i’ve had my issues with ActBlue, but debilitating Democratic fundraising infrastructure would be an obvious “competitive authoritarian” play. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/us/politics/actblue-democrat-fundraising-resignations.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
“If you do not recognize that mass destruction of fundamental concepts of democracy and the US Constitution happening right now, you are either willfully ignorant or just plain stupid. I can’t put it any clearer than that.” @mmasnick https://www.techdirt.com/2025/03/04/why-techdirt-is-now-a-democracy-blog-whether-we-like-it-or-not/ ht @inthehands
i feel like if they fire me and then decide they want me back they should beg my forgiveness and lure me with a nice raise.
“The reality we're seeing unfold is policy that's likely to hurt…workers while primarily benefiting those with enough money to weather the storm and capitalize on distressed assets afterward.“ @kylascan https://kyla.substack.com/p/an-orchestrated-recession-trumps
if you don’t want to be shunned for your cybertruck, just write FUCK ELON in maximal block letters on its rump hood and gigantic backside.
from @jbouie https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/opinion/trump-revenge-american-people.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1k4.tMFy.S4Y0L8lOygBN&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare ht @rickywlmsbong
Text: Under the cover of an audit, he has empowered Elon Musk, his de facto co-president, to take an ax to any and every program that helps ordinary Americans. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency has stripped funds or personnel or both from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the National Park Service, the National Weather Service, FEMA, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration, among others. It has degraded the federal government's ability to deliver critical services to tens of millions of Americans and is endangering direct payments to millions more. There is no apparent rhyme or reason to these cuts, only a nihilistic drive to cause as much damage and to make it as irreparable as possible.
fascists are learning that women are unreliable appointees to the Supreme Court even if they have impeccable pedigree from a Federalist Society whose core intent is to prevent deprogramming. https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/the-drifters-why-supreme-court-justices-drift-left/
“popularists” describe the median voter as a kind of idiot whose prejudices must be catered to.
real voters are not that, are capable of detecting the condescension in the strategy, and flee those motherfuckers every chance they can.
“economists” falsely presume a quantitative resource constraint rather than undesirable patterns of deployment and remuneration. under poor deployment and inequitable remuneration, greater public share can be welfare increasing, even when much must be spent on unconsumable war preparedness.
denialists are predictably popular, until they aren’t.
do the tariffs in their current form survive the morrow?
under Trump, you announce everything.
what you actually do… well that's not so important. as long as he can take credit for your announcement.
the point of fentanyl as a pretext is it has nothing at all to do with the tariffs so there's complete liberty in slapping them on or off, making them stronger or weaker, as a response to actions that may be invented or merely symbolic.
touch the stove for the pleasure of withdrawing your finger. it’s a kink!
if you set wealth and income taxes too low, a kind of very powerful but misaligned AGI emerges.
what bank would have the balls to make a collateral call to Musk as the value of the Tesla shares he pledged falls?
from #BethMole https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/03/rfk-jr-shuts-americans-out-of-health-decisions-despite-vow-for-transparency/ ht @Doug_Bostrom
Text: On Monday, Kennedy published the new policy in the Federal Register, which specifically revoked a transparency rule adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 1971. The rule—called the Richardson Waiver, after then-Health Secretary Elliot Richardson—required HHS to have public notice-and-comment periods for proposed rules and policies regarding certain matters, namely public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts. These five categories would otherwise have been exempt from public notice-and-comment requirements under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The APA also says that public notice-and-comment periods can be waived for "good cause."
Suppose that Congress resolved, by a simple majority, that Trump engaged in insurrection and is therefore ineligible for any office of the United States?
Such a resolution shouldn’t be necessary, under the Constitution’s plain language, but after Trump v Anderson, that would do it, right?
the choice has always been social democracy or catastrophe.
we've been dilatory.
at some level i think this whole thing is just a well-executed plan to make members of the United States’ leadership class have to work as taxi drivers like Vladimir Putin did.