"This is why you get a vaccine, you get to see your friends again," @JohnKingCNN says as he hosts an in-person roundtable.
We need to see more of this. The media plays an important role in showcasing the everyday benefits of the vaccines in order to increase uptake. pic.twitter.com/iivZdWnDoP
— Benjy Renton (@bhrenton) May 10, 2021
Personal note: Spousal Unit & I got our second (Pfizer) shots yesterday, narrowly avoiding having to battle hordes of younglings intent on summer fun for the privilege. Now all my joints hurt and I can’t stop coughing, but I suspect that’s less about the vaccine than it is the ferschluggin’ tree pollen, ugh.
Speaking of improving summer entertainment:
CNN: Lafayette Park, which is directly across from the north side of the White House, has been reopened to pedestrians as of Monday morning. The park had been fenced off and closed to the public for the better part of a year.
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) May 10, 2021
In the fourth month of his presidency, Biden’s overall approval rating sits at 63%. When it comes to the new Democratic president’s handling of the pandemic, 71% of Americans approve, including 47% of Republicans.https://t.co/cdMCrAKOSO
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) May 10, 2021
Hitting back at critics about disappointing job report numbers, President Joe Biden said that the U.S. had created the most jobs in the first 100 days of the administration of ‘any U.S. president on record’ https://t.co/XqdOxBQgvm pic.twitter.com/4e53Bk0sPb
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 11, 2021
On The Road – Elma – In Bruges
Spanky
Edited to remove reference to a stinking ad I thought was part of the post
And maybe fewer jobs are being added because the workforce is pretty much fully employed?
debbie
Congratulations on the second jab, Anne Laurie!
Spanky
Where’s Raven these days?
WereBear
Closing in on my two week post-vaccine period. Throughout, I had weird stuff with aches and tiredness and sleep problems… which is not different from the PAST YEAR so what the hey.
Also, my new career plan (my old one is as dead as TFG’s brain) is perking along with a Patreon Podcast, Behind the Blogs! I also have free episodes for the curious. :)
AND share our joy! We are delighted in Rhiannon, our Pandemic kitten, but Mr Way of Cats lost his Heart Cat last year, and this gap needs to be filled. So I just found out that at the end of the month, I will pick up our new baby that I chose to help him in particular.
Of course, Heart Cat is more art than science, but we are willing to gamble :)
Gin & Tonic
@Spanky: Fishing.
Tony Jay
Further Tales from the Akannawatch,
or the Nounfall of Dumbanbored
“ANYTHING YOU CAN DO, WE CAN DO LATER
WE CAN DO EVERYTHING SHITTER THAN YOU”
A Max Bialystock Production
Back in the Swinging Sixties, when The Beatles were exporting their cheeky/cheery brand of mop-topped, head-wobbling, non-segregated, joy-pop to US shores, the people who got paid on a sliding scale of obnoxiousness to sneer at such things complained that all the Fab Four were really doing was repackaging American rock ‘n blues n’ bubblegum music into tight-fitting drainpipes and selling it back to source. The Beatles, being 1960’s Scousers and therefore composed of 75% dry snarctastic wit, 20% love for American music and 5% German STDs, just drawled “Cool insight, chum, have a cuppa and listen to Ringo’s latest poem”, then went forth to become Bigger Than Jeebus and do for the world’s dope dealers what The Stones would do for no-contest paternity suit lawyers. Of course, it wasn’t very long at all before the people who got paid to sneer at the people who sneered at other people (cue the duelling banjo implication music) pointed out that the musical styles the Beatles were reinventing had originally come to American shores with immigrants from Europe, slaves from Africa and wherever the hell Little Richard’s pomade-stylist came from (Welsh Polynesia?) so really, weren’t they just describing the great ouroboros of everything that powers global culture? People take things in, filter them through their cultural intestines and, hopefully, produce new takes on old standards that are just as genuine as the “back when music had real singers and you knew a lutist by the seam of his hose” classics we remember Grandad formation-dancing to.
My point? Tide goes in, tide goes out, but it’s all the same Ocean, and while that great, big swirling bastard is responsible for bobbing a lot of joyful jetsam into people’s lives, it also dumps an awful lot of reeking turds on everyone’s doorsteps too. See ‘Coldplay’, ‘Dan Brown novels’ and ‘alt-Right populism’ for especially invidious examples. None of them would exist without the ever-churning conveyer belt of bad ideas passing from one cultural market to another, where they all evolve to cope with different conditions and assume new and ever more insidious forms ready for the next leg of the endless journey. Which of them has destroyed more lives? Well, it’s too early to say, but I’d put a multitude of solar quatloons on our great-great-great-great grandkids looking back at Dead Earth from their homes in the Belt City States and thanking Gaia of the Stars that their ancestors melted down certain Spotify and Kindle databases when they fled the planet, then cursing the persistence of our natural wetware databases for ensuring that they – still – have to contend with pinch-faced wankers exploiting their monopoly on Infostream guest-slots to stir up resentment over all those shiftless parasites from Luna Pod 12 (floating over here, taking all our oxygen) just so they can grift a few credits and a lot of votes out of the ever gullible masses.
Now, obviously, I’m not blaming Lesser Brexitannia’s lunge into what that clever young Silverman boy calls Herrenvolk Democracy on the US, or on ‘Americans’, that would be silly and. quite frankly, obnoxiously rude. What I am saying, is that the form and direction of the political ideology and anti-democratic policy being adopted by the modern Conservative and Unionist Party under the media-curated leadership of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson owes a hell of a lot to the example set by the American Republican Party. The tone of the propaganda, the content of it, right down to the specific concentration on certain phrases, themes and targets are very, very familiar to those of us who have spent a good decade or two hanging around blogs like this one. History, they say, doesn’t always repeat, but it does often rhyme, and more and more frequently these days I’m aware that there’s a bloody good case for charging Johnson’s Conservatives and the various Infotainment outlets promoting them with outright plagiarism.
Anyway, this has all been my roundabout way of letting you know that there were elections in Britain on Thursday, mostly at the local constituency level, but with larger scale ones for the devolved authorities of Scotland and Wales and both regional and metropolitan mayoral contests. It’s not a General Election, but it is a chanced to take the pulse of the nation and stick a thermometer up its collective poop-chute. Over the last few days we’ve seen all kinds of alternately painful and uplifting results dribble out, then concluded the festival of democratic junk-punching with some completely predictable but nevertheless terribly unfortunate bed-shittings by people who we’re told are supposed to be professional politicians with functional political instincts, but who seem to be something else entirely. I won’t belabour you with numbers and suchlike, that’s way outside of my wheelhouse and has all the attraction of a porcupine dildo. What I will say is that the UK is clearly a deeply divided country undergoing a political and cultural realignment similar in scope and importance (in British terms) to the post-Civil Rights secession of the Dixiecrat South from Democratic to Republican rule. I don’t really know what to do about that right now other than vent a bit here, so you’ll have to forgive me. This will go on (what a surprise, I hear absolutely no one say) so feel free to give the whole thing a pass. You won’t be missing much and there’s hardly any nudity.
(clears throat)
To begin, our intentionally garbage national news media, led from the front by the totally impartial BBC (with its Tory appointed Board, its Tory senior-management and its Tory News and Current Affairs team) decided long ago that the only real story of these nationwide local and regional elections was going to be the sole Parliamentary bye-election taking place in Hartlepool. The question on everyone’s lips (Ed – the answer is “No” by the way, but they didn’t ask me) was could the ‘Under New Management’ Labour Party possibly hold on to its control of this smallish Leave voting city (69.5% voted to leave the EU) in the so-called ‘Red Wall’, that swathe of former industrial cities and towns across the north of England that had been solid Labour seats for decades until 2019, when a lot of them elected Tory MPs for the first time? Any stylistic similarities to the Rust Belt areas of the US branded ‘The Blue Wall’ back in 2016 were purely deliberate on behalf of an Infotainment machine always looking for the easiest possible narrative through which they can frame the Tory Party’s embrace of alt-Right ideology as part of a bigger centre-right realignment. Then again, wrecked by deindustrialisation, hammered by austerity, abandoned by the young, targeted by racist propaganda geared towards blaming all of the regions’ problems on the insolently brown and those metropolitan, virtue-signalling, foreigner-loving leftie bastards in their hemp moccasins and Fairtrade ponchos who just expect to harvest white, working-class votes in perpetuity while privately looking down on them as ignorant, racist thickos…. it’s arguably not such a bad comparison. The problem is that the Infotainers do their level best to avoid laying the blame for these ills where it actually belongs, since that would impact unfavourably on their employment prospects, and much prefer to just ask the recipients of gushing torrents of unfiltered right-wing disinformation what they think are the issues of the day. They wouldn’t want to appear partisan, now, would they?
I know I said I’m not a numbers man, but here’s a little run-down of past elections that even I can understand and it illustrates very clearly what has happened in Hartlepool over the years.
1974, newly created Parliamentary seat, Labour beats the Tories by 8.6%
1974, second General Election of the year, Labour beats the Tories by 8.1%
1979, Thatcher’s first victory, Labour stuffs the Tories by 16.7%, a big Fuck You Maggie!
1983, centre-right Social Democrats split Labour vote, Labour still beat Tories by 6.3%
1987, Thatcher’s last election, Labour monster the Tories by 14.6%
1992, John Major takes over from Thatcher, Labour beat Tories by 17%
1997 – Blair’s first victory, Labour teabag the Tories by 39.4%, a vote increase of 8.8%
2001 – Blair’s second victory, Labour beat the Tories by 38.7%, a small vote drop of 1.6%
2004 – Bush’s Poodle period Blair, a bye-election called because of the resignation of scumbag Peter ‘Guacamole’ Mandelson (of whom more later) as MP to take up an EU Commissioner post, Labour beat the Liberal Democrats by 6.5%, Tories drop to 4th place, a Labour vote percentage plummet of 18.4%
2005 – Blair’s “Vote for Labour, not for me” election, Labour beat the Lib Dems by 21.1%, making up about 11% of the votes they lost the previous year
2010 – Gordon Brown’s Labour loses its national majority and a Tory/Lib-Dem Coalition rolls into Westminster, Labour beat the Tories here by 14.4%, a vote drop of 9%
2015 – Ed Miliband’s focus-grouped Labour era, Labour beat UKIP by 7.7% with the Tories in 3rd, a 6.9% vote drop and clear evidence of the direction of travel for Hartlepool voters. Anti-EU, but not yet pro-Tory.
2017 – May’s Tories call snap election, Corbyn’s Labour do far better than expected and in Hartlepool crush the Tories by 18.3%, a vote increase of 16.9% and enough to beat the Tories and UKIP combined.
2019 – The Brexit Election, Labour beat Tories by 8.3%, a vote drop of 14.8%, with the Brexit Party in 3rd hovering up ¼ of all votes and signalling the way it’s going to go next time.
2021 – Starmer’s not-Corbyn, not-Nothin’ Era, Tories beat Labour by 23.2%, with that entire majority covered by Brexit Party/Reform Party collapse, Labour vote drops by 9%
As you can see, the Labour vote in Hartlepool had been steadily draining away ever since Blair’s first election victory in 1997, following the trajectory noticeable all across the Solid Red regions (most noticeable in Scotland) as traditional Labour voters saw New Labour ignore the damage done to them by Thatcherism in its pursuit of soft-Tory votes in better off, middle-class areas and thought “Well fuck you very much too, then”. There was a bucking of that trend in 2017 when Corbyn’s version of Labour received 52% of the vote by offering these left-behind regions hope that a more authentic and working-class orientated Labour Party would show them some love, but by 2019 the relentless “Get Brexit Done” message from the Right and the endless demonisation of British History’s Greatest Monster as simultaneously a secret Brexit-supporting mole for the Tory Party who was also going to block Brexit and invite in Venezuelan occupation troops to impose Sharia Law on behalf of the Brussels Politburo (or something, details were always fluid) had carved deep, festering grooves into the Labour base. Only the fact that the pro-Brexit parties miscalculated and split the pro-Leave majority between them allowed Labour’s candidate to sneak in on 32% of the vote. When that candidate was later forced to step down after credible accusations of sexual assault were made a bye-election was called but was delayed by Covid until last Thursday.
Let’s be clear, there was never any doubt whatsoever that Hartlepool was going to go Tory this time. Zilch. Nada. Not a cocktail sausage’s chance in Vegan Hell of a Labour win. Which makes it even more astonishing that the focus-group fanbois back in Labour HQ were apparently boasting they had it in the bag. Never mind all the years of alt-Right tabloid propaganda poisoning the electoral groundwater and the gradual souring of traditional Labour voters on a Party that only seemed to remember they existed a few weeks before election time. When you have a seat that voted overwhelmingly Leave, a national Government that has gobbled up almost all of the Brexit vote by defining itself as the only true Party of Leave, and your own Party leader’s main claim to fame is being the face of the long media campaign to switch Labour to an overt Second Referendum policy, your chances of holding that seat drop from merely slim into the double-figure minuses. Starmer might have spent the last year frantically running away from the ten pledges that won him the Labour leadership, vainly trying to reposition himself as a late convert to the sanctity of Brexit, whipping his MPs to vote for Johnson’s threadbare g-string of a ‘Deal’, ruthlessly banning any discussion of the topic within the Party and making ‘reconnecting’ with lost Northern voters via transparently vacuous flag-waving and a retreat from ‘identity politics’ issues a priority, but all that’s clearly done the sum total of sweet Frankie Avalon to win back a single Brextremist vote and has only succeeded in alienating the majority of Labour voters who, quite rightly, oppose the disastrous policy Starmer has signed them up to. I’d hazard a guess that many see the Damascene conversion of this post-Corbyn Labour leadership team to ‘Brexit realism’ not as the sensible and savvy accommodation to political realities its architects are claiming it to be (because, given the inevitable Brexit bellyflop that’s due to hit over the next year or so, it’s sooooo definitely not) but rather as blood-boiling proof that the destructive civil-war waged by Starmer’s handlers and their media allies against Corbyn’s electorally successful 2017 policy of accepting the Referendum result while opposing any specifically Tory version of Brexit was far less about a genuine commitment to holding a Second Referendum and much more to do with exploiting any available issue to make Corbyn’s Labour toxic to as many different voting blocs as possible. It worked, millions of voters deserted Labour and the Election was lost, but it’s pretty fucking late in the day for the architects of that disaster to be waking up to the realisation that spending years telling everyone and their dog that your Party is shit, dangerous, racist and less credible than a Milli Vanilli ‘Best Of’ compilation might, just might, have a detrimental effect on your Party’s long term reputation.
To make the Hartlepool issue even worse for Labour (oh yes, all that’s just the tip of the twatberg) rather than allowing the local party to choose as their candidate someone who understood the area and could campaign on local issues, Starmer’s office simply froze them out, along with the official national campaign team led by Deputy-Leader Angela Rayner (northern, young, Union-history, single-mother success story, clearly not the right class of person, in the eyes of Labour’s current apparatchiks, to be speaking on behalf of ‘their’ Party) in order to parachute in a candidate so laughably ill-suited to the task that they might as well have put up a cardboard cut-out of a naked Tony Blair fingerbanging a crying monkey with a speech bubble saying “You’ll vote for me AND you’ll like it, prolefolk!” in Comic Sans Bold. Doctor Paul Williams might have some decent policies regarding the NHS, but he was loosely implicated in the (Tory, but now ‘both sides!’) decision to close a local hospital (a VERY big issue locally over the last decade), said some embarrassingly nice things about Saudi Arabia after they paid for him to come see their slave-pens, and was also a loud and proud Remainer who had lost his seat in an adjoining constituency to a pro-Leave Tory in 2019. So, all things considered, just the candidate to appeal to Hartlepool’s radicalised electorate, no? Sigh. Arrogant, out-of-touch and politically inept, totally #newlabour2021.
The campaign itself was hamstrung by Covid restrictions, a lack of funds (especially compared to the Tories and their oceans of oligarch cash) and an even greater lack of enthusiasm among local Party activists, who complained that they had absolutely nothing to say to local voters because they themselves had no idea what the Party’s policies were anymore. Meanwhile Central Office micromanaged ludicrous stunts like insisting on flying a Union Jack over the campaign office (because those types up there like that kind of thing, don’t they?) and having Williams hand out heart shaped leaflets with bugger all on them about local issues. The Tories basically didn’t have to lift a finger. They followed Johnson’s lead by hiding their candidate from scrutiny and concentrated on smearing Williams as an out-of-touch Remainer snob who needed to be taught a lesson. And just to pop the painted plastic cherry on top of the not-really chocolate gateaux, Starmer’s office handed outreach duties over to the ex-Hartlepool MP Peter ‘Call me Lord’ Mandelson, the slimy Blairite backroom assassin who epitomises just about everything wrong and backwards looking about this New New Labour. A twice sacked chum of Epstein and pal of Russian oligarchs who infamously sneered that Labour didn’t have to deliver anything to their core voters because “They’ve got nowhere else to go” and who boasted about working every day to undermine Corbyn’s leadership (just after his two huge leadership election wins and just before the he oversaw the largest surge in the Labour vote since 1997) it’s not exactly going out on a limb to say that the Ghost of Scandals Past might not have been the best choice to oversee the campaign. Unsurprisingly, appointing a man with all the star-quality and blue-collar cred of a well-moisturised Joe Lieberman to that role has led to yet another factional divide, with Party canvassers on the ground saying that the main gripes they heard from voters were about Starmer’s lack of visibility and confusion over what, exactly, Labour stands for these days, while Mandelson himself was given prime media space to quote Mr and Mrs Sokke-Poopeyte blaming that nasty Corbyn fellow and his Marxist takeover of their beloved Labour Party for forcing them to vote Tory. Any half competent leadership would smash the Orb of Souls and cast the Prince of Darkness and his ilk back into their eternity of restless slumber, but I fear that Mandelson is just the bagman for Starmer’s behind-the-scenes string-pullers who would much prefer the Labour Party to be culled down to a nice round 200 or so mostly loyal MPs and about six billionaire donors, membership and activist base not required or wanted. After all, you can hire people on zero-hour contracts to do all that door-to-door nonsense, can’t you?
Breathe. Slow that heartbeat. Remember what your therapist said (Ed – “Pay me or get out of my office” wasn’t it?) and let the swaying of the palm trees waft away the stench of brimstone and spoiled meat.
So, yeah, Hartlepool was a shit-show, which is why the News Media absolutely loved it. They could simultaneously vox-pop the socks off local area nutcases by nodding along to their disjointed rants on why Labour sucks (tick in the box for inclusion of different viewpoints… as long as they don’t offend the Government) while chuckling inwardly at how many YouTube hits they’d get for every example of a balding, clearly confused local blathering on about how great it was that the Tories were increasing the need for charity food-banks in deprived areas “Because we didn’t get any under Labour, did we?” (Ed – Really? Let me look that up… holy shit that’s Florida meth for breakfast level dumb!). In the greater scheme of things, though, it wasn’t anywhere near as important as the other results taking place across the country, but then, these narratives don’t drive themselves, do they?
What were those more important results? Well, in maybe reverse order, while the Tories strengthened their grip on many areas that had drifted rightwards over the last decade, the story across parts of the Tory heartland seems to be that ‘moderate’ Conservative voters are getting a teeny bit annoyed with the grift and corruption of Johnson’s regime and are casting around for safe ways to show it. Labour, Lib-Dems and the Greens picked up quite a few council seats and mayoralties previously held by the Blue Meanies, which isn’t nothing. The News Media are doing their best to ignore it, but outside of areas where the Brexit vote opened cracks that the Tories could exploit with English Nationalism, the need to justify everything Flobalob’s crew do in the name of the One True Brexit Faith might not be as strong as Conservative HQ would like to think. Remember, tens of thousands of people have died because of decisions this Government have made, and only days ago the Tory Press were laying into Johnson for his dismissive cruelty and openness to bribery. 24/7 fluffing about the success of
the NHSBoris’ Brilliant Vaccination Program can’t be relied on to paper over every crack in the shell protecting this Government from oversight and basic standards of behaviour, especially if dropping Covid guidelines for a Summer of Freedom leads to another surge in cases. Back in 2017 the Media were 120% sure that Theresa May was a 2nd Iron Lady who was going to paint the entire country blue at the ballot box… until she suddenly wasn’t, and that was with a dirty commie usurper hated by most of his own MPs as the opposition. Things can change very quickly in politics, and it’s only a matter of time before the Tory Civil-War kicks off big style. Factor in the huge Brexit knock-ons that are only being put off now because the UK is giving the EU import waivers that British producers don’t have going the other way and we could be looking at the Lib-Dems (maybe) but more likely the Greens making substantial inroads into traditional Tory areas. The basic logic permeating Labour Central Office is that they too could benefit if they can only ditch the ‘woke’ label and sacrifice enough left-wingers too build a mountain of skulls visible from Dunny-on-the-Wold, but since that strategy has been proven to depress turnout amongst the actual base of the Party, that opens up the possibility of complimentary Labour losses to the Greens back behind the lines, making the whole effort pointless. Politics, eh? What a carry on.Secondly, Labour had a very good night in Wales and the bigger regional mayoralties. The autonomous Welsh Labour Party took half of the 60 seats in the Welsh Senedd and look like they’ve been rewarded by their voters for a calm, scientifically led response to the Covid pandemic and for calling out Johnson’s nonsense when Starmer’s English Labour so often stayed silent. Plaid Cymru, the party of Welsh independence and long, consonant-only place names, had been hoping to follow the path blazed by Scotland’s dominant SNP, but their campaign failed to pick up any additional seats. Across England Labour picked up 11 of the 13 Mayoralty races, including taking two off the Tories, which again looks like Labour voters coming out for incumbents who have actually stood up for their regions and cities against Tory bullshit. The London result was tighter than many had predicted, with late attacks on Sadiq Khan for being ‘soft on crime’ apparently hitting him hard amongst certain communities, but given the level of animosity shown by Johnson’s Government to the Labour figure who replaced him as Mayor it’s nice to know that Flobalob still has to park his lardy arse in a Labour run capital every night. It is concerning though that a balls-out lunatic like (Tory candidate) Shaun Bailey could get nearly 45% of the vote in an election where most voters were awake and not known to be ripped to the gills on solvent and lizard-jizz, but on the other hand Khan was so far ahead in the polls that, a) the generally low turnout in London, as with most of the elections outside Scotland, may have hurt him, and b) a fairly substantial number of younger Labour voters disillusioned with the national party’s direction may well have gone for the Greens as a safe protest vote.
Even more concerning, the Tories have responded to these defeats by announcing that they’re going forward with legislation to fuck with the ‘ranked preference’ electoral system, calculating that a First Past The Post system might make it easier for Tories to win. This in addition to their plans to enforce a Voter ID requirement at the next general Election. Naked vote suppression based on fraudulent claims of voting irregularity, straight out of the Republican playbook without so much as a please or a thank you. I’ll bet they don’t even bother adding all the missing ‘U’s to the written text when they submit it to Parliament. Dangerous fucking times over here for democracy, but at least all the Tory donors with interests in the laminated card business can start planning to buy that second yacht they’ve been hankering for.
And then there’s Scotland.
The Scottish National Party went into these elections asking for a mandate for another independence vote, and with 64 of 129 seats (one short of an absolute majority) plus 6 Greens who also have a pro-referendum plank in their manifesto, it’s pretty hard to argue they don’t have one. OTOH there’s the super-secret political reality that the SNP currently have the best of both worlds, getting to stand athwart the Lowlands and Highlands wrapped in the Saltire while cocking a very salty snook at those perfidious sassenachs (that would be us down here, hi!) without the crushing responsibility of actually guiding a tiny and very, very divided country out of the UK and into some kind of EU membership. Also, while they might deny it, Johnson’s regime are probably pretty happy with the situation. Democratic niceties are of no interest to them, and with the rebellious Scots acting both as a convenient hate/mockery object for their flagshagging base and a permanent lock on scores of seats Labour would love to have back, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Flobalob made saying no to demands for a Referendum another patriotic test for the slack-jawed Right. Nothing like a bit of down-punching hypocrisy to get average Q-curious prole giddy with that sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves.
On the ‘other’ other hand, I could be completely wrong about that, and we could be looking at a really, really nasty independence Referendum scheduled to take place around the same time as the next Election. That ought to serve as a decent wedge issue to wield against whoever is leading the Labour Party by then. Stand alongside the Tories like they did in 2014 and splinter Scottish Labour even more than it is now, or else leave yourselves wide open to bad-faith accusations of insufficient patriotism and risk shouldering the blame for a ‘Yes’ vote. What’s not to love about that?
So, all in all, a mixed bag. The Tories made some gains, got bloody noses elsewhere, and we got to enjoy seeing UKIP’s candidate in London (a Peter Gammons, you honestly couldn’t make it up) come way behind the true people’s champion, Count Binface of the Count Binface Party. It would have been nice if the Count could also have beaten that pig-ignorant sack of over-entitled white-supremacist losermeat and all-round whining anti-vax taint-breath Laurence “What were you thinking Billie Piper?!?” Fox, but at least the 47, 634 knobfondlers who voted for him couldn’t prevent everyone’s least favourite historical ignoramus from losing his (mega rich backer’s) deposit. Chances are he’ll turn up again as a Tory candidate somewhere properly inbred and hopefully get kicked to death by a self-respecting horse with boundary issues, but until then he can just embark upon a long odyssey of fucking the fuck off until he reaches the edge of whatever flat-Earth bollocks he’s picked up from YouTube and then fuck off a few feet more.
Just before I finish, and to illustrate how politically incontinent the absolute public toilet-seats currently running the Labour Party are, I’ll leave you with this. It’s common knowledge that the tight little sect of soulless wraiths surrounding Starmer do not like and will not allow any other figure in the Party to outshine their boy, which is a thronging market considering how blandly dull Sir Keir the Abstainer has proven to be. Whenever a front-bench figure gets any headlines, as when Ed Miliband eviscerated Johnson during PMQs last year, they move fast to shut that shit down by briefing against them to friendly (for which read eager for dirt on Labour figures) media outlets. People like General Secretary David “Expelliamus” Evans and his Chief of Staff Baroness “Call me Jenny” Chapman of Doncaster are utterly reliant on their figurehead and will stab any back they have to in order to defend their investment.
So, when news of the Hartlepool result hit and Starmer reiterated his claim that he would take full responsibility, they had a problem, which they solved in typical fashion by briefing smears against Angela Rayner (the deputy-leader) to Murdoch’s Sunday Times in advance of dumping the blame for their meddling and control-freakery in Hartlepool on her head. What happened next is a bit murky, either someone in Starmer’s inner circle leaked the news that she was to be sacked from her Party Chair and campaign co-ordinator roles (not the deputy leader role, that’s elected) or someone close to Rayner got wind of what was happening and leaked the news themselves, but either way, news got out just before the result of the London mayoral election was due to be announced and as Labour’s successes across Wales and the Mayoral races were coming through.
So, in one swell foop, all of the good news that Starmer could have claimed credit for was drowned out by outrage that his version of taking ‘full responsibility’ for losses in the working-class north meant sacking the nearest working-class northern woman. It got worse when Rayner’s people were very quickly and publicly able to confirm that she really had been shouldered out of the campaign role by Starmer’s inner circle and prominent voices from all wings of the Party began lambasting the leadership for cowardice and incompetence. Loyal bannermen were dispatched at speed to cast unconvincing excuses into the media bearpit, but it’s not very easy to sell the line that it’s all been a great big misunderstanding and the silly, wee woman is actually being promoted to a much more important role when the spokesthing making the claim can’t answer the simple question “Oh? What role would that be?”. One head-to-head meeting between Starmer and Rayner later and it was crystal clear who had won this little knife-fight, since Rayner now has a larger policy brief, expanded control over the Party and Starmer’s balls in a silken purse hanging from her belt. Figures on the Left of the Party are actually getting quoted in the Press calling for Starmer to ditch Peter Mandelson and his legacy of divisive fuckery and the authority has visibly drained from Starmer and his circle.
For the record, I expect them to emerge from this setback with blood-froth bubbling from their lips and the names of the walking dead etched into their knives, because if they don’t turbo-charge their campaign to decouple the Labour Party name from anything even vaguely connected to icky, dirty ‘Corbynism’ and get it rammed through the National Executive Committee sooner rather than later they might never get the chance again. So my money is on this ‘policy review’ they’re touting coming out with ‘reforms’ to the leadership election system, rules to solidify central control over the selection of MPs, the firming up of disciplinary codes to enable the expulsion of anyone they don’t like the cut of and, definitely, moving away from Union funding and towards a bright future as the wholly owned plaything of billionaire donors, a bit like a football franchise but with fewer openings on the left wing and a hell of a lot more cheerleaders.
Meanwhile, Johnson is facing yet another investigation for corrupt practices that will only go somewhere if the factions within the Tory Party have the okay from their donors to begin revving up the abdication engine. It’s not very democratic and barely of interest to a lot of the population, and that’s the most dangerous thing of all. It would be depressing to lose the country to autocracy, but losing it because people were just so bloody careless would be humiliating.
That’s it, I’m done, rant over. Yes, I do feel better. Yes, I feel alright. Continue to enjoy the very wise decision a majority of you made last November and feel free to point and laugh at the Festival of Fuckery playing 24/7 across the Atlantic. Bring your own popcorn, ours is permanently stuck in Extreme Customs. Thanks be to Brexit!
Dopey-o
I got the Pfizer months ago, yet i am suffering many of your symptoms. I have an app on my called “Plume” which reports on mold / pollen / etc. I check it daily, to see why I feel so miserable. This a.m. I was up at 5:00 coughing and choking.
Around here, its oak, mulberry, walnut and willow trees. Still it’s a small price to pay for a yard full of tulips and daffodils and flowering dogwood trees.
Jeffro
Pfizer approved for 12-15 year olds!
“Oh, Fro Junnnnnnnnnnnior, I haz good news for youuuuuu!”
Don’t want to end on a high note, so…I see that our wingnut friends are blaming gas shortages on…no, not Russian hackers or redneck hoarders, it’s Biden’s fault, of course. I think he should do a news conference and blame Obama. It would really blow their minds. =)
debbie
@Dopey-o:
Same here. The scale of allergens used to be 1 to 10; now I’m seeing 11+. My town is a designated arboretum, so it’s not surprising, but I’m going through inhalers like never before.
debbie
@Jeffro:
Well, we know oil companies could never be accused of gouging at every possible opportunity, don’t we? //
Gin & Tonic
@Tony Jay: tl;dr.
Tony Jay
@Gin & Tonic: ts:dc
Dopey-o
@debbie: I have found a wonderful nasal spray called Azelestine (Rx only). First thing in the morning, it’s coffee, generic claritin and Azelestine. I forgot about the inhalers. Thanks.
Baud
@debbie:
I blame Biden.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: Thank you for the lively and informative comment, Sassenach!
NotMax
Today’s to-do list:
Complete another circumgyration of Sol. ☑
Baud
Baud
@NotMax:
Are you familiar with Daughter of Lupin on Prime?
debbie
@Dopey-o:
Yep, I use Azelastine too, morning and night. Wish it smelled better.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax: Aim high.
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
It’s therapy. And I’ll have you know my great-great grandfather had a trace of the Hoots about him, so in American terms I’m basically a native. 8-)
Baud
Baud
trnc
@Spanky:
No, unemployment is currently 6.1%. Economists would not have predicted job gains of 1 million if we were at or close to full employment.
debbie
@Baud:
This only seems appropriate.
Baud
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
trnc
@Tony Jay: “Sir, this is a Wendy’s drive through.”
JK. Thanks for the insights.
ETA: Nominate for front paging.
rikyrah
@Baud:
The video of that was wild ??
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
germy
rikyrah
Prodigal Son has been cancelled ?
debbie
@Baud:
This made the local news here. I cannot even imagine looking up and seeing him/her walking through the yard next door.
ETA: Can’t see through the paywall, so in case it doesn’t include a video, tiger is here.
rikyrah
@germy:
Thanks for this
debbie
@rikyrah:
I’ve come across deer, fox, and a turkey vulture, but a tiger would do my heart in.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Good lord. Because he’s so diplomatic?
Re all the allergies, mine are worse this year too. I wonder if global warming has changed what we’re exposed to.
Tony Jay
@trnc:
You know that old Internet saw about snorting coffee on your laptop?
The sparks are it healing itself, right?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Did the murder have anything to do with the tiger?
rikyrah
Yeah AL on the second shot ??
rikyrah
TonyJay:
That comment should be FrontPaged ??????
germy
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay: Ted Cruz’s data drone is eager to see a similar crack-up on this side of the pond:
The only person with more WWC cred than Ted Cruz is the oaf who shits in a golden toilet.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
Very quick comment before I read the post: this weekend I potted up all my patio flowers with none of the usual sniffles, even though the patio is right under the ferociously pollinating black walnut. How? I wore my KN95 mask! Those babies are good for all kinds of things!
rivers
@Tony Jay: Thank you, Tony. I’ve been waiting for your take on the unholy mess in the Disunited Kingdom – I so love the fact that the Tories are taking their cue from the We-Can’t-Win-if-We-Let-People-Vote Party on these fair shores. I’m glad you feel better – I’m not sure I do.
SFAW
I was listening to “The Daily” on NPR last night. It was a story/report about a doctor in Tennessee. He (barely) survived COVID, and is (these days) trying to convince his vax-hesitant/resistant patients to get vaccinated. He spends a good chunk of time with them addressing things like microchips, stem-cell usage, and so forth. The reporter recorded one session with a couple in their 70s (I think). He answered/addressed all their concerns, knocked down all their “reasons,” and did it “respectfully,” which seemed to be a big thing for the reporter. Because some anti-vax morons feel doctors are “talking down” to them. [Fecking snowflakes.]
In the end, after all his hard work, they decided “Well, he makes a lot of good points …
but that Hillary — well I just don’t knowwe still have concerns.”I guess that, in my dotage, I must be losing what little tolerance I have remaining, because my first thought was “take them out back and shoot them.” And frankly, if it weren’t for all the potential collateral damage to the innocent, I’d (almost) be OK with every anti-vax-er getting COVID and suffering greatly on their way to death.
Thanks, Rupert, you evil motherfucker.
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Are those stokers on the Cruz2Lose Express paid for that junk work? I was under the impression the Fool of the House of (orange) Blusher benefitted from just that kind of propaganda fuelled lashing-out in 2016, but it doesn’t work so well now that Uncle Joe Biden is in the White House.
Where the hell do they think Johnson’s backers got the idea in the first place?
debbie
@SFAW:
I listened to that, too. The patients were absolutely maddening.
Tony Jay
@rivers:
The availability of lickable toads since all the pet shops had to close is what’s getting me through it.
Tony Jay
@rikyrah:
Less a comment and more of a cry for help. 8-)
“If you’ve been affected by any of the issues raised in this comment…”
HinTN
@NotMax: Get ‘er done
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@SFAW:
Wife and I have settled in to a joint strategy of mocking and shunning the vax resistant. We have taken too much of a financial beating for “respectful, fact based disagreement and dialogue”. Vax resistance gets mockery initially in the hopes that the resistant feel shame and isolation.
If it works, great. If it doesn’t, then an asshole is out of our lives.
NotMax
@Baud
Is it her birthday too? Man-sae!
(Dagnabbit, there’s gotta be a cake somewhere underneath all these candles.)
Chief Oshkosh
@SFAW: Agreed on all that. But possibly one useful stratagem for that doc is to end with “going forward, my practice will only include vaccinated patients.”
Good fucking luck, Ma and Pa Antivax.
eclare
@Chief Oshkosh: That sounds like a good idea to me. I’ve done my two shots and two weeks, and I still don’t want to be around unvaccinated people.
Anyway
@Tony Jay:
we’re not worthy!! Righteous rant to start the day. The Right wing communicators across the world have formed one large eco-system — they all hate the same people.
eclare
@NotMax: Is today your birthday?
hueyplong
Some anti-vaxxers will die and they’ll have a handy conspiracy theory to explain it.
There is nothing to be done about them. Darwin is taking the wheel.
eclare
@Tony Jay: I started worrying about the 2016 presidential election when Brexit passed in June 2016. There were so many people, especially young people, who were stunned by the result. But if you don’t vote…
NotMax
@eclare
(channels Gary Cooper) Ay-yup.
Baud
@NotMax:
?
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
There was a big analysis of the 2020 election out yesterday and I think the best reading of it as far as white voters is things haven’t changed that much. Democrats are still very dependent on white working class voters and Republicans are still very dependent on white college voters. A small shift either way for both those groups as “important” has been the status quo and remains the status quo.
Republicans don’t talk about how they have to attract white college voters, but they do have to attract them. They need a net gain and switching out working class whites for college whites isn’t going to get them there.
TheronWare
And I received my second shot just now yay!
Baud
@NotMax:
By the way, my question was unrelated to your birthday. I recently discovered the show and since you are the expert on such things, I thought I’d mention it.
eclare
@NotMax: Happy Birthday!
Jeffro
My understanding is that one of their current “theories” is that those who take the vaccine um somehow grow and then ‘shed’ a truly killer virus (as opposed to, say, those who ‘shed’ Covid-19 all around them) resulting in death, deaaaaaath! So by not getting vaccinated, anti-vaxxers are actually um protecting the population.
We.
Are.
Doomed.
Baud
@TheronWare: ?
Another Scott
@Tony Jay: Excellent. Thanks so much.
And my condolences for you and yours having to go through all that. Keep fighting the good fight.
Cheers,
Scott.
eclare
@TheronWare: Yay!
Dorothy A. Winsor
I had to bat down the Dr Seuss lunacy at a book club meeting yesterday. The woman said she didn’t know exactly what happened but she was outraged that kids didn’t get to read Dr Seuss anymore. At least that one is easy to explain.
Baud
@Kay:
If Biden can’t hold or improve with working class whites, I’m not sure what else we can do.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Good for you.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
? ??? ??
WereBear
@Tony Jay: I do love your rants! AND they make me more informed.
This kind of misstep happened here, too. We were vocal Jackals when we saw a Democrat trying to woo Republicans — “No, you fools, they are beyond all hope!”
I think it was a great thing for Biden to manage merging the Pandemic damage with ALL the other damage.
hueyplong
@Jeffro: It’s the perfect theory for them because it blames those awful woke people AND allows them to continue to argue that the “mainstream media” (which promotes the alternative theory that not wearing a mask is the problem) is a bunch of liars trying to kill them. Burrow deeper into the bubble, comrades, it’s the only way.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I love how “didn’t know exactly what happened” leads to outrage.
Baud
@Jeffro:
I promise to use this power only for good.
Soprano2
@SFAW: There are going to be people like that, and unfortunately we have to live with them. I say whatever it takes to persuade people to get vaccinated, that’s what doctors should do. Maybe those people will think about it and come back later to get vaccinated.
Geminid
@eclare: There were many similarities between the Brexit vote and trump’s election. One was complacency: people thought Clinton had it in the bag, and stayed home or cast what they thought were “free” protest votes for the Greens, or for the Libertarians who won ~3.5 million votes, way more than usual.
The second was a skillful, potent social media campaign, driven and financed in part by foreign interests. Not using social media myself, I tended to discount it’s impact in last year’s race, despite warnings from my Atlanta friend and political scientist Rachel Bitecofer. But the trump’s campaign’s microtargeting was effective, especially among Latino voters in Florida and Texas. Had the rest of trump’s campaign performed at that level, we could have been in real trouble.
hueyplong
@Baud: I, on the other hand, am promise-hesitant.
NotMax
@Baud
Mahalo. Always on the lookout for something new.
About to fire up Life on Prime (actually on the comes-with-Prime for free subsidiary service IMDb TV, which includes some ads).
@TheronWare
Huzzah!
WereBear
Just living in the Information Age is not enough.
NotMax
Repeating for the daylight throng.
Drawing a blank on who it was asking for a reminder on when arguably the best boxing movie ever, The Set-up, comes around on TCM. This Saturday, the 15th, at noon Eastern time.
Keep an eye open for the clock in the street shots. The elapsed time it takes for the story to unfold is the same as the running length of the film, one of the first uses of ‘real time’ as a device in movies (pre-dates High Noon by three years).
sab
@SFAW: I like NPR, but they do like to dig out the odder interview opinions. We have been trying frantically to get everyone in the family vaccinated since February, and we only just got the twenty year old granddaughter her second shot last week, because appointments were so hard to get.
And yes the available appointments were mostly in rural areas far away. I know ar least a dozen people who drove 100+ miles for an appointment, because they just weren’t available in any nearby city
ETA Maybe a little less focus on vaccinating MAGAts and a little more focus making them available for people who desperately want them would have been helpful and more effective.
Jeffro
@hueyplong:
Them: “You vaccinated people are the real problem! You’re growing worse viruses and threatening me & my family!!”
Me: “Well then…let’s work on getting you a new & better vaccine to combat my ‘worse’ viruses, and you can really turn the tables on me, eh? You can shed your brains out! That’ll show me what’s what! mumbleyoudumbmotherfuckermumble”
Them: <heads explode>
Me: oh thank god
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: They think (on the basis of misreadings of early papers) that the COVID spike protein produced by vaccinated people can cause organ damage on its own, without the rest of the virus, and they also think (on the basis of nothing) that vaccinated people are “shedding” the spike protein so that it can somehow infect other people.
Basically it’s nothing but “I know you are but what am I” projection; we say the unvaccinated are a contagious danger to others, so they say the vaccinated are a contagious danger to others.
NotMax
Kind of an interesting map depicting gaps in broadband service in the U.S., using the most generous possible definition of broadband.
Even so, inaccurate (as any such maps always are). I know several people here on Maui who have access either to no service or only to service which doesn’t come anywhere within shouting distance of the minimum speed being reported. Granted, those tiny blue dots would look like acne due to the size of Maui on the map.
hueyplong
@Jeffro: Ha ha, you act like they’re responding to you instead of the FoxNews straw you, who instead said “all non-wokes must die” and left it at that.
They’re Fox/OANN/Newsmax/Q junkies, and people eventually abandon their junkie friends/relatives.
The disturbing difference is that these junkies, instead of deteriorating physically and ending up on the street/in hostels, end up really angry and heavily armed.
sab
@Jeffro: If they would just wear their masks our killer spikes couldn’t get near them. Also too if they would just let us wear our masks in peace they would be protected from our killer spikes.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: Ah but they’ve got a million theories about the masks killing them too, through hypercapnia, self-infection, etc. Before Naomi Wolf went all in on “shedding” she was talking about how masks were turning children into slack-jawed zombies who were incapable of smiling.
NotMax
@Jeffro
The buffy protein keeps the spike protein in check.
//
Cheryl from Maryland
@rikyrah: ???
Jeffro
@sab: exactly.
I think there is a sizable portion of the country that is essentially not sane at this point from having their fear buttons hammered 24/7 for oh a couple decades now.
I’d suggest we put something in the water to chill them out, but they already think we’re doing that.
Jeffro
@NotMax: thanks for the laugh
now tell these people to shut up and just get their shots, please
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Geminid:
Makes one wonder: would mictotargeting work for us in the same way? Are Dem campaigns doing this already?
bluefoot
@Tony Jay:
Thanks for this, and for the morning entertainment. I have been surprised (though maybe I shouldn’t be) at how the shitshow that is Brexit just made the Leavers and associated groups just double down. Not too different than the Insurrectionists here in the US, but still…Brexit continues to be a massive slow motion car wreck. (It continues to play out in my job, even though we’re into May. Amongst other things, I am involved in clinical trials whose central lab is in Edinburgh. Our clinical sites are in the EU. We’re still using a workaround to get patient blood samples to the lab post-Jan 1.)
sab
@Jeffro: We are putting stuff in the water ( flouride and chlorine.) That’s why they all drink bottled water. A co-worker was laughing that her kids are the only ones she knows who don’t drink bottled water, and they were also the only kids she knows who have no cavities.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The Democrats do. They did in 2020 too. But while the Biden campaign was flush with cash the last two months of the campaign, they were under-resourced until then. The trump campaign never stopped these efforts after 2016, and intensified them in 2019 and 2020. We were playing catch up, and two months were not enough to undo a year or more of propaganda.
JML
@Betty Cracker:
John Judis is running the same bit. Can’t say I was impressed with the analysis. It’s been 25 years since WV was a core Democratic state in national elections, and they traded it out for Virginia in the meantime. I just don’t think it’s as comparable as Judis and others want to make it.
The Tories kneecapped Labour by moving economically (even if it’s only a little) to the left during a period where they’ve had directionless, unclear, and generally poor leadership with a couple of significant wedge issues (Brexit & Scottish independence) complicating the political messaging for Labour’s traditional constituencies.
While Judis and others fear the same collapse here, you just don’t have the same movement. The GOP isn’t even considering a nod left, they’re still flowing rightwards on economics. They’re trying to run the same wedge issue campaigns on social issues that they’ve run for 40 years in the face of an electorate that is changing against them.
What’s happening to Labour in the UK stinks, because the Tories are a shit-show and acquiring some of the same kleptocracy characteristics the GOP is getting here, but it’s not a fair comp to the Democrats.
Ken
bluefoot
@NotMax:
I laughed at this (besides the obvious nerd reference) because when you isolate white blood cells (immune cells), that fraction of the blood sample is called the “buffy coat.” So buffy is keeping spike in check!!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Tony Jay: Sounds like Labor is going threw the same malise the Democrats when threw in the 80s.
I have say from an outsiders perspective, it’s not very clear what Labor stands for now and after going the cluster fuck of the Trump admin the Tories just look meh, but not something to hardly to lose sleep over, so I can see why they keep winning.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: What publication was that analysis in? Sounds interesting!
sab
@Tony Jay: Thanks so much for your informative rant. Very different take on your elections than the tiny bit of information that we in the US got from our press. I feel slightly more cheerful.
Barry
@Tony Jay: I guess that hyperlinks haven’t gotten over to the other side of the Pond.
Betty
@Tony Jay: Thanks for the rundown. This has been very confusing from this side. I am happy to hear there are a a few glimmers of light in all this. Best wishes!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Something interesting I’m noticing – I’m in a Soviet Visuals Facebook group. The graphic art is gorgeous, and when they show film clips from popular movies, the cinematography is off the charts.
What really strikes me is how aspirational to western bourgeois fashion and consumer goods the Soviets were, not to mention the pretension of racial inclusion.
We’re the ones that fucked up their nobler aspirations by wrecking their economy (and ours) with ridiculous resources consumed for the sake of “national security”.
Tony Jay
@bluefoot:
All jokes aside. I think (and this has been said before and better) that the core of ‘Brexit’ wasn’t really about leaving the EU. It was about the loss of hope, lack of self-worth, discomfort with change and different people’s place in it and a destructive right-wing wall of sound that told millions of people that they weren’t to blame but ‘They’ were.
It was about all the shops on the High Street closing but ‘They’ can have posh dinner parties. It was about not having any money in the bank while ‘They’ have flash cars and the pick of the girls. It was about funny accents on the bus making you feel out of place but not being able to enjoy ‘jokes’ about it without feeling judged. It was about all the comedians on the telly going to the same University and why can’t I find the beer I used to like in this trendy pub? It was about all of these things and a million more petty grievances that convinced just enough people that the colour of their skin was more of a tribal bond than class or party affiliation and ‘They’ were getting above themselves by putting ‘Us’ down, so ‘We’ were justified in hitting back.
It was never about the mechanics of uncoupling ourselves from the EU, so news about that being a humiliating shitshow doesn’t touch the core of the belief structure. It’s all just more evidence that ‘They’ think Brexit supporters are stupid.
Twenty years ago they were calling this kind of thing Radicalisation and worrying about bombs on buses. Turns out when you get enough angry white folks together you can think a LOT bigger than that.
Tony Jay
@Barry:
Is that like what they use in Star Wars?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Wherein Glenn Greenwald reveals that he’s never read about China’s laudable (yet diplomatically useful) “Belt and Road” Initiative:
Tony Jay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
The people running Labour are at the “Only a white guy from the South who talks about cutting welfare can win the White House” stage.
The people who own the Tories are at the “It can’t be this easy, where’s the catch?” stage.
So if my calculations are correct we’re just about due for Grunge music and the debut of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. over here.
Betty Cracker
@JML: I give Judis points for consistency; he’s offered the same damn critique of Democrats since God wore knee pants. I don’t think he’s entirely wrong all the time (stopped clock, etc.), but it’s absurd to pretend there’s anything fresh to be gleaned from the Labour situation, as if Dems haven’t been trying to balance the competing interests of voter blocs forever.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Where to you think that comes from? Fox-adjacent? Facebook poisoning? “My cousin told me….”?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Tony Jay:
Clearly, Labour needs to adopt an austerity agenda, high income tax cuts, regulatory reduction, medical privatization, and some anti-union measures in order to give those Midlands voters the government that Rupert Murdoch keeps telling them to vote for.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
a profile of Kyrsten Sinema, on how she went from self described Code Pink Green Party “bomb thrower” to… whatever she is now:
Cat Stevens? I’m ten years older than Sinema, and Cat Stevens was old school the first time I saw Harold and Maude in high school, nearly forty (christ) years ago. And she says the “curtsey” was her way of saying “you’re welcome” to the staffers she had sent a cake to the night before, when some Republican troll had made them work late for no good reason, which staffers I guess were thanking her for the cake right when she registered her vote on the minimum wage.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Here’s the analysis.
The advantage for Democrats is they’re reality-based. They know they have to hold the WWC voters they have and hold/grow their share of white college while also holding or growing AA vote, because AA turnout was absolutely essential to Biden. He would not have won if AA voters had stayed home. They’ve been putting together groups for years.
The college group is smaller than non-college, but a larger percentage of college vote which has also been conventional (and true) wisdom among Democrats for years.
Miss Bianca
@WereBear: I thought Rhiannon was the Heart Cat replacement kitty!
Oh, well, who needs an excuse to get more kitties, eh?
sdhays
@NotMax: Is that what they’re calling it these days?
Sturgeonmouth
Any idea why the media just accepts that Liz Cheney is doomed? The first time McCarthy tried to oust Cheney, she won the secret ballot 145 to 61. What makes the media assume McCarthy can convince 43 of those 145 to change their minds? Unless he has the power to make the votes public this time, I predict embarrassment* for McCarthy and the math challenged media.
*if either were capable of embarrassment
WereBear
@Miss Bianca:
We got Rhiannon before Mr WayofCats lost his Olwyn. We got her to buffer Sir Tristan (he’s TEN, I don’t believe it) from the Wild Boys which are Bud and Lou. Especially Bud.
And once again: the solution to the cat problem is more cats!
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: One basic difference between Democratic Party politics and Labour politics is that the Democrats are more (small d) democratic. Party commitees don’t select our candidates, voters do in primaries. Mr. Jays scintillating comment points out the defects of the Labours’s chosen candidate for Hartlepool. We are better off letting voters pick ours. Most primaries are open to registered Democrats, but you don’t have to pay dues or otherwise qualify. We sometimes come up with clunkers, but more often we come up strong candidates.
The recent Virginia Republican Disassembled Convention is an exception, but I think it is one that tends to prove the rule and the logic behind it.
Kay
Many managers are unwilling to participate in a market economy and insist we go back to a system that is rigged to keep wages down.
I mean COME ON. They’re managers! It is unacceptable to them that demand might ebb? They can’t function with all that “uncertainty”? They need a guaranteed, rock bottom wage, forever?
30 years of this race to the bottom shit and none of these people know how to function in a tight labor market. They’re incapable of competing. “Protect our nine dollars an hour! What if DEMAND goes down?!”
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
He also hasn’t been Cat Stevens since 1977. Is she next going to whine about Cassius Clay?
Kay
If they’re looking for money to pay the lowest tier I have an idea where they can find some- they could cut CEO pay and distribute some of those wages downward.
We found the money. We know where it is. Take some back.
Kay
Once they redistribute some down if they still need more than I will listen. If they all cut CEO pay at the same time they’d have the exact same group of applicants, just at lower rates, because where are they going to go? The US already pays them more than anywhere else. If they move they’ll just make less.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Thanks! Holy moly, this stat: “white voters without a college degree…dropped from 51% of the electorate in 2008 to 44% in 2020.”
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That curtsey story. Hmmm. Did the staffers back her up?
Miss Bianca
@WereBear: Oh, right – I dimly remember now. I sometimes lose track of the animal dramas in other people’s households. ; )
NotMax
@Kay
Scooting my chair to the window in anticipation of seeing a horde of beggars on horseback galloping by.
;)
satby
@NotMax: Happiest of Birthdays!
catclub
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The lady.
Ksmiami
Seriously though how do we stop the GOP from destroying our Democracy? Lawsuits? Massive protests, defunding red states? It has devolved into a dangerous fascist cult…
rp
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I just skimmed his twitter feed, and it’s amazing how obscure his references and grievances have become. It’s completely indecipherable to “normies.”
Ken
It’s a better story that way? And, if she wins the vote, it’s a great twist ending for this season and sets up all sort of possibilities for the next one. Ratings gold!
catclub
I am confused. He did win with that platform. twice.
Does that mean Labour is about to win an election?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ksmiami:
Elections, mostly the midterms but also special and local elections between now and then. Getting the right candidates and getting people to turn out. That’s it.
One thing that did occur to me recently: from DeSantis going all in on the partisanship of his bill signing ceremony, to a story I saw last night on the O’Donnell program about Georgia Republicans blowing up state campaign financing laws: These guys are acting like they’re invincible. I think (and remember, I am certified rando on the internet) Kemp is more vulnerable than DeSantis, but I wonder if they aren’t all crawling out on limbs that aren’t as thick as they think they are.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Still essential, though, for Democrats. It’s just that all policy and outreach doesn’t have to be geared to them anymore. They have to move, alter some of their positions, because there’s fewer of them.
I’m still interested in trying for white working class women. I swear, we can get more of them. Their practicality often overrides shitty tribal impulses. I feel like Obama moved some of them, but it’s considered impolite to just say it overtly. “Just the LADIES”. Unless you’re me, because I don’t care.
Geminid
@Sturgeonmouth: The media may base their reports on off the record interviews with Republican staffers and Representatives. For better or worse, McCarthy is their leader and he’s calling for Cheney’s replacement. If they don’t replace Cheney they might as well replace McCarthy. But with who?
Congressional Republicans want desperately to win control of the House next November. McCarthy has calculated that this can be done, but thinks he needs trump to back the effort, and trump has made his support conditional on Cheney walking the plank. Trump will still go after the 10 Republican House impeachers, but hopefully will not back primary challengers to other incumbents.
I don’t think McCarty is a naive man. He knows trump is a shaky and self-interested ally. But mobilizing trump voters may be the Republicans’ only chance to win next year. So McCarthy is throwing his roulette chips down on Orange, and praying it comes up next November.
Tony Jay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
You are the next Chair of the Policy Review Committee and I claim my sack of Victory Gin!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: Beto O’Rourke was on the O’Bros podcast yesterday talking about the swing to trump among Hispanics in southern Texas. He said he talked a lot of people who told him that trump took care of them. When they got a box from the food pantry, there was a letter with trump’s name on it. trump put his name on the relief checks. He advised Biden to be more shameless. I suspect that applies to a lot broader demographic.
He also said they thought trump was anti-corruption because he said drain the swamp a lot, which I suspect is also true for a lot more people and that’s the kind of thing that just makes me want to throw up my hands.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Someone reliable told me they got a letter from a Biden that their stimulus check was coming. I believe this person- I would just like to read it. They pay estimated taxes – an LLC- so perhaps never receive a refund, so will get paper check/debit card.
Described it as “multi paragraph” which sounds like Biden :)
Another Scott
@Ken: Hubris combined with a desire for power is a hell of a drug.
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@Spanky:
I think they went to the beach, didn’t they? So, gone fishin’!!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: as I recall, Biden did put his name on the most recent round of (paper) support checks
James E Powell
@Baud:
I don’t know how well it will work, but I’d like to see white people, no college buried in communications about all that Biden & Democrats are doing for them with additional emphasis on Republican opposition to those things.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t know anything about Hispanic voters, or Texas, but I would say that Democrats missed on that vote so they should get better information. There was some profound misunderstanding there. If it were me and I was paying for the advice I got on that vote I would hire different people.
Whatever the reality is can be dealt with, but Democrats were/are operating in some fantasy. I feel like there’s a reluctance to admit it, which is silly. It flopped. Do something different.
Another Scott
@Geminid: McCarthy is a dangerous fool.
Feeding a monster that actually wanted to kill him isn’t smart. But, hey, no matter what he says in private, gotta support TFG because that’s the way the system works, amirite?
They’re fools and think their voters are even stupider.
But we’ve got to
workvote them out, until the DoJ charges them and they are convicted in their trials, anyway…Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: like I said, I think what O’Rourke heard applies to a lot more people and places that RGV Hispanics, but I don’t know how you reach people who think trump was a successful businessman, who “cares about people like me”, still less that he was anti-corruption.
germy
@Another Scott:
I’m not surprised she was friends with Stephanik.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/andrew-cuomo-misconduct-allegations.htm
As I remember from high school, the mean girls stick together until they turn on each other.
Tony Jay
@catclub:
My apologies, for being confusing. The point was supposed to be that Labour’s leaders are stuck in 90s thinking but it’s actually 2021.
smith
I don’t believe for a minute that managers have forgotten how to lay people off.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
My experience with Latinos is Mexican Americans. They’ve been here for generations, not “7” but at least 2. They hire me and I have to say I just get no sense that they particularly identify with recent immigrants. Which makes sense, given that they are not recent immigrants, and instead wholly identify as Americans. I just feel sometimes that political people put them in a group they are not necessarily part of. If you were born here and went to school here and then had kids and they were born here and go to school here, I suspect you’re more likely to identify with “American” than “recent immigrant”. That’s how it works and they’re allowed to do that- they can be who they want to be.
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I can’t think of any liberal advocacy groups that would match that transparently right-wing bullshit caricature of liberals.
I cannot imagine what Sinema’s game is, because no matter how often she punches imaginary hippies, AZ Republican voters will always despise her and everyone like her.
prostratedragon
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Or because Tokyo is so far away.
Another Scott
@germy: Yeah, it’s kinda funny how humans can go from “BFF!!1 ❤️❤️❤️” to “I curse you and all of your progeny until the end of time and will gladly see you in HELL!!11 ???”
In public, even.
[eta:] Missing the trailing “l” on your linky – https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/andrew-cuomo-misconduct-allegations.html
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Working really hard not to talk about the minimum wage, I see.
I thought this brand was supposed to be hard headed realist? She’s opining on imaginary hippies? Yuck.
JMG
This morning was men’s senior golf league day, and one of my playing partners for this match asked me about halfway through what I thought about Liz Cheney. I was noncommittal, saying that as a Democrat that flap wasn’t my problem. He expressed real distress at what was being done to her, and actually said he was considering leaving the Republican party. He’s a white college grad well-to-do retiree. Anecdotes are not data, but it wouldn’t take a large number of similar folks sitting out elections or not voting Republican to make a difference. The minority can less afford to lose votes than can the majority.
Kay
@smith:
They want to be able to lay people off and also reduce the wages of the people they retain, to the former lower rate which apparently they thought was some kind of federally guaranteed MAXIMUM wage.
They want the lower maximum wage back. Forever. Reduces uncertainty.
rp
@James E Powell: Occam’s razor: She’s not very smart.
Kay
@JMG:
I think there’s something bigger going on with Republicans, in that they are not as loyal as the Republicans I am accustomed to. It shows up in their threatening to bolt if anyone criticizes Trump, too, but from the other end. That’s loyalty to Trump but it’s also disloyalty to the Party.
That would be a really interesting playing field for Democrats, if Republicans became as fractious and hard to herd as Democrats are. I think they know it’s happening, too. Hence all the pleading to “UNITE”.
Another Scott
@Kay:
Yup. (The things they claim to fear are here now.)
One can’t defeat them by just using logic. There has to be an emotional connection. “The America I grew up in was a place where you worked hard and bettered yourself, you got ahead and could buy a home. Almost nobody can do that now because wages are too low. It’s not fair to the youngsters. How’s your (grand)kid doing?…”
(via LOLGOP)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Another Scott:
They don’t get a maximum wage! No one promised them that. Jesus. They’re Communists.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’ve had similar thoughts about DeSantis. Could be wishful thinking on my part, but he really has doubled and tripled down on the Trumpery, as if Florida were Alabama. I hope it comes back to bite him on the ass.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I have experienced that loneliness. It sucks, man.
catclub
I got the letter, saying ‘you should have received a stimulus check’ from Biden yesterday. With, if not, check at IRS.gov. It also said that the stimulus checks were based on 2019 income tax returns, so if your 2020 income was much lower, you might have more coming, since the first cut may have been less due to higher 2019 income.
Baud
@Another Scott:
What’s the googly eyed thing?
catclub
@Sturgeonmouth: Mccarthy is holding a non-scheduled vote. Presumably he was forced to do this by his caucus. I will assume that he can count, and would not hold an unnecessary vote that he then loses.
I could be wrong.
germy
Fuck Rahm Emanuel.
Kay
This to me is the biggest misunderstanding that higher wage people (like me) have about lower wage people.
The less you make the more you need predictability and constancy in income. They have to budget! They have to budget MORE than people with consistent higher incomes over decades.
They know this too. The biggest single source of their stress about money is that they can’t keep a plan going.
Bonuses are bad. Hourly increases over time is what you need. They have less so need it to run, consistently, OVER TIME. Why wouldn’t money people get that? It’s like the basis of all investment advice in the world.
catclub
@Baud:
I think it is an automated customer service rep.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Republicans have a real numbers problem. Long term, trump will drag them down nationally like he’s dragged them down in Virginia: a six point drop, 31% to 25%, in voters indentifying Republican from December 2019 to February 2021, according to Wason Center polling of registered Virginia voters.
But in the short term, McCarthy desperately wants to retake the House next year. He thinks Republicans can’t do it without trump’s voters, and he may be right.
But can they win even with trump voters? Republicans nationally may be reaching the dynamic they’ve run into in Virginia. Establishment Republicans there welcomed the bible thumpers and tea party cranks into the party, hoping these folks be good junior coalition partners. But the policies the radicals imposed on the party drove moderate conservative Republicans and Independents away. Now Virginia Republicans can’t win without the radicals. But they can’t win with them either.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I assume this will be playing all over MSNBC today, I don’t have the strength right now to look it up, to hear that odd adenoidal whine telling me that weakness is strength
J R in WV
@Tony Jay:
WOW, Tony J. Almost 5,500 words, some of which I could understand. Where is Hartlepool, anyway? Never heard of it. Not English, meself. Is it pronounced like it’s spelled, or is it pronounced Smithtonpol?
So, do I understand correctly that you still dislike Alex de Pfeffel Boris Johnson intensely? OK, got that. We do too.
All in good fun, I enjoy your little rants, they are so seriously funny yet serious at the same time. Take care, don’t go off the deep end, just maintain to fight the good fight.
Best of luck over the pond~!!~
Baud
@catclub:
I’ve never seen one. I wonder what would happen if someone told it they’d like to speak to its manager.
Another Scott
@Baud: A Stop & Shop robot.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/stop-shop-marty-robot-funny-tweets_l_5dc9b751e4b00927b237d5be
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I guess that’s one way to win back working class white people.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Over a year ago. I am behind the times.
Another Scott
@Baud: Me too! (I’ve never seen one in the flesh plastic.) Come sit 6-feet away from me on this bench. It’s nice.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Kay:
Plus, I wouldn’t trust an employer to honor a bonus.
germy
(photo of automated business)
germy
StringOnAStick
@Tony Jay: I always enjoy your rants, and I hope they help you deal with the ongoing transition to oligarchy. Small comfort, I’m sure.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Fuck – I just watched another lawyer have an emotional breakdown in a zoom conference room. She’s in my case (which sucks for my client, because it means a pass date after 2 hours of bullshit), but her state had nothing to do with the case.
I’m so damned sad for her. We sent somebody over, she was sobbing and getting into her car, but didn’t want to talk about it. Have no idea as to the trigger.
Steeplejack (phone)
@NotMax:
Happy birthday! ?????
Sturgeonmouth
@catclub:
But didn’t he already do exactly that (and lost 145-61) or is something different about the process this time?
Steeplejack (phone)
@TheronWare:
Congratulations! ??
J R in WV
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Some people will think a crying lawyer is win-win…
I’m not one of those people, glad you guys tried to help. Things have been really tough for people trying to work through a fuqing epidemic of horrible disease.
Mental health is as fragile at respiratory health right now.
SFAW
@Soprano2:
They DID think about it, were contacted later, and still said “no,” because reasons. There is some (ever-increasing, apparently) percentage of persons in this world who are anti-rational, anti-logic, anti-reason, anti-science morons. It would be OK if they could all be deported to Somalia or Dumbfuckistan, but unfortunately current US law does not allow for that (as far as I know).
SFAW
@NotMax:
Happy B-Day, young one!
Tony Jay
@J R in WV:
I was about to say say it like you spell it, but on reflection that’s bollocks. It’s Hart – Lee – Pool, with a silent J like in Apple. And it’s over on the north-east coast, a region so far from the centre of civilisation that the Doomsday Book puts it in the ‘Probably mythical’ appendix.
And I’m fine. Venting always makes me feel better. It might all be comprehensively shit but at least no one knows where I plan to bury the bodies. 8-)
Tony Jay
@StringOnAStick:
Ah, it’ll be okay. I always wanted to roam the still-smoking wilderness of a post-Apocalyptic future dispensing natural justice to the mutants and warlords unlucky enough to cross my path.
Now I can just staycation in England and do all that with easy access to crisps and instant coffee!
Kay
Students For Trump leader sentenced- 15 months which sounds about right to me:
Such an ambitious liar. Just like his leader!
Uncle Cosmo
I got one for the $1400 check. Here’s a deidentified copy.
Kay
Also- NOT to be mean but why are all Right wing men so… puffy? They all look oddly bloated. Like if you poked them in the face – say someone did that – your finger would just sink.
Something is going on there. It’s crazily consistent.
Gravenstone
@Kay: Claiming 15 years experience at 25? Such a prodigy!
Geminid
@Sturgeonmouth: I think McCarthy may have been neutral the first Cheney vote. Now he has taken the lead on ousting her, basically making this a vote of confidence in him. And trump and his henchmen are demanding through McCarthy that the Republican Caucus do this. I think trump’s power over the party is essentially negative; he can’t really help it much, but he can sure hurt it.
But the plot thickens. I looked up Liz Cheney, and saw an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article that said Margery Taylor-Greene has thrown her kettleball onto the scales. Greene doesn’t want Stefanik as Conference Chairman, says the Caucus must be given more time, and more choices. The AJC article also described a nascent movement among Greene and her fellow wingnuts to replace McCarthy as Minority Leader.
And the New York Post reported on another Cheney primary challenger, a retired Army Colonel who will move from California to the Wyoming he grew up in. I think that makes five challengers now. At least for now, legislative efforts to create a runoff are stymied. For Cheney, so long as there is no runoff, the more challengers the merrier. I would not be surprised if Darth Cheney is surreptitiously encouraging some. It wouldn’t be the first time this or similar tactics were used to defend an incumbent.
Gravenstone
@Geminid: Injuries! Injuries! Goooooo Injuries!
Kathleen
@Kay: Withered Soul Syndrome
evodevo
@germy:
What a choice!! Is he going to cuss them out? Will we be in a trade war or something before Fall? I can’t imagine what the rationale is…
gvg
@Kay:
I got one, a couple weeks after the check.
gvg
@Kay: The problem for them is not seeing that a significant portion of the GOP hates them and doesn’t see them as regular Americans. It is dangerous for them to overlook that. Some GOP and some voters don’t but they are OK working with the rabid haters, just like the ones who vote with and court the other kinds of racists. Bush Jr tried to get immigration reform and his party buried it. They buried it because they are racist. Donald Trump said he wanted to get rid of birthright citizenship. That right there should have been an alarm to…well everyone. In spite of what some smug people might think, there isn’t anyone except Native Americans that couldn’t get hurt by that. Trump and Jewish family but hired rabid anti semitic staff. You should pay attention to who the powerful hate. Thats why hispanic votes were surprising. It doesn’t matter how long they have been here to the haters. The GOP courts haters.
NotMax
Thanks for the birthday sentiments!
Geminid
@gvg: I thought the way the haters in the Republican party “buried,” as you say, the comprehensive immigration reform proposed by George Bush was a watershed moment for the Republican party. Talk radio hosts like Limbaugh really flexed their demagogic muscles, and ginned up a firestorm of phone calls to intimidate Republican members of Congress who otherwise might have gone along. In ways, that was the beginning of the populist insurgency that got momentum and a name with the “tea party” movement that has contended for power with the establishment Republicans since 2010.
This nativist strand has been part of the Republican party since the American Party, the “Know Nothings,” dissolved in 1860 and it’s members joined the four year old Republican Party. After the Southern political realignment kicked off by the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the powerful strand of racism (really not a strand, but a big stinking cable) reinforced the nativists.
Comprehensive immigration reform still has support in the party. The “populist” tea party faction is very strong, although they have rebranded themselves as ” Constitutional Conservatives” and traded their tricorn hats for polo shirts. Immigration reform is anathema to these folks. Establishment Republicans are still around though, and are more broadminded. The Chamber of Commerce types, Wall Street Jounal readers, Koch brothers exert power and influence in the party beyond their numbers, and they favor reform.
This is why I eagerly anticipate the introduction of comprehensive immigration legislation in this Congress. First, it’s a matter of justice; I’ve worked with these people, they live all around me, and I know they deserve relief. And immigration reform is in my and my fellow citizens’ interest, and not just for the positive effect it will have on the finances of the Social Security system.
And comprehensive immigration reform is probably the biggest wedge issue there is for Republicans. I want to see the Democratic Congressional leadership drive that wedge home.