Did you run mentioning this by your airline donors?

And you were at an age where you could ride a skateboard and not worry so much about breaking bones. Things weren't better, you were younger and hanging with your friends after school rather than dealing with adulting and aging.

"People who remember 45-55 years ago, and therefore are a minimum of late 50's to early 60's old, think things were better when they were in their teens or twenties. In other news, water is wet and your dog believes he is a really good boy who deserves a biscuit and a walk."

You see, if you did this more of the time, you'd probably be thought of better by the base.

Jean Shaheen let the cat out of the bag - you engineered or permitted this failure.

If not, then you failed to control your caucus, which means you either need to make them feel consequences, such as stripping their positions on committees, or you need to resign as minority leader.

We eagerly await signs that they will actually suffer consequences for breaking with leadership. Or that you will announce you are standing down for someone else because you can't lead effectively.

But we know that won't happen, because this was orchestrated and you lacked the balls to admit it.

Lander is likely hitting either a congressional seat or the governorship in 2026. AOC is the more likely candidate because she'll have a decade in the house by the time 2028 rolls around, coupled with high personal popularity and the fund raising and activist network needed to beat Schumer.

Don't cave when you're winning. The GOP are seeing every option they have aside from compromising fail, and they're running out of options that don't involve offering decent terms. The only way you could blow this is by handing over the advantage.

So we're pretty sure you'll do that.

You failure.

Well, to be fair, given how close she was with Liz Cheney during that period where she was driving her campaign off a cliff by trying to appeal to the center right, I can understand her personally feeling she has to say something.

"We're not sorry for what we did, we're sorry you caught us doing it"

The last thing the Royal focused press wants is for people to realise that Andrew losing some titles and a trading in one mansion for another is not much of a punishment compared to what other people who had done the exact same thing but weren't as rich and connected would have suffered.

Not exactly something the royal media machine lets out. Losing that control over these dirty little bits on laundry, at least inside the UK, terrifies them.

Facts don't matter much there. The issue is perception, and she, especially in the rear view, is fondly remembered by most people... except for burying the accusations about Andrew. And the worse what she did in the situation involving him was, the more the whole monarchy gets painted with the mess.

The advantage of them targetting blue cities in blue states is the only people who can pardon them will be Blue governors.

You're right, he'd almost certainly skate legally. But can the Royal family survive the PR issue of the King being both guilty of covering for his brother's crimes and still the face of the monarchy? The biggest hit to the Queen was her paying off Andrew's accuser, and that was without the details.

I'm not sure that'll be better for the institution. "Everyone knows he committed the crime but we can't actually punish him" is the sort of thing that will trigger immediate demands for it to be changed going forward. Plus either the King would be a known criminal or he'd abdicate and be prosecuted.

Oh, they are 100% hoping that tossing him out kills the issue, but it's a Boris solution - solves the problem they have right now, but the ugly detail will come out down the line, at which point they'll have to explain what the Queen knew when she paid off his accusers and it'll be 10 times worse.

It's a defence that only works as long as the opposition is intellectuals opposed to an institution. It's a emotive defence of "why should things change?". It doesn't work well against an emotive attack of "They protected this scumbag for years even though they knew he was doing this, this and this"

"You peasants can't make us answer to you, even if you all know what we did" isn't gonna go great for them either. They can only get away with stuff like that if we don't know the details and people can go "well, we are't sure...", because the ambiguity of exactly how bad they are is a major shield.

Weirdly, that could be worse for the monarchy - a scandal where it comes out what he did was really as bad as we think, that they knowingly covered for him and yet they all get to walk away? The public outrage would be huge and with no defence besides "but they're the Royal family"? They'd be toast.

Well, I mean if you're going to take titles away from the privileged upper classes for breaking the standards of law, decency and morality they demand commoners abide by, where will it end? If rich people aren't allowed to break laws without consequence, how are they supposed to remain rich?

If the Epstein files get released in the US, hopefully they all get hauled in front of Parliament to explain why they thought covering up for him wasn't criminal conspiracy. Then they get held accountable, one and all.

Reminding us again that the privileged want us all to equate them losing a title to a commoner going to jail for years for the same crime. They treat titles as a get out of jail free card they can hand over if they get caught for something big. Like an Epstein frequent visitor card or nicking £122m.

Can I point out that the general population has been rather more willing to speak up than, say, you?

He says that because he expects he'd be nice and high up in the pyramid stomping down on the commoners below. If it involved him being subject to it, he'd never want it, but it's the life he wants for other Brits.

Is he trying to grift royalties for the use of his image or something?

I mean, it worked for members of a certain regime from Germany that needed to flee the consequences of their actions...

Anger is one of the few forces in politics that genuinely gets people moving, and the GOP knows this as they've used it for decades. Seeing it pointed back at them for genuine reasons SHOULD terrify them.

Don't cave - threats to fire people if you don't give in imply he won't fire those same people if you do cave... but we know that even if he promised they would keep their jobs it'd be worth nothing.

The bit he's not mentioning is he means "citizens who aren't billionaires". Pretty sure it'll be coupled with impunity for the rich.