RunawayFixer

I had been using YouTube for years without being presented rightwing propaganda in my suggestions. I mostly just watched strategy gaming, history, technology channels and some peculiar travelling blogs. And my suggested was just mostly those things.

Then one day I used my YouTube account to cast kid shows for my niece for the first time. After that I was suggested more kid shows which didn't interest me personally, but I also started getting suggested cat videos, which I obviously clicked. And the week after that half my suggested feed was rightwing misogynist/racist/culture war misinformation, and it took a lot of "do not recommend channel" to clean it up again.

So now I believe that there is a concerted effort by some malicious actors to train Google's algorithm to assume that if someone is interested in cat videos, that they would then also be open to becoming a misogynist racist prick.

I remember from an older article that it's a very small college and the new republican dean/president/chairman (I forgot what he was) is being paid $ 700 000 per year, about $1000 per student. I'm certain that he isn't the only person making bank from this. It seems to be a grift to funnel tax money into the pockets of friends and sycophants, and while the college board tries to make itself relevant in the eyes of their maga public, the future of the students appears to not be a consideration, because they're not the ones paying for this circus.

Apparently fighting the republican culture war is very profitable for republican grifters.

According to the headline it's 20% of those who voted for the mayor, not 20% of the population. So fe a drop from 60% to 48% voter participation.

If a system encourages people to not vote when they have no clue who they are voting for, then that might be considered a feature instead of an issue. Though one problem I can think off is that coaching of voters on how to vote becomes even more effective. I'm on the fence on this one.

Ps: is a 20% drop enough to say that something "cratered" or is this just another superlative clickbait title?

True, headlines matter.

Why "no"? You're basically saying the same as the summary.

In the eu terms like butter and dairy can only be used for milk products.

But our legaslative pendulum did swing a bit too far in the other direction (imo): terms like soja-butter and so on were also banned.

And she also had noone using millions of dollars to bribe voters to go vote, but only voters of a specific flavor. Somehow that was deemed legal, the usa has basically become a banana republic.

They don't have to prove that someone is not a qualified elector to disenfranchise them, throwing up barriers to make it very hard / impossible to vote is enough. In the past the federal government could intervene if something like that happened, but that's not really possible anymore thanks to the current scotus, so it's up to the states.

And this state is now laying the legal groundwork: If "every" persons with xxx qualifications has the right the vote by law and new measures get implemented that make it practically impossible to vote for certain people that fit those qualifications, then those people had a right withheld from them.

If "only" persons with xxx qualifications have the right to vote by law and new measures get implemented that make it impossible to vote for certain people that fit those qualifications, then ... nothing. That's the difference between "every" and "only". Changing the wording to "only" allows the state to legally pile on extra requirements and barriers.

Examples of groups of people that I've seen disenfranchised by state actions: Prisoners, felons who have done their time, college students, minorities, inner city people, military abroad. Some of these news articles will have been attempts that were not (yet) successful.

I haven't read the full wiki article, but I expect those examples to be in here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States

Unfortunately SCOTUS gutted the power of the federal government to enforce those guarantees based on the old provisions + republicans filibustered the democrat bill that was meant to address that. It's as if the republicans have a plan.

https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/what-does-the-constitution-say-about-the-right-to-vote/

"The ability of the federal government to protect voting rights, particularly for racial and ethnic minorities, has been jeopardized both by recent Supreme Court rulings and the failure of Congress to enact new voting rights legislation."

"With the federal government and the Supreme Court unlikely to protect voting rights in a substantial way in the near future, it’s up to the states to take action to protect voting."

And now there's a state changing the law so that they can more easily disenfranchise voters of their chosing. Imo this is no coincidence.

EPP is centrist, not far right, and they work together with greens + socialists + liberals. The national parties that are members of the EPP, that I know, are the old christian democrat parties and in terms of the USA Overton window, they would be to the left of USA democratic party. The far right only has about a quarter of MEPs.

"Combined, the three political groups on the right have 187 MEPs, just over a quarter of the total, but they are viewed as unlikely to form a coherent and united bloc. Following the election, leaders of the EPP, S&D and Renew Europe groups stressed their commitment to working together as a pro-EU “democratic alliance”. The S&D and Renew Europe, together with the Greens/EFA, also stressed that they rejected cooperation with groups on the right, including the ECR. "

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10068/

The parties that I know in the EPP (Belgian and dutch) are definitely to the left of the USA democrats, which isn't very hard. On the national level, member parties of EPP will work and have worked together with their s&d counterparts in many countries. And in the eu parliament, s&d, renew and EPP have indeed worked together for many years.

So yeah, they definitely would not be in Trump's camp. I don't get how one can claim that EPP is far right.