourself and other people at pretty much no cost to the wearer.
Its a dick move to expect others to wear face masks when they're pretty useless and we're post-vaccinations.
Wear one if you want, but don't expect others to do so. Especially if you can't be arsed to wear an FFP3 one.
I didn't mean to tread on a flogging-a-dead-horse culture war thing which I don't suppose will make any progress but I don't know where you're getting this "they're pretty useless" idea from.
How about that link you just shared for starters?
Vaccinations work. FFP3 masks work. Cloth masks on strangers is a comfort blanket.
I may be getting massively confused about the meaning of "FFP3" or something but I don't think the link I shared is about FFP3 masks? IIUC they're using regular surgical ones of the type you can buy in the convenience store from popular brands such as Unicharm, and finding *they* seem to work while the cloth ones don't don't do much.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Trump won the EC in 2016 by more than any Republican since Bush Snr in 1988, he lost 3 key swing states in 2020 by less than 1% so that would be a bit complacent.
Plus if Democrats pack the court with liberal justices when they are in power, Republicans could pack the court with conservative judges when they are in power
Because the electoral college is an undemocratic monstrosity. And his election was funded by corporate donations. And there is heavy voter suppression in several states. If Puerto Rico and residential DC were made states, plus voter suppression banned plus corporate donations banned, he would be screwed.
Suppose the moon were made of cheese... It might change many things. Its also about as likely as all the factors in American politics you list changing.
Its also worth nothing that both sides are well into gerrymandering, voter suppression, pork barreling etc. If in the blink of an eye it could all be eliminated, I'm not sure I'd like to guess which side gets the net advantage.
And because, for better or worse, the system was explicitly designed so that the big states couldn't dominate the smaller ones, by the very design of the system its still going to be possible for presidents to win office whilst loosing the popular vote - that's not a bug but a feature.
Actually, while the Democrats were (and probably still are) heavily involved in gerrymandering, I'm not sure they are so involved in voter suppression. I can't think of a single measure they've supported which is designed to prevent their opponents supporters votes from being recognised.
Personally, I think it's time the US split.
Simply, the gap is too big now. I would suggest that we keep it very simple - the Confederate and the United States should go their own ways. And each state can vote which one to go with. It should generate a map that looks not entirely unlike the Civil War map, with slaver states (plus probably the Dakotas, Montana, Missouri, Wyoming and Idaho) joining the Confederate United States, while the North East, the Great Lakes, and the West join the United States (along with Maryland, Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico).
I don't know which way Ohio, Georgia, Nevada or Arizona would go - they really could go either way.
I think both the Confederate States and the United States would be happier with this arrangement.
Screw that. Places like Virginia and North Carolina don't want to be in the Neo-Confederacy. And it would be truly screwing over African Americans.
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Not only that but people will cast scorn on those of us who won't wear cloth masks anymore, as we're double-vaccinated and its bloody pointless and uncomfortable, as being "selfish" or other nonsense. Quite a discussion with that kind of attitude coming through from a few people earlier today.
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
This research isn't about the FFP3 ones IIUC, they're getting decent results from normal cheap disposable surgical masks, which are comfortable to wear and available cheaply from many excellent manufacturers such as Unicharm. Kind of seems like a dick move not to wear them around other people since there's still a pandemic and they seem to be moderately helpful to yourself and other people at pretty much no cost to the wearer.
Its a dick move to expect others to wear face masks when they're pretty useless and we're post-vaccinations.
Wear one if you want, but don't expect others to do so. Especially if you can't be arsed to wear an FFP3 one.
I didn't mean to tread on a flogging-a-dead-horse culture war thing which I don't suppose will make any progress but I don't know where you're getting this "they're pretty useless" idea from.
How about that link you just shared for starters?
Vaccinations work. FFP3 masks work. Cloth masks on strangers is a comfort blanket.
I may be getting massively confused about the meaning of "FFP3" or something but I don't think the link I shared is about FFP3 masks? IIUC they're using regular surgical ones of the type you can buy in the convenience store from popular brands such as Unicharm, and finding *they* seem to work while the cloth ones don't don't do much.
So let me get this straight, you're trying to dispute my contention that cloth masks don't do much while clinical masks do by saying I'm wrong and that actually cloth masks don't do much while surgical masks do.
Hmmm not seeing the argument to put the cloth masks back on from that.
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Not only that but people will cast scorn on those of us who won't wear cloth masks anymore, as we're double-vaccinated and its bloody pointless and uncomfortable, as being "selfish" or other nonsense. Quite a discussion with that kind of attitude coming through from a few people earlier today.
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
This research isn't about the FFP3 ones IIUC, they're getting decent results from normal cheap disposable surgical masks, which are comfortable to wear and available cheaply from many excellent manufacturers such as Unicharm. Kind of seems like a dick move not to wear them around other people since there's still a pandemic and they seem to be moderately helpful to yourself and other people at pretty much no cost to the wearer.
Its a dick move to expect others to wear face masks when they're pretty useless and we're post-vaccinations.
Wear one if you want, but don't expect others to do so. Especially if you can't be arsed to wear an FFP3 one.
I didn't mean to tread on a flogging-a-dead-horse culture war thing which I don't suppose will make any progress but I don't know where you're getting this "they're pretty useless" idea from.
How about that link you just shared for starters?
Vaccinations work. FFP3 masks work. Cloth masks on strangers is a comfort blanket.
Cloth masks do work in their primary goal: they reduce the chance that someone with Covid will spread it, because they lower the velocity at which water droplets leave the mouth and nasal passages, and they ensure than some proportion of them get trapped.
Now, are they as good as paper or N95 or whavever masks? Nope. But they are still extremely effective at stopping people with Covid spreading it to others.
In Japan even before Covid, it was considered polite for people with coughs or colds to wear masks on public transport. That simple precaution meant that (even pre vaccines), Covid never really got the hold in Japan it got elsewhere.
Yes I get the theory which made sense pre vaccines and when decent masks weren't available.
But where's the evidence they're "very good" post vaccines please? Not just in theory but in the real world where people don't wear them properly, keep reusing the same one and/or wear them around their neck.
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Not only that but people will cast scorn on those of us who won't wear cloth masks anymore, as we're double-vaccinated and its bloody pointless and uncomfortable, as being "selfish" or other nonsense. Quite a discussion with that kind of attitude coming through from a few people earlier today.
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
This research isn't about the FFP3 ones IIUC, they're getting decent results from normal cheap disposable surgical masks, which are comfortable to wear and available cheaply from many excellent manufacturers such as Unicharm. Kind of seems like a dick move not to wear them around other people since there's still a pandemic and they seem to be moderately helpful to yourself and other people at pretty much no cost to the wearer.
Its a dick move to expect others to wear face masks when they're pretty useless and we're post-vaccinations.
Wear one if you want, but don't expect others to do so. Especially if you can't be arsed to wear an FFP3 one.
I didn't mean to tread on a flogging-a-dead-horse culture war thing which I don't suppose will make any progress but I don't know where you're getting this "they're pretty useless" idea from.
How about that link you just shared for starters?
Vaccinations work. FFP3 masks work. Cloth masks on strangers is a comfort blanket.
I may be getting massively confused about the meaning of "FFP3" or something but I don't think the link I shared is about FFP3 masks? IIUC they're using regular surgical ones of the type you can buy in the convenience store from popular brands such as Unicharm, and finding *they* seem to work while the cloth ones don't don't do much.
So let me get this straight, you're trying to dispute my contention that cloth masks don't do much while clinical masks do by saying I'm wrong and that actually cloth masks don't do much while surgical masks do.
Hmmm not seeing the argument to put the cloth masks back on from that.
No, where I came in was specifically saying that the cloth ones didn't seem to do much whereas the cheap disposable surgical masks that lots of people are wearing (not fancy FFP3 type things that hardly anyone is wearing) do seem to work.
I was then lamenting that having got on a track of saying "cloth masks are fine" for reasons that made sense at the time, governments seem to have been unable to adjust when the conditions changed.
Unfortunately the other element to this is that if you say the word "mask" someone immediately jumps into a predefined culture war track where you have to be saying either the progressive thing (cloth and surgical are both fine) or the reactionary thing (only the high-filtration things are meaningful) and if you say anything else people can't even parse your sentences.
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Not only that but people will cast scorn on those of us who won't wear cloth masks anymore, as we're double-vaccinated and its bloody pointless and uncomfortable, as being "selfish" or other nonsense. Quite a discussion with that kind of attitude coming through from a few people earlier today.
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
This research isn't about the FFP3 ones IIUC, they're getting decent results from normal cheap disposable surgical masks, which are comfortable to wear and available cheaply from many excellent manufacturers such as Unicharm. Kind of seems like a dick move not to wear them around other people since there's still a pandemic and they seem to be moderately helpful to yourself and other people at pretty much no cost to the wearer.
Its a dick move to expect others to wear face masks when they're pretty useless and we're post-vaccinations.
Wear one if you want, but don't expect others to do so. Especially if you can't be arsed to wear an FFP3 one.
I didn't mean to tread on a flogging-a-dead-horse culture war thing which I don't suppose will make any progress but I don't know where you're getting this "they're pretty useless" idea from.
How about that link you just shared for starters?
Vaccinations work. FFP3 masks work. Cloth masks on strangers is a comfort blanket.
I may be getting massively confused about the meaning of "FFP3" or something but I don't think the link I shared is about FFP3 masks? IIUC they're using regular surgical ones of the type you can buy in the convenience store from popular brands such as Unicharm, and finding *they* seem to work while the cloth ones don't don't do much.
So let me get this straight, you're trying to dispute my contention that cloth masks don't do much while clinical masks do by saying I'm wrong and that actually cloth masks don't do much while surgical masks do.
Hmmm not seeing the argument to put the cloth masks back on from that.
No, where I came in was specifically saying that the cloth ones didn't seem to do much whereas the cheap disposable surgical masks that lots of people are wearing (not fancy FFP3 type things that hardly anyone is wearing) do seem to work.
I was then lamenting that having got on a track of saying "cloth masks are fine" for reasons that made sense at the time, governments seem to have been unable to adjust when the conditions changed.
Unfortunately the other element to this is that if you say the word "mask" someone immediately jumps into a predefined culture war track where you have to be saying either the progressive thing (cloth and surgical are both fine) or the reactionary thing (only the high-filtration things are meaningful) and if you say anything else people can't even parse your sentences.
I agreed with you the cloth ones don't work well. But you didn't accept that for some reason. 🤷♂️
If people want to wear good masks that work then that's their choice. But cloth masks are not any good - and if you're concerned then paper masks are not the best. Even if you have shares in them, surely if we're going to get people from fairly useless cloth masks we should be suggesting the best quality ones?
"A Cure for Government Incompetence Britain’s successful vaccine program had clear goals, untainted by ideological aims. Theodore Dalrymple
Almost everyone I know in Britain has been surprised—for once, pleasantly so—by the success of the country’s vaccination program against Covid-19. We are so accustomed to the abject failure of our public administration in almost everything, from its political dithering, followed by self-evidently wrong (and costly) decisions, to its bureaucratic incompetence and moral corruption, that when something goes right, we stand amazed. What, indeed, can explain why something should at last have gone right?
The vaccination campaign has been effectively—even brilliantly—organized and coordinated. The government deserves credit for having invested money in research and taken the chance of buying vaccines before proof existed that they worked. This was a serious political risk: if the vaccines had not worked, which opponents of the government must almost have hoped, it would have fashioned a heavy stick with which to beat it. In Britain, we are accustomed to government “investing” billions of pounds in schemes that fail for everyone except the individuals and corporations that manage to extract many millions, or tens of millions, from them."
What makes them think that he has done anything in the last 4 months?
I said six month ago (ish) that Liz Truss was doing more for Britain and for foreign affairs in her role than the actual Foreign Secretary.
Nothing has changed that opinion.
Her department described as "Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V" by Whitehall mandarins for the copy and paste continuation deals being touted as new.
Ignoring the last four words of your post for a minute, isn't that literally her job for the time being? And wasn't part of the argument against Brexit that we wouldn't be able to secure equally attractive terms on our own merits, without the EU's greater buying/negotiating power? In which case she is doing a smashing job in rolling them forwards.
Sure! We needed to roll over the trade deals we left when we exited the EU. Nobody is saying that she shouldn't be doing this.
What I think they are referring to is her claim that these are new deals. Whilst they are a new bilateral agreement they are not new trading arrangements. And yet the claim is made repeatedly that they are.
You mentioned yesterday that you hoped to be selected for the lib dems and I did ask if you would campaign for the union
I would be interested in your reply
I don't understand the question. I am a member of a federalist party. I campaigned for them against the SNP government this year. We want to sustain the union by replacing the failed current union with a new written federal UK constitution that both encompasses national parliaments and as much local devolution (to Mayors for example) as people want.
Will I campaign to preserve the status quo? No. Do I want scottish independence? No. But we WILL end up independent unless the union is made fit for the future. Westminster choosing to expel NI from the free trade zone and telling Scotland their votes count for nothing imperils the whole shebang.
Seems a complex way of saying you agree with lib dem policy in support of the Union and you will campaign against independence
Its a simple way to point out that "the union" as you define it - the current constitutional settlement - is not something we support. So no, I will not be campaigning to preserve this union, but for the creation of a new one.
So will you refuse indyref2
No! It is the expressed will of the Scottish people! A record turnout in a Holyrood election and a record number of pro-independence MSPs elected in a clear majority.
To deny indyref2 is to deny democracy - and accelerate Scotland voting to leave.
Scottish LD policy is to oppose indyref2, if you are now a LD candidate you are obliged to support LD policy
Don't be silly. My party is wrong on this subject. And we have a healthy debate on policy issues every year at conference.
Its hardly like every candidate and elected representative at every level of every party wholeheartedly agrees with every policy that party has.
If you stand on a party ticket you should support that party's manifesto otherwise you are confusing voters
Do you agree with every aspect of the Conservative manifesto ?
He can hardly join the SNP being a unionist and all that.
I thought Rochdale favoured Sindy now?
I favour holding the referendum that is the clearly expressed will of the Scottish people. I do not favour Scotland gaining independence. It will happen though unless we face into the wreck of this union and try to fix it.
Ah ok. Yes the vote needs to happen. If it doesn't we'll see a (Westminster) 'PARLIAMENT vs the PEOPLE' atmosphere develop and we know how that ends. This is why - oddly - I think a vote now rather than later is better for Unionists than for Nats. They'd be favourites and another No to Sindy would take it off the table.
I concur. The Tank Commander and his neo-Unionist fellow travellers are shooting themselves in the feet.
This particular Unionist has no issue with Indyref2 and I agree with @kinabalu
However, the first problem the SNPs has is calling indyref2 before the majority of Scots are ready for it , and secondly it would be very brave without a majority in favour of independence
Additionally I really cannot understand Nicola agreeing a deal with the Greens as it was not necessary
How many times do we have to do this? 1. Scottish voters are ready for the referendum having voted for parties to deliver it 2. A comfortable majority of MSPs pledged to deliver it were elected in a record turnout
We cannot have a "votes cast count, seats elected don't count" argument without also accepting that the Labour / LibDem / Green / SNP group won the UK election.
As many times as you need to understand
The composition of seats in Westminster does not determine Switzerland’s foreign policy because it is not within their sphere of competence no matter how interesting it might be
The composition of seats in Holyrood does not determine whether there will be a referendum because it is not within their sphere of competence
It is purely a political argument that the UK government has been willing to ignore. A clear majority of votes cast would be more compelling to demonstrate that there is a demand from the voters of Scotland
I am not making an argument as to whether such a thing is a devolved matter or not (and it isn't) so most of your post is irrelevant.
The latter point is fascinating though. If members elected is not the correct measure and votes cast is, then Jeremy Corbyn would be prime minister as the Labour / LD / SNP / Green block received more votes than the Tory / Brexit / UKIP / DUP one
No, it’s a totally different thing.
The election of representatives is, for Westminster, on an FPTP basis
Indyref2 is about a clear desire to change the rules of the game. That needs polpukar support. There was a referendum recently so the 50 point something than SNP+Greens achieved in the Holyrood elections isn’t - in my view - sufficient but it’s a political tussle: there’s no right or wrong
I hear you. Don't change the rules of the game. So in Scotland the game is Holyrood and the rules are the electoral system. In May two parties ran on a manifesto pledge to hold a new referendum. A record turnout of voters elected a record number of MSPs to that pledge with a clear majority.
This is popular support. As mandated by the electoral system. Yet you want to now negate this result and propose a different bar set by opinion polls. This is somehow more democratic than actual elections.
You want to keep the union? So why are you working so hard to cement the case for independence?
Holyrood MSPs have no authority over the topic so the number is irrelevant.
The votes cast at the Holyrood elections is relevant. But was only marginally in favour of independence supporting parties.
So if MSPs are irrelevant why are votes cast for MSPs relevant?
Again. "MSPs are irrelevant" is not an argument to maintain union. It is the opposite.
MSPs are irrelevant in this specific situation because it is outside the scope of their powers.
Votes cast for MSPs are relevant because it is the most recent datapoint on popular support for a second indyref.
marginally over 50% of votes were cast for Indyref supporting parties but not an overwhelming level of support so easy to dismiss.
Marginally over 50% of votes were cast for Brexit but not an overwhelming level of support. Not easy to dismiss.
English majority = respected Scottish majority = not respected
Would the English put up with being second-class citizens? So why should Scots?
FPT - on Trident the subs would go to Devonport or Milford Haven, after a very long transition from Faslane of 10+ years. Scotland would have to be reasonable over this as a condition of its ascension to NATO.
However, Scottish independence would hugely complicate patrols around the island of Great Britain by rUK forces regardless, including patrol routes to access the north Atlantic and across the GIUK gap. That's a huge space to lose free sovereign access to.
It's one of the key reasons why Scottish independence would be such a disaster and gravely compromise our defence.
Devonport is too shallow.
Post- independence, the RN will have no mandate for “patrols around the island of Great Britain”. They can patrol their own waters, and use their own waters as patrol routes to the North Atlantic and GIS gap. Tough titties. If you wanted to hold on to Scotland you should have shown us more respect.
"A Cure for Government Incompetence Britain’s successful vaccine program had clear goals, untainted by ideological aims. Theodore Dalrymple
Almost everyone I know in Britain has been surprised—for once, pleasantly so—by the success of the country’s vaccination program against Covid-19. We are so accustomed to the abject failure of our public administration in almost everything, from its political dithering, followed by self-evidently wrong (and costly) decisions, to its bureaucratic incompetence and moral corruption, that when something goes right, we stand amazed. What, indeed, can explain why something should at last have gone right?
The vaccination campaign has been effectively—even brilliantly—organized and coordinated. The government deserves credit for having invested money in research and taken the chance of buying vaccines before proof existed that they worked. This was a serious political risk: if the vaccines had not worked, which opponents of the government must almost have hoped, it would have fashioned a heavy stick with which to beat it. In Britain, we are accustomed to government “investing” billions of pounds in schemes that fail for everyone except the individuals and corporations that manage to extract many millions, or tens of millions, from them."
If we don’t get a move on with the kids, we are going to find ourselves looking across the Channel at some EU countries in the same way they were looking at us in the spring.
I was surprised to see such an extended debate about my vaccination proclivities on the previous thread. Just so we all know...
1. I believe vaccines are safe and effective. 2. I choose not to have one because they are tested on animals. Within the ambit of my information and control this extends to other products and medicines. I refused all pain medication when broke my wrist in that outstandingly excellent MTB accident last year. 3. You're all wasting pixels discussing it because I don't give a fuck what 90% of the people (and 100% of the tories) on here think or write about me. I am not one of these softcocks who will primly demand retractions or apologies if they feel traduced.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
He didn’t steal anything
He played hardball politics and integrated the rules in a way that was favourable to his interests.
Ultimately the responsibility is with the Senate who should proved the jurists in the normal fashion.
I believe in abortion rights. But I also believe that laws should be set by legislators, not by courts.
Process matters more than outcomes, and therefore Roe should go.
That being said, the Supreme Court should have taken this case and should have explicitly overturned RvW, because the Texas law is an absolute constitutional minefield, that will cause America many problems in future.
And you think that SCOTUS overturning wouldn’t be seen as a political act?
If the government tries to impose another lockdown then I think @contrarian will have been proved right. But I don’t expect it to happen, because all the government can do is shutdown the economy. Trying to stop household mixing would be a waste of time.
There’s also the issue of public finances. They’ll take care of themselves if the government doesn’t do so in an orderly fashion.
Zero chance of another lockdown. Zero chance of contrarian being proved right on the tiniest detail of anything to do with Covid. He wouldn't know what to do if he were to be right about something. The shock would probably kill him.
That's a hostage to fortune. If Covid mutated into the Omega variant with a 10% CFR, beats current vaccine protection but a small vaccine tweak gives 100% protection I'd definetely take evens that we would have a full fat lockdown.
But the fact that we did have another lockdown would show that contrarian was wrong given he didn't think pubs would be open right now.
My comment relates specifically to the current virus. Yes, what you describe would be a game changer, but I’m talking about the next six months or so.
Also, I think vaxports are wrong full stop, but I would be even more appalled if antivaxxers like @Dura_Ace are given a free pass on the basis of beliefs.
I also think there's almost zero chance of legally mandated vaxports in this country. It's rhetoric to encourage vaccination.
I just spent 30 minutes talking to an anti vaxxer in our municipal sauna. She won't get the vaccine, because she is terrified of vaccine passports. This seems to have led her in to the world of conspiracy theories; ie that the vaccine and vaccine passports are part of a new totalitarian world order.
The policy of threatening vaccine passports may have nudged some people in to getting the vaccine, but it has also done a lot of harm, as it is hardening opposition by a committed minority.
Vaccine passports are a bad idea anyway, but backing people in to a corner, and marginalising them is more likely to reduce the number who get vaccinated
The problem being, of course, that the more the stubborn minority dig their heels in, the more likely the widespread use of vaxports becomes.
Vaccine refusal can only be tolerated with any degree of magnanimity by society so long as the minority is small enough not to cripple the healthcare system and lead to more lockdowns, as increasing numbers of refusers catch Delta, get sick, and present themselves at hospital expecting to be treated.
I think that the unspoken subtext of the Scottish decision to press ahead with vaxports for entry to certain venues, along with the renewed rumours that the UK Government will do the same in England, is that they want the system in place so that they can use it to start punishing anti-vaxxers and locking them out of society if we have a difficult Winter. Certainly if we see the return of substantial restrictions, which can be pinned on the unvaccinated clogging the hospitals, towards the end of this year then the public demand to ostracise these people is likely to snowball very quickly indeed.
And that’s exactly the problem with them. It encourages the “othering” of a minority in society
"A Cure for Government Incompetence Britain’s successful vaccine program had clear goals, untainted by ideological aims. Theodore Dalrymple
Almost everyone I know in Britain has been surprised—for once, pleasantly so—by the success of the country’s vaccination program against Covid-19. We are so accustomed to the abject failure of our public administration in almost everything, from its political dithering, followed by self-evidently wrong (and costly) decisions, to its bureaucratic incompetence and moral corruption, that when something goes right, we stand amazed. What, indeed, can explain why something should at last have gone right?
The vaccination campaign has been effectively—even brilliantly—organized and coordinated. The government deserves credit for having invested money in research and taken the chance of buying vaccines before proof existed that they worked. This was a serious political risk: if the vaccines had not worked, which opponents of the government must almost have hoped, it would have fashioned a heavy stick with which to beat it. In Britain, we are accustomed to government “investing” billions of pounds in schemes that fail for everyone except the individuals and corporations that manage to extract many millions, or tens of millions, from them."
If we don’t get a move on with the kids, we are going to find ourselves looking across the Channel at some EU countries in the same way they were looking at us in the spring.
Speculation on radio yesterday was that the ultimate cause of the procrastination is that there are insufficient supplies to do a mass school campaign and begin working back through the elderly and vulnerable at the same time. It was also suggested that JCVI might recommend that both be done but not specify an order of priority this time around, so as to force the Government to make a decision as to who misses out. And it gets an order of magnitude worse if they suggest, as they have done with the third dose campaign for the immunocompromised, that all the boosters should be mRNA vaccines, given that I strongly suspect that we have quite a lot of AZ still available but not so much of anything else.
So, ministers either prioritise the schools, to try to stop panicking headteachers and unions from shutting them down and going back to Zoom over spiralling case rates - but that means making the core vote wait. Or they prioritise the core vote and let the schools go to pot. At a guess, I'd say they'd choose the core vote first, because the disease causes very little severe illness in schoolchildren and the vaccine has only a limited impact on transmission rates, but ultimately they're damned whichever way they jump.
If the government tries to impose another lockdown then I think @contrarian will have been proved right. But I don’t expect it to happen, because all the government can do is shutdown the economy. Trying to stop household mixing would be a waste of time.
There’s also the issue of public finances. They’ll take care of themselves if the government doesn’t do so in an orderly fashion.
Zero chance of another lockdown. Zero chance of contrarian being proved right on the tiniest detail of anything to do with Covid. He wouldn't know what to do if he were to be right about something. The shock would probably kill him.
That's a hostage to fortune. If Covid mutated into the Omega variant with a 10% CFR, beats current vaccine protection but a small vaccine tweak gives 100% protection I'd definetely take evens that we would have a full fat lockdown.
But the fact that we did have another lockdown would show that contrarian was wrong given he didn't think pubs would be open right now.
My comment relates specifically to the current virus. Yes, what you describe would be a game changer, but I’m talking about the next six months or so.
Also, I think vaxports are wrong full stop, but I would be even more appalled if antivaxxers like @Dura_Ace are given a free pass on the basis of beliefs.
I also think there's almost zero chance of legally mandated vaxports in this country. It's rhetoric to encourage vaccination.
I just spent 30 minutes talking to an anti vaxxer in our municipal sauna. She won't get the vaccine, because she is terrified of vaccine passports. This seems to have led her in to the world of conspiracy theories; ie that the vaccine and vaccine passports are part of a new totalitarian world order.
The policy of threatening vaccine passports may have nudged some people in to getting the vaccine, but it has also done a lot of harm, as it is hardening opposition by a committed minority.
Vaccine passports are a bad idea anyway, but backing people in to a corner, and marginalising them is more likely to reduce the number who get vaccinated
The problem being, of course, that the more the stubborn minority dig their heels in, the more likely the widespread use of vaxports becomes.
Vaccine refusal can only be tolerated with any degree of magnanimity by society so long as the minority is small enough not to cripple the healthcare system and lead to more lockdowns, as increasing numbers of refusers catch Delta, get sick, and present themselves at hospital expecting to be treated.
I think that the unspoken subtext of the Scottish decision to press ahead with vaxports for entry to certain venues, along with the renewed rumours that the UK Government will do the same in England, is that they want the system in place so that they can use it to start punishing anti-vaxxers and locking them out of society if we have a difficult Winter. Certainly if we see the return of substantial restrictions, which can be pinned on the unvaccinated clogging the hospitals, towards the end of this year then the public demand to ostracise these people is likely to snowball very quickly indeed.
And that’s exactly the problem with them. It encourages the “othering” of a minority in society
If everyone spends months in lockdown because of said minority then they're going to get pretty comprehensively "othered" regardless.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
But their argument for doing so was a spurious one when 4 years later they pushed Coney- Barrett through.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand they are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
That's politics. 🤷♂️
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
Because the argument would be, it is unconstitutional so to do. I can understand that argument, but for once I don't disagree with you.
There is zero in the constitution about the size of the SCOTUS. It's court size has been changed several times.
Indeed, but wouldn't Trump Republican's cry foul, and add there own handful next time, so the whole affair gets ludicrously out of hand?
The question is whether the Trump Republicans could ever get control of both chambers of Congress and and Presidency again if the Democrats added extra justices and banned gerrymandering, corporate donations, and voter suppression. I think in a genuinely democratic system, the current breed of the Republican Party would be screwed.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
Unless they win more senate seats in 2022, that really isn’t a possibility. There are Democrats other than Manchin who have said they would not vote for it.
Yes, because Democrats are crap at political strategy. Too many full on their own egos.
The Democrat in question is Joe Manchin. He won by 3% in a state where Biden lost to Trump by 39%. So I'd say he's good at political strategy.
Yes - assuming the Democratic party can operate as a monolith is both unrealistic, and to misunderstand what they are about.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
I was surprised to see such an extended debate about my vaccination proclivities on the previous thread. Just so we all know...
1. I believe vaccines are safe and effective. 2. I choose not to have one because they are tested on animals. Within the ambit of my information and control this extends to other products and medicines. I refused all pain medication when broke my wrist in that outstandingly excellent MTB accident last year. 3. You're all wasting pixels discussing it because I don't give a fuck what 90% of the people (and 100% of the tories) on here think or write about me. I am not one of these softcocks who will primly demand retractions or apologies if they feel traduced.
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Not only that but people will cast scorn on those of us who won't wear cloth masks anymore, as we're double-vaccinated and its bloody pointless and uncomfortable, as being "selfish" or other nonsense. Quite a discussion with that kind of attitude coming through from a few people earlier today.
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
This research isn't about the FFP3 ones IIUC, they're getting decent results from normal cheap disposable surgical masks, which are comfortable to wear and available cheaply from many excellent manufacturers such as Unicharm. Kind of seems like a dick move not to wear them around other people since there's still a pandemic and they seem to be moderately helpful to yourself and other people at pretty much no cost to the wearer.
Its a dick move to expect others to wear face masks when they're pretty useless and we're post-vaccinations.
Wear one if you want, but don't expect others to do so. Especially if you can't be arsed to wear an FFP3 one.
I didn't mean to tread on a flogging-a-dead-horse culture war thing which I don't suppose will make any progress but I don't know where you're getting this "they're pretty useless" idea from.
How about that link you just shared for starters?
Vaccinations work. FFP3 masks work. Cloth masks on strangers is a comfort blanket.
I may be getting massively confused about the meaning of "FFP3" or something but I don't think the link I shared is about FFP3 masks? IIUC they're using regular surgical ones of the type you can buy in the convenience store from popular brands such as Unicharm, and finding *they* seem to work while the cloth ones don't don't do much.
So let me get this straight, you're trying to dispute my contention that cloth masks don't do much while clinical masks do by saying I'm wrong and that actually cloth masks don't do much while surgical masks do.
Hmmm not seeing the argument to put the cloth masks back on from that.
No, where I came in was specifically saying that the cloth ones didn't seem to do much whereas the cheap disposable surgical masks that lots of people are wearing (not fancy FFP3 type things that hardly anyone is wearing) do seem to work.
I was then lamenting that having got on a track of saying "cloth masks are fine" for reasons that made sense at the time, governments seem to have been unable to adjust when the conditions changed.
Unfortunately the other element to this is that if you say the word "mask" someone immediately jumps into a predefined culture war track where you have to be saying either the progressive thing (cloth and surgical are both fine) or the reactionary thing (only the high-filtration things are meaningful) and if you say anything else people can't even parse your sentences.
I agreed with you the cloth ones don't work well. But you didn't accept that for some reason. 🤷♂️
If people want to wear good masks that work then that's their choice. But cloth masks are not any good - and if you're concerned then paper masks are not the best. Even if you have shares in them, surely if we're going to get people from fairly useless cloth masks we should be suggesting the best quality ones?
The first (and probably only) randomised control trial of the pandemic, which was just published, suggests your arguments are overdetermined.
If Texas moves in a pro life direction for once given all the movement in recent decades has been pro choice that is up to Texas, it has a pro life GOP governor and legislature after all. If the SC respects states rights good for Texas and the SC.
Texas in any case has not banned abortion, just restricted it after the first 6 weeks of pregnancy
Or the two or three weeks if you are lucky after a positive pregnancy test.
More like one to two if you are lucky after a test.
Indeed many women wouldn't even take a test until six weeks.
PS plus of course SCOTUS has ruled in the past I believe that bans from six weeks are not compatible with Roe.
After the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett and after the moderate David Souter retired and was replaced by the conservative Brett Kavanaugh, the SC has moved in a more conservative direction
Trump stole SCOTUS for goodness sake. He didn't apply the rule he claimed in Obama's final year nomination (Garland?) to Coney- Barratt. Don't defend the indefensible!
There is nothing indefensible, Trump nominated conservatives when he could, Obama nominated liberals when he could
Yeah, and Obama's nom was rejected by the GOP as they said it was too close to the election. Trump's was not.
Yes and the GOP had a Senate majority at the time, so their choice
Indeed and the Democrats have a majority now and the Presidency, so they really ought to be nominating more Justices to even up the scales.
The fact they haven't, is their own damned fault.
They are right not to.
There have been no vacancies. What they could do is see if they can pressure anyone to resign to create spaces while they have effective control of the Senate*
Increasing the number of Justices would be entirely different and would permanently politicise the institution
* I don’t know if there are different things like majorities in specific committees that could change the calculations
Comments
The nation's credit card is the deficit.
You're the one trying to pretend the debt is the credit card. It was always the deficit.
https://twitter.com/DefenceHQPress/status/1433170117593124873?s=20
A deficit is a failure to pay your bills by that percentage of your income - which adds up, unlike a an overdraft. I'd rather a 100% mortgage and an ability to pay my mortgage in full every month, than a smaller mortgage percentage but having a shortfall of 10% of my annual income in critical expenditure meaning I can't pay my mortgage and am going to default on it leading to foreclosure and homelessness.
If I had a 1% overdraft last year and a 1% overdraft this year, I still have a 1% overdraft.
If I accrued debts of 10% of my income last year, and 10% of my annual income this year, then I've increased my debts now by 20% of my annual income.
The fact they haven't, is their own damned fault.
The gulf is vast.
I know you love Trump and the GOP almost as much as you do Johnson, but you really need to understand Trump and the GOP are a bunch of duplicitous, conniving b******s, irrespective of Mr Biden's mental capacity!
Now the Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House. They could easily nominate 2 new Justices and ram them through the Senate on a 50/50 vote with the Veep casting the final vote. There is literally nothing stopping them from doing that.
Except they're not. They're choosing not to. So I have ran out of sympathy for their complaints. They have a solution and they're not doing it.
As such it ought to be struck down under the due process clause, and any sane SC would do so.
It always makes sense by reading it as "closing the deficit" because that is literally what it means and it makes sense.
You're struggling with the concept because you misunderstood it. That's not the game being changed. You made a mistake, just accept that and move on.
Also the Senate is an undemocratic monstrosity. So is the House. Dems should scrap the filibuster, add states and ban gerrymandering.
A liberal majority would have issued a stay, Alito or not.
Taking the elites out of the equation, it's certainly a vastly bigger deal in Scotland than it is in England, because Scotland is so much smaller. Indeed, the fundamental inequality of the Union is probably the primary driver behind secession, when you drill down into it. Scotland is home to 8% of the UK's population; England to 84%. How can the Union be anything other than lop-sided, in some important respects at least?
The end of the Union, should it eventually come, will be an upheaval (and possibly a major one) for the Scottish population. Most of the English will either offer expressions of regret, breathe a quiet sigh of relief that it's over, or not care at all. Such is life.
Got anything more recent?
He is a hard line majoritarian. I think you have to understand that.
The US constitution specifically allows it.
Though of course the Democrats do not have a majority in the Senate who would vote for it, as they have yet to transform into the entirely partisan caucus that was the Republican majority.
The other option is to pass a law expand the court to 15 justices and then offer the Republicans a constitutional amendment to cap it at 11.
We need a stiff hard regime of tax increases to clear the credit card balance ie tax properly those who have gained from the COVID but will Rishi be allowed to do it?
story suggests there are options to go quickly. A temporary move to US seems most likely, while they build at huge cost and complication south of the border. Further improving the English view of post-independence Scotland...
https://twitter.com/iainmartin1/status/1433193040382943237?s=20
Plus if Democrats pack the court with liberal justices when they are in power, Republicans could pack the court with conservative judges when they are in power
The GOP also won landslides in the 2010 and 2014 midterms fair and square
There are Democrats other than Manchin who have said they would not vote for it.
“Faslane and Coulport independent British Territory inside independent Scotland” 😃
If Starmer became PM and allowed an indyref2 and lost it that would be his problem (and also Scotland's as they need a deterrent to put off Putin)
Fundamentally the law is clear. It is a matter for the Westminster parliament. Not the Scottish MPs. Not Holyrood MSPs. All Westminster MPs. So two of your claimed metrics are irrelevant.
Essentially you need to convince the Westminster parliament / Uk government there is an overwhelming case for a second vote. This is a political debate. The best argument in my view is there is a clear majority of the Scottish population that is demanding a second vote now.
You can’t demonstrate that convincingly. The best data point you have is a slight majority of votes in the Holyrood election. But it’s not a large enough difference to overcome the “we already had a vote a few years ago argument”. May be in 2040, but not today
These issues were indeed discussed: you could bracket them as the West Tyrone Question.
Its also worth nothing that both sides are well into gerrymandering, voter suppression, pork barreling etc. If in the blink of an eye it could all be eliminated, I'm not sure I'd like to guess which side gets the net advantage.
And because, for better or worse, the system was explicitly designed so that the big states couldn't dominate the smaller ones, by the very design of the system its still going to be possible for presidents to win office whilst loosing the popular vote - that's not a bug but a feature.
The law is an utter monstrosity, which (if allowed to stand) would render the Supreme Court's decisions moot across the country.
Which is why I'm staggered they didn't stay it.
It wasn't.
https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/pfv8bq/the_impact_of_community_masking_on_covid19_a/
One striking thing about government responses is how hard they seem to find it to change direction once they start doing something in a particular way. There was a time when there wasn't enough supply of surgical masks but masks as a class of thing definitely seemed to help so people recommended the cloth ones. Now the makers have had time to ramp up production and surgical masks are available everywhere but we already decided cloth masks are cool so that's that.
Declaration of interest: I have Unicharm stock 🚀🚀🚀
Its not only the government response but the public one too. Some people have latched on to masks like a toddler latches on to a favourite teddy or a comfort blanket.
Time to get over this irrational nonsense. Let people continue to wear futile cloth masks if they want to do so, but we should educate them that if they want benefits from a mask it should be a surgical FFP3 etc one - and that there's no point in expecting others to wear masks on their behalf anymore.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58414597
- New cases: 16,629
- Average: 9,308 (+1,432)
- In hospital: 1,123 (+1)
- In ICU: 222 (+5)
- New deaths: 43
https://twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1433210614038646792
Wear one if you want, but don't expect others to do so. Especially if you can't be arsed to wear an FFP3 one.
Sugar-free drinks – what I thought was orange juice turns out to be pineapple. And there's no pizza to take my mind off it.
Personally, I think it's time the US split.
Simply, the gap is too big now. I would suggest that we keep it very simple - the Confederate and the United States should go their own ways. And each state can vote which one to go with. It should generate a map that looks not entirely unlike the Civil War map, with slaver states (plus probably the Dakotas, Montana, Missouri, Wyoming and Idaho) joining the Confederate United States, while the North East, the Great Lakes, and the West join the United States (along with Maryland, Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico).
I don't know which way Ohio, Georgia, Nevada or Arizona would go - they really could go either way.
I think both the Confederate States and the United States would be happier with this arrangement.
Delta is rapidly giving Israelis a special booster shot.
Vaccinations work.
FFP3 masks work.
Cloth masks on strangers is a comfort blanket.
And this isn't a culture war thing. Cloth masks made sense pre vaccines and when FFP3 masks weren't available. But that time has passed.
But if others want to wear cloth masks that's on them, I don't care. Just don't expect me to.
Now, are they as good as paper or N95 or whavever masks? Nope. But they are still extremely effective at stopping people with Covid spreading it to others.
In Japan even before Covid, it was considered polite for people with coughs or colds to wear masks on public transport. That simple precaution meant that (even pre vaccines), Covid never really got the hold in Japan it got elsewhere.
Hmmm not seeing the argument to put the cloth masks back on from that.
But where's the evidence they're "very good" post vaccines please? Not just in theory but in the real world where people don't wear them properly, keep reusing the same one and/or wear them around their neck.
No, where I came in was specifically saying that the cloth ones didn't seem to do much whereas the cheap disposable surgical masks that lots of people are wearing (not fancy FFP3 type things that hardly anyone is wearing) do seem to work.
I was then lamenting that having got on a track of saying "cloth masks are fine" for reasons that made sense at the time, governments seem to have been unable to adjust when the conditions changed.
Unfortunately the other element to this is that if you say the word "mask" someone immediately jumps into a predefined culture war track where you have to be saying either the progressive thing (cloth and surgical are both fine) or the reactionary thing (only the high-filtration things are meaningful) and if you say anything else people can't even parse your sentences.
If people want to wear good masks that work then that's their choice. But cloth masks are not any good - and if you're concerned then paper masks are not the best. Even if you have shares in them, surely if we're going to get people from fairly useless cloth masks we should be suggesting the best quality ones?
Britain’s successful vaccine program had clear goals, untainted by ideological aims.
Theodore Dalrymple
Almost everyone I know in Britain has been surprised—for once, pleasantly so—by the success of the country’s vaccination program against Covid-19. We are so accustomed to the abject failure of our public administration in almost everything, from its political dithering, followed by self-evidently wrong (and costly) decisions, to its bureaucratic incompetence and moral corruption, that when something goes right, we stand amazed. What, indeed, can explain why something should at last have gone right?
The vaccination campaign has been effectively—even brilliantly—organized and coordinated. The government deserves credit for having invested money in research and taken the chance of buying vaccines before proof existed that they worked. This was a serious political risk: if the vaccines had not worked, which opponents of the government must almost have hoped, it would have fashioned a heavy stick with which to beat it. In Britain, we are accustomed to government “investing” billions of pounds in schemes that fail for everyone except the individuals and corporations that manage to extract many millions, or tens of millions, from them."
https://www.city-journal.org/britain-successful-vaccine-program
English majority = respected
Scottish majority = not respected
Would the English put up with being second-class citizens?
So why should Scots?
Post- independence, the RN will have no mandate for “patrols around the island of Great Britain”. They can patrol their own waters, and use their own waters as patrol routes to the North Atlantic and GIS gap. Tough titties. If you wanted to hold on to Scotland you should have shown us more respect.
How would English readers like it if an English journalist systematically wrote anti-English propaganda?
1. I believe vaccines are safe and effective.
2. I choose not to have one because they are tested on animals. Within the ambit of my information and control this extends to other products and medicines. I refused all pain medication when broke my wrist in that outstandingly excellent MTB accident last year.
3. You're all wasting pixels discussing it because I don't give a fuck what 90% of the people (and 100% of the tories) on here think or write about me. I am not one of these softcocks who will primly demand retractions or apologies if they feel traduced.
He played hardball politics and integrated the rules in a way that was favourable to his interests.
Ultimately the responsibility is with the Senate who should proved the jurists in the normal fashion.
So, ministers either prioritise the schools, to try to stop panicking headteachers and unions from shutting them down and going back to Zoom over spiralling case rates - but that means making the core vote wait. Or they prioritise the core vote and let the schools go to pot. At a guess, I'd say they'd choose the core vote first, because the disease causes very little severe illness in schoolchildren and the vaccine has only a limited impact on transmission rates, but ultimately they're damned whichever way they jump.
“Summit” indeed!
The Senate doesn’t need to explain its workings
Gavin Williamson is back from his holiday.
https://twitter.com/ExStrategist/status/1433305079440936960?s=20
The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh
https://www.poverty-action.org/sites/default/files/publications/Mask_RCT____Symptomatic_Seropositivity_083121.pdf
There have been no vacancies. What they could do is see if they can pressure anyone to resign to create spaces while they have effective control of the Senate*
Increasing the number of Justices would be entirely different and would permanently politicise the institution
* I don’t know if there are different things like majorities in specific committees that could change the calculations