London   Going to Austin, Texas from time to time, you still see bumper stickers and window signs in this huge, boomtown that still say, “Keep Austin Weird.” At least with politics there’s no need for a bumper sticker, because these days it seems all about making sure politics is weird.

In the United Kingdom, the Conservative ruling party is claiming there is a constitutional crisis because the largely honorific, unelected House of Lords rather than being content with their sinecures and titles actually straightened their backs for the first time in 100 years and refused to go along with tax credit cuts for the working poor which would have hit millions for a loss of about $1200 per year. Lords are not just to the manor borne but include Labor lords and Liberal-Democrat lords and they teamed up for a bit of pushback getting headlines for something other than spending their expense money at massage parlors and the like. The Conservatives may modify the cuts or delay them somewhat and also may just back the House of Lords with more Lords to fatten their majority and put off another faux crisis like this for another century.

Meanwhile on the other side of the pond we have Donald Trump reduced to begging the crowd in Iowa to push his polling numbers back to the top and pretending he went to public high school with the rest of us by shouting in the Republican debate that Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio really don’t like each other. The one thing that Trump has contributed to the Republican primaries thus far is total admission that political primaries are in fact exactly the same as high school student council popularity contests. It was a surprise to find that Governor Chris Christie from New Jersey is still running for president. Same for Senator Rand Paul and Governor Bobby Jindal, but hey, let’s keep politics weird.

Meanwhile over here, I will fly out of Heathrow and leave the discussion of the splits in the Labour Party and its civil war over the election of Jeremy Corbyn, a harder left leader than many expected after a drubbing of the party’s former leader in the recent election that has left the party reeling. Somehow the former leader, Ed Milliband, turned up at a training of sorts offered by a UK community organizing group, and US-based Industrial Areas Foundation community organizer, Arnie Graf, was quoted in the New Statesman crowing about the fact that Milliband would have done better to have gone to the training before he was blown away in a curious exercise of kicking sand in his face after having claimed to help him previously. Arnie then took shots at Corbyn and his supporters, Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders, and progressives in general proving mainly that he was either having a very bad day and was caught by a reporter in the middle of it or has suddenly become even older and crankier than Bernie himself.

And, then to make sure Hillary is anointed by Democrats rather than loved by them and isolating progressives’ hopes for the future even more, she made it clear she was still committed capital punishment come hell or high water, just wanted a kinder and gentler path to the electric chair. Soon there will be a bumper sticker on her car saying, Keep Politics Weird, as well.