7 Reasons To Be Optimistic About The Future Of Democracy
#7: the Republican Party might finally be tiring of Donald Trump.
Much has already been written about the “surprise” midterms results. Of course, the results were only a surprise if you believed all of the faulty polls, misguided pundits, and non-stop cable news assurances that “conventional wisdom” all but guaranteed a “red wave,” which of course is the opposite of what actually happened. Nevertheless, as we ponder what the future might hold in store, it’s worth having a look at how Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin sums up key take-aways from the election, and reasons to look to the future of democracy with a sense of optimism…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/13/midterms-democract-7-reasons-optimism/
Mark Zuckerberg picks “wild billionaire Metaverse fantasy” over 11,000 jobs
You might have recently heard about the melt-down in the tech sector. We have Elon Musk reportedly cutting Twitter’s staff by 3,700 (about 1/2 of the total workforce), Amazon laying off 10,000+ workers, and other tech giants following this pattern. But surely, the most notable face-plant has got to be Facebook (now called Meta), after CEO Mark Zuckerberg bet the farm on his vision of the so-called “Metaverse,” Zuckerberg’s imagined future of business, where workers don a virtual reality headset and spend their days “meeting” with other workers represented by cartoon-like “avatars” in a virtual world. So far, Meta expects to lose $10 BILLION this year alone, and projects a long-haul with similar upcoming multi-year losses, before the rest of the world presumably comes to believe in Zuckerberg’s vision. But meanwhile, Meta has laid off 11,000 workers, so far. As reported by VICE News, the vision is more Zuckerberg’s than Meta’s. And according to a lengthy report in the New York Times last month, some Meta employees have taken to referring to Metaverse projects as “M.M.H.” (“make Mark happy”). One senior member of the team has said the money spent makes him “sick to my stomach.” Only 58 percent say they even understand the metaverse strategy, per an anonymous May poll of employees carried out by the social network Blind. Others have complained that the strategy appears “tied to Mr. Zuckerberg’s whims rather than a cohesive plan.”
Elon Musk gives Twitter employees an ultimatum: Stay and work, work, work. Or go, and decide TODAY!
In a move that does little to instill faith that the tech sector is running smoothly, new Twitter boss Elon Musk has given his new (remaining) employees an ultimatum. By the end of today (Wednesday 11/16), employees must either pledge to an “extremely hardcore” work ethic going forward (by which he means 80-120 hour weeks, at the office), or quit today and receive 3 months severance pay. This announcement follows the layoff of approximately half of Twitter’s workforce in the past week. As reported by NPR and others, Musk borrowed $13 billion to buy Twitter in a purchase widely seen as overpriced. Ad sales, which make up nearly all of its revenue, have dropped as advertisers take a wait-and-see approach to both the broader economy and Musk's leadership of Twitter. Meanwhile, Twitter is estimated to have a $1 billion debt service payment on the debt Musk secured to complete his takeover, and the company's ability to make that payment has been in question. Musk has even floated the possibility of possible bankruptcy, which would allow Twitter to restructure its debt, but it remains unclear how serious Musk was about that threat.
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/16/1137105935/twitter-elon-musk-ultimatum
Trump, who claimed an election was stolen from him, now claims he stole an election for DeSantis
Remember when Donald Trump intervened in the Florida governor and Senate races by sending FBI agents to stop vote-counting and ensure victories for Republican candidates Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott? Unless you’re Donald Trump, you probably don’t remember anything of the sort (because it didn’t happen). As reported by the Independent, in “a bizarre, rambling statement rife with attacks” on Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and Wall Street Journal (both of which blamed Trump for poor Republican midterm results), the twice-impeached Trump lashed out at DeSantis and claimed he “fixed” DeSantis’ gubernatorial primary campaign against Adam Putnam in 2018, by endorsing the then-largely unknown congressman. Trump now says he helped DeSantis by weaponizing the Justice Department to prevent Democratic votes from being counted. “I was all in for Ron, and he beat Gillum, but after the race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt election process in Broward County and Ron was going down 10,000 votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the US Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his election from being stolen,” Trump said. What Trump described in his statement would have been a blatantly illegal use of federal authority that could have put anyone who participated at risk of ending up behind bars. However, that never actually happened. Instead, “Trump has to rewrite history to make it seem as if he moved heaven and earth to create Ron DeSantis out of whole cloth.” Right…
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-desantis-rigged-election-2024
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