From Mary L. #Trump

Not only did Vice President #Kamala Harris expose my uncle’s #weakness on the #debate stage last night, which left him seething with rage and reduced to sputtering #incoherence, she also gave millions of us something we have needed for almost a decade — catharsis.

And Harris did it in a way that was not just masterful, it was almost surgical. She #dominated Donald from the outset, crossing the stage to his lectern and forcing him to do something he did not want to do—shake her hand. (I confess, I did not want her to shake his hand—not because I thought it was a tactical mistake, but because I didn’t want her to have to touch him.) And then, while addressing policy issues and giving us substantive answers to the moderator’s questions in a way that underscored how incapable Donald was of doing the same, she slid the knife in again and again. She told him to his face in front of the world that he is a #disgrace. She looked at him with bemused condescension, pity, and outright #contempt. She called out his lies and, worst of all for him, she #mocked his rallies:

“I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies because it's a really interesting thing to watch. You will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”

Donald never recovered from that accurate and damning assessment of one of the most important metrics by which he measures his worth This bit of rhetorical evisceration, which happened at about the 25-minute mark, undid him and he spent the next hour defensive, desperate, and flailing.

We needed someone to call out Donald’s lies in a context he did not control. We needed someone to set the record straight while he had to stand there and listen. Harris did that while laying out his decades’-long patterns of #racist, #corrupt, and #disturbing behaviors that are utterly disqualifying.

For over nine years, this country has been in thrall to a cruel and deranged man who cares only about himself. His constant war on truth and basic human decency has worn us down, #demoralizing those of us who care about other people, who want a better world, and who crave a leader who exhibits empathy and understanding.

We’ve been waiting for somebody in a position of authority to stand up to Donald in a way that would matter, that would loosen Donald’s grip on power and perhaps even undo him. Instead, we’ve watched helplessly as the entire Republican Party bent its knee to him; as corrupt judges give him a pass; and as the #illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court ripped up the Constitution in order to give him, this man who has earned nothing and deserves nothing, more power.

#auspol #USPol

Centuries old European-centric American history debunked by archaeology and advanced genomics

The Pueblo, Pawnee, Comanche and Lakota traditional owners gain confirmation of what they have always being saying, that they'd been using horses centuries earlier than what the Western narrative have claimed.

This is incredibly exciting. Not just this case, but how there’s the potential for history to be rewritten in many other periods of history, provided science is given the opportunity to explore
amp.abc.net.au/article/1035261…
#AusPol #AusEdu #Science #Archaeology #Genomics #IndigenousX

How the horse exposed a mistake in the history books but confirmed what First Nations people have known for generations

Authors of an award-winning US study that incorporated First Nations traditional knowledge say there are lessons for Australian researchers.

^{ABC News}

I grew up in cooperative social housing. The model is that a not-for-profit organisation (with government funding) buys houses within a community area and rents them to people within that community. Rents are capped at 25% of the household income or at cost (which ever is lower).

The people within this community manage rent collection and maintenance requests.
Tenancy is long term so tenants have leeway in making modifications to the house. Even major modifications are possible with consultation with the community group.

This gives people that majority of benefits of home ownership without having to be property investors.

The not-for-profit can use the equity in their property portfolio to purchase or build new properties.

It's a great model for housing for people across a wide range of income levels.

Chronic under funding in the past 25yrs hasn't allowed these cooperatives to grow with population growth so this option isn't available to most people.

Most people don't actually want to own a house, they just want location stability and the ability to paint their walls.

cehl.com.au/

#auspol #HousingCrisis #HousingPolicy

"The latest change would mean all documents required or permitted to be signed under the Corporations Act of 2001 can be signed in a “technology neutral” way. Notices currently required to be published in newspapers would instead need to be published in a way that is “publicly available and reasonably prominent”."

#digitalid #auspol
innovationaus.com/govt-looks-t…

Govt looks to expand e-signatures acceptance

More of the temporary changes introduced during the pandemic to allow businesses and regulators to use electronic signatures and hold virtual meetings will be made permanent under legislation introduced to Parliament on Wednesday.

^{Joseph Brookes (InnovationAus.com)}