#talking points memo

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By Josh Marshall

I want to return to this revelatory interview with coconspirator John Eastman, the last portion of which was published Thursday by Tom Klingenstein, the Chairman of the Trumpite Claremont Institute and then highlighted by our Josh Kovensky. There’s a lot of atmospherics in this interview, a lot of bookshelf-lined tweedy gentility mixed with complaints about OSHA regulations and Drag Queen story hours. But the central bit comes just over half way through the interview when Eastman gets into the core justification and purpose for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and overthrow the constitutional order itself. He invokes the Declaration of Independence and says quite clearly that yes, we were trying to overthrow the government and argues that they were justified because of the sheer existential threat America was under because of the election of Joe Biden.

Jan 6th conspirators have spent more than two years claiming either that nothing really happened at all in the weeks leading up to January 6th or that it was just a peaceful protest that got a bit out of hand or that they were just making a good faith effort to follow the legal process. Eastman cuts through all of this and makes clear they were trying to overthrow (“abolish”) the government; they were justified in doing so; and the warrant for their actions is none other than the Declaration of Independence itself.

“Our Founders lay this case out,” says Eastman. “There’s actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable, tolerable while they remain tolerable. At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.”

“So that’s the question,” he tells Klingenstein. “Have the abuses or the threat of abuses become so intolerable that we have to be willing to push back?”

The answer for Eastman is clearly yes and that’s his justification for his and his associates extraordinary actions.

Let’s dig in for a moment to what this means because it’s a framework of thought or discourse that was central to many controversies in the first decades of the American Republic. The Declaration of Independence has no legal force under American law. It’s not a legal document. It’s a public explanation of a political decision: to break the colonies’ allegiance to Great Britain and form a new country. But it contains a number of claims and principles that became and remain central to American political life.

The one Eastman invokes here is the right to overthrow governments. The claim is that governments have no legitimacy or authority beyond their ability to serve the governed. Governments shouldn’t be overthrown over minor or transitory concerns. But when they become truly oppressive people have a right to get rid of them and start over. This may seem commonsensical to us. But that’s because we live a couple centuries downstream of these events and ideas. Governments at least in theory are justified by how they serve their populations rather than countries being essentially owned by the kings or nobilities which rule them.

But this is a highly protean idea. Who gets to decide? Indeed this question came up again and again over the next century each time the young republic faced a major political crisis, whether it was in the late 1790s, toward the end of the War of 1812, in 1832-33 or finally during the American Civil War. If one side didn’t get its way and wanted out what better authority to cite than the Declaration of Independence? There is an obvious difference but American political leaders needed a language to describe it. What they came up with is straightforward. It’s the difference between a constitutional or legal right and a revolutionary one. Abraham Lincoln was doing no more than stating a commonplace when he said this on the eve of the Civil War in his first inaugural address (emphasis added): “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”

In other words, yes, you have a revolutionary right to overthrow the government if you really think its abuses have gotten that intractable and grave. But the government has an equal right to stop you, to defend itself or, as we see today, put you on trial if you fail. The American revolutionaries of 1776 knew full well that they were committing treason against the British monarchy. If they lost they would all hang. They accepted that. They didn’t claim that George III had no choice but to let them go.

From the beginning the Trump/Eastman coup plotters have tried to wrap their efforts in legal processes and procedures. It was their dissimulating shield to hide the reality of their coup plot and if needed give them legal immunity from the consequences. The leaders of the secession movement tried the same thing in 1861.

In a way I admire Eastman for coming clean. I don’t know whether he sees the writing on the wall and figures he might as well lay his argument out there or whether his grad school political theory pretensions and pride got the better of him and led him to state openly this indefensible truth. Either way he’s done it and not in any way that’s retrievable as a slip of the tongue. They knew it was a coup and they justified it to themselves in those terms. He just told us. They believed they were justified in trying to overthrow the government, whether because of OSHA chair size regulations or drag queens or, more broadly, because the common herd of us don’t understand the country’s “founding principles” the way Eastman and his weirdo clique do. But they did it. He just admitted it. And now they’re going to face the consequences.

#us politics #news #talking points memo #2023 #op eds #Tom Klingenstein #Claremont Institute #john eastman #Josh Kovensky #Josh Marshall #jan 6 investigation #jan 6 insurrection #domestic terrorism #treason #traitors #donald trump #capitol riot investigation #Declaration of Independence

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

This may be the biggest seizure of power by the federal judiciary in US history. Brace yourself. The Supreme Court conservatives, exuding the heady self-confidence of a team that knows it cannot lose, haven’t been coy about the jurisprudence they want to reshape or tear down. Religious liberty, abortion, guns — the Court has recently taken up and dispensed with a whole swath of cases at astonishing speeds, often dramatically changing the bench’s long-held posture in relative silence through the shadow docket. But perhaps on no topic has the Court telegraphed its intent more clearly than the administrative state, the power of federal agencies to regulate and make rules. The dry name belies a system absolutely critical to every corner of American life.

“If I want to dump chemical waste in a swamp, I’d prefer that the federal government not have power to regulate that,” Julian Davis Mortenson, professor at the University of Michigan Law School, told TPM. “If I want to pay people working in my factory a miserably tiny wage, or employ 12 year-olds, I’d rather the federal government not have the power to make a rule against that.” The Court is now stocked with justices hungry to shift the power back in the direction of those nonregulatory interests. In doing so, they’ll really be shifting power to themselves. “If the Supreme Court truly honored the rule of law and precedent, then they would acknowledge the power of the agencies that was granted to them by Congress in order to save our environment,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told TPM of a recent illustrative case involving the Environmental Protection Agency. “But this is an extremist Supreme Court, so I’m very worried about the outcome.” Because Congress is already paralyzed on critical issues, the prospect of a future in which the administrative state is rendered toothless is also a future in which unelected, conservative Justices become the arbiters of what the government can and can’t do. It’s a right-wing fantasy, cherished and developed for decades, come to life.

#TPM #Talking Points Memo #SCOTUS #corrupt SCOTUS #anti-democratic #power #the administrative state #federal agencies #regulation #the rule of law and precedent #rule of law

[dreamy-conceit]

Be ruthless with systems, be kind with people.

— Michael Brooks

#the majority report #the young turks #talking points memo #democratic socialism #progressive #progressivism #internationalism #marxist humanism #quotes

[greenjudy]

#talking points memo #vote them out

[abigailspinach]

Things can change in a moment. But the clearest sign out of Israel this morning is Benny Gantz (et al.) statement that Israel will respond to Iran at a time of its own choosing. That’s a pretty clear signal there is not going to be immediate retaliation and that’s what the White House wanted and demanded. As I noted yesterday, Israel itself has very big reasons not to involve itself in an open-ended conflict right now, as much as all its muscle memory and defense doctrines demand a swift and overwhelming retaliation. But I want to note what we’ve seen here from the perspective of U.S. policy.

The U.S. telegraphed more or less exactly what Iran was going to do via extremely good intelligence (reminiscent of the lead up to the invasion of Ukraine). It undoubtedly played a huge role bringing Jordan, Saudi Arabia and likely other Arab states into active and public armed action in defense of Israel. It positioned and deployed U.S. anti-ballistic destroyers and aerial assets to itself shoot down roughly a hundred of the estimated 300+ aerial devices Iran launched at Israel. Together, Israel, the U.S. and various allied Arab states took down 99% or more of all those devices. Iran launched a massive aerial bombardment and virtually none of it got through. And now the U.S. has managed to get Israel not to launch an immediate and inevitably escalatory retaliation.

It goes without saying that no administration works on its own. It comes to the game with the world’s most powerful military and major power status. It’s operating with Arab allies who have been gravitating toward a de facto anti-Iran alliance with Israel for years. And yet, anyone who knows anything about foreign or defense policy knows that most of it is all the endless number of things that can wrong and the one or two ways they can go right. Navigating the last week to this point today is a tour de force of international crisis management for the Biden White House.

#talking points memo #politics

[ghost-bxrd]

(prev anon with another bad half formed prompt)

what if after the whole pit fiasco jason still gets trained by the league, and then decides that he was kinda done with the whole fighting stuff and gotham feels like home, so might as well get an apartment there, and time moves on and he gets a job and gets into uni or smth and everythings good, and then nightwing comes crashing into his apartment breaking his window and jasons already had kinda a crappy day so he just starts yelling because what the hell man? do you know how much that'll take to repair? my insureance wont cover that! and nightwing is just stuck staring at his grown up little brother whos supposed to be dead, and chokes out a "jason". and now jasons freaked out because he didn't remember telling him his name, and thens theres confusion and dick asks why he doesnt recognise him and jason says hes never met him before in his life, and suddenly dick is staring at his little brother who's alive, but who isn't his brother and he can feel his heart slowly rip in two.

Lmao Dick goes back crying to the family that he found Jason and that he’s ALIVE but he doesn’t remember anything and “Bruce, Bruce, he’s getting his degree. He got into uni. He’s— he’s happy—“

And Bruce (after confirming Jay’s identity) just starts leaving him huge cheques and visiting him under the cover of “scouting for young talents” and “scholarship programs courtesy of WE” and Tim shyly starts waiting for Jason at his favorite café to get to know him, and Dick skips “subtle” entirely and drops by every other day to have dinner with Jason or watch a movie.

Meanwhile Jason has to pretend to keep his cool and not give himself away (he likes his peace and quiet, thank you very much) and becomes progressively more guilt ridden with every instance he does something entirely mundane (reading a book, swearing like a sailor, cooking spaghetti) and Bruce or Dick begin tearing up.

#lmao that would be a fun read #angst be gone #well most angst anyway #Jason just wants to live his life #and stay away from the bats #the bats did NOT get that memo #bonus points if Jason still does some vigilante work on the side #just not full time anymore #he aggressively refuses to use the cheques #at least until Bruce keeps inviting himself over and lossing jason off with his presence alone #from that point onward he spends every single dollar out of spite #or alternatively: Bruce gets progressively more frantic because he doesn’t know how Jay pays for college and housing AND food #and thinks Jay is starving himself to get his degree (he’s not) #and starts leaving hundred dollar bills all around Jason’s apartment #Jason is Not impressed #jason todd #brainstorming #batfamily #dick grayson #batfam #bruce wayne #robin #ghost talks #tim drake #red hood #batman

[sparatus]

heyoooo I saw some tags on a post you shared that said something about how the batarian resistance was born, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on a batarian resistance because I also want to do a batarian resistance, but I've been having trouble noodling out what that looks like.

okay attempt two at answering this cause my computer decided to restart itself last time and i got mad and didn't want to retype everything lol

obviously i'm going to start with saying the vast majority of my batarian work is in my no-reapers au exponential differentiation, especially blood in the water where the two deuteragonists working with shepard are second in command of the resistance tarvok shad'derah and his friend and close ally of the resistance gurji taeja, and we're also poised right at the start of the hegemony plotline in in the land of giants and the resistance will be pretty involved in upcoming chapters (and are already there, please come read it i have essays). moving on.

the short answer is... there is no short answer. it's complicated. the hegemony, per canon, is a strict caste-based, totalitarian oligarchy with complete control over every aspect of life underneath them. you can't work with batarians without addressing the hegemony somehow. there's going to be a lot of messy politics, and wildly varying opinions towards the resistance (there's going to be a lot of people who think it's not worth fighting! let them kill themselves off! why are you going to so much effort!), and very heavy topics that need a lot of care to portray sensitively. the hegemony is very clearly based on very real regimes that killed a lot of people and left a lot of lasting damage. a lot of where i started looking at batarians with a sympathetic lens is from talking to a friend of mine who lives in brazil and saw a lot of their own experiences reflected in the batarians, and quite a few other regimes there are still people alive who remember living under them are obvious inspiration for bioware as well (stalinist ussr is the most obvious, but there's definitely aspects of mussolini's italy and north korea as well, to name a few). accordingly, i've been doing my best to approach the topic sensitively; literally the most important thing i can stress with working with batarians is do your research. there's an awful lot of nuance to consider, and boiling it down to basic "good guy rebels vs evil government" does it a serious disservice.

that out of the way, let's get into it after the cut. i'm going to preface this with a disclaimer that a lot of this is my own work and i am not comfortable with others using it without permission. nothing against you personally i just have some bad experiences with people "taking inspiration" from me and literally just lifting my shit whole-cloth without asking me and only crediting me in a separate place away from the actual fic, lol. so anything with specific names or timelines or just anything that's me speculating and not found in canon is not free to use, kthx.

anyway.

in order to write a resistance against the hegemony, you have to start with actually writing the hegemony. yeah i know i know nobody wants to put too much effort into the slaver assholes, but it's important. and we do actually have some canon details about how the hegemony functions, so Reading The Wiki actually a pretty good place to start! based on what (admittedly not a lot) we know about the hegemony, they're a totalitarian oligarchy where the richest rule. you can potentially buy your way to a higher caste if you make enough money, but it's very difficult, and they're incredibly cutthroat. basically, life under the hegemony is very every man for himself.

this is to the upper castes' advantage! aggressive enforcement of the status quo by the higher-ups, using fear and violence as weapons, not only works very well to oppress the lower castes, but it also encourages people to turn on each other and rat each other out. you're unlikely to find a lot of camaraderie among average batarians - if anyone could turn you in to the cops, you're not gonna trust anybody, and that's gonna go a long way to keeping people under the upper castes' thumbs. we can even reasonably infer that family members are encouraged to report on each other - it's happened irl! it's super useful! nobody trusts each other, everyone's afraid of surveillance, nobody is safe. building up any sort of resistance movement is going to be incredibly difficult anywhere the hegemony can listen.

further, it's canon that the hegemony very tightly controls the flow of information in and out of their borders, and that includes information about the other species and life outside the hegemony. keeping the population ignorant makes them easier to control, after all. this is a known and very common tactic in authoritarian regimes. the common batarian living within hegemony borders believes that their way of life is best, this is how things are meant to be, and all the aliens are lesser beings and basically savages, so it's best to just listen to the hegemony and do as you're told and never ever leave :) why would you want to leave when this is the best possible life for you :) most batarians aren't going to be aware that there's anything wrong with the dystopian horror they're living in, because it's all they've ever known and all they can know. so odds of the lower castes all realizing they're being oppressed and agreeing "fuck that" together are uhhh slim to none, to say the least. this shit goes very deep, and the hegemony has been in place for centuries, so they've had a lot of time to root themselves in the populace's collective heads as Good And Correct And The Only Way To Live.

so, okay, let's leave the hegemony. easy right? wrong. sure, omega has no rules, but that means you're unlikely to find a lot of help if the hegemony decides to drag your ass back. you're still going to have to stay vigilant for spies and trackers and unfriendly tech, assuming they're not going to just up and kill you (which is probably more likely, even - out in terminus, nobody looks twice at somebody getting ganked, but a kidnapping will draw more attention, and then you've got martyrs, and nobody wants those). outside hegemony space, you're going to run into two main flavors of batarian:

batarians who were born under the hegemony, but no longer live there. these can be divided further into batarians who are still loyal to the hegemony for one reason or another (money, habit, blackmail), and those who have cut ties. either they managed to escape somehow, they were let go willingly and decided never to go back, or somebody else took them out of hegemony space.

batarians who were not. these will then be divided into those who still work with the hegemony (we know they pay good, after all) and those who want nothing to do with them.

of those four groups, you're going to have to make a hell of a pitch to get allies for any budding resistance movement - the hegemony are seen as an omnipresent evil in terminus, but one you can live with as long as you don't do anything stupid. keep your head down, or take their money even, and you'll probably be okay. they're a big damn government with a wide territory and lots of guns, and we know canonically that they have a lot of tech and stuff that they don't even share with the rest of the galaxy because they're paranoid and selfish, so "just stay out of their way" is going to be a very, very popular method of dealing with them.

oh, and remember what i said about hegemony info diets? yeah. culture shock once you're out is gonna be a bitch. we're talking near-catatonia levels of existential crisis here.

"what about the citadel," you may ask. great question! fair point! we can in fact reasonably infer that the vast majority of citadel species, with the exception of the asari with their """indentured servitude""" and possibly the hanar depending on how far down the rabbit hole of the hanar-drell relationship you feel like going down with me, are very anti-slavery and would support going against the hegemony! except, unfortunately, it's more complicated than that, because the batarians were the fourth species to reach the citadel, can be inferred to have been the "peacekeepers" of the galaxy prior to the uplifting of the krogan (yes i have textbooks of batarian history no we're not getting into it right now go read bitw), and in general are a big damn nuisance that the council don't want to risk war with right at the moment. "but there's more of them then there are of the hegemony!" yeah and you know how many of them are actually capable of war? the turians. das it. until the alliance start getting in slapfights with the hegemony, the turians are the only species really capable of waging war to any meaningful extent, and supporting the resistance in any way, even just allowing them to Exist on the citadel, would cause a lot of trouble for the council that they simply aren't able to deal with while the batarians still have their embassy on the station. remember what i said about politics? yeah you came and asked tumblr user sparatus about this there's so much xenopolitics involved in why the hegemony haven't been wiped off the map yet i made this field up but it's my passion--

ahem. does this sound like more effort than it's worth yet? good. that's the point.

in short: getting any sort of resistance movement going with any degree of traction is going to be incredibly difficult. there's very few places to run, getting recruits who are at least mostly sane will be like pulling teeth, and you're basically on your own. it's even fair to assume that resistance movements have happened in the past and failed. the hegemony are large and in charge, and yeah sure they're falling down on themselves and a shadow of their former selves but that makes them more dangerous because, as we can see in canon, that pride makes them aggressive and very determined not to show weakness or let anyone know how bad things are getting. taking them down is an uphill battle in the blinding snow and brother, the resistance are a beat-up rear-wheel drive with no snow tires and a faulty fuel injector.

no, i don't make metaphors that make sense. i write about political intrigue and the comics characters, it's obscure bullshit or bust over here.

obviously that's not all to say a resistance movement is impossible. i have one myself, hi how ya doin read my fic. that's all just set up. to write a resistance movement against a massive, well-entrenched regime like the hegemony, you first have to have a good, solid idea of what they're resisting against, and all the factors getting in their way. it's hard! it's difficult! it's true to how these things tend to work out in real life!

here's how i have things set up for my own work (again, keep in mind this work is not free to use):

the hegemony's fall from grace following their defeat by the rachni and their job as the main military might being usurped by the krogan and later turians has led to infighting and cannibalizing each other. as conditions steadily declined and the bad parts of the bad system got worse, what was previously a sustainable dystopia spiraled downwards into a ticking timebomb. the conclave (the "senate" which is now effectively no longer elected running everything, the top caste) is inbred to hell and back, because you can't possibly marry outside your caste, and the question of nonviability is becoming a when, not an if.

the arrival of the alliance and the council's apparent "favoritism" (read: not simply letting the hegemony have their way, because no you're both breaking laws actually please just shut up and sit down for mediation) has destabilized their standing in galactic society, causing their retreat further into isolation. this is making everything worse. things fall apart.

some senators within the conclave, particularly senators shahok khor'berran and morem kednelok, have recognized the hegemony is barrelling towards its breaking point and are looking for reform.

morvarn taryn, a cop in dasrak (the capital city, btw i will always be salty bioware didn't even give khar'shan a CANON CAPITAL CITY), has always struggled with having more empathy than a man of his caste is supposed to have. this gets him in trouble when dealing with a krogan slave that keeps breaking confinement, wragg, because damn that poor guy's really fucked up huh. (this also gets into alien slavery and that whole quagmire, but that's a different essay), but he doesn't really actually question the regime fully until a friend of his, air force lieutenant tarvok shad'derah, comes by the bar one day clearly in pain, and morvarn convinces him to come to his apartment for treatment and finds tarvok and his squad have been subjected to sapient experimentation without anaesthesia and the wounds have been left exposed.

the shad'derahs are a prominent family line due to their ancestor rothok being the second spectre in history and a close friend of gurji beelo. further, as a military officer tarvok is roughly the same caste as morvarn, and they both should be spared from this kind of treatment. the fact that even their middle-tier caste isn't enough to keep them from being seen as tools and objects radicalizes morvarn, but he doesn't realize it yet.

he brings his concerns to a close friend. friend happens to be senator shahok, who sees an opportunity and agrees with morvarn that either things need to change, or the hegemony will fall, and perhaps it needs to for their own survival as a species.

several months pass, with much thinking and discussing of what to do. tarvok disagrees that anything needs to change, and insists this is just the way things are, but morvarn's compassion sticks with him until a fateful mission rattles him, and the hegemony's plan to subject his younger brother thrajul to the same treatment he's had convinces him it's time to leave.

shit happens, blah blah blah, morvarn and tarvok end up fleeing khar'shan with a small group of supporters and also non-supporters who have no other choice but to go with. they run to omega and spend a few months trying to sort themselves out before deciding to keep trying to rescue friends and family from the hegemony.

this evolves into other batarians seeking their help getting their own loved ones out, raiding slavers, deep-cover missions, etc etc, until they're actually a proper resistance movement. they even make non-batarian friends, including gurji taeja, beelo's descendant who has a familial loyalty to the shad'derahs because salarians have like a whole thing about that.

there is no true plan for taking down the conclave, because how the fuck are they supposed to do that

and that's how exdiff and the whole x57 and resulting hegemony plotline tie in, because x57 kicks off the hegemony gearing up for war properly and once [REDACTED] then well the hegemony's the only problem left to deal with and hey look there's this whole group of guys with very intimate knowledge of what to do with them and some guys on the inside,

i have a fic planned for the actual downfall it's called carrion men and i am GOING to outline it next year so maybe i can get started writing it for camp nano or proper nano

..... oh my god this is so much. i am so sorry to anybody whose phone this fucking destroys trying to load it. but also not really. my m.e. big bang fic was an entire treatise of political intrigue and speculation on potential asari supremacy conspiracy, you don't come to me for concise answers on xenopolitical things. anyway hello i have put a completely normal and reasonable amount of work into the hegemony and the resistance and batarians in general

#press conference #cr-noble-main #HOLY SHIT THIS IS SO MUCH LONGER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE IM SO SORRY FDHSLD #do you understand why i got mad and didnt want to retype it for a while lol #council memos #council records #WHICH ONE WAS MY FANDOM DISCUSSION TAG I FORGET #yeah lemme just make a smart themed tag system i said. i will definitely remember this i said. #demented screaming. #turning off reblogs preemptively. any time i talk about batarians nobody can fucking behave #do you guys remember that time i got accused of supporting human trafficking because i said the batarians have a point #in being mad about the humans setting up colonies in territory the batarians had already claimed and were in. i remember. #i trust none of you. no reblogs.

[commanders-sole-braincell]

commander with terrible self care/low something in their blood stands up to do a dramatic speech and just eats dirt instantly

Pure only fools and horses del boy falling into the bar levels, just maintains their cool pose and falls flat. Zero attempt to save themselves

#Gw2 #Guild wars 2 #No points for guessing what my ass just did #Sole are you okay- I dont wanna talk about it (light hearted) #Why am I Sweating hello body we're Young get the memo #Side note and tw period and organ talk #But I just found out a uterus can malfunction and decide to make more of itself IN ITS OWN MUSCLE #guess how I found out

[captn3]

pansexuals are fucking insane bro the bullshit they pull when you try to tell them their sexuality is rooted in transphobia and biphobia...

#memo's ted talk #unfortunately it kind of works. it tires me to the point of not wanting to argue anymore. and that just makes them more smug #which suuuucks they wonder why we're so pissed abt them when they do all this dumbassery

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Republican members of the Texas state legislature introduced a slate of bills Thursday designed to subvert election processes and curb voting rights in the state. One of them would even allow the Texas Secretary of State to overturn election results in the state’s largest Democratic-leaning county, with very little rationale for doing so.

On Thursday, Republican state senators introduced Senate Bill 1993, a bill targeting Harris County, a diverse region that includes Houston and is also the most populous county in Texas, to a Senate committee for debate.

SB 1993 would grant Secretary of State Jane Nelson (R) the authority to order a new election in Harris County “if the secretary has good cause to believe that at least 2% of the total number of polling places in the county did not receive supplemental ballots,” according to the bill text. Secretary Nelson would have the same authority granted to a district court.

The bill would “allow really low thresholds” for ordering a new election, Katya Ehresman, the voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas, told TPM. “Anything from a machine malfunction, which can necessarily be the fault of the county or of an election administrator getting stuck in traffic—which in Houston is incredibly likely—and having a delay in providing election results to the central count station,” she said.

The bill was introduced alongside over a dozen other bills seeking to restrict voter access and overhaul the state’s elections process. Senate Bill 260, for example, would allow the Secretary to suspend election administrators without cause, and Senate Bill 1070 would enable Texas to withdraw from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a bipartisan program that maintains voter rolls across state lines that has recently been targeted by far-right propaganda.

State Republicans quietly introduced the bills in the State Affairs Committee on Thursday morning—without giving the mandatory 48-hour notice. “Every part of today’s hearing highlights the subversive attacks on elections in Texas,” Ehresman said, “and (SB) 1993 is a part of that.”

With a population of nearly 5 million, Harris County is the most populous county in Texas and the third most populous in the U.S. It became the subject of right-wing conspiracy theories back in 2020, when the county experienced some technical difficulties as election officials tried to change procedures to make voting safer during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Secretary of State’s office conducted an audit of the general election. They found that the county “had very serious issues in the handling of electronic media,” but none of those issues actually amounted to voter fraud.

Harris County saw issues again in 2022, however, as state and local Republicans went after the county’s election administrations by recruiting and deploying poll watchers throughout the county. This prompted local Democrats to request federal observers instead. On Election Day, the county did experience several issues that often take place in more urban counties, like polling sites opening late and some running out of paper ballots, among other things.

The Texas GOP, including Gov. Greg Abbott, seized the opportunity to accuse county officials of “election improprieties,” and 22 right-wing candidates used it as an excuse to challenge their losses. Still, there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

State Democrats argue that the introduction of a flood of anti-voting legislation targeting Harris County has all been a retaliation against the county turning blue back in 2018.

“A lot of what we see is Harris County as an example of a need to invest in election administration and not penalize or detract from it,” Ehresman said.

#us politics #news #voter disenfranchisement #texas #gop #conservatives #republicans #texas republicans #gov. greg abbott #2023 #Texas Secretary of State #Senate Bill 1993 #Harris County #Houston #Jane Nelson #talking points memo #Senate Bill 260 #Senate Bill 1070 #Electronic Registration Information Center

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The idea that public investment in infrastructure serves democratic goals fell out of favor in the U.S. in the 1980s. Leaders insisted that private investment reacted more efficiently to market forces whereas government investment both distorted markets and tied up money that private investment could use more effectively. In fact, the dramatic scaling back of public investment since then has not led to more efficient development so much as it has led to crumbling infrastructure and its exploitation by private individuals. 

In late July the New York Times noted that since 2019, billionaire businessman Elon Musk has steadily taken over the field of satellite internet, infrastructure that is hugely important for national security. In just four years Musk has launched into space more than 4,500 satellites—more than 50% of all active satellites. This means that Musk’s Starlink is often the only way for people in places hit by disasters or in war zones to communicate. 

On Thursday, excerpts from a forthcoming biography of Elon Musk by historian Walter Isaacson revealed that Musk “secretly told his engineers to turn off [Starlink] coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast” after learning that the Ukrainian military was sending six small drone submarines packed with explosives at the Russian naval fleet based in Crimea. After talking to Russian leaders, who said they would respond with nuclear weapons—later events suggest this was a bluff—Musk shut off Starlink, the drone submarines lost the connectivity they needed to find their targets, and the weapons simply washed ashore.

According to Isaacson, Ukrainian officials begged Musk to turn the coverage back on, but he refused, saying that Ukraine “is now going too far and inviting strategic defeat.” He told U.S. and Russian officials that he wanted Starlink to be used only for defense. Then he offered a “peace plan” that required Ukraine to give up territory to Russia and reject plans to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Later, he again disabled Starlink coverage in the midst of a Ukrainian advance.

Isaacson portrays Musk as frustrated by being dragged into a war. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars,” Musk told Isaacson. “It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.” Since the story broke, Musk has defended his unwillingness to be in the middle of a war. 

But Mykhailo Podolyak, a top advisor to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, pointed out on Musk’s own social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that the same Russian fleet Musk protected went on to fire missiles at Ukrainian cities, killing civilians, including children. Russia is also attacking Ukraine’s infrastructure for exporting grain, which threatens the price and availability of food in Africa.

The privatization of the functions of government in the U.S. has given a single man the power to affect global affairs, working, in this case, against the stated objectives of our own government. Republican leaders eager to push that privatization have made their case by turning voters against taxes, although the tax cuts put in place since 1981 overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and corporations, permitting a few individuals to amass fortunes: Forbes, for example, estimates Musk’s net worth at $251.3 billion.

On Friday the Internal Revenue Service announced that increased federal funding under the Inflation Reduction Act and the help of artificial intelligence will enable a new push to go after 1,600 millionaires who owe at least $250,000 and 75 large businesses with assets of about $10 billion apiece that owe hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. 

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said the plan “goes to the heart of Democrats’ effort to ensure the wealthiest are paying their fair share.” It also goes to the heart of the idea that billionaires must not be able to impose their will on the rest of us by virtue of their monopolization of key aspects of our infrastructure. Still, Republicans continue to argue for private investment according to market forces. Opposing taxes and the government programs they fund, they have clawed back as much of the new funding for the IRS as they have been able, and they continue to call for more cuts. 

This week, as a fight over funding the government by the end of the month looms, the implications of the parties’ different visions of government could not be clearer. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Sept 10, 2023

+

[ref :: Musk Shut Down Ukrainian Attack After Chat with Russian Official] ::

Elon Musk got caught with his hand in the national security cookie jar, sabotaging or blocking a major Ukrainian military operation after conversations with a Russian government official.

Now let’s unpack this.

Last month I wrote about the rise of the global oligarchs and I made particular mention of Elon Musk. Even if you set aside the various things you may not like about Musk he has amassed a degree of economic power that is novel and dangerous in itself even if he had the most benign of intentions and the most stable personality. More than half the operating satellites in the sky are owned and controlled by him. Overnight we finally got confirmation of something that has long been suspected or hinted at but which none of the players had an interest in confirming. Last September Musk either cut off or refused to activate his Starlink satellite service near the Crimean coast during a surprise Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian Navy at anchor at its Sevastopol naval port.

Ukraine has made extensive use of naval drones. But it at least sounds like this was supposed to be a massed attack that would have done extensive damage to the Russian Navy and the naval port itself and thus seriously degraded Russia’s ability to launch missile attacks against Ukraine. In other words, it doesn’t sound like this was just any attack, though the details are sketchy.

On its face you might say, they’re Musk’s satellites and he’s in charge of who gets to use them and how. But of course it’s not that simple. It’s a good illustration of how Musk’s economic power has crept into domains that are more like the power of a state.

Starlink is a network of satellites providing robust internet connectivity without reliance on any ground infrastructure. This is critical in Ukraine since the ground infrastructure has all been degraded or destroyed. Starlink is owned by and made possible by the launch capacity of SpaceX, Musk’s space launch company, which is currently the sole means the U.S. has to launch satellites into space.

Musk made business and financial decisions that, under our economic system, entitles him to the vast profits of SpaceX. But he didn’t create it on his own. The company was built on the back of U.S. government contracts. In essence the U.S. government fronted the money to build SpaceX by awarding it contracts that made its business viable. Musk and SpaceX are also U.S. military contractors. That comes with a big set of responsibilities and restrictions.

Raytheon isn’t at liberty to sell its high tech weaponry to Russia or China if the price is right. These contractors are legally and financially bound into the U.S. national security apparatus. So is Musk and SpaceX. Or at least they’re supposed to be. A critical part of this story is that Musk took this action after conversations with an unnamed Russian government official which, Musk claimed, led him to worry the attack could escalate into a nuclear conflict.

Of course the threat of escalation has hung over the Ukraine war from the beginning. Countless civilian and military officials in the U.S., Europe and across the globe have been analyzing and trying to manage that risk for 18 months. We should take Musk’s claim about fears of nuclear escalation with a huge, huge grain of salt. There are many other threats and inducements that could have come up in these conversations. But let’s assume for the moment that’s what the Russian official told him. It’s simply not Musk’s judgment to make. That’s not only the case as a matter of basic democratic accountability and national security law. Musk is the last person you’d want making such a decision. He’s a mercurial weirdo whose views visibly change by the day in reaction to whoever is giving him the most comments love on Twitter. His national security thinking is at best juvenile and fatuous. The idea that such a call was Musk’s to make is as absurd as it is terrifying.

Let’s imagine a more generous to Musk scenario.

Maybe that Russian official said to Musk: Turn off your satellites over our naval base or we will start shooting down your satellites. In technical terms that is not an idle threat. You might say, well, war’s hell, Elon. But he might reply, was the U.S. government prepared to reimburse me for the satellites and disrupted service contract fees that I incurred not for any sane business reason but to advance U.S. national security interests?

That’s a good question and I’m not sure I know what the answer is. In fact, I suspect there is no answer. The whole situation is one that mixes and matches private sector and national security in very scrambled ways. And Musk who is someone who pushes every envelope and is more than happy to use his money, domestic celebrity and control of a critical communications hub to wreak havoc with any U.S. government that calls him to account. Let’s not forget that it was just after these events that Musk suddenly started advocating his personal ‘peace plan’ on Twitter — which surprisingly seem to match all of Russia’s demands.

Let me be clear that I don’t think that last scenario is what happened. But we don’t know that it didn’t. My point in discussing that possibility is to illustrate the fact that it’s not just that Elon Musk sucks, which he does. The whole situation sucks. You simply can’t have critical national security infrastructure in the hands of a Twitter troll who’s a soft touch for whichever foreign autocrat blows some smoke up his behind. But that’s what we have here.

As I said above, we’ve known or suspected for a long time that stuff like this had happened. Musk revealed at the time that he’d been talking with Russian officials. Indeed, at one point he said he had spoken to Putin himself on more than one occasion during this period. But we shouldn’t take anything he says at face value. The U.S. hasn’t wanted to get into this publicly because they don’t want a public spat with Musk. (This is the subject of Ronan Farrow’s recent piece in The New Yorker.) This applies even more to Ukraine which still relies on as much Starlink access as it can get. In response to these latest revelations the Ukrainians’ gloves seem to have come off. One of President Zelensky’s top advisors went off on Musk on Twitter last night essentially arguing that Musk personally has blood on his hand for all the subsequent attacks launched from those ships and facilities into Ukraine.

We need to learn more details about just what happened here. A congressional investigation wouldn’t be a bad idea. But we know enough to see that a guy in charge of a lot of critical technology the U.S. relies on is happy to cut deals with the other team.

#Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #Elon Musk #Space X #starlink #satellite internet #defense contractors #Talking Points Memo #TPM #Russia

[minttwisted]

are you really living life if you aren't pushing yourself to write a 4 to 6 page paper with a deadline of tomorrow on the lasting, permanent impact of fandoms on the creation and societal perception of the specific content which unites them (the fandom in question), as evident through authors' character choices, and changing mainstream beliefs which adapt in a reflection of fandoms' actions ?

with your supporting evidence being og sherlock, diversity in the riordanverse, and the contrast of riordan's efforts by jkr's retroactive decisions + lack of diversity + doubling-down on both of the two, and then how such actions were met with criticism by creatives and fans alike, and so the fandom took it into their own hands as to create the change they want to see—as manifested by original fan content such as online writer mskingbean89's 529k fanfiction "all the young dudes", which centers on the era of characters harry potter's father belongs to, as well as the fan-created romance between potter's father's best friends

and how this built a community surrounding said fan-made works, which created a community where people felt and feel safe to explore and express their gender identity, sexuality, and creativity

as well as find and create a safe space derived from the work of an inhospitable creator who opts to spread their harmful beliefs over their large platform and fanbase

thereby reclaiming the work and the community and re-casting both in a positive light in the eyes of both those directly involved and those observing through consumption

#in this essay I will #this shit was due pre winter break even starting and now is the last day of break and aaa #so if you're one of my irl mutuals and saw this haha no you didn't #this essay can and will be me seeing my talking points on my whiteboard #and ranting (read: orating) to an audience of my mic and my cat and my plastic cow I stole from my school's media center #with said voice memo being promptly transcribed in a google doc to be edited and revised tyvm #the citations on this boutta be crazy #tumblr and ao3 and fandom.com #I'm so sorry mr matthews

[mntcoronet]

*pause moment* hey why the fuck did I just realise that during high school, I felt like a fair number of my peers (from outside my friends group) treated me somewhat more "softly" or like a child than they would've done with other people. and why was that

#maggles ramblings #like idk if they were actually doing that or if that's just what i Felt was happening #but. when they'd have to talk to me for things; like short 'do this in pairs' stuff; i def felt like they treated me differently #like I'd point out something in the thing we were looking at and they'd go 'oh wow good observation!!' as if we weren't the same age #maybe they just acted differently cos they didn't wanna be doing it. which like sure. but man u could at least try to discuss the topic #or did i seem like too much of a shy little creature that only just learned human speech that they forgot i was competent enough to get A's #but hhh man idk. i never know how people perceive me that's the real issue here #i can sorta make estimations based on how they talk to me; i can tell well enough if someone just doesn't wanna keep talking to me #but that doesn't mean i can figure out WHY. but i do know that sometimes it feels like.. they pick up on something about me #like i can roughly tell whether the person talking to me still considers me Just A Normal Guy or if they've realised like 'hey... #this person doesn't quite Get It with regards to social/conversation stuff'. bc of the way they talk. but i still never know why!! #like sure every time i go have conversations with new people i feel like I'm just pretending to be A Normal Person yknow #and when other people who seem very socially competent Keep talking to me i just think oh wow you haven't figured it out yet that's wild #figured what out? idk that I'm just pretending i guess. about what? uh good question just pretending in general #pretending like i know what to say; that it feels completely Natural to talk like that; like I'm not mentally rating each of my actions #but then sometimes there's people i just feel like i don't have to do that around nearly as much. i swear i gravitate towards those ppl #but yeah it's just. it def feels like they know I'm Not Getting something when i talk to a lot of people. like they Know i missed a memo #and i don't even know what the memo is about; or whether I've gotten any of the previous memos or just absorbed the knowledge #by observing things. ya #ok im done with that train of thought i need to go and work on that au i accidentally stayed up till 2am last night thinking of ideas for

[hajiberry]

VOICE-MEMOS THEY SEND WHEN THEYRE DRUNK

Kirishima- “baaaaaaabe, hiii I’m out and well I mean I’m not really out anymore I’m on my way home. In an Uber cause no drunk driving duhhhhhh but actually I’m not even drunk so I actually could’ve driven but somebody I won’t name names was being a bit of an asshat and wouldn’t let me drive. But oh my god I love yousomuch like you know I love my guys but god I miss you every time I go out. And yes I know I’ll see you when I get home but your gonna be sleeping and I’m gonna be sad but honestly might wake you up because I wanna kiss you. Okaaay pulling up to to the cribbb noww BYYE”

Deku- “okay let me start by saying I’m only slightly under the influence right now. Like honestly barely, I didn’t even drink that much but sometimes I feel like because I never had a college experience to build my tolerance up I’m still a lightweight at 24 but anyways I’m on the way home and I keep thinking about how much I love you and I miss you so much and oh my god I don’t know what I’d do if we ever broke up. Not that I want that to ever happen but like oh my god how could I even function? I’d probably drop from number 1 to like in the hundreds 'cause I’d be that useless without you.” *starts crying and the rest of the audio message is him crying*

Todoroki - “y/n, I’m currently in midoriyas car because he’s driving me home because I accidentally drank too much at the after-party for the award show. I’m so sad you couldn’t come, like I know the anniversary party for your parents is really important that’s why I’m flying out tomorrow to be there for it. Shit, that was a secret. I hope you don’t listen to this because then you’ll know I’m on a plane coming to see you in like 3 hours. Honestly don’t know how I’m going to function hungover on an airplane but I think I’ll manage, I mean it’s not like it’s a commercial flight so I should be good. Damn it well I was originally going to say I love and miss you. Which still stands but I’m gonna go now because I think I’m going to throw up” “TODOROKI NOT IN MY CAR PLEASE”

Bakugou- “fuck. I’m so drunk right now and I hate even admitting that but that’s how shit-faced I am right now that I can even admit that I’m drunk. This is why I should never go out with my idiot friends, they make me drink and then I end up talking about you and that’s so beyond embarrassing. Not that you’re embarrassing I just don’t need them to know my business like that. Kirishimas driving me home right now which I feel like speaks volumes about my lack of good judgment right now. I don’t even know what the point of this message is I just wanted to say you’re one of the most tolerable person I’ve ever met and I really fucking love you. Okay bye this idiots smiling at what I’m saying and it’s creeping me out.

#my hero x reader #my hero headcanons #my hero academia x reader #my hero academia #my hero academia fic #kirishima eijirou #bnha eijiro kirishima #kirishima x reader #kirishima x y/n #kirishima headcanon #bakugou x you #bakugo x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #bnha bakugo katsuki #bakugou x reader #bakugou headcanons #deku x reader #deku x y/n #deku fanfic #deku scenarios #izuku midoriya x reader #todoroki x reader #shoto todoroki x reader #bnha shoto todoroki #todoroki headcanons #todoroki fluff #izuku x you #izuku midoryia x you #izuku midoriya imagine #todoroki x y/n

[peanut-talk]

What if I just make my general shitpost blog for all the stuff that don't fit on main?

What if I just give in and also post football stuff here?

Who is going to stop me?

#look all im saying is that im at my breaking point #if something happens to memo ochoa or luka modric i will not shut up okay #i already been doing my best trying not to talk salernitana #and modrics contracts ends on june and there are whispers of al-nasar #and the fifa clubs world cup is on February