i’m always talking about thick scary tails i’m worried about but say the base case, the modal outcome, is we muddle through largely as we have.

i’m not sure that’s right any more.

somewhere in an attic there is a portrait of a head of lettuce rotting most floridly.

“One must be careful not to reify the clichés: just because everyone says it’s real doesn’t make it real. Or rather, it does, and that’s the problem.” #JohnGanz https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/vibes-cartel

“i will abuse you until you consent to marry me” may not be the flex they think.

besides maybe a handful of billionaires on an inauguration stage, is there anyone more pathetic than Congressional Republicans, who are watching their guy burn down the country but do nothing because what? they might have to face a competitive primary?

oh the poor poor dears.

@paninid i mean, they might not want to be pwned by a plaything of the Godless CCP.

@paninid i don’t think Project 2025 had a bunch of late-blooming preadolescents downloading all the payments and personnel data it took the Chinese years to steal for themselves in order to hand it to an unelected third-party who was ineligible for a security clearance, who threatens to exercise an idiosyncratic unreviewable personal veto on payments, usurping the House of Representatives’ most basic prerogative.

@scott i’d just revise it to “block everything except deliberation and action on what is actually happening right now in and to the executive branch (even without Senate-confirmed leadership).

@paninid i mean, even toddlers get mad when someone else is taking their shit and banging it to bits without their saying its okay.

@scott i gotta say, after these last few days, all confirmations should be on hold. the executive has gotten way ahead of its skis and the legislature needs either to pull it back or affirmatively endorse what’s going on.

lots of talk about how Ds should shut down the Senate, and i get it. but are there no Rs concerned about the vandalizing of the Federal govt by an unelected megadouche and some 14-year-olds? is there no chance of the legislative branch asserting itself as the legislative branch to say woah wtf?

@apropos all of the above. simple thresholds, elaborate enforcement. past lassitude doesn't refer to duration in time. it refers to tolerating intolerable amounts.

i am grateful to Trump and especially Musk for making so powerful and visceral a case that wealth taxes — at levels quite confiscatory for a while, to remedy past lassitude — are an absolute necessity, prerequisite to a sustainable democratic society.

just as a matter of risk management, you’d think these guys would be less enthusiastic about the Federal death penalty.

@arthegall it’s not. the quotation marks are just to emphasize that i’m writing in character, not as me.

who’s worse?

“the whole reason i voted for him is i thought he was bullshitting. i feel betrayed.”

call me old fashioned, call me naive.

but i say impeach, convict, remove. rinse and repeat.

no. they won’t do it tomorrow.

but motherfucker may become pretty unpopular before very long.

maybe it’s worth just saying, as an american to our remarkable neighbors, i’m really sorry.

this is ultimately our responsibility and we’ve sure fucked it up.

“let’s break the world and see what happens.”