Democrat News

This post was originally published on this site

On Friday afternoon, hundreds of students from Madison East and Madison West High Schools walked out and marched to the state capitol to protest the lack of gun safety laws and to express the fear they have for their own lives:

Hundreds of students from East & West high schools in Madison walked out of classes Friday and marched to the Capitol.

In reaction to the Abundant Life school shooting, students called for stronger gun control measures, increased mental health resources + an end to gun violence. pic.twitter.com/XyE52VxEPg

— The Capital Times (@CapTimes) December 20, 2024

Hundreds of Madison high school students walked out of classes Friday afternoon and marched to the state Capitol building in response to Monday’s shooting at Abundant Life Christian School.

Students from West High School chanted “no more silence, end gun violence” and “books, not bullets” during their nearly three-mile route to the Capitol. East High School and La Follette High School students joined them in front of the building, where speakers called for stronger gun control measures and increased mental health resources in schools.

Many students said they were compelled to speak out because they no longer felt safe going to school. Others said they felt desensitized to gun violence because of school shootings in the past year alone.

Some elected officials, all Democrats, were there to meet with and speak to the students, including one of my personal favorite state reps, Francesca Hong:

Some state lawmakers offered remarks to the student protestors, including Rep. Francesca Hong, Sen. Kelda Roys, Rep. Shelia Stubbs and Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski.

“Because my colleagues and politicians across the country refuse to take action on gun violence and safety, they are endorsing mass murder,” Hong said. “To the Republicans across the country, I say f— your thoughts and prayers.”

Apparently, but not surprisingly, no Republican lawmakers met with the students. Presumably, they were all off to the bank to cash their checks from the NRA.

This post was originally published on this site

After the government pushed for the breakup of Google, accusing it of business practices that violate antitrust laws, the Mountain View, Calif., tech giant proposed its own solutions on Friday — to restructure its business contracts instead.

“Regulating a fast-changing industry like search with an invasive decree like the one proposed by Plaintiffs would harm competition, innovation, and consumers,” Google said in a court filingFriday.

The request comes after a federal judge in August found that the tech company had illegally maintained a monopoly in search. Google said it disagreed with the decision and plans to appeal.

Amit P. Mehta, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is now trying to decide on ways to restore competition. Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice and several states proposed solutions to fix what it described as Google’s illegal search monopoly that included forcing the company to sell Chrome.

Google’s proposed fixes are more narrow than what the DOJ suggested. What the judge decides could reshape the future of the internet and affect Google’s ad business.

In a court filing, Google proposed putting limits around its contracts with mobile device manufacturers and wireless carriers. For example, Google proposed that it wouldn’t enter an agreement with Apple in which it’s the default search engine unless its partners were allowed to set a different default search annually in the United States and promote other search services.

“We don’t propose these changes lightly. They would come at a cost to our partners by regulating how they must go about picking the best search engine for their customers,” said Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs in a blog post.

The nearly 300-page landmark ruling by Mehta partly focuses on how Google held onto its dominance by paying major companies such as Apple and Samsung so it’s the default search engine on web browsers and mobile devices. These agreements hindered Google’s rivals from growing and reduced the incentive for other companies to invest in search, the judge found.

“The truth is, no new entrant could hope to compete with Google for the default on Firefox or any other browser,” the judge wrote. “Google’s query and quality advantage and high revenue share payments are strong incentives simply to stay put.”

Google’s default placements on Mozilla’s Firefox made up 80% of Mozilla’s operating revenue, the decision says. But Google also pays Apple more money than all its other partners combined. In 2022, Google paid Apple an estimated $20 billion so it could be the default search engine on the Safari browser.

This week, Mozilla raised concerns that some of the DOJ’s proposed solutions could harm web browsers. One of the potential fixes include preventing Google from entering revenue share agreements tied to the distribution of its search services.

“By jeopardizing the revenue streams of critical browser competitors, these remedies risk unintentionally strengthening the positions of a handful of powerful players,” Mozilla wrote in a blog post. Mozilla said that Google was the default search engine in Firefox in the United States because it “provides the best search experience for our users.”

Outside of partnerships with major tech companies, there are other ways Google maintains control over the way people access search engines. Google also runs popular web browser Chrome and a mobile operating system Android.

Last month, the DOJ and several states urged the judge to force Google to sell Chrome. The agency also suggested requiring the tech company to display a “choice screen” on every Google browser when a user hasn’t chosen a default search engine so people know there are other options available.

Other ideas the government floated include allowing publishers to opt out of having Google use their content to train artificial intelligence tools and giving advertisers more control over ads that show up in search results.

Google pushed back against the government’s proposed solutions, calling the approach an “unprecedented government overreach.”

Mehta is expected to decide on solutions by August 2025.

This post was originally published on this site

You can understand why President-Unelected Elon Musk doesn’t want people to think he’s calling the shots in the Oval Office. For one thing, his efforts to strong-arm the GOP and/or shut down the government just failed bigly. For another, he knows darned well that his boy, Donald Trump, can’t stand the thought of not looking like he’s the big kahuna.

The New Republic caught Musk tweeting on Friday, “The political & legacy media puppets all got their new instructions yesterday and are now parroting the same message to drive a wedge between [Trump] and me. They will fail.”

Sorry, Musky, but the failure is pretty much yours, though you had help from VP Trump and the MAGA GOP puppets. Musk is the one who tweeted his enthusiasm for shutting down the government until January 20. That was on Wednesday. After the arm-twisting by Musk and sidekick Trump cratered, Musk pulled a switcheroo. Suddenly, he didn’t want to shut down the government and he tried to blame the Democrats for any shutdown. Heckuva job, Prez!

Meanwhile, we at C&L have been having all kinds of fun calling out the obvious: that Musk is the shadow president. Now we know it’s getting to Trump. TNR noted, “On Thursday, a Trump spokesperson insisted that the president-elect, and no one else, was in charge, saying, ‘President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Full stop.’”

You can take that as confirmation that we’re right

This post was originally published on this site

Despite President Musk’s eager prediction that the killer would turn out to be an Islamist, Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser described the suspect in Friday’s deadly car-ramming attack as an “Islamophobe.” Via CNN:

She gave few other details, but German media have named Friday’s suspect, a 50-year-old Saudi, as Taleb A, and he’s thought to have worked to help fellow Saudis leave their home country.

On social media he appeared to have expressed anti-Islam views and support for the far-right AfD.

Speaking from the city of Magdeburg, where the attack occurred, Faeser said investigations were just beginning.

Friday’s attack, in which at least five people were killed and over 200 injured, has raised questions over how the attacker was able to gain access to the event via car and ram his vehicle into the bustling crowds.

Just to make things interesting? He is a psychiatrist.

This post was originally published on this site

Charlie Angus, Canadian Member of Parliament in the House of Commons was asked about the Orange Felon’s threat of a trade war with Canada and he did not waste the opportunity to let the Felon and President Musk know exactly what he thinks about that:

HOST: Mr. Angus, what’s the latest? What do you want to say to Donald Trump?

ANGUS: Well, listen, Mr. Trump, right now you’re trying to shut down the American economy for Christmas. I mean, who does that and what? Because Elon told you to do that? Like, you are plunging your nation and your people into a world of hurt. And so what are you doing? You decided you’re going to pick on your quiet next door neighbor. That’s like going to the librarian down the street and shouting at them to divert attention because the cops are after you. No, we’re not going to put up with it, Donald. Here’s the thing. We’ve got the world’s longest undefended border. We’ve got $100 billion worth of trade. We’ve got just-in-time delivery going back and forth all across the border. And you want to put not just Canada but your own citizens in a world of hurt, what, to look like you’re tougher than us? Well, go for it. It’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt a lot of people on both sides. But the message that I’m hearing from people across Canada is they’re not afraid of you because they know you’re a convicted felon. They know that all the people that you’re bringing in to run your organization right now, and I call it an organization rather than a government, are all grifters and thieves and thugs. We’ve got to look after our own interests right now. We will work with your country. We will work with our great neighbors. But, Donald, don’t push us around.

The best part of that is that Angus wasn’t screaming, pounding the table or adding any theatrics. It was delivered in a calm, matter of fact way, with the right amount of gravitas as to tell the Orange Felon and his puppet master, President Trump, they are about to enter the FAFO zone. That is what confidence and strength sound like.

Canadian House of Commons Member Charlie Angus: But the message I’m hearing from people across Canada is this: they’re not afraid of you. They know you’re a convicted felon. They know that the people you’re bringing in to run your, let’s call it an “organization” rather than a… pic.twitter.com/acBycII8WF

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 20, 2024

This post was originally published on this site

UPDATE: No shutdown, and the Senate restored funding for childhood cancer research. For more details, click here.

Talk about a war on Christmas! Newsmax host Chris Plante is just delighted at the thought of Americans losing their paychecks, getting delayed at airports and dozens of other lack of services over Christmas because President-Unelected Elon Musk and his Project 2025 enablers are doing their darnedest to shutdown the government.

Media Matters caught Plante’s War on Christmas for everyday Americans:

CHRIS PLANTE (HOST): I live in Washington, DC, and I work in Washington, DC. I love a good government shutdown. I always enjoy a government shutdown no matter the time of year, but Christmas makes it especially nice, I think.

Not one of his four guests uttered a peep of disagreement.

Somebody forgot to tell them that the meaning of Christmas is supposed to be about the birth of Jesus and his teachings. Or maybe Plante thinks that cruelty is the real reason for the season. Or maybe it’s just about bullying folks to say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.”

Donald Trump was elected on a promise of making life better for everyday Americans. He forgot to tell us that his real goal is to make life better for Shadow President and Trump’s billionaire benefactor Musk. Apparently, Plante is all in on the Musk presidency, too.

Thursday night’s Musk bill cut more than $190 million for children’s cancer research, put agricultural aid at risk and would have caused other harms to those less fortunate than President Musk.

I don’t normally wish anyone the kind of harm that would come from a shutdown but I am so tempted to make an exception for Plante. At the very least, I would not mind one itsy bitsy if his Christmas plans got ruined because his loved ones (assuming he has any) got stuck in an airport because of shutdown-related delays.

This post was originally published on this site

Luigi Mangione, charged in the shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was extradited to the city from a Pennsylvania prison yesterday. His perp walk was quite the spectacle, reminding me of cinema highlights when super villains like the Joker or Hannibal Lecter were transported.

I doubt it had the chastising effect officials thought it would, and Bluesky had similar thoughts:

https://bsky.app/profile/larougeabeille.bsky.social/post/3ldsvtol3s22y

This post was originally published on this site

Mitch McConnell’s whining about Trump’s isolationist policies, willingness to ignore the Senate w/ recess appointments & inane nomination of conspiracy theorist RFK Jr to HHS. Boo-hoo, Mitch. McConnell should look in the mirror if he wants the real culprit in Trump’s continued destruction of our democracy.

The Peninsula Cooter had a myriad of opportunities to stop Trump, from joining then President Obama to publicly decry Russian attacks on our 2016 election to help Trump deciding to have a spine and vote to convict Donald Trump in his impeachment trial for his insurrection in 2021.

All through the disaster that;s been Trump, McConnell’s enabled him, protected him & genuflected to him . W/out McConnell, there is no Trump.. So stop the whimpering from Moscow Mitch. I can’t hear you over the blaring noise of your serial hypocrisy, greed and betrayal of every institution o our democracy, esp the Senate & judiciary.

Be sure to check out the video & SUBSCRIBE to Cliff’s Edge for more great content like this!

This post was originally published on this site

You gotta love it when a Democrat gets fired up and speaks what is already running through everyone’s mind:

They write the bill. They post the bill. They agreed on a bill. And you know what? They got scared because President Musk told them, President Musk said, don’t do it, don’t do it. Shut the government down. Imagine. What does he know about what people go through is when the government shuts down. Are his employees furloughed? Hell no. Is he furloughed? No. And when you shut the government down, people don’t get paid. And maybe if none of us got paid, if the government shut down, some people on the other side of the aisle would feel differently about where we’re going in this effort.

Besides being fun to listen to, DeLauro makes a very valid point – Lawmakers should be made to share the pain that they cause. As a previous public sector worker who had worked for 16 years under Scott Walker, I’ve seen first hand what these political stunts cost not only the employees, but on the people who are affected by the sudden cessation of the services they rely on. And as such, I’ve always argued that these people should be forced to share in the pain that they caused. Or be more selective on what gets cut. I would suggest corporate welfare as an excellent place to start.

DeLauro: They got scared. Because President Musk said don’t do it. Don’t do it. Shut the government down. Imagine. What does he know about what people go through when the government shuts down? Is he furloughed? pic.twitter.com/Mr0ZG7uxmu

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 19, 2024

This post was originally published on this site

Far-right activist Cameron Macgregor explained the Republican Party hauntingly in a fifteen-second span.

“The right is two things: It is Christian nationalism and white nationalism,” Macgregor explained. “Blending those two things together is the project that we are engaged upon right now.”

Via Perplexity: MacGregor is also described as an entrepreneur, investor, and CEO of Ad Actum, a company focused on scaling platforms that fight censorship and protect free speech. His activism appears to extend beyond mere rhetoric, as he is actively involved in projects aligned with far-right ideologies.

The proof is in the pudding, and the MAGAt pudding is thick with these people.

if you had any doubt of this, President Musk just endorsed far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) to lead Germany.

Only the AfD can save Germany https://t.co/Afu0ea1Fvt

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2024