@semiticgod made an off-hand referall to 'corn-pone' in the 3-word storymaker thread. Having never heard of corn-pone before that naturally led me to searching for what it was using the super-computer at my fingertips. Not only did it reveal to me the wonder that is corn-pone, it also led me to this really excellent essay by none-other than Mark Twain from over 100 years ago (1901). It's not long and well worth the read. The more things change, the more they stay the same...
I'm reasonably certain this is one of the countless times that Trump is saying he is making more progress than he is. I doubt it's sheer coincidence that he's saying this just as his constituents are growing weary of the trade war.
I don't disagree with that assessment. The problem with liars is this: just because *anything* they say can be a lie doesn't meant that *everything* they say is a lie. Still, it is best to presume that they are lying and proceed from there.
You do realize that I was actually talking about Trump, right? And that my assessment was "presume he is lying then go from there"?
I would think twice before agreeing with the phrase "China does not lie". They were hiding spyware in very small chips hidden in the motherboards of many products; some of the chips were embedded in between the silicon layers and looked as if they were supposed to be there.
But you didn't say "presume he is lying then go from there", you said presume "they" are lying and I thought you were talking about China because we were discussing Trump and China and you said to assume they were lying.
And you're right about the espionage etc though technically that's not lying it's more stealing.
I'm reasonably certain this is one of the countless times that Trump is saying he is making more progress than he is. I doubt it's sheer coincidence that he's saying this just as his constituents are growing weary of the trade war.
I don't disagree with that assessment. The problem with liars is this: just because *anything* they say can be a lie doesn't meant that *everything* they say is a lie. Still, it is best to presume that they are lying and proceed from there.
You do realize that I was actually talking about Trump, right? And that my assessment was "presume he is lying then go from there"?
I would think twice before agreeing with the phrase "China does not lie". They were hiding spyware in very small chips hidden in the motherboards of many products; some of the chips were embedded in between the silicon layers and looked as if they were supposed to be there.
But you didn't say "presume he is lying then go from there", you said presume "they" are lying and I thought you were talking about China because we were discussing Trump and China and you said to assume they were lying.
And you're right about the espionage etc though technically that's not lying it's more stealing.
I wouldn't myself presume China to be telling the truth. They're not any more reliable than Trump. In this case if I had to choose who was telling the truth, I wouldn't choose Trump. That's because of his character. He dug his own grave as far his believability. However, this isn't a government like Germany, France or the UK. In any other circumstance I'd be disinclined to believe China. That means its like the 2016 election, pick your poison...
It sounds like the Queen has accepted Johnson's request to prorogue the parliament.
I guess that means the die is cast. It sounds (based on @grond0 's post) that either there will be a hard exit or the Johnson government will fall.
I suppose there is the Hail Mary that the EU will blink and offer a better deal to prevent the hard exit, but that sounds unlikely.
I can't imagine the EU has any reason to offer such a deal. Obviously the UK leaving will hurt economically, but it will almost certainly hurt UK citizens much more. And offering some deal seems to create a moral hazard here, where any other member could threaten to leave and leverage that into some beneficial concession.
It sounds like the Queen has accepted Johnson's request to prorogue the parliament.
I guess that means the die is cast. It sounds (based on @grond0 's post) that either there will be a hard exit or the Johnson government will fall.
I suppose there is the Hail Mary that the EU will blink and offer a better deal to prevent the hard exit, but that sounds unlikely.
I can't imagine the EU has any reason to offer such a deal. Obviously the UK leaving will hurt economically, but it will almost certainly hurt UK citizens much more. And offering some deal seems to create a moral hazard here, where any other member could threaten to leave and leverage that into some beneficial concession.
Because somebody has got to hurt. God forbid that nobody be hurt.
The whole point of the EU 'was' to 'trade' as a bloc in order to compete with the US, China and Russia. That it became political bullshit about things other than trade is because of Brussels & Berlin for the most part.
It sounds like the Queen has accepted Johnson's request to prorogue the parliament.
I guess that means the die is cast. It sounds (based on @grond0 's post) that either there will be a hard exit or the Johnson government will fall.
I suppose there is the Hail Mary that the EU will blink and offer a better deal to prevent the hard exit, but that sounds unlikely.
I can't imagine the EU has any reason to offer such a deal. Obviously the UK leaving will hurt economically, but it will almost certainly hurt UK citizens much more. And offering some deal seems to create a moral hazard here, where any other member could threaten to leave and leverage that into some beneficial concession.
Because somebody has got to hurt. God forbid that nobody be hurt.
The whole point of the EU 'was' to 'trade' as a bloc in order to compete with the US, China and Russia. That it became political bullshit about things other than trade is because of Brussels & Berlin for the most part.
Or Boris Johnson is an opportunist and caused the most part of the complaints not Brussels and Berlin. He, and others, painted cooperation as weakness and complained about it and lied. Like Trump he fearmongered about the 'other' invading immigrants. Nobody likes the scary 'other'.
It sounds like the Queen has accepted Johnson's request to prorogue the parliament.
I guess that means the die is cast. It sounds (based on @grond0 's post) that either there will be a hard exit or the Johnson government will fall.
I suppose there is the Hail Mary that the EU will blink and offer a better deal to prevent the hard exit, but that sounds unlikely.
I can't imagine the EU has any reason to offer such a deal. Obviously the UK leaving will hurt economically, but it will almost certainly hurt UK citizens much more. And offering some deal seems to create a moral hazard here, where any other member could threaten to leave and leverage that into some beneficial concession.
Because somebody has got to hurt. God forbid that nobody be hurt.
The whole point of the EU 'was' to 'trade' as a bloc in order to compete with the US, China and Russia. That it became political bullshit about things other than trade is because of Brussels & Berlin for the most part.
Or Boris Johnson is an opportunist and caused the most part of the complaints not Brussels and Berlin. He, and others, painted cooperation as weakness and complained about it and lied. Like Trump he fearmongered about the 'other' invading immigrants. Nobody likes the scary 'other'.
This wound is self inflicted.
Or maybe immigration issues shouldn't be tied to EU membership at all. What the fuck does immigration have to do with trade? It's bully pulpit 'moralizing' by mostly Germany that has led to this. Italy, Spain and Greece would have abandoned ship already if they weren't sucking on the EU teats...
Edit: The interesting thing is that without the UK, the EU may find themselves to be in a bit of a pickle. Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands may be better off going it alone rather than propping up states that don't hold their own. It might only take one more 'major' defection to bring down the whole house of cards...
The EU is also hurt by their unscientific stance against GMO's, promoted by their behind the times 'governments'. GMO is basically just engineering plants short-term in the lab rather than long-term by selective breeding practices. The problem is, many of the traits being created in the labs will 'never' be selectively bred because the GMO's will have been in the market for a very long time before they can be 'bred' They're basically locking themselves into obsolescence.
@Balrog99: The free movement in between members of the EU--the lack of strong immigration restriction between EU states--has been around since the 90's; the hysteria over Muslims entering the UK by first entering Germany is very recent. It was not German moralizing that established that policy; it was fearmongering that made that already long-running policy suddenly controversial.
@Balrog99: The free movement in between members of the EU--the lack of strong immigration restriction between EU states--has been around since the 90's; the hysteria over Muslims entering the UK by first entering Germany is very recent. It was not German moralizing that established that policy; it was fearmongering that made that already long-running policy suddenly controversial.
But the UK is not the only EU member that opposed this. They're just the only one backing it up with action. Again, how is immigration policy related to trade? The EU power members are forcing their views on lesser members in my opinion.
Edit: I don't blame London wanting control of their own immigration policies instead of having to arbitrarily accept policies determined mostly by Germany and Belgium. If Germany or Belgium want to accept more immigrants then fine, but to say that they can accept as many immigrants as they want and then allow them to move to any EU member is quite ludicrous in my opinion. How is that hard to understand?
@Balrog99: The free movement in between members of the EU--the lack of strong immigration restriction between EU states--has been around since the 90's; the hysteria over Muslims entering the UK by first entering Germany is very recent. It was not German moralizing that established that policy; it was fearmongering that made that already long-running policy suddenly controversial.
I would also point out that while I dont pretend to have a super firm grasp on EU politics, it makes sense that the most robust economies would be the ones that receive the largest amount of immigration. So while Britain is seeing some, I suspect Germany is seeing a lot more.
So it's not like this is some conniving plan where Germany has everyone else receive a ton of immigration while not receiving any themselves.
Also, to be frank: The EU as an organization has done an incredible amount in keeping the peace in Europe. Economic relations make that easier to accomplish, but it only takes a little while to disentangle yourself economically before you might consider yourself free to engage in war (See every major war in the 20th century). The politics in the EU binds those countries together in a way that has resulted in the longest period of peace on the continent in modern history. That's not nothing...
Immigration and trade have always been connected. The same transportation lines that allow goods to pass freely also facilitate the movement of people. This isn't complicated. And the movement of people in order to create a better economy is something Europeans pioneered, as the history of cotton, tobacco and sugar cane trades also easily illustrate.
The idea that you can have free trade and not have a parallel freer movement of people is deluded. And it strikes me as wanting to see the world as you'd like it as opposed to how it is.
@Balrog99: The original justification for the policy was indeed related to trade. The idea is that you don't have to spend so much time on paperwork and overhead if you establish free movement of people and goods between countries. This is true for basically any industry that crosses two or more countries; it's not just to make tourism more efficient.
We have much the same thing going on in the United States. I do not have to go through nearly as much trouble to visit or move to Oklahoma as I would to visit or move to a foreign country. Likewise, I don't have to go through any special process to visit friends in Austin, even though it's a longer drive than a lot of Europeans would need to visit an entirely different country. It means Oklahoma can't really block Houston folks from visiting Oklahoma, and it means that Austin can't keep out all the San Antonians, if they wanted to, but it does save the government money on enforcement, and it saves citizens the time and trouble of going through customs.
Barriers slow stuff down. They have advantages, too, but slowing stuff down and sometimes blocking trade and people is their very purpose.
Also, to be frank: The EU as an organization has done an incredible amount in keeping the peace in Europe. Economic relations make that easier to accomplish, but it only takes a little while to disentangle yourself economically before you might consider yourself free to engage in war (See every major war in the 20th century). The politics in the EU binds those countries together in a way that has resulted in the longest period of peace on the continent in modern history. That's not nothing...
This is extremely well said, and often overlooked. Whatever problems exist in Europe right now, they're so minute compared to what problems have existed there in the not too distant past. And it's myopic to slam the institution most responsible for that win based on some relatively very minor issues it might or might not be creating.
@Balrog99: The original justification for the policy was indeed related to trade. The idea is that you don't have to spend so much time on paperwork and overhead if you establish free movement of people and goods between countries. This is true for basically any industry that crosses two or more countries; it's not just to make tourism more efficient.
We have much the same thing going on in the United States. I do not have to go through nearly as much trouble to visit or move to Oklahoma as I would to visit or move to a foreign country. Likewise, I don't have to go through any special process to visit friends in Austin, even though it's a longer drive than a lot of Europeans would need to visit an entirely different country. It means Oklahoma can't really block Houston folks from visiting Oklahoma, and it means that Austin can't keep out all the San Antonians, if they wanted to, but it does save the government money on enforcement, and it saves citizens the time and trouble of going through customs.
Barriers slow stuff down. They have advantages, too, but slowing stuff down and sometimes blocking trade and people is their very purpose.
Europe is nowhere near like the US though. Comparing Oklahoma to Michigan is nothing like comparing Poland to Italy. They don't have nearly the same viewpoints, motivations or even the same languages. I daresay Mississippi and California are more alike than almost any two European countries. That's why when the EU starts to deviate from purely trade issues they start having problems.
It sounds like the Queen has accepted Johnson's request to prorogue the parliament.
I guess that means the die is cast. It sounds (based on @grond0 's post) that either there will be a hard exit or the Johnson government will fall.
I suppose there is the Hail Mary that the EU will blink and offer a better deal to prevent the hard exit, but that sounds unlikely.
I can't imagine the EU has any reason to offer such a deal. Obviously the UK leaving will hurt economically, but it will almost certainly hurt UK citizens much more. And offering some deal seems to create a moral hazard here, where any other member could threaten to leave and leverage that into some beneficial concession.
I agree there are several things pointing to there being no chance of a deal with the current UK government:
- the desire for the EU to avoid other countries leaving is certainly part of it.
- another issue is the EU supporting Ireland in attempting to maintain the Good Friday Agreement (which the UK appears to be willing to break despite saying they continue to support it). Even though Ireland is a relatively small country within the EU, that's rather the point - most of the EU nations are relatively small and if the EU as a whole is seen as acting so directly against the wishes and interests of one of the smaller states the chances of other states getting worried are high. That would mean a real risk there would be an inability to take decisions and ultimately a break-up.
- Johnson started his premiership by setting down a red line saying that a deal was only possible if the backstop was removed. I think the only way to make sense of that is that he doesn't want a deal, but wants to blame someone else for the failure to get one.
The cordial discussions between EU leaders and Johnson in the last week or so should not be interpreted as the sides getting closer together in search of a deal - there have been no moves of substance in the EU's position. Rather it reflects that Johnson is now PM and other countries want continuing good relations with the UK after Brexit (and they're playing their own version of blame the other party). Apart from anything else, like I've said before the idea of a no deal exit is actually illusory - the day after such an exit, the same issues included in the withdrawal agreement previously agreed by Theresa May will be being discussed in search of, well, let's call it a 'deal' - so it doesn't make sense to sour personal relations unnecessarily.
One theory about the reason Johnson has made a deal all but impossible is that he wants to use that failure as a reason for calling an election, where he will position himself as the Brexit champion. Farage has recently said that he would be willing to have an election pact with a Conservative party that actively championed a no deal Brexit. While I think it's clear such a platform would not be supported by a majority of people, it would be supported by a significant minority. If only 1 candidate in each seat were supporting that platform - and opposition parties did not cooperate in a similar way - that could win a clear majority of seats.
If that were the strategy, Johnson's plan to prorogue Parliament would be likely to be part of it. It's only a few days since Johnson's spokesmen flatly denied any intention to prorogue Parliament (rather than avoiding the question or giving a non-committal answer). That suggests to me a deliberate intention to inflame the opposition - perhaps with the aim of provoking a no confidence motion. That would give him a potential reason to call a general election prior to Brexit, allowing him to capture a large number of votes specifically on that issue - that would be more difficult to do after Brexit has actually happened.
I don't know if that is his strategy, but if it is it's a pretty risky one. It's true that opposition parties combining in an election-wide political pact is very unusual and there's been no great signs of an ability to form a common purpose over Brexit to date. However, if Johnson keeps raising the stakes it's hard to rule anything out.
The move by the UK government to prorogue parliament effectively reduces the period of time that parliament will have to debate Brexit to a few days in early September, and then the period between the Queen's speech and October 31st. It is likely that it will be supplemented by further attempts to delay and to filibuster efforts to pass legislation relating to Brexit. In effect they're time wasting.
There are however a number of problems with this move, tactically as well as the long term problems that come with gaming the system. It unifies the Remainer opposition and reduces the legitimacy of the government, which makes it more likely that Conservative rebels will oppose him in a vote of no confidence and support another figure who will lead a temporary coalition government. It makes the Queen complicit in political matters in a way which it is possible to challenge legally. Parliament may also choose to continue to meet symbolically, which could be corrosive for Johnson's authority.
Expect street demonstrations, undignified confrontations in parliament, and lots of action in the courts. Britain's institutions are now being pushed to breaking point and whatever happens in the end the 'unwritten constitution' is going to need a thorough revamping in order to avoid future chaos. The fixed term parliaments act for example... Don't really know what will happen from here except that the temperature in the UK is going way up. It's possible that the government might settle for just getting Brexit through in any form, and will push no-deal as far as it can to represent that as a compromise, but for now the battle lines look drawn like the penultimate episode in a drama series.
@Balrog99: The free movement in between members of the EU--the lack of strong immigration restriction between EU states--has been around since the 90's; the hysteria over Muslims entering the UK by first entering Germany is very recent. It was not German moralizing that established that policy; it was fearmongering that made that already long-running policy suddenly controversial.
But the UK is not the only EU member that opposed this. They're just the only one backing it up with action. Again, how is immigration policy related to trade? The EU power members are forcing their views on lesser members in my opinion.
Edit: I don't blame London wanting control of their own immigration policies instead of having to arbitrarily accept policies determined mostly by Germany and Belgium. If Germany or Belgium want to accept more immigrants then fine, but to say that they can accept as many immigrants as they want and then allow them to move to any EU member is quite ludicrous in my opinion. How is that hard to understand?
It might be worth clarifying that there is not freedom of immigration to the EU - that's a matter for each individual country. The freedom of movement within the EU is one of the four freedoms underpinning the Single Market (capital, goods and services are the others). Nor would immigrants to one country be immediately free to travel to others - the freedom of movement relates to EU citizens, not to all residents of a country.
I can't be bothered to search for exact numbers at the moment, but the number of recent immigrants to somewhere like Germany that have moved on to other countries like the UK will certainly be tiny. The concerns about immigration being raised during the Brexit referendum were primarily associated with movements from Eastern European countries. Johnson famously stoked fears by referring to potential movements from Turkey (which is not now and never has been close to becoming part of the EU) and I dare say others did try and conflate immigration from outside the EU with movements within it - but that was not a major part of the narrative.
One theory about the reason Johnson has made a deal all but impossible is that he wants to use that failure as a reason for calling an election, where he will position himself as the Brexit champion. Farage has recently said that he would be willing to have an election pact with a Conservative party that actively championed a no deal Brexit. While I think it's clear such a platform would not be supported by a majority of people, it would be supported by a significant minority. If only 1 candidate in each seat were supporting that platform - and opposition parties did not cooperate in a similar way - that could win a clear majority of seats.
I don't disagree with that assessment. The problem with liars is this: just because *anything* they say can be a lie doesn't meant that *everything* they say is a lie. Still, it is best to presume that they are lying and proceed from there.
But you didn't say "presume he is lying then go from there", you said presume "they" are lying and I thought you were talking about China because we were discussing Trump and China and you said to assume they were lying.
One would think that I would know better than to use non-specific identifiers when writing. I own that mistake.
No big deal, it makes sense now but when I read it I really thought you meant China so sorry for snapping about that.
Anyway, seems Trump was indeed lying.
"Aides privately conceded the phone calls Trump described didn't happen the way he said they did," CNN reported Wednesday. "Instead, two officials said Trump was eager to project optimism that might boost markets, and conflated comments from China's vice premier with direct communication from the Chinese."
Trump is agitated, CNN reports, because "the economy is flashing warning signs Trump didn't expect, his trade war with China is dragging on months longer than expected yet he refuses to give in," and he's "spinning to find victories to sell to voters." The voters may be fooled — China apparently isn't.
No big deal, it makes sense now but when I read it I really thought you meant China so sorry for snapping about that.
No worries--apologies are never necessary here, at least not to me. If I took things personally then I would no longer be here at all--it would not be worth the stress.
Apologies certainly aren't necessary--no one is required to do that sort of thing--but apologies are a very good thing to do if they're appropriate. It's easy to misunderstand people online and the nature of an anonymous forum makes it easy for us to think of our fellow forumites as something besides real people on the other side of the screen. Making an apology is healthy and it reminds everyone that we're really all in this together.
No big deal, it makes sense now but when I read it I really thought you meant China so sorry for snapping about that.
Anyway, seems Trump was indeed lying.
"Aides privately conceded the phone calls Trump described didn't happen the way he said they did," CNN reported Wednesday. "Instead, two officials said Trump was eager to project optimism that might boost markets, and conflated comments from China's vice premier with direct communication from the Chinese."
Trump is agitated, CNN reports, because "the economy is flashing warning signs Trump didn't expect, his trade war with China is dragging on months longer than expected yet he refuses to give in," and he's "spinning to find victories to sell to voters." The voters may be fooled — China apparently isn't.
The criminal case(s) against Jeffrey Epstein have officially been dropped--you cannot prosecute a dead person. The civil cases are going to drag out for years.
I am glad that Dorian decided to blow by Puerto Rico.
No big deal, it makes sense now but when I read it I really thought you meant China so sorry for snapping about that.
No worries--apologies are never necessary here, at least not to me. If I took things personally then I would no longer be here at all--it would not be worth the stress.
But in these difficult hyper-partisan times a little respect for your fellow man is not a bad thing.
The criminal case(s) against Jeffrey Epstein have officially been dropped--you cannot prosecute a dead person. The civil cases are going to drag out for years.
I am glad that Dorian decided to blow by Puerto Rico.
Well the NHC is forecasting it to broadside Florida as a Major (Category 3+) Monday afternoon.
The criminal case(s) against Jeffrey Epstein have officially been dropped--you cannot prosecute a dead person. The civil cases are going to drag out for years.
I am glad that Dorian decided to blow by Puerto Rico.
Well the NHC is forecasting it to broadside Florida as a Major (Category 3+) Monday afternoon.
Florida went for Trump in 2016 and he needs it for 2020. So unlike Puerto Rico, they're going to have federal aid coming out the wazoo. I assume Trump is cheering the storm on.
Comments
https://www.thoughtco.com/corn-pone-opinions-by-mark-twain-1690231
But you didn't say "presume he is lying then go from there", you said presume "they" are lying and I thought you were talking about China because we were discussing Trump and China and you said to assume they were lying.
And you're right about the espionage etc though technically that's not lying it's more stealing.
I wouldn't myself presume China to be telling the truth. They're not any more reliable than Trump. In this case if I had to choose who was telling the truth, I wouldn't choose Trump. That's because of his character. He dug his own grave as far his believability. However, this isn't a government like Germany, France or the UK. In any other circumstance I'd be disinclined to believe China. That means its like the 2016 election, pick your poison...
I can't imagine the EU has any reason to offer such a deal. Obviously the UK leaving will hurt economically, but it will almost certainly hurt UK citizens much more. And offering some deal seems to create a moral hazard here, where any other member could threaten to leave and leverage that into some beneficial concession.
Because somebody has got to hurt. God forbid that nobody be hurt.
The whole point of the EU 'was' to 'trade' as a bloc in order to compete with the US, China and Russia. That it became political bullshit about things other than trade is because of Brussels & Berlin for the most part.
Or Boris Johnson is an opportunist and caused the most part of the complaints not Brussels and Berlin. He, and others, painted cooperation as weakness and complained about it and lied. Like Trump he fearmongered about the 'other' invading immigrants. Nobody likes the scary 'other'.
This wound is self inflicted.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/28/trump-lawrence-odonnell-deutsche-bank-1476863
Or maybe immigration issues shouldn't be tied to EU membership at all. What the fuck does immigration have to do with trade? It's bully pulpit 'moralizing' by mostly Germany that has led to this. Italy, Spain and Greece would have abandoned ship already if they weren't sucking on the EU teats...
Edit: The interesting thing is that without the UK, the EU may find themselves to be in a bit of a pickle. Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands may be better off going it alone rather than propping up states that don't hold their own. It might only take one more 'major' defection to bring down the whole house of cards...
But the UK is not the only EU member that opposed this. They're just the only one backing it up with action. Again, how is immigration policy related to trade? The EU power members are forcing their views on lesser members in my opinion.
Edit: I don't blame London wanting control of their own immigration policies instead of having to arbitrarily accept policies determined mostly by Germany and Belgium. If Germany or Belgium want to accept more immigrants then fine, but to say that they can accept as many immigrants as they want and then allow them to move to any EU member is quite ludicrous in my opinion. How is that hard to understand?
I would also point out that while I dont pretend to have a super firm grasp on EU politics, it makes sense that the most robust economies would be the ones that receive the largest amount of immigration. So while Britain is seeing some, I suspect Germany is seeing a lot more.
So it's not like this is some conniving plan where Germany has everyone else receive a ton of immigration while not receiving any themselves.
Also, to be frank: The EU as an organization has done an incredible amount in keeping the peace in Europe. Economic relations make that easier to accomplish, but it only takes a little while to disentangle yourself economically before you might consider yourself free to engage in war (See every major war in the 20th century). The politics in the EU binds those countries together in a way that has resulted in the longest period of peace on the continent in modern history. That's not nothing...
The idea that you can have free trade and not have a parallel freer movement of people is deluded. And it strikes me as wanting to see the world as you'd like it as opposed to how it is.
We have much the same thing going on in the United States. I do not have to go through nearly as much trouble to visit or move to Oklahoma as I would to visit or move to a foreign country. Likewise, I don't have to go through any special process to visit friends in Austin, even though it's a longer drive than a lot of Europeans would need to visit an entirely different country. It means Oklahoma can't really block Houston folks from visiting Oklahoma, and it means that Austin can't keep out all the San Antonians, if they wanted to, but it does save the government money on enforcement, and it saves citizens the time and trouble of going through customs.
Barriers slow stuff down. They have advantages, too, but slowing stuff down and sometimes blocking trade and people is their very purpose.
This is extremely well said, and often overlooked. Whatever problems exist in Europe right now, they're so minute compared to what problems have existed there in the not too distant past. And it's myopic to slam the institution most responsible for that win based on some relatively very minor issues it might or might not be creating.
Europe is nowhere near like the US though. Comparing Oklahoma to Michigan is nothing like comparing Poland to Italy. They don't have nearly the same viewpoints, motivations or even the same languages. I daresay Mississippi and California are more alike than almost any two European countries. That's why when the EU starts to deviate from purely trade issues they start having problems.
I agree there are several things pointing to there being no chance of a deal with the current UK government:
- the desire for the EU to avoid other countries leaving is certainly part of it.
- another issue is the EU supporting Ireland in attempting to maintain the Good Friday Agreement (which the UK appears to be willing to break despite saying they continue to support it). Even though Ireland is a relatively small country within the EU, that's rather the point - most of the EU nations are relatively small and if the EU as a whole is seen as acting so directly against the wishes and interests of one of the smaller states the chances of other states getting worried are high. That would mean a real risk there would be an inability to take decisions and ultimately a break-up.
- Johnson started his premiership by setting down a red line saying that a deal was only possible if the backstop was removed. I think the only way to make sense of that is that he doesn't want a deal, but wants to blame someone else for the failure to get one.
The cordial discussions between EU leaders and Johnson in the last week or so should not be interpreted as the sides getting closer together in search of a deal - there have been no moves of substance in the EU's position. Rather it reflects that Johnson is now PM and other countries want continuing good relations with the UK after Brexit (and they're playing their own version of blame the other party). Apart from anything else, like I've said before the idea of a no deal exit is actually illusory - the day after such an exit, the same issues included in the withdrawal agreement previously agreed by Theresa May will be being discussed in search of, well, let's call it a 'deal' - so it doesn't make sense to sour personal relations unnecessarily.
One theory about the reason Johnson has made a deal all but impossible is that he wants to use that failure as a reason for calling an election, where he will position himself as the Brexit champion. Farage has recently said that he would be willing to have an election pact with a Conservative party that actively championed a no deal Brexit. While I think it's clear such a platform would not be supported by a majority of people, it would be supported by a significant minority. If only 1 candidate in each seat were supporting that platform - and opposition parties did not cooperate in a similar way - that could win a clear majority of seats.
If that were the strategy, Johnson's plan to prorogue Parliament would be likely to be part of it. It's only a few days since Johnson's spokesmen flatly denied any intention to prorogue Parliament (rather than avoiding the question or giving a non-committal answer). That suggests to me a deliberate intention to inflame the opposition - perhaps with the aim of provoking a no confidence motion. That would give him a potential reason to call a general election prior to Brexit, allowing him to capture a large number of votes specifically on that issue - that would be more difficult to do after Brexit has actually happened.
I don't know if that is his strategy, but if it is it's a pretty risky one. It's true that opposition parties combining in an election-wide political pact is very unusual and there's been no great signs of an ability to form a common purpose over Brexit to date. However, if Johnson keeps raising the stakes it's hard to rule anything out.
There are however a number of problems with this move, tactically as well as the long term problems that come with gaming the system. It unifies the Remainer opposition and reduces the legitimacy of the government, which makes it more likely that Conservative rebels will oppose him in a vote of no confidence and support another figure who will lead a temporary coalition government. It makes the Queen complicit in political matters in a way which it is possible to challenge legally. Parliament may also choose to continue to meet symbolically, which could be corrosive for Johnson's authority.
Expect street demonstrations, undignified confrontations in parliament, and lots of action in the courts. Britain's institutions are now being pushed to breaking point and whatever happens in the end the 'unwritten constitution' is going to need a thorough revamping in order to avoid future chaos. The fixed term parliaments act for example... Don't really know what will happen from here except that the temperature in the UK is going way up. It's possible that the government might settle for just getting Brexit through in any form, and will push no-deal as far as it can to represent that as a compromise, but for now the battle lines look drawn like the penultimate episode in a drama series.
It might be worth clarifying that there is not freedom of immigration to the EU - that's a matter for each individual country. The freedom of movement within the EU is one of the four freedoms underpinning the Single Market (capital, goods and services are the others). Nor would immigrants to one country be immediately free to travel to others - the freedom of movement relates to EU citizens, not to all residents of a country.
I can't be bothered to search for exact numbers at the moment, but the number of recent immigrants to somewhere like Germany that have moved on to other countries like the UK will certainly be tiny. The concerns about immigration being raised during the Brexit referendum were primarily associated with movements from Eastern European countries. Johnson famously stoked fears by referring to potential movements from Turkey (which is not now and never has been close to becoming part of the EU) and I dare say others did try and conflate immigration from outside the EU with movements within it - but that was not a major part of the narrative.
One would think that I would know better than to use non-specific identifiers when writing. I own that mistake.
Anyway, seems Trump was indeed lying.
"Aides privately conceded the phone calls Trump described didn't happen the way he said they did," CNN reported Wednesday. "Instead, two officials said Trump was eager to project optimism that might boost markets, and conflated comments from China's vice premier with direct communication from the Chinese."
Trump is agitated, CNN reports, because "the economy is flashing warning signs Trump didn't expect, his trade war with China is dragging on months longer than expected yet he refuses to give in," and he's "spinning to find victories to sell to voters." The voters may be fooled — China apparently isn't.
https://theweek.com/speedreads-amp/861872/trump-made-highlevel-chinese-tradetalk-calls-boost-markets-aides-admit
No worries--apologies are never necessary here, at least not to me. If I took things personally then I would no longer be here at all--it would not be worth the stress.
Hah! I knew I should have placed that bet...
I am glad that Dorian decided to blow by Puerto Rico.
But in these difficult hyper-partisan times a little respect for your fellow man is not a bad thing.
Well the NHC is forecasting it to broadside Florida as a Major (Category 3+) Monday afternoon.
Florida went for Trump in 2016 and he needs it for 2020. So unlike Puerto Rico, they're going to have federal aid coming out the wazoo. I assume Trump is cheering the storm on.
We told you this Bolsanaro guy was a terrible idea.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-rainforest-fires-children-in-brazil-respiratory-problems-health-death-are-having-trouble-breathing/