Finally, Finally -- Anti Brexit protesters demand Britain rejoins EU

The history of Brexit -- so far

We've found this nice article in the Guardian, and present a few highlights with the original HTML-markup still in place and a picture that could start the next Agatha Christie film (scroll down):

May has failed, so far, because she could not win around Conservative rebels, mostly hard Brexiters from the European Research Group. A last, desperate promise to quit if MPs backed her deal only reduced rebel numbers to 34, 28 of them linked to the ERG.
...
Few Conservatives expected Brexit to triumph in the referendum. But the 52% result and May’s elevation to Downing Street changed the picture dramatically.
...
Boris Johnson, the face of the leave campaign, was given the job of foreign secretary, but May marginalised him from Brexit policy. Chris Wilkins, a former speech writer for May, said: “She sees him as fundamentally unserious, and for her that is the worst criticism.”
The prime minister later remarked there was no off-the-shelf plan for Brexit. Instead she set about devising policy in the strictest secrecy, barely consulting cabinet colleagues on the most important diplomatic event since the UK joined the European Union 40 years earlier.
Policy was initially delivered via speeches. According to Wilkins, texts were only shared with cabinet members the day before. There was no general discussion at cabinet...
...

It won't stop, it won't stop

Brexit...accomplished

Escher's Brexit

Quote--unquote -- Benjamin Franklin

(Plus ça change:)

Benjamin Franklin, in "Dangers of a settled bureaucracy" (1787)

Brexit -- what's next? --- Update

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Update:  Perhaps we've underestimated Labour (see last paragraph below). Gaby Hinsliff writes in The Guardian:

But politics is all about opportunism, recognising the moment when it comes and ruthlessly exploiting it...Corbyn’s goal-hanging strategy of letting someone else put in the hard yards over Brexit, before swooping in to electoral glory when it all goes wrong, has served him very well for two years.

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Original post:

The six fans of this blog have been clamoring---hold on, it’s only five now, five fans---clamoring that we shine our Machiavellian light on the future of Brexit.

It took us a little while---we were as confused as the prognosticators of The Guardian, for example---but today we had an epiphany, and now we are almost certain what's going to happen. We base ourselves on two axioms, namely:

(1) the axiom of egocentric rationality among the opportunistic supporters of Brexit, ie, Boris Johnson and his ilk. They, of course, are even more Machiavellian than we are, and so they will base their calculation on the

(2) axiom of memory shortage in the internet age.

Here’s their calculation:

(a) May’s Brexit deal will be voted down in Parliament;

(b) Confusion will rule thence; Labour remains split into semi-closeted Euro-skeptics and semi-closeted Europhiles, and unable/unwilling to rally around the Peoples Votes (a second referendum). Britain crashes out of the E-Union with no deal on March 29, 2019.

(c) There will be chaos (read this week’s detailed and fact-filled prognosis in The Economist): traffic around Dover backed up to Manchester; thousands of people dying in hospitals for lack of medication (disrupted supply chains); tear-gassed closures of manufacturing plants (disrupted supply chains), etc. Unemployment surges, inflation surges, housing prices slump. Google relocates to Berlin, unrest in Northern Ireland reignites. The government falls inside weeks. New elections bring about a Labour government.

(d) And now the second axiom: Inside a few more weeks, people have forgotten about its true cause, but the chaos will persist for months on end. AND SO, SOON THE PEOPLE WILL BLAME THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT for all of this shit. Inside a year, the not-so-new government will fall, and a refreshed, reasserted Tory government under the egocentric leadership of Boris Johnson returns to power at the very moment that misery has bottomed out and a semblance of normality returns.

The only factor left out of this calculation is the matter of residual rationality among the Labour leadership. Don’t bet on it.

Marry me!

If history "teaches" anything, it teaches irony...and so, here we are, with a set of "propaganda" posters distributed before the Sino-Soviet friendship frayed around 1963 (in those days both countries were "Communist"):

Ironic? Yes, because of the homo-erotic vibes, which, like the waves in Nazaré, anticipate gay marriage.

Supreme little rocket man --- commemorating the US-NorthKorean meeting (update)

Here's a picture of the coin the Trump administration released prematurely in "commemoration" of the historical Trump-Un meeting:

Trump canceled said meeting today. Haha.

Two issues: 

(1) Trump joined the Axis of Evil here, by adopting the tyrant's own terminology ("supreme leader");
(2) Trump was right in cancelling the meeting, because Un had the president ensnared in a nice rope of Machiavellian diplomacy; in the end, Trump needed the meeting more than Kim Jong-Un. 


We do agree on the fact that Trump's acting outside the box made sense (as a large chunk of political Game Theory has been telling---"proving" by any standard---since more than 50 years). Lots of "games" lock you into a losing position for as long as your adversary can assume that you are a bienpensant-negotiator. But if your adversary has to fear that you don't care much about a few million Korean citizens killed in a war that's ultimately won by your side because you have "the bigger nuclear button on [your] desk," the equation changes, and you may prevail in negotiations that are otherwise lost. The whole North-Korean nuclear armament issue since 1994 is possibly the best example. Trump is not a complete idiot because he understood this. (We would still say Trump is a complete fool, relying on semantic differences between the terms "fool," and "idiot"). 

And now this Trump-fool, having been promised a meeting with the "supreme leader" (as his own "commemorative medal" of the meeting issued a few days ago calls the Kim Jong-un tyrant), and having been put onto the fawning shield of a Nobel Peace Price by South-Korean president Moon, and then having evoked his Nobel-eligibility on TV, this fool has then his vice-president Pence give a talk in which the latter compares the deal with Kim to the deal with Arab dictator Qaddafi, who gave up on his nuclear prep-work in exchange for nothing and was then swept away by the Arab insurgency of 2011 while the West stood idly by.

Plus, during all of this, Trump cancelled the US deal with Iran, thus putting his country in a position where it may face two major wars of choice at once (from where is Trump to launch his attack against Iran? From Quatar, where he alienated the ruler XXX, and where the US has two military bases, a fact of which the supreme leader (Trump, in this case) was apparently not aware when he did his anti-Quatar twittering? Any other US bases nearby? No.).

So, North-Korea didn't show up during a preparatory meeting three days ago and then didn't even answer the phone. (This is like dealing with local craftsmen on our beloved Cote d'Azur.)

At that point, Trump had maneuvered himself into a position where he needed the meeting more than Kim. Snapping defeat from the jaws of victory---as Trump's erstwhile chum Steve Bannon characterized the Trump trade negotiations with China a few days ago. The art of the deal.

«Amis pédophiles, à demain!» (reposted)

Nikolas Sarkozy, former French president, was arrested yesterday for money laundering.

Remember our post of Nov. 23, 2010 about the then-French-president Nikolas Sarkozy and billionairess Liliane Bettencourt? He're the post again:

The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to journalists, in response to questions about his role in the Karachi affair (one of countless French scandals involving money being redirected into the coffers of the governing party):

«Et vous, j’ai rien du tout contre vous. Il semblerait que vous soyez pédophile… Qui me l’a dit? J’en ai l’intime conviction (…) Pouvez-vous vous justifier?».

(Translation: And you? I've nothing against you. It looks like you are pedophile. How do I know? I'm thoroughly convinced. Could you please justify yourself.)

Then he waved goodbye to the journalists with the words:"«Amis pédophiles, à demain!»

The Kingdom, debt, and Paul Ryan

We received several political emails from Perry (him from the Kingdom). In the first email, he writes:

Perry

On the VP Ryan front: He has our vote.

In the second, he writes:

The US problem is debt. We are floating in debt and O'b [Obama] is simply not willing to address the problem.

And in the third, he writes...

...let's interrupt briefly here, and go to a source that has shown it ability to bring a syllogism home, to quote a source correctly, and to win the Nobel price in economics, and this source writes in its latest post:

Let’s look at what Ryan's budget actually proposes (as opposed to vaguely promises) in its first decade.

VP hopeful Ryan

First, there are a set of tax cuts for higher income brackets and corporations. The Tax Policy Center estimates the cost of these tax cuts, relative to current policy, at $4.3 trillion

Lol

Pure speculation, or Troops of Truth (2) (reposted)

Remember our not-so-prescient words from a recent post:

"And the press of the Free World is eating this up as if it were Yorkshire pudding."

Our words, or something else, triggered Arthur Brisbane, public editor of the NYT, to wonder publicly whether the press should try to sort out the truth, for a change.

And he gives an example:

On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches “apologizing for America,” a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the “post-truth” stage.

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?

If so, then perhaps the next time Mr. Romney says the president has a habit of apologizing for his country, the reporter should insert a paragraph saying, more or less:

“The president has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president’s words.”

Yes man, great. Politics went off the cliff because politicians could be sure that the press would eat their Yorkshire pudding all the time, reporting anything with hands-off  neutrality, then seeking middle ground somewhere between facts and absurdity. This should stop. Yes, press of the Free World, this should stop, so stop this and join the depleted ranks of the Troops of Truth, of which this blog is a shining example (spell checker still does not know the word "blog"). And whenever Romney and his ilk say something, check first whether there is some factual basis to it. Like in: "I want to be your President because I know how to strap my dog to the roof of my car when I go on family vacation to Canada, and the dog's name is/was Blondi." This statement is well-anchored in facts, and it can pass your editorial muster without any additional comments, even if he got the name wrong, since the real name of his dog was Seamus, there is no need for editorial commenting, since the dog's name is auxiliary to the fact of dog-strapping (flatus vocis)...



...even though it was the name of Hitler's dog. Halt, hold on, which government agency did I intend to shut down, no, that wasn't Romney (Romney didn't even get it for a slpit second, as he was suggesting, helpfully: "The EPA?"), we get confused here, perhaps ... Anyhow, this post is already too long, so we stop now.

PS: 80% of the Republican attacks on Obama are just insinuations. "Obama want to bring the US under UN goverment," "Obama wants to introduce European-style socialism," (no socialism here, by the way) etc. Did you realize that? Just insinuations. Perry, where are you when we need you?

Inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.)

Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann have signed a pledge, which obliges them to monogamy and more.

Michele Bachmann (note the flag)

Rick Santorum (note the flag)

The pledge, in its preamble, carried the following statement (later removed from the website):

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President.

As to the pledge itself, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum "vow":

Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracted (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.)

You've any idea what this could mean, "same gender commingling among attracted?"

M& is glad to help out (ranking on the scale of 1 - 10)

Same gender commingling among attracted (3)

Same gender commingling among attracted (6)

Same gender commingling among attracted (9)

Dominique Strauss-Kahn stark naked (2)

Q: So, what does it all mean?
A: The end of Strauss-Kahn's (DSK) career, of course, and more.
Q: He could deny it; then it's his word against hers.
A: Well, first, he left his cell-phone behind, so he fled the scene. Equally important, a famous person is always guilty until proven innocent, especially in America.
Q: Could it be a conspiracy?
A: Sure, as always. He was the most important threat to Sarkozy's bid for a second term, so Sarkozy could have tried to engineer the whole thing. However...
Q: ...however...?
A: It would have been difficult for Sarkozy to do so, even with the French secret services at his disposal. It's unlikely the maid was an agent, since she was working at the hotel on a permanent basis (presumably), and it was unforeseeable that DSK would stay there...well, who knows, changing my mind, perhaps he's always staying there, in the same suite, in which case they actually could have planted her there, perhaps paying off the service manager to have her assigned to this suite (soon to be dubbed the Kahn suite). And so on and so forth.
Q: But the cell-phone?
A: Élémentaire, cher Watson. DSK will deny this is his phone, but the records, oh là là, the records, the most beautiful cell-phone records in the history of the French secret services.
Q: We're in full conspiracy mode now?
A: I'd say 60-40.
Q: Which way?
A: Don't know yet.
Q: Will the Euro collapse?
A: It's in the cards. Expect a weakening of the Euro tomorrow, just for starters.
Q: Why?
A: Sarkozy's ratings are the lowest in the history of the French presidency. He's unlikely to get re-elected, even if the whole thing was his conspiracy. So it's either a socialist next time (to our American readers: DSK was a member of the Socialist Party, no, the SOCIALIST party), but, with the exception of DSK himself, all other contenders are unreconstructed dinosaurs, real tax-and-spend ideologues, all of them, or it's Marine LePen from the Front National. France's standing as a debtor will be weakened, and the markets might fear its collapse, comparable with other members of the Club Med.
Q: This could mean the end of the Euro.
A: Yes, if France does not get its act together, the Euro will collapse.
Q: How about the extreme right?
A: Yes, good question. Marine LePen, the new, charming leader of the Front National is collecting followers left and right with her compassionate xenophobia and an economic program from the dark ages.
Q: How so?
A: Her economic program calls for France leaving the Euro, and for erecting high import barriers to save domestic jobs. To do that, France would have to leave the European Union.
Q: Is that going to happen?
A: Possibly not, since the French farmers would lose their European subsidies, and so on. But I would not rule out a debt spiral triggered by weakening French credit scores (rising interest rates on French sovereign debt raise the deficit, etc), which leads to France's exit from the Euro, the end of the Euro, the end of the European Union...
Q: The end of the world as we know it?
A: It looks bad. But 500 years from now, the only thing we will remember is that the 3rd world war was caused by a man stepping out of his bath room stark naked.

30 years ago: Ronald Reagan shot (reposted)

Reagan was shot, but not killed, kids, and I was there. Sort of. Reagan was shot in March '81 ("Please tell me you're all Republicans" he told the doctors in the hospital---that's the spirit, President Obama), and I arrived on the scene in May '96, for a workshop at the Hilton Hotel. It was the night of the White House Press Corps dinner, and Wolf Blitzer and this woman, she who always sits in the first row in a red dress and gets the first question during a WH presser (Dr. Alzheimer will remember her name), were standing in animated conversation outside our conference room. I could have touched them. I could have asked for an autograph.

We left for dinner downtown. Outside, hunks with sunglasses and big earpieces(white, thick spiraling cables) had descended upon the scene, and were directing towing trucks with spiraling gestures. The trucks were hoisting  vehicles still parked around the hotel. Crowds had gathered. Somebody helpfully explained to me the implications of roadside bombs and the President's plan to attend the dinner. There must have been hundreds of secret service agents, all listening ostentatiously to their earpieces, all gearing up for the big event, the President's Arrival.

We waited for the president. We waited more. Clinton was always late. Finally the motorcade arrives, hunks on bikes, ambulances, limousines, more hunks on bikes, cars, trucks, more ambulances, larger limousines, ever larger limousines. Suddenly, the motorcade stops, with the largest limousine right in front of the entrance. We would see the President!

Then, without prior warning, the president's limousine backs up into a concrete cubicle next to the entrance. A steel shutter comes down.

And that was that.

They had built a special access garage for the president right where Reagan had been shot in '81.

Learning from history.

Mein lieber Freiherr: Baron Guttenberg in trouble

FF has held the Baron in high esteem, raving about him as the Minister of good looks, misunderstood by 12 year old Japanese females who own more than 5 Vuitton bags, and crushed upon by Helen Thomas, the ex-doyenne of the White House press corps. A man with either 9 or 10 first names, and a direct descendant of Bismarck at his heterosexual arm? The man to beat as successor to Chancellor Merkel?  And now what?

The baron...	...with his wife, a née Bismarck
After he met...	...Helen Thomas

Isn't he also a brilliant academic, with a Ph.D. thesis of the highest caliber, raking in a summa cum laude, the highest Ph.D. honor in Germany?  Well, "there's the rub." (Shakespeare, Hamlet's soliloquy) He's accused of plagiarizing. By our own standards, it's borderline, but the German standards rise by the minute, as more and more phrases surface that he has obviously copied without mentioning the source. There's the rub. GOTCHA. He's still good-looking, but...

Can we still play "Doctor"?

Hauptstadt Berlin

You may recall the days of The Wall, when West Berlin was still officially the capital of Germany ("Hauptstadt Berlin"), but the government was ruling from Bonn (the birthplace of Beethoven), and Siemens had left Siemensstadt (Berlin suburb) and decamped to Munich, where its executives were taking classes in Bavarian ac-cent. In those dark days, Berlin (West---the East, on the other side of the wall, was, in fact, the capital of the communist GDR) needed all the help it could get to stay the capital of Germany. Count Dracula's grandson would visit, or a minor relative from the Indian branch of the Windsors, the (West) Berlin press would always manage to ask them about Berlin, and they, right on cue, would always reply "It's good to be back in the Hauptstadt."
Along those lines, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the has-been inverted Islamo-faschist, has pulled the same trick on us, by putting Le Trayas on the background of his election poster for today's regional elections.