i think one thing people have a hard time grasping is that the central figures of the trump administration are not bad as in "the worst republican blowhard you know," but bad as in "the worst people you have ever heard of." donald trump is a serial rapist whose best friend was a pedophile.

this is the intellectual conservative two-step: pretend that because they are raising an issue where people of good faith with broadly shared principles could disagree, that we have to pretend the actually existing conservative movement consists of those people. no. we don't.

And this is wrong! Trump lost his Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube accounts WHILE HE WAS STILL PRESIDENT. www.foxnews.com/politics/tru...

To be fair, this sounds a lot like a position the Post's editorial board would have taken before Bezos' pro-Trump purge, too

Trump and Vance’s contradictory messages on these killings: 1: Our glorious military carried out hyper-precise attacks on dastardly drug smugglers. 2: If you’re an innocent fisherman, watch out because we might kill you by mistake!

Sixteen years and counting of a career dedicated to being the fleeing guy in the goose meme

It would be nice if Ross Douthat could someday bring himself to stop coyly pointing to racists doing racism as examples of civic virtue underappreciated by liberals and just cop to the fact that he's personally a giant racist

After Douthat says Trumpism is pressuring institutions "to do the right thing," his first example of that "right thing"—the "civic purpose"—is resegregation in higher education

Every single criticism of BlueSky is valid except somehow the one the pundits stumbled upon, which is roughly equivalent to kicking down the door of a KFC and incredulously asking everyone if they are aware they are eating fried chicken.

entire press has gotten bullied into treating charlie kirk as if he was one of the most important americans alive and not a modestly popular podcaster

Whoever it was who described Abundance as a zombie effort to shape policy under the Harris administration hit on an even broader truth than that

Talking about the abstract need to reassure heartland swing voters by reviving the anti-abortion wing of the Democratic Party is also just one more case of how the Sensible Liberal bloc is organized around pretending the last ten years didn't happen—it's a fantasy about doing pre-Dobbs politics

Now Ezra Klein is doing it on abortion—inventing a litmus test for hypothetical candidates, in the guise of talking about the need for a bigger tent

The tent has to be big enough to hold Jay Jacobs' feelings, not big enough to include the voters of New York City

This happens over and over again but it never stops being wild to see people throwing a tantrum about a candidate they don't like and then declaring that THEY are the big-tent side of the argument

Zzzzzzz

Get out of yer bubble, nobody’s going to lose in 2026 because they didn’t pledge allegiance to a podcaster

Feels like not honoring a Jan. 6 organizer is pretty easy but mostly this line of argument depends on the brain-poisoned belief that the purple-state public gives a shit about Charlie Kirk

But weirdly this story has no mention at all of Trump's claim that he also blew up a third boat!

Now they're trying to make Trump's murders retroactively legal except they would still be illegal under a military authorization anyway www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/u...

Every new feature needs a "go away and never do this again" button

What's the key combo for get the fuck out of my face

My respect for anyone who says they're afraid of voting against this resolution is zero. You are a member of Congress. The country is being dragged to hell. 'People will threaten us.' What did you think this job entailed? Quit blubbering, vote no, and move on.

Someone please create a fund where ordinary people can invest in betting against Elon Musk's prediction that his fake robot will be more productive than the entire human race

“My prediction is: Optimus will be more productive than the entire global economy. That the output of goods and services from Optimus will far exceed the global economy, of everyone on Earth.” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/t...

Like everybody else including Donald Trump has forgotten about this and moved on

Google doodle where the second O has a tongue coming out of it to lick the second G, which is a boot

Was there an edit test

Remember when people bothered to go through a stage of contrition before making a comeback

40,000 followers!! WAHOO! Please celebrate with us by subscribing to Flaming Hydra! flaminghydra.com

Also the diptych made me notice for the first time that Pete Hegseth's face is too LARGE for his head

These guys are so deep in their bubble they're terminally confused about how popular their shit is, it's like Sinclair's plan to replace Kimmel with a mandatory Charlie Kirk Tribute Hour—are you gonna confiscate the batteries out of everybody's remotes, too? www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...

Is the problem that the government is too weak to do good things or is the problem that forces outside the government are too powerful and prevent good things from being done, we are caught between these irreconcilable positions, I'm politics and policy expert Ezra Klein

I get that the rhetorical strategy here is "look we're the reasonable ones and they're the crazy ones" I just don't think that's a good strategy. The administration is totally lawless and keeping the government open to "help with the cost of living" is an endorsement of that lawlessness

People tried to tell me I wrote an underinformed dogshit column about the importance of engaging with challenging ideas so I'm just gonna keep typing and talking until I drown them out

Ezra Klein putting in an all-time week of Posting Through It www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/o...

A lawyer on the ground on Sunday morning saw just how close things were, and how the flights were only stopped because a federal judge moved at light speed to halt the Trump admin's illegal operation. She saw the plane begin to taxi to take off, only to turn around at the last second and come back.

Does Klein earnestly believe the reason you don't see progressives tour conservative evangelical churches to defend abortion or some such is that progressives are dispositionally less interested in debate and civil discourse than the right? Genuinely? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/o...

Hell fucking yes dude, this is worse than Phillip K. Dick shit

all the Gun Guys! I mean my whole goddamn life I’ve been pervasively lectured at by Gun Guys who Need The Guns to Resist Government Jackboots. and it turns out those guys are the government jackboots! america is a cheap con and the world should erase us.

Fake history for rubes: Peter Thiel destroyed Gawker for saying he was gay. Plausible history for people following the facts: Peter Thiel destroyed Gawker for mocking his lack of business acumen. True secret history: Peter Thiel destroyed Gawker for banning his cruddy alt.

Ahahahaha

Decent start, now also explain how you're going to break up the TV-station conglomerates that gave Carr the leverage

Straight line from the gray comments to "NPC" discourse

YES

Of fucking COURSE

A good day to launch a Democratic Party-aligned think tank devoted to attacking the ACLU.

now we have to be mad about jimmy fucking kimmel? that makes me even more mad. I’m here at the barricades alongside karl rove, john yoo, bret stephens and bill kristol and we’re drawing the line at jimmy kimmel? seriously i hate this whole era

When Karl Rove is more ready to call bullshit than ABC is