If Trump proactively pardons Hegseth, the solution is to signal either to the ICC or the country of origin of the murdered men that we will honor extradition requests on this point. And then, in something of an irony, Noem him out of the country before anyone can react.

The aim should be for individual, not institutional, accountability. Did a university obviously violate the first amendment rights of its faculty to suck up to Trump? Don't seek to fine the university, *seek to jail its president and trustees.* People make decisions, people bear consequences.

Abraham Lincoln, 1855. www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/spee...

I’m sure he felt very powerful, very special forces as he ordered commandos to murder helpless men who had committed no violence against the United States. I hope he remembers that moment as they put the hood over his head

They believe that Trump will use the formal powers of the government and whatever informal powers he may have to extract costs from them if they do not play ball and they equally believe that the anti-Trump coalition will not extract these costs. So we need to extract those costs.

The reality, of course, is that Miller and a significant portion of Trump’s base are the ones who failed to assimilate to America’s post-WWII culture of multi-racial democracy & religious pluralism…and they are now using their power to destroy that once dominant (and still popular) American culture.

Also a category that includes his mother, paternal grandparents, and two of his three wives. But of course that's different, because neither he nor de facto President Miller actually care about immigration as such. They care about racism, and it's a farce to concede the pretense it's anything else.

Everyone in politics, everyone in media knows what’s happening here: the White House is controlled by a repellant white supremacist who waits with bated breath for any opportunity to run nonwhite people out of America. They know who it is, what he’s doing. But they won’t SAY it.

Selling out Ukraine to sell out Taiwan so he can get stabbed in the back over soybean sales that China already has new suppliers for.

yeah I kinda don't think Nuzzi and Lizza are themselves generalizable. the people circling the wagons for them, though....

In service of their country my ass. They were deployed solely in the service of stupid political games.

I don't know what to call it, but there is a very common and annoying social media phenomenon where people demand validation for mildly antisocial behaviour, instead of just feeling mildly guilty about it like a normal person.

A friend who teaches theology shared with me a post about CS Lewis's Mere Christianity, which discusses foundational Christian logic across denominations. It reminded me of Dale's tweet below, and I wanted to share some thoughts here regarding modesty and respectability, which are often hot topics.

it always hurts more when it feels like it's coming from someone on your side www.liberalcurrents.com/in-praise-of...

Oops we turned the command that was supposed to do hostage rescue and non-proliferation stuff into a one stop intel-assassination agency

Betraying Ukraine today to betray Taiwan tomorrow to waste ordnance on regime destabilization in Venezuela

This is sort of truth-adjacent in that the right always thinks of themselves as patriots who are defending some sort of "real America." This is not actually love of country because that imagined "real America" is not the country they actually live in.

An L.A. man was detained in an immigration raid. No one knows where he is

JUST IN: A federal judge says one of the Venezuelan men — illegally deported to El Salvador in March before he was swapped back to Venezuela in a prisoner exchange — is now missing, possibly a victim of the violence he was seeking asylum from. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

If you're trying to convince your friends to spend time on Bluesky rather than X, maybe show them this. X is not "the public town square" or about "free speech." It's "just what Elon Musk wants you to see." If you see stuff he doesn't like he'll step in to make sure you don't see it for long.

One of the most upsetting articles I've read in a long time www.theargumentmag.com/p/when-grade... UCSD report senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347... We are failing a generation of kids.

i think rapists deserve prison

It's gaslighting, plain and simple. The man is a fucking moral vacuum. He would become Vance in a heartbeat if that was the path to power.

this is the crux of the matter for me. I just don't believe Platner didn't know what he had on his skin for twenty years. I can imagine forgiving an edgelord take on this but lying about it undermines the entire whole apology, such as there's an apology.

Mafia governance in action "the only offer on the table was that I needed to resign by 5pm that day or the DOJ would basically rain hell on UVA... If I did not resign that day, I was told that the DOJ would extract/block hundreds of millions of dollars from UVA before they would even negotiate."

Rooting for both sides of the political aisle in the US to notice international law & institutions exist and that to the extent they're flawed it's like 78% caused by the US refusing to play ball

Let's just tea party all these stupid assholes and call it a day.

Tech guys six months ago: haha yes we’re cutting all this WASTEFUL spending by eliminating medical research and USAID Tech guys now: yes I think taxpayers will be excited to bailout my non consensual pornography machine

It's actually not hard. The mainstream left could deliberately decide to distance themselves from local lefty policy that alienates median voters. The mainstream left doesn't *support* those things but neither do they distance themselves at a party level. They just hope it goes away.

Yeah, well, they should! If the Democrats really are in an existential war with fascism - which they are - they should act like it. The last time we were at war with fascists we didn't let random lieutenants damage the war effort by running their mouths. Loose lips sink ships even today.

Quoting again to add: And we're supposed to "work across the aisle" with these people? People who think this? Of ordinary, hardworking Americans like you and me? Fuck no. They must be expunged, excised, extirpated, exorcised, expurgated, expelled. Not "made nice" with

it's utterly wild how the Heritage Foundation president talks about other people if you found a guy talking like this outside, you'd probably call the cops

But *fundamentally* Big Boy War is won with spreadsheets, it is won with production, it is won with research and development. Troop training and fitness matter, but on the margins. In WWII, we buried the better men in steel; the USSR buried them in just more men. Spreadsheets win wars.

This is a poor metric because the value of fraud prevented matters a lot more than the fraud making it though. It costs WAY more to pay the salaries of all those cash truck guards than is stolen from cash trucks every year, but you still have to pay the guards, or else they'd rob them blind.

I had a Marxist phase when I was a teenager but the inability of anyone to plan an economy without prices for a century turned me back into a lib.

Platner didn't join to get access to higher ed. In his own words: he joined for "adventure & to kill". His family is very wealthy. Grandfather is a famous architect whose chairs sell for $15k. Father is a wealthy corporate lawyer. Mother owns several restaurants. Went to $75k pa boarding school.

Graham Platner’s campaign thought they could silence me by offering me money and calling me a liar in the press. I was going to let it go. It has become increasingly clear they are unfamiliar with Maine women.

There is never, ever a response from this guy that is not narcissist coded. He is literally a glorified reddit poster, legend in his own mind, problematic as hell. The more he talks, the less qualified he seems. There is absolutely no good reason for this man to be in the Senate, and several bad.

incredible how fast this guy went from "interesting candidate" and just zoomed through "thoughtless dipshit" and is now deep into "oh this guy is actually like Malevolent. there is a Problem with this guy"

The more evidence mounts that Platner is lying, the more convinced I become that he is lying not only about his past but also about his current views.

Ed Luce watching democracy die in the United States of America

CNN confirms that multiple sources suggest Graham Platner knew his tattoo was a Nazi symbol years prior to launching his campaign — and is now blatantly lying about it. www.cnn.com/2025/10/24/p...

Oh so Platner just decided to get rid of the Nazi tattoo because he wanted to become a powerful politician, that tracks.

jacobin pod save america the atlantic forget podcasts, pretty sure america would be substantially improved if every political commentator were sent to mars and we were all forced to read beat reporters and watch sports

I don’t need to explain why it’s wildly unacceptable for the military to be illegally privately financed by the president’s wealthy allies, right?

This is insanely illegal and incredibly fucking dangerous.

fucking lmao, geidner blocked me for this one. sorry people's lived experiences are more important than your political idol's fan fiction.

Nazi tat affair useful because anyone doing bizarre prevarications atm re how its totally normal to have a Nazi tattoo, good actually, not a big deal that'd matter in an election, if anything its cringe you care, etc etc, has revealed you never need to take their politics opinions seriously again.

I think that Platner's story about being a drunk Marine is probably true to an extent, but it seemed like he also relished the edginess of it, knowing it was taboo. I think the taboo on Nazi symbology needs to be enforced, especially now.