Russia Invades Ukraine XVIII

Tidewater

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The moron has to have a moron to vote for. We should not let morons run for office...

Its why we really need a formidable third party to step forward. Deadlock and polarization between 2 parties is ruining this country.
Fair enough. It might be chicken vs egg.
Third parties are difficult. The last time this happened was 1854, and even that was only possible because the Whigs collapsed.
 

Bodhisattva

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We could model our elections like the Republic of Venice. They generally had good governance for the 500 or so years of its existence. It would certainly be more interesting than the clown show we have every four years.

The Great Council came together and put in an urn the ballots of all the councilors who were older than 30. The youngest councilor went to St Mark's Square and chose the first boy he met who drew from the urn a ballot for each councilor and only those 30 who got the word ‘elector' remained in the room. The 30 ballots were then placed back in the box and only 9 contained a ticket, so the 30 were reduced to 9, who gathered in a sort of conclave, during which, with the favorable vote of at least seven of them, they had to indicate the name of 40 councilors.

With the system of ballots containing a ticket, the 40 were reduced to 12; these, with the favorable vote of at least 9 of them, elected 25 others, which were reduced again to 9 who would elect another 45 with at least 7 votes in favor. The 45, again at random, were reduced to 11, who with at least nine votes in favor elected another 41 that finally would be the real electors of Doge.

These 41 gathered in a special room where each one cast a piece of paper into an urn with a name. One of them was extracted at random. Voters could then make their objections if any, and charges against the chosen one, who was then called to respond and provide any justification. After listening to him, they preceded a new election, if the candidate obtained the favorable vote of at least 25 votes out of 41, he was proclaimed Doge, if they were unable to obtain these votes a new extraction took place until the outcome was positive.
 

Bodhisattva

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I had a Russian friend try to tell me that the Finns were Nazis in WW2.

He didn't want to hear that Finland used the crooked cross symbol(swastika) before the Nazis ever existed, and was the reason why their airplanes had the symbols on them.

And he didn't want to discuss why the Finns turned to Germany for help when the Soviet Union tried to invade Finland.

The Finns kicked their behinds, and will probably do so again if Vladimir feels a froggy.

(We go to Earlham, IA occasionally for a cool breakfast place. There is a farm on the drive into town with a silo that is crowned with swastikas. It's family of proud Finns. https://www.dreamstime.com/editoria...on-county-ceramic-sil-was-built-image85520702

Blow up the image and you will see the symbols.
A symbol similar to the swastika is prominent in Buddhism, and when I was visiting Vietnam last summer, I posted some pictures of a temple decoration with what I thought was an obviously silly comment that "I think I've found a secret Nazi lair in Saigon." More than one person in my circle of idiots thought I was serious. (I mean, really, it's not "secret" if the Nazi decoration is prominent, now is it?) I continue to completely overestimate some people's capacity for basic understanding ... of virtually everything. I think I may have inadvertently set back American Moron - SE Asian Buddhist relations for a generation.
 

TIDE-HSV

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I had a Russian friend try to tell me that the Finns were Nazis in WW2.

He didn't want to hear that Finland used the crooked cross symbol(swastika) before the Nazis ever existed, and was the reason why their airplanes had the symbols on them.

And he didn't want to discuss why the Finns turned to Germany for help when the Soviet Union tried to invade Finland.

The Finns kicked their behinds, and will probably do so again if Vladimir feels a froggy.

(We go to Earlham, IA occasionally for a cool breakfast place. There is a farm on the drive into town with a silo that is crowned with swastikas. It's family of proud Finns. https://www.dreamstime.com/editoria...on-county-ceramic-sil-was-built-image85520702

Blow up the image and you will see the symbols.
 

TIDE-HSV

Senior Administrator
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Oct 13, 1999
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Huntsville, AL,USA
I had a Russian friend try to tell me that the Finns were Nazis in WW2.

He didn't want to hear that Finland used the crooked cross symbol(swastika) before the Nazis ever existed, and was the reason why their airplanes had the symbols on them.

And he didn't want to discuss why the Finns turned to Germany for help when the Soviet Union tried to invade Finland.

The Finns kicked their behinds, and will probably do so again if Vladimir feels a froggy.

(We go to Earlham, IA occasionally for a cool breakfast place. There is a farm on the drive into town with a silo that is crowned with swastikas. It's family of proud Finns. https://www.dreamstime.com/editoria...on-county-ceramic-sil-was-built-image85520702

Blow up the image and you will see the symbols.
I remember the first time I noticed the symbols on the Jefferson County courthouse...

 

JDCrimson

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I wished that was Warren Buffet's parting gift to the world. He is the only billionaire I would probably hold confidence in bankrolling the establishment of a new party.

Musk suggested the idea of a 3rd party last week before walking back his words later on.
While I am not a fan of Musk, with his kind of money, it could’ve become a reality.
 
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Tidewater

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I wished that was Warren Buffet's parting gift to the world. He is the only billionaire I would probably hold confidence in bankrolling the establishment of a new party.
I mentioned the Whig party earlier.
The demise of the Whig Party made the birth of the Republican party possible.
Whigs used to be pro-corporate welfare, and high tariff, they were ambivalent on slavery. Northern Whigs tended to be antislavery, and southern Whigs pro-slavery.
When the party collapsed and the Kansas-Nebraska Act spawned the Republican party, northern Whigs drifted to the Republicans. Northern anti-immigrant "No Nothing" Party members also drifted to the Republicans. Free Soil Party members also drifted to the Republicans. The coalition within the Republican party consisted of anti-slavery types, pro-corporate welfare types, high tariff types, anti-immigrant types and free soil types, in varying degrees.
There was few antislavery types In the South, so no southern Republican party ever grew, so everyone became a Democrat (although dissenters called themselves "the Opposition," a party without an organization or a platform). Low-tariff Northerners stayed in the Democratic party, but they got clobbered as pro-slavery (even though northern Democrats were pretty weak in their pro-slavery stance) and that position really did not sell in the North.
In 1856, there was a three-way election between Whigs (Fillmore), Republicans (Fremont) and Democrats (Buchanan). Buchanan won with 45% of the popular vote.
In 1860, the Whigs were mostly gone to other parties and the race came down to Democrats (Douglas), Southern Democrats (Breckinridge), Republicans (Lincoln) and the "Constitutional Union" party (Bell) which was moderate on slavery and the tariff. Lincoln won a plurality even though he was not even on the ballot in any southern states.
The political trauma of the Civil War killed off every party except the Republicans and Democrats.

It took a ten-year process, the death of one of the major parties, and a civil war for a third party to coalesce into a viable party. Difficult but not impossible.
 

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