Someone's going to figure out a good way to make money is to start up newspapers, sell them to billionaires who want a propaganda outlet, then use that money to hire all the reporters for a new newspaper. Repeat indefinitely to redistribute wealth from billionaires to independent journalism.

Kristi Noem Announces Alternative Puppy Bowl thehardtimes.net/breaking/kri...

A publisher who lays off a reporter whose pen is freezing because she's covering a frigid war zone while dodging missiles is not an editor you want to work for, in a more perfect world

New Penny Arcade for your Wednesday. www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2026/0...

I've said this before, but the most damaging aspects of the Epstein file release are not the unfounded claims, but people emailing Epstein asking for access.

under different circumstances this is congressional-inquiry level scandal

I talked to a woman who quit an AUSA job recently. She was asked by main DOJ to dismiss a Medicare fraud prosecution because the defendant was the daughter of a girlfriend of a MAGA figure.

Also, the impact of this in places like California is that older people can't move out of their house to a smaller one or a slightly different location in the state. All the wealth they built up is just going to be spent on the next place. You essentially get locked into your house.

DHS said that the woman CBP shot in the chest in Portland was “involved” in a gang shooting. Her ~involvement~ was that suspected gang members sexually assaulted and robbed her.

Columbia administration looking especially craven and incompetent about now.

The last time he started talking like this, his allies minimized the risks and we ended up with January 6. This time we must take him literally and seriously. These comments are a five-alarm fire for democracy. In a functioning republic, he would be impeached and removed from office today.

What I like is how the mom keeps saying “if you want this to be real” and then “Fine, I take it back!” Like the truth is a favor we do for other people, instead of something we owe to ourselves.

Minnesota nurses doubt ICE claim about man's shattered skull - Los Angeles Times - goo.gl/alerts/dWG7cR #GoogleAlerts

We should be with them too! Over 1.3 billion people and 70 trillion gdp. That's how you maintain the post WW2 order. Call it, I dunno, the United Federation of Planet.

We carefully curate anti imperialist thought that "Ukraine had no prospect of using the nukes". We do it to remove the moral imperative to do anything. USA nuclear analysts believed it would take Ukraine 3 months to make the nukes work. Cos that's how long it would take them.

OTD in 2002 Ukraine dismantled its final Tu-160, supersonic heavy bomber. Having given up nukes, long range ability to threaten Russia and the entire firing chain, Ukraine was subsequently rewarded with invasion, concern and thoughts & prayers.

Kaja Kallas: In the last 100 years, Russia has attacked at least 19 countries, some as many as three or four times. None of those countries has ever attacked Russia.

Dictators forget that one of the functions of democratic elections and allowing peaceful protests is that if you don't allow them, you end up like Mussolini instead of landing a cushy book deal and highly paid speaking gigs.

Sobering reporting on the risk of Iranian civil war. 'According to multiple accounts, masked men armed with knives killed basijis, the regime’s volunteer vigilantes. “It’s already a civil war,” says a young woman in Mashhad. “We’re just not saying it.”' www.economist.com/middle-east-...

Even in their fantasies, Trumples are so cowardly that they won't fight someone who's fighting back.

A reminder that the Kennedy Center is the literal and legal and congressional designated presidential memorial to JFK. This would be like Trump tearing down the Lincoln Memorial to build something “better.”

It remains my guiding principle that I will ally with Churchill, de Gaulle, and Stalin to defeat Nazis. We were right to do so before. And we'd be right to do so now.

Trump 2.0 also tearing the masks off to show us the actual Libertarians vs the fascists who want to smoke weed and molest children. Any news from the New Hampshire Libertarian party, BTW?

Republican: “I think you should be murdered in the street.” Me: I don’t like that. I don’t want to talk to you. Ezra Klein: wow, don’t you know we all have to live here together? Lets do politics the right way like Charlie Kirk

the Epstein files make it very clear why the MeToo backlash was so extreme and why so much of elite society preferred Donald Trump ruling us like a king to the barest hint of accountability

Trump has flown too close to the sonnenrad for even the voters of ‘White Settlement, Texas’

We missed this review from a little over a year ago, but great to see our movie Assimilate Film get such a terrific shout out in Collider. collider.com/assimilate-m...

Trump's going to send the FBI, CIA, and entire client list of Epstein Island down to Texas to try to fabricate some fraud claims on this one.

The Markiplier situation with Iron Lung shows just how efficiently movies can turn a buck into two, but the entire industry is on fire because no one wants to just get rich, they want to turn fifty cents into a billion.

Jeffrey Epstein did not stop raping children after his 2008 conviction. Jeffrey Epstein did not stop facilitating the rape of children after his 2008 conviction. He kept doing it. That is the context of people treating him as a normal person after his conviction. /1 www.cnn.com/2020/01/15/u...

Over the course of my life I've seen the Bible quoted frequently to justify policy making. But I think this is the first time I've seen someone quote Jesus. Aalways before it was the Old Testament.

/2 AUSA jobs tend to be EXTREMELY competitive. (Not to say they’re not occasionally awarded to morons for politics.) Having to advertise for AUSAs on Nazi-Pedoworld is deeply embarrassing. Also the notion you have to be politically loyal to the President to be a entry-level lawyer is loathsome.

/4 That’s not American. That’s not free speech culture. Free speech culture asks “never mind what separates us, what unifies us?” THAT’S what we should be asking. Like, “sorry to interrupt you fucking that child, but don’t taxes suck?”

I think it is OUTRAGEOUS that people are LEAPING to the conclusion that some our post prominent Americans are child rapists when it is EQUALLY PLAUSIBLE that they are simply indifferent to whether other people are child rapists so long as those other people can offer them access to power.

Guys before I refuse an invitation I am always sure to ask for details about the wildness of the event and hammer out specifics of my travel to that event and that’s when I hit em with I AM NOT COMING WEIRDO but always using a different communications method than for the previous conversations

Qanon was never about taking down actual pedophiles and pursuing justice for victims. It was about smearing any and all prominent liberal figures while protecting and empowering actual pedophiles. Qanon was a movement of pedophiles, protecting pedophiles.

here is the video version of this post, with a few other thoughts as well. youtu.be/wBS13rx-M7s

We're getting deep into the "arresting journalists" phase of fascist takeover

d. teutonis offically re-named as Fratbroatus Brad

Good interview here.

VA leaders have barely acknowledged Alex Pretti's death, workers say - goo.gl/alerts/a8twct #GoogleAlerts

Jesus Christ. The "pivot" lasted about 15 minutes. Arresting a black journalist under the Ku Klux Klan Act for covering a pro-immigration protest at a Christian nationalist church led by an ICE officer is the perfect encapsulation of this administration's authoritarianism, racism, and trolling.

What the observers are doing is a form of civil disobedience, except they're not breaking any laws -- maybe it's "civil obedience." The harassment they're facing is illegal and makes it increasingly clear to millions of people that the regime is wrong.

This is right. You cannot write a constitution that will protect you if everyone it gives power to is a coward.

The United States is not actually in a constitutional crisis. Our Constitution works just fine. We are in a crisis of character — where nearly every single person who has sworn an oath to uphold our Constitution and enforce the law lacks the courage, moral fiber, and decency to do what is right.

This is a cover up of a murder, led by our own federal government.

Minneapolis should press its momentum and demand not only withdrawal but start talking about the need for immediate reparations, loudly, with the total certainty that only winners have. "You have wronged us terribly and must pay recompense" and let them argue the second part.

This survey is conducted every year, so you can see how much worse things have gotten under Trump too. A sampling below; again, morale tanked even before the recent killings of protesters:

Again, real press will absolutely respect rules and boundaries, and I always establish that the only observer who can be identified in any way is myself. But all-consuming paranoia about cameras and press is awful for us. ICE is the one operating in secret. We’re the ones bringing daylight.