LastStandMedia

News Burst: June 10, 2017 (Patreon)

Published:

2017-06-11 02:10:14

Imported:

2022-01

Content

Hey Fam,

I hope you’re all doing very well, and that the weekend is treating you well so far.

Just as a reminder -- as I posted the other day -- this coming week will only have a single video. It’ll post on Wednesday, and it’s on a topic a ton of people requested, so I hope you enjoy it. I’ll be bringing my laptop to Vegas to try to answer comments and hopefully post a News Burst (maybe two), but just as a friendly heads-up in case you missed the original post the other day.

Also, as a note to Patrons on the higher end of the subscription spectrum: If you’re at the $55/month level and live in the US, your signed Tweet went out yesterday, so keep an eye out for that this coming week (this also goes for domestic $100/month supporters who manually opted for the Tweet instead of your monthly postcard). There are a handful of domestic $55/month supporters I need to manually reach out to, as a few addresses are missing. That said, international $55/month Tweet envelopes will be going out on Monday morning, along with the first batch of May’s postcards for $50/month supporters. (Does all of that make sense?)

For $100/month subs that have been at that level since March: Thank you videos will begin to be recorded late next week and posted to Vimeo. Keep an eye out on your Patreon inboxes for your personalized links. All of those will certainly go out before month’s end (obviously).

Okay, that’s all of the housekeeping I felt like I needed to do. Let’s jump into the news!

Will Theresa May Survive?: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pressure-in-britain-builds-on-theresa-may-to-step-aside-as-her-party-plots-her-possible-ouster/2017/06/10/e5755a08-4d52-11e7-987c-42ab5745db2e_story.html

My Take: I’m hardly an expert on British politics, but I’ve paid fairly close attention to it -- from afar -- for years, now. I find the parliamentary system a little bit whacky, but certainly dynamic and engaging, and, above all else, I think it’s worth keeping an eye on what’s going on with our closest friend. The snap election the other day didn’t go the way I thought it would, and while my prediction (~70 seat Tory majority over Labour) wasn’t as bullish as some predictions I saw, it wasn’t nearly met. There was a rubberband effect here, and it all has to do with a poor decision on the part of Prime Minister May.

Now, the word “gambit” means more than making a dare and winning. Inherent in a gambit is the fact that it might not go well, and that a stunning and unexpected move is just as likely to blow up in your face as it is to succeed. In other words, there is no in-between with a move like May made when she called for snap elections. It was either going to work out spectacularly and give Brexit negotiations a harder boost from the right, or it was going to collapse and allow Labour to make some gains, and clearly, it’s the latter that happened. Hindsight is, as always, 20/20, and May’s unneeded snap election will certainly go down in infamy in British political history.

The question now is will she survive? And I suspect the answer is yes, for now. First of all, I was interested in the idea that there would be a second election later this year; there apparently hasn’t been two general elections in a year in Britain in some four decades. But the Tories may be able to strike a deal with Democratic Unionists to create a coalition government. That doesn’t ensure May will survive -- many want her out -- but either way, it’s intriguing to watch something so unnecessary backfire so spectacularly just days before Brexit negotiations are to begin. It’s a real clusterfuck over there in Britain, and it’ll be worth paying attention to how it plays out, even if you aren’t in the UK.

Marching Against Sharia: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/anti-muslim-act-america-stage-marches-against-sharia-law-nationwide-n767386\

My Take: I have to be honest: I had no idea this was even happening until I woke up this morning and saw some news on it, with some snippets from the various protests making the rounds, videos and accounts and the like. I feel like there are a few reasons for me not knowing (amongst them the fact that I suppose I can’t know everything happening at all times), but I think there’s one overriding reason above all others: Everyone is protesting in the streets every fucking day about everything, and I’ve totally tuned it out. It’s like the science protests and all of this shit. Exercise your right to assemble and march all you want, but I don’t know what anyone expects to accomplish by being in the streets with a million ununified messages every day of the week.

Now, I’m no fan of Sharia Law. It’s a backwards set of anti-women, anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-Christian, anti-Jew, anti-secular series of Dark Ages laws that I cannot fucking believe have any resonance anywhere in the world in the 18th century, nonetheless the 21st century. And people have the right to speak out on it. I think it’s important to raise folks’ consciousness about what’s happening with Sharia in countries like Saudi Arabia, just as I did on Twitter the other week to great effect.

But the reality is Sharia isn’t coming to the United States, and building a case against it as a domestic means of survival strikes me as a tad bit silly. This is noise for noise’s sake, really. I think it’s deplorable that we deal so kindly with countries that practice Sharia, and I think we need to come down harder on it as a matter of foreign policy. But this isn’t something we need to be marching in the streets over, not when we have a ton of direct, domestic issues of greater importance. This, like leaving the Paris Agreement, is an unnecessary distraction to what’s right in front of us.

The Resurgence of Mitt Romney: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/09/joe-biden-mitt-romney-senate-donor-conference-hillary-clinton-239383

My Take: Obviously, I’ve long had a soft spot for Mitt Romney. He was the first person I ever voted for (I had just turned 18 when he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002), and I was a fervent supporter of his candidacy for president in 2012, in both the primary and general (I was all-in on Ron Paul in 2008, and voted for Obama in the general that year). I think he got an incredibly raw deal in the ‘12 race, and I think he would have been a great president. I even wanted him to jump into the primary fray in 2016, but I understood why he didn’t. (Watch the documentary Mitt for more on his mindset during and after ‘12, and why he and his family were forever reluctant to get involved yet again.)

The story above, as well as the related story below, are both interesting reads, because they indicate a bipartisan push to get Romney nearer to the levers of power. As a moderate Republican, Romney doesn’t pose an ideological challenge to the left, and I think he represents core Republican values very well. Hearing that Hillary Clinton tried to convince Romney to take the Secretary of State job in the Trump administration if it was offered (it apparently wasn’t), as well as support from Joe Biden to run for the Senate in 2018.

While I’m confident we’ve seen the last of Mitt Romney on the presidential stage, I think it’s great that he may just have a second chance to shine in a smaller capacity, and that even moderate Democrats like Biden and Clinton see the value in his involvement. He’s a man of integrity, and I think he ran a great campaign in 2012 against the Obama/media collective (the same collective that helped take Clinton down in the 2008 primary, a huge piece of the narrative in the book I’m reading right now… more on that soon). Anyway, just thought these stories were interesting enough to share, even if there’s not a ton of meat on the bone.

(Related Story | Romney’s Near-Miss With State: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/09/mitt-romney-hillary-clinton-secretary-state-trump-239370)