And another day of dismantling democracy, dying younger in red states, the ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, US economy grows, the US should be a ‘Christian nation,’ complicated feelings about parents, and Musk officially takes over Twitter comes to a close:
“On the other hand, I think the richest person on earth, who has recently expressed affinity for the hard right, taking over the most politically influential website in the world is probably very bad news.” -- Max Berger
“Astounding number of white people who think they would have been a hero of the past while being a villain in the present.” — saira rao
“What that says to me is that democracy is dying.” — Dale Schultz, who served as a Republican in the (WI) state senate from 1991 to 2015, including as majority leader.
Deaths
US: 1,094,596
World: 6,589,402
Cases
US: 99,281,954
World: 634,610,831
How Wisconsin Became the GOP’s Laboratory for Dismantling Democracy. Republicans are trying to make state politics voter-proof. If they prevail, the next coup attempt may well succeed. “What we’ve seen over and over is that Republicans use Wisconsin as a Petri dish, as a testing ground, for anti-democracy innovations that they then export nationwide.”…That nightmare scenario, which Trump haphazardly tried to pull off in 2020, is now dangerously close to becoming a reality. Wisconsin Republicans are laying the groundwork to potentially overthrow the election in 2024 through more sophisticated and ostensibly legal means. “If we’re talking about things that are anti-democratic and concerns about the integrity of our elections,” says state Rep. Greta Neubauer, the Democratic leader in the assembly, “the threat that the legislature would decide who won the presidency rather than the voters should be at the top of the list.”…The lame-duck session showed how much power the legislature could exercise without public support—the very type of power grab Republicans are now hoping to replicate across the country. In hindsight, the soft coup in Wisconsin seems like a practice run for the full-on coup attempted by Trump in 2020. Evers sees the lame-duck session as a precursor to January 6 and says “there hasn’t been a peaceful transition of power” in Wisconsin since 2018…“Thus far, we have seen Republicans make no effort to discuss or consider overturning the abortion ban or even modifying it,” says Neubauer, the assembly minority leader. “This is not what would happen if we had a fair map. Because Republicans would know that they couldn’t get away with holding this position.” The GOP’s steadfast support for the abortion ban could very well cost Republican candidates in Wisconsin votes in close races this year, but Republicans in the legislature worry far more about primary challenges from the right than a general election defeat because of the deep red districts they represent due to gerrymandering. In an assembly with 99 members, only six races are truly competitive, according to Marquette’s Johnson. — And this is why the GOP does what it does. They know they can do whatever they want, regardless of public opinion, because they know they cannot lose the next election. They have rigged the maps in their favor, and we will all suffer because of it.
More Americans die younger in states with conservative policies, study finds. The United States has a working-age mortality problem: Americans die younger than people in most other high-income countries. While many blame drug overdoses, rising suicide rates and bad health habits, a new study suggests policymakers may play a bigger role than previously thought. Researchers looked at policies relating to criminal justice, marijuana, the environment, gun safety, health and welfare, private labor, economic taxes, and tobacco taxes, and scored them on a 0-to-1 continuum, where the maximum conservative score is zero and the maximum liberal score is one. They merged that information with mortality data spanning from 1999 to 2019, and found liberal policies were associated with lower deaths among people aged 25 to 64, according to the study published Wednesday in PLOS ONE. The analysis revealed changing state policies to fully liberal could have saved more than 171,000 lives in 2019, while changing them to fully conservative may have cost over 217,000 lives…Woolf said the policies could be split into two camps: One, lower working-age mortality was associated with policies that invested more in human capital, focused on family investments, and promoted economic opportunity in an equitable way. Two, higher working-age mortality was associated with policies that put more emphasis on “helping the private sector to thrive in hopes that the economic gains would trickle down to those who need more assistance,” he said. "State policy matters," Gaskin said. “We always get the promise from conservative states that we’re going to cut your taxes and regulation and make the environment better for business, and it comes with a cost."
World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies. The climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe. Collective action is needed by the world’s nations more now than at any point since the second world war to avoid climate tipping points, Prof Johan Rockström said, but geopolitical tensions are at a high. He said the world was coming “very, very close to irreversible changes … time is really running out very, very fast”. Emissions must fall by about half by 2030 to meet the internationally agreed target of 1.5C of heating but are still rising, the reports showed – at a time when oil giants are making astronomical amounts of money. -- Those profits won’t mean shit if the planet can’t sustain life. Such shortsighted greed.
Shell announces $4 billion share buyback as profits double. Shell will buy back $4 billion worth of shares and increase its dividend by 15% after posting another gigantic quarterly profit thanks to strong oil and gas prices. — And yet MAGA supporters blame Biden for high gas prices.
The COVID symptoms you get depend on how many vaccine jabs you’ve had, major study says. In an update to the ongoing Zoe Health Study, which has collected data from almost 5 million participants since 2020, researchers said they had identified symptoms that had emerged in recent weeks, noting that they appeared to differ depending on vaccination status.
U.S. economy returned to growth last quarter, expanding 2.6 percent. Thursday’s estimate from the Commerce Department showed that the nation’s gross domestic product — the broadest gauge of economic output — grew in the third quarter after having shrunk in the first half of 2022. Stronger exports and steady consumer spending, backed by a healthy job market, helped restore growth to the world’s biggest economy.
GOP’s Cheney endorses Michigan Democrat Slotkin in a first. Republican Rep. Liz Cheney on Thursday endorsed and plans to campaign for Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, the first time that the critic of former President Donald Trump, who lost her GOP primary, has crossed party lines to formally support a Democrat.
University of Florida to enforce protest ban after anti-Sasse rally. The University of Florida is going to start enforcing a decades-old prohibition against indoor protests following a raucous demonstration earlier this month against the selection of U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse as a finalist for the school president’s job. Sasse, a Republican in his second Senate term, has drawn criticism from some at the school for his opposition to same-sex marriage.
45% of Americans Say U.S. Should Be a ‘Christian Nation’. But they hold differing opinions about what that phrase means, and two-thirds of U.S. adults say churches should keep out of politics. This raises the question: What do people mean when they say the U.S. should be a “Christian nation”? While some people who say the U.S. should be a Christian nation define the concept as one where a nation’s laws are based on Christian tenets and the nation’s leaders are Christian, it is much more common for people in this category to see a Christian nation as one where people are more broadly guided by Christian values or a belief in God, even if its laws are not explicitly Christian and its leaders can have a variety of faiths or no faith at all. Some people who say the U.S. should be a Christian nation are thinking about the religious makeup of the population; to them, a Christian nation is a country where most people are Christians. Others are simply envisioning a place where people treat each other well and have good morals. — Christianity is neither necessary nor sufficient to be a good person.
Elon Musk has officially taken control of Twitter after finalising a $44bn deal to buy the social media network. Musk’s interest in the platform has become a lightning rod for the debate around free speech in the digital age, with critics expressing fears his control of the platform could mean open slather for hate speech and misinformation. Musk, who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist”, has criticised Twitter’s moderation policies and objected to censorship that goes beyond the requirements of the law.
Musk doesn’t seek a “free-for-all hellscape” for Twitter. Elon Musk is telling Twitter advertisers he is buying the platform to “help humanity” and doesn’t want it to become a “free-for-all hellscape” where anything can be said with no consequences. The message to advertisers posted Thursday on Twitter came a day before Musk’s deadline for closing his $44 billion deal to buy the social-media company and take it private.
Mortgage rates top 7% for the first time since 2002. Mortgage rates have risen almost every week since late August and more than doubled since the beginning of the year.
WHO: Tuberculosis cases rise for the first time in years. The number of people infected with tuberculosis, including the kind resistant to drugs, rose globally for the first time in years, according to a report Thursday by the World Health Organization. The U.N. health agency said more than 10 million people worldwide were sickened by tuberculosis in 2021, a 4.5% rise from the year before. About 1.6 million people died, it said. WHO said about 450,000 cases involved people infected with drug-resistant TB, 3% more than in 2020.
"I'm Expected To Take Care Of Them When They Didn't Take Care Of Me": Gen X'ers Are Having Complicated Feelings About Their Parents, And It's Sadly Relatable. "Now our parents are older and they need us, and many of us are struggling because we were not taken care of. But now we are expected to take care of [them], and that's creating a lot of issues."…She continued, "This wasn’t everyone’s experience, but it was a lot of people’s experience. Also, corporal punishment was still the main way kids were disciplined, and many were abused because their parents thought that was the best way to get kids in line. 'Gentle parenting' was not heard of. Gen X are now parents themselves and have remarked to me that they used to give their parents excuses but now realize 'it wouldn’t have been that hard' to show up for us the way we show up for our kids." She said that these clients tend to come to her because they are experiencing exhaustion, guilt, frustration, anger, and resentment.
Hawaii’s Big Island gets warning as huge volcano rumbles. Hawaii officials are warning residents of the Big Island that the world’s largest active volcano, Mauna Loa, is sending signals that it may erupt. Scientists say an eruption isn’t imminent, but they are on alert because of a recent spike in earthquakes at the volcano’s summit. Experts say it would take just a few hours for lava to reach homes closest to vents on the volcano, which last erupted in 1984.
Space rock slams into Mars, forming a crater that revealed chunks of ice. The space rock also revealed boulder-size ice chunks when it slammed into Mars. They were found buried closer to the warm Martian equator than any ice that has ever been detected on the planet.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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