This! Never engage with bullshit on substance. Call it bullshit and move on.

We need more media reminding people about the injecting bleach moment.

Big question: are they making him apologize? That'll say a lot about both Disney and Kimmel.

I suspect my experience is atypical, but I'm pretty sure a higher percentage of the Jews I know have read the New Testament than the Christians I know. Also, I think it's fair to point out that both Carlson and Kirk have thoroughly rejected the core teachings of the New Testament.

Shanah Tovah, New York City. Here's to a sweet and hopeful New Year.

It's pretty straightforward; @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social will not hesitate to hurt the party in order to maximize his own personal fundraising. He'd rather be minority leader than see another Dem be speaker, and the party structures encourage that approach.

Dem party strategy is dominated by a set of professional consultants desperate to maintain their revenue stream in the face of a mountain of evidence that their advice is worthless. That means finding an endless stream of excuses to convince major donors and party leadership to ignore the mountain.

I've never been military or fired a weapon at a living thing, but I have been a field diplomat in some pretty fight-y places. To the extent that there's crossover: Being in the field and seeing things with your own eyes gives you a unique set of tools. That doesn't mean everyone uses them, or can.

don't make me tap the sign

As much as I'd rather never talk or think about him ever again, it's become important to keep pointing out just what a horrible person Kirk was. In addition to everything else, he encouraged and celebrated political violence, and those whitewashing him are encouraging political violence in his name.

No particular reason

The depth of the @washingtonpost.com idiocy here is truly breathtaking. And it's not just deep! It's layered! So many layers! It's like a planet-sized onion of stupid.

I have a sneaking suspicion it went something like this: 1) Trump keeps bringing up Bagram in meetings, demands to know what's being done. 2) Someone gets tasked with attempting to open a backchannel to the Taliban so that they can make some sort of offer for Bagram. 1/

Don't apologise for your dog showing up during the Zoom, apologise for hiding him all this time

it’s funny how deep the american exceptionalism brainwashing goes. i know better. i’ve known better for years. i’ve breathed gas clouds just like this one. and yet every time i see pictures like this, i want so badly to say “i can’t believe this is america.” but i won’t. because i know better.

Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan, signed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on 29 Feb 2020, Part One, section B., paragraph 2: "The United States, its allies, and the Coalition will withdraw all their forces from remaining bases."

To all the comedians who stood for free speech in the face of wokeness

I like @kfile.bsky.social but *hard* disagree here. @adamserwer.bsky.social is doing a bit of gratuitous bothsidesing by inventing a "mistake" by Kimmel out of whole cloth, and it's gross. Kimmel didn't say Robinson was MAGA, and we still don't have a good picture of his motives. Just stop it.

One of the ways law matters is that authoritarians find the pretense of following it valuable. They might be willing to jettison it entirely in some cases, but they don't want to. Even if they're going to break the law in the end, force them to do it explicitly. Make them sacrifice the pretense.

Someone should have taken this man aside more than a decade ago and made it clear that he was no longer capable of doing the job (leaving aside the question of whether he ever was). They failed to do so, leaving a someone who's clearly not up to the moment, embarrassing himself on a national stage.

It's like he had someone come up with a list of the stupidest and most incompetent things an ambassador could say.

"Did the writer sleep with any of the interviewees?" instantly became both a fair and an important question regarding any @vanityfair.com piece. Sucks for most people who work there, but organizational leadership decisions have consequences for everyone in the org.

Because he's had such success negotiating with the Taliban in the past. 🤦‍♂️

Hey, @warren.senate.gov, @sanders.senate.gov, @markey.senate.gov, @vanhollen.senate.gov, @merkley.senate.gov, @baldwin.senate.gov, @warnock.senate.gov, @ossoff.senate.gov... you consented? To this? And you expect anyone to take you seriously? You all should be ashamed of yourselves.

A cybertruck for your face

Any Dem who votes for this should face a serious primary and a donor boycott. @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social should face a primary and a donor boycott for even considering it. The @democrats.org and @housedemocrats.bsky.social should face a donor boycott if they support anyone who votes for it.

It was always a huge mistake to treat "anti-cancel culture" as a real argument or position. The only appropriate response was always, "You're not upset about people being cancelled, you're upset that you don't get to decide who's cancelled." Call out the bullshit and move on.

You didn't think those concentration camps they're building are just for immigrants did you?

2 key points to highlight: 1) Antifa isn't an organization, it's an adjective. It has no budget or membership roster. This is like trying to designate "commuters" as a terrorist org. 2) If it was an org, Trump would have no legal authority to designate it as a terrorist org.

Given all of the prestige they get, I think people often miss that think tanks exist to make their funders happy. They'll usually jump at the chance to produce garbage if it keeps the money flowing. Sometimes you get a funder who genuinely wants good research or analysis, but that's the exception.

Thousands of people are marching in London right now to protest the official State Visit to the UK of Jeffrey Epstein's close friend

One of these rich dudes invested in a food company with all proceeds going to kids in need. The other started Sundance Institute, boosting the lives of countless artists. Hey modern rich dudes, don't be a typical greedy AI crypto-prick, be like these two.

I don't know him so this is a guess, but I strongly suspect that Klein's current tack is just a business decision. He's betting that being the "I'm not racist but I'm friends with them" guy is the best option for his career, and whether he honestly believes what he's writing is mostly irrelevant.

Do not assume that everything they set out to do is inevitable. They have been successfully fought on multiple fronts, from courtroom wins that have actually stuck to city and state governments that haven't backed down, to activists in the streets organizing against their violence.

I've said this before on here, but: Never, ever, *ever* try to engage with bad faith bullshit on substance. Brandolini's law always wins no matter how brilliant your response, and it will grind you into a fine powder if you persist. The only way to win is not to play. Call it bullshit and move on.

I think @markruffalo.bsky.social is absolutely right here, but also that this understates the impact of individual incentives. @schumer.senate.gov is primarily concerned with raising enough money to keep his leadership post. Yes, he wants to win a senate majority, but that's secondary at best.

I only regret that I had but one WaPo subscription to cancel over their bullshit & I already cancelled it over previous bullshit.

Einbinder on saying 'free Palestine' during her Emmys speech: "It is my obligation as a Jewish person to distinguish Jews from the state of Israel. Our religion and our culture is such an important and long-standing institution that is really separate to this sort of ethnonationalist state."

This was a word AND he cussed 😂

this is, hands down, the best video I've seen on men's influencer content and it's not close either

This right here? This is you defending Charlie Kirk. As someone so concerned about journalistic accuracy, it's interesting that you would misreport that. Also, when Kirk called for an "amazing patriot" to bail out the man who attacked Paul Pelosi with hammer, was that "arguing with civility"?

I hope I have given fidelity, and that everyone viscerally understands: You will have to come through me.

A rare case in which I would actually just skip the linked article; this 🧵 is 1000% better at explaining the whole fiasco. The article is weirdly indirect--almost deliberately evasive.

I think about this poem by Ian Duhig — about Jo Cox, the Labour MP assassinated by a man shouting ‘Britain first’ — every day at the moment. No other contemporary poet has looked so clearly at the political reality of the far right as a minority who must always be appeased

hey some of you are spreading an altered photo, i'm not calling anyone out yet but there are people in every thread telling you it's fake

I'd bet good money that her briefers on this particular point are her fundraising people. This is a pitch to major donors, not voters or real policy types.

It would be asking a lot of him, but I genuinely wish @stephenking.bsky.social would sue Mike Lee for defamation. I'm no defamation law expert, but it seems like he could have a good case, and it could be an excellent way to push back against both Lee and Kirk hagiography in general.

Pritzker's been doing good work, but it's important to understand what's happening here, and it's not all about him. Trump seems to be backing down on the National Guard deployment in Chicago, most likely because of legal obstacles raised by the National Guard deployment in California.

Every single one of these reporters should be shunned. Professionally at the very least, and I suspect personally as well.

You know who was also a young husband and father—not to mention ex-Marine—who died, not attacking others to make himself rich and powerful, but to save the lives of others? David Rose, the officer killed by the anti-vax domestic terrorist who attacked the CDC. apnews.com/article/deka...