Nick DeFiesta

Whining about crime is super effective for right wing politicians because there's never going to be zero crime, so it's a good way to constantly sell total bullshit to the two dumbest groups of people in the world: republican voters and the entire media

genuinely brings me pleasure that no one respects this guy (least of all himself)

The adamant elite refusal to call bullshit is a big part of How We Got Here.

The prevailing cultural attitude for years is you must not, under any circumstances, treat anything as bad faith. You are obligated to find some reasonable idea and engage with that, even if you distort to get there.

there's "charitable interpretation" and there's "being a mark" and the inability or refusal to distinguish between the two is practically a credential in some circles

One thing that has sort of surprised me is that it does really seem like the desire to be ruled by a powerful fascist daddy is stronger in the median elite journalist than in the median voter.

“using real concerns to put reactionary political views in the mouths of people i am not actually going to speak to or give the dignity of their own voices” is a classic move for this clique

Throwing a sandwich at a cop: REQUIRES 10-PERSON TACTICAL TEAM TO AREEST IN FULL RAID GEAR (even tho subject wanted to turn himself in)

Beating a cop unconscious with a flag pole: “Go home. We love you.”

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship: A definitive timeline | CNN Politics A timeline of Trump’s interactions with Epstein and Maxwell reveals a long pattern of social proximity and one that stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s public downplaying of their friendship.

“A .. CNN review of Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein—backed by records, photos, videos, interviews & messages—shows a long, close relationship until at least the mid-2000s .. with Epstein saying Trump was his ‘closest friend for 10 years’ in 2019.”

@kfile.bsky.social
www.cnn.com/2025/08/12/p...

Might not be a better illustration of the conservative legal movement’s foundational lie than “Emil Bove is our revenge for Robert Bork”

Among the many low-points in American journalism we've witnessed recently I will never forget the NYT asking Ms. Rachel if she was funded by Hamas

Honestly it shows just how much you can change your political futures by being seen as a fighter who loathes Republicans.

New Zealand woman and six-year-old son detained for three weeks by Ice in US enduring ‘terrifying’ ordeal Sarah Shaw, who has a US visa and lives in Washington state, was detained after attempting to re-enter US from Canada

This is appalling. Civilized countries look at us and are rightly horrified that this idiocy and cruelty is sanctioned by--encouraged by--our government.

(I originally wrote "Other civilized countries look at us..." But do we any longer count in their ranks?)

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Nobody Cares That White Supremacists Are Calling the Shots Now Darren Beattie, a speechwriter for Trump early during his first term, posted the following in October 2024, a month before Trump would win re-election: “Competent white men must be in charge if you wa...

"Equally damning is that the Times, the Post, the Wall Street Journal.. haven’t chosen to make one singular story the dominant framing device of the past 6 months: The Trump administration is teeming with despicable gutter racists and President Trump and his cabinet are having them call the shots.."

people are mad about this but it's just on-its-face true. trump won the popular vote and because of a few decades of the media priming people to believe that only conservatives can truly represent The People, that popular vote victory was treated as a defacto enabling act

the only thing i'd add to this is that mainstream political media is very much taken with the idea that trump is some incarnation of the national spirit. it shows up everywhere and is used to explain his political success.

The point of all of this The most illiterate men alive were gassing themselves up because the computer had gotten some small degree better at producing dog shit that had the general production values of a circa 2004 video game cutscene. Delighting in the approach of a spiritually and culturally dead future devoid of art and meaning. You do have to admit that a new Narcos season starring Brad Pitt and Mr. Beast and Travis Kelce sounds pretty sick though. There's only one flaw I can see in this supposed AI-generated future of seven fingered bikini babes with death behind their eyes and photorealistic Family Guy pornos: I don’t understand where they think their personalized sense of aesthetics they plan to input into the computer is going to come from down the line when all human artists have been driven out of business. If you want something perfectly tailored 1:1 to your own taste meant solely for you to experience alone you can already do that just by sitting there and thinking about

My thoughts on using "AI" to write.

Senior adviser in the office of the deputy attorney general:

“sure, I’m an abrasive sex pest who was run out of the governor’s mansion in disgrace, but I’m also going to roll over and give Donald Trump everything he wants” is just not going to cut it as a campaign message, imo

i think the real, good faith criticism of FIRE is specifically that its college free speech rankings (and deplatforming database) are a complete mess with no real grounding in objective metrics, and yet they reflect a massive percentage of FIRE's contribution to the public discourse. 🧵

We’ve discovered a literal miracle with almost unlimited potential and it’s being scrapped for *no reason whatsoever*. This isn’t even nihilism, it’s outright worship of death and human suffering.

I believe one of the new mRNA vaccines was expected to treat colon cancer, and another had the potential to keep pancreatic cancer from recurring. That’s what they’re taking away.

Top Trump officials will discuss Epstein strategy at Wednesday dinner hosted by Vance

The administration's handling of the Epstein case, as well as the need to craft a unified response, is expected to be a main focus of the dinner, three sources familiar with the meeting told CNN. The meeting will include White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Blanche.

The WH Chief of Staff, Vice President, Attorney General, and FBI Director are having a meeting to determine the "political strategy" around the child pedophile case circling around the President???

Is that worse or better than when Bill Clinton walked across a tarmac? (Also bad, btw!)

again this is where this was always going the Senate as constitutionally conceived is fucking useless

For decades, the GOP has treated American democracy and the constitutional order the way early game testers treat video games—looking for exploits to circumvent the rules.

Announcing the punishments that you intend to impose is a good way to rally the base and to normalize the idea of retribution, and it may even deter some bad behavior. Whatever the case, laying the rhetorical groundwork for big moves is something the Dems need to partake in.

only in a country with a political press as terrible as ours could a pair of democratic legislators be assassinated by a reactionary conservative and seven weeks later this double murder has been completely forgotten about

Too much "we're cooked" & not enough "we're not gonna take this shit"

Lemme just say if President Bernie Sanders had unilaterally imposed, by executive fiat, hundreds of billions of new taxes, personally browbeat executives about job cuts and investments and then fired the head of BLS, the Chamber of Commerce and the business orgs would not be sitting idly by.