New board game just dropped! Smugglers of Canaan.

The things that gets under my skin the most are: the contempt they have for much of the populace; their habitual dishonesty; holding power is more important than achieving any measurable good; their apparent philosophy seems to be gradually increasing inequality; their toxic attitude to anyone to their left.

It's sadly the same story in the UK the public are sick and tired of the Tory's bullshit. Unfortunately the Labour Party has never been soo right wing. Normally they they wouldn't have have stood a chance on such an authoritarian, uninspiring manifesto but here we are. The cynicism of the people in charge of the Labour Party stinks to high heaven. They fucked the party while the left were in charge then purged them when they retook control. I'll be lucky to still be about by the time the left ever get control again.

There's a bit of a difference in sentencing between premeditated murder and manslaughter

Nobody asking if the bag belonged to Baggenstos? Nominative determinism win?

Kissinger, while organising the bombing of Cambodia and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, said that if he personally didn't organise it the alternative (some other psychotic official) would be worse.

Should we give him a pass? Forgive him his crimes against humanity because someone else would be worse? Does that make the systematic murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians palatable?

Intelligent design but the budget was managed by an insurance company.

They've still got a good reputation for news. So good that after a few combative interviews with Tory MPs (back when they were in power a few years ago) the Culture Secretary wanted to sell the channel off.

Don't get me wrong they can still produce the occasional good comedy or documentary but they used to do so consistently.

Bloody Vikings

You won't get any disagreement from me on the corrosive effects of advertising.

I do think that Channel 4 used to regularly produce greater content than it can now. But that probably is more to do with advertising revenue being leeched away to online platforms and the growth of its direct competitors.

Well the distinction here is that TV license paying citizens of the UK don't get the ads.

All Sunnis and all Shiites hate each other? Even unto death?

Well then they must be truely barbaric and therefore deserving of the decades of avarice inspired wrath meted out upon them by successive US governments and their proxy settler colony.

In the UK the BBC only has advertisements for its own content, nothing else. As bad as its got since Tony Blair and David Cameron both undermined its independence and quality, at least there are no ad breaks in its shows.

Starmer seems to disagree.

Capitalism™

It's the same schadenfreude as Obama bowing to the Saudi King. The rightwing press were having conniptions that the 'leader of the free world' could show any deference to a Middle Eastern leader but it was just normal political niceties.

There are orders of difference between Netanyaho and Putin in terms of future longevity and difficulty in reducing them if that's what the USA wants to do. Putin is a cockroach. For the foreseeable future he is who you're going to have to deal with. So any serious leader will always be running a political calculation as to what their position must be. Stein erred and so sweaty commentators are making hay.

If the Democrats wanted to undermine her position they could easily stop supporting Israel's psychopathy. Any popularity that Stein might be enjoying would wither on the vine.

I still think it's a nothing burger. It a type of political schadenfreude that always happens. Here the UK you'd get MPs unable to condemn Trump because there's a chance that they'll have a Foreign Office role while he's potentially in power. It comes across as weak but they have to play their cards close to be effective in that role.

With Stein it seems like she hadden't evolved her message on Putin to respond to questions that are current about her party's funding. It's just disappointing, not particularly damning.

Counter-counterpoint: the Tea Party was an astroturf movement funded by big oil, big tobacco and the Koch brothers. Given massive amounts of support by media companies (lots and lots of oxygen). With the purpose of taking over the GOP and entrenching their toxic industries and power.

With the perspective we have now it is clear that their plan was to push Republican supporters over into fascism (not to say that it wasn't latent within many of them) and reduce the risks of democracy to the oligarchy.

Kinda relevant: from the latest Private Eye. Just a little insight to the background of the people pushing for this outcome.

The Heritage Foundation who would have guessed it would be in the mix.

Microfilms used to be sold as having a life expectancy of up 500 years. But in my experience they were a pain to use and the machines costly to maintain. The films would tear regularly too. Also the quality of the recorded image could be very poor sometimes.