Staunch

Not only did Omar refuse to back down and insisted on continuing with her meeting, but as the thug assaulted her she looked like she was ready to land a few blows herself.

Bob Jenrick Defects to Reform

 

I apologise for including this picture of these two Not Great people.  No, I don't.  You deserve it.

Title says it all.  Bob the Bloke - who never saw a cheap publicity grabbing stunt he didn't like - has had the whip withdrawn for plotting to defect to Reform, and promptly defected to Reform.

This may actually be good for Badenoch.  Jenrick was a continual threat to her leadership.  Now he gone off to become a continual threat to Nigel Farage's.  This has likely extended her leadership.   There aren't any more clear leaders-in-waiting in the (very thinned) ranks of the Conservative Party.  Presumably, Jenrick was looking at the recent slight recovery in the polls and realised his chances of usurping her were fading.

Keir Starmer is probably weeping bitter tears and wondering why Kemi is so lucky and why none of the various thorns in his side don't piss off and join Your Party.

Mick Foley is a Hero

Mick Foley is a legendary wrestler (Cactus Jack, Mankind, Dude Love). He's famous for taking the hardest knocks in the business. 

He forged a respectable post wrestling career as a writer. His memoir of his wrestling days - Have a Nice Day: a Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks - is a joyous, bizarre ride through one of the strangest parts of the entertainment industry. 

"I no longer wish to represent a company that coddles a man so seemingly void of compassion."

A lot of his peers - who  won't name because fuck 'em - have publicly supported Trump. But Foley is a hero and does things his way. 

Always.

As Atticus Finch almost said, a hero isn't a man with a gun.  Sometimes it's a guy with a chair.  Or in this case, a guy who regularly got whacked over the head with a chair but is still more cogent than the 47th President.

Candace Owens needs help

Not shit-posting but drowning.  Cries for help don't always sound like cries for help.

Candace Owens providing another ... uh ... unique and evidence free take on reality.

Owens alleged that the US ‘military is involved’. Like many of her other claims, which came in the wake of the Turning Point USA founder's assassination, she's yet to provide proof to back this up.

I initially started off planning to make fun of her.  It's still tempting.  After all, this is a woman who - in the last few months has claimed Brigitte Macron is a man and is now being heartily sued for it.  She's burrowed deeper into the strange rabbit hole that is her brain by claiming French special forces (aided by Israelis) are plotting to murder her.

But I remembered many years ago a post about Shoah / Holocaust denier David Irving (who, like Candace, has some problems with the Jews) and how I started off by laughing at his absurdity as much as condemning his evil, but within a few lines I found myself feeling pity more than anger and contempt.  The man was obviously deeply troubled and while that doesn't exculpate him, it does provide some context.

(For the record, that post probably hasn't aged too well - the interviewer who prompted those revelations from Irving was Johann Hari, a gentleman who has turned out to have his own problems with what we will politely call objectivity.  Because it turns out you can have self-serving liars, narcissists, bad actors and straight out fantasists on the left as well as the right.)

Candace Owens has been a diligent miner of the MAGA seam, conjuring outrage and alientation into gold (for her).  But her output has become more and more extreme and less and less hinged.  I don't think this is a cunning marketing ploy.  She's alienating potential marks.  Only people as disconnected from reality as she is will be buying.  This doesn't look like the normal rightwing grift.  This looks like someone having a breakdown in public.

For the benefit of Elon Musk, Alan Gardiner, Nick Tenconi and others

 This is how you make a celebratory or exultant arm gesture without looking like a neo-Nazi.

The Battle of Caerphilly

So the results are in and it seems the battalions of Reform have been dealt a swinging defeat at Caerphilly. Wales is a bit like Afghanistan - you just shouldn't try it on there.

Perhaps the Battle of Caerphilly represents the turning of the sinister nationalist tide? We can but hope. 

 At least is Wales and Scotland, pissed of Labour has somewhere to go that isn't Reform.  Given Labour seems unwilling to do anything to make it look like a party anyone would want to vote for, England needs a similar not-Reform receptacle. 

With due respect to Zak Polanski, I don't think the Greens are it.  They might have more members than the Conservative Party, but bragging about that just confirms their fringe status.  With a following wind and Labour engaged in a curious act of self-destruction they are on 12%.  Enough to split critical votes but not consolidate potential voters into a cohesive, winning whole.  Though there may be time for that.  I may be wrong, it happens.

While I have a place in my heart for the Corbyn / Sultana party / Acrimonious Break Up / Party, I don't think they quite get the urgency of the situation.  Given they are currently touring the country to 'workshop' policies with 'the people' (i.e. the sort of people who sell Socialist Worker and attend meetings), they might be ready for the fight sometime about 2083 - probably with a manifesto of policies which could have been copied and pasted from the 1983 Labour manifesto.  Though I may be wrong, it happens.

But assuming I amn't, what is to be done?

Pelosi turns on Harris, low key

 Like everyone else, Nancy Pelosi is looking for reasons for why the Democrats lost the election.  Her preferred candidate seems to be Kamala Harris, though she disguises this by making it look like she is swiping at Joe Biden:

“We live with what happened,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi was speaking to the Interview, a New York Times podcast, in a conversation the newspaper said would be published Saturday in full. 

“Had the president gotten out sooner,” Pelosi remarked, “there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary. 

“And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”

Note, "there may have been other candidates in the race" - in other words, the Democrats were lumped with a useless candidate who klutzed her way to defeat.

Nope, Nancy.  The blame needs to be shared about more equally.  If Biden shouldn't have been in the race, he should have bene told that long before the disastrous debate.  The damage was done in those months before, where the upper echelons of the Democratic Party were trying to cover up Biden's mental decline.  And 'upper echelons' definitely includes you, Nance.  

Stop trying to distract us by pointing at Harris.

I should probably have blogged a bit more over the last four or five years.  Might have got more people thinking right.  The world really seems to have gone to shit since I went on hiatus.