Authoritarians foster chaos

I'm posting this for the second video clip in this tweet, a minute and 13 seconds of Rachel Maddow explaining how authoritarians work to muddy the waters so badly that no one trusts anything to be true. The tweet refers to Doug Ford making authoritarian moves in Ontario, but it really applies to authoritarians everywhere. They want us to believe that democracy doesn't work, and "only I can fix it," to quote a well-known U.S. authoritarian wannabe.

Doug Ford is an authoritarian 👇 https://t.co/0wHL7FLMVj

— Bev (@Garnet_2203) November 28, 2023

Careful with those commas!

Click here for an article at ABC News entitled "Pence told Jan. 6 special counsel harrowing details about 2020 aftermath, warnings to Trump: Sources," subtitled "The former VP is the top official known to have spoken with investigators."

It's an interesting article, but I like the piece about the disputed comma placement:

Sources said that investigators' questioning became so granular at times that they pressed Pence over the placement of a comma in his book: When recounting a phone call with Trump on Christmas Day 2020, Pence wrote in his book that he told Trump, "You know, I don't think I have the authority to change the outcome" of the election on Jan. 6.

But Pence allegedly told Smith's investigators that the comma should have never been placed there. According to sources, Pence told Smith's investigators that he actually meant to write in his book that he admonished Trump, "You know I don't think I have the authority to change the outcome," suggesting Trump was well aware of the limitations of Pence's authority days before Jan. 6 -- a line Smith includes in his indictment.

"You know, I don't think" and "You know I don't think" express different thoughts.

(I can't resist adding a favorite quotation of mine from Oscar Wilde: "I have spent half a day deciding to use a comma -- and the other half deciding to take it out again.") Careful with those commas!

Click here for an article on Substack by Robert Reich, entitled "Four ways the mainstream media is quietly helping Trump and his Republican allies."

First, it’s drawing a false equivalence between Trump and Biden — claiming that Biden’s political handicap is his age, while Trump’s corresponding handicap is his criminal indictments.

Secondly, every time the mainstream media reports on another move by Trump and his Republican allies toward neofascism, it tries to balance its coverage by pointing out some fault in the Democratic Party (such as the ongoing federal corruption and bribery case against Senator Bob Menendez).

It makes it seem as if the dysfunction in Washington is coming from both parties.  

Finally, blaming both sides for this chaos plays into Trump’s and his allies’ goal of wanting Americans to believe the nation has become ungovernable, so it needs a strongman.

Bothsiderism: the fiction that the two parties are equally bad; or that to be fair and evenhanded, criticism of one side must be tempered by criticism of the other.

That point of view may have some validity when discussing two parties behaving in the way we've become accustomed to over the last 75 years. But when one party -- but not the other -- has gone off the rails, the principle no longer applies.

Robert Reich on AI

 Be afraid. Be very afraid.

And click here for an article by Robert Reich discussing AI and concluding:

Which all goes to show that the real Frankenstein monster of AI is human greed.  

He believes that Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI (which has a capped profit structure and nonprofit board and in which Microsoft has a huge stake) was forced out by board members of the nonprofit group because he was leaning too far toward Microsoft's desire to generate profits and away from the objectives of the nonprofit that Open AI was set up to be.

Altman went to Microsoft. A huge majority of Open AI's approximately 700 employees signed a letter saying they would all quit and go to Microsoft too if Altman was not reinstated (because Altman was moving in the directon of profit, when "they own stock in the company and will make a boatload of money if Open AI prioritizes growth over safety. It’s estimated that OpenAI could be worth between $80 billion to $90 billion in a tender offer — making it one of the world’s most valuable tech start-ups of all time," and "Everyone involved — including Altman, OpenAI’s employees, and even Microsoft — will make much more money if OpenAI survives and they can sell their shares in the tender offer."

So Open AI will  follow the Microsoft path, "making gobs of money." Reich concludes:

This past week’s frantic battle over OpenAI shows that not even a nonprofit board with a capped profit structure for investors can match the power of Big Tech and Wall Street. 

Money triumphs in the end.

The question for the future is whether the government — also susceptible to the corruption of big money — can do a better job weighing the potential benefits of AI against its potential horrors, and regulate the monster.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Robert Reich: Gouging By Airlines (and others)

4.7 million Americans will be flying this week, the highest number of Thanksgiving air travelers in nearly two decades.

If you're traveling, be kind to those around you.

And remember that flying sucks so much these days because of the greed of the airlines. pic.twitter.com/IpmN47IbVo

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) November 22, 2023

The Republican Case In Trump's Favor

This is a video clip at Article 3 Project (A3P) claiming that the charges against Trump are politically motivated. Almost entirely fact-free, with lots of ominous innuendo.

NEW: Article III Project's latest ad lays out the fight against the lawfare used on President Trump.https://t.co/BYacisbKQP pic.twitter.com/TP2DRDonVl

— The Article III Project (A3P) (@Article3Project) November 17, 2023

Mike Davis, the guy behind A3P, is being touted by Steve Bannon and Don Jr., among others, to be Trump's Attorney General, a position he is apparently trying out for. He’s said he’d toss opponents in “the gulag,” said they're going to deport 10 million people, and “We're going to put kids in cages; it's going to be glorious,” and told his followers to “arm up” against “the violent black underclass.” “This is almost comically pathetic chest-beating of a creepy dork," says Chris Hayes, about a Twitter clip where Davis promises to put Mehdi Hasan "in the gulag" when he is AG. Here's another one, a two-minute clip posted by icebergz99, which says: "Here it is!! Keep this moving, spread it Fast!! They keep taking it down, but we keep putting it back up."

NEW: Article III Project's latest ad lays out the fight against the lawfare used on President Trump.https://t.co/BYacisbKQP pic.twitter.com/TP2DRDonVl

— The Article III Project (A3P) (@Article3Project) November 17, 2023

In another post, iceberg says: "During the cease and desist order this was taken down from my page 3 times. This was the fourth time I put it up, but the order was removed (court dismissed) and I have been able to keep it up. Still waiting for Twit to find it offensive and drop it on me…." As if it's some kind of dynamite that the Democrats don't want you to see. It's entirely fact-free, with a bunch of mini-clips intended to put Democrats in a bad light and make Trump look powerful and presidential (shades of The Apprentice). But it gets praise from people who say it's the best video they ever saw, and posts like this one: "Gave me chills, so powerful, moving - that’s our real leader! Made promises, kept promises all while fighting the Deep State and RINOS! PDJT 2024 MAGA!!" Funny, but similar clips and posts on Twitter never defend Trump or offer any support for their claims he's being unfairly prosecuted; they're just empty propaganda.

Republican Lies About Immigration

Click here for an article at MSNBC by Julio Ricardo Varela entitled "This new report reveals the depths of the GOP's lies about immigration."

A report from the Pew Research Center says that the estimated total of unauthorized peaked in 2007, under W., at 12.2 million and has been declining ever since, until 2021, the last year for which figures are available, to 10.5 million. The decline has continued, says Pew, "since apprehensions and expulsions of migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border started increasing in March 2021.”

If those numbers shock you, then there’s a reason for it. Not a week goes by without somebody in the Republican Party promising mass deportations of unauthorized migrants. They can’t talk about the U.S. border with Mexico without falsely describing it as “open.”

Once proudly described as a nation of immigrants, the United States has become a nation of immigration enforcers thanks to Republicans making immigration a wedge issue that too many Democrats are afraid to challenge.

Republicans say that they don’t mind immigrants entering the country legally; they want to decrease the number coming in illegally. Well, that’s exactly what’s been happening.

Another interesting statistic is that while unauthorized immigration has decreased by 14%, legal immigration has increased by 29%. The number of naturalized citizens has grown by 49%. 

And the majority of unauthorized immigrants arrive not over the southern border, despite Republican fearmongering, but by people who arrive legally as tourists and overstay their visa.

The differences in perception between the two parties are stark: " 73% of Republicans believe that “American culture and way of life” has “mostly changed for the worse” since the 1950s. Only 34% of Democrats feel the same way. This is the same survey that found a third of Republicans “believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.” Such views align with a 2021 Pew poll showing clear partisan lines between conservative Republicans (38%) who see the decrease in a white majority to be bad for the country and liberal Democrats (32%) who see it as a good thing.

But Republican fearmongering has not convinced the majority of Americans that immigration is a bad thing:

When asked about levels of immigration, 57% either want it to remain at or above its present levels, while 41% favor a decrease in our immigration levels. Constant news of a so-called “invasion” coming almost exclusively from Republican politicians and their right-wing allies may contribute to the views of that 41%.

The article closes:

The roughly 10.5 million undocumented people in the United States are not faceless, and there is enough political support out there to make sure they are seen as the human beings they are. Republicans might be excoriating them, which is dangerous and terrifying, especially for immigrant communities, but those same immigrants help form the fabric of American society. Distorting statistical reality for GOP political expediency is now the standard. But Thursday’s Pew report gives Democrats the opportunity to radically change the conversation.

Perhaps Trump's recent grandiose announcements of creating huge concentration camps and deportations of millions a year will be more difficult than Stephen Miller expects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We can learn a lot from dogs!

Sharing is good pic.twitter.com/t909PfOKm7

— Enez Özen | Enezator (@Enezator) November 12, 2023

Robert Reich: Pro-Union Video Clip (4 minutes)

71% of Americans approve of unions. So why do nearly all Republican lawmakers in Congress oppose proposals that would make it easier to unionize?

It’s simple: they’re terrified.

Nothing scares the GOP more than working people recognizing their collective power. pic.twitter.com/BD4kqM0oCC

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) November 12, 2023

Election Turnout by Age

It’s an unsolvable mystery as to why politicians pander to 60+ year olds. pic.twitter.com/ptKjyt1IkB

— A. Human (@OddThinks) November 10, 2023

Lawsuits Pending Over 2020 Election Lies

An article in Vanity Fair by Brian Stelter, entitled "Dominion's Fox News Case Was Just the Beginning," referring to the successful Dominion lawsuit against Fox News,which resulted in the media giant paying $787.5 million in April to settle that case. Dominion has “lawsuits pending against Newsmax, One America News, Mike Lindell and MyPillow, Sidney Powell and her law firm, Rudy Giuliani, and Patrick Byrne. 

The suits are moving more slowly than the Fox case “because most of them are in DC, and the DC courts are very busy, still to this day, with a lot of the January 6 cases,”

 Another election technology company, Smartmatic, is also suing Fox, Newsmax, and other defendants. “Smartmatic is a global company that was injured on a global scale,” attorney J. Erik Connolly told Stelter for the book. “The damages are much bigger.”

(I'm trying out an app called Textmaker which allows you to hightlight text in an article you're reading. Unfortunately, it has a few quirks that I may or may not be able to fix. One is that you can't selectively de-highlight marks you've made; if you've made a number of highlights in an article, you do have the option of deleting them all, but not individually. The second is that if you cut and paste, the highlighting remains, as above. I'll be trying to get around this in the future.)

Click here for an article at The New York Times by Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Swan, entitled "Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump's 2025 Immigration Plans," subtitled "If he regains power, Donald Trump wants not only to revive some of the immigration policies criticized as draconian during his presidency, but expand and toughen them."

Something to remember is that this is not Trump's plan, because Trump doesn't plan: he reacts. This strategy is being drawn up by Stephen Miller.

Mr. Trump and his advisers see the opening, and now know better how to seize it. The aides Mr. Trump relied upon in the chaotic early days of his first term were sometimes at odds and lacked experience in how to manipulate the levers of federal power. By the end of his first term, cabinet officials and lawyers who sought to restrain some of his actions — like his Homeland Security secretary and chief of staff, John F. Kelly — had been fired, and those who stuck with him had learned much.

In a second term, Mr. Trump plans to install a team that will not restrain him.

Since much of Mr. Trump’s first-term immigration crackdown was tied up in the courts, the legal environment has tilted in his favor: His four years of judicial appointments left behind federal appellate courts and a Supreme Court that are far more conservative than the courts that heard challenges to his first-term policies.

 It's going to be a scary world for the millions of undocumented immigrants; he is "preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled."

He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.

To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.

To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.

 The article says:

The constellation of Mr. Trump’s 2025 plans amounts to an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.

There's a lot more, and it promises an ugly police-state society. A second term for Trump would be a complete disaster.

Trump's Henchmen Plans For Takeover

Click here for an article by Robert Reich at Substack entitled "What is Trump planning if he gets a second chance? Chaos and consolidation," subtitled "Be worried. Be really worried."

What does Trump have planned? Nothing. Trump doesn't plan: He reacts. But he has a group of minions, many of whom are led by the unholy triumvirate of Bannon, Flynn, and Stone, who have plans -- a lot of them -- and they're not going to be good.

If Trump learned one thing during his four years as president, it’s that he doesn’t want anyone to tell him what he cannot do. All he wants are people to help him do what he wants to do.

They plan to prosecute opponents like Biden, and former Trump people who have turned against him -- Barr, Milley, Kelly --  and to reward people he perceives as having fought for him -- like those imprisoned for their conduct on January 6.

How do Americans feel about politics?” The New York Times asked a few weeks ago, answering in the same headline: “Disgust isn’t a strong enough word.”

Trump and his allies want us to be disgusted. They want us to believe that America is ungovernable – and is becoming more so, as long as power remains diffused. They want us to think we need an authoritarian strongman — Trump — to concentrate power and take over everything.

The article has a lot more in this vein.

SCOTUS Corruption

Click here for an article by Shawn Boburg in The Washington Post entitled "A guide to the friends and patrons of Clarence and Ginni Thomas," subtitled "These are the associates of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni, who have given gifts, made payments or otherwise supported the couple based on recent reporting from various news outlets."

It's limited to various gifts, et cetera, from Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo, and H. Wayne Huizenga. Nice to live a billionaire lifestyle on a federal paycheck of roughly a quarter-million a year.

You might think that obvious Supreme Court corruption would be a bipartisan issue; sorry, no. The Democrats, led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), are investigating; the Republicans are resisting the investigation tooth and nail. I can't think of one issue where the Republicans are in favor of the little guy, the common man, the underdog. Every issue you can think of, they side with the rich and powerful.

Israel/Palestine

Click here for a long thread unrolled on Twitter. I long ago despaired of trying to figure out the Israel/Palestine situation; this looked like a good article to help me make sense of that horrible problem. (I think if world war breaks out, the Middle East is a flashpoint that may be the origin.)

Robert Reich: Wealth Inequality

Pause the video at 5:30; it's a very interesting graph. It bottoms out around 1970, when I was 22. The world looked bright: I had no qualms about quitting university. Lots of my tradesmen friends had a car, a boat, and a cabin at the lake. CEOs were paid about 30 times as much as their employees. But it was all downhill from there, as the graph climbed steadily higher. In 2020, CEOs were paid 350 times as much as their employees. Real estate prices have skyrocketed. The outlook for a young person just starting out looks bleak to me.

728 billionaires hold more wealth than half of American households. If that doesn’t tell you we’re in a second Gilded Age, I don’t know what will.

It can be easy to feel discouraged, but the first Gilded Age teaches us lessons on how we can fight back. Let me explain. pic.twitter.com/2gXK8IQ4ad

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) November 10, 2023

Teddy Roosevelt - The New Nationalism Speech

Click here for an article at Teaching American History which includes Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" speech. Warning: It's pretty wonky! But Roosevelt lived in a time not unlike our own, the first Gilded Age (it seems we're living in the second). And he has some pretty interesting things to say. Here's the article's introduction to the speech:

Vice President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) ascended to the presidency after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. Aligned with the more reformist, progressive wing of the Republican Party, Roosevelt advocated far-reaching policies aimed at, among other things, the regulation and prosecution of monopolies under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890), industrial safety and labor regulations, conservationism, and a muscular foreign policy. Employing a robust understanding of executive authority (he saw the president as the “steward of the people,” authorized to take any action for the people’s good unless that action was expressly prohibited by the Constitution and the laws) and championing the increasing role of administrative agencies to address the challenges of industrial America, Roosevelt was a key figure in the progressives’ transformation of American politics in the early twentieth century. Increasingly, the language of American politics became one of problem solving through the moral, rhetorical leadership of the president and the scientific expertise of administrative experts in the federal bureaucracy.

A year out of office, Roosevelt delivered the following speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, at the dedication of a park built in honor of abolitionist John Brown. Addressing an audience that included many Civil War veterans, his aim was to mend the rift that had emerged between the progressive and conservative wings of the Republican Party since William Howard Taft had assumed the presidency. In the speech, Roosevelt laid out a political platform, much of which was built upon the Square Deal of his own presidency. Roosevelt embraced many of the progressive talking points of the day, especially in his proposals for increased administrative regulation of private business, his remarks on the redistribution of wealth, and his support for the direct primary. He argued that under modern conditions, these and other reforms would help secure the common good and foster greater equality of opportunity for American citizens. He dubbed his program “The New Nationalism,” a term borrowed from Herbert Croly’s seminal 1909 book, The Promise of American Life. Roosevelt used the theme two years later when he broke from the Republicans and ran for the presidency under the banner of the “Bull Moose” Progressive Party.

Bill Gates on AI

Click here for an article by Bill Gates entitled "AI is about to completely change how you use computers"; subtitle, "And upend the software industry."

To do any task on a computer, you have to tell your device which app to use. You can use Microsoft Word and Google Docs to draft a business proposal, but they can’t help you send an email, share a selfie, analyze data, schedule a party, or buy movie tickets. And even the best sites have an incomplete understanding of your work, personal life, interests, and relationships and a limited ability to use this information to do things for you. That’s the kind of thing that is only possible today with another human being, like a close friend or personal assistant.

In the next five years, this will change completely. You won’t have to use different apps for different tasks. You’ll simply tell your device, in everyday language, what you want to do. And depending on how much information you choose to share with it, the software will be able to respond personally because it will have a rich understanding of your life. In the near future, anyone who’s online will be able to have a personal assistant powered by artificial intelligence that’s far beyond today’s technology.

Gates says:

The most exciting impact of AI agents is the way they will democratize services that today are too expensive for most people. They’ll have an especially big influence in four areas: health care, education, productivity, and entertainment and shopping.

He goes on to elaborate how AI will change these four areas.

Eiger wingsuit jump

Click here for an Eiger wingsuit jump. Those guys get way too close to the rock, horizontally, for me. At one point it looks like his fingers must have been brushing the rock on his right. Ten feet to the left and he'd be perfectly safe, and it would still be a lot of fun. I guess they want the danger element for the camera? And he seems to be moving very slowly -- vertically, at least. How slow can those things fall, I wonder?

Jack Smith rebuts Trump's lies

Click here for an article at WaPo by Rachel Weiner, Spencer S. Hsu, and Tom Jackman, entitled "Trump belief that 2020 election was stolen is not a defense, DOJ says," subtitled "Trump claimed he can't be charged with intending to deceive; Special Counsel said his crimes were steeped in lies."

Barb McQuade, former U.S. Attorney and law professor, summarized the legal points in the article in a Twitter thread; you can click here to read it.

 

Bad poll? Dont panic.

Click here for an article at Substack by Robert Reich entitled "Trump v. Biden: How worried should we be?" and subtitled "No reason to panic. Biden will win the 2024 election."

There's a lot of sturm und drang among Democrats, particularly after -- as Reich points out -- a New York Times poll that came out on the weekend showing "that Biden is now trailing Trump by 4 to 10 points among registered voters in the key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania."

Yes, it's alarming; but  Reich goes on to urge calm. It would be a huge mistake if Democrats were to toss Biden because of sudden fear and panic. He closes:

The reality is that Biden is the only person who has beaten Trump. Biden is the incumbent president with all the advantages of incumbency. Biden has shown himself to be a strong campaigner. There is no one to take his place.

If Biden simply continues to be the adult in the room — governing maturely and responsibly — more of the American public will eventually come around to him, including in the swing states. And the more they see that Trump is increasingly unhinged, they will decide that they’d rather have a competent adult in charge.

So my advice is not to panic, not to unduly worry. Biden will need to work hard for it, and the rest of us will have to work very hard in support of him, but Biden will win in 2024.

 

The Bee Lady!

The Bee lady is so amazing pic.twitter.com/wenmwFpTGm

— slaterjonathan (@paulsla1539372) November 6, 2023

By A Nose!

The Winner is the Horse! 💓😂pic.twitter.com/z8ABB1VS2W

— Figen (@TheFigen_) November 6, 2023

Maui fire -- frightening

I subscribe to NYT, so I don't know if this is behind their paywall or not. Sorry.

The New York Times used video evidence, data and interviews to reconstruct the wildfire that raged through Lahaina, once Hawaii’s royal capital. See the deadly Maui inferno, hour by hour. https://t.co/Z7KupqmkhC pic.twitter.com/zZFPmBGOVl

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 6, 2023

Wonders of Modern Technology - 1930

pic.twitter.com/9VpqRlHFdK

— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) November 6, 2023

Just in case.

I saved this thread, just in case at some time in the future I want to use Twitter's search features (I don't right now).

Before we get started, you might be wondering why you need advanced search?

Your main feed just shows what's being posted NOW.

But there's absolute gold in the old tweets from experts you love + big accounts you follow.

Lots of learning just waiting there for us.

Here's how:

— Tessa Davis (@TessaRDavis) April 8, 2022

Media Cowardice - Democracy Is At Stake

Click here for a courageous article in the Philidelphia Inquirer by Will Bunch, entitled "With the world on fire, a cowardly, timid news media is a threat to U.S. democracy," subtitled "News organizations are using cowardly words to describe killing abroad, fascism at home — downplaying the danger to democracy."

"West Wing" religious philosophy

Whomever made this, bravo!
pic.twitter.com/75H43v32RT

— Majestic (@MajesticResists) November 5, 2023

Workout Partners

Yoga time.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/MiXZKc17jN

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) November 4, 2023

That's some driver's test.

pic.twitter.com/QLk7aOcM8o

— NO CONTEXT HUMANS 👤 (@HumansNoContext) November 4, 2023

Republicans Oppose Investigation of SCOTUS Corruption

You might think that investigation of corruption of Supreme Court justices would be a bipartisan thing -- but you'd be wrong. More proof that Republicans are wrong on everything.

Click here for an article at Talking Points Memo by Kate Riga entitled "Republicans Threaten to Filibuster Subpoena Enforcement And Quash SCOTUS Oversight.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) confirmed Thursday that the committee will vote next week to authorize subpoenas for a few powerful right-wing players known to have intimate, monetary relationships with Supreme Court justices. 

The committee plans to authorize subpoenas next Thursday for Federalist Society founder Leonard Leo and mega-donors Harlan Crow and Robin Arkley II. The vote will almost certainly come down along party lines, as Senate Judiciary Republicans railed against the plan during a Thursday business meeting.

After the recent revelations of obvious corruption by Justices Thomas and Scalito accepting bribes gifts (undeclared for tax purposes), Republicans are going to the wall to defend them, claiming the investigations are political attacks because the justices implicated are conservative.

 

Can you read this? Of course you can.

You may need to have an Instagram account to see this; I don't know.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Gaurav Bharadwaj (@amazingsciencez)

Stars in Motion

You may need to have an Instagram account to read this; I don't know.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Gaurav Bharadwaj (@amazingsciencez)

You can't be too careful!

pic.twitter.com/65IL1VJJob

— NO CONTEXT HUMANS 👤 (@HumansNoContext) November 4, 2023

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Will humanity ever produce something like this again? pic.twitter.com/1Kh38lyY4t

— Culture Critic (@Culture_Crit) November 3, 2023

Ricky Gervais and David Bowie collaborate on a song

 

I still can’t believe I co-wrote a song with David Bowie. pic.twitter.com/VgYEfZyDVb

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) November 3, 2023

MAGA violence and intimidation

Click here for a Substack article by Robert Reich entitled "Trump the mob boss," subtitled "His threats to mobilize his mob are escalating."

Shortly after the 2016 election, I spoke with a Republican friend who had retired from the Senate years before. I asked him why so many Republican lawmakers remained silent in the face of Trump’s vile lies and bigotry.

After a pause, he said, “Some of his supporters are nuts, and they have guns.”

I laughed, thinking he was joking. He was dead serious. “They’re a dangerous mob, and Trump’s the mob boss,” he added.

He follows with a list of examples of Republican lawmakers being intimidated by MAGA threats to them or their families, and concludes:

Threats and intimidation are hallmarks of mob bosses.

Mob rule is incompatible with democracy.

Rep. Liz Cheney warned a few weeks ago that if Trump is reelected, “all of the things he attempted to do but was stopped from doing by responsible people around him … he will do. There will be no guardrails … . He will unravel the institutions of our democracy.”

People disapprove of comparisons with Hitler, but sometimes they're apt: In the early 1930s, Nazi violence and intimidation frightened off many of his political opponents. 90 years later, an American parallel?