Politics

…..and the merits of women in politics and all that:

The fisheries minister has raised eyebrows by disclosing she was busy organising a nativity trail on Christmas Eve when the Brexit deal was agreed, and didn’t read its fine print on fish.

Victoria Prentis insisted that the agreement was beneficial for UK boats when she appeared before the Lords EU Environment Sub-Committee on Wednesday, but conceded some quarters of the fishing industry had been hard done by.

It’s just that having been there and done that, politics, the idea that anyone at all who voted either way on the law actually read it is too silly an idea to entertain even for a minute.

That the people who wrote it read it is a bit of a stretch……

Speaking as she signed the article of impeachment after the vote, Nancy Pelosi said she did it “sadly, with a heart broken over what this means to our country.”

She added: “Today, in a bipartisan way, this House demonstrated that no one is above the law – not even the president of the United States.”

If they’re so certain that he’ll not win if he runs again – 2024 – because the nation rejects fascism etc, Then why are they trying so hard to ensure he can’t run in 2024?

A few congressional Democrats have said that we should just wait until the inauguration and turn the page. This is an active threat situation. Millions of people have been told, falsely, that an election was stolen and that a new government would destroy everything they hold dear. They are following that logic to its conclusion, and one riot with, thus far, no consequences will only embolden them. We have seen this happen throughout history, often tragically. Swift punishment rather than placating those who have distinguished themselves as sworn enemies is the proper course of action.

If the statement “The election was stolen” is sedition to be punished then what happens when an election really is stolen?

You know, like the Russians did in 2016?

Trump has lost Twitter, his biggest political megaphone. Now what?

But then there is that result of it. Trump did do an end run around that traditional media by using Facebook and then Twitter (Fbook was, from memory, more important back there at the start).

If the method by which political irruptions happened – or were facilitated – is now closed off then political irruptions are more difficult, aren’t they? To the benefit of those who do not wish to be irrupted, of course.

No, stating that Twitter, or anyone else, must carry such and such is as bad as insisting they must, by law, not carry such and such that is otherwise legal. It’s just one of those burdens that comes with liberty that is…..

Numerous beard strokers have been insisting, for a long time now, that American democracy is moribund. Not enough people take part in politics, too many don’t bother to vote.

The Trump irruption seems to have reversed that – Biden got more votes than Obama for example.

So why aren’t there cheers for this revival of the people speaking?

On Wednesday, a coup attempt was led by the president of the United States. A rightwing mob attempted the coup in the form of a violent riot that stormed the Capitol building. They disrupted the proceedings that would have completed the recognition of the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Those proceedings had been disrupted earlier by elected officials bringing forth bad-faith claims that the election was not legitimate and should instead produce a continuation of Trump’s presidency. This too was a coup attempt, an attempt to violate the constitution and override the will of the voters in this election.

The bits inside were not, cannot, have been violations of the constitution. For they were following the rules of said constitution.

As to everything else well, I guess we know who isn’t running in 2024 then.

Come nightfall on 6 January, the party of Abraham Lincoln will be no more. Instead, the specters of Jim Crow and autocracy will flicker. Messrs Trump, Cruz and Hawley can take a collective bow.

Contesting the election result – a silly thing in my view – is akin to killing Reconstruction and bringing in Jim Crow.

After regurgitating for the umpteenth time unproven and unsubstantiated charges of electoral fraud, the senators invoked the election of 1876. Back then, the Democrats contested the outcome, conceding after the Republicans agreed to halt Reconstruction.

Well, yes, except who did bring in Jim Crow? Those Democrats………

The race to replace Bill de Blasio: Who will be New York City’s next mayor?

Someone competent?

“I feel alright about them,” said Jeremy Hillyard of Sens. David Perdue (R-GA) and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), after casting a ballot for them at an early voting location in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs on Wednesday evening.

“Each side has its flaws,” Hillyard told The Daily Beast. “I’m voting more for gridlock than anything else.”

Make sure that the political system can’t just do something but has to just stand there.

The finance minister for Canada’s most populous province has resigned after going on a Caribbean vacation during the pandemic and apparently trying to hide the fact by sending social media posts showing him in a sweater before a fireplace.

Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, said on Thursday he had accepted Rod Phillips’s resignation as minister hours after Phillips returned home from a more than two-week stay on the island of St Barts despite government guidelines urging people to avoid non-essential travel.

“Travelling over the holidays was the wrong decision, and I once again offer my unreserved apology,” Phillips said in a statement confirming his resignation.

In a video posted on Twitter on Christmas Eve, the sweater-wearing finance minister was shown drinking eggnog beside a fireplace with a gingerbread house and a little Christmas tree.

Yeah, sweaters and eggnog aren’t very St Barts.

After the election, a fierce internal Democratic debate broke out, with centrists arguing that slogans such as “Defund the police” and “Medicare for All” had hurt the party with moderate voters and exposed candidates to wild accusations from Republicans equating universal healthcare with Pol Pot.

The progressives said that on the contrary, the party had not staked out its program on behalf of working people proudly enough, instead trying to play it safe behind an innocuous presidential candidate whose main pitch was a return to normalcy.

The idea that the people might not share your delusions of the world just cannot be tolerated…..

But another significant argument is why Starmer should appear on Ferrari’s show at all. We can readily accept that callers such as “Gemma” represent an extreme element in Ferrari’s audience while doubting his audience offers a rich crop of floating voters. It is a truism – accepted by commentators on left and right – that the voters who have abandoned Labour are socially conservative but economically rooted on the left. But unless Labour wishes to alienate younger progressive voters who lack the natural partisan loyalties of previous generations, conceding to the right on social issues is a no-go. Instead, an economic prospectus that is convincing and compelling enough to override socially conservative objections must be offered.

Don’t actually talk to voters and certainly don;t listen to them. Instead just make up policies in the bubble and that’ll win, right on!

Certainly, don’t even dream that social conservatism might have a point, or that it might be what voters desire. Because who cares about their desires anyway? There’s power to win here.

Biden Taps Pete Buttigieg for Transportation Secretary

Or Dr. Jill?

Warnock is the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta — the church Martin Luther King Jr. preached at in the 1960s. And Republicans have been using excerpts from Warnock’s own sermons to attack him.

This rhetoric carries a specific connotation, Black theological experts told Vox.

Really, imagine that. Using what a man has actually said to attack him during an election campaign.

Shame!

“The staff is in such a bad position,” one former Senate aide told the publication. “They have to defend her and make her seem normal.”

So, err, what’s new?

Sometimes, their rule-bending works almost to perfection. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011, which stated that governments should always last five years, except in narrowly defined circumstances, protected the Tories during the early 2010s, when their austerity and economic policies were so unpopular that they trailed far behind Labour in the polls, and the chancellor George Osborne was booed at the London Paralympics.

No, it was standard game theory. If you’re in a coalition – even Coalition – how do you make sure that the other party doesn’t defect when the time seems right? How can you ensure that continued cooperation? Make it impossible for the defection to lead to an election, that’s how.

Thus that’s what was done.

Trump is the first president in 17 years to reinstate federal executions, despite

Err, right, so Trump for 4 years, Obama for 8, Bush for 8 – that means two of the past three Presidents have allowed federal executions, right?

Just as accurate as 17 years but it sure reads different, right?

The reality is that neither Sunak nor the Tories or Britain’s wider political class have woken up to the essential truth of the pandemic: Britain needs structurally higher government spending and that means permanently higher taxes, too.

This is the same thing Polly has been wailing about for decades. That Britain should have a larger state, paid for with more tax, like parts of Europe.

It’s a vision that the British haven’t bought into over those decades either. We do, after all, keep voting in people who don’t do it.

Labour has lost members at a rate of nearly 250 a day since Sir Keir Starmer was elected last spring, with supporters of Jeremy Corbyn leading an exodus from the party.

Membership fell by just under 57,000 people, or 10 per cent, between April and November, according to official figures from its internal elections.

It is the first time that party figures have shown Labour’s membership falling below half a million since 2016, when Mr Corbyn’s leadership prompted a surge of new members.

A reasonable and accurate analysis of British politics would tell us that the one great battle is between the loons and the lefties. The lefties being just those who are misguided enough to think that a bit more governance is the solution to a problem. The loons being the Corbynites and before them Militant and before them the Tankies and on and on. Those who believe that government doing everything is, well, is.

And the big battle is within the Labour Party as to who gets to use it to smuggle their left/loon into actual power. That the loons are leaving really, really, isn’t a problem for the left. It’s actually a win.

Joe Biden has been President-elect for less than two weeks as of this writing. And even though he’s still months away from actually assuming office and facing Republican opposition in Congress, he’s already abandoning transformative change for tempered incrementalism. Progressives may have no choice but to primary him in 2024 if they want to avoid losing to an even worse version of Trump.

Even in the American political system they normally let the guy take office first……