No, the LA senator and chair of health committee. He is a physician. He was the deciding vote to advance Kennedy's nomination, despite misgivings, because of "assurances" from RFK that he wouldn't do anything drastic wrt vaccines.

Fuck Bill Cassidy. I hope he never has a good night's sleep again.

I've been reading Lucky Loser, and wow there's so much more failure than I imagined

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

every now and then I step back a bit and admire just how truly batshit insane the situation the country is in truly is

Yup. They knew voting no would be a terrible look, so they made an effort to avoid having to vote at all. Now that the vote has been forced, it's a reluctant yes. We shouldn't let them off the hook for obstructing the vote.

But these are not positions that candidates are actually running on. Accepting right-wing framing of progressive policies just cannibalizes the left.

When you cede the framing to the opposition you've already lost the debate. You're no longer playing on home turf. I'm not sure why Dems fail to realize this.

framing about the systemic problems with our democracy that liberals seem unwilling to reckon with on a broad scale. Again, it's a different problem from Jim Crow, but I think I can relate to what you're describing, on some level.

contribute to many of the negative legislative and political discourse in the country, and Utah becomes one of "the bad states". But we aren't a monolith. I certainly don't vote for our reps, and don't subscribe to their ideologies. But recognizing purple within red requires a different kind of

It's very hard for the average person to separate anger at outcomes from anger at the represented populace. I'm not from the south, but I am from Utah, where a Republican supermajority imposes their views on us and gerrymanders the shit out of the state. The result is that Utah's representstives

it's stunning the way you almost forget how many opportunities this corrupt mess of a country had to put an unremarkable grifter away before he could do significant harm

Why doesn't humanity ever get tired of this "Blame the next generation" nonsense? It's a tale as old as time.

Once again, I sincerely hope that Bill Cassidy never has a good night's sleep again.

Giving @nytpitchbot.bsky.social a run for its money here.

turf* damn it

For a far-right ideologue, "Prove me wrong" comes along with the intention to refuse to acknowledge any proof of an idea one disagrees with. The point is to put on a show of not being proven wrong, and to use this bluff to convince people that the far right wins the debate.

In which he deflected questions he didn't like until he could find someone he could laugh at the expense of and turn the humiliation viral. He was never about civil argument or mutual understanding, he was about "owning the libs" on friendly terf for clicks.

What made his argument civil? I'm genuinely baffled by this repeated take that Kirk was a champion of open dialogue and free speech. Even if his viewpoints weren't reprehensible (which they were), he built his empire on a McCarthy style watchlist and "debate" tours

"Calvinball with a twist" strikes again.

Seems this court is concerned with only one type of irreparable harm.

I sense an "FBI Informant Hat" coming on.

Reporters like to give him ideas because they thrive on the drama and the rapid news cycle. They're addicts to the pace and scale of insanity, so they'll throw out bait for Trump as often as possible if it means they can get another fix.

A major goal of the "flood the zone" strategy is normalization. As soon as we stop saying, "He cannot legally do that" because we expect the worst from them, we're doing the work for them.

All of this is awful enough anyway, do people really need to make themselves *more* miserable with defeatism?

I am a *lawyer who practices federal law.* Several times a week I see a headline that makes me think "there's no way the President can do that, right?" and I look into it and it turns out that maybe he can because Congress ceded some of its power in the What's the Worst That Could Happen Act of 1983

Fuck Bill Cassidy.

Why these two countries, in particular?

Somehow, Biden was too senile to have any clue what was going on during his presidency but also aware and conniving enough to hatch this master plan.

Well, this aged well.

My prediction is that in that scenario, he blames the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which puts out employment data. Calls them corrupt, run by Democrats, out to get him. Fires people there, insists their numbers cannot be trusted, White House puts out its own fictitious data to make Trump look good

Did he forget who he actually ran against?