Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 10h

#MedicareForAll

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John Pavlovitz @johnpavlovitz.bsky.social · 11h

Good people need to start outing their ICE family members, neighbors, and community members.

They need to be made into pariahs in the places decent Americans gather.

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Miaganga @miaganga.bsky.social · 12h

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Jon Cooper @joncooper-us.bsky.social · 21h

The nation’s largest private prison company is asking the Supreme Court to give federal contractors blanket immunity from lawsuits — including human trafficking claims.

If they win, private contractors could operate with even less accountability than they do now.

The Human Trafficking Case That Could Hand Government Contractors Blanket Immunity

In a little-noticed Supreme Court case, the country’s largest private prison operator argues companies should be shielded from lawsuits when doing the government’s dirty work.

www.levernews.com

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Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 15h

Making people afraid to be affiliated with antifascism—making people afraid to be associated with groups and people that actively oppose fascism—is some bleak shit.

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Tony Serrata 🇺🇦 @serrata.org · 1d

Just goes to show, the goal is to kill as many poor people as possible. Because if it's good enough for the so called president, why isn't it good enough for the rest of us?

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 1d

The Trump administration has been spreading anti-vaccine propaganda for months. Tonight, Trump's physician announced he just received a flu shot and a COVID booster.

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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 18h

“We can give $20 billion to Argentina but we can’t afford the CDC’s measles experts” is a hell of an argument

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Indivisible ❌👑 @indivisible.org · 13h

“No, Speaker Johnson — the No Kings rally on October 18 is not a hate America rally. In fact, it’s quite the contrary: It’s a love America rally.” #NoKings

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 15h

Never forget this: The forces rigging our economy, undermining our democracy, polluting our planet, and stoking hatred are counting on you to give up. Cynicism is how they win. Stay clear-eyed and ready for the fight ahead.

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Sara Partridge, Ph.D. @sarapartridge.bsky.social · 20h

There are reports that the *entire* office of special education at the US Dept of Education has been cut. These hardworking folks ensure kids with disabilities get equal access to a quality education.

America’s children deserve better than this.

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 14h

The mainstream media loves making it seam like dysfunction in Washington is coming from both parties.

Hello?

Much of the GOP no longer accepts the rule of law, or the norms of democracy, or the legitimacy of the opposing party.

Enough of the false equivalence.

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Rod @roddlyyours.bsky.social · 24d

Gift article: Andrew Coyne on Charlie Kirk:

www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/cf5c908...

The death of Charlie Kirk did not make him a moderate

He is well on his way to sainthood among MAGA Republicans

www.theglobeandmail.com

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Meera Nair @meeranair.bsky.social · 3d

Andrew Coyne: "The north coast of B.C. is legitimately fragile. A large spill would be catastrophic, not only for the environment, but for the socio-cultural heritage of Indigenous people in the region. Mere repeal of the ban – or a one-time carve-out – is not on."

Ghouly Hoye 🇨🇦 👻 @hollyhoye.bsky.social · 3d

“As blackmail notes go, this is right up there. Do as I say – risk your government, Canada’s international climate commitments, relations with Indigenous groups, and God knows what else – or we blow up the country.”
🎁

Danielle Smith’s pipeline ransom note to Mark Carney is using Canada as her hostage

Pressing the Prime Minister for a commitment is fair play. But the Alberta Premier’s dramatic ultimatum over a pipeline is unreasonable

www.theglobeandmail.com

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Lee Harding @rockinbear.bsky.social · 3d

The screenshots are from an article by Canadian columnist Andrew Coyne. Read them. And ignore them at your peril.

serenakyle.bsky.social @serenakyle.bsky.social · Jan 19

Pinned for predictive sake (and hoping my sleepless nights are for naught). Hoping but not believing.

Andrew Coyne, a highly respected Canadian columnist with the Globe and Mail, pulls no punches on the incoming US administration:
"Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.
The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.
There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do - to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world - is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.

The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe - the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry - before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative.
China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions.
At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional - the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be ... atmospheric.
At some point someone - a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin — will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there.

The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him. Or they might issue a ruling, and find it has no effect - that the administration has called the basic bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in the crunch, people in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments the courts, the same as everyone else. Then everyone will take their cue. Executives will line up to court him. Media organizations, the large ones anyway, will find reasons to be cheerful.
Of course, in reality things will start to fall apart fairly quickly. The huge across-the-board tariffs he imposes will tank the world economy.
The massive deficits, fueled by his ill-judged tax policies - he won't replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes - and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will ignite a new round of inflation.
Most of all, the insane project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants - finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of internment camps around the country, probably for years, before doing so - will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late.

We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event.
They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing "tough things" to
"restore order?"
Some won't, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things.
All of this will wash over Canada in various ways - some predictable, like the flood of refugees seeking escape from the camps; some less so, like the coarsening of our own politics, the debasement of morals and norms by politicians who have discovered there is no political price to be paid for it. And who will have the backing of their patron in Washington.

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Andrew Berkshire @berkshire.bsky.social · 1d

This from Andrew Coyne is kinda wild. Does one of Canada’s most influential commentators actually believe billionaires controlling politics is new?

Andrew Coyne writes: I used to shrug at people who railed against "the billionaire class." I mostly still do: you make a product people like, get them to part with their money, you're entitled to your bundle, for all the good it will do you. (Chesterton defined the very rich of his time as "clever enough to get all that money [but] stupid enough to want it.") Pay your taxes - lots of them — and we'll stay out of your affairs.
But there was an implicit bargain in this: you stay out of our affairs. The minute the billionaires start throwing their weight around in politics, the issue changes - from the concentration of wealth to the concentration of power. A billionaire's wealth entitles him to as many pools or houses or private jets as he can find the time to buy. But it entitles him to no more say in how a country is governed than any other citizen.

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Elaine Bougie Gilligan @elainebg.bsky.social · 17d

𝗗𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟𝗗 𝗧𝗥𝗨𝗠𝗣 𝗜𝗦 𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗞 𝗢𝗙 𝗕𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗔 𝗗𝗜𝗖𝗧𝗔𝗧𝗢𝗥. 𝗖𝗔𝗡 𝗛𝗘 𝗕𝗘 𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗣𝗣𝗘𝗗?
𝗔𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘄 𝗖𝗼𝘆𝗻𝗲 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗚𝗟𝗢𝗕𝗘 & 𝗠𝗔𝗜𝗟
𝗣𝘂𝗯𝗹 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱𝗔𝘂𝗴𝟮𝟵 𝗨𝗽𝗱 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱𝗦𝗲𝗽𝟮
Story not shareable, Text in images
"By now it should be clear that the subjection of the United States to the dictatorship of Donald Trump...is an imminent reality."

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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 1d

Children that were kidnapped by invading Russian barbarians, not displaced.

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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 23h

Imagine that

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Humor For Resistance @funnysnarkyjoke.bsky.social · 22h

#portland #satire

SATIRICAL NEWS Man Struggling To Feed His Family Just Happy His Taxes Are Funding War on Portland, Oregon

guy laughing while holding a sack of something

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the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 1d

this utter maniac flanking establishment dems from the morally righteous side of history is just embarrassing.

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Grudgie the Whale @grudgie.bsky.social · 1d

I think something has to be really wrong with you to be in ICE right now

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 1d

EL PASO — a family says ICE showed up at their house looking for migrants and shot and KILLED THEIR DOG, then didn’t help them as the agent ran away and was not identified.

kfoxtv.com/news/local/e...

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles.blue · 1d

I don't know if there's such a thing as a "world cyberwar" but I think we are in one? and the US is determined to lose it. 🧵

Today the admin is mass-firing the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the nation's cybersecurity protection across all levels of government.

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Jon Cooper @joncooper-us.bsky.social · 1d

With Larry Ellison in control of TikTok, we now have right-wingers or looney far-right wingers in control of most of the major social media platforms.

Right-Wing Moguls Dominate Social Media. One Legal Fix Can Help Stem the Tide.

Revising Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act would make outlets more accountable for the content they platform.

www.thenation.com

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Dana Goldberg @dgcomedy.bsky.social · 1d

Release the Epstein Files.

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Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 1d

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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