Today, we had European elections in Germany.

We have the Wahl-O-Mat, a state-funded service, where you can answer 38 questions, and then match your positions against a selection of or all political parties that could be elected. It then shows you how much overlap (a percentage) you have with the various parties and their answers to those questions.

I find this to be a very important and useful tool for citizen information.
Campaign adverts are shallow and colorful PR. Broad slogans.
Individuals are not necessarily what the broader party policies are and how they vote. Personal sympathy can even be misleading in that a sympathetic person may not hold the values and positions you do.
Voting for a party, I think their program and stances should be the primary decision factor. (Alongside assessment of whether you can trust them of course.)
It obviously and drastically shows you misconceptions about parties and your alignment, and shows you parties relevant to you that you may not have known about before.

Do other countries have something/things like that too? A tool to match personal stance against political parties' stances? [In a concrete and up-to-date way.]

Sorry if I disturb your regular schedule, I just want to remind you if you're an European citizen like me to go out there and vote for your representative in the European Parliament. If you're Romanian as well, like me, go out there and vote in the local elections as well so we can kick those comassed corrupt assholes in the but. They can't steal as much as we can vote!

Muie PSD!
Muie PNL!
Muie AUR!
Muie SOS!

Archive.is link needed please.

Fifty-eight percent of GOP voters said in the new survey convicted felons should be allowed to become president if they are elected. YouGov noted that just 17 percent of Republicans held that opinion in April.

In February, 34 percent of GOP voters said criminality was among their least desired traits. Now, 19 percent say the same.

Incredible.

If you want to see weaponization of the courts against a political opponent, THIS is the case to look at.

The ATF Form 4473 is the Firearm Transaction Record and has a list of checkbox questions which, in a normal country, would not be questions at all, but a bullet point list of disqualifying criteria, such as (shortening for clarity):

• Are you buying the gun for someone else?
• Are you a citizen or legal alien?
• Are you a convicted felon?

Rather than simply saying,

• You cannot purchase the gun for someone else.
• You must be a citizen or legal alien.
• You cannot be a convicted felon.

This is done in order to create a criminal charge of Making a False Claim if one of these is not fulfilled. Note that for many of these, you will in fact fail the background check (FBI NICS system) and be unable to even purchase the gun, such as if you are not a US Citizen or Green Card holder, but you could still have just become a criminal based on your 4473 answers.

Most of the questions are very 'reasonable' in their objective, but then you reach question 21f:

f. Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?

At first glance this is pretty straightforward: possession of an illegal drug is a crime, so of course you can't buy a gun if you admit you're committing a crime!

But note, it also calls out addiction. Being addicted to something is not illegal, and is not even the same as being intoxicated, but is grounds for rejection under this. Moreover, that addiction can be to legal controlled substances as well, and still run afoul of this question.

And who decides if you are addicted to something? That's not spelled out here, and can be determined by a doctor either before or after arrest for this.

This is extremely unusual for courts to retroactively pursue, especially years later. That Hunter Biden is being pursued on this is 1000% only happening because of Republican pressure, in order to smear Biden so they can try to equate his family to Trump's, in their corruption.

Then again, many laws (especially around drugs and guns) were put in place to target minorities and ~~Leftists~~ non-Conservatives so this is really just the law being used how it was intended.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16414235

The Ugly History of Dual-Loyalty Charges Ilhan Omar recently deployed an accusation that’s been used against religious minorities for years.

Interesting article, showing how treating Muslims as non-loyal to a country is the same bullshit already done against Catholics, Jews and other religions in USA.

You crooked motherfucker

President Joe Biden has suggested he will appoint progressive justices to the Supreme Court if he wins a second term in the White House in November.

"The next president, they're going to be able to appoint a couple of justices... Look, if in fact we're able to change some of the justices when they retire and put in really progressive judges like we've always had, tell me that won't change your life," he said during a campaign rally in Philadelphia on Wednesday.

...on Tuesday, the former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was all over social media for a picture taken of her during a visit to Israel. In the picture, Haley – the one Republican who had been frequently lauded for her smarts on foreign policy – is seen squatting down in front of a row of Israeli artillery shells, likely provided by the United States, with pen in hand. “Finish them,” she wrote on one of the shells.

The evidence indicates that Nikki Haley can write, but one must wonder if she can read.

Amazing jabs by the author aside, the cruelty and the callousness and the bigotry displayed by those deadset on supporting Israel is both astonishing and horrifying.

What makes this genocidal unity of Democrat and Republican all the more horrific and rage-inducing is that, despite the war-mongering messages emanating from America’s politicians and media pundits, all the polls repeatedly show that the American people want a ceasefire in Gaza, not a genocide. One of the latest surveys, a Data for Progress poll published in early May, found that seven out of 10 likely voters “support the US calling for a permanent ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza”. This position was endorsed by majorities of Democrats (83%), independents (65%) and Republicans (56%).

The [Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention] concluded their position this way: “Humanity has a choice: Either we decide that our children can all be killed whenever a superior force alleges that ‘terrorists’ are among us, or we decide that under no circumstances will we allow these superior forces to lay waste to our world any longer. We each must choose and act accordingly. The watershed moment is now.”

The Lemkin Institute exhibits the kind of moral clarity that we must demand from our leaders. If we don’t, the Nikki Haleys of this world will be signing more than bombs. By endorsing the genocide that the people don’t support, these politicians are also signing the death certificate of our own democracy.

In Atlanta, the George Floyd demonstrators are being prosecuted as gang members. The activists of today could be next.

A great writeup on Atlanta's Cop City protests, and the political establishment's wider response to protests in a post-BLM world (hint: it's not to listen to protestors' concerns).