You can make the case that shutting down the government is contrary to our aspirations, so you vote to pass the CR and choose other battlefields. But if you vote yes on overcoming the filibuster then symbolically vote no on the actual thing, all you stand for is cowardice. You are feckless.

and civic virtue is downstream from policy. when we collapsed high marginal tax rates and encouraged inequality as incentive, we made a world where my welfare stands in competition with yours rather than boats rising or falling together. we put our families’ well being and civic virtue in conflict.

“some influencers remain concerned to ensure that what they are sharing is true, others have gradually lost all qualms. We call these networks left and right, but these political positions seem to me less determinate than the epistemic positions.”

i do think it’s not a coincidence that going after Canada, whether seriously or performatively, undermined the possibility of maintaining a principled stand against Russia for Ukraine on Westphalian / we-enforce-territorial-integrity grounds. i think there was some encouragement of some sort.

ambitious sociopaths are drawn to MAGA. rule by unvarnished, unapologetic exercise of power is their highest ambition made real. there are plenty of ambitious sociopaths among democrats. you can see them. they feign disdain but they slip, pulled toward that bright light of ruthless control.

(and she's broadcasting it!)

if a tree falls in the forest and there isn’t a right-wing ecosystem to shout about it, does it make a sound? the public is informed, and “mainstream media” cowed, by Fox News and its counterparts. when rightwing media adopt a see-no-evil posture, the only ones shouting are hair-on-fire liberals.

mastodon.social/@alexlunavie...

why is the new administration destroying USAID’s documents? to make it much more difficult to reconstitute programs? apnews.com/article/usai...

“if you install egalitarian economic institutions that result in a compressed distribution of income and wealth, the precise regional and sectoral composition of the economy becomes much less important.” @mattbruenig.bsky.social mattbruenig.com/2025/03/11/y...

So is the Khalil case going to end up at the Supreme Court on the whether a Secretary of State's statutory authorization to declare a noncitizen deportable can be Constitutionally exercised based primarily on 1A protected speech? (Will Khalil have any opportunity to see the sun in the meantime?)

"Overall, we find that gains associated with ideological moderation are relatively modest and likely secondary to turnout effects." // a bit sad from persuasionist perspective, but seems consistent with recent experience, e.g. relentlessly moderating Kamala Harris damned by turnout more than swing

i wonder a lot what the experience is like in the world of military-to-military contacts, people who perhaps have worked in close cooperation with one another for years.

i ❤️ canada. as an independent friend and partner. as any american should. i am grateful they remain a voice of sanity through our lunacy, even at great cost. i hope we recover ourselves soon, and apologize and thank them properly.

Great news. ht @gottalaff.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/u...

occasionally they tell the truth just to throw you off.

well, a generous native speaker! i know from my 30-something-brained Romanian i'll never be mistaken for a native speaker, but i can pretty fully participate in Romanian life. i really hope eventually to achieve that with Spanish.

cc @steveroth.bsky.social ht @buddyyakov.bsky.social