I’m just going to leave this here.

I wonder if it will cost them more trying to defeat the tax, than if they just paid the tax.

They’d probably be okay with that anyway. They probably enjoy paying more just to watch poor people squirm.

I definitely think Europe should have strong relationships with good allies, like Canada and Japan. Hopefully they would both be reliable.

Mexico, potentially yes, they could be a reliable ally. As for India I’m not so sure, because India seems to want to be quite friendly with Russia (I think India buys a lot of military equipment from Russia), and Russia has been waging war against Europe for the last 12 years.

I’ve noticed that irony too. For example, in 2024:

Donald Trump’s campaign has filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against the UK’s Labour Party, accusing it of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election

And then, in 2026:

JD Vance backs Orbán’s re-election bid in Budapest visit

It’s funny that conservatives are all about “law and order” and then they’ll happily break the law (fleeing Brazil illegally) when it serves them

I think more Europeans need to realise that the only countries which care about the security of European countries are European countries.

Trump on 13th June 2020:

We are ending the era of endless wars

Trump on 5th October 2024:

I will not send you to fight and die in a foolish, never-ending foreign war

That second link has other examples too.

Oppressive authoritarianism? But tankies told me that China is a place of unbridled liberty. A land of milk and honey. Unlike the evil West which is always horrible and terrible.

Him seeming like a “weirdo” makes more sense when you look at his background. He was influenced by the hippie culture of the 60s and 70s. He travelled to India when he was a young adult and he got into Buddhism. I think all of that stuff inspired him to try things which are unconventional in western countries.

As for what you mentioned about jumping to the front of a transplant queue, yes that’s obviously selfish and wrong, if he did indeed do that.

Your in-laws sound like GB News viewers here in the UK. GB News is a right-wing news TV channel, and it has only existed for a few years. Previously people had to watch BBC News or Sky News, which are both pretty moderate. But now right-leaning voters can get sucked into GB News propaganda. They are never shown different sides of an argument presented fairly; instead everything they are shown is highly biased.

Maybe actually I’m making a mistake by comparing the French election with the 2024 US election because of the different voting systems.

I suppose leftist voters in France might think “if we can get Melenchon into the second round then moderates will have to vote for him to keep out Le Pen”. So then the second round polling between Melenchon and Le Pen might change when the reality sets in that Melenchon and Le Pen are the only two options. Which is different to the single-round US presidential election, where the only two realistic candidates to win were Trump and Harris. In that US election, every anti-Trump non-voter just helped Trump.

As for Melenchon being anti-Ukraine, I don’t know his stance in detail, but like you, I’m not in favour of anti-Ukraine stances.

I’m just looking at polling. In fact Melenchon now seems to be in second place for the first round, behind Le Pen, so perhaps he is likely to get into the second round. But the problem is that he fares worse than Philippe in the second round against Le Pen.

The most recent second round polls seem to show this:

• Philippe ~44%, Le Pen ~56%
• Melenchon ~31%, Le Pen ~69%

Of course polling can change. Pollsters in 2016 thought Hillary Clinton would enter the White House. But still, at the moment, if Melenchon gets to the second round, it looks like a victory for Le Pen is more likely.

I guess with the French election I’m mainly thinking about the second round. If it’s Philippe versus Le Pen then hopefully enough people will back Philippe, because I think Le Pen would be worse.

In the first round maybe there’s more freedom to vote for who you really like. But if it ends up being Melenchon versus Le Pen in the second round, it could be pretty difficult to stop Le Pen winning.

Torygraph propagandists are losing their jobs?

Let me go and find my microscopic violin…

Rich people pump money into politics in order to amplify their personal whims. Then they wonder why self-described socialist politicians are becoming more popular.

Apparently he has citizenship of the USA and Canada as well as South Africa:

According to Isaacson’s biography and an Esquire magazine profile of Musk, he became a US citizen in 2002

Removed by mod

Fair points. I’m British not American, so I’m sure you know a lot more about Newsom than I do. I’ve seen a couple of interviews with him but that’s about it.

If 2028 is Newsom vs Vance and Newsom wins, I would hope that would improve the world. Maybe a Democrat who more boldly stands up for ordinary (non-wealthy) people would be better, but whether they’d get enough support from Middle America to win the presidency, I don’t know.

The solution is simple: European AI.

Europe should invest more in European AI companies like Mistral. Otherwise, Europe might find itself dependent on American AI or Chinese AI, and both of those countries don’t seem very friendly towards Europe.

I think I read some time ago that Newsom’s argument is that a national billionaire tax would be better and more effective than a California billionaire tax.

But yeah maybe he should just support both: a California tax and a national tax.

It is pretty obscene that billionaires can spend nearly limitless money trying to defeat a proposal for them to pay just a little bit more in tax; a tax which could save the lives of the most disadvantaged people in society.