People who can interpret statistics?
People who can interpret statistics?
Approx. 20% of 500 members is âa LOTâ?
No, 86% âof those who voted among the 500âŚâ
If the expert legal authorities find sufficient evidence to make a case, then yes, go after them and try to uphold the rule of law But please refrain from interpreting complex legal definitions that youâve just leaned of & then try to confidently argue your interpretation as if it matters.
I've already said: War crimes, clearly. But if every instance of large and indiscriminate civilian casualties is "genocide," the word will have less meaning and world leaders will be more reluctant to use it than they already are.
Somehow our diseased information environment has produced the net outcome that *the pandemic is considered a political problem for Dems*, not the party that lied about it & got people killed at every juncture. The party that tried, but not perfectly, to save lives, is being forced to apologize.
COVID was Dems' fault because they acknowledged it. Any societal disruption could've been avoided if only we pretended. First time US media and voting public didn't hold the president responsible for a bad thing on his watch. Even as he messed it up on live TV. Nothing I can think of comes close.
As I wrote in the book. This is the exhausting part of the day where people send me stuff that's new to *them* and therefore think no one's ever thought of it:
"Why are you lying?" Because it wins votes. "Lying is morally wrong." We've allowed the media to promote lying. The media want chaos, that's novelty, literally News. But they used to silence liars. Now lying is monetised. "Lying is morally wrong. Your lies are immoral. You are immoral."
No, I don't think that'll solve everything. In fact, I think "that won't solve everything" is a very bad, way too common reason to not do something. I think treating obvious lies as lies, and serial bad faith as bad faith, would be better on its own. Waste less time, focus more on the real problem.
I have a language suggestion, which everyone can do, but is primarily for media members who value truth and Democratic politicians: Instead of asking and adjudicating if an obvious lie is false, make the fact that it's false your premise. "Why are you lying?" instead of "some say that's not true."
Why doesn't anyone make a big deal of Trump not divesting himself of his assets and investments like past presidents did? Seems like there's a different set of rules and norms for Trump.
This morning (9/1) at 8 AM feds pulled over a couple at 18th & Park NW. They smashed the window, dragged the husband out & arrested him. When a community member stopped to record they were grabbed & threatened w/ pepper spray by this piece of shit. @mayorbowser.bsky.social do you welcome this too?
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.
I still can't believe the "inject disinfectant" bit didn't end him. Even with MAGA. Our language is insufficient to describe the idiocy of this time period.
Michelle Obama: âEat more veggies and exercise!â RFK Jr: **bans vaccines** Tom Bartlett: âThese are the same thing.â
Someone please kill me right now.
Guy who must be constantly be the center of attention and always needs to be in the spotlight has basically up and vanished for six days and the BIDEN IS TOO OLD crowd in the media is not interested in asking why. Got it.
"Fun really is the name of the game for Trump & co. Itâs fun for them to see a majority-Democratic city like DC live in fear of violence/deportation, to flood the trains/buses with armed law enforcement just because they can, to unleash troops who understand that they will not be held accountable."
Judge Sooknanan continues her monologue: And so, absent action and intervention by the court, all of those children would have been returned to Guatemala, potentially to extremely dangerous situations.
remember how on COVID Day we could all tell he wasn't writing the tweets
Stu, itâs a legal standard that requires very specific evidence of what someone was *thinking* (what was their intent) when they performed an action - e.g. was it their specific intent to bomb a hospital in order to cause the death of innocent civilians? Or was the intent something less than that?
Mens Rea en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocid...
Tom here wrote in a book a lot warning about cherry-picking experts and the politicization of intelligence. (I also warned about Wikipedia, too.) /1
Take your comments about Kamalaâs Gaza response and look in the mirror and ask yourself why youâre still repeating this nonsense
In â24, disproportionate outrage toward Dems (especially compared to the insanity from Râs) weakened Dâs in the long run. Media amplifies every D criticism no matter how trivial, which is why nitpicking/exaggerating flaws in Dem candidates ultimately does more harm than good if you want them to win.
Iâm sorry youâre not reading well today, hope you read well again soon!
These people are in a cult and live inside a batshit alternate reality and are trying to get as many Americans as possible to join them inside it.
Raddatz asks how anyone could object to the National Guard in DC because carjackings are down 87%. Brilliant. If they hermetically sealed all DC residents inside their homes, they could get that stat down to nothing at all. Should we do that, Martha?
Our news media are so broken. There's a way to challenge someone in an interview without looking like you're the press secretary for the other side. ABC's Martha Raddatz badly misses the mark. "Why fight with the president?" she asks.
No one understands what youâre saying. Everyone else is rightly focused on the enormous piano hanging over the head of our country. But go on and keep criticizing Dems as if they raped and pillaged Gaza themselves. Fucking tired of this nonsense. Get with the fight or go away
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.
@nytimes.com we get it, you canât capitulate fast enough to the self-described âdictatorâ
Gavin Newsom is exactly right, Trump is doing everything we told you he would do and more. It's time to wake the hell up, America. Authoritarianism is here.
[Bill Cassidy looking down at corpse of chicken he has fucked to death]: That chicken should not have been fucked that hard
"...healthcare they can afford." THAT right there is the problem. Universal Healthcare shouldn't cost us outside of our taxes... stop looking to make money off of suffering...
Inhuman. âI donât have any choiceâ is a lie.
over the last week, several political scientists i trust have declared trump a dictator and that america is not a full functioning democracy anymore. see here: goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/where-we-a... donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-author... i think making a list clarifies this:
They're now saying it out loud: The Administration's goal is to undo the political independence that Congress granted the Fed, so that the President can directly set rates.
Donald Trump recently said that he has âthe rightâ to do anything he wantsânot unlike the antagonistic Homelander of the TV show "The Boys"âand his followers are determined to prove him right. www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
'depoliticization' works by amplifying so much noise that regular good faith people can no longer tell what is true and what is not and what is good and what is bad and they just disengage and let the leader do whatever they want as long as their approval # is high enough. 2/2
Just be afraid. All the time. Of the dumbest man in the country, maybe world
My kingdom for a transaction that does not result in more time spent deleting customer satisfaction survey reminders than the actual transaction took.
This is a real photograph of Washington, DC this week, where the United States president has ordered military occupation in peacetime, and ordered the display of colossal portraits of himself. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
The fact that so many people here think that avoiding jargon and in-group phrases that are so clearly associated with left-wing Democrats would make Democrats sound like â1990 Republicansâ is part if the problem
I'm not sure Americans have a frame of reference for the sort of gangster government we have now. Any objective functions it performs are an afterthought. The law only used as a tool to punish political enemies and ignored in every other instance
Iâm fatigued by the sheer number of people who fail to see your point. I get the appeal of the âbig tentâ but donât understand why Dem voters canât see the strategic power of voting in lockstep and sorting out the nuances later. YOU GET TO MAKE ZERO POLICY IF YOUâRE NOT AT THE TABLE.
My current favorite bit of right-wing Christian hypocrisy is Ken Paxton, a man whose wife is divorcing him for adultery, forcing Texas schools to unconstitutionally post "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery." www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...
Most striking thing about this clip is not Trump floating the idea of being a dictator (again) and claiming some want that. The most striking thing is his sneering dismissal of the counter argument "freedom." Only modern US president to explicitly oppose freedom. Should be the basis of opposition.
We are very far off the cliff here folks. đşđ¸
Disappointing from Warren. Ds are obviously getting talking points from leadership on this and itâs just such bad messaging. Itâs an easy case to make that he wants to be a dictator â fundamentally un-Americanâ and has been acting accordingly. That message makes the big picture clearer.
note how Trump on a daily basis is trying to normalize the idea that he's a dictator
Most folks seem to live in a fantasy world already anyway, so that lines up.
Methinks you havenât read Politics and the English language, yes. Check it out
Whatâs the major malfunction here? Iâm not suggesting âbanning wordsâ, Iâm just suggesting we follow the advice of Orwell when he said: âNever use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.â
Yeah, thatâll show me
If you actually engaged with the issue instead of just trying to âownâ someone you might learn something!
This DOES NOT and CANNOT criminalize flag burning. Flag burning is constitutionally protected speech. If you actually read the "order" all it does is tell Pam Bondi to be sure to prosecute any cases that fall into an exception to the ruling. It's toothless and performative (Links/deets follow! đ§ľ)
Kamala Harris nailed it. We warned everyone the stakes were too high to hand the guy built for Project 2025 another shot â but noooo. Ever have one of those mornings you just want to throw the window open and yell, FUCK YOU ALL? Yeah, that.
Says the person who clearly hasnât read Politics & The English Lanaguge. Read it, itâs not very long, and itâs free. Amazing what you can learn by not assuming you know everything! www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-f...
Enjoy your fantasy world đ
Stretching reality to fit your narrative is bad
Are you having a stroke?
@60minutes.bsky.social what are we doing here? Credulous interviews about catholic âmiraclesâ in 2025? Really?
I cannot improve upon Orwell, no
You donât know how right you are
Why do you twist reality to fit your narrative. No one ever said ban certain words. Jesus this place is such a waste of fucking time.
Read Orwell if you donât want to listen to me repeating him, heâll tell you that obscure political language is bad. www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-f...
âTheyâre throwing the entire federal apparatus at one father of three to prove that no one should dare challenge their authority.â
Steve, be well
I realize that anything new to *you* never existed before, but my hope that Democrats avoid jargon and academically stilted language in talking to voters is part of a general effort I've been making ever since forcing students to read Orwell on the English language. /3x
Thatâs funny, that doesnât sound like something Iâd be. But you seem to know everything, good for you.
Some, like Bluesky darling Jamelle Bouie, became so irate at the existence of multiple examples of this speech by elected Dem politician, then blocked my account, because it apparently triggers them. I will hold space for him and others during this difficult time.
Again, i only started in on this argument because multiple âjournalistsâ on here kept arrogantly asking for examples where a Dem politician used these silly phrases, as if it was unheard of. Well, I unfortunately heard and recall it. Next, people moved the goal posts, saying the same thing you did
Heâs correct. Where and when do the revisions to LGBT end? Itâs after Q, the answer is LGBTQ. I feel like Iâm stuck in a bad The People's Front of Judea v. Judea Peopleâs Front skit. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbog...
âGetting ratioedâ means nothing when all the comments are the same drivel
Lady, just read Orwell and picture a world where you donât know everything. Christ, not everyone you disagree with is on âthe rightâ
More goalpost moving. "Name a Dem who talks this way." "AOC" "No, no, not her, someone else" Because, you know, no one really knows who AOC is, which is why she is readily recognized just by her initials
âNever use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.â -George Orwell, Politics and the English Language Too bad you werenât there to tell Orwell âForeignâŚEnglish?â
Yes, as I said to another user, this has been a problem far longer than the word âcisgenderâ has even been in use. Do we not teach âPolitics and the English Languageâ in school anymore? Free copy: www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-f...
It is embarrassing interacting with your like, yes, quite. Like debating a child
And there is the moving of goalposts, yet a fucking gain. First itâs no examples exist, then itâs not fitting your narrow definition. Go away
www.sbs.com.au/voices/artic...
âMelt downâ working overtime there
Yeah, you canât look at anyoneâs post history or anything. Stop being lazy in your little bubble
Iâm not reposting it again, go find it if you care so much, itâs not hard and it didnât take very long. Jesus.
And yet when presented with evidence that they do, you say itâs fringe, not representative of the whole. Iâm telling you, IT DOESNâT MATTER! Itâs been used in the past, once is too much. Might as well throw other self-owns by dem politicians, like âdefund the policeâ and âdemocratic socialistâ
Youâre trying to argue âbut I have the data!â In an argument that is not about fucking data. Jesus.
I just read it, it does not address my central point. Using this language, at all, is bad enough. Itâs even worse when Dem acolytes on here and elsewhere now parrot this confusing language over and over again because itâs special to them and their in-group. Fucking fight fascism not this nonsense
Yeah, Dems are sabotaging themselves with right-wing liesâŚyou know, the super clever right-wing who is not incompetent at all, they planted it so deep that one of the most popular Dem governors fell for it too, oh the humanity! www.politico.com/news/2025/02...
Stop being intentionally dim, I know youâre trying to show youâre a good member of the very online left but that doesnât change anything. Orwell wrote about this phenomenon long ago. Write so people grasp what you mean, instead of dressing it up in terms that obscure meaning.
