1/9 russia’s war on Ukraine is built on lies—genocidal lies to justify invasion, and strategic lies to excuse failure. This thread breaks down some of the most common excuses and why they collapse under scrutiny 👇
Self determination advocate. Keeping Phoenix families on the road with Consolidated Auto Sales & Service, educating civic leaders with the Libertarian Policy Foundation, providing affordable self-defense with the Altor. https://nsarwark.substack.com/
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1/9 russia’s war on Ukraine is built on lies—genocidal lies to justify invasion, and strategic lies to excuse failure. This thread breaks down some of the most common excuses and why they collapse under scrutiny 👇
Donald Trump is destroying faith in the American banking system.
Spirit Airlines CFO Fred Cromer filed a declaration in the carrier's latest Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday, Aug. 31. He didn't provide any additional details on the airline's restructuring plan but he did shed some light on why Spirit filed late Friday.
HOLD FAST
“I just want to note how extraordinary it is to have 3 veteran Justice Department watchers of diverse politics—none of us alarmists, all of us believers in the institutional continuity of the DOJ across time—tripping over each other to describe the magnitude of the earthquake that has struck it.”
celebrating our 52nd anniversary at the Indiana state house with about 2000 of our new friends.
We’ve already got Thom Tillis and Joni Ernst out. Susan Collins is next. Republican politicians know they’re in deep trouble and they’re torn between representing their constituents or kneeling to Trump. The constituents will win every time if they pay attention, get off the couch, and get involved
Good for Illinois. Strong anti-SLAPPs laws are what gives the First Amendment its teeth. What good is the right of free speech if it takes years of litigation and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a defendant out of a case?
#USDemocracy NEW: Veterans have been BLASTING a speech from General Milley for over TEN HOURS to the National Guard: “We don’t take an oath to a king, queen, tyrant, or wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution – America – and we’re willing to die to protect it.” 🇺🇸💪
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Swiss/French writer, Alain Bonnet, aka Alain Soral. He’s best known for his rabid antisemitism and for his pathetic support for all the worst authoritarian regimes from Russia to North Korea. 1/22
We do not fully grasp how damaging the SCOTUS’ presidential immunity decision was. What we know is it was a disaster and the huge damage it has caused is being compounded daily. That is because the result is a collaboration between corrupt justices, a supine Congress and a demented President.
30-YR U.S. TREASURY YIELD RISES AS HIGH AS 4.98%, HIGHEST SINCE JULY
“Staggeringly dishonest” Tariffs are taxes on Americans, and Bessent (and Trump) know it
The answer to Bessent’s question is because it is a discriminatory tax. It’s only levied on American consumers when they buy imports, putting those imports at a disadvantage. There can be two losers here: Americans pay the tax, foreign companies lose their business.
at no point did we defund the police. it's important when we talk about defunding the police to note it never actually happened. would it work? we don't know! but merely phrasing the idea succinctly incited a reactionary backlash that put fascists in charge of all 3 branches of government. curious!
MAGA conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has dumped his far-right protégé from his Infowars media empire, claiming he was “too anti-Trump.”
www.jackhopkinsnow.com
In Lviv, the funeral of former Ukrainian parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy is taking place today. The politician was assassinated last week in a shooting that shocked Ukraine’s political scene.
Wordle 1,536 5/6* 🟨⬛🟨⬛⬛ ⬛🟩🟩⬛⬛ ⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Republicans are cowards, afraid of their own constituents.
During the hearing yesterday, Ensign said: “This has been done previously. This is not a new use of this authority. Prior Secretaries have done precisely this.” He didn't cite specific examples. What is he talking about? When did prior Secretaries do this? bsky.app/profile/anna...
I don't see an alternative to trying, I mean, what else is there?
I don't disagree with the first two sentences, but I think in general there's been far too much movement from 'not really noticing the problem' to 'despair'. Let's experiment with 'people and organisations try and enforce the norm' and then see if it is actually hard for it to be re-bottled.
They like Trump and are trying to help him
Birth rates are lowering *literally everywhere.* The only countries which keep growing in power will be the ones which continue to grow, and without immigration that will not be “the West.”
Announcement tomorrow, 2PM.
. @bsky.app just start running this ad on X asap
Your Cherokee words for today. The top word is English followed by how it is written in the Cherokee language followed by how it is spelled in English then how to pronounce it phonetically. Around the year 1700 it was said another star fell to earth. Some Cherokees who went to look for it found a
The first story I did for Crikey back in 2021 was reporting on a leaked neo-nazi manual showing how "media baiting" — aka tricking journalists into writing about them — was a major strategy for them. www.crikey.com.au/20...
⚡️ Kremlin denies Trump, Putin ever agreed on face-to-face Zelensky meeting.
As Belgium announces that it will recognise the state of Palestine, New Zealand is increasingly isolated. www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...
Google's search engine was the greatest information retrieval tool I'd ever experienced in my life. So many mysteries unraveled under the scrutiny of a few keystrokes. They lobotomized it *for this*.
might rewatch Death of Stalin some time soon. for no particular reason
“In 2017, O’Hanlon was captured at Trump’s first inauguration festivities in DC decked out in his full Eagle Scouts uniform. The photographer who took the photo wrote on his personal website of ‘the Boy Scout kid that looked like a Brownshirt.’”
If you haven’t read this yet you should.
To understand Trump's modus operandi for authoritarian consolidation, listen to this podcast of @radleybalko.bsky.social, the nation's premier expert on the militarization of law enforcement, by @ezraklein.bsky.social youtu.be/UcTZ_en5FTM?... .
Mamdani on Nadler: Just read that last sentence. Perfect.
More framing like this, please www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/u...
10/ After 14 years of working on this topic, I tell you this with confidence: Highly invasive mercenary spyware is a power abuse machine. It's incompatible with Americans constitutional rights and freedoms. And our legal system and civil society is not prepared for the next chapter.
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...
The lack of ego Rep. Nadler is showing is a perfect example of putting service before self. This deserves so many props and respect. Thank you, @nadler.house.gov.
“Institutions — as I and many others have written — are failing us all around us.”— @chrisgeidner.bsky.social “But, fighting back matters. And many are doing so. It works — both in fact, as to specific outcomes, & also to dismantle their propaganda of fear.” open.substack.com/pub/chrisgei...
honestly insane how reporters have kept going "well but crime down so isn't this a good thing" about the take over of DC, dawg the reason why crime has collapsed is the same reason why restaurants are in freefall, because no one is outside because of all the goddamn goons
Big opening for, say, Brad Lander www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/n...
Whatever is in the Epstein files must be pretty bad, because the President seems extremely stressed by its content. 🤔 Tomorrow morning, we push for the release of the unredacted Epstein files, and the impeachment of this criminal president. Join us.
Wow: 78 year old congressman Jerry Nadler decides not to seek reelection, saying Biden fiasco showed need for "generational change." “Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that."
if you like the old war horses retiring, can’t hurt to say a couple nice things when they hang em up pour encourager les autres
This kind of thing happens to the best of us but it does seem to be happening a lot more than usual at DOJ
Trump’s mysterious disappearance from public raises new questions about Joe Biden’s advanced age
Your pal @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social at the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn. Genuinely hard to take a bad picture of this dude. That's the @nywfp.bsky.social float behind him - follow them and let's make this man mayor and get him the progressive caucus he needs to get things done, NYC!
This is about Mamdani and it is true because it extends to Brad Lander too
Good sign at #WorkersOverBillionaires protest in Concord NH #NHPolitics
Yet another incredible use of the passive voice. "11-year-old boy fatally shot in Houston after ding-dong-ditch doorbell-ringing prank, police say." Who or what shot him, WFLA? www.wfla.com/news/nationa...
Fascinating stuff
Joining the distinguished company of Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, and Rush Limbaugh. Truly, what an honor.
When Tiffany Cross referred to WH adviser Stephen Miller as a “white supremacist,” apparently, people who don’t own dictionaries were outraged Fortunately, we found someone who can clarify things
I don't know anything about liability re: the knockon effects of this, but the next true feature for this website would be something like Craigslist or an Events listing. They shouldn't be trying to reinvent Twitter, they should be trying to revive classifieds.
the thing I think people don’t want to deal with is that it’s not Bluesky v Twitter, it’s Bluesky v Substack
Meanwhile in Russia… “Russian Emergencies Ministry helicopter with volcanologists on board crashes in Kuril Islands” 🚁 “A Russian Emergencies Ministry Mi-8 helicopter made a hard landing on Iturup Island in the Sakhalin Region. The aircraft lay on its side” www.mk.ru/incident/202...
"O’Hanlon was captured at Trump’s first inauguration festivities in DC decked out in his full Eagle Scouts uniform." Highlighting this pic both because it's hilarious and as a grim reminder: the Trump era has been going long enough for teenagers to become cops with prematurely receding hairlines.
The tragedy of Trump isn’t just the chaos he creates. It’s the people who convince themselves they can manage it—for access, for relevance, for proximity to power. Rubio isn’t the adult in the room. He’s proof that access costs integrity.
What these Schatz posts say to me is that Dem elected officials like him seem incapable of perceiving the right as a *political movement.* The response to Covid mitigation and the Floyd protests was not a spontaneous reaction...it was a right wing backlash organized by a reactionary movement.
In NH, 68% of those arrested this year had no criminal conviction. The number arrested who have never been charged with a crime (44) has seen a marked increase from the same time period in 2024, when that category made up 0%. #NHPolitics www.seacoastonline.com/story/news/p...
Over 4000 people! #NHPolitics #resist #laborDay #NH50501
Hundreds march in Miami against Republican censorship efforts. Miami's mayor rails against GOP stripping away local control for state centralized power.
Who is concerned? Crackpots? The same people who hate medicine everywhere?
Waiting for @sanders.senate.gov and @rokhanna.bsky.social to speak at the State House #NHPolitics
Judge Cullen torched Trump. The administration thought it could sue every federal judge in Maryland. Bold move. Stupid move. In a 39-page takedown, Cullen didn’t just dismiss it, he called it what it was: “novel and potentially calamitous.” Read here. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
It's mostly "the biggest victim of COVID was me" combined with "I can't get mad at a virus, it doesn't react in a way that gives me emotional satisfaction." Obviously COVID policy wasn't perfect. But to think it was political persecution, and pretend Trump wasn't president then, is really something.
Question: What "liberal-coded institutions" were kept open during COVID while churches—for sake of argument, pretend they're all conservative—were closed? Universities closed, Hollywood shut down production, unions met on Zoom, progressives avoided indoor gatherings. So... which institutions?
some white racists mad as hell today
lmao YOU LITERALLY TARIFFED LUMBER
He would flee to the US where his fellow coup artist would grant him asylum. Brazil is lucky that they have competent prosecutors unlike here where we had the weakest/worst AG w/ Garland & DAG w/ Monaco who have destroyed us imo. They let him back in ffs. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/w...
Murder at Burning Man!?! techcrunch.com/2025/08/31/m...
CHARLIE SYKES (@sykescharlie.bsky.social): Trump has tapped into this really visceral hatred of the other and the desire to inflict pain and suffering on them. That is one of the ugliest aspects of his presence in our politics, and we saw that with the "Mass Deportation Now!" signs.
I have fairly affluent neighbors who go to LV frequently and we had a recent conversation about how LV is dead. They said it was amazing how easy it was to get into restaurants and tickets to shows. Their argument was LV nickle and dimes too much so people are done going
"The current administration perpetrates a Watergate-level scandal each week, usually several times per week. They’re doing it shamelessly, boastfully, and right out in the open. They can do it because they know there’s almost no chance they’ll ever be held accountable." — @radleybalko.bsky.social
If this were North Korea you wouldn’t be able to post that.
This social media site will not and cannot succeed until everybody pats me on the head and tells me I’m a good boy for all my opinions
Trump on RFK Jr., the CDC, and vaccines (a translation). He seems to be saying that he was shown data about COVID19 vaccines being safe and effective, but that the pharma companies didn’t show those amazing data to anyone else, like RFK Jr. He thinks this is why there is a “mess” at CDC.
Wikipedia has no source of revenue. Editors are always saying who isn't welcome and what articles aren't notable. It's going to die.
There's a reason that the people who complain that Bluesky isn't welcoming never explicitly say WHO isn't being welcomed. Who should we be nicer too? Be specific about the kind of people you want here. I'd've quote posted this. But he turned replies and quotes off. Making me feel very unwelcome.
happy labor day
It makes me emotional to see Judge Sooknanan showing that she values each individual child’s life at a moment when this administration is doing exactly the opposite
It’s really sad that America is descending into fascism, but it’s nice that Trump has had to experience multiple news cycles in which the entire nation speculates on whether he’s a pedophile and/or dead.
JUST IN: Drew Ensign, on behalf of DOJ, reports that all of the migrant children have been returned to ORR custody.
Courts still matter.
9 Former CDC Directors who were all qualified for their posts are warning that deranged chaos agent RFK Jr is a danger to public health. I’d say he’s actively destroying public health and committing murder on a daily basis with his destructive monstrous agenda.
On Labor Day, the traditional start of the campaign season, New York City's major labor unions issue a joint endorsement of Mamdani. Unsurprising.
To be clear, the “official” here is a paralegal. The attorney general of the United States fired a paralegal. She also concedes that disrespecting the National Guard is disrespecting “law enforcement,” which … the military cannot do under federal law. Happy Labor Day, Pam Bondi!
News outlets should send their medical correspondents (the ones who are actual doctors) to the White House on Tuesday - and every day after that - to ask him questions about his health, hand bruising, if he’s getting lasix infusion, etc etc
From the U.S., Kier Starmer really does come across as a perfect example of you cannot successfully try to ape reactionary conservative politics in the long term. Labour got a single win and Starmer proceeded to drive the party into its worst polling in generations by courting the right.
A reminder on this Labor Day: Slavery still exists in the form of incarcerated labor. It’s long overdue to end forced labor in prisons.
Like it’s not an exaggeration lol bsky.app/profile/atru...
There are people in public life clearly and accurately stating the danger to America at this bizarre moment. Those people need support from every Conservative and Liberal American who find our Constitution worth preserving.
Real talk Trump creating inroads for democrats in rural areas by tanking the economies is political suicide at a level that I don't think you can replicate. Again: it doesn't take much. A little depressed turnout, maybe 5-8% uniform swing, and suddenly you're losing Iowa and Ohio.
