I woke up this morning at 8:30 am ready to go for a walk but hearing the sound of rain on my roof made it clear that today was going to be an inside day. I had breakfast and then afterwards I did some light weights in between getting some chores done around the house. I’ve opened up the curtains and let some natural light into my bedroom rather than relying on having to switch on the light. There is something relaxing about laying in bed, using my laptop and hearing the sound of rain on the roof which makes spending today at home enjoyable. On the Metservice forecast it has the weather clearing up this evening and on Sunday the weather will be fine however I’m going to play it by ear to see how it turns out.
It is interesting watching how the right wing ecosystem is splitting itself apart – the neoconservatives on one side and the paleoconservatives on the other side (with smaller factions emerging) critiquing each other over the the war in Iran and the ‘failure to deliver on the promises’ (while ignoring that ‘make America great again’ was all slogan no policy specifics). There has been a good amount of hopium by some on the centre left believing that this is an indication that there has been a shift away from Donald Trump but that assumes there is something at the core of their (influencers) being other than just saying what needs to be said to get an audience. This move away from Donald Trump was bound to happen because ultimately these influencers are running a business and have to plan for a post Donald Trump future – many of them trying different flavours of ideology in a hope that when the dust settles that they’re on the side that has the largest number of potential viewers willing to tune in.
I also believe there are a number of Democrats in the senate and lower house who support the war with Iran in the name of regime change but are quiet about it. The reason why they’re quiet about it is because they see Donald Trump as a sacrificial anode that can be used to achieve what they want. The use of Donald Trump as a sacrificial anode gives them the benefit of having enough distance between the execution of the policy of regime change and the blow back in the form of higher petrol and diesel prices allows Democrats to run in 2028 as the anti-war candidate who ‘always opposed the war’ while getting the geopolitical benefits (as far as they see it) of that war.
Then there is a matter of JD Vance that Tucker Carlson appears to have a soft spot for him based on a recent NPR interview (link) but the problem is that the internet doesn’t forget. The internet isn’t going to forget when JD Vance talked about Hatians eating dogs and cats (link), the fact that JD Vance stayed silent as Donald Trump talked about wiping a civilisation off the map, stayed silent when Donald Trump started a war with Iran, stayed silent when Donald Trump’s economic policy resulted in JD Vance pleading to voters to ‘give us a second chance’ (link). I really do hope that Democrats are smart enough to use these many, many, many sound bites that JD Vance has provided. The big question is whether JD Vance decides not to run in 2028 and instead spend the following 4 years doing a rehabilitation tour to try and put enough distance between himself and the Donald Trump administration – the same administration he was a part of and when push came to shove he didn’t resign to clearly take a stand against the direction Donald Trump was taking the country in. The problem is that the rabilitation tour may work given how short the attention span is for the average American voter – see the Republicans winning back the house 2010 after driving the economy off the cliff two years prior (plus the United States getting stuck in two ‘forever wars’).
The other observation regarding the recent Tucker Carlson interview on NPR (link) is his unwillingness to lay the blame for the war in Iran squarely on the shoulder of Donald Trump. Benjamin Netanyahu has given the same sales pitch to Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden with each of those presidents telling Benjamin Netanyahu to pound sand. Let’s not entertain this antisemitic trope that Benjamin Netanyahu did some sort of svengali mind trick and forced Donald Trump to invade Iran – Donald Trump made that decision of his own free will and Tucker Carlson needs to accept that reality rather than attempting to shift the blame. The problem is that now Tucker Carlson is trying to have it both ways – be a critic as well as a supporter at the same time and the problem is that most people with an IQ above room temperature can see the disengous fence sitting for what it is. With that being said, as Kyle Kulinski pointed out, it’s never a dull moment when the right wing are fighting with each other.
When I visited to London and Paris I went ont he ‘hop on, hop off’ bus that would do a circuit around the city to all the main attractions – in both cities they had different circuits with cross over points so you could transfer from one bus to another bus. In terms of Wellington, everything is very much in either walking distance or can be reached either via train or bus. The Snapper payment system in Wellington can now use contactless payment methods such as debit or credit cards which make travelling around Wellington as a tourist pretty easy (Auckland also supports contactless payments as well).
