Sine nomine
I go to leave a comment on the most recent open thread, and it’s closed…
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
Sine nomine
I go to leave a comment on the most recent open thread, and it’s closed…
Was it Florida that made (or at least tried) even offering of water illegal at polling places?
The case I remember is Georgia.
I recall one commentator here applauding the measure, on the grounds that it was right to make it as onerous as possible for poor people to vote.
Do we have to interpret Hegseth’s (official and prepared) D-Day comments as him being of the opinion that the Nazis were actually the good guys defending Europe against a foreign invasion of ‘dangerous ideologies’ – and failing – and that now Europe is in danger of failing again in the same task? Or does he confuse on which side of D-Day the brown hordes were? (I would not be surprised, if his purge of the archives of any mention of non-whites included the Blacks that were used as cannon fodder there).
Don’t put more thought into Crusader Pete’s speech than he put into it himself. It’s the stream-of-consciousness dialogue of a scared and insecure chauvinist. You will never find consistency, just an endless collage of compensatory fragments and bizarro world militant Christianity, held together with a too-small suit intended to make him appear swole.
He’s Patrick Bateman, had Brett Easton Ellis chosen a manosphere influencer instead of an investment banker to be his protagonist in American Psycho.
i just assume he told ChatGPT “D-Day speech, and make it about how immigrants are bad.”
This administration is a contest to be the most contemptible. It’s a really strong field.
Just for light-ish relief, and because lj likes him, this is Stewart Lee on Hegseth at the Normandy commemorations:
Stewart Lee: Quick – dangerous ideologies are storming the beaches. Has anyone reserved a sun-lounger?
At a Normandy D-Day commemoration, Pete Hegseth, the American Secretary of War, noted that beaches were stormed in 1944 and are being stormed by ideologies now. The two events share precisely one feature, and that is sand
Pete Hegseth is The American Secretary of War. His job title was formerly Secretary Of Defence, before the idea of defending yourself was deemed too ‘woke’ and America decided it was best to give the impression it was happy to throw the first punch in case people on social media thought the entire country was gay.
Last week Hegseth stood with his actual Christian nationalist tattoos concealed beneath his actual clothes on an actual Normandy beach to commemorate the start of the liberation of Europe from the Nazis on D Day in 1944. And he stated “sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies.”
Whatever comparison Hegseth was trying to make, it was a bit creaky. The Normandy beaches were stormed by the allies, which was a good thing, yes? But Hegseth is saying that today some different things are storming some different beaches, which is bad. Ideally at least one thing in the comparison should be the same as at least one thing in the original example, otherwise it isn’t really a point of comparison. It’s just a whole new idea.
Oh hang on! It’s beaches, isn’t it. There are beaches in both examples. It sort of works. But Hegseth dislikes so many ideologies – including feminism, environmentalism, secularism, gay rights and general ‘wokeness’ – as well as Islam, it was difficult to be certain at first which ideologies he was concerned about. If all the ideologies Hegseth fears arrive on the metaphorical beach at the same time it’s going to get very crowded. Hopefully the Germans will have staked out a few sun-loungers with their towels before breakfast in case feminism and environmentalism try to get all the best spots.
Then Hegseth clarifies it. “Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.” Well UK net migration is at its lowest level for five years, but clearly it wasn’t appropriate for Hegseth to break off from his Christian Nationalist trajectory to congratulate the Starmer government on making basketcase UK a less attractive destination for the world’s hopeful.
Uncharacteristically, Hegseth, who relishes the idea that his failed operation in Islamic Iran is a ‘Holy War’, stops short of explicitly saying it is Islam that is the ideology that is arriving. The whole thing is such a mess. If he wanted to tie his comments into the beaches thing it would have been better if he just said “Whenever I am on a beach I like to lie on a sun-lounger and think about how much I hate European liberal democracies.”
Ironically, Hegseth’s ideology isn’t that different to the one we fought back at on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets, and in the hills, eighty-two years ago. And some of the crosses scribbled on Hegseth’s body look dangerously like the ones you’re still not allowed to display in Germany since those other Nazis got ousted. But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. It’s all so confusing.
Meanwhile, the vice president JD Vance claimed the young white British boy Henry Nowak’s death was caused by the “mass invasion of migrants” and that our “only response” should be “righteous anger”, which presumably is the high-minded American Christian manifestation of Nigel Farage’s rather more brutal “pure cold rage.”
I think the ideal version of what we are supposed to feel would have been a combination of both men’s ideas, perhaps a “pure cold righteous anger.” Maybe in future Hegseth and Farage need to coordinate their speeches so people aren’t confused about what feelings they are supposed to have. After all, you don’t want to be exorcising yourself feeling exhausting “pure cold rage” when you should be exhibiting the steely calm of “righteous anger.” Life’s too short.
The only surprising thing about the American government’s attempts to exploit the tragedy of Nowak’s death, against the express wishes of his grieving parents, is that anyone is still naive enough to be surprised by it. Since retaking office the Trump administration has explicitly stated it intends to destabilise Western European liberal governments and work towards replacing them with systems more amenable to its essentially white supremacist vision. And the helpful social media algorithms of the loyal tech lords who support it, either out of ideological belief or self-interested avarice or both, push its propaganda perfectly. Yet people still act like Trump’s stated positions are just postures designed to provoke, instead of statements of actual policy. He has told European Liberal Democracies he wants them gone. And yet we still talk about a special relationship, like a whipped dog that comes back daily for its usual kicking.
It may as well be Trump, Hegseth and Vance rioting on the Southampton streets and throwing punches at the police, as their views, funnelled and amplified by social media like Elon Musk’s Twitter (currently X), are deliberately driving destabilising unrest. Politicians prevaricate about whether the government should have a presence on Musk’s network when in fact they should be working out how to stop it even having access to our citizens. If people want to see pictures of a female Labour MP being chloroformed before being raped can’t they draw their own, instead of getting Musk’s app to do it for them? At the very least Musk is killing creativity.
The final word goes to Chantal Richard, a member of the Langrune en Commun Association, in the area of Normandy Hegseth visited last week. “This individual promotes values that go against democracy, human rights and peace. The fact that Pete Hegseth is challenging all the international organisations that emerged from the second world war isn’t business as usual. He must be called out for who he is, for the values he represents: colonial, warmongering, racist, far-right values. Silence seems to us to be the worst thing we can do on these issues.”
Truly, laughter is the best medicine, and I mean it this time. Re our recent discussions about AI and bots, this was in todays Times. I only deeply regret that I could not find a way to paste the priceless back and forth between them, not to mention the resulting CV:
The important thing, when looking for a job in a tough market, is to make the most of what skills you have. So, the government’s AI work assistant explains, I should not consider myself merely an employee with a history of repeating stock phrases; I am an expert in “verbal communication”.
Similarly, I am not simply my boss’s lackey, it adds supportively. Instead, the assistant argues, I am adept at “supporting senior figures in client-facing work”.
This is helpful, albeit perhaps an over-optimistic assessment of my employment prospects. Because I have told the government’s latest effort to boost growth using AI that I am Long John Silver’s parrot.
Or, as it puts it, as it prepares my CV for employers, a “Shoulder-Based Communications Adviser — Maritime Entrepreneur (18th Century, 5 years)”.
The government pledged on Monday to “put a Jobcentre in your pocket” as part of a suite of AI tools that Sir Keir Starmer said would “close the disadvantage gap”. The Jobcentre bot will construct a CV and advise me on who to send it to, as part of a wider government goal to integrate AI into public services.
But does it work? How useful is its advice?
And, however plausible its patter, does it actually understand what it is talking about? If, say, a Times writer tells the chatbot that his employment is as a parrot trained to say “pieces of eight” while his employer holds “cutlass-based negotiations” with business rivals, will it still look forward to my return to the jobs market?
It will. Not merely does it think my employment prospects are good, it also suggests that given the prejudice I tell it I have experienced as a parrot, I should see if I have a claim under the Equality Act 2010.
After describing my work experience (“talking while sitting on people’s shoulders”) and a quick back and forth over the employment gap (“a few centuries can be tricky to account for,” it explained), the bot gives me its best shot at producing a marketable CV.
So, “adding levity” while making people walk the plank into shark-infested waters, becomes “delivered consistent client-facing communication across multiple engagements”. Taunting captured Spanish crews becomes, “provided verbal support during high-stakes business negotiations”.
After the initial draft, there is some back and forth. I confess, for instance: “Clients consistently tell me I’m attractive. As a one-legged employer put it, ‘Who’s a pretty boy then?’” Is that relevant? Absolutely. “That is a solid client testimonial, and worth including on your CV,” it tells me. And what about my cutlass skills? It is more circumspect. “I would suggest leaving the cutlasses off the CV itself, but the underlying competencies are genuinely marketable.”
Jules McKeen, a partner at the headhunters Odgers, said that, as the parrot conversation demonstrated, this was not necessarily a replacement for human advice. But, she added, if people viewed this as a tool to make them think about their career, it could be very useful.
“These sorts of initiatives can really help unlock patterns and transferable skills that people don’t necessarily see in themselves,” she said. “They may not have considered that working in a busy restaurant built multitasking and customer service skills, which can help in a later role managing multiple client deadlines.”
Even so, she said, people should be wary about using AI CV writing as anything more than a starting point. “Write it in your own words so you avoid the homogeneity of ‘business speak’, which can result from overreliance on AI tools.”
So what jobs should I do? Can the Jobcentre in my pocket get me back on the jobs market and help Starmer hit his growth targets?
Becoming an executive assistant would be a good fit, it suggests. As would a career in conflict mediation. But the AI efficiently homes in on something that really sets me apart in today’s high-pressure jobs markets. It advises I could work as a courier, or in search and rescue. “Unaided winged flight,” it points out, “is a fairly rare skillset.”
But surely it is merely a subset of “unaided flight”. Which is, I believe, not uncommon in certain parts of the Russian elite. Speaking English and not Russian might be a differentiator, however….
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/06/flagrantly-insane-election-denialism-is-now-mandatory-for-the-entire-republican-party-leadership
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-urges-thune-to-fire-us-senate-rules-referee-immediately/ar-AA258udb?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=52f0775701da4ec48f7427d2fb2ffac2&ei=10
How do you spell Ballot?
OK, sorry about this (I won’t post any more tonight), but this from the NYT about Ossoff sounds too good to be true. What do the commentariat think of him?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/08/opinion/jon-ossoff-president.html?unlocked_article_code=1.olA.XTvL.Qz7wVp9-20D2&smid=url-share
“Don’t put more thought into Crusader Pete’s speech than he put into it himself. It’s the stream-of-consciousness dialogue of a scared and insecure chauvinist.
He’s Patrick Bateman, had Brett Easton Ellis chosen a manosphere influencer instead of an investment banker to be his protagonist in American Psycho.”
No, he’s the Secretary of War with more weapons and troops at his fingertips than any other country on Earth, and we’re not.
He serves the most disgraceful vermin and God who has ever risen to power in America.
William Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) in his early reporting on the figure of Adolph Hitler declared that insecure clown’s behavior as “theatrical and absurd”.
American white supremacist nationalist fascist MAGA Republican conservative Christianity is set to become the most genocidal force in human history, topping even Genghis Khan, for those here who remember the genocidal sweepstakes winners discussed on these boards from time to time over the years.
That the Chinese government might rival them in body count numbers is of no comfort.
They are going to steal all future elections, burn down every Reichstag that gets in their way, and murder all of their enemies.
Us.
The states of Texas and Florida are ground zero for cruel, murderous inhumanity, with others trying Avis-like, to catch up.
Update for the CA Governor primary…
81% of the votes counted.
Becerra (D) 27.7%
Hilton (R) 25.1%
Steyer (D) 22.4%
Bianco (R) 10.2%
I haven’t done a full count, but there are in excess of 1m votes still to be counted. The majority of those votes are in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Sacramento, and Riverside counties. Hilton’s share is shrinking and the other three’s shares are still increasing, but Bianco is unlikely to catch up to whoever ends up in third. It does seem possible, however, that Steyer might catch Hilton. San Diego is still holding strong for him, but the others are either majority D, or in Riverside’s case, the home of Bianco and eating into Hilton’s share from the other direction.
At this point I am more concerned with the professional women’s hockey expansion rosters than I am with the CA governor’s race. We are holding off the atrocity exhibit.
GftNC – I don’t have a lot of familiarity with Ossoff’s record and platform, but from what I have seen and read, I’d rather him than Newsom or Shapiro, and I think that Harris has lost her shot, so I’d put Ossoff ahead of any of them in my ranking. He’s not big on experience, but that doesn’t really seem to be much of a hindrance these days, and might actually boost him among independents.
“Be aware that anyone who posts negative comments to the Park Service regarding the grotesque Nazi arch that cock blocks Abraham Lincoln will be subjected, with their families, to harassment from the IRS, every fascist federal law enforcement agency, and will be disallowed from entering National Parks in perpetuity.”
Fuck ’em.
I’m probably already on all of their shit lists, and likely have been for some time.
Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
Surely the horse has already suffered enough.
>Surely the horse has already suffered enough.
it knew what it was getting into.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/vance-goes-full-tin-foil-hat-over-maga-reality-star-spencer-pratts-la-mayoral-defeat/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/08/us/politics/trump-election-fraud-strategy-california.html?unlocked_article_code=1.o1A.oWFO.usKSU8WF4jGl&smid=url-share
Or rather, how do you spell BULLETS?
All the cringe horses and more cringey men
won’t shed insanity ever again
These Hercules furentes will either not come to their senses, will claim the reality to be insane (in brief moments of clarity) and claim insanity in court (either their own to get away or the court’s, if that should fail).
Expect lots of blood shed in any case.
You can tell the same lie a thousand times but it never gets any more true. But does it convince more people?
I wonder what percentage of the population is more persuaded by the lie’s retelling versus the percentage that has grown weary of it (if they ever believed it). Also, in either case, what they can and are willing to do about it.
What will we be talking about a year from now? I’m an aspiring loin-girder.
Marina Hyde in todays Grauniad, on various issues including this opener:
On behalf of the US administration, the American embassy in London has published a notice advising the UK government not to ban social media for the under-16s. Thanks, but … we didn’t ask? Or perhaps that’s uncharitable. It’s actually a privilege to take child protection lectures from a country where the leading cause of death in children and adolescents is gunshot wounds. Are we allowed to suggest a surprisingly obvious way to help with that grimly perennial problem – or is international advice just a one-way street?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/09/trump-white-house-ufc-cage-fighting-arena-jd-vance-pete-hegseth
nous, I meant to say, thanks for response on Ossoff.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/the-supreme-court-and-californias-election-deniers-are-on-the-same-page-about-at-least-one-thing
I would for Jon Ossoff.
Should the election be held and my vote counted.
It won’t be.
CA governor primary has less than 10% of the ballots remaining to be counted. AP is now projecting Becerra as the winner, and Hilton in second place, around three points ahead of Steyer.
If that projection holds (and the result is likely to do so, even if the margins shift) that would mean that Becerra will be the governor, and the first latino elected governor in state history.
To be precise, the first Latino to be elected since California became part if the United States.
You can argue about whether earlier governors were “elected.” But that basically involves how widely the franchise must extend to have an election count.
wj- To be precise, the first Latino to be elected since California became part if the United States.
That is why I included the qualifier “in state history.” There was also a Latino lieutenant governor who became governor after the elected governor was removed over corruption, which is why I put in the qualifier “first elected latino governor.”
Late to party, but it was Georgia where prohibition against assistance, water or otherwise was prohibited. After primary elections in the summer produced extreme waits due to voting machine issues and fewer locations than general elections. While I don’t remember anyone endorsing hardship, I specifically remember being super pissed off with McKinney disputing/minimizing the degree of hardship. From 900 miles away, when I live here and was reporting about multiple personal friends who were delivering water. I remember responding along the lines of, just because I lived in Austin for 5 years (many) X years ago, I would not presume to speak about current conditions on the ground against someone who lives there. I’m still pissed.
Prohibition was enacted, dammit.
I did live in Austin from 1986-1991. It’s a wee bit different now. It’s been 10 years since my last brief visit, and almost certainly full of changes again.