Oof, what a month, this January 2020. We started with Australia on fire, then an almost-war with Iran that we've already half forgotten about except the traumatic brain injuries, and ending with Republicans destroying the separation of powers for the mob-boss-in-chief. And that's not mentioning all the usual mayhem of Mafia Mulligan's administration, everything else about the climate crisis, and a lot more my brain cannot recall right now.
As always in reverse chronological order within topic.
On the impeachment:
Head-shaking serious columnists. If one side votes essentially along party lines to do the right thing and one party votes to prevent it, that doesn’t mean the process is sadly partisan. It means one party is bad.On Mulligan generally, his policies, and appointees:
John Hodgman
The Republican Party has no principles but the will to power and it will gladly sacrifice constitutional government to maintain its hold on power.
@jbouie
"Hunter Biden" is the new "Hillary's emails" of this election cycle. Don't get fooled again.
Michael McFaul
imagine if john bolton had half the courage of christine blasey ford
@ManlnTheHoody
The Senate can’t be bothered to spend time hearing witness testimony because they’ve got to get back to their busy schedule of not passing any legislation.
Bree Newsome Bass
In an election year, Republican presidents are immune from impeachment and Democratic presidents lose their ability to appoint Supreme Court justices.
@JesseCharlesLee
Two senators from South Dakota will cast votes against witnesses and documents. They each represent 429,234 South Dakota voters.
Our two California Senators represent 19,625,000 voters each. South Dakota voters have 45.72 times the voting power that I do.
Fuck that.
@IAmJohnAles
JUNE 18: PENTAGON certifies Ukraine has met all anti-corruption benchmarks and is cleared to get aid.
JUNE 19: Trump orders Mulvaney to stop aid to Ukraine, because.... it's "corrupt." Meanwhile, his lawyer is shaking down Ukraine for Trump's personal gain.
There's your case.
Seth Abramson
The President’s lawyers say this is about a “policy debate.” It is not. Unless that policy provides that a president can be as corrupt as he chooses and there is nothing Congress can do about it. That must never be the policy of the United States.
Adam Schiff
We're witnessing something like the GOP's corruption coming-out party – a public confession of its pretensions to criminal kleptocracy, something its members have denied for years – before a media that feels professionally obligated not to acknowledge the truth.
Brian Beutler
Pam Bondi is upset that Hunter Biden made 50k monthly on the board of Burisma as a highly educated law school grad. Pam earns $115k monthly as a lobbyist for Qatar. She has no experience in the region and doesn't speak Arabic. Her degree is from a minor school. Pam is a hypocrite
@Leslieoo7
Imagine being a lawyer for Donald Trump and lecturing people about the Golden Rule.
Chris Hayes
So that everyone is clear, Trump’s team is simultaneously arguing that the House should enforce its subpoenas in court *and* that it is unconstitutional for a court to enforce the House’s subpoenas.
Justin Amash
Alan Dershowitz unimpeached Richard Nixon today. All Nixon was doing was obstructing justice and abusing power because he thought he was the best person for the USA to be POTUS. When POTUS does it... etc. Seriously, that was his motive! Agree with Alan and impeachment is gone!
John Dean
Question for GOP senators: If you don’t want a fair trial, why should anyone think you want a fair election?
Windsor Mann
“We must respect the will of the people” is an odd argument for the president’s defenders to make when polls show 65%-80% of Americans want to see witnesses here and they’re arguing against that.
Kevin M. Kruse
Time and time again Republicans with knowledge of Trump's crimes, serious people and so-called public servants who witnessed him endangering our lives and rule of law, made a decision to call their agents to see what deal they could land instead of testifying to the people. What we’re witnessing with the dismantling of American democracy and law is a group of people who took oaths to protect the country looking at a house engulfed in flames and asking how to best translate the heat into profit.
Jared Yates Sexton
Know who got money from China because of a real conflict of interest? Ivanka. Plus Jared's family. And also McConnell's family.
emptywheel
It's like Thomas Jefferson said, "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with pre-orders of books by staffers who refused to comply with Congressional subpoenas and won't tell the public what they know about the President's misconduct unless you pay them $16.99."
Max Kennerly (commenting on John Bolton's book)
Think about how much the Republican Party’s complete and utter corruption is taken for granted: We’re not hoping that evidence of Trump’s obvious guilt will get 20 of them to remove him. We’re hoping that 4 of them will even allow that evidence *to be heard*.
@ObsoleteDogma
Remember folks: the same guy who has said that he wants to get rid of the federal law which prohibits foreign corruption, is now trying to convince you that he cares about foreign corruption.
Greg Brower
"Law and Order" = using police to harass poor people while using the Senate to ensure the president can commit whatever crimes he wants
Bree Newsome Bass
This defense by Sekulow could have been written by Russian propagandists. The simple but terrifying truth is that Trump’s fortunes are tied to Russia. He exists solely within a world of their design and any defense if his crimes is covered in their fingerprints.
Jared Yates Sexton
Henry II: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"
ABC: He meant "fired"
GOP: That's just how they talk in New York
FOX: They serve at the pleasure of the king
Beckett: ack. JFC! *gurk*
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
To the people who scream at the top of their lungs that Hunter Biden was not qualified to be a Director at Burisma: Many people are often put in jobs that they are not qualified for. Donald J Trump comes to mind.
@DearAuntCrabby
trump could shoot someone in the senate and still get acquitted 53-47. unless he shot a republican, then it would be 52-47.
@ManlnTheHoody
I'm not seeing major reporters or news organizations on Twitter right now pointing out that Trump is lying in reporters' faces with total abandon, all to conceal widely known facts about his corrupt conduct. Meanwhile, Trump is bashing media as corrupt and dishonest. Why this imbalance?
Greg Sargent @ThePlumLineGS
It's astonishing to see a group of smart, wealthy, accomplished people transformed into criminal syndicate by a two bit mobster from Queens. But then great empires fall apart different ways.
Langdon Winner
In case you miss the irony, Democrats are about to demand official State Department business records improperly conducted on private devices, and the GOP is going to REFUSE to obtain records of that improper use of private devices.
emptywheel
Senate Republicans who represent 15 million fewer people than Senate Dems can block impeachment of a president who committed crimes worse than Watergate, lost popular vote by 2.9 million votes and suffered largest midterm election defeat in US history
Ari Berman
A reminder to the press parroting GOP defense of Trump: Zero of the fact witnesses were partisan Democrats. At least three were partisan Republicans. The rest professed no partisan affiliation. When someone claims this is abt party, do not repeat that unchallenged.
emptywheel
Kellyklan Conway says Dr Martin Luther King Jr would disapprove of the impeachment of the racist reality show host who spent 8 years trying to claim the first black president was illegitimate.
The Volatile Mermaid @OhNoSheTwitnt
The President of the United States oversaw an organized crime ring that used tax dollars to shake down a head of state, frame a former Vice-President, stalk diplomats, and undermine free and fair elections. Everyone should be horrified. Democrats. Republicans. Everyone.
Jared Yates Sexton
Ivanka made $135 million last year, working in the White House.
Don Jr. was as allowed to kill an endangered species because daddy got him a permit.
Eric is still selling access to the presidency.
Giuliani's son works in the White House.
But Biden's son is the problem? Sure.
Ted @trom771
This is how authoritarianism wears you down:On the general state of our political clusterf*#k, particularly the Republican party:
* Trump announced his Muslim Ban - we showed up at airports to protest.
* Trump renames it a travel ban for 7 countries. The Supreme Court upholds it.
* He adds 6 more countries to the ban today, and people barely notice.
Amy Siskind
This is the core of Trumpism: this nihilistic cynicism and projection that everyone is equally corrupt, everyone acts like Trump.
Chris Hayes
Nothing says "drain the swamp" like a 1.5hr-long recording of the president of the United States at an intimate dinner with wealthy super PAC donors hosted at the luxury hotel he still owns and profits from, during which the donors talk about their business and policy priorities.
Robert Maguire
Threats of persecution and violence is the fate of any intelligent/powerful women who stand up to Trump. The similarity to the fate of women around the world standing up to dictators here is alarming. #LockHerUp #SendHerBack #TakeHerOut
Ilhan Omar
Just have to state, the Mayor of New York during 9/11 having a late-life breakdown and dragging a C-List-reality-TV-star-turned-demagogue-president into international treason because neither can tell the difference between truth and conspiracy theory is quite the development.
Jared Yates Sexton
We have a Supreme Court justice that lied under oath before the whole nation about what "boofing" meant. Sometimes out of the blue I remember that and wow.
Angie Schmitt
So yeah, making Clinton’s emails a bigger issue than Trump’s multifaceted incompetencies and personality disorders appears to have been a mistake. A fatal one.
Amanda Marcotte
Donald Trump is not a secret, strategic genius. He’s a failure who’s continued to fail upward because of inherent privileged white supremacy. He’s as incapable of running the country as he is rolling out Trump Vodka. There’s a madman at the week. Recognizing that is necessary.
Jared Yates Sexton
This is William Patrick Hitler. He served in the United States Navy 1944-1947. He received the WWII Victory Medal and Purple Heart. His uncle was Adolf Hitler. You read that correctly. More Hitlers have served in the US Armed Forces than Trumps.
Alternative NOAA
The essence of Trumpism is a swaggering ignorance that outright refuses to even examine the past or educate itself on matters beyond its immediate interests. Trumpism only cares about power as a means of protecting insecure self. Trumpism is dangerous, terminal delusion.
Jared Yates Sexton
UPDATE: A new count finds that Trump has now amplified QAnon accounts at least 72 times via at least 58 individual accounts.
Alex Kaplan
The right-wing enthusiasm for a man so sociopathically violent that he made Navy SEALs cry isn't just a quirky story. It's part of a larger move towards fascism on the right, and towards the fascist belief in the redemptive power of violence.
Amanda Marcotte
No matter how many times you repeat the silly phrase, Mar-a-Lago is not “the Southern White House.” It’s a bribery mill where you sell government access to plutocrats for $200,000/year and up.
James Gleick
Putin had a concentrated plan to use technology, misinformation campaigns, and an appeal to racist nationalism to divide the United States and isolate Britain from Europe. It came together like the final swell of The Godfather. You couldn’t have orchestrated it better.The Democratic primary race for president, including the debate in Des Moines:
Jared Yates Sexton
there is no gop; there’s an unregulated media-industrial agenda broadcast on Fox and talk radio, designed to enrich 8 or 9 families and their associated sub-contractors
Heather Anne Campbell
Since I started following US politics in the 1990s, 1 simple heuristic has been the most reliable guide: the GOP, at every juncture or decision point, will do/say/be the worst possible thing. The bulk of analytical errors in punditry trace to ignoring or doubting that heuristic. And it's worth remembering that people who DO accurately diagnose the GOP have consistently been marginalized as "partisan extremists." Being correct over and over and over again has done approximately nothing to diminish this dynamic; it is still operative.
David Roberts
The Democrats are not poised to lead a resistance to fascism. Please make peace with the reality that the election alone will not be sufficient and there will have to be mass organized resistance led by the people (as has already been happening, but needs more participation). People often share videos of popular uprisings occurring in other nations but we must reconcile ourselves to reality we will have to do the same here if we don’t want a dictatorship. We can’t assume there will be an election & further extensive damage will occur between now and November. If Democrats go back to cutting deals with this admin, attending the State of Union and going thru all the motions of normal governance, it’s a total wrap. You can’t (correctly) argue that this admin is overthrowing Constitutional democracy and then act like it’s all normal til November.
Bree Newsome Bass
As good a time as any to remind everyone that this generation of Republicans aren’t particularly talented at anything and maintain power because of racist gerrymandering and the influence of a cable news channel that keeps their voters entrenched in an alternate reality.
Jared Yates Sexton
Even in a best case scenario where Dems unite behind progressivism and win the popular vote and electoral college, take the Senate and keep the House, we need to be prepared for racists in this country to react like it’s Wilmington 1898. Anything else is fatally naive on our part.
Bree Newsome Bass
There are a lot of people in this country who would rather we become a fascist dictatorship than a somewhat less generous version of a European welfare state. I don't know how you work on anything with people like that.
@ShaneDPhillips
Voter ID doesn't prevent election fraud, it IS election fraud.
Robert Moffitt @justplainbob
Someday someone'll write a good narrative of how Reagan led to Gingrich led to the Tea Party led to Trump, all the while funded by the Kochs & Co. and egged on by "respected" conservative columnists as well as right wing media. It's all one story. Should be seen as such.
David Rothkopf
While we're talking about foreign interference in elections, let's take a few minutes to talk about the fact that one of the major parties has actively disenfranchised entire communities for years because changing demographics mean a loss of political power. Let's get into that. Let's talk about the fact that fascist movements destroy democratic institutions when democratic institutions no longer serve them. Let's talk about how white identity Christian nationalism only became overt when white identity Christian nationalism couldn't win elections.
Jared Yates Sexton
Over the last decade, half of all donations to Super PACs came from just 25 people. If this isn’t the mark of a kleptocracy, I don’t know what is.
Robert Reich
And we didn't get the Bush administration's lawlessness without the lackluster prosecution of Iran-Contra and the forgiveness of Nixon for Watergate -- and it was key players in both crimes who went on to shape the 21st century GOP and esp the Trump admin.
Sarah Kendzior
2017 study: Those with conservative views on hierarchy don't just defend inequality; they tend to deny it exists.
Alfie Kohn
Our fight now is not just Democrat versus Republican. It is democracy versus oligarchy.
Bernie Sanders
Conservatives are very big on cost/benefit analysis when it comes to regulating for clean air and water but find it morally repugnant when you mention it regarding wars of choice.
@Ugarles
Bernie Sanders is proof that Jews don't control the mediaCritiques of the media in all of this:
Rachel McCartney
The polls are telling a consistent story on Elizabeth Warren: majorities of voters like her the best, think she’s the smartest candidate, and would be happy with her as the nominee. But she’s a woman, so a lot of these same folks are considering giving their vote to a white man instead.
@TheStagmania
Well duh, Sanders has been the frontrunner for over 3 weeks and there have been almost 0 "how will he pay for it?" articles and only a few "is he electable?" articles. That is not an accident.
@RachelBitecofer
As someone who worked for a woman running for President this cycle, and got paid to talk to caucus goers everyday, I can 10/10 confirm that sexism and double standards have shaped this primary. Great piece that dives deeper into how
Nora Walsh-DeVries
South Bend is nearly 30% black and nearly 15% Latino. The fact that Pete Buttigieg has lived in and been mayor of such a diverse (extremely small) city but can not connect with people of color is a huge red flag. And a presidential campaign isn’t the place to fix it.
Paychecko
By the time the GOP & mainstream media are done with Biden or Klobuchar as an actual general-election candidate, either on will be a toxic, monstrous caricature that no self-respecting R would *ever* work with. They'll be talking about impeachment!
This is something that political commentators always seem to forget, or ignore: there are people the GOP slime machine hasn't rendered toxic *yet*. But in no way is that proof, or even evidence, that the slime machine couldn't do so at will.
David Roberts
If you called Elizabeth Warren a "neoliberal shill," don't act like your acceptance of Bernie Sanders touting Joe Rogan's endorsement is because you support a big tent - you clearly never cared about a big tent Democratic coalition before. You can't have it both ways. Choose one.
Krishan Patel
While [the election of a woman president] will herald the end of misogyny roughly as much as Obama’s election ended racism (spoiler: not at all), it will mean something to me personally that the country I call home has offered evidence that we’re at least capable of further embodying the values we claim.
Franklin Leonard
Once again* I find myself wondering how far ahead in the polls Elizabeth Warren would be if she were a man. *by “once again” I really mean “all the time.”
Sarah Mackey
I didn't watch any of the New York Times endorsement video, but I am certainly shocked to learn from twitter that the NYT editorial page is run by smug centrists, I never would have guessed
@tomtomorrow
Another way of looking at dual NYT endorsement: For years, it got to endorse two candidates for president, one in each party. It could present a nuanced front btwn the two. Now, and for foreseeable future, there is no serious GOP to engage with. Solution: two Dem endorsements.
Alec MacGillis
"We think you two little ladies are so delightful, we decided to endorse both of you gals. Now you two sweet things just take our half-an-endorsement, run along, and buy yourselves something pretty." –New York Times
Frank Conniff
If you attended the kinds of schools that so regularly produce Buttigiegs, you know that becoming a Buttigieg was offered to all of us as the path of least resistance, a six-figure career so long as you never ask anyone hard questions about where the money was coming from or why.
@girlziplocked
If you can only see how it matters to the two men [Sanders and Biden], you should ask yourself why you can believe she leaked it on purpose (not sure we’ve seen evidence of that), but if so, she owes him no deference and has every right to try to win for herself. No, a woman trying to win isn’t “helping Biden” even if it’s at the expense of your guy
Adam Miller
You know which candidates always get vetted and picked apart all along? Women candidates. You know which candidates never get vetted enough until it's too late? Men.
@kar_nels
Getting tired of media constantly asking Dem candidates if they’re “strong enough” to stand up to Trump. It’s a flawed concept, no Dem is afraid of Trump. Only Republicans are afraid of Trump. Dems only need to expose him as the weak, sniveling coward he is. #DemDebate
Mark Kaufman @Drawmark
I cannot believe I am listening to Amy Klobuchar talking about fracked gas as a bridge fuel in 2020.
Varshini Prakash
Under the Warren and Sanders wealth taxes, Tom Steyer would no longer be able to afford the high-priced consultant who told him voters want you to stare at them.
Anand Giridharadas
The fact that the black and latino candidates couldn’t even stay in the race until the Iowa caucus is a big red flag that this Dem nominating process is a disaster.
Charles M. Blow
Democracy isn’t working when two white billionaires are still in the race, outspending their rivals 10-1, but Kamala Harris, Julian Castro & Cory Booker are not
Ari Berman
I think whoever the next Dem President is should consider making a showy proposal about switching to the metric system just to distract the Republicans from getting activated about something that actually matters
Michael Tae Sweeney
Not a fan of these arguments that basically amount to "Warren is uncool." Especially when they say she’s “like a mom.” She is a mom! You want to elect an ~80 year old man president but women expire after they reproduce (average age 26)? Shit is sexist af
Angie Schmitt
I know most things suck right now, so can we quickly talk about what Castro is doing for Warren? I don't think I've ever seen a man whole-heartedly promote a woman as the best person for a job she's just beat him at. I continue to be really moved by the way he's run his campaign.
Amy Hartman @ameseh
Joe Biden is similar to John Kerry and Al Gore in that all three were told far too young by far too many people that they should be President some day. Those voices still seem to stay in their heads and definitely get in the way.
Zephyr Teachout
Everybody is talking about Bloomberg’s $$$ but nobody’s talking about the brain drain his hiring 800 people (with sometimes massive salaries) is creating in the House and Senate campaign talent pool (not to mention state leg races). Yuck.
Joan Walsh
Just to be clear, the minority candidates dropping out before the first primary is a result of the DNC inflicting harm on itself with unnecessary rules that disadvantaged these candidates in a year that Democrats need minority voter turnout the most.
Bree Newsome Bass
The media is allowed to "fact check" individual lies, but it is not allowed to *learn* from the lies, call the person who lies a liar, or evince skepticism about future statements from liars. All of that is "bias" I guess?Oh, and yeah, remember that war with Iran that Mulligan almost started near the beginning of the month, and the plane that was shot down, and all of that? There were a few about that:
David Roberts
Republicans aren’t going to answer your questions in good faith. To have them on your national shows is only good for the spreading of misinformation and gaining online shares from angry viewers. You’re not presenting another side of an argument, you’re hurting our country.
Jared Yates Sexton
I wonder what it will take before the mainstream media is forced to rediscover France on the map? 200 protesters hit the streets of Tehran and its regime change, while a general strike engulfs France with revolution in the air and it’s nothing to see here.
@JohnWight1
So much of the political chatter is framed as poor (white rural) people voting against their best interests because they were tricked. What is a bigger issue imo in Ohio is people become so poor and destitute voting is the least of their concerns. The people who vote in Ohio really aren’t very representative of Ohio. But presidential elections are better than midterms at least. The people who vote in Ohio are Way better off and Way older than Ohioans in general.
Angie Schmitt @schmangee
I’m convinced that the desire not to seem wacky prevents journalists from describing what is happening accurately. It is legitimately difficult to not sound a bit crazed in describing what Donald Trump is doing to the country.
Brian Schatz
In India and in China pro-Democracy protests are regularly represented as riots in the media. It’s amazing how classic American tactics to misrepresent Black political protest have become global anti-democracy tactics.
Jason Stanley
Over 85 THOUSAND CHILDREN starved to death as Saudi Arabia bombed Yemen w/ weapons supplied by USA. American media barely mentions it and it’s an example of how the narrative around “defending freedom from the bad guys” is US imperialist bullshit
Bree Newsome Bass
[The Iran situation is a] good time to remember that for the American media, when it comes to war “both sides” means having someone who thinks we should already be at war and someone who thinks we should fill out the proper paperwork and then go to war.
Jesse Brenneman
Every left-wing cable news pundit rushes to restate how bad Soleimani was before saying literally anything else. Because in American media, being skeptical of military aggression is immediately viewed as a sign that you might secretly side with the enemy.
Carlos Maza @gaywonk
Mike Pence says Intelligence was "too sensitive" for Congress? But it was not too sensitive for the buffet line at Mar-A-Lago?On white supremacy, racism, and police brutality:
@VoteEarlyNow
The dead Canadians and Iraqis are absolutely on us. All this death is on us. We had a great treaty that a lot of people worked very hard on, and it was scuppered by a fucking sociopath. Everything has snowballed from that.
Kameron Hurley
The President of the United States baselessly accused his predecessor of enabling the death of Americans yesterday and It isn’t so much as a headline today. We need to remember with every passing day our country becomes more and more desensitized to this madness.
Jared Yates Sexton
Headline if the US were a third world country: “Impeached Strongman Provokes War, Threatens Cultural Sites As Nation’s Ethnic Tensions Deepen Ahead of Election.”
Waleed Shahid
What's weird about Western governments and commentators now insisting everyone label Soleimani, a state actor, a 'terrorist' is, after 9/11, the same governments & commentators insisted the US, UK and Israel, couldn't be called terrorists because it only applied to non-state actors.
Mehdi Hasan
This administration keeps saying they want the situation to de-escalate and it's the equivalent of an arsonist saying they want to extinguish the fires they continue to light.
Bree Newsome Bass
A Farsi speaker once told me that "Death to (insert thing)" is a Farsi idiom that gets translated as way more emotionally extreme in English. He gave me an example of frustrated Iranian cab drivers yelling "death to traffic". But the Anglosphere media really fixates on it.
Antifascist Alligator
The number of people who believe war with Iran would be simple, easy, and clean is just jaw-dropping.
War is never simple.
War is never easy.
War is never clean.
Stop overlooking human lives. Stop simplifying complicated situations. Stop clinging to ignorance like a raft.
Jared Yates Sexton
There are so many horrible lies and distortions coming at us so quickly it’s hard to focus, but one really stands out: Pence attempting to put 9/11 on Suleimani is as dishonest and cynical as anything Goebbels ever came up with.
David Klion
Medicare for all is a much more moderate proposal than any war.
Mandela Barnes @TheOtherMandela
A man is literally trying to start World War 3 because he’s angry that he might be held accountable for his actions but please tell me more about how women are too emotional.
The Volatile Mermaid @OhNoSheTwitnt
hey dems how about impeaching him for illegally assassinating a foreign official? or is the requirement that he only be impeached for some stupid bullshit nobody cares about
Current Affairs
Here's my savvy insider take on Iran: Trump and the people around him are corrupt & lie about everything. They're probably being corrupt and lying in this case too. Handy thing about this take is that it works in the next situation too, and the one after that.
David Roberts
Yes, let’s remember the context. A rocket attack killed a contractor, so Trump ordered air strikes that killed dozens. There was a protest that caused some damage at the embassy, so Trump ordered an assassination. These are unhinged excessive overreactions to each provocation
Daniel Larison
9am: Donald Trump's Twitter goes silent. 3:44pm Eric Trump (with no sec. clearance) tweets, 'Bout to open up a big ol' can of whoop ass'. 3:45pm, stocks of Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin all jump. Who was Donald Trump talking to yesterday? Not Congress.
Frank Lester @LoveYourCarrot
Don’t worry, everyone, I’m sure the guy mad about being cut out of the Canadian broadcast of an old children’s movie will act in a measured, rational way
Jess Dweck
When Trump took office, we had a lid on Iran's nuke program and a working diplomatic channel to discuss other issues. He walked away from both in order to launch a "maximum pressure" campaign devised by some of DC's dumbest ideologues, and here we are.
Matt Duss
A decade from today, 95 percent of thoughtful people will think the Iran War was a mistake. So beat the traffic and think so right now.
Anand Giridharadas
This is gonna cost like 3 Medicare For Alls
@ItsDanSheehan
(Me, hitting hornet's nest with a stick): Welp, killed that one hornet, the backyard is a safer place *now*!
@tomtomorrow
The hubris of US electeds defending an assassination in Iraq after the U.S.'s illegal war there nearly destroyed that nation and killed nearly 1 million Iraqis? Can you imagine believing anything coming from an Administration that described brown nations as "shit hole countries"?
Keeanga-Yamahtta T.
A lot of people were okay with Obama's extrajudicial assassinations because they trusted his judgment. I used to try to point out that someday that power would be in the hands of -- in the example of the time -- Sarah Palin. And, well, here we are.
@tomtomorrow
This is not to say this was the correct decision or trivialize the consequences. It is to say that the people who warned you that this bipartisan expansion of executive warmaking authority would one day end up in the hands of someone like Trump were right.
Adam Serwer
this country doesn’t have a government, we just have a bunch of arms dealers and their sales reps.
@Judnikki
The Suleimani assassination and the fires in Australia are not separate events; the rule of carbon capital relies on imperialist intervention
Christian Henderson
In a time like this, Americans need to put their differences aside and unite against a common enemy - Donald Trump.
Frank Conniff
there's an impeached president sitting in the situation room authorizing international assassinations without congressional approval
Open Mike Eagle
We’re 17 years with no end in sight into a conflict in Iraq that began with Bush’s illegal war. Spare me the mass media PR revisionism about that murderous war criminal. Whatever crimes Trump commits doesn’t excuse Bush’s or the complicity of the bipartisan political class then and now.
Bree Newsome Bass
John Bolton: He's brave enough to send your kids to war with Iran, but he's not brave enough to testify about Trump for two hours.
Matthew Chapman @fawfulfan
your reminder that we had a treaty with Iran that they were abiding to and our game show host president tore it to pieces because he was jealous of a black man's accomplishments
Jeff Tiedrich
i think my biggest take away from grad school is that it was a mistake to tell white people about intersectionality. we are not using it right.
@RubyGraceLevine
Coronavirus is scary enough to make Americans racist about Chinese people but not scary enough to make Americans start washing their hands
Kath Barbadoro
I've been asked so many times on journalism panels whether I can objectively cover Asian Americans as an Asian American. A question I've never heard asked, and one that I often wonder, is why are white people always perfectly qualified to write about everything?
Frank Shyong
Placating racists is also identity politics.
Josh Dorian @SaltedJosh
I don't understand how every marginalized group surviving under brutal oppression for the past several hundred years are the "snowflakes" and the true victims are the white men who are mad because they feel entitled and can't compete in a somewhat more level playing field. Like...if you can't compete in a landscape just because it's 2% less white and male than it was 3 decades ago, it's not because someone is taking something from you, it's because you were never cut out for it and can't compete in a society that doesn't cheat for you on your behalf.
Bree Newsome Bass
White people will invoke the violence of slavery at every possible chance except when it comes to taking responsibility and offering recompense for slavery.
@ElleOnWords
Wow, what a story: African American man sues his employer for race discrimination, obtains a (seemingly substantial) settlement. Then, when he goes to deposit the check, his bank doesn’t deposit it but instead calls the cops on him for fraud.
Sam Bagenstos
Perhaps the thing that most outrages me about how we characterize 45’s GOP is that we say, “more conservative” when we mean, “more racist.”
Adam Miller
I’ve said this before, but if you’re doing an MLK day service project consider bringing King-level analysis to it. Don’t just serve lunch at a soup kitchen, interrogate why millions of ppl live in poverty in the first place. King’s legacy isn’t about charity, it’s about justice.
@ClintSmithIII
When they’re armed and dangerous but also white men, they’re just “militia influencers,” not “terrorists”
Eric Haywood
It's interesting how many see diversity as being forced upon people, but can't recognize that exclusion was forced through the most violent of means.
Jesse Wente
Every book we read at Wayzata was about the internal struggle of some white boy wanting to be a moral person then deciding it was beyond his control. The only protagonist who took responsibility was George from Of Mice and Men and he just murdered his best friend.
@TomBasgen (answering a query, What “classic” book were you to read in high school that you despise to this day?)
if 90% of your awardees are white you're already 'considering race' you're just lying to yourself about it
Saladin Ahmed
If y’all are convinced that white ppl are naturally dominant in all these industries from art to politics w/o the active assistance of structural racism & state violence, then why can’t you let your foot off our necks? If we’re no competition, why so much effort to repress us?
Bree Newsome Bass
the Discourse is utterly poisoned by the fact that we use the word diversity when what we're really talking about is equality
Saladin Ahmed
“Race is not a biological category that naturally produces health disparities because of genetic differences. Race is a political category that has staggering biological consequences because of the impact of social inequality on people’s health.” — Dorothy E. RobertsSexism, misogyny, and toxic masculinity:
Arrianna M. Planey
The ongoing oppression of women is upheld primarily by white women choosing white supremacy over gender solidarity with nonwhite women. It wouldn't be possible for the people who pass oppressive policies toward women to remain in power without white women's support specifically.
Bree Newsome Bass
If white men are tired of taking all the blame, maybe they should try relinquishing control of everything so someone else can have a shot at running things.
Ragnarok Lobster @eclecticbrotha
White men who didn't complete high school are more than twice as likely to find employment as Black men with the same educational attainment. Black men who didn't complete high school are over 4 times as likely to be incarcerated as White men with the same educational attainment:
wikipedia brown @eveewing
I just think it’s incredible how national security doesn’t matter anymore. The white establishment is fine to let Trump destroy the USA so long as he keeps it white. They’d rather have a destroyed America than a multiracial one.
Bree Newsome Bass
“Our people have always had children when the world was ending for us,” my mother said. “If black women waited for a world that was hopeful for us to have children, we would never have them.” Wrote about having kids during climate crisis for @greenpeace
Kaitlyn Greenidge @surlybassey
The policing of Black hair is not about “professionalism.” It’s about enforcing a racial caste system. If you can’t simply say “no n****** allowed” anymore, then you find other ways to engage in racial oppression and exclusion.
Bree Newsome Bass
Me to patriarchy:The climate crisis (including the fires in Australia) and renewable energy solutions:
Nnedi Okorafor, PhD
One thing is, it’s weird that we are so ok with people saying something sexist as long as they qualify it with “This may be sexist, but...”
Molly Hensley-Clancy
Eye-opening article for me: the average woman spends up to $225,000 on skincare and makeup during her lifetime.
@SerafinaScheel
one quick way to understand wikipedia's somewhat opaque significance guidelines is to remember that every firearm ever made has its own lovingly detailed page but the pages of women scientists get systematically deleted
Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @perdricof
we were done such a disservice by all the people who thought empowerment was a problem you had to fix with the disempowered people rather than with the people who actually hold the power. The same way we teach girls how not to be raped but don’t teach boys how not to be rapists.
bag of moons
Weird how no one asks women if they're afraid to hire men after centuries of sexual assault
Sandra Newman (in response to a survey that found 21% of men say they're afraid to hire women because of the MeToo movement)
‘Work appropriate’ clothing, hair, and makeup for women is expensive and time-consuming. Consider it a form of hidden pay inequality. [Responding to an article called The Grooming Gap: What “Looking the Part” Costs Women. If women don’t conform to beauty expectations, they’re paid less.]
s.e. smith
For all the negatives of being female within a patriarchal society, being socialized as a boy/man seems even worse, a hypercapitalist/colonialist (self-)destructive identity.
@happifydesign
After a week at the beach, I’m wondering...
It is not abnormal to see wealthy, old, unattractive, overweight men with gorgeous young wives adorned in jewels. If women had more mega earning power, would we see our senior citizen sisters with smoking studs in speedos?
Stephanie Ruhle
The Achilles Heel of a capitalism’s market system is in what economists call externalities: the human, societal and environmental costs of economic activity completely externalized from both buyers and sellers. Externalities are killing us and the planet.Livable cities and transportation:
Arash Kolahi
US climate actions "critically insufficient" to protect life on Earth. In 2018, the US became the world’s largest producer of crude oil, was the world’s largest producer of gas and increased gas exports by 53%. –@climateactiontr Must. Turn. This. Ship. Around.
@rwclimate
Climate change disproportionately impacts communities of color. The centering of white activists on the issue is deliberate erasure. Dominant media does this with everything.
Bree Newsome Bass
I'm not sure people understand the degree to which beef is worse for the planet than other forms of protein. It's not like 10% or 20% worse, it's 1000% worse than chicken, 2500% worse than soybeans:
Michael Tae Sweeney
If you're asking when climate change is going to "happen," you're really asking when's it going to happen to "me," because it's already happened to many other people.
Eric Roston
A shitty climate politics starter pack:
- 3 degrees is fine
- Anything about population control
- "China and India are the REAL problem"
- We're all to blame, human nature etc.
- Natural gas = bridge fuel
- Renewables will outcompete fossil fuels because markets are magic
Kate Aronoff
#BoycottMurdoch:
Stefan Rahmstorf
I don’t care what thresholds we pass. I don’t care how much worse it gets. Giving up is immoral.
Mary Annaïse Heglar
The man who predicted that the Trump tax cut would pay for itself says Greta Thunberg needs lessons in economics
Paul Krugman
Great graphic with this otherwise depressing Guardian story:
David Roberts
Tip 6 on How To Reduce Food Waste: Buy your groceries by bike and you’ll be less likely to over-purchase in the first place.
Fietser Nicole @GoingDutchDen
It’s a ludicrous injustice that less than 1% of humans could be responsible for sending humanity to the brink of extinction.
Extinction Rebellion Australia
New research: transitioning the world to 100% renewable energy by 2050 would create about 14 million new jobs in the power sector. Of all the charges levied at climate policy, "it will destroy jobs" is the most bizarre. "Let's do the biggest thing humanity has ever done, replacing every machine that uses fossil fuels." "But how will we find work?"
David Roberts
The whole idea that climate change is more important that every other issue doesn’t make sense because climate change IS every other issue.
Mary Annaïse Heglar
it's not humans vs. nature, it's capitalism vs. nature and we are the nature pass it on
Tash Heenan
We are responsible for electing people who will use *all* their power to end the fossil fuel era. And that's it. That's the tweet.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther
Despite growing evidence over its harm to health and the environment, demand for plastic products continues to rise. One firm forecasts that plastics production will grow on average 3.5 to 4 percent per year through at least 2035.
InsideClimate News
Our entire public debate is decades behind the realities we know we face now, and as we understand those realities better, most of our findings will reveal our problems to be even more pressing than we thought they were. The 2020s: An entire decade of cascading revelations of peril, discontinuity and interconnection. That's just what the 2020s are going be like.
Alex Steffen
When a three-judge federal panel moved to dismiss the youth climate lawsuit yesterday, one of them issued a blistering dissent: "It is as if an asteroid were barreling toward Earth and the government decided to shut down our only defenses.” In Citizens United, the judiciary decreed that corporations could dominate our elections, and now they decree that only elections can deal with our gravest problem. They've set up a Catch 22 that should haunt legal scholars, because it's sure as hell going to haunt the rest of us
Bill McKibben
The world's oceans are now heating at the same rate as if five Hiroshima atomic bombs were dropped into the water every second, scientists have said
CNN
This map gives you a rough sense of all the ways U.S. land is used. Much of U.S. land serves specific purposes, such as the 2 million acres devoted to golf courses or the 3 million acres for airports:
Farm Policy
If the capital cost of eliminating 7 mil pollution deaths/year, energy insecurity and global warming emissions from energy pays back in 7 yrs, reduces energy costs 61%, reduces social costs 91% and creates ~29 mil jobs, let's do it
Mark Z. Jacobson
It is very difficult for most members of the American press/academia/punditry to accept the idea that their core thinking on climate change and the planetary crisis has been bounded and shaped by Carbon Lobby propaganda... much less grapple with the implications of that fact. The idea that working class people's interests are best served by slower climate action has never been true, and largely stems from extractive/high-carbon industries selling themselves as the ones protecting jobs from coastal elite environmentalists.
Alex Steffen
It's official:
2019 was the 2nd hottest year in recorded history.
The six hottest years in history have been the past six years.
2020 is likely to be hotter than 2019.
We are in a climate emergency.
Eric Holthaus
would be great if reporters would ask the opponents of a green new deal how they plan to pay for the damage caused by climate change and pollution generally
Dean Baker
Climate is not an “issue area”, it is not for “environmentalists” or “elitists,” it is the single greatest threat to the survival of our species. Every human needs water to drink, air to breathe, soil to grow food. To me, it isn’t “climate,” it is life.
tara houska @zhaabowekwe
The most unforgivable lie in climate politics is claiming we didn't know what was coming.
Alex Steffen
War and militarism are the largest contributors to climate change. We cannot curb climate change without stopping all wars.
Page May
It would help to stop discussing climate policy in terms of "moderate" and "radical" and begin talking about slow and fast, delay and speed. There is no such thing as a climate moderate. There are those committed to doing enough, and those who aren't. Every claim of holding "the middle ground" is, in fact, just spin obscuring disastrous and cowardly lack of commitment to meeting the greatest threat in human history. And to acknowledge that in the real world, the fastest action we can achieve is the most realistic action.
Alex Steffen
This is the decade we have to curb climate change and instead we're on the eve of another potential war. US belligerence perpetrates staggering harm--through direct violence, and through its foreclosure on other possible futures.
Sarah Lazare
Do most people working on climate know that the bottom half of Americans *already* average less than 10 tonnes [of carbon per year]? That's in range of the EU average. That more manageable level is wiped out by the big spenders, though.
City Atlas
Pity the poor Australians, their country ablaze, and their rotten Scott Morrison MP
saying, “This is not the time to talk about Climate Change. We have to grow our economy.” What an idiot. What good is an economy in an uninhabitable country? Lead, you fuckwit!!
Bette Midler
Since October, Australia's #bushfires have spewed as much carbon into the air as the entire country produces from every car, home, and factory in a typical eight months. Climate chaos feeds on itself now.
Bill McKibben
This is the decade we have to curb climate change and instead we're on the eve of another potential war. US belligerence perpetrates staggering harm--through direct violence, and through its foreclosure on other possible futures.
Sarah Lazare
I love my little corner of climate twitter within the bigger climate twitter. It's such a bone-deep relief to feel less isolated and I'm grateful to know, for real and for sure, that you all are also out in the world living our future.
@happifydesign
Beyond ending climate silence, I tell people: everything you see around you in the world must begin to change in order to reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 & by 100% by 2050.
Rebecca Burnell
Re: "just transition," your reminder that more than twice as many Americans work in winter sports as work for coal companies. Every additional day the coal industry exists, more winter sports workers lose their jobs... and the planet continues to warm. Speed is justice.
Alex Steffen
This will turn out to be an iconic image of the global warming era. It came on the last day of the hottest decade recorded in Australia, and on earth. So far:
Bill McKibben
Wanna help save the world?
Want long-term employment security?
Become an "ecologically-skilled" food grower.
Start now. These are The Practice Years.
Rebecca Burnell
When your city is designed for cars, the assumption is that people cycling are doing so b/c they have no choice - usually it is a pretty terrible choice. When you design your city for cycling, it becomes the best choice. Paris has a strategy to make cycling a first choice.Guns, including the gun march in Richmond on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day:
Jennifer Keesmaat
Cycling for transportation, not recreation, has a real stigma attached to it in my city. It is pretty much assumed that an adult riding a bike to get around has effed up at life (ie: broke, jobless, impaired driving or such). Is Paris friendlier to bikes as transportation?
@FluffyFire
Why does it make sense—outside of structural racism— to spend $ paying police to guard a subway turnstile instead of spending that $ in the form of fare assistance for impoverished residents?
Bree Newsome Bass
I've never been in a house without the side window blinds closed to avoid looking at neighbors and having neighbors look into your house. So why not row houses!?
Zachary Wefel
Treat trucks like cigarettes: Ban advertising anf let people buy them but tax their purchase based on weight, motor type.
@TheCritninja
wHy WoNt MoRe PeOpLe UsE pUbLiC tRaNsIt? :
Tim Pate
In 2019, Americans bought 18 million new cars at an average price of $37,000. That's $630 billion. We also bought 40 million used cars at an average price of $20,000. That's $800 billion. We also spent $200 billion in state/federal tax dollars on roads and highways. In 2019. That's $1.6 trillion. In one year.
Now add expenses. Operating and maintenance and fuel for cars: Average ~ $9,000 a year, across fleet of 136 million, for $1.2 trillion. Pollution & health impacts, another few dozen billion. Military protections for oil shipping, add some more billions. In 2019.
In 2019, Americans spent nearly $3 trillion on car culture. In 2020, Americans will spend around $3 trillion ... on car culture. In 2021 ... maybe we should look at something cheaper and less deadly, like ... ubiquitous high speed rail, and infill housing near jobs & transit?
I still don't understand how people can afford all these cars. I can't! Shouldn't we spend a few trillion dollars (one year's worth of cars) on high speed rail to and from every city in the USA, and stop wasting all this money?
@mateosfo
Better transit (please electric aBRT everywhere, now), separated/protected bike paths everywhere, narrowing and reducing car lanes, charging for street parking, eliminating parking minimums is better way to reduce transportation emissions.
@kar_nels
Red liquid was smeared on vehicles at the Belgian Motor Show and nearly 150 climate change protest heroes were arrested:
James Szypula @YokohamaRides
Electric vehicles are only 2% of market share in France, and yet, Paris is reducing car pollution faster than any city on earth. Oh! They also have a $20,000 SUV tax. Fer reals. EVs are looking increasingly like an auto industry tactic for (more) predatory delay.
@mateosfo
Since *2014* Paris has reduced car traffic by 22% and reduced nitrogen dioxide emissions by 11%. Why? City's massive implementation of new bikeways, elimination of significant space previously used by cars, creation of pedestrian plazas, & major improvements in transit service.
Yonah Freemark
Why are bike lanes and bike corals and parklets jumping thru a million hoops? Just put them in. Drivers and contractors just do whatever. Why let the bad stuff get away with it and the good stuff fight Herculean battles for crumbs?
@mikesonn (commenting on a construction dumpster in the parking lane in front of a fire hydrant)
To powerfully transform transportation in North America, we wouldn’t even need to change ALL trips. We could do it just by changing SHORT trips. #multimodalcities
Brent Toderian
"My country is too big and spread out for bikes.” A THIRD of all trips in America are one mile or less. HALF are three miles or less. The large majority are driven. The potential for transformation is huge. But only if we stop making excuses and start making space for cycling.
@modacitylife
Statistically speaking, and contrary to generations of patriarchal hogwash, men are shitty drivers.
@BillLindeke
my heartrate increases when I hear vehicles approaching when I'm biking on an otherwise empty street. how I wish my recreation wasn't so life threatening.
@Neomischa
Somewhere in the Twin Cities, there is a kid being raised in a car-free household, whose parents only shop at Aldi. That kid will only be able to give directions by bus routes and bike trails, and they will only be familiar with Aldi brands. That kid is the Chosen One.
Ian R Buck
Imagine looking at this roadway design AND THEN immediately blaming the collision on the type of clothes a pedestrian was wearing:
Nate Hood
when you're a gearhead but also a radical environmentalist who's terrified of the Jevons rebound effects: guess I'll get really into buses!
decommodify survival @Auptimist
I really think we need like a 10 minute video with cute animations that explains what various govts do in regards to infrastructure, who is responsible for what, and where the tax dollars go and how very very expensive roads, traffic lights, maintenance every thing is.
@kar_nels
Boomers: we used to play ball in the street, not like the kids today.
Also Boomers: keep your kids and their ball away from my car.
@BayRidgeDrivers
In my imaginary world we would receive way more than $150 mil because we would culturally value mass transportation on the level that many other countries do already. There would be no arguing over better service vs. free, because we could do both. i want free *and* quality transit, but it's pretty clear this country doesn't yet have the ideological basis to funding public things for public good. Otherwise we'd have a good education system, clean water for everyone, and healthcare for all. But: this is why elections matter
@pyry
This is what allowing right turn on red results in...frightening as the driver of this truck/SUV absolutely cannot see this child in the crosswalk. #VisionZero:
Bill Schultheiss
21% reduction on reported crashes since the default speed was reduced to 20 mph on Seattle's residential streets. 2400 miles or 60% of our street network. Data is for all non-arterial linear street network.
Dongho Chang
currently, the problem with many non-car modes of transportation is cars. get the cars out of the way and walking, buses, bikes and micromobility are all much more viable. the inverse is not true.
Momifornia
New report by the California Air Resources Board finds that ride-hailing services like Uber/Lyft emit 50% more CO2 per passenger mile than regular cars — even though they use more efficient vehicles — because they travel passenger-less much of the time.
brad plumer
Truly Smart Cities. Imagine your smartphone knew everything about the city – but the city didn’t know anything about you. Wouldn’t that be truly ‘smart’?
G_Penalosa
Best graphic I've seen so far on how dangerous the latest models of absurdly large trucks and SUVs are today:
Charles Denison IV
"Get out of my fucking way!" shouts the driver out their window as I walk legally through the crosswalk. Cars do this to people. Cars do this to our society. Of all the many reasons to reduce car dependence, the toxic behavior they teach us to live with is not the least.
BeyondDC
Person: "We can't have those new apartments on the vacant lot in our neighborhood. Where will they park?"
Same person: "Why are there so many unhoused people in our city?"
Adam Miller
Have I mentioned the time I decided to buy an ebike and kept researching them all winter and my spouse got so tired of me talking about ebikes she said "just buy one already, so you'll stop talking about ebikes." That didn't work out well for her.
@kar_nels
I've been scolded by fellow bike riders for giving 'a dirty look' when I glance back over my shoulder but this is what's staring back at me so maybe it's more of an "oh shit" look:
@mikesonn
i spent ~$1100 on buying my two bikes plus another couple hundred ish on gear (shorts, gloves, pedals, etc.). backed my car into a pole last year and spent $1200 just to replace the bumper. the cost of owning and maintaining bike(s) is orders of magnitude less than cars.
@lieholepiehole
We need to change society’s perception that a $3K ebike is a luxury item but a $30k car is a necessity.
@katalinscherer
Over 70% of [Toronto's] morning commuters arrive in the core on transit. Where are we spending our precious tax $$? 84% of our capital spending over the next 10 years will be spent on roads and the Gardiner expressway. This is no way to build a city if we are taking climate change seriously:
Jennifer Keesmaat
Single-family homes, then and now
In early 1970s:
- Median space-per-resident: 507 sq ft
- 36% with central AC
- 23% with 4 bedrooms or more
In 2017:
- Median space-per-resident: 971 sq ft
- 93% with AC
- 46% with 4 bedrooms or more
Derek Thompson (census data)
The true 'pedestrian infrastructure' is the arcade, the water fountain, the bench, the stone floor. What we routinely call 'pedestrian infrastructure' is merely an automotive asylum, the flotsam of cars run amok:
@AsherDeMontreal
Most disingenuous argument against highway tolls and congestion pricing: “It’s a regressive tax.” My dude, *car culture is regressive.* Rich people defending their subsidies and privilege hiding behind poor people is a whole thing.
@mateosfo
Dear journalists, we need to stop calling the stuff "natural gas." Antiquated term was created to distinguish gas coming out of ground from "town gas," made from coal and used for lighting street lamps until mid-20th century. Let's call it what it really is, "fossil gas."
Justin Gillis
"For safety, the speed of this 30-pound vehicle should be limited to 20 mph but the speed of this 5,000-pound vehicle should be limited only by roadside signs, the threat of fines and the judgment of individual operators. Also, the bigger vehicle is engineered to go 143 mph."
Doug Gordon @BrooklynSpoke
People using stock images of beautiful young white models on fashionable avenues in major cities has REALLY distorted our views of who pedestrians are in America and what kind of conditions they operate under.
Angie Schmitt
Our cities have so much public space built into them. The only reason we can’t see it is because so much of it is devoted to moving people around in private metal boxes. Look at the amazing things that can happen when you open that space up to people.
David Gouldin
Multi-family homes are a free way to instantly cut home carbon use by 50%- or more. Detached single family homes are the SUVs of housing:
Phil Ritz
If anyone can make a case for why a single inch of Broadway should have cars on it, I’m not listening.
@travis_robert
We wouldn't call it "natural coal" or "natural oil." So don't call it "natural gas." It's all poison.
Margaret Klein Salamon @ClimatePsych
driving exams should really have a component that tests civility and composure under stress
@pangmeli
I haven't seen research on this, but it sure seems like driving a car has a similar escalatory effect as carrying a gun.
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark (responding to a news story about a Yakima man running over a bicyclist for 'staring at him')
Imagine if 9 times as many people were killed in building collapses in the U.S. as in Europe every year but U.S. engineers continued to use their same unsafe practices rather than adopting the safer European standards? Why do we allow our traffic engineers to do so?
Local Mile
What if car ads had disclaimers like drug ads? What if car ads had to show real life experiences, instead of sci fi cities totally empty but for the model driving a Tesla? What if dealerships had to show the true cost of owning a car? $9k/year on average.
Phil Ritz
It's always been bizarre how we decided that driving on streets (which are expensive to build and maintain!) is a god-given right available to all for free, and on the other hand, healthcare is subject to massive user fees. We should reverse those
James Medlock
One of my weirdest most commie unAmerican views are that yards are bad and they ruin everything. Yards are why no one can walk anywhere. Yards are why everyone has to have cars. And yards are almost always lame and boring.
Angie Schmitt
There are an astounding 56 grocery stores within a 15-minute bike ride of our flat near the centre of Delft. As a result, our family finds itself buying fresher, more frequently, and in smaller quantities. A cycling city is a healthier city—and not just for the obvious reasons:
Modacity
When a driver kills a pedestrian on impact at 4:30 pm it’s not an accident. It is the result of 100 years of valuing saving two minutes over human life. That is unjust, and that is the traffic system in most every U.S. city.
Marlon Boarnet
I've got an idea: in this century, people who own car companies don't get a say in how we design cities.
Michael Hendricks
Mother of seven killed in East Cleveland walking home from work in an area where multiple streetlights were out. Our local transpo leaders are focused on the Hyperloop and not addressing these kinds of quality of life and safety issues. It is hopeful that the local leadership said right away: this is preventable and this should never have happened. This issue of incomplete streetlights is a racial equity issue. But East Cleveland just emerged from bankruptcy. It needs help from the region, the state, and the feds. Instead groups like the Cleveland Foundation pony up for Elon Musk techno nonsense.
Angie Schmitt
I know people who rail against expanding socialism in our cities, the "nanny state", and transit subsidies. I also know people who want to ban more building because they resent it fills up free street parking and who oppose removal of mandated parking mins. They are same people.
@kar_nels
Pro-car arguments and NRA arguments are the same. Instead of acknowledging how deadly ubiquitous car ownership is, carpologists insist we need more helmets and high-viz. The way to safe streets is stricter license requirements and slowing, shrinking, limiting and banning cars.
Isabella Chu
3-year-old Antonio Martinez Cruz was killed today in the parking lot of a bank on Rockville Pike in Rockville. The vehicle was a 2010 Ford Explorer. 50 years ago the Dutch decided that child traffic deaths were unacceptable - and they acted. When will we act?
Action Committee for Transit
I'll be 47 on January 12, 2020. Since I got my eBike in 2017, I've never experienced such a radical shift in lifestyle as I have in the last three years. I attribute it all to my eBike. It didn't just replace car trips, it replaced me, with a far better version of me:
James @eBikeSTP
normal, normal, normal, normal, so, very, normal. I honestly think it's getting hard to process how very far off the rails this country is right now:Education:
@tomtomorrow (gun rights activists carrying semi-automatic firearms walk through the Capitol Building on January 31, 2020 in Frankfort, Kentucky).
A gun is a portable machine engineered to effortlessly kill at a distance. To display one is to advertise one’s agency to do exactly that.
William Gibson @GreatDismal
In New York, Black teenagers face a mandatory minimum of 3.5 years and maximum of 15 years in prison for simple possession a firearm. Meanwhile, in Virginia, parades of white people in ski-masks carrying assault weapons walk menacingly down the street on MLKDay and all is normal.
Scott Hechinger
These Virginia guys. What’s the message? Oh no, if we allow sensible gun reform then a bunch of angry dudes with machine guns wouldn’t attempt to subvert democratic processes with implicit threats of violence?
Angie Schmitt @schmangee
On this Martin Luther King Jr. day, Virginia Democrats are honoring his legacy by making it easier to vote. Sharp contrast with the armed white mob protesting outside the state capitol
Stephen Wolf @PoliticsWolf
all I'm saying is that if your reaction to minor gun control legislation is to cover yourself in swastikas and go fucking apeshit on Martin Luther King Day, you're probably not a good avatar for responsible gun ownership
Jeff Tiedrich
The great irony, of course, is that the gun rights of white men are never under threat nor the real issue. Armed white men marching in the street, wearing tactical gear are never confronted with the same level of police violence as are nonviolent anti-racism protests in the USA.
Bree Newsome Bass
Organized marches of men brandishing their private arsenals while dressed in military uniforms and armor are terroristic exercises. Their express purpose is to remind legislators and citizens that they are prepared to wage war should their political demands not be met.
Jared Yates Sexton
That Nazis will simply take over Richmond on Monday, Martin Luther King Day, and all anyone can do is damage control just shows how far things have already sunk.
Gerry Canavan
Why are these big tough white guys so terrified of everything? I’m a smallish woman I’ve lived in an urban area for 20 years. Never needed a gun. These strapped guys that live in gated communities are the most paranoid m'fers.
Angie Schmitt
Students’ HS grade point averages 5 times stronger than ACT scores at predicting college graduation, according to study published today in peer-reviewed journal fHealth care:
leonie haimson
Why bankrupt the public schools where 85-90% of kids are to placate charter promoters and religious groups who want public money?
Diane Ravitch
We are so screwed:
Sam Cohen
“At its best, school and can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living.” –Neil Postman
@Sisyphus38
Lol, charter schools could be also called single payer education, opposed to our current socialized system
James Medlock
Why are people so concerned with when a child starts reading? It’s not a race. People learn at different rates. Relax.
Mother Bae I @tiersaj
Not many people know this, but Medicare-for-all is the only thing that costs money. Keeping a military presence in central Asia is actually free, thanks to a bunch of coupons the Pentagon cut out in the 70s.Immigration:
Dave Weigel
US Healthcare advice: Do your research!
Healthcare providers: We can't give you pricing information, and only your insurer can confirm coverage.
Insurer: We can't give you firm information. Check out our web site. Also, we cannot guarantee that our web site info is accurate
Joseph N. Cohen
When you hear BBC "NHS Failing" stories and their panel-show comedians making cheap jokes about NHS waiting times, just remember that in 2010, before Tories began running it down, the NHS had its highest ever public approval rating, and NHS staff are busting a gut to treat patients
Marcus Chown
Astonishing U.S. healthcare stat I learned today: Folks *with* Medicare spend, on average, 12 percent of their income on out-of-pocket health costs.
Annie Lowrey
So let me get this straight, Trump argues that we need immigrants who will pull their own weight and won't burden America financially, yet he just banned Nigerians, the group with one of the highest levels of educational attainment in this country, from getting green cards?Wage theft, wealth inequality, our economic system, and better ways to do things:
@Freeyourmindkid
They want to turn "American" into a pay-to-play privilege for the wealthiest few. And they do it by turning us against each other, shaming and blaming new immigrants for the hardships this government creates for all.
@anatosaurus (reacting to the Supreme Court decision allowing a wealth test of new immigrants)
"Why don't poor people in the global south just apply to get in legally??" is the "let them eat cake" of the 21st century
@LouisatheLast
The Trump admin wants to hang a "whites only" sign on the Statue of Liberty. They can't, so they're passing a bunch of measures designed to shut down nonwhite immigration to the USA as much as possible. There's no way you can see Stephen Miller's presence in the Whitehouse and not see that
Bree Newsome Bass
propaganda in real time --> "Nearly all of the 100 miles of new fencing completed thus far is labeled 'replacement barrier' by CBP, but the White House has asked the agency to stop using that term because it sounds like less of an accomplishment."
Glenn Kessler
I still live in fear that being financially stable will make me too soft if I'm ever poor again. It's hard not to feel like I need to maintain these skills to protect myself against an unknown future.And finally, the best of the rest:
Ashley C. Ford @iSmashFizzle
We say that capitalism "creates" value, when quite often it's really a process of plunder. Enclosure, colonization, the slave trade, privatization, labour exploitation, resource extractivism... for 500 years, plunder has been central to capitalist growth.
Jason Hickel
Change is slow because powerful people need time to hide their money.
Hari Kondabolu
This year, no income earned beyond the first $137,700 gets taxes to support Social Security. Anyone proposing raising the retirement age needs to be asked why eliminating the cap isn’t an obviously better—and more popular—policy choice.
Peter A. Shulman
This year, no income earned beyond the first $137,700 gets taxes to support Social Security. Anyone proposing raising the retirement age needs to be asked why eliminating the cap isn’t an obviously better—and more popular—policy choice.
Peter A. Shulman
Our society fails to distribute enough resources to people, and then stigmatizes people for making use of the few programs that do exist to account for this. But somehow you never see homeowners forego the Mortgage Interest Deduction out of pride
James Medlock
Today, let us remember Martin Luther King as he was: A Black radical anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, revolutionary Christian who died as an enemy of the State. Anything else is just a lie.
Marc Lamont Hill
Slightly reducing someone’s pile of money is confiscation but widespread fraudulent foreclosures was an oopsie.
David Kaib
I don't know who needs to hear this but you are significantly closer to being homeless than you will ever be to being a billionaire, have some class solidarity and stop glorifying your oppressors
@iconickbeauty
Hey guys, just a friendly reminder that 3% of what the United States spends on war could end world hunger. Goodnight.
Armie Hammer
One of the most destabilizing things economically that could happen to me right now is an unplanned pregnancy (carried to term) or divorce. These kind of issues though are not considered core "economic" issues. They're tertiary or "identity politics."
Angie Schmitt @schmangee
Sure, capitalism "works in practice", it's just that the logical end goal of capitalism is for a tiny number of people to own and control everything, at the expense of the planet, the workers, the poor, and everyone else. I'd rather it didn't work so well, in practice, honestly.
Existential Comics
The top 1% owe 70% of those unpaid taxes, so the top 1% will cheat on $5.3 trillion in taxes over the decade. Getting a third of that would be enough to offset year-round meals for kids, to double SNAP, and to double WIC, with lots left over.
Bobby Kogan
If 1024 fair coins are each tossed 10 times, chances are good (> 63%) that at least one will come up heads 10 times in a row; and that coin will be proud to explain how its skill, faith, guts and determination made its achievement possible, and how that combo can work for you too.
Marian Farah @bayesiangirl
Why do we call it taxing only when the government does it? High premiums and deductibles are corporate taxes from insurance companies, hospitals and big pharma on all of us. Would you prefer to pay $1200 in taxes that goes to all of us or $14,000 in private taxes that goes to CEOs?
Zephyr Teachout
US boasts more billionaires than any other nation. US also has child poverty rates from 10.3% (lowest) in New Hampshire to highest (28%) in Louisiana. A "great" economy? Not even close. #HowCapitalismWorks
Richard D. Wolff
We need philosophy because no one was ever radicalized into revolutionary politics from learning mechanical engineering. Technical skills will only make the system more efficient, but we always need at least the possibility of reimagining the system entirely.
Existential Comics
Catching up on yesterday’s Minnesota Legislature hearing on Minnesota Corrections. Stunning fact: 60% of 2019 prison admissions were for violations of probation or parole. Not new crime. This has huge human & economic costs.
Lars Negstad
i want to meet the person who looked at this and decided his most distinguishing feature was his white brows??
@meakoopa
love to see Lizzo spoiling the exclusivity of thinness and whiteness (esp. the part where these equal glamour and beauty) one outfit at a time. this is why people are mad: she undermines the symbolic associations that make thin, white bodies seem special and superior, send tweet
Michelle Allison @fatnutritionist
At the bottom of cliff lies man with one too much pep in him step.
@hellobigfoot
It's not that hard to see that your heroes can be seen in a different light by others, especially when they did do terrible things. And the fact that you wouldn't have to say "now's not the time" if the time to talk about it ever actually existed. What happened was what always happens, a powerful man was accused and people shamed the accuser and then went past the issue as quickly as possible. It's not unfair that some are still bitter about that and what it says about our world and how we value women. Every great thing Kobe did afterwards, his support for women's sports, his love for his children and the youth, his new adventure into other ventures, was wonderful. But it's not up to fans to grant him a redemption for that rape case. Redemption starts at the people you hurt.
If he's never forgiven for that, then that's just it. That's the problem with hurting someone, you can't go and erase it and the power to fix it is not in your hands. But being mad at him not being forgiven for it, is being mad that the victim won't let you be comfortable.
@_Zeets
Saying “that’s not real Christianity” to people who explain their negative/traumatic experiences with Christianity is kind of like of saying “that’s not a real man” when a woman talks about a man who abused her. It’s a non-argument at best, a dismissal at worst. Don’t do it.
The Profane Feminist
PSA: literally not every person should accept brand sponsorships or be a paid influencer
Michelle Allison @fatnutritionist
you guys all say you hate lawyers until you need our help navigating the extremely burdensome and unforgiving system we designed
@The_Law_Boy
just wanna reiterate how absurd it is to live in a culture obsessed with exercise and "active living" but that treats you with suspicion if you show up anywhere remotely sweaty or breathing hard. we are supposed to exert but never betray proof of exertion...how exactly?
Michelle Allison @fatnutritionist
Me, to my 10-yr-old: “Sure, you can use your new art set, it it gets you away from the iPad.”
10-yr-old, to herself: “Sweet. He must be ok with me painting a rainbow-farting moose on my bedroom wall and door.”
@DNealeColorado
Why does the definition of “faith” always sound so similar to the definition of “gullibility“?
almightygod
Closed captioning but tells you how retired generals and other pundits are making money these days.
Chris Steller
if you showed a person in 2010 even a tiny dose of today's content it would cause irreparable brain damage
@MilesKlee
Hello imposter syndrome, my old friend. Voice inside my head: Is it really your old friend, or is it just pretending to be?
Carolyn Porter
I think we should all go through Wikipedia and add Sexuality sections to every biographical article. They can read, "Though he never officially came out as straight, he had three children with his wife of 27 years; this led to widespread speculation that he was heterosexual."
@StephenGKrueger
Libertarianism is Thoreau building a cabin and living all self reliant while his mom and sister bring him food and do his laundry.
Levis Becker
People who are incarcerated should still be able to vote. The only reason people think otherwise is because of decades, really centuries, of fear-mongering that connects carcerality to blackness and blackness to underservingness. Their disenfranchisement should not be accepted as a given.
@ClintSmithIII
People hear "prison abolition" and get mad because, as someone told me today, "it's naive to think that there will be a world without crime[/harm]." Abolitionists don't think this. They think that there are better ways to respond to, prevent, and reduce harm in society. I realized today how crucial of an intervention point this is. We're sold the lie that the two options in response to harm are 1) throw someone in a cage or 2) do nothing. Intervening in that lie and pointing out that there are other ways is key, I think.
Micah Herskind
There are direct and indirect ways to cut taxes. Starving the IRS of the funds it needs to enforce the code is among the most pernicious indirect ways, one that leaves billions of owed taxes on the table.
Jared Bernstein
How come every conservative knows the hundred-year-old history of Democrats support for Jim Crow and segregation, but their foreign policy memory only goes back like 18 months?
@TheHipsterRebbe
Of the 7,613,000 eligible Hispanic voters in California, only 4,211,000 are registered. We're leaving 3,402,000 votes on the table.
Albert Morales
white paint color names are so unintentionally scathing:
Saladin Ahmed
Hi, I'm a paragraph of literary writing. I'll start with a bit of straightforward prose. Then, a long sentence—one that snakes around and includes a surprising but apt metaphor, like a cobra hiding in tall grass. And to end? Sentence fragments, a register shift. Fucking bathos.
Adam O'Fallon Price
There’s nothing revolutionary about nihilism. It’s literally the ruling-class’ ideology.
@babadookspinoza
I'm old enough to remember when we used to mock the Soviet Union for requiring its citizens to have travel papers to move around their country internally. Nothing says "FREEDOM!!!" like requiring domestic travel IDs.
Peter Corless
Are we in a disaster movie, a war movie or a horror movie? I can’t keep up.
@UrbanismAvenger
Again, we do not have to choose sides between empires and dictators. The other option is actual freedom.
Bree Newsome Bass
The fact that we’re in the ‘Twenties’ sounds so weird. It’s so synonymous with the 1920s. Sounds like a bygone era when women were still fighting for their rights, the upper classes were living a life of hedonism whilst people starved & the world was on the verge of financial ruin and war
@BeardedGenius
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