Doug

It's time for Democrats to put pragmatism before purity and make Graham Platner their nominee for the United States Senate bsky.app/profile/poll...

Finding it funny how progressive views on Graham Platner so neatly divide between those who still post on Twitter (positive) and those who post on Bluesky (negative)

Who fucking cares

Usually when Labour loses because of Muslim voters they blame it on dirty tactics like Galloway accusing opponents of being infidels or secret lesbians. But the Greens did nothing of the sort. Cries of "sectarianism" are a tantrum that its become unviable for progressive parties to support Israel

Cuba policy is a good summary of the Democrats. Trump labels Cuba a state-sponsor of terror in his last week in office & throttles its vital tourism industry. Biden leaves this in place in a failed attempt to win Florida, only lifting it in his last week in office. Trump reverses this a week later

They've got what they care about most, a deeply socially conservative anti-immigration Labour government. They might even get net-zero migration. They haven't gotten much influence on the economy, but Labour's economic and fiscal policies are almost designed to alienate everyone anyway

They're the faction of the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff! They are *the* leading faction

Unfortunately the Starmer government is too spineless to pick a good fight even on a matter with universal support against a universally despised crackhead billionaire

It makes perfect sense. The most unpopular government ever "boycotting" Twitter obviously won't do anything. Banning the whole thing until they stop AI sexual abuse images will.

I only consider Avatar 2 to be above "decent" but seeing Star Wars and Marvel fans attack Avatar is like watching Kemi Badenoch supporters puzzled as to why Nigel Farage is popular. It's doing the thing you want but with basic skill and competence!

Well if there were a lot of people who bought blu-rays for Avatar 1 but didn't care enough to watch it, Avatar 2 and 3 wouldn't have been massive hits

It was the top-selling Blu-Ray for 5 years straight! They're obviously most popular as theatrical experiences but you can't ask for them to be *more* popular at home

‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’ Blasts To Top Of Nielsen Streaming Charts In Debut Week; ‘Never Have I Ever’ Enters List At No. 4 In its debut week on Disney+ and Max, Avatar: The Way of Water was by far the most-watched streaming program

The first one was a big hit on DVD/ Blu Ray, the second one was a big hit on streaming www.nielsen.com/insights/201... deadline.com/2023/07/avat...

Labour's new social conservatism isn't because of a rejection of Blairism though, it's the result of a rightward shift among centrist elites against the perceived excesses of the activist left and increased nativist sentiment. Blair himself is an aggressive opponent of trans rights

Their other big problem of course is their various stupid attempts at spending cuts, the most toxic of which you said was a great idea!

If there was a button called "economic liberalism" which immediately brought back pre-GFC growth levels, I'm sure someone would press it. But the government's real problem is that growth has been stagnant since 08, and this has forced them to raise taxes to pay for improved public services

I don't remember Starmer ever having a plan to govern

Starmer loyalists want to risk a Reform government because they have some esoteric beef with Andy Burnham tracing back to 2016. It's quite absurd

Having a deeply incompetent and uncharismatic leader is quite a drag on a political party's fortunes! The Government faces a lot of challenges and a high cost for failure, which is why the Labour Party should attempt to put its best foot forward.

I think having a leader who can talk like a human being, knows how to do the basics of Parliamentary management, isn't associated with Reeves' various toxic decisions and doesn't deliberately aggravate liberal & left voters would do a quite a bit better than Starmer

A couple weeks ago I had a conversation with a (somewhat) senior Labour right figure who was at peace with Rayner taking over but abhorred the prospect of Andy Burnham, even after it was pointed out the latter is much more popular than the former

It doesn't benefit the Labour Party in anyway, but it does benefit some internal factions for a temporary period of time. So who's to say whether it's good or bad?

The use of pensioners at the Palestine Action protest was also a great tactic to make the ban look ridiculous by forcing Ministers to defend charging kind elderly people with terror offences. They clearly made sure those arrested were especially sympathetic and non-threatening

If Iran is now actively pursuing nuclear weapons, which is not proven by any means, it would obviously be the result of the United States ripping up the agreement it made to prevent that. And it would be in their rational self-interest. It's important to remember that this war was preventable

I obviously do not like the Islamic Republic of Iran. But this is a war where the primary dispute is something where one side has repeatedly shown a willingness to settle via negotiation and diplomacy, and the other side has repeatedly attempted to wreck that diplomacy.

Regardless, this war has been caused by Israel working to sabotage diplomacy at every turn, both in ripping up the JCPOA and now attempting to destroy Trump's negotiations. No need to handwave a clear pattern of aggressive, destabilising behaviour

I doubt Tulsi Gabbard would choose to leak to CNN if she wanted to influence the rest of the administration. I also doubt that CNN would publish this if it's Gabbard's insistence alone, given their close alignment with the traditionalist foreign policy blob and the Israel lobby

Israel says Iran was racing toward a nuclear weapon. US intel says it was years away | CNN Politics When Israel launched its series of strikes against Iran last week, it also issued a number of dire warnings about the country’s nuclear program, suggesting Iran was fast approaching a point of no retu...

Not that it's a consensus view that Iran is close to nuclear weapons or actively pursuing them anyway edition.cnn.com/2025/06/17/p...

Maybe Israel shouldn't have successfully lobbied to destroy the international agreement which prevented Iran from getting nuclear weapons

Politics is never explicitly discussed in the series but I think The Final Reckoning shows the dangers of nuclear proliferation in a way that the Labour leadership would dismiss as CND propaganda