Hammer good for nails. Hammer not good for fingernails.

Accursed be Autocorrect and all its works. Anathema! Anathema! Anathema!

If you don't have any political actions planned, I recommend taking the weekend off from politics for your mental health's sake. Good news will keep. And bad news will refuse to leave. Morale is power.

Oh please.

Per a Reuters-Ipsos poll in early December, 3/4 of trump voters said they approved of trump's handling of the cost of living, compared to 1/3 of all respondents. This is what a cult looks like. When reality conflicts with dear leader, reality loses. #MAGACult

Someone told me they voted for the person who actually had logical thinking. I laughed in their face.

The #US declares itself our enemy. #Europe emerges as its main adversary in the US national security strategy. Russia is its friend, not us. Everything that looked solid since the second world war is turned upside down; the land of the free becomes the destroyer of democratic values.

It’s not a boycott. It’s muscle memory. And it’s working. #cdnpoli youtube.com/shorts/BYb90...

And 50% of Americans aren't used to thinking of food as a luxury, that basic Cheesy Poofs or whatever might be unattainable. Sure, that's always been the reality for the most vulnerable, but 50% of Americans now say it's difficult to pay for food.

🚨🚨 The #EU strike back: @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu says Donald #Trump should not get involved in European democracy, days after the U.S. president launched a stinging attack on Europe. 🧵 www.politico.eu/article/euro...

“It is not on us, when it comes to elections, to decide who the leader of the country will be, but on the people of this country … That’s the sovereignty of the voters, and this must be protected,” the European Commission president said in an interview at the POLITICO 28 gala event in Brussels. /2

“Nobody else is supposed to interfere, without any question,” the @ec.europa.eu president added in response to a question about the U.S. National Security Strategy, which was published last week and caused uproar in Europe. /3

The strategy claims Europe is facing “civilizational erasure” within the next 20 years, a narrative that has resonated well with Europe’s far-right leaders, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, as well as in Russia. The document also

bashes European efforts to rein in far-right parties, calling such moves political censorship, and speaks of “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.” VDL said this is one of the reasons why the EU proposed the Democracy Shield,

meant to step up the fight against foreign interference online, including in elections. VDL said she has always had “a very good working relationship” with U.S. presidents & ”this is also the case today. However, she stressed that Europe should focus on itself and not making comparisons with others.

“From the bottom of my heart, I’m a convinced transatlanticist. But what is so important? [What’s] important is that … we take pride in being the European Union, that we look at our strength and that we deal with the challenges that we do have,” she said. /6

“Of course, our relationship to the US has changed. Why? Because we are changing. And this is so important that we keep in mind: what is our position? What is our strength? Let’s work on these. Let’s take pride in that. Let’s stand up for a unified Europe. /7

This is our task … [to] look at ourselves and be proud of ourselves,” VDL said, to applause from the crowd. Trump denounced Europe as a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people in an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns that aired Tuesday in a special episode of The Conversation podcast. /8

“I think they’re weak,” Trump said, referring to the continent’s presidents and PMs, adding, “I think they don’t know what to do. Europe doesn’t know what to do.” @politico.eu on Thursday named Trump the most powerful person shaping European politics, placing him at the top of the annual P28 list.

The list highlights who is expected to have the most sway over Europe’s political direction in the coming year, based on input from POLITICO’s newsroom and the power players POLITICO’s journalists speak with. /ends

via @ketrinjochecova.bsky.social

Trump’s ambassador to the EU is accidentally—and unwittingly—saying the US economy is losing ground to the EU, even if he doesn’t seem to realise it. By comparing the wrong GDP metrics, Andrew Puzder is arguing the EU is currently trouncing the US. And it’s all because of Trump! Let me explain🧵

The argument put forward by the US ambassador is that nominal GDP in the EU (ex UK) was higher in 2011 & is now 31% lower. He made this point in the FT recently. Sounds alarming. It is... for America! Because under Trump this trend is reversing faster than ever www.ft.com/content/0398...

Indeed, as Puzder argues, if you look at US vs EU GDP in 2011 they were the same size. Now the EU is much smaller. surely that means the EU should be panicking! USA! USA! well, no. Europe should be concerned, but not panicked. For if you look at GDP through the correct lens, the EU isn't so bad.

Now, comparing the size of GDPs is fraught with danger. Typically you have to adjust for how much things cost. If you have a GDP/head of $5000 but a Big Mac costs $300, that's not a sign of a good economy - just a strong currency. In short this is a bit what happened in America vs Europe since 2011

If the $ is strong, the EU economy will look smaller measured in USD. And the $ soared from 2011 to 2024 €1 used to buy you $1.46 in 2011 but only $1 or so by 2020s. So when you use that exchange rate to compare the economy, the EU looks *terrible*. That's the chart Puzder is using - the 31% drop

Does this matter to Europeans. If your €1 baguette used to cost $1.46 and now costs $1, if you're still earning the same amount in Euros... makes no difference. Imports and holidays cost more, but fundamentally your economic life is not the same. So using nominal GDP growth is a bit silly.

Luckily, economists have a way around this, which adjusts for purchasing-power (ie how many baguettes can you buy with that €1). Do this and the EU looks all of a sudden much better. It's in effect keeping up with America rather well in fact.

The real story is that Europe has fallen behind the US a bit. But there are factors at play. a) US population is rising while EU is flat, b) fracking delivered huge $$$ to US, c) US debt has soared while EU (esp Germany) has had tight fiscal policy. you'd expect US GDP to have ended up higher

Europe has just about kept up to the US, in this analyis, in part because Western Europe's poor performance is compensated by Poland/Romania/CEE having strong "catch up" growth. Btw, Europe's population is bigger than America, so per capita we ARE poorer. Why? Mainly because we work (much) less.

The funny thing about the US ambassador’s argument is that if you use nominal GDP, as he does, the real thing you’re looking at is the impact of currency movements. And the dollar has cratered since Trump came to office! A € could buy $1.03 when Trump was inaugurated, and now $1.17. A huge shift!

So.... the next time a GDP figure comes out comparing America and Europe, the figures will be MUCH closer together. In nominal terms the EU economy will have grown something like 13% this year -- but most of that will be because the exchange rate has moved and Euros are now more expensive vs $.

In Washington DC — or in pretty much every other Republican dominated state — the threats might have worked, because fear is a powerful weapon, and political courage is vanishingly rare. But in Indiana, it backfired royally. Spectacularly. Decisively. open.substack.com/pub/charlies...

Know you get a glimpse of just how many dipshits got into power, or hold power currently because of the things done on that island that were recorded. Nobody will ever release those files, there are clearly people being threatened/bribed right now and they made a career out of blackmail.

no surprise on this development, I bailed on SCOTUSblog earlier this year abovethelaw.com/2025/04/scot...

Trump again finds himself taking recurring damage from a tactic that worked very much to his benefit in 2015 and 2016: the slow release of not-particularly-interesting information that 1) gins up overheated news cycles and 2) keeps unwanted stories in the public eye.

It’s so wild that “a random online leftist said something I found annoying once” is legitimately a huge driver of modern politics in a way that “online right-wingers with significant sway over powerful people say literal Nazi things” isn’t and likely never will be

Happy birthday to Lillian Smith (1897-1966): bestselling author, civil rights activist, & 1st white Southerner to publicly call for integration. My bio on her will be out @stmartinspress.bsky.social September 29! Just finished copyedits😌

I don't think people are really processing the fact that the sitting U.S. President and his team — and maybe the Supreme Court — and maybe half the Congress — want to force us to accept that we should obey the President and not the Constitution. I don't know what news would be bigger than that.

Their closing message to Indiana: change your maps to artificially benefit the President's political party or 'roads will not be paved' as punishment. They are openly saying this. Who would want to live in a country that works like that?

Dear male White House reporters, The next time Trump insults one of your female colleagues, if one of you doesn’t interject and say “Excuse me, sir, but fuck you.” God is going to lose his mind. Regards, God

Remember when Charlie Kirk died, god damn that was funny

People who say that we should worry about who will be in charge after Trump is dead don’t get it. Those people are already in power. They’re hiding behind him. They won’t be able to hide behind him, once he’s dead. They won't be able to hide behind him, once he's impeached & convicted.

Why don’t we have a thread 🧵 where we give a shout out to our favorite journalists around the world? I’ll start with Heather Cox Richardson - @heathercoxrichardson.skystack.xyz I’d first discovered her work during the beginning of COVID in 2020. Primary source material + historical context 😍

Posthumous shout out to the brave work of #VictoriaRoshchyna: 27 years old when she was tortured to death by the #Russians. Rest in power, dear sister. 🇺🇦 #SlavaUkraini #RussiaIsATerroristState #Russia #Ukraine #Putin #Trump rsf.org/en/death-ukr...

Watching CNN and I know people have been mad at Jake Tapper, but he is spending quite a lot of time taking apart Trump’s completely crazypants speech

Listen to how casually Justice Gorsuch presents as fact the idea that remedying racial gerrymandering requires racial discrimination.

ICYMI — “I identified myself as a U.S. citizen and a veteran, but that didn't matter. ICE Agents smashed my window, sprayed tear gas and pepper spray into my car, dragged me out… this experience violated the very principles I fought to defend.”