I think blue state governors should just have their national guard patrol red parts of the state, all of which need some armed guards beautifying things.
my name is elon musk, king of kings: look on my works, ye mighty, and despair
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I think blue state governors should just have their national guard patrol red parts of the state, all of which need some armed guards beautifying things.
In some sense, the dog whistle is dead as a rhetorical form because it requires an audience with the capacity to understand subtext.
Hell yeah let’s bring back Covid discourse I missed this stuff
we’re about to see a second wave of teen reddit atheism the world has never seen before
Hi, tech billionaire here. I am convinced of two things: that AI is a couple years away from replacing all human labor, and that fertility-induced worker shortages is the biggest problem in the world.
tbh i'm deeply amused how we went from accusations of welfare queen stuff in the 70s/80s to this
One of the definitive days of this admin imo was the WSJ identifying racist posts from a DOGE staffer - the kind of stuff that would be read out loud to you as HR explains why you're not getting severance - and Vance saying no, we won't let the media cancel people anymore.
Low trust people are especially susceptible to the most obvious scams. See also; Everyone who thinks the federal reserve is an evil shadow organization falls for every shitcoin rugpull (or buys gold if they’re over 50)
"we need to be sure your parents don't want you to die"
Sorry I screwed up the inequality lol but you know what I mean
Happened during the immediate postwar baby boom if you look at the Gallup time series but since I think 1960 it’s been desired < actual
The survey also smooths over the bargaining problem. Woman wants 2 kids, husband wants 3. They eventually agree to 2. You put them both in a survey and you get desired 2.5, actual 2. Is it a societal problem the woman “won?” Idk. Just a dumb example but I suspect it might be more complicated.
I’ve always been a little skeptical of that stat tbh. If you asked me that question 5 years ago, I might have said 4. If you asked me today, I’d say 3. After my second is born and I’m in the thick of it, decent odds I might say 2.
1 seems like the reasonable course to me although basically no one wants to say that. Some negative effects of people not wanting kids but not enough to warrant the actual cost to fix
My view is simply that taxes are good and we should have more of them
People younger than me will likely never know dems used to be the one with the reputation for being overly litigious
“I oppose gerrymandering because it subverts voter will, but if I were a Democrat, I’d respond to Republican gerrymandering by trying to reach voters even harder”
weird they never disclose this guy is a republican www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/o...
As a friend recently put it: the venn diagram of people who assured us the gun violence was worth it because we need the guns to protect ourselves against a tyrannical federal government and the people cheering on Trump as he deploys the military to take over American cities is a circle
This is how low the WaPo has fallen. Megan McArdle tells us Lisa Cook has to "come clean" when Trump and everyone around him is openly stuffing their pockets with billions washingtonpost.com/opinions/202... This is too stupid for words.
don't want to let it slip under the radar that racist law prof amy wax lost her discrimination suit against penn and will be suspended from teaching this year
If Trump actually dies I guarantee you 100% the media will not do a fraction of the health coverup coverage they did on Biden. There will be no equivalent of the Tapper/Thompson book
Until the TCJA, the top 400 US individuals by wealth and the full US population both had effective tax rates of ~30%. The TCJA reduced the Top 400 individuals’ total effective tax rates to 23.8% in 2018 – 2020, well below those of the full population (still ~30%). www.nber.org/system/files...
Heroin took PSH but left us this guy
Every time your electricity bill goes up for the next 10 years, it can be traced back to this Administration’s actions. They are making solar and wind power illegal to build in the United States. They are artificially restricting supply while demand is going up.
The only thing surprising about this ruling is that the courts actually followed the law. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/b...
When the hog castration lady actually won the fucking seat that was my first clue that we were diving headfirst into an era of stupid and I didn’t really get it
Ive been predicting blue Iowa for, idk, 6 cycles running now? But maybe this time…
Science: Trump supporters are assholes.
on the day after the CDC purge the substack that defines the left is tone policing people criticizing rfk jr for saying he can see mitochondrial stress. i'm in awe
Save your durable good purchases until the court system resolves this one www.nber.org/papers/w33726
One thing that’s super good for the macroeconomy is when consumers anticipate that prices will very likely be lower later and withhold spending.
“Our job is lethality and readiness and warfighting.” – Pete Hegseth, U.S. secretary of defense 🥴
Just saying if anyone wants to Red Dawn us these guys seem a little occupied
Most likely way he doesn’t complete term is ischemic stroke, but if he faces any kind of serious external crisis mid-attempt at authoritarian rule people have always been eager to scurry off the ship
There was constant talk in the first term about how it was unthinkable he’d manage to serve the whole thing, obviously no one thinks that anymore, and I think at this point that’s kind of an underrated view
They’re working on replacing him with a body double. Watch for the signs.
Trump not being seen + the tariffs ruling just reminded me how Breitbart got so mad about online that he died
They laughed at him but I still think Supreme Court tries to save him from himself here.
Pretty funny that these people can debate with a straight face what Lisa Cook put down on a mortgage application when we know the president of the United States said on a loan form that his 10k square foot condo was 32k square feet --- all the Republicans are just fine with that.
I watch various local news programs every morning before work and it’s consistently the top issue. People like to do 4D chess stuff with Trump but to me he’s shooting himself in the dick
I’ve read a number of articles about how people don’t understand what tariffs are or about how they’ll be hard to remove bc the govt will want the revenue but every normie I’ve encountered seems to know about them and hate them
Narrative buster: NYT finds that DC arrests were up only 13% over the previous two weeks and that the biggest change has been more arrests for minor infractions like smoking weed in a public place. (This does not include immigration abductions.) (Gift link.) www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/u...
IMO, this is probably the most important thing to keep in mind. The Trump administration is trying to keep the focus exclusively on foreign aid funding, since it’s the least popular, LOUDLY illegally impounding it via pocket rescissions, while they very quietly continue to impound cancer research.
This is unfortunately true.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I put away childish things, like sobriety
yo this guy is cooking
Also, "cause" is whatever the president says it is
The tens of millions of dead people receiving social security is something that, if I were a journalist, I’d keep asking the admin about
Feel free to dunk on this later if the US economy explodes but I really don’t think the Supreme Court is gonna give up Fed independence.
i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.
it is a real problem that none of the people who interview these guys are equipped to ask a question like, “what gives this president greater legitimacy than a law passed by a democratically-elected legislature, signed by a previous president and affirmed by subsequent legislatures and presidents?”
Of course the law insulating the Fed from direct presidential control was passed by a representative body that itself has democratic legitimacy. In the Madisonian Constitution that might matter In the Schmittian Constitution, though, Congress ain't the avatar of the Volk
Schmittian constitutionalism
Even wilder to me than the people who are like this machine is my wife-slash-overlord are the people who are like your eyes deceive you, it’s not actually passing the Turing test
Prayer works, and oh yeah sometimes praying kids will get shot in the head in a church, hmm they’ll explain that one to me after I’m dead
JD Vance 2016: Trump could be the next Hitler! JD Vance 2024: I could be the next Hitler!
Will take your word on it, was basing it on Levitin’s post www.creditslips.org/creditslips/...
I need to do a reread of Mao II. Blew me away maybe a decade ago but it doesn’t seem to have the same longevity that Libra, White Noise, and Underworld got.
any argument that trump has fully consolidated authoritarian power has to contend with the fact that the government wants to deport kilmar abrego garcia to uganda but hasn't done so, because a judge told them not to
Massive walkout underway at CDC. RFK jr. must resign so that we can be safe.
Fighting back
-Mainstream media is harshly critical of Trump -Election administration still local and non-partisan -Judges and juries are resisting prosecutions -Military isn't repressing protestors -Local law enforcement in places like Illinois resisting cooperation -Vibrant civil society resistance
Breaking: BILL CASSIDY is calling for CDC's vaccine advisers meeting to be postponed. "If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership."
I took I think 10, it’s all good
One of the most restrictive regulatory environments in the country real-faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/u...
The National Guard is not just a mindless obedient tool; it's made up of people with families & responsibilities at home that they are missing to ::checks notes:: clean up parks while needlessly carrying weapons in a city they don't live in. Trump's actions are wildly unpopular. This matters.
Politics for the modal Trump voter is a tv adaptation of the Turner Diaries. Something they like as a consumer but still want to be able to hold at arm’s length.
I forgot my Bluesky name doesn’t have the underscore, but you get the picture
You too can take the chud_meridian pill and be fine with renting
The language here the admin is citing was “principal residence,” a term I understand isn’t legally well-defined and is being misreported widely as primary residence
I really think we need to have some mechanism in place for being able to say, in print and in the media, that a problem with a public figure is that they are insane. Not in a hyperbolic way. RFK Jr is a maniac.
Lila would be a sick sleeper agent.
The thing about trading endorsements for cabinet positions is it’s not terribly enforceable
I feel like Kamala should’ve taken the rfk endorsement and then after winning just told him to fuck off
do people still talk about trump derangement syndrome or has everyone acknowledged he is actually doing everything libs said he would at this point
We do need a money trough for putting good takes in the world, I don’t see a problem
he also has the mind of a child (i stopped 7, no actually 10 wars). its really embarrassing for everyone. someday i would like to live in a country governed by a person with a basic understanding of public service, who also has done grocery shopping or gotten an oil change
I got called a few weeks after turning 18 and then never again.
I’ve said it once but I really do believe the sandwich guy should get a top job in the next Dem admin
I like the insightful thinking at the times where Trump successfully purges other presidents’ appointments but Dems are helpless to leave his in place for 14 years
They’re all giant babies asking for dictatorial interference in every minor grievance, I think libs can claim this platform
My expectation was they would love it
fwiw people are calling this nullification and I don’t think that’s quite fair. they were charging a felony and he didn’t commit a felony. the grand jury did their job faithfully and well.
As someone who still finds polling largely useful, happy to repost this
one thing i've taken away from surveys asking the public to evaluate trump's most authoritarian moves is that the ordinary americans have a much clearer sense of what's happening than most professional political observers
I do legit believe when he kicks the bucket the tenor of politics changes dramatically
4o's agreeable sycophancy was a major driver of the product's growth and also one of the most immoral product features in tech history
Maybe unfair to extrapolate but my Trump supporting relatives are the ones who’ve like cut off contact with the rest of the family, kicked their kids out of the house, etc. So the Vance “we love our family too much to care about strangers” really annoys me.
The whole chart can’t be bright red, that’s not what it’s measuring. It’s mapping a distribution.
this stuff is such a disgrace. a free citizen of a free country should be ashamed to engage in it.
It def helps win elections, it’s also very good for your career anywhere else if you can present yourself as serious, trustworthy, and unassuming, all at the same time. I think it’s not easy and other strategies matter.
Look I’m gonna be honest here, a lot of this stuff amounts to “have the raw charisma of, say, Barack Obama—an energy that makes people psychologically feel safe with you”
Really no need to convince ordinary voters of this one imo, the audience is republicans in position of power. People understandably get very cynical about how far down the authoritarian pipeline they’ll go but 80% inflation should legit scare them.
sorry to body shame but i do think the image of donald trump and jd vance as our maha figures ending obesity is really funny
Yep. We’re at a “The regime fell apart overnight” moment but it’s not yet obvious to which regime the statement refers.
If I exfiltrated a copy of the numident to a random server I would be in jail right now
Bluesky is all aboard the “how about Dems do pure power politics too” train but I’m still hoping after some acute pain we can convince voters unchecked power is bad and technocracy is good for you
Robyn 