When will Hillary Clinton give up her candidacy ?

We don't call elections over here. I won't be happy until he's in and chinless wonder Zak Goldsmith is out.

Overall the council/mayoral/PCC/Scottish Parliament/Welsh Assembly elections have been a bit of a mixed bag.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2016-36206505

Definitely not. You're confusing the long established, and mostly ceremonial, role of Lord Mayor with that of elected Mayor who has real power. Elected Mayors were introduced under Tony Blair. So far we've only had two, Ken and Boris.

Thanks, I'll be interested in the results.

The actual City of London is pretty small, isn't it? Isn't the place known as London mostly composed of what would be called suburbs over here?

Yes. "The City of London" is a square mile. It's also known as "The Square Mile," but the rest of London is still a city. It's just that when people talk about the "City" they mean the financial district, like Wall Street.

I don't think you'd call the parts of London outside the Square Mile suburbs, a lot of it is heavily urbanised. It's just that London has been growing steadily since it was founded by the Trojan Brutus, (or that might be a myth.) It's a collection of hamlets that got subsumed by the urban sprawl.

Quote Lash:


In the national election they will come down in favor of Hillary over Trump, for sure.

Lash seems to put a lot of faith in Hispanics being against Hillary, using an anti-Hillary rally led by Ron Gochez as a prime example. Here is a speech given a few years ago by Ron Gochez, this is his theme:



Here are excerpts from the speech:
It’s not just about Mexico; it’s about the global struggle against imperialism and capitalism! (applause)

We know that all of that is happening in the context of where we now stand is stolen, occupied Mexico! (applause)

And the message that we bring is that we want to bring more of a revolutionary context to this. Why is that these people, these frail, racist white people want to keep us out of this country? It’s not because simply the color of our skin, it’s not simply that they just want to exploit us, let me tell you why: because on this planet right now, 6 billion people…at the forefront of the revolutionary movement is La Raza (The Race)…(Applause)

When we go to Venezuela….(Applause)…when we go…

We have a long history of example from our commandante Fidel Castro Ruz, Viva Fidel! .....

.......They know that every single country… they know that we no longer will fall for these lies called borders… We know that the Salvadorans, the Guatemalans, Nicaragüenses, the Mexicanos, there’s no damn difference, we are all one people. So with that in mind, we see ourselves — all of us here — as The Northern Front of a Latin American Revolutionary Movement!

There are more than 40 million of our people north of the Rio Grande. That means to them that’s over 40 million potential revolutionaries north of the border inside the belly of the beast! So when you think why do they want to kick us, our people, out — that’s why! Because they know that we now know the truth, they know we are La Raza, we are professionals, we are educators, we are revolutionary students, what does that mean?

We are not just a regular culture any more! We are a culture of revolutionary spirit! And that’s the fear! (Applause)

This guy doesn't like Hillary, and is Lash's hope that Hillary will not receive the Hispanic vote.

Trump made his first play for the Hispanic vote by tweeting a picture of himself eating a taco bowl and saying "I love Hispanics"

when I read that yesterday I wondered if he thought Hispanic was the filling

Saw that. It was hilarious.

If he's anything like Naheed Nenshi, they'll be very lucky.

Mr. Khan won so they'll find out soon enough.

really? I wonder why I was getting notifications like this

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/06/sadiq-khan-ahead-of-zac-goldsmith-in-london-mayoralty-count

Well, either way, I am glad he got it as it further helps Islamophobia. Hopefully he will be a good mayor. I don't know how it works there, but, is London still the capitol of UK? Actually I just googled it. It is. Always wanted to go there.

Quote Izzy:

So, is the Mayor of London Mayor over just The Square Mile, or is he also Mayor over the surrounding districts as well?

Where Mitt Romney won white women by 14 points, Trump is now negative 20 points with that demographic. And that's just one piece of the enormous dilemma for the modern conservative party/movement with Trump as candidate.

The GOP is flying apart. Hannity says Paul Ryan is a "traitor". The boys and girls at NRO and Weekly Standard along with Krauthammer and Michael Gerson and John McCain and Mitt Romney and many others are actively and publicly doing whatever they can manage to bring Trump down, even now when it is understood he is the party's candidate. The Bircher billionaire class are pushing money down to state and local levels to hopefully protect the party's standing in (mainly) red states and to try and hold on to the House and Senate, the last being an uphill battle this cycle. The evangelical groups are going in all directions.

This is a very bad time for the GOP and acknowledgement on the right that this is so is broad and concern is profound. Many of the publications and names above write or speak explicitly of the threat to the party's future.

This ought to delight me more than it does. After all, I've been waiting two decades for this to happen. But whatever delight I do enjoy right now is tempered by a real fear regarding what might emerge. Trump has not created this situation. He has merely made more visible - for everyone - the fractures, failures and incoherence of the institutions of the modern American right. It's a dangerous time.

George Bush was the Chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1973 and 1974, the darkest days of the Nixon debacle. He considered the nomination for the 1980 presidential run as his pay-off, and so did a lot of other people. When it became obvious that Reagan was going to win, he accepted that, and was reward with the VP slot. He was further rewarded with the with the 1988 nomination. Party loyalty is highly prized in politics, and from the insider point of view it makes sense. Those who rail against it really aren't thinking about how these things work.

One of the observable facts of group behavior is the tendency for individual to default towards a reigning consensus. Pretty easy to understand why such a thing would evolve, of course, but it has a lot of interesting facets.

For example, it is why the classic propaganda trick of placing an idea or claim, apparently voiced by numerous individuals, into multiple media outlets works. It provides an impression of emerging or existing consensus, thus credibility.

And where consensus is absent or seen to be breaking down, credibility and trust are damaged, as you say. All the folks who take the easy way out through defaulting to consensus - the folks that more shady politicians and demagogues count on to fleece or to be unwitting agents - become much less dependably manipulatable.

So, for sure, the present conservative-universe in the US is in trouble as a consequence of this building internecine warfare. As I said, it's a good thing and something like it had to happen eventually but it still scares me.

Why does it scare you? Are you thinking the same will happen with leftist?

No, I'm little troubled by the Sanders phenomenon. Though there is obviously something similar apparently going on in the two cases, both the magnitude and the causes look very different, for the most part. There's nothing going on with the Dems that matches what happened to Boehner and Cantor, for one quick example (the Freedom Caucus extremists versus everyone else). There's nothing matching the Koch network with its anti-government John Birch ideology and its array of billionaire funders. There's nothing like the Norquist Pledge nor anyone like Norquist with the organization/power he has developed and wielded over GOP reps. There's no faith group comparable to the southern evangelicals and the Catholic conservatives actively enforcing an extremist theological orthodoxy through activism and via ensuring that those not on board are primaried out. Etc.

And if we look at left wing leaning media persons and outlets, we don't have anything even slightly similar to what we see every day coming from the NRO or Weekly Standard or Redstate or Fox or talk radio where real panic has set in regarding the future of the party and movement along with the evident internecine warfare, one part set against another part.

Where I think we can see something quite similar or identical on both sides is a manifestation of what has been termed "Green Lanternism" - the delusional, romantic, naive notion that One Special Person in the White House can, if bold enough, brave enough and passionate enough can overcome the existing power structures and dynamics of a country like modern America and do it over night, or in four years, or eight. Many Sanders' fans like many Trump fans perceive incrementalism as weak-kneed, corrupted betrayal. The Occupy Wall Street phenomenon was exemplary in holding that most any instance of internal organization or long-range planning must inevitably lead to corruption. But we'll note that this is pretty much limited on the left to a small portion of that base while on the right it has become very pervasive, and a key reason is this...

The modern right is now so inculcated with the ideology that government is the source of almost all the bad things that happen in the nation that they inevitably had to end up where they are now - where government cannot, axiomatically, cure the negative characteristics or tendencies that government, at any point in time, might manifest.

It is that reliance on the Strong Man (authoritarian, totalitarian) figure that has been bred into movement conservatism that scares me. Michael Gerson can't stop that now, nor can Krauthammer nor Jeb Bush. And the financial dynamics pushing this forward on the right (Glenn Beck made 80 million bucks three years ago, Limbaugh makes nearly that much every year, Fox makes billions, etc and that doesn't even begin to address the many billions being made by financial and corporate entities through inculcating hatred of citizen government. Hatred of governmental and intellectual institutions has been purposefully promoted and over a half century, that has caused levels of damage that might not be reparable. Just ask Trump's brownshirts.

excellent analysis