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SvennoJ said:
Bofferbrauer2 said:

I'm actually somewhat afraid that an assassin might hit Trump. Vance is much younger (so the chances of dying of old age in office are very low), just as bad if not even worse (he seems to loathe Europe with a passion, Trump is more indifferent in that regard) and an assassinated Trump would easily be sold by Republicans as him being a martyr and sweeping the election due to this when it looks increasingly that the opposite will happen.

Does impeachment also mean Vance gets in power? Yeah it does and impeachment would also make a martyr out of him to his base.

Is there no way to trigger early elections in the US? (Can't find any info on that)


So it's 4 more years of Trump/Vance wrecking the world or armed insurrection, monumental fuck up. No working checks and balances in the US.

No. Regardless of the circumstances, U.S. presidential elections can never be held outside of the first Tuesday of every fourth November. There are no special elections or anything like that for the president. The vice-president becomes acting president for the remainder of the outgoing president's term, and Congress appoints a new vice-president (who must be approved by both houses of Congress.) 



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sc94597 said:
RolStoppable said:

New polls show Trump's favorability dropping and journalists talk about it as if it still means something. Trump will be president for as long as he is alive.

He is nearly 79 and of below average health for his age, so that might not be too long. Also even dictators (or latent dictators, in this case) need to be popular enough in the early stages of consolidating their power, especially in a country with 500 million guns and millions of wackos with access to them. So far the bullets have missed, but there is no guarantee they'll continue to. The U.S has a very long history of assasination attempts as well as successful assasinations. 

But really who this matters is for the Republicans who don't have his non-stick status. The special elections so far are a hint of what is to come. Virginia's elections in November will be another hint. And then 2026 will tell us if they can consolidate a post-Trump authoritarian state or not based on which margins the Democrats pull off. If Democrats get more than 260 HoR, then the GOP will start to fear they're on track to be a decades-long minority party in the same way the Democrats were after the Civil War until the Great Depression, and the GOP was after the New Deal until the Reagan Revolution. Being in that place right after their president frayed the Separation of Powers and de-legitimized the courts which have been their biggest boon toward their agenda for the last forty years, will be a shock to them.

And if Trump doesn't have his dictatorship consolidated by then, then they'll want to distance themselves from him as the boat sinks. 

Granted, that sounds like a lot of guns in the hands of a lot of idiots, but the catch is that these same idiots want to live in exactly the country that Trump is shaping.

In the event that Trump does get assassinated, I'd like it to be committed by one of the January 6 people who got pardoned. That would be ironic.



Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.

RolStoppable said:
sc94597 said:

He is nearly 79 and of below average health for his age, so that might not be too long. Also even dictators (or latent dictators, in this case) need to be popular enough in the early stages of consolidating their power, especially in a country with 500 million guns and millions of wackos with access to them. So far the bullets have missed, but there is no guarantee they'll continue to. The U.S has a very long history of assasination attempts as well as successful assasinations. 

But really who this matters is for the Republicans who don't have his non-stick status. The special elections so far are a hint of what is to come. Virginia's elections in November will be another hint. And then 2026 will tell us if they can consolidate a post-Trump authoritarian state or not based on which margins the Democrats pull off. If Democrats get more than 260 HoR, then the GOP will start to fear they're on track to be a decades-long minority party in the same way the Democrats were after the Civil War until the Great Depression, and the GOP was after the New Deal until the Reagan Revolution. Being in that place right after their president frayed the Separation of Powers and de-legitimized the courts which have been their biggest boon toward their agenda for the last forty years, will be a shock to them.

And if Trump doesn't have his dictatorship consolidated by then, then they'll want to distance themselves from him as the boat sinks. 

Granted, that sounds like a lot of guns in the hands of a lot of idiots, but the catch is that these same idiots want to live in exactly the country that Trump is shaping.

In the event that Trump does get assassinated, I'd like it to be committed by one of the January 6 people who got pardoned. That would be ironic.

There are plenty of non-MAGA gun owners and also many on the far-right see Trump as too moderate (on X, which is becoming a new Stormfront, you can't go a half dozen posts without seeing them talk about how Trump is controlled by Israel and Jewish people and that is why he is focusing on deporting palestinian protestors and not mass-deporting "illegals", which is code for non-whites.) 

But also like you mentioned, it could be by a disaffected former MAGA who was harmed by his policies.





Canadian form of protest (electoral reforms needed here as well)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/longest-ballot-protest-candidates-carleton-riding-poilievre-1.7503993

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will be facing more opponents than ever in his eighth federal campaign, thanks to dozens of protest candidates running in his riding. Nearly 80 candidates registered to run in the Ottawa-area riding of Carleton, where Poilievre has been the MP since 2004.

Most of those candidates are linked to an electoral reform advocacy group called the Longest Ballot Committee. The group wants to put a citizens' assembly in charge of electoral reform and says political parties are too reluctant to make government more representative of the electorate.




Still far less options than a Dutch voting ballot!

You vote for the candidate you want to see in parliament, no riding bullshit.

First past the post, winner takes all system sucks. We can't vote for Carney here, not even Bonnie Crombie (Ontario leader of Liberal party) have to vote for Chuck Phillips instead. And we've been pushed into a new riding, so no idea who is 'ahead' or whether it's close in the riding we're voting in now.
https://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/news/local-news/some-brant-county-residents-will-head-to-the-federal-polls-as-part-of-a-new-riding


I guess we're 'lucky' we haven't yet entirely been locked into a two party system like the USA, but it's basically Liberal vs Conservatives every time with the NDP and Block Quebeqois to align with if neither gets the majority.

It looks like Liberal+NDP again for next term with the latest poll results. So I'm guessing the safest bet is to vote for Liberal in this new riding unless NDP is ahead here and a Liberal vote would hurt the NDP vs Conservative voters.

There's a good chance it won't matter anyway as the Progressive Conservative Party is massive in Ontario. (PCP 80 NDP 27 Lib 14 seats) While not the same as the (federal) conservative party: The CPC (conservative party of Canada) is a centre-right political party that runs candidates in Federal Elections in Canada. The PC (progressive conservatives) refers to various centre-right political parties that run in provincial Elections but do not run candidates in Federal Elections. (Note however that there is significant overlap in the demographics of their voter bases and significant interaction between the federal CPC and provincial PC parties.

NDP is second, Liberal last. So maybe better to vote NDP to give them a chance to win my riding instead of the conservatives, and thus give Carney a better chance. Fucking twisted.

I know who I want to vote for but I don't know who to vote for.

Voting in a different riding now as for the provincial elections a month ago. I don't even know the NDP candidate in this new riding, Peter Werhun apparently. Can't (pointless) vote for the Green party at all: The Green Party candidate not based in the local riding, and is not actively campaigning. She advised FlamboroughToday by email that she agreed to have her name included on the FGNB ballot as a “paper candidate” to help the party achieve the 90 per cent benchmark needed for the leader to participate in national debates, and to give Green party supporters the chance to “vote with their heart” in this election.


Looking at the Provincial election results in my provincial riding

PC Will Bouma*24,16947.3%
NDPHarvey Bischof12,00223.5%
LIBRon Fox10,36420.3%

Yet now we're mixed in with this riding while cutting out Brantford cit

PC Donna Skelly*23,79049.4%
LIBJoshua Bell15,13531.4%
NDPLilly Noble6,09512.7%

So yeah, the conservatives are likely gonna take my riding, while leaving me guessing whether to go for Libs or NDP.
I'm thinking Lib would be better against conservatives in the new riding.

Election reforms needed! I would like my vote to count, not to get discarded in a first past the post system.



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LVMH's Arnault lashes out at Brussels over US trade tensions - Reuters

Europe's wealthiest man is willing to throw the whole continent under the bus so Americans will keep buying tacky, overpriced purses and brandy. Apparently he's afraid of losing a few billion.

Meanwhile, Hermes has said that they're going to pass the cost of tariffs on to American customers. Not that anybody in the market for a Birkin bag is going to mind spending a few thousand dollars more for one.



Looks like the Trump administration is now starting to try banning books critical of them by ordering to delist them from Amazon:

And it's not just his book: https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughTrumpSpam/comments/1juqjeh/trump_admin_trying_to_remove_books_from_online/

Last edited by Bofferbrauer2 - on 17 April 2025

Republicans launch probe into Harvard for flouting civil rights law

Republicans in the US Congress have announced an investigation into Harvard University, accusing it of flouting civil rights law in an escalation of President Trump’s attacks on elite institutions.

The lawmakers wrote to the world-renowned education and research establishment demanding documents on its hiring practices, diversity programmes and last year’s pro-Palestinian campus protests.

The investigation was announced after Trump on Wednesday called the storied seat of learning a “joke” and that it should lose its government research contracts and tax-exempt status.



There has not been a successful attempt to assassinate the president since 1963. The closest we came was in 1981 with Reagan. Ronald is pretty much the reason Republicans are the way they are today. He set the wheels in motion for the decay. There may be a lot of guns in the U,S but the only one in the last 100 years who had success had both US and Russian military training. The rest didn't know how to properly use one.



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

Leynos said:

There has not been a successful attempt to assassinate the president since 1963. The closest we came was in 1981 with Reagan. Ronald is pretty much the reason Republicans are the way they are today. He set the wheels in motion for the decay. There may be a lot of guns in the U,S but the only one in the last 100 years who had success had both US and Russian military training. The rest didn't know how to properly use one.

The current year and 1963 is about the same gap as 1963 vs. 1901 when McKinley was killed (despite there being attempts on Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Hoover, FDR, and Truman.)