Let us begin with good news - a person who had spent a year with an active tuberculosis infection has been cured of it, after spending several days in isolation after being arrested for public health reasons. One also hopes that this curation also doesn't come with a surprise bill or penalty of any sort that would make the mistrust she had in the state and county health officials justified.
Bob Newhart, comedian with an absolute command of delivering the absurd in a deadpan style, at 94 years of age.
A decision that floored just about everyone who had to react to it in real time: the withdrawal of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. from the United States presidential race and endorsement of his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be the Democratic candidate for President. This came after significant rumblings in the Democratic Party about the President's debate performance against his opponent, and likely having several polls thrust in his face about what his continued presence in the race would do to his chances and others' chances of victory. The timing on the announcement, however, came after the Repulican convention finished, and the swift suite of endorsements of Kamala Harris has at least a few speculations that once the withdrawal had been decided upon, figuring out the timing of when to drop the album for greatest effect was on. (Scalzi also talks about Kamala Harris's ability to win and also the fact that because the President is no longer running for re-election, he now has until the inauguration of the next president to run wild, including with the new powers the Supreme Court foolishly granted in anticipation of having the Republican candidate in the office.)
Expect a torrent of misogynoir about the candidacy of Kamala Harris, first with "I think a black woman can win, but not this one," and "I would support a black woman, but other people won't," and then, when those don't work, the harder, less socially-acceptable to whites versions. The US election is once again shaping up (yet again) to be an election where the options are someone who may not be the most ideal (or even a particularly ideal) candidate, but who is firmly in the camp of continuing the democracy and someone who has no intention to continue the democracy, but who promises that by removing democracy, the Time That Never Was can finally return to us, the supposedly glorious era of White Men Uber Alles where women could look forward to terrible marriage, awful pregnancy, and the possibility of poisoning their husband with arsenic when it finally became too much for her, where the non-white could look forward to being "put in their place" and systematically exploited and denied any opportunity to do anything or obtain anything, and where queerness simply disappears and is never spoken of again, except when it resurfaces as being something that the local pastor or the national politician has been for all their life and has been arranging to exploit those who cannot consent for their own purposes. It's already out there, and more than enough of the Republican and Republican-aligned have said out loud and on the record that this is what they want. (So one of the important things that we have to figure out now is how to make sure that all the people who are able to vote actually get to exercise that vote, rather than having those votes suppressed through gerrymandering and election interference.)
And if you think they won't, well, they already had to send out a notice saying "Please don't be racists and sexists when you attack Kamala Harris." (The slug on this URL makes it sound like the Republicans actually managed to do this, but no, it's a desperate plea to not do it.) Because it's too tempting to both the Republican candidate, his vice presidential pick, and many of his flunkies and enablers to rely on what they believe has worked for them before. The brighter among them remember to use at least some kind of euphemism or attempt not to be explicit, but the fig leaf they hide behind doesn't actually hide anything at all. If to looks like there may even be a glimmer of possibility that Kamala Harris could win, the polite forms will likely vanish.
There are also some interesting sidebars, like Nikki Haley attempting to silence a group that changed their support from her to Kamala Harris after she endorsed the Republican nominee and are deliberately trying to recruit more people who would have voted for Haley to vote for Harris instead.
The Elon of Elon's folly refuted claims made by the Republican nominee that he was giving $45 million per month to help in Republica election, claiming the $45 million was only once. The msot difficult part about assessing such a claim as that is that it's nearly impossible to follow the money and where it comes from once it disappears into shell entities and superPACs expressly designed to make it so that large amounts of cash can be laundered untraceably into politics.
The United States Senate passed a bill that intends to specifically censor protected speech in the name of protecting minors from accessing protected speech. And it expects any place that might offer the possibility of user-generated content to do the policing and identifying necessary to comply with the censorship provisions of the bill. An excellent summary of the things that the Kids' Online Safety Act gets wrong and expects private companies to do in the name of complete vagueness by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
synecdochic. And the Senate clearly got this wrong because they passed a bill that the sponsor specifically said she wanted to use to censor queer and trans people. So many of the supposedly liberal coalition were apparently too afraid of being seen as allied with predators to defend the rights of children and teens. The Senate version of the bill may not make it through the House, but that doesn't necessarily mean that a bill of that nture will pass through eventually.
If you are looking for examples of what the Project 2025 document intends to do to the country, look around you, especially in those states and localities where the government is already implementing everything that it demands. Child labor, lack of women's freedoms, public schools and libraries threatened with defunding and staff threatened with specious but emotionally-charged messages that says teachers and librarians are pushing sexual material on children, (which means "there are queer books and age-appropriate books about sex available and a child might pick one up") immigration demonization, the demand that history be replaced with hagiography, and all the rest of the things that people are suddenly surprised at when they find their own state or locality has passed the relevant laws and implemented them, so their library is adults-only or they are forbidden from getting reproductive care and further from leaving their state to get reproductive care and that soon there will potentially be law enforcement officers trying to get their private medical records to make sure they didn't get any illegal reproductive care while in or out of the state. Or their school closes because it's been structured so that the funds for vouchers to go to private schools come out of the allotment that a school would receive per student and the school can't rely on any guarantee of having enough funds to continue operating.
So, y'know, as best as you can, exercise your ability to control who is in your localities and your states as well as in the federa offices. As you can already see, states are more than happy to screw over their populations without the feds stepping in. And, as we have seen so far, the high court currently does not believe in crucial democratic values, so appeals to them are unlikely to produce good results, either.
One of the good spots, though, is another court ruling that Customs and Border Protection is not allowed to conduct warrantless searches of U.S. Citizen phones and data devices at the border, which is building a significant amount of case law for the protections of everyone based on ruling in cases of people who are not very sympathetic.
( And still several other things inside )
Last out, someone we can recognize as he keeps showing up with the belief that his argument actually means anything: Mister Gotcha.
(Materials viaadrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, the_future_modernes, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
meta_warehouse community, little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
Bob Newhart, comedian with an absolute command of delivering the absurd in a deadpan style, at 94 years of age.
A decision that floored just about everyone who had to react to it in real time: the withdrawal of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. from the United States presidential race and endorsement of his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be the Democratic candidate for President. This came after significant rumblings in the Democratic Party about the President's debate performance against his opponent, and likely having several polls thrust in his face about what his continued presence in the race would do to his chances and others' chances of victory. The timing on the announcement, however, came after the Repulican convention finished, and the swift suite of endorsements of Kamala Harris has at least a few speculations that once the withdrawal had been decided upon, figuring out the timing of when to drop the album for greatest effect was on. (Scalzi also talks about Kamala Harris's ability to win and also the fact that because the President is no longer running for re-election, he now has until the inauguration of the next president to run wild, including with the new powers the Supreme Court foolishly granted in anticipation of having the Republican candidate in the office.)
Expect a torrent of misogynoir about the candidacy of Kamala Harris, first with "I think a black woman can win, but not this one," and "I would support a black woman, but other people won't," and then, when those don't work, the harder, less socially-acceptable to whites versions. The US election is once again shaping up (yet again) to be an election where the options are someone who may not be the most ideal (or even a particularly ideal) candidate, but who is firmly in the camp of continuing the democracy and someone who has no intention to continue the democracy, but who promises that by removing democracy, the Time That Never Was can finally return to us, the supposedly glorious era of White Men Uber Alles where women could look forward to terrible marriage, awful pregnancy, and the possibility of poisoning their husband with arsenic when it finally became too much for her, where the non-white could look forward to being "put in their place" and systematically exploited and denied any opportunity to do anything or obtain anything, and where queerness simply disappears and is never spoken of again, except when it resurfaces as being something that the local pastor or the national politician has been for all their life and has been arranging to exploit those who cannot consent for their own purposes. It's already out there, and more than enough of the Republican and Republican-aligned have said out loud and on the record that this is what they want. (So one of the important things that we have to figure out now is how to make sure that all the people who are able to vote actually get to exercise that vote, rather than having those votes suppressed through gerrymandering and election interference.)
And if you think they won't, well, they already had to send out a notice saying "Please don't be racists and sexists when you attack Kamala Harris." (The slug on this URL makes it sound like the Republicans actually managed to do this, but no, it's a desperate plea to not do it.) Because it's too tempting to both the Republican candidate, his vice presidential pick, and many of his flunkies and enablers to rely on what they believe has worked for them before. The brighter among them remember to use at least some kind of euphemism or attempt not to be explicit, but the fig leaf they hide behind doesn't actually hide anything at all. If to looks like there may even be a glimmer of possibility that Kamala Harris could win, the polite forms will likely vanish.
There are also some interesting sidebars, like Nikki Haley attempting to silence a group that changed their support from her to Kamala Harris after she endorsed the Republican nominee and are deliberately trying to recruit more people who would have voted for Haley to vote for Harris instead.
The Elon of Elon's folly refuted claims made by the Republican nominee that he was giving $45 million per month to help in Republica election, claiming the $45 million was only once. The msot difficult part about assessing such a claim as that is that it's nearly impossible to follow the money and where it comes from once it disappears into shell entities and superPACs expressly designed to make it so that large amounts of cash can be laundered untraceably into politics.
The United States Senate passed a bill that intends to specifically censor protected speech in the name of protecting minors from accessing protected speech. And it expects any place that might offer the possibility of user-generated content to do the policing and identifying necessary to comply with the censorship provisions of the bill. An excellent summary of the things that the Kids' Online Safety Act gets wrong and expects private companies to do in the name of complete vagueness by
synecdochic. And the Senate clearly got this wrong because they passed a bill that the sponsor specifically said she wanted to use to censor queer and trans people. So many of the supposedly liberal coalition were apparently too afraid of being seen as allied with predators to defend the rights of children and teens. The Senate version of the bill may not make it through the House, but that doesn't necessarily mean that a bill of that nture will pass through eventually.If you are looking for examples of what the Project 2025 document intends to do to the country, look around you, especially in those states and localities where the government is already implementing everything that it demands. Child labor, lack of women's freedoms, public schools and libraries threatened with defunding and staff threatened with specious but emotionally-charged messages that says teachers and librarians are pushing sexual material on children, (which means "there are queer books and age-appropriate books about sex available and a child might pick one up") immigration demonization, the demand that history be replaced with hagiography, and all the rest of the things that people are suddenly surprised at when they find their own state or locality has passed the relevant laws and implemented them, so their library is adults-only or they are forbidden from getting reproductive care and further from leaving their state to get reproductive care and that soon there will potentially be law enforcement officers trying to get their private medical records to make sure they didn't get any illegal reproductive care while in or out of the state. Or their school closes because it's been structured so that the funds for vouchers to go to private schools come out of the allotment that a school would receive per student and the school can't rely on any guarantee of having enough funds to continue operating.
So, y'know, as best as you can, exercise your ability to control who is in your localities and your states as well as in the federa offices. As you can already see, states are more than happy to screw over their populations without the feds stepping in. And, as we have seen so far, the high court currently does not believe in crucial democratic values, so appeals to them are unlikely to produce good results, either.
One of the good spots, though, is another court ruling that Customs and Border Protection is not allowed to conduct warrantless searches of U.S. Citizen phones and data devices at the border, which is building a significant amount of case law for the protections of everyone based on ruling in cases of people who are not very sympathetic.
( And still several other things inside )
Last out, someone we can recognize as he keeps showing up with the belief that his argument actually means anything: Mister Gotcha.
(Materials via
adrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, the_future_modernes, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the meta_warehouse community, little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
