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I can’t recall such utter hopelessness in UK politics, with every political party in the grip of a self-serving cabal of the political class interested purely in personal interest. The Labour Party is entirely taken over by the Wes Streeting tendency. Its method is to find the most right wing racist in Hartlepool who ever […]

The post So Now Who Do We Vote For? appeared first on Craig Murray.

Is DeSantis already spent? Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I’ve been saying the smart move for DeSantis would have been to wait until 2028. Trump is still dominant and there’s just no way for anyone to get around it. It looks like some of his fans are starting to come to that realization as well: Among the 15-20 Republican mega-donors who control the purse strings in G.O.P. politics, there’s growing concern that Ron DeSantis, the great white knight from Tallahassee, might not be the one, or at least not yet.

Trump is facing multiple legal challenges and this is how he chooses who to represent him? Seated far to the left of the defendant, former President Donald J. Trump, in a Manhattan criminal courtroom on Tuesday was a lawyer who has never tried a case in court, whose phone was seized by federal agents executing a warrant last year, and who once hosted syndicated news segments bombastically defending the Trump White House. Seated to Mr. Trump’s far right was Todd Blanche, a newly hired criminal defense lawyer who also represents the lawyer at the far-left end of the table, Boris Epshteyn. In between them was Joe Tacopina, a combative presence on cable television who recently represented Mr. Trump’s future daughter-in-law, Kimberly Guilfoyle, before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The tableau, rounded out by another lawyer, Susan R. Necheles, from Mr. Trump’s arraignment on felony charges of falsifying business records, revealed more about the client than about the case at hand.

They’ll have Trumpism without so much Trump in it The persistent Mr. Frank Luntz delights us with yet another look into the minds and desires of Trump voters. He finds them, curiously, outside rural diners. He doesn’t specify how he selects his focus groups — more than two dozen! — and gets them to sit still for him. Some things haven’t changed. Like their sense of victimization (New York Times): Many felt ignored and forgotten by the professional political class before Mr. Trump, and victimized and ridiculed for liking him now. Like Republican primary voters nationwide, the focus group participants still respect him, most still believe in him, a majority think the 2020 election was stolen, and half still want him to run again in 2024. Others want Trump without so much Trumpiness in a 2024 presidential candidate. They want “a candidate who champions Mr. Trump’s agenda but with decency, civility and a commitment to personal responsibility and accountability.” Um, no, they don’t. That’s the difference between Luntz reporting what Trump voters say they want and considering what their choices actually reflect.

Tiffany Dover is ready to exit the shadows The conspiracy caucus’ legacy may linger long enough to bite us the next time a nasty virus appears. Brandy Zadrozny interviews Tiffany Dover, a Tennessee nurse unwillingly placed by anti-vaxxers at the center of their conspiracy theories (NBC News): I’d been following Tiffany since that day, Dec. 17, 2020. Like thousands of others, I first saw her on a livestream during the national rollout of Covid vaccines to front-line workers, where Tiffany became one of the first people in the U.S. to get a shot. I was also watching when she fainted immediately after, launching a wave of misinformation and conspiracy theories that would eventually unravel her life.  The modern anti-vaccine movement was powered by unverified stories of the dead and damaged. Tiffany wasn’t the first person to be swallowed up in an anti-vaccine propaganda campaign, and she wouldn’t be the last.  The unsettling thing about it — to me and the more well-meaning conspiracy theorists who took up an interest in Tiffany’s case — was that she seemed to just disappear. Imaginations ran wild.

Does it matter? New polling: With former President Donald Trump now formally charged on criminal charges, a majority of Americans (53%) believe he intentionally did something illegal, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll. An additional 11% say he acted wrongly but not intentionally. Only 20% believe Trump did not do anything wrong, and 16% say they don’t know, per the ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel. As part of the Tuesday charges against the former president, Manhattan prosecutors alleged that Trump engaged in a “scheme” to boost his election chances during the 2016 presidential race through a string of hush money payments made by others to boost his campaign, and then “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records” to conceal that criminal conduct. A “statement of facts” paired with the 34-count indictment alleges that Trump discussed the scheme while he was in the Oval Office and made reimbursement payments to his lawyer for a year while in office. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 34 felony counts and has long denied any wrongdoing.

The last 24 hours I’m not saying he’s having a mental breakdown because I think he actually believes this is a good strategy. But it’s still startling to see how it looks one right after another:

Observing his glee in humiliating Floridians who don’t agree with him — from high school students to immigrants to Disney to well, everyone — this does not surprise me: The torture regimes is well documented. We know what they did. And apparently, DeSantis was part of it, assigned to “ensure that the prisoners rights were upheld” but in fact, he oversaw torture, specifically the force feeding tactics to stop the prisoners from staging hunger strikes, (which the Pentagon fatuously defined as a form of “asymmetric warfare.”) DeSantis has been accused of overseeing the force feeding of massive amounts of Ensure causing the inmates to vomit and choke. (Don’t read this link about his time at Gitmo if you have a weak stomach.) I don’t know if it’s all true but the mere fact that DeSantis was part of this grotesque program disqualifies him from ever holding office as far as I’m concerned.

Also, they should probably ban pregnancy. That’s about 118 deaths per million, by far the worst of all developed nations. Also guns. Of course, guns.

And yes, the cops were completely irresponsible in saying there was a manifesto which is by definition “a published declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government.” I think it’s fair to assume they were pimping the right wing line…