Elections 2023 and 2024 (Part 1)

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More Bad News for Trump in Primary Results

https://www.meidastouch.com/news/more-bad-news-for-trump-in-primary-results

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155k votes for somebody who is out of the race.

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And more than 3x that of their governor. DeSantis must be stewing right now

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from

Just FYI, in case anyone is wondering how much wealth the president has…

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/what-is-joe-biden-s-net-worth-in-2024/ar-AAXlkyn

It’s mostly from his real estate assets (2 homes that appreciated since he took office)…

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The message on the sweatshirt is nice enough but I hate it when people photoshop public figures like the Obamas into images like that just to hawk a product. They also made a fake image of Michelle Obama wearing a shirt with the same design.

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I can’t be 100% sure but I zoomed in on that image and Obama’s face has been pasted onto the body of whoever is wearing that hoody.

Skin tones don’t match.
Size of head doesn’t match body.
Lighting on his face doesn’t match lighting on body.

I am not saying the hoody does not exist, just that Obama would not be the kind of person who would wear something like this. It’s just not inside his model of who he presents himself to be.

ETA:

Coca Cola Coke GIF by LIMESODA Interactive Marketing GmbH

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Woods has been a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner to win the Republican nomination this year and face Biden in the November general election. “I’m shocked,” Woods reportedly wrote on X. The implication, of course, is that Biden’s wealth more than quadrupled during his time in the White House — something that would certainly raise eyebrows.

But it turns out that Woods’ claim was way off — by about $30 million. PolitiFact rated it as “false.” Meanwhile, Woods seems to have taken that post down.

James Woods? Ugh.

Season 1 Episode 13 GIF by Friends

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This would help, but not likely to happen:

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It would hard to come up with a worse way to elect folks than with our current two-party system, but a parliamentary system that depends on governing coalitions of parties is no panacea to stop strongmen from seizing power either. There are a ton of recent examples around the world where that system has gone badly wrong. For one example Netanyahu’s Likud party hasn’t won more than 30% of the vote ever, and is usually less than 25% of the vote, yet that a-hole has been running the country off and on for many years. A coalition government briefly ousted him a couple years ago but it required very different parties who had nothing in common other than a hatred for Netanyahu to try and run the country together and it didn’t last long.

Berlusconi also was a bit of an authoritarian and his party never won an outright majority in Italy but he still managed to rule the place for longer than any other post-war Italian PM.

That said, I’d probably prefer a parliamentary system to what we’ve got now, but I wouldn’t be sure until seeing it in action here. And like you said, it will never happen anyway.

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A parliamentary system would almost certainly be an improvement over the current American set-up, but you’d need to replace the entire FPTP election mechanics with some kind of a proportional system, and that is not going to happen anytime soon, if ever.

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there are steps in that direction depending on where you live

proportional representation has been kicked around but seems less likely

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I don’t know. Countries with well-established parliamentary systems, like France and UK, seem to be having issues with fascism as well. I’m not so sure the problem is the form of the government, so much as the festering omniphobia lurking in the population, which feeds reactionary authoritarian assholes.

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Who in turn, actively feed the omniphobia…

Yeah, I think that’s correct though. Many of the fascist/reactionary movements of the last century came from parliamentary systems. A set of strong constitutional protections against that kind of thing helps, but it really only keeps those playing by the rules in line. Fascism is, by definition, opposed to any sort of democratic system, and will work to subvert whatever kind of system that they are in (or use those systems against the systems). They operate outside the law by definition.

What’s needed is an population that understands history more generally and the history of fascism specifically, to spot the signs before they become a problem, and they demand that threats be taken seriously. Far too many states decided that the reactionary movements that seek to infiltrate electoral politics are not to be taken seriously, because “that can’t happen here”. If law enforcement had treated the white supremacist underground more seriously after Oklahoma city, we might have been in a better positon now to deal with this kind of thing. All one needs to do is look at the difference from that vs. post 9/11 (or even after the first WTC bombing in the 90s), to see just how they failed to take fascist groups seriously as an actual threat… Same in the UK with the far right movement in the late 70s and 80s, that aligned with Thatcher’s government.

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Gingrich says he hopes Trump will plan speeches in large cities

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4546568-gingrich-trump-speeches-large-cities/

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Wednesday he hopes former President Trump plans to make speeches in larger cities to attract members of President Biden’s base.

I didn’t know that asshole was a funny guy. /XLs

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Trump is spending so much time in court going forward that he’ll only have the weekends available at best.

And who knows what kind of state he’ll be in when they start confiscating his assets?

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Denial

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He’ll be on the greens then, unless, his golf courses are confiscated too.

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It would be great if they started with those. Ivana’s grave might wind up looking halfway decent, which would piss off TFG even more.

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That one’s in New Jersey though, isn’t it? Do they have power to confiscate anywhere else? If so, Mar a Lago should be first on the list.

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