“Funny” is one word. True is another.
Candace has welcomed all lawsuits from the Macrons. They have done nothing.
“Becoming Brigitte” 5 Episodes on YouTube. All laid out.
Oh, on Youtube, it must be true then.
I can check it if you want, but I will be extremely doubtful.
Besides, who cares if she would have been a man? It’s not illegal.
I never followed her much, but I used to have a somewhat neutral to favorable view of Candice Owens. She seems to have gone off the deep end lately. There’s a lot of money in going off the deep end for social media influencers. They’ve cultivated an audience who is ready to believe anything with limited ability to discern well-supported information from rumor and speculation. Plus there are no shortages of shady and sometimes foreign backers ready to funnel money to them.
A quick Grok search indicates extensive public records of Bridgette Macron going back to childhood, including photos, but I’m sure those can be explained away with the right set of mental gymnastics and Jewish overlords.
The Bell Curve informs us that there are plenty of really gullible people in every political camp. Freedom of speech and social media subscription and advertising models allows ignorance to be monetized, and there are plenty of people willing to sell it. It’s the World Weekly News updated for the digital age.
If you look french politics in general, it’s very corrupt. Top politicians, such as Macron, Le Pen, François Fillon, Jacques Chirac etc. have had all shady stuff going on.
So there’s worse stuff than genders. Even the age gap between Brigitte and Macron when they met is problematic on its own.
That’s why I’m baffled why there has been so much fuss about Brigitte’s potential penis.
Agree you on this.
It’s an undeniably weird situation with the age gap and whatnot, but not interesting enough for me to sit through a five part Candace Owens youtube documentary connecting her dots and likely reading between a lot of lines.
The last foreign leader conspiracy rabbit hole I went down was Justin Trudeau as Fidel Castro’s son. There is definitely a striking resemblance, especially when you look at pictures of a young Castro. Grok says there’s no evidence for that theory, too, but it’s hard to completely dismiss the physical resemblance and the ideological resemblance. Canada keeps moving left and they’re currently trying to round up all of the semi-auto firearms. Hopefully we can snag Saskatchewan from them as the 51st state.
Yeah. I think it’s a stretch to assume they’re related.
About Canadian politics: Trudeau is not PM anymore, so he doesn’t have much influence over the gun laws as far as I know.
About gun laws, Finland is in interesting place compared to US. We have pretty strict gun laws. You can’t basically just “have a gun”, you need to have strong evidence for needing one (for hunting for example), civilian carrying a firearm in public is a strict no too. This also leads to situation where guns that can’t be used in sports or hunting are very rarely allowed.
But at the same time almost every male has trained to use one in mandatory military service, and we have a lot of guns per capita (still less than half compared to US though), since hunting is something which is quite common activity here.
Trudeau was the guy who point-blank told Canadians that they don’t have a right to own handguns for personal protection. The confiscation scheme for semiautomatic weapons is just a continuation of his policies, which he didn’t invent out of thin air. Communists have been disarming the population for as long as they have been criminalizing political dissent.
Part of what makes the USA such a tough nut for leftist revolutionaries to crack is both our first and second amendments. Our Constitution is why Americans don’t get a knock on their door for saying the wrong things about the wrong political party.
My friend here in Lewiston did get the police sent to his door for making public comments at city council meetings, but it only took a couple of hours before our local district attorney rescinded the protection from harassment order because all of the “harassment” was constitutionally protected speech.
We have a real mix depending on which part of the country you’re in. I carry a pistol pretty much everywhere. “Concealed” outside the waistband, so it prints to the trained eye. It’s totally normal where I live and in the surrounding states to carry and people don’t think anything of it. But when I travel north to visit family, just having a pistol in my car becomes a felony in 4 states I drive through. Our 2nd amendment rights are so strong that we have to know the laws of 50 different states to stay out of prison 
.
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I have a question. Why on earth JD Vance supports Viktor Orban’s campaign in Hungary? The speech he gave with Viktor was embarrassing.
I understand that there’s some overlap with MAGA and Fidesz politics and values (national christian conservatism), but Orban is basically undemocratic and corrupt Kreml vassal. What’s the point? Is it that it’s more important to be anti-woke than western democracy? Opposing liberal values are more important than free media or elections?
I don’t know much about the details of Hungarian politics, but I do know that Orban was voted into power in a rejection of socialism, similar to the Trump and MAGA movement in the USA. I’m going to assume that leftists operate in a similar manner in Hungary as they do here in the USA.
Has he criminalized dissent or opposition parties, or simply moved to end public funding for socialist activist NGO’s like the Trump administration has? Are their elections free, fair, and secure? Do all citizens have voting rights?
When I look at what the Trump administration is doing, I don’t see much “authoritarianism” from the executive branch that wasn’t equally done by the Obama and especially Biden administrations, both of whom have taken advantage of the expanding executive powers granted by Congress over the decades. All of the talk of “fascism” and “authoritarianism” seems to be a child-like reaction to having the gravy train cut off for the publicly-funded aspects of Democratic Party political organizing and ideological indoctrination.
To use one case-in-point that’s local to me, Blackgirlinmaine is one of the state’s most prominent far-left bloggers, promoted to students by Bates College and generally considered progressive royalty. She’s an open communist and deeply racist, which she characterizes as “anti-fascist” and “anti-racist”. She’s been complaining since Trump got elected that all of her “anti-racism” contracts have dried up and constantly begs for subscribers and donations. She also claims that Heather Cox Richardson, substack’s highest-earning author and Maine’s biggest blogger, earns more than her because people are too racist to listen to her insane racist and communist thoughts every day. Richardson is just a better author and better at disparaging Trump, which is the product that they are both selling. Neither of them really comment on state or local politics in Maine, since there isn’t much to brag about except increasing spending on this or that pet project.
I think I’ve used this comparison before, but imagine being taxed so someone could move to Finland and get government contracts to explain to Finns that they are all deeply racist no matter how they conduct themselves and that paying for more of her “anti-racist” seminars and voting for the furthest left political party is the only way you can possibly atone for this sin. That’s Blackgirlinmaine’s whole grift, and it was pretty lucrative for her when the government contracts were flowing. Now that they aren’t, very few people will actually fork over their own money to listen to her hate on white people and preach communism.
Now multiply that by a 10’s of thousands (probably 100’s of thousands) of other NGO’s/nonprofits/charities that performed similar political advocacy sustained by taxing the public and giving grants to the activist NGO’s.
I believe that much of Trump’s international actions make more sense when viewed through this lens of dismantling a pretty sophisticated political activist machine that runs on public money more so than private donations. Again, I’m not familiar with the weeds of Hungarian politics, but it appears to be somewhat similar to the USA in that the internationalist “liberal consensus” politics were rejected, so now the beneficiaries of that grift are screaming bloody murder and making Hitler comparisons.
For another example of the absurdity, the same people screaming about “fascism” and “authoritarianism” are the ones fighting tooth and nail to make sure that Maine (and other blue states) have absolutely no mechanisms to prevent noncitizen voting, all while pumping massive numbers of noncitizens into the population (also using taxpayer money). They call this “Our Democracy” and characterize their opponents as “fascists” or “authoritarians”.
Here’s a really good take on the Eric Swallwell situation in California from one of the few pundits I still regularly read. Like many other politicians, he’s getting “me too’d” at a very pivotal moment in his career as he is running for California governor and polls are indicating he might actually lose to a Republican.
https://x.com/CynicalPublius/status/2043032645718937733?s=20
There. Fixed that for you.
When Orban rised to power he seemed like a great guy, he was a right wing liberal, and a liked figure.
Yes and no. Orban is not dumb. I don’t even know where to start. Here’s just soms examples:
Destroying democratic checks and balances.
Fidesz used its new powers to rewrite the electoral law in its favor. Until 2010, local constituencies used a two-round system, with a minimum turnout required to validate the result. After the reforms, there was only a single round: The candidate with the most votes won, regardless of turnout. By abolishing the second round, the opposition’s ability to coordinate tactically in a runoff was eliminated.
The governing party put loyalists in charge of other institutions that are supposed to check or balance government power, including the State Audit Office, Prosecutor General’s Office, tax authorities, National Bank, Media Council, Central Statistical Office, and ombudsman. Rather than acting as checks on executive power, these institutions have become enablers and, at times, instruments of political enforcement used to penalize nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and opposition parties under the guise of independent authority.
Fidesz also entrenched its control by introducing unusually long terms for key positions. The prosecutor general, the head of the State Audit Office, and several other watchdog posts were given 9- or even 12-year mandates, ensuring that Orbán loyalists would remain in power long after any future change of government.
Getting judges under gov. control
Meanwhile, another safeguard was removed: Previously, the judges themselves elected their own chief judge; however, that power was transferred to parliament, meaning the leadership of the court could now be chosen directly by the ruling party.
Even though adding members and other changes gave Fidesz control of the Constitutional Court, these measures also restricted the court’s authority. It became more difficult to take a case to court, and the court was no longer empowered to review tax and budget decisions, such as property rights violations.
Importing non-citizen voting
In 2012, Orbán gave voting rights to more than one million ethnic Hungarians who live just outside the country’s borders (largely a result of losing much of its territory in the 1920 Treaty of Trianon). They can send their votes via mail and have systematically supported the ruling nationalist party, which provides its local Hungarian civic groups with generous financial support. Ninety-five percent of the newly enfranchised voted for Fidesz in the 2014 elections.[28]
Owning the media and using it to spread propaganda
To begin with, the government took direct control of public service media and imposed uniform control of content across six television channels, six radio stations, and its press agency. Hundreds of editors and journalists were fired and replaced by loyal cadres. The loyalists received an enormous budget, almost €300 million, to promote a pro-government agenda in 2020.
How journalists were expected to report became clear through a leaked secret recording made by staff inside Hungary’s state television and later published by independent media ahead of the 2019 European elections. In the audio, an editor can be heard instructing his team: “I’m sure nobody will be surprised if I say that in this institution, it’s not the opposition alliance that is supported.” He then went on to dictate the approved narrative, concluding: “If anyone doesn’t like it, they can hand in their resignation.”[31]
During the 2018 election campaign, 61 percent of state media stories covered the government, of which 96 percent cast it in a positive light. Meanwhile, 82 percent of stories covering the opposition were negative. In the 2022 campaign, the united opposition candidate for prime minister received a total of five minutes of airtime.[32]
And this is just a start. Fidesz is also breaking down civil rights and civil society in various ways.
Yes. He has dismandled bunch of NGOs, just to bring new, Fidesz controlled NGOs in their place.
He is also doing the thing he opposed against as a young politician. He was anti-communism, but now he is introducing state based economics back to Hungary.
By the end of Orbán’s second term in office, the state had taken control of around 300 to 400 companies in such diverse sectors as banking, energy, shipyards, airports, restaurants, broadcasting, waste collection, film production, and telecommunications.
Before Orbán, Hungary had moved faster than other postcommunist countries in privatizing state property, but under him, the government quickly reversed that policy. In 2007, Hungarian state-ownership was 11 percent of GDP, 2.9 percentage points below the EU average. In 2016, the share of state-owned enterprises had increased to 16.5 percent of GDP, 1.6 percentage points above the EU average. The equity capital of the state increased two-and-a-half times between 2010 and 2015.[50]
You can find much more shit if you look.
This was the source for the quotes:
(https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/how-viktor-orbans-hungary-eroded-rule-law-free-markets#_edn50)
If Cato is somehow an unreliable source for you, you can find that same stuff elsewhere.
Besides all this: Orban has great relations with China and Russia and he is known to deliver sensitive EU and NATO information to them. So when Vance is there repeating Orban’s lies in public, the guy is selling your information to the main adversaries of the US.
So either JD Vance is ignorant, misinformed, or just does not care.
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False dichotomy.
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Somehow Trump/Vance are eager to criticize old allies from
even smallest political movement to the wrong direction in their eyes.
But when it comes to authoritarian assholes like Orban, or full blown dictators like Erdogan, they close their eyes or just joke about the stuff.
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What is false about it?
I take what the Cato institute says with a grain of salt as a rule, but if I assume everything is true and not a deceptive framing of the situation, it sounds like Orban differs from Trump and MAGA in some significant ways. But still not as much as Woke differs from MAGA.
From their description, it sounds like Orban has turned all of the institutions that (in the USA) were fully captured by woke leftists into nationalist instruments. This differs from the MAGA approach of simply cutting off public funding like they did for our only state radio and television outlet NPR/PBS, along with other NGO’s like Blackgirlinmaine. They didn’t keep the funding and somehow purge it of leftist ideologues (which they can’t really do here because they are technically private companies, as are all NGO’s).
At a glance, it seems more similar to German National Socialism than American Republicanism, especially with the increased nationalization, although it sort of depends on how they go about nationalizing private companies. Nazi Germany did it by compulsion, not simply agreeing to purchase companies like Junkers. They expanded nationalization later by building things like Herman Goring Works from the ground up, rather than expropriating it from the previous owners.
From my perspective, what Cato describes looks more like a purge of wokeism and a replacement with nationalist loyalists, rather than simply dismantling the publicly-funded aspects of it. Purging woke ideologues out of government positions is perfectly fine in my book, but I’m less supportive of keeping the woke activist infrastructure and repurposing it for nationalism. It isn’t something the government should be doing in the first place, in my opinion.
The idea that if you’re not anti-woke you’re racist and/or communist.
And besides this they’re dismantling the basics if democracy and constitutional state.
So yeah, not something I would support.
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