The Eeeeew

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Mongrel
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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Mongrel » Fri Jun 23, 2017 12:24 pm

I'm not sure if Thad realizes that if the government fails a confidence vote, the government falls and there are new elections.
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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Thad » Fri Jun 23, 2017 1:04 pm

I did not; yeah, that makes sense. And seems like the likeliest outcome at this point. (There is, of course, the possibility that the Tories bounce May and nominate somebody else, but the reason May's there in the first place is that everybody else called "Not it." I don't imagine Boris Johnson is likely to change his mind right now, but then again if he were concerned about being humiliated he wouldn't have asked for that haircut.)

It still seems like an uphill battle; Labour would have to gain 64 seats for an outright majority. Given that the SNP has 35 seats, it would take a little bit more than convincing some (or even all) SNP voters to vote Labour instead.

It seems to me that SNP voters' best call is to stick with SNP; if Labour needs SNP to form a government, then Scotland's got a lot more leverage on Brexit. Though maybe I'm off-base; as I've already demonstrated, this is well outside my areas of understanding and expertise.

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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby IGNORE ME » Fri Jun 23, 2017 1:35 pm

Mongrel wrote:I'm not sure if Thad realizes that if the government fails a confidence vote, the government falls and there are new elections.


When you put it THAT way it sounds so enviable.

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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Bal » Fri Jun 23, 2017 3:50 pm

There's no way Labour gets a majority, but a coalition is possible, particularly since people seem even less enthused by the Tories after this election. There's also the very serious question of whether Tory leadership can actually assemble a functional government, whereas Labour has proven twice now that their leader, while unpopular with the suits, is actually very popular with the people in the party, winning back to back party leadership votes by historically high margins. Beating his own record in the second vote. So on their side there is a potential government to be assembled, while the Tories basically have nothing and no one, even with all their seats, who want to really make up a government.

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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Thad » Tue Jun 27, 2017 3:56 pm

May appears to have DUP onboard now, though there have been enough reversals by now that who the fuck knows whether that'll still be the case tomorrow.

Sturgeon is delaying the Scottish independence referendum, now planning it for 2021.

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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Thad » Sat Sep 02, 2017 11:35 am

538: Six Charts To Help Americans Understand The Upcoming German Election

The good news is that we've gone from "the far right stands a real chance of unseating Merkel" to "we're not entirely sure AfD will clear 5%." The bad news is that Merkel had to move to the right on refugees to do it.

Well, "had to" is debatable. I'm sure she thought she had to, or she wouldn't have done it.

While Breunig attributes much of AfD’s decline to a reduction in immigration, Markovits views it as a larger European retreat from right-wing populism in response to Trump’s election (our editor-in-chief has made a similar argument). But despite its flagging popularity, AfD is likely to clear the 5 percent threshold for making it into the Bundestag. Then, Breunig said, the question will be how and whether other parties will work with them.

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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Thad » Sun Sep 24, 2017 1:33 pm



Worse than I'd hoped but better than I'd feared.

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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Mongrel » Sun Sep 24, 2017 2:36 pm

To add to that, the second-place SPD (the other traditional "Large" party, centre-left to Merkel's CDU centre-right) is leaving the governing coalition with the CDU to form the opposition, specifically to prevent the AfD from being the main opposition party. That leaves Merkel and the CDU to form an oddball coalition with the smaller parties (many of them further left than the SPD such as Die Linke, and the Greens).

So things should be interesting.
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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Mongrel » Mon Sep 25, 2017 8:15 pm



Well, that sure took long, dinnit?
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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Mongrel » Sat Oct 07, 2017 7:56 pm

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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Mongrel » Tue Oct 10, 2017 5:37 pm

Catalonia is supposedly going to unilaterally declare independence.

Uh... because the last Spanish Civil War worked out so well?
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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Bal » Tue Oct 10, 2017 6:12 pm

In the context of a continuing and powerful EU, I don't mind more regionalism in Europe. Most of those borders are treaty compromises from WWI. If people want to go back to a more classical map, I don't see the harm in the current climate.

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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Mongrel » Tue Oct 10, 2017 7:22 pm

That's fair, though it's worth mentioning that Spain's current border is much much older than WWI.

What's both funny and tragic was that apparently there was a regional power devolution arrangement worked out a few years ago that everyone agreed to and was satisfied with... and then the far-right party in Spain's parliament contested it as unconstitutional and won.

I mean a lot of Quebec issues here have foundered on some very rough constitutional rocks too, but in those cases there was a lot more widespread discontent on both sides. Spain's situation just seems like a totally dick move by the fringe assholes, when everyone else was happy to look the other way to peacefully get what they wanted.
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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Bal » Tue Oct 10, 2017 7:39 pm

Spain's right wing seems hell bent on convincing everyone that Spain is a bad idea.

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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Mongrel » Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:03 pm

Yeah, it'Spainful.
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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Yoji » Wed Oct 11, 2017 1:05 pm

I won't pretend to know much about the Spain/Catalonia situation, but I still wonder and worry if Russian ratfucking was involved here.

I think back to the CalExit thing that happened after the last US election. It'd been joked about for years, but there was a tiny, honest push for it after Trump got elected. Then it turned out that one of the biggest people behind the campaign was some Russian asshole who didn't even live or work in the US. I forget where else this kind of thing happened,* but it wasn't the first time.

I feel like an asshole to suggest that independence might not be a good thing. But in my semi-informed opinion,** it's not good when a splintered and angry world is what Putin wants.

*Ukraine and maybe the Kurdistan vote? I'm not sure, I'd have to watch the Rachel Maddow segment about it again.
**Okay, disregard this post. The takeaway I'm getting is I need to watch more Maddow.
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Mongrel
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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Mongrel » Wed Oct 11, 2017 1:14 pm

Nah, the Catalonia thing really is a self-inflicted injury deal. Bal basically has it right.
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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Mongrel » Wed Oct 11, 2017 2:15 pm

Someone updated it already, but I chuckled:

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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Mongrel » Wed Oct 11, 2017 11:22 pm

The Spectator: Domenic Cummings on how the Vote Leave team won the Brexit referendum

This is absolutely fascinating.
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Re: The Eeeeew

Postby Mongrel » Wed Oct 25, 2017 3:39 pm

Second Spanish Civil War inches closer as Catalonia unilaterally declares independence in the wake of the Spanish government's move to impose direct rule

All I can think is that a pretty fair percent of the Catalonian population is just absolutely bewildered as to what the hell just happened over the past month.

The "best" part is that since the referendum went all to hell, no one even has any fucking clue what the percentage of Catalonian citizens who are pro- or anti-independence actually is right now!
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