So I guess a few social media posts for the other guy actually was not the reason for his top spot in the polls. Shocker. If you care about democracy, let the people choose their candidate. If if that is unacceptable, then give up the pretense.
🦄 Current Events Monday March 31, 2025 through Sunday April 6, 2025
- Thread starter SunRaven01
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Just reminding folks that today is not the day to believe every headline you read.
Not that any day is under the current administration, but especially not today.
Not that any day is under the current administration, but especially not today.
85.000 identified attempts to hack the election authorities isn't really "a few social media posts"...
The Trump administration is seeking the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, alleged killer of the former United Healthcare CEO.
If convicted and given the sentence his own AG is seeking, I wonder if Trump will succumb to the urge to earn public adulation for pardoning an unlikely folk hero, or if he'll double down and make an example in hopes of heading off more people resorting to violence against the rich they otherwise feel powerless against.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30qlr528elo
If convicted and given the sentence his own AG is seeking, I wonder if Trump will succumb to the urge to earn public adulation for pardoning an unlikely folk hero, or if he'll double down and make an example in hopes of heading off more people resorting to violence against the rich they otherwise feel powerless against.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30qlr528elo
Lycanthropos
Smack-Fu Master, in training
Senator Cory Booker is currently holding a marathon protest speech in the Senate, hitting the 20 hour mark as of 3 PM EST today. He's said he's going to go as long as he's physically able to. This isn't a filibuster, technically, since it's not holding up a vote on anything, but it does keep the Senate floor open until he has to yield. Worth noting he cannot stop or even sit, or he automatically yields his time.
Personally pretty pleased that someone is doing SOMETHING to hold up the Trump agenda. Turns otu we didn't need a majority to at least stall them, we just needed someone willing to stand up. Literally, in this case.
Links to the CNN article and the Youtube livestream below:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/03/31/politics/booker-senate-floor-speech-trump-protest
View: https://www.youtube.com/live/v2utlMxAwtE
Personally pretty pleased that someone is doing SOMETHING to hold up the Trump agenda. Turns otu we didn't need a majority to at least stall them, we just needed someone willing to stand up. Literally, in this case.
Links to the CNN article and the Youtube livestream below:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/03/31/politics/booker-senate-floor-speech-trump-protest
View: https://www.youtube.com/live/v2utlMxAwtE
Techdirt put out a podcast with Ron Wyden about his new book, titled On Chutzpah. The Podcast is another circlejerk over how Section 230 is fine as it is.
The last segment of the description says this:
On tech and innovation, the most I can find is him saying is stuff about bringing real taxation to big corporations who need to pay their fair share. On tech and "innovation", he says shit like "Yes, countless jobs will be displaced thanks to AI and automation. But we have to make sure that we're there to cushion the blow for them", which sticks in my craw.
The last segment of the description says this:
But from reading through some of the book, what he says on bringing Big Tech back to Earth, it's not really different from standard Neoliberal shit.
On tech and innovation, the most I can find is him saying is stuff about bringing real taxation to big corporations who need to pay their fair share. On tech and "innovation", he says shit like "Yes, countless jobs will be displaced thanks to AI and automation. But we have to make sure that we're there to cushion the blow for them", which sticks in my craw.
I recoil at the talk about smoothing the way to "more and better jobs in the future". I find it to be a braindead take. Because like... what the fuck is that "better job" for someone who's solid at coding or art and spent years learning to do that? What is the restaurant worker or trucker going to move up to if the coders and more are getting replaced by AI? It feels like magical thinking to assume that there will be those "more and better jobs in the future" and it's that among other shit like Ron's insistence on the idea of bipartisanship that pins him as just another bargain-bin Democrat whose main claim to fame was one bit of law 20 years ago.
Lycanthropos
Smack-Fu Master, in training
Update for anyone curious: He has officially beat the previous record of longest floor speech in the Senate, which was previously 24 hours, 18 minutes. It was held by Strom Thurmond who was protesting the Civil Rights Act. He has spoken about Trump's damages to just about everything (he had plenty of time to hit each topic after all), and as far as the varying comments go it sounds like he didn't deviate off that topic.
He's planning to go for another hour or so to hit 25 even.
News Nation via MSN: Republicans cancelled all votes scheduled for the week due to Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna (Florida) forcing a vote on Democratic Representative Brittany Pettersen's (Colorado) resolution allowing proxy voting for parents of newborn infants. Nine Republicans joined Democrats to end Republican leaders efforts to stop the effort:
Johnson expressed disappointment at the rare act of Republicans joining Democrats - maybe that should tell him something about the popularity of the effort? This puts off votes until next week:
There might be another effort next week to stop the proxy voting measure.
Over now. He went over 25 hours. Not everybody Congress has that kind of physical stamina, but it shows the kind of commitment we need out of everybody in Congress.
He really shamed Republicans on not standing up for the people and the programs they voted to fund. Or he would have if they were able to feel shame.
Meanwhile in Florida:
Weil closed the gap from > 30 points to around 9%. Republicans in more competitive districts might be worried, especially if the predicted recession appears on schedule this summer.
Looks like Crawford won the open WI SC seat. One small step for anger, at least.
To be clear, this was the floor vote to approve the Rule laying out the bills for the week.
Specifically: H. Res 242 (text pdf, much easier to parse pdf), which laid the timelines for debate.
Closed rules, so no amendments allowed. The rule was to basically allow for a straight yay/nay majority vote on four measures:
- two joint resolutions that would effectively eliminate some regs put forward by the-now-effectively-defunct CFPB,
- the No Rogue Rulings Act of 2025 which would limit nationwide injunctions,
- the Safegaurd American Voting Eligibility Act of 2025 which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
Johnson needed these to go through the rules process because the only way these pass is on simple majority terms - there is no way any of these get Democrat support to pass a two-thirds majority requirement if the leadership allowed them to be scheduled under suspension of the rules. That’s why they’ve cancelled any more votes.
Why this was important was because of this language in the rule that got voted down by the Republican defectors joining the Democrats (slight edits for readability):
1) H. Res 164 is the Discharge Petition for floor consideration for H. Res 23. (congress.gov).
2) H. Res 23 is the proxy voting House Rule. (congress.gov)
Discharge Petitions allow circumventing the House leadership to get a bill or House Resolution to the floor. They require a simple majority - 218 Representatives - to sign the petition. (CRS report on how they work)
The Discharge Petition (H. Res 164) has 218. These names are public, and can be found here, on the Office of the Clerk house.gov site.
The RULE that they voted down? Would have tabled both the discharge petition AND the proxy voting measure and made it effectively impossible to revisit the issue in the 119th Congress.
Luna
Well, this is interesting:
View: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.social/post/3llrboir6es22
View: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.social/post/3llrboir6es22
Take your millions and shove them where the sun don't shine, Musk.
Photo credit, the New York Times.
Photo credit, the New York Times.
Not liking that margin given how unpopular Musk is supposed to be, though. I was really hoping for undeniable refutation to the tune of 15-20 points. ![:\](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/civis/data/assets/smilies/slash-1x.png "Slash :\")
Not liking that margin given how unpopular Musk is supposed to be, though. I was really hoping for undeniable refutation to the tune of 15-20 points.
Every US election is basically:
53% Okay/Good thing
47% Stupidest timeline possible
And that’s if we’re lucky.
Not liking that margin given how unpopular Musk is supposed to be, though. I was really hoping for undeniable refutation to the tune of 15-20 points.
It's an off cycle election, those have pathetic participation rates usually.
I bet Musk blames somebody else and asks for his money back from those voters he bribed.
By the way, where's the arrest warrant and BOLO?
Yeah but as someone who voted in this election, polling places were pretty busy, almost as much as in the general presidential election. Granted, I'm in a super-blue county where there were a lot of motivated voters.
I would say hopefully coming, but I'm not gonna hold my breath.
That was a completely separate effort, not linked to Georgescu. But go on with your dishonest framing.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgq18w507dko
https://www.politico.eu/article/cyb...ntial-election-national-defense-council-says/
"They didn’t say when the cyberattacks took place or what exactly they targeted, but the officials suggested Russia might have been involved.
'Romania, together with other countries on NATO’s Eastern Flank, has become a priority for the hostile actions of some state and non-state actors, particularly the Russian Federation, which has a growing interest to influence Romanian society’s public agenda and social cohesion,' the Supreme Council of Defense of the Country said in a statement."
So Russia trying to affect the election through these hacks wasn't intended to influence the election in favor of the pro-Russian candidate? That's dishonest framing? Seriously?
The margin, reflective of the candidates, is a blow out. Shimel has widespread name awareness, he won the State Wide Attorney General election in 2014, and he's got very wide-spread awareness amount the WOW area and Fox Valley voters. He's also, despite personally finding his policies abhorrent, far more likable than Dan Kelly was (previous Conservative WI Supreme Court candidate from 2023 election), and Shimel only improved on Kelly by like .7%. And the thing is, this election didn't feel like it had nearly the stakes of the previous WiSC election, despite being just as important.Not liking that margin given how unpopular Musk is supposed to be, though. I was really hoping for undeniable refutation to the tune of 15-20 points.
Why do I mention Kelly? Because "likability" was the narrative among local GOP/Conservatives after Dan Kelly lost, not his overt Trumpism or his opposition to abortion rights or his anti-democratic messaging and endorsing of the overt gerrymandering here.
For liberals, that previous 2023 supreme court election was viewed as our "last chance" to repair the damage done by Scott Walker in 2010/2011, which was a big f'ing deal.
Musk didn't help, for certain, but once again the real lesson here is that the Democratic base in WI, that sits in Dane Co and Milwaukee, is the most cohesive bloc in the state. It's really a reversal of where things were 15 years ago.
The media is already insisting this was a repudiation of Musk, and not really reflective of Trump, but everyone I know who is part of the "base" voters for the Dems already hated Musk, but massive out-of-state money is nothing new for us. I expect wildly different lessons to be learned at the State vs. Federal levels, which isn't surprising. If anything, I expect even more hardening against Trump in the near term. Rural WI is going to get slammed by these tariffs. Madison will get hurt, as well, by virtue of the cuts to the University here, but if I were a congressional Republican representing WI right now (Derek Van Orden, for example) I'd be very very worried about keeping my seat in 2026, and that's assuming the congressional districts don't get messed with before that election.
The real issue is that the WI GOP/Conservatives have deeply unpopular positions for most Wisconsinites. If Trump isn't on the ticket, the. GOP does very poorly here. People aren't into the cruelty that is permeating GOP politics right now, and anyone who isn't full MAGA does not have patience for a deteriorating economy.
The real question is how much new congressional push back will we see against the tariffs after last night? We'll see after today's "Liberation Day" announcement and how poorly it's received and how loud the "unnamed congressional sources" sector gets.
Population decline is starting to get a little more mainstream acknowledgement. Kurzgesagt just did a video specific to South Korea and its doomed population spiral, but then also added other countries that are not much better off at the end. This one was pretty dire. It's not often K adds a chapter like "There is no way out" as a conclusion.
View: https://youtu.be/Ufmu1WD2TSk?si=GxBkN_Tsfterrp9v
View: https://youtu.be/Ufmu1WD2TSk?si=GxBkN_Tsfterrp9v
A Group connected the Heritage Foundation is now soliciting "free" legal work from the Big Laws firms that given unto Trump's demands. These preemptive settlements to avoid executive actions attacks have included a promise of $100 million in Pro Bono services .
At least one Heritage linked group has reached out to these for services.
At least one Heritage linked group has reached out to these for services.
Saw this posted elsewhere and I'm honestly tired of the population decline topics. The solutions are obvious: immigration, a cultural shift that leads to more children with appropriate support, or steady decline. The global population isn't declining.
Or in
terms:
Sad part of US politics is that we were projected at population stability/sloooow growth out to 2100 as recently as last year, but I don't see that holding now.
...except for South Korea, it's too late for that, and the video explains why. They can't childbirth their way out of this one, and immigration would have to be a degree that South Korea wouldn't look terribly South Korean anymore. I don't have a problem with the latter, I'm a melting pot person. But there's no way society and government moves fast enough to accept that change. Doubly so when South Korea has such a toxic work culture, and SE Asian women know better than to marry a Korean man, due to the sexism and cultural toxicity.
Yes, you are broadly correct about the solution. No, South Korea can't enact them.
The video skips over climate change and rising right-wing authoritarianism. My kids, now young adults, have expressed that it would be morally wrong to bring new humans into this mess. I suspect they will be the last generation of my parent's genetic line, as I'm the only sibling of 5 who had kids, and we're all pretty much past child-rearing age.
In a world without hope, the biological imperative to reproduce is easy to ignore.
You might want to revisit the post you were responding to.
I don't see how failed attempts to hack election computers is going to influence polling. Please explain.
The November election had about 3.3 million votes cast and this was the biggest non-federal election in Wisconsin history.
This election had "mixed" results because a resolution to amend the state constitution to require picture ID to vote passed by 62%. That type of legislation is typically a Republican talking point so I am not sure how to really interpret the results.
Personally, I do support better ID for voting in theory. It is the detail that is the problem.
By the way, it take less than 15 minutes to get a New ID in Hong Kong. Granted, HK requires you carry ID at all times.
As a channel, they have no shortage of videos on climate change, so I think they were more focusing on specific government policies that South Korea had enacted that prevent even the basic mechanics of child rearing.
yea, my point is, even if you fixed the policies, and then somehow fixed misogyny, you still might not reverse the trend, if you don't also give these younger generations some reason to hope for a better life for their children.
I can only imagine that boomer/GenX preaching to 20-somethings that the world is gonna collapse if they don't start spawning will fall on deaf ears when we're the ones who built the fucked up world they would need to raise kids in.
It is also that we are tired. We have too much works. And also, sex is a lot less attractive with so many other entertainment. Social media also isolates us from actual human interactions.
How do you know all the attempts failed? How would even the authorities know? As far as I know, the authorities haven't made any claims either way.
How could this affect polling? The election authorities systems hold the voter rolls, and attempts to exfiltrate those were among the identified attempts. That sounds like something which would be useful for an illegally financed social media campaign, doesn't it?
Demographic dividends are not indefinitely sustainable. Having "boomers" -- named precisely because they were part of one during a post-WWII "baby boom" -- means you need even more people than before to sustain the demographic trends and accompanying economic growth. At some point, that flattens/declines. Immigration (in the US) has largely plugged the gaps. Now that we have a nationalist, nativist, anti-immigrant political culture taking hold that is gutting what little of a safety net there was while creating environmentally and geopolitically dicey conditions...well, good luck.
Anyway, it's feels less of a current event and more of a separate topic.
All the talk without support is essentially meaningless.
Can speak from experience—am a Gen Xer with a 1-year-old. Raising children in the developed world is expensive, and even with support like childcare is still a commitment many either can't or don't desire to make. Without meaningful initiatives to support parents financially, professionally, and on other fronts, the talk will be for naught.
That's why the exhortations of Musk and others fall on deaf ears. A lot of noise, but little movement where it counts. It does take a large village to raise a child.
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