#but 25% of the vote was reform

[awkwxrdapple]

Hi my name's Anna and according to this c*nt I'm a vegetable

[navree]

Incorrect, the fact that Biden has dropped out and a candidate with history of supporting medicare for all and being more receptive to a ceasefire in the I/P conflict has made me go from "I cannot morally support the Democratic nominee" to "I am voting for the Democratic nominee despite the fact she isn't perfect in every respect." I'm really happy this played out. The Dems for the most part abandoned the old Obama platform and it feels like its possible an actual progressive agenda could come to pass in my lifetime.

Kamala 2024!

If you weren't going to vote Democratic in this election before Biden dropped out you're a dorkass loser who does not care about any of the issues you're yammering about here and also a fundamentally bad person, and I hope you get run over by a bus.

But you got one thing right in all of this gibberish, Kamala 2024.

[notasapleasure]

.

god I don't CARE what you call the germanic peoples who migrated to the british isles in the post-roman period did you have to fucking hack my client who still owes me £500 for work completed months ago

[lady-raziel]

here is my optimistic take re: the biden news. i think this should be an absolute motivator to vote blue as much as possible in november. while having a new candidate may slightly improve chances, harris will have to be selected outside the traditional candidate-choosing means-- meaning regular people didn't get a say.

while winning is vital to stopgap the changes the republicans want to make, this whole situation with biden and harris offers enormous leverage to demand reform to the party process and compel the democrats to take up policies that they've shied away from.

this situation explicitly came about because of a 25+ year history of the democrats favoring elites and not listening to the wishes of their voters on policy and candidate choices-- this all can be held up as a means to force the party to change and reform.

this is THEIR fuckup, and we cannot allow them to sweep it under the rug even if the democrats win in november.

[the-bibrarian]

I see a lot of incomprehension online about our pension reform and the anger it generates in France, and what it often boils down to is "why are they so angry, 64 is plenty young to retire?"

I don't agree, but even if I did I would still oppose the reform. Here are some of the reasons why:

We already need 43 full years of work and tax contributions to be able to retire. Which means college-educated people were never going to retire at 64 anyway, let alone 62. This reform is aimed at people who start working early, mostly in low-paying jobs.

There's very little provision made in this law for hard/dangerous/manual labour.

There's no provision made for women who stop working to raise their children (51% of women already retire without a "complete career," which means they only retire on a partial pension, vs. 25% of men).

At 64, 1/3 of the poorest workers will already be dead. In France, between the richest and the poorest men, there's a 13 years gap in life expectancy.

Beyond life expectancy, at that age a lot of people (especially poorer, non-college educated) have too many health-related issues to be able to work. Not only is it cruel to ask them to work longer, if they can't work at all that's two more years to hold on with no pension

Unemployment in France is still fairly high (7%). Young people already have a hard time finding work, and this is going to make things even harder for them

Macron cut taxes on the rich and lost the country around 16 Billions € in tax revenue. Our estimated pension deficit should peak at 12 Billions worst case scenario.

While I'm on wealth redistribution (no, not soviet style, but I think there should be a cap on wealth concentration. Nobody needs to be a billionaire.): some of the massive profits of last year should go to workers and to the state to be redistributed, including to fund pensions. The state subsidized companies and corporations during the pandemic, Macron even said "no matter the cost" and spent 206 Billions € on businesses. Now he's going after the poorest workers in the country for an hypothetical 12 Billions??

Implicit in all of this is the question of systemic racism. French workers from immigrant families are already more likely to have started their careers early, to have low-paying jobs, are less likely to be college-educated, more at risk for disabilities and chronic illnesses, etc., so this is going to disproportionately affect them

This is not even touching on the fact that he didn't let lawmakers vote on it, meaning he knew he wouldn't get a majority of votes in parliament, or that 70% of the population is against this law. Pushing it through anyway is blatant authoritarianism.

TL;DR: This is only tangentially about retirement age. The reform will make life harder for people with low incomes, or with no higher education, for manual workers, for women—mothers especially, for POC, for people with disabilities or chronic conditions, etc. This is about solidarity.

Hope (sincerely) this helps.

[duchess-of-mandalore]

Star Wars, friends. I know this is not why you follow me, but please make this my most shared post.

You are here.

We're living the lead-up to Revenge of the Sith, and it scares me so much a) it feels like there is so little we can do, and b) young people are acting as if there is nothing we can do.

If you don't know what's going on, I need you to wake up and get engaged.

I have two history degrees. My whole life I've always been the person saying, "When people say, 'This is the most important election ever," it just shows how little they know about history.'"

So please believe me when I tell you that THIS is the most important election (cycle, not just presidential race) that you will likely ever be a part of.

Trump is not Hitler. He's too stupid to be Hitler.

But our democracy only held together in 2020 because of a few people like Mike Pence who were willing to stand up against Trump when it was truly the last line of defense. I know that's hard for some of you to hear, but whatever you think of his beliefs, Pence showed he has integrity and stands by the Constitution.

There will be no Mike Pences this time around. Trump will not make the mistake of surrounding himself with those who are not fully committed to him.

Trump is a convicted felon. He is running to avoid his convictions and likely jail time more than anything else. If he wins, he will be able to pardon himself of his federal crimes, but he's going to keep acting like Donald Trump. If he's still alive in 2028, do you think he will leave the White House peacefully and just submit to further cases against him?

Please watch John Oliver's recent expose on Project 2025 and Trump's Second Term. It is linked in a comment below.

Trump and his administration are already putting in place plans for sweeping reforms that truly will make America look like The Handmaid's Tale. Presidents usually will push for more when they're in their second term because they don't have to worry about another election campaign, but this is different. This is about dismantling the democratic system so that it only benefits the most radical conservatives and Christians.

Christians, I am one of you. I was raised Evangelical (capital E meaning politically motivated culture warrior), and I am still evangelical (lower-case e, referring to theological beliefs). This is not the posture of Christ-followers. There is no good that comes from state-mandated religion, which both coerces people to claim that they are believers for social and cultural clout AND waters down the true religious fervor of the church because most people are only nominal believers.

There is NOTHING about Christian Nationalism that is in the best interest of Christians or in the best interest of the neighbors Christians are called to sacrificially love. If you need a reminder of who your neighbor is, read Luke 10:25-37.

Please start talking with your friends. Young people, please register to vote and bring your friends to do the same.

I know so many of you are disillusioned. I am too. Things that are going on in Palestine and Ukraine and so many other places make it very hard to vote for people with "D"s behind their names (especially after the recent presidential debate).

But punishing Joe Biden is not the revenge you want to pursue here. Are you unhappy with him giving Israel $12.5 billion? I am too, but do you think that number won't be repeated multiple times under Trump? Again, I was raised Evangelical. A staple of (politically-focused) Evangelicalism is that Christians (and thus America) must support (the modern state of) Israel no matter what because they have a hyper-literal understanding of the verse where God tells Abraham that he will bless those who bless him (including his descendants who became Israel).

Do not underestimate the importance of that view in their ideology. Nearly every member of my biological family has shunned me for suggesting that this is not a blanket endorsement of every action the modern state of Israel takes.

Trump is a criminal running for president to save his skin. He supports Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel who is now himself wanted for war crimes. Trump has aligned himself with the authoritarian leaders/dictators of Hungary, China, North Korea, and Russia. He is open about his love for Russian president Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime and stands against Ukraine's democracy and national sovereignty.

This is what happened before World War I and World War II.

I know this isn't what you follow me for.

But George Lucas was showing the dangers of authoritarianism. He shows that democracy is hard. It's frustrating trying to negotiate with people you disagree with vehemently. It may seem like nothing gets done.

Go and watch the Naboo picnic scene. Go and do it. And after chuckling at all the funny memes it's given us, let me tell you why it scares me so much.

Because Padme laughs.

Anakin tells her who he is, and she laughs.

She passes it off as a joke, or as flirting, or maybe even as just the ignorant views of a boy who views life as far more black and white than she knows it to be.

But the alternative to all of that frustrating democracy, all that gridlock in the Senate, all those choices and compromises you have to make in order to benefit the people at all ... the alternative is a dictator who says, "I will make all the decisions for us."

That's why there are people who applaud Palpatine. That's why we as viewers see Bail and Padme as the reasonable ones and think it's crazy that anyone would applaud, but they do.

The applaud because Palpatine says, "You don't have to be frustrated anymore. You don't have to be worried about those who disagree with you anymore." Safety and security and ease are powerful temptations when you live in a polarized society, and Palpatine offers them all of those things.

That's why many people applaud Trump, too.

There were also people who applauded Palpatine who did see the danger of what he was doing. But they applauded because it was easier to do so. He had already amassed power because they didn't stand up to him before. They applaud him now because standing against him now would have dire consequences they wouldn't have faced if they had stood against him before.

So vote. And get your friends to vote.

If there is any part of you that believes Star Wars has important things to tell us about real life, then I need you to fan that flame into a fire.

Otherwise, you won't be living in the prequels anymore. You will be living in the time of the Empire.

Vote.

[zvaigzdelasas]

"Why doesn't Hamas just have elections?'

The result was a victory for Hamas, contesting under the list name of Change and Reform, which received 44.45% of the vote and won 74 of the 132 seats, whilst the ruling Fatah received 41.43% of the vote and won 45 seats.[1][...]

In the lead-up to the elections, on 26 September 2005 Israel launched a campaign of arrests against PLC members. 450 members of Hamas were detained, mostly those involved in the 2006 PLC elections. The majority of them were kept in administrative detention for different periods.[19] In the election period, 15 PLC members were captured and held as political prisoners.[20]

During the elections, the Israeli authorities banned the candidates from holding election campaigns inside Jerusalem. Rallies and public meetings were prohibited. The Jerusalem identity cards of some PLC members were also revoked.[21] The Carter Center, which monitored the elections, criticised the detentions of persons who "are guilty of nothing more than winning a parliamentary seat in an open and honest election".[22][...]

On 21 December 2005, Israeli officials stated their intention to prevent voting in East Jerusalem, which, unlike most of the Palestinian-inhabited areas that are planned to participate in the election, is under Israeli civil and military control. (Israel annexed East Jerusalem in the wake of the Six-Day War; this move has not been recognized by most other governments, or by the PNA, which claims Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital.) Israel's stated motivation was not the argument about sovereignty over the area (Palestinian voters in East Jerusalem had been allowed to vote in previous PNA elections despite the dispute) but concern over Hamas' participation in—and potential victory in—the election.[...]

The Israeli police arrested campaigners of Hamas and closed at least three Hamas election offices in East Jerusalem during the campaign.[26][27][...]

On 29 March 2006 a new government was formed by Hamas leader Ismail Haniya.

After the kidnap of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on 25 June 2006, Israel launched a series of raids into Gaza and West Bank. Israel destroyed civilian infrastructure and arrested dozens of Hamas supporters, including elected cabinet ministers and members of the PLC. On 28 June overnight, the army invaded Gaza and performed airstrikes, bombing infrastructure such as bridges and an electricity station. On 29 June, the IDF detained from the West Bank 8 ministers and 26 PLC members in addition to many other political leaders.[19][41] By August 2006, Israel had arrested 49 senior Hamas officials, all from the West Bank, including 33 parliamentarians, "because technically they were members of a terrorist organisation although they may not be involved in terrorist acts themselves". Most of the Hamas detainees were moderate members from the West Bank who had been calling on the Gaza leadership to recognise Israel and make the party more acceptable to the international community. Hamas has accused Israel of trying to destroy the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.[42][...]

On 28 January 2006, Israel said it would prevent Hamas leaders, including newly elected PLC deputies, from travelling between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. On 29 January, Ehud Olmert said that after Hamas sets up a Government, Israel would stop transferring to the PA custom duties and taxes it had collected on their behalf until it was satisfied that they would not end up in the hands of "terrorists". US Secretary of State Rice declared that "The United States wants other nations to cut off aid to a Hamas-led Palestinian Government, also ruling out any US financial assistance to a Hamas Government." [45] On 17 February, one day before the new parliament was sworn in, the then Fatah-led government returned $50 million US aid that Washington did not want to come in the hands of the new government. The money had been intended for infrastructure projects in Gaza.[46][...]

Just before the January 2006 elections, and after witnessing Hamas' gains in municipal polls, the House of Representatives passed H.Res. 575 (December 16, 2005), asserting that terrorist groups, like Hamas, should not be permitted to participate in Palestinian elections until such organizations "recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, cease incitement, condemn terrorism, and permanently disarm and dismantle their terrorist infrastructure."[54] The Palestinian Authority chose to ignore this external decision[...]

The New York Times reported in February 2006 that "The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again. The intention is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and international connections to the point where, some months from now, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election."[56] Just how much further matters would be taken was revealed in April 2008. Tom Segev (in Ha'aretz) reported:

a "confidential document, a 'talking points' memo,[57] was left by the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, Jake Walles, on the desk of Mahmoud Abbas . … According to the paper left behind … he wanted to pressure Abu Mazen to take action that would annul the outcome of the elections that had catapulted Hamas to power. … When nothing happened, Walles … warned the Palestinian president that the time had come to act. Instead, Abu Mazen launched negotiations with Hamas on the establishment of a unity government. … At this point the Americans moved to "Plan B." That was a plan to eliminate Hamas by force. In fact, it was to be a deliberately fomented civil war Fatah was supposed to win, with U.S. help."[58][...]

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.) Some sources call the scheme "Iran-contra 2.0," recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.'s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.[59]

The Jerusalem Post confirmed that the documents cited by Vanity Fair "have been corroborated by sources at the US State Department and Palestinian officials", and added:

The report said that instead of driving its enemies out of power, the US-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. David Wurmser, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney's chief Middle East adviser a month after the Hamas takeover, said he believed that Hamas had no intention of taking over the Gaza Strip until Fatah forced its hand. "It looks to me that what happened wasn't so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was preempted before it could happen," he was quoted as saying. Wurmser said that the Bush administration engaged in a "dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] with victory." Wurmser said he was especially galled by the Bush administration's hypocrisy. "There is a stunning disconnect between the president's call for Middle East democracy and this policy," he said. "It directly contradicts it.".[60][...]

The original article was cited by the Irish Times, the Israeli historian and political analyst, Tom Segev, in an article entitled "Bay of Pigs in Gaza", and also by Suzanne Goldenburg of The Guardian, who added "A state department memo put the cost for salaries, training and weapons at $1.27bn (£640m) over five years."[50]

The 2008 exposé by Vanity Fair (of plans to reverse the democratic 2006 PA parliamentary elections) confirmed a CF Report of January 2007, over a year earlier, by Alistair Crooke:

Deputy National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams ... has had it about for some months now that the U.S. is not only not interested in dealing with Hamas, it is working to ensure its failure. In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas elections, last January, Abrams greeted a group of Palestinian businessmen in his White House office with talk of a "hard coup" against the newly-elected Hamas government — the violent overthrow of their leadership with arms supplied by the United States. While the businessmen were shocked, Abrams was adamant — the U.S. had to support Fatah with guns, ammunition and training, so that they could fight Hamas for control of the Palestinian government.

Over the last twelve months, the United States has supplied guns, ammunition and training to Palestinian Fatah activists to take on Hamas in the streets of Gaza and the West Bank. A large number of Fatah activists have been trained and "graduated" from two camps — one in Ramallah and one in Jericho. The supplies of rifles and ammunition, which started as a mere trickle, has now become a torrent (Haaretz reports the U.S. has designated an astounding $86.4 million for Abu Mazen's security detail), and while the program has gone largely without notice in the American press, it is openly talked about and commented on in the Arab media. Of course, in public, Secretary Rice appears contrite and concerned with "the growing lawlessness" among Palestinians, while failing to mention that such lawlessness is exactly what the Abrams plan was designed to create."[61]

Voice of America reported that the Bush administration had denied the Vanity Fair report.[62]

In 2016 a 2006 audio tape emerged that contains an interview by Eli Chomsky of the Jewish Press with Hillary Clinton. Clinton opined that pushing for elections "in the Palestinian territories ... was a big mistake", adding "(a)nd if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win."[63][...]

In June 2007 the Washington Post reported: "Hamas … leaders have accused Fatah's security services of working on behalf of Israeli and American interests because of a $40 million U.S. aid package to strengthen Abbas's forces. … The Israeli government has openly supported Fatah forces against Hamas, whose tightening control of Gaza alarmed Israeli defense officials.[67]

In a wikileaks cable dated 13 June 2007, Shin Bet security chief Yuval Diskin told U.S. Ambassador to Israel Richard Jones that: "Fatah had thus turned to Israel for help in attack Hamas", which he termed a new and unprecedented development in Jerusalem's relations with the Palestinian Authority.

In the cable sent to Washington, Jones said that Yadlin had been quite satisfied with Hamas' seizure of the Gaza Strip. If Hamas managed to take complete control then the Israel Defense Forces would be able to relate to Gaza as a hostile territory and stop looking at the militant group as an undiplomatic player, Yadlin apparently told Jones."[68]

[qqueenofhades]

Having seen what's currently happening in Venezuela, I feel so terrible for everyone to tried to vote Maduro out, and I worry about the US election. Will Trump and the GOP be able to do the same thing??

I agree that what's happening in Venezuela is bad and scary, but it's also not unexpected (unfortunately), and it doesn't correlate to the US election. It is very much a cautionary tale for us, but in the case of what could happen, not what has happened yet (and which we could and MUST still avoid). Here's why I think that.

First, Maduro is the heir of 25+ years of dictatorship (first the Chavez regime and then his), and that political machine has had a full generation to fix/control everything in Venezuela just as they want it. They've collapsed the economy, driven mass emigration/purges/brain drains, installed corrupt systems and destroyed civil society, staffed the government with cronies who will only ever do what Maduro personally says -- etc. In other words, exactly what Trump and the Republicans aspire to do here in America, but with 25 years' head start, so all those fixes are well entrenched. Outside observers were also warning well ahead of the Venezuelan vote that even an overwhelming majority for the opposition candidate might not be enough, because Maduro and co. can just fix the result however they want with imaginary fantasy numbers. (See Putin's "win" in the Russian presidential "election.") Because dictators all draw from the same playbook regardless of their professed ideological temperament, they always use the same tools.

Next, voting in Venezuela is all-electronic, which is obviously the easiest kind of voting to jigger, and which means that whatever the people actually select has little to no relevance to what gets published, recorded, or proclaimed. Now, despite the Republicans' constant screaming about ELECTION FRAUD, the 2020 elections in America were widely hailed as the safest, most accurate, and fraud-free in the nation's history. (For that matter, multiple investigations afterward have re-confirmed this, and the tiny handful of cases of election fraud that were found were committed by, you guessed it, Republicans.) This did not happen because of the Orange Fuhrer and co., who were busy trying to commit election fraud on their own behalves, but because America, however flawed, is still a participatory liberal democracy and citizens have the right to engage and to do so in a meaningful fashion. We had the entire investigation about how Russia meddled with the election in 2016, and changes were made. Cybersecurity experts were brought in; redundancies and failsafes were introduced; etc., and even the Russian campaign focused on psychological influence rather than actually, physically changing already-cast votes, because that is very, very hard to do in America. We are not an all e-voting nation; there are paper trails, hard-copy ballots, hand recounts, poll observers, election lawyers, and multiple other safeguards that exist. The Republicans have been attacking them as hard as they can, but they're still there.

Thirdly, the Evil Orange tried to fix the elections when he was the sitting president (don't forget the infamous "find me 11,780 votes" phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State that got him slapped with felony charges), but he couldn't do it even then. He also tried a coup as the sitting president, with full discretion as to whether, for example, the National Guard should be deployed to the Capitol on January 6, and that didn't succeed. As such, when he's a disgraced jobless felon who is not the commander-in-chief of the American military and holds no official or political role, he's definitely not getting it done now. There were reforms made to the Electoral Count Act to prevent another January 6, Biden and not Trump would be the president at any other attempted attack on the counting of electoral votes, and I can guarantee Biden would not sit around for three hours watching Fox News and cheering the rioters on if such a thing happened again. Trump has been threatening violence again because that's the only move in his playbook, and he wants to intimidate people into voting for him out of fear that he'll attack them if they don't give him what he wants, like any other psychopathic bully. But that does not mean he actually has the tools to successfully carry it off, and honestly, motherfucker? Try it one more fucking time. I double fucking dog dare you. Biden has 6 months left in his term and total immunity, according to your own SCOTUS. So.

Basically, Venezuela has already been a banana republic for 20+ years, the dictator has had a full generation to destroy it/remake it/turn it into his personal fiefdom, he allows elections only because he already knows they won't change anything or actually remove him from power, and that is precisely what Trump wants to do in the US -- but, and this is crucial, has not done yet. Which is why it is so, so important to Orange-Proof America and get rid of him once and for fucking all on November 5th. We can do it. So yes.

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Year

1. Belgium approves four-day week and gives employees the right to ignore their bosses after work

Workers in Belgium will soon be able to choose a four-day week under a series of labour market reforms announced on Tuesday.

The reform package agreed by the country's multi-party coalition government will also give workers the right to turn off work devices and ignore work-related messages after hours without fear of reprisal.

"We have experienced two difficult years. With this agreement, we set a beacon for an economy that is more innovative, sustainable and digital. The aim is to be able to make people and businesses stronger," Belgian prime minister Alexander de Croo told a press conference announcing the reform package.

2. Spain makes it a crime for pro-lifers to harass people outside abortion clinics

Spain has criminalized the harassment or intimidation of women going for an abortion under new legislation approved on Wednesday by the Senate. The move, which involved changes to the penal code, means anti-abortion activists who try to convince women not to terminate their pregnancies could face up to a year behind bars.

3. House passes bill to federally decriminalize marijuana

The House has voted with a slim bipartisan majority to federally decriminalize marijuana. The vote was 220 to 204.

The bill, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, will prevent federal agencies from denying federal workers security clearances for cannabis use, and will allow the Veterans’ Administration to recommend medical marijuana to veterans living with posttraumatic stress disorder.

The bill also expunges the record of people convicted of non-violent cannabis offenses, which House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, “can haunt people of color and impact the trajectory of their lives and career indefinitely.”

4. France makes birth control free for all women under 25

The scheme, which could benefit three million women, covers the pill, IUDs, contraceptive patches and other methods composed of steroid hormones.

Contraception for minors was already free in France. Several European countries, including Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway, make contraception free for teens.

5. The 1st fully hydrogen-powered passenger train service is now running in Germany. The only emissions are steam & condensed water.

Five of the trains started running in August. Another nine will be added in the coming months to replace 15 diesel trains on the regional route. Alstom says the Coradia iLint has a range of 1,000 kilometers, meaning that it can run all day on the line using a single tank of hydrogen. A hydrogen filling station has been set up on the route between Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, Bremervörde and Buxtehude.

6. Princeton will cover all tuition costs for most families making under $100,000 a year, after getting rid of student loans

In September, the New Jersey Ivy League school announced it would be expanding its financial aid program to offer free tuition, including room and board, for most families whose annual income is under $100,000 a year. Previously, the same benefit was offered to families making under $65,000 a year. This new income limit will take effect for all undergraduates starting in the fall of 2023.

Princeton was also the first school in the US to eliminate student loans from its financial aid packages.

7. Humpback whales no longer listed as endangered after major recovery

Humpback whales will be removed from Australia's threatened-species list, after the government's independent scientific panel on threatened species deemed the mammals had made a major recovery. Humpback whales will no longer be considered an endangered or vulnerable species.

Climate change and fishing still pose threats to their long-term health.

Some other uplifting news from last year:

A Cancer Trial’s Unexpected Result: Remission in Every Patient

California 100 percent powered by renewables for first time

Israel formally bans LGBTQ conversion therapy

Tokyo Passes Law to Recognize Same-Sex Partnerships

First 100,000 KG Removed From the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

As we ring in the New Year let’s remember to focus on the good news. May this be a year of even more kindness and generosity. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2023!

Thank you for following and supporting this g this newsletter

Buy me a coffee ❤️

[probablyasocialecologist]

Just 35 per cent voted Labour. That is the smallest share of the Britain-wide vote ever obtained by any party winning an outright majority, however small. It must be one of the weirdest landslides that any mature democracy has ever served up.

[...]

Labour’s majority this time is close to that enjoyed by Tony Blair in 1997. Yet its 35 per cent share yesterday was nine points lower than Blair’s 44 per cent—and six points lower than under Corbyn in 2017. The most dramatic result of the night illustrates what happened. In South West Norfolk, Liz Truss was defeated by Labour’s Terry Jermy. Socialism sweeps the Fens? Not exactly. Jermy won just 26.7 per cent of the vote. But in a crowded field, first-past-the-post does odd things. Truss, with 25.3 per cent, was followed closely by Reform’s Toby McKenzie, on 22.5 per cent. Had just one in 10 Reform voters backed Truss, she would have held her seat. Sunak, then, was right to say that, by taking votes from the Tories, they would help Labour win seat after seat. Sunak’s problem was that these voters, having lost their fear of a Starmer government, had no reason to hold back on their animus towards the Conservatives. So, rather than saying the electorate divided 65-35 per cent against Labour, the larger truth—both arithmetically and politically—is that the electorate divided 75-25 per cent against the Tories. And that 75 per cent vote has given us a parliament in which 80 per cent of British MPs are non-Conservative. 

July 5 2024

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Steve Brodner

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 24, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 25, 2024

Tonight, President Joe Biden explained to the American people why he decided to refuse the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination and hand the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Speaking from the Oval Office from his seat behind the Resolute Desk, a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, Biden recalled the nation’s history. He invoked Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence; George Washington, who “showed us presidents are not kings”; Abraham Lincoln, who “implored us to reject malice”; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who “inspired us to reject fear.”

And then he turned to himself. “I revere this office, but I love my country more,” he said. “It’s been the honor of my life to serve as your president.” But, he said, the defense of democracy is more important than any title, and democracy is “larger than any one of us.” We must unite to protect it. 

“In recent weeks, it has become clear to me that I need to unite my party in this critical endeavor,” he said. “I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It’s the best way to unite our nation.”

There is “a time and a place for long years of experience in public life,” Biden said. “There’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.”

Biden reminded listeners that he is not leaving the presidency and will be continuing to use its power for the American people. In outlining what that means, he summed up his presidency. 

For the next six months, he said, he will “continue to lower costs for hard-working families [and] grow our economy. I will keep defending our personal freedoms and civil rights, from the right to vote to the right to choose. I will keep calling out hate and extremism, making it clear there is…no place in America for political violence or any violence ever, period. I’m going to keep speaking out to protect our kids from gun violence [and] our planet from [the] climate crisis.”

Biden reiterated his support for his Cancer Moonshot to end cancer—a personal cause for him since the 2015 death of his son Beau from brain cancer—and says he will fight for it, (although House Republicans have recently slashed funding for the program). He said he will call for reforming the Supreme Court “because this is critical to our democracy.”

He promised to continue “working to ensure America remains strong, secure and the leader of the free world,” and pointed out that he is “the first president of this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.” He promised to continue rallying a coalition of nations to stop Putin’s attempt to take over Ukraine, and vowed to continue to build the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). He reminded listeners that when he took office, the conventional wisdom was that China would inevitably surpass the United States, but that is no longer the case, and he said he would continue to strengthen allies and partners in the Pacific. 

Biden promised to continue to work to “end the war in Gaza, bring home all the hostages and bring peace and security to the Middle East and end this war,” as well as “to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.”

The president reminded people how far the nation has come since he took office on January 20, 2021, a day when, although he didn’t mention it tonight, he went directly to work after taking the oath of office. “On that day,” he recalled, “we…stood in a winter of peril and winter of possibilities.” The United States was “in the grip of the worst pandemic in the century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” But, Biden said, “We came together as Americans. We got through it. We emerged stronger, more prosperous and more secure.”

“Today we have the strongest economy in the world, creating nearly 16 million new jobs—a record. Wages are up, inflation continues to come down, the racial wealth gap is the lowest it’s been in 20 years. We are literally rebuilding our entire nation—urban, suburban and rural and tribal communities. Manufacturing has come back to America. We are leading the world again in chips and science and innovation. We finally beat Big Pharma after all these years to lower the cost of prescription drugs for seniors…. More people have health care today in America than ever before.” Biden noted that he signed the PACT Act to help millions of veterans and their families who were exposed to toxic materials, as well as the “most significant climate law…in the history of the world” and “the first major gun safety law in 30 years.”

The “violent crime rate is at a 50-year low,” he said, and “[b]order crossings are lower today than when the previous administration left office. I’ve kept my commitment to appoint the first Black woman to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. I also kept my commitment to have an administration that looks like America and [to] be a president for all Americans.”

Then Biden turned from his own record to the larger meaning of America.

“I ran for president four years ago because I believed…that the soul of America was at stake,” he said. “America is an idea. An idea stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It’s the most powerful idea in the history of the world.” 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” he said. “We are all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. We’ve never fully lived up to…this sacred idea—but we’ve never walked away from it either. And I do not believe the American people will walk away from it now.

“In just a few months, the American people will choose the course of America’s future. I made my choice…. “[O]ur great vice president, Kamala Harris… is experienced, she is tough, she is capable. She’s been an incredible partner to me and a leader for our country.

“Now the choice is up to you, the American people. When you make that choice, remember the words of Benjamin Franklin hanging on my wall here in the Oval Office, alongside the busts of Dr. [Martin Luther] King and Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez. When Ben Franklin was asked, as he emerged from the [constitutional] convention…, whether the founders [had] given America a monarchy or a republic, Franklin’s response was: ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’... Whether we keep our republic is now in your hands.” 

“My fellow Americans, it’s been the privilege of my life to serve this nation for over 50 years,” President Biden told the American people. “Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and in Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as the president of the United States, but here I am.

“That’s what’s so special about America. We are a nation of promise and possibilities. Of dreamers and doers. Of ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things. I’ve given my heart and my soul to our nation, like so many others. And I’ve been blessed a million times in return with the love and support of the American people. I hope you have some idea how grateful I am to all of you.

The great thing about America is, here kings and dictators do not rule—the people do. History is in your hands. The power’s in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands. You just have to keep faith—keep the faith—and remember who we are. We are the United States of America, and there is simply nothing, nothing beyond our capacity when we do it together. So let’s act together, [and] preserve our democracy. God bless you all and may God protect our troops. 

“Thank you.”

And with that, President Joe Biden followed the example of the nation’s first president, George Washington, who declined to run for a third term to demonstrate that the United States of America would not have a king, and of its second president, John Adams, who handed the power of the presidency over to his rival Thomas Jefferson and thus established the nation’s tradition of the peaceful transition of power. Like them, Biden gave up the pursuit of power for himself in order to demonstrate the importance of democracy. 

After the speech, the White House served ice cream to the Bidens and hundreds of White House staffers in the Rose Garden.

And when the evening was over, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden posted an image of a handwritten note on social media. It read: “To those who never wavered, to those who refused to doubt, to those who always believed, my heart is full of gratitude. Thank you for the trust you put in Joe—now it’s time to put that trust in Kamala.” 

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

The US Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to lower price caps on prison phone calls and closed a loophole that allowed prison telecoms to charge high rates for intrastate calls. The vote will cut the price of interstate calls in half and set price caps on intrastate calls for the first time.

The FCC said it “voted to end exorbitant phone and video call rates that have burdened incarcerated people and their families for decades. Under the new rules, the cost of a 15-minute phone call will drop to 90 cents from as much as $11.35 in large jails and, in small jails, to $1.35 from $12.10.”

The new rules are expected to take effect in January 2025 for all prisons and for jails with at least 1,000 incarcerated people. The rate caps would take effect in smaller jails in April 2025.

Worth Rises, a nonprofit group advocating for prison reform, estimates that the new rules “will impact 83 percent of incarcerated people (about 1.4 million) and save impacted families at least $500 million annually."

New Power Over Intrastate Calls

The FCC has taken numerous votes to lower prison phone rates over the years, but Thursday's is particularly significant. While the FCC was previously able to cap prices of interstate calls, an attempt to set prices for intrastate calls was struck down in court in 2017.

Prison phone companies could sue again. But the FCC said it now has authority over intrastate prison phone prices because of the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, which was approved by Congress and signed by President Biden in January 2023. The new law "empowered the FCC to close the final loopholes in the communications system," the commission said.

The 2023 law—named for a grandmother who campaigned for lower prison phone rates—“removes the principal statutory limitations that had prevented the commission from setting comprehensive just and reasonable rates," the FCC said. Specifically, the law removed "limits to the commission's ability to regulate rates for intrastate calls and video communications."

More than half of prison audio call traffic is intrastate, with the calling and called parties both in the same state, according to data in a draft of the FCC order released before the meeting.

The FCC's work to reduce prison phone rates "was not always embraced by the courts," FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said. "We were told—over and over again—that the commission did not have the authority to address every aspect of these rates, because while interstate calls fell within our jurisdiction, intrastate calls did not."

Previously, the FCC imposed price caps on interstate calls ranging from 14 to 21 cents per minute for audio calls, depending on the size of the facility. Going forward, a uniform set of price caps ranging from 6 to 12 cents per minute will apply to both interstate and intrastate calls.

Ban on Other Fees

The FCC also adopted video call rate caps for the first time. The video call caps range from 11 to 25 cents per minute. These caps are classified as "interim" and could be lowered in the future.

Other fees will be prohibited, too. “Using this new law, we fix what has been wrong for too long," Rosenworcel said. “We reduce calling rates by more than half. We stop tacked-on costs like ancillary fees and prohibit special fees for site commissions. We make clear these policies apply to both interstate and intrastate rates. We also set rates for video calls for the first time. On top of that, we strengthen accessibility requirements for incarcerated people with disabilities and improve consumer disclosures.”

Site commissions are payments that phone companies make to prisons and jails in exchange for the exclusive right to offer service to inmates. FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said that banning the commissions will "end the practice of provider kickbacks to correctional facilities and payments for costs irrelevant to providing services so callers will no longer be forced to bear the financial burden of these costs."

The nonprofit Prison Policy Institute said that prison phone companies charge ancillary fees for things "like making a deposit to fund an account." The ban on those fees "also effectively blocks a practice that we have been campaigning against for years: companies charging fees to consumers who choose to make single calls rather than fund a calling account, and deliberately steering new consumers to this higher-cost option in order to increase fee revenue," the group said.

The ancillary fee ban is a “technical-sounding change” but will help “eliminate some of the industry's dirtiest tricks that shortchange both the families and the facilities,” the group said.

FCC: Revenue Will Still Exceed Costs

The FCC's draft order said that even with the new caps, potential "revenues for eight out of 12 [Incarcerated People's Communications Services] providers exceed their total reported costs when excluding site commissions and safety and security categories that generally are not used and useful in the provision of IPCS. These eight firms represent over 90 percent of revenue, 96 percent of [average jail and prison population], and 96 percent of billed and unbilled minutes in the data set."

Worth Rises said that the "primary factors driving the FCC's lower rate caps is the exclusion of security and surveillance costs as well as the exclusion of commissions. For decades, the cost of an ever-expanding suite of invasive surveillance services has been passed on to incarcerated people and their loved ones. With [the] new rules, prison telecoms will be barred from recovering the cost of the majority of such services from ratepayers."

The price-cap order was fully supported by the FCC's three Democrats and Republican Nathan Simington. Republican Brendan Carr approved in part and concurred in part, saying he had concerns about the rate structure.

[interested-pig]

Why young people must Vote

The older generation are shitting on their children’s future and their children are letting them do it.

Reform UK, campaigned on Changing Human Rights Legistation, Revise the Equalities Act, Scraping the Net Zero Target and Removing Environmental Lobbies. 18% of 65+ voted for Reform UK, that is nearly 1 in 5 of old people don’t give a f*ck about equality, the environment and human rights. However, only 5% of people below 24 voted for Reform UK, the difference however, is that only 50% of them voted, whereas 80% of 65+ year olds voted.

Joseph de Maistre said "Every nation gets the government it deserves." Young people will get the government they deserve if they don’t vote.

Here is the figures I abstracted from the ONS (which I can’t be bothered to reference) to produce this. Not the upward trend of Votes Cast, and Votes per Reform UK with age. Are 20%+ of parents so stupid as to not notice the world they wish to create for the people they most love?

- 18-24 Years Old:

- Total Votes Cast: 47%

- Votes for Reform UK: 5%

- 25-34 Years Old:

- Total Votes Cast: 55%

- Votes for Reform UK: 8%

- 35-44 Years Old:

- Total Votes Cast: 63%

- Votes for Reform UK: 10%

- 45-54 Years Old:

- Total Votes Cast: 68%

- Votes for Reform UK: 12%

- 55-64 Years Old:

- Total Votes Cast: 74%

- Votes for Reform UK: 14%

- 65+ Years Old:

- Total Votes Cast: 80%

- Votes for Reform UK: 18%

[furious-blueberry0]

I was looking through some old google doc files, and came across this government structure I had created of the Mandalore post-Empire, for an AU I was working on at the time.

Basically Din in this AU had given the darksaber back to Luke when he went to give the gift to Grogu in TBOBF, because he had discovered that it originally was protected by the Jedi and that Vizla had stolen it from the Temple, basically saying “My Ancestor gave it to the Jedi, and now I’m here to do the same”.

I mean, this was actually a really small part of the AU, but it was fun to create, so if anyone is curious here it is:

There are two Governors on the planet

They are chosen with an election, and are voted by only the citizen of age.

Their tenure lasts ten years.

But if the Assembly does not like one or both of them, with a unanimous vote they can take away their position of power.

The Assembly is formed by eighteen elements, and with the Governors they are twenty

Their tenure lasts twenty years.

A lot of the members are from the historical families of Mandalore, or at least the few that survived, but there are also members elected from less famous other clans

To be part of the Assembly you must be at least 25 years old and maximum 60. Obviously the non-human species that have different life spans will have different rules, with their years who can equate to the human ones. 

The Council is made up of six elders with tenure for life.

To be part of it you need to be at least 60 years old.

The members are chosen by the Assembly through a vote.

Often they are former members of the Assembly, who cannot be re-elected there, and so they are given this position.

There are cases in which some were elected even if they never held political tenure, but they are rare.

The Council doesn’t actually have political power, they are there just to give advice to the Governors and the Assembly.

They can suggest reforms or make proposals, but their vote on them is not valid, only the Assembly can decide.

It’s more of an honorary position than anything else.

Then there are the Mandalorian citizens.

To be considered of age, and have the right to vote, you have to complete the Verd’goten and/or follow the Resol’nare. 

All of it depends on when the citizen became a Mandalorian, if they were a child or already an adult.

It’s their role to vote for the members of the Assembly and for the Governors, but not for the Council.

They can also make requests in front of the Assembly.

[glitches-and-bugs]

The State Of The Community (From an outsider)

Let me preface this by saying that this is all based on information I could gather on my own from the Discord and the various blogs involved. I will do my best to be as accurate as possible but since nobody involved in the situation came to explain, I'm quite limited. Thank you to the two of you (Aside from my main contact) that approached me to tell me what was going on, even though you were both distant from what was happening. I wholeheartedly appreciate you.

Let's get started, shall we?

The Server

This will address both the previous state of the server, the current state, and the demands presented in order to reform the server.

Firstly, the previous state. It's abundantly clear that none of you involved in the management of that server 1) know how to run a server with a mixed age range, 2) Have enough emotional control to not abuse moderator positions, and 3) Know what to include and not to include in a server in order to provide a healthy environment. This is not calling you out, this is a statement of fact because this community is mostly children. Yes, yes, some of you are close to 18. But I'm fucking 25. You're children to me.

The current state. Though the NSFW channels seem to be removed (Which they shouldn't have even existed in the first place without proper age verification and a moderator group of adults), there's still aspects present that should NOT be in a healthy server. Let's break it down. The Trigger Channel. Though I understand that it might be seen as necessary for you to make sure that people don't misstep, you do realize that people can use those against you, right? You should NEVER discuss your triggers publicly. The sheer amount of Vent/Mental Health chats. Look. It's clear that you're all trying to take responsibility for each other and that's nice and all, but none of you have boundaries. These types of discussions are fine to have with friends, it's important to have a supportive net of friends, but you should NEVER have a vent chat unless it is in private. These discussions you're all having in there are things that should be brought up to medical professionals. Some of you should be going to HOSPITALS. The fact that there were NSFW chats at all. This is a community of mostly children. I know nothing can stop you kids from exploring on your own, but there should never be a place where adults and children can go at the same time that has sexual connotation. I know y'all might not think this is serious but you kids can get adults into trouble, or end up in compromising situations yourselves. I pray nobody's groomed or grooming any of you.

Now the demands, reviewed by someone that worked as a professional Twitch/Discord moderator for a few years. Things I understand why you want to change it: The sheer amount of moderators. Too many cooks spoil the stew. By having so many people with that much power, you cause confusion and disarray. Limit your moderation team to 1 moderator per like, 20-30 members, with a good spread of time zone variance. Transparency of moderator decisions. Sorta. This should always be a given. Any rule changes and major events should be publicized, but things like rule violations, bans, and things as such should stay in the background. You are not entitled to every piece of information. No-nonsense moderator applications. Being a moderator is something to be taken seriously. You're ensuring the safety of your peers, not making a secret club. Things I do not understand: Public moderator applications. This isn't necessary. Sharing applications with the moderation team is all well and good, but it's not a public affair. You aren't voted on like parliament or the senate. "Collectivized" server ownership. A server should be made up of one trusted owner and a team of moderators. This isn't a government, it's a leisure activity. A big server I'm in has one moderator per 50 members. YOURS has at LEAST one for every FUCKING EIGHT. That's oversaturation. Any further collectivization and you may as well just make everyone a moderator. Server owner rotates between moderators. This isn't going to work. I promise you with all my little rotten heart that this isn't going to work. You're either going to give up or someone is going to just... Not give up the server owner position. You do realize that can happen, right? That they can just not give up the Server Owner role? What happens then? Did you have a contingency plan? Opt-in Mental Health channels. It's better than just leaving them free and open, but having them at ALL is still not good. Like I brought up before.

Phew, and that's all just the SERVER.

The Tumblr Community

As some of you may know, I was one of the handful of founding blogs in this project.

It has gotten way out of hand.

We have lost the spirit of what we started as, and as a result we have become a very toxic, disorganized community built on the backs of people who cannot support it.

People are being exiled from the community left and right for reasons I cannot figure out but am certain are petty in spirit. You're all great kids, but you're ruthless. You're going to cannibalize this community someday. I pray it happens soon, so you can all get over the grief that much sooner. I pray it rips off like a bandage, quick and efficient, a grand hoorah that leaves this place etched in the annals of Tumblr history. But we all know it won't. You'll all slowly cannibalize the community, ousting any member that stands up against whatever in group is most popular at the time, and you'll slowly decline in number until it's just a handful of you all bickering with yourselves about what went wrong. You'll look back and wonder what happened to change this community so much and there won't be anything to pinpoint because it's not just one event that caused its downfall. It's dozens.

If you know what's best for you, you'll leave on your own terms before that day comes.

Go touch grass. Stay in school, go to college, follow your dreams, and go to fucking therapy. All of you.

I promise you, as someone who was once in your shoes; young and stupid with a big RP blog and a lot of moxie, I know how this ends. Godspeed Tem-ily, you beautiful Undertale blog.

Final thoughts

I'll give a summary of Glitches' and Bugs' storyline tonight or tomorrow or something. Feel free to send me asks through the day, maybe tomorrow. but after that I'm gonna abandon the blog for good.

As an adult of my age, I shouldn't have even stayed when I realized how young some of you were. This is me rectifying that mistake. Any adults are free to hit me up, but i don't wanna deal with y'all being so young compared to me. It's just not right for us to interact.

Goodbye and good luck.

Glitches.

[mariannesgirl]

“Let’s be very clear…

I called for the President to step down from his renomination bid the day after the Trump-Biden debate. There is nothing we have seen since that night that wasn’t on full view in the debate. Effective crisis management would have called for all those who are calling for him to step down now, to do so immediately - when I did.  They did not do so because they were waiting until they could consider it a politically safe thing to do.

That’s how much control the party holds over its elected members. They effectively silence anyone who doesn’t tow the party line.

Yet ever day that Democrats have waited, they ceded ground to Trump. Their procrastination has been a perceived weakness in the eyes of the electorate. And even now, when they discuss opening the nomination and allowing a real contest to occur, their ideas of who should step forward are political leaders who have felt too fearful of the party’s ire to stand up and speak before now. (I do not include Kamala Harris in that group because it’s literally her job to support the President and I respect that.)

Do we need a Democrat to beat Donald Trump? Oh YES! But the soul of the Democratic party does not lie with the Democratic Party machine. I am an FEC registered qualified candidate. I am on the ballot. And despite a media blacklisting of my campaign and the most absurd kinds of character assassination, I received half a million votes in the primary. The only reason I was painted as an “unserious” candidate is because those who did the painting know how serious I am.

My platform would be considered moderate in any other advanced democracy. It includes plans that are supported by a majority of both Republicans as well as Democrats - such as Medicare for All, and tuition free college and tech school. It speaks to the need for fundamental economic reform to address the extraordinary anxiety among 39 percent of Americans who are skipping meals to pay their rent and 25 percent of Americans who carry medical debt. It speaks to unrigging our economy, and our need for an Economic Bill of Rights.  It speaks to the horrors of the addicted and the unjustly imprisoned. It speaks to the needs of our children and the toxicity of our food supply. It speaks to the climate emergency and to our need to wage peace.

No, I’m not politics as usual. But that is the point.

Neither is Donald Trump…which is why I’m the one to beat him.

I hope my supporters - as well as those who do not necessarily support my agenda yet support the practice of democracy itself, and do not agree with political parties should have the right to obstruct it or manipulate it - will join me in insisting that I have the right to be in any open convention contest going forward. Any debates. Any Town Halls. Any contention whatsoever.”

— Marianne Williamson, July 21st, 2024