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decolonize-the-left · 10 months

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I hate democrats with all my very heart but I can't in good faith advise to vote 3rd party in these hell years when they would see every trans person hang and be off hormones. When the transphobia is not at its height (Eg, like. a few years ago) I would 100% agree with you, but the stakes are too high. If the states falls to transphobia, even more countries will follow it. I think it's harmful to consider not voting D this upcoming election. Once they got off tihs current bend, I could get behind where you are coming from.

"this is helpful and not lacking critical analysis at all"

"if the states fall to transphobia"

Where have you been?

GA & VA are blue states this year btw. It's gotten worse since May and and April, too. The mid terms didn't save anyone.

Also if you, the person reading this, have considered voting 3rd party pls know it's not nearly as unpopular or as unlikely of a win as Democrats want you to think it is.

People would vote for a good 3rd party candidate, actually.

Dems convincing you its a long shot is absolutely a self-preserving psyop hoping to convince you otherwise. Its a half-assed theory that blatantly denies what we learned from 2016 and can still see in polls.

And that's 3rd party candidates stand a shot of they can get in the primaries for the general election. People want progressives. People were pissed and turned to voting for Trump when Sanders fell out- not Clinton.

They need and want another option and it's not a long shot or unlikely. They just need to make it to the primaries.

Enter Cornel West

Cornel West is not running as a Democrat and thus does not need to battle Biden for a spot on the general ballot in November of 2024....

✨ Which gives you and all your friends plenty of time to learn about him ✨

So here are some of his policies and also his campaign site

I'm a decolonial anarchist that hates the state and sees voting as nothing as upholding the state. I make no room for Democrats because Democrats lack the ambition to challenge anything about it.

But unless Cornel West drops out or ends up being some awful closeted abused... Im going to vote for him.

A lot of his politics and campaign goals align with my politics. I wouldn't feel like I was settling if I voted for him.

And a lot of this stuff isn't unreasonable or unrealistic either. Like I just made a post about how the NDAA budget proposal for 2024 is being increased with enough money to solve clean water, homelessness, and implement free college tuition for the whole USA. And Republicans are fighting for more.

And that's just the budget for two years, it'll probably be increased by another hundred billion in a couple years. Nobody blinks when the military budget is swelling like that.

But we should when we can be using that kind of money to solve real problems that real people are having and face and would change lives literally overnight. They just throw that money at the military where most of us never see it again.

But this stuff can be real.

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reasonsforhope · 1 year

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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill Wednesday repealing the state's nearly century-old abortion ban.

Last month, the state's House and Senate passed HB 4006, a single-sentence bill, which revokes the 1931 law that criminalized abortion.

Specifically, the bill repealed Section 750.14, which makes it a felony -- punishable by up to four years in prison and/or a fine of up to $5,000 -- to administer drugs that induce a miscarriage unless the mother's life is in danger.

It also repealed Section 750.15, which makes it a misdemeanor to advertise, publish or sell "any pills, powder, drugs or combination of drugs" that can cause an abortion.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, questions remained about whether or not the 1931 law would be put back in place...

A Michigan state judge ruled in September that the ban is unconstitutional, barring any state prosecutors from enforcing it.

Two months later, in the November mid-term elections, Michiganders voted in favor of a constitutional amendment that would add protections for reproductive rights...

The amendment defines reproductive freedom as "the right to make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion care, miscarriage management and infertility care." ...

Whitmer has openly expressed her support for abortion access in and out of Michigan and signed an executive order in July refusing to extradite women who come to Michigan from other states seeking abortion and refusing to extradite providers for offering the procedure.

"In November, Michiganders sent a clear message: we deserve to make our own decisions about own bodies," Whitmer said in a statement provided to ABC News. "Today, we are coming together to repeal our extreme 1931 law banning abortion without exceptions for rape or incest and criminalizing nurses and doctors for doing their jobs."

-via ABC News, 4/5/23

#abortion #abortion access #pro choice #gretchen whitmer #michigan #united states #us politics #constitutional amendment #VOTING MATTERS #executive order #abortion rights #pregnancy #healthcare #healthcare access #good news #hope

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steddiebang · 8 months

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The Center Cannot Hold

Author: @mashawisotsky l Artist: @boiiko Posting on Monday, November 27

Days after an earthquake rocks Hawkins, Indiana, citizens struggle with how the strange event has impacted their lives. Rising sophomores strain to complete their first year of high school. The Wheeler family pretends everything is fine; Mike remains a member of Hellfire Club while Nancy gets a unique opportunity – intern-at-large in support of an AP crime reporter for the Northern Midwest region. The coverage of the Munson Murders is thick on the ground while the lead suspect is still at large. Lucas and Erica Sinclair have two enemies, the unfair house arrest imposed by their parents and the rising racial hatred as the mid-term elections of '86 rumble with the fractures of the Reagan presidency. Meanwhile, Susan Mayfield can't balance her thankless night job with a daughter in a hospital where no one will answer her questions. Rumors swirl around a Hawkins day-care while former King of Hawkins High, Steve Harrington, convalesces at home. One intrepid Roane County prosecutor is convinced the two are linked. Corroded Coffin is no longer playing at The Hideout but one member – the bassist – is certainly signing a tune for county officials. Joyce Byers and her kids return to a town that isn’t sure why they bothered to come back and has no interest in welcoming them. Underneath it all, there is something stirring. What was dead had risen once again

Keep reading for a sneak preview!

He’s bored of being bored. The first while had slipped away under a haze of painkillers and sleep. Mid-week Wayne had driven him back to the hospital to get the lingering stitches removed, the skin healing pink and itching around the black thread. The doc had snipped away the knots and then with tweezers pulled the thread right out of him. Eddie would find himself rubbing the scars and trying to ease the itch on the inside. He prodded the edges of the puffed pink lines and felt the tacky fluid of his body trying to keep itself together. The docs had gone in and manhandled his organs. The morphine was excellent, he remembers. It was like the best of anything he’d ever taken. Nothing bothered him. Everything easy, calm, and warm. The whole world kind and full of comfort. He had never had a sleep that good in his life.

Now at the motel and officially cleared for activity Eddie mourned a little. He’d been forced cold turkey off the booze and the dope; even after the feds had awkwardly returned his paraphernalia it was only the music shit he got back. Nothing he could move. The problem was that he sucked at planning ahead for so-called important shit. Stuff like drafting a campaign, was no effort at all. Burning through Off Season when he finally got his hands on it - not even stopping to eat or take a piss, eyes going dry from staring at the page, not even turning on the light after the sun got low - the usual when he liked a book. Taking all his codeine the first week, leaving him to lay on the bed and grit his teeth and drink whisky to sleep, well. He was predictable. Bucking convention exactly as expected. The refill was still days away.

The issue with drinking to sleep was that it made him have to piss early in the morning, pre-dawn light smearing across the floor, mouth dry and flooded with spit, stumbling into the bathroom and trying to hit the bowl. Everything grey-washed and even standing making him feel like his guts were water. When he had lived with Wayne after the disastrous first-last year of high school he had enough shame to creep around. They gave up the pretence after Wayne caught him in the dark eating a dry cheese sandwich and leaning on the counter, drunk in the witching hour after being drunk in the afternoon after being drunk the day before. Days bleeding one into the other. His dad would have brought out the belt. Would have swung so the buckle hit.

“Go to your room,” was all Wayne said, and didn’t comment on the pull tabs littering the ground outside like shrapnel.

Getting to the bathroom today almost saw Eddie break his neck. He stepped on something that cracked underfoot but it was too dark to figure it out. The whole cleaning thing for him came in waves. Dirty clothes and books and scrap paper would pile up until it bothered him, then some kind of second wind would catch him around the throat then he’d spend the weekend scraping down to the carpeting and washing two weeks' worth of dishes until ten at night. Then he would feel good - scoured even - and his mind would be quiet. He always fucking himself over. The minute Master of Puppets dropped in his hands everything else fell away. Eddie spent hours listening to the tracks, could pick apart every section and examine it, turning over the riffs in his mind. Meditating on the progression. Sitting there and thinking about the rhythm. Drilling the solos over and over until the calluses were bruised underneath. Despite what the guys said, he wasn’t good. Music wasn’t magic to him, but it was his mother tongue. Some guys could talk Quenya or Conan or whatever, and sure he could do that, but he dreamed music. When he was showering or driving or even taking a shit sometimes a phrase would fall into his head, fully formed. He tried not to let the frustration get to him but playing at Jeff so the guy could play it back at him was always torture. Not to mention fighting with Gareth about, fucking, polyrhythms while Eddie could only say, look, look, like this man, and slap it out on his own thighs. As if he knows what tempo means. Just listen, that’s all, recreate the noise in his brain out there in the open.

Read more on November 27!

#steddiebang23 #steddiebang23 upcoming projects

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kp777 · 10 months

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By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

Aug. 3, 2023

"In the past 12 years, one political party captured the Legislature and has insulated itself from being answerable to the voters."

Voting rights organizations and law firms joined forces Wednesday to file a legal challenge against Wisconsin's aggressively gerrymandered state legislative maps, which have allowed Republicans to cling to power in the Assembly and Senate for more than a decade.

Filed by Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Law Forward, the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, Stafford Rosenbaum LLP, and Arnold & Porter, the petition argues that "Wisconsin's current legislative districts are unconstitutional in multiple ways," intentionally fragmenting Democratic voters in mid-sized cities and towns and giving Republicans an unlawful advantage.

The state's maps haven't changed much since 2011, when Republican lawmakers crafted GOP-friendly districts under then-Gov. Scott Walker.

"They are extreme partisan gerrymanders that violate multiple provisions of the Wisconsin Constitution," reads the new lawsuit, which was filed directly with the state Supreme Court. "The maps violate the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection because the Legislature, through these maps, has created superior and inferior classes of voters based on viewpoint, subordinating one class to the abusive fiat of the other. The maps also violate the constitutional guarantee of free speech because they retaliate against voters who express a political view by stripping them of political power."

The groups filed the challenge on behalf of 19 Wisconsin voters a day after liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz was sworn in to the state Supreme Court, ending 15 years of conservative dominance. Protasiewicz criticized Wisconsin's maps as "unfair" during her campaign for the seat—the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history.

Jeff Mandell, a partner at Stafford Rosenbaum and board president of Law Forward, said Wednesday that "in the past 12 years, one political party captured the Legislature and has insulated itself from being answerable to the voters."

"Despite the fact that our legislative branch is meant to be the most directly representative of the people, the gerrymandered maps have divided our communities, preventing fair representation," said Mandell. "This has eroded confidence in our political system, suppressed competitive elections, skewed policy outcomes, and undermined democratic representation."

"We have endured 12 years of rule by right-wing interests," Mandell added, "and the voters of Wisconsin deserve fair representation."

"Legislators have no right to complete a term of office that was unconstitutionally obtained."

After a legal battle last year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court implemented Republican-drawn voting maps that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed in late 2021. Wisconsin's Republican-controlled Legislature tried and failed to override the governor's veto.

The new lawsuit argues that by imposing on the state the exact maps Evers vetoed, the Wisconsin Supreme Court violated the separation-of-powers principle.

The petition notes that the maps "did precisely what Republicans hoped" in 2022, "increasing their majority to 64 assembly seats (two shy of a veto-proof two-thirds majority) and 22 senate seats (a veto-proof majority)."

"An equally divided electorate yielded near two-third majorities for Republicans in both chambers," the petition adds.

The plaintiffs ask that the state's current legislative maps be redrawn and call for special elections for state Senate seats that would otherwise not be up for reelection until 2026. If the lawsuit succeeds, state Assembly races would also be held under newly drawn maps.

"The legislators elected in November 2022 took office in unconstitutionally configured districts," the lawsuit states. "That constitutional infirmity has persisted for over a decade now, and Wisconsinites have suffered under this unconstitutional system for long enough. Legislators have no right to complete a term of office that was unconstitutionally obtained."

Mark Gaber, senior director of redistricting at Campaign Legal Center, said Wednesday that "for far too long, Wisconsinites have had their voices illegally silenced by extreme gerrymandering."

"Gerrymandering is a stain on our democracy no matter which party does it," said Gaber. "It's common sense: Voters should pick their politicians, not the other way around."

#gerrymandering #wisconsin #janet protasiewicz #wisconsin supreme court #voting rights #campaign legal center

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mashawisotsky · 9 months

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Posting: November 27, 2023

@boiiko

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mariacallous · 4 months

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Standing on the speaker’s dais inside the Palestinian Legislative Council, three dozen Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers held up an Israeli flag.

The IDF soldiers captured the building in mid-November, as they swept through Gaza City and took control of key government buildings while pushing out civilians across the territory.

It was stark juxtaposition to the scene inside the chamber 16 years earlier, when it was Hamas who seized control of government buildings throughout Gaza. Brandishing rifles, they forced out Fatah, their political rivals, and asserted total control over the Gaza Strip.

A decade before that, the Palestinian Authority held its first elections to fill the chamber. While there were limitations, the elections successfully created a functioning government for the Palestinian proto-state, armed with a mandate to both improve the standard of living in the territories and to negotiate a permanent deal for independence with Israel. There was reason to be optimistic.

Today, the legislative council building lies in ruin. Shortly after the Israeli forces posed for photos inside, the complex was partially razed.

The building’s destruction also symbolizes a chance to try again. But in order for the PA, or whatever replaces it, to succeed, it will need a mandate from the Palestinian people—something it hasn’t had in more than 15 years.

It’s a tall order.

Restoring democracy to Palestine is a collection of Catch-22s. It needs a new government to function, but its current politics have long been too fraught to hold elections. It cannot have real elections without Hamas, its most popular party, but Israel will not tolerate any government which includes them. Its electoral infrastructure is sound, but its political system is woefully broken.

For the far-right coalition in power in Israel, led by long-term political survivor Benjamin Netanyahu, a divided Palestinian community is far better than one with a clear democratic leader. Yet holding any real election will need both cooperation and security assurances from the Israeli government and support from the international community.

With respect to the United States, a likely broker of any deal, their hesitant inching toward an independent Palestinian state cannot come fast enough.

Untangling these problems may seem impossible amid a siege in which hundreds of Palestinians are still dying weekly. But true representation and a path to real statehood for Palestine are vital to any lasting peace.

“I don’t think anyone is yet thinking of how we restart political competition in Palestine,” said Vladimir Pran, an elections specialist who previously served as director of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems for Palestine.

“I would argue it’s important, it’s condicio sine qua non, when it comes to good governance and democracy.”

In the months since Oct. 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza, the international community has played variations on a theme when it comes to governance in Palestine.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu told NPR that “there has to be a civilian government” in Gaza, but implied that it would not be the government in Ramallah. Yair Lapid, who leads the Israeli opposition, said the PA should be the one to take over Gaza, but only after it goes through a “de-radicalization process.” In a Washington Post op-ed, U.S. President Joe Biden wrote that “Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority.” Now the White House is toying with a plan for an independent, but “demilitarized,” Palestine. The European Commission’s foreign policy representative, Josep Borrell, put it in more blunt terms: “The Palestinian Authority has to return to Gaza.”

Specifics, however, have been in short supply. A State Department spokesperson confirmed to Foreign Policy that the White House supports the PA regaining control of Gaza. Asked how they ought to happen, the spokesperson said that decision should be up to the Palestinian people.

Zaha Hassan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who previously represented Palestine in international negotiations, says there’s a hollowness at the heart of this language.

“We need to clarify what the U.S. and others are talking about when they talk about a ‘reformed’ or ‘revitalized’ Palestinian Authority,” she said. “That’s not the same thing, in their minds, as a legitimate Palestinian Authority—one that is going to represent the will of its people.”

An Egyptian plan, teased in December, tied together political and economic security. The proposal would see an immediate ceasefire, followed by the release of the hostages held by Hamas. The peace deal would require that Hamas relinquish power in Gaza, to be replaced with an administration of technocrats. That new government would plan and hold fresh legislative elections to bring democratic government back to the Palestinian territories.

A plan from a broader coalition of Arab states, reported by the Financial Times in January, would see the establishment of a recognized Palestinian state, under some form of a “strengthened” PA. (Netanyahu, for his part, continues to oppose any sovereign Palestinian state.)

These reports feel like a historical rerun.

After Hamas’s 2007 coup, Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency and appointed U.S.-educated economist Salam Fayyad as caretaker prime minister until fresh elections could be held. Fayyad, a member of the small Third Way party, was hailed by then President George W. Bush as “a good fellow.” But his appointment never engendered real legitimacy.

“Yes, fine. Everybody loved Salam Fayyad, the Americans love Salam Fayyad,” Pran said. “The Palestinians hated it. They saw him as an American accountant, imposed on the Palestinians.”

According to Israeli broadcaster Kan, American diplomats have again put forward Fayyad’s name as a candidate to helm this hypothetical renewed PA. (Fayyad says he has not been part of those discussions.)

“We are constantly trying to apply frameworks and solutions on the Palestinians, completely oblivious and ignoring their internal politics and their internal political dynamics,” Pran said. “You can’t freeze politics out of political systems.”

“All this talk about post-Gaza [war], the day after, when you strip away the fantasy scenarios, we’re back where we were a year ago,” Pran said. And the problem is: Succession planning for Abbas, the president of the PA.

It was clear, even long before Oct. 7, that Abbas, now 88, needed to be replaced. But there has been no clear indication of who will step into his shoes. It is almost certain that his successor will need to be chosen before any election can be called. That makes the internal machinations of Fatah critically important.

One faction inside Fatah clearly still favors a return to a national unity government, which would include Hamas. That faction includes one possible Abbas successor: Jibril Rajoub, the secretary general of Fatah’s Central Committee, who had previously tried to revive the Fatah-Hamas power-sharing deal.

Another camp appears keen to freeze out Hamas and partner more closely with Israel and the United States. Hussein al-Sheikh, appointed by Abbas to serve as secretary general of the PLO, is seen as more deferential to Israel. “Isn’t it worth discussing how to manage this conflict with the Israeli occupation?” al-Sheikh said in a December interview with Reuters. Hamas has branded him “spokesman of the occupation.”

There is no clear path to reconcile these seemingly incompatible positions.

No matter who replaces the aging Abbas, they will face the same problems as the longtime president: The Palestinian people see Fatah as corrupt, ineffective, and a barrier to Palestinian statehood.

Hamas won the 2007 elections for exactly that reason. And the terror group’s popularity has only grown since the Oct. 7 attacks: A poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found Hamas’s support nearly doubled as opposed to just months prior.

Hamas has seized on the opportunity. At a press conference in January, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, appeared alongside a member of Fatah’s Central Committee and called for an end to the fighting between the two factions and for fresh elections.

But the Palestinian Center’s polling has also shown a deep malaise. When surveyed in person in June 2022, more than 7 in 10 Palestinians said they wanted fresh elections. Yet faced with the choice of either Abbas as Fatah’s presidential candidate, and Haniyeh as the stand-in Hamas candidate, fewer than half said they would actually vote.

Asked who they would like to see replace Abbas late last year, just 1 percent named al-Sheikh, while Rajoub’s name didn’t appear at all. There is one name, however, that was consistently named by a third of Palestinians as their preferred leader: Marwan Barghouti.

The problem is that Barghouti has sat in an Israeli prison since 2002, serving consecutive life sentences. An Israeli court convicted Barghouti of murder and terrorism, but to many in the territories, he is Palestine’s Nelson Mandela. There have been frequent pleas and campaigns to release Barghouti over the years, but they have all come to naught. Israel, Hassan says, has “no interest whatsoever” in releasing Barghouti. (He has long been at odds with Abbas and his loyalists as well.)

As soon as the fighting stops or slows, there will be a desperate need for a functioning state in a devastated Gaza. Any attempt by Hamas to reassert control will likely be met with force from Israel, while the PA says it will not even try to return to Gaza unless a broader peace package is on the table.

A longer-term Israeli occupation is unwanted and untenable, while a vague plan for an Arab-led peacekeeping force seems impractical and unlikely. Palestinians, for their part, seem justifiably hostile to the idea of foreign powers setting their political agenda. In an open letter, a group of Gazan activists vowed to “denounce and refuse any political discussions” so long as Israeli military operations continue.

One plan, put forward by Israel, would see the establishment of “civil committees,” possibly approved by Israel directly, which would govern Gaza. The idea may be modeled after the “village leagues” initiative of the 1970s. Such a plan is likely to fail for the same reason the original incarnation did: Because local government cannot be imposed on a population by an occupying power.

An increasingly likely possibility is that Gaza will simply have no government—the PA may claim notional control, but Gaza will be essentially administered by a coalition of Western donors, as the Israeli Defense Forces manage its planned “buffer zone,” clearing Palestinian territory and launching selective raids as it sees fit. Meanwhile, the Israeli blockade will continue.

The Israelis will also need to sign off on any vote, Pran says.

“If the Israelis don’t facilitate those elections, then they really can’t happen,” Pran said. “Because the election commission cannot travel to Gaza, sensitive election material cannot be sent from the West Bank—the ballot papers, you know, all that stuff—training of officials: Really, nothing can happen if Israel wants to block those elections.”

“In terms of electoral process, I know this sounds paradoxical, but Palestinians have the best election commission in the Middle East,” Pran said.

The Palestinian Central Elections Commission, he says, is widely respected as neutral, independent, and capable. While there will be challenges for the commission going forward, it nevertheless represents a rare spot of credibility amid public frustration with the PA.

One thing the rest of the world can do on this hypothetical “day after” is to ensure that the electoral commission is set up for success. “Number one, they have to update the voters list—because the last update was done in 2021,” Pran said. The massive displacement inside Gaza means that list will need significant revision.

The Palestinian people seem keen for political choices beyond Fatah and Hamas. The current law, however, makes founding a new competitive party essentially impossible. Reforming the electoral system to allow for real multiparty democracy could be one way to disrupt Fatah’s hold on power while offering an alternative to Hamas. Luckily, much of the work has already been done. The United Nations Security Council released a road map to a two-state solution in 2003, including political reforms.

Focusing on how to get a real political process started in Palestine will be vital for a lasting peace—but it requires buy-in from actors who often loathe each other. Failure will doom Palestinians to another generation of political corruption, dysfunction, and unrealized aspiration.

The Palestinian people want and deserve better.

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nancydrewwouldnever · 1 year

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I feel like once Trump lost re-election in 2020 his politics interest started waning big time. His tweets became less, even his retweets lessened. // I find this really interesting as there has been so much going on since Trump and nothing from him. Some people have said it's because of ASP but I don't think so, but then it's been nothing from him on ASP in what over two months. Maybe he's dropping the whole political avenger image? It's just another odd data point, to borrow a term from you.

Someone in a comment pointed out that Mark Kassen, who used to be really good about reposting ASP things, hasn't posted/reposted from it since mid-November. Perhaps they've gone very lowkey because their reposts bring comments about Chris' current personal life mess. However, that will be a factor which will never change. I just feel this betrays their lack of long-term planning for the site/project. They needed to better craft a plan which went beyond the spotlight of Chris' fame/name recognition.

#ask

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calliopechild · 2 years

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The race for Senate control may come down to three states: Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, all of which are rated as “Toss-up” races by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales. As Republicans look to flip the Senate, which Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has called a “50-50 proposition,” they’re trying to pick up the first two and hold on to the latter.

Senate Democrats’ path to holding their majority lies with defending their incumbents. Picking off a GOP-held seat like Pennsylvania – still the most likely to flip in CNN’s ranking – would help mitigate any losses. Wisconsin, where GOP Sen. Ron Johnson is vying for a third term, looks like Democrats’ next best pickup opportunity, but that race drops in the rankings this month as Republican attacks take a toll on the Democratic nominee in the polls.

It is vitally important that you vote no matter where you live, but if you live in any of the states listed here--especially the three listed above--it is even more pivotal. If the GOP gets control of the Senate or House back, the loss of Roe will absolutely just be the start; various GOP candidates have already been vocal about taking aim at Medicare/Social Security and even access to contraceptives.

This is not an election we can afford to sit out, anymore than the 2020 election was one that we could afford to sit out. We only avoided the disaster of a second Trump term because people showed up in record numbers, and that needs to happen again, especially since Republican voters typically have a stronger turnout during midterms.

Get out and vote blue.

#keeping the house/senate out of the hands of the gop(ieces of shit) is more important than ever #because if they get a majority back in either one they will absolutely do the same shit they did with obama #which is stonewall any and all progress and then blame biden for his inability to get anything done #as if it's not their fault for refusing to support anything that doesn't strip rights from anyone who isn't rich white or male #november mid-term elections #vote blue #voting

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naturalrights-retard · 7 months

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Newly installed Speaker of the House Mike Johnson just managed to avert a government shutdown. Democrats helped pass a spending bill that will keep federal funds flowing until after the holidays.

However, the real structural problems within the federal government have not been addressed, which means it is only a matter of time before another funding battle begins.

So, let’s talk a little more about government shutdowns. What happens? Who gets affected? What happens if a shutdown occurs close to an election?

A brief history of government shutdowns

The federal government shut down twice during Clinton’s presidency, once for six days in November 1995, and then a second time for 21 days between December 1995 and January 1996. Clinton was trying to pass funding for various healthcare and environmental projects. The Republican Congress, led by Newt Gingrich, would not agree.

Then, in 2013, the government shut down under Obama. Congress refused to approve funding for the newly approved Affordable Care Act, and the government began a partial shutdown on October 1, 2013. About 800,000 federal workers went without pay, and over a million other workers had their paychecks delayed. Obama signed an agreement to make some minor tweaks to ObamaCare shortly after midnight on October 17, ending the shutdown.

The government shut down twice under Trump. The first time it closed for two days in January, 2018, when Republicans and Democrats could not agree on spending regarding immigration and healthcare policies.

This shutdown was unusual in that Republicans had control of the presidency as well as both houses of Congress, illustrating the sharp divide Trump caused within the Republican Party.

The next shutdown under Trump occurred at the end of 2018, after mid-terms and with a Congress controlled by Democrats. This time, the shutdown lasted 35 days, the longest shutdown in 40 years, and it occurred over funding of Trump’s proposed border wall.

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decolonize-the-left · 2 months

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The legal offensive, led by Dana Remus, who until 2022 served as President Biden’s White House counsel, and Robert Lenhard, an outside lawyer for the party, will be aided by a communications team dedicated to countering candidates who Democrats fear could play spoiler to Mr. Biden. It amounts to a kind of legal Whac-a-Mole, a state-by-state counterinsurgency plan ahead of an election that could hinge on just a few thousand votes in swing states. The aim “is to ensure all the candidates are playing by the rules, and to seek to hold them accountable when they are not,” Mr. Lenhard said.

WHAT???

You're telling me that this guy

Suddenly gives a single shit about the rules???

The headlines about this are fucking insane also

"will giving voters access to vote for whatever candidate they want dooming democracy"

Normal headline for a country that definitely isn't being run by fascists.

Btw this is Dana Remus

"In August 2022, President Biden questioned in a 60 Minutes interview “how anyone can be that irresponsible” when asked about classified documents in the possession of former President Trump. But when President Biden said this, he knew he had stashed classified materials in several unsecure locations for years, dating back to his time as vice president and even as U.S. senator."

[...]President Biden’s attorneys claim to have first discovered classified material at Penn Biden Center on November 2, 2022. However, President Biden and his lawyers kept it secret from the American people before the midterm elections. CBS News broke the story in January 2023, leaving Americans to wonder if the White House had any intention of ever disclosing that President Biden hoarded classified documents for years.

You know what else they did together? Lied about codifying Roe v Wade if they won mid-terms. 6months AFTER dems won a narrow majority, Rie v Wade was overturned.

And like not to be a wacky conspiracy theorist who's right again but

"The case concerned the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi state law that banned most abortion operations after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Mississippi law was based on a model by a Christian legal organization, Alliance Defending Freedom, with the specific intent to provoke a legal battle that would reach the Supreme Court and result in the overturning of Roe"

Guess what the Alliance Defending freedom works with and serves an agenda for?

Project 2025 yeah, the heritage foundation lists them as partners

Yeah remember how Dana Remus worked with Samuel Alito? Guess who's vote helped overrule abortion rights?

Samuel Alito, correct. Guess who else? Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett.

All Trump appointments.

Odd company to find yourself in without having ANY ties to the ADF or heritage foundation or project2025.

I wonder who the lawyers involved were?

Scott G Stewart. Interesting. Well who appointed him, right?

In 2021, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch appointed Scott G. Stewart as Solicitor General for the State of Mississippi.

Oh so she was voted in.

Well im sure it was a normal election that Democrats didn't tamper with or anything. Like SURELY they didn't intentionally platform this woman using the Pied Piper method? SURELY NOT after platforming Trump and making the entire 2016 elections about anti-Trumpism. SURELY, they wouldn't have tried to make themselves look better by positioning themselves against extremists only to LOSE the bet they were making.

SURELY WE DIDNT LOSE ROE V WADE BECAUSE DEMOCRATS WONT STOP USING THE PIED PIPER STRATEGY TO WIN ELECTIONS? R I G H T???

Riley Collins, 53, is running against the state's treasurer, Lynn Fitch, who was the chair of the group Mississippi Women for Trump in 2016. Riley Collins is running an explicitly anti-Trump message, saying Monday that she doesn’t understand how Donald Trump's Christian supporters can reconcile their politics with their faith

Oh.

Welp.

Everyone thank democrats for Trump and the stacked supreme court and the loss of Roe V Wade. It Truly couldn't have happened without them blasting primetime tv with alt right candidates 24/7.

One day democrats will stop platforming right wing extremists and election tampering but I guess it won't be anytime soon.

Let me ask, what's the biggest argument for voting blue this year?

Right.

And how's that going? Y'all feel confident in that strategy right now?

And don't forget what they did to Bernie. Because Biden is very poetically doing the same fucking shit to sabotage 3rd parties right now.

Remember to act surprised when Trump wins.

Like voters and progressives and leftists haven't been saying for MONTHS that we won't vote Biden. Like swing states aren't voting uncommitted. Like labor unions aren't voting uncommitted. Like he isn't tanking the polls.

You know I will say that this election is a little different. Clinton didn't have nearly this much pushback so early in the race.

Biden's massive gap of votes compared to Trump is gonna look like the grand fucking canyon.

#vote #dont vote #biden #3rd parties #trump #roe v wade #2024 #2025 #project2025 #politics #news #current events #facsism #democrats #Republicans #RFK #usa elections

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republicansaredomesticterrorists · 2 years

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If we don’t crush the Republikkkan MAGAts in November’s mid-term election and again in ‘24 we will be ruled by these monsters forever.

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bighermie · 2 years

Link

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ausetkmt · 11 months

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York Pa. race riots sparked by decades of discrimination

As the story goes, the deadly York race riots of 1969 started when a Black youth claimed a gang doused him with gasoline.

That story proved to be false – he burned himself playing with lighter fluid.

But that set the stage for a rumble between a white gang and Black youths.

And then a Black youth, Taki Nii Sweeney, was standing with a police officer when a shotgun blast struck him.

All that said, the racial unrest really didn’t start in mid-July 1969.

You could say it started with the Conspiracy of 1803 when Black people in the country were barred from entering York and the movements of African Americans in York were severely curtailed. That reportedly came after a perceived unfair conviction of a Black woman caused a series of protest arsons by Black residents.

Or it could have been in 1863 when the son in the prominent Black family, the Goodridges, was convicted of rape, a county court sentence that the governor later reversed. That pardon came at a cost to the family and Pennsylvania. Imprisoned Glenalvin Goodridge, a pioneering photographer recognized by the Smithsonian today, was ordered to leave the state.

It could have come in the mid-1930s when neighborhoods, homes to many Black people newly arrived from the South, were redlined. That federal government policy made it more difficult for those in York neighborhoods designated on a map with red ink to secure homeownership.

The point is that the riots came after decades of racial oppression. In fact, discriminatory practices were the leading factors in a type of combustible equation as the cause for the York race riots.

Here is that calculation that I put forth in 2009: Long racial oppression + neglect of services for low-income people + unfit mayor + boiling U.S. urban racial environment + K-9 Corps (as a catalyst) = York riots of 1968-69.

A look at the 1960s

We’ll take a snapshot of just one decade, the 1960s in York County, to understand how these factors played out.

The decade begins in November 1961 when Republican John L. Snyder was elected York’s mayor by a 9,197-8,335 vote over Democrat Henry Leader in a city with a Democratic majority. This election was particularly important because it was the first under the strong-mayor system that gave Snyder relatively more power, particularly in police oversight, and veto power over the City Council’s actions.

You could say a lot about John Snyder, an insurance man and unfit mayor in the equation, but here are three things:

He got into office, in part, because the public did not like some of the Democrat-led redevelopment projects that spelled change. One that had particularly cost city redevelopment head Leader votes was the building of a Black Elks lodge in the 8th Ward to replace a Princess Street Elks building that had given way to the Park Lane urban renewal project. The large parking plaza to the north of York High was the hallmark of that project.

“The Democrats had little expectation of taking this district where anti-Negro sentiment was made known,” The Gazette and Daily said.

And the third was that Snyder was patently racist, governing as if the 20th century never existed, as one pundit said.

For example, he used a derogatory word for a Black person with a reporter in a discussing a matter relating to the largely Black garbage workers.

He was visited by two city leaders before 7 a.m. one day. He initially thought it was a Black person, using the derogatory term.

“The remark didn’t surprise us,” a Gazette and Daily editorial stated.

And then went on: “Mayor Johnny Snyder has been elected twice as a man who would keep the (derogatory term used by Snyder) in their place. Let’s face it, hard it may be.”

The mayor dug himself in deeper when asked for an apology from a union representative for the garbage workers. He denied using the term, then said he typically used two other racial slurs to describe Black people instead.

Here’s another example: The K-9 Corps of German shepherd police dogs started under his administration and their disproportionate use against Blacks was deeply resented in the Black community. In fact, he owned a German shepherd himself similar to those used by police.

Certainly, Black people could not appeal to the community’s sense of justice.

In a referendum on his first term, voters backed Snyder for four more years in the 1965 election against longtime Democratic City Councilman Al Hydeman Jr. by a 7,741-7,348 vote.

His reelection meant that he could continue to stonewall against reform ideas such as a police review board. When the state Human Relations Commission made recommendations to defuse racial tension after the 1968 summer unrest, Snyder largely ignored them.

In fact, his administration escalated things. Police expanded their K-9 corps, and a monument was constructed to honor the dogs.

York-area people played their cards in a second vote.

Comfort in the status quo

Clearly, York County did not have the things in place that would disrupt a status quo that accepted blighted housing, inequitable hiring practices, lack of affordable health care and limited public transportation.

It was a status quo hardened by the county’s perch on the Mason-Dixon Line, an invisible border that freely allowed Southern ideas to waft across.

Enlightened thinking from education was — and is — a go-to resource at a time like this. In those days, less than 45% of York County residents above 18 years in age had high school diplomas. Only 7% of York County’s population had college degrees.

York Junior College did not become a four-year school — York College – until 1968. In fact, the college moved from its downtown College and Duke streets site in 1959 to the former Out Door Country Club land, its current home. The country club had moved to its current site in the growing suburbs north of town.

Imagine the help that would have been provided by the college’s present-day Marketview Arts and Center for Community Engagement in those days.

Indeed, the city was suffering from a talent, population and tax drain to the suburbs. And increasing economic woes. York lost 8.2% of its population in the 1960s after sustaining a 9.1% loss the previous decade.

That suburban retail challenge — York Mall opened in 1968 — caused a panic that spawned parking lots as city’s growth industry to the detriment of landmark buildings that embodied York pride. Indeed, York College’s former building of Dempwolf design was one of those landmarks that came down in the early 1960s.

Black history not included

There were many signs that the city and county leadership just wanted to ignore growing frustration in the Black community.

Three publications came off the press in the mid-1960s: the York Area Chamber of Commerce’s “Greater York in Action,” a coffee table book; the county Elementary Principals’ Association’s “York County, An Overview”; and the York area’s 225th anniversary program.

All three publications told of Pennsylvania German, Presbyterian and English presence in York County in the 1700s. There was no mention of the sizable Black community, though more than 1,000 freed and enslaved people lived in the county in 1790.

“Greater York” could have designated space for William C. Goodridge in its “Men and Events” section, which, of course, also excluded contributions by women. But its editors chose not to.

“Greater York in Action” would not be complete,” the book states, “without mentioning some of the important early happenings and men of note who contributed so much to York’s place in the history of our country … .”

Goodridge also was not selected nor were he or any other events involving Black people listed in a “Greater York” historical timeline.

“York County, An Overview,” and the 225th anniversary program treated the Civil War with a friendly tone toward the Southern army that, as part of its campaign to maintain slavery, invaded the county, stole horses, trampled crops and terrorized the population.

“We know, in spite of the fears of townspeople, that the soldiers behaved like gentlemen and everyone in the town was safe,” “An Overview” said. “Most of the people felt sorry for them, they were so ragged and hungry.”

The 225th program called invading Confederate Gen. John B. Gordon “handsome.” That’s great respect afforded to the enemy and disregarded the fact that he was recovering from a disfiguring bullet wound to the left cheek.

The pageant notes glibly stated that there was sympathy for the Confederate cause in York: “It was a war that pits brother against brother.”

Rather, it was primarily a war in which the fate of millions of enslaved people hung in the balance.

One can only imagine what those in the Black community thought about these publications, the exclusion of their history and the soft and friendly treatment of the deadly Civil War.

Many Black families in York County had been enslaved and then struggled to survive in the Civil War’s aftermath. They had come to York to better themselves economically.

‘Nothing would have changed’

With little else in the community to disrupt systems that spawned racial discrimination, the pot boiled over in the race riots in York in those two summers, a moment in which members of the Black community showed they weren’t going to take it anymore.

The York community had to hit rock bottom before it could rebound — and the riots served that purpose.

“If the riots hadn’t taken place,” Bobby Simpson of Crispus Attucks Community Center later said, “nothing would have changed.”

Several things happened between the 1969 riots and the summer of 1970.

Snyder died in York Hospital in the fall of 1969, and city voters backed Democrat Eli Eichelberger over Republican E. Nelson Read, a party switch that served as a referendum on the 1960s. York voters were tired of the Snyder-led decade.

Indeed, Snyder’s inept mayorship in the 1960s was replaced by capable mayors in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly John Krout, Elizabeth Marshall and William Althaus. The main complaint of those 1970s mayors that you hear about today is that they narrowed the first block of West Market Street.

The York Charrette in April 1970 — a moment of intense community problem solving led by a Black man from the South, Bill Riddick — produced reforms in health care, housing and public transportation.

Fifty years later, Black men and women hold or have served in the most powerful offices in York County.

At last, plans are being drawn up to attract investment in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, some of which have changed little since the riots era.

Much work is ahead.

Wages of Blacks and Latinos lag significantly behind whites. The poverty rate of Blacks and Latinos are 3.5 and 5.5 times more than the white population countywide. Both are unsolved equality issues raised in the 1960s.

+++

In the post-riots era of reform, the York City Human Relations Commission and the York Spanish American Center were formed, both with the goal of improving community life for minorities.

So it’s a healthy and ironic sign of change in the community that both organizations occupied Snyder’s former insurance office and residence in the 200 block of East Princess Street in York.

The Spanish American Center succeeded the Human Relations Commission in that building in 2007, becoming the José E. Hernandez Centro Hispano. The block itself is named after a prominent Latino family, the Riveras.

The name of Renaissance Park across the street stands against Snyder’s lack of a real platform for change in 1961.

So the type of attention, regard and justice that Snyder withheld from minorities in the 1960s is now in play in his old neighborhood, even in the very house where he lived and sold insurance.

Sources: James McClure's "Almost Forgotten," Jeffrey S. Hawkes' master's thesis; "J.W. Gitt's Last Crusade: Demise of the York Gazette and Daily, 1861-1970"; York Daily Daily Record files and Peter Levy's "The Great Uprising," 2018.

Memorial service

A prayer service is set for 5 p.m. Friday, July 21, to mark the 54th anniversary of the deaths of Lillie Belle Allen and Henry C. Schaad, both of whom were killed in the 1969 race riots in York.

The service is set at the site of the Allen/Schaad Memorial, 402 N. Newberry St., Farquhar Park.

Jim McClure is a retired editor of the York Daily Record and has authored or co-authored nine books on York County history. Reach him at [email protected].

#pennsylvania #york pa #rce uprising #white hate #supremacy #white supremacy #1969 #racial discrimination #systemic racism

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Special Counsel Jack Smith isn’t messing around.

The prosecutor tasked with investigating former president Donald Trump is showing so much hustle, he’s prompted former prosecutors to say Smith may be gearing up to indict Trump within the first few months of 2023.

That’s partly due to the flurry of investigative activity following Smith’s appointment in mid-November, a time when many observers worried openly that naming a special counsel would dramatically slow the Trump investigations. Smith quickly proved those doubters wrong, filing a legal brief on Thanksgiving Day and a raft of new subpoenas, while securing testimony from top Trump associates including former White House lawyers and former Trump speechwriter Stephen Miller.

Smith is leading investigations into the removal of highly-sensitive government documents taken to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, as well as Trump’s attempts to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election and his role in the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. Smith has an incentive to make a charging decision quickly, experienced criminal lawyers say: To keep any criminal trial and appeals process from stretching past the end of President Joe Biden’s term, when a new president and attorney general could stymie the process.

“If they do decide to bring charges, they’d need to do it in the first quarter of 2023, because otherwise Trump might be able to run out the clock,” said Barbara McQuade, the former top federal prosecutor in Detroit.

Others point out Smith is assembling a top-shelf team of hard-charging lawyers—one that appears to mean business.

“I don’t think they would’ve left their former positions, both in government and private practice, unless there was a serious possibility that the Justice Department was on a path to charge,” Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, told Meet The Press on Sunday.

“And I think it’ll happen in a month,” Bharara said.

FASTER THAN MUELLER

Smith has been moving faster than even his famous predecessor, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller initially began his two-year probe of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia without an office or a team.

By contrast, Smith inherited two ongoing investigations that have only appeared to ramp up since his appointment.

That means Smith is taking over a staff that’s already almost twice as big as the team of lawyers that worked for Mueller, according to CNN.

Immediately after his appointment, Smith promised: “The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch.” And so far, from all outward appearances, it hasn’t.

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In particular, he’s dropped a flurry of grand jury subpoenas on officials from six states — places where Trump’s allies attempted to secure the electoral college votes from the 2020 election that Trump would have needed to hold power.

Smith’s team has sought both testimony and also any communications with Trump, the Trump campaign, and a list of 19 Trump associates.

This week Smith’s team subpoenaed Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State who took the infamous phone call in which Trump urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to make him President.

“All I want to do is this,” Trump told Raffensperger. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.”

Raffensperger refused to do so. Instead, he tape-recorded the call, which was then leaked to the media.

Smith has also subpoenaed officials in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada.

On December 2nd, Smith secured grand jury testimony from Trump White House Counsel Pat Cippollone and his chief deputy, Patrick Philbin-just one day after a federal judge ordered them to appear.

And on top of all that, Smith’s team secured a key victory when an appeals court effectively annulled the appointment of a special master to review documents in the Mar-a-Lago case on December 1st.

The Judges ruled that the notoriously pro-Trump Florida Judge, Aileen Cannon, was wrong to accept Trump’s lawsuit in the first place.

The ruling effectively frees up Smith to use evidence collected in the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search in a future prosecution, during which prosecutors may want to show how highly-sensitive government documents were intermingled with random clutter by way of proving that state secrets weren’t being carefully handled.

Trump has repeatedly insisted he did nothing wrong, and that the investigations are part of a groundless “witch hunt” against him, led by his Democratic enemies.

But legal experts watching the probes say the Mar-a-Lago documents case is theoretically likely to be ready to move to prosecution much sooner than the sprawling investigation into the complicated events of Jan. 6th.

That’s because the documents case is relatively simple, and many people have been successfully prosecuted for mishandling secret government documents in the past. By contrast, no past president has ever attempted to hold on to power despite losing an election in the way Trump did—which makes any attempted prosecution totally novel, and makes the legal questions involved highly complex.

“The Mar-a-Lago case is the one that is probably pretty close to being ready to go,” McQuade said.

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dhaaruni · 1 year

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Some pretty rough poll numbers for Biden just came out today. I know it's way too early to worry about Trump winning in 2024, but I just wanted to see where you are right now in your level of concern.

Also, the map below seems like a pretty easy path for Biden, no? We know that Arizona and Georgia are trending blue, so I feel like in a Biden-Trump rematch specifically, Biden just has to win those two states again, plus Nevada and Michigan (not that hard, and definitely easier than winning PA or WI). Any thoughts on this path?

Hi!

My two cents on that ABC/WaPo poll is that of course all presidential elections will be close because of Republicans' advantage in the electoral college, but this is one poll where Biden's approval is markedly lower than in all other polls, and also, if you look at the sample size, it's like 20% Democrats, which is really not representative of the country. I'd just throw it in the averages and move on since it's also like 18 months before the 2024 election and a lot of things can change in that time.

Getting down into the nitty gritty, I think Georgia is the bigger issue for Democrats than Wisconsin or Pennsylvania because Brian Kemp won by 8 in 2022, and even Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin only lost by 1 while Governor Evers won another term. I also think Pennsylvania will be fine because Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman won in relative landslides in 2022.

At the end of the day, I think Biden wins his 2020 states with North Carolina and Texas as light red tossups (with Trump and Cruz on the ballot, Texas will be closer than 2020 although Trump will still likely win it by 2, which may be enough to knock off Cruz if we're lucky since he'll almost certainly underrun Trump), and if Biden is winning North Carolina, he's won the presidency. Post-2020, what worries me is that the election won't be called the night of, which means there's additional chances for Trump to yell about election fraud but then again, election deniers faced a real penalty in 2022 so here's hoping that it's not as crazy as 2020.

The thing is, we all knew by like mid-morning November 4, 2020, after Wisconsin was called at like 2am and Michigan was called hours later that Biden had won the presidency, and it really was bullshit that the Republican legislature of Pennsylvania refused to count the votes (although I think there's a law against counting mail-in ballots as they come in which is another issue) and Nevada refused to call it for Biden until Pennsylvania did. That's part of why Florida gets called immediately, like they have the best ballot counting operation in the country.

I'd say a good litmus test for 2024 is how Florida and North Carolina go, like if Biden wins North Carolina and keeps Florida within 5, he's won the presidency so rest easy, but if they're called extremely quickly for Trump, and especially if Duval County aka Jacksonville, which flipped to Biden in 2020 flips to Republicans in 2024, start worrying.

Also, nobody wants to admit this but Ron DeSantis will absolutely clean up the Sunbelt; I flat-out don't see Arizona or Georgia as blue states, I see them as anti-Trump states! Brian Kemp won, and Maricopa County suburbanites literally intentionally split their tickets so that Kimberly Yee, the only normal Republican, won by 20 even while Mark Kelly and Katie Hobbs also won. They WANT to vote for Republicans, they just don't want to vote for crazy freaks who give off school shooter vibes, and while DeSantis probably won't play well in the Midwest, I see him handily winning the Sunbelt. All polling has him winning Georgia by 5!

But anyways, does that offer some insight?

#politics #answered #zuko-is-crazy

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