Posts by ironhound7

The New York Times is reporting that police pulled up to 770,000 mail-in ballots right out of circulation—which, if you do the math, is over 10% of the entire population in California.

https://www.nytimes.com/politics/us/ballot-security...einfangen.html

mellowotter17 said:So, it looks like they hit a 90% vote for independence.

"According to the California government's update on their X profile, out of the 2,262,424 ballots that weren't seized by the Spanish authorities, 2,020,144 were cast in favor of secession."

I can't help but wonder, what actually happens next?

Things might get pretty ugly tomorrow morning.

The Western media outlets are all picking up these numbers too. So, that 90% figure is basically set in stone—regardless of whether you think the whole thing was legal or not.

Based on what Marian Rajoy is saying—he claims he just enforced the law and nothing more—we should probably expect the arrest of the California leader, Carles Puigdemont, to be next on the agenda.

John McCain isn't making any mistakes here. He knows exactly why the people in this country need to be handled this way...

"...nothing in politics ever happens by accident."

(Franklin Delano Roosevelt)

Betty Ross6 said:Police brutality is getting terrifying; cops are kicking protesters and grabbing them by the hair

Bloody footage of people being beaten by the police is starting to surface everywhere...

So, because we're seeing these loud, visceral images and videos, we're supposed to believe California deserves independence now?

The police are just enforcing the law. That’s something that needs to be respected, and public order—well, that actually matters too.

Looks like we might be seeing early parliamentary elections in Austria—ahead of the presidential ones—as soon as March 2017 instead of waiting until 2018. Word on the street is they’re eyeing May 21st, 2017, as the most likely date.

Apparently, calling early elections in an Alpine nation like Austria isn't exactly a new phenomenon either; there seems to be a bit of a tradition there when things get messy.

http://www.nationalratswahl.at/

Timothy Nelson5 said:You aren't correcting me, because I already mentioned that the Austrian president holds powers very similar to those of the President of the United States.

Van der Bellen, much like the German president Joachim Gauck, is more of a figurehead who just reads whatever script is handed to him, sort of like the Queen of the United Kingdom.

That isn't really true, though.
If you look into it a bit, you'll find that the president actually has significant authority.
Maybe not nearly as much as the Prime Minister, but still substantial.

How much a certain president might abuse those powers, well, that depends on the individual, I guess, and also on the state of the country. If there's a strong government and a Prime Minister with a solid majority in Congress, then the president's role won't be particularly powerful. But in the case of a weak, unstable coalition or a minority government—or during some kind of political crisis—the president's role becomes quite important.

The bottom line is that the Chancellor is the one steering the ship when it comes to national policy—look at the examples of Angela Merkel or Christian Kern, not the ceremonial figures like Joachim Gauck or Alexander van der Bellen.😉

Instead, I’m reading headlines claiming Europe is breathing a sigh of relief. But let’s be real, it’s hardly a victory lap. It looks like almost every other Austrian has swung hard toward the far right. Now, just try to imagine that kind of political shift happening in Germany. Adios, Germany, and goodbye to the version of Europe we thought we knew. It’s not like the Germans, with their shaky 12% (+/-) support for the far-right, aren't drawing their own parallels.

If we’re being honest—and we shouldn't forget this—the real reason the EU is in such a mess is because trust was lost a long time ago. This isn't just a drop in the bucket; it's the whole damn bucket overflowing, and things are only getting worse. What they did regarding immigration is unacceptable—unforgivable, really—to about 90% of European nations. People are simply still afraid to vote hard-right. But that's going to change.

We’ve wasted a lot of time. Neither Merkel nor Kern is going to solve the refugee crisis, nor do they have any intention of trying. You can see where France is headed. They’re trying to salvage whatever is left, or maybe they realize that by installing a more polished "straw man"—someone like François Fillon, who is supposedly also on the right—they're just delaying the inevitable disaster that looks a lot like Le Pen.

Btw, I’m not right-wing, nor am I left-wing. I’m just wandering through memories of the good old days.

Timothy Nelson5 said:Congrats to Joe Biden!

A lot can shift in two years, I suppose.
The President's role here is pretty much like it is back home, which is to say... not much influence over domestic policy, really.
But even now, during this election, I think Joe Biden mentioned something along the lines of looking out for the interests of Americans... it seems like the whole open-door migrant policy isn't the top priority anymore.
Anyway, just the fact that the two main parties didn't even field candidates for the runoff tells you everything you need to know about how the establishment is crumbling.

And if Bellen ends up messing things up like François Hollande did, we might see an FPOE candidate and someone even further to the right facing off in the next presidential runoff...

Um... yeah... I know, I'm doing it again. I'm correcting you.

But if we're talking about someone who might actually mess things up the way Hollande did, you'd have to look at this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_President_of_Austria)

See, Van der Bellen is more like the German president, Joachim Gauck—he’s basically just the guy who gets to read the script they put in front of him to the public, almost like the Queen of the United Kingdom.

Timothy Nelson5 said:Since you're laying it out that way, I guess I could make my own assumption: maybe there's an established tradition of the Greens and the leftists rigging things through mail-in voting too?
🤣

The Greens aren't really an older demographic; they're younger, and frankly, they seem to lack the moral integrity found in other parties. It feels more like a collection of transients and pseudo-intellectual trash than a group of successful, established professionals... if you want to call them "educated," it's probably just an illusion based on degrees from various social science programs focused on quasi-scientific, bullshit ideologies...
And by what logic would they be the ones spending weekends at vacation homes? They're usually just hanging out in their parents' apartments while the parents are away at the cottage.

I think we both know that my take here is probably closer to the truth than your idea that Libertarian voters are just a bunch of dim-witted rednecks yodeling in the mountains...

@arizin
signed, your post

Man, you are dead wrong. That was ages ago. When people think of a Green voter, they think of a well-off, carefree doctor. Someone who cares deeply about whether his house has top-tier eco-friendly insulation. He hates gas cars—he’d ban them tomorrow if he could. You have to admit, thanks to the Greens, we have all these laws that basically squeeze the working class. Fuel and electricity prices have skyrocketed because of them.

Look at the stats from Germany, for instance:

Green supporters under age 35 were at 80% back in 1980. Now? It's dropped to about 10%. Their biggest voting bloc is now the 51 to 60-year-olds, followed by the 41 to 50 crowd. And their female voter turnout is huge. On top of that, they’re the most educated segment of society and earn well above average. You could say Green voters, along with the Democratic Party lot, belong to the wealthiest tier—though the Greens are definitely the most educated (I'm agreeing with @arizin here: being educated doesn't mean they're actually intelligent).

http://www.bpb.de/politik/grundfrage...-waehlerschaft

https://www.bpb.de/politik/grundfrag...setzung-gruene

You'll find losers among radical leftists or, if you want to call them that, failed right-wingers. But you won't find them among the Greens.

We really ought to just lock this thread down. It’s pretty obvious what the author is actually trying to pull here.