Flake news

+An instructive battle may take place in West Virginia in the US midterm elections, if an article in the Intercept  (Joe Manchin May Not Be Kingmaker in West Virginia for Long (theintercept.com)) is anything to go by. The Democrats there lost control of both houses of their State capitol, their Congresspersons, the governership—and their only significant flag bearer is the awful, self-serving Senator Joe Manchin (on whose shoulders some of the blame for recent Supreme Court decisions can be laid, amongst many other crimes against people and planet). But, according to the Intercept, a grassroots rebellion has led to the near complete takeover of the local Democrat Party machinery by a progressive alliance. Some of them may have been motivated by the fact that in the Sanders/Clinton primary, West Virginia Democrats voted in every county for Sanders, but the Democrat hierarchy chose superdelegates to vote for Clinton instead. Manchin must be worried that his moribund party will revive and start fighting Republicans, unlike him acting as an echo chamber for every perversion Republicans stand for (such a tactic is of course common. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton alike both wanted to occupy their opponents’ territory, as if that represented a victory, rather than marking out their own. Note how the Trumpian Republicans are not playing this game and are nevertheless gaining ground. Now we have Starmer playing the same worn-out so-called triangulation strategy. And he’s so embarrassingly bad at it even Blair thinks he’s a plank. Apparently.)*

​+I wrote a sentence mentioning floods yesterday before I heard on the news that a collapsing glacier in the Dolomites killed a few people. The reasonable assumption is that the current extreme heat in Italy contributed to the collapse. First comes the collapse, then the flood, then the drying up—i.e. no more abundant drinking water, hydropower or irrigation. Another once in a 1,000 year event? ‘fraid not.
 
*And now, just as the serial liar Johnson is once again on the ropes, what does Starmer want to talk about? Brexit! There are still a few embers spluttering under the ashes of the Leave vote (I’m one of them) but fanning this fire is precisely what people aren’t asking for. Every time Starmer thinks he’s extinguishing it, it merely reminds people what a flake he was over the subject in the first place.