David Atkins

The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

Old enough to remember that a former DNC press secretary put together a project, in 2021, to name and ostracize Trump’s operatives. Folks from Jake Tapper to Democratic elected officials piled onto him so furiously in response that the plan died in the crib.

Welp.

I would rather people think that ChatGPT helped me write than give up my glorious em-dash.

I have used it for decades—and you will pry it out of my cold dead hands before I use parentheses or (shudder) commas.

Notice it's almost always wealthy white people pushing this faux-leftist slop for their own self benefit. This doesn't just apply to nimbyism, either.

Remember that Ghislaine Maxwell did not just procure children for Epstein to rape--though that is bad enough. She actively participated in the rapes, too.

yes they do in fact, that’s the thing about social media, it has cooked the brains of elites most comprehensively of all

There are a lot of great responses to this about how Dem establishment and donors kneecap and refuse funding to actual hard-charging progressives.

But it would also help if more of the anti-establishment left were constructivist instead of deconstructionist. No more attention to the Tulsis & BJGs.

If you're ruthless for the right, you get money put behind you. If you're ruthless for the left, you get money put against you.

America First Legal got >$50 million in funding. A left version of the same would get attacked by Dem orgs and donors, and everyone associated with it blacklisted forever.

what was stephen miller doing when trump was out of office? he was receiving more money than any of us could ever dream of to create legal bills for the dems while living comfortably and not having to worry about health insurance

thats why there isnt a stephen miller of the left

This thread

Wall Street Journal headline and deck: "New York Shooting Puts Mamdani on the Spot Over Policing Views: The killing of four people in a Midtown office building rattled a city where mass attacks are rare and violent crime has declined."

It's really weird to demand accountability from a NYC mayoral candidate for a deadly NYC shooting rather than the current NYC mayor, an ex-cop who campaigned on a "tough on crime" platform and promptly got indicted for crimes

The news is so incredibly dark.

1) Trump fires Labor Stats chief to corrupt jobs reports
2) Corporation for Public Broadcasting shuts down due to cuts
3) Trump's name redacted from Epstein files
4) Ghislaine Maxwell corruptly moved to minimum security
5) Trump tells Russia nuclear sub movements

Who could have guessed that a president who idolized McKinley and Smoot Hawley would be bad for the economy?

The civil service can not recover from this without legal and criminal consequences for Trump, Musk and Republican members of Congress who let it happen.

A couple “good” election cycles won’t cut it.

I was wondering when we would get to the "fire the economists and fake the jobs data" part of the Trump regime.

Honestly surprised it took him this long.

Congress has not appropriated the substantial funds this would require nor does this have the legally required approval of the Commission of Fine Arts (which must approve architectural changes to the White House among other properties).

DOGE Wasted Tens of Billions While Chainsawing the Government in the Name of 'Efficiency': Senate Report | Common Dreams Elon Musk's DOGE wasted more than $21 billion in just six months. Other studies have found that in the longterm it may cost the government more than it saved, while resulting in millions of deaths.

Elon Musk's DOGE wasted more than $21 billion in just six months. Other studies have found that in the long term it may cost the government more than it saved, while resulting in millions of deaths.

www.commondreams.org/news/doge-wa...

Forcing Culture War Bigotry on Private Enterprise  | Washington Monthly President Donald Trump is compelling private businesses, from football teams to AI companies, into the culture war.

The Trump admin isn't content to enforce bigotry through government policy. They are, in myriad ways, trying to brutalize private institutions into adopting misogyny, homophobia and white supremacy through threats and coercion.

My latest at WaMo:

washingtonmonthly.com/2025/07/30/f...

But qual practitioners love what we do!

How is it that the richest man on earth can share this kind of openly white supremacist and misogynistic trash and it be met with a shrug by the entire US elite?

This part stood out to me. Seems to me like Attorney General Pam Bondi and whoever runs the “Bureau of Prisons” should testify in front of congress to tell us where this claim of a missing minute came from.

CBS News investigation of Jeffrey Epstein jail video reveals new discrepancies A CBS News investigation found discrepancies between the government's description of the Jeffrey Epstein jail video and what the video shows.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

This is extraordinary evidence.

www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey...

There's a certain set of shared values underlying Jeffrey Epstein saying "She's not here for you" to Trump about a woman he was abusing and Trump complaining that Epstein was "stealing" his people.

Trump got upset with Epstein, his longtime friend, for "stealing" one of his teenage spa employees. That's the word he used: "stealing."

Now why would he use that word, do you think? And why would it upset him so much?

I think we all know why.

If humans do eventually live on Mars and go to the stars, it will be because we discover new physics--not because we can land used rockets.

Elon is actively making it harder, not easier, by polluting near space.

From AP

If ICE’s goal was to turn everybody (and I mean absolutely everybody) against them, then they are doing an exceptional job

When local/state cops start seeing their patrol buddies and friends start getting this treatment, think they’ll keep supporting it?

STEWART: “I feel like I’m watching something so self-evidently inhumane and horrific and to be told I have to shut up because I risk the Jewish state by speaking out? I would say the opposite — they’re putting the likelihood of a surviving Jewish state much more at risk.”

This would be a crisis that preoccupied the whole white house and the political press for weeks with any other president.

The Actual Conspiracy Theory Surrounding Trump and Epstein It’s not what you think it is.

The actual conspiracy theory is that multiple women independently lied, with apparently nothing to gain, and much to lose, about Trump’s entanglement with Epstein. katemanne.substack.com/p/the-actual...

There has to be something incredibly devastating on Trump in the epstein files that the public doesn't know about yet. Too much squirming and flop sweat to come to any other conclusion.