(TRUMP) Republican Ralph Shortey, a former Oklahoma state senator & Trump’s Oklahoma campaign chair, was indicted on four counts of human trafficking and child pornography. Pled guilty to a federal charge of child sex trafficking after hiring a 17-year-old boy for sex. Sentenced to 15 years in prison, in addition to ten years of supervised release and ordered to pay $125,000 in restitution.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/trump-s-oklahoma-campaign-chair-plead-guilt-child-sex-trafficking-n822461
Republican Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Illinois Congressman and one of the highest-ranking U.S. politicians to ever go to prison, molested at least four boys as young as 14 years of age when he coached wrestling at an Illinois High School. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison, two years' supervised release, and a $250,000 fine. A civil case was due back in court for a status hearing on Jan. 8, 2021 at the courthouse to further address the jury trial. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/ex-u-s-house-speaker-dennis-hastert-starts-prison-term
Republican Jayson Boebert, husband of Q-ANON Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado, was arrested in Jan. 2004 after allegedly exposing his penis to two women at a bowling alley, according to an arrest affidavit. Lauren Boebert (then a minor at 17 and known as Lauren Opal Roberts) was also there. He pleaded guilty to public indecency and lewd exposure involving minors. https://nypost.com/2021/01/16/gop-rep-lauren-boebert-and-husband-have-racked-up-arrests/
Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bauman
**Republican Joseph Dendy, Cobb County GA Republican Party Chairman & Sunday School Teacher,**was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted on four counts of child molestation, four counts of first-degree cruelty to children, three counts of enticing a child for indecent purposes, and one count each of aggravated sexual battery and aggravated child molestation. https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/former-gop-chairman-arrested-on-child-molestation-charges
Republican Kentucky state Representative & pastor Dan Johnson, committed suicide after an exposé revealed his serial lies, suspected arson, criminal church, racism, accused rape of a teen and more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Johnson_(Kentucky_politician)
Republican election board official Kevin Coan was sentenced to two years probation for soliciting sex over the internet from a 14-year old girl. https://www.semissourian.com/story/57773.html
Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Robin_Vanderwall
Republican city councilman Mark Harris, described as a “good military man / church goer,” was convicted of repeatedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Because he's a firehose of bullshit (gish gallop) and projection supported by a documented surge of foreign troll/bot farms helping plant and reinforce disinformation. As planned through years of gop attacking basic access to education, health care and a livable wage... the American people are either not equipped or don't have the energy to deal with that - especially from the position of a president or candidate even - we're trained to need a national father that will protect us if we get over our skis, so we are intimidated by the idea of fully opposing the office and the process, which is why we allow a convicted felon, compulsive liar to stand on stage as some sort of peer with a serving president.
As a non-american just watching the democratic shitshow I can't believe why on earth there are only two parties. If the parties are fucked up, build a new one. That's what democracy is made for.
Macrons party in France was fresh up from the ground at his first election.
PS. I'm aware that France is a bad example actually, but the fact about his party is still true.
First past the post elections. If we had ranked choice or runoff elections, more parties would appear.
Instead, in FPTP, every vote that is not for one of the two highest-polling candidates is objectively a wasted vote.
Game theory dictates that the only rational choice is a vote for one of those two candidates, since the possibility of a third party gaining enough votes to win in any single election is nearly infinitesimal. So instead of many parties, all candidates self-sort into one of the two viable parties. Any candidate that does not is a protest candidate or deluded, but in either case, there is no hope of actually winning.
So what about primaries? The primary system decides the candidates, but even that is tainted by FPTP, because primary voters have to guess which will perform better in a FPTP general election and often vote against their ideal candidate in the hopes of winning (or, not losing) the general.
In short, until we structurally reform elections to be ranked/STAR/runoff/etc to remove the punitive effect of voting for your actual ideal candidate, we're stuck with a prisoner's dilemma election every time.
As a non-american just watching the democratic shitshow I can’t believe why on earth there are only two parties.
In a lot of cases, there's only one real functioning party. Smaller states and gerrymandered districts tend to have a single dominant party and a secondary dissident party, with the dominant party controlling all the statewide offices and most of the legislative seats, while the dissident party controls some number of municipal seats where they have a local majority.
Macrons party in France was fresh up from the ground at his first election.
Macron spun En Marche out of the collapsed ruin of Hollande's Socialist Party (*) (for whom he was deputy secretary general until Hollande's ouster). He was more akin to Lincoln's Republicans (who emerged from the wrecked carcass of the American Whig Party) or Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party (which might as well have been Republicans For Roosevelt Party, given how badly Wilson rocked both him and Taft).
(*) don't get too existed. they were pretty thin on actual socialism.
Le Penn's National Front has a real foundation (of French fascists) that existed before she started mobilizing the party and will stick around after she's gone. Similarly the New Popular Front (not to be confused with The People's Front of Judea rimshot) has a broad coalition of support that transcends any one leader. Both are more in line with a traditional American party.
Looks like I know shit about French politics, thanks, TIL.
Btw. maybe it needs a strong movement to create a real third party. A workers union for example, there is a lot of potential if they unite. BLM, too. America had strong movements in the past but none of them went into a political party, sadly.
Americans are near universally convinced that third-parties are a dead end, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. I've never understood it and I would've thought having two obviously non-viable candidates would challenge that assumption, but it doesn't seem like anything will. The classic Simpsons bit where both candidates get replaced by evil space aliens but still get elected because "what are you going to do, vote third party?" was not an exaggeration in the slightest. Americans just accept anything.
its because the indivual states entrenched the two parties. It's really difficult to form another national party. The two main candidates also often run as nominess for smaller state level parties.
They are not the same, the republicans are the psychopath shooting up a classroom of kids, and the democrats are the Uvalde cops tasing those that try to stop it.
I have no idea if these numbers are correct. For me I don't need any history though. One party is standing behind a guy who has been charged with 91 felony counts in four different jurisdictions and convicted of 34 and counting, and that's just for stuff he did while in office or as a candidate. He attempted a coup. He fomented a terrorist attack on the Capitol. Still, the Republicans are like, "Yep, that's our guy!" all while the Democrats tear themselves apart over Biden being old and doing old person things. Yeah it would be nice to have a better option for president, but this is not a difficult decision.
I'm actually confused because I know Jesse Jackson Jr. did a prions sentence of 2 and a half years for wire and mail fraud and Anthony Weiner did 18 months for sexual offenses. Frank Ballance was sentanced to 4 years for money laundering and mail fraud and William J. Jefferson was sentanced to 13 years for bribery. Jim Traficant was sentanced to 8 years for financial corruption. Which one of these is the 1 prison sentence?
Who knows? There's no citation as far as I can tell.
Its not like we don't have Bob Menendez pending trial for smuggling gold bars down his pant legs or Henry Cueller queued up for $600k in bribery charges (both of which are apparently fine, according to the GOP aligned SCOTUS...)
But you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel when your case for a 2024 candidate slate requires you to call back to the Keating Five and Abscam.
I need no convincing. There is a Wikipedia page on this topic and its mostly Republicans listed there but plenty of Democrats as well so the meme really makes no sense to me. AI generated perhaps.
This isn't true. Off the top of my head I can think of at least two democrats who've been sentenced to prison. I vote democratic party 99% of the time and I don't disagree with the premise but I don't want like-minded folks going around with bad info
This is pretty meaningless if it doesn't include which levels are counted. Is this just congress? Is it the national level? Does this include the state and local levels? Without proper context this turns from an insightful piece of information to propaganda.
Both parties are capitalist and support First Past the Post voting in the states they control.
Of course there are differences, don't you want more differences?
Think the Republicans getting control in government is a existential threat? Then you should be open to using every and any tool available to fight this from becoming reality. That means taking a big gulp, and considering that perhaps the democrats don't have what it takes to take on the Republicans.
So democrats need backup! They need help out there on that debate stage to fight Trump. We need to bring in outside perspectives with fresh ideas in the form of more viable political parties in the voting booth.
This means we must do away with First Past The Post voting in each and every state in democratic control. Republican ones as well, but at the very least they have an excuse as to why they use a mathematically flawed voting system that doesn't represent everyone. What is the excuse blue states?
Time to set aside your pride democrats. Perhaps you really aren't the future in the USA. You do want a future in the United States of America right? Would you be willing to risk your beloved democratic party not being relevant any longer to save this nation? I'd say, thats going to happen either way. Either the Republicans win it all, or we find a way around this massive blue roadblock of a political party.
So you may as well do the right thing, and implement Ranked Choice voting in your state before the door hits you on the ass on your way out.
Political parties are not the USA, the people are. We can set ourselves free with state level electoral reform. Now.
I have to rule on a technicality with Nixon and say that it doesn't count, leaving the Republicans with only twice as many impeachments. Lucky for them Obama wore a tan suit in public, otherwise the final score would've been really lopsided.
Sure. They both benefit from the same situation. Both benefit from the weird electoral system the states have and they both benefit by being one of only two parties. Infact they are almost completely dependent on each other. Once Republican Democrat politicians realized they could get elected by getting people afraid of the opposition instead of excited for their candidate they've had this country voting for the lesser of two evils ever since. 🤷
Both options suck, but the Democrats are slightly better than the Republicans. They both get paid by the same people and they both push forward the same agenda. For example, probably the most left-wing policy we've had come out of our countries. Federal government in a long time is Obamacare. But Obamacare was actually thought up by a right-wing think tank called the heritage foundation. It's a Republican idea that works as bad as other Republican ideas but because it was put forward by a Democrat because who's going to defend it? The real solution is single-payer universal healthcare like any other non-backwards ass country has. But the Democrats being controlled opposition put Obamacare there instead.
Hope that helps you understand where other people are coming from. 👈😎 I find the short form memes like that used to strip away. Nuance and "trigger" those who disagree with you to be a very trumpet esque style of memeing.
You see the problem is that in a system where you only get two choices, you don't get to say both choices suck, because that is literarily helping the shitter side.
If you want to fix the system I'm all for it, but today, here, now, we are required to make a choice and the choice is crystal clear, one side is infinitely better than the other.
It's not close, it's not they both are not perfect, this shitty system we have requires us, as adults to vote for one or the other and the Republicans are batshit insane people that literally want to kill women and queer people.
This is not a matter of coke VS Pepsi, this is a brocoli VS steaming diarrhea.
I'm not going to vote for Trump. If my state were a swing state, I'd vote for Biden. I'm going to work on getting us a third option with my vote since im not in a swing state.
!you don't get to say both choices suck,!<
What's the point of this whole democracy thing if I can't even say my piece? Like what are we defending if we're just going to get in line and shut up anyway?
Anyways the two parties are still basically the same. We deserve an actual left wing party.
They aren't the same. They are bad in different ways. One side are corporate shills who are looking to depress the power of workers the other wants to kill blacks, lgbtqa+, Latinos and turn women into sex slave baby machines.
One is clearly worse and we should vote against them, but don't tell me the Democrats aren't bad.
They absolutely are. My point was, and I apologize if it didn't come through, republicans are bad in every way Democrats are and beyond. But the Democrats aren't good.
They both serve the rich first and foremost which is a critical issue for them to be "both sides" on. Yes, republicans are worse, but that doesn't make democrats good.
No party that "served the rich" would've even let people like Bernie into the party, let alone give them committee assignments and let them run for president on their ticket.
There's no point in arguing that the Democratic Party is entirely controlled by the rich other than to encourage political nihilism. It has always been possible and always will be possible to beat wins out of (or even change/become) the party establishment through concerted effort and activism, as happened in the 30s, the Civil Rights Era, and the purging of the Blue Dogs after the Civil Rights era.
Bernie's losses were disheartening, but abandoning any effort to sway the democrats and writing them off as "servants of the rich" when the decade before 2016 had been one of growing progressivism within the party and when Bernie unfortunately never even beat Hillary in a Dem Primary Poll, is the political equivalent of taking your ball and going home.
Bash on the DNC and NDC all you want, but until we replace them with progressives like was done to the segregationist dems or lose doing so, there's no point in writing off the Democratic Party.
That they fought harder to stop Bernie from getting the nomination twice than they ever fought against trump speaks volumes. Just because they allow progressives to do a few minimal things, doesn't mean the party does not serve the rich first and foremost. This is like how freedom of speech is allowed until it becomes a threat to the establishment (see pro-Palestinian protests that were shut down with bullshit excuses). When the possibility arose that Bernie could make actual significant change, the party threw a shitfit.
The democratic party will never be replaced with progressives because their donors won't allow it.
Which party do I vote for that stops spending money on weapons or war?
Or, at the very fucking least, spent less money on weapons or war than the year before?
EDIT: I notice all the downvoters don't actually respond to a point in which both parties are the same that literally drives a lot of the domestic issues we have.
Stop defending murdering people in other countries. It's also pretty racist as most of those people are not white.
More importantly than president: Down ballot. Start with your local representative and non federal positions. Local elections usually have less party lines and you may find political alignment there.
The Presidency is mostly a sock puppet for the military industrial complex. We aren't catching lightning in a bottle there.
Since left wingers tend to be obnoxious assholes to anyone who doesn't mindlessly parrot whatever rhetoric they think u should already know, I just assume they're as bad as anyone else be cause I tend to prefer people who actually treat me with respect.
Edit: I called it and look who comes out of the woodworks to call me names and rude sarcasm.
A human being would have said "I'm sorry that you've dealt with the worst of us but it's not all of us, or at least not me". Instead I got a bunch of shit flinging monkeys.
You mean the entire other wing that calls people "snowflakes" when someone asks them to please not be complete self-centered asshats? Those people that treat you with respect when you don't parrot their rhetoric instead?
You want to be treated with respect? What snowflakey whining is this? Need a safe space, liberal crybaby? Fuck your feelings! Real conservatives grab others by the genitals when- and wherever they feel like it (when you're rich, they let you do it). A cage is good enough when you rip apart families seeking asylum! Get outta here with your communist tree-hugging fascist rules and regulations on how I am to behave.
Sorry, I was possessed by the spirit of the right wing's leader slash all of his propaganda mouthpieces there for a minute. What I parroted there wasn't very respectful. Nobody should ever say that to anybody else.
I'm sorry that you've dealt with the worst of us but it's not all of us, or at least not me.
Now for the love of any chance we have remaining to fix this country please vote Biden. We do not have the luxury of stopping Trump by splitting our vote when his minions are all voting together.
A grand conspiracy that's lasted for 50 years, that somehow has infected every branch of govt, but somehow still doesn't guarantee victory in elections, presidential and otherwise.
I was making a silly joke based on the likelihood that most people have committed crimes and gotten away with it. For example, Obama talks openly about smoking pot in his 1995 memoir. He didn't get caught.
If the Republicans have been in power more than Democrats, why haven't they investigated all the Democrats and sued them? Are you saying that the Republicans are incompetent? Tell me this also, which party holds the majority in Supreme Court right now?
So even if what you're insinuating were true: do you really want to vote for the corrupt and stupid rather than the corrupt and smart? I'd at least trust the corrupt and smart people to run the country in a way that doesn't lead to catastrophic failure.