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Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 9th 2024 at 3:24:05 PM
Well, I wasn't very clear in my previous post. That's the problem with being too lazy to cite sources. :)
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
A procrastination in of itself
Also the PLP are ignoring that many Labour Leave voters didn't vote Leave because they want to leave the EU, they voted leave because they refuse to agree with Cameron, are unsure on the EU and want to stick one in the eye of not just the Tories but also the PLP who has ignored them for so long.
The PLP is avoiding recognising that a big reason Labour people voted Leave is that they hate the PLP members who hold their safe Labour seats but never do a days work for their constituents.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
Yep. That's a very strong feeling in these regions; many still feel the effects of Thatcher and haven't forgiven Cameron for pushing for a state funeral for her. It makes them want to cut off their noses to spite their face rather than support anything Cameron supports, and that's exactly what they did.
edited 8th Dec '16 4:12:54 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Looks like Wilders got done for hate speech.
And as usual for this sort of thing he seems to think that the law doesn't apply to him and his conviction is part of some Muslim conspiracy.
edited 9th Dec '16 5:35:47 AM by Deadbeatloser22
"Yup. That tasted purple."
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
He's getting nothing but that, though. No fines, no community service.
And he'd probably blame the Moroccans for stubbing his own toe if he was out of earshot of a reporter...
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
Fuck Wilders. Fuck him with a rusty spoon. Fuck him and his "party of freedom" for shitting on the Freedom of Religion. Religious freedom is pretty much what built this country and I do not want to see these jackasses compromise it.
Fingers crossed that people around here got spooked by Brexit and Trump to the point of going to vote next March.
𐀀𐀩𐀯𐀂𐀰𐀅𐀡𐀄
Unless the UK or the USA instantly explode from those choices,people won't be very spooked.Immediate,tangible results are spooky.But those are "slow".
Secret Signature
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Slow? Trump isn't even in office yet and has already caused in international incident. Not to mention that a lot of his lies are already falling apart. The people he picked for his cabinet alone should make a lot of people cause - no because most of them have questionable views, but because they are basically rich guys getting an opportunity to get even richer, including someone who used to work for Goldman Sachs.
Meanwhile the Pound has fallen, which is resulting in the living costs rising while it becomes more and more obvious that the government has no idea how to even implement Brexit. Oh, and the money promised for the NHS? Yeah, not only did Farage claim "he never said that" one day after the vote went through, the government slashed the budget even further.
It will take some time for the truly "big" catastrophes to hit, but I think within the next six months it will become fairly obvious that trusting populists is a foolish thing to do.
The problem here is though, that not everyone is getting this information. And it's gonna become harder for the media to report on him over time given the way he's acting.
𐀀𐀩𐀯𐀂𐀰𐀅𐀡𐀄
Obvious expectations have been subverted before.Trusting "people" to act in a certain way sadly doesn't work wonders.
Secret Signature
"Fingers crossed that people around here got spooked by Brexit and Trump to the point of going to vote next March." Given what also happened in Italy just a week ago, I'm afraid many voters will rather feel emboldened.
By the way, I've growing even more disgusted by the Italian opposition parties. Each tries to claim the biggest part of the No victory at the referendum, yet they clearly don't want to collaborate in the transition that will lead to the next national elections. They won't happen very soon anyway, also because the new electoral law is under scrutiny of the Constitutional Court, which will speak about it in late January 24th (I'm honestly mad at how slow they are). The new PM the President may nominate soon will inevitably be still an expression of the current parliament majority, so the Democratic Party and its allies will wear themselves out, while the opposition will just sit there, shouting and using their hoaxes-filled propaganda, getting more popular while they do exactly nothing - the current lack of serious government proposals from any of those parties is jarring, to say the least. They're just leeches, waiting for the host to be weak enough to overtake it, and not bringing at least something beneficial in exchange.
@Swanpride:
As much as it pains me to say it, you're really not understanding the kind of people who voted for Brexit (or, I suspect, Trump, since the campaigns were the same), or the way the media so successfully limits the knowledge people have access to inside the country.
To find the truth, people need to know, or suspect, there's something more than they currently know or are being told. That alone is a big problem. However, more importantly, it requires them to care. And that is an even bigger problem.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Italy was more complicated than the outlets made it out to be. I am not sure if I would have voted for a constitutional change which would have put more power into the hands of a smaller group of people in a country which is infamous for its corruption.
Actually, I am not that naïve about the hard-core right wing voter. It's the ones who are gravitating currently to easy solutions or have stopped voting at all I hope will wake up and realize that they can't afford to be complacent about this. In the Austrian election, the right got lower percentage of the votes the second time around, with more people voting overall. That gives me hope.
I think pro-European parties would be smart to show that they actually care about those voters that don't vote. If they keep spooking them with horror stories about "what will happen if you don't vote"...they won't vote. It doesn't work. Brexit and Trump showed that. Meanwhile, nationalists are building enthusiasm among their bases - enthusiasm for absolutely awful causes, but enthusiasm nonetheless.
Obama got liberal people to vote. Clinton, not as much. That's why she lost, even if her opponent was waaaaaay more scary than Obama's. So if your hope is solely built on "scare tactics", I am afriad it will simply not hold.
Hence why I am super pessimistic in France. The main plan of the left so far is to say that "the right-wing have a scary program, be afraid" (and "I should be the candidate" too). You don't build anything with that. Saying five years later "I told you so" just won't work, because by that time the campaign will be forgotten, and that will remain will be "and what did you propose?" (followed by "Yeah, I thought so").
The left? Won't the final round most likely be the right vs the fanatic right?
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If I understand correctly that's what s/he (sorry, don't know your gender) means. Since the left is only going for scare tactics (so to speak), they have no chance of getting to the second round, because they won't energize the base.
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
He, and yes, that's my point. The FN isn't super high because a majority of people believe in them, it's super high because their voter base actually goes out to vote. The traditional right also has a high turnover due to its voters being more, eh, "constant"?
The left however is screwed whenever it doesn't manage to give a good reason for its base to vote. Basically, the default vote is very low in the left, where people can easily be tempted to try for an alternative (or not try at all) if the main party looks uninteresting.
The right kind of automatically follows the leader and "does its duty". The left is more "revolutionary" and rambuctious. Hollande managed to create a movement in 2012, he didn't only rely on the hate towards Sarkozy.
But today, no one exciting is on the starting line. The ecologists have an unknown guy (since their most charismatic guy, French-German Daniel Cohn-Bendit, always refused to be candidate for the presidency as he truly believes in the EU and as such never looked for "national influence"), the "far but not THAT far" left has Mélenchon, who would be a very fine candidate if he ditched his Cold War geopolitical statements (ie Russia good, USA bad, Fidel Castro was a great man, I won't condemn Al-Assad in Syria, etc...), and the PS candidates will be plagued because their party was rather inefficient in the last five years in power (plus no one is truly exciting on the starting line - I would support Najat Vallaud-Belkacem if she was a candidate, but she isn't likely to be). Meanwhile, Macron is more of a centrist, being pro-business and socially progressive - although out of them all, he is the most likely to create something resembling a strong movement, and he seems to have charisma - but he has no party support to speak of, which means that even if he manages to grab the presidency, he will have to rely on the socialists to govern.
Chaotic Greedy
Montebourg is one of the two who raised the alarm that the PS was drifting right (and got fired for that). At least, that's what I remember him for, unlike Macron who's remembered for an unpopular economics/labor law. I think Montebourg would have the best chance of making it to second turn.
edited 11th Dec '16 11:53:55 PM by Medinoc
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
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An opinion piece from Haaretz speculating on Le Pen collapsing through her base deserting and infighting with her niece:
With a new rival on the right, the National Front leader is left with only xenophobia. And even her niece is cramping her style in the run-up to the presidential election.
Napoleon’s right-hand man Talleyrand said back in 1814: “It is a calamity for a state to be governed by a good man when it needs a great one.” François Hollande, France’s nicest president ever, hasn’t been great enough. But his popularity is surging – up to 25 percent in some polls – a kind of consolation prize for his dedication to the Republic.
It’s not clear whether the left can exploit Hollande’s resignation announcement and gird for the fight for the Élysée Palace, but one thing is certain: The biggest loser in France’s most turbulent political week in a long time is Marine Le Pen.
On Wednesday, cracks in her National Front party were apparent as many party members openly expressed support for Le Pen’s niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen. The issue was abortion rights, but the clash has the potential to morph into a full-fledged challenge to the older Le Pen’s leadership.
In the past week, the far-right leader was ready four times to make a dramatic announcement that would help her take back the reins, but ended up having her television appearance canceled each time.
François Fillon won a surprising victory in the center-right primary, Hollande announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Manuel Valls resigned in order to run for the presidency, and Emmanuel Macron also entered the race on the left. Night after night, Le Pen was preempted by other newsmakers whose stated goal is to block her path to the Élysée Palace.
But it wasn’t just the quantity of challengers. The presence of Thatcherite-like Fillon blurs the differences with Le Pen, leaving her with only xenophobia to propel her campaign.
On every other front – opposition to multiculturalism, restoring Christianity to state culture, making it more difficult for women to legally obtain an abortion, opposition to gay rights and restoring nationalism to the school curriculum – Fillon is perceived as more credible.
Francois Fillon, former French prime minister and member of Les Republicains party, campaigns for the second round for the French presidential primary election, Lyon, France, Nov. 22, 2016.Robert Pratta, Reuters By May, Fillon is expected to clarify his positions on the National Front’s core issues – immigration laws, the country’s attitude toward Islam, revoking the citizenship of terror suspects and closing down mosques. Le Pen understands that she has to attack Fillon head on before he owns these issues, hence her desire to ramp up her headline quota.
Fresh faces
On top of that, the evaporation of the predicted Hollande-Le Pen-Nicolas Sarkozy battle has made Le Pen seem like the representative of the past; now almost all the candidates are new faces. With Hollande and Sarkozy out of the picture, Le Pen is left facing young, sometimes very young, candidates, some of whom are just as populist as she is.
Hollande’s withdrawal created a new map of the left; Valls is now perceived more as a centrist than a leftist. This is strengthening radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Unfortunately for Le Pen, while Mélenchon holds starkly opposing views on foreign affairs and security, his economic platform is incredibly similar to hers.
This odd situation, absent anywhere else in Europe, not only gives Le Pen supporters a non-racist option (or at least, a less racist option, as Mélenchon’s remarks on Israel have taken on an anti-Semitic odor), it’s also driving away right-wing voters who are tempted to shift even further right.
Le Pen also finds herself facing the most unexpected challenge of all – the rise of the political center. Traditionally, the French have shunned centrist positions and have never elected a centrist president. The eternal candidate in this category, François Bayrou, is one of the country’s most popular politicians, but at the moment of truth the French always abandon him.
Macron, the former finance minister, could alter this pattern by siphoning from the far right the votes that centrist candidates are always lacking. Macron is cautious in his responses to questions about immigration, but his pro-business platform is appealing to many who’ve grown disillusioned with Le Pen and view the National Front’s near-communist economic platform as a grave mistake.
The latest polls show that if Macron made it to the presidential election’s second round in May, he would beat Le Pen by a huge margin. Before that, more leftists would feel more comfortable with a former Socialist Party darling than with Fillon.
At the same time, the far right’s defeat in Austria lends credence to the theory that Europeans like to flirt with populist stances in national referendums or local elections, but they return to the legitimate parties in general elections. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s latest pronouncements, including a call to outlaw the burqa, have further blurred the difference between Le Pen and the classic right wing.
Niece a nuisance
All of which makes it easy to understand the surging opposition to Le Pen and the growing ambition of her niece Marion. The younger Le Pen is the granddaughter of party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, and despite her young age (she turns 27 this weekend), she has attracted strong support in the movement. The younger Le Pen chose a highly charged issue over which to challenge her aunt: abortion.
The National Front has always been critical of the ease with which women can have abortions in France, but in her attempt to win the women’s vote, Marine Le Pen has been careful to keep any mention of this out of the party’s platform for the 2017 election.
This week, the government gave Marion a chance to hone her positions. The National Assembly passed a law prohibiting anti-abortion organizations from advertising in public, including on billboards and online. The government aims to remove from the public space an American-funded campaign with slogans like “I’ll never forgive myself” and “The guilt feelings never go away.” As of this week, such ads are banned in France and punishable by prison time.
Marion Le Pen hastened to decry the “banalization of abortion” and said the National Front would be “more aggressive than François Fillon” on this issue. Fillon has said he’s against abortion but would not seek to change the status quo.
The young Le Pen also declared that the National Front would cancel the full reimbursement for abortions given by France’s national insurance system, and would institute a “waiting and thinking period” before abortions could be performed.
The National Front leader had no choice but to declare that the party has no intention to change the existing legislation on abortion. As Florian Philippot, one of the party’s vice presidents, put it, “There is only one person in the National Front who holds a different view, and she is all alone in her radical position.”
Since then, party supporters have flooded their Twitter accounts with pictures of Marion Le Pen, ostensibly to show that she’s not “all alone.” The protest essentially amounts to a challenge to her aunt’s leadership.
The National Front is of course no stranger to familial strife; after all, Marine Le Pen ousted her own father from the party. But a crisis around such a fundamental issue could hurt her.
Le Pen will probably be making some strong statements in the coming days in an attempt to stanch the flow and regain the media focus. That is, if she can find an evening when other politicians aren’t stealing the show.
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
Romanians vote leftists back into power, a year after chasing them out
Partial results on Monday showed the leftist PSD party and its junior ally ALDE, on just under 6 percent, will command an outright majority after an election that underscores the growing divide between older voters tired of austerity and the mostly urban young, who are losing trust in the prospect for reforms.
The result is a triumph for PSD leader Liviu Dragnea, who has remained in his post despite being found guilty of electoral fraud earlier this year and receiving a two-year suspended sentence.
The new government's progress will be closely watched by Romania's European Union peers because of the PSD's softer stance against chronic corruption and its propensity for higher public spending, which could risk breaching EU budget limits.
The party campaigned on a promise to cut taxes and raise spending on public wages and pensions, in the hope of winning the support of the mostly poor rural electorate. Turnout figures suggested many younger people had not bothered to vote.
Dragnea had told reporters in June that Romanians must choose between "better bread or handcuffs", implying that anti-corruption drives could not co-exist with higher wages, development and better living conditions. Prosecutors have gone after lawmakers and ministers across all parties.
The PSD was forced from power in November 2015 when a deadly fire in a nightclub that lacked emergency exits and safety permits sparked nationwide anger over politicians' failure to stamp out abuses. Many saw it as emblematic of a climate of impunity in Romania, a former communist country that has been dogged by corruption for decades.
For the past year, the country has been run by a technocrat government of experts.
The Central Electoral Bureau said results from more than 80 percent of polling stations showed the center-right National Liberal Party, the main centrist grouping, was trailing the PSD on about 20 percent.
Newcomer and anti-graft party Save Romania Union got just over 9 percent.
Once official results are finalised and the new parliament is sworn in, President Klaus Iohannis will likely call parties for consultations before nominating a prime minister. Commentators expect this to happen around Dec. 20.
Several leading leftists including the powerful mayor of the capital Bucharest said party leader Dragnea should be the next prime minister. Iohannis has said he will not nominate any politician who has been convicted.
"The result confirms the exit polls and gives the PSD huge negotiation powers, while the powers of the president (Iohannis) have sunk given the Liberals' very poor performance," said political commentator Cristian Patrasconiu.
(Reporting by Radu Marinas and Luiza Ilie; editing by Justyna Pawlak and Mark Trevelyan)
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Close aides from what I know.
The mayoralty of Rome has always been a white elephant. That city is seriously messed up.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
So nothing has changed?
There are other things that don't change: Greece on collision course with lenders as ESM freezes debt relief
edited 7th Dec '16 5:02:51 PM by Quag15