Was that with Jörg Haider?
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Sort of. Yes he was the head of the party. But to keep the president from trying to instate a social-democrat minority government, and ot mitigate protests from abroad, Haider did not take an office in that government and even resigned as head of the party (for a while). He continued to have a big influence on “his” party as a “simple party member” (that’s what he called himself; it sort of became a joke in Austria).
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Maybe not quite everything.
To further co-opt this ‘US Election’ thread.
Ken Livingstone really is an idiot. I’m sure this will really help Labour in the upcoming elections.
And to stray even further off-topic, there were even suggestions yesterday that Labour might slip behind the Conservatives in Scotland…(any comment, @miasm?)
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Have you seen the turnouts for our elections? 50% is good! Ugh.
It appears that the massive turnout for the devolution referendum might have radicalised more people on both sides of the spectrum, and it maybe seems like without the coordinated media campaign against the referendum, those who opposed it are more likely to stay home than those who campaigned for the yes vote. The ‘deal’ we were offered in order to vote no has been revised and downplayed and now there’s the prospect of the fucking brexit hanging over people’s heads. That in itself could be a radicalising factor, and whilst I welcome greater participation from the electorate, there’s a stripe of anti-european feeling even within the nationalists.
So there’s also a new dynamic to consider this year, for the first time, 16 and 17 year olds are eligible to vote, and whilst I don’t believe many of them will, I suspect that those families of conservative support in Scotland are more likely than those of other party affiliations to radicalise their children with the lying lies of tory lies.
I’m terrified that Scotland’s general apathy towards its independence spreads to its children who, upon seeing the adults throwing in the towel with the devolution referendum, inculcate the defeatist mindset and either don’t vote (because what’s the point, the adults have fucked it up already) or vote tory, having internalised their position of ideological slavery to their ‘betters’. There’s an undercurrent of supplicant defeatism in Scotland, and what I’ve seen of youth in the business world they tend to be buttoned down and attracted to the most conformist of ideas and that means ‘sensible’ politics like austerity and cuts, because that’s what seems most adult, especially when many adults in positions of power around them are parroting the same conservative rhetoric.
There’s a light though, many young people in some of the major cities have been bitten by the social justice bug, especially in Glasgow, where the largest chunk of the country lives, 1.2 mil in Glasgow, 4 mil spread around everywhere else. (I know there’s hardly any of us) I expect Glasgow and Dundee at least to continue their lead in the push for independence and that means a continued lean from the tories and labour toward the SNP and another devolution referendum down the road some ways. And this is the fucked up part, probably more assuredly and more soon if the UK exits Europe… Like I’ve said, it’s not the road I want to to go down and I’ll be voting no, but if ever there was a sure fire way to really radicalise the public into finally getting a large enough percentage to vote to devolve, that would be it. Hopefully Europe would take us back!
The most troubling infection is the rise of the tories, and by connection, fucking ukip, down in the south. I don’t know what weird virus is spreading around down there but it also seems to have jumped up around the North East, I expect to see the SNP hold up here, but damned if I haven’t gotten the impression of a conservative hotbed fomenting lies and austerity propaganda in the businesses around the oil industry.
I think the corporation types in the oil industry feel like labour has failed them, so are turning towards the tories. Did I ever tell you that I was in an AGM for the oil company I worked for up here the day before the devolution referendum and several of the top men in the company, some flown in from abroad, made obvious and unchecked comments about voting ‘NO’ in ‘this ridiculous vote’ etc?
That was to a room of (hmmm, maybe 700+) or so people, who were at that time working in one of the few oil companies which hadn’t lost money, and were not firing people left and right. I can’t imagine what the fallout from desperate company execs sounds like now that everyone is losing their jobs. But I suspect the worst, and that’s when the tories seem to pick up the protest vote. When people feel like ‘fuck it!’
I’m holding out hope against hope that the Greens are actually the party to whom people turn instead of the tories, Labour seems like a lost cause and anyone without an ideology of obstructionism might be turned toward the mostly progressive greens, but I suspect the worst.
The defeatist mindset is shockingly popular over here. It bugs me the fuck out.
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Well, here are some depressing articles.
Tim Kaine sounds awful.
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I haven’t watched Larry Wilmore’s WHCD appearance yet, but this makes it sound good.
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What I saw on Twitter was good. Yep, white people are freaking the frak out 
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Wilmore was OK. His big problem was that Obama did a great job, and Wilmore’s routine was a little less sharp and low energy by comparison. He also punched down a couple of times at some of the media; unlike Obama, who made some similar jokes, he did not have the standing to do that by virtue of having been a target for them, as a result some of the same jabs that work well on his show seemed a little mean in this venue.
I thought Wilmore was kinda dull, but I really enjoyed most of the jokes the audience took offense at.
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Every year, every host goes too far. It’s a badge of honor at this point. 
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Yes. This is me totally freaking the frak out. Whatever shall I do.
Seriously though…
This claim makes a Ted Cruz speech look free of hyperbole and hypocrisy. Consider the mission statement on the top right of the page:
Take Town presents the best, strongest opinions in the world. Take Town is not afraid to go there, in the hottest way possible. Take Town takes no prisoners, but instead burns the entire village of utterly incorrect views down to the ground.
They’re accusing Larry Wilmore of doing what they claim to do. They probably flipped a coin on whether to accuse him of going too far, or to accuse him of not going far enough. Either way, they were determined to post a sanctimonious, submoronic complaint about it.
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Glad to hear you’re apparently not working on a hand-wringing OMG-The-N-Word think piece 
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Oh, Take Town. I thought it was Take Ten, the magazine for rubber stamp collectors. I would have expected more thoughtfulness from Take Ten.
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Well, this is something.
Well America, you can’t say you weren’t warned, and you can’t say you weren’t given a better option.
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Bwaaaahahahahahahahah… 
America, could you possibly suck any harder.
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That bit of me that has always wanted to watch the world burn is maniacally giggling, the rest of me is experiencing schadenfreude seizures while repeatedly mumbling, “You could have voted for Bernie! You could have voted for Bernie!”
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Everyone to the congressional voting both and vote third party, it’s the only option we have left!
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