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Punters give Trump a 79% chance of winning every state primary – politicalbetting.com
Punters give Trump a 79% chance of winning every state primary – politicalbetting.com
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I do hope @Casino_Royale has not left us, permanently
That would basically leave me, @isam and @HYUFD as the solitary remaining rightwingers of note?
The relentless mediocre witless humourless lifeless inert festering smelly blob of twatty leftwing PB - from @DougSeal to @Foxy, from @kinabalu to @Benpointer to @RochdalePioneers to @Roger to @EvanGladne, in all its desperate and piffling monotony, will have overwhelmed and destroyed everything of value, like the ghastly fungus in The Last of Us
Bring back CASINO
This cannot be true. You listen to most of the leftwing posters you mentioned and PB is a den of right wingers with a few left wing voices.
Must be the case.
If Leon means right-wing headcases, he might have a better argument. But then that's a small minority group in this country, thankfully. And of them, finding those who can type using actual words narrows it down even more.
The wheels of the American justice system grind exceedingly slow but there has been an important change of pace in the last week or so.
The Court of Appeals found that Trump did not have immunity. Basically because the Constitution doesn't say he has whilst it does grant limited immunity elsewhere. This type of reasoning is somewhat problematic for an Originalist based SC. Trump says he will appeal of course but he does not have a right to a hearing in the SC and they just might say no.
The CFO of Trump's businesses is negotiating a plea bargain on perjury. He was the principal witness on financial matters in the fraud case in New York. Justice Erdogan wants to know about it. By today. The question of who suborned Alan Weisselberg to commit that perjury is next up on the rank but even as a starter this has the potential to make appealing Erdogan's judgment more difficult and justify even harsher penalties.
The hearing on whether Trump is able to be on the ballot at all goes before the SC tomorrow. I think the oral submissions are down for 2 days. As it is, I think that case encourages Haley to hang on in there as the last (wo)man standing if they rule against him.
My observation for the morning is that all 3 of these carry significant risk factors for Trump that do not seem to be reflected in his odds of being either the nominee or the next President.
It's October !!! Maybe
Bur my God PB leftwingers - all of them, I think - are boring, stolid, and unfunny, so it is quite a chore enduring the cycle
I shall abide on my balcony, and sip Kiwi Sauv Blanc, and listen to The Lark Ascending
Feel sad for LuckyGuy and DavidL and MaxPB (and Bart? Although he's woke liberal right wing, so maybe exlcuded) not making the rightwingers of note cut
(Apologies if any of you feel mislabelled, but I'd put you right of centre, but maybe that's my skewed woke leftie academic viewpoint)
Also sad not to get my own shout out within the RMWHLIFSBofTLPB
In your right wing star chamber you left out MarqueeMark and LuckyGuy, and I am sure there are more. From what I can tell the modal demographic on here is neither lefty nor markedly right wing but remains Cameronian Tory wet.
@EvanGladne was a major poster from about 2008-2016, and relentlessly right-on and feminazi. Absolutely spammed the threads, and got quite personally aggressive with @YHMWilhelm amd @ZoilaGroth
It all came to a head when she stole a car in Newent and drove south to actually attack poor @Aberjeffrey in his motorised buggy in a W H Smiths car park near Yeovil and @pillsbury called the coppers, she actually did three weeks inside. It is the only actual case of a PB fight and arrest (apart from @BigIan and @LondonBob of course, but that was more sexual)
Your faith in judicial proceedings is heartening. But I can't shake the feeling that it is all entirely immaterial.
Trump instigated a storming of the Capitol (where someone was shot dead and staffers fled in fear of sexual assault), and he's openly discussing dictatorship and reprisal. His minions are interviewing Putin and voting against aid for Ukraine.
Yet he remains miles ahead of any other Republican. A few disapproving judgments from distant judges is not going to upset the enormous popular mandate he now has.
I think we should actually BRACE for once
Personally I like having people of different political persuasions. But if Leon can't cope with people who aren't his supplicants, the opportunity to start a new forum is always there.
How about WOKE-NO. Or AIALIENDEFENDERS.
UK 54.3
USA 52.5
Biden's investment in new industrial production is the right thing to do.
But the number of people who directly and quickly benefit is limited, very limited.
Biden could really do with more feel good consumption working into the economy before November.
He was the last genuinely funny leftwinger on PB, also a brutally effective debater, sometimes
OK a bit of a dick, and possibly misogynist, and a terrible liar. But still, funny
SIGH
On one hand, the periodic meltdowns are undeniably entertainment of the first rate. Like Michael Barrymore doing "Backstreet's Back".
On the other hand, his tin-pot tory, social climbing, monarchist fuck-piece act is pure cringe. Like Michael Barrymore doing "Backstreets' Back".
It struck me that a lot of the dramatic end of world stuff was a bit old hat and that actually looking between the lines there are a few pieces of good news. There's no longer an energy crisis. Debt and Equity markets are pretty stable. Inflation and interest rates have peaked and inflation is now coming down globally. The US and China seem to be getting on a bit better. We feel a few steps further from Ukraine related nuclear armageddon than 2 years ago. The only really novel threats are the fallout from the Israel-Gaza conflict but we've been there many times before, the rise of AI, and the prospect of a Trump-induced trade war.
I told them to cut out some of the older hat stuff and focus on what's really new, and maybe even include a few good things.
Nikki Haley loses to "none of the above" in Nevada !
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68225999
Composite PMIs:
🇬🇧 52.9
🇪🇸 51.5
🇮🇹 50.7
🇩🇪 47.0
🇫🇷 44.6
148 was fucking well up for it, then CR flounced. 👌
The vast majority of the UK population are still facing insane prices, higher mortgages and expensive energy. The roads are shite, no one can get a doctor's appointment and Dentists are rarer than sane Tories. It's grim out there.
My vineyard is in Kent by the way.
I also hope they haven't left permanently - when Charles does finally pop it it would be fun to know there's at least one person that can be easily wound up by my not really giving a shit.
My PB peak, though, was in the Mrs May Brexit era, tipping against No Deal and 2nd Ref at silly short prices. Have not quite regained that groove. But we keep trying.
Trump v Biden? Yes it looks that way, doesn't it. But, you know, Joe looks so fragile, and the Trump situation is unstable with his legal issues and his erratic hubristic behaviour.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
We shouldn’t get sucked into seeing PB or UK politics as straightforward binary choice.
Indeed Corbynista and Starmer 2nd hand new Labour, and blukip and moderate Tories should be having passioned ding dongs with each other - on the same half of political spectrum, without being dismissed as from the other political wing.
So you are Literally Worse Than…. Starmer?
Didn’t you get the memo?
I don't think any of us really overstepped the mark with him yesterday, but there a fair few of us were nailing him about Chaz, and we do know he suffers from the black dog occasionally, so maybe we should have rowed back a bit once he started going batshit.
Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers? You're right wing.
Do you fight for the interests of workers over capital? You're left wing.
Do you fight for the interests of capital over workers, but really really would prefer if everyone pretended that you're still a good person? You're a liberal (and right wing).
But seeing as she is now dead she has probably paid the price. RIP
I do tease CR sometimes, but try to back off when I think he's going full tonto. On the flip side, he's very happy to dish it out, as he did yesterday to anyone showing insufficient deference to our God-chosen rulers.
Also, no borders is good for workers. Because "British" workers could also just go wherever they wanted.
Edit, and I can do nutty, I really can.
I am pretty liberal on social issues though, and keen on engaging with and participating in pan-national structures.
That fitted well with the Coalition in most respects, but there isn't really a political home at the moment. I can't abide the Populist Nationalism of the present Tories, and am not keen on the statist economic policies of Labour. There isn't much space for folk like me at the moment.
Most immigrants share the same class interest as workers as workers already here. Immigrants are not the group with power in how they impact workers - capitalists are. You could have a state that had open borders and also held companies to the law on misusing immigrant and under waged labour. You could have a state that invested in infrastructure and redistributed wealth and power to all workers, regardless of immigration statues. That is a decision by the state that is deferential to capital, not to the workers. I would happily enforce minimum wage on employers more harshly, and demand that all workers get access to workers' rights, and workers get representation in company decisions, etc. Immigrant or not.
Making the issue about immigrants rather than how companies pit factions of workers against each other to stall a unified workers' movement, or try to illegally hire people under minimum wage and without their full rights as worker to maximize their profits, is a slight of hand trick. Immigrants are not the enemy of the worker - the boss is.
Aside from the fact there's a whole plethora of policies that are good or bad for both labour and capital (and very few that are truly zero-sum in the long term), this always forgets the third estate: the consumer.
Untrammelled capital leads to monopolies which leads to poor quality products and services, technological stagnation and product incompatibility, and unsafe and polluting industries.
Untrammelled labour power leads to closed shops, surly customer service, price inflation and restrictions on consumer choice.
A cosy-up between the two too often leads to them colluding to do over the consumer.
"Boris Johnson has invoked some of the oldest and most pernicious antisemitic stereotypes in a book he wrote when he was a Conservative shadow minister. He describes “Jewish oligarchs” who run the media, and fiddle the figures to fix elections in their favour.
He portrays a Jewish character, Sammy Katz, with a “proud nose and curly hair”, and paints him as a malevolent, stingy, snake-like Jewish businessman who exploits immigrant workers for profit. There is nothing subtle about this. We know what antisemitism looks like."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/11/boris-johnsons-record-of-bigotry-antisemitism-and-far-right-politics-must-not-be-forgotten
As far as I can see, the only reason for voting Labour at the moment is because they're not the Tories, and as you say, the Populist Nationalism is most unpleasant. But then I've been a committed European since about 1960!
Bristol University academic unfairly dismissed for anti-Zionist views
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-68211872
Yup, I think so.
Its the meaning of right wing that has changed, more so than the population.
If workers in Germany go on strike for better conditions and the bosses respond by hiring an army of Jimmy Nails from England, whose interests are being served?
Also why do you talk about "illegally hiring people under minimum wage" when in your world there is no state to enforce a minimum wage?
I also don't agree with people's views on @EvanGladne. I find him to be a bit of a right winger.
"Jeremy Corbyn was not personally antisemitic. "
I'm not so sure. when the controversy first started, I decided that he was probably just someone who was naive, a "passive anti-Semite". Then, as events unfolded, it seemed clearer and clearer that he was either/or/and totally thick, or actually actively anti-Semitic. And I pay him a complement by saying he's not totally thick.
Racism - and anti-Semitism - can take many forms. It doesn't have to be racially abusing a black person in the street, or painting a swastika on a synagogue door.
Or rather remoan that we're peering through the window from the outside..
But I guess your attempted deflection means you agree that the 32% of people who voted Labour in 2019 were voting for an anti-Semite? (I'll give the 40% in 2017 the benefit of the doubt, as it was not as clear back then)?
The idea of "identity politics" in the modern sense as being separate to this is weird to me - of course fighting for the rights of marginalised people (queer people, women, non-white people, disabled people, etc.) is a fight of workers, because the marginalised are, typically, most seen in the lower classes (either because their marginalised status is constructed around that, such as how race became intrinsically linked to slavery in the Atlantic slave trade, or their marginalised status can lead to becoming dispossessed, such as when people were outed and fired for being gay).
You may be able to point to periods where capital was reigned in (as I have when discussing the New Deal and the post-war consensus), but even at those times capital was supreme and workers did not have "untrammelled power". The high point of union power, for example, was crushed because the profit motive was considered more important. Yes, workers stopped working, went on strike, etc - but the request of labour wasn't for the ownership of the means of production - it was for better wages, better conditions and for the ability to make ends meet if they have to learn new skills before they can work again.
Personally I would at the moment, describe myself as pro Gazan, unless they're leaders of Hamas!
But I do also disagree with the premise, yes - I don't think Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite.
"God chosen" is just a .. er .. Hail Mary Pass by washed up Republicans who have had limited supporting arguments for about 400 years, and none at all at present. Even more
I am still a Thatcherite free marketeer, a believer in sound money, and aspiration.