I know everyone is reposting this same article, but I don’t get how you can write this article and not highlight that the new war goal is the status ex ante.

Maybe the most depressing conclusion I’ve come around to in the past decade (and there are many) is that trying to teach & promote widespread “critical thinking” has been a complete and catastrophic failure. Most of the population is not capable of it, and it is socially disastrous when they try.

i absolutely think we need to drastically reduce the role of $ in our politics. at the same time i also think that a ton of people on the left blame $ in politics because confronting the fact that a lot of voters simply have wrong or bad ideas is uncomfortable and daunting.

There's a whole array of strategic bungles in this operation, it deserves a thread. 1/ below

The possibility that really worries me is that when Trump withdraws leaving the regime in place – which feels inevitable – the hardliners feel emboldened to sponsor terror in the west on a larger scale, betting that Trump won't want to do a replay of this debacle.

We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Either Jimmy Kimmel can retweet President Trump’s celebration of Mueller’s death or ABC can lose its broadcasting license. by Brendan Carr

Trump is panicking. His latest threats to blow up Iran’s power plants within 48 hours if the Strait of Hormuz is not opened is thick with desperation. It reads like we’re finally arriving at the narcissistic collapse stage where he grasps he’s losing and lashes out hysterically.

“Everywhere I went in New York people openly loathed the very sight of me. So naturally I concluded that the entire city had gone crazy and I left. There was no other possible explanation.”

Genuinely blows my mind that there is a type of guy willing to get into real estate speculation in MMOS THAT SUCK AND NO ONE WANTS TO PLAY

When It Happens, no one will need to call you. You'll just feel the deafening roar of cheers shaking your house like an Air Force flyover that never ends.

In the White House they now refer to Hegseth's press shows as the "Five O'Clock Follies."

here's Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy riffing on Democrats and "Trump derangement syndrome" on Fox & Friends, because nobody in the Trump administration has real job duties beyond going on TV and pleasing the leader

Would be great if the corporate media reminded people come election time that republicans drive up the deficit to pay for tax cuts for rich people and horrible wars no one wants that serve no purpose but to cause chaos. fortune.com/2026/03/18/h...

It is quite telling that since the horrific story of Cesar Chavez re: sexual abuse broke earlier this week and calls to change the names of schools and other public spaces named in his honor, not one conservative voice has stepped forward to object that this would be tantamount to erasing history.

NEW: Virginia lawmakers just passed a bill that'd forbid sheriffs and local police from contracting with ICE, if ICE doesn't say it'll follow state laws and agree to let its agents be prosecuted. Everyone seems to agree that'd spell the end of ICE contracts in Virginia: boltsmag.org/virginia-bil...

I mean this is most people in the Trump admin if we are being honest. Stephen Miller, for example, is living out his wish to be Hitler.

How the fuck do you have a reporter free news room?

Taking care of business. We need to do this and move on.

An immigration judge has ordered the removal of Liam Consejo Ramos, a Minnesota toddler who was detained by ICE. The politics of citizenship might seem like the detail that distinguishes Liam’s story from the stories of our kids. But his innocence, like the innocence of all kids, is unimpeachable.

Fox News has spent less than 12 minutes covering the Pentagon's reported request for $200 billion to pay for the war in Iran. In the same time frame, they've spent 26 minutes talking about Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders being asked to leave a restaurant. www.mediamatters.org/us-iran-rela...

Some days, it’s incredibly difficult to fight back the cynicism and remain optimistic about hope for a better world.

It’s not just repulsive, it’s also risibly vapid. Was this guy actually a serious thinker once & went off the rails, or was Harvard so desperate to have token right-wingers on the roster that it abandoned all standards?

Another US maritime strike—this time with three survivors reported. (I am not optimistic that they will be rescued.) This lawless killing for content cannot become mere background noise.

If things like universities, democracy, and the humanities exist in 30 years, there are going to be some fascinating dissertations written on the political culture of authoritarianism in 2020s America.

Digby with a good account of how 47's words & actions mean the US is very much alone. 47 "was never a pacifist nor an isolationist. In fact he is the opposite — a domineering strongman who seeks to bully everyone around him into compliance."

In a normal world this would be a giant scandal leading to months of investigations, but it will be forgotten by Monday www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/u...

Ossoff: "After years of this president trashing our allies, we learned today that the Danish govt was preparing military options to defeat a potential American invasion of Greenland just months ago. The president has treated our allies like they don't matter then demanded they come to his aid."

Aid to Ukraine from 2022-2026 was a rounding error. We used more in the first two weeks of the Iran war than we provided in the 4 years of aid to Ukraine.

New post just out: Can Trump steal the midterms? He certainly wants to but it's no so easy. I look at all the things he could try and the challenges with each. And why his attempts may hurt the Republicans rather than boost their chances. (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

More for Marcy's case that Trump is uniquely bad at picking enemies of his regime to personally focus on. Sure, he brutalizes the powerless at will. But when he tries to make an example of a name we've heard, it always activates or alienates a constituency that he theoretically needs.

Nailed it.

Unable to entertain the thought that Trump might fail in Iran, the president’s supporters “insist that only treachery can explain the constant betrayals and catastrophes they see,” Jonathan Chait argues.

“Americans are facing a bizarre epidemic of gullibility and cynicism"—one “that is drawing people into a world of conspiracism and falsehoods," Adam Serwer argues.

Hell I had this in the 80s when it was called the Power Pad for NES.

"Fascism isn't a normal political party. It's not something you have a debate with or try to reason with. It's more of a cancer. Saying you've "never been on one side or the other" in the fascist era is like saying you've never taken sides in the need for oxygen." @karlbode.com in this must-read:

every so often i think about the vonnegut story about how he'll go to the store so he can talk to strangers along the way instead of more conveniently buying 100 pack of envelopes online anyway, there's value in preserving and finding opportunities to talk to random people, even if it's inefficient

Guy who should be in a nursing home thinks daycares are nursing homes

The whining about wanting a “politics free evening” is rich. “I shat on the neighbor’s lawn, and he has the GALL to keep bringing it up.”

Admitting publicly that you only want this bill that is designed to disenfranchise voters is necessary to make sure your party wins is quite a choice. The GOP has done away with subtlety and euphemisms and is now all "we need to cheat because the polls say people don't like us."

The lawyers are likely correct that Carr would lose this in court. They were also likely correct that Trump would lose his lawsuits against ABC and CBS -- but their corporate owners (with much deeper pockets to fight than a local station) folded instead. That’s the real threat.

This is the decade of stupid people finally getting their wish and having the chance to run the world their way.

“We want to change the rules of the next election so Democrats don’t win anymore”

I mean, we’re getting a pretty clear demonstration that illiterate grunts who don’t think you need to know anything but “warfighting” are, in fact, terrible at warfighting.

This is pure speculation; but if Trump says Iran wants to negotiate and he said no, that probably means Trump begged to negotiate and Iran said no.

Yes, that’s the real problem, the press is reporting too much on the bad things that are happening.

I wonder when the US media will join together and tell this Nazi to F off.

Just absolutely unable to functions as grown-ups, let alone Cabinet officials who can reassure the public that they have a plan.

hm