I can entertain the argument that reacting to this stuff with alarm isn’t obligatory, may even be counterproductive. But it HAS to go hand in hand with the promise of GRINDING accountability that makes everyone complicit atone. Otherwise it’s just a unilaterally imposed degradation of standards.

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 8h ago

It’s paralyzing! The correct, normal, healthy reaction to something like this is profound alarm. But that’s foreclosed because expressing alarm is considered déclassé. So.. how are we supposed to react? Treat lunacy as normal? And so the normalization of this nonsense undermines our whole politics.

This is something that can be made to happen, and should have been made to happen long ago, though now would arguably be better timed after the midterms, since Republicans are already poised to lose those.

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 13h ago

God help the GOP if "Nazi infiltration of the Republican Party" ever becomes an obsessive media discourse object the same way "antisemitism on the left" has. Even the world's laziest reporter could find three of these guys on every campaign. It'll be shooting gallery.

The "Natalie" episode is virtually the only time I can remember in the last decade-plus when our side *shaped & directed* the discourse rather than just reacting to whatever bullshit the RW wanted everyone to talk about. Did anyone learn anything from it? Is anyone trying to replicate it?

curious! bsky.app/profile/scar...

Scary Mr. Olmec Man@scarymrolmecman.bsky.social · 13h ago

Remember how we were talking about Natalie Harp and now we aren't anymore, weird, isn't it

a fun and telling thing to track will be whether twitch streamer hasan piker or sitting united states congressman max miller receives more mainstream news media coverage between now and the election www.the-downballot.com/p/morning-di...

Morning Digest: Thought Max Miller would become a GOP pariah? Nope.

Republicans in competitive races are still backing the congressman—and keeping his contributions

the-downballot.com

Dean Baker@deanbaker13.bsky.social · 14h ago

The Washington Post news section editorializes against El Sayed www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

The grand jury report on the Florida embezzlement scheme is blood-boiling. It's clear beyond serious dispute that the current AG of Florida was part of a shameless, calculated plan to steal public funds from sick children to gift the Republican Party & his own PAC. drive.google.com/file/d/15YSC...

As @brandyjensen.bsky.social once wrote, "Too often these days I find myself in the position of defending someone I think is annoying from someone I know is dangerous." I can work with annoying. I don't have to like them. I can't work with fascists. Democrats should have a laser focus on fascists.

The most infuriating thing about the Kushner/Hasan 1-2 is that it makes obvious the fact that Jeffries doesn't believe that Trump and Republicans represent a grave threat that requires our immediate and undivided focus, despite that being an essentially unanimous belief among his party's voters.

Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · 15h ago

I think it's bad that the Democrats' House leader is having secret chummy meetings with a guy doing a domestic ethnic cleansing operation and funding a genocide abroad, then spending his entire week going on cable news to complain about a lefty Twitch streamer who nobody knows. Sorry for offending.

It just keeps getting better.

Genuinely abundant, cheap, accessible energy has vastly more liberatory potential than AI, for vastly more people -- especially more poor people. Which, I guess, is your answer.

mtsw@mtsw.bsky.social · yesterday

Have you seen any reporting on how solar power generation in the USA is 5 times higher than it was in 2020 in mainstream outlets? If not, why do you think this is not being widely covered the same way other large technological changes are?

Oh, and the National Association of Broadcasters is pushing a captured FCC to sunset ATSC 1.0, so they can guarantee the implementation of DRM across networks. Requiring internet allows for targeted advertising. Too bad for rural folks without broadband who just want to watch the news!

The Trump administration is responding to public blowback on data centers by ... giving the public fewer opportunities to speak.

E.P.A. Moves to Curb Public Input on Air Pollution Permits for Data Centers

Under the proposal, states would no longer need to provide public notice or solicit comments on air pollution permits for data centers and other projects.

nytimes.com

Our whole digital world has been wrapped in chains by rent-extracting monopolists who gloried in their power to use hook IP to deprive you of the right to use your property in ways you see fit, writing private laws that made it a crime to displease them. 87/

It's not just VCRs. Anti-circumvention law led to the enshittification of everything from tractors to ventilators, phones to smart speakers, thermostats to games consoles, all of which are bristling with hook IP that lets their manufacturers decide what you can do with your own property. 76/

Recording a video off a streamer has the same copyright status as recording off your analog cable had in 1984 when the Supreme Court handed down the *Betamax* decision, but because there's an "access control" on video streams, it's nevertheless a felony to make a VCR for a streaming service. 72/

This is how they disinvented the VCR. Once every video had an access control, it had "hook IP" that could be used to control *all* technologies that were capable of receiving, storing, or playing back that video. 62/

Every video format and distribution system that succeeded the VCR shipped with an access control: DVDs, Blu-ray and HD DVD, satellite and digital cable, and, of course, streaming video. 61/

Congress never passed a law criminalizing this conduct: rather, they gave companies the ability to write their own criminal code. Simply by adding an access control to a device, they could felonize any conduct that displeased them. 60/

Competition makes companies weaker, giving the public *and* democratic institutions more power. Competition makes the public richer at the expense of corporate shareholders, who have less money to spend on the project of subverting democracy. 40/

This year's admirals are *always* last year's pirates, and they insist that what *they* did to their predecessors was progress, while anyone who tries to do the same thing to *them* is a thief. 18/

As @brianbeutler.bsky.social argued, the next Democratic president should send bulldozers to the Supreme Court and tell them they have 15 minutes to decide if the Unitary Executive Theory is real.

Dean Baker@deanbaker13.bsky.social · 2d ago

Pretty brilliant how Trump is taking the Kennedy Center hostage, says he'll tear it down if he can't put his name on it www.usatoday.com/story/news/p... As Trump says, no one has ever seen anything like it before.

The Supreme Court is not being obtuse. They're being evil. My latest in @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/poli...

The Supreme Court Is Helping Trump Rig the Midterms

Trump’s order limiting mail-in voting is patently unconstitutional—but that didn’t stop the court from giving it the green light.

thenation.com

Republicans have spent the last year trying to defund Dolly Parton

The same story repeats itself everywhere in the culture: dumb rich guys who don't know what anything is or does, who are too lazy/smug to learn and ideologically committed to the idea that everything they don't control is Woke Bullshit, wrecking stuff on principle. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/w...

How U.S.-Canada Tariff Negotiations Turned Into an All-Out Trade War

Detailed accounts of the final hours of the negotiations show that, while the United States offered Canada what it said was the best deal of any country, what Canada had to give up in exchange was see...

nytimes.com

Of course, reporters won't do this, because they're too busy pushing every Democrat they can find to respond to every syllable ever uttered by three DSA members

Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · 3d ago

New NYT poll of Pennsylvania finds Trump approval in the state at 38-57. On economy it's 39-61. On cost of living it's 33-66 (!) Freebie for reporters: Ask the vulnerable House GOP incumbents in Pennsylvania what they think of Trump's new trade war with Canada.

There are going to be Democrats who say we shouldn’t rip it all out — it’s already built, we have other priorities — but removing the visible signs of Trumpism is absolutely necessary.

Andy Craig@andycraig.bsky.social · 6d ago

The vandalism and desecration of the White House isn't just vanity and it's not trivial. It's caesarism, as in literally what Julius Caesar did to the symbolic architecture of civic republicanism. Our national iconography matters and allowing the disfiguring of it to persist is a substantive harm.

Two people have died in Pennsylvania from measles, the state health department said. Both were unvaccinated. These the first deaths related to measles within the state in 35 years, it reports

2 people die from measles in Pennsylvania

Two people have died in Pennsylvania from measles, the state health department said Tuesday.

abcnews.com

in which the world's richest man appears to endorse a post calling for "shooting migrants" and "sinking boats with refugees"

Reporter on Bond Market: The yields have come back up since then. Have you talked to Bessent about another type of intervention.? Trump: The ultimate intervention is our military. And if we have to use that, we will.