cbw94533.bsky.social

A jury's power to acquit (not necessarily to convict) is the most unchecked power that exists in our whole system of government. No judge can overturn it. No prosecutor or president can challenge it. Nobody can punish them for it. They don't have to explain why. End of story, case over.

These seem to be the three legs to the Trump regime's political stool, if you consider Trump, Vought, and Miller as the three centers of power:

Corruption (Trump)
Extreme conservative ideology (Vought)
Fascism (Miller)

Philip Larkin’s this be the verse mangled into Ozymandias, the text reads They Oz you up, your mandyias. They may not mean to, but they do. They give you vast and trunkless legs A sunken shattered visage too. But they were Ozzed up in their turn By Mandyias upon the sand Who half the time had wrinkled lips And half in sneering cold command. Oz hands on mandyias to man. Like mighty works atop a shelf Look on them early as you can Ye mighty and despair yourself

The Kavanaugh stop, 50 days later "What a sick world." And, for paid subscribers: Closing my tabs.

Tuesday will be 50 days since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican appointees issued an order allowing the Trump administration, essentially, to target working-class Latinos in its massive immigration raids.

What has happened since has been as bad, if not worse, than experts warned on Sept. 8.

Your regular reminder that we desperately need to overturn Citizens United and get big money out of politics.

It is among the worst Supreme Court decisions in history.

It corrupts our political system every day.

100%. Tear down the ballroom, dig up his patio & replant the area with rosebushes similar to those he destroyed. If he builds that ridiculous arch, take a wrecking ball to it. Additionally, pull down that hideous gold stuff he's plastered all over the oval office!! The WH is NOT a monument to trump😡

We’re not dealing with brilliant strategists cleverly laying traps, we’re dealing with impulsive whiners whose advantage is contempt for laws, norms, and morality.

They’re not pulling some elaborate trick, they’re just willing—even eager—to do things regular, principled people consider off limits.

Find Out Why Health Insurance Denied Your Claim You likely have the right to access records that explain why your insurer denied your claim or prior authorization request. Use ProPublica’s free tool to generate a letter requesting your claim file f...

Your periodic reminder that you have the right to find out why your health insurer denied your claim.

We built a tool to help you do it: projects.propublica.org/claimfile/

I have been debating conservatives for 4 decades and the only thing consistent about them is that they think it’s unfair, evil even, to remember what they previously said and repeat their words.

Global sex trafficking ring. And it wasn't in the basement of a pizza shop.

*global hegemon destroys its entire network of post war diplomacy and trade that gave it control of the world economy for the last 80 years while liquidating its own bureaucracy, world renowned education system, and engineering a collapse of its public health system*

yeah 50bps should do it

"By the Waters of Babylon", a short story by Stephen Vincent Benét, I first redd in high school. I think about it often now.

The single most important thing to understand about digital futurism is this:

When the digital future that Sam Altman ( or Elon, or Andreessen, etc) predicts fails to materialize, he doesn’t have to give the money back.

listen as somebody who has a lot of really good ideas

ideas are fundamentally worthless. sorry. we give WAY too much credence to people who have them. yeah, even good ones, dude. the only thing I respect is execution. whether it's in myself or somebody else. an idea executed is worth something

There was no concept of “illegal immigration” when the constitution was written. If you were here you were allowed to be here.

It is an absolute necessity that Democrats redistrict this way. Every state legislator Democrat who gives up the slightest bit of "fairness" on redistricting is inexcusably assisting the Republican party's assault on democracy.

In honor of World Emoji Day, I bring you the American diet by % of calories

🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞
🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞
🍞🍞🍞🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽
🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽
🌽🌽🌽🌽🍭🍭🍭🍭🍭🍭
🍭🍭🍭🍭🍭🍭🍭🍭🍭🥛
🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🐄🐄
🐄🐄🐄🐄🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔
🐖🐖🐖🐖🥔🥔🥔🍊🍊🍊
🥦🥦🥜🥜🥚🥚🧈🧈🧃🐟

HT @waiterich.bsky.social, whose land-use graphic I ripped off

the only thing close is national service. I do think everyone should have a "gap year" (or two) after finishing HS and it can be spent either in the military or other service.

we need to rub up against things that aren't the same.

What voters think nativism will mean: stop giving benefits to others, so you can focus resources on citizens

What it actually means in practice: stop giving citizens benefits, so you can focus resources on punishing others

Thanks for that link!

Thank you for including this transcript. I don't have sound enabled.

Nice one-sentence summary!

Our version of the poem is more like "First they came for the labor unionists and I said nothing, then they came for the teachers/professors and I said nothing, then they came for the librarians/historians and I said nothing, then they came for me"

The answer to any version of “why doesn’t America have…?” is white people would rather not have it than see a black person benefit from it.

The clearest conclusion I’ve come to doing a DOGE podcast for 4 months is that they’re not just incompetent at cutting waste and fraud, but that was never the real goal. And it’s vital to get folks who share that goal to recognize that.

Anyway it’s a stupid thing for an incredibly powerful country to collapse because a tiny set of influential professionals developed a set of norms that created a loophole for lawbreaking, but it’s also stupid for people to die because a tiny piece of their car randomly failed, and that happens too

ya I guess the difference to me is that while eugenics is a phony pseudoscience and monstrous, it's at least based on the idea of genetics, which is a real thing. By contrast wellness/anti-vaxxer/whatever-we're-calling-this is equally monstrous but not based on a real thing but on made up bullshit

i have no doubt that this is actually one of the biggest reasons behind DOGE. he wants to get his hands on all the data he can to feed into developing AI on a level that beats everyone else. others simply dont have access to that sheer, high level amount of data. it’s terrifying.