It's time we started rockin' the boat
This photo of sunrise in Taiwan is from Joe Garrity's BlueSky account at JBGarrity Photography. Lotta cool pics in his stream.
"'Tragic Day for the Freedom to Vote’: Supreme Court Guts Remnants of Voting Rights Act: 'Make no mistake: This ruling isn’t about the law, it’s about power, and giving Republicans more US House seats they couldn’t otherwise win at the ballot box,' said one critic. The US Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Louisiana must redraw its 2024 congressional map—which created a second majority-Black district to mitigate persistent barriers to equal representation—in a decision that further guts the already tattered Voting Rights Act. The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Louisiana v. Callais that the state’s map is 'an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,' effectively voiding the last remaining provision of Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which allows voters of color to challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps in court. The case centers on the redrawing of Louisiana’s six congressional districts to better reflect the population of a state in which one-third of the people are Black, as Section 2 states that minority voters should have the same chance as others to elect candidates of their choice. [...] Kagan said the majority 'straight-facedly holds that the Voting Rights Act must be brought low to make the world safe for partisan gerrymanders.' [...] NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson called the decision 'a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act, and a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities.'" There's more about the right-wing's rationale here.
"What’s Wrong With The SPLC Indictment: DOJ's indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center is a critical moment in the administration's war on democracy. [...] Here’s the central thesis of the case: The Justice Department wants us to believe that one of the nation’s leading civil rights groups, the people who broke the Klan and continue to expose the white supremacist groups that crop up in its wake, is actually supporting racism and domestic terror, that they’re in fact responsible for whipping up the frenzy. This indictment tells a story, and the story is that SPLC engaged in material support for domestic terrorist groups. The indictment rises or falls on one faulty premise: that you should look only at one piece of SPLC’s work to infiltrate these dangerous groups, not at their overall efforts to dismantle them. DOJ predicates its wire fraud charges, which we discussed here, on the assumption that people who donated to SPLC would be unhappy that their dollars were used to fund paid informants who obtained inside information about what white supremacists and other groups were up to."
Kier Starmer has tried to claim that a mentally ill man who attacked two Jewish men and a Muslim man in London was actually an incident of antisemitic violence caused by anti-genocide protestors. Unsurprisingly, the fact that there was a Muslim victim doesn't seem to be mentioned in public discussion of this story because that would ruin the narrative. Meanwhile, a curious thing has been happening: There are attacks on Jews that turn out to be committed by non-ideological thugs who've been paid by a foreign entity. They can't arrest the perps for terrorism because they're just doing it for the money. An unknown outfit on Telegram is claiming credit on behalf of Iran, a nation which could not possibly benefit from any of this. In fact, there is only one nation that could benefit from it, but you'd probably get accused of blood libel for saying so, even though that nation has a long history of trying to frame others for attacks that they in fact had launched.
"A Broken Press Gathers This Weekend To Normalize Fascism Over Cocktails: The brunchlord American press gathers every year to pretend they hold power accountable. This year it teeters out of unethical farce and into complicity. [...] The concern, and I believe it's the correct one, is that yukking it up with fascists over dill salmon crepes normalizes an administration whose masked gestapo murdered Americans in the street just a few months ago." Well, we all know what's happened since this article was written.
Jeff Cohen at Common Dreams says, "I Detest Billionaires: My Journey to Supporting One for Governor of California: Make no mistake about it: Corporate lobbyists are horrified that Tom Steyer might become California’s governor. Despite myself, he may just be the class traitor we’ve been waiting for. As a progressive who watches too much television, when I see a Democratic candidate dominating the TV air war with ubiquitous campaign ads, I usually know that’s a Democrat I should oppose—the one being lavishly funded by wealthy corporate interests. And the ads are usually vapid, empty." But Steyer is putting out ads that could have been put out by Bernie Sanders, and now the corporate ads are coming right for him. I've listened to a couple of interviews with Steyer, and most of what he says does sound good. The only answer I didn't like when David Sirota interviewed him was that he doesn't believe every billionaire is a policy failure, but he sounded great on everything else.
John Roberts has been whining again about how people don't see his utterly ideological and partisan antics as being the stately calling of balls and strikes he claims it is, and Paul Campos doesn't think so. "This is a situation where the dumbass median voter’s belief — 'it’s all just politics's — is a lot closer to the truth than the view held by Elite Lawyer Brain cases like Roberts (FWIW I believe that Roberts believes what he’s saying is true)."
"The IOC's New Policy Isn't Really a Trans Story: Every headline says the IOC banned trans women from the Olympics. The athletes who’ll actually be barred are cis women who’ve never heard of the SRY gene." Did you know that you can be born with female genitalia and develop as a woman and then one day find out your genes don't fit the right stereotype and have your whole life ruined? These are women who never "transitioned", never were raised as boys, never reacted to male hormones, don't have any "male" advantages, but can arrive at the Olympics after years of hard work to find themselves shut out and their careers ended. Many of these women can even get pregnant and bear children. Are they not women?
Mike the Mad Biologist says, "Views on Crime Will Turn Me into the Joker—and Might Be Harming Democrats More Than Some Think." Because the Republicans have been remarkably successful at convincing people that violent crime is persistently increasing, and Democrats have done more to reinforce that belief than to break the myths. "Women are much more likely to get this answer wrong. Unfortunately, there are no publicly available crosstabs to break this down by race and gender. But when 'crime’ becomes a salient issue—or more accurately, when Republicans successfully fearmonger about crime—it is likely influencing women more than men. And to be clear, influencing them in a direction towards voting Republican. In other words, crime might be a more successful way to chip off women voters than one might otherwise expect."
RIP: "Nicole Hollander, cartoonist who channeled wit and feminist ideas through 'Sylvia' comic strip, dies at 86: Her comic strip starring wise-cracking, cigarette-smoking, cat-loving, middle-aged freelance writer ran in newspapers around the country for more than three decades." She was living proof that feminists had a sense of humor.
RIP: "CNN founder Ted Turner, a pioneer of cable TV news, dies at 87." I missed all of this as it developed, but eventually his name became one that, even over here, couldn't be ignored. I only know I wish he'd never sold CNN to a bunch of people who only valued money.
"The Third Party Spoiler Argument Is No More!: The sad truth is that in 130 congressional districts there is, in reality, only one party, and the Democrats lose by 25 percent or more time after time, that is, if they even run a candidate at all." And sometimes, it's the Democratic Party that is the spoiler.
"Hereness" is Max Sawicky's review of Molly Crabapple's new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country, the story of the Jewish Bund. Now as the Israeli fascist regime burns down the heritage of labor Zionism, Bundism is ripe for a comeback. Crabapple is one of the tribunes of this possibility. Another is the journal Jewish Currents. The most explicit activist incarnation is Jewish Voice for Peace. Crabapple happens to be a visual artist, but she is also quite a good writer." Great interview with Molly here on The Majority Report.
I honestly had no idea it had gotten so bad that airlines were now making you pay extra to sit with your traveling companion(s). I can still remember when they'd give you a free deck of cards if you were bored, and I could put my guitar under my seat, and my shoulder bag didn't even count.
"Google Chrome force-installs a 4-gigabyte AI model — how to get rid of it"
Video: Michael Parenti on "The Fake Philosophy Behind Capitalism".
When I hear people talking about lowering the voting age, I think of Max Frost and the Troopers singing "Fourteen or Fight".
04:36 GMT comment
