onfocus

Walz also says maps help implement the nitty-gritty details of otherwise abstract policy. “You have to have a plan” for “how we’re doing power and economic justice and environmental justice,” he said. “The tools for that plan are GIS.” Those tools “transfer a vision of a fair society into one that actually has results.”

VP candidate also a map nerd.

X is now an app that forcibly puts abhorrent content into users’ feeds and then rewards financially the people who were the most successful in producing it, egging them on to do it again and again and make it part of their living.

PSA: misinformation and outrage bait is ramping up at Twitter. We have good alternatives now. Fly, you fools!

Congress can determine the size of the Supreme Court; it has already added and removed seats on the Court seven times throughout its history. At a time when the American people’s confidence in the nation’s highest court has fallen to a record low and Congressional Republicans have already employed their far-right judicial playbook by disregarding norms and precedent in the confirmations process, Congress must take action by once again expanding the Court.

It's way past time for this to happen. We need a Democratic congress now.

The Democrats’ use of “weird” turns the Republicans’ self-image on its head. For years, the GOP has positioned itself as the party of “real Americans,” fighting to reestablish “real” American values. “Weird” points out how many of their positions, including but not limited to their antiabortion stance and historic refusal to support broader access to health- and childcare, put them at odds with a majority of Americans.

Weird is a good way to call out "minority rule" without using technical jargon like "minority rule". Also, on a gut level, have you heard unedited speeches from these folks? Deeply weird.

State Democratic party chairs on Sunday threw their weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris to be the party's new presidential nominee to run against Republican nominee and former president, Donald Trump.

Bracing for the "Dems in Disarray" stories but so far impressed by the support and donations for Harris. I thought this path was too risky but it's good to see this solid start.

A mass expulsion on the scale of 15–20 million people would be, bar none, the largest in the history of the world. Even if Trump’s people only manage to hit a quarter of their goal, the result will be human suffering and death on an enormous scale.

Please register to vote and please choose leaders who don’t want suffering and death.

“An AR-15 was used in the shooting of Donald Trump. This was the assault weapon that killed so many others, including children. It’s time to outlaw them,” Mr Biden told the audience at a convention in Las Vegas.

It's common sense. This is a weapon for trained experts, not anyone off the street.

“The evidence assembled thus far plainly suggests that Justice Thomas has committed numerous willful violations of federal ethics and false-statement laws and raises significant questions about whether he and his wealthy benefactors have,” Whitehouse and Wyden wrote.

The US has to remove this corrupt court.

Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.

Authoritarians will use every opportunity to silence the opposition no matter what the current circumstances are. If there is a threat to democracy, we have to be able to point it out and talk about it.

But for all that the right has bombed so many of the roads to a prosperous, humane future, it's a huge mistake to think of the right as a stable, unified force, marching to victory after inevitable victory. The American right is a brittle coalition led by a handful of plutocrats who have convinced a large number of turkeys to vote for Christmas.

Cory Doctorow has a way with words. His words about Project 2025 are worth a read.

“Any aggression that Trump does is because he’s the defender of freedom, and the Democrat represents real tyranny,” Ben-Ghiat said. “So it’s very seductive rhetoric, but it’s an inversion, so that democracy becomes the threat and tyranny and fascism, or whatever we’re calling Trumpism, becomes freedom, and that is how in history, we’ve gotten into situations where mass repression is hailed as something positive."

Not great!

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, a sign of the president’s strength in uniting his party to have the backing of one of its most liberal members.

This is the way.