#donald churchill

[niti-who]

Next up is the Hound of Baskerville's version (1983), starring Ian Richardson as Holmes.

I think this version has a certain charm, but unfortunately I don't warm to Richardson Holmes that much.

But I had to laugh when I recognized 2 other actors.. First the good Brian Blessed where was very good than false villain 😬😊

And the real villain Stapleton played by Nicholas Clay. Granada fans surely know him as Dr. Trevalyan in the Resident Patient 😊😂

#acd canon #sherlock holmes #The Hound of the Baskervilles 1983 #ian richardson #Richardson Holmes #Donald Churchill #brian blessed #Nicolas Clay

[steamboatclusie]

Hatfield played by John Carradine in John Ford's Stagecoach.

#john carradine #louise platt #hatfield #mrs. mallory #stagecoach 1939 #john ford #john wayne #thomas mitchll #berton churchill #old hollywood #western #classic western #donald meek

[lejay-the-impossible]

Went to Krakow to pass an English test I need for my college application and visited the wax museum. Pay a special attention to my page of assholes. And keep in mind that the TWO of them were in the same room. Guess who👀

#wax museum #krakow #elton john #winston churchill #elvis presley #the beatles #jack sparrow #martin Freeman #kiren knightly #merelin monroe #queen elizabeth #donald trump #hitler #putin #sketches #sketchbook

[letterboxd-loggd]

Turnabout (1940) Hal Roach

May 17th 2023

#turnabout #1940 #hal roach #carole landis #john hubbard #adolphe menjou #donald meek #william gargan #verree teasdale #mary astor #joyce compton #berton churchill #margaret roach #marjorie main #franklin pangborn

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/fractured-fairy-tales/

Fractured Fairy Tales

Scientists have discovered a way to extract small electrical currents from humid air.  They hadn’t meant to do it.  A student failed to unplug one of their machines at the end of the day.  The next morning, researchers found a spray of microscopic tubes, one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, produced an electrical signal without power. It’s a small unit, not capable of producing much energy.  Nonetheless, the scientists were surprised, much like the shoemaker who woke up one morning to find Eleves had mended his customer’s shoes.   Miracles in the real world are scarcer than geese that lay golden eggs, but the scientists’ discovery set me to wonder if other forms of energy were possible. What about greed? We have an abundance of that.  Rumpelstiltskin was powered by greed, but he ended badly.  If Vladimir Putin had read that cautionary tale as a child, he might have been less eager to swallow Ukraine. António Guterres, Secretary General of the  United Nations knows about negative energy. Like Henny Penny, he keeps shouting, ” The sky is falling” concerning the war between Isreal and Hamas.  Instead of being thanked for his pains, he’s charged with spreading bad news.   Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman has stepped forward as a peacemaker in the crisis.  Unfortunately, many see him as Foxy-Loxy–a man who makes peace by killing his opponents.  Hateful energy in the U. S. Legislature may do little for the common man but the media thrives on it.  Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) is particularly popular with reporters.  Like the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s Allice in Wonderland, she often calls for a colleague’s beheading.  But to be fair and to her credit, Greene insists that the bloodletting be done with decorum. She’d never boo a journalist for asking a question as her colleagues have done. But I could be wrong.  I’m not certain about the etiquette of scoundrels. Booing might be a form of praise.  The Republican leader Don Trump is often abusive to others, even those in his party, yet they continue to follow him like the characters who followed the Simpleton in The Golden Goose. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D) seems to share Greene’s respect for decorum. He told Mike Johnson (R ) the newly elected RepublicanHouse Speaker that if disagreements arose between them, Jerries would not behave disagreeably.   His remark reminds me of another great man who was a master at decorum. During a heated debate in the House of Commons, Winston Churchill refrained from calling his opponent a liar.  He accused the man of technological inexactitude instead.   Jeffries is right to be guided by Churchill.  But for how long and how far? For example, Johnson insists that a woman’s right to control her body is tantamount to the holocaust.  His opponent might consider that view a bridge too far.  Finding a troll in his path,  Jeffries might do better to heed the lesson in Three Billy Goats Gruff and decide to throw his weight around.  I don’t believe in magic, despite the lessons in fairytales, though scientists who pull electricity out of thin air seem to have managed it.  If it did exist, I’d never trust it. Look what happened to Jack Spriggins when he planted a few magic beans.  Being old, I’m less confident than the legions of beauty queens who have hoped for World Peace in their competitions.  Aware that negative energy exists, I hold out less hope for the planet than beauty queens.  Even so, Congress’s Queen of Hearts may have a lesson for us all. The best we can wish for is a little decorum.  

#Antonio Guterres #decorum #Donald Trump #electrical current from air #Hakeem Jeffries #Marjorie Taylor Greene #Mike Johnson #politics and fairy tales #Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Saliman #technological inexactitudes #Winston Churchill

[citizenscreen]

John Ford and the cast of STAGECOACH (1939): Donald Meek, John Carradine, Claire Trevor, Nora Cecil, John Wayne, Berton Churchill, Andy Devine, Thomas Mitchell.

#john ford #stagecoach #old hollywood

[telaviv-delhi]

Hátigen A vicc, hogy az Apollo 11 legénységének is van csillaga a tv-ben nyújtott tevékenységért. Talán a Holdtagadók Társasága szponzorálta :) Végülis: Churchill meg irodalmi Nobel-díjat kapott :)

VIDEO:

A lencsevégre kapott valakik, benne néhány kivándorolt/elmenekült/elűzött magyarral:

Elvis Presley, Orson Welles, Clark Gable, Audrey Hepburn, Arthur Spiegel, Apollo 11 Crew (Neil Armstrong, Edvin E. Aldrin), August Lumiere, Johnny Cash, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Borgnine, Mariska Hargitay, Kim Novak, Kevin Bacon, Lassie, Ronald Reagan, George Cukor, David Niven, Marlene Dietrich, Jane's Addiction, Richard Pryor, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Sinatra, Orson Welles, Joseph Szigeti, Tom Jones, Eva Gabor, Larry King, John Cusack, Vladimir Horowitz, Daniel Radcliffe, Celine Dion, Bee Gees, Matt Damon, Forest Whitaker, Martin Landau, Billy Bob Thornton, Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner, Russel Crowe, Anthony Hopkins, Martin Scorsese, Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry, Steven Spielberg, Jamie Foxx, Jamie Foxx, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, Bela Lugosi, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rod Stewart, Hugh Laurie, Ella Fitzgerald, Aerosmith, Janis Joplin, Mötley Crue, Marilyn Monroe, Ozzy Osbourne, Jay Leno, Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves, Anthony Perkins, Britney Spears, Antonio Banderas, Peter Jackson, Ryan Reynolds, Ricky Martin, The Doors, Slash, John Travolta, Salma Hayek, Charles Bronson, William Shatner, Godzilla, Tom Selleck, Tom Selleck, Jodie Foster, Quentin Tarantino, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Elton John, Billy Crystal, Bruce Willis, Tommy Lee Jones, Bruce Lee, Orlando Bloom, Eddie Murphy, Drew Barrymore, Julio Iglesias, Glenn Close, James Dunn, Alice Cooper, Henry Fonda, David Hasselhoff, Patrick Swayze, Richard Chamberlain, Samuel L. Jackson, Johnny Depp, RuPaul, Peter Falk, Thomas A. Edison, Helen Mirren, Tony Curtis, Dwayne Johnson, Groucho Marx, Greta Garbo, Kermit the Frog, Mariah Carey, George Clooney, Colleen Moore, Eddie Murphy, Denzel Washington, Walter Matthau, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Peter Sellers, Sophia Loren, Anthony Quinn, Sean Connery, Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, Robert de Niro, The Hunger Games, Kevin Costner, Kim Novak, Henry Fonda, etc.

As of 2023, the Walk of Fame comprises 2,752 stars, which are spaced at 6-foot (1.8 m) intervals. There is a $75,000 sponsorship fee upon selection. The fee is used to pay for the creation and installation of the star, as well as maintenance of the Walk of Fame.

Donald Trump valamivel leöntve. Nem akarom tudni, hogy mivel öntötték le ennek a derék, becsületes, szőke, fehér hazafinak a csillagát.

#Elvis Presley #Orson Welles #Clark Gable #Audrey Hepburn #Arthur Spiegel #Apollo 11 Crew #Neil Armstrong #Edvin E. Aldrin #August Lumiere #Johnny Cash #Humphrey Bogart #Ernest Borgnine #Mariska Hargitay #Kim Novak #Kevin Bacon #Lassie #Ronald Reagan #George Cukor #David Niven #Marlene Dietrich #Jane's Addiction #Richard Pryor #Alfred Hitchcock #Frank Sinatra #Joseph Szigeti #Tom Jones #Eva Gabor #Larry King #John Cusack

[weathermanpolls]

#polls #tanks #britain

[tomorrowusa]

Ron DeSantis has endorsed his Florida neighbor Donald Trump – while using a fake Winston Churchill quote.

Maybe we should call him Reek rather than Ron.

In front of enormous rally audiences, Mr. Trump painted Mr. DeSantis as a submissive sniveler, insisting that he had cried and begged “on his knees” for an endorsement in the 2018 Florida governor’s race. In a series of sexually charged attacks, Mr. Trump suggested — without a shred of proof — that Mr. DeSantis wore high heels, that he might be gay and that perhaps he was a pedophile. He promised that intense national scrutiny would leave Mr. DeSantis whining for “mommy.”

Trump, of course, is a hypocrite. In addition to being a corrupt and lying Toad, he's personally repulsive and ignorant. Despite that, Republicans can't stop lining up to kiss his butt.

All of DeSantis's blustering and political machismo looks that much more pathetic after swearing his allegiance to the Orange One this week.

Now he is both defeated and debased. His departure from the race on Sunday was a far fall from grace after opening his campaign as the heir apparent in a Trumpified Republican Party. Rehabilitating that reputation as he considers his next political move will require plenty of repair work with donors and Republican voters, thanks to Mr. Trump’s ruthless parade of insults over 242 days on the campaign trail. “I don’t care if he’s a Republican,” Mr. Trump said of his belittlement of Mr. DeSantis at a November gathering of the Republican Party of Florida — the governor’s home turf. “We hit him hard, and now he’s like a wounded falling bird from the skies.” [ ... ] The missives were often led by Mr. Trump’s chief spokesman, Steven Cheung, who leaned into his background as a public relations operative for the Ultimate Fighting Championship to deliver brutal slams with the force of the sport’s suffocating guillotine chokehold. In November, Mr. Cheung told The Wall Street Journal that in Iowa, Mr. DeSantis would face “unimaginable pain that he’s never felt before in his life.” In a news release, he cast doubt on Mr. DeSantis’s masculinity, saying that he walked like “a 10-year-old girl who had just raided her mom’s closet and discovered heels for the first time.” Mr. Cheung also referred to the Florida governor as a “desperate eunuch,” questioned why Mr. DeSantis would “cuck himself” in front of the entire country — sexual slang that implies weakness in a man — and accused him of searching for “new sugar daddies” to fund his campaign. He called Mr. DeSantis a “disloyal dog.”

A truly "disloyal dog" would have bitten Trump. DeSantis just drooled on Trump's shoes.

Don't feel too sorry for Ron/Reek, he allegedly has about $100 million left in his campaign war chest. He could sit on that until 2028 while hoping Trump loses in order to vindicate his own failed presidential bid this cycle.

EDIT: In case that wasn't enough humiliation of Republicans for you, Stephen Colbert was firing on all thrusters last night.

#republicans #florida #ron desantis #reek #ron backs down #desantis's humiliation #ron desanctimonious #donald trump #gop presidential nomination #election 2024 #stephen colbert

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Polite and smart and punctual, It once was good to be. You answered for your actions And a woman was a she. You'd stand up for your people, If needs be even fight. But now if you uphold such values, Then you are far right.

Oh... we're all far right now, We're all far right now, Peterson, Rogan, Shapiro, Ee-aye, Ee-aye, Ee-aye-oh. We worship Mussolini, His portrait's in the loft. Musk saved Twitter. Heil Hitler! We're all far right now.

Oh, you say you're in the middle. A moderate individual. A Gladstonian liberal. You once laughed at Donald Trump. You're probably a fascist too.

There once was a great speaker Called Martin Luther King Said character's what matters Not the colour of your skin. But conduct doesn't count now, Just your identity. If you should ever question this, You're racist obviously.

Oh... we're all racist now, We're all racist now, Off to the gallows we must go, Ee-aye, Ee-aye, Ee-aye-oh. Worse than Winston Churchill, Worse than Enoch Powell, Ku Klux Klan and Jimmy Fallon. We're all racist now.

Oh, the countryside is racist, Dogs and cats are racist, Eating meat is racist. Black Lives Matter's even racist. Do you know what's also racist? You.

Found out I am dyslexic, I thought I was just thick. My son he is dyspraxic I'd presumed he was a dick. My mother is bulimic, My mate's got OCD, My girlfriend is bipolar. That gives me anxiety.

Oh... we're all mental now, We're all mental now, Off to the madhouse we must go, Luh-luh, luh-luh, luh-luh, luh. Nutty as a fruitcake, Demented and deranged. Cuckoo, Psycho, Wacko, Loco, We're all mental now.

Oh, my, what is coming next? What is coming next? What is coming next? Oh, my, what is coming next? We're probably all paedos too.

Dirty little paedo, Hanging around the lido, In your little Speedos, Far right!

#Dominic Frisby #far right #We Are All Far Right Now #comedy #religion is a mental illness

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[The Daily Don]   Pride Month

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 4, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 5, 2023

Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, a staunch supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, last week awarded the First Degree of the Order of Glory and Honor from the Russian Orthodox Church to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán has dismantled Hungary’s liberal democratic government in favor of what he calls “illiberal” or “Christian” democracy that rejects LGBTQ and women’s rights, claiming that the equality valued by liberal democracies undermines traditional virtue. Kirill called out for praise Orbán’s “great attention to the preservation of Christian values in society and the strengthening of the institution of family and marriage.” This award makes explicit the link between the Putin regime, which has been committing war crimes against Ukraine’s people, and Orbán, who is such a hero to America’s right wing that the Conservative Political Action Conference has twice gathered in Hungary, most recently just last month. Orbán has called for Trump’s reelection. The common thread among these groups is a rejection of democracy, with its emphasis on equality before the law, and the embrace of a hierarchical world in which some people are better than others and have the right to rule. In Poland today, an estimated half a million people marched in the streets to protest the loss of rights for women and LGBTQ people amid an attack on democracy by the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), which condemned the protest as a “march of hate.” Leaders for PiS claim they are only trying to protect traditional Christian values from Western ideas. Today is the 34th anniversary of the first democratic elections in Poland in 1989 as the Soviet Union was disintegrating. Former Polish prime minister and president of the European Council Donald Tusk, who called for the march, told the crowd: "Democracy dies in silence but you've raised your voice for democracy today, silence is over, we will shout.” Today is also the 34th anniversary of the Chinese government’s crackdown on demonstrations for democracy in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, with troops firing on their own citizens. For 22 weeks now, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been protesting in the streets against the plans of right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to overhaul the judiciary, weakening the country’s system of checks and balances by shifting power to Netanyahu, and threatening the rights of minorities and marginalized groups. In Sudan today, the war between two military generals who seized power from a democratic government continues. Tens of thousands of Sudan’s people have fled the country since the fighting broke out in April. The political career of Florida governor Ron DeSantis is the epitome of Orbán’s “Christian democracy” come to the United States. DeSantis has imitated Orbán’s politics, striking at the principles of liberal democracy with attacks on LGBTQ Americans, abortion rights, academic freedom, and the ability of businesses to react to market forces rather than religious imperatives. Last week he told an audience that “the woke mind virus represents a war on the truth so we will wage a war on the woke. We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of congress. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. We will make woke ideology leave it to the dustbin of history; it’s gone.” But DeSantis’s speech was a perversion of the real speech on which he based it. On June 4, 1940, nine months into the Second World War, British prime minister Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons. British, Canadian, and French destroyers along with dozens of merchant ships and a flotilla of small boats had just managed to evacuate more than 338,000 Allied soldiers from Dunkirk, in northern France, as German troops advanced. Britain was fighting fascism, and Churchill warned his people that the war would be neither easy nor quick. But, he promised, “we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender....”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#The Daily Don #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardsoon #fascism #LGBTQ #human rights #White Nationalism #viktor orban #ron desantis #Churchill

[blackswaneuroparedux]

The historian must enter into the dialectic of the actual and the potential contained in every critical moment of the past. Memory is the real psyche or life force and nothing is genuinely more alive than the historian’s disciplined rejoining of the past; apprehended in the right way, history becomes palpable.

- John Lukacs

A fine modern historian whose writing was influenced by his upbringing in war torn Hungary and as a devout Catholic. Lukacs was an iconoclast who brooded over the future of Western civilisation, wrote a bestselling tribute to Winston Churchill, and produced a substantial and often despairing body of writings on the politics and culture of Europe and the United States.

A proud and old-fashioned man with a cosmopolitan accent, and erudite but personal prose style, Lukacs was a maverick among historians. In a profession where liberals were a clear majority, he was sharply critical of the left and of the cultural revolution of the 1960s. But he was also unhappy with the modern conservative movement, opposing the Iraq war, mocking hydrogen bomb developer Edward Teller as the “Zsa Zsa Gabor of physics” and disliking the “puerile” tradition, apparently started by Ronald Reagan, of presidents returning military salutes from the armed forces.

Lukacs completed more than 30 books, on diverse subjects including his native country and 20th century American history, as well as the meaning of history itself. His books include “Five Days in London,” the memoir “Confessions of an Original Sinner,” and “Historical Consciousness,” in which he contended that the best way to study any subject, whether science or politics, was through its history.

He considered himself a “reactionary,” a mourner for the “civilisation and culture of the past 500 years, European and Western.” He saw decline in the worship of technological progress, the elevation of science to religion, and the rise of materialism. Drawing openly upon Alexis de Tocqueville’s warnings about a “tyranny of the majority,” Lukacs was especially wary of populism and was quoted by other historians as Donald Trump rose to the presidency. Lukacs feared that the public was too easily manipulated into committing terrible crimes.

Hitler and Stalin were Lukacs’ prime villains, Churchill his hero. Lukacs wrote several short works on Churchill’s leadership during World War II, focusing on his defiant “blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech as the Nazis were threatening England in May 1940. Lukacs wrote that the speech was at first not well received and that instead of having a unified country behind him, Churchill had to fight members of his own Cabinet who wanted to make peace with the Nazis.

One Churchill book attained unexpected popularity after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Rudolph Giuliani, then New York City’s mayor, held up a copy of Lukacs’ “Five Days in London,” declared he had been reading it and likened New Yorkers to the citizens of London.

Quietly published in 2000, the book jumped into the top 100 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list. But Lukacs was not entirely grateful. He noted that “Five Days in London” had little to say about how Londoners endured the Nazi assault, and he rejected comparisons between London in 1940 and New York City in 2001.

“The situation was totally different,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer at the time. “As a matter of fact, it was much worse in England.”

He wrote about how the postwar era signaled the end of an age of civility. Modernity, he argued, had run its course since the printing of the Gutenberg Bible, and a new barbarism would take its place.

Lukacs’ ideas defied easy classification. He was for a time a darling of conservatives, but he rejected the notion that people could be defined as hewing to the political left or right.

The Cold War, he argued, had never been a conflict between communism and democracy; rather, it was a struggle between Russia and the United States. At the same time, he insisted that economic conditions never determined human belief.

Born Jan. 31, 1924, in Budapest, Lukacs Janos Albert had a Catholic father and Jewish mother, making him technically a Jew, although he was a practicing Catholic for much of his life. For the Nazis, who occupied Hungary in 1944, being half Jewish was enough to be sent to a labour camp.

By the end of 1944, he was a deserter from the Hungarian army labor battalion, hiding in a cellar, awaiting liberation by Russian troops. Within months of living under Soviet control, he fled the country on a “dirty, broken-down train” to Austria. In 1946, he arrived by ship in Portland, Maine, his youthful affinity for communism shattered.

Lukacs was a visiting professor at Princeton University, Columbia University and other prominent schools but spent much of his career on the faculty of the lesser-known Chestnut Hill College, a Catholic school (all girls until 2003) in Philadelphia where he taught from 1946 to 1994.

He called himself a “reactionary” because he was a traditionalist and a persuasive advocate of the necessity of historical knowledge to make any sense out of most things, and because he lamented the transformation of science into a false religion and the over-commercialisation of economic progress, and was viewed  as curmudgeonly. He was, in fact, unimpressed with much that was modern but not a pessimist; he never resented disagreement, and was always good-natured in debate. He was an important historian of great integrity and originality, and certainly one of the greatest American historians of modern Europe.

A pessimist by definition, he often expressed personal contentment. He wrote warmly about his enjoyment of romance, friendship, books, teaching and the rural life, the “pleasure of fresh mornings, driving alone on country roads, smoking my matutinal cigar, mentally planning the contents of my coming lecture whose sequence and organization are falling wonderfully into place, crystallizing in sparks of sunlight.”

“Because of the goodness of God,” he concluded in his memoir, “I have had a happy unhappy life, which is preferable to an unhappy happy one.”

He died at age of 95 years old in 2019.

#lukacs #john lukacs #quote #history #academia #second world war #world war philosophy #ideas #university #hungary #britain #churchill #america #cold war #europe

[liberaleffects]

I'm a fervent believer in democracy, but this bullshit we have going on in this country now doesn't feel like democracy. With billions of hard-to-trace dollars spent to advance candidates, with our mail boxes and our TV screens jam-full of expensively produced campaign propaganda used mostly to obfuscate, we've corrupted the very idea of government by, of, and for the people. With so many Americans willing to support anti-democratic forces, have we shown ourselves to no longer be capable of self-governance? With so many billions of dollars being used to blow smoke up our collective ass, how is it even possible for the truth to become general? If, by chance, a little useful information does leak out from that cloud of smoke and that hall of mirrors created largely by donations from corporations and the very, very rich, it is usually negated or nullified by denials, or lies, or scurrilous counterattacks.

It is so wasteful. If you set out to create a system that would intentionally sow cynicism, disdain, and irritation with the process, you could hardly do better than doing democracy the way we are doing it now. If the "will of the people" can yield a man like Donald Trump or a political party like the GOP, is it any wonder that democracy is under threat throughout the world.

If the idea is for a democracy to give voice to the will of the people, how can all this money spent on obfuscation be helpful in pursuit of that goal? What do we learn from all these fliers, and what is gained by these interminable election seasons that are treated like TV entertainment by most of the reporting across the spectrum of opinion?

The right wingers are always invoking and evoking the "founding fathers," but even with the contradictions and hypocrisies found in the motivations and the hearts of some of those men, I cannot believe that they intended a democracy to look like this. Sure, they would have probably been ok with the voter suppression efforts, especially where minorities and women were concerned. And they wouldn't have been at all ready for that statue in New York harbor welcoming immigrants from places that didn't even have names yet. The founders were far from perfect people, and neither are we. But we sure as hell ought to be better than we are now. Why are so many of us so crabbed, so mean, so profoundly ignorant? Why are races so tight, with so many votes being cast for people who are so transparently corrupt, incompetent, dishonest, bigoted, venal, and greedy?

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." I thought those were Ben Franklin's words, but the quote is attributed to Winston Churchill. He was a Tory, not my favorite political party, and he was an aristocrat, not my favorite demographic. But I am glad he was so determined to see fascism defeated unlike far too many Brits, then and now, who thought maybe the Nazis were onto something.

What the hell is the use of these so-called "debates" which have become a sideshow to the process of seeking election. Few people watch those "debates" because real debate of issues seldom occurs and everything is seriously dumbed-down. A televised debate to become a U.S. Senator seems less dignified and substantive than an argument between 6th graders on the playground at recess.

The right wingers have so thoroughly undermined confidence in the integrity of elections that we can anticipate probable violence either at the polls around the country, or in the courts or on the streets once the votes have been counted and the winners declared. Democracy, the expressed will of the people, was intended to insure against that kind of disorder. But is what we have now what democracy was supposed to be? Is this how it was best meant to function?

I am anxious for this interminable election to be over. I'm so tired of the fucking polls, the strategizers, the talking heads, the coverage given to so many repugnant people who play peek-a-boo with their real motives and intentions. I'm so nauseated by the amount of money being spent to hide motives, or blur the malevolence that money is so often used to hide. I'm so weary of the daily reminders of just how far we fallen from the kind of government Lincoln described as being by, of, and for the people, not just the plutocrats, not just the corporations, and not just those who would befoul our most noble humanitarian dreams, but pollute our air, our water, and our founding principles. I'm sick of untaxed money from churches going to support politicians who would deny rights to people who don't believe as they do. I'm sick of a system in which one of two dominant political parties is now made up of people who make Joseph McCarthy and his henchman, Roy Cohn, look almost honorable and decent by comparison.

Most of all, I'm sick of anticipating the news we might learn on November 9th. On that morning, we may find that we proved unredeemable as a nation. Thanks to the corrupting influence purchased by goo-gobs of cash from secret sources, we may learn that the intolerable status quo is still securely in place and that we will be hearing more from people like Marjorie Taylor Green, Herschel Walker, Chuck Grasseley, Lauren Bobert, Joe Manchin, Mitch McConnell, Matt Gaetz, Brett Kavanaugh, Kevin McCarthy, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Clarence and Ginni Thomas, Steve Scalise, Donald Trump, Steven Bannon, or innumerable other scoundrels whose names may not be on ballots, but who wield power and pull the strings behind the curtains.

Can such a nation long endure? And if so, why?

[christianandnerdy]

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the oldest pro-Israel organization in the United States, awarded former President Donald Trump its Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion on Sunday evening. The award, which has only been given a handful of times in the history of the organization, recognized Trump’s contributions to the safety and security of the State of Israel, as well as to the American Jewish community. These include: moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem; forging the Abraham Accords between Israel and Arab states; recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal; ending U.S. funding that subsidized Palestinian terrorists; eliminating Iranian terrorist general Qasem Soleimani; becoming the first sitting president to visit the Western Wall; and protecting the civil rights of Jews against antisemitism on college campuses, among other unique achievements. Morton Klein, the president of ZOA, noted in his remarks that Trump joined the few recipients of the award, including Lord Alfred Balfour, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Harry S. Truman, and Israeli Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir. He added, in describing Trump’s diplomatic succsses with the Abraham Accords: “Mr. President, you deserved, unquestionably, the Nobel Peace Prize.” President Trump acknowledged the award by hailing the partnership between the United States and Israel in defending liberty, sovereignty, and Biblical traditions, expressing the hope that they “stand strong, and proud, and free.” He hinted at the forthcoming announcement of his next presidential campaign on November 15. Trump noted — as he has before — that some Jewish Americans, the vast majority of whom vote Democratic, did not seem to vote to support pro-Israel policies and political leaders, and pledged to increase the Republican share of the Jewish vote in future elections. The occasion marked the first on which a non-partisan Jewish organization honored President Trump for his work on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people. https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck-RF0Duqh4/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bighermie]

President Donald Trump was in attendance at the 148th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs this weekend. The president was holding a fundraiser with top Kentucky donors at the historic racetrack. SPOTTED: Former President Donald Trump is here at Churchill Downs.#LEX18AtTheDerby pic.twitter.com/9bqf5hRcI7 — LEX 18 News (@LEX18News) May 7, 2022 Donald Trump sighting…

[mariacallous]

Since the 1990s I’ve been interpreting events in Britain for an American audience through my journalism. Sometimes it’s easy: London’s glorious renaissance, Tony Blair’s rise. Sometimes it’s less easy: the strangeness of a “special relationship” where one side cares too much and the other too little, the post-imperial hangover that courses through British life.

And sometimes it’s hard: the puzzle of Brexit, the precipitous downfall of the Conservative party. It helps that for Americans still living through the Donald Trump saga, nothing is outside the realm of possibility any more. It also helps when I explain to them that those two latest chapters of British history are connected.

I tell them that from the 2016 referendum onward, Brexit increasingly gave the Tories a focus. Never mind that Brexit was the most divisive event in postwar Britain; over time, the struggle to make it happen unified the party. Boris Johnson’s “Get Brexit Done” 2019 election campaign cemented the transformation and, as far as Brexit went, silenced Labour.

Within six weeks, however, the Tory tide would turn. Once Britain formally left the EU, the Brexit-imposed discipline within the Conservative party began to unravel. Admittedly, the pandemic would have thrown any government off course, but Johnson’s conduct in office didn’t help the Tory brand or party unity. Swamped by scandal, he was out. Enter Liz Truss.

As the US and the world looked on, Truss’s first weeks in office did not exactly restore confidence in Downing Street. Suddenly, the new government was shredding the Tories’ reputation for fiscal prudence and sound economic management. Friends of mine in the States could barely believe what they were witnessing. Even Americans who are ideologically opposed to the Conservatives were shocked to see the party of Churchill and Thatcher flying off the rails.

The Truss-Kwasi Kwarteng “Growth Plan 2022” started out as a budget at war with itself, with vast emergency spending sitting alongside big unfunded tax cuts. It was also at war with Bank of England monetary policy. That was bad enough. Then came U-turns, the defenestration of Kwarteng and the naming of a new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, hardly an ideological soulmate of the libertarian prime minister.

This story is far from over. From the outset, the reaction to the new government’s “fiscal event” abroad was awful. Former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers said the world’s fifth-largest economy was “behaving a bit like an emerging market”. President Biden himself said that Truss’s original plan was a “mistake”. The International Monetary Fund, which usually reserves its sermonising for developing economies, said: “we do not recommend large and untargeted fiscal packages at this juncture, as it is important that fiscal policy does not work at cross purposes to monetary policy. Furthermore, the nature of the UK measures will likely increase inequality.”

Still, with all the opprobrium heaped on Truss, it’s easy to forget that the damage began long before she got hold of Britain’s finances. What’s happening today cannot be separated from what happened in the last decade, leading up to Brexit. To explain those days to non-Britons, you have to wade into the weeds of British politics. There, we come upon Nigel Farage, who though never elected to parliament had an extraordinary influence on Westminster politics. Had it not been for the threat Farage and Ukip posed to the Conservative party, David Cameron may never have decided to call for a referendum. But, fatefully, he did.

As a dual US-UK citizen who’s lived in London since 1996, the closest I could get to understanding a rationale behind Brexit was to see it in the context of what Blair once called “post-empire malaise” – a vague if deep-seated yearning to regain the confidence and sureness of identity that, at least in the imagination, went hand in hand with running an empire. “Take back control” was surely part of that, fuelled also by heightened economic insecurity in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis and a concomitant unease about immigration.

Setting that logic aside, I have to say that virtually all the economic arguments in favour of Brexit looked specious at best and cynically misleading at worst. In that sense, Brexit is a kind of original sin that sits at the heart of today’s UK economy. That should have been evident in the myriad dire economic forecasts blithely dismissed as “remoaner” scaremongering in the run-up to the 2016 referendum – forecasts that turned out to be mostly accurate. And it should have been obvious– as it was to the rest of the world – in the downward trajectory of the “Brexit pound”, which fell from 1.50 to 1.33 to the dollar overnight after the 23 June 2016 vote and ultimately hit its lowest-ever recorded level of 1.03 on 26 September of this year.

Being “liberated” from the EU was never going to live up to the counterfeit promises made by the Vote Leave campaign before the referendum. Britain’s borders are no less porous than they were. The post-Brexit trade deals the UK has negotiated are insignificant compared with the loss of its largest trading partner. The jewel-in-the-crown deal with the US is not even on the agenda, as Truss admitted last month.

The pandemic, whose arrival coincided with Britain’s departure from Europe, camouflaged much of the toll Brexit was inflicting on the economy. But the harm is real. A year ago, the Office for Budget Responsibility was estimating that Brexit’s long-term impact on economic growth would be more than twice as damaging as that of Covid.

The effect on trade has been devastating. Modelling by the Centre for European Reform found that solely because of Brexit, British trade in goods was down during the first half of last year, ranging between 11 and 16% month to month. “There is evidence that businesses face new and significant real-world challenges in trading with the EU that cannot be attributed to the pandemic,” the House of Lords European affairs committee reported in December.

Ending the free movement of labour between Britain and the continent – a Brexit cornerstone – is hollowing out the workforce. According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of job vacancies stood at 1,246,000 in the third quarter of this year, up from about 823,000 before Brexit and Covid-19 set in. These shortages afflict businesses large and small, from cafes and pubs to farms and manufacturing plants.

Meanwhile, the OBR analysis from May shows a number of economic indicators all going in the wrong direction: as a result of leaving the EU, long-term productivity will slump by 4%, both exports and imports will be around 15% lower in the long run, newly signed trade deals with non-EU countries “will not have a material impact”, and the government’s new post-Brexit migration regime will reduce net inward migration at a time of critical labour shortages. It has been some story to tell.

There’s a scene in the House Commons that keeps playing in my head. It’s 2019 and Jacob Rees-Mogg, now Truss’s business secretary, is speaking of the “broad, sunlit uplands that await us” thanks to Brexit. Then I contemplate where Britain is today: heading into a protracted recession under an enfeebled prime minister leading a wounded, fractious party. I hope I’m proved wrong, and those sunlit uplands are out there over the horizon. No sign as yet. But I’d be pleased to come back and tell everyone who has listened so far that I was mistaken.