Farage beats Count Binface

As expected, Reform party leader and generally odious person Nigel Farage has won the Clacton byelection that he triggered by resigning his seat. There were 34 candidates but none from any of the major parties, who accused Farage of pulling a stunt to try and avoid a parliamentary inquiry into money he received from a cryptocurrency billionaire.

But Farage cannot be pleased with the result, because of the low turnout and that his main opponent was Count Binface, a joke candidate who won nearly 27% of the vote, the first time that he has not lost his deposit of £500, which requires a candidate to get 5% of the vote.

After a campaign in which a record-breaking 34 candidates vied for the coastal seat, Farage held on to Clacton, with 22,239 votes (62.8%) of the vote.

His nearest competitor, Count Binface, a parody candidate dressed as an intergalactic rubbish bin, won 9,455 votes (26.7%). The turnout was 44%.

Farage did not attend the traditional ceremony where the results are announced, because he was afraid that he would be embarrassed by Binface.

Hegseth’s logistical failures

Napoleon Bonaparte is reported to have said that an army marches on its stomach, suggesting the importance of keeping troops well fed and otherwise well taken care of if they are to be an effective fighting force. This is why logistical planning is such an important part of any military operation, to ensure that supply lines are well established so that one does not run out of essentials. One assumes that the same sentiment can be expanded to the naval forces as well. If so, the US is failing badly, according to this report.

Concerns are rising about food shortages aboard US warships deployed in the Middle East, as service members report limited portions and declining meal quality. Dan F, whose daughter is a Marine stationed on the USS Tripoli, said he was alarmed after seeing a photo of her meal. “A lunch tray, two-thirds empty, carried one small scoop of shredded meat and a single folded tortilla,” he was quoted as saying to USA Today. Another image from the USS Abraham Lincoln showed “a small handful of boiled carrots, a dry meat patty and a gray slab of processed meat.”

Families say troops have started rationing food as supplies tighten. Dan’s daughter told him that fresh produce is no longer available and provisions are running low.
…

Communities across the United States have mobilized to support deployed troops, but many care packages have yet to arrive. “The food is tasteless, and there’s not nearly enough, and they’re hungry all the time,” said Karen Erskine-Valentine, a West Virginia pastor assisting sailors’ families. “That kind of breaks your heart.” With no clear timeline for restoring mail delivery and deployments continuing at sea, families say uncertainty is deepening over both food supplies and the well-being of their loved ones.

[Read more…]

Trump’s list of enemies gets even weirder

The TV channel C-Span is watched mainly by a small audience of wonky types who are interested in the details of government and public affairs.

Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN /ˈsiːˌspæn/ SEE-span) is an American cable and satellite television network, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises proceedings of the United States federal government and other public affairs programming. C-SPAN is a private, nonprofit organization funded by its cable and satellite affiliates. It does not have advertisements on any of its television networks or radio stations. However their official website has banner advertisements, and streamed videos also have advertisements. The network operates independently; the cable industry and the U.S. Congress have no control over its programming content.

Since it mainly passively shows public events, it rarely creates any controversy. But at 9:25 a.m. ET Monday on its program Washington Journal, it had a representative from the Center for American Progress (an organization that supports Democrats) discuss an analysis that found that Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to American cities, a move that was widely criticized, had no effect on crime rates in those cities.
[Read more…]

Another good election day for progressives

Yesterday saw primary elections in several states in which, on the Democratic side ,progressives were pitted against establishment candidates.

The big win was by progressive Peggy Flanagan for the US senate race in Minnesota, who easily defeated Angie Craig by a margin of 59%-39%.

Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, won decisively on Tuesday after a campaign that attacked Angie Craig, a US representative, on her immigration record.

At the center of the attack was Craig’s vote for the Laken Riley Act, which requires immigration detention for undocumented immigrants accused of local crimes, and Craig has since expressed regret for voting for it.

The role of the Israel lobby played a significant role.
[Read more…]

Another reason that the US is running short of weapons for the Iran war

They are being used to protect Trump while he plays golf.

One photo shows Trump wielding a wedge with an Avenger behind concertina wire in the background. There is another photo of an Avenger, but it is unclear if it is the same one. There are certainly other protection platforms we don’t see, especially electronic warfare systems.

The White House on Monday confirmed the authenticity of the photos to us.

The amount of taxpayer money spent on his golf outings must be astounding.

Backlash against Facebook and Meta’s pervert glasses

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has introduced eyeglasses that can record what the user sees with only the smallest indication that the people who fall into the field of vision are being recorded. That this would lead to a serious problem should have been obvious but they plowed ahead anyway and now they are facing a backlash with content creators who use them being barraged with hostile comments, even leading to calls for the glasses to be banned in the UK

Despite being marketed as the latest must-have gadget, Meta’s smartglasses, which can record video footage while being worn, have faced a vicious backlash, particularly relating to concerns about surveillance. There are widespread fears about the glasses being used to film people, especially women, without their consent, and the resultant footage being posted on social media. This has earned them the label of “pervert glasses”, and content creators, no matter how they are used, have faced a flood of negative comments for deploying them.
[Read more…]

Letter from an ex-slave to his former owner

The podcast This American Life had the following segment.

In 1865, a formerly enslaved man named Jourdan Anderson received a letter from his former enslaver, asking Jourdan to return to the plantation and work. Actor Laurence Fishburne reads Jourdan’s response. 

This letter was performed in New York City at an event for Letters Live, which stages live readings of famous and remarkable letters in front of a live audience.

Trump fails the first rule of war: Know your enemy

The world watches aghast as Trump zigzags wildly in the war that he and Israel started with Iran, one day threatening massive bombing to force surrender by the Iranian leadership to the next day proclaiming that the US has already won the war and that he had called off the bombing because the Iranians are desperately seeking a peace deal. This has been repeated so many times that it has inspired widespread mockery.

Critics suggest the ultimatum-climbdown sequence has acquired a Groundhog Day quality. By one count, he has adopted the same tactic seven times since launching the war in tandem with Israel on 28 February.
…

The US president has also claimed multiple times that the US has “virtually” won the war and that Iran’s regime was clamoring for a deal.

Increasingly, such claims are prompting ridicule.

A recent CNN montage showed 14 separate pieces of footage dating back to March, with Trump insisting peace was at hand because Iran’s leaders “want to make a deal” after being supposedly rendered militarily impotent – assertions belied by a continuing Iranian ability to inflict damage on US and allied targets in the Middle East.

[Read more…]

What if the Lincoln reflecting pool can’t be fixed?

I have become fascinated, for both technical and political reasons, with the saga over the Lincoln Reflecting Pool. That the original attempt to paint the pool blue was botched is now well established with even Trump lackey Jeanine Pirro conceding it. Trump will continue to claim that it was vandalized (even if he knows that the claim is false) but only his most deluded cult members will believe it. Pirro is pointing the finger at the Department of the Interior for not providing them with all the information thus requiring her to withdraw the prosecutions of the four alleged vandals, although it makes her look utterly incompetent in rushing to indict without having the facts. The Secretary of the Interior Doug Burghum is angrily pushing back.

Here is a review of the timeline of the pool renovations, including when Trump’s motorcade actually drove into the drained pool during the renovation. It is not clear if he drove over sections that had been painted (which would make him one of his alleged vandals) or the part that was still bare.

We tend to think that a solution will eventually be found, possibly at a high cost, because we have faith in the power of technological innovation to solve practical problems. But what if that faith is unfounded in this case? What then?
[Read more…]

The Lincoln pool fiasco reveals how despicable these people are

In the grand scheme of things, with wars going on with Iran, Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, the mess that Trump has made of the Lincoln Pool is small potatoes. But the public humiliation of Trump that it reveals, when even his loyal cult member Jeanine Pirro had to contradict his claim of vandalism, is worth savoring even as the episode reveals how despicable and dishonest the Trump administration is.

We saw how they made up false charges to prosecute David Hearn which they dropped late Friday evening. But they also arrested and charged three other people for vandalizing the pool and now they have quietly dropped those charges as well.

Within days, Pirro’s office also moved to drop misdemeanor charges against three more people accused of the same phantom vandalism. Justin Carreno, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Cameron Thiers all faced lesser counts of destroying property worth less than a thousand dollars, and their attorneys told reporters the common thread was simple: The federal government had just spent millions repainting and relining the pool, and when the work failed, the Trump administration needed a scapegoat. The entire theory of the case — that ordinary citizens had descended on a national monument with knives to sabotage it out of political spite — evaporated once anyone with subpoena power actually looked at the evidence.

But what we must never forget is that these people do not care how many innocent people are harmed because of their determination to pursue a false narrative. They do not care if there is no evidence to support the charges. The whole point of the arrests and prosecution is not to find guilt but to use the government and law enforcement to inflict punishment and instill fear.
[Read more…]