"Instead of arguing over whether transgender 16-year-olds should wait until age 18 to get access to cross-sex hormones, the question being posed in states like Kansas is whether, for the purposes of state law, someone can be trans at all."

"The Department of Justice, which once fought white collar crime, now effectively supports it." Trump sees fraudsters as winners and victims as losers, so that's how the government views them too.

Your daily bananas Trump corruption story: It's about a bridge connecting Michigan to Canada that's due to open, until the billionaire owner of the existing clogged bridge called Trump and asked him to keep the new bridge closed. Nuclear grade corruption. All out in the open.

While “‘“Wuthering Heights”’” has #KateBush stuck in everyone’s heads, a note that her debut, THE KICK INSIDE, turns 48 today. Not every song is a keeper, and her choreography is kind of nuts, but the album is written & performed with an astonishing surehandedness, considering Bush was a TEENAGER.

No doubt @jdickerson.bsky.social signed up at a higher Patreon level than I did, but I sure as hell signed up! #girlyman

While “‘“Wuthering Heights”’” has #KateBush stuck in everyone’s heads, a note that her debut, THE KICK INSIDE, turns 48 today. Not every song is a keeper, and her choreography is kind of nuts, but the album is written & performed with an astonishing surehandedness, considering Bush was a TEENAGER.

This article (🎁🔗) focuses on how RFK Jr., a homicidal quack given carte blanche to destroy America's public health system, is making progress in his goal of bankrupting the vaccine industry. Elsewhere, articles on RFK's measles outbreak illustrate what's at stake: millions of lives.

“For the love of God, please, someone grab the Jane Austens!”

it's a false herring

"Congress has only so much sway when Mr. Trump can detonate days or weeks of diplomacy with a single post to his social media platform." Of course, Republicans in Congress COULD have plenty of sway, but it would require Johnson and Thune to emerge as independent, autonomous beings.

Gorgeous & powerful. And hard not to consider that Vance, Musk, and Miller would 100% endorse states reinstating separate-but-equal laws.

It’s not just superior. It’s reality. An end to multiculturalism would require actually existing Americans to be stripped of their Americanness. The logic of the implementation of white nationalism is “do mass human rights crimes” and that’s all it can ever be

bookmark this

Taking a second listen to the new @paranoiacs.bsky.social LP, again amused that I assumed "DFL" would be about the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party

A Valentine’s Day reminder that even the president has bad dates

He has searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted

This article is just brutal. An awful lot of people around Noem & Lewandowski—who, it's clear, are having the affair everyone has long suspected—desperately want to see them disgraced & fired. Both are utterly amoral, incompetent, and self-promoting, with no business being in charge of *anything*.

The Pride Flag flies again at Stonewall. The Trump administration tried to erase our vibrant LGBTQ+ history by literally tearing down our flag. This isn’t their first attempt to spew hate and erase our history, and it won’t be the last.

Most people grow out of the pop culture they loved in middle school. And I’ve kept most of my age-13 faves in nostalgic perspective. But Rush’s MOVING PICTURES album, released 45 years ago today, is still in my all-time top ten. It’s one of maybe half a dozen LPs on which I wouldn’t change a note.

Hey, Billy, farðu til fjandans

Hey, Billy, farðu til fjandans

Moderna's president: “This refusal to start a review is all confusing, to say the least. It is surprising, and we’re trying to understand what has changed.” What has changed, needless to say, is that Trump put a psychotic quack in charge of America's health policy and empowered him to kill everyone.

Very much hoping the November election proves that campaign cash no longer matters much, because otherwise 😬😬😬

"Scrubbing the names of discredited authoritarians from the public square is nothing new. Some countries go the full purge. Others, as with Italy’s post-Mussolini cleanse, are less meticulous." Never too soon to begin discussing how rapid & comprehensive the post-Trump unbranding should be. 🎁🔗

Literally searching for outgroups to scare people about "That has left the G.O.P. looking for ways to address its voters’ concerns over the number of immigrants who came into the country during the Biden admin. while avoiding the increasingly unpopular policy of mass deportations under Mr. Trump."

Trump has made it OK for white nationalists to proudly shout the quiet parts on live TV. And he has bolstered a financial infrastructure that enriches the loudest of those white nationalists no matter how much interviewers smirk at their naked bigotry. MAGA never apologizes. Football is ours.

Five years ago today, for all who celebrate Kitten Zoom Filter Mishap Day

Post a banger not in English

Even Trump didn't watch the Kid Rock thing

i worry that a 5-year stretch of nothing but ads for NFTs, bitcoin, and AI is a long enough gap that this nation's once-great advertising industry will forget how to sell a product people actually want

I ran a walk-twenty-blocks errand in NYC yesterday morning, with the feels-like at -12F, and kept going only by thinking about the Minnesota #resistance, far stronger and more valiant than I. Owning real Winter Clothing is only part of it!

👀 What if I told you there was a hidden art gallery scattered across the country? What if I told you some of its treasures had vanished? What if I told you that I found them? A project three years in the making (🎁 gift link):

Happy “little bit LGBT queer-ish” Super Bowl Sunday to all who celebrate 🎉 www.mediamatters.org/greg-kelly/n...

Hard not to see pro- and anti-Trump messaging in *everything*, but even so, in this new KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS making-of clip, actor Bertie Carvel makes the subtext into text

España no es una empresa que puedas comprar. Ni nuestro pueblo una red que intoxicar. Lo que odias es que un gobierno democrático ponga límites a los oligarcas tecnológicos como tú.

Trump: “America is respected again on the world stage.”

Almost exactly a year since JD Vance flew to Munich to berate European “commissars” for violating their citizens' free speech. So since he's already overseas—in Italy, trying to avoid getting booed at the Olympics—surely he's planning to detour to Moscow and berate Vladimir Putin?

"Donald Trump is a noodle adrift in the chicken soup of his own mind. He has no idea where he is, what he is, what today is, what may come next. Which is a pity because I’d really like him to be able to know what is coming."

"Mr. Kennedy has a history of promoting ideas with little to no scientific evidence to back them up." Just a crank who's always looking for his next attention-grabbing claim—only he's a crank who the president elected to give an enormous megaphone and personal control over a massive agency.

In unrelated news, Paul Mazursky's autobiographical NEXT STOP, GREENWICH VILLAGE premiered fifty years ago tonight & remains exhilarating, even if one doesn't live down the street from where it's set, as we do. And damn, that supporting cast: Walken! Winters! Goldblum! Ellen Greene! Lois Smith!

Donald Trump and his administration don't believe in science — that doesn't mean Americans have to suffer because of it. ICYMI: Illinois has joined @who.int's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network to ensure we're prepared no matter who the President is.

The Washington Post but it’s ‘The Traitors’

10/10 timing

Confirming, once again, that @wsj.com's news reporting is first-class while the newspaper's opinion pages have zero standards

"A protest song is an act of defiance and we will need more such acts in the coming days. Time for young songwriters to stand up and write songs that inspire bystanders to become resistors."

“There are no real safeguards anymore, until people recognize that we’re all potential targets.”

The last thing I personally need is boxes of Girl Scout cookies within arm's reach. So I ordered three donation boxes here!

All the stars are here: Brantley Gilbert, Brice Bradley, Gabby Babby, Bibb Glibsy, Slab Gabbert, Brice Bryce,