2022 is shaping up to be a bloodbath. The Trump census cooked the numbers to advantage Republicans, and GOP statehouses are poised to redistrict in ways that will hand potentially permanent minority rule to the GOP in Congress.

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There's a potential way out: #HR1, an omnibus bill of electoral reforms that would create durable, structural protections for voting rights and a level playing field for campaigning.

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To get a sense of how urgent the looming crisis is - and of how important HR1 is - listen to @ryangrim interviewing @schwarz and Rep @JohnSarbanes [D-MD] on this week's @intercepted.

https://t.co/BFaga8Rr5F

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In theory, HR1 could be blasted through - Dems control the Senate, Congress, and the White House, and the future of the party depends on it, but I'm far from confident that they'll find the discipline and political will to make it happen.

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The Democrats keep squandering their majorities and wasting opportunities to make real change - changes that are must-haves, not nice-to-haves; changes needed to head off existential threats to the nation itself.

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Take the stimulus, which every Republican will vote against, which will only become reality if the Dems use their majority. Why are they bargaining themselves down?

https://t.co/HtdGvvGw5D

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Yes, as @sensanders says, the Dems "have the votes" for a larger stimulus, but only if they use it, and everyone understands that they won't - not if it is bold, and reflects the will and priorities of the people, rather than the donor class.

https://t.co/QXDJZyU0Kp

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That's because the Democrats - like the Republicans - are a coalition, not a party, but there's a fundamental difference between the two coalitions. The GOP coalition is between finance ghouls, religious maniacs, white nationalists and paranoid latter-day Birchers.

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Whereas the Democrats are a coalition between leftists, liberals...and Republicans. The party establishment includes figures whose policies are squarely in the GOP mainstream - if they were on the other side of the aisle, they be "hard liners," not "moderates."

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I'm not talking about people like Pelosi who want to reform a system governed by 80 rich old white men by replacing half of them with women and people of color.

I'm talking about Joe Liberman. Dan Lipinski. Michael Bloomberg. Richie Neal.

Monsters.

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But while the right has been doing entryism into the Democrats for a generation-plus, there's no reciprocal left-entryism into the GOP.

In states like California where Dems have solid majorities, Republicans join the Democratic party and primaries are the real elections.

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It's not even subtle! In NYC, 1.6m independent and GOP voters just switched their party affiliation to Democrat and lifelong Republican hard-liners are running for mayor as Democrats.

https://t.co/DqrLEN2JqE

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It's a completely understandable urge. If the real contest over policy is intra-party (whoever wins the primary wins the election), then you'd expect people who care about policy to form a faction in the party, irrespective of whether their politics align with the party.

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But it only seems to go one way. When Ontario shifted for the NDP, Bob Rae stood for leader and governed like he was from the Liberal party (which he later joined and spent the rest of his political career in).

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Blair and his cohort were Tories who took over the Labour Party. The safest Labour seats are also the most anti-Labour - thinking of my MP, Meg Hillier, who could easily have served as a Thatcher back-bencher.

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Why is there no left-entryism into right parties? In part, it's got to be because there's no business-model for it. Lipinski and Lieberman and Ritchie absorb titanic fortunes in corporate money.

There's no comparable source of money for leftists who join the Missouri GOP.

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Maybe that's all there is to it: the GOP - the right - stands for the rule of the few over the many, whether that's billionaires, white people, men, Christians, or the US empire.

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The people who support this position have power, which means they have money (power can be converted to money and vice-versa) so they can fund DINOs.

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But it's weird to think that a RINO is "a Republican who isn't racist or conspiratorial enough" while a DNO is "a Democrat who supports the unchecked power of wealthy people and multinational corporations."

You know, a Republican.

eof/

More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

There are lots of problems with ad-tech:

* being spied on all the time means that the people of the 21st century are less able to be their authentic selves;

* any data that is collected and retained will eventually breach, creating untold harms;

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* data-collection enables for discriminatory business practices ("digital redlining");

* the huge, tangled hairball of adtech companies siphons lots (maybe even most) of the money that should go creators and media orgs; and

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* anti-adblock demands browsers and devices that thwart their owners' wishes, a capability that can be exploited for even more nefarious purposes;

That's all terrible, but it's also IRONIC, since it appears that, in addition to everything else, ad-tech is a fraud, a bezzle.

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Bezzle was John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." That is, a rotten log that has yet to be turned over.

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Bezzles unwind slowly, then all at once. We've had some important peeks under ad-tech's rotten log, and they're increasing in both intensity and velocity. If you follow @Chronotope, you've had a front-row seat to the
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Thinking through Mitch McConnell's plea for comity; Further, on Mitch McConnell and comity; Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/1rRmrJa4FK

#Pluralistic

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Thinking through Mitch McConnell's plea for comity: A thoughtful analysis.

https://t.co/2T74ykb3Ws

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Further, on Mitch McConnell and comity: I thought about it some more.

https://t.co/mTQ225Lr3X

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Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets: Even if there's no angels, there's still a path to glory.

https://t.co/x7BaqUQ0hj

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#10yrsago Morrow’s Diviner’s Tale is a tight, literary ghost story https://t.co/XFW0AGFwhI

#10yrsago ATM skimmer that doesn’t require any modifications to the ATM

More from Trump

Long thread: Because I couldn’t find anything comprehensive, I’m just going to post everything I’ve seen in the news/Twitter about Trump’s activities related to the Jan 6th insurrection. I think the timing & context of his actions/inactions will matter a lot for a senate trial.

12/12: The earlier DC protest over the electoral college vote during clearly inspired Jan 6th. On Dec 12th, he tweeted: “Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal. Didn’t know about this, but I’ll be seeing them! #MAGA.”


12/19: Trump announces the Jan. 6th event by tweeting, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Immediately, insurrectionists begin to discuss the “Wild Protest.” Just 2 days later, this UK political analyst predicts the violence


12/26-27: Trump announces his participation on Twitter. On Dec. 29, the FBI sends out a nationwide bulletin warning legislatures about attacks https://t.co/Lgl4yk5aO1


1/1: Trump tweets the time of his protest. Then he retweets “The calvary is coming” on Jan. 6!” Sounds like a war? About this time, the FBI begins visiting right wing extremists to tell them not to go--does the FBI tell the president? https://t.co/3OxnB2AHdr
You’d think that if Pence could overturn the election like Trump claimed then Biden surely would’ve taken up that chance


Also this is such a small thing but one thing I noticed in that Trump campaign ad the defense just ran, there were no citations, unlike every clip that the impeachment managers showed

Michael Van Der Veen is giving us the full Fox News Primetime Defense.

PROCESS ARGUMENT.

DRINK.

Lol my guy this is the chance to rebut the evidence that they’ve presented against Trump.

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