@JoonasIlmavirta Hah!

@cmw The USA is still a democracy; there will be legal challenges if he attempts to go too far. One rumour is that he fancies a third term--the chances? Didn't Nixon toy with that idea?

@Adam Insanity? More than half the electorate voted for Trump. How do you account for this?

@Cerberus These missiles need to be operated from within the US., by American technicians. This is what may have stimulated the greater-than-usual Russian anger.

@tony I heard a rumor about that, but I don't think it was a legitimate idea at the time. Even Bush Jr. joked that being a dictator would make things easier. But doing away with elections was never seriously entertained. Trump has made multiple statements to that effect.

@tony This actually isn't true. More than half of the voting electorate voted for Trump, but turnout was only around 65%, and Harris lost millions more votes that Biden got than Trump gained from 2020. A large number of people just decided not to vote, but honestly, especially in battleground states, they share in the blame.

@cmw The media, here, told us there was a massive turnout?! I never looked. Harris got some 68M, Tr., 72.5M; in 2020, Biden, 81M. All those people who did not vote. No wonder you are angry. Harris was a lightweight. She wouldn't discuss Gaza--why not?! The only contentious thing she went to town on was abortion; but, still didn't get the female vote (or enough of it).

@cmw In July we elected a rubbish government which is alienating many people, including some who voted it in. A government is not usually so unpopular until 3/4 years in; this lot have managed it in 3/4 months. The only thing is to tough it out, until they implode; or, are voted out. Same position you guys are in. Make the best of it.

@tony Are you quite sure? I would be very much surprised if that were true?

@tony More rubbish that the previous government?

@Cerberus Yeah, that doesn't make sense to me either.

@tony The US doesn't have the same mechanisms for an unpopular government to be voted out during the term as most European countries do.

@JoonasIlmavirta Let me ask GPT...

GPT says so.

Wikipaedia also just says that they can be launched from rocket artillery systems.

I can't imagine those would need to be fired from another continent.

@Cerberus I don't think they'd give them anything intercontinental, so any material given must be locally usable.

I suspect nothing intercontinental exists...

@Adam That in itself shouldn't be much of a surprise. But I share the feeling of preferring to avoid the overflow.

@Cerberus There are intercontinental missiles.

Umm that is not what this is about.

This is about missiles with a reach of about 300 km.

I thought as much. I was just saying that there are missiles that could be launched from the US pretty much anywhere, but they wouldn't give them out.

Sorry not really following haha.

Maybe I'm too tired.

Tony said Ukraine cannot fire these missiles without someone in American pressing the button to fire.

I didn't bother to check any details on the missiles in question, so I was going just on what's here and may well have been confused, too.

@Cerberus I doubted this.

@Cerberus I wasn't sure of the intended interpretation. Americans guiding the missile once launched, hitting the launch button, launching it from their soil, sending assisting personnel to Ukraine, or something else?

He said, "operated from within the US".

I, too, doubt any interpretation other than personnel being sent along to help get started.

Right.

@Cerberus Sure, but "operate" can mean "fire" or "guide" or maybe something else. None of them plausible for this scenario, though.

Yeah it doesn't matter how they would be "operated".

@tony I don't want to get too political here, but the math suggests we're not as crazy as we first seemed a couple Wednesdays ago.

@cmw It's all the more frustrating when he didn't get the popular vote, even with a lower turnout. It actually makes me angry when people don't vote. It's one thing we can all definitively do. You might not have money, you might not be able to argue points to congress, but you can vote.

You don't have to like either candidate but you should still show up and vote for the less bad of the two options in your own mind. It varies but it's also so much easier to vote than it used to be for a lot of people.

Meanwhile I will go back to obsessing over the mysteries in the show FROM.

@Adam Not voting makes sense if one is genuinely equally happy with either option. I don't think that applies to a substantial enough number of Americans to explain the low turnout.

I'd be curious to see if there's a study on self-reported reasons for voting in this election. Fatigue with political news? A feeling that Harris belongs to Obama's dynasty? Thinking that it doesn't matter? I really can't predict what the top reasons would be.

@cmw That was an interesting read.

@cmw That's a bit of a change.

@Adam Agreed.

Maybe voting is harder for some people in districts where Republicans removed voting stations or something?

@JoonasIlmavirta I also find it hard to understand.

I also don't really have a feel for why Biden is so unpopular.

To us, he seems to be doing fine, for an American president.

@Cerberus Could well be. Voting in the US is much harder than here in Finland, for example. There's no such thing as registering to vote. You just show up either the day of or during the early voting period.

Same here.

You are sent your voting-card by post and that's all you need.

@Cerberus My sense is that his approval is much higher in Europe than back home, but this should be taken more as an anecdote than data.

Maybe some people far out in the country in Finland need to travel farther than here?

@JoonasIlmavirta Yes.

@Cerberus You don't even have to bring the mailed card along here.

Basically Europe doesn't care much who runs America as long as he doesn't start too many new wars and isn't crazy/anti-democratic.

And for early voting you can use any of the polling stations in the whole country as you please.

@Cerberus Exactly.

Bringing the card makes it faster and they recommend it, but it's also very explicitly not required.

So they need to check whether you already voted by immediately storing your vote in a national database?

@Cerberus Certainly true for some Finns, given how sparsely we populate some areas. But the majority of the population will get near a polling station in their daily routines anyway, so the threshold is low.

Makes sense.

The country is probably highly urbanised.

@Cerberus I don't exactly know how they do that, but an instant database is probably not needed. The vote is sealed in an envelope, which in turn is sealed in another one along with the voter's details and sent to their home station. Assuring that nobody voted twice can well be done after the polls close when going through everything that's come in.

OK it could be done later, using one database per 'home station'?