Republican voter challenges are part of their voter suppression efforts

Republican mass challenges will be one of the biggest stories to come out of the 2022 midterms. We are fighting them but they are multiplying. https://t.co/DR10LusklC
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) September 30, 2022

The thing about these private voter challenges law that I did not know before I read this were that the challenges are unlimited and there IS NO PENALTY for challenging a voter falsely, or in bad faith.
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) September 22, 2022

Activists fueled by false conspiracy theories about election fraud are working to toss out tens of thousands of voter registrations and ballots in battleground states.

“They are just going to beat the system into the ground,” said one election official. https://t.co/88eevyRL8O
— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 28, 2022

A Republican group tried to purge more than 6,000 Harris County voters. Their efforts didn't work. https://t.co/0xsLB31URA
— Chris Hollins (@CGHollins) September 30, 2022

I warned everyone over a year ago.👇

"Among the most overlooked, but most important, provisions of the omnibus voter suppression law enacted in Georgia are new provisions that encourage mass challenges and threaten counties that refuse to abide them."https://t.co/EKRnMp66Rw
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) September 23, 2022

MAGA Republicans will stop at nothing to override the will of the people and infringe on our rights to choose who leads us. https://t.co/nyJMFIDYRb
— Defend Democracy Project (@DemocracyNowUS) September 30, 2022

We recently spoke to a county elections chief in Iowa about this. He told @boltsmag he’d received 3 voter registration challenges in the previous 15 years. This year, 119. https://t.co/DcbEhflVMD https://t.co/PCJn0C61K3
— Alex Burness (@alex_burness) September 28, 2022

"Georgia Republicans have begun to challenge the qualifications of thousands of voters who, they argue, may have moved out of the state or have died. These efforts are based on the state’s new SB202"https://t.co/gfxunxGSdQ
— Black Voters Matter (@BlackVotersMtr) September 27, 2022

Reforming the Electoral College is good. Do you expect Trump and his cult to follow new laws when they won’t follow current ones?

I don’t. If the Republican candidate loses in 2024, I don’t expect them to concede and I expect another insurrection. Do you really think Trump or his cult would respect new laws? The best way to prevent another insurrection is to punish people like Trump who incited it, planned it and funded it, not just the folks who stormed the Capitol. The jail time has to be so severe that tey won’t do it again.

As it stands now, Trump and other extremists would just recruit more chumps to replace any that are in jail. Since the leaders haven’t been punished, there’s no reason for them not to do it again.

Tweets on US income and wealth inequality

https://t.co/LnNEUHJL2S
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) February 20, 2023

New CBO report: The poorest *half* of America — ~150 million people — hold only *2 percent* of the country's total wealth

Wealth of top 10 percent has grown markedly since 1989

That tiny little line at the bottom of this chart is half the country pic.twitter.com/L3uLba3ht0
— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) September 28, 2022

NEW: income inequality in US & UK is so wide that while the richest are very well off, the poorest have a worse standard of living than the poorest in countries like Slovenia https://t.co/gtHvhNsnuT

Essentially, US & UK are poor societies with some very rich people.

A thread: pic.twitter.com/fXFsULsrQ3
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) September 16, 2022

Wealth inequality in the U.S. has continued to intensify during the coronavirus pandemic. A recent Forbes Advisor survey of 2,000 people shows 78% of U.S. adults have little-to-no room to stretch their budget to cope with rising inflation. https://t.co/wzlZpP95pR
— MarketWatch (@MarketWatch) July 24, 2022

The Congressional Budget Office has determined that over the past 30 years:

A. The share of total wealth held by the top 1% rose from 27% to 34%.

B. The share of wealth held by the bottom 50% fell from 4% to 2%.

Face it, America is an oligarchy.https://t.co/3hW6ndp1Tv
— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) September 29, 2022

NEW: Wages rose fastest for the top 1% and 0.1% of earners in 2021, while the bottom 90% took a pay cut.

Inequality has skyrocketed over the past 40 years. This growing inequality isn’t inevitable—it is a result of policy choices to reduce worker power. https://t.co/h1Ex1MdaAX pic.twitter.com/WQYPjiqkjO
— Economic Policy Institute (@EconomicPolicy) December 21, 2022

Airplane poop

Lots of stuff on pooping on planes

A thing I think about too often: the time someone did such a bad poop that an airplane had to turn around https://t.co/rhVkjGIqTw
— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) September 30, 2020

Headline: Flying Poop That Came Crashing Down on Windsor Man's Garden Dropped by Airplane

Sky poop for your garden. This could be the next big thing…https://t.co/OFJbVF4NFt pic.twitter.com/TGjAEp18hH
— Grumpy Dingo Radio (@RadioDingo) October 21, 2021

There’s no good reason to show news correpondents in hurricanes

I call it weather porn. They could just show the view from a camera without having someone get pelted by wind and rain. We could see the bad weather without a miserable person in the picture.

Why do we want to see other people suffering? This also applies to shows like Highway Thru Hell and Heavy Rescue 401. They show an endless series of trucks destroyed by accidents, generally in snowy weather in Canada.

I agree with this tweet.

I can't believe in 2022 we're still sending reporters out in Hurricanes like this pic.twitter.com/MsDtLw1bec
— Read Class Struggle Unionism by Joe Burns (@JoshuaPotash) September 28, 2022

Films most often assigned in college classes

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Documentary about Syl Johnson on Tubi

Syl Johnson was an excellent blues and soul singer. I contributed to the Kickstarter for the documentary about him but haven’t watched it yet. It is now on tubi:

Syl Johnson: Any Way the Wind Blows

Media coverage of Biden’s student loan plan doesn’t put the cost in perspective

Sure, $400 billion is a lot of money but it’s only about half of the annual defense budget. They don’t point out the cost is spread out over many years. I kept pointing this out on Twitter. I guess this is part of the media’s attempt to be balanced in coverage of both parties.

Yes it’s a big number but it’s only about half of the defense budget for one year.
https://t.co/RmyXSObQek
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) September 26, 2022

To put it in perspective, it’s about half of the defense budget for one year.https://t.co/RmyXSOco3S
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) September 26, 2022

If you want apples-to-apples, note that this is a THIRTY year score; most often, CBO estimates a program's cost over its first TEN years.

When @POTUS announced this, the WH said it would cost about $24b in the first year. This @USCBO estimate puts the first year cost at $21B. https://t.co/vIKZjHfLjv
— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) September 26, 2022

That’s about half of the defense budget for one year. Put it in perspective.
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) September 27, 2022

That’s about half of one year of the defense budget.
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) September 26, 2022

Washington Post redistricting analysis

Our MC article builds on our more detailed analysis of this cycle’s new maps in Publius: https://t.co/UfqR6XN303
— Chris Warshaw (@cwarshaw) September 27, 2022

Just a reminder that somewhere between 4–10 of the lean/likely GOP seats would be lean/likely *Democratic* seats but for #SCOTUS’s unsigned, unexplained stays of district court injunctions that had blocked congressional maps in Alabama and Louisiana — and their effects elsewhere. https://t.co/q7F9MCGvoZ
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) September 21, 2022

Joe Bussard 1936-2022

Joe Bussard had a record collection of about 15,000 old recordings and shared his knowledge and the music in his collection.

Here’s the story I wrote about Joe in June where we talked about the fate of his collection https://t.co/KN4qRGGp7L
— Joe Heim (@JoeHeim) September 27, 2022

R.I.P. Joe Bussard, a record collector who was always there to help us from the very beginning of Dust-to-Digital. We loved Joe and will miss him. pic.twitter.com/mffX2t1KHD
— Dust-to-Digital (@dusttodigital) September 27, 2022

Joe Bussard, who collected thousands of early American blues, country, and jazz records, has died https://t.co/KQ6bWijyPd
— Pitchfork (@pitchfork) September 27, 2022

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"That ain't the goddam blues," says Bussard, disgusted. "You ever hear of Charlie Patton?" – Joe Bussard, story by Eddie Dean, Washington City Paper https://t.co/SFCtAPrG3r #BlindDogRadio – #Blues #CountryBlues #DeltaBlues #Roots pic.twitter.com/rGchdKnq96
— Blind Dog Radio (@blinddogradio) August 26, 2018