Local knowledge is invaluable. As might be expected, refugee from Little Britain Oliver has STRONG OPINIONS.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
“Alexa, change the president.”
I really should read my own blog.
The lights are all blinking red.
Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?
There is no right way to do the wrong thing.
We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.
T R E 4 5 O N
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.
Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.
One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.
Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.
Optimism opens the door to great things.
It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.
Come on, man.
“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”
Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.
We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.
This really is a full service blog.
This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.
The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.
He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!
I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.
The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.
Everybody saw this coming.
dogwood
We are so lucky to have Oliver on this side of the pond.
Trentrunner
The rise in xenophobic harassment and violence in England since Brexit is disturbing.
THIS is the real risk of Trump’s candidacy: Legitimizing bigotry and violence to remove their masks and act.
Davis X. Machina
Wait, I was assured that Brexit is the first blow of the struggle against the forces of finance capital and neo-liberalism, and that, freed from the clutches of Frankfurt and Brussels, workers in England have at last seized for themselves the power to improve their lot.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Blue is the national color for Scotland, not England. So I don’t think holding their breath would work very well.
sigaba
@Trentrunner:
Damage already done.
Most important lesson of the video: That was the vote. There are no fucking do-overs.
Splitting Image
@Trentrunner:
It’s disturbing how little encouragement some people need to let their inner bigot hang out. During the Canadian campaign last year, Stephen Harper and some other Conservatives tossed off a few remarks about the niqab to see how well they would fly, and within days there were reports of Muslim women getting harassed in the streets. Yes, we threw the bums out, but women are still getting harassed. Some men, once they were given the okay to push women around, are simply not going to stop.
Splitting Image
@Davis X. Machina:
We’ll have a chance to find out for sure. If they reward Farage for lying about the extra funds going to the NHS, then the vote wasn’t about the NHS. With luck, the next election will be a Labour landslide, but for the moment I’m going to predict that both UKIP and the Boris Johnson wing of the Conservatives will pick up seats. That’s not going to improve anybody’s lot.
scav
It does somehow seem to crop up every so often, the English Mob mindset. Remember the one riled up by the News of the World Name and Shame paedophile campaign? Went after a pediatrician (that shared moran heritage breeds true. — Shakespeare ran with both elements, come to think of it.)
ETA, OK, it’s late, full sad nerd mention of Dicken’s Barnaby Rudge mob too,
Major Major Major Major
Good evening, balloon folk.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Its quiet, too quiet…
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman:
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Yep. This is true. The only problem with sleeping most of the day because I’m fighting this respiratory infection is I wind up awake until 3 AM or so.
So what should we talk about because no one else seems to be around.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t know, I’m pretty tired for once. Sawry.
Prescott Cactus
Canada doesn’t have room for the influx of sane Brit’s and Liberal Democrats from the US.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: No need to apologize. I have a two year old TV show of a bunch of Louisianans hunting a roogaroo on. So I’m good.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Ha. One less thing I have to worry about, then.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Just don’t look the roogaroo in the eyes, it will mesmerize you and then you’re a late night snack!
Prescott Cactus
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for reminding my why I cut the cable. Never even bought a flat screen. I’d have caught England v Iceland, but passed on Louisiana roogaroo hunt. . .
Hope the respiratory infection is cleared ASAP !
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Roogaruh-roh.
gene108
@Prescott Cactus:
Canada has room. It’ll be cold – brutally cold – but they have a larger land mass than the lower 48 states and population not quite as large as California.
Viva BrisVegas
@Adam L Silverman:
What the hell is a roogaroo? A rabid kangaroo?
As to the Brexit, the central problem is that Labour never repaired the damage done to the North of England by Thatcher and her crew. Then the Conservative austerity program was used to screw over the North even harder.
This has left a slew of truly desperate communities looking for answers, any answers. New Labour certainly didn’t provide any.
Desperate people are ripe for right wing demagoguery. So long as one part of the Tory Party could detach itself from its main body long enough to pretend it was anti-establishment, EU membership was doomed.
The Leave vote was essentially a marriage made in hell between the far right of the Conservative Party and those people most victimised by that same party.
gene108
@Splitting Image:
I think Labour has to get its own house in order, before being able to challenge the UKIP – Conservarive alliance.
Anyway, I’m wondering if Queen Elizabeth II has the power to intervene, one way or the other, and literally take her country back.
Maybe issue a royal decree that if Northern Ireland or Scotland bolt there will be war.
Or start with a more common sense royal decree stating from now on the Brits will drive on the right-hand side of the road like civilized people, and apologize to other countries for letting them adopt left-hand side of the road driving.
Adam L Silverman
@Prescott Cactus: I’ve been on levoquin since last Thursday. Spoke to my doc today, apparently what’s going around is a lingerer. It is the nice thing about teleworking though – when you’re ill, you don’t have to call in.
As for the show I’m watching, I love these types of shows. Its like bubblegum for the mind. I’ve just started watching a new one about how the cops in Shepherdstown, WV have called in a team of paranormal investigators because its the most haunted town in American. I’m waiting for them to work out that the hauntings are simply Cole either out late with the dogs or wandering aimlessly looking for his mustard,
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: My puppy – okay, she’s about 2 and 1/2 now, but she’s the baby is named Ruby. I call her the Rubaroo. One must be ware the Rubaroo. Do not look at her, the cuteness is mesmerizing!
Adam L Silverman
@Viva BrisVegas: Rugaroo is the Cajun derivation of the French Loup Garou, which is the French variant on the werewolf, lycanthrope legend/myth. There are a couple of different variants of the Louisianan/Cajun rugaroo legend. One is a straight up werewolf like the French legend. Another is more akin to the Canadian First Nation’s legend of the wendigo, where a human has been cursed and turned into the rugaroo. Unlike the wendigo this does not seem to have anything to do with cannibalism. Another variant is that it is simply the Louisiana variant of a bigfoot or susquatch, basically the Louisiana bayou version of the Arkansan Boggy Creek legend of the Fauk Monster. The simple translation for your part of the world is its a Yowie or an Indonesian Mok.
J R in WV
I don’t think I could stand the cold… Isn’t Vancouver warmed by the Japan Current?
But I understand that home prices around there are through the roof because of people fleeing Hong Kong and Macau anad the rest of SE Asia, as warships are being built by everyone.
I won’t live under Trump’s regime. I am contributing monthly gifts to Hillary Clinton. I may well go to a swing state and work for Hill and their local Dem Senate candidate, god knows here in WV the R’s have captured the ignorant segment of the voting electorate, which means 60-70% voting for the stupid Republicans. Which make me worry about my pension that I worked hard for a very long time for…. it’s a quarter of our income.
Looks like the Brits have really done the trick though. We know now that without a miracle of leadership AND clever voting by a group that has shown themselves to nOT be clever about voting, they look to be screwed for the foreseeable future.
One of the best comments about BREXIT voting I heard, the commentors 73 Y O mum met with her lunch group, and they all thought the point of the “LEAVE” vote was that the immigrants would leave… no dearie, not the case. FSM help those old girls!
Viva BrisVegas
@gene108: Labour is dead in the water for at least the next generation. UKIP and Scottish independence will reduce it to irrelevance. England is about to become a one party state with a democratic veneer.
QEII has no power to intervene.
No war from the Queen. PM Boris on the other hand, who knows?
The left hand side of the road is the only natural and proper side of the road on which to travel. This is an incontrovertible truth.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: You all high and dry?
Viva BrisVegas
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for that. I should have been thinking along the lines of The Howling III: Marsupials, an underrated and understated classic.
Adam L Silverman
@Viva BrisVegas: Nothing like having built in pockets when one turns into a monster!
I’m an American Werewolf in London kind of guy, but that’s just because I’m a big Jenny Aguter fan.
Viva BrisVegas
@Adam L Silverman:
I wholeheartedly concur. I was 14 when Walkabout came out, and I can say that the movie greatly impressed me. Especially the artistic bits.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Yes, we were fine, just ran gullies into the farm road, which we graded out Saturday. Did you see the video of the house floating down the creek, on fire? We’re SW of Charleston about 20 miles airline, and the heavy work started 12 or 15 miles NW of the city, ran ESE clear to the VA line, got wider as it went east into the mountains.
Worst since 1985, which was a geologic event in the NE part of the state. Rivers changed their courses, there were dead cows stuck up under girder bridges, hanging up there. People and their cars were eroded into big banks of fill, gone forever. Mrs J was working for The AP at the time and spent over a week up there, living in a VW Jetta. The National Guard crews gave her a body bag to use for a sleeping bag, because the ground was flood mud. 47 dead, many never recovered, including a trooper who’s car was trapped by rising water in front and behind, with a sheer cliff he tried to climb. No luck…
It rained hard today, with thunder, and I couldn’t bear to think of those folks, trying to live through the trashing of their whole lives, and here comes more rain!
I think worse than the west coast fires, after the fire, its just all gone, mostly vaporized. After a flood it’s gone as in ruined, but you yourself still have to shovel it up into the dumpsters, yourself, because it’s rotting faster than you can save anything.
But Lincoln county was spared the destruction, we just got soaked as if it were still spring.
J R in WV
Here’s a link that includes a pic of one of the hanging cows.
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: The thing about the fires in SoCal, many previously forested areas will never have large trees again. The Old Fire in 2003 was especially destructive and one large area that was burned over, Hook Creek, looks like the surface of the moon. Something like 1200 houses were lost and 4 people died. It was arson and it took about 10 years to find the arsonist.
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: Glad you’re ok, terrible that so many lives were lost and homes destroyed. I’m glad you are safe.
I don’t think I want to click that link.
patrick II
@Viva BrisVegas:
I watched Logan’s run about ten times when I was a youngster because of Jenny Aguter. She’s old now and her sweet face has some wrinkles, but she is still lovely.
Elizabelle
The Oliver clip was good, but I wonder if Britain truly cannot get a do-over. Referendum is non-binding, and Parliament may decide to discuss it a lot more and put it up for another vote, or just ignore it.
So many downsides, and such falsehoods in play. Does not sound like many of the British fully understood what they were voting for, or the consequences.
People are down on “the young” doing anything, but I think some well attended protests, and a social media campaign, could go a long way.
Do you think a PM Barack Obama would not have looked for a way out of the idiocy? It would be his duty.
Elizabelle
Pat Summitt, Lady Vols coaching legend, should be in our thoughts this morning. Sounds like she has very little time left; family no longer allowing visitors.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: It will all depend on who wins the next election.
Arclite
@gene108:
Global warming will fix that for ya.
OzarkHillbilly
No comment.
Zinsky
The Brexit vote just proves that the stupid and the crazy are pretty thick and prevalent on both sides of the Atlantic. We haven’t progressed all that far in 10,000 years of living in semi-civilized societies.
Gator90
@Elizabelle: Would it be patronizing to call her the female John Wooden? A true giant of college sports.
Elizabelle
@Gator90: re Pat Summitt and John Wooden: I think she and he would be honored at the comparison.
Have moved into the school’s residence hall, which is very comfortable except — they don’t offer coffee at breakfast. WTF? There are teabags galore and a jar of Nescafe instant.
No. Am in the kitchen, brewing up my own espresso and milk.
Slowly. Watched pot and all.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: I guess they cater to a lot of Brits.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes. And Asians. The Chinese are this school’s bread and butter, because they arrive for a year at a time.
Although, mostly, providing the no coffee is cheap. And we’re required to pay for “breakfast” as condition of staying in the residence hall.
Might ask about that this afternoon.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: You would love the wall of floor to ceiling cupboard/shelves, hidden behind beautiful European doors. Mucho storage space, elegantly housed.
Will insist whatever house I finally settle in, for good, have these cupboards built. You could get away with pretending to minimalism, if no one looked at all the possessions hidden away.
OzarkHillbilly
Head? Meet desk.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle:
I can’t get away with anything around here, due to the way this house is constructed. And due to the people who live here. Sometimes it drives me nuts.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Splitting Image: Aye, true that. I’m kind of looking forward to the first time I get to see that here in my town. It’ll be fun tearing a strip off whichever bigot decides to let their freak flag fly.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Act now, think later.
rikyrah
No new morning thread?
Well, Good Morning ☺, Everyone ?
JPL
Local news mentioned the release of the Republican Benghazi report. One station said they personally blamed Hillary Clinton for the deaths. From what I read online, that characterization, was a little harsh.
What I can’t find is mention of David Petraeus, since he was head of CIA at the time.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I have a saying for people like Trump: “Don’t just do something, sit there.”
Baud
@rikyrah: It’s a travesty. What are we paying Anne Laurie for? Time for a vote on BJexit.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly:
Love it.
TheMightyTrowel
@Baud: that, sir, must be illegal in at least 13 states.
satby
Good morning! It’s wonderfully cool today for a change. Now that the tree is down my house gets full sun and is about 10 degrees hotter than it used to be, and since most of the screens on the side of the prevailing breezes were also wrecked I can’t open windows to air out the joint.
The Oliver piece was great, he is better than Stewart and I never thought I’d say that.
debbie
@efgoldman:
Tough to guffaw with your mouth closed!
Matt McIrvin
@gene108:
Basically, no. The Queen intervening in politics in any direct way is a one-shot deal that would just create more chaos; while she has theoretical reserve powers, it’d end the monarchy, and probably wouldn’t have the desired effect.
NorthLeft12
My thirty year old daughter is working in the London area as a teacher. Since the campaign started she has been questioned about her national origin [she is Canadian with a Polish surname] and after the vote her and seven friends [all Canadians except one American] were at a restaurant loudly talking, when two English men came to the table and told them to quiet down, and BTW you should leave the country too.
I have never bought into the nonsense that the anti-immigrant prejudice is just directed at “different” people, or people that obviously don’t “fit in”. I have always seen that this is a slowly moving target, that eventually sweeps all before it.
Canadians are different from the English, and Americans even more so. We stick out like sore thumbs no matter what we try to do to become part of their society.
This will not end well.
Matt McIrvin
@patrick II: You can briefly spot Jenny Agutter as one of the SHIELD Council members in The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, maybe some of the others too. I think those are the last things I saw her in.
NorthLeft12
The Guardian has a story about the splits in families over their Brexit vote.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jun/27/brexit-family-rifts-parents-referendum-conflict-betrayal
Looks like the days of “my family has always voted [fill in party name]” , are over.
NorthLeft12
@patrick II: She was in one of my favourite horror movies “An American Werewolf in London” awhile back. Still a guilty pleasure.
sigaba
@Viva BrisVegas: If there’s nothing for the Queen to do in a situation like this, why do they even have a Queen? You’d think a sovereign would maybe at least have something to say in this, the issues at stake go to the heart of the British national polity, but I guess it’s known that Elizabeth II isn’t much of a speaker, or a politician, or a leader.
Amir Khalid
@sigaba: @sigaba:
That’s the way they do things in Blighty. The monarchy has evolved over the years from having absolute power to its current, largely ceremonial role as head of state. Most monarchies have a similar role now.
Miss Bianca
@efgoldman: why, is he going to eat all your food? Or would you just be laughing too much?
@Adam L Silverman: Damn, see what happens when you fall asleep over “Red Dwarf” and retire to bed early? You miss the really cool stuff – the ROOGAROO conversation!
Emma
@sigaba: Actually what it’s known is that Elizabeth II is a very clever lady and, according to her Prime Ministers, one heavy-duty counselor (her role vis-a-vis the government is to consult, advice, and warn). Whether her Prime Ministers listen, it’s another matter. At least one is on the record as saying “on this matter I should have listened to her.” (John Major, IIRC)
The other role she has is as representative of her nation and she is tireless at it. That frees her PMs to do business — and it really helps the wives of PMs who don’t go through the sort of treatment Michelle Obama got.
She does have some reserve powers but it would trigger an abdication crisis, and who needs more crap on top of the one they have already?
sigaba
@Emma: I’m not saying she should actually exercise any powers or anything, but maybe she has something to say about all this? I understand her role is ceremonial but in an event like this for her to take no public action at all, even as small as give an address, makes the monarchy seem redundant.
I don’t doubt she’s not clever but from previous incidents she seems to have a tin ear and doesn’t really connect with her people very well.
Tripod
@Davis X. Machina:
Noted neo-liberal sellout Neil Kinnock.
Emma
@sigaba:
Really? Did you see her 90th birthday celebrations?
In any case, her role in politics is advisory and behind the scene. It has worked well. For her to pull the gun on basically ending the monarchy would require open civil war. Not to mention that if the UK fractures she’s going to have negotiations of her own. She is a fairly large (private) landowner in Scotland, to begin with.
Emma
And the hits keep on coming, this one from The Guardian:
nutella
@Davis X. Machina:
It’s the first blow but it’s aimed at the wrong parties. The enemies of the British working class are not EU bureaucrats or immigrants. It’s the Tories who have been and continue to destroy their livelihoods and loot the treasury. Although they look pretty bumbling now, they have successfully pulled off an enormous con by directing a lot of legitimate hatred away from themselves. Cameron’s head should be on a pike, as I’ve said before, but they’re all going to waste time blaming the EU and immigrants for the destruction he and his Tory colleagues have done to the country.
ETA: Sorry, I know you were snarking but the topic set me off again.
Tripod
@Viva BrisVegas:
Do what exactly? Re-open the pits?
This will go well.
NorthLeft12
@Emma: SHOCKER!! Right Wingers lie about all the benefits that will come to England after voting to leave. Whocouldanode?
To me this points out even more how the systematic dumbing down of the public has succeeded beyond the Right’s wildest dreams. The education system, the media, and the corporations have all played their part in ensuring an ignorant and selfish population.
sigaba
@Emma: ” For her to pull the gun on basically ending the monarchy would require open civil war”
Or her daughter-in-law to die in a Paris auto accident, but I take your point.
Matt McIrvin
@sigaba: You can think of the British Crown as the rough equivalent of the US flag. (The Union Flag in the UK isn’t the focus of quite the same level of idolatry as ours.) With some of the purely ceremonial/symbolic duties of the President mixed in.
Emma
@sigaba: Her FORMER daughter in law died in a Paris auto accident. So? Was that her fault? Was she supposed to demand that the papparazzi chasing her be hung? Or that the man she was with, who ordered his driver to drive like a maniac, be put in jail?
Honestly, Diana worship. I. Can’t. Even.
Andy
@NorthLeft12: ….The intellectual response is framed by cognitive dissonance. Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard University, saw it as “Russian roulette for republics”. He complained that the simple majority system of those who voted (36% of eligible voters voted for leaving) was an absurdly low bar. Professor Rogoff argued that such a significant decision should not be made without appropriate checks and balance. In an editorial price for the Business Insider, American opinion-ist Josh Barro termed the decision “a tantrum”. British voters had made “a bad choice”. It was an “error of direct democracy”. Such important decisions should not be decided by voters but left to “informed” elected officials.
In essence, for those who believe they are born to rule, Brexit signals the need to limit democracy to ensure that important decisions are left to self-certified experts. European Parliament President Martin Schultz was refreshingly clear: “It is not the EU philosophy that the crowd can decide its fate”.
In a pivotal moment in the campaign, challenged to name a single expert who thought that Brexit would economically benefit Britain, Justice Secretary Michael Gove’s defiant response was that: “I think people in this country have had enough of experts.” Attacked for being anti-intellectual, Mr. Gove’s position highlighted the fact that over-reaching and arrogant experts, especially on economic matters, have been often incorrect, sometime disastrously.
The reality is that experts no longer relate to ordinary people. Policy orthodoxy, such as free trade, de-industrialisation and, in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, austerity and unconventional monetary policy, have not benefitted large parts of the population. Ordinary people’s appetite for sacrifice in return for unquantified future benefits promised by experts has waned. The gravitational pull of aspiration, central to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s brand of conservatism, has faded as trickle-down economics has betrayed many people.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Tripod:
We have the same problem. Major manufacturing jobs are gone and are never coming back. For lack of a better term, we have a structural jobs deficit.
This is why, in spite of all the polls and all the reassurances that the general is different from the primary, I worry about a Trump victory in November. I was one of those who knew Trump would flame out before Stupor Tuesday, because I did not understand what was happening in the Republican base. I like to think I have a slightly better handle on it now, and it scares the fuck out of me.
NorthLeft12
@Andy: My daughter is very familiar with Mr. Gove. He was previously the Minister for Education and has left his right wing stamp on the British education system. He has succeeded in uniting the teachers of Britain in their unhidden disdain and loathing of him and his policies.
Uncle Cosmo
@Andy: As usual, you are cordially invited to fuck off & die. In the interests of expediency you may omit the fucking off & return forthwith your corporeal elements to the planet, where pond scum could make more thoughtful & incisive use of them.
gorram
@Splitting Image: Sorry to bring my bullishness on Welsh nationalism into another thread, but my suspicion is that the NHS business is going to drive a wedge between the Welsh Brexit vote and the English Brexit vote. The North is the wild card, since they might actually have seen the point of improving the NHS, but rural Essex? Rural Midlands? It’s pure unadulterated xenophobia, racism, and islamophobia out there.
The NHS grew out of essentially a pensioner program built in Wales by Welsh people, so they’re uniquely protective of it (trust me, you think English people brag to Americans about the NHS, ask a Cymro or Cymraes about it). The promise to fund it more thoroughly (combined with a lack of the kind of blatant usefulness of the EU that’s happened in Northern Ireland and Scotland) probably moved the needle to Leave within Wales, I suspect. Failing to deliver on that lets the air out of the bag so to speak.
Looking at Wales currently, it reminds me of Scotland in the 80s and early 90s – with comparatively conservative / centrist parties winning a lot of constituencies because voters split between Labor (anti-nationalist but pro-worker) and Plaid Cymru (not terribly pro-worker but pro-nationalist). It’s a bit like how the Democrats weren’t winning majorities in the rural US West during the 1990s, but carried a lot of states because they won pluralities while the conservatives split between the GOP and various third parties and the like. In the same way they wised up and started voting strategically, I suspect the anti-poverty/austerity sentiments in Wales are going to align increasingly with nationalist sentiments (in the way Scotland has been hurtling for a few years now).
There’s more euroskepticism in Wales as well (beyond the evidence of the recent Leave vote), so the threat that leaving the UK might mean being out of the EU for a few years isn’t the same threat to Wales that it was to Scotland (in their recent referendum for instance). What the Leave camp, by doing this about face on the NHS, have done is arm Welsh separatism in a way it hasn’t been for decades, and right after demonstrating the flimsiness of the UK holding Northern Ireland and poke the sleeping giant in Scotland.
Matt Mangels
Video no longer available due to a copyright claim by HBO :(