Happy Independence Day

Take the pledge: NEVER take the bait when Axios runs a bunch of anonymous quotes from random Democratic backbenchers dumping on D primary voters

It is, in fact, very very bad that anyone can simply be smeared as a hardliner for Israel with very little (or in some cases outright manufactured) evidence. More evidence that populist brainworms and conspiracism are bad, folks!

you know, when someone says something like "these are the things that need to be done to avert disaster" and your response is "you think democrats will do that?!?" all you're telling me is that you think politics is a spectator sport

My favorite part of this: it appears Roberts' willingness to re-interpret whatever he wants to achieve GOP ends while pretending he's judicial aristocracy above the understanding of the plebs has led to: 1. Dems want to reform the Calvinball Court 2. Right-wingers want to reform the Calvinball Court

Cool that James Madison envisioned everyone having a rocket launcher but the authors of the 14th amendment explicitly stating their intentions doesn't count for some reason.

Yeah, this is accurate.

If the GOP is going to try and make some socialist the face of the Democratic Party, at least they chose the popular, pragmatic, hot one, tbh.

My position on DSA candidates winning Dem primaries is basically "socialists are part of this coalition and have the right to try and get members of their coalition into elected office, which they can do if they focus on coalitionalism over anti-Dem shtick, but I still don't like socialism."

Why do I get so mad at the first group? Well, because they’re usually the better-off people who largely *make the policies the second group then has to try to survive under*. I get mad at those with vacation money and good jobs who assume, very falsely, that nobody will die if they’re denied AC.

Wishcasting how the Dems might be bad in the future on a dumb hypothetical instead of just taking the W, standard online leftist BS. 99%+ of Dems would support AOC over a GOP option, it's not clear AOC wants the Speakership right now, and the DSA could resolve this by winning more primaries.

I guess my big concern with Glonzo-ism is that you can't control it. Yes, sure, today it's data centers, and while that's not harmless, exactly, it's close enough. But every conspiracy theorist inside the tent is a ticking time bomb.

i think boarding school teenage masculinity is a part of masculinity but not of manhood. we have to get away from the concept of the opposite of "man" being "woman." the opposite of "man" is "boy"

Obviously Israeli actions in Lebanon are a huge threat to this "deal," but I've been seeing the media round-up this morning and everyone calling this a massive L for Trump and the US military is probably as big a threat to the "deal," right?

One must wonder if any Trump Admin pivot back to "resolving" the Russian invasion of Ukraine is that Russia is losing harder than ever and turned on maximum leverage over Kushner and Witkof to get things resolved before all their planned corruption windfalls evaporate with the Russian state.

Its amazing that none of these chuds are capable of grasping that "Trumps wasting your $ on a shitty deal to get out of a war he shouldnt have even started" is not saying "we wish this war would have gone better," but I guess thats what happens when your entire politics is just being anti-Dem Party

also, keep it in mind the next time some galaxy brained white podcaster pundit blames harris for not going on joe rogan for the hundredth time, even though subsequent reporting confirms this was rogan's decision, not hers

It continues to amaze me that there are still people who don’t think that Zohran Mamdani (D), the thrice-elected Democratic state legislator and successful Democratic nominee for mayor, doesn’t really count as a member of the Democratic Party or representative of the Democratic Party in NYC.

I’ve known a lot of dirtbags, it’s not that interesting or impressive to lack consideration for the feelings of others or the ability to foresee the predictable consequences of your own actions

"Meetings are held, emails are sent, phone calls are made, and something like 520,000 children die of malnutrition, diarrhea, tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV." prospect.org/2026/05/22/w...

The problem here is that X already took all the liberal and progressive voices and put them on a remote island where no one could interact with us via aggressive algorithm changes, so the reduction was happening regardless.

I think that the elephant lurking behind all of these discussions is the simple issue that 'what schools teach' is not as important in the lives of students as 'schools as socializing devices'. you're being molded into an adult and the particulars of it are largely irrelevant to you at the time

Googled "Semen maxxing diet Reddit" today because my wife and I are going to start working on having kids soon, but apparently that was less weird than what you people were talking about today, like damn.

If your politics give you permission to indulge in unrestrained interpersonal cruelty toward a hated out-group that is undeserving of sympathy, your politics are bad.

Lunch break thought: it remains profoundly sad how much of the economy has been turned over to scams that pretend to be gambling which pretends to be an investment. Do you want to gamble your money with odds that are actually good? Index. Funds. But I guess that's not masculinity-affirming enough.

"But then all of our predictive cases would suggest basically economic catastrophe! We'd have to recommend drastic re-configuring of business operations!" Yup, that is the implication of attempting a massive decapitation strike on Iran. Maybe you should have explained that back in February.

Precautionary savings, make sure you have ample access to revolving credit now not when you need it (esp if you have a good chunk of home equity as most people do). The pain for developed economies would be via higher unemployment + inflation, not outright shortages you can hedge against.

Someone said that eventually, physical reality would force the futures and spot prices (which are like $150 per barrel or more) to converge when the hopium ran out, and it appears the supplies are finally getting exhausted.

it’s simple. Dems need to 1. prepare retaliatory gerrymanders in every blue state now that the VRA has been overturned 2. pack the court (and prosecute Thomas/alito) in 2029 I will only even *consider* primary candidates who support both of the above going forward

Imagine scoffing at the ability of elections in backsliding democracy when Hungary--FUCKING HUNGARY--just threw Orban out on his ass by like 15 points after almost two decades of them literally passing the Rig Elections for Orban Acts annually

Lot of people on the right crying about the Virginia redistricting vote. We told you this would happen while you were celebrating the illegal off-cycle seat grab in Texas. Stop playing stupid games if you don’t want to win stupid prizes.

Republican redistricting efforts 1) happened first 2) were literally at the behest of the President 3) were not voted on but guess which one gets critical op-eds from the political media

I don't actually think Evangelicals or anyone else is leaving Trump over the Jesus thing because it was a specific, religious bridge too far. The MAGA vibes are just rancid right now and people are grabbing whatever fig leaf they need to get out of their associations with it. Which is good.

Informal out-of-government civic organizations (like Pride) are an essential check in any democracy of checks and balances, and are to be celebrated and maintained accordingly.

this is a boring take but if we want this from a Dem President in 2029 we need to deliver the type of huge legislative majority Magyar just achieved and not the razor-thin one that Biden was forced to work with.

So, the American authoritarian right has been featuring Orban at CPAC and trying to adopt Orban-esque competitive authoritarianism as a goal, more or less explicitly. How do we think they respond to today?

I'm at a wedding venue where you can watch trains go by and it's activating my neurons so hard.

it feels very much like the "kamala will send you to war" memes were more about people who disliked a woman giving them orders outside of pornography

Seeing this lie going around again & I just want to remind folks that the reason people tell this lie is not to convince you that it's true, but to revel in the impunity of lying to your face.

What the fuck are you talking about? The Democrats have happily embraced the guy nationally, the only real opposition is coming from local politics dead enders that you can just kind of ignore.

living in New York has made me realize that unions are a stakeholder group like any other: sometimes making reasonable demands and other times just pure rent seeking from taxpayers at the cost of better transit service

Impossible to disagree with a single word that Ben Rhodes (Obama era NSC official) is saying here:

That was a multi-day story. The story where the former top general who served as Trump's chief of staff warned he was an insane fascist got buried on A14 and never mentioned again. In retrospect, perhaps more important than the Walz thing idk.

I'm at the DFL convention for my State Senate District, and the mood is definitely "we will not forget the crimes of this admin and all its members down to the individual ICE agents shall face our justice," which is beautiful.

"The idea that there are huge swaths of the United States populace who want and need the right wing’s unreality—their alternative reality—is a farce: a gaudy, festering artifice constructed and maintained by a million people who need it to be real for financial, political, and cultural purposes."

I regret to inform you the actual point is just concentration camps and purging America of "undesirable blood" and any profits are ancillary.

I realized my problem with the "Boy Kibble" thing has nothing to do with Gender and everything to do with the fact that making meals from a staple grain + bulk cheap protein + whatever veggies/seasonings make it taste good is about as old as agriculture and the standard way to make "budgets" work!

The Cult of the Operator is very profitable for retired operators who can go on podcasts and talk about how America's problems are caused by scrawny pencil-necks who won't unleash the operators, but will not be profitable for all the operators who are going to die because the Admin bought the hype.

Finally watching Sicario so I can understand the dumbest and therefore most likely future of US-Mexico relations.

The Nazi wing of the GOP is absolutely going to try to spin this into “It’s all You Know Who’s Fault and that makes Vance the peace candidate in 2028“ and you fuckers had better not fall for it.