Happy weekend gang! Hope everyone had a great week.
My coworker is flying to London tonight. They did not realize it was the Coronation this weekend.
For those that are interested, here you go. The rest of us will still be asleep!
Coronation timetable: Your complete guide to the day
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65342840
Very Big Brain
Video of Trump confusing E Jean Carroll with ex-wife in deposition is released
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/05/donald-trump-e-jean-carroll-trial-video-deposition
Today’s Turtle Content (sound up)
I laughed at this for a long time:
Have a great day!
It could have been worse…
I wonder what denials by Judge Ruckus are going into the toilet or has Probublica decided to take the weekend off?
There is only One True King
…to b b the king…or not to b b the king?
When I read that quote, this is the first thing that came to mind, by the legendary Ashley Feinberg:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/what-if-donald-trump-is-just-blind.html
…deaf & dumb, too
…doubt he plays a mean pinball, though
What a fool he is. I wish this very plausible theory would circulate more widely and become a meme because we know for sure it would get under his skin. Death by a thousand slights 🤓
UKers can fill in more detes, but in the latest lower level elections the Conservatives got a whooping, and it sounds like it was even worse than expected.
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-pm-sunaks-conservatives-lose-seats-early-local-election-results-2023-05-05/
I guess they can stick around until 2025 if they don’t call an election before that. I’d be curious if this binds the party tighter or if it heightens infighting as they see a cliff looming. If you’re a relatively pragmatic and reality-tuned Conservative, do you stick with the loons or do you finally get serious about reform?
…so I think when all was said & done the net score puts labour on about twice the numbers (councillors & councils they hold majority control over) the tories wound up with…little over double on the councillors & a little under double on the councils…so 65 plays 35 on those
…the lib dems (who don’t get hammered as bad in these as in the general post coalition) clocked in around 70% of the tory total for councillors…& at 16 not quite half their tally for councils controlled
…all of which puts the conservatives 10 councils down & the others three up apiece
…the remaining four being three that are split with no party in overall control & one the BBC lists as “other”…that might be the outer isles in scotland which I think is listed as “independent” but the net changes is the simplified version & the full results map is harder to follow so I could be wrong about that
…rishi was no doubt immensely relieved to be able to get on the telly being all part of the coronation service reading from a script rather than on a weekend show having to answer questions about how disappointing his party’s results were & how much of the blame he deserved…but I don’t think the knives are out quite yet in terms of a change of leader this side of an election…they weren’t the worst result ever…davey boy cameron had a worse showing one time & he didn’t have to go hide in an expensive shed so as not to get underfoot & aggravate ‘er indoors for a while after that
…so I’d say their wagon’s pretty firmly hitched & towing such electoral favorites as
…stopping the smallest boats bringing desperate people taking their lives in their hands to try to cross the channel…in lieu of actually reforming immigration
…un-fucking the NHS just as soon as he can stop them going on strike because of the real-terms pay cuts his party have forced on it for upwards of a decade while talking about how in raw numbers they’ve increased spending on it & don’t want to break it at all really, honest…oh…& the metric for this one is waiting lists
…& rishi’s favorite…a triple word-salad score for this little hat-trick…halving inflation…while reducing the national debt…& growing the economy by creating more jobs…that pay better than being a nurse or a “junior” doctor, presumably
…those are/were his five pledges…& despite claiming the results this week made it clear to him he needed to listen to the people…apparently what he heard was a request to repeat the slogans he picked before the vote…in, like, january or something?
…he said it before, during & after the “I’m getting that I need to listen” thing…here’s the “during”
It sounds like he’s decided against pivoting in the wake of the losses, and I suppose there’s a certain PR angle to that — switching now could make him sound like he’d be admitting failure.
But I’ll be curious if we ‘re just seeing a sunk cost fallacy, or maybe a guy who just has no good ideas, or maybe someone with no nerve to shake the party out of a lot of bad habits, even at the risk of some challenges.
…he picked those things to say because aside from “halving inflation”…which has trickled down to “reducing”…they’re all numbers they can fudge since they can’t do anything that would amount to actually tackling that stuff…so they might as well stick with the slogans they got from their focus groups & skip testing out different lies to campaign on?
…it’s basically labour’s election to lose so standing pat is their logical bet at this point in proceedings
…despite the exhausting timbre to the rhetoric doing the rounds…it’s not a good look but they’ve been looking like they’re on the same ropes for a while & the rope-a-dope is the only hail mary they’ve got with a chance at keeping the fallout of brexit & other “emergent properties” of their recent record in government off the debate stage…approximately
…I mean…there’s people sniffing about trying to say it’s his fault boris of the “historic mandate” isn’t their poster boy & maybe he should be
…but that’s still the preserve of jokers & other lovers of tomfoolery rather than a serious bit of coup plotting as things stand
I think the wisdom of dtanding pat depends on the length of the time frame they’re thinking about.
If they’re hoping to just get through to the next match, and you’re convinced your team is basically sound, then you sit tight. But if you’ve got an out of shape, aging striker and a keeper with a trick elbow and a center half who keeps getting photographed at clubs at three in the morning on match day, then it makes sense to start trying out new lineups and strategies.
I guess the question I can’t answer as an outsider is how sound is their team? If they’re all on the same page on repairing Brexit damage and maybe more importantly they’re agreed to crush any new goofball schemes in the nest, then sitting tight might be a plan. If they still have a significant faction that’s dreaming up some nutty plan like blowing up public education or selling public transit to the Saudis, then I’d be skeptical that sitting tight for a couple of years is a plan at all.
…there hasn’t been a good reason to elect a tory government in longer than you get to blame the party that was in before you…but they keep voting them in again all the same…so standing pat has historically much better odds than it deserves on any remaining merits they haven’t entirely squandered
…they aren’t a team…haven’t been since pre-brexit-referendum…that whole thing was red meat for a slavering pack of witless mutts who actively avoid funding out what that’s done to how the sausage gets made…so they’re like the DUP wing of the tory spectrum…with the daily mail taking the pro-royal wing & anyone with a practical idea or some applicable knowledge stuck in the middle…feeling the squeeze & hoping it isn’t a noose
…& they’ve been through more leaders than any respectable party can afford to discard without admitting their whole deck is weak…so aside from boris giving it the self-annointed mary sue routine it’s literally their best bet…which ought to be enough to condemn it but probably isn’t?