NEW: "As we survey the wreckage of Trump’s second term, it is often said that 'half the country voted for this,' or worse, 'half the country is fine with this.'" The truth, though, is that Trump's MAGA base "is not the majority. Nor is it half of the country." www.thebulwark.com/p/how-big-is...

In 2008, I was left-of-center and working in one of North Carolina's most conservative counties, and I'm pretty sure most of the Republicans I had to work with hated Romney more than I did (hell, I merely disliked the guy, they had actual contempt for him).

"This change is just the nail in the coffin of a carefully calculated plan to turn the United States into the tin-pot dictatorship of my dreams. It’s definitely not because I’m scared of any investigations that the DOJ’s antitrust division may or may not launch." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/dem...

Wait. Do I have to just hand it to Hunter Biden now?! Goddammit.

one thing i have noticed is a lot of folks do not seem to understand the difference between a presidential election and 435+ legislative elections. i have seen any number of people say that you could subvert the outcome this november by targeting “swing states,” which does not make any sense.

trump and musk are both similiar in a couple ways. They're fucked up by daddy issues, dumb but think they're smart, and have always been maladroit punchlines within their elite milieus. This makes them both deeply resentful, spiteful little narcissistic freaks who appeal to other spiteful losers.

Bookshop.org is teaming up with Draft2Digital to allow self-publishers to sell ebooks on the Bookshop platform www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

My admittedly uninformed suspicion is Bezos liked the idea of owning a newspaper (and the Post, specifically) more than he liked actually running one (hence the inappositeness of Citizen Kane memes/references I've seen circulating). This would be consistent with that.

there's a lot of people who mock liberals with "what are you going to do, vote harder" and yes actually that is exactly what will happen if you try to intimidate people outside voting places like this! that's how you drive presidential-level turnout from normie libs in a midterm

If there are any journalism or media folks out there who have a list of local papers that aren’t owned by private equity, it would be especially helpful!

In my opinion these people are the real heroes of the resistance to ICE. There’s no credit, no one can talk about their work (because they directly contact vulnerable families). It’s expensive and dreary and neverending. ICE follows them around. But they refuse to abandon their neighbors

Trump's initial excitement was tempered when he was reminded Peter Falk is dead and he wouldn't get to meet him at the unveiling. Trump's handlers were too depressed to explain anything else to him that evening and poured themselves stiff ones when they finally got the President to stay in bed.

If they kill me, here's how you all need to play it: "This is a Crime. She was Too Hot to die."

This is brilliant.

The ability to accurately land a 37mm shell in a Frenchman's ass more than a century after it's fired is the kind of warfighting Pete Hegseth wants to emulate.

One has to wonder if Johnson doesn't yearn for the "good ol' days" when an Evangelical could publicly dismiss the Pope as Satan instead of having to fret about fracturing the Republicans' Christian coalition.

On top of everything else that's wrong with this from a theological and constitutional perspective, let's also simply note that in representative democracies individuals are (at least at some level) the government and border policy is something those individuals set by consensus and compromise.

Apparently, unlike our elites, we were silly enough to think all that goofy stuff we were taught about the nation's creed, from the Declaration of Independence through the Gettysburg Address, actually mattered and we were being forced to learn it because it was important. Just imagine.

Does anyone know if this cat is still practicing law, or did he get into trouble with his bar for fraudulently denying he was a cat?

If you see this, post a character whose name starts with B, and be serious this time.

If you see this, post a character who starts with B. (I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself.)

Sand cat Chelbi doesn't feel like it. Any of it. At all. [via Phoenix Zoo]

It's a better case for seeing the movie than most....

Not a DOJ attorney but a former ICE attorney who volunteered to help just a MONTH ago and is already having a nervous breakdown. There are ethical considerations to quitting a case but it feels like begging the court to rule contempt because your client sucks does too. www.fox9.com/news/federal...

If true, this is fucking insane. It's also an indicator the Trump administration is likely to break before we do. They can't keep this kind up with this level of attrition.

See also DFW; I think "Consider the Lobster" is a powerful piece of wrangling over what it means to be an ethical, humane person, but it's painfully clear now that the questions Wallace was wrestled with weren't questions he adequately rose to meet in his private life.

Human beings are complicated. It's possible for somebody to be both a predator and an ally, unfortunately. This doesn't excuse or exonerate; it does ask us for self-reflection and perhaps in some cases pity for others (and note that feeling pity does not require feeling forgiveness or acceptance).

discussing this with my sister once, she said very wisely that it's good to learn to sit with cognitive dissonance. there's value to being able to say, I love this art made by a shitty person. there's value to holding those two truths without trying to make them resolve.

You couldn't even post a picture of your lunch, so you described it, and everybody else was also somebody procrastinating with their BlackBerry or at a computer terminal, so we liked reading the description of your lunch. It was groovy.

the victory condition for Goncharov (1973) is to talk about it enough that, following the informational dark age of the 21st century, our descendants would be reasonable to conclude that it actually existed

Trump to Harvard: 2 billion $ NYT: Harvard to pay 2B$ Harvard: no Trump: 1B Harvard: no NYT: Negotiations intensify Trump: 200 million NYT: Harvard-Trump reach deal Harvard: no Trump: 0$ Harvard: ok NYT: Harvard not paying! Trump loses. Trump: How about 1B$ Harvard: no NYT: Negotiations resume!

Three rules in FBI firearm training: 1. Always point your weapon downrange 2. Do not point your weapon at anything you do not intend to shoot 3. Don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you intend to shoot Guns are not for threatening compliance for unarmed people doing things you don’t like

I feel like getting the dudes who demand government issued girlfriends out of the gene pool might be one of those problems that solves itself

ME: Well, when you buy a classified ad they charge by the word CHOTINER: But you must have known people would find it sad ME: I mean, I knew it might help make a sale but— CHOTINER: And to be clear the baby was not dead ME: He just grew out of them too fast! I didn't intend— CHOTINER: Fraud? ME: No!

Entitled Kickstarter Asshole Backer is a real thing. It always sucks to see hardworking artists have to deal with the customer service aspect of obnoxious fuckwits who are mad about games.

Setting a dumpster on fire is bad, and yes people should be filming the people who did it. If they don’t want to be observed they should not light the dumpster on fire!

There was no mastermind or grand scheme, but there was a successful effort by wealthy men, including Epstein, to destroy a status quo that they feared was trending towards greater accountability.

This is where I come down as well. I take his intent seriously, but there's a huge gap between what he wants to do and what he can actually do given the way our elections are run. We need an all-out effort to make sure he "wins" as little as he can, but the doomerism is largely misplaced.

They're literally running out of lawyers in a state where the district judges are practically at war with the administration.

to be kind of blunt, if the hardcore veteran activist organizer expertise that you bring results in "light a dumpster on fire, get mad that this is filmed" it's not really expertise anyone should respect, sorry. don't care how many little activism merit badges you have.

Judge Reyes’s conclusion: “There is an old adage among lawyers. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. … Having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, [Noem] pounds X (f/k/a Twitter).”

The racists getting angry about Nolan's Odyssey are reminding me of Ian Fleming getting upset about a Scotsman being cast as James Bond, seeing the movie, and being so pleased he subsequently retconned Bond to be half-Scot, and all this is making Fleming look better in retrospect, which is so weird.

This is the world they want. Have some babies sometime in there so they can have the same lives of quiet despair when they turn 17. Assuming there are any job positions not held by terrified 77-year-olds who can't afford to retire.

"Hey, listen pal, what if, instead of, you know, eating me, you let me use my special power." "What special power?" "Uhh... I can predict how long winter will last?" "Hrm. No, no, I think I'd rather eat you." "BUT I CAN TOTALLY DO IT! LET ME TRY! COME ON, BE A PAL!"

people say these guys want feudalism, but even that gives them too much credit, because kings and queens and lords in feudalism had substantial obligations to the peasants, and worried about being disemboweled by the mob if they shirked those obligations for too long

And unless it's a cost-free government ID, it's a POLL TAX. If you have to pay the government for a document that you must have to vote, that is a POLL TAX.

But I do think that is changing. We are reaching a point where I people think more like this: "okay, but we do think it's necessary to hear that some Justice said racist ass shit in chambers when doing the next version of Dred Scott, and you'd be a hero if you publicized it."

ICE was stealing equipment from the Islip Long Island fire department and a Islip Forward member documented it. ICE tried to arrest the community member but the firemen said “I don’t think so” www.islipforward.org

Announcing the Cafe 53 Horror or Sci-Fi Author Temporary Residency. If you come to Hyde Park, Chicago, I'll take you out to lunch at my favorite Palestinian-owned lunch spot, Cafe 53, which has about 30 different sandwiches including many veggie/vegan options, and we'll talk about horror or sci-fi.

framing Lolita as a “great and tragic love story” speaks volumes about Rowling’s worldview, but it is also fascinating to me that she doesn’t seem to understand what an unreliable narrator is