Politics

The British Government is in complete chaos, and is on the brink of collapse tonight. PM Boris Johnson has been hit with 38 resignations from his cabinet staff, including the Chancellor of The Exchequer, and the Health Minister in the last 24 hours. A delegation of other cabinet colleagues including the Home Secretary and the replacement Chancellor (who was appointed only yesterday) are said to be at Downing Street tonight trying to persuade the PM to resign - which he is currently refusing to do. Attempting to explain the sequence of scandals which has led to this situation is no simple task, but this article by CNN offers a reasonable overview: https://…

https://nypost.com/2022/07/20/joe-biden-says-he-has-cancer-in-possible-gaffe/ Is he preparing to retire for health reasons??????

The United States may use force against Iran as a "last resort" in case of failure of negotiations on the renegotiation of the JCPOA, President Joe Biden said in an interview with Israeli Channel 12.

What is his MO within the Democrats? i don't know much about him, and his professional contrariness piques me...?

On Tuesday on CNN’s “The Lead,” former Trump White House national security adviser John Bolton made a weird admission: he had “helped plan” coups d’état previously. Bolton told host Jake Tapper he did not think Trump’s actions leading up to the January 6 House Select Committee rose to the level of a coup. https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/07/12/bolton-admits-to-planning-coups-during-cnn-appearance/ After Bolton's confessions, Venezuela called the US authorities a criminal gang

Peterkin and others are constantly complaining about Republicans redrawing voting districts, and changing rules in an effort to keep minorities from voting. And rightly so; this is obviously an attack on democracy, as evidenced by the fact that they still win elections even though more people voted or their opponent. What then should we make of the situation in North Carolina ? NC Green Party rejection sparks claims of unfair undermining by national Democrats | WFAE 90.7 - Charlotte's NPR News Source https://youtu.be/omwJ4b3uNOc https://youtu.be/mQWrJV1q0KU Seems the Democrats have jumped in the mud with the pigs. Now you could make the arg…

Prof. Andrew Sachs (economics), who was on the Lancet's Covid 19 Commission, and Prof. Neil Harrison (molecular pharmacology) jointly suggest covid-19 may have originated in a US biotechnology lab and the technique shared with Chinese researchers, who then accidently let it out into the wild. PNAS paper by them: Do SFN biologists think they have a case? I felt this was more about politics, even though it's technically biology, so I put here because I think this conversation may well head in that direction.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/anti-satellite-weapons/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=anti-satellite-weapons Even testing these systems causes more debris in the orbits these satellites use. And their potential for destruction, as we rely more and more on satellite technology, makes them as much a concern as nuclear weapons. Do you think a ban can be implemented worldwide, or is it going to take some kind of horrendous accident that fills the skies above our heads with all kinds of nasty? Should we be weaponizing space?

Just to take a break from US crazyness and considering that quite a few folks here actually are Canadians (or live in Canada) I thought it is worthwhile to look at Canadian crazyness. While overall higher competency and not having a professional grifter as the leader, Canada fared better through the pandemic (a bit higher than world average in terms of death rates, for example), we have encountered a fair bit of conspiracy theories among the population when it came to COVID-19, which we had (perhaps unfairly) associated mostly with the US. The question whether vaccines contained tracking chip from Bill Gates was a question that came up too frequently for comfort, f…

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/24/perspectives/solar-panels-tariffs-clean-energy/index.html This is incredibly important to our energy future. Why a nation with our manufacturing capacity and resources would be dragging its feet on this is....oh wait, yes, no mystery at all, politics as usual.

Although counting continues, Australia now has a new Prime Minister, Anthony Albenese. You fucking beauty!!! Both major parties though lost numbers to the Greens and some Independents. Only doubt that remains is whether he is heading a government that will need the support of the Greens, and some Independents, or have the required 76 seats to govern in their own right. Here is PM Albenese's acceptance speech. https://www.perthnow.com.au/politics/federal-election/watch-live-australias-new-prime-minister-anthony-albanese-gives-victory-speech-c-6887483

Will this give Trump an opening for him to return? Any other predictions/motives regarding Musk doing this?

Negotiating for a loan on a house that only asks for $300/mo. I'm willing to pay that for a while. Negotiating a pay wage that will allow us to live on our own. It seems that money is going towards things that aren't very important. You guys want us to get a college education, don't ask us to pay for it, and stop trying to get rich off of it. That goes for alot of things. It disturbs me when people try to get rich off of other peoples product. In these days, you have to prove youre making 3 times the rent for a poor location that is asking for $525/mo. I can't do that

Just to add my tardy 2 cents to this discussion, the SCOTUS doesn't make laws nor necessarily interpret laws. The SCOTUS decides whether a new law or a lower court ruling conforms to our Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land. Laws are proposed by the Legislative branch of our government, which is the House of Representatives and Senate. These proposed laws or bills only become law when they are signed by the POTUS. New laws that change our Constitution must go through this process in addition to having a majority of our individual state governments ratify that change. The Supreme Court has no intercession in this process unless they are presented with a …

Jordan Peterson said something along the lines of the Supreme court nomination being racist from the begining because the US administration said they are going to pick a black female and people do not understand what the issue is with affirmative action, he states that not only it is racist because we are ignoring an entire set of people who have appplied for this job but we are actually creating a climate of racism because now as individuals we have to look at people of color who are in these high positions and were going to say - Did you really get that position based on your merit or did you get it because youre black or youre female? And the people involved are going …

When Trump pressured Raffensperger to cheat and give him 11,780 more votes, it would only give Trump a TIE. Trump complained he was behind by 11,779 votes ("one more than we have"), so if Raffensperger would "FIND" 11,780 votes that would exactly match the number of Biden votes, and it would BE A TIE 😁 Trump: "So look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state." Trump knows he won the state because he has big rallies and Biden doesn't. ‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: Trump pressures Georgia officials as state’s runoffs approach (yahoo.com)

https://phys.org/news/2022-04-chinese-astronauts-earth-months-space.html Three Chinese astronauts return to Earth after six months in space Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after 183 days in space, ending China's longest crewed mission as it continues its quest to become a major space power. The Shenzhou-13 spacecraft was the latest mission in Beijing's drive to rival the United States, after landing a rover on Mars and sending probes to the Moon. more at link............................... :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: I read the article, and was certainly am…

20 minute long video..... Amazing, terrifying, unbelievable!

Yeh, but it's one law for the rich, and another for the poor. 😄 Roman Abramovitch came to the UK, bought Chelsea Football Club, spent billions building it up into the top club in the whole world, and they jump on his assets without even trial. Meanwhile, people come from the gutter in Somalia, Eritrea and Lithuania, bring nothing with them, and they rape, rob and murder, and we shower them with lawyers, psychiatrists and benfits. It's always the poor what gets the gravy, and the rich what gets the blame !

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/25/1088720571/ginni-thomas-tex-messages-mark-meadows-2020-election What do you think about this? The justice has a voting record of weakening voting rights, and a slavish devotion to Republican agendas aimed at reducing the chances of fair elections. His wife is a conservative activist who sounds like she's gone down the QAnon rabbit hole, and doesn't care who the majority voted for.

We have seen Trump's pitch on the Russian move into Ukraine. "Isn't Putin smart?But I am pally with him and together we will come to an arrangement that suits the two of us and shithouses like Ukraine will do as they are told when I am elected" A fair paraphrase? How likely that he will gain (enough) support for his Make Trump and Putin Great Again project ?

For anyone who's been paying attention, the notion that Trump will voluntarily concede the election (even if he has been legitimately and resoundingly defeated) is undoubtedly not based in reality. Trump is not the type of person to graciously bow out. Trump will use any and all means at his disposal to retain power, and has already laid the groundwork via the bully pulpit to deny the authenticity of the election results: through his constant efforts in the media to undermine the legitimacy of mail in voting, the Republican efforts to limit access to in person voting, and their attempts to get mail in ballots thrown out on fabricated technicalities by the courts. …

Is blocking Russian state media broadcasts counterproductive to the western audience getting a clear multi-sided view of the conflict... even if it's totally false? It may make our western governments look to be doing the same as our adversaries: controlling the narrative and what we see i.e. propaganda.... pot, kettle.

At work a large number of motorists seem unaware of the new changes. They come into force this weekend. With the understandable pressure of COVID and other it would be expected that Government publicity is low. Laws can have good intent and bad consequences as well as be fatally flawed. In Germany pedestrians always had priority. In UK it was cars. I prefer the old UK system re pedestrians. Its going to very scary. Especially on dark winter nights crossing junctions. Most cars 99% on probability will give way. 1 % will not. Simply because they do NOT see the pedestrian at the junction. Pedestrians will comfortably cross because they see the bright lights of cars who ar…

Exeter University is the nearest university to me. Here is a quote from journalist alumnus J Irwandi about his prizewinning photo during the covid pandemic, although he was villified by both government and private authorities for 'fake news' at the time. His example was from coronavirus, but I ask it in a much wider context.