You can buy MS Office again! No subscription needed!
“Earlier this month, Microsoft finally released the latest version of Microsoft Office that isn’t tied to Microsoft 365, meaning you can now buy access to the latest versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with a one-time payment instead of shelling out cash on a subscription.”
Again, there was ZERO evidence of any kind of systematic fraud in the 2020 election. They filed 62 lawsuits to challenge the results and ALL OF THEM were dismissed for lack of evidence! The system is designed to catch fraud and you can’t say it’s rigged just because you don’t like the results. Trump, Vance, and many other Republican leaders have refused to admit that Trump lost in 2020. When he loses again in 2024, we’re going to have a repeat of all that nonsense. 🙄
“With days left in the presidential race, former President Trump has once again questioned U.S. election integrity — pairing long debunked lies about the 2020 election being stolen from him with equally baseless claims of fresh cheating.
“In a Friday post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote that there was ‘rampant Cheating and Skulduggery’ in 2020; that he and his allies are watching closely for similar problems in the current race; and that, if he wins, those involved in such ‘unscrupulous behavior’ will be ‘sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.’
“Trump’s remarks echoed previous claims he has made without proof that U.S. elections have been corrupted, and drew renewed condemnation from election experts.
“‘Sadly we have seen this playbook before,’ said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, which is fighting legal challenges to voter access initiatives and protections nationwide.
“‘Trump is doubling down on setting the groundwork to question and try to overturn the election if it doesn’t go his way,” Lakin said. “His threats of prosecution sound in authoritarianism and should concern all who care about preserving our democratic institutions.’
“Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Voting Rights Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said it was important not to repeat Trump’s claims but refute them — because they are not grounded in fact, and they undermine the very system he is criticizing by driving down both trust and participation among voters.”
“Donald Trump on Thursday blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for helping start that nation’s war with Russia, a comment that further suggests Trump is likely to radically shift U.S. policy toward Russia if he wins the Nov. 5 election.”
How did the war start? By Russia invading? Yup! That’s Ukraine’s fault, that Russia insists on stealing the land around it!
Just imagine how our international relationships would change, not just with Ukraine, but across the world, if he were to be reelected!
Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-blames-ukraines-zelenskiy-starting-war-with-russia-2024-10-17
“GOP lawmakers have signaled their intention to elevate the issue ahead of the November election, despite scant evidence that it has ever been a problem before.”
“While the bills echo a favorite claim from Republicans regarding election fraud, several years of research and data suggest that the problem they attempt to solve up to now has been so rare as to be insignificant.”
“In the broadest terms, a person can vote in federal, state and local elections if they are a U.S. citizen, meet the residency requirements of the state they reside in, are 18 years old on or before the day of the election and are registered to vote by the state’s voter registration deadline.
“Federal law also requires all voter registration forms to advise those signing up that they must swear they are a citizen under penalty of perjury. And in 1996, Congress passed a broad immigration law that explicitly banned noncitizen voting in federal elections, making it punishable by up to a year in prison.
“However, states and localities have latitude to set their own election requirements. And in some places, those lawmakers have adopted differing postures on issues like whether to allow convicted felons or minors to vote.”
More details and explanations: https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2024-05-24/sorting-the-fiction-from-the-facts-about-noncitizen-voting
Two lawsuits have been filed in Wisconsin challenging the eligibility of over 100,000 voters, claiming that they ‘appear to be invalid’. And almost half are in Milwaukee County. Overall, clearly targeting cities that tend to vote Democrat. This is happening in all the “battleground states” and the purpose is actually to sow distrust and undermine confidence in the elections. Presumably so if their candidate loses, they think they’ll have a basis for challenging the results.
TO BE CLEAR, the state’s elections commission is constantly vetting voter registration statuses via multiple sources, including U.S. Postal Service records, and they are already effectively removing ineligible voters from the rolls (usually because the people have moved).
These lawsuits were brought by attorney Daniel Eastman, who also was one of the lawyers involved in a 2020 lawsuit seeking to overturn Trump’s loss to Biden.
More details and explanation in this article:
https://www.wpr.org/news/lawsuits-seeking-changes-to-wisconsin-voter-rolls-filed-weeks-before-presidential-election
There has been talk lately about the Alien Enemies Act. Specifically by Trump and in regard to immigrants.
The Brennan Center has a high rating for factual reporting and they break down the history and use of this Alien Enemies Act in the article linked below this excerpt from the Brennan Center’s “The Briefing” email.
In 1798, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. These laws criminalized dissent, abused civil liberties, and violated the Constitution. They are among the most notorious laws in history. One is still on the books, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
The law has only been used three times: During the War of 1812. During World War I. And most notoriously, to imprison tens of thousands of innocent noncitizens of Japanese, German, and Italian descent in internment camps during World War II.
Thomas Jefferson decried the Alien and Sedition Acts as part of a “reign of witches.” Recently, Donald Trump called the last of these laws something else. Let’s call it Project 1798.
This past weekend, Trump pledged to launch “Operation Aurora,” a plan to deploy the military on U.S. soil to seize, detain, and deport immigrants he deems dangerous. “Can you imagine? Those were the old days when they had tough politicians, have to go back that long,” he told a rally on Saturday. “Think of that, 1798. Oh, it’s a powerful act. You couldn’t pass something like that today.”
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/alien-enemies-act-explained
Some uplifting news: In their 80s, these South Korean women learned reading and rap!
“Wearing an oversized bucket hat, silver chains and a black Miu Miu shirt, 82-year-old Park Jeom-sun gesticulates, her voice rising and falling with staccato lines about growing chili peppers, cucumbers and eggplants.
“Park, nicknamed Suni, was flanked by seven longtime friends who repeated her moves and her lines. Together, they’re Suni and the Seven Princesses, South Korea’s latest octogenarian sensation. With an average age of 85, they’re probably the oldest rap group in the country.
“Born at a time when women were often marginalized in education, Park and her friends were among a group of older adults learning how to read and write the Korean alphabet, hangeul, at a community center in their farming village in South Korea’s rural southeast. They were having so much fun that they started dabbling with poetry. They began writing and performing rap in summer last year.”
It’s not theoretical anymore. It’s real.
In the first year after Roe v Wade was overturned (June 2022-June 2023), over 200 women have faced criminal charges for conduct associated with their pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth. The majority of these charges are in just six states: Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. All run by Republicans and operating under abortion bans.
Trump said in an interview that “there has to be some sort of punishment” for the woman. And it’s already happening.
Researchers have found that pregnancies and pregnancy loss are more highly scrutinized in these states. And it’s more about the ramifications of giving full legal personhood rights to a fetus than it is about actual abortions. Read below:
“Almost none of the prosecutions documented by researchers were brought under state abortion laws. Instead, researchers found that law enforcement most often charged pregnant women with crimes such as child neglect or endangerment, interpreting the definition of “child” to include a fetus. In doing so, authorities relied on a legal concept called fetal personhood — the idea that a fetus, embryo or fertilized egg has the same legal rights as a person who has been born.
“If we focus only on abortion laws, we miss a crucial part of the picture in the fact that pregnant individuals are being criminalized for allegedly endangering their own pregnancies, for pregnancy loss and, in some cases, for conduct related to abortion. What’s driving pregnancy criminalization is the expansion of fetal personhood.’
“Charges of child abuse or endangerment carry stiffer penalties — higher fines and lengthier prison sentences — than the low-level drug charges the women likely would have faced had they not been pregnant.
“‘Pregnancy-related prosecutions don’t generally charge crimes that, on the face of the criminal statute, have anything whatsoever to do with pregnancy,’ said Wendy Bach, a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law and the report’s principal investigator. ‘Instead, using the idea of fetal personhood, or more specifically the idea that the fetus can be the victim of a crime perpetrated by the pregnant person, they use that theory to charge general crimes.'”
Oklahoma is requiring Bibles in every public school classroom. But the requirements are so narrow and specific that only Trump’s Bibles qualify!
“Oklahoma Education Superintendent Ryan Walters’s (R) office is defending the process for how the state will be selecting newly mandated Bibles in classrooms after a report was released that the criteria is so narrow that essentially no Bibles qualify — besides ones endorsed by former President Trump.
“The Oklahoman reported on Friday that vanishingly view editions match the specific parameters the superintendent calls for in his request for proposal (RFP): a Bible that is bound by leather or material like leather, has the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and is the New King James version of the Old and New Testament.
“‘The RFP on its face seems fair, but with additional scrutiny, we can see there are very few Bibles on the market that would meet these criteria, and all of them have been endorsed by former President Donald Trump,’ Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice Executive Director Colleen McCarty told the news outlet.
“A spokesperson for Walters office told The Hill that “it would be inappropriate to comment while bids are being placed” for who will supply the bibles for Oklahoma classrooms.”
He “found a salesperson at Mardel Christian & Education who said none of the 2,900 Bibles they sell fit the criteria Oklahoma has proposed.
“The two Bibles that Trump has endorsed, We The People Bible and God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, both meet the criteria and are sold for $90 and $60, respectively.
“Walters has asked for $3 million to buy 55,000 copies of the Bible for Oklahoma classrooms.”
Teacup is a new TV series on ABC that has been praised by Stephen King and recommended for fans of Lost or FROM. IMDb classifies it as Sci-Fi/Horror/Thriller. It is premiering on October 10, 2024.
“Trapped on a farm in rural Georgia, a group of neighbors must put aside their differences and unite in the face of a mysterious and deadly threat.”