Posts by Carol Newman2

Chris Chase5 said:I think I’m going to have to tune into CNN today... 😁 Does anyone have a live link where I can track the results? This country is truly something else... the polls here don't seem to mean much at all. It feels like the average voter keeps their true opinion hidden away like a secret...

The first exit polls should drop around 5:00 PM.

CNN link

http://tvthek.orf.at/live/Wahl-16-Bu...fburg/12775055

Since the pollsters completely missed the mark during the first round, they aren't offering any predictions for this runoff.

Brenda Taylor13 said:Thanks. Yeah, I was already aware that the Democratic-Republican coalition has been running things in the United States of America for years now—but I’d heard rumors about some new Chancellor stepping in, so I figured maybe the political landscape had shifted. My mistake! But man, I honestly had no clue the Reform Party pulled that kind of weight. And who even are these purple guys, Neos?

Neos is a liberal party.

Brenda Taylor13 said:So, who’s actually running the show in the United States of America right now in terms of parties? And how much of a mess would a potential win for Hofer actually make out of the government?

Right now in the United States of America, we have a grand coalition consisting of the Democrats (Democratic Party) and the Republicans (Republican Party), led by the new Chancellor, Christian Kern (from the Democratic Party).

Here’s the poll from yesterday:


Twenty years ago, those Red and Blue heavyweights commanded over 80% of the national vote combined. Today? They’ve dwindled down to just 45%.

The era of these massive, dominant political machines in Europe is effectively dead.

If Hofer wins, it’s going to throw a massive wrench into that grand coalition and deepen the crisis.

The big decision day in the United States of America is finally here tomorrow.

We should see the first exit polls hitting the news around 5:00 PM.

Right now, the betting shops are calling Hofer the frontrunner.

Some folks on Twitter are already claiming that the televised debate tanked voter turnout by as much as 20%.

Yesterday we saw the second TV debate between Hofer and vdB. No moderators this time, either. Honestly, they were a hair's breadth away from a physical brawl.

The first expert breakdown was pretty scathing: "Both candidates look disgraced, and the very dignity of the presidency has taken a hit. This discussion was basically toddler-level nonsense." 😬

Hofer comes out on top here. It’s going to be an uphill battle for vdB to find any way to motivate his base after this. If anything, this whole debate just left voters feeling disgusted by both of them.

New Poll Results:


Party preference:



http://www.cnn.com/politics/polling-data/235248837

Nicole Wright said:I’m honestly happy for the people who managed to build up this massive euphoria and start planning gold medal parties after just two days. It's always the same old story. 🤦

Exactly. We were celebrating a win against Poland like we’d already won the whole damn championship.

Mark Harris66 said:I don't buy the second one. If they were truly short on labor, they would have just brought in Ukrainians looking to move to Germany—they'd fit right into society. Plus, they wouldn't have just revoked work permits for Americans this year—and let's be honest, Americans are way better educated and integrate much faster anyway.

As for the third theory—where did she actually come from? I read somewhere that she might have been the child of Stasijevac? Or something like that? But even that doesn't quite click... because even Stasi wouldn't have wanted migrants if the Stasi/East Germany era was still around.

Give me a break. She’s the daughter of a Protestant pastor. She’s a German woman, born in New York City. And apparently, her grandfather was a Pole.

POLITICS PREMIER MILANOVIC

The US Administration calls Juncker's refugee plan "out of touch"
"Whoever drafted this clearly has no clue how things actually work on the ground": The US Prime Minister slammed the briefing paper for the refugee summit as totally unrealistic, insisting there is only one viable way forward.
http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/a...weltfremd.html
----------

The German conservative outlet The World is reporting on Prime Minister Milanović's statement, where he tore into Juncker's plan in that classic, arrogant, Milanović-esque style.

Big Zoki claimed that "whoever wrote this plan doesn't grasp the core of the crisis at all and probably just woke up from a deep winter slumber."

German commentators are practically cheering at Milanović's latest crusade against Juncker.

Nicholas Watson said:I hope you're kidding. Someone could easily take that as racism or just plain trolling
Let's show some respect to our neighbors and other nations

😁 I'm just messing with you.

Yeah, here they go again. Honestly, we should probably just ban Koreans from this forum entirely. I've never been a fan of them as a people anyway. 😁

The movement for California independence has essentially imploded, despite them managed to snag a majority in the legislature.

All those pro-independence parties combined only managed to pull in 48%.

That earthquake was terrifying

I was actually there back in 2004, in Indonesia.

Poll results from two weeks ago:
Sweden Democrats (nationalists, anti-immigration) 25.2%
Democratic Party 23.4%
Republican Party 21%
-----
Back in 2010, the Sweden Democrats were sitting at just 5% support.

Why don't you start a thread over in the Other Media section first?
http://www.forum.us/forumdisplay.php?forumid=366

Sunday at 2:00 PM: our guest will be Domazet Lošo.

The Journal is taking another swing at the right wing. 🙄

First it was Banac, now they're coming after Lošo...

I'm on board. We've got plenty of folks on this forum who actually have some decent engineering background.

Sam Alvarez4 said:Two different topics that are basically just two sides of the exact same coin.

Israel - Palestine (Collective, Part II)

There was a thread opened up recently covering this exact same topic: the recognition of an independent Palestine.
I've been following this thread for a while now, and honestly, it feels like we’re just circling the drain. Everyone keeps shouting about how much they hate the current administration, but nobody seems to be looking at the actual data behind the economic shifts. It’s easy to get caught up in the outrage, I get it—believe me, I do—but if you actually look at the labor statistics coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the picture isn't nearly as black-and-white as the pundits make it out to be. Sam Alvarez4 mentioned earlier that the inflation numbers are being manipulated, which is a pretty bold claim to make without showing any receipts. I’m all for skepticism, but at some point, you have to acknowledge that the supply chain issues weren't just some political stunt; they were a massive, systemic failure that hit everyone from small businesses in Ohio to major retailers in New York. You can't just blame one person or one party for a global meltdown. And then there’s Carol Newman2, who keeps insisting that everything was perfect before the last election. Look, I’m not saying things were a paradise under the previous guys, but let’s be real—we had our own set of deep-seated issues. To suggest otherwise is just ignoring reality to win an argument. We need to stop treating politics like a sports rivalry where we only cheer for our team and pretend the other side doesn't exist. It's exhausting, and frankly, it's getting us nowhere. We need more nuance here. If we want actual solutions, we have to stop the knee-jerk reactions and start looking at the structural problems in our institutions. It’s messy, it’s complicated, and it’s definitely not going to be solved by anyone yelling louder than the next person on a message board.

First.
Can we just merge these two threads? Honestly, having both up right now is just redundant and makes zero sense.

Connected.

Sam Alvarez4 said:Second.
Can we start a dedicated thread for Israel? I want a space where the discussion stays focused strictly on that country. There’s actually a ton of interesting news coming out of there lately—everything from breakthroughs in science and high-tech to literature, film, and archaeology. It feels like a lot of great stuff is getting overlooked because it gets mixed into other topics.
If every other country gets its own dedicated thread, it’s only fair that Israel gets one too.

As for the question regarding the conflict, we’d still be looking at the same old collective thread: Israel-Palestine II. Honestly, you could easily fold those four massive, newly opened double-threads right back into it.

I honestly think implementing this would make life a whole lot easier for anyone actually interested in writing here. It’d definitely clean things up and give us much better visibility across the board.
It would simultaneously prevent everyone from spamming the exact same tired talking points about the conflict, its root causes, or recognition issues across two separate threads that currently exist.

P.S. A few people have already brought up this suggestion over in the main thread. I’m just stepping in to formalize the idea because I’m fully on board with it.

New thread.

Israel.

I honestly don't see why everyone is getting so worked up about this. It feels like we’re circling the drain on an argument that was settled before it even started. People love to jump on these trends because it makes them feel like they're part of some grand realization, but most of it is just noise. Look at what Carol Newman2 was saying earlier—it’s the same pattern every single time. We act like every minor shift in policy or every headline is a seismic event, when in reality, it’s usually just more of the same bureaucratic inertia. It’s exhausting to watch. I know, I know, I’m being a cynic here. Maybe I am. I tend to get a bit too focused on the granular details while everyone else is looking at the big, shiny picture, but that doesn't make my skepticism any less valid. We need to stop reacting emotionally to every little thing. If we want to actually have a productive conversation about how things work in America, we have to move past the surface-level outrage. It's tedious. Just my two cents, though. Take it or leave it.