One of the appealingly quirky features of UK politics is that pretty much anyone can stand for election to a parliamentary seat, provided that they can come up with 10 voter signatures in support and pay the required deposit of £500, which they lose if they do not get 5% of the total votes cast. This has resulted in novelty candidates, such those from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (founded by the rock musician David “Screaming Lord” Sutch) and, more recently, Count Binface, an extra-galactic being who wears a costume consisting of a trash can on his head. They serve as outlets for protest votes for people disgusted with the system. These candidates typically stand only in constituencies where there is a high-profile major party candidate which will draw media coverage because the UK system is one in which all the candidates for a parliamentary seat line up on stage to hear the vote totals at the end, so you can see them close to the major political figures. In the past, Binface has stood against Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.

They also sometimes get interviewed by major media looking for a light-hearted take on the election. Here is Binface interviewed by Sky News during the recent by-election in Makerfield that Andy Burnham won on his way potentially to the prime ministership.

[Read more…]

Trump managed to make the US even more disliked around the world by pressuring FIFA to suspend the red card given to their star player Falorin Balogun in the previous game that would have required him to sit out yesterday’s game with Belgium. I have not followed the games, have little knowledge about soccer, have not seen the foul in question, and so cannot judge if the red card was warranted or not. But I do know that reversing a red card ruling in highly unusual. Making it worse for FIFA was that Trump publicly bragged about calling on FIFA president Gianni Infantino to drop the suspension. Infantino, who has been sucking up to Trump in a big way, going to the extent of giving him a fake peace prize after Trump sulked about not getting the real one, is believed to have acquiesced to Trump’s wishes to allow Balogun to play.

This move caused widespread anger in the soccer world, not just in Belgium but also with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).
[Read more…]

I recently wrote that the wins by more progressive candidates in Democratic primary races that ousted candidates favored by the party establishment would show us whether the party would embrace this new energy and help these candidates win the general election races or whether the establishment would instead seek to hold on to its grip on party power even if it meant losing in the general election. And it appears that at least some are opting for the latter course.

Jaime Harrison, the former chair of the Democratic national committee, directed a pointed message at candidates running under the party’s banner while openly criticizing its direction.

“I say this with no ill will or animosity: if you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination,” Harrison wrote on social media. “Don’t use our resources. Don’t rely on our volunteers. Don’t use our infrastructure. Focus on building the party you actually support.”

It is curious how Harrison frames the progressives as ‘hating’ the Democratic Party purely because they want to take it in a different direction. He seems to think that the neoliberals who have dominated the leadership for so long are the rightful owners of the party and should not be challenged. He is not alone.

Over the last few days, prominent party figures have moved away from unifying under a “blue no matter who” banner to push for a more formal break with their left flank, and said the moment may have arrived for Democrats to confront their more socialist wing.

“I actually do think it’s time for Democrats to talk the S-word: schism,” James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist and former Bill Clinton adviser, said on his podcast. He added that some DSA-aligned candidates “have no place in the Democratic party” and, of the broader coalition: “I’m not in that fucking political party.”

[Read more…]

Today is American Independence Day, a milestone in it being the 250th or semiquincentennial one, which I read is Latin for half of five hundred, which, like half of anything like half-baked or half-assed, makes it sound less impressive. It is a day when people are urged to put aside their differences and come together in patriotic unity.

Well, forget that.

I am a critic of the concept of patriotism and it takes some nerve for Trump and his cult to call for bipartisan unity when Trump hijacked the original bipartisan plans (as Jenora Feuer pointed out) and created his own celebration committee to make it all about himself. So it had long stopped being a national celebration and had become a Trump vanity project so it is hardly surprising that there is a lot of schadenfreude about how things have fallen apart bigly.

The big news is how an event that should have had massive crowds seems to have attracted tinier audiences than small local county fairs, with one band playing to audiences that were smaller than the band size. In fact, there seemed to be fewer people on the Mall than there usually are on any summer day.

“The Mall in the summer is a big tourist destination,” Democratic Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois wrote on X, resharing video of the performance. “Tourists, locals on their lunch break, people tossing frisbees, etc. A strong case can be made that there are FEWER people here than there would be but for Trump’s Tacky Craptacular.”

[Read more…]

Did you know that at this moment the Trump administration is running what it calls the The Great American State Fair on the National Mall in Washington DC from June 25th to July 19th to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence? Me neither. And so it seems did most of the country since the attendance was to, to put it mildly, sparse, consisting of a handful of people wandering around a largely empty mall. There were supposed to be 56 booths each representing a state or territory but even that was was pathetic, with some states making merely a token effort and not even manning the booths, leaving just empty rooms.

The opening event was to be a big concert featuring musical acts, but they could only line up mostly B and C listers and even they pulled out for various reasons, so Trump decided to hold a rally with himself as the speaker. But that too proved to be largely a bust.

Malcolm Ferguson describes what he saw.
[Read more…]