Sorry are we supposed to pretend that Bret Stephens didn't contact @davekarpf.bsky.social's provost to try to get him fired for a joke in the bad old days of (imagined) left-wing-only cancel culture?

It's worth thinking about what it would look like if the earth-scorching apparatus Trump has built falls cleanly into the hands of a Democrat acting under the license furnished by the court to use what are effectively dictatorial powers for a campaign of blue vengeance. New for @thenation.com

There are probably thousands of perfectly sane pregnant women who are going to have to suffer for months because Mr. MAGA says no more Tylenol.

Thoughts and prayers to the biggest Reds fan I know, @delsannio.bsky.social -- a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Please get this done; no one outside of Queens wants to see the Mets in the playoffs.

The President of the United States is a deeply unwell person.

Disney discovering the really really hard way that most people don’t actually want humorless MAGA autocracy should be a lesson to other elite institutions that are still busy capitulating.

I don’t mean to alarm anyone but America is giving off some real “yikes” vibes

Why I quit everything Meta and will never go back part 10,000.

Serious question: the only thing tethering me to Disney is Bluey. But my household currently cannot function without it so—is there a hack? My 2 yo daughter would lose all faith in the world and by extension in me if Bluey and Bingo disappeared.

These deranged threats from an FCC commissioner should remove any doubt: you no longer live in a democracy. You live in an unconsolidated autocracy and the next 41 months will be an extended effort to ensure that Dems can never take power again.

You can inject Task directly into my South Jersey veins.

Let me get this straight: As the president tries to bankrupt his own employer with a frivolous, $15 billion lawsuit, America's most influential liberal columnist emerges from hiding to co-sign the idea that criticizing Charlie Kirk's work is tantamount to celebrating his murder?

What's happening is that this country is entering an uncontrolled vertical spin of authoritarian lawlessness and persecution and it is not clear who or what is going to stop it. The Democratic Party's leadership seems like it just emerged from a cave, blinking, believing that it is still 1988.

If you have not already canceled your subcription, now is the time.

Obviously this is indefendible but it should shock the conscience for officials of the American government to treat any human being like this, not just citizens of a wealthy ally.

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein's 2012 assessment of the GOP in "It's Even Worse Than It Looks" contains what might be the single most concisely devastating and prophetic sentence ever written about American politics:

The silence from Republicans who spent the last 48 hours blaming The Left is a familiar Trump era game where they have not yet received the company line from MAGA headquarters and don't know what to say. Don't worry, they'll come up with something.

Kirk didn't serve in the military or hold office. The war hero treatment -- half-mast flags, military guard, Air Force Two escort, calls for a statue at the Capitol or to lie in the Rotunda -- shows that for MAGA, service to Trump has become the highest, most honorable form of service.

One piece of Charlie Kirk discourse that is hardening into lazy conventional wisdom is "young voters swung sharply right in 2024." The Pew validated voter analysis -- the gold standard - shows 18-29 year-olds voted 21.5 points to the left of the electorate in 2020 and 20.5 in 2024.

Extremely cruel when we are offered a taste of autumn and then it is taken away from us.

No one has ever failed at anything harder than I just bricked air fryer falafel.

Charlie Kirk spent his last days manufacturing a lurid panic about “Black-on-White crime” and his final post on X was a call to politicize a murder. He was not “practicing politics the right way.“ You can oppose what happened yesterday without pretending he was One of the Good Ones.

It really doesn't help that the president has maybe the worst case of algorithm poisoning in the whole country and just used his primetime address to dump kerosine on the fire.

If you want a live look at the effects of algorithm poisoning, the MAGA consensus on Twitter is that all political violence is committed by mentally ill progressives. I’m also not sure I’ve ever seen discourse outrun -any- knowledge of the shooter’s ID or motives like this. Unreal.

Ban assault weapons. Oppose the murder even of people who are awful. Don't encourage or applaud or joke about violence. Pretty simple and easy to be consistent on this.

So we're almost 8 months in here. Our new president has single-handedly ground job growth to a halt, exacerbated the cost of living crisis, rattled bond markets and revealed himself to be, at minimum, a fully-informed bystander to the crimes of the century's most notorious pedophile. Heckuva job.

The Atlantic just published the single most incoherent thing I have ever read on their website. Completely flabbergasting. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Cards on the table: I really preferred it when the President of the United States was not gratuitously shitting on and casually threatening to invade the great American city that I live in. It’s a bit stressful.

At minimum, blue state leaders need to be figuring out whether their National Guard leadership is loyal to the Constitution or to these bloodthirsty fascists and go from there. I’ve said this before: the United States as currently constituted cannot survive another 3 years of this.

Alien: Earth is set in the future but….

Would be such a shame if you filed a claim and these parasites went belly up.

Ah yes, as Adams said, go abroad in search of monsters to destroy with maximum lethality.

Important to remember that the “I’m not a partisan hack, I’m just calling balls and strikes” routine isn’t fooling anyone anymore and there is nothing other than weak knees stopping the next Dem government from mounting a frontal assault on the Court.

This morning we received important answers to the question of "What is Blueskyism?" from Nate Silver and it turns out that the answer is "picking on Nate Silver" and "Being Michael Hobbes."

Thanks to John Roberts, people asking for lifetime jobs on the federal judiciary can no longer say for sure whether it is illegal for the president to order the assassination of his political opponents.

NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE

My second favorite thing about ALIENS, rewatching it for the first time in 20 years, is how they cast an actress called Janette Goldstein as one of the Marines, covered her in bronzer or something and had her play a character named “Vasquez”

Watching the whole Alien franchise from the start and can’t get over how James Cameron thought people would be smoking in corporate meetings 200 years in the future.

That Trump and Trumpism are fascist doesn’t explain the sheer vandalism of unleashing mass murdering mayhem via RFK to replace medical/scientific institutions of immense value and prestige with medieval peasant superstitions. That is a criminal madness facilitated by but above and beyond fascism.

JD Vance asking to be invited into a city feels really on the nose after Sinners

Teaching any aspect of American politics right now requires constantly adding the caveat, “or at least that’s how it worked before January 2025.”

Just a heads up. I was able to schedule my COVID vaccine appointment. Online it will ask “do you have a condition that puts you at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19 virus.” Click yes and it will allow you to schedule an appointment. No questions asked. No proof required. Pass it on.

Those hoping that voting blue next year will fix this mess need to be braced for a frustrating reality: that our democracy has in fact collapsed. Putting Democrats back into power is merely the opening salvo in a battle to restore democracy—one that will last for decades.

There are now three seasons in Chicago: winter, construction and fascist occupation

Stuff like this is why I’m increasingly skeptical of national progressive projects of any kind. If we ever get back into power just cut giant checks to blue states and make sure they clear before handing power back to these lunatics.

For The Nation, @davedaley.bsky.social and I argue that even if Newsom can overcome the daunting obstacles to a re-gerrymander of California, it won't be enough. Dems have to win elections in places where they are losing and commit, finally, to structural reform as a top partywide priority.

every single democrat should be saying this

The great @pjmaciak.bsky.social reviews the new Alien show? No one disturb me for the next 20 minutes please.