Something the US needs to accept too is that without a large-scale correction imposing consequences on a large number of people, the crisis of governance here will continue indefinitely

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[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.] JANET: Ugh... LIZ: What's up? JANET: I am so bored of cooking peas! LIZ: Have you tried... AI peas? JANET: AI peas? LIZ: They're peas with AI! [Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI]. LIZ: Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas JANET: What LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines] Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas? [Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it] LIZ: Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine [Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas] LIZ: With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas! JANET: What LIZ: Shut up LIZ: Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow From opening the bag of peas to boiling the peas to eating the peas To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means. JANET: Is it really necessary to- LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]: THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET [Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan: AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas. [Ends]

Every ad now

One of the defining feelings in American life, for decades now, is elites doing plainly criminal shit and nothing at all happening as a result. It is deranging in a way that virtually nothing else is. Media fixates on perceived street lawlessness but shit like this matters much more in my opinion.

Important to understand the Epstein stuff and the fascism and the corruption are, in a lot of ways, really all the same story from different angles: powerful men who can and do abuse vulnerable people around them because they can, and because systems of elite accountability catastrophically failed

Also, very funny how the Dems keep trying to do this “release the Epstein files!” thing as a naked base pander in mimicry of the other side’s conspiratorial muckraking, and then the files actually do get released, and it’s like “oh wait Trump really is all over these things, he really did it huh”

This is what's so aggravating — yes, it was not working in extracting a policy concession but it was working in *driving down trump's numbers and provoking GOP infighting* which is what's important if you take Dem rhetoric about the perils of MAGA remotely seriously.

Imagine if Democrats relentlessly hammered him in these moments instead of assuming nothing will ever stick to him. Imagine if we demanded that Republicans answer why the President is throwing Gatsby parties and calling football plays instead of negotiating. Nah, we should definitely fold instead.

AT X.com @primediscussion I know people seemingly don't care about this anymore (like at all), but one of the biggest tolls paid by the last 2 decades of politics is a generation of children witnessing outwardly vile, unkind and dishonest people and behaviors repeatedly rewarded.

I have shed tears repeatedly over this

I don't want you chuckling and repeating canned applause lines, I want you filled with righteous incandescent rage at the assholes who wrecked the country because they were bored and saw too many memes

Their message is that they are holding the lives of poor americans hostage to bring Dems to the table, like villains in a movie shooting hostages to show they mean business.

They've literally set themselves up as the baddies.

The problem, again, is elected Dems & candidates DON'T actually spend very much time at all talking about these things. Right-wing media does. And Dems ultimately have no control over what right-wing media is going to talk about.

the democratic party’s basic problem is it has almost no control over how its message reaches the ears of voters, especially outside of presidential election years. but rather than devote serious time, attention and cash to that problem its consultants and pundits want to fight factional battles

The tariffs aren't quite a Trump v. United States issue but still, I don't think even at the time we fully appreciated how that decision just destroyed the country's centuries-old political order, ushering in regime-based strongman politics.

Photos: White House East Wing Demolished For Trump’s Ballroom The privately funded ballroom will be approximately 90,000 square feet, much larger than the White House itself.

Thinking a lot recently about the outrage over Lizzo playing James Madison's flute

ordinary americans are filming ice agents and trying to save their neighbors. for all the hemming and hawing during 2024 about how democracy was an elite concern, the elites gave up far more quickly than average people.

basically all this shit is Roberts' fault, because the immunity made Trump feel like he could break the law as much as he wants without consequences. bsky.app/profile/jayw...

There is no difference between Trump destroying the East Wing and using a wrecking ball on the Washington Monument or Smithsonian. Just because he (temporarily) lives there doesn't give him the right to demolish the White House without Congressional approval.

There's no limit to how much money Trump could demand from the government for various pretextual reasons. Why stop at $320 million--a third of a billion dollars?

if the president does something so awful it would be indecent to describe and ask about then you very obviously need to describe and ask about it, thats the entire job

Swearing in isn’t some ceremony. You aren’t a member of Congress until it happens. He knows that.

No phones, no staff, nothing.

I had to escort her into the Capitol on Wed bc Capitol police must treat her as a public visitor until she’s sworn in. And solo visitors aren’t allowed during shutdown!

We often say Congress has the power of the purse, a framing coming from the Federalist Papers. But to be technical, it is federal law that has the power of the purse. Appropriations bills are laws! Rather than a fight between branches, it's better to think of this as a question of the rule of law.

Remember how we just went through a multi-week newscycle where Democrats and liberals were lambasted for their "violent" political rhetoric, which included Fox hosts claiming that only one political party was demonizing their political opponents as evil? And how libs needs to lower the temperature?

The Supreme Court’s majority right wing indicated in oral arguments that they think racism is over on the same day that the vice president defended the “I love Hitler” guy, and that the NYT reported that the current administration plans to accept only white, English-speaking refugees.

Federal agents invaded even the offices of The Crisis and the National Association for the advancement of colored people and asked searching questions: " just what, after all, were our objects and activities?” I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, “We are seeking to have the constitution of the United states thoroughly and completely enforced.” It took some ingenuity, even for Southerners, to make treason out of that.

How W. E. B. Du Bois responded to government policing of "anti-American" sentiment during the 1910s:

"I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, 'We are seeking to have the Constitution of the United States thoroughly and completely enforced.' ”

We should have ended it all when he started openly monetizing the presidency at his DC hotel & sending his kids to represent the 🇺🇸 government at official international events. But he is One Special Boy and we appear to no longer be a serious country interested in the rule of law or the Constitution.

Brett Kavanaugh assures me this is the sort of minor inconvenience that shouldn't disturb anyone.

The Speaker of the House has firm views that Bad Bunny is a terrible pick for singing at the Super Bowl, but hasn't had time to watch the President's speech to our military leadership or form an opinion whether furloughed federal workers should be paid or Illinois' governor should be thrown in jail.

one thing the liberal political class never learn is that basic-bitch voters don't perceive your sophisticated triangulation as giving the people what they want, they perceive it as you admitting the other guys were right all along — not just policy-wise but emotionally

it makes me incandescently furious that roberts invented the idea of banning coercive conditions on funding to kill medicaid expansion and refuses to do a single thing about the fact that the trump administration's entire deal is "coercive conditions on funding"