Meatwad and i certainly wasn't dogwhistling "incompetence".

This is a justified complaint. Don't be coming 'round flippantly calling Kamala incompetent, especially in the context of this race (pun intended), as well as the state of leadership the world over. I disagree with many of her policies, but calling her incompetent is a bit rich.

However, I certainly don't think anyone in the US can tell anyone else to mind their business with a straight face. That's just the pot calling the kettle black (pun not intended).

    Burnwinter indeed. Don't get me wrong, I am still deeply interested, and even committed, to the brilliant analyses of modern problems by great thinkers. Practice works differently from analysis, though. What once worked probably won't work again precisely because it once worked. Folks also seem to have a hard time accepting that great analysis doesn't necessarily lead to effective practice. I'm not even sure that the ends proposed by many liberatory ideologies are actually good ideas, which would mean that we've got inadequate means for achieving potentially outdated ends (i.e., workers owning the means of production, etc.). The analysis of the problem remains cogent, but I'm finding it easy to discard most of the rest, including ideology itself.

      Might need to pull some of these comments out and put them in UK politics thread, before the Americans start shouting at me again 😆

      RocktheCasbah clearly, having painted himself as whiter than white, Starmer has put himself in a bit of a predicament with the clothes and the glasses (personally I couldn't care less about the box at Arsenal and the flat).

      However, there is still a world of difference between this and the wide scale corruption and lying of the Johnson era - and the way everyone in the parliamentary party was forced to line up and tell lies, defending lies & things they knew to be wrong, gaslighting the nation every single day.

      And that's just talking about what the Tories became once Johnson was in Number 10, let's not forget how he got there - selling the country down the river for his own personal ambition.

      The problem for Starmer is one of his themes for his election was his integrity and within weeks of taking office he showed he isn't much different to others when it comes to taking freebies. Now we can argue about the amounts and whether he was as corrupt as the last guy but he is not the honest whiter than white politician that he claimed to be. I mean what makes anyone think he won't do other dodgy shit? It was one of his most effective tools calling out the Tories on their corruption but he has also shown he's happy to turn a blind eye when it comes to him.

      You say the ticket thing isn't important but would you have given Boris Johnson the same leeway when it came to taking gifts? It's a ÂŁ175k per year box not some ÂŁ50 ticket. Look it is not the end of the world, not like he is selling state secrets and if he wants to live like that fair enough. But he is a hypocrite for calling out others and you can't then complain that the media are holding him to account for that.

      I don't disagree with your comments about Johnson but am not sure why you are comparing them? Boris and his antics are also one of the reasons he is no longer PM, no longer an MP and his party took one of their worst beatings in like 100 years. The other reasons goon highlighted. This guy went from being nailed on 2 or even 3 term PM to political wilderness. If your incompetent at your job the voters will punish you for it.

      goon I don't even think the COVID parties were terminal for Johnson.

      I actually think they were the begging of the end for him. During Covid a lot of people had to make big sacrifices and we were told they were for the good of the country and when the leader gets caught fucking having parties I think he was a dead man walking.

      goon What people care about is policy, things that will materially change things on the ground. Improve the NHS, Prisons and invest in public services/infrastructure and people will notice given time.

      Agreed and for that you need a strong economy and secondly will need Labour to be strong on planning laws. Planning law overhaul imo would turn the economy and country around. Housing, Business, infrastructure & even prisons all have been handicapped by current planning laws. If the planning laws don't work then the environmental regulations are the next tool of choice for the NIMBYs. If Labour can defeat the NIMBYs they'll have a great chance at turnings things around. They have the numbers and I hope they have the political will to do it.

      I do actually also think Wes Streeting is one of the best members in the cabinet. I don't know if his ideas will work for the NHS but they seem to make sense and probably a lot of thought has gone into them.

      RocktheCasbah Jazz seems to

      I think people do care about this stuff but obviously if his policies turn the country around people will look past that. Clearly doesn't bother you but it does bother others, Considering his majority it won't make much difference but recent events have definitely had a knock on his reputation. Again polling right now is irrelevant in a way but it all shows his favourability among voters is massively down.

              Gazza M in trumps case, your first paragraph will become nakedly obvious the second he takes office. he's a pro shit talker and rabble rouser, but his governance was dogshit in his first term, and will have less guardrails the second go round

              I agree Trump does talk a lot of shit. But like I said about Starmer, it doesn't matter what people think of him right now because if he delivers his promises people will look past that. Same applies for Trump.

                @Meatwad If you understood what it's like not to be from the States, you'd also understand why people who aren't from the States have opinions about the United States elections.

                For example: Australia had a stupid deal to spend USD 300 billion on some nuclear submarines which were to be made in France. A few years ago the US diplomatic corps got to Australia's then leadership and convinced it to switch rails to something called AUKUS: a trilateral Australia-UK-US defence treaty under which the nuclear submarines would now be principally manufactured in the United States for 400 billion.

                The parameters of the AUKUS deal are kinda absurd, like most US MIC deals: it's quite blatant the whole thing's wrapped up in a way that allows particular members of Senate and Congress to feather their own nests. Basically Australia transfers an enormous amount of state revenue to the United States—enough money to double the state funding of our education system for a decade—in return for some imaginary submarines.

                The AUKUS deal caused a major diplomatic incident with France which was only patched up relatively recently. But now we hear what I could've already told you back when AUKUS was announced—the United States will not actually manufacture said submarines, or if it does, they will never be delivered to Australian control.

                That's a stock standard example of how the United States treats its nominal allies.

                This kind of thing should make it clear that, whatever your politics on the above, the operations of the United States empire have a vast material significance to the place I live. It is totally normal for people here to have opinions about the States including its elections, and we're going to keep doing it whether United States citizens like it or not.

                  seems trump's nazi rally he held today at madison square garden might be backfiring slightly

                  consitutional crisis incoming. brazen about it too.

                  i mean, im pretty sure this is what hes angling at

                  If no candidate receives the majority of electoral votes, the vote goes to the House of Representatives.

                  This has happened twice. The first time was following the 1800 presidential election when the House chose Thomas Jefferson. And following the 1824 presidential election, the House selected John Quincy Adams as president.

                  a 269-269 tie is certainly possible (though very unlikely) and if it comes to that, each of the 50 states gets one vote, and republicans will likely control a majority of states.

                  the electoral college is a godawful system, but its in the constitution, so it cant just be changed by the speaker of the house.

                  Burnwinter
                  didn't have a problem with this thread until "incompetence". when i see shit like that i have to pop in and remind folk that hey it's one thing reading nonsense like that from people who can vote, another thing entirely with those who can't.

                      I will say this, Twitter's a fucking joke now.

                      I shut down my main a couple of years ago, but I have a business account I use to read tweets (since that's rather hard without a login).

                      This low key business account has never tweeted anything but banal links relating to my technology expertise etc. Perhaps predictably, its "For You" timeline (the content recommended for it by X, as opposed to what it follows) includes a great deal of AI hype as well as tweets about software which have attracted a lot of engagement.

                      However, a large chunk, if not the majority of everything else that is recommended—I'd say as many as one tweet in four that gets recommended to this account overall—is modern day race science, eugenics advocacy and phrenology, Elon Musk and adjacent tweets, techno-fascism and other far right content, or pro-Trump stuff.

                      Twitter's overall direct influence may well have declined because its utility as a "de facto public square" is so deeply in question, but nothing else has effectively replaced it, and what is pushed on there is an absolute carnage of extreme right wing ideology, much of which is more disturbing than the usual rhetorical limits of the likes of Trump.

                        Meatwad Fair play, just shedding some light on it from my perspective. You're not the only US citizen to have expressed that view to me / around me over the years.

                          Burnwinter right now, the For You section of X-chan is a bolus of insanity. the comments section on any given post is a mixture of maga types, crypto scammers, onlyfans creators and bots. people are being buffeted by pure madness on there, but it seems like that was part of the plan

                              Gazza M I do think the broader effect is as much to do with pulling whatever Twitter used to be (not great, but more functional) out of circulation as it is creating a platform with alternative values.

                              That said, I think people should be very worried by the type of ideology I have seen being normalised in and around US tech circles as they're currently represented on X.

                              It's viewed as a dire time for US big tech. There's been a prolonged period of layoffs, and a dip in the valuation of and questions about the business model of some major tech companies, and a long, deep dip in the success of VC-backed startups over the past couple of years.

                              It's all relative of course, but the days of it being relatively easier for Ivy League tech grads to secure a $300–400k pa FAANG salary are fading.

                              If anyone on OMITT remembers what nRx was back in 2014 (before it fell apart for the time being), some variation of those "neoreactionary" ideas now seems to verge on normal for a decent chunk of the higher profile US tech posters on X. It could be described as often extremely racist, always techno-optimist authoritarianism with a greater or lesser degree of modesty covering it up.

                              Having come across a lot of this content, I see Musk's antics as owner of the platform as the thin end of the wedge.

                                  Burnwinter they're naked opportunists from what i can see. cosying up to the right in order to replace democratic institutions with a techno-oligarcy. if trump wins, musk will be plonked into the heart of government with authorities to gut whatever agencies oppose his agenda. I genuinely believe he's gone all-in on maga because he's running from accountability that would definitely arrive under a democrat administration

                                      Gazza M if trump wins, musk will be plonked into the heart of government with authorities to gut whatever agencies oppose his agenda.

                                      I think this is slightly sensationalising it. I don't think Musk would have hiring and firing authority—based on past experience Trump aggressively brokers state influence to technology companies when in office, he doesn't give it away for free. Compare the current situation with his previous and current contract hijinks with Bezos and Amazon.

                                      However, tech capital's interest in Trump's candidacy overlaps heavily with the prospect of a run-up start on huge federal contracts, as well as the continuation of subsidies many of Musk's companies have enjoyed.

                                      If you google "Sovereign AI" (a recent speech by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang articulates this term) you can also see a major future prize looming into view: at least one of the major AI platforms being built in the USA is highly likely to become, in practice, the preferred supplier of AI to the feds. An unbelievably vast and for the time being, almost bulletproof piece of business for whichever company gets a hold of it.

                                          See also the National Security Council for Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI). Pretty sure I have mentioned this industry-government peak body on OMITT before, but if you take a look at what was leaked a few years ago under the name "the Chinese tech landscape" you will get an idea of how big tech presently lobbies the US administration for rents.

                                          Burnwinter it's not that sensationalist imo. Biden overturned the below EO, but this will be one of the first things on his agenda

                                          In October 2020, the Trump Administration issued an executive order that would have stripped protections from civil servants perceived as disloyal to the president and encouraged expressions of allegiance to the president when hiring. This effort is referred to as “Schedule F” because that was the name of the new employment category that the executive order created. The administration claimed the authority to create Schedule F based on statutory language that exempted certain positions “of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” from employment protections. Previous administrations and Congress always understood the language to apply only to a smaller number of positions traditionally filled by political appointees

                                              Gazza M A broad spectrum purge of the federal bureaucracy is the substance of the Project 2025 initiative, which you'd think is something Trump would try to put into action, though I'd be curious to see how committed he'd actually be to it. I don't think that's outlandish.

                                              What I'm suggesting sounds sensationalist is the claim that Trump would hand hiring and firing authority to third parties such as Musk.

                                              I think Trump would be more likely to jealously guard that authority and only use it on behalf of vested interests based on specific agreements. There could however be some de facto agreement between Trump and Musk, or with other holders of capital about the Cabinet selection, or about the removal of specific regulations or officials, or the award of specific major contracts, and so on.

                                              I really hope Trump doesn't win. I think a Trump victory would be very damaging to US state capacity independent of its uses. And I get the sense there would be less resistance from the establishment than there was in 2016.