Was the election rigged

In my ongoing series about whether the 2024 election was stolen, I ran across a link to Newsweek with a quote from Trump about Musk, Jan 20, 2025. "He knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers. Those vote-counting computers," Trump told the crowd. "And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide."

We know they rigged the game as much as they could with voter suppression tactics, and they're doubling down now that they're in power. Did they also mess with the actual vote totals? We don't know. But I blame the Democrats for having power for four years and not ensuring that the vulnerable electronic voting machines were eliminated, or at least required to be audited.

Poem: To Pray To The Goddess Of Lost Things

via musesfool
I love the mix of metaphorical and actual things to lose, jumping across stanzas.

To Pray To The Goddess Of Lost Things
by Barbara Jane Reyes

Help me to find my innocence. I may have dropped it
On the bus last week, when I also lost my cellphone,

And a notebook full of poems. I keep dropping things.
I forget where I've left things. People keep taking my shit

Without asking. Maybe I've forgotten what I've lent out.
I can't hold it together. I'm trying. I'm trying, so help me

To find my pride. Some punk ass bitch stole it from me,
I'm sure, when I was at the mall. I just turned around

For a second. I was looking for my mother. I was
Updating my Facebook. I was blindsided by something

That must have been important, I was shoulder bumped
By strangers, I was robbed. I searched all my pockets,

My skinny jeans in piles of laundry, my shopping bags,
My crumpled receipts, and it just wasn't anywhere.

Where is my dignity, where is my credit card, where are
My self-esteem, my perfect size-two body, my medication,

Where did I leave those? Where is my lipstick, my car keys,
Where is my one true love, my very own happily ever after.

Where is my voice. Every time I speak, some man, any man
Always interrupts, and every time I speak louder, he shouts.

He claims he knows far better than I, what I need, what's good
For me. Where is my fire to burn the filth from his tongue.

He wants me to fit in his pants pocket. Where are my knives.
Where is my backbone. Where is my wishbone. Help me

Find my voice, because some white woman keeps yapping
At me, as if I should drop everything. As if I must listen.

She says she speaks on my behalf. Do not believe her.
She says she's my friend and my sister. She's a dirty liar.

Where are my manners? I seem to have lost those too.
My mother taught me to say please. Please help me find her.

Where is my compass; this GPS keeps leading me away
From all that is clear and cool. Help me to locate my center.

Where are my manners? My mother taught me also,
To remember to breathe. And always, always give thanks.

Oakland links

I got on See Click Fix to report the terrible potholes on my nearest bike route, and it linked me to Oakland's 5 year paving plan starting in 2022. The fiscal year starts July 1, so they started paving the 2025 streets last year, which include a lot of the bike routes I use. Looks like my nearby bike route is due to be paved this summer, yay, but I wish they would patch the potholes before then anyway. Someone outlined them in paint a couple of times, starting at least a year ago, and they've patched further up, and on surrounding streets, but the segment near me hasn't gotten any repairs.

The future happens in Oakland first. That’s a cautionary tale for global cities by Lois Beckett, March 22, 2025.

Oakland, California, is often treated as a city on the margins, best known for its struggles with poverty and gun violence, as well as for its history of radical Black activism. But a new book, The Pacific Circuit, argues that Oakland should be viewed as one of the centers of global change in the past century, serving both as a key node in the new global economy built around trans-Pacific trade, and as one of the “sacrifice zones” this economy requires.

Far from being an outlier, US journalist Alexis Madrigal argues, Oakland is in fact an early adopter of the technological and economic changes now tearing through cities across the US, and around the world. Oakland has long been the canary in Silicon Valley’s coalmine of disruption, the book suggests. But its residents don’t suffer passively: they organize and learn how to fight back.

Civil rights lawyers on justia.com in Oakland and surrounding areas. You can search for your region in the search bar at the top right of the page.