Actor, nerd, played Brent Musburger on HBO’s “Winning Time”!
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The Trump administration used Benny Johnson's claims that his house was "burned to the ground" and that "people were murdered in my front yard" to justify its federal takeover of DC. @kenbensinger.bsky.social found out that Johnson made it all up. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/b...
Oh, 100%. My comment is more on the natural of polls like this, and how the results can tell incomplete stories, and how I wish polling would start factoring its own influence into itself.
All this chart actually proves is that Republicans base more of their satisfaction on the man in charge than Dems do.
Anna has had excellent coverage of this developing case in which the Trump administration tried to use the holiday weekend to secretly and illegally deport children.
No wonder he wants to fuck us so bad
I seem to recall people telling me there was no “lesser evil” in November 2024 with regards to this issue…
Man where’s THAT guy been during all of this?
today's Giuliani news feels like when you're watching season 5 of a TV series after they've already added so many new characters & plot lines that you can hardly keep up, & then for some inexplicable reason, the writers bring back some random character from season 1 and you're like WTF?!?
This is the first post where I’ve been like, “oh shit, can this be real?! I thought we were all just doing a cathartic bit!”
one of my hot legal takes is that any court which involves government intervention into people’s lives should be open at least seven days a week, and arguably late at night if not 24/7
This whole thread is just appalling. The hearing arises from the Trump admin conspiring with a foreign country to violate a federal court order in the middle of the night so it can deny due process to children who escaped dangerous circumstances.
Cc @ditzkoff.bsky.social
Everyone on the internet:
Meanwhile, the press let the GOP grin like loons and have their statements simply being placed on record stand in as the “gotcha”. The American people are used by the press as a court order against Democrats’ points and an appeals court to Republicans’.
What’s infuriating here is, you know Raddatz is smarter than this, but Democrats will always get the full-court press, the “assume good faith criticism” adversarial media, with intense follow-ups about how “half of America” believes this obvious bullshit.
In this same regard, expect crime “rebound” statistics after they withdraw to be used to justify permanent occupation.
Prosecutors are punished for overcharging, period. A major part of the reputation of grand juries was likely the extreme reserve federal prosecutors usually exercised in employing them. There’s no way a jury of peers watched that same video and says “felony”.
Because it’s easier to validate anger when you don’t need what you say to be true
The thing about a lot of these never Trump Republicans is that, unlike a lot of institutionalist Dems who think the fever will break and we can all return to comity or whatever, these guys saw the rot up close and know the only appropriate response is to tear them out of government root and branch.
But considering the alternative (sitting there not eating dairy, feeling probably fine I guess but missing the dairy)…worth it?
This “explicit” is a weird editorial choice. The constitution gives the president no power over this at all. It’s not ambiguous.
I’ve got a CA booster already scheduled for next week! Check and see, you may yet have access in your states! And if you don’t, raise holy hell to the pharmacy, then to your doctor, then to your state reps!
I’ve got my CA booster already scheduled for next week!
Update: it got funny again
What an image (J. Scott Applewhite, AP)
Looks like it was a bum wrap
I think Vance is cooked either way (Thiel muscle or not, the guy has no nationwide appeal if he doesn’t have a rigged system), and ultimately his power will come down to how he decides to react when people will be out in the streets celebrating on that day. Does he send the troops out, or home?
Trump is arming the National Guard and taking them away from their jobs and families to pick up trash around Lafayette Square, the National Mall, and the Tidal Basin. www.fox5dc.com/news/nationa...
Funny way to say “is not legal”
It just chills me to the core that the direction of the nation will be determined by what JD Vance does when confronted with a celebrating nation that day.
"The year in which activist language was most prominent – 2020 – was the year Democrats actually won," writes @notalawyer.bsky.social. stringinamaze.net/p/is-activis...
Literally who
When people say we’re “post-truth”, this is what they mean. It doesn’t matter if crime is up or down, it matters how they “feel” about it. Which is about bubbles both online and real-world. Truly, feelings don’t care about facts.
It really does just feel like we’re waiting for him to die at this point and then gambling on which approach to the celebrating in the streets Vance takes.
Blue Fell
“The best camera is the one you have with you” was a Torment Nexus all along.
AI isn’t a Google replacement but it is replacing Google. Social media isn’t a news replacement but it did replace news. The story of 21st century technology is iteration from frictional and better to easier and worse.
I had this thought, and I believe it’s true: the social internet as it presently exists will never allow a Democrat to be elected president.
“Infinite airwaves” and no more need to curate programming broke information dissemination. 30 years ago who would have given her an hour to talk about politics on television? Biggest Loser was her allocation of space! And that was plenty!
Reminds me of the old saying: “What do you call alternative medicine that works?” “Medicine.”
I like this. Gavin set a bar, others are rushing to meet it. That’s how this is supposed to work. 2028 primary is wide open. Fight for our vote, all of you!
everyone do it. rearm. make it the new norm. we have to strangle them in their own filth.
Don’t you see they love capitalism so much that they’re willing to die for it! You CAN take it with you! Shhh don’t tell the poors
Good, someone else got the Gavin memo. Compete for the nomination, Dems, I know you can do it!
In 2024, Harris, the DNC, and the SuperPACs scrupulously followed Shor's advice to achieve a decline across every metric and every demographic. Urban, rural, college, non-college, young, old—you name it and Shor's mealy-mouthed centrism produced a loss. So of course Dems still listen to him.
At some point we’re going to have to reckon with the fact that the wellness industry probably seeded a lot of anti-pharma rhetoric, taking legitimate problems and using them to make people anti-medicine instead of pro-regulation.
I hope *somebody* is watching this campaign and understanding that Mamdani is finally doing the left version of what Trump did: behaving in a manner that makes everyone critiquing it look like a bigger dork to the target voters
I take back calling Cuomo not a Democrat, only an experienced Democrat can poopoo people having fun this effectively
This is a really good observation. There’s been no major Normie Exodus to here. Most Normie conversation is on threads now it seems.
Wait until this guy starts to actually think about the highly correlated relationship between black dialects and southern dialects, the socioeconomics of speech, and the relationship between that and the difficult relationship between progressivism and perceived elitism…
They also gave the Sudetenland back, dumbass. And Germany lost its military.
The thing is, it would need to be pardons in many cases because there are charges that can be pressed by individual citizens, lawsuits, etc. I agree on the grander level, a lot of corruption, criminal direction, record destruction etc would require federal investigation
I don’t see even the most cynical Democratic president blanket-pardoning ICE agents. Many career federal employees who can claim they broke rules for fear of reprisal, I can picture that scenario, more than pardons for the installed P25 bosses directing the malfeasance.
Well if Jim Jordan says there wasn’t any sexual assault…
Look, if you’ve got IRL self-sufficiency on lock, more power to you. I may be an online addict but I only visit this opium den, I don’t live here.
I mean I think the real problem is that a lot of people are still coded that way and kind of reflexively roll their eyes and vote against people who put it that way. People don’t learn those beliefs overnight and won’t drop them overnight either.
Right, it’s a straight up hostile takeover move.
Except without any of the parts of that that are supposed to be pro-social!
I just think it’s funny how quickly the skills involved with me getting a theatre degree are appreciating in value, as more and more humans lose the basic ability to like, talk and listen.
After this Intel business, I never want “communist” to land as a hit against a Democrat ever again. This shit pisses me off so much. They just call people words for things that are scary and then they just do the thing themselves, because people don’t know what the word actually means.
So to me it seems like the actual best practice is “just refer to people the way they like on a case by case basis, be humble if they tell you something different, and try to not be dogmatic or prescriptive” or, put even more simply, “let’s just not be assholes”
Yeah see that’s why I was rebutting the “x”, i know a lot of latin folks in like, theatre, and most of them use the “e” if they use anything at all, which is where we agree, it’s a largely extrapolated “solution” that didn’t really originate from the group itself.
Hilarious in what sense? I personally don’t care, but I just remember a lot of the backlash to “latinx” being from Latin people who were like, “um, we didn’t pick that”
Understand that they are acting like this because they don’t believe an “after” is ever coming. If one does, an ungodly number of people are fucked.
I suspect that in that supposed “after”, agencies will need to implement a kind of “nuclear” regulation, maybe similar to FINRA’s rules around working in finance, where if you’re charged with even a misdemeanor related to obstruction or line of duty abuse, you’re barred from government service.
Saw a comment of someone being pedantic about a superman thing like “oh how can he breathe in space??” And this reply sent me lmaooo (I fully do not need comics accurate responses rn, let’s just all revel in “he is superman dawg”
what’s the functional difference between a MAGA Republican and a Republican?
I thought “Latine” was the preferred term, though?
If there is an “after”, we are going to be living in lawsuits for decades.
This goes right up there with the Mark Hamill-as-Harrison Ford “it ain’t that kind of movie, kid”
I understand the logic (conservatives butthurt about things they don’t understand, pretension = bad, etc), but these words all found mass use because they all refer to stuff in more specific ways that old terms were ineffective at communicating. Using old words won’t change the backlash.
But you get it, right? Like, these words get used because someone is like, “what’s that word for, it seems like everything is designed around men and it’s harder to do xyz”, ya? It’s not like the sexists would like it any better if we stuck to Glynis Johns going “Votes for Women, step in time!”
I understand the theory behind saying this, but here’s the thing…almost all of those terms came about as a means of communicating with more precision about a variety of issues and people. Is the pitch, just don’t talk about these topics at all, or is it, speak about them with less clarity?
The State of Illinois at this time has received no requests or outreach from the federal government asking if we need assistance, and we have made no requests for federal intervention.
I feel like we tend toward introspection, and that it’s easier to control our messaging than bad actors. Or try to recognize that people who get manipulated are grabbed by a kernel of recognizable concern. Be it “safety” or comfort or whathaveyou. Easier to hope when people seem reachable.
But a “free” thinker? In this day and age? It just sounds like no tethers, no ties. No load. No bias because of no context, because of no information. A sandbox with no sand, a forest with no trees, a playground with no sets. Just sounds like a bunch of empty space.
I want to be a reconciliatory thinker. I want to know why a belief system got the way it did. I want to understand systems because a system you don’t understand can still hurt you, and knowledge is the best defense.
I want to be a nuanced thinker. I want the knowledge of additional information not to complicate but clarify my opinions. In an age of collateral damage and harm by generalization, I want to recognize precise beliefs as a higher moral good than general or “strong” ones.
I want to be an extrapolative thinker. I want to hear two pieces of trustworthy information that seemingly contradict each other, and find the means by which they coexist. I want not to balk at truths I can’t believe, but find out why they’re true despite my initial disbelief.
I want to be a rigorous thinker. I want to be able to take information from any source, understand where it comes from and how, understand the standards of it, and know how to accept its truths and account for its biases.
“Free-thinker” has been destroyed by the internet. A romantic notion of being beholden to no ideology instead turned into an allergy of any information that’s passed through a vetting process or the benefit of any amount of rigor. Just a laundered version of anti-expertise, or worse, contrarianism.
No American should accept how this country has treated Kilmar Abrego Garcia. No American. Thread.👇
“The Epstein List is a hoax” being spouted by the guys that built a movement around exposing it, quite the thing
The president of the United States, wearing a novelty hat that says he’s always right and sitting next to the World Cup trophy he stole, insists that “African American ladies, beautiful ladies” are demanding he invade Chicago with the military.
The full weight of the Trump/WH legal/propaganda apparatus has been bearing down on this one day laborer and his family for months, all because Trump/Miller decided defying the law would thrill MAGA. No one should accept how the US government has treated this man. An absolute disgrace. 8/8
It’s clear that the main goal of the Maxwell interview was to get her to say that she didn’t see Trump do anything wrong. Which can only mean that there is something in the files that suggests that he did. Why else would she need to say that? The interview is more incriminating, not less.
MAGA is comprised of “free thinkers” who speak only learned lines like a parrot.
All these self-proclaimed “free thinkers” who speak only learned lines, like parrots.
“Trump ended 6 wars.” “Name 2.” “Russia Russia Russia… fake news….” A+ exchange on British 🇬🇧 radio
Is the Administration Consequently anything like the Marshall of the Supreme Court? Do you think he took any pleasure in reporting this?
fantastic lede from sam, and the rest of it ain’t too shabby either
This is a slight tangent, but I’ve thought long and hard about the issues around info dissemination in our age, and the way it would take some kind of monocultural messaging to get most people back in reality. Then it hit me: Trump is the last monocultural object, the last piece of “mass media”.
The worst part is that because a cult has formed around this thing, responding to it with any degree of justice will unleash catastrophic violence from some of the most unhinged people on the planet.
Trump irrationally hates windmills because they made one of his golf courses look ugly and he doesn’t understand how batteries work.
Like seriously, what the fuck is this man’s deal with wind?
To a degree he’s always been this way (the horse in the hospital routine), but now his agency is fully surrendered to his impulses. He’s barely a human anymore, he’s a lizard-brained blob of id impulses.
We’re at the point where Trump is so broken and addled that he’s just a natural disaster. He’s deserving of so much punishment and has escaped all of it, and it’s time to actually be madder at the Republican Party overall than at him.
The most important question of our era, and one that every person will need to both be able to answer, and be unafraid to ask other people, is, “under what circumstances will you believe that someone you disagree with is telling you the truth?”
Can't They All Be KBJ 
