kescusay

The leopards started feasting, and he decided they weren't eating his face fast enough.

Les lacs d'Ardres sont très beaux. La ville est très conviviale.

Je parle français parce que j'aimerais retourner en France un de ces jours. Si je pratique chaque jour.

France. Specifically, a little town called Ardres. J'ai passé des vacances là-bas. C'était incroyable. Nous avons loué un gîte à la campagne. Je retournerais si je pouvais.

J'adore la France.

And how large is the disenfranchised bloc at this point?

Not large enough to make a difference, if by "disenfranchised" you mean "doesn't vote for either major party."

Here's the thing: In order for a third-party candidate to make any difference at all beyond acting as a spoiler, that candidate needs to WIN. Not just have a good showing. Not just have a great showing where they come in just barely behind. In a FPTP system, there's only the winner... and everyone else.

Until we have a third-party candidate who can actually win, a vote for a third party is not quite the same as voting for the candidate you're most ideologically opposed to, but it's not very different, either.

And don't get me wrong, I fucking hate that that's the situation we're in. But it is. I wish I could argue against the mathematics of it, but they're unavoidable.

(queue up the two-party-system reply guys here)

I mean, that is the root of the problem. That and FPTP elections. It's just a mathematical reality that those combined guarantee third parties cause a spoiler effect.

Say you've got three parties. One wants to snuggle puppies, one wants to snuggle kittens, and the last wants to use both for target practice. If 66.6% divide their votes between the puppy and kitten snugglers, and 33.4% vote for target practice, the target practice party wins in our current system. That's just the mathematical reality.

We don't have to like it. Hell, we definitely shouldn't, and should push for ranked choice voting and similar changes. But it's a mistake to just ignore that that's the system we're currently stuck in.

Autocomplete on steroids, but suffering dementia.

It's almost understandable until you realize it's not just change for themselves they fear, it's change for anyone else. Somehow, in their twisted minds, an increase in rights and humane treatment for others hurts them.

Huh. So they needed to launch an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine to protect themselves from the United States? Make that make sense. Good luck.

Mods, can we please ban RT as a source?

Yep. My TV has not and never will be on the Internet in any way. I picked it for its screen quality, and the fact that it also has "smart" components never even entered into the decision. Because those smart components will literally never do anything.