And another day of seeing what a fascist America looks like, election theory, sheriff’s deputies at drop boxes, a Russian ‘cleansing’ operation, SCOTUS could gut Medicaid, warmth in Europe, and the emissions gap between 1%s and the poor comes to a close:
“It’s why propaganda is so embraced by so many people… they want to believe that their country is good, not this evil regime that kills people for no reason, because who would want to acknowledge that?” — Matthew Chance
Deaths
US: 1,097,881
World: 6,601,734
Cases
US: 99,580,091
World: 636,866,858
It’s Critical to See what a Fascist America Looks Like, Before it's Too Late. That was 1954; this is 2022. We now know. We know how the poisonous hate that animates fascism seeps into a society because we saw it ourselves during the 4 years of the Trump administration. We’re watching it in Red states across the country as Maga Republicans replace honorable Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. We know how easily a government can be toppled and how close we came on January 6, 2021: if just five Republicans had not refused to go along with Trump we’d be in this fascist dystopia today. We can’t pretend we don’t know what’s happening and where it will lead if it’s not stopped. This election may well seal or determine the fate and future of democracy in the United States and, by extension, most of the rest of the world. Vote as if it’s your last chance to have your voice heard. Because it may well be.
A controversial election theory at the Supreme Court is tied to a disputed document. In their bid to promote a once-fringe legal theory that could upend election laws across the country, Republican state lawmakers in North Carolina have turned to a document whose reliability has long been under serious doubt. The North Carolina Republicans are claiming in a court filing for their U.S. Supreme Court case that the words of Charles Pinckney — a delegate from South Carolina who presented a plan of government during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 — help prove that the framers intended to give state lawmakers almost unfettered authority over how elections for Congress are run without any checks or balances from state courts or state constitutions. But 235 years after the historic convention was held in Philadelphia under a rule of secrecy, no undisputed record of what's known as the Pinckney Plan has been found, leaving exactly what he presented and how much influence it had on the drafting of the U.S. Constitution to be an enduring mystery of the country's founding.
Law enforcement ratchets up presence in voting process as some sheriffs push election conspiracy theories. Early voters dropping off ballots in Berks County, Pennsylvania, are confronted by a sight surprising for elections in the United States: A pair of uniformed sheriff’s deputies armed with guns and tasers guarding the ballot box...Having deputies at drop boxes “can obviously be very intimidating in the moment to those voters,” said Mary McCord, executive director of the nonpartisan Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center. But it also “sends this broader message that our elections aren’t secure, that there’s widespread fraud … and what’s really abhorrent about this is, it’s based on a lie, it’s based on disinformation.”
With Bolsonaro tamed in defeat, Brazil steps back from brink. In the run-up to Brazil’s presidential election, many feared a narrow result would be contested and spell the death knell for Latin America’s largest democracy. So far, however, the worst fears have been averted, despite a nail-biting victory for former leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, and ongoing protests by some of Bolsonaro’s supporters across the country. The conservative leader’s allies quickly recognized da Silva’s victory, the military stayed in the barracks and vigilant world leaders swooped in to offer support for da Silva and nip in the bud even the thought of anything resembling the Jan. 6 insurrection that overtook the U.S. Capitol. “All of Bolsonaro’s escape valves were shut off,” said Brian Winter, a longtime Brazil expert and vice president of the New York-based Council of the Americas. “He was prevailed upon from all sides not to contest the results and burn down the house on his way out.” — Trump’s goal, and now the GOP’s goal, is to burn down the house here in the US.
How Russian soldiers ran a ‘cleansing’ operation in Bucha. Yet there was a method to the violence. What happened that day in Bucha was what Russian soldiers on intercepted phone conversations called “zachistka” — cleansing. The Russians hunted people on lists prepared by their intelligence services and went door to door to identify potential threats. Those who didn’t pass this filtration, including volunteer fighters and civilians suspected of assisting Ukrainian troops, were tortured and executed, surveillance video, audio intercepts and interviews show.
The nightmarish Supreme Court case that could gut Medicaid, explained. On Tuesday, as millions of Americans cast their ballots in the 2022 midterms, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in what could be one of the most consequential health care cases in its history. The defendants in Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski are asking the justices to fundamentally rework the Medicaid program, which provides health care to over 76 million low-income Americans. Should the defendants prevail, these tens of millions of patients could effectively be stripped of legal safeguards intended to guarantee them a certain quality of care. In some cases, individual patients may lose their health coverage altogether due to Talevski…As a practical matter, that could render much of federal Medicaid law almost entirely unenforceable — including, potentially, the legal requirement that certain patients must receive coverage…Even when it discovers a violation, the primary remedy the federal government may use against a noncompliant state is to cut off some or all of its Medicaid funds. That means that if a state refuses to meet its legal obligation to low-income patients, the consequence will be that the state will receive less money to provide health care to those very same individuals — essentially punishing the patients for the state’s misconduct. And that’s assuming that the federal government even wants to enforce Medicaid laws. In a post-Talevski world, a Republican administration could potentially stop enforcing Medicaid law and there would be no recourse. — Vote for Democrats all down the ballot.
It's unseasonably warm in Europe this fall. Climate researchers are feeling the heat. The balmy conditions in western and central Europe follow a summer marked by intense heat waves, widespread drought and severe wildfires across the continent — adding to concerns about the consequences already being felt from climate change.
UK Study Reveals Huge Emissions Gap Between Top 1% and Poorest. The top 1 percent of earners in the UK are responsible for the same amount of carbon dioxide emissions in a single year as the bottom 10 percent emit over more than two decades, new data has shown. The findings highlight the enormous gaps between what have been termed “the polluting elite,” whose high-carbon lifestyles fuel the climate crisis, and the majority of people, even in developed countries, whose carbon footprints are far smaller.
Kyrie Irving suspended by Brooklyn Nets over ‘failure to disavow antisemitism’ after Twitter controversy. The Brooklyn Nets announced Thursday the suspension of Kyrie Irving, days after he tweeted a link to a documentary that has been criticized as antisemitic and then defended his decision to do so.
New calculator tackles inequality in missing persons stories. If you went missing, how much press would you be “worth”? The Columbia Journalism Review unveiled a tool on Thursday that calculates the number of stories your disappearance would net, based on demographics. It sounds morbid but the exercise is designed to call attention to “missing white women syndrome,” the tendency of news organizations to pay relatively little attention to missing people who don’t fit that category.
Miss Argentina and Miss Puerto Rico reveal they’ve tied the knot after secret two-year relationship. Mariana Varela (Miss Argentina) and Fabiola Valentín (Miss Puerto Rico) announced they tied the knot on Instagram with an adorable montage of the two of them, including their marriage proposal and wedding ceremony.
Their children went viral. Now they wish they could wipe them from the internet. Because social media is “so relatively new,” there’s little clinical research on the long-term effects of growing up online, according to Cooley, the clinical child psychologist. Older Gen Z, she said, is the “first generation that’s been raised more or less completely online,” but it was less common for their parents to post them on public social media with the frequency and intimacy that many parents do now.
“White Person in Foreign Peril”—The Movie Trope That Needs to End. Oh no! There’s a natural disaster/civil war/coup in an unnamed Latin American/African/Asian country. But what’s this? A white American/European is there too? Thus begins every movie in the genre I’m calling White Person in Foreign Peril. It’s a movie and television motif in which a disaster or conflict of some sort is happening in a foreign country, but instead of telling the story from the perspective of people who are actually from that country, the filmmaker focuses on a visitor to the country, typically a white person. And French director Claire Denis has done it again with her latest film, Stars at Noon.
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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