PREDICTIONS

                                                                     PREDICTIONS

          

                                                                              "A"
                                                                  KEVIN  & BORIS

             Private school,privileged,entitled,inebriated,spoiled brat will not be 

                  

                    a]                                     Prime Minister

                                                                    nor

                    b]                               A Supreme Court Justice

• The first basks in the reputation that he cannot keep his trousers on,
• His views to himself  nor
• His bon mots silent

• The second claiming he never took his off 
• Will have no views until confirmed to the Court and 
• Has no mots bon or otherwise

Both will be hoist by their bad,laddish,selfish,arrogant and entitled antics.

• The Yank will understand that in Baseball "3 strikes" and 
• You are out.
• The third woman came forward this afternoon.
• A deafening silence from a dozen Publican Senators.

•  For British Cricketer Boris,
•  Bowled by a googly.
•  His wife has finally dumped him and 
•  Promises "revelations".
•  She has been the political "brains" apparently.

Boris and Kevin, bon voyage,don't let the door hit you on your way out. 

Sad that it is their behaviour that causes their de fenestration rather than their odious politics.

Cyclops must be grateful for small mercies and contemplate the meaning of Schadenfreude.

Or is it Irony?  

HRH does not really know as Cyclops is only first generation and anyway left for the Goldena Medina forty years ago.

                                                           

                                                                              "B"
                                                                            JEZZA

Corbyn will never be Prime Minister.Not because "they" control Finance and Medya.

He never said they did--just that they are lacking in the Irony department.

The furore revealed that he is 
                                      a] not a nice guy            b] has a weird world view
                                      c] is ignorant                  d] simplistic                                                                                                 e] conspiratorial              f] spiteful            and
                                                g] has determined anti Semitic friends.

He also does not know how to apologise or  doven maariv

Nor will Emily Thornberry--too many white vans.

                                                                             "C"
                                                                        BREXIT 

• The fat lady will not sing.
• She will not be fooled by a Canadian /Norwegian/Swiss or Montenegrin Solution.   

                                              Brexit will NOT mean Brexit. 

• All of Britain knows. 

• There will be a "Peoples Vote" in one form or another.
• That's a 2nd referendum.
• This is the only remaining  road to Salvation.

Unless of course. ... the Brexiteers follow the logic of their own rhetoric and call for Parliament to decide.

• On a free vote by each member; 
• each then subject to the judgement of her/his constituents.
• A return to British Representative Democracy through the will of Parliament.

                                   Stranger things have /are happened/happening.

After this outcome of Epic Norse or Greek Proportions--the EU may then proceed to collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions or the stupidity of its leaders.

At least Jezza would be happy as he tends his allotment.

                                                                               "D"

                                           Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Sultan.

Where is he? Why no statements for three weeks?

• He pursued a low oil price strategy to weaken Iran and
• Please Trumpfski.
• It wrecked OPEC allies  and 
• Depleted Saudi Financial  Reserves.
• No gratitude from the US President.
• That strategy has now been abandoned,
• Saudi turned back the taps and 
• Oil prices up by 40% in six months.

• He promised to transform the Saudi economy away from oil and gas. 
• Using oil revenue 
• Linked to massive investments from foreign capital.
• He boasted that he would list five percent of Aramco-
• Valuing the state oil company at two TRILLION dollars.

• He intended to create a massive sovereign wealth fund
• With the Aramco proceeds.
• All is now abandoned.
• Not before he had ordered a $ three billion investment in UBER and 
• Over a billion in Tesla.
• Both down over forty percent in the eighteen months since 
• While US stock market is up nearly a third---oops. 

In the meantime he incarcerated two dozen members of Saudi Royalty and Merchants--all billionaires--in the Ritz Carlton Riyadh and extorted  several Billion dollars from them.

Not least:

• He indulged in a series of foreign policy fiascos 
• Ranging from kidnapping Saudi ally the Lebanese Prime Minister 
• Backing the losing rebels in Syria and
• Invading Yemen 
• Creating a humanitarian disaster and 
• Humiliating the Saudi Air Force and Army. 

So where is he now?               Apparently not sleeping in any of his palaces.

Cyclops continues to predict that his tenure as presumptive King will end before he can take the throne.

 FOOTNOTE 1:  YEAR+VINTAGE BREXIT PREDICTIONS

   11/5/16 

                                                                                 We shall see                                                                                                                                       In the meantime the fat lady has gone on vacation. King Cyclops predicts Britain will stay in the single market and may not even leave the EU 

    12/3/16                                                WE ain't leaving the EU---not really. 

                                               

   11/13/17 

  

 In any event the UK will change its mind; legitimize the about turn either through another referendum [one man, one vote, one time is truly Stalinist---this Jezza and the boys understand] or through a series of parliamentary votes or a crisis election.    

                                                                          The FAT LADY will never sing   

                                                                                         

          In the meantime we are living through the most incompetent UK government since the last one.                                                                                              

                                                           Perhaps the worst ever--at least until the next one.                                                 

   The only real question is whether the UK can abandon Brexit in time to be in the EU before it all collapses.

Silly Old Farts

                                               You really cannot make this up.

Old Republican farts on Senate judiciary committee really are clueless to the views and sensibilities of younger generations---or even King Cyclops

U.S. Senate's Grassley sets Saturday deadline for Kavanaugh accuser--NY TIMES
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-court-kavanaugh/us-senates-grassley-sets-saturday-deadline-for-kavanaugh-accuser-ny-times-idUKKCN1M11MJ

Crassly sets another "deadline".Having had his bluff called twice already.

McConnell plays to his base as though nobody else is listening
                                   'We're going to plow right through it'

                                                  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/09/21/mcconnell-voices-confidence-on-kavanaugh-confirmation-were-going-to-plow-through-this.html

Nothing impresses Cyclops more than the majesty of the "World's Greatest Deliberative Body"  giving a fair and unbiased hearing to a  an individual citizen of the female persuasion.

Their latest wheeze to  appear "sensitive" to  Professor  Ford is to have their female staff  or an external  female  lawyer do the Senate interviewing

Nothing condescending about that then

You would think that the Publican Senators [Professional Elected  Politicians] could find some sensible  PR advisers

Or maybe "sensible PR advisers"  by definition would not work for this crew

This should all end so well for " decent,honest,upright, thoughtful"  CORBYN Kavanaugh

Howard Jacobson's speech about Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism

Howard Jacobson's speech about Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism

This is the renowned author's address to a debate on whether the Labour leader is 'unfit to be prime minister'

Something tells me you're expecting me to call Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite. There's been a bit about it in the press, and I... well, you know...

But I'm not going to call him anything. He says he isn't an antisemite, Hamas says he isn't an antisemite, the white supremacist David Duke says he isn't an antisemite, and that's good enough for me.

 Am I being ironical? Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm incapable of irony.

We know what an antisemite look like. He wears jackboots, a swastika arm-band, and shouts Juden Raus; Jeremy Corbyn wears a British Home Stores vest under his shirt and is softly spoken.  Antisemites accuse Jews of killing Jesus; Corbyn is an atheist and seems not to mind if we did or didn't. Whether that's because Jesus was Jewish and killing him meant one less Jew in the world, is not for me to say.  And - and - he doesn't deny the Holocaust...

Mind you, he knows a man who does.  In fact he knows a surprising number of men who do. That he denies ever having been in their company - until photographs turn up of him rubbing noses with them at the gravesides of mass murderers, offering to show them his belief systems if they'll show him theirs - 'Gosh, they're the same size!' - should come as no surprise. You can't spend your whole life in the company of blood-libellers and holocaust-deniers and expect to remember them all by name.

If I may quote from Oscar Wilde's missing play The Self-Importance of Being Jeremy- 'To associate with one antisemite you don't know to be antisemitic, Mr Corbyn, may be regarded as a misfortune, to associate with antisemites on a regular basis looks like a predilection.'

Look - when I think of the scoundrels I've hung around with, I know how easy it is to get people wrong, even when they turn up to meet you wearing hoods and holding burning crosses.  And Jeremy - is it OK if I call him Jeremy? - has never exactly been what you'd call observant.

Take that mural he championed, showing bankers playing Monopoly on the naked backs of the world's oppressed.  You and I, ladies and gentlemen, would look at those greedy, grasping, hooked-nosed, syphilitic, Zionistic financiers and recognize them at once as straight out of the Julius Streicher I-SPY BOOK OF JEWS.  But so innocent of antisemitic caricature is Jeremy, that he didn't see anything remotely offensive. "I didn't look closely," he explained later. How many times does he have to say it, for God's sake! I might have been there but I don't think I wasinvolved. I don't remember... I didn't look closely....

 If this reminds you of those who lived downwind of the chimneys of Bergen Belsen claiming never to have smelt anything out of the ordinary, I say you have suspicious natures. Corbyn is a busy man. Busy men must take emotional shortcuts. There's an image of a bloodsucking Jew. It's identical to the image of the bloodsucking Jew I already carry in my head. Snap!

 Could there, I wonder, be such a thing as an inadvertent antisemite? Jeremy claims to be a peace-maker. A peace-maker brings warring parties together. Why then do we only ever see him taking Palestinians to tea?  Could it be that he just can't remember to ask the Israelis? "Oh, bugger, I've forgotten to invite the Jews again."

Unless - perish the thought - it isn't peace he wants after all, but the triumph of those he calls comrades and the destruction of those he doesn't.

 According to his supporters, Jeremy Corbyn doesn't have a racist bone in his body.  Just a question, but what is racist bone and how do you know whether another person has one? There are 64 bones in the human arm alone.  Can one be absolutely certain that Jeremy doesn't feel even the tiniest twinge of bone ache, somewhere between the scapula and the humerus, when he sees an alien figure such as I am, coming towards him on Islington Green, carrying the collected speeches of Benjamin Disraeli and humming My Yiddishe Mama?

 And what are we to make - speaking of Corbyn's unconscious - of his inability ever to disavow antisemitism without reminding us of his lifelong opposition to all forms of racism? Which is like answering the question  'Are you a wife-beater?' with an assurance that you always buy The Big Issue.

Because antisemitism isn't quite a racism. It's closer to a superstition: embedded in theology, shrouded in medieval irrationality, updated to suit leftist economics, and exhumed whenever a single explanation for all the evils of the world is sought.  To talk of antisemitism as a racism is a contradiction in terms for Jeremy Corbyn, since in his eyes Jews are neither downtrodden nor exploited but are - as usurers, colonialists and conspirators - the very source and fount of racism themselves. Once hold Jews to be racist, and Zionism a racist endeavour, then no antisemite can ever be a racist himself. And any definition that says otherwise must be amended. 

That's the psychology: now the science. Corbyn's political life has been determined by Newton's First Law of Inertia which states that an object at rest will stay at rest, forever, as long as nothing pushes or pulls on it. In physics the something that might push or pull at it is another object in motion; in socialist politics it is a view contradictory to your own. Corbyn averts his face whenever he hears the word Jew, and rolls his eyes whenever he is asked a question, because he fears the chaos, otherwise known as a change of mind, that might ensue from accepting there's another way of looking at the world.

I will spend my remaining seconds - I don't mean in life, I mean of this speech - telling you why it matters to everyone, not just Jews, that a man so spiteful, sanctimonious and obdurate should never be allowed to do to the country what he's been doing to his party. 

Those who revere Corbyn see it as a virtue that he has never changed his views. Mr Chairman, it is only a virtue to stay faithful to one's vews if those views are worth staying faithful to.

To persist in a small erroneousness is the mark of a fool. To persist in a great erroneousness is the mark of a dangerous fool. The ideology in which Corbyn has been pickled for half a century was outworn by the time it reached him. It oversaw the death of millions.  That the ideologies he opposes have scarcely done any better is not an argument for his. You don't have to love the West to refuse the embraces of those whose sole ambition is to blow the West apart ... especially if you want to call yourself a pacifist.

This should have been a golden summer for Labour.  The nightmare that is Brexit, the hell that is Jacob Rees-Mogg, the out-of-season pantomime that is Boris Johnson - from all these Labour ought to have delivered us. But Corbyn did as much as anyone to make Brexit happen with his feeble non-support for Remaining - "I'm seven, erm, seven-and-a-half per cent in favour."

That was one to get us to the barricades. The wrong man - ladies and gentlemen - the wrong man at the wrong time espousing the wrong causes.

I am nothing if not fair: people who are limited in everything but the pleasure they take in themselves are ten a penny in all political parties; they haunt the peripheries, like ghosts-of-the-Christmases-they-don't-believe-in-past, backing losing causes, throwing tea parties for murderers, and looking saintly. Mr Corbyn's misfortune was to be lifted from those peripheries, and dumped haplessly in the centre. 

Not just for our sake but for his, will someone please have pity and dump him back.

Howard Jacobson delivered this on September 6 in favour of the Motion - "Jeremy Corbyn is Unfit to be Prime Minister" - at a debate organised by Intelligence Squared.

Labour Party This Morning

In this morning's inbox:

 Labour Friends of Israel chair loses no confidence vote

Labour Friends of Israel chair Joan Ryan MP lost a vote of no confidence by her Enfield constituency party last night. She responded by hitting out at the ‘Trots Stalinists Communists and assorted hard left’ who had voted against her, and statedher intention to remain in place. Iranian television station Press TV, which had its licence to broadcast revoked by Ofcom, live-tweeted the vote.

Blair: Corbyn has won Labour’s civil war
Tony Blair has told the BBC he is ‘not sure it is possible’ for Jeremy Corbyn’s moderate critics to win back control of Labour after the ‘profound change’ the party has been through.

In this morning's snail mail:

                                                   Is this what is called irony in Shropshire?

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

Cyclop's quick guess on who wrote the NY Times Op Ed has elicited record responses

Some of Cyclops non US readers have asked "what Op Ed ?"

As a service to them  the URLs below contain a transcript and a reading on CNN

http://kingcyclops.blogspot.com/2018/09/i-am-part-of-resistance-inside-trump.html

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/09/05/new-york-times-op-ed-full-bolduan-erin-vpx.cnn

The medya is of course in frenzy.

No pundit has agreed with Cyclops guess of Mad Dog Mattis

The consensus of Cyclops blog readers seems to be that  "It's the Butler what did it"

We will know soon enough.

In the meantime the WH Straight Jacket has been sent to the dry cleaners.

In response to one of Cyclops passionate readers  the king understands that Congress has instigated a search for the lost Cojones of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell-----nothing found as yet

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/09/05/new-york-times-op-ed-full-bolduan-erin-vpx.cnn

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his

agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.

Mad Dog Mattis

All right ,all right Cyclops surrenders[army metaphor]

Many demands for HRH to name the author of bombshell Op Ed in NY Times before the investigative medya find out.

Some see this as a challenge to Cyclops credibility.

Some wish to humiliate this old soul.

All BS 

Nevertheless  I have left my slumbers to respond

                                               General "mad dog" Mattis.

This kind of piece is not written on a whim.

Not over night.

it was in the works waiting for ignition.

Mattis's friend McCain  was buried on Sunday.

A universal US hero respected by EVERYBODY except the craziest tea party zealots.

McCain vetoed Trump's attendance at hie funeral

Trump dishonoured this man in his usual graceless narcissistic manner

McCain's last act of patriotism and honour is to defenestrate Trump.

Mattis his warrior compatriot and instrument.

We will know soon enough.

Nothing like this can stay secret at the centre of Empire.

Those pundits who think the author cowardly or a disaffected loser are just plain wrong.

Whoever it is knows that his identity will surface.

By starting out in this "secret" way he/she has heightened the speculation to the level of frenzy.

Drawn the attention of even the most casual know nothing citizen.

This plus the Woodward book will tip Trumpfski totally over the edge.

The question is will the rest of the Cabinet and the  Publicans  in congress act before the November elections.

Recent history and the overwhelming cowardice of Paul Ryan,Mitch McConnel et al argues not.

The Publicans will need the coming catastrophe to force them to act.

Sounds correct.

Cyclops however warns--do not bet the college fund or your pension on it.

At some point even McConnel will feel shame.Well Ryan then.

TED CRUZ and the SUPREMES

                                   
                                              " you have to larf dont ya"---Socrates

 Apologies to those asking for his majesty's wisdom this week on Woodward's new book, Spur's ascent to the top of the Premiership and Corbyn's manic need to believe that in the immediate aftermath of the holocaust Israel was conceived and born as a racist project designed for Jews to be cruel to Palestinians.

Cyclops has been busy catching up on all kinds of chores,paperwork ,admin and family stuff.He has assured the Royal  Court that he will return to Trumpfski and  Corbyn.In the meantime plenty of other wise and liberal minds are on the case.

But Cyclops just came up for air,brewed some Camomile tea and tuned in to the Kavanaugh auditions to join the Supremes. a uniquely US process.As I turned on the TV Senator Amy Klobishar was  asking Kavanaugh a series of  straight forward ,substantive questions on topics from Roe, Executive Privilege,Health Care Rights  to Consumer Protection and Anti Trust Law.By the simple"ruse" of being substantive,polite,intelligent and forthright ;and focusing on his record, she had Kavanaugh running in circles,ducking and diving and relying on  "I can't comment on that" evasion.

    This must have been what Senate confirmations and investigations were supposed to be  like in some mythical golden age of enlightenment.Cyclops has said this before ,he has not yet seen a Democrat for President he admires more.Watch this space.

Cyclops only caught about 15 minutes of her time.She was immediately followed by Ted Cruz of Texas and HUUUGE Presidential ambition He brings the GRAAAND into grandstanding.It was interesting to note that as Cruz started  both Publican and Democrat Senators who had sat through Klobichar's time nodded to the Chair and left. A full dais   suddenly became almost empty. Check you Tube.

After some obligatory and traditional bloviating about his own profound thoughts on the constitution,the judiciary etc,etc Cruz asked a"clever" leading question.

Cruz fancies himself an intellectuuual--Haarvaaard,supreme Court Clerkships and so on.His long preamble was replete with  data about how much Kavanaugh's voting and decision record on the DC Superior Court overlapped with the Obama nominee Merrick Garland's votes and opinions as a colleague on the same court for the last decade.

The question being that as both men had such similar records "what were the the Democrats complaining about"?

In his smug self satisfaction Cruz was oblivious to what would be the obvious retort,silently delivered by Cyclops and his liberal ilk.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/supreme-court-picks-disagreements-show-stakes-of-confirmation

 " If the record is so similar that both candidates are eminently qualified etc etc then why did The Publican Senate refuse for over a year to even allow Garland a hearing let alone a vote".

                                      I was inevitably reminded of the Socratic quote above,

PS.  Cruz clearly believes that his "cute" voting  data showing a 93/94 % overlap in Kavanaugh/Garland  decisions was a Quat Erat Demonstrandum moment--sort of Perry Mason for Law Nerds

For those who do not follow these things: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Samuel Alitto have a similar decision overlap percentage.This on an historically polarised court.

 Because most cases ,especially at the Superior court level, are not ideological--just disputed matters of Law.

The real point is what were the legal,philosophical and ideological issues where there IS disagreement?.

Back to my Camomile tea and family admin.

                                                        you have to larf dont ya