Liz Truss is VERY BAD NEWS

Excerpts from this article in the 9/22/22 issue of the New York Review of Books.

The Party’s Over
Fintan O’Toole

Truss will take the Tories further down the only path that is open to them, that of anarcho-authoritarianism. Like Johnson, she projects herself as a rebel against authority: “I hated being told what to do and that has driven my political philosophy.” She put forward the legislation that allows British government ministers to break international law by tearing up the Northern Ireland protocol. She has indicated her willingness to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights.
This outlawry is underpinned by the language of piracy. A chapter in Britannia Unchained, a 2012 book cowritten by Truss and other rising Conservative politicians, is titled “Buccaneers” and quotes Steve Jobs approvingly: “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.” It concedes, with evident reluctance, that “law and order” are “on the whole beneficial.” But it hankers after an ideal of “capitalism as chaos,” the magic that happens “when nearly all society’s strictures are relaxed.” Hence the claim by Truss’s supporter David Frost, who led negotiations of the Brexit deal with the EU and is widely expected to have an important role in a Truss administration, that “what needs to be done [by the new prime minister] will be turbulent and disruptive.”
This promise of disruption is all that remains of Brexit. It can function now only as a fantasy of liberation, not from Brussels but from all restraint on the making of money. Truss’s language evokes a Britain whose only real problem is that its natural exuberance has been constrained by regulation. Hence the recurrence in her rhetoric of “unchain,” “unleash,” “unshackle.” But, as in current US conservatism, these images of freedom must go hand in hand with their opposite. When she is not talking of unshackling everything, Truss is promising to “crack down” on everything. The chains that are to be taken off the moneymakers will be clamped on much of civil society.
In her speeches, and in the way they are reported by her fans in the Tory press, she has promised, so far, to “crack down” on “militant” trade unions, on civil servants who are working from home, on Chinese companies like TikTok, on onshore renewable energy projects, on “unfair protests” by climate activists, on “antisocial” behavior, on illegal migration, and on the “excessive caution” of financial regulators. She is even promising to repress criticism of the dire condition of post-Brexit Britain, warning the democratically elected first minister of the devolved administration in Wales that “I will crack down on his negativity about Wales and about the United Kingdom.” In the pantomimes, it is customary for the audience to cry out against certain assertions made by the characters: “Oh, no, it isn’t.” In this next version of the show, those who dare to make that call will be ejected from the theater. hand in hand with their opposite. When she is not talking of unshackling everything, Truss is promising to “crack down” on everything. The chains that are to be taken off the moneymakers will be clamped on much of civil society.
In her speeches, and in the way they are reported by her fans in the Tory press, she has promised, so far, to “crack down” on “militant” trade unions, on civil servants who are working from home, on Chinese companies like TikTok, on onshore renewable energy projects, on “unfair protests” by climate activists, on “antisocial” behavior, on illegal migration, and on the “excessive caution” of financial regulators. She is even promising to repress criticism of the dire condition of post-Brexit Britain, warning the democratically elected first minister of the devolved administration in Wales that “I will crack down on his negativity about Wales and about the United Kingdom.” In the pantomimes, it is customary for the audience to cry out against certain assertions made by the characters: “Oh, no, it isn’t.” In this next version of the show, those who dare to make that call will be ejected from the theater.

Railroad Medley the Brothers Four

Railroad Medley the Brothers Four

Today's Wordle in two tries!

Now, what should I do with all of my extra time?

Given the potentially catastrophic national security threat

discovered at MAL, should not extreme interrogation methods in order to gain information that would aid our efforts with damage control be used? Because, you know, treason? Maybe something like withholding Big Macs or Kentucky Fried Chicken, or force feeding the subject tofu and vegetable stir fry?

Your honor, I object to the sexist implications

of the term “special master”. Why not a special mistress? There are plenty of persons who come to mind under that category, imo.

I demand to know if Judge Cannon

agrees that Joseph R. Biden is the legitimate President of the United States as the result of a free and fair election in 2020.

With regard to William Barr's extremely accurate characterization

of the need to appoint a “special master”, I posed this question to someone who always knows more than I do:

COS! In terms of weights and measures, how much is a crock?

A very good question.

It depends on the size of the crock and the content produced by the defecator, which could be measured either by volume or by weight. So as small as a soup bowl or, as in this case, as large as a dump truck (no pun intended)



or even a giant Euclid earth mover.



So, TAKE THAT, your dishonor!

Of course he lied about not intending to make a pun.

Should professional sports teams boycott

any state that allows any political party to not follow and accept the rules of fair play and that refuses to concede its candidates’ losses according to those rules? Or states where election workers and their families are subjected to threats of violence?

In other words, what would happen to professional sport, all sports for that matter, if teams refused to accept losses?

Greenfields