What shall we read into this? – politicalbetting.com
What shall we read into this? – politicalbetting.com
NBC News confirms: JD Vance will meet tonight at his residence with Susie Wiles, Pam Bondi, Deputy AG Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other top Trump officials to discuss the Epstein scandal. @MSNBC
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Sadly, though, groundless wishful thinking has always been a curse of anti-Trumpists, and a blessing for Trump.
I don't see a path to that for Vance.
Wait they canceled it? That looks worse. Like that asshole at the Coldplay concert if you play it cool there's plausible deniability but freaking out and canceling your Epstein dinner because it leaked looks worse
https://bsky.app/profile/coachfinstock.bsky.social/post/3lvrljdiyp22e
VANCE: As an ice breaker, let's all name our favorite amendment to the Constitution. Pam?
BONDI: Uh ... the First, I guess?
BLANCHE: Can't represent the Big Guy without the Fifth!
PATEL: #2 on the list, but #1 in my heart. All about the guns, son!
VANCE: So ... no fans of the 25th huh
They don't want another President tarnished with that particular paedo-brush.
Biden may have occasionally slurred his words but he wasn't a clear and present danger to mankind.
It's just not yet clear which particular fix.
Hence the calls from people in both parties - “Prosecute them all, and if our people are part of it, fine”
Trump's mental decline becomes more obvious every week. The 25th is just a matter of time but that cabinet of yesmen, nutters and freaks is going to be a long time coming to that conclusion.
Age:
Height:
Electoral college votes:
Wars:
Net wealth:
Impeachments:
https://x.com/ANI/status/1952877566047449426
Sure.
The Epstein files might be the perfect dirt to get him there.
Is reduced to the mental capacity of Truss, let alone a cabbage.
UK interest rates expected to be cut to 4%
Bank of England expected to react to a weakening economy despite inflation rising to 3.6 per cent
https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/economics/article/interest-rates-uk-bank-of-england-predictions-august-2025-t6nf3sbdq
It happened quite late (1956) but it could have happened at any point over the previous 20 years, or even a few years later. We just didn't get involved in the 1930s and, during WWII, aside from aerial defence and the Royal Navy couldn't do much alone.
So, it was a symptom, not a cause.
They, and the rest of the corrupt administration, owe their places to Trump, and have demonstrated craven obedience on a pretty constant basis.
The idea of such a crew, who have little other reason to trust each other, taking a wild gamble on Vance, and an untried procedure, to chuck out the guy who has the up until now unwavering support of MAGA, strains credulity.
Vance certainly has to be worried that the Epstein affair might damage his chances of succeeding Trump to the presidency, but a meeting like this is more likely about how to cover it up, rather than how to depose Trump.
Not that Vance wouldn't, if there were a less risky way of doing it.
What's the point of negotiating with the US at all ?
Dozens more countries face higher taxes on exports to US as new Trump tariffs come into effect
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/07/trump-tariffs-come-into-force-taxes-us-exports
Much more of this, and we're going to see western aligned countries start to pivot to dealing with China.
Whether he bothers to check or remembers he should check are different questions.
Saying "I don't know, I'll check" is a perfectly valid response which more politicians should use instead of pretending they know about an issue when they don't.
It may look like a very unstable equilibrium, but it can persist for ages.
The point about WWII, though, isn't that we were still a great power, but rather that we (and the rest of Europe) exhausted our economies to the point where any chance of competing with with the US on any kind of level terms just disappeared.
I don't think that was a given prior to WWII.
Don't forget that a significant part of their technological advance came from European exiles.
As of today the average US tariff on imports is over 18%. Which compares to 2.5% last year. And doesn't include further threatened increases.
That's the highest since the 1930s, for context.
It was more a symbol we could no longer act independently in foreign affairs without US support outside of Europe
On topic: why did they publicise this meeting? This group of people could have met somewhere in WH at any time without all the fnafare.
US potential productive capacity had been larger than anyone else on the planet for a while. WWII simply turbocharged them getting there.
It wasn’t just destruction of other economies.
The scale required to be a Big Power massively increased.
To give an example - if at Pearl Harbour, the Japanese had sunk the entire US fleet, down to the last rowboat, the US would have had superiority, again, over the Japanese 5 months later than in our timeline.
The industrial capacity of the US, at this point, relative to the planet was absurd. The U.K. decided they couldn’t afford the 75 and 100 ton bomber projects. The US ran the B29, B32 and B36 in parallel. The Manhattan project was just another big project. When other countries were considering aircraft carriers vs battleships, the US built both.
All this while barely touching the domestic economy - certainly compared to other nations in WWII
It’s no so much that the U.K. got small, as the US and the USSR got big.
We saw that with UK budget last year. Its just Trump does it to the extreme, but I think that is probably grounded in him growing up doing real estate in NYC where you deal with the many dodgy individuals.
The razor suggests this: Trump campaigned on Epstein promises because it was essential to being elected. The high degree of silence and evasion now not only from Trump but from a large number of top sources is explained by the very large number of people who are somehow implicated. If Trump falls from this so do lots of others. No further complicated explanations are needed.
Will it work? Wait and see.
Also, his whole shtick is clearly and obviously lying and changing like the wind, so its not like the bar is set where if he falls from some high pedestal of perceived honesty because his mental decline doesn't allow him to keep the plates spinning of half truths.
Maybe their secret grand strategy is to have a mass-cleansing by removing him?
The squealing from Republicans at this threat is a thing to behold....
They were fine with having a presidential candidate they knew was senile and but for one bad night they might have got away with it.
And while Trump lies almost as easily as BoZo, the problem with his mental decline is that he is starting to believe his own confabulations.
He told a story a few weeks ago that his uncle taught the Unabomber.
Yes, his uncle was a university professor.
Yes, the unabomber went to university.
Not the same university. Not at the same time. They never met.
Biden was (mostly) harmless. Trump is a clear and present danger.
So 2020 was quite a bit too early to be betting on the US outcome, as a lot of people don't expect him to try to run again at that point.
The best time to lay Biden was much later, after he'd intimidated the rest of the Democrats into not standing for the nomination.
I guess the question on the header is - where was Trump?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/project-2025-trump-administration-six-months-b2802384.html
Plus it will suit them for Vance to take over after the halfway point of Trump 2 - meaning they can get 10 years of him rather than 6 and a bit
Was the proposed meeting with or without his knowledge/support?
Biden couldn't do 5 minute appearances. Trump in comparison is still out there muck spreading his BS like some kid with ADHD.
Europe, in fighting itself, in Europe, destroyed a vast amount of industrial capacity while the US just continued to build. And got to pick over the industrial carcass of Europe for the choicest pickings, after the war.
The thought that we have had a Labour government for a year and still have all that child poverty when Labour could have taxed wealthier people and redirected the money to poor children was avoided entirely. Genius.
A case in point.
https://x.com/sprinterobserve/status/1953207168066568395?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Harold Macmillan wasn’t howled down for saying “they never had it so good” - it was the literal truth.
The US had the same thing, on a bigger stage.
As an aside, Goodwood reported a healthy increase in crowd numbers for its Festival meeting last week, The Public Enclosure (the cheap seats) had crowd numbers up 10% from 2024 while even the posh areas saw a 5% rise and that was despite last Thursdy's biblical deluge.
Attendances at race meetings are doing well and some evidence there's still plenty of discretionary income out there to be spent despite the notion we are on our knees, society is broken and we are one step away from anarchy and barbarism under Labour.
It's all much more nuanced than that - it always has been.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections#Per_state
California
Dem 43
GOP 9
Ratio 4.8:1
Illinois
Dem 14
GOP 3
Ratio 4.7:1
New York
Dem 19
GOP 7
Ratio 2.7:1
Texas
GOP 25
Dem 13
Ratio 1.9:1
The balance of gerrymandering (and vote rigging) benefited the Dems in 2024.
Which is why the GOP only had a House majority of 5 despite their 3% lead in the popular vote.
That is not a perfectly valid response.
My wife and I have had a total of 10 covid vax (each), had covid itself twice and was really ill, and it looks like more to follow !!!!!!!!!!
https://x.com/RobertJenrick/status/1953350916809044266
From the outside, it's easy to look at horse racing as being a sport with plenty of money in it and of course the top end is extremely wealthy but, as is the case in many other industries, the wealth at the top disguises the poverty at the bottom. A lot of what goes on in racing from stable staff to hospitality workers at racecourses to ground staff doesn't command high wages and often involves long hours of often thankless work.
Racing "claims" hundreds of jobs would be lost if the tax harmonisation plans came into force - the truth is the very top would continues as it does now and the "pain" would be felt at the lower levels (as it always is).
The superficial attraction of Brown's policy idea belies the fact the industry would contract and those no longer able to work could go to the State for support. As racing stables are often in rural areas where alternative employment is scarce, it would mean further depopulation and increased demand on housing in urban areas. The £100m largesse sent back wouldn't cover all this.
Yet, as yesterday's fixture announcement shows, racing has money to throw at increasing prize money and incentives for breeders (let's not forget the bloodstock industry which isn't just the top end stud farms).
It's complicated as public policy always is with many layers and dimensions to consider.
To be fair to Trump his tariffs on nations trading heavily with Putin is not something even Biden and Harris were willing to do
He'll use any excuse to impose them.
The Democrats would probably go for that and take their chances; I'm pretty sure the GOP wouldn't.
I fear we will not see their like again in my lifetime.
That's not just a lie. That's a mathematical impossibility that he no longer understands.
He has mentally declined "by 1500% (sic) " since he was last in office
2012 was the last House election that the Republicans won, despite finishing slightly behind the Democrats in vote share.
Partisan gerrymandering cancels itself out, at national level.
It’s hard to see how Newsom could make the California electoral map any more favourable to the Democrats than it already is.
I'd go further and argue the private rental sector is one of the biggest housing problems we face - the demand for rental accommodation in London is always high but developers want to build properties for ownership and that's well beyond what most people can afford even for a deposit.
You're also probably right - I've no information on the demographic of those who were at Goodwood last week. It looked from the tv coverage as though there were families present (being the school holidays) but I also suspect white, retired people were over-represented. They are at most midweek meetings which are primarily for the needy and the greedy.
He's not near Biden levels yet though.
The same can be said for Farage over here: he can say any amount of shite and people will swallow it up, because they have faith in the package as a whole. There's even the FeDS: Farage excitable Defence Squaddies, who proactively try to spin anything that might be seen as bad for Farage or the Farage Party.
https://x.com/theipaper/status/1953152881617420311
It doesn’t matter if the GOP in Texas only got 190% more seats than the Dems if they only got 10% more votes. I don’t know those numbers, but I imagine the GOP gerrymanders are much worse.
Neither side should gerrymander though. It’s an absolute stain on democracy.
I'll do it in Keir X speak:
Britain is a wealthy country but too much of it is held by the few. This leaves many people struggling.
We need a better and fairer way.
My government will leave no stone unturned to find it. Oh yes.