Thanks, @OpenStars and @Vodulas

@UngodlyAudrey

We don’t know each other and I don’t know how to help you and others in a similar situation, but I’ve just read this:

Sarah McBride makes history as first transgender member of Congress

Maybe there is also a faint spark of hope today.

Just a question: Where can you see the voter turn out rate in this and possibly past elections? I can’t find that.

Oregon governor Tina Kotek ready to deploy National Guard if needed to combat election violence - (archived)

In an email to the Capital Chronicle, spokesperson Roxy Mayer said any voter intimidation or criminal acts aimed at undermining the election would not be tolerated and that the governor’s office is closely monitoring the situation, working with local, state and federal agencies to ensure Oregonians can safely vote.

Yeah, but is it worthwhile?

Yeah, that’s not new, but I feel there are still many who are unaware, although I don’t understand why.

Exploiting Meta’s Weaknesses, Deceptive Political Ads Thrived on Facebook and Instagram in Run-Up to Election

• Deceptive Political Ads: Eight deceptive advertising networks have placed over 160,000 election and social issues ads across more than 340 Facebook pages in English and Spanish.
• Harmed Users: Some of the people who clicked on ads were unwittingly signed up for monthly credit card charges or lost health coverage, among other consequences.
• Spotty Enforcement: Meta removed some ads after first approving them, but it failed to catch others with similar or identical content — or to stop networks from launching new pages and ads.

I feel this is too simplistic. There are apparently parallels to Nazi Germany’s ideology, and the Nazis represent without doubt one of the worst regimes in human history. But they didn’t ‘invent’ this. Their racism, their hatred, and their view on women whose place is ‘in the family’ has been here for much longer, and it is by far not limited to the ‘Western’ world (in China, officials go from door to door urging women to become pregnant, just to name an example, and a recent UN study found that one in eight women and girls alive today experienced rape or sexual assault before they are 18 years old).

One thing I’m missing in this discussion is the role of men in the family. No one appears to talk about that, at least not publicly. (Just stumbled upon this 1 min video.)

But that’s just my opinion. Also, I’m not a historian or sociologist, so take this with a pinch of salt.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell (video, 8 min)

"The issue of the day on the campaign trail was the stupidest person who has ever run for president, telling American women… what he is going to do to them, whether they like it or not.”

A scholar from Berkely has been investigating the possible impact of Project 2025 and Trump’s pissible second term on the environment:

The plan contains an extensive description of how they would constrain the reach and breadth of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by limiting enforcement and shifting its focus to what we sometimes call compliance assistance. In this role, the EPA would work directly with companies to try to help them reduce their environmental impact, but would move away from enforcement. This model has been tried federally under some Republican administrations and the absence of enforcement has repeatedly resulted in significant environmental degradation.

The effort to break up [NOAA] is part of a strategy of hear no evil, see no evil: If you don’t report on climate change, then perhaps it doesn’t exist.

It’s a good Q&A with Ken Alex, Director of Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE).

Here’s the whole story if I’m not mistaken:

Hell is Not Hot Enough for Ken Paxton - (December 2023)

Yeah, they say inflation is high in the U.S. But wait until a Trump administration has deported all the farm workers …

What kind of people are they? I cannot even think something like that, this is not in head.

Another good Q&A with Robinson (2023):

“Transition to democracy is not easy”

We emphasize two things: first, people need a strong state that regulates society, collects taxes, provides people with goods, and maintains order. But the state should be forced to work for the benefit of society. Therefore, political power should be distributed among the population. Thus, if one of these two things fails, extractive political institutions emerge in society. Here we focus on: the political foundations of inclusive economic institutions and how inclusive economic institutions can lead to prosperity.

(Emphasis mine.)

We are about to watch the collapse of journalism in real time.

I respectfully disagree.

Conventional media may collapse, but we see very good media outlets doing a great job - ProPublica, 404media, Bellingcat, OCCRP, many local andvregional outlets, … It could turn out to be a good sign if and when the media industry gains a more decentralized structure (the Fediverse is of great support here).

So don’t subscribe to the large media papers and periodicals, support some independent smaller outlets that you like to read.

You need to read this in context. They want the office to help Trump “steamroll the kind of internal opposition he faced in his first term.”

This office is not to make the president’s moves ‘legally sound’ but rather to the opposite. They want to defund the agencies (it isn’t “legally sound” to “traumatize” EPA and other officials), to erase any reference to climate change so that “our energy companies” can work, and many other things.

Just read Project 2025: https://www.25and.me

Ian Bassin, a democracy expert, calls these moves “anticipatory obedience”: fear by owners that if Trump wins he could take vengeance on companies that cross him. They noted that the leadership at CNN and the Post changed after the Trump administration tried to block the takeover of CNN’s parent company and tried to deny a cloud computing contract for Amazon, Bezos’s company.

That’s very telling and a stark reminder why decentralization in media and the entire economy is important.

Washington Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan stepped down in the meantime. As Semafor reports on the newspaper’s recent editorial meeting:

[…] But there may be more: “people are shocked, furious, surprised,” said an editorial board member [referring to Jeff Bezos’ non-endorsement decision], citing internal discussions around resignation. “If you don’t have the balls to own a newspaper, don’t.”

Addition:

Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein Blast Washington Post’s ‘Surprising’ Decision Not To Endorse

"Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.”

Just read a new report:

'Climate crunch time is here,’ new UN report warns

Annual greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high, and urgent action must be taken to prevent catastrophic spikes in temperature and avoid the worst impact of climate change, according to a new report released on Thursday by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Border and immigration: How mass deportations would devastate Texas

Former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised, if elected, to implement the “largest deportation in the history of our country.” If such an operation were carried out, a second Trump regime could target around 11 million undocumented people in the United States. Trump’s running mate, vice presidential candidate JD Vance, has suggested starting with 1 million deportations a year—a figure that dwarfs the total reached in any year of Trump’s presidency or that of Barack Obama. The proposal has become a rallying cry for Trump’s base, with supporters brandishing matching signs at rallies reading “Mass Deportations Now.”

[…] Immigrants exist across our economic spectrum. They’re everywhere. They’re us. When we talk about eliminating them from our society, it’s like not just talking about cutting off a finger. We’re talking about cutting off entire legs from the thigh down.”

Microsoft/Crowdstrike last summer.