Search Results for: BID

Beyond the Bubble: Rightwing newsletter tries to decipher the conservative news media for outsiders

Nearly six years into monitoring the content of conservative media outlets for his website and newsletter The Righting, Howard Polskin has not lost the capacity for surprise. Case in point: when Donald Trump announced his 2024 presidential candidacy, and many of his long-time media allies let fly with anger and insults. Two impeachments, two years of election denials and a U.S. Capitol riot didn’t have the impact of a disappointing showing by Republicans in the midterm elections. “I didn’t expect the level of vitriol, there’s no question about it,” he said. Trump’s inauguration in 2017 started Polskin on his...

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Is this true? The algorithms used by social media are not attuned to what is best for society

The man who coined the term “virtual reality” and helped create Web 2.0, Jaron Lanier, recently told a said that there is an aspect to the internet that could endanger the literal survival of humanity as a species. It is an amazing story, and I believe he is 100% right. Humans are fragile creatures. We don’t have fangs or claws to protect ourselves from other animals that might want to eat us. We don’t have fur or a pelt to protect us from the elements. What we do have, however, that has allowed us to conquer the planet and...

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Imposing a judicial code of ethics on SCOTUS could protect it from wealthy rightwing “Christians”

The European Parliament and the U.S. Supreme Court are both ensnarled in major corruption scandals. Each was caused by powerful politicians having no independent legal check on their own behavior. And on “this side of the pond” Congress needs to act as soon as possible. While news coverage of the EU here in the United States is mostly confined to the rarefied pages of financial and diplomatic publications and “international news” in major papers, the European Parliament is in the midst of a major, multinational bribery scandal. Numerous members are accused of taking hundreds of thousands of Euros in cash as...

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Undoing Roe: Fallout of ending abortion protections was immediate, far-reaching, and still not over

Anti-abortion groups hoped and strategized for decades for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that was delivered last June, ending a court-protected right to abortion after nearly 50 years. The fallout was immediate and far-reaching, and it is not over yet. The midyear ruling in 2022 overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which established the right to abortion, shaped the national political agenda for the rest of the year and put abortion access in flux. The shifts are expected to keep coming as lawmakers, voters and judges weigh in. After the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling that left abortion up...

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Simmering Tensions: Why talking across the political aisle helps reduce hostility

By Dominik Stecuła, Assistant professor of political science, Colorado State University; and Matthew Levendusky, Professor of political science, University of Pennsylvania Simmering tension in American politics came to a head two years ago, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. The failed insurrection on January 6, 2021, resulted in several deaths and injuries to almost 150 police officers. But on the cusp of the November 2022 midterm elections, the majority of Republicans said they still believed the false claim asserted by the Capitol rioters –...

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Survey of electorates showed Independent voters contributed to midterm woes for GOP candidates

As Republican Tyler Kistner’s closing ad aired before the 2022 midterm elections in one of the most competitive congressional districts in the United States, Vickie Klang felt that something was missing. The 58-year-old veterinary technician and self-described independent voter watched as the 30-second spot showed grainy black-and-white images of President Joe Biden with two-term Democratic Rep. Angie Craig superimposed alongside him. The narrator ominously described life in America as “dangerous and unaffordable” because of an alliance between the two Democrats. Absent from the ad, Klang thought, was anything close to a solution beyond electing Kistner. “You’re never telling me...

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