Sunday 16th of November 2025
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democratically speaking...

Some 45% of residents of Western nations believe that democracy in their countries is “broken,” Politico has reported, citing a poll by Ipsos.

The study which was shared with the outlet was carried out in September and involved 9,800 voters from the US, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Croatia, the Netherlands and Poland.

According to the poll, people in seven out of the nine surveyed nations are dissatisfied with how democracy is working, with Sweden and Poland being the only two countries where most of the respondents are confident in their system of self-governance, Politico said in an article on Friday.

Some 60% in France said that they were unhappy about the situation, followed by the US (53%), UK (51%) and Spain (51%), the study found. The respondents singled out disinformation, corruption, a lack of accountability for politicians, and the growing popularity of extremist parties as the main threats to the democratic process.

https://www.rt.com/news/627821-democracy-us-uk-eu/

 

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THIS IS NOT NEW. EVEN CHURCHILL THOUGHT THAT DEMOCRACY WAS FLAWED BUT IT WAS THE BEST SYSTEM WE HAD FOR CONTROLLING SOCIETIES. ENGLAND (AND AN AGGRIEVED AUSTRALIA FOR THAT MATTER) ARE PSEUDO-DEMOCRACIES WITH A ROYAL HEAD OF STATE.

FOR AUSTRALIA THE SYSTEM IS MORE "REPRESENTATIVE" THAN IN MOST COUNTRIES, AS VOTING IS COMPULSORY AND PREFERENTIAL. THUS SOME BACKROOM DEALS ARE OFTEN MADE BY THE DIFFERENT POLITICAL PARTIES, THOUGH COMING SECOND BEST ON RAW VOTES, PASS THE POST FIRST WITH THE OTHER MOB'S VOTE ADDED... IT'S A BIT LIKE A BOAT RACE WHERE THE WINNER IS CALCULATED ON "HANDICAP" — BUT NOT QUITE.

THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM WAS APPARENTLY INVENTED BY MATHEMATICIAN LEWIS CARROLL WHEN WE WAS NOT CHASING RABBITS DOWN THE ALICE IN WONDERLAND HOLE.

IN SOME OTHER COUNTRIES, ESPECIALLY EUROPE, THERE IS A SECOND ROUND OF VOTING, WHERE FIRST AND SECOND FROM THE FIRST ROUND ARE FIGHTING OUT... DEALS CAN BE MADE BETWEEN THIRD PARTIES TO PROP-UP CANDIDATES... SEE MACRON VS LE PEN....

IN AMERICA, THE COMPLEXITIES OF VOTING ARE SO STUPID THAT "ONE MAN-ONE VOTE" IS BYPASSED BY VOTE RIGGING, GERRYMANDERING, STATE LAWS, COLLEGES, RACIAL PROFILING AND STRANGELY APPEARING OR DISAPPEARING BALLOTS.

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THE CONVERSATION TOLD US IN May 3, 2024:

 

Americans, it seems, can both value the idea of democracy and not support it in practice. 

Since 2016, academics and journalists have expressed concerns that formerly secure democracies are becoming less democratic. Different measures of democracy, such as scores produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House and the Varieties ofDemocracy Institute, have suggested as much based on data over the past decade. 

The surveys have sounded alarms about the future of democratic governance in places such as the U.S., which the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance listed as “backsliding” since 2019.

A number of countries that were once considered stable democracies – such as Hungary, India and Nicaragua – have seen their leaders and representatives undermine government institutions in common ways: by encouraging division and polarization, spreading misleading or biased messages, pursuing strategies to unfairly dominate in elections, promoting loyalists and marginalizing opponents, and attacking efforts to hold leaders accountable.

This pattern across democracies raises questions about whether what’s called democratic backsliding is happening globally and which democracies are at risk of failing. 

A report released recently by the Pew Research Center that describes the results of public opinion surveys on democracy and political representation in 24 countries, including the U.S., has added to those concerns.

https://theconversation.com/supporting-democracy-is-hard-for-many-who-feel-government-and-the-economy-are-failing-them-225541

 

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OF COURSE THE RACONTEUR AT THE CONVERSATION CAN'T PREVENT HIMSELF FROM ATTACKING SOME CHOSEN COUNTRIES, INCLUDING HUNGARY, FOR "encouraging division and polarization, spreading misleading or biased messages, pursuing strategies to unfairly dominate in elections, promoting loyalists and marginalizing opponents, and attacking efforts to hold leaders accountable"... WE KNOW THIS IS MORE PREVALENT IN COUNTRIES LIKE THE UK, FRANCE, POLAND, THE USA, ITALY AND RECENTLY ROMANIA... BUT SINCE WE GET "THE RESULT WE LIKE", encouraging division and polarization, spreading misleading or biased messages, pursuing strategies to unfairly dominate in elections, promoting loyalists and marginalizing opponents, and attacking efforts to hold leaders accountable IS OKAY... REMEMBER JEREMY CORBYN BEING VILIFIED... OR LUMUMBA KILLED BY THE CIA... OR JOE BIDEN'S SENILITY BEING HIDDEN BY HIS MOB.

 

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IN 2015, POLITICO TOLD US ABOUT Britain’s broken democracy

Imagine a drunk driver hurtling toward a cliff edge with no idea where the brake pedal is. That’s Britain:

...

From the defeat of Nazism in 1945 and the Partition in India in 1947, through to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the emergence of a rainbow nation that defeated apartheid in South Africa in 1994, nations everywhere seemed to be marching in step to the siren call of ballots rather than bullets. In the 1970s and 1980s alone, juntas fell in Greece, Spain, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Who could blame our academic friend for discerning in this pattern a certain outcome for all the souls on Earth?
A good job, then, that he has been able to see his myth exposed in this, the tumultuous and deeply unstable 21st century. Every day the news agenda inserts a million pricks into the deflating tire of Fukuyama’s theory, now officially punctured by the evidence of events.
Democracy, far from spreading, faces two profound and possibly unbeatable enemies: first, rival systems of government; second, the disgusting complacency of those it has generally served well. A specific instance of the second is my chief concern here, but before we look inside our castle, it may be wise to shine a spotlight on the enemies at the gates, since their numbers and weapons are multiplying.

https://www.politico.eu/article/britains-broken-democracy/

 

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SO WE LIVE IN HOPE....

        GUS LEONISKY

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

SEE ALSO:

‘More snouts in the trough’: The plan to expand parliament 

Jason Koutsoukis  For the first time in 40 years, Labor is developing a plan to increase the number of seats in the parliament – a move the Coalition fears will cement Labor’s majority.

 

 

 

suckering....

 

GUY SOMERSET
I'm Glad Trump Hates Cancer Kids

(Editor's note: The following is a SATIRE piece)

 

The Federal Government is now reopened and I, for one, could not be happier.

What a cornucopia of benefits for wealthy people such as myself. (Not joking.)

First of all, there are tremendous Tax Advantages for the better half. That's we earning or having more than $100,000 a year…and them's on the low end.

Second of all…well, know what? Let's make a record of boons!

My List — You Ain't On It

I'm glad that cancer kids will die. If those pallid little bastards wanted to live they ought to have gotten born without cancer. I loathe seeing them simp around seeking "treatment” and such. Good riddance!

I'm glad that Americans won't have to wait in airport lines for two hours (or even four!) and consider a lifetime of Affordable Health Care a reasonable trade for getting home or back to work on schedule. Speaking of…

I'm glad you Plebians who weren't born flush get to labor until your dying day — LITERALLY — since you can't afford your Diabetes medication or what-the-Hell-ever you Poors order from the online pharmacy.

I'm glad my Johnson and my Pfizer portfolios will skyrocket as you Little Punks get hooked on "Your Meds” from womb to tomb with ever-increasing side-effects (such as aforementioned Diabetes) which are TOTALLY not an intentional by-product of those treatments.

I'm glad that I will get to hear more stories about Slavery, the Holocaust as well as Late-Stage Patriarchy according to brainless morons who are fixated on ancestors who may (or may NOT) have perished generations if not centuries ago because it distracts from the tens of millions about to die right now.

I'm glad the internet exists because that service allows for low-cost porn and Sportsball gambling which are about the only two ways for anyone birthed in the Bottom Half to dice-toss such meager lives into prosperity. (Also glad that most Americans are blissfully unaware of things such as Odds and Statistics.)

I'm glad incoming Mass Human Displacement (MHD) will throw a quarter of the population of the United States out of gainful employment because desperate Citizens are the easiest for Richy Riches like me to swindle…cue Gary Larson…”Double Your IQ or No Money Back!”.

I'm glad soon lechers will have an endless supply of hot teens in need of cash to exploit…I suggest finding a pretty blonde with a newborn who is sick or, better yet, finagling a cutie whose brother has an incurable illness to entice with Health Coverage and when you're done you can either pimp her out via OnlyFans or the Old-Fashioned method — that's Capitalism at its finest for you, my friends.

I'm glad my ancestors founded a few banks, got in on the ground of a few pharma corporations, and taught me how to do a few stock trades to make your weekly salary in a few hours because I sure as blazes wouldn't want to be you.

I'm glad our Government allows a Trillionaire to exist at the same time less than half his fortune would fund Health Care for a third of the working population of this country, since if they permit that then they permit anything, and as Most Evil Alive you really would be shocked what I will do for goodtime jollies.

I'm glad Trump is such a vapid husk that he swapped his offspring — one Arab, one Christian, one Jew, etc., and likely the youngest going to be farmed over to a gay mulatto Samoan — for bags of gold; since a fellow such as that is a proverbial "man we can deal with”.

I'm glad I'll be done with this pathetic country and despicable mortal coil soon enough.

I'm glad most of you are too stupid to realize how bad things are going to become.

So Long, Suckers

Finally, to the Boomers (whom I hate to a person) you need to understand that your sacred Free Market does not exist…in the sense your Medicaid (which you ALL use save those named Rockefeller or Rothschild) is subsidized by 75% every time you employ it.

Also, there were no Illegals "getting free Health Care” other than any who used the Emergency Room which is mandated by Law because less than a lifetime ago hospitals were PHYSICALLY DUMPING the unwell without cash onto the sidewalks if they could not pay.

Furthermore, lest we neglect "Marginalized Communities” please take note there was no Organized Outcry from the Alternative Lifestyle cohort despite the reality any of those folk living on the median wage are more than two times the average users of the Now-Formerly Affordable Health Care system.

Likewise, for the past 15 annums (nearly a generation) medical "Pre-Existing Conditions” have been covered by Health Care, which Trump or Hindu Husband is presently going to remove within the next few years. So if your granddaughter has a baby with ANYTHING wrong and she earns less than $50,000 a year?…I don't know…sell it, I suppose…in Canada over 5% of deaths are by "Euthanasia”…there's that.

Moreover, for all you Harpies screeching about "Muh Rights” on Abortion, you better get used to killing your kids — whether you want to or not — since that will become "the only humane thing” in less than your lifespan. Because, after all, the divine "National Debt” takes precedence over caring for those Lessers with even the slightest birth deficiency.

Ultimately, you get what you tolerate. I'm going to be just fine. Matter of fact, I made money today. It's "Blood Money” of course. But, also of course, that's the American Way.

You fools don't have any idea yet…but you're about to learn.

Guy Somerset writes from somewhere in America

 

https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/164847-donald-trump-cancer-kids/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

trump's USA....

 

Is This When Trump Became a Lame Duck?
Bad electoral indicators and outrage among the base threaten the Trump program, whatever it may be.

BY Jude Russo

 

November 4 was a bad day for the Republicans. The Grand Old Party had little reason to be optimistic going into the off-year elections, but the magnitude of the loss was surprising even to committed pessimists who questioned monkeying with food stamp payments days before people went out to transact the business of democracy, that is, to express their transient frustrations at the polls. In themselves, these results weren’t a catastrophe, and under the numbers there are still some encouraging secular trends. Retrenchment and course-correction before the midterms are still in the cards.

The hits have kept coming, though. Fox News on Monday aired Laura Ingraham’s latest interview with President Donald Trump. It was not what you’d call a great success. When Ingraham asked about negative voter sentiment about the economy, Trump dismissed the concerns: “More than anything else, it’s a con job by the Democrats”; “I think polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we've ever had”; and so on.  The president is correct that falling energy prices will bring down prices in other sectors, but one of the many sterling lessons of the Biden presidency is that telling people their feelings and perceptions are invalid or irrelevant ain’t a political winner. 

Perhaps worse was his handling of Ingraham’s questions about visa programs for college students. Ingraham expressed skepticism at Trump’s proposals to increase student visas for China from 350,000 to 600,000, and the president insisted it was necessary for floating the American higher ed sector. “Historically black colleges and universities would all be out of business,” Trump said. “You would have a system of colleges and universities, would go down the tubes.” He went on to compare the American relationship with China favorably to that with France.

 

Difficult as higher-ed rent-seeking and Red China boosterism might be for the base to swallow, Trump’s comments on H-1B labor may be worse. Ingraham asked about whether H-1B reform would be a priority for the administration and asserted that “we have plenty of talented people here.” Trump’s reply was stark: “No, no you don’t. No, you don’t.”

He tempered the statement with gentler (and broadly correct) statements about certain specialized skill bases in the U.S., although these arguments are largely irrelevant to the H-1B program. But that’s not the soundbyte—which, by the way, is playing very badly online. MAGA drummed Vivek Ramaswamy out of the magic circle over Christmas for a similar gaffe; the American political memory is short, but is it so short that an anti-immigration president can seamlessly transform into Bush Lite?

Close on the heels of this interview, a fresh tranche of Epstein emails splashed into the press; none so far have been smoking gun material, but they strengthen the known evidence that Trump and Epstein were familiar socially, and that the former knew what antics the latter was up to. The administration has gone to bizarre lengths to tamp down on the Epstein story for reasons opaque; it has been suggested that the shutdown was extended so the House wouldn’t come back and vote to release the Epstein files. It’s hard to gauge what’s going on here—the level of evasion doesn’t match up with the facts that have come out so far—but the song and dance is itself a show of weakness, and is infuriating elements of the base.

 

So, ten months into the term, Trump now finds himself wrangling not just Ds, but Rs. With Trump’s coalition at war with itself and a daunting midterm battle ahead, you have to ask whether Trump is a lame duck. Does it seem likely at this juncture that Trump will have the control over his own party, or even the raw vote count, to push through any more legislation? And, if the GOP loses the House, who’s to say that the impeachment circus won’t come back to town? (Trump may live to regret having been so fast and loose with the use of military force if the absence of AUMFs in Iran and Venezuela gives the Democrats a case.) While it’s unlikely that Trump would be forced from office, it is quite plausible that he will be bogged down in fighting the Hill, with limited bandwidth for pursuing even executive actions that do not require congressional approval.

Donald Trump has been discounted many times in the past; it has been a mistake every time. The man seems to have a luck he can trust. (However you feel about it, whipping up a riot against Congress is usually the sort of thing that ends most mortals’ public careers.) But the party will end someday. The first two weeks of November 2025 may well be the moment when Trump’s power over the government and authority within his own coalition began to ebb.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/is-this-when-trump-became-a-lame-duck/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trump-withdraws-endorsement-from-marjorie-taylor-greene/