Meanwhile in Israel…

Remember there was an election there as well last week? It hasnt had the column inches the American one, at least in part cos it appears there was no real winner; neither Bibi nor his primary opposition figure Gadi Eisenkot (who I’d never heard of before last week; I’m not sure what that says about me or the Internet’s general coverage of the Middle East) actually got the requisite majority to declare outright victory. Israeli politics basically seems to run on coalitions cos no single party is big enough to pull it off. In any case the results, such as they were, have now been certified and Bibi is not happy:

Arab-led parties won a record 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, up from 10 seats in the previous election.
The fallout from Israel’s inconclusive election takes another dramatic turn amid allegations of foreign interference.
Mr Netanyahu and his supporters have repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims that the Arab-led parties stole the election, possibly with foreign assistance.
“The review found no evidence of irregularities that compromised the integrity of the election or affected its results,” the election commission said in a statement.
Elections committee acting director Dean Livne said the investigation examined every complaint “individually and thoroughly” but found no evidence to support allegations that the election results were invalid. […]
A separate investigation by the Shin Bet intelligence service into allegations of foreign interference is ongoing, according to a spokesperson for the elections committee.
In a private meeting of the election committee’s members on Wednesday, its head — Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg — read out an intelligence assessment from the Shin Bet saying the agency believed there had been a “widespread phenomenon involving the influx of substantial funds into Israel from foreign states”, including from countries hostile toward Israel.
The Shin Bet provided no evidence to explain its assertion.
The committee has previously said that while claims about foreign actors seeking to influence the election are serious and under investigation, it does not believe that any such interference affected the results — even if it had happened.

Personally I’d be surprised if foreign states weren’t sending money to Israel for this, particularly the US… Anyway, I gather that Isaac Herzog now has to decide whether Bibi or Gadi actually gets to form government, which they may have to do together (which I don’t suppose either of them wants) or maybe Eisenkot will team up with the Arab parties who’ve apparently expressed an interest in doing so (which I don’t think anyone else really wants), and if all else fails Israel goes back to another election next year. I suspect Herzog will just go for Netanyahu to keep Trump happy.

The biggest loser

Yes. Yes, he did. About $170m-$200m (I see different quotes of just how much) of that specifically went on the Texas race, because Edolf has issues with Democrat contender James Talarico:

…and the latter’s response was to absolutely fucking stomp on Republican contender Ken Paxton. To be sure, Talarico had been targeted by the Republicans generally for months beforehand, so they should probably take some blame for boosting his profile so much… but dickhead went into a real fit about him, as you can see. And the “creep” still won.

The only problem, of course, is that $470m or whatever it was won’t actually hurt him that much; when you’re worth nearly 900 billion dollars, that’s kind of small change. Conversely, he might feel the apparently sixty billions he’s also lost from SpaceX and Tesla shares dropping after the election… I suspect, though, he won’t actually learn anything from this and will only double down on this stupidity, which is obviously fine by me; as long as all his expenditure has no tangible results, I’m entirely in favour of him blowing as much money as he likes. His shareholders might feel differently, mind you…

Deus wilt

Now THIS is one of the best memes on yesterday’s debacle that I’ve seen yet. We obviously remember the unfortunate Liz Truss (and how great is it that the lettuce has its own Wiki entry?), and it looks like Pete Kegsbreath’s career could be on a similar timescale… from what I’m seeing online, Mushroom Cock is obviously furious and looking for someone to throw under the bus for what happened on Tuesday, and Hegseth is apparently the favoured target. J. Divans actually said this much on the subject:

“The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone … The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” Vance said in a lengthy post on X. “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.
“Everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there,” added Vance, who had reportedly been sceptical about the unresolved war, which Trump launched in February alongside Israel.

Trump did indeed kind of say the Iran nonsense was at least part of the problem, but obviously he’s not going to accept any blame for it… so who does that leave? Well, obviously Pete’s the most likely candidate, and Republican insiders have been saying that Trump is publicly supporting him but also privately asking if he should get rid of the guy. As it stands, a couple of months ago Thomas Massie—who’s a Republican Congressman, no less—drew up a bunch of impeachment articles against Hegseth for illegally starting the war and then refusing to stop it, for extrajudicial killings, for kidnapping Nicolas Maduro (remember him?), and for participating in the war in Yemen as well, and he’s been talking about forcing a vote on the matter. If he holds off on doing so until the new Congress starts, I think he’ll have no trouble with that. So I think even if Trump does wind up keeping Hegseth, the latter could be fucked anyway.

How about those midterms

Which kind of sums up my reaction to the US election. From what I can see, the Republicans cannot win; if all the still uncounted senate and house seats went their way, it still wouldn’t be enough. The Democrats have pulled off the “blue tsunami”.

And… that surprises me, to be honest.

I’m always left with a terrible feeling about US politics because, you know, US politics, and despite all the enthusiasm in my particular online bubble that the Democrats would succeed, I couldn’t convince myself. It was obviously pleasant to open up the Graun and see that they did—not a gigantic margin but enough to give the Republicans grief—but I wouldn’t have been surprised somehow to find they didn’t. I’m still half-expecting a repeat of January 6. I thought that if the Republicans won that would make them behave worse than they already do, and if they lost they would behave even worse than that, and I still expect that from them. And I feel there’s only so much the Democrats will do to frustrate them. Too many in the Democrats need to get the hell out of there too (especially you, Fetterman).

Still—a positive beginning that the Democrats will hopefully be smart enough to take advantage of. There’s been some really historic flips (apparently the Kansas senate has gone Democrat for the first time since 1932). And we’ve already had one outstanding meme, with no doubt more to come:

…When?

How odd that a presumably official FBI account would be claiming that election day in the US is Wednesday, not Tuesday like it always is. How very bloody odd indeed. I feel fairly certain this was an honest mistake, to be sure, but with this regime you can never be too certain…

In happier news…

There was one amusing spectacle yesterday when Mark Latham was served paperwork while he was chilling out at Randwick Racecourse. Even better, we now know what it was:

Mark Latham faces a fresh threat to his political future after being served with a bankruptcy notice at Randwick Racecourse over money owed to independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich.
The former federal Labor leader was handed the documents while attending the Golden Eagle meeting on Saturday, October 31.
According to NewsWire, the notice seeks about $175,000 in court ordered damages and interest. It does not include separate legal costs Latham has been ordered to pay. […]
The notice follows years of litigation triggered by a graphic social media post Latham published about Greenwich in March 2023.
In September 2024, the Federal Court found the post defamatory and ordered Latham to pay $140,000 in damages.
The dispute also produced separate proceedings before the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
In April 2026, the tribunal ordered Latham to pay another $100,000 after finding he unlawfully vilified and sexually harassed Greenwich. It also ordered him to remove offending social media posts and refrain from repeating unlawful vilification.
Latham said he intended to appeal that decision.
In October, the High Court of Australia rejected former Latham’s application for special leave to overturn a ruling that he defamed gay independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich.

If he becomes bankrupt over this—which he could if he doesn’t comply with the notice’s instructions in 21 days—that could also mean the end of his parliamentary career, cos being morally bankrupt is considered fine but financial bankruptcy means having to vacate your seat. Which Latham should be looking at doing anyway, he’s 65, so it’s about time he was thinking of hanging up his hat and going back to attacking taxi drivers… Just think, he could’ve NOT been a grotesquely homophobic shit on a carriage service to Alex Greenwich and he wouldn’t have been in this position now. Obviously that would’ve been asking too much of him, though.

EDIT Tuesday night: Latham’s crowdfunding campaign is evidently going marvellously. Got this screenshot from a friend’s FB, but verified it was in fact real:

RIP Model 500

Juan Atkins, pioneer of Detroit techno sound, dies aged 64

Juan Atkins, one of the pioneers of Detroit techno and a huge influence on dance music more widely, has died aged 64.
His agency, Greensmith Artists, confirmed the news to the dance music website Resident Advisor, saying Atkins had been found unresponsive in a hotel room in Mexico City prior to a performance there, and was pronounced dead after being taken to hospital.
Atkins created a gleaming, mechanistic form of electronic music, first as part of the duo Cybotron and then under the alias Model 500, that could command a dancefloor while also evoking sci-fi fantasias. He was the first person to use the term “techno” in tandem with this hard electronic style, pre-empting an entire genre that now stands as one of the pillars of dance culture.

To be honest, techno has never been my particular flavour of choice when it comes to electronic music, but it would be churlish and wrong to deny Atkins’ particular place in musical history. In their way, him and the rest of the Detroit mob really were as transformative as the British Invasion had been in the early/mid-60s, kind of taking European and Japanese influences like Kraftwerk and YMO and selling that sound back to them…

RIP K9

John Leeson’s gone too. What a hideous week for TV sci-fi fans. I have read some, hmmm, not entirely positive reports of his behaviour in the past, being a little bit “handsy” at conventions and fan gatherings and so forth, though I don’t know what evidence for said allegations there was, and I only ever saw them circulating on Tumblr, not any proper news stories, and they never got in the way of his career… but then again that’s so often the way with this sort of situation, isn’t it? People overlook and cover up… and yet Leeson doesn’t seem like the sort of person people would go to the trouble of overlooking and covering up. I can imagine stories about Tom Baker being hushed, for example, but I can’t imagine the same effort being made for the voice of K9. And in fairness to him, there are far worse allegations about other Doctor Who staff out there… sigh.