I will write in more detail after the nuclear war has been averted. Also about the accusations of election fraud.

How the hell did Jobbik f*ck up so badly?

I was expecting that the drift of European politics to revolve more and more around immigration and identity issues would benefit Jobbik more than anyone else.

There are about 50,000 Jews in Hungary, or about 0.3% of the population. Why is how they voted of much interest? Polling a population that sparse would require patient and labor intensive procedures to construct a probability sample and process the data.

There seems to have been some incompetence. I’ll write examples later when I have time.

I’m sure it’s just a conspiracy theory, but on the surface there are plausibly enough sounding anecdotes.

What’s their reasoning? Is there evidence for any fraud at all?

Opposition supporters now increasingly claim that the election was stolen.

It’s also higher IQ, more people can speak and read English, etc.

I read the analyses about Fidesz being overmeasured, and it matched my personal experience of people getting progressively more anti-Fidesz. Which was, of course, true of Budapest only. The rural areas were moving in the opposite direction.

I can only tell you that the vast majority of Jews supported leftist parties. Each of them had some Jewish support.

In recent years a number of famous Jewish intellectuals have been advocating for some form of coordination with Jobbik. Jobbik itself was open to a coalition with LMP, the only new leftist party which managed to get into parliament. Unfortunately since its founding leader Schiffer resigned (he is of mostly Jewish descent, but interestingly with working class sensibilities and never obsessing over the Jewish issues like the supposed anti-Semitism of Orbán etc.), they are drifting to become a traditional leftist party soon. They were still more accepting of Jobbik than the rest.

Now Vona, the president of Jobbik, responsible for its leftward drift, has resigned (he also gave back his seat in parliament), so it might become a radical party once again.

That’s been so since 2010. It’s mostly heavily Gypsy infested areas where Jobbik became the strongest, and it stayed that way until this very day.

That generally wasn’t my experience when I lived there for a year. Unlike in provincial cities, where housing projects/sink estates were built on big tracts of then peripheral land, those in London tended to be high density, small in area and dotted around randomly. Supposedly left wing councils are in the process of “redeveloping” them (isteve has extensively covered this phenomena in the states). There are quite a few nasty private hmos/bedsits/kommunalkas though. If you’re talking about “rich” parts, I’ll have to disagree. Land values are absolutely
astronomical in every inch of the place, and the countryside beyond.

In London, it depends a lot on the area of the city. In East side, or South of the River Thame, it feels like a disaster zone.

But in the rich parts of London, everything is very civilized, even with the multi-national atmosphere (it’s mainly civilized behaving people from other parts of the world living there – as well as civilized tourists including from the most civilized countries like Japan).

In the case of London, they’re either homeowners whove been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the last couple of decades or they’re renters who live there by choice, knowing full well what living there entails. Besides “diversity” is quite misleading. You tend to get the right tail ends of all nationalities heading to the capital(s). The dregs go to the crappy, depressed provincial towns where there’s a surplus of housing.

Question for reiner,
Any thoughts on why certain rural areas were stronger for Jobbik than others? Also, any ideas on which leftist party the Budapest Jews supported, and how many are for Fidesz or Jobbik?

The whole point of EU is that anyone can move anywhere, how long before s few ‘enterprising’ newcomers in Malmo decide that Coenhagen is better? Once they have documents – and Swedes are giving them documents – they can go anywhere in EU.

That’s been going on for years, and not only originating in Sweden either. Tip to the enterprising asylum seeker: you can pretty easily get gibs from multiple countries, set up collections of wives in multiple countries, etc. And in case one fails, move on.

” Don’t the elites in Budapest see it”

Of course they see it, however this is precisely what they want to happen which then will then justify the establishment of the “solution”, namely : Communism.

The “elites” ( professors) world-wide have but one goal in mind as the ( innefective) cure for all of mankinds, from their viewpoint, flaws : Communism.

This is what the total academic field in every country on planet mirth is relentlessly striving towards, as crazy as it seems, however not hard to comprehend when ones realizes that they are all insane.

Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army vet, and proJazz artist.

one of those “zmagar” types who believe Belarus to be a descendant of the Commonwealth

He sounds great, I didn’t know such people even existed.

Budapest is more exposed to the EU mainstream narrative, isn’t it?

I was thinking about it too. I propose that:

(1) In a large city you do not have really a community, even by – unfortunately – low CEE standards. Without a community, you don’t really get what’s this nationalism is all about.

(2) It’s not like living in big city you experience negative consequences of immigration. Yes, on average criminality might go up; the costs of living might go up; but it might not be discernible from the point of view of average Joe until it’s too late.

(3) The boiled frog theory. If you live in a big city when the change is gradual, you compare current situation to the past year, past two years, and then you do not really see that much a change. When, in contrast, if you go from the province to the big city you might experience a huge shock. A lot of my Polish friends go back from the West racist and islamophobic, while westerners living there for years seem to not care about Londonistan having larger homicide rate than New York.

In the present Hungarian election the incomprehensible thing was that the capital and rural areas were moving in an opposite direction. Budapest got more leftist, while the rest of the country (mostly the rural areas, not even the bigger cities) got more pro-Fidesz. Usually there’s a difference, but at least there’s correlation.

There is a theory in biology and in religion known as costly signaling. The religious application is relevant here.

The idea is that religious rituals which impose substantial personal burdens on the observant proves that he is is faithful and loyal to the group.

Putting up with the burdens of “diversity” is costly, stressful, and even dangerous. By claiming to piously worship the invaders, one demonstrates fealty to the one truth faith of liberalism-progressivism or whatever it ought to be called. This religious cult also polices non-observance by punishing those guilty of the taboo of “racism”.

People who live in metropolitan areas are mostly more ambitious, so they are both more personally willing and find it more professionally necessary to participate in this rubbish religion of self-annihilation.

It’s the same everywhere. For instance in the American state of California whites voted for Hillary over Trump, even though their state has basically been destroyed by immigration.

This is why Reiner Tor is right to point out that lowbrow populism is inadequate. We need something compelling to offer to elites–and especially elite aspirants. And I mean something more than the highbrow, empirical arguments you can find on this website.

We need something people can believe in. National myths and the old religions are one obvious place to look, but it seems like we’ll need more than that to capture the Davos wannabes. I think the NRx people were onto something with their technofeudalism and open embrace of elitism, though obviously they were too autistic and LARPy to be taken seriously.

Fidesz would’ve lost if the country was Budapest only

This persistent gap between the metropolis and the rest of the country is in one way puzzling. People in Budapest – or London, Vienna, Prague – experience the costs of Third World mass migration more. Crime, squalor, cost of housing, the general dirty crumminess that results when large migrant ghettoes are created, menacing subways become, hustlers from Tunisia or Nigeria hanging around centers – it happened first in the large cities, and it would also happen in Budapest first.

Many people in capitals benefit economically – government social jobs, NGO’s, foreign owned media, increase in real estate values. But it is selling one’s future for transient benefits (yeah, I know, also the ‘ethnic food’ that Londoners swear by and justify all else when they run out of rational arguments).

If liberal-left-progressives would come to power in Hungary, they would quickly apologize to Brussels and quietly accept their share of migrants. The same pattern that destroyed Western capitals would then follow: first few thousand would come, start bringing in their relatives, small ghettoes would form with those ‘great ethnic’ restaurants. Then the less respectable in-laws and cousins would show up, crime would rise, locals would move out, and within 10-20 years Budapest would have a few ‘no-go’ zones and expensive welfare and crime ghettoes. At that point there would be no civilised way to address it – it would be a bumpy, unpleasant ride into a Third World oblivion (but with that ‘unforgivable’ Pakistani cousine).

Don’t the elites in Budapest see it? Or are they so short-sided and greedy that it simply doesn’t matter to them?

In my district, the vote share of Fidesz dropped by 15%. It’s a traditionally Fidesz-voting district, it voted conservative (not Fidesz) already in 1990 and 1994 (when Fidesz was still a liberal party), and started consistently voting Fidesz in 1998.

Perhaps one reason why I thought Fidesz was significantly weakening: because in my social circle (and wider area), it was. (This included this significantly pro-Fidesz area.) It was also the belief of most analysts.

In Budapest as a whole, it’s a mixed bag. Fidesz would’ve lost if the country was Budapest only, whereas I think it’d have a small majority in 2014. (It won 10 districts out of 18 then, now it won only 6. And then, the major leftist parties formed a coalition, whereas now it was limited to a few districts.) But I’ll have to check the overall number of votes (unfortunately I haven’t found aggregate numbers for the whole of Budapest, only electoral district level data) once I have time.

Is there a collection of liberal media crying yet to make up a collection for schadenfreude?

Would like to see the Visegrad countries develop a nationalist establishment, nationalist press, academia, publishing, movies etc a true right-wing (in the nationalist, anti-globalist sense) cultural hegemony, to begin a true cultural/political, overton window moving type counterattack.

I’m sure Orbán would’ve won without the Gypsies. It’s a huge enough victory.

It is good that Orban won, but I am starting to worry that these are all mostly symbolic victories, that current political systems simply are not able to address this.

They are not symbolic. Orban winning will have a decisively positive impact on the V4 at least. If his opposition would have won, it would definitely worsen things in a direct and material way.

However, you’re correct that ultimately what we’re doing now is slowing rather than reversing the tide. This will continue to happen even if we were to exit the EU. It would make movement harder, but geography is like parents: you don’t choose it. Even if we were to leave the EU and/or disobey the EU freedom of movement, then these people would crawl into our countries sooner or later.

It is only a combined Western/Eastern effort at full-scale repatriation that would fix this and for that you need a large political change in Western Europe. I do not subscribe to the idea that EE can ride this one out alone.

we are also facing endless NGO comprador elites in most countries that are obsessively devoted to ‘open borders’ EU dream

Ñot only this, but we also face a hostile and often foreign media. A significant chunk of our media is owned by Germans. There was even a scandal where one of the editors of one such large media outlet sent out a memo to his journos about how they need to side with the EU over Poland in a recent dispute and how this is “really good for Poland in the long run”.

Obviously this got leaked and a huge firestorm ensued, but after the initial days of rage and mea culpas, not much happened because PiS dare not openly confiscate media the way Orban did early on(though he handed some of them to his trusted oligarchs, to avoid too much screeching). But most of these moves of Orban were done during the years of austerity, when the gaze of Europe was fixed on Southern Europe, not the Eastern one. It was also before the 2015 refugee wave.

To truly become independent, we’d have to do a full rootcanal of not just NGOs but also the media. However, the political space to do this now is limited since after Russia, the neoliberal/neo-Cohenist obsession with Hungary and Poland are a close second. Orban has also been in power for much longer and he is a more skilled politician than whatever PiS can offer.

Finally, Hungary is a more conservative country. All the right-wing parties get around 45% in total in Poland, in Hungary it is closer to 65%. Their good example will be a great model for us to follow in purging the subversive elements who are working for hostile and foreign agendas.

But all that said, today’s election was a good development.

The Gypsies save Europe!

I love it!

Unlike Jews, Gypsies are a diaspora people who benefit their host nation!

Gypsies good, Jews bad. That is the lesson of this election, and I will love shoving it in the face of the likes of Cofnas from now till the end of time.

Also glad to hear Vona is retiring, hopefully he will take Vambery’s absurd Turanism with him when he goes. It was painful to watch Jobbik reflexively taking sides with Turkey against Armenia and Cyprus.

By the way, compared to Trump’s 3 am tweets about Miss Venezuela’s weight, Orban’s speeches seem very high brow indeed. Is Orban is a Hungarian Nixon or Reagan, with some Hungarian Buchanan writing his speeches for him?

The Fidesz/Jobbik vote held up pretty well in Budapest, but Fidesz lost a few seats because the left wing parties got their act together and ran just one candidate in a few seats, had they not Fidesz would have held most of their Budapest seats. I’m surprised that they did as well as they did there. At some point in time the left will probably win all the district seats there, but still be surrounded by Fidesz or Jobbik districts nationwide.

Any country in the EU could simply ignore EU rules about the free movement of people and announce this publicly.

I agree that EU is a paper tiger, no teeth. But what we are facing is not just Brussels ‘commisars’, we are also facing endless NGO comprador elites in most countries that are obsessively devoted to ‘open borders’ EU dream. They tend to dominate the capital cities, even in this election Budapest went against Orban (and no other region did). They control the media, the universities, the public discourse. They are effectively sell-outs in a much more significant way than the alleged ‘corruption’ of Orban and people like him. They are the ultimate sell-outs, because they are willingly selling the future of their nations for a job, or an internship, or often just a free airline ticket with a crappy hotel.

They might account to less than 5% in most countries, and get 10-15% in elections (old ladies like to be ‘nice’), but they dominate 90% of media, 90% of discussions, etc… Until that changes we are truly f..ed.

The whole point of EU is that anyone can move anywhere, how long before s few ‘enterprising’ newcomers in Malmo decide that Coenhagen is better? Once they have documents – and Swedes are giving them documents – they can go anywhere in EU.

Sooner or later someone is going to realize that the EU is a paper tiger. The EU is not the United States federal government. There is no EU army, no EU police, and no EU court system.

Any country in the EU could simply ignore EU rules about the free movement of people and announce this publicly.

Then what does the EU do?

It is good that Orban won, but I am starting to worry that these are all mostly symbolic victories, that current political systems simply are not able to address this.

I agree with this. Immigration reduction is well and good, but it needs to be reversed as Enoch Powell proposed.

political outcomes matter

In the short run. Denmark is better than Sweden, Trump is better than Clinton, and Brexit was a plus. But I have not detected a real change in the overall massive direction of population replacement and gradual Third-Worldization. Maybe it is slower, maybe a few places delay it, even avoid it for now, but the massive migration continues. And is with osmosis in physics, the new migrants will eventually spread to the places that re currently resisting. The whole point of EU is that anyone can move anywhere, how long before s few ‘enterprising’ newcomers in Malmo decide that Coenhagen is better? Once they have documents – and Swedes are giving them documents – they can go anywhere in EU.

It is good that Orban won, but I am starting to worry that these are all mostly symbolic victories, that current political systems simply are not able to address this.

Neutral, you might be right, but political outcomes matter. Imagine if Tony Blair and new Labour hadn’t been elected in 1997, and instead the bad (but not catastrophically horrible) Tory immigration policies of the 80′s and 90′s been continued. The UK today would be in a lot better shape today. Or look at Danish immigration policy vs Sweden. In Denmark you have the Progress Party helping to keep the other parties much more pro-Danish than would have been the case without them, with the result that the average Danish city is in a lot better shape than a Swedish city.
Also, its nice to see politicians rewarded for campaigning on a low/anti-immigration platform, to encourager les autres.

No different to Brexit and Trump, the international jew will not simply accept this and move on, they will double down and try even more to destroy Hungary with mass immigration.

Thank you for your contributions on this subject, it was genuinely helpful.

And congratulations on the election win. Your country will continue to resist the colored tide.

YEEEEEEAAAAAAH

You were correct, I overworried it. It could be a supermajority for Fidesz.

Now I’m going to sleep, since I was traveling this morning and had to get up at 5AM.

Thanks for the detail. It’s often the case, that politicians that seem good from a distance, are less impressive when you hear detail from people who live in the country.

When I read on Wikipedia the overall ‘broad’ strategy and ideological mix of Orban, it seems to be very similar to what I would argue for if I was Hungarian person.

It’s not a case like Obama, or Trudeau, where their political/ideological orientation is wrong on every issue compared to my view.

Or of Putin – where he is sensible on some or issues, and obviously wrong on others to my view.

When I look at underlying views of Orban (obviously you can correct me on his poor execution of them), then I think to myself that all seems like the right general choices or goals for the country.

Now whether he is acting in an incompetent or corrupt way, that’s another issue from the goals he sets for himself, or personal ideology.

Yes, they are very professional and service is good. But that’s also true of young stewardesses here and frankly just American business in general.

The pilots and technicians are very, very good.

It’s easy for me to complain about things since I live here, but fundamentally most things in America very well.

Yes it’s my impression of America – a very high degree of competence in professional life, even where I am averse to many aspects of the wider culture.

Rumors have it that Fidesz is going very strong among rural voters, whereas the left is very strong in the big cities, especially in Budapest.

In 2014 the fptp voting system was still new, and there was very little strategic voting. Usually, like in the old system, people voted for the local candidate of their chosen party, even if he had no chance of winning. There was very little cross voting even among voters of leftist parties. Now it will be more widespread.

It’s extremely unlikely that they won’t end up with a majority this time again.

Please note that my prediction was a narrow Fidesz win. This now looks a bit overly pessimistic, and based on what we know now they are likely to win a solid majority (but it still doesn’t look like a supermajority). At least that seems to be the consensus in Hungary for the moment. We don’t yet have exit polls.

Fidesz got 2/3 the seats with 44% of the vote.

Back then no Jobbik voter thought of voting for a leftist candidate if the leftist had a higher chance of being elected, and vice versa. Since 2014 this has become the norm, especially after Fidesz tried to basically outlaw Jobbik using some highly questionable legal pretext. So it’s unlikely they will be able to repeat the 2014 performance with only 44% of the vote.

Some folks over at the /r/Europe megathread made the argument that it not only matters if there is strong turnout but where the turnout is. Some Hungarians were claiming – presumably on Hungarian news outlets and similar sources – that a lot of this turnout was coming from rural areas.

Yes. See comments #63 and #70 above.

Yes, they are very professional and service is good. But that’s also true of young stewardesses here and frankly just American business in general.

The pilots and technicians are very, very good.

It’s easy for me to complain about things since I live here, but fundamentally most things in America very well.

Some folks over at the /r/Europe megathread made the argument that it not only matters if there is strong turnout but where the turnout is. Some Hungarians were claiming – presumably on Hungarian news outlets and similar sources – that a lot of this turnout was coming from rural areas.

Obviously I am not Hungarian, so I can’t confirm, but if this is true then it would mean that Fidesz could outperform the somewhat negative expectations that at least reiner built up over the past few weeks. I guess I was not that worried given their decent polling average, coupled with the 2011 election law changes which mixes a proportional with a FPTP system, which favours big parties. That’s how Fidesz got 2/3 the seats with 44% of the vote.

It’s extremely unlikely that they won’t end up with a majority this time again.

Ironically enough, he was actually criticised by liberals on Twitter for giving Trumps “too high” a chance before the election, because those supposed experts thought that such numbers would give a moral boost to the Trump campaign.

In reality, his numbers were eminently reasonable. He has to work on what public information there is available. He doesn’t commission his own polls. Based on the polls – which I remind you were within the post-1968 historical averages – there was indeed a strong chance that Hillary would have won.

Don’t forget that Trump lost the popular vote by 2 million. In some of the key swing states he literally hung onto by the skin of his teeth. Michigan had a margin of just some thousands of votes, same in Pennsylvania. It’s always easy to be a smartass with 20/20 hindsight, but in truth his win truly was an upset and a surprise. Silver’s estimates were reasonable, very reasonable, given the available information and in fact gave Trump better chances than most MSM outlets.

It’s also not correct to claim that polls did a very bad job, they did about as well as most polls did in the last 50 years. Notably, the 2012 polls actually did worse according to the FiveThirtyEight aggregate database than the 2016 ones did. Yet you did not hear that whining about polls in the media. Can you guess why? Because the favored candidate won.

Sorry, those estimates are based on some pre-election extra-large polls, not actual exit-polls. I remember once (maybe in 2002) they didn’t even do exit-polls at all. I hope we’ll know about them, but I think no exit poll data can be legally released as long as voting was still going on.

Not very reliable estimates anyway.

There’s a possibility in the Hungarian constitution that ethnic minorities can also get seats in parliament using less votes than is normally required for a vote. However, people would have to register for the ethnic minority lists, and usually few people do this. (I would abolish this rule anyway, why should ethnic minorities’ votes be more valuable than anyone else’s?) This year apparently the German minority will be able to elect an MP (which is why the number of MPs would go up to 200 from 199), and the guy will probably be a Fidesz member. (So, it was probably a Fidesz GOTV organization effort.)

Actually, the vote is not yet over, because in a lot of precincts there are so long lines that they have to keep them open longer. (They cordon off the people who arrived earlier, so no new voters can arrive, but those who arrived before 1900 will not be sent away until they can cast their votes. This means that voting is actually still going on.)

The first estimates show a parliament with 116 Fidesz seats (of 199 or 200). But a lot of seats hand in the balance with just a 1-2% or less advantage, so the estimate is not very reliable.

Because the turnout was less spectacular after 1700, I’d be highly surprised if Fidesz lost. They’d have needed at least 75% turnout to lose.

The two-year budget was back in 2000. I don’t think he did it later. The reason for this was that his parliamentary majority was thinning out (his coalition partner the Smallholders’ Party was breaking up), and so he needed to have the budget for the year 2002 accepted earlier, before his majority would completely disappear. (I think it did finally disappear for the last few weeks before the elections, but it didn’t matter any more.)

The healthcare system and education were both neglected. (I have already explained why neglecting the educations was a strategic mistake. I’m not sure if he’d have had money for both, but since he spent enormous amounts on football, building stupid stadiums for shitty teams, he could’ve provided more money for both. And it’s a bit different when you can point out that you have no more money, than if your opponents can point out that you wasted billions on vanity projects, which eventually came to naught.)

He was very corrupt, probably even personally. His close family members (especially his oldest daughter and son-in-law) enriched themselves, and one of his cronies, a gas fitter called Lőrinc Mészáros, became something like a top 10 richest person in the country. Mészáros had no wealth to speak of until 2010, and his special talent seems to be getting profitable public contracts. Interestingly, his holding company went public early last year, and as of last December (when BTC was at its highest) it proved a better investment than Bitcoin. (I guess it looks still better now.) Because Mészáros seems to be basically an uneducated hick (he doesn’t give interviews, but that’s the impression one gets from the few public appearances he makes), many suspect he’s actually just a front man for Orbán himself. (Or maybe for Fidesz, or maybe for a number of Fidesz potentates, or something similar.)

Now his extremely lowbrow anti-immigrant campaign would’ve been okay, if he was principled about it, and if he started a parallel highbrow campaign to explain the reasons for it. First, he wasn’t principled: he started (and in a typical manner, his cronies profited from) a program where foreigners could easily get Hungarian immigration visas in exchange for having bought a quarter of a million euros worth Hungarian government bonds. (Yes, bonds, which he still owned. I’m not sure if there were safeguards against him selling the bonds immediately.) Apparently a number of high profile criminals got immigration visas that way under Orbán’s watch. Another problem was that the lowbrow campaign was used to deflect from any charges against him. Orbán’s primitive, idiotic propagandists (they clearly could’ve learned a lot from Goebbels) basically shared any anti-immigrant fake news, many of which were easily disproven by the leftists. It’s questionable how effective it was for the 85 IQ target audience, but it was probably counter-productive among the highly educated. Now we have an educated class which is inherently skeptical of any stories about the problems of immigration in Western Europe. They have been inoculated against it.

Just an example: they shared yesterday stories claiming that the attacker in Münster was a Muslim. Later they had to retract (which they did by simply ceasing to talk about it at all), but of course many people can speak English, so people know. Also, at least half the media is still leftist, so they wrote it in Hungarian. It’s just embarrassing, they share stories without checking.

We should soon get results. I think they will win despite all this, but I hope they can get their act together for the next four years.

Jobbik is the only opposition party with solid views on immigration (and at least initially they’d probably be less corrupt), and two leftist parties (LMP and Momentum, the latter probably won’t be in parliament) are at least open to anti-immigration arguments (but their instincts would lead them to opening the borders anyway).

The turnout seems to have been lower for the last couple hours, so it’s probably not a record turnout. This means I think Fidesz cannot lose.

I don’t support over-unionization.

But my impression with old air stewardesses, is that they have been given a career for life at the same airline (in other words, they should take the job seriously, and see it as their lifelong career – rather than some kind of student holiday job). I would also hope the same from the aircraft technicians and pilots.

I also remember American planes had only old stewardesses, and my view was they seemed professional and gave a good service, without the rudeness of some planes (although you would expect this considering how much the ticket costs).

He seems especially good in economic policy. It mentions in Wikipedia, the two-year budget. This is a very good idea.

Reiner can tell us more about who did you vote for and what are the qualities and opinions of Orban (why is he so popular?).

I read his Wikipedia page and he seems very sensible. But you probably have more subtle information about him.

You have to love the detailed descriptions of the secret Russian labs where they specifically design the weakened boutique form of the nerve agent only for murder. (I guess for at most a few murders only, since after a few cases most hospitals in the first world will be equipped with antidotes and easy ways to identify the symptoms.) When it’s obvious that it’s all conjecture. The more plausible sounding details there are (without any evidence), the more believable the whole story becomes.

It’s a simple conspiracy theory at this point, where any and all details can only further confirm what the conclusion had been before we even started to investigate. I mean, the fact that such a highly sophisticated military grade (i.e. very clean, highly poisonous) nerve agent was produced was proof that it must have been a state actor – a simple chemist in a university lab would’ve killed himself. Later it emerges that it was a highly watered down version of the poison, i.e. not so dangerous, but we don’t need to revisit our previous conclusion that it was a state actor. No. The fact that it was a deviously less poisonous poison is now further proof that it must’ve been the evil Russians – because no one else would’ve been so devious as to produce a less poisonous version of the most poisonous poison ever.

The fact that the method was in fact quite primitive (put some poison on the door handle – if anyone else touched the door handle for any reason, than that would’ve foiled the plans completely; not that the plan worked that way), or that the not very poisonous version of the most poisonous poison in fact seems to be just a “watered down” (i.e. not quite military grade) version of it is not proof that it was cooked up in some home lab by less sophisticated actors, it just deepens the plot.

I cannot really imagine any new developments which will shake the convictions of these people. They will keep adjusting their unfalsifiable theory until it fits the facts (sort of).

The Syrian chemical attack is also very strange. The Russians warned previously about a planned false flag. You gotta love how these stupid Syrians commit a militarily totally ineffectual chemical attack (which only manages to kill a few dozens or hundreds of children for the cameras, but no combatants ever) just at the time when President Trump publicly expresses his wish to disengage from Syria. Last time it was a few days after Tillerson said Assad could stay, now it’s a few days after Trump told his generals to prepare to pull out of Syria. It’s also curious that they would go on to win the civil war regardless.

63.21% until 1700. Please note that it’s not directly comparable to previous years, because previously they disclosed turnout data until 1730, so it’s a little shorter time period.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

This is what Silver forecast.

National polls are meaningless, who knows where those votes in California came from. Except for PPD and Trafalgar they got almost all the swing states wrong. The pollsters were very wrong no matter what spin is put on it. Nate Silver being perhaps the biggest joke.

OT, perhaps of some importance.

The official reaction of the Leader of the Free World to the latest Putin-inspired atrocity in Syria, following that in Salisbury:

Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price…

Will be interesting to see what the “big price” is.

By the way, for those not having kept up to date on the Skripal case, here are a 3 articles explaining the state of the art as to: (i) how it was done: (ii) why the Skripals didn’t die; and (iii) what is to become of the Skripals:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/russian-who-masterminded-spy-nerve-12320728

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5590067/Nerve-agent-used-poison-Russian-spy-designed-4-hours-work-allow-culprits-flee.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5589987/Daughter-poisoned-Russian-spy-given-new-identity-granted-political-asylum-UK.html

Fidesz was probably running a very efficient get out the vote effort. That’s part of the reason for the high turnout.

Apparently a lot of Gypsies voted. For those who don’t know, they are all bought and paid for votes by Fidesz. The Gypsy voivod gets paid, and provides the Gypsy vote. The precinct is often 90% Gypsy, so it’s easy to know if he delivered or not. (It boggles the mind that leftists and liberals know this, are complaining about this, and yet call you a Nazi for mentioning that Gypsies shouldn’t be allowed to vote.)

It’s an indication that the airline is old and unionized, that’s it.

Compensation for airline staff, including pilots, has been in decline in America ever since air travel was deregulated. In the regulated era the airlines did not face much competition, and their fares were regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board. Airfares were as a result very high and the airlines competed on service (which, according to older businessmen I talk to, was spectacular).

This gave organized labor a lot of power, so unions got very generous compensation packages. The legacy airlines as a result still have a lot of the staff they had a generation ago.

Ever since deregulation the legacy carriers have been under constant pressure from budget airlines.

Used to be that chair force and navy pilots resigned their commissions to make more money as airline pilots, but now staying in the armed forces is generally a better financial decision. Plus the workload is much lower (and the planes more fun).

I am reading about this Orban now.

He seems probably to have the right mix of policies for navigating a small country in this situation.

Neo-liberal economic policy to encourage investment in the country, combined with sensible approach to non-EU immigration – and while also still taking advantage of the EU benefits and free money from staying in that club.

American carriers also rarely have hot stewardesses which is extremely irritating. I don’t want to be waited on by an overweight middle aged woman

Still it’s a good indication if they are providing the stewardess as a kind of ‘career for life’, so that they will take it seriously. Also you would hope they are treating the same way pilots, technicians, etc – which show professionalism.

53.64%, 1500

Most pollsters predicted that low turnout could mean a supermajority for Fidesz, while a very high turnout could mean that they won’t even get absolute majority. But it all depends on how much leftist and Jobbik voters are willing to vote for each other’s more popular candidates. It never happened in 2014, but it will happen this time a lot. It’s a little bit uncharted territory for pollsters (even the election system is quite new with little experience), so they aren’t very confident in their own models.

The idea that elections in the EU countries are considered locally relevant on an official level, is conspiracy theory pushed by the EU and Western media, in order to try to undermine various candidates by associating them with Russia (it’s the typical election tactic of accusing your opponent of being ‘fifth column’)/.

Really there was little coverage about Hungary election anywhere – except reported in the BBC.

Looks like the high turnout is mostly in pro-Fidesz or pro-Jobbik places. (The two are not nearly identical.)

So it’s quite possible that the high turnout will not be beneficial for the leftist parties. Especially not for the smaller ones, which might drop out of parliament as a result. We’ll know in a couple minutes.

Regarding airlines all of the legacy American carriers other than Delta are terrible. Delta is the only one which even pretends to offer a competitive transatlantic business class product (American and United don’t even have lay flat bed seats), and Delta has a better on time record than the others.

American carriers also rarely have hot stewardesses which is extremely irritating. I don’t want to be waited on by an overweight middle aged woman, or worse a homosexual.

Best choice is Aer Lingus, because Dublin has US immigration & customs preclearance. The business class product is competitive, and because they fly 757s (single aisle) you can get an entire row for yourself. The cuisine isn’t as good as other European carriers (best here is Austrian Airlines) who fly larger aircraft, but it’s still quite good.

The Luftwaffe is also a nice choice because they operate the 787 on their Chicago – Munich route, so you arrive feeling much more refreshed owing to the greater cabin pressure and humidity. The business class product is inferior to other European flag carriers, but it’s still good.

Avoid London Heathrow and Paris CDG at all costs. Don’t fly SAS unless you need nonstop Chicago to Stockholm.

Worst transatlantic carrier is Air India. Got food poisoning on an empty 747 flying from NYC to London. Later when I got to know Indians they told me Air India has a terrible reputation in India itself and Indian businessmen refuse to fly on it.

I hear great things about the Emirati carriers, but I refuse to fly them as it offends me that Arabs are allowed to own airlines. The British executives who run these airlines should be regarded as traitors.

Looking forward to trying the Asian carriers. Next time I visit India I’ll go transpacific for that reason.

Within Europe itself I prefer taking the train unless distances are truly great. E.g. Aeroflot has a direct flight from Nice to Moscow–not going to bother with the train for something like that.

In the USA I prefer legacy carriers as they have domestic first class unlike the budget airlines, but my main priority is the avoidance of bad airports. Smaller airports outside of big metropolitan areas are generally much more pleasant.

The carrier Allegiant offers nonstop flights between various small airports as a competitive strategy. They for instance offer a direct flight from Rockford, IL to Punta Gorda, FL. This allows the complete avoidance of nightmarish hellscape airports like Chicago O’Hare, Atlanta Hartfield, or Miami.

Downside is Allegiant is a budget airline which not only doesn’t have first class, but the seats don’t recline! Fortunately you can buy an exit row seat which helps.

And as Karlin said, use Google Flights. Just remember that Southwest refuses to work with them. For a complicated itinerary use Flight Fox.

Viktor Orban is a lot like Trump.

Frustrating, but necessary.

If the Visegrad 4 survive in their current ideological orientation for a few more years, immigration restriction will seem normal in Europe. Bridgeheads are already spreading outside of Mitteleuropa, most notably in Austria. Not only did Sebastian Kurz campaign on immigration restriction and form a coalition government with Joerg Haider’s old party, but he declined to attend the faggot parade and instead got married to his beautiful fiance in a Catholic Church. Very trad.

From Russia’s point of view the reason to care about Orban is that we Western nationalists tend to be Russophilic, at least outside of Poland. Hungary itself isn’t powerful, but through Hungary you may one day get a Russophilic government in Germany for the first time since Schroeder.

PSA: After inexplicably dragging their feet, the mods of /r/Europe finally decided to open a megathread on the Hungarian elections. You can find it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8apkao/hungarian_election_megathread/

The US polls were well off in 2016

This is a myth that refuses to die. FiveThirtyEight adressed this in their early 2017 round-up:

Another myth is that Trump’s victory represented some sort of catastrophic failure for the polls. Trump outperformed his national polls by only 1 to 2 percentage points in losing the popular vote to Clinton, making them slightly closer to the mark than they were in 2012. Meanwhile, he beat his polls by only 2 to 3 percentage points in the average swing state. Certainly, there were individual pollsters that had some explaining to do, especially in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Trump beat his polls by a larger amount. But the result was not some sort of massive outlier; on the contrary, the polls were pretty much as accurate as they’d been, on average, since 1968.

They wrote at length on this topic in a separate article which you can read in full here:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-is-just-a-normal-polling-error-behind-clinton/

My personal pet theory is that part of the reason why “it was da pollz” narrative was spun up is because something had to be used in order to save face for an extremely smug pundit class which almost all had discounted Trump and his chances, so instead of doing some soul-searching about their own (in)competency they decided to blame the pollsters.

Furthermore, polling is not an exact science. It can only give you a narrow band at best, and this is what the 2016 polls did on aggregate. The fact that pundits earning many hundreds of thousands per year cannot understand basic mathematical concepts like margin of error should perhaps not surprise us, given that the vast majority of them are utterly useless and just end up parroting whatever conventional wisdom is out there. Whether it is “Trump is doomed” or “Russia is Ebil”. Few if any do any independent analysis and even fewer are even remotely numerate.

The US polls were well off in 2016, ignore California. Only Trafalgar and Richard Baris at PPD had Trump to win Michigan and Pennsylvania, places like Ohio the polls were well off and some even had Clnton ahead 12 points at some point. It was a complete mess, and I think this was partly a deliberate pysop to depress Trump turnout.

Turnout was 42.32% until 1300.

With Ryanair changing its mind on Ukraine Wizzair are really the only budget option for last minute flights to Lviv and Kiev.

The deal finally went through a few weeks ago.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ryanair-ukraine/ryanair-to-fly-15-routes-from-european-cities-to-ukraine-idUSKBN1GZ15U

Though the high turnout was very bad in the traditional Fidesz district last month where the mayoral by-election was held. The turnout is once more very high there.

Turnout until 11AM is still massive, but no longer record, only 29.83%.

Well, it’s a record if we don’t count second rounds. The second rounds were not fully national, because many districts were already decided in the first round.

One hopeful sign for Fidesz is that traditionally Fidesz-voting districts have the highest turnout.

One way Fidesz could be hugely helped by the high turnout is if the smaller leftist parties fail to reach the 5% limit. In an extreme case it could be a three- or even two-party parliament. (The socialists formed a coalition, so they have to reach 10% instead of just 5.)

A two-party parliament with just Fidesz and Jobbik would be awesome, it’s a pity it won’t happen.

Anyway, Fidesz is still most likely to win.

That’s got nothing to do with the airline, those guys are hired by the airport. Though AFAIK there aren’t any non-budget airlines that use Luton.

Wizz are very good for Ukraine, because their aviation laws over there still don’t allow airlines to offer anything other than full service, so no baggage fees or airport checkin fees. Zhulyany is also better connected than borispol.

I just realized that the “p” just means parliamentary election.

Anyway, before 2014 there was a second round, now it’s just one round.

I don’t what’s the “p” abbreviation, but p1 means first round, p2 second round. Since 2014 there’s just one round.

Record turnout.

I think Orbán seriously believes in his anti-immigration viewpoints. But he’s also massively corrupt, and it starts looking like he’s not far from personal enrichment himself.

He also doesn’t believe in intellectual arguments. Lowbrow arguments are necessary and useful, but in themselves they have the opposite effect on the educated. He’s not much of an intellectual himself, and has a healthy disdain for intellectuals in general, but it shouldn’t cloud his understanding of the importance of convincing the intellectuals.

Massive turnout already at 7AM. Not very good for Fidesz.

Government (Fidesz) campaign poster said to be all over Budapest:

Hail to you, PM #Orban#HungaryElection2018 pic.twitter.com/apbDRrfmmO

— Hail (__To_You) April 8, 2018

Hungarian communist leader running in this election slams Gypsies, Muslims, says “we should defend the borders of Hungary, [and] we should save Europe and European civilization.” (–Gyula Thürmer)

John Morgan of Counter-Currents, who lives in Hungary, has a lot of insightful comments here: “For Europe: Hungary’s 2018 National Election.”

Morgan endorses Orban:

Viktor Orbán certainly deserves a great deal of praise, and he is the closest to a “true Right” figure that one can find among national leaders within the European Union today. He acted swiftly, decisively, and effectively to put an end to the inflow of migrants into Hungary in 2015. Since then, he has made himself the chief spokesman for opposition to Brussels over the issue of migrant quotas. [...] His government has made a point of making use of the sorts of rhetoric that are condemned as “extremist” in the West, talking of white genocide, the preservation of Christian values, the incompatibility of large numbers of immigrants from non-Western origins…

with this caveat:

one must take a nuanced view of Fidesz and Orbán. They should not be seen as ideologically committed Rightists. Orbán is a quintessential populist; he is acting as the opposition on the migrant issue because he knows that this is a popular viewpoint among Hungarians

Yes it’s a miracle for all cheap inter-EU flying.

With some provisos, like not packing glass souvenirs in your luggage:

Offtopic, but do any of you guys use Hungarian Wizz Air?

I flew out of Budapest six weeks ago and judging by the departure board Wizzair looked to be the biggest airline there.

Anyway, the one time I did fly on Wizzair I thought the seats were even tighter than on Ryanair and easyjet, but everything went well. They have a great selection of direct flights to medium sized cities in the old Eastern bloc countries at great prices but make sure you read the fine print before booking.

I was also in Gdansk in February and was seriously tempted to fly to Sweden just for the day. Booking only a couple of days before the flight the prices were less than 30E each way. At that price it’s hard to complain about lack of leg room.

With Ryanair changing its mind on Ukraine Wizzair are really the only budget option for last minute flights to Lviv and Kiev.

He’s from Chelyabinsk – only gopnik cattle live there. I guess he’s some kind of freak exception.

To be fair, American Airlines was a very nice plane, once they eventually let me on the plane. I also have a good experience on United Airlines from Moscow.

Is Anatoly Karpov a huge hero to people in the Urals?

Lol yes. But it’s not because of that, that I take Ural airlines. Our shit airline has taken over the world in the last two years, you can now take it from anywhere to anywhere

I prefer it to Ural airlines, which is the one I use to visit my parents. In Ural airlines, they don’t think they’re a lowcoster and wake you up when you are sleeping, to force their disgusting food on you. Stewardesses are also rude.

In Wizz Air, the Hungarian stewardess are always friendly. Yes, it’s a bit uncomfortable for your legs though. (I’ve flown quite far on them before)

You always have to check-in online as well (they charge a lot of money if you want to check in at the airport).

The worst experience I’ve had so far was with American Airlines, who are basically pirates. I was flying from San Francisco to San Diego. I arrived on time, but they didn’t allow me on their flight, because some other people had arrived and paid more (something like this? – they didn’t even explain it). Instead they booked me into a hotel, and made me take another plane at 6am the next day.

Dmitry, are you from the Urals?

connected to the nuttiest elements of Hungarian nationalism. The Sumerian etc. thingy.

That one is nutty, but exploring it is interesting. Sumerians are not a mystery – their language and culture were a major part of the Indian Ocean early advanced civilization that encompassed Sumer, Elam, Indus Valley, Kushites, etc… invented writing, structured divinity, trade, boats, copper and bronze. After they lost vigour they were displaced by invading Semites, Indo-Europeans, and eventually Turkic people. The last remains retreated to southern India (and a few isolated pockets in between) and today we can see them in the Dravidian civilisation.

There are puzzling linguistic links in Magyar to ancient Sumerian that can probably be explained by Sumerian trade links to Volga-Ural region. The attempt to read more into it by some Hungarian nationalists betrays a sense of inferiority (‘backward Ural tribes, no, we were contenders, we were linked with ancient civilisations like Sumer’).

On Sunday the nationalists will win and the left (‘socialist’) will lose. This has been happening for a few years in all elections. It is Orban or Jobbik, they will outperform. There can be no ‘left’ with uncontrolled borders, no state benefits, no social solidarity – so the modern ‘left’ is done. The only question is whether the winning nationalists will march around in uniforms or not. Longer this gets delayed by the establishment, more likely this will go the uniform route. And that really cannot be good for anybody.

Question, of all the left wing parties running, do any of them show signs of being pro-Hungarian and rejecting the pro-non white immigration agenda. Just wondering who to root for (if any) among this group. Hoping for a clear Orban victory tomorrow with Jobbik in second place.

Debrecen will be even cheaper, but the airport there is a joke. Was a Soviet military base that they turned into an airport without actually building a terminal. Very close to Romania though.

Wizz are good if you can get a good deal; standard budget airline. I went to Kutaisi with them a few months ago from London which really tested my tolerance for discomfort to the limit though.

There’s a small chance I’ll be in Hungary this year – will almost certainly be in Romania in early June, after which I might as well tick some of the V4 nations off the list.

Moscow to Budapest – currently €44 on some days in June on Wizz Air.