Just inject this into my veins: Beutler presents a succinct and cogent overview of the consultant-industrial complex that's stifling Democratic politics. Their meddlesome, proven-loser horseshit is the single largest source of my anxiety and despair at the moment.
Frontline Democrats Are Not Beautiful And Unique Snowflakes
Inside the mailbag: Jared Golden ... Mike Johnson ... Iran War
open.substack.com
I admit, all this definitional foofaraw about AI is mind boggling. What is actually at stake with these declarations of what qualifies as intelligence or consciousness, and what merits such strident claims here? To be sure, I'm stupid enough to know that this terrain has been well covered already.
Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 4d agoI mean, the article you just shared is from 1981 and it literally says "Machines with preprogrammed responses don't have intelligence, unless someone were to invent something exactly like an LLM, which would obviously have intelligence, yes"
This is about one thing and one thing alone. Steering our research dollars for cancer, heart disease, and new infectious diseases to Trump’s political allies and friends.
The New York Times@nytimes.com · 5d agoBreaking News: Federal officials are drafting an executive order that would help cement President Trump’s ability to control billions of dollars in scientific grants funded by the National Institutes of Health.
In fashioning their strategic advice, do Dem consultants' models ever price in this kind of reaction? Is there ever an evaluation—quantified or not—of downstream effects like voter turnoff, intracoalitional conflict, damage to the party brand, consequences for fundraising, etc.?
Thomas Lecaque@tlecaque.bsky.social · 5d agoI want the name of every consultant who convinces a Democrat to run an ad ceding ground to trans hatred, and I want them blacklisted by the party and noted so I can never give a cent to anyone who hires them ever again.
A prophetic Katharine Hepburn from 1942, speaking to us of 2026 (You can watch it on the TCM app right now, as I just did.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=_abR...
excerpt from keeper of the flame
YouTube video by beverly crusher
youtube.com
the Supreme Court should not have sent this man a very clear message that he was a king above the law
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last wk.Trump: "I could've banned fishing. The power of this office is crazy. I could've banned fishing. I think I'm gonna do that."
AI has exposed the austerity con game in higher ed. For years, we have been told there is no money for students, faculty, staff, capital improvements, libraries. But somehow universities have suddenly come up with the money to pay for AI services??
Moxon is brilliant here. Consciously or not, he's advancing a very productive understanding of politics as rhetoric. Today the word rhetoric is usually meant pejoratively as mere verbal ornamentation or bs. But behind the word lies a 2,500 year-old discipline dedicated to the art of persuasion.
A.R. Moxon@juliusgoat.bsky.social · 2w agoAlmost nothing is more important than persuasion. Which is why it has been so diluted, corrupted, bastardized, and captured within mainstream circles. Every act is persuasive to different people of different things. It’s not just words; it’s how you show up. www.the-reframe.com/us-and-them/
When Democrats act in ways that show fear by kowtowing to bad faith Republican talking points what they're showing us is that they don't yet have the backbone needed to change the direction the country has been heading since 2016.
Six solid weeks of Center for American Box Wine demanding we throw the Michigan Senate seat over a personal grudge with a twitch streamer: crickets The most shit-on group in the country being angry they were shit on again: SAVE YOUR PETTY GRIEVANCES FOR AFTER THE ELECTION, YOU SELFISH JERKS
The vitriol directed at me and other members of the trans community for having the audacity to declare our votes are not to be taken for granted. By cisgender people who otherwise have called themselves allies. I wish it weren’t so utterly predictable.
I'm Jewish and if a candidate triangulated on antisemitism to win an election, I would most certainly pressure him to do better *right now* and would hope my fellow Americans would do the same. I see no reason why our trans siblings and those who support them should demand anything different.
Mike Rothschild@rothschildmd.bsky.social · 2w agoHe should be pressured. He should do better. But he has to win the election to be in the position to be pressured.
Talarico's trans stance is infuriating not simply because it's wrong on the merits, but because it's the very brand of losing, consultant-brained shit that delivered us to this moment. How many times have centrists told us if we compromise, the right will only stick it in a little (they promise!)?
Atrios@eschatonblog.com · 2w agoThis is lis smith's org and this is the message they are pushing on instagram
In modern American history has there been a single issue where Republicans consistently hammered Democrats for their position on a topic, Democrats responded by capitulating on it, and then Republicans just… Stopped attacking them over it, does this strategy even exist in reality, seriously asking
No matter how much you throw trans people under the bus, you are still going to get attacked. All you've done is betray a vulnerable minority, anger your base, and made the issue front and center.
Any answer other than “who gives a shit, republicans are using a dozen kids playing JV volleyball as a distraction from looting the county and covering for elite pedophiles” is cowardly horseshit
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2w agoTalarico: "I oppose trans athletes playing in girls' sports if it endangers safety or fairness"
You cannot publish the phrase “reverse decades of structural disinvestment in public higher education” at the New York Times. It’s illegal. You’d be arrested.
sharing again for the weekend crowd. the humanities aren't in crisis, they're under attack -- because they're dangerous to people in power, because they ask their students to imagine possible worlds.
Liberal Currents@liberalcurrents.com · 3w ago"The administrators deciding on these closures and cuts often say that they rely upon 'data points' and metrics, although they choose which metrics… Such supposedly data-driven decisionmaking often leaves aside the fact that Humanities departments tend to be revenue positive."
This is why some people think Jeffries and Schumer are doing a good job (”They don’t have the votes! Forced most discharge petitions ever!”) and some people think they’re doing a bad job. They have different views of Congress. D leaders good job: sure, in Old Congress. But Old Congress is deadz
Eric Blair@protecttruth.bsky.social · 3w agoCongress can’t simply return to how it functioned before. Bipartisanship is dead. Agreeing with Trump is dead. Small legislative bills and fundraising, with an occasional 5 min oversight question in a hearing, is no longer the whole job. Congress must change
Beutler puts his finger precisely on what's so maddening about Jeffries' announcement. And if you're a late model millennial who's never NOT watched Dems cede ground to reactionaries, give up on oversight and opposition, lose twice to DJT, etc., I think anger and disgust are fair reactions.
Hoping Someone Else Stops Trump Is Not A Plan
A whistleblower exposed his illegal scheme to cheat in the midterms, and House Democrats turned around and funded his government. It’s a bad omen for 2027.
offmessage.net
I'm tired of too-polite assessments that "Jeffries just isn't the right leader for the times." The man is a civic abomination. He's a shitheel hack dedicated to the proposition that being a Democrat is dreary, hopeless, and dire. He neglects our vital institutions. He belittles our democracy.
Sahil Kapur@sahilkapur.bsky.social · 3w agoWhat @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social told me the House agenda will be next year if Democrats win —Reverse Trump’s Medicaid cuts —Extend expired ACA tax credits —Restore Congress’s authority on tariffs —“Decisively” end the Iran war Beyond that: “We’ve established five working groups on affordability”
Perhaps it would be better morally & electorally to make the people you're running against, who are assaulting, abducting, murdering, stealing, putting kids into concentration camps, starting wars & destroying our lives, your opposition. Instead of some streamer dude voters have never heard of.
"I shouldn't have to say it, but I am" has to be among the stupidest sentiments ever expressed by a politician. "I shouldn't have to convey my values and intentions, but (haughty sigh) I guess I have to for you dipshits."
No one from the Trump Cartel is getting a pass
YouTube video by Rep. Jeffries
youtube.com
I hope everyone caught this Lancet study confirming that Elon Musk & DOGE are responsible for genocidal levels of suffering & death.
Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis
USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the a...
thelancet.com
Democratic candidates are falling all over themselves to say negative things about Donald Trump. But is criticizing a popular wartime president really smart politics?
It is simultaneously true that Ossoff said nothing even remotely misogynist and that Republicans pretending to care about politicians who demean women are exhibiting farcical levels of bad faith
"hmm maybe this whole Arday affair shows that we need to have a Serious Conversation about whether Woke 1.0 overreached in manner X, Y, of Z" motherfucker you are generally in Fascism 487.0, as is this particular affair you're talking about. worry about *that*. /Final
i know votes are still being counted but the more i look at this michigan senate map the more it becomes clear that it kind of looks like a mitten
No major media seems interested in the fact that senior DNC staff is openly undermining Ken Martin and literally withholding documents they don't want him to see, and you can bet the reason for that is that those are the same staffers media depend on for leaks so reporters won't spotlight them.
There's a piece on the DNC autopsy in the New York Times that I think everyone should read because it's very important context but there's one crucial part about this above all. Here's the piece. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/u...
Author of Democrats’ 2024 Autopsy Says Party Left Out Key Chapter
A dispute over the chapter between the author and the Democratic National Committee has added to the party’s turmoil as it tries to look forward, not backward.
nytimes.com