Politics

It’s just one of those things:

Swedish PM offers deal that could see far-right allowed into government
Party, which has neo-Nazi roots, will hold ‘important ministerial posts within immigration’ if four-party coalition wins in September

If people keep voting for the Nazis then yues, the Nazis do get to be in government. That’s what democracy is, the folk get what the fikk say they want, good and hard.

One of the things that amuses me about all of this is that the same people who scream no, but, democracy doesn’t mean the will of the people, are also those who – generally at lesat – shriek that we must have true economic democracy. You know, the people who would be insisting that even if the people did vote for it we couldn’t have tiots oot fer the lads, donuts and fracking. Because democracy doesn’t actually mean dong what the folk want, does it?

The action, which the president has framed as an effort to enhance “election integrity”, directs the Department of Homeland Security to work with the Social Security Administration to create a national voter list and share that with states.

It also directs the postmaster general to require all mail-in and absentee ballots to be placed in “secure ballot envelopes” with official markings, and the postal service to send mail-in ballots only to those on the list, and orders the attorney general to withhold federal funds from “non-compliant” states and cities. Under the order, the attorney general is also supposed to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of election officials and others who distribute federal ballots to ineligible voters.

There’s always the obvious point that those arguing that the vote should be insecure well, why are they?

There’s also that historical point that it’s been the Feds who ensured the validity of the vote – it wasn’t the states and the counties that allowed the darkies to vote now, was it?

On the other hand the idea that a national database is going to be accurate, well, pfffft.

.…because Miliband is the cabinet’s resident deep thinker at a time when big ideas are suddenly back.

Given what he says about renewables etc we’re wholly fucked, tight?

Polling for anti-immigration DPP is relatively low, but many feel its ideas have been co-opted by Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats

The electorate indicates it thinks like this, the political parties scramble to do things like this? Isn’t that the point?

José Antonio Kast, the Pinochet fan about to swerve Chile to the far right

Far right, eh?

…..was elected president at the third attempt when he won 58% of the vote.

58% sounds pretty centrist to me. Majority of the voting public isn’t extreme anything. It’s middle of the road by hte standards of that voting public. By definition. You know, this is what the people have said they want?

In one sense of course that’s facile. But in another it’s very sensible. By what standard(s) are we to judge that someone is far anything? That, clearly, depends upon what we’re going to define as centrist. The Guardian’s definition of centre might well be rather further left than your or my definition. Or even, of the voters of Chile…..

But that night and throughout the campaign he avoided all mention of the hardline, ultra-conservative moral code on which he has built his political career.

Erm:

He used his three terms in congress to oppose abortion and the morning after pill, and to promote traditional family values.

Standard Catholicism therefore. The largest centrally organised religion in the world don’t forget.

“Kast has always been on the most conservative fringe of Chilean politics in cultural and neoliberal economic terms,”

Thinks prices and markets work. Ho Hum.

A free market Catholic is extreme right to The Guardian.

Just a thought about this:

Kast has publicly supported Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, under which more than 3,200 people were murdered and 1,469 forcibly disappeared. Thousands more were detained, tortured or forced into exile.

Has there ever been a socialist takeover with less murder than that?

Well, that’s one way to read this headline:

A lone battle: Why is Pedro Sánchez the only European leader to take on Trump?

So, there’s that.

Nigel Farage has called for Commonwealth citizens to be banned from voting in British elections.
The Reform UK leader said that only naturalised British citizens should be allowed to vote, while residents from Pakistan, India, and other nations should lose the privilege.
The current rules allow Commonwealth citizens to register and vote if they meet residency or leave-to-remain conditions.

Joe Biden warns that Donald Trump will try to ‘steal’ midterm elections
In a rare public address, former president said US is experiencing ‘dark days’ and urged Americans to vote

Trying to tighten up ID systems at the polls – say – would be stealing. Obviously, as it would lower D chances which is the definition of stealing to be used.

This was a vindication of the unabashedly populist strategy pursued by Zack Polanski

How recently did we have Owen Jones denouncing populism? Because I’m sure I’ve seen him do so about Nige, Reform and so on.

A political killing risks tearing the French left apart – and the far right is taking full advantage
Philippe Marlière

So, bunch of lefties – antifa types, even if French – kill a rightie type. The rightie was really pretty rightie, street gang rightie.

Well, we’d probably all be thinking about the dead young lad’s family and so on. The column in The Guardian concentrates upon what this means for far left politics – and how unfair it is that the right should exploit it all.

No one so self-absorbed as a Guardianista, eh?

Labour came third in the tightly contested race, 5,616 votes behind the Greens on 14,980 votes, while Reform UK finished second with 10,578 votes.

Not even close. Turnout was v close to what it had been in the GE.

An increasingly bloody battle for the soul of the leftwing Your Party set up by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana will come to a conclusion on Thursday, when the results of its leadership election will be announced.

The complete and total incompetence of the British left – the incapacity to do anything at all – means that this doesn’t matter in the slightest. It’s as important as the recent merger between the CPGB and CPGB (Marxist-Leninist). Or the reason for their split, whichever. And the proof of the importance of that is that no one but other tankies knows which is true, merger or split, and no one at all knows why.

The former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern is living in Australia with her family, a spokesperson has confirmed.

“The family has been travelling for a few years now,” her office told the Guardian.

“For the moment they’re basing themselves out of Australia – they have work there, and it brings the added bonus of more time back home in New Zealand.”

Speculation that Ardern was considering a move to Australia emerged on Thursday, after reports in Australian media that she and her husband, Clarke Gayford, and their seven-year-old daughter, Neve, attended open home viewings in Sydney’s northern beaches.

The high-profile family’s move to Australia could hit a nerve within New Zealand, as the country grapples with record numbers of citizens leaving the country because of a weak economy, high living costs and high unemployment.

Be PM, screw the place up, leave for another country?

Isn’t it more usually dictators that have to do that for fear of the population if they remain at home?

Trump has lost the ability to entertain. Sadly, he hasn’t lost the ability to offend
Moira Donegan

Throughout the speech, Trump seemed tired. He had difficulty reading from his teleprompter; he gripped the podium with a tightness bordering on desperation

80 year old who is 80 year old acts like 80 year old – stop the presses.

Last one who was 78 and obviously senile – nothing to see here.

How important the letters are, R and D, eh?

The Defence Secretary has been accused by the Conservatives of misleading Parliament by saying Britain faced legal threats about the Chagos Islands.

John Healey said in May that the Government faced a legal challenge “within weeks” if it did not agree to the handover to Mauritius of the islands, including the Diego Garcia military base.

He told MPs the “most potentially serious” threat came from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which handles maritime disputes. But the Government has now admitted there is an exception to United Nations maritime laws for “disputes concerning military activities”.

Politicians are lying bastards. We knew that, right?

Hmm, what, you want to say that only that lot of politicians are lying bastasrds? Bit partisan of you, isn’t it?

Via email from John Hearn.

So, Starmer wants 15 year olds banned from social media and 16 year olds to vote.

Quite a leap in responsibility in only the one day, no?

We owe it to every victim of Jeffrey Epstein to better protect women and girls in Britain. And we will
Jess Phillips

I am furious that women and children have to endure a crisis like this for progress to become politically possible. But I will seize this moment

Not one mention – not even a side-eye – of the grooming gangs in this country. All eyes on that handful in the US, none on the thousands here.

But then Our Jess is the one who diverted and crippled the investigation into the grooming gangs here, isn’t she? You know, Our Jess with a 693 majority over the Muslim leaning Worker’s Party of George Galloway?

Brazen fucking hypocrisy.

We’re often told the PM is a ‘decent’ man. But in appointing Peter Mandelson he chose political convenience over doing right by trafficked women and girls

It’s very important that we talk about Epstein’s handful of willing – if underage – tarts and not about the thousands here at home. No, really.

Bitch doesn’t even mention the comparison. Fuck off, eh?

The US National Security Strategy published by the White House in November called for strengthening the growing influence of “patriotic” European parties such as Reform UK, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN), Fidesz in Hungary and Vox in Spain. As with the communist movements of the cold war, these nationalist, populist and in some cases far-right parties are best understood not as isolated national phenomena but as expressions of a shared intellectual project – a movement that is, to varying degrees, now being reinforced by a foreign power.

The movement that is – it’s not an intellectual one. There are people who try to intellectualise it, create a ssystem of thought for it and I’m sometimes one of them. But it’s not an intellectual project.

It’s far more a Great National Upchuck. This isn’t working. What “this” is can be argued – the lanyard class, say. But this, the current base political settlement. It’s just not right, see? There’s not much guidance of it let alone intellectual cohesion. It’s far far more just we don’t like our current rulers and their rules. And this is at a deeper level than which party is in government, it’s the whole system.

Now, obviously, that’s my idea about it which can of course be wrong. But there really isn’t any intellectual pathway being followed here, not that I can see. There’s a very strong incoherence against perhaps, but other than that I cannot even see the one single unifying idea.

you are under no moral obligations to become a fan of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, but to equate them with Trump (or say they are worse, as Wall Street leaders have done) means contributing to the destruction of democracy.

Ah, but then he’s a professor of politics at Princeton. Very sound that is therefore. Very sound toss.