Wrote about my friend and former comedy-writing partner Kaleb Horton.

I don’t think those two things have anything to do with one another. Congress keeps running during a shut down, unless it adjourns. And they were already stalling the swearing in ahead of the shut down.

New online: John Ganz (@lioneltrolling.bsky.social) interviews Dylan J. Riley on Trump and the state of American democracy. www.dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

Someone should tell JD Vance about EMTALA, which requires ER’s to treat all comers, so that people don’t literally die in the streets. It was signed into law by Ronald Reagan.

klein thoroughly misunderstands abortion as a political issue in red states: as a single issue, a solid majority of voters are in favor of making it legal or expanding access, but it's not enough of an animating issue to get voters who otherwise lean conservative to elect pro-choice candidates

Hey Alexandrians and Del Ray citizens! You going to #artontheavenue this weekend? Catch us there! We'll be performing at the Mt Vernon Basketball court at 2:45! See you there!

Fair play correcting the right wing journalist, but I have to confess it’s hard for me to enjoy a political culture whose main point of consensus is that it should be illegal to use federal funds to treat people who are injured or sick and happen to have the wrong immigration status.

the Supreme Court has clearly indicated that as far as they are concerned Trump has plenary powers over the budget. so what are we even doing with this "shutdown" thing? prospect.org/politics/202...

#Realtalk on the government shutdown from @ryanlcooper.com: the Supreme Court has handed Trump plenary powers over the budget to spend taxpayer money in any way he wishes. The shutdown is an opportunity to point out what is happening. prospect.org/politics/202...

Kaine and Warner need to hear from you today.

This is false as a matter of law, but it’s also useful as an admission that Republicans are perfectly happy with the government shutdown and will use it as a pretext to harm more Americans.

This is it. Stay in the fight. @beyer.house.gov @markwarner.bsky.social @kaine.senate.gov

my latest is expanding on the observation that your view of the politics of opposition to the administration depend largely on your view of the election (gift link)

Short passage captures so much so lucidly. Gurri’s point captures the essence of what was missing in Klein’s Biden age stuff. degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/you-don-t-...

all you’d really need to do is be out there going “do y’all fucking see this shit? do y’all see the masked goons abducting people off the street? do y’all see this senile asshole threatening to take away your social security? do y’all see any of this?”

Clipse dropped a video for The Birds Don't Sing

"Klein kicked this off ... by telling Douthat that Democrats should run ‘pro-life’ candidates to 'make it more likely to win Senate seats in Kansas and Ohio and Missouri.' But ... all three of those states have seen massive pro-choice victories."

wrote about a great writer thealexpress.substack.com/p/kaleb-horton

It's the blog hailed in Slack as "the ideal defector post" but also "i don’t think it’s possible for a blog to be more Scocca than this one is"

This is inspirational It reminds me of one of those incredible chase sequences in a Chaplin or Keaton film--he comes close to being grabbed at least five times!

Getting my 7 y.o. into Survivor. We started with S46. I haven't watched since like season 3, but this shit still hits.

the pro-life comments from klein really are galling because despite his constant hectoring about persuasion, klein doesn't make any attempt to explain why he thinks pro-life democrats can win back red/purple seats. he presents it as a given without making the case.

My most controversial post-ejection take is that treating voters as adults with agency and telling them the truth isn’t looking down on them, while telling voters things you know to be false to validate their feelings in an attempt to manipulate them is considerably more condescending.

"Most of the times we chatted, he was looking for work — did I know of anything? — and mostly I felt ashamed because I knew he’d do something good whenever given a chance, but there were no chances I could give him." — @mattdpearce.com on the late Kaleb Horton

It’s not a truly held value if you are immediately ready to renegotiate it because you went on a tour of right wing podcasts and got upset you lost to them. It’s not the values you miss; you might just be addicted to the sense of victory you previously held.

have been thinking about @kalebhorton.bsky.social all day. what a tremendous, incalculable loss. this, from @lukeoneil47.bsky.social, punched me in the fucking gut, but i needed it and i’m thankful he did www.welcometohellworld.com/life-is-a-pr...

"Saying nothing at all is an option that is permanently available to you, and that I urge you to more frequently consider." - Ed Yong

Yeah man I know what the point is

For people wondering what she said afterwards

What did she say after that, Ezra Klein? What was the next thing she said in this speech you say you have been obsessing about, that you are organizing your current theory of politics around?

Rest easy, Kaleb Horton. About the only post 2016 election piece worth a damn, and one of the few that showed how 2024 was going to happen too. web.archive.org/web/20221130...

I was saddened to learn of the sudden passing of Kaleb Horton. (See thread below.) One of the best American writers of his generation. Most recently at Rolling Stone, but at every outlet where his byline appeared, he had that very rare gift for literary eloquence that read like ordinary speech.

"Basket of Deplorables" and "Bitter Clingers" were point-for-point identical, a too-pungent passing piece of rhetoric extracted from a speech and weaponized to make it sound as if speaker had been saying the exact opposite of their explicit message

One of the best pieces by Kaleb Horton ever is no longer easily available, because of course MTV wouldn't maintain actual good music writing done for its site once. Thankfully I found it again via some digging: his 2016 memorial to Merle Haggard on his passing. Link here, screencaps to follow.

in honor of Kaleb Horton kalebhorton.ghost.io/the-d-lbert-...

Awful news that Kaleb Horton died. A talented writer who in another time would've been getting $5 a word with an expense account. Read his skilled filleting of the Entourage movie web.archive.org/web/20150605...

Kaleb Horton was a wonderful, wonderful writer, and a lovely person to talk to, and someone gone many decades before he should be. High lonesome California’s best. RIP.

a lot of good writers out there, but Kaleb Horton was truly gifted. what a terrible loss

RIP Kaleb Horton kalebhorton.ghost.io/2025-so-far/

Really sorry to hear about the sudden passing of Kaleb Horton, a fantastic writer. Only seems fitting to share what he wrote for David Lynch kalebhorton.ghost.io/death-is-jus...

Wild that they clipped this segment that crystallizes so clearly the flaw in Klein's argument. Susan Collins gets elected not because of her policy choices, but bc she is culturally liberal! Policy is not what matters! Andy Beshear is the governor of Kentucky! Jon Ossoff! Raphael Warnock!

the post office is a public service. it doesn’t need to make money. public transit doesn’t need to make money. the library doesn’t need to make money. some things exist for the public good and we desperately need lawmakers to stop thinking about them in terms of capitalism. these are not businesses.

Wouldn't watch, but I would happily read recaps of a Keeping Up with the Comeys reality show.

100% this from @joshtpm.bsky.social Let It Begin — The Real Fights Are Finally Coming Into View talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/let-i...

This seems to be their angle. If there’s a shutdown they won’t furlough employees they’ll fire them permanently. The fact that this is illegal kind of isn’t the point these days. I don’t see why this is much of a threat. They don’t have to do this. It’s a choice. They run the govt. when things …

My wife has put me on to my new favorite pastime- looking at random places in Alexandria on Google street view and scrolling back to the oldest photo. Here's E Glebe and Rte 1 from Nov 2007. maps.app.goo.gl/HSpyZGpiDrLP...

It's fine that ALXNow reported public information. It's bad that DASH placed these employees on leave. They should be reinstated. This is only up for debate because the schools have such a hard time hiring bus drivers, which indicates that ACPS hiring standards are too strict.

This is the empty lot across Glebe from the Giant. Between the Target parking lot and the bus stop. Glad that space is getting put to use.