In 2008, my then-boss said he didn't like either candidate and wished someone like Trump would get into office and run the country like a business. At the time, Trump was pretending to be a businessman on a staged "reality" television series, of course.

it's never been more national security over

I cannot even begin to describe how much diarrhea 4 cups of coffee and 7 beers would give me.

Honestly the worst year for reading for me in ages, mostly because I like to read about politics and political history and none of those works make me optimistic for the future.

Yeah, I'll just say there is no such thing as a republican voter without severe moral defects. Like, I wouldn't date a serial cheater or criminal for the same reasons.

Noted investigative reporting expert, Bari Weiss

It's funny coming from Ian, whose mere visage has its own smell.

*traveling back in time and getting Billy Joel to add a few names to the list*

I’ve seen a million media stories about how sad Republican voters in CA are about losing their Republican representatives. But I don’t think I’ve seen a single one talking about Demoratic voters in Texas, or North Carolina, or Missouri losing their representatives.

WSJ breaks significant news reporting that Mar-a-Lago’s spa *for years* regularly sent young staffers to Epstein’s home purportedly to give him massages, contorts its scoop to find a more flattering angle for Trump, and still gets an icy blast of a comment from Leavitt. www.wsj.com/us-news/trum...

Just like the conspiracies over the hurricane response, you could see this bullshit develop legs in real time with absolutely no meaningful pushback from Dems. Not blaming them here; they just lack both the will and means to address this shit head on.

Here’s me on a Tuesday night digging through Trump’s pardons like “come on I know he had to have done one of these for someone who unambiguously stole straight from the government” and lo and behold.

Earl Lamont Smith was convicted of stealing thousands of government computers and selling them for profit. He pleaded guilty and waived his right to a trial. Trump pardoned him on May 28, 2025.

Feel like in more functional countries if a bunch of random dudes turned up to a daycare and demanded to see the children they would be immediately escorted to prison

We don't have a government. We have a bunch of guys who heard things on social media. We don't have due process. We have entire groups being punished for the alleged actions of a few.

Yeah, set this precedent.

Once again, the throughline to trumpism is simply not knowing anything about anything at all in the world.

This is not hard. Artists are not responsible for ensuring the Kennedy Center remains relevant and successful. The center’s board is responsible for that, in a fiduciary way. All of this energy being directed at artists should be re-directed at the board.

"Trump suggests that he committed a war crime" is actually a story in and of itself.

Dems need an information apparatus to compete with all of broadcast media, most of print media, and all of social media.

The “fun” thing about the kennedy center freakout is that conservatives have been carving out “creative” exceptions to anti discrimination laws so they can be bigots to ordinary people just trying to make a purchase, but if actual artists don’t want to perform for the god king they must be punished

Pretty monstrous swing and miss here.

as.ft.com/r/e3d27468-4... “Trump’s son Eric has said he is working on ‘several’ hotels in India and a company connected to Ambani paid a $10mn ‘development fee’ to the Trump Organization.”

lol

Exclusive: A year after Tenet Media was busted for funneling Russian money to MAGA pundits like Benny Johnson and Tim Pool, a Trump administration effort involving State and the FBI has welcomed Tenet's founders back into the US. @thebulwark.com: www.thebulwark.com/p/lauren-che...

Again, russiagate is a theory like gravity

Everything Flanagan writes is indistinguishable from the dumbest person you went to high school with.

It's funny that the republican solution to the affordability crisis is "make cars worse" when, by far, the best solution is to make it so people can buy cars directly from the manufacturer.

What comes through loud and clear is that rural areas actually want access to renewable energy while the more affluent townships don't like the aesthetics.

I don't think it's likely that many Republicans defect and impeachment succeeds, but the idea that moving quickly doesn't apply political pressure on them is just bizarre. A lot of people seem to argue that politics doesn't matter and I just don't think that's true.

Every time someone says HSAs are the answer, they demonstrate that they are the dumbest person alive.

"Attention hacking" makes it sound like they are winning the game rather than rigging it - Republicans bought up and control the biggest platforms and audiences. There are machines that literally determine what stories people see and conservatives own the machines.

An exceptionally stupid and contingent set of circumstances made Stephen Miller the most influential ideologue in the US. There is no future for the left or liberalism that does not take as a core mission ensuring he is punished for his crimes & no one as hateful as him is ever close to power again.

As Dave gets at, Dems content to operate in an info environment dominated by the right surrender the initiative to their political foes. The right can propagate damaging narratives at will — as Dems wait in vain for a chance to “get the facts out” so they can “let the voters decide.”

Weird how “American nationalists” get mad at immigrants dying to work hard and be American, but not at the super rich guys who are in Epstein’s little black book and would throw away their loyalty to this country to avoid taxes

Underlying this was that Pelosi / Dem leadership immediately gave up on pursuing Jan 6 impeachment as a serious attempt to obtain conviction. No Republican managers was another aspect of that. Delaying the Senate trial was another. Maybe would have failed anyway, but they decided not to really try.

The President of the United States appears to be getting regular IV infusions, the public doesn’t know anything about it, & the DC media evidently doesn’t care. We are months into the mystery of Trump’s hands, the White House is lying, & I’ve seen a grand total of one serious news story about it.

Immigrant-hating Stephen Miller talks about Americans being "first to harness the atom." But the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was conducted by a team led by Italian immigrant Enrico Fermi, who didn't become a U.S. citizen until a year and a half later.

In authoritarian states this is why you generally see things like Saddam Hussein's 1979 Ba'ath Party Purge get rushed forward at even the hint of a coup. Because the factions in those states understand that outrage is a precious resource that evaporates with time.

If he actually believed this he wouldn't be upset.

The main reason the popularists all piss me off is that they all but ignore how conservative areas are dominated by right-wing propaganda in local media. This is the only battle that matters.

Strategic bombing, all of it, by all sides, was a very marginal source of death and destruction and its basically a rounding error against the infantry atrocities by the Axis powers in Eastern Europe and China, respectively

this is the simple answer to people who keep saying NATO expansion matters. Sure, it matters because it presented an obstacle to Russian imperial ambitions. Putin didn't invade because he hated NATO expansion, he hated NATO expansion because he wanted to invade

Importantly, no fox viewers have any self-respect.

post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, pearl jam, soundgarden, or Alice In Chains

Fighting a war is a war crime

This is really the only appropriate response. Love to see it.

Where I land on the Kat Abu thing is that campaign finance rules feel like they come from a different, West Wing-ier era of politics that feels incredibly out of touch with current jurisprudence on corruption of public officials and oh yeah Trump II