And this criticism of ‘the greens only show up every 4 years’ is in bad faith.

No, it’s really not. The Mayor of Galesburg, IL, a town of 30.000 is the highest office any green politician holds in the US. This is fucking ridiculous.

By their own admission, only 130 Greens are currently in office in highly influential positions such as Zoning Board of Appeals Alternate or Cemetery Trust Fund Committee. This party is a fucking joke. And that’s the party whose presidential candidate accepts an invitation from Putin.

still taking Russian oil

That’s a lie

Also: Germany’s coal power production drops to lowest level in 60 years in 2023

Stop with that bullshit

How is that a better solution than using another messenger app?

The Shinkansen is absolutely great and I love traveling in Japan by train, much better experience overall than Germany. That said, there are still so many things that are oddly outdated. Like, why is there no app to book tickets? Even when booking online, physical tickets are still needed and have to be collected at the train station.

Now with the typhoon a lot of connections were cancelled. Hundreds of people had to go to physical counters to exchange their physical tickets to cash. Because there’s an emergency schedule on some lines, the ticket machines don’t work and customers have to go to counters to get tickets. Even Germany is more digitized than that. Granted, Germany has a lot more experience with cancelled train connections…

It’s like, Japan was ahead of everyone else and just stopped there. Still a great experience but it could be so much better with relatively little effort.

I don’t quite share your sentiment. Although FDP tends to yap a lot about car infrastructure, investments into train infrastructure in Germany are at a record high. Still far too low, I agree, but it’s not getting worse. And I don’t see AfD joining any government on national level anytime soon. Also, cycling infrastructure is more a local topic and most cities are still center-left. Outside of cities I don’t see biking infrastructure improving either, though.

The article is pretty well done and shows exactly why this discussion is moot. There’s simply no merit to the accusation, plain and simple.

If an accusation comes from Russia and only from Russia, it’s part of their misinformation warfare. That’s not ad-hominem, that’s paying some fucking attention.

Okay, then it’s exactly what I thought. Thanks!

other people’s voting paperwork

Same way as they would for the ID, They don’t. That’s not a common problem. Only people in the same household could possibly access the paperwork and as there are only 250-ish people voting at the same polling station, risk is high that someone voting twice with paperwork of a family member would immediately be found. That there are enough cases of this to sway election results is highly unlikely.

voting several times

Check list. Everyone that is registered at that polling station is ticked off on the list.

I mean, I like Elon

Honest question, why?

IDs are not routinely checked when voting in Germany at least. But there’s no voter registration necessary because everyone is registered with their municipality and automatically gets their voting paperwork sent home. You just need that paperwork to vote, no ID. I wouldn’t change that setup because giving poll workers ways to refuse voters is not a good thing.

Btw. I’ve never had to wait in line for more than a minute to vote. Voting booths are usually in walking distance (might be different in very rural areas) and each accommodates maybe 250 people for the day.

Also, there are polling stations in prison. The right to vote can’t be taken away.

True, Breezy is just one example. But that’s not the ones they were discussing with.

Is that remorse here in the room with us?

Just to make clear what I mean:

he said it’s the biggest mistake of his life - I sure fucking hope so. This is an empty statement, of course it is.

and he has to bear the consequences - that’s what grinds my gears. No, he doesn’t bear the consequences, his victim does. I would like for him just once to acknowledge that there is an actual victim here and it’s not him. He destroyed her life. Even that carefully crafted PR statement you posted here only ominously mentioned “those involved”. He doesn’t mention her, his organization doesn’t mention her. He calls it a misstep and a mistake, he doesn’t call it what it is, child rape.

If he were truly reformed, he would acknowledge what kind of pain his continuous presence in the public eye inflicts on his victim and others like her and would actually bear the consequences - step down on his own.

There is no proof that he is a pedophile.

Not entirely sure where you’re going with this. He’s not an irredeemable asshole because he might be a pedophile, he’s an irredeemable asshole because he raped a child and that’s indisputable.

Real talk: constantly conflating child rapists with pedophiles is actually a problem. Pedophiles didn’t choose their sexuality, however coming out would destroy their lifes because of how society sees them, so they don’t. Which means they don’t seek help which increases the risk of them acting on it at some point in their life. Even if you feel no sympathy towards them, which I get, them getting treatment is important to reduce cases of child abuse.

That’s wrong, he knew she was twelve before he went to the UK. Don’t make shit up.

He joked about finding 10-year-olds at this Olympics.

WTF? Seriously?

Your pretentious pseudo-enlightened bullshit pisses me of. No, not everyone here is out for vengeance. But there’s a middle ground between capital punishment and letting a child rapist go after only 13 months without them expressing remorse plus letting them represent their country at the Olympics. Travelling to another country to convince a 12 year old to have unprotected sex three times in two days, leading them to self-harm including an overdose is not “fornication”, it’s rape. This is not rehabilitation but a blatant failure of the Dutch justice system and society.

First of all, sorry this happened to you and thank you for your perspective on this.

There’s a lot of possible middle ways between 13 months and life’s over, though. I’m a strong believer in rehabilitation but there are some necessities, e.g. a sufficient level of remorse which he has not shown as far as I can tell, and basically zero chance of repetition, which to be fair seemingly is the case.

There are some things in my opinion that you should never be able to do as a convicted child rapist even after rehabilitation which includes being a primary care taker of children and representing your country at the Olympics.

“do you really want to ruin their life over this"

The problem with this statement here is that the responsibility is shifted to the victim. The victim didn’t mess up the rapist’s life, the rapist did. But this is not an issue of too harsh sentences of rapists but of awful training of police officers.

Under Dutch law, pressuring a 12 year old into having sex repeatedly (3 times in 2 days) is fornication, not rape. Not making this up, that’s actually their reasoning.

To be fair, of course Durch authorities did not ignore that he was in prison in the UK, so they did not say one month is enough, but 13 months.