Vernon Thomson

When Biden gave the worst debate performance in history, my job as a neutral reporter was to write about it incessantly until he dropped out. When Trump gave the second worst debate performance in history, against Harris, my job was to lend credence to his claim that immigrants were eating pets.

US Grant: best general in US history, one of the most decent people to ever hold high office, and just catastrophically terrible at anything having to do with money or business. from birth to death one comical pratfall after the next

i think a lot about how the collapse of reconstruction was in the event a result of macroeconomic mistakes by republicans--the panic of 1873 leading directly to the corrupt bargain of 1877

people think grant’s fatal flaw was alcoholism, but that’s a lot more nuanced than is generally discussed. his fatal flaw was being pathologically incapable of recognizing that someone might be trying to get one over on him.

Look if you're running for office as a Dem and ever say you're working across the aisle, you're a white supremacist, or, at best, the person who wants to work with the white supremacists so you're a white supremacist. Anyway. Just a note for anyone running

parks Y @parkersity_9 Without naming your job, tell me something you say 20 times per day at work

“That sounds illegal”

it sure seems like what happened is that the admin told hegseth and maybe rubio they could do whatever they wanted with the military, but do not intend to offer any cover, which is why, if you are enlisted, you need to pay close attention to whether your orders coming from command are actually legal

If you or someone you know is in the U.S. military and betting on conflicts, or potential conflicts, let us know @taskandpurpose.com. Please reach out via email or signal, contact info is in my bio.

everyone is correctly noting that they’re throwing bradley under the bus, but they’re also throwing hegseth under it

i’m genuinely so convinced all of this has been a planned operation by the student and her mother (who is commenting on this publicly, and associated closely with the republican party), and big far right propaganda account going all in on it. this is designed to oust trans people from public life

Becoming What They Hate For years, professional conservatives bemoaned the "special treatment" they alleged "unqualified" liberals received on campus. Now, they demand it for students on the right.

Conservative commentator Brian Griffiths on Turning Point USA's religious-discrimination claim against the University of Oklahoma: "if you read Fulnecky’s essay, you will see that...the essay is really pathetic and bad. Nor did it meet the basic instructions set out for the assignment."

Screencap of a tweet by Ben Rosen Text: 90s scientists: we cloned a sheep! We landed a robot on mars! scientists today: for the last time, the earth is *round*

oh dear chulhu the nineties were 35 years ago

/me: crumbles to dust

This thread is 💯. Labor precarity in academia means the evisceration of faculty governance and academic freedom, opening the door to administrative purges of the most vulnerable. And faculty-esp tenured faculty and academic leaders-who aren't defending their trans colleagues are enabling it.

btw, every "reasonable" person who's own posting stuff like "well, the prompt was unclear," or "she actually kind of did the assignment OK so maybe the TA overreacted"--you are also part of the problem! You're laundering the deliberate targeting of a TA and a blatant abrogation of academic freedom!

Thank you for understanding this.

How do people not see that the entire OU essay thing is just an attempt by this girl and the Turning Point chapter to turn her into another Riley Gaines grifting on trying to push trans people out of society?

I don’t really have a lot to say about the OU thing except 1) it’s obviously about the trans instructor and 2) red state publics are all so, so vulnerable to this

The last time Trump claimed he didn’t know someone he had pardoned came when he pardoned a crypto mogul who has made the Trump family billions of dollars in cash.

www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-pard...

trump is the president in the sense that he holds the office but he very clearly isn't the president in the sense that he has basically relieved himself of its duties

If you’re curious what the illustrious life of academia looks like, my wife is an (unpaid) Senior Researcher at Whitman College. She just had her access to Office 365 computer apps cut off as she finishes edits on her book with Cornell UP. The license for having the apps would cost them $5/month.

There is now zero reason why a married couple will choose to live in the USA if one of them doesn't have permanent residency.

Another hole in the brain drain.

I basically said as much and got an appropriate chuckle.

David Sacks’ counterpoint to the New York Times’ deep, detailed account of his massive conflicts of interest and corruption in the White House is to lie, pretend factual evidence doesn’t count, then get indignant when people don’t buy that.

But see, you're helping with the throwing. Nitpicking the grading when this student was searching for a bad grade to attack a trans TA see to miss the forest for the trees.

So wait, your point is then that suspension of the instructor was warranted (in the context of what was obviously a trap laid by the student) on the basis of "the grading warranted a raised eyebrow"?

You had me until then.

The Vaccinated Dead Make Their ACIP Debut What happens at FDA CBER doesn't stay at FDA CBER

If you disliked Vinay Prasad's CBER memo that outlined his plans to destroy evidence-based vaccine regulation based on unsupported claims that COVID vaccines kill children, you are REALLY going to hate what is going down at this week’s ACIP meeting.
rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/the-vaccin...

I named my fists “ye wannae bai” and “a dag” because you won’t understand anything once I’m done

so I'm glad that this is getting more attention - the far right's obsession with the crusades is way more than just Hegseth's white supremacist tattoos

in this THREAD I'll collect some of my own recent work on how the American right has used the crusades

1/

President Hernandez was responsible for smuggling 500 TONS of cocaine into the United States! He was the top dog; the Pablo Escobar figure! He wasn’t just “selling drugs in that country.”

“But the Trump administration cut the money, claiming it fell under DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion.”