– Jeffrey, Becky, Joshua, Deva, Nathaniel, Nichole and Andrew
“Politics does not reflect majorities, it builds them. “
Here’s one thing you can surely count on: post-election interpretations of what happened will be just as ridiculous as pre-election predictions of what will happen (myself included). So, with this caveat. Here’s what happened and what it means. . .
I don’t think any candidate I’ve actively supported ever got elected, or most likely are, so all the satisfaction of Election Day for me comes from the anguish of those who lost. This year’s big losers: bipartisan fear of the Crime Caucus, “Dr. Oz,” Phil Knight, AIPAC (which spent $4 million on a failed effort to defeat Summer Lee), and media pundits, who were so eager to blame their own “wake-up” ploy for decimating the Democrats.
However, this election will turn out to be that black Americans have already noticed and experienced: either a minimal victory for liberals who will end up betraying almost all their promises or a defeat of reactionaries who will point directly to the right, well—the being and life of all minorities.
When you realize that we live in a country that is more angry with the homeless than the homeless, the effects of the midterm elections will make much more sense. (Just a note: A recent University of Chicago study found that 53% of other people living in homeless shelters and 40% of homeless people were employed. )
The worst thing about the election is that it was not enough for one party or another party to repudiate one or the other party to force them to change course: the GOPs towards the authoritarianism of the “alpha male” and the democrats towards neoliberalism. This leaves us stuck with the same two terrible politicians running into oblivion.
The fact that Democrats are relieved by the narrowness of their defeat and Republicans outraged by the weakness of their victory attests to the other psychologies of the two parties. One lives in fear, doubting (rightly) one’s own beliefs. The other angry because not everyone bends to his will.
Democrats lost Florida. Es a red state, more at stake. There is no longer any political explanation for flattering right-wing Cuban and Venezuelan exiles.
Of course, a blue wave is coming to Florida, faster than later. . .
The thing about Joe Manchin is that you know exactly who and what he represents (I object to that). It does not hide its policy. And he sticks to it no matter what kind of tension he’s under. Are there any Democrats you can communicate about, including on life-and-death issues like guns, physical care, or climate change?
Think of elections this way: Whoever wins, we will get many other harmful people off the streets and bring them to Congress with sentences of two to six years.
Beto defeated in Texas, but contrary to the issue of a widespread Hispanic conversion in MAGA, he kept his word along the Rio Grande corridor. What Beto didn’t do, according to his native friends in Texas, was spend time courting the state’s wonderful Native American vote. , to its inevitable demise.
Brazil had its electoral effects in a matter of hours. Even the votes of the Yanomami tribal lands came before those of Maricopa County. . . But then they are a complex civilization.
When you give other people the ability to vote directly on issues (on guns, abortion, drugs, debt, physical care, police), they make rational, humane, and even radical decisions—the kind of decisions their representatives say are politically impossible.
The crime wave and the wave turned out to be the same wave. . .
+ The choice of a company rebukes the crime wave hysteria that much of the press believed would lead to a red tsunami. Top of the list is the welcome defeat of belligerent Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who tolerated police gangs within his department. He himself is now under investigation for breaching the crusade’s financial legislation by bashing his parliamentarians over his contributions to the crusade. Then there’s the welcome defeat of crime lord Lee Zeldin as governor of New York, though the cowardly Democrat Kathy Hochul has tried to make Zeldin right on issues like bail reform and has promised to crack down on “subway crime. ” ” in the city. In Harris County, Texas (Greater Houston), a recent bail deal that freed tens of thousands of others from prison came under fire (even as crime in the city had dropped), Lina Hidalgo, judge’s sentence . county attacked by tough crime mob, re-elected. Democrats now have a 4-1 majority on the Commissioners Court and the top Democratic justices have retained their seats. Also in Texas, Kelly Higgins, a reform-minded Democrat, was elected district attorney in Hays County, a booming suburb of Austin. In Hennepin County, Minnesota (Greater Minneapolis/St. Paul), a career public defender beat a tough opponent by more than 10 points, even in the wake of the expected backlash over the George Floyd protests.
The promise of (somewhat modest) student debt relief turned out to have worked.
Hershel Walker on student loan forgiveness: “They were given the cash and they were there to buy video games, they went on vacation, gambled, they drank alcohol. “
I hope you’ve set aside some of this to pay for some abortions. . .
Rewrite?
– Daily call (@DailyCaller) October 31, 2022
Speaking of Rogan, transphobic Matt Walsh said this week on his Rogan screen that “millions” of other trans people use puberty blockers. The actual number is less than a thousand.
Daniel Horowitz: “Many other people say Republicans underperformed last night, yet no party that tried to violently overthrow the government has done so well midterm since the Civil War. “
Consider the fact that Diego Morales, a former Pence staffer connected to Qanon who called the 2020 election a “scam,” is now Indiana’s secretary of state and will oversee long-term elections in the land of the Hoosiers.
Tulsi Gabbard has the Lara Logan of former Democratic presidential candidates. . .
– Tulsi Gabbard ? (@TulsiGabbard) November 6, 2022
Tulsi is right. It’s hard to be more “awake” than that damn Chuck Grassley: “I think not having a wealth tax recognizes other people who invest, as opposed to those who spend every penny they have, whether it’s on alcohol or women or movies.
What does it mean for Trump to run as an independent just to screw DeSantis and Rupert?
Tim Ryan, the dream candidate for Blue Dog Democrats: an unconscious Chinese hawk, tough on crime, who spewed an avalanche of white working-class rhetoric backed by polls. office, JD Vance, a funder who campaigns like an idiot who makes a song from Donald Trump’s fake book.
The bad news for Democrats is that the red wave makes it more likely that Biden will be re-elected, not that PeteBot or Kamala Chameleon would have been an improvement.
As with Bill Clinton, a narrowly divided Congress is the political ecosystem Biden wants. More than ever it is in his hands and his veto pen. He can make deals with Republicans on rights, such as Medicare and Social Security, and then blame them for the failure of his crusade promises.
Claud Cockburn: “Never anything until it’s been officially denied. “
Jeff Sharlet: I’m disgusted by the way political elites are temporarily rallying around a new CW that DeSantis, who introduced a self-defense force under the explicitly white supremacist signal of a white alligator, and the “election police,” and hijacked a cargo of family airplanes—is a return to normalcy.
A few weeks after Sen. Josh Hawley declared the Republican Party the new “party of the establishment,” Democrats won the majority of Americans with incomes below $50,000, while Republicans won a majority with incomes of $100,000 or more.
Who will break Citibank Senator Chuck Schumer?
The Democratic Party was once formed, at least in part, through social movements, namely hard work and civil rights. Now it is formed through the movement of money: Does Raytheon want more war in Ukraine?Does Goldman Sachs want a bailout? According to Cargill, who will provide the largest agricultural subsidies?
If you allow other people to vote for Medicare for All, is there any doubt that it would pass en masse. . . ?
– Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) November 9, 2022
A healthy outcome of New York’s disastrous electoral comebacks is that it will likely serve as the morning-after pill in the face of the birth of an Eric Adams presidential campaign.
Slavery was in the survey in five states. Vermont, Tennessee, Alabama and Oregon voted to remove slavery and involuntary servitude from their constitutions. defeated with 60. 9% of the vote.
In his e-book What’s Wrong with Kansas?Thomas Frank described Johnson County as one of the “most intensely Republican places in the country. “He has now been elected as a Democrat in the last 3 elections, with margins ranging from 5% to 15% in the last 4 years.
And it’s not just Kansas, which also re-elected its Democratic governor. Missouri legalized marijuana, Nebraska passed a $15 minimum wage, while Montana and Kentucky rejected the abortion ban.
In Illinois, the passage of Amendment 1 marks the first time the electorate has codified collective bargaining through voting, and Illinois would also be the first state to constitutionally prohibit the “right to work. “
New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, on the midterm message: “Fix politics later, madness now. “
Neither do they.
After going to the polls in Vermont, my old Michael Colby wrote, “Hey, I think there would be Marxists on the ballot. “
Speaking of which. . .
Whichever way you interpret Kherson’s Russian withdrawal, it presents an undeniable opening for a diplomatic end to the war before the onset of winter (nuclear or seasonal). Will they prosecute it?
This is one of the strangest wars ever fought. . .
– MilitaryLand. net (@Militarylandnet) November 6, 2022
In 1998, Bernie Sanders called police officers opposing antiwar activists protesting their vote for Clinton’s war war on Serbia to the street at his workplace in Burlington. Now he is defaming a former supporter and director of political outreach, Nick Brana, for being paid by someone for criticizing his stance on Ukraine.
In Pennsylvania, another 1100 people are serving life sentences under the state’s Criminal Homicide Act, which states that a user can be sentenced to mandatory life in prison without parole when they are involved in a crime resulting in death, even if they failed to invoke cause or intent. kill. Nearly 70 percent of those serving such sentences are black, in a state where blacks make up only 12 percent of the population.
Police activity records show the San Francisco Police Department engaged in a planned slowdown of construction under the leadership of reformist District Attorney Chesa Boudin, which canceled almost without delay after Boudin’s ouster and Brooke Jenkins took office.
The increase in police in the New York City subway has failed to decrease crime, but it has led to more arrests for small-scale violations, especially of other people of color. This outcome is not only predictable, but the point.
Jody Greene has been re-elected sheriff in Columbus County, North Carolina, two weeks after resigning following the leak of an audio in which he called his own deputies “black bastards. “
It turns out that Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post presented two false stories to crime victims if they said they were Democrats and now voted for Republican Lee Zeldin.
Sister Helen Prejean: “Toughness on crime” policies are not effective. If locking up as many other people as possible were the solution, then the United States would be the safest position in the world. Prevention, accountability, and rehabilitation provide security where retaliation and overpunishment have failed.
In New York City, police officers sprayed a 9-year-old woman in the eyes because she didn’t need to get into a police car. As the woman yelled, “Please don’t do this to me,” the police officer snaps. You did it to yourself, honey. “
In 1994, two brothers were convicted of rape in Leeds, Alabama (near Birmingham) and sentenced to 20 years in prison, although there is no physical evidence linking them to the crime. The brothers, Frank Meadows and Quentin Cook, served their full sentence. sentences, saying they were innocent. Thirty years later, a long-buried police report, which never went to trial or passed to the police, has resurfaced, confirming the protests. The hair samples in the report didn’t fit either Meadows or Cook. The two brothers, both black, were officially exonerated this week.
However, the speaker of the House waiting for Kevin McCarthy to take the war on nuclear drugs with a “frontal attack on China”. . .
– Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 7, 2022
Not to be outdone, Trump, who has claimed that the average drug dealer kills at least 500 Americans in his career, has called for the death penalty for drug dealers and human traffickers in two-hour trials, culminating in the executioner’s bullet being sent to families. .
So MSDNC killed another black correspondent. This time, they terminated the Tiffany Cross contract, a common target of Tucker Carlson’s racist evil. people I believe Boko Haram runs this network. ” (H/t Tom Winter).
Secrets to a long life: eating cheese frequently, acting like a monkey (having a national health care program). . .
Tesla was forced to recall 40,000 U. S. cars due to a possible loss of technical assistance.
Manu Saadia: “Now Twitter is like a Tesla on autopilot that takes advantage of random pedestrians. “
Eve6: “Blue checks mean you’re a public figure or a mild to very boring journalist. Within a week, this will mean that you do not comply with the legislation on the age of consent and that you are launching a crypto scam.
CEOs shouldn’t let investors see how self-destructive morons they are in real time. Let them find out from the fine print of quarterly reports.
I don’t see running off Twitter when you can see one of the most gruesome people in the world being torn apart day after day in his own space, in front of the other people he aspires to admire. This is something from our Greek Myth – like Pentheus torn at the end of the Bacchae.
– Ros Atkins (@BBCRosAtkins) November 10, 2022
Erin Bartram: “I’m surprised that so many academics have left Twitter so quickly. They are so professional that they continue thankfully as the establishment collapses around them.
The Twitter prisoner’s dilemma: Would you pay $8 and ask 7 other people to read your tweets or download them for free and ask five other people to read your tweets, and then blame shadow ban’s algorithms for the lack of “global engagement”?
In less than a week, Twitter has undone decades of reputational washing in the PR industry for some of the most evil corporations on the planet. Moved, Mr. Musk!
Now, if Elon is simply driven to launch a hostile takeover bid on Spotify!
Chomsky has long argued that if you need transparent information, you’ll more likely place it in the business press than in the NYT or the Washington Post, which will inevitably put their bias on it.
Julian Lemos, a Brazilian lawmaker and former coordinator of Jair Bolsonaro’s crusade, claims Bolsonaro is physically abusing his wife Michelle. It should be noted that during his term, Bolsonaro reduced by 90% the amount allocated to the fight against violence against women in Brazil.
Meanwhile, two of Bolsonaro’s sons, Flávio (senator) and Eduardo (congressman), visited the Italian embassy in Brasilia this week, in an effort to accelerate their programs for Italian citizenship. . .
A study published in the Journal of Peace Psychology found that other people living in countries with higher conflict intensity tend to be more vulnerable to conspiracy ideals like COVID-19. »
If politicians are going to do something for us, they can at least serve as elements of public ridicule. In this role, Ted Cruz rarely disappoints.
Cruz on Fox: “Why did the Democrats do more than expected?For the past two years, they have been governing as liberals. They like crazy lefties. Do you know what he did? This excited his base. This excited an organization of young voters.
Myra Brown, plaintiff in one of the right-wing lawsuits to end Biden’s modest student loan cancellation plan, has $47,996 of her $48,000 PPP loan written off through the federal government. Borrowers
Is Bari Weiss in the case?
– Jeffrey Sachs (@JeffreyASachs) November 6, 2022
This is the University of Chicago. They made it worse. See: Chile.
At least thirteen bloodhounds have been killed in Mexico this year. This is more than in any other country except war-torn Ukraine. Our friend Laila al-Arian and her colleagues at Al Jazeera explain why in this documentary “Silenced”:
In the most recent crypto scam, FTX CEO Bankman-Fried, celebrated as a genius through Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, looted more than a portion of the cash his customers had deposited on his cryptocurrency exchange to fund his hedge fund, in a $10 billion loss!After the collapse, Bankman-Fried called it “bad judgment. “
Patrick Thewell, after being arrested for throwing 4 eggs at Charles Windsor and his wife Camilla during their stopover in York: “I stand with all the victims of slavery, colonialism and imperialism. . . These eggs are the only justice that those other people will have to look at. . . Ror all the other people who died for that guy to only wear a crown.
As weather activists made their way to the Egyptian police state, many of them downloaded the official mobile app for COP27. The app requires a variety of non-public information, adding passport numbers and emails. It also appears to include spyware that protects security. Experts say it poses a “credible” risk to protesters.
The fault, dear Brutus, is in the stars, but in the stars and stripes. . .
– Science is strategic (@scienceisstrat1) November 8, 2022
The Pentagon is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide on the planet. Globally, the military accounts for 5. 5 percent of total carbon emissions, according to a new study from Scientists for Global Responsibility, and that’s not counting direct emissions during the war.
Missing words from Rishi Sunak’s COP27 speech (sponsored through Coca-Cola). . .
Sunak is in bad taste, but his Labour counterpart is arguably even worse. This week, Keir Starmer renewed his calls for longer criminal sentences for activists protesting catastrophic climate change.
Carbon dioxide (CO₂) averaged 416 ppm in October 2022. In 2012, October averaged 391 ppm.
Sorry. Electric cars may not save the planet. The entire road transport formula contributes less than 12% of greenhouse fuel emissions. Also, Teslas are not “green. ” You still have to drive 13,500 miles to break even with a Corolla: 78,000 miles if the carrying force comes from coal.
What’s more, EV costs are going in that direction: The 2023 Kia EV6 will start at $49,795, adding a destination payment of $1,295, more than $7,000 more than the 2022 model.
In Africa, the amount of land that will be subject to oil and fuel growth is expected to quadruple in the coming years, according to a report by the Rainforest Foundation, which threatens to destroy up to a third of the remaining rainforest in the Congo Basin. .
According to the Financial Times, Apple’s profits in China have doubled over the past two years to $31. 2 billion, making it China’s tech company, surpassing the combined revenues of Tencent and Alibaba, China’s two tech companies.
A new United Nations report says carbon dioxide emissions from structures have reached record levels, pushing the sector to decarbonise by 2050: the report found that structure and sector accounted for 34% of all energy demand and accounted for 37% of energy. and process-related CO2 emissions last year.
On November 5, the Rockefeller Center ice skating rink in Manhattan opened. That day, the temperature in New York reached F.
The Democrats’ new heroine, Liz Cheney, presented a bill that would not only remove grizzly bears from the endangered species list, but also ban public comment and prevent any judicial review of the decision.
John Horning of WildEarth Guardians on filing a lawsuit to prevent wolf hunting and capture in Montana: “Right now in Montana, it’s legal for a trophy hunter to stand 10 feet outside Yellowstone National Park, throw burgers on the ground as bait to lure #loups out of the park, and then melt them down.
Isaiah 20:3-4, perhaps?” He will go barefoot and barefoot, with his buttocks uncovered. “
Is this how Isaiah did it?
– Right-wing surveillance (@RightWingWatch) November 4, 2022
Or perhaps it is also this prophecy of Isaiah (28:8), which turns out to refer to the dining rooms of Mar-a-Lago: “For all tables are covered with filthy vomit without leaving a clean post. “
Nick Estes: “What do you call nine unelected public servants if indigenous nations have the right to be families and protect their children?”
Here’s a pattern of the kind of judicial bigotry Nick talks about, from this week’s pleadings in a challenge to India’s child welfare law, which prioritizes placing Native American youth in foster or adoption homes with parents, other tribal members or other indigenous people. households. In his mocking way, Alito reaffirms the doctrine of discovery, announcing that the indigenous peoples of the continent were savages at war who benefited from the civilizing hand of conquest and colonization.
The so-called “primitive” cultures of North America left Mesa Verde, Palenque, Keet Seel, Betatakin, Tikal, Chaco, Machu Picchu, Chelly Canyon. . . and we left Storage Locker, Dollar General, KFC. . .
— Tom Wheeler (@TomWhee50376032) November 7, 2022
Q. What is your favorite Led Zeppelin song?
A. This one is written through Willie Dixon.
Billie Holiday: “If I’m going to sing like everyone else, then I don’t want to sing at all. “
“Wet fill”? Are they called sauces now? It sounds like the call of the space band from one of the strip clubs on 82nd Street.
According to Wikipedia access on Randolph Churchill, Winston’s son read to his wife, Pamela Digby (later Harriman) passages of Edward Gibbon’s decline and the fall of the Roman Empire on their wedding night. The access notes ironically: “Despite this, she controlled becoming pregnant in the spring of 1940. “Perhaps she knew Latin, where Gibbon secreted the hottest parts.
In one of his books, Edward Abbey tells an anecdote about Gibbon introducing the last volume of The Decline and Fall to his patron, Baron Eliot, who replies, “Doodle, doodle, huh, Mr. Gibbon?”
For Christmas one year, Cockburn gave me a copy of the 3 volumes of The Decline and Fall filled with fleshy illustrations condensed into a single volume of 10 books. The handwriting is so small that even the old magnifying glass of the Compact OED makes the words readable. However, it looks impressive on the shelf. . .
Me to shoot weapons or spread bread. . .
How international relations make no sense
“In the past, war was perceived as a soldier’s affair, foreign relations as a diplomat’s affair. But now that war undoubtedly has a general and undoubted character, the loose game of kings has the forced and fratricidal affair of the people, and diplomatic codes of honor between countries have collapsed. Peace is no longer serious; Only war is serious. Every man and every country is friend or foe, and the concept of enmity is mechanical, great and without genuine passion. When virtually all negotiations aimed at a nonviolent settlement are most likely perceived as “appeasement” or even betrayal, the active role of the diplomat loses all meaning; Since relations between countries are only a prelude to war, an interlude between wars, and in such a context, the diplomat is replaced by the warlord. (C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite)