buctootim

Very interesting. Would have been good to know the how many of those exposed to a sub infective dose of the virus develop a degree of immunity. That's the way I'm living my life - no high risk, long duration interractions but equally not wearing gloves or using sanitiser on the basis that repeated low dose exposure has an innoculation effect.

Looks possible that most of the hard left electoral liabilities will quit the party and set up on their own. If he planned this Starmer has been brilliant. Until this he was facing years long war of attrition over every policy, party post and candidate selection - against a backdrop of party civil war played out in the media. If he can provoke the headbangers to stomp off and become outsiders criticising Labour for being too social democratic that will be manna from heaven and reassure voters like nothing else.

Maybe / probably not tbf. But he should limit terms. It’s crazy that you have political appointments to the highest court in the land and they could potentially have 30-40 years there making a bigger impact than 90% of elected senators or representatives

You'd think age limits would be universally accepted. The mandatory Judicial retirement age in the UK is 70 and that seems about right to me.

Ffs stop digging Major.

Even in that first sentence you've made a mistake and got it round the wrong way. Anyhow Badger made the joke assuming it would be obvious to everyone. I got it, presumably other people got it. You didn't. Ergo...

Nah. It's just another example of how acting in bad faith and breaking down government by consensus comes back to bite you. Biden will simply pass legislation to increase the number of Supreme Court judges and then appoint three or more Democrats.

I can imagine almost any outcome apart from a Trump landslide. Four years ago he was seen as the super effective businessman from the Apprentice who was going to shake up those know nothing career politicians and the establishment. Now he's just another politician seeking re-election on the back of a lacklustre at best track record. Demographics have continued to move against him. I think his time is done. Even being up against Biden, who was wooden and limited 12 years ago as VP and hasn't aged well won't be enough to save him. Hearing Obama speak the other day was a reminder just how bad they both are. Actually worse than that, just how bad they are going to be in four years time

Doh. You call out Soggy and then promptly do the same thing yourself. Badger was making a funny about Trump beating Biden in the senility race. The problem is Wes you are up there with both of them. Not yet dementia but no longer able to deal with situations which require processing multiple pieces of information; confusion; repetitive, slightly infantile phrasing - even copying a point I made about Trump voters masking intentions.

I agree with that, the political landscape is much more complex than before. Left v right splits have to some extent been replaced by nationalist v internationalist. The problem is that nationalism is superficially very attractive electorally but mighty hard / impossible to deliver on without a huge economic hit. It's bred this culture of lying to get elected and then lying about who is to blame when the unicorn promises fail to materialise.

Harris would be centre ground politics in the UK, maybe a tad more Liberal than Tory left, but not much. Biden is to the right of her. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Kamala_Harris Johnson's strategy is denigrate anybody who might check his progress from amusing buffoon to incompetent aspiring authoritarian. Blame them for when his policies and promises fail - the Judiciary, Parliament, opposition parties, the EU, 'covidiots', hungry kids.

So your idea of the best vote rigging operation in electoral history is one which tampered with voting in one county out of 3,100 and made no difference to who won. I guess my size 10s fit

It's desperate stuff. There were irregularities in one county in one state nearly 60 years ago which had no effect on the outcome - and on the basis of that you want to justify Trump's attempt to stay in power after losing the election.

Which part of Mayor and not the mob didn't you get? Yes the were some issues in Chicago with the mayor. The three officials were complicit with him. They were prosecuted, sent to jail and their actions made zero difference to JFK being elected. Nixon chose not to contest the result. Sounds like the system working well to me.

Chicago may have actually happened - but it was the Mayor not the mob; it made no difference to the outcome of the election; and I didn't contradict you about that. Apart from that, carry on with conspiracy.

Not absolute proof but at least cite some incident of it happening in one location. Since the fraud was supposedly so widespread and since there were over 100,000 polling stations and since there has been over 50 years for the secret to leak out, I would have thought you might have something.

Meh. Kennedy won by 303 electoral college votes to Nixon's 219 and was a whisker away from winning California which would have made it 335 to 187. The only surprise in the election was that it was closer than the polls had predicted. JFK was consistently 2-4% ahead in the months before the election but in the end only won the popular vote by less than 0.5%. The only states where even a credible suggestion of possible irregularities exists are Illinois and West Virginia and they had only 27 and 8 electoral college votes respectively - not even close to being enough to change the result of the election. JFK won because appointing LBJ as his running mate meant he did much better in the Southern states. LBJ delivered his home state of Texas. Black votes were the other critical factor - the Civil Rights movement galvanised black Americans to vote, many for the first time, and they voted very largely for Kennedy. Not only is there no evidence of mob involvement, no-one is able to say how they could have delivered on rigging anyhow. Everybody voted in person then - you'd have to not only force people to vote but stand over them to see which box they crossed.

You get your views on American history from watching the Irishman? Ffs In all probability JFK was assassinated exactly because he was cracking down on corruption, the mob intimidation and corruption led by his brother Bobby as Attorney General. JFKs opponent Nixon was the proven liar, cheat and scumbag

It’s classic, tired diversion tactics. Don’t look at the real corruption and clusterfucks, look instead at the terrible waste of money of free school lunches

That club history screams 'Got talent but 'kin awful attitude'.

???

I met him once when he was in London at the same time as Bill Clinton. Absolute frickin w*nker. His staff hated him Clinton was just out of office as the US President and Giuliani was just finished as NYC Mayor. Clinton stayed in a room at the Ritz and had a car and a modest two vehicle security detail. Giuliani was obsessed with outdoing him and took over an entire private hotel with 26 rooms and had a cavalcade of 14 cars with flying pennants and crests - more than serving President would have. Absolutely bizarre.

Talking about the current Government having a left or right wing bent misses the point imo. The current policies have simply been cobbled together to get enough votes for Johnson to make himself PM - by bringing together the mostly right wing nationalists with the more socially liberal centre of the party in order to 'Get Brexit Done'. The Tory 'left' has mostly been pushed out. Aside from a desire to avoid the Tory party splitting in two the factions don't really have anything much in common - it's just a temporary marriage of convenience. Who wins the inevitable fight after is what counts.

Agree COVID is something we need to adapt to living with instead of pretending we can eliminate it. However you do still need to manage demand on hospitals. If 60 million people suddenly start smoking the government will get a massive boost to the treasury and healthcare demand will be fairly evenly distributed over the next decades. If 60 million catch COVID, even if 95% don't need hospital care that leaves 3 million people all turning up at A&E in a short 2-4 week window for a health service which has only c100,000 acute care beds