Karen Wickre

Go, @beccabalintvt.bsky.social! That's Vermont's only rep--whole state is less than 1/4 the population of Brooklyn--a day after our *less* progressive senator, Peter Welch, brilliantly airquoted Cory Lewandwoski, "Special Advisor."

I love this so much

It’s looking increasingly likely that Kristi Noem and Lewandowski funneled almost 200 million in government money to a company that is run by her friend and that nobody can give an address for.

Oh, and it was 8 days old when it was awarded the contract.

We need to pass a House rule or law that requires them to work a certain number of days to get paid. Since Mike Johnson took over these people hardly ever work. When they finally come back after weeks off they work 2 days and he sends them home for 2 more weeks. It’s ridiculous.

Kristi Noem Misled Congress About Top Aide’s Role in DHS Contracts Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Noem denied that Corey Lewandowski had any role in approving contracts. But internal DHS records and interviews with current and former agency staffer...

New:

Kristi Noem claimed to the Senate yesterday that Corey Lewandowski has no role approving contracts at DHS.

But internal DHS records and interviews with current and former agency officials contradict her testimony:

www.propublica.org/article/kris...

w/ @josh-kaplan.bsky.social

"How am I going to sell my house with this crap in my backyard?" ICE wants to turn warehouses into detention centers. The suburbs are fighting back.

ICE wants to turn warehouses into detention centers. The suburbs are fighting back.

@schuylermitchell.bsky.social reports from a weekend protest in New Jersey:

Tennessee Wants to Let Schools Ban Immigrant Kids, Threatening to “End Public Education as We Know It” A Tennessee bill would take the right to education away from undocumented children. The Heritage Foundation is pushing it in other states.

Tennessee wants to ban undocumented children from access to a free public education, and turn school administrators into immigration informants. The Heritage Foundation wants to take that plan national. Read my latest for @theintercept.com:

Any way you slice it, this year has been a PR disaster for Strongly Worded Letters.

Just a random reminder that over 50 members of Congress collectively own millions of dollars in defense contractor stocks.

They stand to personally profit from wars that enrich these contractors.

Make no mistake, this is legalized corruption.

Watch how they vote this week.

At CBS News, where staffers are apparently barred from reading history books, the hostilities between Iran and the US don’t begin until 1979.

When the media covers war, every other topic fades Trump will do anything to distract from the political damage of the Epstein files

@sulliview.bsky.social
Thank you Margaret. This needs to be highlighted. Keep your focus on the margins of what is not reported!
#proudblue #pinks

margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/when-the-m...

Republicans are literally incapable of comprehending that the world doesn’t simply follow Trump’s orders the way that Republicans, or American CEOs, or Supreme Court justices do

DOJ's recent 6th Circuit filing misspelled:

Voters as “Votors”
Emergency as "Emeregency"
United States as "United Staes"

And, it included a non-party in the caption.

These are the people who want access to your sensitive voting records and who my team fights in court every day.

Q: "Do you think Trump should be deposed by this committee?"

HILLARY: "Absolutely. Trump has been held civilly liable for sexual assault by a jury of his peers. That is behavior that fits a pattern."

cc: all the large firms who folded

🙄

After Netflix Drops Warner Bros. Bid, GOP Senator Cancels Planned Antitrust Hearing; Top Democrat Vows To “Exercise Congress’ Oversight Authority” — Update Mike Lee dropped plans for a hearing next week.

months and months of phony "antitrust concerns" by the GOP (propped up by a press that lets them pretend they have credibility they never earned) magically disappears now that it's a Trump-allied billionaire zealot buying Warner Brothers

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

-Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

Time to relearn the Pottery Barn rule

Oh, I got this one: they can go fuck themselves to infinity

If even a single Democrat makes even a single noise about finding this argument anything less than repulsive, they should be removed from office

Trump in 2020: "We've spent $8 trillion in the Middle East. And we're not fixing our roads in this country. How stupid is it? We're not fixing our highways, our tunnels, our bridges, our hospitals, even."

the NYT updates on the war are like 2003 updates about the Iraq War run through some kind of Idiocracy translator

The thrill Trump gets from having people blow up & kill other people, and from watching other people fight at UFC, comes from deep insecurity rooted in his personal cowardice. It makes him feel tough. It makes him feel adequate. Things he has never been but always wanted to be.

"American innovation" now refers to making a kind of atrocity cronut by combining insider trading with war crimes.

I promise you that the government that murdered Alex Pretti and Renee Good does not give a flying fuck about the protests in Iran.

This obviously very stupid but is it also smart? We’ll talk to some liars after this break.

Today is a good day to take note of all those telling you how swimmingly this is going to work out so you can stop paying attention to them forever

We have illegally and under false pretenses launched a war that in no way benefits us and isn't going to ever truly end

A MISTAKE WE HAVE MADE BEFORE

User Chris: What was the core difference why you think the DoW accepted OpenAI but not Anthropic Sam Altman: I can't speak for them, but to speculate with the best understanding of the situation. *First, I saw reporting that they were extremely close on a deal, and for much of the time both sides really wanted to reach one. I have seen what happens in tense negotiations when things get stressed and deteriorate super fast, and I could believe that was a large part of what happened here. *We believe in a layered approach to safety--building a safety stack, deploying FDEs and having our safety and alignment researcher involved, deploying via cloud, working directly with the DoW. Anthropic seemed more focused on specific prohibitions in the contract, rather than citing applicable laws, which we felt comfortable with. We feel that it it's very important to build safe system, and although documents are also important, I'd clearly rather rely on technical safeguards if I only had to pick one. *We and the DoW got comfortable with the contractual language, but I can understand other people would have a different opinion here. *I think Anthropic may have wanted more operational control than we did

I saw some folks asking what the difference was between what OpenAI signed with the DoD and what Anthropic said they wanted, and Sam more or less admits here the key point: OpenAI's deal requires them to trust the NSA. Anthropic's contract had real safeguards.

A strip map from 1675 showing the route from London to Bristol — kind of like an early modern TripTik for those Americans who grew up in a family with a AAA membership.🗃️