History offers a sobering precedent—Queensland, Australia’s gerrymander lasted 40 years. For Democrats, this is an existential fight that will set the tone of American politics for possibly a generation or more. The question is: are they up to that fight?

Trump's base hasn't been remaking the U.S. in its image just to have it evaporate after two or four years. It's out to lock in those changes permanently and make future Democratic victories nearly impossible. ctd.

Expect a political fight to the death: Republicans gerrymandering, Democrats attempting to “anti-gerrymander.” But with Trump’s proposed changes, the 2026 midterms may be engineered beyond recognition, well before Americans get to vote. ctd.

This comes 2 days after Newsmax agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems US$67 million for defamation, following false claims that Dominion rigged the 2020 election. Fox News settled in 2023 for US$787.5 million. No, 2020 wasn't rigged but the next elections probably will be seriously so. ctd.

According to today’s New York Times, President Trump is urging other Republican-led states to redraw electoral boundaries before the 2026 midterms. He says he's drafting executive orders to eliminate mail-in voting—favoured by Democrats—and to ban voting machines altogether. ctd.

"The reversal of the years-old policy is a stark sign of how the company is repositioning itself for the Trump era," it says. The move is also likely to please foreign governments such as Russia which has a massive propaganda ecosystem that targets the west. ctd.

The report says that, instead, Meta will rely on users to add notes or corrections to posts. Can we really rely on the public to fact check the more than billion posts published each day? "It is likely to please the Trump administration", says the NYT story. ctd.

Aren’t we lucky!

You might fool an online age verification system with a VPN but there's now VPN detection tools, Netflix & others detect you're spoofing your region/location. The arms race builds. I believe it will become too complex to fool age checks for many, but a fair portion will. Is a win on points enough?

So this dispute should have been resolved with the govt playing a role weeks ago. In fairness to Healthscope, a US company, Gold Coast Private Hospital provided exemplary service during my recent surgery there. The staff was excellent, as was the medical care and available resources. ctd.

Healthscope had big billboards up in hospitals warning of this extra fee for weeks, along with Bupa & AHSA members' refusals to pay it, and other funds' agreement to pay it. But this issue only hit the headlines recently. I saw the billboards at Gold Coast Private Hospital in September. ctd.

Musk is on a mission to deregulate tech in the US, including countering any move for government to vet misinformation. It’s not fanciful that he will use his new found reach to derail efforts by other regulators against US firms across the globe.That could prove a diplomatic nightmare for Australia.

Elon Musk, soon to be arguably America’s second most powerful person, in his advocacy of “free speech” on X, has already branded Australia’s government as “fascists” & has crossed swords legally with Australia’s eSafety commissioner. This could prove a major headache for Australia’s regulators Ctd.