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Former illegal immigrant threatens to destroy the Republican party – politicalbetting.com
Former illegal immigrant threatens to destroy the Republican party – politicalbetting.com
?Elon Musk has threatened to use his enormous wealth to topple Republican senators who vote for Donald Trump’s flagship “big, beautiful bill”https://t.co/Dp6cLx5vc4
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Which one of Trump or Musk is cast as Robespierre?
If Musk takes on the state, he will lose. Starting with government contracts and subsidies.
And if Musk pays for opponents of some Congressmen, they will find other billionaire donors who want to retain their own contracts, tax cuts and subsidies.
This is the American way.
YouGov / Sky / Times
Here are this week’s voting intention figures
CON 17%(nc), LAB 24%(+1), LDEM 16%(nc), RefUK 26%(-1), GRN 10%(nc)
It wouldn't be the first time the government have interfered in space launch companies: they forced Boeing and Lockheed to form ULA.
First non Reform lead since the locals approaches, Advance UK to push Keir over the top
Handy if the RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD is spending on your opponents...
Reform are slightly off their May/Early June highs
Can we now define Starmerite Doctrine thus: fewer benefits, more fruit?
Or perhaps: Say No to Benefits, and Yes to Bananas!
Otherwise the 2026/8 elections are going to be the most expensive the world has ever seen and that includes some of the ones in ancient Rome
The welfare cuts are clearly popular. 😉
Certified Principle Free Clusterfuckery
And yes, the elections, if they happen, will be more expensive than a Bezos divorce
Zack Polanski is making lots of waves on Social Media. If his insurgency wins the Green leadership, as seems likely to me, it will be 5 party politics nationally. Like the New York Mayor's race the young will turn out when they have a reason to do so.
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-business-confidence-levels-hit-highest-since-2015-lloyds-says-2025-06-29/
This is a heatwave?
Podbean: https://undercutters.podbean.com/e/f1-2025-austrian-gp-review-and-british-gp-predictions-and-preview/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f1-2025-austrian-gp-review-and-british-gp-predictions/id1786574257?i=1000715251700
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5lJnjwjUc2vm0uvUiq1ROk
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bcfe213b-55fb-408a-a823-dc6693ee9f78/episodes/74f148a2-9d6a-4b69-be42-d9d14563c336/undercutters---f1-podcast-f1-2025-austrian-gp-review-and-british-gp-predictions-and-preview
Transcript: https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/07/f1-2025-austrian-gp-review-and-british.html
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/revolutions/id703889772
of which I have completed three.
The first covers our civil war (however people want to name it) which was good, then the American Revolution which was better and the third series is the French Revolution which has been epic.
Absolutely jam packed with detail over 66 episodes (about 40 hours I think) and presented in a deeply knowledgeable but clear and witty way.
The amount of times during each of the three revolutions where I did an eyebrow raise about things that had parallels to today’s world was instructive but for anyone who likes a good bit of in depth history it’s a brilliant series so far. If you only have time to listen to one then the French Revolution is an extraordinary podcast.
Be interesting to see the noises out of Labour this morning
Are any former Farage freinds launching a parry today?
Though no doubt Trump and his coterie have such ambitions.
Blue Origin is making significant progress, and offers a much easier way of getting payback.
Separately I wonder if Antonelli running into Max means Max can trigger his if results aren't good enough he can leave Red Bull clause.. Would be ironic if it's true and given we are 10 races into the season its going to be about now that the clause becomes active.
Here up on the Norwegian plateau, its shirtsleeve weather already, and partly sunny, despite the patches of snow still about on the higher slopes. Some lunchtime light rain is forecast (a common pattern here, as I remember from last time) followed by a very warm and sunny evening; the town in the valley is forecast for 23C so I’d guess 19-20C up here.
But I’m heading for the coast tomorrow, and while much of Europe has been hugely drier than average since mid spring, the Norwegian west coast so far this year has been exceptionally wet.
https://x.com/antoguerrera/status/1939933642752418031
He's started doing some new stuff, which I have yet to listen to. Though I feel like asking him if he's ready for the second American revolution...
Though decoupling the two would be interesting, considering SL relies on F9 to launch.
Trump proposes to DOGE the King of DOGE?
Blessed it was to be alive etc...
America needs someone to smash the two party system. The GOP has been corrupted and transformed into the NSDTP. The DNC still think that running the failed scandalised former bigwigs is the way to salvation. They are both terrible choices.
That said, this week’s polling still has them averaging 28.5%.
Air conditioned nationalised rail to the office it is...
Back in the good old days teams would have a mid-season car change. Sometimes to the very delayed new one, sometimes to a lightly modified old one. This year's RB needs to be scrapped.
Though he will still have his defenders...
Although in Norway half the population seems to have one already.
Most war criminals/criminals against humanity, are not at all pathological. People like Oskar Dirlewanger and Amon Goth are the outliers. There’s a general reluctance to believe that architects of atrocity are frequently people who have read Law, Classics, or French Literature at leading universities.
Ferrari's decision to completely alter their suspension, as per McLaren a decade ago, is looking like the most avoidable of errors. They should be competing with McLaren.
I think it will pass by 20 to 30 votes unfortunately
https://www.retail-week.com/legal-and-regulatory/uk-business-confidence-plummets-into-ominous-territory/7048517.article
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/15/uk-business-confidence-falls-to-lowest-level-in-over-two-years-survey-shows
https://www.cbi.org.uk/media-centre/articles/business-confidence-across-services-sector-falls-sharply-again-as-cost-pressures-accelerate-cbi-service-sector-survey/
https://bmmagazine.co.uk/news/private-sector-confidence-hits-lowest-level-since-2022-as-wage-and-trade-pressures-mount/
https://realbusiness.co.uk/business-growth-confidence-hits-4-year-low
If business is more confident, it certainly hasn't fed into investment, which is up a pitiful 0.2% from the same period last year. Even if you think that business confidence has ticked up, any survey that says that business is more confident now than in the boom years of 2021 and 2022 when the economy was expanding by 4 or 5 per cent isn't worth anything.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.
Makes sense really. Those clean offices are distant enough from the evil that their occupants never have to fully process it. And if reality does threaten to bite, those occupants have enough education to construct a comforting pillow of words.
(My unoriginal theory of management is that organisational failure is all but inevitable once the hierarchical layers exceed a critical value. If a manager can give instructions with no understanding of the consequences of those instructions, then functional and moral failure will occur before teatime.)
For what I heard when Honda agreed a deal with Aston Martin a lot of the better engineers went back to the previous devil they knew..
It's also why the Max stories are so strong now because he wants out...
I think the bookies are right in making Labour favourite for most seats. Such a result almost certainly excludes a Reform/Reform led government.
It is not easy (though possible) - to imagine Labour being worse in the next four years than they have been so far.
Payroll/public sector vote, benefits class vote, liberal middle class vote, BAME vote/stop Farage vote/young people vote/Tory vote splitting Reform + me should see Labour home.
Spanner in this works: the biggest by far is a Tory/Reform electoral pact.
Bet accordingly. DYOR.
Musk has trashed his brand in much of the world, and Tesla is too intertwined with him.
Alpine's engineers were pissed because their engine was apparently looking promising when it was canned to use Mercedes' instead.
Edited extra bit: I'd also heard Red Bull was seeming to be slower than rivals.
Round here there are very few 25 reg tesla's around
That said, I’d expect Reform to be winning 150-200 or so seats, next time, with Labour winning somewhat more.
Norway took squadron deliveries of the new Y in May. And sales are up 213% YonY
Australia also took the new model in May. And sales are +122% YonY
https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2025/06/08/tesla-pulls-off-miracle-recovery-in-norway-and-australia/
UK deliveries of the new Y were happing in large numbers in June. The previous car was the best selling car in the world for 2 years running, and the new car is significantly better in practically everything way. Will take a while to recover lost ground from H1 this year where the car was off-sale*, but it will recover
*Robert will probably try and show me a screen grab of 6 cars left in Uk inventory and claim they're still on sale. Yes, just as Jaguar are still selling the remaining dribble of cars, or you could buy a brand new Rover in 2007...
How far will this government continue to drown after being thrown in the deep end? Or will some of its members start to do a fair approximation of swimming?
How much will some of the longer term bets (energy, planning, Europe) be seen to have paid off by 2028/9?
The electorate are far less patient than in the past. But with no election imminent, that doesn't matter. And most governments would be happy with second place and a single-figure deficit at this stage.
Frank Luntz
@FrankLuntz
·
7h
Over the weekend, Donald Trump threatened to primary Republicans who vote against the Big Beautiful Bill.
Now, Elon Musk is threatening to primary Republicans who vote for the Big Beautiful Bill.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/world/canada/tesla-canada-sales-musk.html
The original Black Sabbath line up in rehearsals for Saturday’s last ever performance of the band.
Quote from Ozzy Osbourne: It’s taken us 57 years to get to the Villa, we made it. Back to the Beginning.
https://x.com/NinaNannarITV/status/1939932956509757444
1) tax jobs
2) cut benefits
3) increase bananas
4) tax North Sea exploration/production
5) chase out non-doms with punitive taxes
6) surprised Pikachu face at economic decline
The 2.6 is value imo but I can't hold that view very strongly because I'm not doing it.
Anne Applebaum
@anneapplebaum.bsky.social
The president of Aix-Marseilles University is welcoming US scientific refugees.He "likened the situation to that of European academics who fled persecution by Nazi Germany both before and during World War II"
www.politico.eu/article/meet...
https://bsky.app/profile/anneapplebaum.bsky.social/post/3lsv6aype6c2b
If this is right then the Reform/Tory presence have only two options: split the vote and both lose, or have a pact and have serious though awful prospect of winning. I exclude the possibility of a One Nation Tory revival.
To Leon this is wishcasting. But I don't think so.
Nice to see that now communities are using them for citizen surveillance against the state. Puts a big smile on my face
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/06/30/surveillance-against-the-state-doorbell-cam-owners-are-tipping-people-off-about-ice-raids/
Behind the scenes at Cadillac’s UK base as it builds an F1 infrastructure as well as an F1 car
With three US locations too, includes some really interesting stuff from Graeme Lowdon about how the management structure is inspired by the Apollo project:
https://bsky.app/profile/chrismedlandf1.bsky.social/post/3lsvaxiy6222y
But busting the party for a few billion isn't a plan. If you are going to have 150 MPs rebelling, let it be over issues that actually change the direction of the country in good ways.
Of course there is more than one way to pursue this. Their choice is to increase spending and focus it towards capital projects. Funded by borrowing within market constraints and tax rises within political constraints.
It is odd that a fairly centrist government seems to have no coherent narrative or plan when it has so much to draw on. Working out and communicating a social democratic plan should not be that hard. It's been the only real candidate in the UK since 1945.
Across a range of issues, it wasn't that the Conservatives tried things and got them wrong - they simply gave up trying, perhaps understandable after Covid but nonetheless countries can't drift on inertia which is why you change Government but the new Government faces the same problems and has to come up with responses if not solutions.
The problem is across a range of inter-connected and inter-dependent issues there are no easy solutions - at best, there are costly and unpopular schemes which might pay dividends a decade or more down the road but that's not how modern politics functions and so frustration sets in.
Adult social care is an enormous issue but neither Labour nor Conservatives have felt willing or able to tackle it despite big Parliamentary majorities. That's a damning indictment of where we are or rather where we aren't.
There is always one and a half eyes on the next GE and the act of staying in power trumps actually doing anything difficult and unpopular.
Starmer, and Blair, had majorities that would have allowed them to make sweeping changes early on and hope that the electorate would realise four years later that it was actually something good for the country and reward them but they are too cowardly.
Hope it pisses down all day