I know Charlie Kirk valued debate and free speech because he blocked me for fact-checking his lies on Twitter and then put me on his organization's Professor Watchlist for writing a book he didn't like.
Retired medical lab scientist and IT drone married & living in eastern Washington. Politically liberal 🇺🇲🇨🇦🇺🇦🏳️🌈. SF reading, woodworking, fishing, gaming. Being a grandfather & great uncle is the most amazing thing!
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I know Charlie Kirk valued debate and free speech because he blocked me for fact-checking his lies on Twitter and then put me on his organization's Professor Watchlist for writing a book he didn't like.
Decrying violence against political opponents rings a bit hollow when you pull Secret Service protection from your political opponents.
You people trying to rewrite the history of who Charlie Kirk was are pathetic. He used his organization to bully, dox and attack people he didn't agree with. Free speech my ass. He was one of the worst aspects of American politics. www.theguardian.com/education/20...
Losing my goddamned mind. We can condemn political violence without valorizing a destructive, hateful bigot.
Here are some things that Charlie Kirk said in his life. The man is dead, and so it only seems fair to share his legacy by cataloguing the values he spread while alive.
I'm hearing "political violence has no place in America" from people who were more than OK with what happened on Jan 6, 2021.
The MSNBC commentator saying that most political violence has historically come from the left just once again showed how we suffer from failing to learn history. Lynching, pogroms, race riots, the political violence that ended Reconstruction, and against the Civil Rights Movement. Come on.
If you're fortunate you'll have some grandkids to love and spoil. Best thing ever about getting old!
wrote about the “national conservative” vision for america
The president is a rapist authoritarian who is destroying US institutions & literally invading US cities, quick ... restore healthcare subsidies!
The US president trafficked & raped underage girls, the evidence is overwhelming, everyone knows it, and this country's elites & institutions are so broken, so insular, so decadent that we can't even bring ourselves to state it clearly, much less do anything about it. Contemptible & pathetic.
The 400 richest Americans are now worth a record $6.6 trillion, after getting $1.2 trillion richer over the past year alone. Meanwhile, the rest of the country is getting squeezed by tariffs and high prices for groceries, utilities, and health care. The system is broken.
Biden was going to change the rules so that when airlines canceled or rescheduled a flight, they owed passengers cash (as in Europe). Trump canceled the rule. Biden fought for ordinary people/consumers, again & again. Trump doesn't give a fuck about them. But it's cringe to say that, so 🤷♂️
At this point abolishing ICE and reforming the Supreme Court have to be non-negotiables for every 2028 Dem.
They insist that America is about blood & soil, about where you were born & what color you are, because on any level playing field, they would lose. They have no decency, no particular skills, no ideas, nothing to offer ... the accidents of their color & geography are all they have going for them.
All of a sudden I'm seeing iembot accounts from all over the place. Kind of annoying.
After stupid vote against their interests, anti-socialism MAGA farmers ask for socialism.
Don't let him near the winners trophy or you'll never see it again.
Martial arts for children is a great way to get so many benefits for them. My son practiced karate for 10 years starting when he was six.
"Reality has a liberal bias"
Good morning. After you've read about why renaming the DOD is the sign of silly and unserious nation, you can read my newest about why the world won't take Trump and America seriously anymore: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
seems to me that roberts has decided that it is the job of SCOTUS to protect the administration’s exercise of radical executive power irrespective of what the law says
surely we can come up with something better for 7 billion people than being lorded over by a bunch of plundering elderly murder and torture enthusiasts who whisper to each other about printing spare organs so they can immiserate others in perpetuity
Man, I really hope people are enjoying their ability to say "retard" in public again. Was it worth it?
Meanwhile, back in reality…
Ossoff on RFK Jr: "Absolutely he should resign. And he never should've been confirmed to begin with... in any normal Senate, he never would've gotten so much as a hearing. This is someone who throughout his public life has embraced just about every piece of quackery & pseudoscience he's come across"
The biggest scandal in US public life *ought* to be that we are the richest country in history & yet our infrastructure sucks, our transportation choices suck, our cities suck, our healthcare sucks, our public administration sucks, & in dozens of little ways, our daily lives suck.
Now we have to hope commercial health insurance companies and Medicare don't forbid paying for vaccines if our providers use state alliance recommendations. And sue them if they do.
I know, I know, but: The president of the US saying, literally, "we're going in" in reference to sending the military to an American city for no reason beyond terrorizing the local population should be the most immediately impeachable shit imaginable
That about sums it up.
Our oldest granddaughter has her first day of kindergarten today as well. 😍
If you're 60, 69.1% of all job growth since your birth occurred under Democratic administrations. If you're 45, that number is 74.7%. If you're under 28, the number is 100%. Happy Labor Day.
Graham Platner, an oyster farmer from Maine, announced a bid for the seat of incumbent GOP Sen. Susan Collins. His goal? To “claw back wealth that was created by the labor and the consumption of working class Americans who have not shared in the riches they helped build.”
"Here’s the truth we cannot escape: If Ashli Babbitt is honored, then few things are sacred. If loyalty to the Constitution and an attempt to overthrow it are treated as equal, we lose the very meaning of service." www.thebulwark.com/p/honoring-a...
This is exactly how a large number of Americans are. Vindictive and cruel to anyone not in their group.
Science: Trump supporters are assholes.
Promises made to these companies are why Trump is killing America’s investments in Solar and Wind energy. He’s keeping us in the dinosaur days of dirty energy because they paid him bribes to keep us behind in energy technology and keep big oil rolling in the dough!
Mental health? You mean those with mental health problems that Republicans won't take the guns away from? That mental health?
It's literally the only thing conservatives ever offer after a mass shooting event.
Dear people who are saying that the CDC directors who quit yesterday should have “stayed and fought”, With all due respect, you do not grasp the magnitude of the problem of RFK Jr. He is asking them to do unethical and immoral things that will actively harm the people of the United States. 1/3
"The oft-mentioned tyranny being opposed by gun owners is really just the sense that the wrong people are encroaching on the privileges and prerogatives of whiteness." From 2020:
FUCK YEAH SCIENCE arstechnica.com/science/2025...
I want you to think about what it means for the criminal president to be the primary source of economic instability, disorder and chaos while at the same time you, a normal law-abiding person, are doing everything you can do get ahead or just tread water. Do you feel resentful? You should.
The fact that this administration is hell bent on punishing Kilmar Abrego Garcia while rewarding Ghislane Maxwell tells you all you need to know about their violent racism and misogyny.
Stagflation in some form is coming. The trillion-dollar question is whether inflation becomes entrenched paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-econom...
The PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA is planning to use the US military to invade US cities that vote Democratic because, in addition to raping children, two things that animate him most are rectifying narcissistic injury and hating Black people. Call your reps 202-224-3121 #RemoveTrump
Having Hakeem Jeffries in a position of leadership in this moment is like intentionally having an alarm clock that doesn’t actually wake you up.
The article was fun and interesting but any couple that argues over dishwashing loading needs some therapy.
We'll see if this causes as much agita among the elite classes as the proposal for a few state-run grocery stores in poor parts of NYC.
Do you know how insane and infuriating it is to live in a country where one party claims, with media and public support, the mantle of being the ‘tough on crime’ party while its leader openly calls for convicted criminals to be released from prison ‘or else’?
Former National Guard Vice Chief Major General Randy E. Manner says deploying the Guard to D.C. will ruin how the average American views the military.
California has walked the walk on independent redistricting at the state level for 15 years. But we cannot unilaterally disarm while other states throw out the rules to gain power. With one vote, Californians can punch back and also demand nationwide independent redistricting.
This is the way the bubble ends: Not with a pop, but with smog and brownouts. [Disappointed that some readers didn't recognize the TS Eliot ref] paulkrugman.substack.com/p/what-happe...
"Newsom’s threat to retaliate in kind is not a divisive attack on good governance. It is, instead, the only hope for democracy. Bipartisanship right now is appeasement. Democrats cannot and should not hide behind neutrality and fairness as MAGA incinerates the remaining tatters of our republic."
Do you agree with this post? It’s what the Nazis in Germany did.
The US is being left behind -- in a clean, digital, electric world it is erecting walls & tariffs, cutting itself off from the world, constricting its own power supply, and tying itself to fossil fuel combustion & autocratic fossil fuel regimes. This is what you get when you elect reactionaries.
It's impossible to exaggerate how much of the reactionary backlash of the last few years has been driven by wealthy bosses who believe that their employees have gotten too uppity.
The moment he named his platform “Truth Social” we were headed this way.
Trump's BLS pick EJ Antoni has said that Social Security, America's greatest anti-poverty program, is a "Ponzi scheme" that needs to be sunset. Reminder that BLS data is what determines annual cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security benefits. This is a five-alarm fire.
You might ask this question about E.J. Antoni: How did a guy with zero academic publications become Chief Economist at a "think tank" with a $100 million yearly budget? Because the Heritage Foundation is just a bunch of hacks, and that's who the right values and elevates.
You can't teach U.S. history without "divisive" narratives. Slavery wasn't "unifying." The Japanese incarceration wasn't "unifying." The anti-immigrant Operation Wetback (real name) wasn't "unifying." It's history's job to tell the truth, not cover up past racism to pave the way for future racism.
This guy needs to reexamine his life choices. 19 and 31?
📌He’s a 79-year-old morbidly obese, sickly old man with swollen ankles and accelerating dementia. Time is not on his side. It is his most dogged adversary. And it’s running out for this terrible man.
Clearly this is not about making DC, or any of us, safer.
I deleted my Nextdoor account because of all those crazy people.
It was precisely Watergate that set off a multi-decade effort on the right to protect Republicans from ever again facing real accountability. The experience of facing consequences for their actions was deeply traumatic for them.
I know we have seen a lot of agencies being hobbled and dismantled over the last six months. But the coup happening at the FBI should worry you the most asharangappa.substack.com/p/the-fbi-as...
Really frustrating seeing journalists continue using “peace deal.” This is such an insult to Ukrainians. What “peace deal” implies is rewarding a terrorist state committing genocide and an illegal invasion by an aggressor.
If he gets it then it's worth about as much as a goldfish prize at the county fair.
Americans are relearning the lesson we learned during the Gilded Age of the late 1890s, when robber barons ran the government and the economy for their own benefit: Oligarchy is incompatible with the common good. I'm hopeful we'll respond with a new progressive movement.
Small town safety is a myth.
I am still astonished that ANY person on planet earth would choose to vote for that asshole. The most infantile, petulant, ridiculous, farcical, ignoramus to ever exist. The sheer stupidly of it all is what galls me the most. The stupidity.
When they show you who they are, believe them
One of the most idiotic policies for schools, ever.
Trump will veto and Republicans won't override.
Republicans in Texas just rolled out their proposed Congressional map that cut 5 Democratic seats out of thin air. Let’s be clear: these maps are not about representation, it’s a power grab to silence voters and suppress votes. (1/2)
I got about 8 people in my inner monologue.
Ds should make clear they will impeach him if Rs confirm… they will not be done with this
the one thing i genuinely did not anticipate from this administration was its vicious, know nothing hostility to any and everything that might even be adjacent to science and scientific research. they genuinely one to destroy the entirety of the nation’s research capacity. and for what, exactly?
It was all so hollow.
On sale now; releasing 9-9
ICE has detained multiple U.S. citizens under new rules. Brian Gavidia was questioned by ICE. They returned his phone, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗗. “I stated I was American. He still attacked me. We are not safe, guys, not safe in America today.” Citizens are not safe. www.cnn.com/2025/06/27/u...
Get just a taste of this “golden age”: GM profits down 35%. Trump’s tariffs costing Stellantis hundreds of millions. Beef prices highest since the '80s. Trump’s approval hits a second-term low at 37%—only president beating him is himself from the first term.
Groceries reached record highs in 2025. MAGA my ass!
The oil industry buys off Congress. No action on climate. The NRA buys off Congress. No action on guns. Insurance companies buy off Congress. No action on health care. The list goes on and on. Money in politics is the root of our dysfunction.
Forget about what year it is. What century is it? nashvillebanner.com/2025/07/20/d...
UN Secretary‑General António Guterres: "Countries that cling to fossil fuels are not protecting their economies – they are sabotaging them. Driving up costs. Undermining competitiveness. Locking-in stranded assets. And missing the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century."
hegseth makes my blood boil. he's a boorish bigot and an all-around idiot.
We are witnessing, in real time, an entire political party shielding the most notorious sex trafficking ring of the modern era. This isn’t silence — it’s complicity.
UnitedHealthcare is raising premiums for policyholders in New York and Washington after spending $9B on stock buybacks last year. Healthcare companies are robbing you blind to enrich their executives and shareholders. This is why we need Medicare for All.
So just to be clear - the “protect the kids” party is now shutting the government down to protect sexual predators? Do we have this right?
Stop falling for the trap of latching on to the price of an item (eggs, beef…) as the message. The issue is affordability. From 2001-2023 wages failed to keep up with rising costs. Medical premiums rose 301% Travel expenses were up 170%. Rent grew by 131%. The cost of raising children grew by 107%.
Trump has scrapped the Labor Department's only job training program for low-income seniors, just after his Big Ugly Bill imposed new hurdles for nearly 9 million Medicaid recipients between the ages of 50 and 64. The cruelty is the point.
One side wants to give you free healthcare and free childcare. The other side has already taken healthcare away from millions and doesn’t care if your children are murdered at school.
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