And another day of elections in Brazil, threats to US democracy, Republicans trying to stop you from voting, churches breaking the law and endorsing elections, FL bans gender-affirming care, and Elon turns Twitter into a hellscape of disinformation comes to a close:
“REMINDER: Inflation is temporary, losing your democracy is permanent.” -- Dean Obeidallah
“I need someone to explain to me why it’s legal for armed, masked men to threaten people who want to vote, but illegal for people to give voters water to drink. Explain it to me like I’m in kindergarten.” -- Andrea Junker
Deaths
US: 1,095,204
World: 6,593,685
Cases
US: 99,345,927
World: 635,450,458
Lula defeats Bolsonaro to again become Brazil’s president. Brazil’s electoral authority said Sunday that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the leftist Worker’s Party defeated incumbent Jair Bolsonaro to become the country’s next president. With 98.8% of the votes tallied in the runoff vote, da Silva had 50.8% and Bolsonaro 49.2%, and the election authority said da Silva’s victory was a mathematical certainty. -- Thought we’d start off with a little good news today. Of course, with the vote being as close as it was, I expect Brazil to have their own version of January 6 fairly soon.
“They defeated extremism and fascism in Brazil. Let’s do it in America.” -- George Takei
“It will be really terrible if Brazil rejects fascism two weeks before America embraces it.” -- John Pavlovitz
Pelosi attack shocks country on edge about democracy threats. An America that can already feel like it’s hurtling toward political disintegration has been jolted yet again, this time by the violent attack on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi less than two weeks before Election Day.
Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, tweeted out an unfounded conspiracy theory Sunday morning about the attack on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from a website that has a history of publishing false information...“There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” Musk wrote to Clinton, linking to a story published on a right-wing website called the Santa Monica Observer that questioned the circumstances of the attack on Pelosi, according to an archived version of the story. (The website was no longer accessible late Sunday morning.) -- The story that the trash that is Elon Musk shared claimed that Nancy Pelosi’s assassin was a prostitute and that Paul Pelosi was “drunk again” and the two had a dispute. Musk has since deleted his tweet.
MTG says Biden better resign before a Republican majority in the House starts their investigations of him in Jan 2023. — They are telling us exactly what they plan to do if they gain power. Are you listening?
In 5 key battlegrounds, most GOP state legislative nominees are election deniers, report finds. Experts warn that if enough are elected, Republican majorities in the state houses of these crucial battlegrounds could have the power to rewrite election laws. Nearly 6 in 10 Republican state legislature nominees in five key battleground states deny the results of the 2020 election, according to an analysis by a group tracking the races. Of those 450 Republican nominees — including incumbents running for re-election and nonincumbents — in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Minnesota, 58% of them have echoed former President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him, according to research shared exclusively with NBC News by The States Project, a left-leaning group that tracked state legislative races in battleground states.
Republicans Want to Stop You From Voting. Here’s How to Fight Back. Voter suppression is racism in action, and the GOP is counting on it to win in November. Supposedly, these rules are to prevent voter fraud, but countless studies have shown that there is no significant voter fraud in America. Rather, from its origins in 19th Century Jim Crow laws to the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, “voter fraud” is a lie told for ulterior motives. What motives? Well, that’s where the “certain people” part comes in. Republican voting restrictions just so happen to disproportionately impact people who are Black or Brown, young, poor, queer, or marginalized – in other words, people who just so happen to favor Democrats and oppose nationalistic, white-male-dominated, Christian-fundamentalist-majority party that doles out tax cuts to the ultra-rich and cuts services for everyone else. It really is that simple. — Yes. It really is that simple. Stop voting for Republicans. Unless of course you are a racist, in which case then own up to it.
Churches are breaking the law and endorsing in elections, experts say. The IRS looks the other way. For nearly 70 years, federal law has barred churches from directly involving themselves in political campaigns, but the IRS has largely abdicated its enforcement responsibilities as churches have become more brazen about publicly backing candidates. Burden’s sermon is among those at 18 churches identified by the news organizations over the past two years that appeared to violate the Johnson Amendment, a measure named after its author, former President Lyndon B. Johnson. Some pastors have gone so far as to paint candidates they oppose as demonic. At one point, churches fretted over losing their tax-exempt status for even unintentional missteps. But the IRS has largely abdicated its enforcement responsibilities as churches have become more brazen. In fact, the number of apparent violations found by ProPublica and the Tribune, and confirmed by three nonprofit tax law experts, are greater than the total number of churches the federal agency has investigated for intervening in political campaigns over the past decade, according to records obtained by the news organizations...The Johnson Amendment does not prohibit churches from inviting political speakers or discussing positions that may seem partisan nor does it restrict voters from making faith-based decisions on who should represent them. But because donations to churches are tax-deductible and because churches don’t have to file financial disclosures with the IRS, without such a rule donors seeking to influence elections could go undetected, said Andrew Seidel, vice president of strategic communications for the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State. -- Organized religion is such a con game.
Florida medical board votes to ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors. The Florida Board of Medicine voted to start drafting a rule that will ban puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries for trans youths under 18. -- Republicans are literally trying to kill trans youth.
Colleges dabble in real estate to help US staff afford housing. The lack of affordable housing is threatening school administrators' ability to attract and hire employees. So now the University of Vermont and a number of schools across the country are tackling the housing crunch head-on with a new strategy: building homes targeting faculty and staff. — Housing is a human right.
S. Korea in shock, grief as 153 die in Halloween crowd surge. Concerned relatives raced to hospitals in search of their loved ones Sunday as South Korea mourned the deaths of more than 150 people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who got trapped and crushed after a huge Halloween party crowd surged into a narrow alley in a nightlife district in Seoul.
Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification. And if the employees building it don’t meet their deadline, they’ll be fired by Elon Musk. The directive is to change Twitter Blue, the company’s optional, $4.99 a month subscription that unlocks additional features, into a more expensive subscription that also verifies users, according to people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence seen by The Verge. Twitter is currently planning to charge $19.99 for the new Twitter Blue subscription. Under the current plan, verified users would have 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue checkmark. Employees working on the project were told on Sunday that they need to meet a deadline of November 7th to launch the feature or they will be fired.
Powerball grand prize climbs to $1B without a jackpot winner. The Powerball jackpot keeps getting larger because players keep losing. It happened again Saturday night as no one matched all six numbers and won the estimated $825 million grand prize. That means the next drawing Monday night will be for a massive $1 billion, according to a statement by Powerball.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
No comments:
Post a Comment