This bit is a rip off of George Carlin's way funnier bit about Bill Clinton: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xAn...
This bit is a rip off of George Carlin's way funnier bit about Bill Clinton: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xAn...
I'm so fucking sick of politicians talking AT people instead of just silently holding everyone in the nations hand with the exact amount of pressure that conveys assurance and support but not control for each person
This is manifest destiny without land to conquer. What there is to conquer is other people living among us that this guy is stating are not the same kind of human as he is
Not to weirdly brag about my claim to this bullshit identity, just to point out that I grew up with stories about their hatred and fear of German kids
Dude named Schmit would have gotten beaten within an inch of his life in the specific ethnic America that like 6 of my 8 great grandparents grew up in
We got a prideful lad, just a superior youth
Looking at their recent posts they post about someone who has a deleted account saying it's not them. The other thing I see is them saying "I'm still waiting for the relentless onslaught of media demands for a press conference and calls to resign." In response to a Meidas Touch post about no press
What you learn on the media beat is not abstractions but stories of attempts at maintenance, destruction, or rebuilding... wait I'll come in again
This age of bullshit is not one of "radical transparency" as evinced by, among other things, this kind of bullshitty answer.
I think you're being very unfair to award winning authors who are blaming the real culprits: Barack Obama's hot summer beach read lists
It's so narcissistic and ghoulish of an author of fiction to try to make the horrors of Gaza about themselves. "We're nearly 2 years into this atrocity and not a single Mario Kart update about it?" - Mario Kart youtube guy
I agree with this, I just think it faces the same problems as saying what "the law" is faces. Hard to get your voice heard in this environment, but vital to try
Unfortunately in matters of ethics, too, I think people are largely swayed by whatever the crowd around them is doing is right
You can tell this guy writes for a living with sparkling, crystal clear prose like these
🧵 Authoritarianism, Democratization, and Coalition Politics. The consensus around here is, more or less, that the United States is currently a consolidating authoritarian regime controlled by a mix of reactionary populists and fascists.
Tons of Sam Cooke
Is Rubio, as the funny one, Kruschev?
Swallow 8 of them on average a year in my sleep
Meant to spell it NĂĽ Some, my apologies
One of the challenges of this age is to try to keep perspective in the midst of an information environment that's village gossip but everyone in the world can join in
You can only protect people in a future when you survive into that future, and you can't survive if you ignore the actual harms of Trump because you're too focused on the hypothetical harms of a Nesome candidacy in 3 years (harms that are like, kind of untrustworthy, not death camp torture)
Yeah it's very frustrating and grim when we're facing the actual weight of Trump, fully blossoming into it's evil, mature form, for people to be arguing about their imagined hypothetical gripes in a primary in 3 years. I get it in a, we've got to really protect people after this way, but...
I do think that the people who are like, he's 99% of Trump or whatever are out of their minds, but there's clearly some opportunism there that I think people are reasonable in finding distasteful. Calling it eugenics or whatever is way overboard and feels like you don't actually care about anything
I didn't listen to those podcasts but he did them at a time when everyone was psychically wounded and engaging those guys in a friendly way felt like kicking people when they were down. Shifting from that to this so quickly feels opportunistic and like he isn't acting out of what he truly believes
Guy's this is super embarrassing, but I meant to title it Hillbilly Eulogy, and I just aint no durn good at book learning
Oh you don't like it? The pyramid just got 10 feet higher with 10,000 more MAGA influencer retainer sacrifices
On The Day I'm bringing back all the old gifs, pixelated as hell. That dude popping out that chair, that kid smashing that plate, all the classics
These same reporters missed that Ivermectin gives you super powers, so I understand their being upset that they didn't do critical coverage of news that could only be brought to light with their great skills
Theo's Place: Solely Fans
Times square sailor kisses for some, NASA control room at the first moon landing for others
This is antithetical to what the purpose of being a judge who writes opinions is. The point of an opinion is to establish some sort of rule that other people can reliably apply going forward. Saying it's whatever I think, makes you a crazed king not a jurist (I blame Potter Stuart's quip in part)
I like how you can hide your own ignorance and cowardice in stating something unequivocally as a universal truth by employing the passive voice. Not, I'm not clear on the legality, but the legality is unclear
Have you directed Mike Meyers in a major motion picture? No? Then with all due respect how can you say his performance in the Love Guru was lazy and offensive? Do you know how ignorant, and frankly, naive you sound to those who have directed him?
Have to direct a movie starring Mike Meyers before you can critique one. Have got to have terminal cancer before you can support researching it
Even to the extent that people like to collect them and don't ever plan on anyone using them (which is delusional, but whatever), the way that they display them specifically to try to cause anger and upset in other people they view as their political enemies is itself extremely ghoulish
I do feel like the extent to which stuff "for adults" is available but harder to find because there are so many streaming services with bad UI they become difficult to navigate/indy movies with less wide releases than in the past, this too is part of a supply problem
Yeah Always Sunny for sure for adults. I watched the first season of Yellow Jackets and it felt pretty teen aimed to me, but in a way that most Showtime shows always have been
Yeah this may be the case; I may just be getting old/have a young child, so my perspective of where the culture is could be irredeemably warped. May have a lot of, man everyone loves Rafi so much, and they're right to, takes in me
Yeah I'm thinking of the kind of Oscary acting movies we used to get like, In the Bedroom. Re: streaming, definitely don't watch nearly as much as I used to, but I feel like several of the shows are less for adults than peak Prestige. One show I've watched recently and liked, Reacher, is more teen
To the extent that people rate Mao and Stalin as on the same level or worse than Hitler, a lot of it is about the policy choices they made that resulted in forced starvation for their populaces. A very decent chance that because of USAID cuts and RFK Jr.'s appointment, Trump will be on that level
I think a big part of this is also supply; they're not making as many movies purely for adults as they used to. I also feel like this is true in TV, but that space is so fragmented it's hard to say. Movies for teens, horror movies, proliferating is the closest we get.
If he dies it's important that everyone immediately pin all the blame for everything on JD Vance. Vance has disgraced Trump's memory by firing the head of BLS, Trump would never have deployed the troops like Vance has, things of that nature
A lot of this is true and right on, but I think he was clearly banking on this dynamic in his criminal prosecutions last year and it failed to show up for him. The response to Jan. 6 did actually work in that respect that they took some juice away. Though I suspect it's back
If he dies it's important that everyone immediately pin all the blame for everything on JD Vance. Vance has disgraced Trump's memory by firing the head of BLS, Trump would never have deployed the troops like Vance has, things of that nature
Was just watching the Pee Wee Herman documentary, and I feel like we lost all the people who would have made a thing like that, because all those people turned from shit like that to the same takes about Democrats for 10 years. I saw the best minds of my generation post themselves dumb
This is semi-tangential, but I'm old enough to remember many media people of this ilk before 2014 when they were fun and quirky and broadly into a recognizable 90s life. So many posted to becoming dour and fanatically dogmatic about leftist stuff they would have barely thought about 2 years before
This shit drives me insane, I don't know if Jeffries is good at legislating (very difficult to tell unless you work with Congress or follow obsessively closely) but that's his job, making legislative coalitions, crafting legislative language. Not "doing something" where I determine what that means
What is the purpose of this? Does he want to ultimately write a joint biography of the conservative justices? Clerk again?
When I'm staring at kids in the airport with a deep frown from a leathery tanning bed face and speaking in a garbage disposal voice that makes Diane Rehm sound like Barry White, I can tell which kids have bad ribosomes and endoplasmic reticula by those that behave weird socially, it's organelle shit
Ultimately this leads you to kind of going insane because you have to keep stretching further and further out if you have pegged your own conception of yourself as a guy who comes up with new takes and Trump just keeps wanting cops to smash immigrants every day
I think Matt Yglesias is a genuinely smart guy and uses his very strong thinking powers to come up with new unique takes about a situation that is incredibly dumb and unalterably dumb. Trump is a dumb guy who likes violence and control and the dumb part of us loves rooting for that. Not much to say
Her: What are they shouting in Persian, these Iranian attackers?
Every institution failed. Sorry don't know what to tell you. The Democrats were one of the last, but they couldn't stand alone in society. We are probably the last, and some days we keep it together, but a lot of the time we're chasing Cracker Barrel or rural hospital discourse, which is a failure
Damn that literally is what this spot I used to love 10 years ago in DC was (probably still is): barreldc.com
Immigration is the central issue of our century and progressives must defend it or lose absolutely everything to fascism
I genuinely don't get why we're assuming the public mood in 2024 is etched in stone anymore than Republcians should have assumed the public mood in 2020 was etched in stone. Shit changes! People forget their old grievances and find new ones, budget deficits was a top issue in 2012, so was terrorism
Just an idiot who doesn't know anything, but I feel like we need digging up Mirabeau to guillotine his corpse level anger, not the, ah man I already saw this episode of the Office anger it seems we've got
I feel like I unironically have this experience constantly. I read about Harry Belafonte in books about black political movements of the 60s and was like, oh he sounds cool. Only very recently did I realize that he's the guy singing "Jump in the Line" and "Day-O" which was discordant for me
It's also very stupid, whoever wrote it is a stupid mark. Wow he said immigrants are eating pets! Love him or hate him, that's so savvy! People like their pets!
Look the truth is ultimately unknowable, unless a guy tells you, then you've reported on it (science like!). But if another guy tells you the opposite, then it becomes unknowable again. You have to add ", others disagree" to your headline to show that questions were raised, the situation confused
There's a sense in which every narcissist probably wants the world to end with them, and this is the guy who actually gets to make real progress on that?
Man it really feels like we're accelerating. I guess we have been this whole time, but I feel like it's starting to push us back down into our seats and doesn't show signs of letting up
Ending all life on earth would, according to my model, reduce crime
Fundamentally, Trump was explicitly and repeatedly promising the end of modern society. That’s literally what “make America great again” means. They can’t all be surprised that he actually delivered
In addition to everything else with her and the Times, these Haberman sentences are not well written
(Pressing the brake, nothing happens, pressing it again, slowly realizing this was the doing of my neighbor Jasper who must have cut my brakes, I shake my head with a wry smile): This move is one of Jasper's most aggressive yet
There was this website that covered this called Gazer or Gasper or something I forget what happened to them
It's also, I don't think, true when there are strong leaders. Fox definitely focused attacks on Obama but they definitely covered the hell out of Bill Ayers and Sandra Fluke and whatever else they could find 13 years ago
I think a lot of the laws specifically have exceptions for kids that have IEPs where their IEPs require that they use a phone, so not the most cogent argument against those laws
Maybe, giving them the benefit of the doubt, he even did care about IGs 30 years ago when he was 61 and Bill Clinton was President
I feel like the Federal Tort Claims Act's barring of suits against the military assumes that Posse Comitatus is good law, and the obvious shredding of the latter should necessitate the shredding of the former
One thing that irks me is that for my whole life, until Biden got elected, the term "trifecta" meant that you controlled, Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court. Now suddenly the meaning has changed to a dumber meaning. Like if everyone relentlessly started using penultimate to mean last
The problem is that their leaders when not in power are legislators. I don't know if these guys are world historic good legislators or not, but the skill of legislating is managing small groups of people and mastering policy minutiae. It is a bit antithetical to messaging well
I like Crooked media but it is definitely the Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Ben Wallace, Delotne West, and Monty Williams teach you how to win in the NBA series of self improvement tapes
I genuinely appreciate your dedication to using the internet as a space in which multiple viewpoints can be expressed and ideas can be openly debated, because I trust that you're a man who will honestly respond to me and my firmly held belief that an upside down emoji does not lead to a rich debate
Damn, Theo, I thought it was good
1900% excessive prepositions, 9/11 metaphor is mildly interesting
This is just the invention of the printing press, which doesn't make this fucking 30 years war we're about to go through any easier, but from the perspective of people in 80 years, people replying to posts to try to get likes will not seem to have warranted destroying civilization
Tucker Carlson is a sophisticated man who believes in the import of the Iranian census count and that demons claw him when he sleeps
How would you feel if you had to grow up in America?
This is such bullshit. Like no one on the left had to grow up in a society they largely disagreed with, being taught by people with values they didn't share. All of us fucking did. What does he think this country was like during the W years (and I strongly suspect) the Reagan years?
Fuck this guy. I grew up in Utah as a non-Mormon during the Bush years, where's my violent take over of the federal government because I disagreed with the ideology espoused by my public school teachers?
Journalists often respond to good faith criticism with some, oh you don't like Cat in The Hat? Why don't you direct Mike Meyers in something then I'll listen to you shit
The best case scenario, and the story I tell myself, is that COVID/online psychosis meant the normal rules don't apply. But it's crazy the people who saw people react viscerally negatively to versions of their policies the 2015 Sanders campaign could never dream of by calling it weak sellout shit
I heartily support anyone on the left coming up with a list of centrist terms that are immediately clocked as political that we shouldn't use, like "kitchen table issues" or "working families" bsky.app/profile/p-ka...
“And to my children, I leave to you…” *licks finger and flips through DSM-5*
Can't be true because there was no fallacious promise that this would only take 20 minutes
I think this is true for posters in general. Like Chirstopher Rufo is not reveling in the world he wrought, he's instead taking outrage at the fucking Cracker Barrel logo. It is fundamentally a medium of despair and negativity and finding the *next thing* that is standing in the way of happiness
It's like supporting everyone getting a fair trial. Fundamental bedrock property of what was our legal system
Soldiers*
Slight tangent, but this feels so close to just giving up to me. We're going to vehemently police catch phrases from 5-8 years ago to counter police in the streets? Why not just angrily yell at people for not saying their prayers?
This is like Hegel writing about the Master-Slave dynamic. If you think about it Queen Elizabeth II was the most punk, for she had to maintain the establishment conditions against which Johnny Rotten rebelled, the maintenance of which was a rebellion against the natural anarchy punkers carried out
That's not 100% true but true of the bulk of them
I legitimately haven't heard anyone say any of these things since 2021 (except for when I watched the movie Eddington)
I do this one all the time too but always feel paranoid about it but I think few care
A bold departure from journalistic norms
Not sure if you're trying to goad them into a firing, but if so you could respond "there*"
The reason we could start admitting what a fucked up country the US had been for so much of our history was that we had, or seemed to have, actually improved. What the current administration, much like we did for much of our history, is saying by saying "it wasn't bad" is that we haven't improved
I think about this in conjunction with Trump having a grand time in rallies with the mayors of Hamtramck and Dearborne Heights talking about their shared disapproval of the LGBT agenda or whatever at least once a week
Have you ever been to Picadilly? How's it rate if so?