This is disgusting but unsurprising. Racist pseudo-science is making a comeback thanks to Elon Musk. Recently, the tech billionaire has been retweeting prominent race scientist adherents on his platform X (formally known as Twitter), spreading misinformation about racial minorities’ intelligence and physiology to his audience of 176.3 million followers—a dynamic my colleague Garrison Hayes analyzes in his latest video for Mother Jones. […] In 2022, just one week after Musk purchased Twitter, the Center for Countering Digital Hate —an online civil rights group— found that racial slurs against Black people had increased three times the year’s average, with homophobic and transphobic epithets also seeing a significant uptick, according to the Associated Press. More than a year later, Musk made headlines once again for tweeting racist dog whistles in a potential attempt to “woo” a recently fired Tucker Carlson. But, his new shift into sharing tech-bro-friendly bigotry carries its own unique set of consequences. Garrison also talks to Dr.
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You sure can see the tiny hands of Donald Trump on the party apparatus. Most Republican officials, even MAGA, do not want any of this. They know that people like to vote early and they know that it can benefit them. But no, “Honest Don” wants people to only vote on election day because he’s so stupid he thinks that allows him to win. He also wants all counting of all the (paper) ballots to stop on election night. Did I mention that he very stupid?
Here’s part of that story: Hur’s February report stated that following a yearlong investigation into Biden’s possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents, he had concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted.” But journalists quickly fixated on Hur’s incendiary and unfalsifiable description of Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and his references to specific Biden memory lapses over the course of their five-hour interview. The mainstream political press treated Hur as an impartial voice levying credible accusations, unleashing a deluge of reports calling Biden’s mental acuity into question. Hur’s background as a former clerk to right-wing judges and a Trump administration appointee — and his gratuitous swipes at a Democratic president that happened to align with a yearslong GOP campaign to portray Biden as addled — failed to raise their alarms.
There was a pretty energetic push to get primary voters in the state of Washington to vote “uncommitted” to protest the administration’s Israel policy. It got 7.5% of the vote representing 48,600 votes which is quite a few. It’s not a state with a large Arab American population but there are a lot of lefties there and they made their voices heard. Still, it’s not a battleground state so perhaps it’s not as relevant as it was in Michigan. Dave Weigel reported on the project for Semafor: Next week, they’ll try again in Kansas. Next month, they’ll do it in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin — all states where “uncommitted” efforts have come together quickly, inspired by campaigns in Michigan, Minnesota, and Hawaii that have denied Biden 20 delegates so far. “We’re focused on ensuring that President Biden and his campaign listen to us,” said Rami Al-Kabra, the 47-year-old deputy mayor of Bothell, a city in Seattle’s suburbs. “What happens in November?
Judging from the bots on my social media feeds none of this reality makes any difference. People are convinced that their lives are the worst they’ve ever been, they’re are all barely getting by, unable to buy food or gas and have no jobs and no future. Americans are starving while “illegal” criminals are killing them in their beds. We are in a dystopian nightmare from which we cannot awaken — at least until Donald Trump makes America great again. Here’s just another little reminder which will be refuted immediately because as it happens, Trump’s term actually ended in 2019 rather than 2020 according to many Americans. He bears no responsibility for anything bad and gets credit for Obama’s recovery. Isn’t that special?
We now know the recipients for the next Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Awards. This year’s RBG Awards will go to entrepreneur Elon Musk, actor and filmmaker Sylvester Stallone, lifestyle expert Martha Stewart, philanthropist Michael Milken and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. This award is given out by a right wing foundation through the Library of Congress so I guess that explains it. But why is the Library of Congress involved in something like this? And they couldn’t find more than one woman for the RBG award? Sylvester Stallone?
It’s a winner. Huge. You go boys and girls: Republicans leading the party’s effort to defend the House in this fall’s elections are pushing GOP colleagues to openly discuss their positions on abortion, rather than try to sidestep the issue like many did in the previous campaign, arguing that doing so will be critical to winning competitive races. A memo prepared by House Republicans’ campaign arm and viewed by The Wall Street Journal says Republicans have a “brand problem, not a policy problem,” as their reluctance to discuss the issue left it to Democrats to define where the GOP stood. Many voters view the party’s hopefuls as opposing abortion under any circumstances, when there are actually a variety of positions held by candidates, particularly in swing districts, the memo states. The guidance tells candidates that they must “confidently articulate” their stance and that “being unwilling to stake out a clear position with voters is the worst possible solution.” Abortion has weighed on the party’s success in recent years.
Another time for choosing Indulge me. I still struggle to get campaigns here to rethink their strategy and to cast a wider net for “low-propensity” voters Democrats here cannot win statewide races without. Without getting into the weeds, a short thread by Anat Shenker-Osorio gets at what I was already recommending. It’s related to how Jay Rosen a full year ago recommended the press approach this election: Not the odds, but the stakes. For individual voters, the stakes are also high, but democracy may seem an abstraction. Shenker-Osorio’s observations are based on preliminary findings, but what seems to move voters is reframing how Democrats pitch their message: from vote for us to vote for you. “We must shift folks from seeing election as contest between 2 (or more) people to seeing it as fork in road between 2 different futures.” It is old hat to ask people if they are better off now than they were four years ago. But they might disagree that they are, no matter how much data you throw at them. It’s almost reflex on the left to try to browbeat people into submission with our supposed superior command of the facts.
Today, the United States House of Representatives voted to require the Chinese company Bytedance to sell its stake in the popular service Tiktok. If the company does not comply, the bill would ban the use of Tiktok in the US. The bill still needs to pass the Senate and get delivered to President Biden’s desk, … Continue reading Tiktok and the Fediverse
This is the person who runs 538 now: I always remember that time Michael Dukakis came out of his convention 18 points ahead and we all sat back on our laurels thinking that the election was over. Yeah, that didn’t work out.