L'Ombre de l'Olivier

The Shadow of the Olive Tree
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  • Francis Turner

Trumping the NeverTrumpers on Impeachment Dec 19, 2019

Over at Samizdata the following question is asked: [D]oes Trump have a case to answer? Has he done anything illegal and – more to the point – has he done anything wrong? Perhaps even more to the point, has he done anything that other US presidents – Obama for instance – wouldn’t do? I responded there more or less as follows but I wanted to add a bit more to my 'additional thoughts' section than seemed appropriate for a blog comment Did Trump do anything illegal? Technically probably yes. But illegality is not, as far as I can tell, anything...

By Francis Turner Vote2 0

General Election Time Nov 7, 2019

So the turkeys did, finally, vote for Christmas. They had to stick it to Boris and not vote in a large enough number for HIS original bill, but the did then vote to dissolve parliament and hold a general election on the date which he wanted. Boris will take that as a win. Of course large chunks of the remoaner lot are now mocking Boris for not delivering Brexit on October 31. Which is interesting because it is obvious that the only reason he didn't deliver a Brexit (with deal) was that the Remoaner parts of parliament couldn't bear to...

By Francis Turner Vote1 0

Boris Plays a Blinder Oct 18, 2019

They said it couldn't be done, indeed many of them deliberately put roadblocks in the way, but Boris appears to have done what he promised he would anyway. There is a Brexit deal which is far less binding on the UK than the May one and therefore a lot more like an actual Brexit and it will occur on October 31. As Patrick O'Flynn explains in the top link above It is truly remarkable that he has secured an agreement at all given that he was nobbled by the Benn “Surrender” Act, had other traditional prime ministerial prerogatives stripped away...

By Francis Turner Vote3 0

Boris Blindsides Bolshy Remainers Aug 29, 2019

So the news yesterday is that Prime Minister Johnson is finding ways to do exactly what he said he would do - i.e. Brexit on November 1 - despite the objections of the various remainer MP factions and the chattering classes as a whole. Apparently this came as a shock to people. As did his using dastardly tricks of parliamentary procedure that have never been used before except umm like about 22 years ago by John Major and various times before that. This unprecedented reuse of prior parliamentary procedures is, apparently the worst thing ever, whereas Squeaker Bercow's actual unprecedented...

By Francis Turner Vote13 1

Censorship comes out into the open Aug 17, 2019

Project Veritas dug up a Google employee (now kind of an ex-employee) who provided a number of fascinating documents about how the "algorithm" is tweaked to bias things in favor of stuff Googlers like and against stuff they don't. This follows up work like this from DuckDuckGo that have showed this sort of issue in the past. If you want proof that Google has some leanings in a certain political location I invite you to look at what it suggests for auto complete as you type the words "clinton" and then "body". Do the same with DuckDuckGo and observe some...

By Francis Turner Vote7 0

How to Prevent Mass Killings Aug 8, 2019

Recently a few losers in the USA decided to shoot lots of others. This has of course led to the predictable calls for "common sense gun control" or similar. Plus lots of concern trolls saying that the US "right" needs to solve mass-shootings to be allowed to keep their guns and the like. There are two standard responses to this. Pointing out why "common sense" measures won't work and (accurate) statements that mass-murderers will use other weapons if they don't have guns so that's not the solution. Both of these are fundamentally correct, but they are reactive not pro-active and...

By Francis Turner Vote1 0

Literal Genocide Jul 1, 2019

Over on Tw*tter some person called Sarah Gailey, who has a blue check mark and is a Hugo award winning author apparently, posted a string of tweets regarding the Andy Ngo "Milkshaking" event. She's deleted them now, but not before people archived the thread and screen capped it   Apart from the fact that Mr Ngo was in fact struck by things other than milkshake - videos show at least one rock, not to mention statements from the Portland police about cement being in the "milkshake" - what struck me was the last two words in the third tweet Literal...

By Francis Turner Vote13 0

Leaving is the Hardest Thing May 23, 2019

Anyone who has been paying attention to European politics might detect a certain soupçon of nervousness amongst the EU establishment regarding the EU elections this week. It seems that beastly nationalists and non EU-lovers are likely to win big in many countries. We have President Macron begging people not to vote for "nationalists": “We have a crisis of the European Union. This is a matter of fact. Everywhere in Europe ... all the extremes, extreme-rights, are increasing,” Macron said Thursday, making an unexpected appeal for European unity on the sidelines of a technology trade show. “On currency, on digital, on...

By Francis Turner Vote8 0

A Tale of Two Coups May 20, 2019

In the UK there was Brexit, in the US there was Trump's election. Both these events were a big shock the establishments in their respective nations (and in the case of Brexit to the neighboring EU as well). Since they perceived these events as a threat, people in both establishments sought to strike back and nullify the result one way or another. In the US, the result of this was the "collusion" story and the Mueller investigation. In the UK the result has been the numerous attempts to not actually Brexit but pretend to. Both of these attempts to strike...

By Francis Turner Vote11 0

Notre Dame Apr 16, 2019

About the time I was picking up my bags at Nice Airport, fire broke out at Notre Dame in Paris. By the time we had checked into a hotel for the night the spire had collapsed and it was clear that this was a serious blaze. Social media alerted me to the blaze and to the scant details repeated in every news article/broadcast about what little was known. When we woke this morning we learned just how bad things were and, fortunately, the summary of the damage is bad but not as bad was was initially feared. Yes the roof...

By Francis Turner Vote2 0

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