Canadians are also more clear than Americans that this isn't a Trump problem. He's just the symptom.
Canadians who are old enough remember the Bush II presidency, where Canada decided it wasn't going to join the US on its adventure in Iraq, and Americans freaked out. Americans started boycotting Canadian goods, and saying that if Canada wasn't siding with the US it was siding with the "terrists".
The election of Obama restored some hope that maybe things were getting better, but the reaction to that with the whole Tea Party thing, and then the Trump presidency showed it wasn't a blip, and that almost 50% of Americans were not rational people. Then there are things like the frequent government shutdowns, the constant gun massacres, the overtly political Supreme Court and its recent stance that precedent doesn't matter.
Back when Reagan was in power, the US conservatives were making terrible decisions, but at least they had a coherent philosophy, they believed in democracy, and the conservative ideals were more or less shared by other conservatives around the world (Thatcher, Mulroney, etc.)
These days, the US right wing is an incoherent mess of conspiracy theories, religious extremism, and chaos. Conservatives want to ban or burn books, but they still claim to stand for freedom of expression and speech. They talk about passing laws banning non-heterosexuals from everything, while simultaneously wanting the government to get out of their lives.
And, with a nearly 9000 km shared border and massive social and economic ties between the two, whatever happens in the US will affect Canada. There's no escaping that fact. Canadian democracy is almost irrelevant. If Trump comes to power again, there are no votes that Canadians can cast that will shield them from the chaos.
Ahhh, some people still think political systems which are power duopolies were voters only get to vote for style of entertainement (morality subjects) but never for the actual management of all those things that determine Quality Of Life, are Democracy.
My grandfather drove a tank in WW2, a cousin of my grandmother went down on the HMS Hood. My family survived the blitz.
Now I'm sitting in Canada watching America gleefully become the new nazi fatherland and it's terrifying. Watching your neighbour embrace fascism with open arms... words cannot describe the amount of disappointment I have right now.
I'm tempted to lock this for sensationalism. The top of four layers of cockpit glass cracked. While it's SOP to return to port after detecting a crack in the cockpit, this type of damage isn't uncommon in Boeing aircraft, including the 787:
I mean, it's not great to have planes be forced to turn around because of cracked glass and I think this is the first 737 to experience the issue, but it's not a big deal imo.
Stress is eventually going to cause wear and then failure to lots of parts, especially ones on the outermost layer of the plane. That's why they're over-engineered. Does there need to be 4 layers of cockpit windshield? Probably not, but humans make mistakes and we're lucky to have those extra layers so we can turn around and land safely.
US "democracy" will be fine. Russia is still technically a democracy. US can also have it both ways: have some sort of life long president staging sham elections and locking up political rivals at the same time. It will still be a 'democracy'. Of course Supreme Court would not let that... oh wait, they're all hand picked by the dictator, never mind. I wander if an average American would even notice any difference.
Right, but if it's a sham democracy, it's not a democracy. That's the thing about Russia - it's not actually a democracy. The layer of "democracy" is just a layer of authoritarian control with a very thin coat of paint.
Yes and what I'm saying is that US is not really that far away from this system. It doesn't have strong constitutional defences (Supreme Court is extremely politicised, corrupt and can just change it's interpretations of the constitution on a whim), the two party system is pretty much one capitalist party switching power between more extreme and less extreme wings every couple of years and it's all run but 70+ year old millionaires. US could very easily keep the thin layer of "democracy" and turn into dictatorship beneath it.
Yep, I think we agree on the danger - I think the quotation marks might be throwing people off. If we agree Russia is not a democracy and the US is risking becoming that, not sure why you're getting downvoted.
The Supreme Court wouldn't even need to be stacked. They have made it clear that the law means nothing. There will be some ruling that I dunno know someone didn't say the magic words when the two term limit was put in place and hence it doesn't apply.
Exactly, most of them would already 100% support the dictator. That was my point, US democracy is really fucking close to oligarchy already and it would be easy to take it over the edge.
this is in no small part because, i think, he's the only guy in the entire race who's actually an entertaining speaker. he's literally an entertainer, he just does riffs for an hour rather than droning on like every other politician ever. i know he's also evil, but it's a brilliant strategy. no one cares if you got the minutae of the 1994 pipeline marginalization act correct, people want to have a good time! simple as that
Americans can see entertainers everywhere else if they wish to. But now, it's time to choose a good president, not a clown. So, if they do otherwise, well, too bad for them.
Too bad for us all. However, it's not just the entertainment. People are miserable and scared. They want to blame someone for it. No one wants to blame themselves. So, who are you going to blame? That guy over there. Trump is not afraid to point fingers and he's happy to tell people it's not their fault, it's the fault of specific other people AND that they are better than those other people. Just as ue blames everyone else and thinks he's better than everyone else.
It's natural for him. He couldn't read a speech and sound good at all, and he sure as hell couldn't talk about policy for a couple hours. The content of what he says is jingoistic, self-aggrandizing, vindictive, often nonsensical and generally awful, but that works great for his target audience, who have been raised on pastors saying nonsensical crap and outlets like Fox who were talking nasty nonsense years before Trump was a politician.
I hate hearing people like Hannity or Limbaugh more, or whatever wretched people they have on Fox now whose job is to make nasty faces when they mention Democrats, but have definitely been sick of Trump’s shit for quite a while now.
Wait hold up. Am I seeing this right? Only around 100k people voted in the primary? That feels… incredibly low. I would assume that’s even higher than most GOP primaries in the state, but this one has had unparalleled attention. I would have expected at least double that
Legitimate question: I understand the Suez Canal is this major shipping route and it's owned and operated (slightly indirectly) by the Egyptian government. But why do all the news stories I see about the Houthi attacks say the US, the EU, all these other countries are sending ships to secure safe passage?
I know these countries want to protect their people and their goods going through the canal. But Egypt owns and operates the Canal and they make over half a billion dollars a month off it. They have the largest navy in the middle east, the largest navy in Africa, and the twelfth largest navy in the world. So why aren't they doing more to protect transiting ships from attack?
Political sensitivities. Some of the multinational coalition currently patrolling the area have declined to be named, and it's widely speculated that Egypt is among them.
they gave control of the red sea task force to the US last year.
theyre the 12th largest navy in the world.
their navy us split into 2 fleets: Mediterranean and red sea.
they have 2000km of busy coastline to patrol.
the attacks are also happening beyond their coastline in the gulf of aden.
Djibouti has a military base of loads of other countries because uts also in their interests to protect the shipping
a weak navy and large coastline means they have limited ability to project naval power before considering protecting the gulf of aden or putting airstrikes into yemen.
oh, and Egypt has a track record of having an incompetent military, so there's that...
I think this is very telling of the RNC political apparatus. Trump has largely operated outside of the official Republican platform, you know the actual Republican committee chaired by Ronna McDaniel. Largely avoided debates and the other political machinations. And has dominated the party.
Which if Trump can do that outside of the RNC it absolutely begs the question, what the fuck does anyone need the actual governance of the GOP political party's official arm? And the answer seems to be from this, nothing at all. Which to me signals a massive erosion of power from the actual RNC.
If Trump leaves politics for whatever reason, the power vacuum thereafter is going to be absolutely mind numbing. There's zero strength left in the RNC itself.
Well that would also seem OK too. It's major news and while I don't known where you saw it, it's likely for an intended audience that's been following events thus far so it's not exactly misleading since it can be reliably predicted that people reading it, like yourself will understand what was won.
I understood this one, the "Trump wins Iowa" had me wondering.
Not that Sky News is anything of a respectable source.
I'd also question whether this is "major news" given that everyone saw this outcome coming months ago. Trump is the leading Republican, by far, the real question is whether he can legally be President again, or whether he can win the vote without a massive increase in the kind of fraud his party undertook in the last election.
The real problem is outside the votes, unfortunately. Even if Trump loses, there's a bunch of people who think their decision is more valid than any majority. Civil war is looming.
I agree with what you're saying, but remember that a lot of new-to-politics people are starting to pay attention, and they might now understand how the Iowa stuff works.
Shit, I barely do and I've been following politics since early 2020.
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