Young Master Smeet
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It does look like in Pennsylvania the Libertarian vote will be greater than the margin of victory:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/us2020/states/pa
Fnar…
Don’t be sure Trump is finished, the 12th Amendment is in play, if he can make sure that Biden doesn’t get to 270 electoral college votes (by making sure, say, Pennsylvania never gets to certify electors) then the appointment to the VP goes to the Senate, and the President gets elected by the House voting by state (and the GOP controls the majority of state delegations).
The game is afoot.
Well, Trump has out performed the polls again.
As some have pointed out, even if Biden edges it, he’s going to spend four years pandering to the Trump base. Millions have voted for Trump despite knowing exactly what he is, or because. That’s where we start: and then there is the clear racialisation of the vote…
Lobster has a range of reviews on books by Never Trump republicans:
https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster80/lob80-never-trumpers.pdf
The interesting thing is the bipartisan foreign policy, that Truimp has upset:
“The Republican foreign policy
establishment was by and large bipartisan in sympathy, looking as far as
possible to achieve consensus with their Democrat opposite numbers. As
Saldin and Teles point out, they sometimes overlapped. Mike Green, for
example, had been offered jobs by both George W Bush and Al Gore
before the 2000 Presidential election, while Eliot Cohen, ‘Condoleezza
Rice’s top aide at the State Department’, had voted for the Democrat,
John Kerry, in 2004. (pp. 31-32) Now once Trump won the nomination,
they became ‘the purest strain of Never Trumpism’”It was precisely because they were monolithic and bipartisan that trump was able to upset the Applecart…
Of course, and as Cde. Newells blog remind us, Marx worked on a secret history of 18th C. diplomacy:
https://marxists.info/archive/marx/works/1857/russia/index.htm
(side note, Brexit seems to have re-opened the door to secret diplomacy, after all, Truss signed a trade deal with Japan on her own, no need for any parliamentary scrutiny nor approval, Royal Prerogative is back).
It won’t have been Israeli lobbyists alone that would have wanted to prevent BDS, but British capitalists and their geostrategic interests would have been working to crush him.
I’d suggest talk of ‘divided loyalties’ is poor form, people and political actors in the UK have connections, interests and sympathies for many different countries around the world, and lobbying on their behalf is perfectly normal and reasonable.
I’m not sure what bringing his wife and children’s religion into things achieves.
Nor spotting up the perfectly normal and legitimate lobbying activity of a businessman. The class analysis is that the vast majority, Jewish and non-Jewish alike are locked out by this kind lobbying. If it wasn’t Chinn it’d be some other businessman because their power of the purse is required to get ahead in politics.
All governments and state actors lobby and influence other states: Churchill (beloved of the right) interfered in American politics to drag them into the war on the British side.
They’re not likely to be helped by the British capitalist class (indeed, I’d argue those waving the prospect of third party political/military intervention are doing them an active disservice).
Why should we care about Israeli influence in UK politics? The only people who should care about that are British capitalists.
Well, that’s just it, they’re not democrats: they want to impose a solution, and argue that the situation is serious enough to warrant use of force. Hence the mythic 3.5% rule
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
(as the article states, that’s 2.3 million in this country, which would be a epic number of participants, and well beyond what they’re achieving right now).
Alan, I knew the pledge of allegiance would be raised, but it is different from mandatory attendance at parades, or compulsory voting for the regime’s candidate and other performative controls of the political process.
Of course, once upon a time the pledge of allegiance included the Roman salute…
Of course, it’s hard to distinguish fascism from a run of the mill authoritarian regime. Certainly, Hitler borrowed from American style campaigning with his sound and light shows, but he also borrowed heavily from the Bolsheviks in his methods.
I think we can look to Benjamin’s aestheticization of politics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestheticization_of_politics) maybe as a better clue than the schematic checklist put up earlier. Certainly, the US is no mobilised dictatorship, unlike the Nazi and Bolshevik dictatorships, it doesn’t compel people to perform in ritual observances and seek to control the totality of the political practice: dissent exists, even in political office.
It’s hard to respond to such utter cynicism, certainly, it’s a reminder of the need for partyism, and formal (and open, democratic and transparent) control mechanisms, policies and platforms. But it’s hard to work against a foe that consciously lies, and lies not caring about being caught lying. Further, for lying, no formal organisation is needed, and stochastic terror works.
Biden’s tax returns are fascinating. e.g.
https://joebiden.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/OGE-Form-278e-signed.pdfClearly, he is a wealthy man. Now, as a senator for about 40 years, he earned about $4 million in salary alone, which (as apparently he likes to get involved in real estate) means he could be worth a rough minimum of $20 million in assets.
His 2020 income includes a salary of $130 thousand odd as professor at Pennsylvania uni (he is known not to be academically gifted, this job is apparently professor of being vice-president studies). He earns about as much for speaking gigs (and seems to run some of his speeches and book income through a company he lists himself as president of).
In other words, he is wealthy, but he is not in business: his wealth is derived from a lifetime of serving as a politician. The colossal speaking fees seem to m to be a grift of a political establishment securing loyalty, likewise the convenient university chair. They could be a way to funnel corrupt payments, but some people might genuinely be willing to pay $180K for a speaker(?!?)
(He has half a million at least in cash in one bank account).
Yes, he lives in Delaware, which is a tax evasion paradise (apparently hence why some of his income runs through a corporate vehicle).
As far as I can see, unless he really is hiding a supreme amount of wealth off-shore, and risking imprisonment for lying on his tax forms, he really is jut a live long politician living on the gravy train.
