Con Flambers

Just paid these two and I’m adopting one more MN immigrant family’s rent for tonight, if I can pull it off.

This next family needs $2400 to stay out of eviction court. Can you help them stay housed?

V: @Ian-Coldwater
CA: $iancoldwater
PP: @coldwater

Please share and help if you can! Thank you! 🌻

As Trump and co wither in the political doldrums, they will look with increasingly frenzied effort for people to throw overboard to save face. The DOGE guys seem like a good first choice, since nobody cares about some broccoli-topped asshole that nobody voted for.

Not really relevant to the broader discourse rn but in light of the regime's likely heavy losses in 8 months... if you're a DOGE guy, you better lawyer up. Subpoenas are gonna be flying + I have a hunch the admin will view them as easy fall guys, so they'll let them get steamrolled.

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

In light of America's embassy in Saudi Arabia apparently being on fire... remember when the most annoying people you knew could not stop talking about Benghazi?

whether war, vaccines, or critical infrastructure there is contingent of the right that seems to believe that their security from the worst things that happen is some kind of metaphysical principle rather than the result of specific historical processes that could've gone otherwise and still could

Bullies have two basic beliefs:

-they can hurt you whenever they want
-you don't get to fight back

The second belief backstops the first. But the second one isn't actually up to the bully.

I agree with your analysis, but also: if they are bringing their war planning skills to their election rigging schemes ....

I think that Jamelle Bouie is a good person

The "rally-around-the-flag" effect is not some law of physics that works automatically. It largely seems to happen because 1) the opposition party stops criticizing the president or the military operation, 2) partially as a consequence, the mass media is flooded with pro-government messages. /1

There's no way these dumbasses at both the DoD and in the White House thought to call the Ukrainians before engaging in war with a state that is the world's biggest manufacturer of suicide drones, right

My opinion: Jamelle Bouie is the best national political columnist in America. This doesn’t mean he is always right or you always need to agree with him. But he consistently elevates the form. Conservatives and liberals who make deranged personal attacks on him just make themselves look bad.

One reason I think my BlueSky experience has been superior to my Twitter experience, in addition to the site just having better people on it + superior tools to manage your experience... is that I am somewhat selective about who I follow.

I feel like I just follow great people because 90% of the time i'm hearing some bullshit it's secondhand, and not seeing it directly. People have beef with Jamelle Bouie who aren't outright MAGA toads? News to me. Guy's great, appreciate him a lot.

Eventually the Trump regime will collapse, because it’s built on a single rotten, 79-year pillar. When it does, the army of cranks who have tried to shelter under the boss’s seeming impunity, in order to commit crimes of their own, will have nowhere to hide. We must scour them out of our society.

I don’t think they are playing 5D chess here, most of the senior administration is just in an information ecosystem where “we did it for Israel” is rewarded. You were also part of this ecosystem until a few days ago when you suddenly caught up to the Democratic base.

On the mark

This entire debacle could best be described as idiots supporting and enabling even bigger idiots and then being shocked that Iran didn't just roll over right away.

One of my favourite sides of politics/media.

A graphic that compares the logo for AI product Claude with Kurt Vonnegut's depiction of an asshole from Breakfast of Champions. They are very similar.

I can't be the first to notice that the Claude logo looks exactly how Vonnegut drew an asshole for Breakfast of Champions. This is either intetional or an accident. Either way a good argument for hiring humanities majors.

MAGA thinks that you can overcome this distrust through basically holding people hostage and using that whimsical violent instability to enforce compliance. But however well that may work in the short term, and I don't think it will, it definitely won't work as a long-term IR model.

Trump's second election is the herald of a managed decline of the US as a global leader. The US will still have the largest economy and military in the world, and will likely still for the next many decades, but the rest of the world extricating itself from US dependence will have significant costs.

But when you see that he's rogue, corrupt, and wildly unstable, and then you elect him again, what you've actually said then is that the political decisions made by the people of the US can no longer be trusted, and that means the US as a whole can no longer be trusted if we elect such people.

Someone get Astead Herndon on the horn - oh, wait, sorry. "The president's age and health only matter if there's a D next to their name." Forgot the cardinal rule of beltway journalism.

Yeah, 2024 was an inflection point. You don't just come back from it by saying "oh just trust us bro, we didn't MEAN to elect fascism." That's a shit excuse, and gives American allies no reason to ever trust us fully ever again.

I'm sure this person found a great role in Marco Rubio's State Department, since this is exactly the type of person this admin seeks to promote.

Iraq war was started on a presidential lie but it feel like somehow the Iran war was started on something worse: a total presidential failure to comprehend even the most basic facts of the situation

A through line of American foreign policy circles is an astonishing arrogance. The assumption that the people we fight are simpletons, with inferior tech, and that they can be easily bested. Wasn't true in Vietnam, wasn't true in Iraq, won't be true with Iran.

Can't help but wonder if America having so many military toys to play with is the intellectual equivalent of getting kicked in the head for many in our elite circles. The assumption that you can just brute force your way to victory and suffer minimally.