October 2019 is over. Well, that snuck up on me — I almost forgot the month had ended. I guess a few things have been going on.
Maybe we have to start with general comments on the current occupant and specific ones on the beginning of the impeachment process and its reasons:
Please stop making your defense that he was "duly-elected." The founders provided for the impeachment and removal of "duly-elected" presidents. You just sound like a sycophant.But there are separate ones on the administration's policies, appointments, and other topics:
Gabriel Malor
In 1974 almost the entire house voted to start impeachment inquiry into Nixon. In 1998 31 dems voted to start an investigation in to Clinton. Today 0 republicans voted to investigate a guy who makes Clinton and Nixon look like Angels. House republicans are the worst
Pete Dominick
For all those people calling impeachment vote a "coup," it's worth noting Trump lost popular vote by 2.9 million votes while Dem House candidates won it by 9.7 million votes in 2018
Ari Berman
House GOP: "The process is a sham, there are no open hearings!"
House Dems: "Let's vote to have open hearings."
House GOP: "I vote no."
Mieke Eoyang
Sometimes you just have to take a step back and appreciate Trump trying to gin up a corruption scandal around an elected official’s kid being suspiciously handed a job:
Schooley
Do I get this right, GOP and DonaldTrump supporters?
Intelligence chiefs lie
Military leaders lie
Career diplomates lie
Scientists lie
Journalists lie
The only person telling the truth is the man who famously cheated wives, customers, investors and patrons of his charity?
Augie Ray
Recent testimony from US career civil servants: Speaking truth to plunder
Langdon Winner
The GOP complains about transparency to defend a president who refuses to release his tax returns.
Dan Rather
The next time Republicans decide to march around with a flag or claim they’re the party of the military, just remember what they’ve done to veterans, how they’ve turned their backs on their needs, ridiculed them for political gain, and called them traitors to save themselves.
Jared Yates Sexton
The original sin of a lot of Trump coverage is the idea that if a scandal doesn't affect support among his base, then it doesn't matter.
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark
The Trump term has been a constant reminder that—unlike the myth of meritocracy — rich people are often completely incompetent morons with privilege who fail (and fail and fail) upward their entire lives
Alexis Goldstein
FUN FACT: Although Trump DID give up his $400,000 per year salary, he has now spent 279 YEARS worth of that presidential salary on taxpayer-funded golf trips.
Translate Trump
A small point here, but worth repeating that even withholding the Ukrainian aid, for *whatever reason* wasn't lawful! The aid was passed by both houses and signed into law by the president. The president doesn't get to just withhold it.
Chris Hayes
Not one newspaper that demanded Clinton shut down her foundation that helped kids with AIDS before she was even elected has called for Trump to resign over 2,500 conflicts of interest.
LOLGOP
President Trump has now exceeded 2,500 conflicts of interest. Up from 2,300 in August. They're rising so fast that we decided to make a live tracking for the public, journalists, and lawmakers to keep up.
Robert Maguire
You know, when you really break it down, “One of the most highly accomplished secretaries of state in history who correctly identified Trump’s ties to Russia is concerned about additional candidates with Russian associations” would be a five alarm fire if that Secretary of State was a man.
Sarah Mackey
Chaos is a strategy for some. The purpose is to overwhelm you, distract you, and exhaust you with the drama of the day so you don’t have the clarity to see the big picture or the energy to fight the real battle against the fascism that is taking hold right in front of our faces.
Caroline Orr @RVAwonk
Destroying the world just to prevent your hotel chain from going bankrupt a seventh time is the dumbest supervillain plot of all time
Jess Dweck
Remember when Hunter Biden held the G7 at his own hotel 4 profit? And then got 100 patents granted by China? And had his real estate holdings bailed out by the Saudis? And offered foreign countries quid pro quo? And spent $200M taxpayer dollars to play golf? Me neither.
Elayne Boosler
Hi. There is no level of corruption greater than a President participating in the award of a contract to himself. We have reached the bottom. If the Senate will not act to stop this, there is no government ethics program. It's over.
Walter Shaub
Vladimir Putin figured out that the Republican Party would trade everything for the federal judiciary. And that's pretty much the whole story.
LOLGOP
If I'm following this correctly, Rudy has spent months arguing that Hunter Biden was paid an absurd amount of money based on political connections and not actual professional skill, all while being paid half a million dollars for his political connections
Sam Stein
Just today, I have seen Donald Trump's son, Ron Paul's son and Mitt Romney's niece speak out forcefully about how bad it is to use family connections to advance your career.
Kevin M. Kruse
The thing about Hunter Biden is his plush board seats are so obviously corrupt in the very mundane way that pretty much everything in DC is corrupt. Trump's efforts to capitalize on that, meanwhile, are so obviously corrupt in a totally new, over-the-top, thoroughly Trumpian way.
Lachlan Markay
Turns out ‘Make America Great Again’ really meant ‘Make America a terrorist-enabling, ally-betraying kleptocracy dedicated to doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin.’ To be fair, it’s a lot less catchy.
James O'Brien
It never gets mentioned but one thing that Trump White House did early on that has had major ripple effects was to get rid of the visitor logs. We would know right away how many times Rudy was in the building or, for that matter, if Parnas and Fruman ever stopped by.
Sam Stein
You know, Kathy Griffin had her life basically destroyed because she posed in a picture, meanwhile the president's group shows a video that includes him murdering senators, congresswomen and the poor public broadcasting service and it’s business as usual.
Molly Jong-Fast
Putin came from nowhere to win the latest chapter in US-Russia geopolitics. All thanks to white American racism. Y’all spent decades doing drills hiding under desks, all that espionage and building a massive nuclear arsenal just to sell the country out to Russia in one election. Essentially blew a 40 point lead in the last quarter because you didn’t want black people and immigrants to have basic human rights. What an embarrassing, earth-shattering disaster and lack of judgement. Y’all should be ashamed.
Samuel Sinyangwe
Just because this Republican president is the worst president of all time doesn't mean the last Republican president wasn't also, at that time, the worst president of all time.
@TheTweetOfGod
The Constitution has an answer for a president who refuses to cooperate with congressional oversight: impeach, convict, remove. The constitutional crisis isn’t Donald Trump. It’s Mitch McConnell’s protection of Donald Trump.
Ezra Klein
Who remembers Susan McDougal? She served 18 months for ignoring a subpoena to testify in the Whitewater case against the Clintons. Let me say it again. Served 18 months in prison for ignoring a subpoena.
@Mattsdoreen
Sometimes I wonder where we’d be right now if Trump’s overt cooperation with Russia hadn’t been treated like a wild-eyed conspiracy theory and if the media wouldn’t have given a career criminal the benefit of the doubt.
Jared Yates Sexton
All Hillary had to do is lose her balance in the sun and the media acted like she had a few hours to live. Donald Trump tweets incoherent nonsense daily and we can't talk about it being a sign of something physically wrong? He has the launch codes.
Zerlina Maxwell
The sad, overlooked part of this story that Ukraine is a fledgling democracy in an existential struggle with Russia. Its long corrupt government was finally trying to cleanse itself, looking to the U.S. for guidance. Along comes Trump and his goons ...
Radley Balko
The destruction of as many US institutions as possible in the shortest period of time with minimal public resistance will be remembered as the Trump / GOP era's greatest enduring legacy. (And we thought they were "resilient.")
Langdon Winner
Trump: I want to jail my fucking enemies and execute them.
Jeb Bush: Watch the cuss words. There are ladies present.
Jeet Heer
Invoking the fight against corruption to corruptly persecute political rivals under the cover of authority is what the Chinese Communist Party does every day. Never thought I'd see a U.S. president use and defend the same tactic.
Josh Rogin
Am getting tired of hearing about how "corrupt" Ukraine is. You know which country is corrupt? The United States. We have a president who is using the White House to make money, presidential children who are using their father's prestige to make money.
Anne Applebaum
Trump covers up his high Crimes until they’re exposed — then says “So what? I’ll do it again: here, watch me. See? That didn’t hurt so much, did it?” It’s a normalizing technique that works — until it doesn’t.
Laurence Tribe
It doesn’t get much lower than suggesting to an ally staring down the barrels of Russian tanks that you’ll leave them to be slaughtered if they don’t help your election.
The Hoarse Whisperer
President Trump literally owns a hotel three blocks from the White House where foreign and corporate interests pay him money every day to try to make him happy, but, sure, Hunter Biden is the real scandal
@dylanlscott
I don't think asking China to investigate the business dealings of children of powerful American politicians is a great look for the Trump family.
Charlie Quimby
Trump's acting like a guy who got pulled over doing 120 in a school zone and thinks he can get out of the ticket by screaming "I PAY YOUR SALARY!" at the cop.
Kevin M. Kruse
If congressional oversight = abuse, can we talk about Benghazi then or is it only abuse when Dems do it.
Katelyn Burns @transscribe
As Trump/GOP + many Democratss claim a "strong US economy," data pile up showing the opposite: a declining housing industry, serious cash shortages at banks, dangerous debt levels (both personal and corporate), etc. Just like before 2008 crash.Plus a few on the Mulligan rally in Minneapolis specifically:
Richard D. Wolff
FYI: Trump has made 31 claims about companies adding or saving American jobs thanks to his intervention -- adding up to 2.4 million jobs. We checked in May. More than *90 percent* of the jobs haven't materialized.
ProPublica
Trump deciding not to attend Elijah Cummings’ funeral is an atrocity, as would be Trump deciding to attend Elijah Cummings’ funeral. Trump’s presence in the office of the president is by itself an atrocity, as is his presence in public life in any capacity.
A.R. Moxon (Julius Ghost)
Barr was always this guy. His legacy was being this guy. He got confirmed because a bunch of pauncey DC insiders loudly told the country he was some kind of institutionalist with a nice reputation. They did immeasurable fucking damage.
@nycsouthpaw
The same attorney general who jailed Chelsea Manning for refusing a subpoena is currently refusing a subpoena
Justin Horwitz @Progressive_Pol
Whenever Trump talks, this is the picture every American should see in their head because this is reality:
@TimJOliver1
In the last two days Trump has referred to need for Turkey to "clean out" Northern Syria and also as the Turkish operation as being part of an "ultimate solution" to an unnamed problem.
Chris Hayes
the only surprising thing is that it took three years for president dumbass to create this big of a foreign policy mess.
Tom Tomorrow
Conservatives are still talking about how Ocasio-Cortez spent $300 at a hair salon, but we never found out who paid $200,000 of Brett Kavanaugh’s mysterious credit card debt.
Denizcan James @MrFilmkritik
another semiperiodic reminder that when Rick Perry was in college he took a class called “Meats” and got a D
Adam Steinbaugh
Our military is now for hire to other countries? WTF?
Duchess of mudder @geeeeeeebee
You’re on your own, Kurds. We have Crown Prince Bonesaw to protect.
Charles P. Pierce
going into a city and holding a rally for white people to have them to boo at the mention of a large and ethnically different part of the local population is unapologetic and open white supremacyThere were also a some on Mulligan being booed at the World Series game:
Taniel
Trump's hit on Biden as an ass-kisser while a dreamy-eyed Mike Pence swooned stage right also exhausted a massive amount of our national irony supply.
Rick Wilson
After Black Lives Matter protests, Minnesota GOP lawmakers enthusiastically backed bills to increase criminal penalties and let cities sue protesters for police costs. But when Minneapolis wants Trump costs covered they call it an “abuse of power“ by the “radical leftist” mayor.
Tony Webster
Something I hope reporters take away from all these GOP Senators blasting Trump on the Syria withdrawal is that it’s not “fear of Trump” that stopped them from speaking out like Mitt Romney did about Ukraine. They just didn’t want to.
Matthew Yglesias
from Ben Sasse: “If the President sticks with this retreat, he needs to know that this bad decision will likely result in the slaughter of allies who fought with us, including women and children. I hope the President will listen to his generals and reconsider.
Steven Dennis
Spontaneously booing and mocking your head of state at a sporting event without being told to or fear of consequence is a sign of liberty.Moving on (finally, to the Democratic primary:
Ernie Tedeschi
“Dad, what did you do to fight the fascist?”
“I told everyone to be civil and not boo him”
Alexis Goldstein
The media needs to show more of this organic public opposition to Trump instead of trying to silence it. They force feed us Trump's staged MAGA rallies where people are paid to show up. But clutch their pearls with legit and spontaneous crowd responses in opposition to him?
Cheri Jacobus
Media: Where is the public outcry about Trump? People must not really care if they're not screaming about it.
American public: *does outcry in highly visible venue*
Media: Well, that's not very polite. Truly, where has civility in American politics gone.
Shannon @TheStagmania
Imagine arguing that you shouldn’t boo the guy responsible for children in cages, kidnapping of kids after deporting their families, tent cities in Mexico after a bait and switch on immigration rules, and refusing to give TPS to Bahamanians after a devastating hurricanes
Alexis Goldstein
Time to remember the best voting advice I ever heard: voting isn't marriage, it's public transport. You're not waiting for "the one" who's absolutely perfect: you're getting the bus, and if there isn't one to your destination, you don't not travel- you take the one going closest.Elections in the U.S. generally and our general political problem:
Debbie Moon
Of all the criticisms of left-wing candidates like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or AOC, the "you know that they made money that one time" is by far the DUMBEST. NOBODY is opposed to making money, WE JUST WANT YOU TO SHARE SOME SO EVERYBODY CAN GET A FREAKING FLU SHOT.
Elie Mystal
It's amazing how the GOP has cratered in Fairfax county. George W. Bush carried it with 49% in 2000. McCain and Romney both got 39%. Then Trump got 29%.
Josh Barro
Wondering why everyone's so surprised about Nats fans giving Trump boos. Just because Jared and Ivanka live there doesn't make it Trump country. Here's Trump's % in 2016:
DC: 4
Arlington: 17
Alexandria: 18
Fairfax: 29
Montgomery: 20
Prince George's: 8
Major metros are deep blue!
Alec MacGillis
Mayor Pete is not worthy and I'm going to die mad about him occupying so much space in this race while Julián Castro gets ignored.
Shannon @TheStagmania
I liked Pete Buttegieg better when I disliked him for being clueless and green and not ready for prime time with delusions of grandeur, as opposed to now, when I dislike him for being shady. no wonder he was such a dick to Warren about breaking up big tech! He’s got skin in the game now
Claire Willett
Things rich progressives should do: Fund independent journalism, voting rights and anti-gerrymandering initiatives at the state level, and progressive candidates for state legislatures
Things rich progressives shouldn't do: Run for president, spend 10s of millions on presidential candidates
Stephen Wolf
Pete Buttigieg is running an ad literally claiming that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are “infringing on people’s freedom” by proposing Medicare for All. Simple question for Mayor Pete: Do you think requiring all seniors over 65 to be on Medicare is infringing on their freedom?
Ro Khanna
Each debate is pretty much everyone else attacking Warren or Bernie and then saying “no one wants to hear us fight” when they get criticized back.
@evanchairs
klobuchar doing the classic mean girl move of being extremely harsh and then when she’s rebuked by her opponent she puts a teary warble in her voice
@lyta_gold
Warren: here’s a little joke aimed at homophobes.
Conservatives: murder liberal politicians and especially journalists. Also John McCain.
Never Trumpers: The rhetoric on both sides has gotten too heated. Democrats must nominate a center right plutocrat for president.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
“Running Joe Biden against Trump is a terrible idea: if your pitch is, ‘Vote for me, my corrupt family isn't as blatant as the other guy,’ you are already dead in the water.” –Cory Doctorow
@MitchWagner
People who think Elizabeth Warren‘s old employer would have written “terminated employee for pregnancy reasons today“ are the same ones who helpfully pointed out that Brett Kavanaugh’s calendar for July 1, 1982 didn’t read “9pm: Attempt to rape Christine Blasey.”
@thehighsign
if you don't understand what this furor over the Elizabeth Warren pregnancy firing story is about, ask pretty much any woman in your life over 35.
Anne Helen Petersen
All you people squabbling at your desks about whether Warren or Sanders is scarier to big money are missing the damn point: two front-runners are scary to plutocrats right now, and that represents a blissful turning point in the Democratic Party and in America. Enjoy it.
Anand Giridharadas
I think the assumption going forward is every Republican who has not spoken up supports letting foreign countries determine our elections. Democrats should campaign that way and let the Republicans deny it
Jennifer Rubin
“Warren can’t win” is becoming “Warren’s only winning because of [insert external force].” Maybe check your assumptions & consider the possibility that a working class woman from Oklahoma who became a national figure by fighting for working people may just be really good at this.
Adam Jentleson
REPORTER: Have you seen enough evidence to vote to convict Donald Trump and remove him from office?
ELIZABETH WARREN: “Yes.”
It has long seemed to me that Biden's big problem is his unwillingness to confront head-on what the GOP has become. This is a symptom of the same problem; it's as if he imagines that the Senate would really deliberate the way it once did. Warren, however, knows what she's up against. This is a bigger asset than her policy wonkishness, much as I admire it.
Paul Krugman
Yes, as a historian who studies multiple centuries I keep telling people we haven't been trying large-scale democracy very long, and the USA is still running the barely updated beta software which had had no user testing, of course we're finding exploitable bugs. #fixthemThere was a flurry of tweets about Facebook:
Ada Palmer
Republican control of a state is self reinforcing, IMO. Like in Ohio, "conservative" policy repels LGBTQ people, young people, other Democratic base groups. Becomes entrenched one party system
Angie Schmitt
US federal employees in the West are regularly threatened and assaulted by right-wing nutballs, but antifa something something.
David Roberts (responding to a Washington Post story about a GAO report)
I love how America's collective brain is so diseased that the left wing wanting everyone to have education and healthcare is treated as radical while the right wing threatens civil war over paper straws and pronouns.
Joe Kassabian
Reminder: The Senate majority leader is not a position described in, or anticipated by, the Constitution.
@ryanbeckwith
Conservative in 1800: "we don't understand society well enough to recreate it from scratch, so we should only make small changes."
Conservative in 2019: "lmao I don't give a fuck if the planet is destroyed, we are making a shitload of money and I refuse to make a dollar less."
Existential Comics
Since at least the early 90s there have few if any consequences for conservatives ignoring facts, but often loss of jobs or primaries for speaking truth. In such a system, lying is rational.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
Any election "reform" that comes from Republicans is more than likely thinly disguised voter suppression, as was the case in Iowa. It belongs in the trashcan.
Robert Moffitt @justplainbob
Man, you watch Fox for 15 minutes and it explains nearly everything about the sorry state of our politics and media right now. The Murdochs have probably done more damage to the world over the last generation than anyone, anywhere.
Jon Favreau
There's been a false idea that the government does everything badly and the private market can do everything better. The post office has a very democratic and egalitarian mission at its heart. Postal banking is a good way to show how public institutions can deliver.
Mehrsa Baradaran
How is it that the Madame Tussauds wax model of Mark Zuckerberg looks way more like a real person than Mark Zuckerberg does? Oh my god:Racism, white supremacy, and police brutality:
findom earle @coherentstates
i think it's very cool that in 2004 some nerd was like "what if there was a website where you could post your name and also a picture of yourself" and now we have to check in with him every six months to make sure he's not destroying human civilization
@The_Law_Boy
It seems like Facebook could extract itself from most of its political difficulties by just *refusing to run political ads of any kind*. It can't be that big a chunk of revenue. Why doesn't FB take this obvious step? What is the *upside* of running political ads?
David Roberts
It is *not* giving more people a voice to allow white supremacists to pay to promote their message on Facebook. It is giving *fewer* people a voice. And stopping voter disenfranchisement is only a “political outcome” if we believe voter suppression is a legitimate political goal.
Anil Dash
Conceding on right-wing frames or right-wing policy does not make you more moderate, it means you are willing to give up some people's freedom, agency, rights, and lives to appease another side that will never be appeased. It makes you complicit.
ilyse hogue
Gotta say the internet was better before we traded all the cool websites for a shitty calendar/messaging app that turns your grandma into a white nationalist
@pixelatedboat
FB Comment: Someone needs to do something--people are dying
Me: Organize
FB Comment: But that's hard
Me: There is no one else
FB Comment: You do it
Me: I'll support you, but I'm not taking the lead
FB Comment: Someone needs to do something--people are dying
Alan Mills
Tells you everything you need to know about Facebook and Big Tech that they’re unworried about election tampering, fascists harnessing their tools, and endangerment of users but are actively terrified and mobilizing against Elizabeth Warren, who might challenge their monopolies.
Jared Yates Sexton
"If you need me to prove my humanity — I’m not the one who’s not human.” –Suhaiyma Manzoor-Khan, British-Muslim poetSexism, misogyny, and toxic masculinity:
Linda Sarsour
I am so grateful for the emotional energy and brilliance and sense of placement that black people on twitter give us white people every day in order for us to grow. It’s a gift. Listen and learn and grow.
Lisa Talmadge
stop saying 'nationalist' when you mean 'WHITE nationalist'
Saladin Ahmed
White Confederates, those who took up arms against the United States and killed union soldiers, had their voting rights restored to them after the Civil War.
Resist Programming
I've always been impatient with narratives of "How come [some particular form of resistance] didn't happen here?" Our context is different. The battlefield is different. Which means that tactics have always been different here. There's trillions invested in ensuring the US White majority sleeps. *Trillions.* tl;dr: I'm proud of resistance rising all over the world. But don't be ahistorical. Yes, some of us are complicit af, some of us are complacent af... However, castigating Black America for not overthrowing the US government? Especially Black elders? Whoo sah. Perspective is needed.
Ebony Elizabeth
Here are the founders in that painting of the Declaration signers who weren't slaveholders. The list is short enough to fit in a tweet:
Sam Adams
Robert Paine
Elbridge Gerry
George Clymer
James Wilson
Thomas McKean
Roger Sherman
Charles Thomson
Will Williams
Sam Huntington
John Adams
Will Ellery
George Walton
Arlen Parsa
When powerful white men use words like lynching and witch hunt to describe their perceived persecutions, it's because there are no historical analogues to white male persecution. There's no term for it because historically, there's no such thing.
Tom & Lorenzo
The people who don’t want us to use the term “concentration camps” when talking about groups of children concentrated in camps are defending their use of the word “lynching” to describe a white man being held accountable for his actions.
The Volatile Mermaid @OhNoSheTwitnt
W.E.B Du Bois: “Either he knew what slavery meant when he helped maim and murder thousands in its defense, or he did not. If he did not he was a fool. If he did, Robert Lee was a traitor and a rebel - not indeed to his country, but to humanity and humanity’s God.”
Liam Hogan @Limerick1914
Only lynching is lynching.
@DanaVivianWhite
Before you call the police, where Black people are involved, you should ask yourself if a gun is actually necessary to address whatever problem you’re trying to solve. Because that’s the tool they’re going to use. #AtatianaJefferson
Andre Henry
Today [so-called Columbus Day, more properly called Indigenous Peoples Day] in Providence, Rhode Island:
Michael J. Simpson @HiddenHistoryRI
I agree there are some opportunities to embrace bi-partisanship. But first think to yourself, will it be at the expense of low income people and people of color? It’s that simple.
Cacje @CJ_Hende
The threat of overt racist violence against Black people is always boiling beneath the surface as is fear that Black people will rise up in anger and refuse to tolerate the system of white supremacy. Cases like Guyger and Zimmerman become the stages where these tensions play out.
Bree Newsome Bass
We must enter a moment where irrational, white supremacist fears of Black bodies are no longer used to justify killing Black people. Racism cannot be exculpatory.
Marc Lamont Hill
Exactly! Their "fears" disappear when it's clear they can go to prison for murdering Black people.
Bree Newsome Bass
who cares that someone got fired from SNL for doing a racist joke. i know someone who got fired from their job for wearing shorts.i got fired froma job once for calling in sick. wheres my $30k gofundme
@Tormny_Pickeals
It's wild y'all still give white people so much benefit of the doubt when they claim to be "afraid" of Black people while Black people aren't allowed to be afraid or angry in any given interaction but ok
Bree Newsome Bass
Today, marijuana, the substance that turned Black men into prisoners, thus impoverishing Black families, is turning white men into moguls and making white families rich.
Bishop Talbert Swan
“Cabin culture,” perhaps the most famous white Minnesota cultural phenomenon, is literally just settler colonialism
Devin Hogan
Germany’s reckoning with the Holocaust led to a commitment to human dignity—which shows up in every aspect of its prison system. The US, however, has failed to reckon with its legacy of slavery. The result? A criminal justice system shaped by racism. #ReimaginePrison
@verainstitute
For everyone saying, "History will judge them harshly," please remember we live in a country that still isn't sure how it feels about confederate statues.
Phillip Atiba Goff
thinking about how a dude who illegally downloaded a bunch of JSTOR articles faced more jail time than a lady cop who murdered a guy in his own apartment
@floozyesq
Cool newish euphemism for Asian immigrants that we will soon see be hearing more of: “white adjacent people.”
Wesley Yang
Plato’s mother Perictione was a Pythagorean philosopher. As recently as the 16th c. some scholars considered her an equal of Socrates as Plato’s 2 teachers. 19th c scholars believed a woman couldn’t have been a philosopher & removed her from the story leaving only the male mentorClimate change and renewable energy:
Ada Palmer
The core of “not all” is a denial of personal responsibility, but as a member of any privileged group, you still bear responsibility for ending oppression that benefits you. If you’re doing that, you don’t feel inclined to “not all,” because you see the observation as legitimate.
feminist next door @emrazz
ALL men benefit from the actions of violent men. It keeps women in check. It allows men perform the barest minimum and still feel good about themselves. The existence of violent men grants "good" men awards for basic decency.
I BELIEVE HER @OmogeDami
Reasons why only black women should be spies:
- We remember everything
- Receipts are our currency
- Unmatched interrogation tactics
- When we switch up our hair white people don’t recognize us
- Frequently mistaken for staff
Camilla Blackett
Experts discover that being nice is a good leadership strategy. It might seem obvious, but toxic masculinity has left generations of men extremely confused about such things.
Among Today’s Most Prized Leadership Qualities: Playing Nicely
David Roberts
“notice how “girls mature faster” is never stated as a reason why girls should be given more positions of power and authority? It only works to hold girls to greater accountability than boys and to justify men’s attraction to them
@VicksStyles
Me: we need to set our gender mix target to 76 percent women.
My CEO: that is extreme!
Me: That is our current percentage of men, I’m glad you agree with me that our current situation is extreme.
My CEO: uh....when you put it like that...
@DameKraft
I know I’m being trite but like I genuinely don’t think I’d notice or care if I ever got called “beautiful” by a man again. The vast majority of times that a man has called me that (not that many times) it has been about power or threatening me, not like romance.
Sophia Benoit @1followernodad
Why is Brett Kavanaugh allowed to make rulings on what people can do with their bodies?
Bree Newsome Bass
Fun fact: Like serial killers and mass shooters, most trolls and douchepools on social media are ... white guys ...
Paul Thomas
"From October 21 to October 28, morning and primetime news shows on the major broadcast (ABC, CBS, NBC) and cable (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC) news shows aired 275 combined segments on the California wildfires. Just 11 of them, or 4%, mentioned climate change."Sustainable cities and transportation:
Waleed Shahid
This year’s extraordinary methane rise over the Arctic is coming into perspective a bit better. Almost 10 separate readings over 2050 ppb. Clearly something happening. I know many would prefer we not talk about methane. Sorry:
Randall Gates
So. Would you rather the human species:
a. Lived in a non-industrial way, without cars, airports, factories, power stations, electrical grids etc.
b. Died?
Is this a difficult choice to make?
@WinterOakPress
Props to these auto companies for waiting till California is literally engulfed in flames to announce they won't be abiding by its hard-fought air quality rules.
Angie Schmitt
95% of the world’s people have never set foot on a plane. The super-rich will buy 8,000 new private jets in the next decade fuelling the climate emergency. Climate justice and social justice go hand in hand.
Jonathan Bartley
GM to the planet: drop dead
Angie Schmitt (in response to General Motors' decision to side with Trump on emissions)
If SUV drivers were a nation, they would rank seventh in the world for carbon emission.
Rob Hopkins
Conventional wisdom is that clean energy is more expensive, but the truth is that lots of dirty energy is being protected from competition and propped up because it benefits a few powerful incumbents.
David Roberts
Carbon capture captures little carbon: "Only 10.8% of CCU plant’s CO2e and 10.5% of CO2 removed from the air by SDACCU are captured over 20 years; both plants increase air pollution and social cost vs no capture." Doing nothing has lower social cost than carbon capture.
Mark Z. Jacobson
Can we stop with the carbon capture pipe dreams already? We need fundamental systems change, rapid reduction in manufacturing, and total shift of non-essential functions toward #carbondatadriven processes. If your business can’t profit in an ethical economy, please don’t try to fake it.
julie kearns
the buried lede here is "global warming could be stalled for 20 years with the same amount of money the world spends on its militaries every 60 days"
@nihilocrat (responding to a Bloomberg story that said it would cost $300 billion to stop the rise in greenhouse gases and buy 20 years to fix global warming)
Study: US air pollution deaths increased by 9,700 a year from 2016 to 2018
@voxdotcom
"I calculated that Bill Gates, for example, causes at least 1,600 tonnes of CO₂ to be emitted into the atmosphere – and this is from flying alone."
Dr. Genevieve Guenther
This is why carbon literacy matters. It’s why we need progressive taxation and a robust price on carbon. Wealth correlates directly to CO2-e: every billionaire is a policy failure and every billionaire is also a massive climate threat.
julie kearns
After declining by 24% during the Obama years, average air pollution (PM2.5) has increased by 5% in the U.S. since 2016, resulting in an estimated 9,700 additional premature deaths in 2018.
Tucker Doherty
We are really failing at reducing transport emissions. And at such a critical time. This is a grave concern. People are not taking it seriously enough. Already dreadful outcomes + SUVS + low gas prices + Uber and Lyft + business as usual transportation policy = world on fire.
Angie Schmitt
So we're all clear: there already is a price on carbon. It’s just that the wrong people are paying it.
Mary Annaïse Heglar
Friday fun fact: Per capita aviation emissions exceed that of the US in at least ten countries. Half of those are in Europe. (Courtesy of Sola Zheng)
Dan Rutherford
emissions from SUVs have obliterated *all* emissions saved from EVs.
SUVs are also why pedestrian deaths are up 50% in just a few years.
banning SUVs is good for:
livability
climate
safety
health
and most importantly
quality of life
Electric cars are not enough. It’s time to get serious about banning SUVs.
@sea_Baugruppe
Wow, this is a pretty depressing statistic: SUVs were the second-largest contributor to the increase in global CO₂ emissions since 2010 after the power sector, but ahead of heavy industry, trucks and aviation...
Glen Peters
I think it is long past time for climate hawks to stop getting excited about far-off targets, resolutions, pledges, and other bits of happy symbolism. Policy. Movement on the ground. That's all that matters.
David Roberts
Most of the plastic that exists today has been made in the last decade. The environment appears to be drowning in plastic for the same reason that global temperatures continue to rise – fossil fuels have remained cheap and abundant. #KeepItInTheGround
Paul Dawson
A new Tesla emitted around 35 tonnes of upfront carbon into the atmosphere. This will remain for 100s of years, hot housing our planet. Cargo bikes were invented to replace cars
Rosalind Readhead @Privatecarfree
Fairly certain that crude oil is a genuine eldritch horror.
• lied in wait in the Earth's crust for literally millions of years
• made from the dead bodies of creatures nobody in recorded history has ever seen alive
• almost immediately granted us advanced technology
@YseultCeirw
BIG: NASA climatologist/ lead IPCC author Drew Shindell calls for an end to new gas-fired power plants because they are climate incompatible. “This is true even if we consider only the CO2 emissions from burning natural gas.”
Dr. Sandra Steingraber
It is telling how many corporations’ plans for achieving the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 are only marginally different from their older plans to achieve an 80% reduction from 1990 levels by 2050. Almost like distant targets with vague timelines don’t change actions today.
Alex Steffen
This is a major milestone: Alaska's average annual temperature has now risen above the melting point. We are in a climate emergency
Eric Holthaus
“Buried a million years… now serving the nation” - Tennessee GasTransmission Company [c.1950s]:
Masque of the Red Death @doctorow
Regular reminder that the costs of cutting greenhouse gases -- at least for the first couple of decades -- will be more than covered by the health and economic benefits of concomitant cuts in local air pollution.
David Roberts
Honest question: What would it take to get people as excited about building a better world -- about literally preserving the ability of our planet to sustain life and for our civilizations to continue to simply exist -- as we already are about football?
Eric Holthaus
Ice sheet collapse is irreversible on human timescales.
Michael E. Mann
“Irreversible *on human timescales*” is a phrase that ought to spring to mind whenever we hear someone claiming they have a plan to “reverse climate change.”
Alex Steffen
Community: We don’t want micro plastics in our water.
Experts: Most micro plastics come from rubber tires on our cars.
City leaders: Ban straws!
Luke Klipp
Climate writers often slip into a war metaphor. But climate change is not a war, it is genocide. It is domination. It is extinction. It is the most recent manifestation of how powerful men throughout history have sought to steal from the less powerful. Climate change is about how we treat each other. Our weather has changed so rapidly that we now stand on the brink of collapse. But simply speaking about the impending apocalypse will do nothing to change it. We need to reimagine human relationships.
Eric Holthaus
How to fix climate change in 2 easy steps:
1. Don't vote for people who don't get it
2. Organize for people who do
Kate Marvel
My grandfather was born at 288ppm CO2. We’ve hit 416ppm CO2 and I don’t even have kids (yet). So hard to fathom.
@happifydesign
“The potential economic benefits arising from limiting warming to 1.5°C may be at least four or five times the size of the investments needed in the energy system until 2050.”
David Wallace-Wells
For those inspired by Greta Thunberg, but unwilling to change their SUV-driving ways—stop making it hard for those who ARE making a difference. Be grateful for the people on bikes you may need to slow for, respect that the road is shared, and give up parking for bike lanes.
Brad Dykema
about 700 million people live on less than 2 dollars a day and emit no carbon. about 5 billion people live on betwn 2-10 dollars a day and emit no carbon. the rest of us use WAY more than 1 ton per annum. average US per capita is 16 tons, the rich way way way more.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther
For more context on flying, a round-trip flight from NY to London will emit more per passenger than the annual per capita emission of 81 countries, which represent about 47% of the world's population.
Engaging Data
Thought: how much of the reasons that large supermarkets in car-friendly locations are cheaper is that car infrastructure has been forced to be built and subsidized?There were just a few on guns. Not sure if there weren't enough mass shootings or Twitter and I are getting numb:
Gustav Svärd
"...we found that people who say no one rides the bus are people who never ride the bus."
Nothing makes many people more angry than seeing an almost empty bus.
Nothing makes many people more happy than seeing an almost empty highway.
It's not about principle or sound public policy. It's about self-interest.
Jason Segedy
Imagine cities not primarily designed around the movement of mostly empty metal boxes, a return to when humans were primary in street life. Imagine investing in free public transport for all, so all can participate in our society equally and as bonus preserve a livable habitat.
b9AcE
If MnDOT was serious about safety & economic development, they’d have a “Corridors of Commerce” that did this ... Instead of spending $300M yearly on highway expansions, spend half that on road diets & improvements to the public realm — it’d have 50x more of an impact!
Nate Hood (commenting on a photo of a Chicago painted intersection)
i really like the analogy of cars in cities being like invasive species.
cars were not there first. they overwhelm and choke off everything else.
get rid of them and watch the natural wildlife and surrounding environment flourish to its fullest potential.
Jonathan Maus
It’s that time of year again: Constant reminders of how unnecessarily wide most of our streets are. #SlowTheCars:
Nate Hood
Pedestrian fatalities double every year on Halloween. No case of poisoned candy has ever been confirmed. If police really wanted to keep kids safe, they would be warning drivers, enforcing traffic laws and closing high-risk streets to cars.
You're Wrong About...
a network of citywide bus-only lanes would drastically improve emergency response times.
patrick kennedy @WalkableDFW
it is truly incomprehensible to me that a suburban commuter might spend an hour or more in traffic every day and not hate cars with every fiber of their being
@lieholepiehole
We can't just convert all cars to electric, IMO. (Though I think we need to do that as well.) Re: Climate change: We also need to rethink cars entirely. The individual ownership model. The size and shape. The way we use them (mostly drive alone). Like if we have all electric cars but they're still mostly transporting one person surrounded by 4+ adult-size empty seats... it's wasteful and inefficient.
Angie Schmitt
broke: fare evaders are frustrating to riders
woke: fare evaders are paving the way to free public transit for all riders
@dirtcutie
My mom called me yesterday and said, "I have to tell you something. I saw a cyclist biking with no hands! What do you think of that?" This is MY MOM. She proofread chapters of my book! I give up.
She would never call me and say, "I saw an SUV driver texting, parked in the crosswalk!"
Angie Schmitt
Pretty wild to sit in a modern American city and realize cars are:
- primary cause of local air pollution
- primary cause of local noise pollution
- primary impediment to safe walking and cycling
- primary source of carbon emissions
Marcel Moran
It's a big cultural problem that people think something like this is so ridiculous/mockable and not driving around in a 85% empty F-350 all the time:
Angie Schmitt
When you insist that the city needs to be made convenient for people driving cars, you’re saying that there should be no places for people who can’t or don’t want to drive. The latter group includes elderly people, people with certain disabilities and people who care about the planet, vibrant urban spaces and general pleasant living environments
Adam Miller
I fail to understand how one of these images show something legal (and subsidized) and the other is demonized, regulated and capped at 500:
@Neomischa
The only thing single-family homeowners hate more than not having free parking available is having free parking available and other people using it.
Zachary Wefel
Our cities are toxic environments for pedestrians (and cyclists and anyone not in a car). If we want to have any chance of saving the planet—and want people to walk— every city, every suburb, every town and village and hamlet has to make it safe, convenient, and comfortable to walk.
Lou Miranda
(pssst ... reduced vehicle miles traveled is, on its own, a "community benefit" that can be measured in lives saved, air pollution abated, carbon emissions reduced, transpo dollars saved, and valuable land freed up for better uses ... pass it on)
@mateosfo
Transit fare evasion leads to armed intervention, criminal prosecution, jail time
Parking fare evasion just results in a ticket, I wonder why
Greg Shill
The whole city of Firenze (Florence) could fit inside an Atlanta interchange. The suburban experiment will prove to be the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world:
The Decolonial Atlas
One of the most dangerous delusions in America is the idea that brittle places, broken systems and jobs in hi-CO2 industries must be saved and made just. The unsustainable and untenable cannot be made just. They can't even be saved. The only real justice now is inclusion in speed.
Alex Steffen
I remember *many* years ago watching a TV report on China showing almost everyone getting around Bejing on bikes, masses of bikes. It was understood in U.S. we'd all see this as as a sign how backwards China was. Boy were we wrong about bikes and limiting cars. So wrong.
kar nels
If you’re suing the city for scooters but not for 100% inaccessible sidewalks (like Franklin and Lagoon) or for the lack of accessible detours for construction, you’re a troll, not an advocate for people with disabilities.
@happifydesign
Truth: 1 bus is equal to 40 cars. 40 cars! Instead of focusing on making those cars electric, we should be focusing on investment into our transit system.
Amity Foster
Many suburbanites: “I can’t drive less because there isn’t good public transit here.”
Also many suburbanites: “I’m against any increase in density that would make transit more viable, and any reprioritization of road space that would make transit work better.”
See the problem?
Brent Toderian
Portland seems to me to have just MASSIVE amounts of retail. All these little locally owned businesses offering all this diverse stuff. It just like HURTS to see what we give up for big box stores you drive to with big parking lots.
Angie Schmitt
San Francisco, a city in which the majority do not own cars, allows car parking in front of bus stops. People need to squeeze between car bumpers to board the bus. Imagine doing this with a stroller, groceries, or a wheelchair:
Patrick Traughber
"Why do we expect sidewalks to be something that’s optional, while at the same time there’s this huge spigot of funding for state and federal roadways? We design that inequity right into the street, and it’s reinforced by law, regulations and policy." –City Lab
Brent Toderian
If driving is faster than walking or transit, your city is choosing segregation by income (i.e. race) and disability.
If driving is easier and more reliable than transit or cheaper with a family, you’ve set up a regressive tax from poor people to fossil fuel companies.
@happifydesign
if you want more people riding bikes (especially more timid, much older or much younger population); we probably need more slow, protected, calm infrastructure than fast conveyances.
James @eBikeSTP
Regular buses should run regular hours, every single day of the week. Not on three very different schedules depending on what day it is.
@happifydesign
Our poor built environment harms the quality of life of almost everyone, rich and poor. But the wealthy have more ways of mitigating it. One is the ability to vacation in more rewarding places.
Rik Adamski
Cycling on sidewalks is a product of bad planning, not bad people. No one should be vilified, or fined, for ensuring their own safety in a city that has ignored their needs.
Robin Mazumder
Remind me again why our kids can’t bike to school? Especially in the winter? If they really “can’t,” it’s because of how we’ve deliberately designed things. #designforkids #letkidsbike:
Brent Toderian (with Finnish photo)
A big part of our problem with pedestrian deaths is privileged people (hold who hold outsized political power), just do not find themselves in this position: And they aren't sympathetic. They are the ones in the cars crowding the crosswalk:
Angie Schmitt
Fun Fact: The fine for riding a bike in NYC without a bell is nearly twice that of a driver who gets caught speeding through a school zone in a multi-ton vehicle with kids everywhere.
@CarHelmets
“What seems most convenient for the individual in the moment — whether it’s driving alone, hopping in an Uber or a Lyft, or soaring over a gridlocked highway in a helicopter — is often the worst for everyone in the aggregate.”
Ryan J. Reilly
‘A walk in the park rivaled the peak effects of Ritalin.’ Our children need better parks, open spaces and more places to garden in the city. #ParksMatter #NCCNatureTalks
Jennifer Keesmaat
a triumph of advertising to get whole generations to think of suburbia as the default mode of human living, too. Think how suburbanites always refer to city-dwellers as insects, sardines, rats etc.
@corgzone
The more I read about it, the more I think America's post-WWII land use decisions -- highways, cars, suburbs, malls, single-family homes -- cemented all its worst dysfunctions in place and doomed its democracy to eventual collapse.
David Roberts
I love this. This is at Work Dr and W Exchange St in Akron. Sometimes a little bit of beautification can go a long way:
Jason Segedy
“U.S. consumers held a record $1.3 trillion of debt tied to their cars at the end of June... up from about $740 billion a decade earlier.” And auto debt is going to turn into cement shoes if we go into a recession where Uber dies and unemployment jumps.
Matt Pearce
Not sure what agency that is but that’s some dope street art right here on Vanderbilt in Brooklyn:
Hae-Lin Choi
Literally USDOT: The thing on the left is fine and acceptable. The thing on the right is a safety hazard:
Angie Schmitt
I've been around for almost 5 decades now. I haven't met a lot of adults who have never been a renter themselves. Yet, there is some transformation that happens to many people where, once they no longer rent, they lose all sense of perspective and any empathy for those who do.
Jason Segedy
Whether pedestrians live or die is like a 14th tier priority behind snow plowing and salting and analyzing traffic flows to find where the "pinch points" are so they can order up another widening to keep themselves busy for another year.
Angie Schmitt
"SUVs are a paradox: while many people buy them to feel safer, they are statistically less safe than regular cars, both for those inside and those outside the vehicle."
William Lindeke
Someone told me: Georgia DOT has 4,000 employees. One of them. Just one. Works on both pedestrian and bike safety. Georgia has like 250 pedestrian deaths a year! They don't give a shit about safety! Esp. not low income folks getting killed on their nightmare arterials.
Angie Schmitt
One of the most important but overlooked metrics for walkable mixed-use development is the number of doors per linear foot. This single building on Brooklyn’s Court Street does exceptionally well: 100’ in length with 11 doors - 7 for retail:
Mike Lydon
That the car is a symbol of status, doesn't this look cool? Just give us infrastructure and alternative means of getting around, and we shall show you what is cool, cooler and coolest...and that will be the process of redefining status in terms of mobility.
Amanda Ngabirano @mandyug
3/4 of drivers fail to yield at crosswalks. Drivers kill 86 school buses full of pedestrians in a year
Angie Schmitt
Human beings have lived in cities for 5000 years. Everyone, including kids were able to walk freely. When cars appeared ~100 years ago kids vanished from the streets. Cars were killing them. Cities need to be for human beings and especially the most vulnerable
Claudia Adriazola-S
"Since 2014, over $80 billion has been spent on “smart” or connected cars & AVs, arguably to make cars safer. But investing in the car of the future is investing in the wrong problem. We need to be thinking about how we can create a world with fewer cars."
Allison Arieff
This idea that homes are an 'asset class' and/or an 'equity vehicle' is relatively new and has blossomed over the course of my adult life - it's not a coincidence that rising homelessness and under-housing for so many has gone hand in hand with this shift.
Jennifer Keesmaat
Helsinki is about the size of Greater Cleveland, a cold weather city, didn’t have a strong bicycle culture until ~5 years ago. Now almost every street is a complete street
Josh Jones @Josh_CLE
Global electric bus fleet:
2012: 5,000
2019: 425,000
Colin Mckerracher
If Denver went into every neighborhood and said “we’d like to plant 3000 trees and add five acres of green space but we’re going to do it by repurposing every on street parking space for greenspace” we’d find out real quick who’s serious about climate change.
John Riecke
“Walking and biking is not ‘alternative transportation.’ It’s original transportation.”
Jess Zimbabwe
So, putting aside my histrionics for a sec, here's what we know about cars:
- most people can't actually afford them
- they're poisoning the ocean
- they're wrecking the climate
- they're the leading cause of death for young humans
- they take up most public space in our cities
@mateosfo
Depavement, or replacing as much space as you can with soil and plants in a city, isn’t just pretty, it’s a pollution reducing and flood prevention act. Every parking lot would be better as a park.
John Leavitt
there are at least 10 high grill trucks parked on my block. I have never felt more afraid for my self, for children, or for the climate.
@Neomischa
Prioritizing long trips over short -- U.S. traffic engineering's whole big thing -- is sexist. Also classist. $1 billion interchanges for 25 mile highway commutes (for rich men). But no money for missing sidewalks, crosswalk upgrades, bus shelters.
Angie Schmitt
Hey look, it's a protected bike lane doing its job:
@scttdvd
maybe you shouldn't live out in the burbs and expect to have a congestion free auto commute with one driver/suv into your metro area that has poor public transit options
chooglincharley
Somehow we convinced ourselves that dead children were an acceptable price to pay for guns and cars. They are not.Health care:
@drschweitzer
More access to empathy. Less access to guns.
Matt Deitsch
"Mental illness" is just GOP code for "I'm too scared of the NRA to do what's best for the country." If the only time they care about mental illness is right after a mass shooting, that's a dodge, not a legitimate concern.
Robert Moffitt @justplainbob
Part of me thinks that, as long as the US is flooded with easy guns and everyone might be armed, quasi-military policing + ever-increasing surveillance are inevitable. And the powerful people defending easy gun access know & welcome this fact.
David Roberts
Anytime you call the police, you are choosing to introduce, at minimum, one loaded firearm to the situation
@bornwithatail_
The DMV: you go, get a number, and are seen. If you don't have the right documents, they walk you through what you need for next time.Education:
Literally any interaction with private insurance: phone trees, interminable indefinite waits, deeply opaque policies, hours lost, relief denied.
Kelsey D. Atherton
Imagine if reporters pressed Republicans on their health care plans killing people the way they press Democrats on theirs raising taxes.
jess mcintosh
Small study: just 2 months of being made to keep a reading log lowers young kids' interest in reading - vs. what it was before & also vs. that of kids who could choose whether to keep a log. (How much more damage from years of mandatory logs, one wonders?)Immigration:
Alfie Kohn
Enrollment at MI teacher prep programs dropped 70% in 8 yrs--16,000 fewer college students majoring in K-12 ed programs in 2016-17 school year than 2008-09. Those 16k fewer teachers are the equivalent of 1/6 of MI’s current pub school teaching workforce.
nancyflanagan
There are 60,000 fewer public education jobs than before the recession began. If we include the number of jobs that should have been created just to keep up with growing student enrollment, we have a 307,000 job shortfall in public education.
Economic Policy Institute
"Collecting data on human learning based on children’s behavior in school is like collecting data on killer whales based on their behavior at Sea World." ~@cblack__
Isabel Rodríguez @ecomentario
Leading up to Día De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), the Hispanic Caucus built an altar in the US Capitol to remember the children and families who have lost their lives while seeking safety at our border. Our altar celebrates them and honors their sacrifice, bravery and resilience:Income inequality, wage theft, and better ways to organize an economy:
Hispanic Caucus
The Trump administration is spending more than $200M to investigate more than 700,000 citizens with the goal of denaturalizing them. By contrast, the average number of people denaturalized from 1990-2016: 11. It's a large scale attack on citizenship.
Don Moynihan
A DNA registry for migrants. Imagine the ugly possibilities of having a marginalized group of people that large cataloged according to their DNA, and that catalog being in the hands of the state. I know folks are focused on Ukraine, but this is a whole thing.
@MsKellyMHayes
If the media was as skeptical of wars as it is of compressing income inequality, we would live in a much better world.And the best of the rest:
Anand Giridharadas
@AYFKMPEOPLE
One cannot simultaneously argue for the virtues of a free market and the virtues of a corporation. Corporations are literally creations of the government.
Joe Kearns
So much of people's lack of willingness to support more robust social programs stems from:
1) a fundamental misunderstanding of how people become and stay impoverished
2) a failure to recognize that, but for the arbitrary nature of birth and circumstance, it could have easily been them
Clint Smith
“If you want a living wage, get a better job” is a fascinating way to spin “I acknowledge that your current job needs to be done, but I think whomever does that job deserves to be in poverty.”
@suchnerve
Capitalism didn't give us the internet. Large-scale cooperation, open protocols, and free software gave us the internet. Capitalism gave us mobile sites that don't work because fifteen ads cover the screen.
Existential Comics
Poor people don't need to be told to cook more. Low-income families already cook more than middle-class families, and they eat less fast food. Poor families need more money and support to be able to feed their families the way they want to.
Sarah Bowen
Why the hell is it “if you can’t pay rent, buy fewer lattes” and not “if you can’t pay your employees a living wage, buy fewer yachts”?
@Strandjunker
Can't wait till WeWork and Uber and all the Silicon Valley smoke and mirrors IPOs crash the whole economy.
Angie Schmitt
Richest country in history of the world has a concept of “school lunch debt” for six year olds
@djkilllist
Instead of talking about housing supply not keeping up with "demand" I think it's clearer to say it's not keeping up with "need". Demand is need backed by money. But lots of people don't have any/much money and their needs are just as important.
Tommaso Sciortino
Plutes gonna loot
Anand Giridharadas
you gotta love capitalism where the government “can’t afford” to offer $2 transit rides for free but can afford to pay 3 cops to stand there
@alsoconnor
Since 2008, GE execs wasted more than $53 billion on stock buybacks.
In 2017, it paid its CEO, Jeff Immelt, a reported $211 million exit package.
Now, in debt, it's freezing pensions for 20,000 employees--while its share price reaches 25-year lows.
just an absolute disgrace
Eric Markowitz
Rich people who CONSTANTLY get stuff for free are always so concerned someone living in poverty MIGHT get something for free too.
Ashley C. Ford @iSmashFizzle
Pat Robertson graduated from Yale Law and his dad was a US Senator. There's money to be made pretending to be stupid.
almightygod
The idiom “the blind leading the blind” has always frustrated me - blind people are the best equipped to help others navigate blindness. Similarly, there is no better resource for deaf people than other deaf people. Disabled people are experts on how to live with disability.
Hayden Smith
Everything has already been said. Pick a side. Fight like hell.
@prisonculture
Be the change you wish to see in the world. Write more letters to the editor and op-eds for your local paper so it’s not just wall-to-wall gripes about crime and traffic from idle boomers.
Alex Schieferdecker
Quite brilliant:
Suresh Rajan
1950: Interracial marriage? What’s next; marrying a horse?
2015: Same sex marriage? What’s next; marrying a horse?
2019: A trans person identifying as a woman? What’s next. Identifying as a horse?
They have one argument. It sucks.
@peppercoyote
BREAKING: The federal deficit for fiscal 2019 was $984 billion, a 26% increase from 2018. Federal deficit increases 26% to $984 billion for fiscal 2019, highest in 7 years. The gap between revenues and spending was the widest in seven years. Defense, Medicare and interest payments ballooned the shortfall.
CNBC Now
Going out on a limb and guessing "hors d'oeuvre" is one of the most frequently looked-up words in the dictionary.
Carolyn Porter
Me, writing an email: I'm using an exclamation point so you know I'm friendly and excited! But now I'm using a period so that you know I'm not crazy. Here's another sentence with a period as a buffer, proving my normalness. Thanks so much!
Grace Segers
was thinking how a thing called “wework” ended up boiling down to one guy who will never have to work again.
Brandon Stosuy
I said "Ralf with F" and this is what happened:
Ralf Singh
On average, cops make around 15 arrests per YEAR. Only a handful of these are felonies. This idea that cops are running around dodging gunfire all the time might be the plot of Bad Boys, but it's not real life.
Tahir Anderson Duckett
I frequently get called “elite” by people who likely have more money and a wealthier background than I do, and the only excuse I can see is I read at a college level and have progressive views on gender and sexuality.
Amanda Marcotte
It's amazing the idea that wanting to treat people with equal amounts of respect regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, identity, etc. is somehow 'elitist', while treating certain classes and populations as somehow inherently 'wrong' or 'inferior' isn't.
@Citizen_Kryptik
If someone described the process of pregnancy and childbirth to you, and you had never heard of it, and they said, you can do this physically, grow a 8 pound child and then pass it through your vagina. You would be like LOL, fuck off!? Quit playing.
Angie Schmitt
There is only one mosquito left this season and it lives wherever I am standing.
Tressie McMillan Cottom
My father once told me that anyone who can tell you everything they’ve ever done for you is not your friend. Wise man, he was.
jelani cobb
I am Tulsi Gabbard years old and I still can't hear Robert Bork's name without thinking about the Swedish Chef.
Maggie Koerth-Baker
I am 100% supportive of more places trimming hedges into dogs:
Nate Hood
As a reminder, the whole idea of "alpha" and "beta" in group dynamics was based on observations of captive wolf populations and is not actually how wolves behave in the wild. The author has been trying to debunk the influence of his OWN RESEARCH on pop culture for years.
@TBSkyen
I think it's kind of crazy that religious institutions are tax-exempt at all. I think it's crazy that explicitly religious schools are allowed to sub for public schools. I want MORE separation of church and state. (I could not win an election anywhere in the US.)
David Roberts
Reminder to cheerleaders of all kinds that wars are fought by militaries but suffered by civilians.
Ben Ehrenreich (commenting on news coverage of the Kurds)
That's a rather absurd name for a cafe:
@CoopEats
The next time I go to a Q&A, I’m going to bring an air horn, and whenever someone in the audience stands up and says, “I don’t really have a question, but...” I’m going to sound the air horn until they sit down.
Pamela Colloff
My son got a pencil from school that says "it's never cool to do drugs.' He just pointed out to me that it has a design flaw: as he sharpens it, eventually it will say "do drugs."
Jared Cook
I'm the wrong person to tweet at about *no one organizing around X, Y, Z." I really am. It's almost uniformly untrue. Do some research and figure out who is working on the issue *nobody is organizing around* and then join them. Otherwise be quiet.
@prisonculture
Everyone who loves crypto-currency is just desperate to avoid doing actual work to make money.
Tom Basgen
No one ever talks about how an oubliette implies the existence of a larger, and far more terrifying, oobly.
@Brainmage
I feel like Minnesota missed an opportunity by never building a stadium in the shape of one of the great Minnesota inventions, the Bundt pan.
Chris Steller
"Business leaders" are the top two words in a news story that make me not care about said news story.
@mollypeonies
Everyone's got a moral blind spot, and it's usually the mirror.
@count_01
Jargon is like an invisibility cloak for bad ideas.
Mary Annaïse Heglar
how this logo still exist is beyond me:
Chris D'Angelo
"In the nineteen-nineties, researchers found that forty-one percent of male officers admitted that, in the previous year, they’d been physically aggressive toward their spouses"
Clint Smith (quoting a New Yorker story)
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