Hey, it's working for the Ueberklass, so it's working as intended.

As I pointed out to a number of people last week, the absolute youngest people involved in the Normandy landings are 92 now.  If you're 80, you have little memory of the war and NO memory of the Blitz.

Reading that Wall-Streetwalker Wanniski's Laffer-Curve-promoting drivel makes me go all Luke Skywalker: Impressive.  Everything you just said is wrong.

I think the confusion for many in common law jurisdictions is that here, if a court finds probable cause, it issues the arrest warrant; the prosecutor has no such authority.  And it's kind of a big deal because I personally have dealt with several situations where cops have tried to intimidate clients with "warrants" they issued themselves.  Hence we are leery of any warrant issued by an enforcing authority rather than a tribunal.

As a side note, I think the inherent differences between common law and civil law systems (which were never identified and addressed when Maastricht was being hammered out) provided much of the grist for the "We have to take control back from the Brussels bureaucrats" elements of the Brexit campaign.

Nailed it.  The DNC/DLC/DCCC would rather run a road-kill skunk than a progressive.  And the Koch Bros. are ready to start throwing money at them to make sure that keeps happening.  Bunch of whores.

Oh no, abortion is just a part of their overall repression of women, which in turn is just a part of their overall repression of anyone who isn't a rich, white, heterosexual male.

What's the old saw about one definition of insanity being repeating the same behavior and expecting different results?  Neocons are straight-jacket/rubber-room/chain-them-to-the-wall-level criminally insane.

What's the old saw about one definition of insanity being repeating the same behavior and expecting different results?  Neocons are straight-jacket/rubber-room/chain-them-to-the-wall-level criminally insane.

Isn't illegal, it's just always been reserved for little people like Iceland and Venezuela.  But now that the UK has decided to relegate itself to vassal-state status....

The only real crime in neo-liberal society is not to have sufficient money to pay your lawyers off for getting you off whatever crimes you are accused of. And Trump has shown that a large proportion of the population is ok with that.

Hard to say at a Parliamentary level. He was already the overwhelming favourite and many careerist Tory MPs would have seen supporting him as a ticket to a ministerial job.

At a grass roots Tory membership level, Trump's endorsement enhances his prestige as a global player and plays into the Tory conceit of being very important on the world stage. Many of them like Trump anyway,and share his attitudes to the EU.

The DUPes are allowed to make a lot of noise, but how much of their support is solid?

Their support is solid enough amongst their core fundamentalist protestant base, but that only amounts to 20-30% of the electorate. Most of them actually quite dislike and distrust the English, but know that their diminishing hegemony is based on the "English Backstop" made up of guarantees of being part of the UK and in receipt of £10 Billion p.a. in subsidies. They know the Republic of Ireland couldn't afford such largesse, and, in any case, would have different priorities in spending what subsidies it could afford.

But the elephant in the room is the long term decline and systematic underdevelopment of the N. Ireland economy which has made those subsidies necessary in the first place. From having a GDP/Capita of about twice that of the Republic on independence in 1922, that ratio has now been reversed to being half that of the Republic. If re-unified now, Northern Ireland would be a proportionately larger drag on the all Ireland economy than the former GDR is on Germany.

In principle, however, absent civil unrest, there is no reason why N. Ireland should be any less productive than the Republic if run on similar lines within the EU. The problem is this could take 30+ years to achieve - see continuing underperformance and de-population of the former East Germany within Germany - and there is no way the Republic could afford that under-performance in the meantime, especially with changes in global corporate taxation rules in the offing.

So the DUP support base is stuck in something of a time warp, economically, politically, and socially, with no one really wanting them or being able to afford them, and with their traditional strategy of just saying no to everyone losing its efficacy. The EU/Ireland has steadfastly ignored their objections to the backstop and I suspect Boris Johnson will probably end up doing so too. They will then become a very nasty minority to have to deal with in N. Ireland, Ireland, the UK and, by association, in the EU.

Because previous military interventions in the middle east have worked so well...

No, but they did begin life as the political wing of Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church which was a breakaway from the Presbyterian Church because the latter's bigoted, homophobic, and creationist teachings weren't fundamentalist enough... Religion rather than drugs is their thing, but then religion is the opium of the people...

No need for anything illegal. Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey...

Here are two related, authoritative but diverging explanations in the USA of appropriate health care for transgender persons. Each of these was cited in recent litigation.

Health Disparities at the Intersection of Disability and Gender Identity
"research" into disparity of medical outcomes ultimately correlated to earnings and "unsupportive family networks," which legislation cannot remedy

Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People
clinical treatment of (alleged, as above) mental disability and controversial nomenclature

Given these examples, is it reasonable to suppose that one's "psychosocial" satisfaction with gender-affirmation or sex re-assignment would be identical to one's political expectations, but for "the visceral fear/disgust" expressed by psychopaths who are committed to sex discrimination in any case?

Well, Frank, I'm about as far from an optimist as it's possible to get, but I think NI has had a taste of peace and likes the flavor.  The DUPes are allowed to make a lot of noise, but how much of their support is solid?  NI doesn't exist in the UK without massive subsidies, and how forthcoming will those be under a hard-right Tory regime?  Add into the mix the social changes of the last 20 years, including the Republic's massive liberalization and most of NI's population discovering it can get on nicely with the southern neighbors, thank you very much.  So when NI finally has to face the issue that has been looming for a century, is it more likely to reboot The Troubles or to tell Ever Littler England to keep itself and its attitudes on the other side of the Irish Sea?

Two key words there: competent and negotiator.  There is no competence, and negotiating has never been on the table.  Why bother when it's always been "obvious" the EU would just cave?

We all knew End-Game Middle East War was back in the scenario mix when Der Drumpfenfuehrer brought John Boltbrain back.

Craig Murray had a similar thought, less the cocaine, at GlobalResearch last Fall.

we are being used as a wedge issue to attack both gay rights with an aim on whittling minority rights generally.

Who is using transgender political agitation to "whittl[e] minority rights generally"? Step back from hyperbole induced histrionics in media commentaries on the occasion of 2019 Pride month. Prohibition of sex discrimination (all of its instant permutations, including "gender" perception) in legislation and, most important, case law actually is not excluding transgender persons. Proceeding from a very important series of categorical ("protected class") opinions (beginning with Perry v. Schwartzenegger and culminating in Hollingsworth v. Perry) differential application of any state or federal law is impermissible. Of course, that doesn't immediately guarantee someone won't try. As they will every day, every year somewhere or another to some other representative member of a "protected class".

Iowa Sued Over Ban on Medicaid Funds for Sex-Change Surgery

Two transgender Iowans and a gay rights group backed by the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Friday challenging the constitutionality of a new state law barring Medicaid coverage for sex-reassignment surgeries.
[...]
The law, passed on the final day of the Iowa Legislature's session and tacked on to a 108-page appropriation bill, was in response to a unanimous March 8 ruling from the Iowa Supreme Court striking down a state Department of Human Services rule excluding sex-reassignment surgeries from Medicaid coverage. The state's high court said the rule violated the Iowa Civil Rights Act, which includes gender identity among the protected characteristics.

Justices Rule Bias Claims Can Skip Over EEOC
Supreme Court rejects appeal over transgender bathrooms
Trump administration to scrap rule protecting transgender patients from discrimination

"When Congress prohibited sex discrimination, it did so according to the plain meaning of the term, and we are making our regulations conform," said Roger Severino, director of the department's Office for Civil Rights.

ie. the gender regulation of the PPACA is redundant. In point of fact, defects of states' Medicaid coverage and PPACA provisions arise from minimum mental health care benefit schedules, regardless of "protected class". christ Obama admin fucked up "insurance reform" and attempted to mitigate from the back-door.

I could argue that over the last four decades LGBQT have fomented more political divisions (by definition) in the USA than have "right-wing" reactionaries, wherever they may be found embedded in public offices including but not limited to ecumenical agents directed and financed by secular institutions. LGBQT activists have readily adopted specious argument which belie historical and concurrent civil rights legislation, litigation, and enforcement authority from the last century. The political agenda of this cohort is approaching the limit of grievances by its own designs on legitimacy. Competing interest in enforcement --those "wedge issues" inherent to sexual orientation-- within the ranks is illustrated in ideological disarray as well the prompt for discussion, "The lack of dedicated LGBTQ media is a disaster" (Bacharach, above).

I've thought about it --false dichotomies and "intersectional" calculus promoted by "the false left"-- a lot over forty years. I say that as one "in it but not of it", one who has been and remains an ally of "minorities" struggling to secure equal protection and enforcement of the laws of this nation while balancing "normative" shibboleths of "dignity" disposed to mere status quo ante victory; as one who has observed with dismay the degeneration of prescriptive action into revolving, rhetorical descriptions about "equality", "hate", and "empowerment" given by some figurehead of the day; as one who is reasonable suspicious of persuasion which advocates for primacy in peculiarity of suffering.

But for daily, conspicuous consumption of moral and industrial goods by "powerful" individuals, one might forget that we are all suffering at the hand of that nonpartisan minority. For rest of us our goal is to alleviate suffering regardless of hierarchy or condition of servitude, to commit our productive energy to positive reinforcement of institutional adaptation to diverse demands. Which means the majority of us need to acknowledge that barriers to achieving that goal lie not enumerating expressions of humanity by every conceivable ("demographic") characteristic --the infinitesimal "why" in or "how" of discriminatory affects; but in our failures wholly to affirm and demand from private- and public-sector agents of our governments the obligation to delivery essential utilities irrespective of the characteristics of any one.

As to speculation of a revival of "female homosexual" militancy, please note "news" so far removed from "solidarity" and "gender" coherence derived from "sexual revolution" as to be comical: LGBTQ Protest Under Fire from Zionists for Banning Pro-Israel Symbols

Dyke marches are a tradition in the U.S. that typically precede regular pride marches: they are distinguishable because they tend to engage in direct action, such as dropping banners and blocking traffic, and the participants typically hold more radical politics.

tbh, I laughed aloud reading this, because I had been mistaken for a dyke back in the day when the "label" had political force and zero religious connotation, because my first-year university informant advised me not so long ago that the idiom is offensive today. I had to bring her up to speed on the actual disintegration of "Women's March" organization.

So, did Trump's endorsement of Johnson help him or hurt him?

It is also obvious that the Boris Tories and the Farage Brutals are in a death match for the same group of voters and there really isn't room in UK politics with FPTP for two parties on the right. tbh, post-brexit I'm not sure either has a future

Any chance the two cut a survival deal?  Provided, of course, they can overcome the trifling point that Frottage and Boor-Ass each has an ego with its own post code.

The eruption of naked privilege and grotesque hypocrisy has genuinely sickened many people. Their willingness to preside over the destruction of poor peoples' lives for lesser crimes than they themsleves committed has given a pause to many who would previously have considered them.

Then you're still a far more decent lot than we are.  We've been fine for decades with scions of the Ueberklass getting away scot-free for behavior that puts the less-advantaged in prison for years.

And if I should chance to run over a cad,
I can pay for the damage if ever so bad.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.

Once again the DUPes demonstrate a firm nongrasp of reality.  I'm compelled to conclude their party meetings are held in opium dens.

If I were European Commission president, the moment Boor-Ass became PM, I would use that statement as a basis for freezing all UK assets in the EU.

A piece of SOMETHING, certainly.

Yes, 15 miles off of Miami.  It will be a public-private partnership (Private partner: Trump Waterwalls, Ltd.; incorporation jurisdiction: Isle of Jersey; incorporator: Donny Drumpfenfuehrer Anstalt, Vaduz, Liechtenstein; bank: Twenty-Third Bank of Grand Cayman, recently formed by a consortium led by Gold-Sachs and J.P. Morgoth Chase) in which the private partner will take a boatload of money up front, skip out, and leave the public holding a big bag of malodorous BarnStuff.  Pence is already an expert at these arrangements.

The only reason he can locate New Jersey is that he had a casino there once.  That he ran into the ground.