#marshalate popularity poll | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hotvintagepoll · 8 months ago

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Propaganda

Greta Garbo (Camille, Anna Karenina, Queen Christina)—Enigmatic and alluring and made me bisexual. The perfect example of the eroticism in silent films that literally transcends text. Could literally not change anything about her expression but you knew by looking at her eyes what she was thinking. She’s so gorgeous.

Kay Francis (Jewel Robbery, I Loved A Woman, British Agent)— kay francis was an icon of glamor in her time and a top star of the 30s - she was the highest-paid actress at warner bros from 1930 to 1936. she tended to play characters who were charming, sophisticated, and elegantly dressed, and starred in at least one legitimate masterpiece, the sublime 1932 comedy trouble in paradise. her first big role was in the marx brothers movie the cocoanuts in 1929, and she and william powell made seven movies together between 1930 and 1932. even in her sillier movies she always elevates the material with her charm and presence - she never phones it in and there’s a sort of warm, knowing wittiness about her. a really good short promo from a retrospective of her movies that i think really gets her Vibe across

This is round 3 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Kay Francis:

youtube

Jewel Robbery clip

"From 1932 through 1936, Francis was the queen of the Warner Bros. lot, and, increasingly, her films were developed as star vehicles. By 1935, Francis was one of the highest-paid actors, earning a yearly salary of $115,000, dwarfing the $18,000 Bette Davis – who would one day occupy Francis's dressing room – made. From 1930 to 1937, Francis appeared on the covers of 38 film magazines, second only to child sensation Shirley Temple's 138." Source: Wikipedia. Kay Francis is like the MOST FAMOUS Actress from the 1930s you've never heard of--and it was her and Norma Shearer who wore and made classic the 1930s tall, slim, bias cut silhouette. She ALSO has a WHOLE PODCAST episode devoted to her life and career in Hollywood--it's fascinating! She is both tough and a total wet cat.

One of the TALLEST Warner Brother stars at 5’9” and known as a “clothes horse” for her glamorous roles wearing the height of 1930s fashion. She fell out of popularity in the 40s, but her 30s work sizzles. The scene with her and Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise where she says she doesn’t care about his reputation (because she’d rather sleep with him?) HAWOOGA

melted my gay heart with her butch look in stolen holiday

"My life? Well, I get up at a quarter to six in the morning if I'm going to wear an evening dress on camera. That sentence sounds a little ga-ga, doesn't it? But never mind, that's my life ... As long as they pay me my salary, they can give me a broom and I'll sweep the stage. I don't give a damn. I want the money ... When I die, I want to be cremated so that no sign of my existence is left on this earth. I can't wait to be forgotten." —From Kay Francis's private diaries, c. 1938

Garbo:

A cold-ass Swedish WLW Sphinx. Had plans to murder Hitler that she never got around to. "She will remain always a child of vikings, moved about by a snowy dream."

First of all, she's on the money; that's how much of a treasure she is. She's beautiful in such a distinct way you need very few lines to draw her. (Drawing by Einar Nerman) She managed to be mesmerizing in both silent and sound films. She kissed a woman in Queen Christina (and probably several more in real life). She was super dry and really funny in Ninotchka. She got the hell out of Hollywood and stayed out, living for almost 50 years after her retirement.

Garbo is one of the many reasons why I'm gay. If you haven't seen Queen Christina please do, She is so gender in that film. Also her accent makes it sound like she's always talking in cursive and it's so hypnotic (or at least I think so).

She's a gay introvert, like all of us here on Tumblr.

Mysterious and aloof, charismatic and enigmatic, with beautiful androgynous characteristics, Garbo is undoubtedly the most eccentric and unique Hollywood vintage star. Her aversion to fame and stardom makes her even more desirable to the audience, and her insane chemistry with the camera, an actress one of a kind! Her particularity and her oddity is what discerns her strongly from her hollywood co workers at the time, noone was like her and would never be like her. I think, to the utmost extent, that she deserves the title of the hottest vintage star, even though that would be an understatement of what she is!

SO gorgeous, her thick Swedish accent makes will turn your brain into pudding

Probabaly a lesbian, absolutely a mood when she retired

#kay francis #greta garbo #hotvintagepoll #fuck that old woman #ladies 3 #Youtube

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marshallpupfan · 11 months ago

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More Movie Thoughts Again...

It's been a few months since The Mighty Movie released to theaters. Currently, we know a third movie is on its way, and it's due to release in 2026. What we don't know, however, is... well, anything else about it. We still don't even know yet which pup it'll focus on, or if it even will at all. We know the year, just nothing else.

If the story does focus on a single pup again, much like The Movie and The Mighty Movie before it, then the question is... which one will they go with? If you ask the fans, the answer seems to be quite obvious. Just take a look at the above poll from the PAW Patrol Wiki.

And even this poll on Reddit, too. Rocky's the most popular on the PAW Patrol subreddit, yet Marshall still won by over twice the votes. It seems fans really, really want to see the spotted pup in the spotlight this time around... which may even lead to him finally getting some sort of backstory. Of course, what we want isn't always what we get, but it's possible the folks at Spin Master, Brunker, or whoever with influence might be aware of this.

As many of you know, despite my mixed feelings about the theatrical films, I am rooting for Marshall to helm the third movie. After season 7 and 9 of the TV series were so bad to him (season 8 wasn't exactly great to him at times, either), I really want to see something propel him back into the spotlight. Becoming the star of the next theatrical film will undoubtedly accomplish this, as even Skye has seen an increase of attention since The Mighty Movie hit theaters. Assuming the third movie is about him and it turns out good, I've no doubt the same will happen to Marshall, too. And, if we're lucky, the TV series will finally go back to using him more again, instead of calling someone with her helicopter to save a kid from a tree as her harness cable magically passes through a bunch of branches to do this, instead of calling the firefighter pup with his ladder like they should've.

However, I have some reservations here. I've talked in the past about how I feel the theatrical films haven't handled Marshall all that well, my "caused vs. because" argument with the way they portrayed his clumsiness, and the fact that he's rarely involved in comedic moments because of Brunker's obvious preference for Rubble. Even if Marshall's the focus on the plot, I don't know if these things will be any different.

This is just a theory, so it may be far from the truth, but... I have a bad feeling that Brunker may not like or care about Marshall. I hope I'm wrong, but due to the way he's portrayed in these theatrical films, the fact both movies continuously refuse to give him his elevator wipeout running gag, among other reasons, I just can't shake this belief. And the thing is, I've noticed over the years that when a writer doesn't like or care about a character, they often try to change them... drastically, at times. It's not uncommon at all, really. And if any of this is true, then I fear what this means when/if Brunker tries to write an entire film around the pup. It's possible he may act completely different, or portray his clumsiness as the result of some devastating event in his past. Marshall's a silly pup who always means well but sometimes trips over his own paws, but Brunker might try to change the meaning behind that. And should the film become popular and these newfound characteristics spill over into the TV series, well... I honestly dread the thought.

Then again, this might happen anyway, no matter who the focus is. You see, a few months ago, I was chatting with someone on the PAW Patrol Wiki who said their favorite pup is Skye. When The Mighty Movie got brought up, they admitted to me how they felt Skye was really out of character during it... not to mention, they were also quite disappointed to see the film ditch her unique Mighty tornado & wings, in favor of a cape and simply turning her into a Superman clone. The thing is, if Marshall, Rocky, Zuma, or whoever turns out to be the focus next, will the same happen to them, regardless of how Brunker feels about these characters? Did he dislike Skye, or did he just write her in a way he believed was good? Is that Skye fan in the minority? Am *I* in the minority with any of this?

...I don't know. Do you? Does anyone know?

As usual, all I can do is wait and hope for the best. Should Marshall be the focus, I really, really, really, hope that Brunker takes his time with understanding the character, learns the way he acts and behaves, and comes up with something that's both good and not out of character. I also hope that, should we get a backstory for Marshall, it's not another "and then they almost died" plot, just like Skye, Chase, and even Surly's backstory from Brunker's The Nut Job 2. I want Marshall's history to stand out and truly be something good, not just... more of the same we've already seen. And if Brunker does insist on changing the character, I hope it's nothing extreme. In all fairness, change isn't always a bad thing, when its done right.

As I often say... only time will tell.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 months ago

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deAdder

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 26, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 27, 2024

The point that is currently holding up plans for ABC’s September 10 presidential debate is whether the candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is the other’s turn to speak. Vice President Kamala Harris’s team wants the mics “hot”; Trump’s team wants them turned off. Officials on the Harris campaign say they are quite willing for viewers to hear Trump’s outbursts and, in a statement, appeared to bait Trump by saying: “Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own.”

Over the past few years, observers who have been paying attention to Trump have noted that he appeared to be sliding mentally and warned that when voters saw him again outside his Mar-a-Lago cocoon and his rallies they would be shocked. That prediction appears to have come true. Trump seems to have little interest in doing the actual work of campaigning, instead swinging between grievance-filled rants and flat recitations of his apocalyptic worldview, trying to stay in the center of public consciousness with outrageous lies and, as he did in his suggestion that he would not debate Harris, telling people to “stay tuned!”

But as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out today, “nobody cares.” Instead of making him look dominant, his old performance makes him look weak, especially as he appears unable to grapple with Harris’s rise and is still fixated on how “unfair” it was of the Democrats to choose Harris as their presidential candidate. In 2016 and 2020, Trump had the help of talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News Channel to push his narrative, but Limbaugh died in 2021 and the Fox News Channel is somewhat chastened after a $787 million settlement over its lies about the 2020 election. Harris and Walz are now setting the terms of debate surrounding the 2024 presidential election, and their dominance illustrates his weakness.

A key element of Trump’s political power was always his insistence that he is by far the nation’s popular choice. In 2016 he insisted that he won the popular vote against Democratic candidate former secretary of state Hillary Clinton—in fact, he lost by almost 3 million votes—and even now, he keeps saying he has all the votes he needs and that he is doing well in the polls, when demonstrably he is not. His constant focus on crowd sizes and enthusiasm is designed to establish the illusion that a majority of people prefer his election to that of his opponents.

By insisting he is the popular choice, Trump has tried to make his election seem inevitable, convincing his loyalists that a loss must be an assault on our democracy and that good Americans will fight to defend both it and him. The Big Lie that he won the 2020 presidential election was intended to cement the idea that the Democrats could win only by cheating. In fact, President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election by about 7 million votes and won the Electoral College by 306 to 232, the same split that in 2016, when it was in his favor, Trump called a landslide. Trump and his allies lost more than 60 lawsuits challenging the results of the election.

And yet, pushing the idea that Trump cannot lose in a fair election seems to have been a key part of his strategy for 2024. The lie that there was widespread voter fraud in 2020 led to a wave of new state laws to suppress the vote. MAGA lawmakers defended these laws on the grounds that they must respond to voter fraud. The nonprofit law and public policy Brennan Center for Justice recorded that in 2021 alone, from January 1 through December 7, at least 19 states passed 34 laws that restricted access to voting.

In May 2024 the Brennan Center reported that in at least 28 states, voters this year will face new restrictions that were not in place in the 2020 presidential election. Varying by state, these laws do things like shorten the time for requesting an absentee ballot, make it a crime to deliver another voter’s mail-in ballot, require proof of citizenship from voters who share the same name as noncitizens, and so on.

As MAGA Republicans and their plans—especially their assault on reproductive healthcare and the policies outlined in Project 2025—become increasingly unpopular, Republican-dominated states are ramping up their effort to keep the people they assume will oppose them from voting.

In Nebraska, Alex Burness reported in Bolts today, two Republican officials—Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen— last month stopped the implementation of a new state law, passed overwhelmingly by a Republican-dominated legislature earlier this year, that granted immediate voting rights to about 7,000 people with past felony convictions. In the process, Hilgers also declared unconstitutional a 2005 law that had allowed those convicted of a felony to vote two years after they completed their sentence. Evnen then told county-level elections offices that they could not register former felons.

The confusion has made people nervous about even trying to register. “People are scared they’re going to get charged with something if they try to vote and can’t vote, so a lot of people will just wash their hands of it,” Pamala Pettes told Burness. “They don’t want to go and vote unless they have a clear idea of what’s going on. They don’t have that.” More than 100,000 people are caught in this confusion. As Burness notes, the election could come down to the city of Omaha, where thousands of potential voters��overwhelmingly Black, Latino, and Native—have been blocked from registering.

Voter intimidation is underway in Texas, too. On August 18, Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo, who was a key figure in promoting the Big Lie, posted a rumor that migrants were illegally registering to vote at a government facility west of Fort Worth. The Republican chair and election administrator there said there was no evidence for her accusation and that it was false, but Texas attorney general Ken Paxton nonetheless launched an investigation.

In addition to feeding the narrative that there is voter fraud at work in Texas, the investigation led Paxton’s team to raid the homes of at least seven Latino Democrats. No one has been charged in the aftermath of the raids. Latino rights advocates call them a “disgraceful and outrageous” attempt to intimidate Latino voters and have filed a formal complaint with the Department of Justice.

Today, Texas governor Greg Abbott announced that since 2021, Texas has removed more than one million people from the state’s voter rolls, and said the process will be ongoing. Abbott’s office said those removed are ineligible to vote because they have moved, are dead, or are not citizens. But more than 463,000 of those on the list have been removed because their county of residence is unaware of their current address.

Even when voters do make their wishes known, in Republican-dominated states, those wishes are not always honored. David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo today pointed out an article in which Adam Unikowsky, who clerked for the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, eviscerated a recent decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court that will prevent an abortion rights initiative from appearing on the ballot in November.

Why is the state supreme court keeping an initiative supported by far more than the 10% of voters required by law off the ballot? Because, Unikowsky writes in Adam’s Legal Newsletter, “when the ballot initiative sponsor submitted its petition on the due date, it failed to staple a photocopy of a document it had already submitted a week earlier. The court reached this conclusion even though (a) nothing in Arkansas law requires this photocopy to be stapled; and (b) even if this requirement existed, Arkansas law is clear that the failure to staple this photocopy is [fixable], and the sponsor immediately [fixed] the asserted defect.”

Unikowsky accuses the court of guaranteeing that a measure the people wanted could not win by making sure it was not on the ballot. Further, although Unikowsky doesn’t mention it, keeping abortion off the ballot will generally help Republicans in the Arkansas elections by keeping those eager to protect reproductive rights feel less urgency to make it to the polls.

Another way to suppress the vote is showing up these days in Georgia, where MAGA Republicans in the state legislature have handed control of the state election board to a three-member MAGA majority whose members Trump has personally praised.

The three have been passing a series of last-minute rule changes that will sow confusion over how to conduct an election and then will give Republican-dominated election boards the power to refuse to certify election results. Such a scenario would put into effect the plan Trump and his allies hatched in 2020 to nullify the will of the voters. Tonight the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia sued to stop Trump’s allies from blocking the certification of the 2024 election.

The momentum of the Harris-Walz campaign undermines the Big Lie that Trump is the popular choice, but the voter suppression the Big Lie justified remains. That voter suppression recalls the years of Reconstruction in the American South, when southern Democrats determined to keep Black men from voting found all sorts of ways to do so on grounds other than race, which the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited. Modern media allows us to see today’s machinations in real time, making it easier for civil rights lawyers—who were few and far between in the late nineteenth century—to fight back, and for voters to recognize that they are not alone in their struggle to claim their right to a say in their government.

In her acceptance speech at last week’s Democratic National Convention, Vice President Harris called for the passage of two measures killed by Republicans after 2020: the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. These measures would stop the flow of big money into politics, end partisan gerrymandering, and protect the right to vote.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #voting rights #voting law #voter suppression #election 2024 #certification of the 2024 election #presidential debates

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tekken-posting77 · 2 months ago

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Character Popularity Poll

so out of curiosity I decides a character popularity poll, but part 1 because there's a limit unfortunately.

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justinspoliticalcorner · 26 days ago

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Ruth Ben-Ghat at Lucid:

The benchmark of democratic political systems used to be elections, and the practice of holding elections was often used to determine whether a country could be classified as a democracy. Today, as "electoral autocracies" take hold around the world, that's no longer the case. Many illiberal leaders come to power through elections, and then manipulate the electoral system to get the results they need to stay in office. As the U.S. election approaches, it’s useful to remember that the history of autocracy is the history of war on the idea and practice of free and fair elections. For authoritarian leaders on the right and the left, allowing a population to determine through their votes who is in government and for how long is unthinkable. Why should lesser beings decide the fate of the strongman, who alone can lead the nation to greatness?

Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini derided elections as a “childish game” that had “already humiliated the nation for decades.” Il Duce replaced democratic elections with occasional plebiscites. In 1934, as he prepared to invade Ethiopia and was dealing with increased internal unrest, he staged a vote. Italians were actually weighing in on a purge of the political class: a single list he had approved of nominees for seats in Parliament, with the choices YES or NO. The real point of the exercise was to show Italians and the world that he had popular approval for his governmental measures. To that end, voting was “assisted” by Fascist "poll watchers," (squadrists in black shirts, armed with knives), and the regime’s communications about the vote can be summed up as “vote yes or else,” in the Fascist manner. This propaganda piece, on the façade of Palazzo Braschi in the center of Rome, depicted Mussolini's face as a kind of death mask, suggesting what could happen to those who voted no. The result of the plebiscite --99.85% YES, and only .15% NO--suggests that Italians got the message.

Today’s autocrats may keep elections going, but they won’t hesitate to game the competition by finding ways to silence rivals. Here’s Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2018 when CNN asked him if he was a dictator. "Here we have a ballot box...the democracy gets its power from the people. It's what we call national will," But in advance of the 2023 Turkish presidential contest, Erdoğan sentenced popular Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu to several years in jail. That way İmamoğlu could not be the opposition candidate. The newer autocratic tactic, facilitated by disinformation, is to discredit elections before the election is held so the public will believe you when you say, in the event of defeat, that the whole contest was “rigged” against you or invalidated by fraud. If the authoritarian is able to marshal his party and allies into sustaining the falsehood in public, then the idea of an illegitimate election can gain traction. This is called institutionalized lying: when a lie that is particularly important to the leader and his survival in politics becomes party doctrine. Then anyone who wants to have status in the authoritarian party or state must perform the lie in public, or at least refuse to refute it. Propagandists know that a lie, when repeated with enough frequency, becomes familiar and eventually can be taken as truth.

[...] The outcome of this scenario In Brazil offers an example of gatekeeping as democracy protection. After President Jair Bolsonaro lost the 2022 election, he decided to try and replicate the Donald Trump playbook, claiming that the election was rigged and planning an insurrection for January. Stephen Bannon and Jason Miller were among his advisors. Lack of military participation was among the reasons for the failure of Bolsonaro’s insurrection. Brazil had a military coup in 1964, which led to a military dictatorship that only ended in 1985. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva acted promptly to prosecute participants. In 2023, Bolsonaro was convicted of abuse of power in office and banned from running for office until 2030 for spreading lies about election fraud. In America, Trump, who incited a far bloodier insurrection, continues to maintain he won the 2020 election as he prepares to possibly contest the 2024 outcome. Trump has worked hard for almost a decade to get Americans to give up their quaint ideas about voting as a valued democratic right. He has conditioned them to see democracy as a failing system, and to view elections as an inferior and unreliable way to choose leaders.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Lucid post on how elections are the enemy of the autocrat is a must-read.

#Autocracy #Donald Trump #Benito Mussolini #Fascism #Authoritarianism #Illiberal Democracy #Recep Tayyip Erdoğan #Ekrem İmamoğlu #Jair Bolsonaro #Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

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misfitwashere · 3 months ago

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August 26, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 27, 2024

The confusion has made people nervous about even trying to register. “People are scared they’re going to get charged with something if they try to vote and can’t vote, so a lot of people will just wash their hands of it,” Pamala Pettes told Burness. “They don’t want to go and vote unless they have a clear idea of what’s going on. They don’t have that.” More than 100,000 people are caught in this confusion. As Burness notes, the election could come down to the city of Omaha, where thousands of potential voters—overwhelmingly Black, Latino, and Native—have been blocked from registering.

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#heather cox richardson #letters from an american

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murillo-enthusiast · 6 months ago

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Brun: Bory. This is too far.

Bory: This is for science!

Lameth: You are playing with fire, my friend~

Saint-Chamans: I'm clearly the most popular! My memoirs are actually available on the internet!

Petiet: Mine is more exclusive..!

Pierre Soult: Not sure how I feel about being included here. And what about Anthoine and Franceschi?

Bory: They don't appear on this Web Log so much, so they are not options! And neither is our good friend C͞i̗̱̻̳̟̲͢ͅt̮͢o̳͓̣͉̥̘ye̱n O͞m̢̖̯̪̙̬b̛r̰͓͙̬̭̖è, for he is not as, ahem, historical as us~

Lameth: Anthoine is too innocent to be exposed to the internet! We keep him away from such things~

Brun: And Franceschi has better things to do with his time. This is stupid, however. Obviously I'm the best. I'm the one who actually went to Napoleon and convinced him of Soult's good intentions during that awful Roi Nicolas stuff.

Lameth: But I died tragically and young, and that gives me a certain charm, non?

Bory: My plan is working! Unfortunately, Coco has passed out drunk again and cannot defend himself, but ah well. Anyway, as the completely impartial poll host, I simply must point out that I am a very famous naturalist renowned for my scientific discoveries, and a certain Monsieur Darwin carried my book with him on his voyages. So, ah, do keep that in mind!

#napoleonic shitpost #napoleonic shitposting #napoleonic fandom #napoleonic roleplay scene #marshalate ballot #the duke of dalmatia's aides de camp #adc brun de villeret #adc petiet #adc lameth #adc saint-chamans #adc bory de saint-vincent #adc pierre benoit soult

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mariacallous · 9 months ago

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European liberals erupted into cheers in 2019 when the 45-year-old environmentalist and civil rights lawyer Zuzana Caputova was sworn in as Slovakia’s president. Even though she has fallen short of her ambitious goal of rooting out the persistent corruption and cronyism that course through Slovak society, she has chalked up many successes. These have earned her widespread popularity among Slovaks, who seemed to understand her project would always require more than one five-year term.

There’s just one problem: Caputova, facing new headwinds from the election of a new populist prime minister, has announced she’s not prepared to fight on.

Not only was Caputova the first-ever woman to hold the office, but her progressive, pro-European outlook and squeaky-clean biography stood out in a regional landscape stocked with ethnic nationalists, authoritarians, and other questionable operators. Caputova’s tough anticorruption platform was welcome relief to a country that had been rocked by graft, money laundering, and abuse of power scandals, as well as the contracted murder of a young journalist investigating organized crime.

In the course of her five-year term, the newcomer to elected office acquitted herself remarkably well, navigating Slovakia through the pandemic and then the war in Ukraine, a country with which it shares 60 miles of border to the east. Even as Slovakia’s southern neighbor, Hungary, prevaricated and obstructed transatlantic solidarity with Ukraine—a course many Slovak nationalists applauded—Caputova, suddenly head of a front-line state, stood fast. She has remained unflinchingly pro-Western even in the face of an acute energy crisis and hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Her mission to clean up the Slovakian state also notched impressive wins. Dozens of investigations were launched and cases opened up against figures linked to former governments—many of which led to convictions. In August 2023, Caputova—sometimes referred to as the Erin Brockovich of Slovakia—fired the country’s counterintelligence service chief for interfering in corruption investigations. But her anticorruption drive grew larger in scope when parliamentary elections in September 2023 reinstated Robert Fico, the former prime minister and pro-Russian, anti-American populist with the interests of himself and his associates always foremost in mind.

Many supporters expected that Caputova, as the principled, popular face of a new Slovakia, would soldier on for at least another term come elections in March 2024: to finish the job she had started. But Caputova’s tenure, she announced in June 2023, will come abruptly to an end. Her family’s well-being, she said, was behind her choice not to run again. “My decision is a personal one,” she said. “I am sorry if I disappoint those who expected my candidacy again.” In office, she had received multiple death threats, she said. A year earlier, she had already complained about “people who are threatening to kill me are using the vocabulary of some politicians. It does not only concern me, but also my loved ones.”

At the time of her announcement, Caputova polled as Slovakia’s most trusted politician. “I was surprised and disappointed when I heard the news,” said Pavol Demes of a German Marshall Fund fellow in Bratislava, who served as Slovakia’s foreign minister from 1991 to 1992. “Her track record proves that it was not coincidence that people elected her,” Demes said, adding that he believes Caputova would have prevailed again at the ballot box.

Others admit they’re more than just disappointed with Caputova’s “premature departure,” as the Slovak daily Dennik N put it. “Having an opportunity and not using it is literally a sin,” opined the Slovak newspaper Pravda, “especially if it is one that will never come again. … President Zuzana Caputova’s decision not to run can be considered a mistake. At a time when the chaos in Slovak politics has reached unprecedented proportions and the disillusionment among the population is great, the president bears even more responsibility for the fate of the country.”

In office, Caputova often punched back as hard as she was punched by her less principled opponents. She refused to let Fico, in the opposition since 2020, hound and bully her with impunity. In May 2023, she sued Fico for calling her an “American agent” and of “appointing Soros’ government,” referring to U.S. billionaire-philanthropist George Soros and the technocratic caretaker government she appointed in May 2023. Slovak authorities are still pursuing criminal cases involving dangerous threats made against the president.

Caputova’s aversion to the nastier aspects of Central European politics—in 1995 the son of the then-Slovak president was literally kidnapped—is understandable. But Caputova’s presence is all the more necessary today as Fico and his Smer-SD party are back in power and bent on returning Slovakia to its former incarnation. In just four months, Caputova has checked Fico several times. In October, for example, Caputova quashed the nomination of Rudolf Huliak as environment minister by the Slovak National Party, a Fico ally. Huliak, a nationalist, is known as a climate skeptic and opponent of LGBTQ+ rights.

She is currently weighing a veto of the Fico government’s move to dismantle the special prosecutor’s office—the body that handled the most serious corruption cases—and modify the criminal code, which triggered weeks of protests across Slovakia and rule-of-law concern from the EU. By weakening criminal sanctions for financial crimes, Fico could rescue the likes of Smer-allied oligarchs who would otherwise face prison sentences. One opposition politico charged that the law looks as if the mafia itself had written it. If her veto is overridden, which is likely, Caputova could take the issue to the Constitutional Court.

Caputova’s decision not to run thus opens the way for a multi-candidate race, the first round of which will be held on March 23 with, if necessary, a second in April. The vote is likely to come down to two candidates: National Council Speaker Peter Pellegrini, an on-again, off-again Fico ally; and Ivan Korcok, a liberal-minded former Slovak foreign minister and career diplomat. If Pellegrini triumphs, his victory will open the way for Fico to set in motion a pro-Russia political course that will greatly complicate the West’s defense of Ukraine, among other concerns.

Certainly, there would be no presidential corrective to hinder Fico in emulating his strongman counterpart next door in Hungary, Viktor Orban. Poland’s throwing off of its authoritarian leadership last year could have left Orban completely isolated in Central Europe. But Fico, though unlikely to amass the power of Orban’s Fidesz party or act so defiantly as Law and Justice Poland, sees Orban as a blood brother.

“Fico and his followers are fascinated by Orban’s method of governance since 2018,” Juraj Marusiak of the Slovak Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Political Science told Foreign Policy. “They see this authoritarianism as efficient and Orban as someone who takes care of his country’s national interests. This has made Orban creditable in Central Europe beyond Hungary alone.”

And Caputova’s bright light will be missed beyond diminutive Slovakia. Upon her election in 2019, a Hungarian acquaintance said to me that the only reason someone like Caputova could win in Central Europe is because she seemed to have no drawbacks at all: She was politically clean, charismatic, down to earth, and smart. And in office, she learned the ropes quickly. But she wasn’t perfect, apparently—no one could foresee that there would eventually be limits to her will to lock horns with Slovakia’s ruthless profiteers.

Sadly, there’s only one of her in the region. And soon, by her own choice, there will be none.

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armagnac-army · 9 months ago

Note

I DEMAND YOU CREATE ANOTHER POLL !! And do not call it a “pity poll” unless you want your house flooded with my vikings

-Bernadotte

MARSHALATE PITY BALLOT

VOTE FOR ONE OF THE LESS POPULAR LES GRANDE CHAPEAUX!!! SOMEHOW BERTHIER THE NERD WON THE FIRST POLLE WITH ME IN SECOND PLACE SO LETS DO THIS SHIT AGAIN

IN CASE YOU DONT KNOW WHO WE ARE WE HAVE A "OUIKIPEDIA PAGE" ALL ABOUT US AND OUR BIG HATS BUT LONG STORY SHORT WERE NAPOLEONS TOP COMMANDERS WHO FUCK SHIT UP FOR HIM

SO ONCE AGAIN VOTE FOR WHOEEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT WHETHER THATS THE BEST OR THE SEXIEST OR THE MOST PATHETIC

YOU CAN EVEN STUFF THE BALLOTS IF YOU WANT THE EMPEROR DID IT SO WHY NOT YOU

This is a public service announcement. Do not engage in vote manipulation. -Maréchal Soult

IVE DEFINITELY NOT FORGOTTEN ANYONE THIS TIME AND THERES NOBODY SNEAKING ONTO THE BALLOT!!!!

FEEL FREE TO POST PROPAGANDA OR ANTI PROPAGANDA WE WILL SHARE IT IF ITS FUNNY

ALSO DO SHARE THIS SO THAT WE CAN SEE WHO WINS THE PITY VOTE AND MAYBE PIT THEM AGAINST BERTHIER IN A CAGE FIGHT

WHERES GROUCHY

#exchanges with that guy who is now swedish #dispatches from the marshal #napoleon's marshals #marshalate popularity poll #marshalate popularity ballot

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i-mustache-your-opinion · 2 years ago

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Meet The Competitors

Preliminaries have officially ended! Combining the winning characters from the preliminaries with the characters who received 3+ nominations during the submission period, we have officially finalized our 128 competitors. It will take some time to get the brackets and Round 1 polls together, so in the meantime here is the complete list of competitors for those who are curious.

Mustache Girl (A Hat in Time)

Count Olaf (A Series of Unfortunate Events)

Damon Gant (Ace Attorney)

The Judge (Ace Attorney)

Marvin Grossberg (Ace Attorney)

Ice King (Adventure Time)

Magnus Burnsides (The Adventure Zone: Balance Arc)

Gordito Delgado (The Adventures of Dr. McNinja)

Captain Archibald Haddock (The Adventures of Tintin)

Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie's Poirot)

Brewster (Animal Crossing)

Heimerdinger (Arcane: League of Legends)

Iroh (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Lawrence Betelgeuse Shoggoth (Beetlejuice: The Musical)

Bob Belcher (Bob's Burgers)

Tim Lockwood (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs)

Jet Black (Cowboy Bebop)

Watari (Death Note)

Senshi (Delicious in Dungeon)

Harry Du Bois (Disco Elysium)

The Master (Doctor Who)

Sebastian (Doki Doki Precure)

Cranky Kong (Donkey Kong)

Captain Villads (The Dragon Prince)

The Lorax (Dr. Seuss)

Ramuh (Final Fantasy)

Cervantes (Fire Emblem: Awakening)

Alex Louis Armstrong (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Maes Hughes (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Kintoleski (Futari wa Precure Splash Star)

Kratos (God of War)

Lan Qiren (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation)

Old Man McGucket (Gravity Falls)

Stan Pines (Gravity Falls)

Gordon Freeman (Half-Life)

Mumbo Jumbo (Hermitcraft)

The King of Town (Homestar Runner)

Seneca Crane (The Hunger Games)

Isaac Netero (Hunter x Hunter)

Gyro Zeppeli (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure)

The King of All Cosmos (Katamari)

Solomon David (Kill Six Billion Demons)

Chourou (Kira Kira Precure a la Mode)

Ganondorf (The Legend of Zelda)

Daruk (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild)

King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild)

King Harkinian (The Legend of Zelda CD-i)

Morshu (The Legend of Zelda CD-i)

Yosemite Sam (Looney Tunes)

Gandalf (Lord of the Rings)

Gimli (Lord of the Rings)

Treebeard (Lord of the Rings)

Daisuke Jigen (Lupin III)

Tim Wright (Marbel Hornets)

Broque Monsieur (Mario & Luigi)

Mr. Sinister (Marvel)

Odin Borson (Marvel)

The Bowler Hat Guy (Meet the Robinsons)

William Murderface (Metalocalypse)

Rich Uncle Pennybags (Monopoly)

Danjuro "Gentle Criminal" Tobita (My Hero Academia)

Shouta "Eraserhead" Aizawa (My Hero Academia)

Yamada "Present Mic" Hizashi (My Hero Academia)

Master Wu (Ninjago)

Maestro (Once Upon a Time...)

Dracule Mihawk (One Piece)

Edward "Whitebeard" Newgate (One Piece)

Franky (One Piece)

Gan Fall (One Piece)

Gol D. Roger (One Piece)

Jinbe (One Piece)

Kaido (One Piece)

Killer (One Piece)

Marshall "Blackbeard" D. Teach (One Piece)

Rob Lucci (One Piece)

Sanji (One Piece)

Trafalgar D. Water Law (One Piece)

Usopp (One Piece)

Zeff (One Piece)

Darius Deamonne (The Owl House)

Dell Clawthorne (The Owl House)

Paul Blart (Paul Blart: Mall Cop)

Davy Jones (Pirates of the Caribbean)

Entei (Pokémon)

Kricketune (Pokémon)

Probopass (Pokémon)

Raikou (Pokémon)

Samurott (Pokémon)

Sealeo (Pokémon)

Stoutland (Pokémon)

Drayden (Pokémon: Black & White)

Captain Kamado (Pokémon Legends: Arceus)

Warden Ingo (Pokémon Legends: Arceus)

Count Dracula (Popular Culture)

Santa Claus (Popular Culture)

Inigo Montoya (The Princess Bride)

Julius Pringles (Pringles)

Agent Wyoming (Red vs Blue)

James Ironwood (RWBY)

Remus Sanders (Sanders Sides)

Norville "Shaggy" Rogers (Scooby Doo)

Sea Hawk (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power)

Ned Flanders (The Simpsons)

Master Eon (Skylanders)

Papa Smurf (The Smurfs)

Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik (Sonic the Hedgehog)

Kamaji (Spirited Away)

SpongeBob SquarePants (The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie)

Henry Henderson (Spy x Family)

Will Riker (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

Mirrorverse Spock (Star Trek: The Original Series)

Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)

Hades (Supergiant Games' Hades)

King Bob-omb (Super Mario)

Luigi (Super Mario)

Mario (Super Mario)

Toadsworth (Super Mario)

Waluigi (Super Mario)

Wario (Super Mario)

R.J. MacReady (The Thing)

Ricky LaFleur (Trailer Park Boys)

Minimus Ambus (Transformers)

Asgore Dreemurr (Undertale)

Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe (Voltron: Legendary Defender)

Jimmy T (WarioWare)

Nigel Thornberry (The Wild Thornberrys)

Geralt of Rivia (The Witcher)

Professor Crumbs (Wizards of Waverly Place)

#ffhs #tumblr polls #tumblr tournament #competitors

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hotvintagepoll · 8 months ago

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Propaganda

Elisabeth Welch (Song of Freedom, Big Fella, Dead of Night)— Starry-eyed, honey-voiced, magnetic. A Broadway star in the 1920s, she SHOULD have become a torch-singing Hollywood star when talking pictures came in. Instead she was faced with Hollywood racism, so she moved to Europe and juggled British movie roles and a top-class cabaret career. (Heard the classic songs "Stormy Weather" or "Love For Sale" or "As Time Goes By"? She introduced them all.) You need to hear her croon, so here she is co-starring with certified hot vintage man Paul Robeson [video below the cut]

This is round 2 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Kay Francis:

youtube

Jewel Robbery clip

melted my gay heart with her butch look in stolen holiday

Elisabeth Welch:

youtube

#elisabeth welch #kay francis #fuck that old woman #hotvintagepoll #ladies 2 #Youtube

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marshallpupfan · 1 year ago

Note

I know that I’ve brought this up before but I know both me and you are hoping it’s Marshall as the main character in the 3rd movie I have done polls on who pup is favorite and who is likely to be the third movie out of all the first 6 pups it goes for both polls Marshall is 1st place then Chase and Skye are tied for 2nd place Rocky and Zuma are both tied for 3rd and Rubble is last on the list for being a favorite and next for the movie what would be cool is if paw patrol themselves did a poll and had the fans answer

Admittedly, I've seen many polls as well. There was even one on Reddit (seen above) in which Marshall won most of the votes again, despite the fact that Rocky is very easily the most popular pup there. I think this shows just how much people really, really want the spotted pup to be the focus of the next theatrical film.

It's possible those at Spin Master are aware of how much fans want Marshall to be the focus, and I feel even Brunker's aware, considering how much fans have brought it up to him on Twitter/X. Perhaps this'll influence their choice... or they'll ignore it completely and go in an unexpected direction. The truth is, many of us thought Marshall was going to be the focus of the spinoff, but Keith Chapman said "lol that wouldn't make sense" and made it about Rubble instead.

The sad truth is, as much as I joke about the whole 3 3 3 thing and that red "3" on that Mikros post being hints, there's just no guessing right now who they'll pick. I think Marshall has a really good chance, but they may decide to go in a completely different direction. And, given my response to the previous question, they may decide to make it female-driven again (more about Liberty, etc.). We'll just have to wait for that coveted announcement...

The anticipation is kind of rough, I'll admit. 😅

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yourreddancer · 3 months ago

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HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

August 26, 2024 (Monday)

(Leave the mic MUTED!!!! This was a victory finally gained, that should have been in place in 2016 and 2020, with instructions for him to sit his ass DOWN and not wander all over the stage like he did with Hillary. This is not the win you think it would be, Harris campaign. AND FURTHERMORE, if he does NOT answer the question put to him, and instead goes on one of his demented rants, the moderators should stop him, mute his mic, and instruct him to ANSWER THE QUESTION or else his time will be forfeited to Kamala!!!!)

The confusion has made people nervous about even trying to register. “People are scared they’re going to get charged with something if they try to vote and can’t vote, so a lot of people will just wash their hands of it,” Pamala Pettes told Burness. “They don’t want to go and vote unless they have a clear idea of what’s going on. They don’t have that.” More than 100,000 people are caught in this confusion. As Burness notes, the election could come down to the city of Omaha, where thousands of potential voters—overwhelmingly Black, Latino, and Native—have been blocked from registering.

(THEY NEED TO COUNTERSUE PAXTON, WITH THE HELP OF THE ACLU!!!)

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