I'm left to reflect how much harder it is for a leader these days to disguise or cover up weakness or ill health.
Had the media of today and the scrutiny of today existed back then, Churchill's stroke in 1953 would have led to calls for his resignation and with Eden in poor health as well you'd have had a serious political crisis.
It's different in non-democratic societies where the health of the leader isn't openly discussed but in democracies, nowadays, I'd argue, there's nowhere to hide.
Even in so-called collective leadership systems, there is still a primus inter pares and their physical condition is more scrutinised and discussed than others in the leadership.
Its a feature of the UK system that there's no way a PM could have lasted this long when incapable.
Winston Churchill had a heart attack during the war, and a stroke during his second term. Both were covered up for decades.
There is no cover up. As anyone with eyes can see from the press conference yesterday Biden doesn’t have dementia. No one with dementia could answer the kind of policy questions he did for that long. He is simply a very old man who in my view is transparently too old to do the job properly. If you’re a staffer, Governor, diplomat, foreign minister or whatever are you going to come out of a meeting with him and brief the press that he’s too old and needs to go? That’s not a cover up.
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Carte blanche for foreigners to do what they like. Their country of origin is not going to imprison them on our instructions.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Because it’s now legally impossible to deport anyone from the UK, apart from a handful of Windrush veterans and Australians overstaying visas by decades.
Its a feature of the UK system that there's no way a PM could have lasted this long when incapable.
Winston Churchill had a heart attack during the war, and a stroke during his second term. Both were covered up for decades.
There is no cover up. As anyone with eyes can see from the press conference yesterday Biden doesn’t have dementia. No one with dementia could answer the kind of policy questions he did for that long. He is simply a very old man who in my view is transparently too old to do the job properly. If you’re a staffer, Governor, diplomat, foreign minister or whatever are you going to come out of a meeting with him and brief the press that he’s too old and needs to go? That’s not a cover up.
If. But so far they havent and the Biden saga could take another month to resolve.
You can hope, and of course you may be right. However the news is moving quickly now. I doubt he will hang on until the convention.
Maybe. But if he hangs on it's bad. If he goes that will take the best part of a week to get him shifted - withdraw as candidate but stay as Potus ? Just plain go ? - and then several weeks to sort out a new candidate.
With three months to go this was not the campaign the Democrats thought they would be fighting.
I agree, and every attempt to reset makes Biden appeared even less coherent than the last time. Once Biden is gone the decline can be explained away as very rapid, compare and contrast the State of the Union speech with the last fortnight of chaos.
Remember too Trump has been ruminating on sharks and batteries.
Trump also recently gaffed his son a wife that nobody else knows about.
Imagine if Biden that.
Yes but those two contain an important lesson that the media and Democrats are almost bound to get wrong. Attack Trump for gaffes like the son's wife, and not for the shark/battery dilemma that has been part of his speech schtick for years. It's like when those supercilious fools at the Plain English Campaign went after Donald Rumsfeld for his known unknowns speech whose meaning was obvious.
“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine. A man who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, president Putin”
No, that's just an incompetent social media team. Similar to what the Tories were doing... The person who does the "Joe Biden" account is better.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Carte blanche for foreigners to do what they like. Their country of origin is not going to imprison them on our instructions.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Because it’s now legally impossible to deport anyone from the UK, apart from a handful of Windrush veterans and Australians overstaying visas by decades.
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
On the other hand Biden stepping down hits the Trump Campaign too, perhaps even harder.
It would require a major change to reorientate against Harris.
Per last thread, The Donald is ahead of you and already preparing to campaign against Kamala Harris.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Because it’s now legally impossible to deport anyone from the UK, apart from a handful of Windrush veterans and Australians overstaying visas by decades.
Simply not true.
It's the Tories that have led the collapse of deportations.
Biden’s own campaign team posted the video of him calling Zelensky, Putin.
“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine. A man who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, president Putin”
It’s actually quite sad that those around him, starting with Jill and Hunter, don’t want to tell him that he needs to stand aside.
We’ve all had these conversations with elderly parents and grandparents. My father (73 and thankfully in good health), told me several years ago that he wants me to tell him when to stop driving, for example. The problem with Biden is that all of those around him rely on the patronage that results from him being the big man.
I think the driving analogy is a good one. If you didn't do everything possible to stop an unfit parent from driving and they went onto kill someone, you bear a great deal of responsibility.
The danger for the Democrats is that the anger and blame starts to shift onto Harris for this disaster (particularly if she has known about it for some time).
Everyone in the senior echelons of the party and the liberal media have known about this for years, but very few have put their head above the parapet until a fortnight ago.
This one, from The Atlantic in March 2020, stands out. Eight months before the last election, they knew they were promoting someone in his last years, but were willing to support anything to beat Trump. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/stay-alive-joe-biden/608614/ “Stay Alive, Joe Biden “Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence.”
But that can't be right? Surely Leon spotted it all on his own, and no-one else noticed for at least a year thereafter?
Of all @Leons ludicrous claims the least credible is that he is the only one who noticed that Biden is old and frail.
I wasn't the only one at all, there were quite a few who agreed with me, I've re-read the threads (I have also never claimed this). @kle4 and @Luckyguy1983 were also entirely persuaded, for instance
What I was - as is my usual style - was the most persistent, and annoyingly loud, and the most contemptuous of the many pb-ers who were clearly in denial (and some still are!)
I also pointed out, several times that this was a crisis in the making as Biden could only get worse and then we'd end up with an obviously demented president. Bingo
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Carte blanche for foreigners to do what they like. Their country of origin is not going to imprison them on our instructions.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Because it’s now legally impossible to deport anyone from the UK, apart from a handful of Windrush veterans and Australians overstaying visas by decades.
Really ?!
Fine, but it means the maximum penalty for any crime is a free ticket home. Not a great deterrent.
4 people die trying to cross the channel. The French don't have a domestic government to talk to and seem unlikely to have one for months. Labour (rightly) find the disincentive of the Rwanda scheme abhorrent and want to bring it to an end. What do they do? Its a tricky one that Starmer largely ducked during the election.
I think the time has arrived to be truly radical. Everyone who has been here 10 years, whether legally or not, is granted an amnesty. The backlogs are vigorously attacked after the elimination of tens of thousands of cases through the amnesty and acted upon. Those who arrive are processed within weeks and then either granted asylum or removed. We have the worst of all worlds at the moment because the previous government was scared of bigots and racists. Act, act now.
Good point. Anyone who is not on board, and happy clappy, with mass inward migration is a bigot or a racist.
Yeah, trouble is the other way round really is true, and the racists are against mass immigration. Anyway, aiui the point was the time to act is now.
Biden’s own campaign team posted the video of him calling Zelensky, Putin.
“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine. A man who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, president Putin”
It’s actually quite sad that those around him, starting with Jill and Hunter, don’t want to tell him that he needs to stand aside.
We’ve all had these conversations with elderly parents and grandparents. My father (73 and thankfully in good health), told me several years ago that he wants me to tell him when to stop driving, for example. The problem with Biden is that all of those around him rely on the patronage that results from him being the big man.
I think the driving analogy is a good one. If you didn't do everything possible to stop an unfit parent from driving and they went onto kill someone, you bear a great deal of responsibility.
The danger for the Democrats is that the anger and blame starts to shift onto Harris for this disaster (particularly if she has known about it for some time).
Everyone in the senior echelons of the party and the liberal media have known about this for years, but very few have put their head above the parapet until a fortnight ago.
This one, from The Atlantic in March 2020, stands out. Eight months before the last election, they knew they were promoting someone in his last years, but were willing to support anything to beat Trump. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/stay-alive-joe-biden/608614/ “Stay Alive, Joe Biden “Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence.”
But that can't be right? Surely Leon spotted it all on his own, and no-one else noticed for at least a year thereafter?
Of all @Leons ludicrous claims the least credible is that he is the only one who noticed that Biden is old and frail.
I wasn't the only one at all, there were quite a few who agreed with me, I've re-read the threads (I have also never claimed this). @kle4 and @Luckyguy1983 were also entirely persuaded, for instance
What I was - as is my usual style - was the most persistent, and annoyingly loud, and the most contemptuous of the many pb-ers who were clearly in denial (and some still are!)
I also pointed out, several times that this was a crisis in the making as Biden could only get worse and then we'd end up with an obviously demented president. Bingo
He is still is not "obviously demented". He is old and bumbling. The fat lady may be singing on his presidency, but not on your predictions let alone assertions, which an unkind observer might point out are occassionaly a touch demented.
Its a feature of the UK system that there's no way a PM could have lasted this long when incapable.
Winston Churchill had a heart attack during the war, and a stroke during his second term. Both were covered up for decades.
There is no cover up. As anyone with eyes can see from the press conference yesterday Biden doesn’t have dementia. No one with dementia could answer the kind of policy questions he did for that long. He is simply a very old man who in my view is transparently too old to do the job properly. If you’re a staffer, Governor, diplomat, foreign minister or whatever are you going to come out of a meeting with him and brief the press that he’s too old and needs to go? That’s not a cover up.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Because it’s now legally impossible to deport anyone from the UK, apart from a handful of Windrush veterans and Australians overstaying visas by decades.
Simply not true.
It's the Tories that have led the collapse of deportations.
So under a Labour government, we can look forward to an increase in the number of deportations?
Hopefully they’ll soon publish a target for the number of deportations, on which we can judge them at the next election?
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Carte blanche for foreigners to do what they like. Their country of origin is not going to imprison them on our instructions.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Because it’s now legally impossible to deport anyone from the UK, apart from a handful of Windrush veterans and Australians overstaying visas by decades.
Really ?!
Fine, but it means the maximum penalty for any crime is a free ticket home. Not a great deterrent.
The standard used to be - on release from jail, on the plane to wherever, if they don't have indefinite leave to remain. Has that changed?
Some countries have reciprocal agreements, so their nationals can be sent home to complete their sentences in a "home" prison.
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
It's no longer true that Harris is behind Biden in a match up against Trump. Some polls still have her polling worse than Biden, others have her polling better. Overall there's nothing in it between them at the moment.
That's now though. In a scenario where Harris was the legitimate nominee and the Democrats were focused on promoting her not the sitting President, Harris would surely get a boost, just as pretty well any other potential nominee would. That should be a pretty legitimate expectation, not the outside hope that you infer. And as for Biden, there's an enormous risk that once the campaign heats up in intensity he'll bomb again and the polling will move further to reflect that.
As for campaign finance, moving forward donations are going to continue to drop off if Biden stays.
So basically on your two points: 1. Campaign Finance - Not a problem on what's been raised to date if Harris is the nominee, but a problem moving forward if Biden stays. 2. Harris's polling - Bound to improve and improve on where Biden is even currently, let alone where Biden might be after a second car crash debate.
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
On the other hand Biden stepping down hits the Trump Campaign too, perhaps even harder.
It would require a major change to reorientate against Harris.
It wouldn't 'elitist coastal liberal, who makes Hillary look charismatic and with the common touch' the Trump campaign against Harris in the rustbelt swing states writes itself.
Biden had an OK press conference last night and is clearly not going to step down without clear polling Harris consistently polls better v Trump than he does
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
It's no longer true that Harris is behind Biden in a match up against Trump. Some polls still have her polling worse than Biden, others have her polling better. Overall there's nothing in it between them at the moment.
That's now though. In a scenario where Harris was the legitimate nominee and the Democrats were focused on promoting her not the sitting President, Harris would surely get a boost, just as pretty well any other potential nominee would. That should be a pretty legitimate expectation, not the outside hope that you infer. And as for Biden, there's an enormous risk that once the campaign heats up in intensity he'll bomb again and the polling will move further to reflect that.
So basically on your two points: 1. Campaign Finance - Not a problem if Harris is the nominee. 2. Harris's polling - Bound to improve and improve on where Biden is even currently, let alone where Biden might be after a second car crash debate.
1. Would still have a lot of issues. It's America - lawsuits would start in 15 seconds. 2. Maaaaybe. And there hasn't been a poll suggesting Harris could actually win. Just lose less badly. Check out how she polls in the swing state.....
“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine. A man who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, president Putin”
They're trying to lean into it as a joke. It won't work
Its a feature of the UK system that there's no way a PM could have lasted this long when incapable.
Winston Churchill had a heart attack during the war, and a stroke during his second term. Both were covered up for decades.
Neither appear to have affected his mental abilities. That is a crucial difference.
I think the stroke did. His second premiership wasn't exactly dynamic.
The problem with Biden is not so much his current state, which has clearly declined in the last year or two, but more whether he is up to 4 more years. He clearly isn't and a change to Kamala is the right thing to do.
America is a country that worships youth to the point of denying ageing, so does seem to have far too many ancient politicians.
Just retire FFS.
What is it about the mentality of some politicians that makes them want to go on forever? Why not, after a reasonable run as leader, would you not want to call it a day, and sit back and retire in comfort instead of making a fool of yourself?
Vanity which is a requisite to some degree for most politicians. The trouble with Biden’s situation is that he’s past the point of a graceful, controlled departure from the stage and he’s convinced himself the only option is to fight it out for the chance of another four years. I actually find the feisty, combative, old coot stuff more cringeworthy than the gaffes.
The belief that one is absolutely right and everyone else is wrong seems to be fairly common in leading politicians.
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
TBF, the Obama of 2008 was incredibly smart and quick and eloquent. So maybe all the above is true. You don't come from a 50/1 shot (take a bow, OGH) to beat Hillary Clinton by being a doofus. He was brilliant
It's just a shame his brilliance at campaigning and his superb grasp of issues and the charismatic oratory didn't translate into an especially good presidency
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
On the other hand Biden stepping down hits the Trump Campaign too, perhaps even harder.
It would require a major change to reorientate against Harris.
It wouldn't 'elitist coastal liberal, who makes Hillary look charismatic and with the common touch' the Trump campaign against Harris in the rustbelt swing states writes itself.
Biden had an OK press conference last night and is clearly not going to step down without clear polling Harris consistently polls better v Trump than he does
He literally talked about vice-president Trump.
“I wouldn’t have picked vice-president Trump to be vice-president, if I didn’t think she was up to the job”
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Carte blanche for foreigners to do what they like. Their country of origin is not going to imprison them on our instructions.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Because it’s now legally impossible to deport anyone from the UK, apart from a handful of Windrush veterans and Australians overstaying visas by decades.
Really ?!
Fine, but it means the maximum penalty for any crime is a free ticket home. Not a great deterrent.
The standard used to be - on release from jail, on the plane to wherever, if they don't have indefinite leave to remain. Has that changed?
Some countries have reciprocal agreements, so their nationals can be sent home to complete their sentences in a "home" prison.
I think reciprocal agreements would be fine - I mean who would we have back, Andrew Tate possibly from Romania, some drug runners from Thailand, white collar criminals from the USA and some visa overstayers from Oz (Well they're sent back anyway)
Its a feature of the UK system that there's no way a PM could have lasted this long when incapable.
Winston Churchill had a heart attack during the war, and a stroke during his second term. Both were covered up for decades.
Neither appear to have affected his mental abilities. That is a crucial difference.
I think the stroke did. His second premiership wasn't exactly dynamic.
The problem with Biden is not so much his current state, which has clearly declined in the last year or two, but more whether he is up to 4 more years. He clearly isn't and a change to Kamala is the right thing to do.
America is a country that worships youth to the point of denying ageing, so does seem to have far too many ancient politicians.
Just retire FFS.
What is it about the mentality of some politicians that makes them want to go on forever? Why not, after a reasonable run as leader, would you not want to call it a day, and sit back and retire in comfort instead of making a fool of yourself?
Vanity which is a requisite to some degree for most politicians. The trouble with Biden’s situation is that he’s past the point of a graceful, controlled departure from the stage and he’s convinced himself the only option is to fight it out for the chance of another four years. I actually find the feisty, combative, old coot stuff more cringeworthy than the gaffes.
The belief that one is absolutely right and everyone else is wrong seems to be fairly common in leading politicians.
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
TBF, the Obama of 2008 was incredibly smart and quick and eloquent. So maybe all the above is true. You don't come from a 50/1 shot (take a bow, OGH) to beat Hillary Clinton by being a doofus. He was brilliant
It's just a shame his brilliance at campaigning and his superb grasp of issues and the charismatic oratory didn't translate into an especially good presidency
I think it is more that, like test pilots, the arrogance is required for leading politicians.
Like test pilots, the good ones are actually that good.
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
On the other hand Biden stepping down hits the Trump Campaign too, perhaps even harder.
It would require a major change to reorientate against Harris.
It wouldn't 'elitist coastal liberal, who makes Hillary look charismatic and with the common touch' the Trump campaign against Harris in the rustbelt swing states writes itself.
Biden had an OK press conference last night and is clearly not going to step down without clear polling Harris consistently polls better v Trump than he does
All you need to think about is that Biden stays in then Trump wins. It won't even be close.
Facing that, understanding that, means that anyone, even a Hail Mary pass, would be better than letting Biden remain as the Dem nominee. Trump understands this very well which is why his camp are talking up Biden's abilities.
Biden’s own campaign team posted the video of him calling Zelensky, Putin.
“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine. A man who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, president Putin”
It’s actually quite sad that those around him, starting with Jill and Hunter, don’t want to tell him that he needs to stand aside.
We’ve all had these conversations with elderly parents and grandparents. My father (73 and thankfully in good health), told me several years ago that he wants me to tell him when to stop driving, for example. The problem with Biden is that all of those around him rely on the patronage that results from him being the big man.
I think the driving analogy is a good one. If you didn't do everything possible to stop an unfit parent from driving and they went onto kill someone, you bear a great deal of responsibility.
The danger for the Democrats is that the anger and blame starts to shift onto Harris for this disaster (particularly if she has known about it for some time).
Everyone in the senior echelons of the party and the liberal media have known about this for years, but very few have put their head above the parapet until a fortnight ago.
This one, from The Atlantic in March 2020, stands out. Eight months before the last election, they knew they were promoting someone in his last years, but were willing to support anything to beat Trump. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/stay-alive-joe-biden/608614/ “Stay Alive, Joe Biden “Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence.”
But that can't be right? Surely Leon spotted it all on his own, and no-one else noticed for at least a year thereafter?
Of all @Leons ludicrous claims the least credible is that he is the only one who noticed that Biden is old and frail.
I wasn't the only one at all, there were quite a few who agreed with me, I've re-read the threads (I have also never claimed this). @kle4 and @Luckyguy1983 were also entirely persuaded, for instance
What I was - as is my usual style - was the most persistent, and annoyingly loud, and the most contemptuous of the many pb-ers who were clearly in denial (and some still are!)
I also pointed out, several times that this was a crisis in the making as Biden could only get worse and then we'd end up with an obviously demented president. Bingo
He is still is not "obviously demented". He is old and bumbling. The fat lady may be singing on his presidency, but not on your predictions let alone assertions, which an unkind observer might point out are occassionaly a touch demented.
Did you watch the debate? I did
I also watched the press conference. It was excruciating. Not only did he call Kamala Harris "Vice President Trump", and mix up Europe and Asia, there were many moments when he mumbled into nothing, lost track of his thoughts, confused concepts and metaphors. It was so bad even the Guardian has noticed
"The best that could be said about the press conference was that it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Though that is to damn it with faint praise. There were long moments when Biden was perfectly lucid, with a stronger grasp of foreign policy than Trump could ever have managed.
But equally there were many moments when he appeared confused. His sentences would start nowhere in particular and then abruptly tail off. His delivery was dreamy, disconnected and detached. At one point during a rambling diversion about Finland, he became distracted and fell silent for a moment. You could sense the embarrassment in the room. The media were reluctant participants at the crime scene."
Some of you are just fucking idiots who are unable and unwilling to name something which is directly in front of you, because it makes you uncomfortable. It is, frankly, pathetic
Otherwise, have a lovely day everyone! I must to my flints, as the day is cool, thank God, and the coffee is strong, and the moment is here
The reason Americans are feeling poor is not just because inflation is not keeping up with wages but because inflation is not keeping up with inflation.
And that is before you get into the issue of the methodology changes since 1990 which have, according to some widely quoted sources resulted in US CPI being significantly lower (like half the amount it would have been) if the methodology had remained unchanged.
Just a 1% difference compounded over 20 years on pay, benefits and pensions would have supressed all three significantly on such a timescale.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Carte blanche for foreigners to do what they like. Their country of origin is not going to imprison them on our instructions.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Because it’s now legally impossible to deport anyone from the UK, apart from a handful of Windrush veterans and Australians overstaying visas by decades.
Really ?!
Fine, but it means the maximum penalty for any crime is a free ticket home. Not a great deterrent.
The standard used to be - on release from jail, on the plane to wherever, if they don't have indefinite leave to remain. Has that changed?
Some countries have reciprocal agreements, so their nationals can be sent home to complete their sentences in a "home" prison.
I think reciprocal agreements would be fine - I mean who would we have back, Andrew Tate possibly from Romania, some drug runners from Thailand, white collar criminals from the USA and some visa overstayers from Oz (Well they're sent back anyway)
We have already done some reciprocal prison agreements. It depends on both countries agreeing. IIRC the Thais don't want to do this for the drug smugglers they catch, because the UK government won't agree to keeping them in prison for Thai style prison sentences.
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
On the other hand Biden stepping down hits the Trump Campaign too, perhaps even harder.
It would require a major change to reorientate against Harris.
It wouldn't 'elitist coastal liberal, who makes Hillary look charismatic and with the common touch' the Trump campaign against Harris in the rustbelt swing states writes itself.
Biden had an OK press conference last night and is clearly not going to step down without clear polling Harris consistently polls better v Trump than he does
He literally talked about vice-president Trump.
“I wouldn’t have picked vice-president Trump to be vice-president, if I didn’t think she was up to the job”
My parents, similar age, would get my name wrong once every dozen or so goes. They are lucid, capable and still have excellent decision making. They would struggle with the energy of the role, but then so would I be to be realistic. Misspeaking names is extremely common amongst eighty-somethings.
It doesn't matter as the narrative and momentum is now too powerful, and if he stays on each further gaffe will take away from anything he tries to argue, so he has to step down. I suspect he is fine at the day job now but the risk he won't be in two or three years time is significant.
Its a feature of the UK system that there's no way a PM could have lasted this long when incapable.
Winston Churchill had a heart attack during the war, and a stroke during his second term. Both were covered up for decades.
Neither appear to have affected his mental abilities. That is a crucial difference.
I think the stroke did. His second premiership wasn't exactly dynamic.
The problem with Biden is not so much his current state, which has clearly declined in the last year or two, but more whether he is up to 4 more years. He clearly isn't and a change to Kamala is the right thing to do.
America is a country that worships youth to the point of denying ageing, so does seem to have far too many ancient politicians.
Just retire FFS.
What is it about the mentality of some politicians that makes them want to go on forever? Why not, after a reasonable run as leader, would you not want to call it a day, and sit back and retire in comfort instead of making a fool of yourself?
Vanity which is a requisite to some degree for most politicians. The trouble with Biden’s situation is that he’s past the point of a graceful, controlled departure from the stage and he’s convinced himself the only option is to fight it out for the chance of another four years. I actually find the feisty, combative, old coot stuff more cringeworthy than the gaffes.
The belief that one is absolutely right and everyone else is wrong seems to be fairly common in leading politicians.
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
TBF, the Obama of 2008 was incredibly smart and quick and eloquent. So maybe all the above is true. You don't come from a 50/1 shot (take a bow, OGH) to beat Hillary Clinton by being a doofus. He was brilliant
It's just a shame his brilliance at campaigning and his superb grasp of issues and the charismatic oratory didn't translate into an especially good presidency
I think it is more that, like test pilots, the arrogance is required for leading politicians.
Like test pilots, the good ones are actually that good.
Very good point. It's the same with artists. They tend to be selfish, arrogant and egotistic because 1. that's the only way to carve out the time to do such a strange job, by ignoring other demands, and 2. you have to BELIEVE the world wants to see your paintings, read your thoughts, hear your music, insert your artisanal flints
That generally makes for quite self-centred people, or at least narcissistic and driven, tho they can have other virtues that balance these out, one hopes
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
The secret bit is the software that enables the landings, that’s the real SpaceX IP. Anyone can build their simple-ish rocket, but no-one else can land it on a 100mx100m barge in the middle of the ocean.
That said, I'm not sure there's a mechanism to make him to unless he wants to go and decides to go. Unless his thousands of delegates all rat on him at the convention.
So perhaps he just doesn't even if the everyone else wants him to.
Article 25 is probably the best way.
25th Amendment. Basically that the Cabinet can declare the President unfit to hold office.
“Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
This might now be the only way to remove him from the nomination, if he’s unwilling to do so himself. But it requires Harris to weird the sword.
It also requires Biden not to dispute it, as if he does a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress is required to uphold the invocation.
That's an effectively meaningless proviso in this scenario, just like the Fixed Term Parliament Act's proviso that Parliament needed to vote through an election.
Once announced, realpolitik forces everyone to vote accordingly.
The Democrat Congress, having seen Harris and the Cabinet oust Biden, will have no realistic option but to ratify it. The GOP Congress realistically can't and won't vote to say that Biden is fit to continue.
So the Congressional element is a dead rubber. Its the pressure on Harris that she has to be the one to wield the sword that is the hardest element there.
If the GOP had been quick and clever enough they would already have impeached Biden on grounds of incapacity.
Resulting in either the Dems defending him or arguing amongst themselves.
Instead they spent the last year investigating supposed misconduct.
They can't impeach him for incapacity. The President can only be impeached for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors". Whilst the Constitution doesn't define what classifies as "high crimes and misdemeanors", it would be a real stretch to argue that incapacity counts.
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
On the other hand Biden stepping down hits the Trump Campaign too, perhaps even harder.
It would require a major change to reorientate against Harris.
It wouldn't 'elitist coastal liberal, who makes Hillary look charismatic and with the common touch' the Trump campaign against Harris in the rustbelt swing states writes itself.
Biden had an OK press conference last night and is clearly not going to step down without clear polling Harris consistently polls better v Trump than he does
He literally talked about vice-president Trump.
“I wouldn’t have picked vice-president Trump to be vice-president, if I didn’t think she was up to the job”
Biden’s own campaign team posted the video of him calling Zelensky, Putin.
“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine. A man who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, president Putin”
It’s actually quite sad that those around him, starting with Jill and Hunter, don’t want to tell him that he needs to stand aside.
We’ve all had these conversations with elderly parents and grandparents. My father (73 and thankfully in good health), told me several years ago that he wants me to tell him when to stop driving, for example. The problem with Biden is that all of those around him rely on the patronage that results from him being the big man.
I think the driving analogy is a good one. If you didn't do everything possible to stop an unfit parent from driving and they went onto kill someone, you bear a great deal of responsibility.
The danger for the Democrats is that the anger and blame starts to shift onto Harris for this disaster (particularly if she has known about it for some time).
Everyone in the senior echelons of the party and the liberal media have known about this for years, but very few have put their head above the parapet until a fortnight ago.
This one, from The Atlantic in March 2020, stands out. Eight months before the last election, they knew they were promoting someone in his last years, but were willing to support anything to beat Trump. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/stay-alive-joe-biden/608614/ “Stay Alive, Joe Biden “Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence.”
But that can't be right? Surely Leon spotted it all on his own, and no-one else noticed for at least a year thereafter?
Of all @Leons ludicrous claims the least credible is that he is the only one who noticed that Biden is old and frail.
I wasn't the only one at all, there were quite a few who agreed with me, I've re-read the threads (I have also never claimed this). @kle4 and @Luckyguy1983 were also entirely persuaded, for instance
What I was - as is my usual style - was the most persistent, and annoyingly loud, and the most contemptuous of the many pb-ers who were clearly in denial (and some still are!)
I also pointed out, several times that this was a crisis in the making as Biden could only get worse and then we'd end up with an obviously demented president. Bingo
He is still is not "obviously demented". He is old and bumbling. The fat lady may be singing on his presidency, but not on your predictions let alone assertions, which an unkind observer might point out are occassionaly a touch demented.
Did you watch the debate? I did
I also watched the press conference. It was excruciating. Not only did he call Kamala Harris "Vice President Trump", and mix up Europe and Asia, there were many moments when he mumbled into nothing, lost track of his thoughts, confused concepts and metaphors. It was so bad even the Guardian has noticed
"The best that could be said about the press conference was that it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Though that is to damn it with faint praise. There were long moments when Biden was perfectly lucid, with a stronger grasp of foreign policy than Trump could ever have managed.
But equally there were many moments when he appeared confused. His sentences would start nowhere in particular and then abruptly tail off. His delivery was dreamy, disconnected and detached. At one point during a rambling diversion about Finland, he became distracted and fell silent for a moment. You could sense the embarrassment in the room. The media were reluctant participants at the crime scene."
Some of you are just fucking idiots who are unable and unwilling to name something which is directly in front of you, because it makes you uncomfortable. It is, frankly, pathetic
Otherwise, have a lovely day everyone! I must to my flints, as the day is cool, thank God, and the coffee is strong, and the moment is here
I agree fully with the Guardian post. His knowledge of policy is 8/10 and his communication is 2/10. He is old not suffering from obvious dementia, if he has dementia it will be very early stage. He should be replaced if he doesnt step down.
That said, I'm not sure there's a mechanism to make him to unless he wants to go and decides to go. Unless his thousands of delegates all rat on him at the convention.
So perhaps he just doesn't even if the everyone else wants him to.
Article 25 is probably the best way.
25th Amendment. Basically that the Cabinet can declare the President unfit to hold office.
“Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
This might now be the only way to remove him from the nomination, if he’s unwilling to do so himself. But it requires Harris to weird the sword.
It also requires Biden not to dispute it, as if he does a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress is required to uphold the invocation.
That's an effectively meaningless proviso in this scenario, just like the Fixed Term Parliament Act's proviso that Parliament needed to vote through an election.
Once announced, realpolitik forces everyone to vote accordingly.
The Democrat Congress, having seen Harris and the Cabinet oust Biden, will have no realistic option but to ratify it. The GOP Congress realistically can't and won't vote to say that Biden is fit to continue.
So the Congressional element is a dead rubber. Its the pressure on Harris that she has to be the one to wield the sword that is the hardest element there.
If the GOP had been quick and clever enough they would already have impeached Biden on grounds of incapacity.
Resulting in either the Dems defending him or arguing amongst themselves.
Instead they spent the last year investigating supposed misconduct.
They can't impeach him for incapacity. The President can only be impeached for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors". Whilst the Constitution doesn't define what classifies as "high crimes and misdemeanors", it would be a real stretch to argue that incapacity counts.
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
It's no longer true that Harris is behind Biden in a match up against Trump. Some polls still have her polling worse than Biden, others have her polling better. Overall there's nothing in it between them at the moment.
That's now though. In a scenario where Harris was the legitimate nominee and the Democrats were focused on promoting her not the sitting President, Harris would surely get a boost, just as pretty well any other potential nominee would. That should be a pretty legitimate expectation, not the outside hope that you infer. And as for Biden, there's an enormous risk that once the campaign heats up in intensity he'll bomb again and the polling will move further to reflect that.
So basically on your two points: 1. Campaign Finance - Not a problem if Harris is the nominee. 2. Harris's polling - Bound to improve and improve on where Biden is even currently, let alone where Biden might be after a second car crash debate.
1. Would still have a lot of issues. It's America - lawsuits would start in 15 seconds. 2. Maaaaybe. And there hasn't been a poll suggesting Harris could actually win. Just lose less badly. Check out how she polls in the swing state.....
1. Hang on, you had commented that "Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far" which can only be read as meaning that there is no real barrier to Harris using the campaign funds, consistent with what I've read from commentators elsewhere. But feel free to change your mind. By contrast Biden definitely has a lot of issues. Like established donors no longer donating over the remaining four months. 2. Not Maaaaybe at all. And you're wrong on polling. In the most recent polling, Ipsos 5-9 July have Harris 2 points ahead (with Biden level or 1 point behind.)
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
On the other hand Biden stepping down hits the Trump Campaign too, perhaps even harder.
It would require a major change to reorientate against Harris.
It wouldn't 'elitist coastal liberal, who makes Hillary look charismatic and with the common touch' the Trump campaign against Harris in the rustbelt swing states writes itself.
Biden had an OK press conference last night and is clearly not going to step down without clear polling Harris consistently polls better v Trump than he does
All you need to think about is that Biden stays in then Trump wins. It won't even be close.
Facing that, understanding that, means that anyone, even a Hail Mary pass, would be better than letting Biden remain as the Dem nominee. Trump understands this very well which is why his camp are talking up Biden's abilities.
What I've been seeing watching Dems argue with each other about this on Bluesky is that there's a lot of disagreement about how hopeless Biden's chances are if he stays in. The pro-Biden argument goes:
- Polls are basically tied - Trump's improvement on 2020 is mostly with voters who are hard to poll - It's only July, July polls aren't very predictive - The economy is getting better, inflation has come down and perception of it is laggy, the 538 model that takes non-polling factors into account thinks it's a toss-up - Since the debate there's been a non-stop news cycle about Biden's condition and it's managed to produce a swing of a grand total of 1%, so it seems like it's already in the price
I don't think I really buy the argument but it's not ridiculous.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Because it’s now legally impossible to deport anyone from the UK, apart from a handful of Windrush veterans and Australians overstaying visas by decades.
Simply not true.
It's the Tories that have led the collapse of deportations.
So under a Labour government, we can look forward to an increase in the number of deportations?
Hopefully they’ll soon publish a target for the number of deportations, on which we can judge them at the next election?
I expect so, after all the last Labour government did a lot of deportations.
It's all about competent administration, something that the Tories lost sight of during their breakdown over Europe.
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
The secret bit is the software that enables the landings, that’s the real SpaceX IP. Anyone can build their simple-ish rocket, but no-one else can land it on a 100mx100m barge in the middle of the ocean.
The suicide burn* algorithm isn't that hard to figure out.
The paper is by the SpaceX guy who led the team for the landing project.
*It's called that because the F9 has a thrust to weight of more than 1 on landing. So it can't hover - if it carried on thrusting, it would starting climbing back into the sky.. So, instead, it heads for the ground at a velocity that means, when it is slowing down, zero velocity just happens to be at zero feet.
One point about the prisons - why is it that we can't deport all our foreign national prisoners*
* Not including Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Iranians and other difficult countries but Indians, Albanians, French, USA and so forth. Apparently there's over 10,000 of them in our jails - they can't all be from countries like the first four.
Because it’s now legally impossible to deport anyone from the UK, apart from a handful of Windrush veterans and Australians overstaying visas by decades.
Simply not true.
It's the Tories that have led the collapse of deportations.
So under a Labour government, we can look forward to an increase in the number of deportations?
Hopefully they’ll soon publish a target for the number of deportations, on which we can judge them at the next election?
I expect so, after all the last Labour government did a lot of deportations.
It's all about competent administration, something that the Tories lost sight of during their breakdown over Europe.
Okay, I look forward to the increase in deportation numbers.
Being even older than Biden (!) I have some sympathy with him, although (even) my wife tells me that, dodgy though I may be physically, there's nothing amiss mentally. However, I'm conscious that I'm quite capable of verbal slips, and I'm also conscious that, as I peer at a distant 90..... 3 and a bit years away ...... things are not going to get better. It's clear that he's got into his obviously slightly fuddled brain that he's the only one who can beat Trump, and he may be right; however he's also not going to improve over the next four years and if I were a US citizen I would be hoping and indeed praying to whatever gods there are that he can be persuaded to let someone else have a go. I suspect, without any information, that if he were to step aside, then the relief would be so great that his successor would walk it. But that's probably just hope talking!
Biden’s own campaign team posted the video of him calling Zelensky, Putin.
“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine. A man who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, president Putin”
It’s actually quite sad that those around him, starting with Jill and Hunter, don’t want to tell him that he needs to stand aside.
We’ve all had these conversations with elderly parents and grandparents. My father (73 and thankfully in good health), told me several years ago that he wants me to tell him when to stop driving, for example. The problem with Biden is that all of those around him rely on the patronage that results from him being the big man.
I think the driving analogy is a good one. If you didn't do everything possible to stop an unfit parent from driving and they went onto kill someone, you bear a great deal of responsibility.
The danger for the Democrats is that the anger and blame starts to shift onto Harris for this disaster (particularly if she has known about it for some time).
Everyone in the senior echelons of the party and the liberal media have known about this for years, but very few have put their head above the parapet until a fortnight ago.
This one, from The Atlantic in March 2020, stands out. Eight months before the last election, they knew they were promoting someone in his last years, but were willing to support anything to beat Trump. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/stay-alive-joe-biden/608614/ “Stay Alive, Joe Biden “Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence.”
But that can't be right? Surely Leon spotted it all on his own, and no-one else noticed for at least a year thereafter?
Of all @Leons ludicrous claims the least credible is that he is the only one who noticed that Biden is old and frail.
I wasn't the only one at all, there were quite a few who agreed with me, I've re-read the threads (I have also never claimed this). @kle4 and @Luckyguy1983 were also entirely persuaded, for instance
What I was - as is my usual style - was the most persistent, and annoyingly loud, and the most contemptuous of the many pb-ers who were clearly in denial (and some still are!)
I also pointed out, several times that this was a crisis in the making as Biden could only get worse and then we'd end up with an obviously demented president. Bingo
He is still is not "obviously demented". He is old and bumbling. The fat lady may be singing on his presidency, but not on your predictions let alone assertions, which an unkind observer might point out are occassionaly a touch demented.
Did you watch the debate? I did
I also watched the press conference. It was excruciating. Not only did he call Kamala Harris "Vice President Trump", and mix up Europe and Asia, there were many moments when he mumbled into nothing, lost track of his thoughts, confused concepts and metaphors. It was so bad even the Guardian has noticed
"The best that could be said about the press conference was that it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Though that is to damn it with faint praise. There were long moments when Biden was perfectly lucid, with a stronger grasp of foreign policy than Trump could ever have managed.
But equally there were many moments when he appeared confused. His sentences would start nowhere in particular and then abruptly tail off. His delivery was dreamy, disconnected and detached. At one point during a rambling diversion about Finland, he became distracted and fell silent for a moment. You could sense the embarrassment in the room. The media were reluctant participants at the crime scene."
Some of you are just fucking idiots who are unable and unwilling to name something which is directly in front of you, because it makes you uncomfortable. It is, frankly, pathetic
Otherwise, have a lovely day everyone! I must to my flints, as the day is cool, thank God, and the coffee is strong, and the moment is here
I agree fully with the Guardian post. His knowledge of policy is 8/10 and his communication is 2/10. He is old not suffering from obvious dementia, if he has dementia it will be very early stage. He should be replaced if he doesnt step down.
I didn't see the press conference but saw the earlier debate here in America. Excruciating hardly begins to cover it.
On dementia, most who suffer from it have good days and bad days. My grandmother (who lived with us when I was growing up until she started leaving the gas on etc. and we had to put her in a home) could be very lucid on many points until she died. Even to her last days she could do crossword puzzles very well, though she forgot all of our names. But we're not talking about a sinecure here - I think we need a leader of the free world whose mental capacity is above suspicion.
Also we're not just thinking about him now - we're thinking about how he will be in 2028.
Finally, I think the best point in favour of him stepping down is that Trump has been attacking anyone who thinks Biden should step down and seems to want him to stay in the race. And I doubt that's for the benefit of the US, or for anyone except Donald J Trump.
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
It's no longer true that Harris is behind Biden in a match up against Trump. Some polls still have her polling worse than Biden, others have her polling better. Overall there's nothing in it between them at the moment.
That's now though. In a scenario where Harris was the legitimate nominee and the Democrats were focused on promoting her not the sitting President, Harris would surely get a boost, just as pretty well any other potential nominee would. That should be a pretty legitimate expectation, not the outside hope that you infer. And as for Biden, there's an enormous risk that once the campaign heats up in intensity he'll bomb again and the polling will move further to reflect that.
So basically on your two points: 1. Campaign Finance - Not a problem if Harris is the nominee. 2. Harris's polling - Bound to improve and improve on where Biden is even currently, let alone where Biden might be after a second car crash debate.
1. Would still have a lot of issues. It's America - lawsuits would start in 15 seconds. 2. Maaaaybe. And there hasn't been a poll suggesting Harris could actually win. Just lose less badly. Check out how she polls in the swing state.....
1. Hang on, you had commented that "Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far" which can only be read as meaning that there is no real barrier to Harris using the campaign funds, consistent with what I've read from commentators elsewhere. But feel free to change your mind. By contrast Biden definitely has a lot of issues. Like established donors no longer donating over the remaining four months. 2. Not Maaaaybe at all. And you're wrong on polling. In the most recent polling, Ipsos 5-9 July have Harris 2 points ahead (with Biden level or 1 point behind.)
Conclusion: "Sometimes, it makes sense to bet on uncertainty"
But also includes this: "In our polls-only forecast pairing Biden against Trump, the Democratic candidate needs to win the popular vote by just 1.1 points to win the presidency. That’s thanks to Biden doing better in Pennsylvania, the likeliest tipping-point state in our model. Harris, by contrast, would need to win the popular vote by 3.5-4 points to win Pennsylvania and, with it, the Electoral College." So doing 2 points better nationally (other polls are available showing Harris doing worse nationally) might not help.
But still, rolling the dice on incumbency boosting Harris seems to make more sense than hoping that the narrative of Biden being past it somehow goes away.
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
It's no longer true that Harris is behind Biden in a match up against Trump. Some polls still have her polling worse than Biden, others have her polling better. Overall there's nothing in it between them at the moment.
That's now though. In a scenario where Harris was the legitimate nominee and the Democrats were focused on promoting her not the sitting President, Harris would surely get a boost, just as pretty well any other potential nominee would. That should be a pretty legitimate expectation, not the outside hope that you infer. And as for Biden, there's an enormous risk that once the campaign heats up in intensity he'll bomb again and the polling will move further to reflect that.
So basically on your two points: 1. Campaign Finance - Not a problem if Harris is the nominee. 2. Harris's polling - Bound to improve and improve on where Biden is even currently, let alone where Biden might be after a second car crash debate.
1. Would still have a lot of issues. It's America - lawsuits would start in 15 seconds. 2. Maaaaybe. And there hasn't been a poll suggesting Harris could actually win. Just lose less badly. Check out how she polls in the swing state.....
1. Hang on, you had commented that "Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far" which can only be read as meaning that there is no real barrier to Harris using the campaign funds, consistent with what I've read from commentators elsewhere. But feel free to change your mind. By contrast Biden definitely has a lot of issues. Like established donors no longer donating over the remaining four months. 2. Not Maaaaybe at all. And you're wrong on polling. In the most recent polling, Ipsos 5-9 July have Harris 2 points ahead (with Biden level or 1 point behind.)
She is the one who can simply go forward without having to give all the money back or have it all donated to the DNC or something. That doesn't mean it will be simple after that. Lawsuits are guaranteed. And with MAGA judges out there, that could easily lead to orders to freeze money until lawsuits are resolved.
Swing states are where the polling is important. See Hillary. Winning California by huge margins is nice, but doesn't win the presidency.
Biden’s own campaign team posted the video of him calling Zelensky, Putin.
“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine. A man who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, president Putin”
It’s actually quite sad that those around him, starting with Jill and Hunter, don’t want to tell him that he needs to stand aside.
We’ve all had these conversations with elderly parents and grandparents. My father (73 and thankfully in good health), told me several years ago that he wants me to tell him when to stop driving, for example. The problem with Biden is that all of those around him rely on the patronage that results from him being the big man.
I think the driving analogy is a good one. If you didn't do everything possible to stop an unfit parent from driving and they went onto kill someone, you bear a great deal of responsibility.
The danger for the Democrats is that the anger and blame starts to shift onto Harris for this disaster (particularly if she has known about it for some time).
Everyone in the senior echelons of the party and the liberal media have known about this for years, but very few have put their head above the parapet until a fortnight ago.
This one, from The Atlantic in March 2020, stands out. Eight months before the last election, they knew they were promoting someone in his last years, but were willing to support anything to beat Trump. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/stay-alive-joe-biden/608614/ “Stay Alive, Joe Biden “Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence.”
But that can't be right? Surely Leon spotted it all on his own, and no-one else noticed for at least a year thereafter?
Of all @Leons ludicrous claims the least credible is that he is the only one who noticed that Biden is old and frail.
I wasn't the only one at all, there were quite a few who agreed with me, I've re-read the threads (I have also never claimed this). @kle4 and @Luckyguy1983 were also entirely persuaded, for instance
What I was - as is my usual style - was the most persistent, and annoyingly loud, and the most contemptuous of the many pb-ers who were clearly in denial (and some still are!)
I also pointed out, several times that this was a crisis in the making as Biden could only get worse and then we'd end up with an obviously demented president. Bingo
He is still is not "obviously demented". He is old and bumbling. The fat lady may be singing on his presidency, but not on your predictions let alone assertions, which an unkind observer might point out are occassionaly a touch demented.
Did you watch the debate? I did
I also watched the press conference. It was excruciating. Not only did he call Kamala Harris "Vice President Trump", and mix up Europe and Asia, there were many moments when he mumbled into nothing, lost track of his thoughts, confused concepts and metaphors. It was so bad even the Guardian has noticed
"The best that could be said about the press conference was that it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Though that is to damn it with faint praise. There were long moments when Biden was perfectly lucid, with a stronger grasp of foreign policy than Trump could ever have managed.
But equally there were many moments when he appeared confused. His sentences would start nowhere in particular and then abruptly tail off. His delivery was dreamy, disconnected and detached. At one point during a rambling diversion about Finland, he became distracted and fell silent for a moment. You could sense the embarrassment in the room. The media were reluctant participants at the crime scene."
Some of you are just fucking idiots who are unable and unwilling to name something which is directly in front of you, because it makes you uncomfortable. It is, frankly, pathetic
Otherwise, have a lovely day everyone! I must to my flints, as the day is cool, thank God, and the coffee is strong, and the moment is here
I agree fully with the Guardian post. His knowledge of policy is 8/10 and his communication is 2/10. He is old not suffering from obvious dementia, if he has dementia it will be very early stage. He should be replaced if he doesnt step down.
I didn't see the press conference but saw the earlier debate here in America. Excruciating hardly begins to cover it.
On dementia, most who suffer from it have good days and bad days. My grandmother (who lived with us when I was growing up until she started leaving the gas on etc. and we had to put her in a home) could be very lucid on many points until she died. Even to her last days she could do crossword puzzles very well, though she forgot all of our names. But we're not talking about a sinecure here - I think we need a leader of the free world whose mental capacity is above suspicion.
Also we're not just thinking about him now - we're thinking about how he will be in 2028.
Finally, I think the best point in favour of him stepping down is that Trump has been attacking anyone who thinks Biden should step down and seems to want him to stay in the race. And I doubt that's for the benefit of the US, or for anyone except Donald J Trump.
I am not arguing he shouldn't step down or that his performance in 2028 is not a risk, I have stated he should step down and it is a risk. I am simply pointing out that nothing we have seen in public is obviously dementia.
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
The secret bit is the software that enables the landings, that’s the real SpaceX IP. Anyone can build their simple-ish rocket, but no-one else can land it on a 100mx100m barge in the middle of the ocean.
The suicide burn* algorithm isn't that hard to figure out.
The paper is by the SpaceX guy who led the team for the landing project.
*It's called that because the F9 has a thrust to weight of more than 1 on landing. So it can't hover - if it carried on thrusting, it would starting climbing back into the sky.. So, instead, it heads for the ground at a velocity that means, when it is slowing down, zero velocity just happens to be at zero feet.
There’s a massive difference between understanding something, and being able to engineer something to compete with it.
I want to watch a space Formula 1, where every weekend ten teams compete to bring the cheapest LEO rocket to the party.
On topic: This is an "if it were to be done, tis best it be done quickly" type thing for the DEMs. Either get behind Biden and stop the handwringing or - my preference fwiw - lever him out and get behind someone else. The longer it goes on the better it is for Donald Trump, which means the worse it is for everyone but the bad people of this world.
the Labour government has started its search for a new border security commander – a plan it trumpeted in the election as its answer to the migration crisis (despite the job already existing). The role has been advertised at £140,000-£200,000, with a very healthy 27% pension, and location is described as ‘flexible’:
“Flexible: including, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Peterborough, Manchester, Solihull, Sheffield, Croydon and London. Regular travel to London (if based nationally) and overseas will be required.”
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
It's no longer true that Harris is behind Biden in a match up against Trump. Some polls still have her polling worse than Biden, others have her polling better. Overall there's nothing in it between them at the moment.
That's now though. In a scenario where Harris was the legitimate nominee and the Democrats were focused on promoting her not the sitting President, Harris would surely get a boost, just as pretty well any other potential nominee would. That should be a pretty legitimate expectation, not the outside hope that you infer. And as for Biden, there's an enormous risk that once the campaign heats up in intensity he'll bomb again and the polling will move further to reflect that.
So basically on your two points: 1. Campaign Finance - Not a problem if Harris is the nominee. 2. Harris's polling - Bound to improve and improve on where Biden is even currently, let alone where Biden might be after a second car crash debate.
1. Would still have a lot of issues. It's America - lawsuits would start in 15 seconds. 2. Maaaaybe. And there hasn't been a poll suggesting Harris could actually win. Just lose less badly. Check out how she polls in the swing state.....
1. Hang on, you had commented that "Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far" which can only be read as meaning that there is no real barrier to Harris using the campaign funds, consistent with what I've read from commentators elsewhere. But feel free to change your mind. By contrast Biden definitely has a lot of issues. Like established donors no longer donating over the remaining four months. 2. Not Maaaaybe at all. And you're wrong on polling. In the most recent polling, Ipsos 5-9 July have Harris 2 points ahead (with Biden level or 1 point behind.)
She is the one who can simply go forward without having to give all the money back or have it all donated to the DNC or something. That doesn't mean it will be simple after that. Lawsuits are guaranteed. And with MAGA judges out there, that could easily lead to orders to freeze money until lawsuits are resolved.
Swing states are where the polling is important. See Hillary. Winning California by huge margins is nice, but doesn't win the presidency.
Very real possibility of low black voter turnout if Biden is replaced, they're the most strident part of the Democratic base behind him and do have variable turnout - that would almost certainly guarantee Georgia for Trump.
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
The secret bit is the software that enables the landings, that’s the real SpaceX IP. Anyone can build their simple-ish rocket, but no-one else can land it on a 100mx100m barge in the middle of the ocean.
The suicide burn* algorithm isn't that hard to figure out.
The paper is by the SpaceX guy who led the team for the landing project.
*It's called that because the F9 has a thrust to weight of more than 1 on landing. So it can't hover - if it carried on thrusting, it would starting climbing back into the sky.. So, instead, it heads for the ground at a velocity that means, when it is slowing down, zero velocity just happens to be at zero feet.
There’s a massive difference between understanding something, and being able to engineer something to compete with it.
I want to watch a space Formula 1, where every weekend ten teams compete to bring the cheapest LEO rocket to the party.
There are plenty of competent engineers out there. I would say Blue Origin & Stoke (for example) will figure this out pretty rapidly.
The main issue, actually, is getting the real world data on engine throttle up/down curves in flight*, grid fin performance in the wild** etc. to feed the algorithm.
*Engines respond differently on the test stand. Think G loads, vibration.... **Supersonic aerodynamics is hard and not a solved problem.
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
The secret bit is the software that enables the landings, that’s the real SpaceX IP. Anyone can build their simple-ish rocket, but no-one else can land it on a 100mx100m barge in the middle of the ocean.
The suicide burn* algorithm isn't that hard to figure out.
The paper is by the SpaceX guy who led the team for the landing project.
*It's called that because the F9 has a thrust to weight of more than 1 on landing. So it can't hover - if it carried on thrusting, it would starting climbing back into the sky.. So, instead, it heads for the ground at a velocity that means, when it is slowing down, zero velocity just happens to be at zero feet.
If it had a thrust to weight ratio of less than 1, it wouldn't be landing; it'd be crashing.
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
The secret bit is the software that enables the landings, that’s the real SpaceX IP. Anyone can build their simple-ish rocket, but no-one else can land it on a 100mx100m barge in the middle of the ocean.
The suicide burn* algorithm isn't that hard to figure out.
The paper is by the SpaceX guy who led the team for the landing project.
*It's called that because the F9 has a thrust to weight of more than 1 on landing. So it can't hover - if it carried on thrusting, it would starting climbing back into the sky.. So, instead, it heads for the ground at a velocity that means, when it is slowing down, zero velocity just happens to be at zero feet.
If it had a thrust to weight ratio of less than 1, it wouldn't be landing; it'd be crashing.
There's actually a potential solution for that - involves some weird manoeuvres and using the fuselage of the rocket as a lifting surface. Gary Hudson did the maths on that, IIRC, long ago.
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
It's no longer true that Harris is behind Biden in a match up against Trump. Some polls still have her polling worse than Biden, others have her polling better. Overall there's nothing in it between them at the moment.
That's now though. In a scenario where Harris was the legitimate nominee and the Democrats were focused on promoting her not the sitting President, Harris would surely get a boost, just as pretty well any other potential nominee would. That should be a pretty legitimate expectation, not the outside hope that you infer. And as for Biden, there's an enormous risk that once the campaign heats up in intensity he'll bomb again and the polling will move further to reflect that.
So basically on your two points: 1. Campaign Finance - Not a problem if Harris is the nominee. 2. Harris's polling - Bound to improve and improve on where Biden is even currently, let alone where Biden might be after a second car crash debate.
1. Would still have a lot of issues. It's America - lawsuits would start in 15 seconds. 2. Maaaaybe. And there hasn't been a poll suggesting Harris could actually win. Just lose less badly. Check out how she polls in the swing state.....
1. Hang on, you had commented that "Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far" which can only be read as meaning that there is no real barrier to Harris using the campaign funds, consistent with what I've read from commentators elsewhere. But feel free to change your mind. By contrast Biden definitely has a lot of issues. Like established donors no longer donating over the remaining four months. 2. Not Maaaaybe at all. And you're wrong on polling. In the most recent polling, Ipsos 5-9 July have Harris 2 points ahead (with Biden level or 1 point behind.)
She is the one who can simply go forward without having to give all the money back or have it all donated to the DNC or something. That doesn't mean it will be simple after that. Lawsuits are guaranteed. And with MAGA judges out there, that could easily lead to orders to freeze money until lawsuits are resolved.
Swing states are where the polling is important. See Hillary. Winning California by huge margins is nice, but doesn't win the presidency.
Very real possibility of low black voter turnout if Biden is replaced, they're the most strident part of the Democratic base behind him and do have variable turnout - that would almost certainly guarantee Georgia for Trump.
Not if Kamala Harris becomes the nominee . That’s why if Biden does withdraw she has to be the pick .
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
It's no longer true that Harris is behind Biden in a match up against Trump. Some polls still have her polling worse than Biden, others have her polling better. Overall there's nothing in it between them at the moment.
That's now though. In a scenario where Harris was the legitimate nominee and the Democrats were focused on promoting her not the sitting President, Harris would surely get a boost, just as pretty well any other potential nominee would. That should be a pretty legitimate expectation, not the outside hope that you infer. And as for Biden, there's an enormous risk that once the campaign heats up in intensity he'll bomb again and the polling will move further to reflect that.
So basically on your two points: 1. Campaign Finance - Not a problem if Harris is the nominee. 2. Harris's polling - Bound to improve and improve on where Biden is even currently, let alone where Biden might be after a second car crash debate.
1. Would still have a lot of issues. It's America - lawsuits would start in 15 seconds. 2. Maaaaybe. And there hasn't been a poll suggesting Harris could actually win. Just lose less badly. Check out how she polls in the swing state.....
1. Hang on, you had commented that "Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far" which can only be read as meaning that there is no real barrier to Harris using the campaign funds, consistent with what I've read from commentators elsewhere. But feel free to change your mind. By contrast Biden definitely has a lot of issues. Like established donors no longer donating over the remaining four months. 2. Not Maaaaybe at all. And you're wrong on polling. In the most recent polling, Ipsos 5-9 July have Harris 2 points ahead (with Biden level or 1 point behind.)
She is the one who can simply go forward without having to give all the money back or have it all donated to the DNC or something. That doesn't mean it will be simple after that. Lawsuits are guaranteed. And with MAGA judges out there, that could easily lead to orders to freeze money until lawsuits are resolved.
Swing states are where the polling is important. See Hillary. Winning California by huge margins is nice, but doesn't win the presidency.
Very real possibility of low black voter turnout if Biden is replaced, they're the most strident part of the Democratic base behind him and do have variable turnout - that would almost certainly guarantee Georgia for Trump.
Hasn't Biden lost appeal with black voters since 2020 though? I've read a few articles suggesting that.
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
The secret bit is the software that enables the landings, that’s the real SpaceX IP. Anyone can build their simple-ish rocket, but no-one else can land it on a 100mx100m barge in the middle of the ocean.
The suicide burn* algorithm isn't that hard to figure out.
The paper is by the SpaceX guy who led the team for the landing project.
*It's called that because the F9 has a thrust to weight of more than 1 on landing. So it can't hover - if it carried on thrusting, it would starting climbing back into the sky.. So, instead, it heads for the ground at a velocity that means, when it is slowing down, zero velocity just happens to be at zero feet.
If it had a thrust to weight ratio of less than 1, it wouldn't be landing; it'd be crashing.
There's actually a potential solution for that - involves some weird manoeuvres and using the fuselage of the rocket as a lifting surface. Gary Hudson did the maths on that, IIRC, long ago.
Isn’t that what the Starship is doing, with that weird fallback manoeuvre?
It’s a load of mad maths that somehow works on the computers.
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
It's no longer true that Harris is behind Biden in a match up against Trump. Some polls still have her polling worse than Biden, others have her polling better. Overall there's nothing in it between them at the moment.
That's now though. In a scenario where Harris was the legitimate nominee and the Democrats were focused on promoting her not the sitting President, Harris would surely get a boost, just as pretty well any other potential nominee would. That should be a pretty legitimate expectation, not the outside hope that you infer. And as for Biden, there's an enormous risk that once the campaign heats up in intensity he'll bomb again and the polling will move further to reflect that.
So basically on your two points: 1. Campaign Finance - Not a problem if Harris is the nominee. 2. Harris's polling - Bound to improve and improve on where Biden is even currently, let alone where Biden might be after a second car crash debate.
1. Would still have a lot of issues. It's America - lawsuits would start in 15 seconds. 2. Maaaaybe. And there hasn't been a poll suggesting Harris could actually win. Just lose less badly. Check out how she polls in the swing state.....
1. Hang on, you had commented that "Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far" which can only be read as meaning that there is no real barrier to Harris using the campaign funds, consistent with what I've read from commentators elsewhere. But feel free to change your mind. By contrast Biden definitely has a lot of issues. Like established donors no longer donating over the remaining four months. 2. Not Maaaaybe at all. And you're wrong on polling. In the most recent polling, Ipsos 5-9 July have Harris 2 points ahead (with Biden level or 1 point behind.)
She is the one who can simply go forward without having to give all the money back or have it all donated to the DNC or something. That doesn't mean it will be simple after that. Lawsuits are guaranteed. And with MAGA judges out there, that could easily lead to orders to freeze money until lawsuits are resolved.
Swing states are where the polling is important. See Hillary. Winning California by huge margins is nice, but doesn't win the presidency.
Very real possibility of low black voter turnout if Biden is replaced, they're the most strident part of the Democratic base behind him and do have variable turnout - that would almost certainly guarantee Georgia for Trump.
"Harris also does slightly better than Biden in our forecast of the national popular vote. The model forecasts that Trump would outpace Harris nationally by 1.5 points, while he would outrun Biden by 2.1 points. However, this could be an artifact of our model not having any Harris-versus-Trump polls that include independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who tends to take slightly more votes away from Democrats than Republicans when included in a poll.
However, Harris’s popular-vote edge is almost entirely negated by the bigger Electoral College bias against her. In our polls-only forecast pairing Biden against Trump, the Democratic candidate needs to win the popular vote by just 1.1 points to win the presidency. That’s thanks to Biden doing better in Pennsylvania, the likeliest tipping-point state in our model. Harris, by contrast, would need to win the popular vote by 3.5-4 points to win Pennsylvania and, with it, the Electoral College."
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
It's no longer true that Harris is behind Biden in a match up against Trump. Some polls still have her polling worse than Biden, others have her polling better. Overall there's nothing in it between them at the moment.
That's now though. In a scenario where Harris was the legitimate nominee and the Democrats were focused on promoting her not the sitting President, Harris would surely get a boost, just as pretty well any other potential nominee would. That should be a pretty legitimate expectation, not the outside hope that you infer. And as for Biden, there's an enormous risk that once the campaign heats up in intensity he'll bomb again and the polling will move further to reflect that.
So basically on your two points: 1. Campaign Finance - Not a problem if Harris is the nominee. 2. Harris's polling - Bound to improve and improve on where Biden is even currently, let alone where Biden might be after a second car crash debate.
1. Would still have a lot of issues. It's America - lawsuits would start in 15 seconds. 2. Maaaaybe. And there hasn't been a poll suggesting Harris could actually win. Just lose less badly. Check out how she polls in the swing state.....
1. Hang on, you had commented that "Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far" which can only be read as meaning that there is no real barrier to Harris using the campaign funds, consistent with what I've read from commentators elsewhere. But feel free to change your mind. By contrast Biden definitely has a lot of issues. Like established donors no longer donating over the remaining four months. 2. Not Maaaaybe at all. And you're wrong on polling. In the most recent polling, Ipsos 5-9 July have Harris 2 points ahead (with Biden level or 1 point behind.)
She is the one who can simply go forward without having to give all the money back or have it all donated to the DNC or something. That doesn't mean it will be simple after that. Lawsuits are guaranteed. And with MAGA judges out there, that could easily lead to orders to freeze money until lawsuits are resolved.
Swing states are where the polling is important. See Hillary. Winning California by huge margins is nice, but doesn't win the presidency.
Very real possibility of low black voter turnout if Biden is replaced, they're the most strident part of the Democratic base behind him and do have variable turnout - that would almost certainly guarantee Georgia for Trump.
"Harris also does slightly better than Biden in our forecast of the national popular vote. The model forecasts that Trump would outpace Harris nationally by 1.5 points, while he would outrun Biden by 2.1 points. However, this could be an artifact of our model not having any Harris-versus-Trump polls that include independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who tends to take slightly more votes away from Democrats than Republicans when included in a poll.
However, Harris’s popular-vote edge is almost entirely negated by the bigger Electoral College bias against her. In our polls-only forecast pairing Biden against Trump, the Democratic candidate needs to win the popular vote by just 1.1 points to win the presidency. That’s thanks to Biden doing better in Pennsylvania, the likeliest tipping-point state in our model. Harris, by contrast, would need to win the popular vote by 3.5-4 points to win Pennsylvania and, with it, the Electoral College."
Not to mention that, as we saw last week, polling models and forecasts are not always right.
Mr. Owls, ha, thanks, but it's been a while since I wrote anything creatively.
Theoderic was a fascinating chap who led an Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy in the name of the Eastern Roman Empire. He was mostly prudent and just but did have Boethius imprisoned then executed unfairly. This led Boethius to write the Consolation of Philosophy, which was a very popular work in the Middle Ages.
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
The secret bit is the software that enables the landings, that’s the real SpaceX IP. Anyone can build their simple-ish rocket, but no-one else can land it on a 100mx100m barge in the middle of the ocean.
The suicide burn* algorithm isn't that hard to figure out.
The paper is by the SpaceX guy who led the team for the landing project.
*It's called that because the F9 has a thrust to weight of more than 1 on landing. So it can't hover - if it carried on thrusting, it would starting climbing back into the sky.. So, instead, it heads for the ground at a velocity that means, when it is slowing down, zero velocity just happens to be at zero feet.
If it had a thrust to weight ratio of less than 1, it wouldn't be landing; it'd be crashing.
There's actually a potential solution for that - involves some weird manoeuvres and using the fuselage of the rocket as a lifting surface. Gary Hudson did the maths on that, IIRC, long ago.
Isn’t that what the Starship is doing, with that weird fallback manoeuvre?
It’s a load of mad maths that somehow works on the computers.
No - Starship has enough engines, and is big enough that it can adjust thrust to weight to 1.0
It can hover. Which may be demonstrated soon - at least for the booster. That's how the catch-the-booster-with-the-chopsticks is going to work.
The "belly flop" follows the sideways re-entry. In this it follows the flight plan that DC-Y was going to use, all those years ago. Go sideways to slow down and keep the speed down.
At the last moment, light the engines and pull up into a vertical position and land. The idea is to keep the amount of propellant for landing as low as possible.
Its a feature of the UK system that there's no way a PM could have lasted this long when incapable.
Winston Churchill had a heart attack during the war, and a stroke during his second term. Both were covered up for decades.
ETA Churchill's Secret (about the stroke & recovery) can be seen on YouTube or Amazon Prime, but not ITVx, oddly.
So 70+ and 80+ years ago.
A very different world - there wasn't any PMQs, for example, until the 1960s.
PMQs would detect nothing, so rarely do Prime Ministers address the actual question asked. Half the time they probably do not even hear the questions from the Leader of the Opposition. You might recall Theresa May leaning into the bench speakers, and Boris for a time had the whips quell the barracking.
In any case, your history is mistaken. Churchill did answer PMQs twice a week, as was the pattern until Blair. Gladstone was the first to have the modern-style PMQ slot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister's_Questions
ETA more to the point, Churchill of course chaired Cabinet meetings with 22-ish ministers all of whom wanted the old boy out so they could sit in the big chair.
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
The secret bit is the software that enables the landings, that’s the real SpaceX IP. Anyone can build their simple-ish rocket, but no-one else can land it on a 100mx100m barge in the middle of the ocean.
The suicide burn* algorithm isn't that hard to figure out.
The paper is by the SpaceX guy who led the team for the landing project.
*It's called that because the F9 has a thrust to weight of more than 1 on landing. So it can't hover - if it carried on thrusting, it would starting climbing back into the sky.. So, instead, it heads for the ground at a velocity that means, when it is slowing down, zero velocity just happens to be at zero feet.
If it had a thrust to weight ratio of less than 1, it wouldn't be landing; it'd be crashing.
There's actually a potential solution for that - involves some weird manoeuvres and using the fuselage of the rocket as a lifting surface. Gary Hudson did the maths on that, IIRC, long ago.
Isn’t that what the Starship is doing, with that weird fallback manoeuvre?
It’s a load of mad maths that somehow works on the computers.
I'd be intrigued as to what sort of control software they do use. After watching the last Starship flight where it somehow managed to land vertically (in the sea) despite severe damage to its control fins, I wonder if they use some sort of neural network rather than hard-coded algorithms.
That said, I'm not sure there's a mechanism to make him to unless he wants to go and decides to go. Unless his thousands of delegates all rat on him at the convention.
So perhaps he just doesn't even if the everyone else wants him to.
Article 25 is probably the best way.
25th Amendment. Basically that the Cabinet can declare the President unfit to hold office.
“Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
This might now be the only way to remove him from the nomination, if he’s unwilling to do so himself. But it requires Harris to weird the sword.
It also requires Biden not to dispute it, as if he does a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress is required to uphold the invocation.
That's an effectively meaningless proviso in this scenario, just like the Fixed Term Parliament Act's proviso that Parliament needed to vote through an election.
Once announced, realpolitik forces everyone to vote accordingly.
The Democrat Congress, having seen Harris and the Cabinet oust Biden, will have no realistic option but to ratify it. The GOP Congress realistically can't and won't vote to say that Biden is fit to continue.
So the Congressional element is a dead rubber. Its the pressure on Harris that she has to be the one to wield the sword that is the hardest element there.
If the GOP had been quick and clever enough they would already have impeached Biden on grounds of incapacity.
Resulting in either the Dems defending him or arguing amongst themselves.
Instead they spent the last year investigating supposed misconduct.
Having invested all that effort into creating dirt on Biden, why would they want to get rid of him now ? They think they will win from here; what happens if he voluntary hands over to Harris is less predictable for them.
the Labour government has started its search for a new border security commander – a plan it trumpeted in the election as its answer to the migration crisis (despite the job already existing). The role has been advertised at £140,000-£200,000, with a very healthy 27% pension, and location is described as ‘flexible’:
“Flexible: including, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Peterborough, Manchester, Solihull, Sheffield, Croydon and London. Regular travel to London (if based nationally) and overseas will be required.”
The irony is that Plumb was convicted and imprisoned for what was basically a thought crime, and escaped scot-free for actual kidnap attempts. Quite what that says about our justice system...
Its a feature of the UK system that there's no way a PM could have lasted this long when incapable.
Winston Churchill had a heart attack during the war, and a stroke during his second term. Both were covered up for decades.
ETA Churchill's Secret (about the stroke & recovery) can be seen on YouTube or Amazon Prime, but not ITVx, oddly.
So 70+ and 80+ years ago.
A very different world - there wasn't any PMQs, for example, until the 1960s.
PMQs would detect nothing, so rarely do Prime Ministers address the actual question asked. Half the time they probably do not even hear the questions from the Leader of the Opposition. You might recall Theresa May leaning into the bench speakers, and Boris for a time had the whips quell the barracking.
In any case, your history is mistaken. Churchill did answer PMQs twice a week, as was the pattern until Blair. Gladstone was the first to have the modern-style PMQ slot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister's_Questions
ETA more to the point, Churchill of course chaired Cabinet meetings with 22-ish ministers all of whom wanted the old boy out so they could sit in the big chair.
PMQ would be mediated by Hansard editors and the press, pre TV days
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
IMV there's a mahoosive misunderstanding of ESA and Arianespace in the space community - and especially in the sector that thinks space=SpaceX.
The *most* important thing Arianespace gives Europe is independence from the US. There are other factors; jobs; IP; prestige; solid rocket motors; but the main thing is independence.
This is because in the 1970s Germany wanted to launch two comms satellites that were world-beating. And the US agreed to launch them, as long as they were not used for commercial purposes. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonie ). Europe does not want to be trapped in that situation again.
But something unusual happened with Ariane 4, and especially 5 - it was cheap. This led it to getting a large part of the commercial launch market. This was a nice-to-have; but it was not the *reason* to have a launcher. Even with zero commercial launch contracts, Arianespace will exist.
I'd also argue that Ariane 6 is good enough for the internal market ESA needs to service.
Listening to some people, you'd think ESA and Arianespace are stupid. This is wrong. They've just got a different worldview.
the Labour government has started its search for a new border security commander – a plan it trumpeted in the election as its answer to the migration crisis (despite the job already existing). The role has been advertised at £140,000-£200,000, with a very healthy 27% pension, and location is described as ‘flexible’:
“Flexible: including, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Peterborough, Manchester, Solihull, Sheffield, Croydon and London. Regular travel to London (if based nationally) and overseas will be required.”
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
The secret bit is the software that enables the landings, that’s the real SpaceX IP. Anyone can build their simple-ish rocket, but no-one else can land it on a 100mx100m barge in the middle of the ocean.
The suicide burn* algorithm isn't that hard to figure out.
The paper is by the SpaceX guy who led the team for the landing project.
*It's called that because the F9 has a thrust to weight of more than 1 on landing. So it can't hover - if it carried on thrusting, it would starting climbing back into the sky.. So, instead, it heads for the ground at a velocity that means, when it is slowing down, zero velocity just happens to be at zero feet.
If it had a thrust to weight ratio of less than 1, it wouldn't be landing; it'd be crashing.
There's actually a potential solution for that - involves some weird manoeuvres and using the fuselage of the rocket as a lifting surface. Gary Hudson did the maths on that, IIRC, long ago.
Isn’t that what the Starship is doing, with that weird fallback manoeuvre?
It’s a load of mad maths that somehow works on the computers.
I'd be intrigued as to what sort of control software they do use. After watching the last Starship flight where it somehow managed to land vertically (in the sea) despite severe damage to its control fins, I wonder if they use some sort of neural network rather than hard-coded algorithms.
Both F9 and Starship fly response-observe-response loops. So the system checks the results of its attempted actions and increases/decreases them to match up the real world with what it wants to do. With humans that's how you get Pilot Induced Oscillation, but there's a long history of using it in automated flight control.
See the F15 that landed after losing the entire wing - the system adapted to the loss, so at a high enough speed, the plane still landed.
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
IMV there's a mahoosive misunderstanding of ESA and Arianespace in the space community - and especially in the sector that thinks space=SpaceX.
The *most* important thing Arianespace gives Europe is independence from the US. There are other factors; jobs; IP; prestige; solid rocket motors; but the main thing is independence.
This is because in the 1970s Germany wanted to launch two comms satellites that were world-beating. And the US agreed to launch them, as long as they were not used for commercial purposes. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonie ). Europe does not want to be trapped in that situation again.
But something unusual happened with Ariane 4, and especially 5 - it was cheap. This led it to getting a large part of the commercial launch market. This was a nice-to-have; but it was not the *reason* to have a launcher. Even with zero commercial launch contracts, Arianespace will exist.
I'd also argue that Ariane 6 is good enough for the internal market ESA needs to service.
Listening to some people, you'd think ESA and Arianespace are stupid. This is wrong. They've just got a different worldview.
In the age of cheaper launch, Ariane 6 is the wrong answer. The head of SES told them, back in 2014. As did a number of the Ariane partners. But the French demanded solid boosters. The Germans a hydrolox core.
They have tried to buy off complaints with Themis and Ariane Next. And then slow rolled both projects - almost to the point of extinction.
Ariane has even complained about the small amounts of money that have been handed out to European rocket startups - they actually said "that should be our money".
Tbh I'm not sure how wise it is to show so many drone-arming Ukrainians on screen. It's not like the KGB can't watch YouTube, and like Israel's Mossad, it has form for killing anyone who has wished harm on the mother country even years afterwards.
the Labour government has started its search for a new border security commander – a plan it trumpeted in the election as its answer to the migration crisis (despite the job already existing). The role has been advertised at £140,000-£200,000, with a very healthy 27% pension, and location is described as ‘flexible’:
“Flexible: including, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Peterborough, Manchester, Solihull, Sheffield, Croydon and London. Regular travel to London (if based nationally) and overseas will be required.”
As this is such a high priority I would have thought the government would want them based in London full time.
Should they not be embedded at smugglers cove?
The head of border command should be based in Maidstone - slightly behind the Dover/SE beach frontline, easily commutable to London for regular meetings with SW1.
the Labour government has started its search for a new border security commander – a plan it trumpeted in the election as its answer to the migration crisis (despite the job already existing). The role has been advertised at £140,000-£200,000, with a very healthy 27% pension, and location is described as ‘flexible’:
“Flexible: including, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Peterborough, Manchester, Solihull, Sheffield, Croydon and London. Regular travel to London (if based nationally) and overseas will be required.”
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
The secret bit is the software that enables the landings, that’s the real SpaceX IP. Anyone can build their simple-ish rocket, but no-one else can land it on a 100mx100m barge in the middle of the ocean.
The suicide burn* algorithm isn't that hard to figure out.
The paper is by the SpaceX guy who led the team for the landing project.
*It's called that because the F9 has a thrust to weight of more than 1 on landing. So it can't hover - if it carried on thrusting, it would starting climbing back into the sky.. So, instead, it heads for the ground at a velocity that means, when it is slowing down, zero velocity just happens to be at zero feet.
If it had a thrust to weight ratio of less than 1, it wouldn't be landing; it'd be crashing.
There's actually a potential solution for that - involves some weird manoeuvres and using the fuselage of the rocket as a lifting surface. Gary Hudson did the maths on that, IIRC, long ago.
the Labour government has started its search for a new border security commander – a plan it trumpeted in the election as its answer to the migration crisis (despite the job already existing). The role has been advertised at £140,000-£200,000, with a very healthy 27% pension, and location is described as ‘flexible’:
“Flexible: including, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Peterborough, Manchester, Solihull, Sheffield, Croydon and London. Regular travel to London (if based nationally) and overseas will be required.”
As this is such a high priority I would have thought the government would want them based in London full time.
Should they not be embedded at smugglers cove?
The head of border command should be based in Maidstone - slightly behind the Dover/SE beach frontline, easily commutable to London for regular meetings with SW1.
Durham, Bristol, Glasgow are all a nonsense.
Belfast...need to some really good binoculars.....
Rory Stewart gave a good example of this nonsense in a recent interview. His Syrian team when he was a foreign office minister were based in East Kilbride and weren't allowed to fly down to London because of climate change commitments.
That’s actually an interesting one. There are a number of spats between Germany and France in the economic sphere at the moment. And never forget the German worship of sound money.
For example, days before the first launch of Ariane 6, Eumetsat cancelled a planned launch with Ariane 6, moving it to the cheaper and proven SpaceX F9.
On the face of it an arguable decision - the satellite is unique and expensive and it would have been the first flight of that configuration of Ariane 6. When originally booked it would have flown years after A6 went into service. But A6 was delayed. And delayed.
But Ariane is seen as a French controlled EU champion. To the the French this is something like treason.
Worse, the vote by the controlling countries in Eumetsat was everyone vs France. Germany has orchestrated the votes before the meeting to get a 14-1 result.
The single biggest question in space flight at the moment, is who exactly is prepared to put in the investment required to prevent a SpaceX monopoly?
The best possible solution is likely to be some international consortium agreeing to pay $$$ to open source the F9 technology on a perpetual basis for low earth orbit, and let Musk and co get on with their ambitions to colonise Mars.
Somewhat amazingly, SpaceX remains a private company.
Nope of the technology is secret. F9 is a two stage, LOX/Kero rocket, using a gas generator cycle engine with pintle injection. On the face of it that is old tech.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
The secret bit is the software that enables the landings, that’s the real SpaceX IP. Anyone can build their simple-ish rocket, but no-one else can land it on a 100mx100m barge in the middle of the ocean.
The suicide burn* algorithm isn't that hard to figure out.
The paper is by the SpaceX guy who led the team for the landing project.
*It's called that because the F9 has a thrust to weight of more than 1 on landing. So it can't hover - if it carried on thrusting, it would starting climbing back into the sky.. So, instead, it heads for the ground at a velocity that means, when it is slowing down, zero velocity just happens to be at zero feet.
If it had a thrust to weight ratio of less than 1, it wouldn't be landing; it'd be crashing.
There's actually a potential solution for that - involves some weird manoeuvres and using the fuselage of the rocket as a lifting surface. Gary Hudson did the maths on that, IIRC, long ago.
That said, I'm not sure there's a mechanism to make him to unless he wants to go and decides to go. Unless his thousands of delegates all rat on him at the convention.
So perhaps he just doesn't even if the everyone else wants him to.
Why should he go though ? What is the imperative for him to. As HYUFD points out he polls better against the Trumpdozer than any other likely candidate.
The time for him to have stepped down was before going through the rounds of primaries and caucuses.
Nominate a better VP, stand for election, beat the Trumpdozer then stand down is a scenario.
The problem is, is that you're looking at it from a 'just defeat Trump' point of view - which might be possible.
But that isn't what US Presidential elections are asking. They are asking, "Who do you feel is best to run our country for the next four years?"
The answer to that question is most likely not Trump or Biden but at the moment that is what is being offered.
What is now going through the minds of every reasonable voter (ie, not the 'donkey with the red rosset sort' who are largely irrelevent to this decision) is:
Is Biden mentally sharp anymore? It appears he isn't. Do I really want him being President for the next four years when it's very likely 12 months from now he won't remember his own name, let alone Zelensky's?
There are two equally reasonable and rational conclusions from this: 1. Yes. Despite everything wrong with Biden, Trump is a fundamental threat to US democracy and seeing him back in the White House would mean the end of the United States - I can't risk it - I'll vote Biden and hope he's eased out in 2025 anyway to be replaced by Harris; OR 2. No. In all good conscious, I can't vote for Biden. He's no longer able to do this and the Democrats themselves are proving unable to replace him. What if they let him win and never replace him and we have a senile dementia-ridden old man running the country for four years! Despite the possible danger from a Trump win, that's a risk I'm willing to take against a risk I'm not willing to take. I'll vote Trump.
I strongly suspect that more and more American's are moving from (1) to (2).
Unless something comes up to show that Trump has also lost it, I think Trump will beat Biden easily now.
Europe therefore needs to plan to assume Trump will be President, and plan to assume the US will leave NATO and likely stop all support to Ukraine very soon - possibly even lending support to Russia(!)
Awful crimes... deadly weapons used on innocent children... hospital attacked... handcuffed civilians killed... mass graves... dead bodies left in the road
The hypocrisy of the British prime minister laid bare.
‘Do you think privatisation of water was a mistake?’
She doubles down on how ‘better regulation’ can control private monopolies
Of all the policies to expose Starmer & Reeves as Tories, it is their ideological refusal to nationalise water
the Labour government has started its search for a new border security commander – a plan it trumpeted in the election as its answer to the migration crisis (despite the job already existing). The role has been advertised at £140,000-£200,000, with a very healthy 27% pension, and location is described as ‘flexible’:
“Flexible: including, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Peterborough, Manchester, Solihull, Sheffield, Croydon and London. Regular travel to London (if based nationally) and overseas will be required.”
Nothing wrong with that. The people "doing the work" need to be paid well to get good people. We'd get the same politicians if they were paid 10 times more.
The Rest is Entertainment ponders telly jobs for ex-MPs and it is not good news for them. Spoilers: they reckon Penny Mordaunt is working on returning to the Commons so will steer clear of telly in favour of books or podcasts; Strictly won't want any of them (except maybe Gove who is uninterested); IACGMOOH might suit Jonny Mercer; Shapps for Traitors (John Bercow is currently on Traitors US); leaving GBNews for Suella. Jacob Rees-Mogg already has his fly-on-the-wall series for Discovery Plus.
The irony is that Plumb was convicted and imprisoned for what was basically a thought crime, and escaped scot-free for actual kidnap attempts. Quite what that says about our justice system...
That they take much more interest if "one of us" is the intended victim?
1) Campaign finance. Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far. However, the ticket goes from Biden/Harris to Harris/?
American campaign finance law is extremely lax is some ways and extremely proscriptive in others. Even if it is Harris taking over the ticket there will be plenty of ways for lawyers to interfere. And tie up the campaign in allegations of illegality. Given the GOP hard right has pushed judges into the system (not just the Supreme Court), you can bet on some eye bending judgements - "This is illegal because it is done by a Democrat"....
If it isn't Harris, then all the money has to go back and be re-donated, probably. Orchestrating that will be fun. Plus all kinds of legal challenges are possible (see above)
2) Harris. It looks like she would lose slightly worse than Biden. There isn't a challenger who stands out as better than Biden. Even now.
Trump seems very clear that he wants a re-run vs Biden. Which in a way makes sense - very narrow last time and with Biden off his game, he has a known opponent. Plus, for Trump, there is the revenge aspect of defeating the man who defeated him.
So the Dems would be backing (probably Harris) as an 52 card pickup game - hope that between the turmoil and the occasion, their new pick would soar in the polls.
It's no longer true that Harris is behind Biden in a match up against Trump. Some polls still have her polling worse than Biden, others have her polling better. Overall there's nothing in it between them at the moment.
That's now though. In a scenario where Harris was the legitimate nominee and the Democrats were focused on promoting her not the sitting President, Harris would surely get a boost, just as pretty well any other potential nominee would. That should be a pretty legitimate expectation, not the outside hope that you infer. And as for Biden, there's an enormous risk that once the campaign heats up in intensity he'll bomb again and the polling will move further to reflect that.
So basically on your two points: 1. Campaign Finance - Not a problem if Harris is the nominee. 2. Harris's polling - Bound to improve and improve on where Biden is even currently, let alone where Biden might be after a second car crash debate.
1. Would still have a lot of issues. It's America - lawsuits would start in 15 seconds. 2. Maaaaybe. And there hasn't been a poll suggesting Harris could actually win. Just lose less badly. Check out how she polls in the swing state.....
1. Hang on, you had commented that "Only Harris can simply go forward with the money raised so far" which can only be read as meaning that there is no real barrier to Harris using the campaign funds, consistent with what I've read from commentators elsewhere. But feel free to change your mind. By contrast Biden definitely has a lot of issues. Like established donors no longer donating over the remaining four months. 2. Not Maaaaybe at all. And you're wrong on polling. In the most recent polling, Ipsos 5-9 July have Harris 2 points ahead (with Biden level or 1 point behind.)
She is the one who can simply go forward without having to give all the money back or have it all donated to the DNC or something. That doesn't mean it will be simple after that. Lawsuits are guaranteed. And with MAGA judges out there, that could easily lead to orders to freeze money until lawsuits are resolved.
Swing states are where the polling is important. See Hillary. Winning California by huge margins is nice, but doesn't win the presidency.
Very real possibility of low black voter turnout if Biden is replaced, they're the most strident part of the Democratic base behind him and do have variable turnout - that would almost certainly guarantee Georgia for Trump.
"Harris also does slightly better than Biden in our forecast of the national popular vote. The model forecasts that Trump would outpace Harris nationally by 1.5 points, while he would outrun Biden by 2.1 points. However, this could be an artifact of our model not having any Harris-versus-Trump polls that include independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who tends to take slightly more votes away from Democrats than Republicans when included in a poll.
However, Harris’s popular-vote edge is almost entirely negated by the bigger Electoral College bias against her. In our polls-only forecast pairing Biden against Trump, the Democratic candidate needs to win the popular vote by just 1.1 points to win the presidency. That’s thanks to Biden doing better in Pennsylvania, the likeliest tipping-point state in our model. Harris, by contrast, would need to win the popular vote by 3.5-4 points to win Pennsylvania and, with it, the Electoral College."
Indeed as we know from 2016 the popular vote is irrelevant, only polls showing how Biden and Harris do v Trump in the swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia are relevant
the Labour government has started its search for a new border security commander – a plan it trumpeted in the election as its answer to the migration crisis (despite the job already existing). The role has been advertised at £140,000-£200,000, with a very healthy 27% pension, and location is described as ‘flexible’:
“Flexible: including, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Peterborough, Manchester, Solihull, Sheffield, Croydon and London. Regular travel to London (if based nationally) and overseas will be required.”
Nothing wrong with that. The people "doing the work" need to be paid well to get good people. We'd get the same politicians if they were paid 10 times more.
We have the other problem is we don't pay enough for other crucial roles. We have highlighted on here how piss poor the pay was for important IT security and AI advisor roles.
the Labour government has started its search for a new border security commander – a plan it trumpeted in the election as its answer to the migration crisis (despite the job already existing). The role has been advertised at £140,000-£200,000, with a very healthy 27% pension, and location is described as ‘flexible’:
“Flexible: including, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Peterborough, Manchester, Solihull, Sheffield, Croydon and London. Regular travel to London (if based nationally) and overseas will be required.”
Nothing wrong with that. The people "doing the work" need to be paid well to get good people. We'd get the same politicians if they were paid 10 times more.
Alan Sugar once said the reason government procurement is a mess is they can't pay the seven-figure salaries to compete with the private sector.
That said, I'm not sure there's a mechanism to make him to unless he wants to go and decides to go. Unless his thousands of delegates all rat on him at the convention.
So perhaps he just doesn't even if the everyone else wants him to.
Why should he go though ? What is the imperative for him to. As HYUFD points out he polls better against the Trumpdozer than any other likely candidate.
The time for him to have stepped down was before going through the rounds of primaries and caucuses.
Nominate a better VP, stand for election, beat the Trumpdozer then stand down is a scenario.
The problem is, is that you're looking at it from a 'just defeat Trump' point of view - which might be possible.
But that isn't what US Presidential elections are asking. They are asking, "Who do you feel is best to run our country for the next four years?"
The answer to that question is most likely not Trump or Biden but at the moment that is what is being offered.
What is now going through the minds of every reasonable voter (ie, not the 'donkey with the red rosset sort' who are largely irrelevent to this decision) is:
Is Biden mentally sharp anymore? It appears he isn't. Do I really want him being President for the next four years when it's very likely 12 months from now he won't remember his own name, let alone Zelensky's?
There are two equally reasonable and rational conclusions from this: 1. Yes. Despite everything wrong with Biden, Trump is a fundamental threat to US democracy and seeing him back in the White House would mean the end of the United States - I can't risk it - I'll vote Biden and hope he's eased out in 2025 anyway to be replaced by Harris; OR 2. No. In all good conscious, I can't vote for Biden. He's no longer able to do this and the Democrats themselves are proving unable to replace him. What if they let him win and never replace him and we have a senile dementia-ridden old man running the country for four years! Despite the possible danger from a Trump win, that's a risk I'm willing to take against a risk I'm not willing to take. I'll vote Trump.
I strongly suspect that more and more American's are moving from (1) to (2).
Unless something comes up to show that Trump has also lost it, I think Trump will beat Biden easily now.
Europe therefore needs to plan to assume Trump will be President, and plan to assume the US will leave NATO and likely stop all support to Ukraine very soon - possibly even lending support to Russia(!)
Trump's main enemy is China and the EU he will likely reimpose tariffs on both, he is interested in trade wars more than actual wars and would try and get a negotiated settlement between Putin and Zelensky although he would still support Israel
the Labour government has started its search for a new border security commander – a plan it trumpeted in the election as its answer to the migration crisis (despite the job already existing). The role has been advertised at £140,000-£200,000, with a very healthy 27% pension, and location is described as ‘flexible’:
“Flexible: including, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Peterborough, Manchester, Solihull, Sheffield, Croydon and London. Regular travel to London (if based nationally) and overseas will be required.”
Comments
I'm left to reflect how much harder it is for a leader these days to disguise or cover up weakness or ill health.
Had the media of today and the scrutiny of today existed back then, Churchill's stroke in 1953 would have led to calls for his resignation and with Eden in poor health as well you'd have had a serious political crisis.
It's different in non-democratic societies where the health of the leader isn't openly discussed but in democracies, nowadays, I'd argue, there's nowhere to hide.
Even in so-called collective leadership systems, there is still a primus inter pares and their physical condition is more scrutinised and discussed than others in the leadership.
SpaceX don't patent very much - because, as Musk said, suing the Chinese and Russian (or any other) government for intellectual property theft would be a waste of time.
SpaceX won't and can't release their detailed design, no matter the money - ITAR is something that everyone in American politics agree on. From far left to far right.
They don't even need to - both Ariane and some Chinese companies have published plans to build clones of F9. See Ariane Themis.
Then you have Starship - which is, as an expendable, already cheaper than Ariane 6 per flight!
The problem is that nearly all space launch systems are "National Champions" and are about subsiding a national launch capability and putting jobs in the right places. This is how you get to Ariane 6 *costing* more than $100 million a launch (unsubsidised). F9 now *costs* between $20-28 million.
A very different world - there wasn't any PMQs, for example, until the 1960s.
It's the Tories that have led the collapse of deportations.
What I was - as is my usual style - was the most persistent, and annoyingly loud, and the most contemptuous of the many pb-ers who were clearly in denial (and some still are!)
I also pointed out, several times that this was a crisis in the making as Biden could only get worse and then we'd end up with an obviously demented president. Bingo
Hopefully they’ll soon publish a target for the number of deportations, on which we can judge them at the next election?
Some countries have reciprocal agreements, so their nationals can be sent home to complete their sentences in a "home" prison.
That's now though. In a scenario where Harris was the legitimate nominee and the Democrats were focused on promoting her not the sitting President, Harris would surely get a boost, just as pretty well any other potential nominee would. That should be a pretty legitimate expectation, not the outside hope that you infer. And as for Biden, there's an enormous risk that once the campaign heats up in intensity he'll bomb again and the polling will move further to reflect that.
As for campaign finance, moving forward donations are going to continue to drop off if Biden stays.
So basically on your two points:
1. Campaign Finance - Not a problem on what's been raised to date if Harris is the nominee, but a problem moving forward if Biden stays.
2. Harris's polling - Bound to improve and improve on where Biden is even currently, let alone where Biden might be after a second car crash debate.
Biden had an OK press conference last night and is clearly not going to step down without clear polling Harris consistently polls better v Trump than he does
2. Maaaaybe. And there hasn't been a poll suggesting Harris could actually win. Just lose less badly. Check out how she polls in the swing state.....
It's just a shame his brilliance at campaigning and his superb grasp of issues and the charismatic oratory didn't translate into an especially good presidency
“I wouldn’t have picked vice-president Trump to be vice-president, if I didn’t think she was up to the job”
https://x.com/tpostmillennial/status/1811547150557290543
Like test pilots, the good ones are actually that good.
Facing that, understanding that, means that anyone, even a Hail Mary pass, would be better than letting Biden remain as the Dem nominee. Trump understands this very well which is why his camp are talking up Biden's abilities.
I also watched the press conference. It was excruciating. Not only did he call Kamala Harris "Vice President Trump", and mix up Europe and Asia, there were many moments when he mumbled into nothing, lost track of his thoughts, confused concepts and metaphors. It was so bad even the Guardian has noticed
"The best that could be said about the press conference was that it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Though that is to damn it with faint praise. There were long moments when Biden was perfectly lucid, with a stronger grasp of foreign policy than Trump could ever have managed.
But equally there were many moments when he appeared confused. His sentences would start nowhere in particular and then abruptly tail off. His delivery was dreamy, disconnected and detached. At one point during a rambling diversion about Finland, he became distracted and fell silent for a moment. You could sense the embarrassment in the room. The media were reluctant participants at the crime scene."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/12/you-could-sense-the-embarrassment-as-biden-spoke-a-sign-of-how-low-the-presidency-has-sunk
Some of you are just fucking idiots who are unable and unwilling to name something which is directly in front of you, because it makes you uncomfortable. It is, frankly, pathetic
Otherwise, have a lovely day everyone! I must to my flints, as the day is cool, thank God, and the coffee is strong, and the moment is here
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/business/inflation-worse-pandemic-coronavirus.html
And that is before you get into the issue of the methodology changes since 1990 which have, according to some widely quoted sources resulted in US CPI being significantly lower (like half the amount it would have been) if the methodology had remained unchanged.
Just a 1% difference compounded over 20 years on pay, benefits and pensions would have supressed all three significantly on such a timescale.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex.asp
It doesn't matter as the narrative and momentum is now too powerful, and if he stays on each further gaffe will take away from anything he tries to argue, so he has to step down. I suspect he is fine at the day job now but the risk he won't be in two or three years time is significant.
That generally makes for quite self-centred people, or at least narcissistic and driven, tho they can have other virtues that balance these out, one hopes
Ta-ra
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
2. Not Maaaaybe at all. And you're wrong on polling. In the most recent polling, Ipsos 5-9 July have Harris 2 points ahead (with Biden level or 1 point behind.)
@PickardJE
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1h
the tragedy of cognitive decline is that you don’t know you have cognitive decline
https://x.com/PickardJE/status/1811672634800607338
- Polls are basically tied
- Trump's improvement on 2020 is mostly with voters who are hard to poll
- It's only July, July polls aren't very predictive
- The economy is getting better, inflation has come down and perception of it is laggy, the 538 model that takes non-polling factors into account thinks it's a toss-up
- Since the debate there's been a non-stop news cycle about Biden's condition and it's managed to produce a swing of a grand total of 1%, so it seems like it's already in the price
I don't think I really buy the argument but it's not ridiculous.
It's all about competent administration, something that the Tories lost sight of during their breakdown over Europe.
See here - http://larsblackmore.com/nae_bridge_2016.pdf#[{"num":75,"gen":0},{"name":"XYZ"},-68,792,0.850006]
The paper is by the SpaceX guy who led the team for the landing project.
*It's called that because the F9 has a thrust to weight of more than 1 on landing. So it can't hover - if it carried on thrusting, it would starting climbing back into the sky.. So, instead, it heads for the ground at a velocity that means, when it is slowing down, zero velocity just happens to be at zero feet.
Being even older than Biden (!) I have some sympathy with him, although (even) my wife tells me that, dodgy though I may be physically, there's nothing amiss mentally.
However, I'm conscious that I'm quite capable of verbal slips, and I'm also conscious that, as I peer at a distant 90..... 3 and a bit years away ...... things are not going to get better.
It's clear that he's got into his obviously slightly fuddled brain that he's the only one who can beat Trump, and he may be right; however he's also not going to improve over the next four years and if I were a US citizen I would be hoping and indeed praying to whatever gods there are that he can be persuaded to let someone else have a go.
I suspect, without any information, that if he were to step aside, then the relief would be so great that his successor would walk it.
But that's probably just hope talking!
On dementia, most who suffer from it have good days and bad days. My grandmother (who lived with us when I was growing up until she started leaving the gas on etc. and we had to put her in a home) could be very lucid on many points until she died. Even to her last days she could do crossword puzzles very well, though she forgot all of our names. But we're not talking about a sinecure here - I think we need a leader of the free world whose mental capacity is above suspicion.
Also we're not just thinking about him now - we're thinking about how he will be in 2028.
Finally, I think the best point in favour of him stepping down is that Trump has been attacking anyone who thinks Biden should step down and seems to want him to stay in the race. And I doubt that's for the benefit of the US, or for anyone except Donald J Trump.
This is a week old, but not much has changed:
https://abcnews.go.com/538/kamala-harris-stronger-candidate-biden/story?id=111656941
Conclusion: "Sometimes, it makes sense to bet on uncertainty"
But also includes this:
"In our polls-only forecast pairing Biden against Trump, the Democratic candidate needs to win the popular vote by just 1.1 points to win the presidency. That’s thanks to Biden doing better in Pennsylvania, the likeliest tipping-point state in our model. Harris, by contrast, would need to win the popular vote by 3.5-4 points to win Pennsylvania and, with it, the Electoral College."
So doing 2 points better nationally (other polls are available showing Harris doing worse nationally) might not help.
But still, rolling the dice on incumbency boosting Harris seems to make more sense than hoping that the narrative of Biden being past it somehow goes away.
Swing states are where the polling is important. See Hillary. Winning California by huge margins is nice, but doesn't win the presidency.
I want to watch a space Formula 1, where every weekend ten teams compete to bring the cheapest LEO rocket to the party.
“Flexible: including, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Peterborough, Manchester, Solihull, Sheffield, Croydon and London. Regular travel to London (if based nationally) and overseas will be required.”
https://order-order.com/2024/07/12/labours-new-border-security-commander-could-be-based-miles-from-english-channel-in-glasgow-or-belfast/
As this is such a high priority I would have thought the government would want them based in London full time.
Can't recall offhand how old Theoderic was when he had Boethius incarcerated.
The main issue, actually, is getting the real world data on engine throttle up/down curves in flight*, grid fin performance in the wild** etc. to feed the algorithm.
*Engines respond differently on the test stand. Think G loads, vibration....
**Supersonic aerodynamics is hard and not a solved problem.
“Gavin Plumb could have been stopped sooner, says survivor” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4ngd4e7dmpo
It’s a load of mad maths that somehow works on the computers.
https://abcnews.go.com/538/kamala-harris-stronger-candidate-biden/story?id=111656941
"Harris also does slightly better than Biden in our forecast of the national popular vote. The model forecasts that Trump would outpace Harris nationally by 1.5 points, while he would outrun Biden by 2.1 points. However, this could be an artifact of our model not having any Harris-versus-Trump polls that include independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who tends to take slightly more votes away from Democrats than Republicans when included in a poll.
However, Harris’s popular-vote edge is almost entirely negated by the bigger Electoral College bias against her. In our polls-only forecast pairing Biden against Trump, the Democratic candidate needs to win the popular vote by just 1.1 points to win the presidency. That’s thanks to Biden doing better in Pennsylvania, the likeliest tipping-point state in our model. Harris, by contrast, would need to win the popular vote by 3.5-4 points to win Pennsylvania and, with it, the Electoral College."
Theoderic was a fascinating chap who led an Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy in the name of the Eastern Roman Empire. He was mostly prudent and just but did have Boethius imprisoned then executed unfairly. This led Boethius to write the Consolation of Philosophy, which was a very popular work in the Middle Ages.
It can hover. Which may be demonstrated soon - at least for the booster. That's how the catch-the-booster-with-the-chopsticks is going to work.
The "belly flop" follows the sideways re-entry. In this it follows the flight plan that DC-Y was going to use, all those years ago. Go sideways to slow down and keep the speed down.
At the last moment, light the engines and pull up into a vertical position and land. The idea is to keep the amount of propellant for landing as low as possible.
In any case, your history is mistaken. Churchill did answer PMQs twice a week, as was the pattern until Blair. Gladstone was the first to have the modern-style PMQ slot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister's_Questions
ETA more to the point, Churchill of course chaired Cabinet meetings with 22-ish ministers all of whom wanted the old boy out so they could sit in the big chair.
The *most* important thing Arianespace gives Europe is independence from the US. There are other factors; jobs; IP; prestige; solid rocket motors; but the main thing is independence.
This is because in the 1970s Germany wanted to launch two comms satellites that were world-beating. And the US agreed to launch them, as long as they were not used for commercial purposes. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonie ). Europe does not want to be trapped in that situation again.
But something unusual happened with Ariane 4, and especially 5 - it was cheap. This led it to getting a large part of the commercial launch market. This was a nice-to-have; but it was not the *reason* to have a launcher. Even with zero commercial launch contracts, Arianespace will exist.
I'd also argue that Ariane 6 is good enough for the internal market ESA needs to service.
Listening to some people, you'd think ESA and Arianespace are stupid. This is wrong. They've just got a different worldview.
The Low-Budget Tech That Redefined Ukraine's Fight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG5gbgknLAY
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/live/c988yr44n07t
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/labour-s-new-border-security-commander-could-earn-more-than-starmer/ar-BB1pJeNn
See the F15 that landed after losing the entire wing - the system adapted to the loss, so at a high enough speed, the plane still landed.
They have tried to buy off complaints with Themis and Ariane Next. And then slow rolled both projects - almost to the point of extinction.
Ariane has even complained about the small amounts of money that have been handed out to European rocket startups - they actually said "that should be our money".
Durham, Bristol, Glasgow are all a nonsense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn-Shuttle
Rory Stewart gave a good example of this nonsense in a recent interview. His Syrian team when he was a foreign office minister were based in East Kilbride and weren't allowed to fly down to London because of climate change commitments.
But that isn't what US Presidential elections are asking. They are asking, "Who do you feel is best to run our country for the next four years?"
The answer to that question is most likely not Trump or Biden but at the moment that is what is being offered.
What is now going through the minds of every reasonable voter (ie, not the 'donkey with the red rosset sort' who are largely irrelevent to this decision) is:
Is Biden mentally sharp anymore? It appears he isn't. Do I really want him being President for the next four years when it's very likely 12 months from now he won't remember his own name, let alone Zelensky's?
There are two equally reasonable and rational conclusions from this:
1. Yes. Despite everything wrong with Biden, Trump is a fundamental threat to US democracy and seeing him back in the White House would mean the end of the United States - I can't risk it - I'll vote Biden and hope he's eased out in 2025 anyway to be replaced by Harris; OR
2. No. In all good conscious, I can't vote for Biden. He's no longer able to do this and the Democrats themselves are proving unable to replace him. What if they let him win and never replace him and we have a senile dementia-ridden old man running the country for four years! Despite the possible danger from a Trump win, that's a risk I'm willing to take against a risk I'm not willing to take. I'll vote Trump.
I strongly suspect that more and more American's are moving from (1) to (2).
Unless something comes up to show that Trump has also lost it, I think Trump will beat Biden easily now.
Europe therefore needs to plan to assume Trump will be President, and plan to assume the US will leave NATO and likely stop all support to Ukraine very soon - possibly even lending support to Russia(!)
The hypocrisy of the British prime minister laid bare.
‘Do you think privatisation of water was a mistake?’
She doubles down on how ‘better regulation’ can control private monopolies
Of all the policies to expose Starmer & Reeves as Tories, it is their ideological refusal to nationalise water
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAhEU8fHFEc
The Rest is Entertainment ponders telly jobs for ex-MPs and it is not good news for them. Spoilers: they reckon Penny Mordaunt is working on returning to the Commons so will steer clear of telly in favour of books or podcasts; Strictly won't want any of them (except maybe Gove who is uninterested); IACGMOOH might suit Jonny Mercer; Shapps for Traitors (John Bercow is currently on Traitors US); leaving GBNews for Suella. Jacob Rees-Mogg already has his fly-on-the-wall series for Discovery Plus.
IPPR thinktank finds that only 52% of the British adult population cast their ballots on 4 July
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/12/lowest-turnout-in-uk-general-election-since-universal-suffrage-report-shows
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