This annual event, where Washington-based journalists meet, eat, drink, and schmooze with the people they cover, with other celebrities thrown in, is a disgusting example of the incestuous world of politics, shattering the illusion that these reporters are hard-hitting seekers of the truth even if their work antagonizes politicians. This year Trump was the main speaker and to say that he bombed is putting it mildly. Even his ardent supporters found it hard to find anything good in his rambling tirade of venomous insults.

Jon Stewart, in a funny skewering of Trump’s dreadful speech says that the event should be put in the dustbin. As a stand-up comedian, Stewart knows how to tell jokes and he brutally dissects Trump’s ineptness at telling even the simplest ones.

That’s about right.

It is quite extraordinary how Count Binface emerging as the main opponent to Nigel Farage in the Clacton by-election on August 13 has thrown politics and media coverage into a turmoil with people struggling to figure out how to respond.

There are those who positively hate Farage and are relishing the prospect of him having to campaign against someone who was known as a novelty candidate but in this election is emerging as a serious threat. This has resulted in his supporters angrily denouncing Binface’s candidacy as a stunt (which nobody denies) and accusing the mainstream political parties of being behind him, even though it is clear that their decision to boycott the election was because they saw Farage’s resignation as as a stunt and Binface stepping in to fill the vacuum and emerging as a serious candidate something that they had little to do with.

The media are also nonplussed. On the one hand, there are those who are enjoying the comedic aspects of the whole thing, allowing them to interview Binface on show after show, thus increasing his visibility even more.

Then there are others who are tut-tutting, saying that it makes a mockery of democracy. It is not clear why that claim makes any sense. We have an election in which candidates could freely contest and some have chosen to do so. One of them is a candidate in a space suit that has a trash bin on his head. But he has stood in many elections before. It is Farage who created this situation by resigning so he cannot blame anyone else for not contesting.

Here in Binface appearing on the BBC TV show Newsnight where the host was clearly in the tut-tut camp but the other panelists were not.

Although Farage remains the favorite to win, the odds of him winning are getting worse by the day. National opinion polls may not help much in anticipating the outcome of this election since the voters who actually live in Clacton may be torn. Even if they hate Farege and would happily vote for any of the major political parties, they may hesitate to vote to elect Binface as their MP for fear of having their constituency seen as a joke and thus may sit it out. That may the biggest factor favoring Farage.

The Clacton by-election that will see Nigel Farage face off (bin off?) against Count Binface will take place on August 13th. It is not clear how many other independent candidates will enter the race but all the major parties are boycotting it.

I came across this clip of an Oxford Union debate from two years ago, before the last elections in the UK and US, where Binface was designated the final opposition speaker on the proposition ‘This House will fake it till you make it”. He made some cogent points about UK and US politics.

Meanwhile, Farage continues to be dogged by the £5 million pounds he received from a cryptocurency billionaire Christopher Harbone. He had said before declaring his candidacy that he would need about one million pounds per year to make up for lost earnings if he became an MP and so the timing is highly suspicious.

Nigel Farage told senior figures in Reform UK he would need “a million a year” to cover lost earnings if he stood for parliament in the 2024 general election, sources have told the Guardian, raising further questions about why he was given £5m by a crypto billionaire.

Sources say the discussion took place in March 2024 – shortly before the undeclared gift was made by Christopher Harborne on 5 April, according to the Thailand-based crypto billionaire’s lawyers.
…

These discussions about needing “a million a year” took place in March 2024, the Guardian has been told. Lawyers for Harborne have said the gift was made on 5 April 2024.

The Guardian has revealed that, according to financial industry sources, some of the £5m was not received until the end of May, just before Farage announced on 3 June that he would stand as an MP.

A true grifter, making money off public office, just like his hero Trump

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The late night talk shows I watch were no fans of Lindsey Graham and I was curious as to how they would treat the news of his death. They obviously would not want to make fun of it but at the same time would not want to pretend that he was an admirable person.

I though Jon Stewart managed to deal with it pretty well by turning it into a discussion of how geriatric the US Congress is.

It may be that Graham’s love of being on TV hastened his demise. When he complained on Saturday of not feeling well, people suggested that he go to the hospital but he said that he was due to be on Meet The Press on Sunday morning and did not want to miss that and would go after it. It is not clear if the tear in his aorta could have been detected and treated if he had gone to the hospital earlier.

Over in the UK Andy Burnham, who had been the mayor of Greater Manchester, won a byelection in the nearby constituency of Makerfield yesterday. This means that he is now an MP and thus in a position to challenge Keir Starmer for the Labour party leadership and, if he wins, become the next prime minister. Indeed, that clearly has been his goal all along and the MP who had represented Makerfield resigned his seat just so as to create an opening for Burnham.

There had been some concerns that the candidate of the surging right wing Reform UK party led by Nigel Farage might take the seat away from what had once been thought to be a safe Labour seat, held by them for more than 120 years but that did not happen. Burnham won comfortably by 55% to 35%, even increasing the party’s majority from the 2024 election, which they won 45% to 32%. The new more extreme right wing party Restore Britain won just 7%, while the Conservatives, Greens, and Liberal Democrats continued their slide with 2.2%, 0.7%, and 0.4% respectively.
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Trump may have a lot of money, though for him and his greedy family it is never enough and they keep using the government to enrich themselves, but he is the textbook example of a parvenu, defined as “one that has recently or suddenly risen to an unaccustomed position of wealth or power and has not yet gained the prestige, dignity, or manner associated with it.” People who have what used to be called ‘old money’ grew up with a sense that it was gauche to talk about it and especially not flamboyantly flaunt it. It was a given that everyone knew you were wealthy and you were expected to demonstrate it discreetly in understated ways, by being philanthropic, cultured, and patronizing the arts, so that the ugly origins of your wealth was obscured. Trump is the opposite, using every opportunity to tell people how rich he is, and even exaggerating so it is no surprise that old money people despise him.

While his father made a lot of money in the construction business and gave Trump a start on his his own ventures, they were from the outer boroughs of New York City, and Trump was always aware that he was not of the Manhattan elite and felt that they looked down on him. You can see this in the way that he bristles at what he perceives as even the mildest slight, and rages and insults anyone whom he thinks does not respect him. That is not how old money behaves. They feel superior to others and thus can afford to be condescending towards those they consider their social inferiors, mostly ignoring them.

But Trump craves to be accepted by the old money elites and as part of that push he moved his construction business to Manhattan and put his name in gaudy gold lettering on a building there, no doubt seeing that as his entree to the old money elites. But those snobby elites tend to look down even further at those who try too hard to join their ranks and so Trump ended up consorting with other parvenus like the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
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