Four years ago right about now, I had to put together a Twitter round-up for the month after Mafia Mulligan's 2016 Electoral College win, and it was excruciating. The length was extreme, so it took many hours just as a task, and the content was even worse.
November 2020 is better than that, despite COVID with all its death and four more years toward climate catastrophe, so that's kind of amazing. (Or maybe it tells you something about my mental state after four years of wear and tear.) At least we are probably getting rid of him. Even though, as Bill Lindeke recently pointed out, we appear to be trapped in so many forms of voter denial and dysfunction that it may not make enough difference.
Obviously, the election (with its aftermath of cult and coup) and COVID are the two dominant topics for the month, though all of my usual themes are present. As has been my recent practice, I am listing the tweets in reverse-chronological order without regard to category. (I sometimes move the ones with images around a bit so they are better distributed in the list.)
Let's get this thing posted.
imo, while there are good infrastructure and design improvements cities can do to improve transit, the most crucial need is leaders at all levels of government who are willing to tax the wealthy to actually fund transit service long-term. otherwise we are stuck in austerity.
chris arvin
Thinking about others and wishing them well is prayer--a personal meditation that makes us feel good. Real sacredness is found in working for solutions.
Mary Morse Marti
The same people who were totally cool with the birther who bragged about sexual assault, called women dogs, mocked the disabled, insulted a POW, disrespected a Gold Star family and claimed he could shoot people on 5th Avenue without losing votes, now find mean tweets disqualifying.
@JoJoFromJerz
These two messages are only two days apart and may be among the best pieces of evidence of the Trump cult. It comes as no surprise that the messages have now been deleted:
Don Winslow
2020 is just the first year of the 2020s. You'd better buckle up, join a union, learn about mutual aid, general strikes, histories of popular struggle failures and victories. Your textbook history will not help you during this decade, but your solidarity with others will.
Prof Julia S @JKSteinberger
I worry that our response to climate breakdown will look eerily similar to our response to covid:
1) dither and delay
2) double down on individual liberty rhetoric
3) play whack-a-mole with disasters
4) take advantage of corporate profit opportunities
5) get used to mass death
Jason Hickel
almost every societal issue people claim you 'can't just throw money at' has never actually had sufficient money thrown at it
Saladin Ahmed
It always makes me LOL when people say "Americans just love cars!" like it's some genetic trait. Just like the Dutch are born with a bike gene and the Japanese with a train gene. Actually no dipshit, it's just what our government spends a shitload of money on!
Travis R. Eby
This is just totally unnecessary... Why do we need vehicles this big? WE DON'T!
Jerome Alexander Horne
Interesting to watch cities talk about rising crime like it’s some unique problem in each place and not a global pandemic that we are expecting people to survive with no financial support or healthcare in cities that are increasingly expensive and lack affordable housing.
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing
It's sort of extraordinary, and entirely predictable, that /both/ GOP senators running in Georgia engaged in insider trading to profit off a pandemic that's killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
The brain is a machine for turning glucose into mistakes
Neuroskeptic
I believe in prison abolition but also I want rich people to go last.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
Here's the final version of the global population density graphic I made, because another one that is circulating was less well defined, and someone cropped New Zealand off it:
Alasdair Rae @undertheraedar
President Trump has visited a golf course on 21.8% of the 1,408 days of his presidency, or roughly 1 in 5 days. He has visited a Trump property on 29.7% of the days of his presidency, or roughly 1 in 3 days.
Betsy Klein
Men's midlife crises are intensely boring they just get an expensive bike and marry a 30 year old version of the same wife whereas women do fucken cool stuff like open owl cafes, retrain as beekeepers and get phds in necromancy.
Helen Kingston @kingstonwrites
The phrase “Judeo-Christian” is designed to absorb Judaism and erase Islam. Don’t use it.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
When we talk about inequality in transportation one thing that I think is overlooked a little is how luxurious the interior of high end cars have become. People are driving around having their butts electrically warmed with high end sound systems and computer voice control. That reinforce’s people’s sense that they are better and more worthy than people waiting at bus stops that are a pole in the ground or whatever. That every aspect of society, their journey should cater to their comfort and convenience. And the auto companies pretend like they can’t afford or find time for socially beneficial safety features like built in car seats are instead laser focused on fluffing the egos of buyers with this kind of frivolous stuff.
Angie Schmitt
The congressman whose district looks like this is yapping about election integrity?
Rolling on the floor laughing:
Mrs. Betty Bowers
In US politics, "understand them better" just means "don't hold them responsible for what they say and do." That's always been it. Hold white conservatives blameless, even as they kick you in the face, because ... well, they're upset. They don't feel special like they used to.
David Roberts
"Siri, who do I have to ritualistically sacrifice to stop people from calling white people "caucasian"?"
Tressie McMillan Cottom
If you hate the Pope because he’s too “liberal” ... I have some very bad news for you about Jesus.
Kate Kelly
Trump got 58% of white voters. That's one point less than Romney yet he still lost the election by 6.1 million votes. Instead of endlessly focusing on how Dems can't attract WWC voters anymore why not ask why working class white voters have turned to fascism.
Daryl Sturgis
Always remember that being open about mental illness makes you brave but that displaying symptoms of mental illness makes you bad
Rachel McCartney
I don’t want to have to pick my kids’ elementary school from a catalog. I just want to send them to the neighborhood public school and have it be stable.
Angie Schmitt
Despite focus on underperformance, Dems won the House popular vote by more than twice as much as GOP in 2016.
2016: GOP got 241 seats (47 seats more than Dems) with a popular vote win of 1.1%
2020: Dems got 222-224 seats (8-12 more than GOP) with a popular vote win of 2.5+%.
Taniel
I wish we might, once in a while, be honest in our debates about how a supposedly moderate, reasonable pace of climate action—not "going overboard"—saddles billions of people with dangers, burdens and tragedies that can only be met through heroism and heart-rending endurance.
Alex Steffen
A fascinating look at the cultural geography of the nation:
Jason Segedy
Thinking about neighborhoods that don't want to change things because they want to save the trees, and how many trees they chop down elsewhere and then throw out during a holiday season
@pyry
Joe Biden handily won Americans who make under $100,000.
Donald Trump handily won Americans who make $100,000 or more.
Any analysis that reduces the power of Trump to economic anxiety misses the forest for the trees.
Sahil Kapur
David Brooks is one of many columnists who is never going to admit that Trumpism was about cultural and social resentment, not about economic anxiety or “a sense of place” or the Forgotten Towns or any of the other bullshit rationalizations.
Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom
“The idea of free-dumb is something like this. Freedom means a gun, a beer, a Bible, and no rights for women and minorities.”
@umairh
The saddest thing about the bad covid ruling is that the five justices in the majority are ostensibly some of the smartest, most thoughtful people American conservatism has to offer. Their best and brightest. And they're no better than anti-mask tantrum-throwers at Trader Joe's.
Athul K. Acharya
How do we elevate the problem of driving when car-dependent people use the pandemic to demonize transit? The "transit is dirty" narrative is out of control. Nobody (except you) talks about driving injuries or deaths or lifecycle costs or environmental or health externalities. And some of us are going to throw in that hat on transit and head right into the EV solution. Well, forget it! I want walkable, bikeable, rail-able, affordable, beautiful neighborhoods with clean air and healthy people. Enough of the asphalt, already.
Mary Morse Marti
I don’t think folks have quite internalized that development of a vaccine is easy part. Getting 70 million MAGAs/anti-vaxxers/evangelical Christianists/new-agers to take vaccine in a Federalist system that just established a religious exemption to public health orders? LOL
(((Matthew Lewis))) @mateosfo
If protesting racism makes you feel tense, the problem is that you are ok with racism.
N. K. Jemisin
It's pretty funny that the Catholic Church had massive pedophilia coverups, backed and promoted fascist governments, helped the Nazis, etc. And what makes them mad is the Pope saying something mildly progressive.
@Lefty_Jew
What to make of these people who insist on total reverence for all police no matter their conduct but can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum to help protect nurses right now?
Angie Schmitt
Amazon effectively forces sellers to use its warehousing service by prioritizing sellers who use it in search results. Want “Christmas lights?” The seller who uses Amazons Warehousing and delivery (FBA) gets their product placed higher. Two direst impacts:
1) Amazon warehousing grows massively, increasing Bezos power to dictate working conditions
2) Sellers pay more because they can’t choose other services, a wealth transfer to Amazon.
Sellers have long suspected this but Bezos admitted it under questioning by the House Antitrust Subcommittee. Also, it’s illegal under antitrust laws.
Zephyr Teachout
Spice up your morning with an unexpected trip to the ground floor:
Bad Realty Photos
The Supreme Court needs more atheists. Government in general needs more atheists.
Candace Avalos @candaceforpdx
Martha Stewart went to jail after her broker gave her a tip that saved her $45,000. David Perdue is a sitting senator who traded on insider info to save 15x as much that he rolled again into a $5 million profit. If he was that good on his own he'd be running his own fund.
Brian Murphy @Burrite
flynn was a high ranking government official who plotted to abduct a us resident and unlawfully extradite him to his home country. anyone who thinks this was about fbi overreach is completely out of their mind.
@kept_simple
everybody in America thinks they could one day become a billionaire but nobody thinks they could get covid
ellory smith
Do you ever think about the fact that like 100,000 restaurants that were people’s sweat and blood and dreams and livelihood are gonna close forever because one man, Mitch McConnell, thinks that’s preferable to adjusting some ## on the balance sheet?
Angie Schmitt
"What should we call our matches?"
"I dunno, something normal":
jono ganz
To give you a scale of the pandemic right now. This year will be the worst for homicides in two decades. We’ll lose more people to Covid in the next two weeks, most likely, than those lost to homicide all year.
Chris Hayes
17 percent of Americans report having no one they are close with, and these people are far more likely to support Trump...it’s sad.
Indrid @NineEightSix
The Biden Administration is going to have to create a cabinet-level position called the Secretary of Undoing
michaelharriot
Finance is a social construct. People invented, we can reinvent it. A stable climate and the web of life are nature's constructs over 3.8bn years. We'd be wise to make our designs fit with nature's long learning.
Kate Raworth
How to talk kindly with people about the fact they've been lied to — that whole industries are ending, whole communities are doomed, and they're now about to find themselves living in the ruins of the unsustainable — is one of America's core cultural questions, moving forward.
Alex Steffen
so Jordan Peterson wrote a book called "12 Rules For Life" and then immediately got hooked on benzos and nearly died and then popped back up saying he's got 12 more rules lmao thanks bro but i think i'm good
Law Boy, Esq.
PostSecret
The average American taxpayer personally gives $230 directly to Lockheed Martin. That's more than double the $109 we pay for child nutritional assistance.
@twkovach
It’s Tuesday before Thanksgiving so you should know that if the minimum wage had increased at the rate of productivity since 1960, it would be $22.50. Instead, it’s $7.25. That's $15.25 per hour that's disappeared from the pockets of low income workers the past 60 years.
Joe Sanberg
Andrew Jackson was a literal genocidaire and history has done a shit job of judging him. It’s because history is not a sentient force. I think historians are, obviously, important. That we do vital work. That learning and teaching history matters. But it's a contested project rather than an inevitable twirling and twirling towards objective truth.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
So called “predictive policing” is effectively a bias laundering project obscuring persisting racism behind the illusion of neutral technology.
Shahid Buttar for Congress @ShahidForChange
Predictive policing serves as empirical facewash for bias. Take last year's biased policing statistics, give them to a machine learning model, and ask it where the crime will be next year, and it will tell you that next year's crime will look much the same.
Cory Doctorow
Hourly Wages
- Dollar General: $8
- Kroger: $10
- Walmart: $11
- CVS: $11
- Home Depot: $11
- Lowe's: $12
2020 Profits
- Dollar General: $1.4 billion
- Kroger: $2 billion
- Walmart: $15.6 billion
- CVS: $6.2 billion
- Home Depot: $10 billion
- Lowe's: $4.9 billion
U.S. workers need $15/hr and a union.
Bernie Sanders
I want to live in a country where Colin Kaepernick is seen as a hero and Kyle rittenhouse is seen as a terrorist.
rosanna arquette
Learning to process my emotions helped me realize some of my anxiety is actually just rage
Ashley C. Ford @iSmashFizzle
It's now 15 days after the election was called, and I have yet to see an op-ed/analysis/commentary in a major newspaper on why Trump supporters need to do better outreach to folks outside their bubble and ask what it means to be a Biden supporter.
Charlotte Clymer
We are desperate for restaurants and bars to be open because there is so little non-commercialized public space in America
David Parsons
On Tamir Rice. Whatever polite ideas you have to reform police quietly, respectfully... If your polite, quiet, respectful police reform wouldn’t have stopped Tim Loehmann from being hired by Cleveland PD, shooting a child, and not being arrested, then your reform is meaningless.
Michael Reed
Oh so you like “a beginning, a middle, and an end”? Well tough luck pal, history is all middle
Ted McCormick
The challenge with the ‘people won’t cycle in winter’ brigade is that in cities where there is extensive cycling infrastructure and timely snow ploughing, people already are. It’s a fact. We do not need to speculate about this. We can just follow the lessons from elsewhere. See: Finland.
Jennifer Keesmaat
For all you tall people, this is literally my view (as an adult) of those gross vehicles that are somehow street legal. Not a child's view. Not of a souped-up truck. Just the kind of vehicle advertised during your favorite hulu shows:
@happifydesign
I think you see versions of this fantasy a lot, honestly: white men dreaming of a world where the salience of race and gender magically fades, but the set of people in charge somehow remains predominantly white men, except now reflecting their smarts and sobriety, not privilege.
Will Stancil
Addressing climate change is easy - just leave coal oil and gas in the ground. The part that needs more thought is how to best meet everyone's needs without fossil fuels. It is a major ongoing victory for fossil fuel interests that instead we act as though we can't get off fossil fuels until we've built something to allow the same way of living without them. Wait a minute....what if the climate system is a physical reality and capitalism is what's made up?
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin
[Ramsey County] Sheriff Bob Fletcher recklessly speeds through Saint Paul neighborhoods putting lives at risk over stolen property. [It's] crime porn.
Kevin Gallatin
Why is it that a $79,000 Tesla is subsidized with tax credits, but a $4000 cargo e-bike that is 20x more energy efficient isn’t?
Denver Bicycle Lobby
Rahm sucked as Obama’s chief of staff. He sucked as Congressman. Really sucked as Mayor. His qualifications for Biden cabinet? Secretary of I suck?
Fred Klonsky
Car Infrastructure is just Socialism for Climate Denialists send tweet
@Neomischa
I wrote this last week and I'll write it again. Just be prepared for Trump not leaving if he loses in 2020. He will say the election is rigged. He will call it a coup and a deep state conspiracy. He will attack all institutions. Right wing media and Republicans will defend him.
Wajahat Ali
Cultists are like junkies, it's never as good as that first fix.
@BeyaFong
Scott Baio, silver spoon Ricky Schroeder (Schroder) and the My Pillow guy helped bail out domestic terrorist Kyle Rittenhouse. Dolly Parton gave her money to Coronavirus research. See the difference between good and evil?
Ricky Davila
Only in America can a black kid be blamed for their own death because they played with a toy gun, meanwhile a white kid who literally shot and killed two people, become a conservative hero and offered a branding sponsorship. Ridiculous:
Francis Maxwell
Tamir Rice was demonized after being killed while playing with a toy gun in an empty park. Kyle Rittenhouse is being encouraged to run for public office after killing two people with a straw-purchased rifle. I feel like there must be a term to describe this phenomenon.
Scott Charles
Kalief Browder’s family was not allowed to post his bail so he spent 3 years in Rikers Island for allegedly stealing a backpack. There are Two Americas.
D.Lee.Blackburn
I’m not going to be told I’m “living in fear” for wearing a mask by someone who is so afraid of the world that they need to bring a gun to Walmart.
@emilysuetaketwo
One of the symptoms of overshoot as listed in the 30 year update to the limits to growth. "Declining respect for the instruments of collective government as they are used increasingly by elites to preserve or increase their share of a declining resource base."
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin
Amy Coney Barrett being against abortion but also voting for someone to be executed makes sense when you think of both the death penalty and anti-abortion laws as mechanisms by which the state unjustly controls and harms people’s bodies
@kimyaf
Across the US, millions of people are drinking unsafe water. How can we fix that?
Mary Hoff
While journalists keep hammering home that we all need to worry more about transmission through the air than from surfaces, I swear every shop I’ve gone into mid-pandemic has entrance hand sanitizer — but never a door or window open. Messaging failure.
Lauren Pelley
For perspective, during World War 2 the rate at which US soldiers died was 300 a day. 36 days of fighting on Iwo Jima left 6,800 Americans dead. That is 3.5 days of COVID at this current rate.
Daddy Bitts
They think they'll become the 1% in wealth...but not the bottom 1% in death...
Majo no Kiki
Here are a few facts:
No court has delayed the counting of a single ballot.
No court has thrown out a single ballot that had already been counted.
No court has delayed the certification of county/state results for even a single minute.
Joe Biden has won this election.
Marc E. Elias (Nov. 20)
There are 3 states reporting over 500 hospitalizations per million people: ND, SD, and now NE.
The COVID Tracking Project (Nov. 20)
People really need to have some fun with Republican politicians. My favorite is telling them that Donald Trump says 1 +1 = 3, and then asking them if they agree. Needless to say, all our great Republican Senators and Representatives will say "I'm not a mathematician."
Dean Baker
The idea that North America was some untouched, “pristine” wilderness before colonizers showed up is actually a concept rooted in anti-Indigeneity and I want y’all to throw it out of your minds.
@keoraborealis
Here's another reason to critique the idea that you shouldn't scare people when you talk about climate change: a study showing that when you remind people about their own deaths, they become more concerned about future humans.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther
Pay everyone $1500 to get vaccine. It is a stimulus check and big vaccine incentive rolled into one. Result: more people get vaccine, it saves lives, helps people financially, and the $400 B pays for itself w/ economic boost from ending pandemic.
John Delaney
I mean, no wonder drivers are so entitled. Our whole system tells them that their convenience is the #1 priority, and that pedestrians, transit riders and people on bikes are obstacles in their way. This is a learned behavior that is the result of our infrastructure and laws.
Momifornia
My four year old, when asked by a friend at day care why she has two mums and no dad, told her that her dad was eaten by a shark.
@BakeKater
Anne Hidalgo adopted a new modal hierarchy [for Paris] this year that underscores the priority placed on serving the needs of people with reduced mobility:
Bike Ottawa
A large part of the population is only patriotic when it doesn’t demand personal sacrifice. 9/11 made them feel good cause all they had to do is watch tv
Aaron Bradley @Godblsmnymkr
When, on Sept. 11, nearly 3,000 people were killed, we reorganized the entire federal government. We're now losing that many people every three days, and the Senate went home early for Thanksgiving.
Alison Fitzgerald Kodjak
Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, no matter how hard Christian evangelicals and Jewish communal institutions try to pretend it is.
Sophie Ellman-Golan
The GOP loves America, but with that "kill you and wear your skin" kind of love.
Elliott Kalan
No seriously...how *do* you deprogram 75 million people? Where do you start? Fox? Facebook? We have to start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan. Or the failures of Reconstruction in the South.
David Atkins
Trump's 2020 vote increased by about 10 million over 2016. How many of those were white voters outraged by attention to BLM and issues of white supremacy in months before the election? Social scientists will eventually let us know.
Langdon Winner
New qualitative study explores how homework perpetuates inequities: Richer kids have advantages that help them succeed with assignments and are then "seen by teachers as responsible, motivated, and capable." Conversely, kids who struggle with homework because of fewer resources at home are blamed for lacking responsibility or motivation. As Deb Meier has said, “If we deliberately tried to come up with a way to widen the achievement gap, we might just invent homework.” (Never mind its lack of academic benefit and negative effects on curiosity.)
Alfie Kohn
Americans during WWII weren’t better at sacrificing than Americans today. They hated it! There was a bustling black market and people violated ration limits all the time. But they had leadership and laws that made sacrifices more manageable.
Nicole Hemmer @pastpunditry
When you decide NOT to throw out/"donate" that old sweater with holes in it, but mend it instead? You are learning--in the way humans learn best--that broken things can be repaired, that repair is love, that it's always in process. Like, you know, DAMAGED PLANETS
@happifydesign
‘I Can’t Wait to Not Have to Think About Politics Again,’ Says Woman Whose Home Will Be Underwater in Five Years
Reductress
“I spoke to a small group of people who’ve self-selected into an activity with me and they all agree with me so that should be state policy” is actually the core to all MNGOP politics.
@mrotzie
We’ve never had an actual public health response to this global pandemic. We’ve had people foolishly obsessed with carrying on business as usual and then wondering why things are the worst they’ve ever been 8 months later. One of the greatest failures of governance in history.
Bree Newsome Bass
Democrats are soul-searching over whether to prosecute Republicans who committed real crimes, because "We must unite the country," while Republicans never rest in their effort to put Democrats in prison for being Satanist pedophile something something with no evidence needed
Sandra Newman
As I fed my baby this evening, I thought about the fact patriarchy deems this to be “women’s work.” The denial of this incredible joy is one small way that patriarchy hurts men too.
Hari Kondabolu
So hear me out—maybe designing our streets to maximize the convenience of the users who are already the least vulnerable and the most likely to cause harm was a bad idea and we should stop doing that.
Momifornia
It is scandalous we let stores design parking lots that put people in harms’ way. If one person were killed or injured by some design defect in the store it would be an enormous liability. I think we need a new set of design standards for parking lots. It's evolving but somebody has to set the standard for what is acceptable.
Angie Schmitt
As much as I would like to see our "endless wars" in Afghanistan and Iraq end, I have no faith in this administration to do it right.
Robert Moffitt @justplainbob
We overstate the role of fossil fuels by looking at "primary energy" because it's so wasteful. Coal plants are only 33% efficient at converting energy to actual useful electricity; modern internal combustion engine cars often just 20%.
Kate Mackenzie
Suburban life is socialist, dependent on absolutely massive government subsidies. While hidden, we can’t really ease up on them.
Phil Ritz
After listening to today's The Daily, I am confused why some Democrats are so focused on what they think they shouldn't say instead of coming up with something they do think they should say.
Becky Zosia Dernbach
Do you ever just stop and think that every existential crisis we are in right now--from covid to climate--was/is entirely preventable and we are living through it because of a few rich people's whims and fear of making, like, the equivalent, for them, of $20 less a year in income
Kaitlyn Greenidge @surlybassey
How about this as a pre-Thanksgiving image?
@pattho
Fox News and Facebook did to our parents what they said video games would do to us.
Ally Maynard
There's nothing more manly than being exploited in your workplace, lacking adequate healthcare, education, and housing, and being sent off to war to die by the wealthy folks who did that to you.
Chenjerai Kumanyika
The lesson is never “The forces we’re up against are just too powerful.” Facing tough odds against formidably powerful opponents is the nature of insurgent struggle. It is the duty of insurgent leaders to study the terrain and learn how to win.
Jonathan Smucker
Organizing a popular political force requires meeting people where they are, in the spaces they frequent, in familiar language. Clubhouses, on the other hand, require people to learn a special vocabulary and assimilate into a subculture in order to join. Which are you building?
Jonathan Smucker
Knowledge of what is wrong with a social system and knowledge of how to change the system are two completely different categories of knowledge. (Too many critics fail to grasp that having the former does not automatically confer them with the latter.)
Jonathan Smucker
The easiest solution to car-dependent suburban sprawl would be to stop publicly subsidizing it. Make sprawl pay for its full and real costs, both upfront and in ongoing taxes. Sounds fair, right?
Brent Toderian
Has the City Council's openness to defund the police emboldened criminals? Or has it emboldened the police force to sit back, and not respond?
Amity Foster
Obama agrees with me. I said years ago on a podcast with Jamil and Gene and Aisha that the Gates moment was the moment white America turned on him. I say it is because he violated the implicit contract of their faith in him: he appealed to historic Black grievance. He was supposed to be an immigrant, divorced from 20th c. Black political rhetoric that argues racism is structural and historical. He sounded regular Black in that Gates moment and they never forgave him.
Tressie McMillan Cottom
Today's reminder of what America has become: As Trump ignores the mounting death toll (while golfing), cheers violent extremists, and undercuts democratic norms and institutions by petulantly refusing to concede, his approval rating climbs to 45%, almost his highest ever
Alfie Kohn
If you can’t put a piece of cloth across your face to keep your neighbor from dying, never, never try to talk to me about God.
Pam Houston
Police have gotten 30 years of free PR from Law & Order and every other cop show. Defund police is a culture shift that challenges every level of thinking. It’s budgetary and it’s moral. We don’t bend because politicians w/o courage or imagination don’t know how to message.
blackness everdeen @traceyecorder
This image by @mrfishcartoons dates to before the 2016 election, but it’s gotten only more relevant since then:
Seth Cotlar
The light at the end of Sweden’s Covid19 tunnel is an oncoming train, filled with chickens, coming home to roost
@ianjamesyoung70
Never at the beginning of this would I have thought we could get close to the numbers of the 1918 flu pandemic which killed 675K Americans, but we just may very well at this rate AND this is despite 100+ years of public health, scientific and other advances.
@DrOniBee
Polite request to stop running vaccine news stories alongside photos of giant terrifying needles. It would be more accurate to show photos of people hugging their families
@DrKateMarvel
Quote by a forest ranger at Yosemite National Park on why it is hard to design the perfect garbage bin to keep bears from breaking into it: “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”
@mathematicsprof
Top ten state reports of new cases of COVID-19 per 1M/pop.:
1. South Dakota 1,355
2. Minnesota 1,339
3. Iowa 1,217
4. North Dakota 1,212
5. Montana 1,190
6. Wyoming 1,059
7. Wisconsin 1,040
8. Indiana 997
9. Oklahoma 991
10. Alaska 886
@KagroX (November 15)
People like to say states like Wyoming need to be over-represented in government because they're "rural." We imagine this means people there work on the land. In reality, only 3065 people in Wyoming work in agriculture. 30,171 work in retail. 36,871 work in hotels and restaurants. There is no state now where a large percentage of people work in traditional rural occupations. Everywhere, most people work in health care, hospitality, construction, manufacturing, retail, finance, real estate. So we're being told that people in small red states, who mostly live in towns and cities and work in the same sectors as everyone else, have different needs that necessitate more government representation. Could someone please explain what these needs are, apart from being white?
Sandra Newman
It’s almost as if it was never about the flag:
Nancy Armour
As a Black person, one of the things I really enjoy is being thanked for saving democracy, while simultaneously being told that any redress of the dehumanizing conditions in which we’re forced to live would turn off white voters who matter more.
@Marxicology
There's actually a quite simple heuristic that mostly works for differentiating election fact from fiction. If it's boring, it's fact. Nobody makes boring stuff up. And if it's sensational, it's probably fiction. Because elections are designed to be boring.
Max Hailperin
So little about how our society works is pro-life.
Max Berger
We should stop saying we need "political will" to solve climate change and start saying that we need massive "public pressure." For that's really the only thing that's going to work.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther
Public pressure and lawsuits kept the USPS from handing Trump the election: Experts believe what made the difference was enormous public pressure, multiple lawsuits, scrutiny from courts, voters mailing ballots early, and legions of dedicated USPS workers.
Kyle Griffin
I hope that Brookings, Harvard, and other pretentious prestigious outfits don't chase after people like Barr and Pompeo, the people who tried to destroy democracy. It really is not a plus to have a formerly powerful fascist on your faculty
Dean Baker
The central policy position of US government during the past 40 years: The vastly wealthy need much more money! Will that mania continue during the Biden/Harris years?
Langdon Winner
Just a friendly reminder that some people are indeed making dumb decisions and some people are forced to take risky actions because there's no other way to provide for their families; there's a serious difference and the failure is the federal government's
Anne Helen Petersen
Moving to egalitarian justice, egalitarian law, freedom of movement, and away from Montague/Capulet factionalism is a big gain in terms of liberty, self-determination, peace, but modern states need to have a new social safety net to substitute for what the patrons used to do. If working toward the Singularity means attempting to increase computing power, and human brains are part of that computing power, I think decreasing general social precariousness generates/frees a lot more computing power than building a supercomputer. Which is where the Epictetus argument comes in: advances aren't only (or even mostly) caused by the people who are trying to cause them, they're more often caused by an enormous number of seemingly orthogonal activities of other people doing other things but with ripple effects. Believing that freeing the computing power drained by poverty will actually help requires believing in vastly plural agency in which changes are caused by many many people doing many many things, not by a few geniuses with a vision of the future who then make that future.
Ada Palmer
Washington Post photographer Bill O'Leary captures the vibrant spirit of the "Million MAGA March":
Julie Lynn @bellafortunate
Today in horrible but unsurprising quotes: in Obama's memoir, he recalls he and Biden trying to explain the policy merits of a bill to Mitch McConnell, who responds "You must be under the mistaken impression that I care”
Jonathan Ladd
As a parent, my biggest fear for my children and their potential demise is large personal vehicles.
Becky Alper @santabeckyMSP
Covid is causing extreme vascular damage in people young and old. Maybe men in America will start to #MaskUp when they realize that their erections work off of blood supply...
Diana Berrent
Trump got his wall:
Brent Toderian
Pedestrians being hit by cars is a car problem. Car congestion is a car problem. Noise and air pollution from car exhaust is a car problem. The solution is less space devoted to cars and fewer cars.
Momifornia
Opinion: America really needs two healthy, honest, and competent political parties; the Democrats and the Democratic Socialists.
Sandra Newman
Americans see traffic jams and think: more roads. We see violent crime and think: more police. Instead both responses get more people killed, make our cities more dangerous and stressful, are so costly, and don't solve original problem. And yet after 50+ yrs of this, we persist
kar nels
Losing Thanksgiving because you couldn't stay home on Halloween is, like, a literal failing of the marshmallow test
Aaron Mesh
The marshmallow test is a fantastic analogy for the COVID situation, in that people like to pretend it's about individual grit and determination, but it actually highly correlates with wealth, food insecurity and how trustworthy the adults in your life are.
Cynthia Taylor @pinkhairedcyn
How privileged is your life where wearing a mask is the most oppressed you’ve ever felt?
@JLBarrow
Unpopular view but incarcerated people should be amongst the first to get a safe vaccine. You can’t socially distance in prison or jail. Our society has failed them too many times, we should not do it again. We will be judged by how we treat our most vulnerable
Brendon Woods
somehow, "i would kill for my kid" is valid and acceptable, but "i would illegally cross a border for my kid" is an incomprehensible act of evil
@kittiebabiee
I hope Trump goes back to hosting celebrity apprentice but this time whenever he tries to fire anyone, they sue him and refuse to leave
Sarah Cooper
Will Trump disclose secrets once he leaves office? Probably not, unless he owes someone money, needs to make a deal, or craves attention...
Marty Manley
a shrink once told me road rage is one of the most common manifestations of anxiety disorders in men and I feel like some of you younger dudes could use to know that
Saladin Ahmed
The Electoral College sadly plays into making people think of states as monoliths. 834,533 people in Alabama voted for Biden. That's more people than voted for Biden in Vermont, Delaware and DC combined. Alabama has more Dem voters than won Biden nine electoral votes.
Marco Esquandolas
Joe Biden has a coronavirus team...Trump’s team has coronavirus. That’s everything we need to know.
Justin Key l Ent. Entrepreneur
It’s curious that the two most powerful women in Minneapolis of the last decade — Mayor Betsy Hodges and Council President Lisa Bender — have been tied by their opponents to bike lanes, in a way that their male counterparts (despite also supporting bikes) have not. You couldn’t open up the Strib comments section back in the day without a reference to “Bike Lane Betsy.” Now just open CP Bender’s mentions and for every tweet attacking her for paling around with terrorists, there’s another mocking her for bike lanes. The masculinity of motor vehicles; the association of bikes with children and domesticity; the dual imposition of women into the space of politics and bikes into the space of the road; there’s a lot of things going on. I don’t have a unified theory, just that it’s ubiquitous.
Alex Schieferdecker
I wonder, if you did a nationwide poll, how many people are aware of the fact that a conservative lawsuit is on the verge of destroying Obamacare and leaving 10s of millions without health insurance ... vs. the number that are aware of the "threat" that the left will abolish police.
David Roberts
If you believe that all Americans, no matter color, creed, or sexual orientation, should be treated fairly and with compassion, guess what? *You're on a side.* You might not like it, you might not like the aesthetics of constant fighting, you might not like "politics," but you're on a side. One side is fighting for your values and the other is fighting against them. And what's more, if the great masses of Americans who share those values don't recognize that they've become partisan and under threat, don't *take their own side*, then that side's gonna lose! We just barely dodged a racist authoritarian takeover and it absolutely won't be the last attempt. We need people -- decent, ordinary, "non-political" people -- to realize what's going on and start fighting for their own side.
David Roberts
"Sure, blame Donald Trump for his inept pandemic response. But blame Ronald Reagan for encouraging people to hate their own government, or to view an individual sacrifice for the common good as some kind of tyranny," writes Jenny Boylan
New York Times Opinion
There have been more Trump aides who’ve tested positive for coronavirus since the election than documented cases of voter fraud
Ari Berman
Continues to amaze me that people think “solutions” only refer to tech and policy, not... I don’t know, cultural norms, language, all the stuff that makes that tech and policy actually work?
Amy Westervelt
Coronavirus explained in craft terms: you and 9 friends are crafting. 1 is using glitter. How many projects have glitter?
coastal eddy
is rugged individualism and personal responsibility working:
Zach @floyding
Uber and Lyft are like the pinnacle of modern disaster capitalism. Two companies that have never made a profit, screw over their workers, produce all these negative externalities. Mostly exist to wildly enrich a few early founders and investors
Angie Schmitt
Raise your hand if you haven’t been able to watch a police procedural for some time and feel a little gross about how many of these shows you have watched in the past without thinking through the implications
Kathleen Weldon
Defund is also not starting in a vacuum: the police have had a 140-year head start in making their argument. They’ve enjoyed mostly uncritical/collaborative coverage in the mainstream news media for most of that time and the entertainment media is lousy with copaganda.
@GeeDee215
Schrodinger’s coup
if it fails, it’s a joke
if it succeeds, it’s not
but until we open the box, it exists simultaneously in both states
(((Matthew Lewis))) @mateosfo
People who are so shocked that one party would throw away democracy, that they would subvert elections, suppress voters and the legitimacy of government to ensure minority rule...aren’t Black. This has been, really, the only America we have ever known.
Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones
Overheard a mum at school: ‘I won’t get a vaccine; I think scientists mess about too much.’ Then back into her car which she presumably found growing in a field. I’m tired.
Mark Watson @watsoncomedian
Imagine if any fraction of this GOP energy to find phantom voter fraud had gone instead to preventing the spread of COVID.
Scott Hechinger
OF COURSE THEY BELIEVE IN ELECTION FRAUD WITH ZERO EVIDENCE THEY BELIEVED HILLARY CLINTON WAS RUNNING A PIZZA PLACE PEDOPHILE RING
Tom Tomorrow
The average Black degree recipient owes *more than what they borrowed* 12 years after starting college. This isn’t an “investment” that’s paying off. It’s an albatross around people’s necks.
Beth Popp Berman
This is a massive problem and it's not limited to Trump; Kushner and others will also sell state secrets. Even out of the White House, US nat sec is destroyed. And that outcome was inevitable the moment Trump was installed in power.
Sarah Kendzior
"Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women." I talked to Jessica Calarco
about her research on women and pandemic parenting/relationships — and the idea of sociology as "un-gaslighting"
Anne Helen Petersen
Some folks be acting like if the GOP does something illegal, the constitution will become sentient, walk out of the archives and physically detain Trump with no help needed from human beings. Lol
Chenjerai Kumanyika
The fact that the Federal Reserve resisted full employment during Obama and embraced it under Trump explains a lot more of recent elections than people are willing to admit.
Jeet Heer
If Americans actually paid for the parking they consume, they would drive 500 Billion fewer miles each year.
Brent Toderian
the generation of grownups who tried to shame gen x with “remember you’re sleeping with everyone they’ve ever slept with” is now trying to persuade us to “just” come over for dinner without us noticing we’d be breaking quar with everyone they’ve ever broken quar with
Emily L. Stephens @emilyorelse
Somehow this does not inspire a lot of confidence:
Ian R Buck
The desire by SOME Democrats, mostly activists, to shift SOME funding from police to other social services is alleged to have damaged Democratic electoral results, while the ENTIRE GOP's utter refusal to deal with climate change is, meh, whatever. Why? Oh, same answer: the fact that the right wing has a giant, coordinated messaging machine and the Democrats don't *matters*. The argument from some Dems seems to be: anything anyone on the left (including street activists) says can be used against everyone on the left, so no one on the left should say anything that might be used against or damage the farthest-right Democrat in the purplest district. Both of the common reactions to this are correct. On one hand, it's *true*. The right wing media machine really *does* use the most extreme rhetoric against all Democrats. On the other hand, it's nuts to run a broad coalition around the lowest common denominator rhetoric. What's the answer? The answer is that Democrats *have* no good answer as long as the right wing has a massive, relentless, well-funded, coordinated propaganda machine and the left wing relies on the shitty mainstream media to get its message out. That imbalance shapes *everything*. As I keep saying: the right wing has a giant, coordinated messaging machine and the Democrats don't, and it *matters*. And I can't even get people to acknowledge and discuss it.
David Roberts
Many of our roads were built at time when traffic engineers expected the "extinction of walking," according to Walter Kulash. That helps explain why the U.S. is failing to protect so many pedestrians today.
Chris McCahill
Nothing says a Democrat-rigged election like [checks notes] losing ~10 seats in the House, failing to take the Senate, and gaining no state legislatures.
Brian Tyler Cohen
The allegations of fraud are the fraud
David Frum
relatedly, it is...a problem that so many people understand jim crow as simply extreme discrimination rather than as a one-party authoritarian enclave whose political influence extended throughout the country.
@jbouie
Seriously folks, I wish with all my heart that I had to turn to comparative politics to find examples of authoritarianism, stolen elections, mob violence at the polls, mass disenfranchisment, coups. But it ain't so.
Jonathan Ladd
Imagine what economic theory would look like if the basic unit of behavioral modelling wasn't an abstract, bourgeois male individual but a mother.
Jason Hickel
I for one am shocked that the party that nurtured a conspiracy theory about secret underground pedophile tunnels is having a hard time accepting the reality of losing the election.
Tom Tomorrow
it was a grave mistake to convince people they could eat indoors
Jake Anbinder
Is it just me or did this always just seem wild? I remember walking into a full restaurant in San Bernardino County in June and thinking what the hell is wrong with you all.
@VamonosLA
And to think Trump, Pence and so many who now refuse to abide by our democratic norms and respect Biden’s win had the nerve to question the patriotism of football players who peacefully protested police brutality.
Midwin Charles
“There are 2 billion parking spots in the U.S. for about 200 million cars. The area of parking per car in the United States is thus larger than the area of housing per human." Cars make your life more expensive, even if you don’t have one.
Brent Toderian
I admire those of you who can take a “it’s not going to work so calm down” approach to all of this because I am incredibly angry with the Republican Party’s cynical and cowardly willingness to delegitimize democracy to save face with the monster they put into office.
@jbouie
Policing is not an evidence-based practice. We don't keep giving money to interventions that have no research to support their validity or reliability.
Rachel Bean @colocha_rachel
I hope people realize that the same Republicans who are refusing to acknowledge the results of our elections also champion disastrous foreign policy claiming they’re “bringing democracy” to other nations.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
The social costs of alcohol are higher than any other drug. And yet, it's the least regulated or socially censored:
Alec Stapp
US Secretary of State jokes about a coup just days after Qanon followers threaten to blow up a ballot counting facility and weeks after the feds intervene on plots to kidnap governors of states targeted by the president! Hilarious! Don’t worry, everyone! Just humor! Bipartisanship!
Bree Newsome Bass
People are worried about coups, but the thing causing me real despair is the prospect of living for decades in an ever-tightening vice of right-wing gerrymandering and court packing, in which there is no election victory large enough to permit anyone left of center to govern
Will Stancil
I was in a household with a Reason subscription. My dad had us kids read "The Road to Serfdom" out loud to him so he knew we'd read it. What I came to understand as an adult was most Libertarians are huffing privilege glue and don't really care about human freedom. I once described it to one of my sisters as "would sell my bodily autonomy for gold," and I stand by that. I have a uterus and the Libertarians would ABSOLUTELY sell my freedom to control my own body for lower taxes. It's all bullcrap.
@elljayvalentine
atheism online and Reason have always been 1) right-leaning 2) anti-woman 3)islamaphobic 4)racist. I (black, raised muslim) used to read them in the early 2000s but was turned off by all that.
@PYRAMlDScheme
It's a weak view of freedom. Implausibly narrow. Not the freedom people choose.
@rowyourbot
a take i stand behind: most sweaters are the wrong length. they should either be cropped so they hit right at the waist or very long and cavernous so they envelope half your body like a wool cloud. the in between length is mostly a lumpy mess that does not flatter!
rachel syme
I'm curious, how often do Republicans "reach across the aisle"? How often do they travel to our towns to court our votes and seek to understand our issues? Am I missing all the Republican initiated bipartisanship in DC? OR could it be that these calls are DISINGENUOUS?
Candace Avalos @candaceforpdx
This teddy bear came with instructions for how to microwave it. It did not come with instructions for how not to feel like a war criminal:
Les Lim
Legally cast ballots sounds like a new way of saying whites only.
Shay Stewart Bouley @blackgirlinmain
Having worked this meta-story for two decades, it's no surprise. Voter fraud propaganda is almost universally about black people voting. Occasionally it's about Hispanics or Native Americans. SD Sen in 2002. But mainly it's about black people whose franchise is deemed contingent. What are we talking about: three majority black or near majority black cities where we're told "urban machines" are stealing the election.
Josh Marshall
Minneapolis parenting in 2020, a tale in one tweet:
"Do you know what it's supposed to do outside tonight?"
"The helicopter?"
"Well, yes. But I meant snow"
Ian Coldwater
It really is remarkable how many Americans have decided that their recent inability to freely express their racism without consequence is the greatest danger facing the country.
David Roberts
Donald Trump alleges fake voter fraud (as he did in 2016) and gets massive coverage. His chief "witness" in Philly is a convicted sex offender. Meanwhile what happened at USPS - which is ACTUAL voter fraud and suppression - gets almost no coverage and we still have no answers.
Don Winslow
I used to find defenses of the electoral college compelling. But I've definitely changed my mind on it. The fact that at no point all year did anyone seriously think Trump would win the popular vote really seals it. We have plenty of other counter-majoritarian safeguards.
Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart
Nothing says "Late Republic America" like Democrats encouraging other Democrats to reach out to Republicans while Republicans refuse to accept the results of the election because Democrats actually won.
Elie Mystal
reminder that the filibuster is nowhere to be found in the constitution and wasn’t used on any regular basis until the 20th century, when it was used to kill anti-lynching and civil rights bills
@jbouie
The firm that invented the #Pfizer vaccine, Biontech, is a German medical startup founded by the children of Turkish #immigrants: Özlem Türeci (CMO) and Uğur Şahin (CEO):
Christian Odendahl
If I am understanding this correctly -American healthcare confuses me so correct me if I’m wrong- the same people who claimed that COVID19 is “just a flu” are now arguing that it’s a “preexisting condition” that can make someone’s insurance package worse.
@TheRealNubian2
Tomorrow, #SCOTUS will hear arguments about a case that could dismantle foundational provisions of the #ACA, potentially ending healthcare as we know it--during a #pandemic. Cruel does not even begin to describe it.
Jonathan Metzl
If the mainstream media were as curious about racISM as they are about racISTS, we might not be in this mess in the first place.
Phillip Atiba Goff
the part of modern politics that constantly makes me feel like i'm going insane is the asymmetry of how dems and republicans view each other. the modern gop would gladly outlaw the democratic party if they felt like they could get away with it and dems are desperate to be friends
@hucklebuckets
Georgia's two Republican Senators telling the Republican Secretary of State to resign because he let too many Black people vote is just a great example of what the GOP is.
Max Burns
Every time we have one of these “voter fraud” investigations we find republicans committing intentional voter fraud and a smattering of confused people on a bipartisan basis.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
The f*****g nerve it takes to not only benefit from an already imbalanced system but to then gut the Voting Rights Act, engage in unprecedented gerrymandering, remove voting machines to cause hours-long lines, pass voter ID laws, cripple the USPS and then claim YOU'VE been cheated.
Michael Hattem
I’m not going to tolerate anyone suddenly finding their inner fiscal discipline now that Biden is President Elect. We need major investments to help businesses and families come out the other side of this. Policy should be expansionary for economic, moral, and health reasons.
Brian Schatz
Disputing the election isn't, for the GOP, about reversing the result. It's about crystallizing for their voters the idea that if they don't get what they want in the world, it can only be because someone else unfairly took it from them. It is a central tenet of the party.
Mark Harris
Ohio’s long standing-support for Republicans and decline are self-reinforcing trends, in my opinion.
Angie Schmitt
It’s nice to think that the next person to run the Bureau of Justice Statistics will almost certainly have a background in either justice or statistics, or maybe even both! (Trump’s director, of course, had neither, except for some work on a football ranking algo.)
John Pfaff
I’m sorry I can’t let this go: the people who can’t find the right Four Seasons want you to believe they uncovered 40,000 fraudulent ballots in Philadelphia?
Jeffrey Lieber
Joke all you want, but Rudy's prepared to fight this all the way to the Supreme Courtyard by Marriott.
John Ricks @jricks77
To be clear; I do not expect racists to be happy that their racist president has been defeated. I do not expect racists to accept the results of the election. These assholes still haven’t accepted the ratification of the 15th freaking Amendment.
Elie Mystal
The same people who said "It can't happen here" and then "No one could have seen it coming" will now say "It wasn't really that bad." It was. Do not let anyone rewrite the history of the Trump admin years. History must be remembered to ensure it does not repeat.
Sarah Kendzior
Hey guys the house seats that Democrats lost are just as gerrymandered towards Republicans now as they were in 2018 when Democrats narrowly won them in a wave election. This could explain why some lost
@prof_gabriele
This country always focuses on compromising w/ most hardcore factions of white supremacy and it’s why we’re here:
-3/5 compromise
-Missouri compromise
-Ending reconstruction and allowing the rise of Jim Crow
-reaching across the aisle to the folks who empowered Trump
It has to end
Bree Newsome Bass
Saying the GOP is now the party of the working class is utter nonsense. Trump lost voters earning under $50K by 15 points. He lost voters earning between $50-$100K by 13. He WON voters earning over $100K by 11. That's what happens when you enact Paul Ryan's agenda
Peter Beinart
What y’all think Mississippi looks like vs what it actually looks like"
Mary Annaïse Heglar
The white folk in my state [Mississippi] have every reason on earth to share with us, to be fair and kind, to repair. But they double down on despicable. When I say worst of white folks, I'm not analyzing; I'm describing what I see, brutality in the face of grace.
Kiese Makeba Laymon
Mississippi is the Blackest state in the US, at nearly 40%. The redness of the places where Black people *don’t* live is shaped by that antiblackness.
@GeeDee215
More LGBTQ candidates ran for office in the United States in 2020 than ever before – at least 1,006. That’s a 41% increase over the 2018 midterms, according to the LGBTQ Victory Fund.
MinnPost
We can resolve the climate crisis *precisely* by beating the pandemic and rebuilding our economy through developing our safe-energy future, while investing in communities of color in ways that root out systemic racism. Climate Action itself will heal our nation's soul.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther
Alex Trebek as a smooth, hip 23-year-old hosting a show called Music Hop in 1963 on the CBC:
Eric Alper
I think maybe if you supported the man who enacted the muslim ban, kept children in cages, and basically golfed while 225K americans died of covid, you're being shamed for a little more than "simply supporting your president," just one man's opinion
Tom Tomorrow
The reason I actively supported Biden is his experience with death/dying/grief, including holding others in it. Climate grief—and the racist, extractive, oppressive, individualistic violence of it—is something we all have to face as we shift towards social/planetary healing.
@happifydesign
There is a whole spectrum of feelings that one cannot afford to experience in the midst of crisis, in the midst of abuse, in the midst of moral injury. It is only when we begin to suspect we are safe enough that we can afford to experience the worst of the rage, pain, sorrow.
Martha Crawford @shrinkthinks
“In Finland, the # of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment and counseling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.”
Brent Toderian
Hillary's losses in several states were so small and the election was called crazy quickly in the middle of the night. She waited till the next day, made a civil concession and got roasted by media.
kar nels
Overheard walking past someone on the phone in DC: “I mean, people can’t hold it against us just because we were in the administration, right? This is going to be so unfair.”
Abe Rakov
The world spent a lot of time de-Nazifying Germany for a very important reason: If there are no consequences for fascists' actions, and they are allowed to rejoin society, then fascism will rise again. Very quickly.
@barney1776
Instead of the “Biden needs to reach out to Republicans,” pundits should try, “Republicans need to help convince their voters to compromise with Democrats. It’s a two-way street. Progressives have always been told to compromise most. Time for a correction.
@davedwardspiano
The NYTimes swing state module shows how insane the the Electoral College is: NC swung *more* towards Biden than WI and TX swung more than NC! But none of it matters under winner-take-all. So dumb.
Chris Hayes
We already empathize with Trump supporters on policy. We want them all to have healthcare, to make a living wage, to have a fair and equal justice system. We don't have to empathize with them because they voted against those things and lost.
Elizabeth Spiers
Mitch McConnell does not deserve to keep his job. Ossoff and Warnock are objectively better candidates than Perdue and Loeffler.
Angie Schmitt
Anybody who's like "well that was a pretty good showing for Trump!" should consider how Hillary Clinton was treated as the World's Biggest Loser after an election with the same Electoral College margin as this one*.
* But where she won the popular vote instead of losing it by 5
Nate Silver
I suspect there will be books about the genre, academic ones. The relationship between fascism and kitsch deserves to be more widely understood:
William Gibson @GreatDismal
One thing that drove me particularly nuts was the asshole 'artists' who used their albeit limited talent to regurgitate this awful propaganda. I hope this trend is dead and buried
Chris Stein
Less talk about forgiveness talk. More talk about accountability and what’s required in the work of sincere repentance. In Judaism, you’re not required to forgive someone who hasn’t done sincere, meaningful work of repentance and repair. And then, it’s complicated at best. But the literature is clear that if the harm caused was irreparable, you’re never required to forgive, even if they repent.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
One of the reasons I don't fuck around with BS calls for "unity" with Republicans is that the onus is always on the people being abused to humanize their abuser. There's a reason the expectation doesn't begin with the other side. No progress is expected there.
@MsKellyMHayes
That the election ended with Rudy Giuliani standing under a chemical hazard sign behind a landscaping company in northeast Philly is everything I could have possibly hoped"
@dansinker
He promised to run the country like he ran his business. It ended with Rudy Giuliani outside Four Season Total Landscaping next to a dildo shop, after a staffer mistakenly thought the empty parking lot was a Four Seasons hotel.
@morten
When Republicans say voter fraud what they really mean is too many Democrats are voting
Ari Berman
The Trump campaign accidentally booking a press conference at something called Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia instead of the Four Seasons hotel they intended is such a perfectly dysfunctional way for this to end. The writers really outdid themselves.
Aaron Rupar
my favorite takes are the right-wingers saying “OHHH so how do you feel about the electoral college NOW” we won the popular vote both times, we still think it’s garbage, this is not a difficult concept
@erinscafe
Per source, lot of west wing anger at Jared right now over how embarrassing Trump’s legal fight has so far been. “Jared is running everything and it’s a disaster!”
Gabriel Sherman
For those of you that don’t live in cities, let me just tell you that a multi-racial, multi-generational, ideologically pluralistic dance party /is/ actually the American Dream. And that’s still alive underneath the wretched empire.
@MutualArising
Kind of wish we'd saved this (2008) cover idea another dozen years:
Monika Bauerlein
Ian this is very much a "we're all white men here, let's shake hands" take. I am a woman. Republicans are trying to kill us. They were killing Latino refugees. They were killing Black people. They were killing trans people, hurting LGBTQ rights. We will not befriend murderers.
Heidi N. Moore @moorehn
If you did that, good for you. As someone who voted against Trump in 2016, I reached out to Trump supporters to try to understand what they saw that I didn't. With a few rare exceptions, I was told to eff off. They *celebrated my pain* and called me names. Will *never* forget.
Nancy Cauthen
Just a gentle reminder that I'm 30 years old, I have been alive for eight presidential elections — and a Republican has only gotten the most votes once. 1 of 8. Maybe our system should more clearly recognize American voters' choices?
Sean Hayford Oleary
From Wil Wheaton:
Cory Doctorow @doctorow
The GOP will lose the Presidency, and may lose the U.S. Senate, but if Americans commonly start using the term “legal vote,” as if there’s a horde of “illegal votes,” then the GOP would have won the narrative war to defend the voter suppression that allows them to retake power.
Ibram X. Kendi
Fuck Donald J. Trump
Fuck Melania
Fuck Ivanka
Fuck Jared Kushner
Fuck Don Jr
Fuck that entire family of fascists.
NONE OF THEM IS A VICTIM. They are fascists too - participants, complicit and enablers. ZERO SYMPATHY
Mona Eltahawy
People believe we need growth because they start from the assumption of scarcity. But there is no scarcity. There is inequality.
Jason Hickel
nice day at the beach:
@RubyGraceLevine
The white power structure will always be more invested in and concerned about healing the divide among themselves than ending the persecution of BIPOC in this country so don’t be surprised for that to be where most of the post-election convo resides.
Bree Newsome Bass
Maybe Betsy DeVos should deal with her unemployment by learning to code.
Sarah T. Roberts @ubiquity75
Thinking of John Lewis, John McCain, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the many others who did not live long enough to see this man defeated but whose memory helped make it happen.
jelani cobb
AP got the shot. Trump on the golf course while Biden is announced as new President:
James Longman
For 60 years, car advertising has programmed us that driving is freedom, it’s how we get around, that driving — even reckless driving — is a symbol of status and power. But what if a car marketing vet used his skills to highlight the insanity of car culture?
Brent Toderian
It's infuriating how the election volunteers & workers in PA are blamed for pace & hounded with insults, when they've begged PA for months to allow them to process mail early, & the GOP refused precisely to get to a point where it could blame their pace and hound them with insults.
Taniel
Sen. David Perdue bought stock in company producing PPE after briefing - Business Insider
Maggie LaPointe @courageousgirl2
Prospect Park News:
Vince Netz
Having screamed about election security for decades, it is really wild and amusing to watch how amateur and ignorant the Trumpworld is about their conspiracy theories around this. Meanwhile, their crazy claims get far more attention then reasonable questions around USPS delays.
kar nels
What I did not realize until I began expanding my work into creating actual media and reporting institutions such as the Washington Examiner (I was the founding online editor) was that U.S. conservatives do not understand the purpose of journalism.
Matthew Sheffield
We are not a center-right country. We are a fairly progressive country on a range of issues with antebellum institutions.
Waleed Shahid
So this is an historic turnout? Imagine what the numbers and demographics would look like *without* all the voter suppression. Imagine what the last 20 years would've looked like *without* the EC or gerrymandering amplifying the white rural vote and suppressing everybody else.
N. K. Jemisin
If the Electoral College woke up one morning as a guitar:
Randall Stephens
Any originalist not okay with vote tallies taking days is a poor student of history.
@betweenstations
If establishment Democrats were smart, they'd be talking about how they won the popular vote in 7 out of the last 8 presidential elections and we need to reform our system so the majority - which they represent - can govern. Instead, they're blaming the left for their losses.
Max Berger
With a lot of talk about Native voting in Arizona. I thought I would share 2 maps. The left is a map showcasing all 22 tribes in the state. The right an updated 2020 voting results maps by precinct. This give you an idea of how Indigenous communities voted in the 2020 election:
Shondiin Silversmith
We need automatic voter registration everywhere. We expend so much effort trying to overcome this needless obstacle to voting. It really saps energy/money that we need for other things. And that's why they like it.
Angie Schmitt
I pointed out how Omar/Dems pushed up turnout around Twin Cities, but so far Biden seems to have improved on Clinton in most of greater MN, too. By my count Trump ran behind his 2016 margins in 51 of the 85 counties outside Hennepin/Ramsey.
Dave Weigel
Today’s game is ‘Who goes to jail and who gets to be visiting faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’
Hari Kunzru
Imagine a Democratic party that learned the lesson from this election was to trust and empower Black people, instead of coddling and protecting white people.
Elie Mystal
The funniest genre of tweet at the moment is conservatives incredulous at the Biden-Trump vote margins in cities they have been demonizing for the last four years
Adam Serwer
I added some numbers [to another tweet that posted a map of the U.S. if it was split into sections that have the same population as California]:
Steve Chiotakis @RadioChio
"A presidency born in a lie about Barack Obama’s birthplace appeared on the edge of ending in a lie about his own faltering bid for re-election.”
Cliff Levy
Montana and South Dakota voted for weed yet voted for Trump by large margins. Florida voted for $15 min wage yet voted for Trump. Many red states have voted for Medicare expansion. Guys, it’s the racism for them.
@luckybastard77
Georgia is for John Lewis. So fitting his Congressional district put Biden in the lead
Ari Berman
The "legal vote" thing reminds me of "legitimate rape."
Sarah Posner
Crazy idea: maybe we should start arresting and prosecuting the people who perpetrate all the voter suppression instead of just accepting that the Republicans are going to do it and we just have to fight through it.
@adamstemple4
The 15th Amendment, which gave black men the vote, was ratified 150 years ago. It was hoped that black voters would offset the political power of racist whites who’d nearly destroyed the country. A century and a half later it’s doing the same thing.
jelani cobb
If you believe a word Trump is saying about the election being stolen you are beyond reason. I don't want to reach out to you to "understand" your views. I don't want to find common cause with you. You are deranged. A cult member. I care only for one thing: your eternal defeat...
Tim Wise
I feel like we should limit news stations to 1 hour of helicopter time per month. It’s ridiculous that every day they fly over our neighborhoods. If they want footage they should send a reporter.
Alex Beck
I keep coming back to a truth I'm feeling deeply. Those who value holding onto power more than upholding democracy should not hold significant power in a democracy.
Kate Knuth, Ph.D.
Trying and failing to explain America's electoral system to gobsmacked relatives overseas is a part of the immigrant experience that never gets old
Monika Bauerlein
Oh my god I love this so much:
Sarah Mackey
What if the Republican Party is a Ryan Party and a Trump Party and both are minority parties unless they have a reason to unite?
Michael Brendan Dougherty
Top five issues for Biden voters: COVID, health care, the economy, racial justice, climate emergency. Finally, the biggest existential threat of our lifetimes has become one of the biggest issues in an election.
Eric Holthaus
Funny that the 'illegal' voters are making Trump lose, but they do count for the House and Senate seats the GOP won?
Pamela Herd
Just going to set this right here...
Christina Greer
Twitter yesterday: Polling is dead, cancel the quants
Twitter today: Exit polls reveal third-generation Uzbeks from the Ottumwa exurbs betrayed us by 1.7 points
Ari Schulman
Reminder that in WA, OR, and CO -- vote-by-mail states -- participation and satisfaction rates are high, everyone has voted, and the count is proceeding without difficulty. All the voting problems in this country are self-generated for political purposes. They're easily solvable.
David Roberts
the only problems with trump's suit, according to the judge, is that it was based on hearsay, brought the wrong party to court, couldn't give names of any of the people or locations they said broke the law and the relief sought is unavailable because the counting is over.
@mo87mo87
History will mark this moment: When an American president who is trying to steal an election is claiming he is being robbed.
Ibram X. Kendi
Classic white supremacist argument- "it's not that we've earned it, it's that we DESERVE it."
WhiteNonsenseRoundup
In 2021, Republican Party will have more QAnon Members of House of Representatives than African Americans.
stuart stevens
If the farmers in Minnesota's 7th congressional district run into some problems in the next couple of years, and need some help from Washington, not to worry! They have a freshman Representative with no seniority and in the minority party representing them.
Robert Moffitt @justplainbob
NPR had an expert who critiqued politicians' ability to speak to ordinary Americans and then used the word "milieu"
Chris Steller
It's pretty funny how Trump tells all his backers not to use mail-in ballots and is then surprised when all the mail votes are for Biden. No one ever accused Donald Trump of being too sharp.
Dean Baker
'If children walked to school in our bike lane, would paint be enough protection?' Car marketing vet uses his skills to highlight insanity of car culture:
@MargoCHanson
How y’all feeling this morning? I’m feeling like we gonna pull it out, but I’m exhausted AF. I also (as a former Atlanta resident) want Georgia for Biden, and then I want Stacey Abrams to run all the victory laps and have her pick of jobs.
Brittney Cooper @ProfessorCrunk (from November 4)
I personally spoke with 3 Wisconsin voters who would normally have voted straight republican and they all voted for Joe Biden for president so I’m fairly certain I was more effective than the Lincoln Project.
Not Bob @StPaulBikeScum
When Biden wins, watch how fast the narrative switches from scapegoating the minority of Black and Latinx voters who went for Trump to praising America for redeeming itself—while ignoring how it was high turnout among Black and brown voters that made it possible
Bree Newsome Bass
Just a reminder to the folks who are upset about the late counting in PA, MI, and WI. This is entirely due to Republican legislatures who refused to allow these ballots to be processed early, as they are in states like Florida.
Dean Baker
Relieved that the worst will not pass, disappointed that the best did not come, ready and clear-eyed for the path forward.
Evan Weber
Was anyone still wondering if we could address climate change without rooting out white supremacy and patriarchy? Anyone?
Dr. Katharine Wilkinson
White Trump Voters: You’re not “losing the country,” because it wasn’t yours to begin with.
Hari Kondabolu
people in the cities have their garbage, water, septic supplied by the government
they expect the government to do things. country people from day one have their utilities paid for by people in the cities. they expect the government to do things without paying any taxes.
Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @perdricof
Whatever the outcome, Democrats need to think long and hard about how it's so close despite there being overwhelming support for single payer healthcare, mass investment in a clean energy economy, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and other core issues.
Saikat Chakrabarti
We lost Florida by 400,000 votes, and the GOP blocked the votes of 700,000+ former felons who the people of Florida specifically stood up to re-enfranchise in ’18. IT’S THE SUPPRESSION
Chris Conroy
today it’s “the south is useless” after y’all just spent months talking about voter suppression. please pack it up.
@DaShaunLH
The Trump Era in a nutshell. The president is openly trying to steal the election, but also, ha ha, he said "poles":
David Roberts
BREAKING: Mississippi overwhelmingly voted to end a Jim Crow-era "electoral college"-like system for picking governors, which was intended to dilute the power of Black voters. Mississippi will now choose top elected officials only by popular vote.
Ashton Pittman
oh hey have I ever mentioned how much I despise the electoral college system
Tom Tomorrow
This is a deeply divided country, steeped in misinformation campaigns. It's really sad.
Leah Stokes
Seeing all the pro fash propaganda construction workers bring from the suburbs presumably on their trucks to this utilities construction project we have going on is a good reminder we need to diversify public construction contracting. Especially in a diverse city like Cleveland
Angie Schmitt
Well he finally got his wall:
Cory Doctorow @doctorow
Welcome to living in the last 20 minutes of a horror film when you know the director's anxious not to be considered "too commercial" so you can't count on a happy ending and even *if* the studio gets its way and the good guys win at least one person you're rooting for won't make it.
Tabatha Southey
This morning feels like an odd mix of a kid on Xmas morning and a doomed prisoner's last day.
Sandi Behrns
This is just shitty indoors. You’re indoors but less comfortable. I get the impulse but please stop trying to game this. It doesn’t work that way:
Maggie Koerth
"He will be wounded, afraid and dangerous." Truly wild how in less than four years we've all just grown accustomed to the president being described as if he's a racoon stuck in the crawl space or something.
Torrance Coste
Fascists did not make the trains run on time. They just made sure you couldn't say the trains don't run on time.
Ben Aveling
I’m sorry but, I don’t need to believe in an all-powerful being in the sky to have morals.
@gabsthehuman
2 died of Ebola: They said Obama should resign.
4 died in Benghazi: They had Hillary testify for 11 hours, held 33 hearings, and launched a multiyear probe.
235,810 died thanks to Trump’s malevolence: They cheered, gave him his 3rd Supreme Court pick, and demand 4 more years.
Andrea Junker @Strandjunker
Number of polling places closed since the 5 Republican appointed Justices on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013:
Texas: 750
Arizona: 320
Georgia: 214
Louisiana: 126
Mississippi: 96
Alabama: 72
North Carolina: 29
13 States Total: 1,688
Keith Boykin
"DARMOK AND JALAD AT TANAGRA" was originally a sentence using highly culturally referential speech, but now it exists as culturally referential speech to the idea of culturally referential speech
@HTHRFLWRS
Around the world, the best predictor of controlling Covid is social cohesion. The understanding that we’re all in this together. We’re all safer when we all mask up, support tracing, and, eventually, get vaccinated. No group can get infection without endangering others.
Dr. Tom Frieden
June 30: Fauci warns that daily covid cases could reach 100,000 a day. Is mocked by critics as “alarmist.”
Oct. 30: Confirmed daily covid cases in U.S. reach record 99,784.
Paul Farhi
ExxonMobil was the largest company in the world, measured by market value, as recently as 2013. Today, the oil giant is not even in the top 40 most valuable companies in America.
Illustration of a gas pump with the hose forming a descending stock trend line.
Once the world's biggest company, the Exxon empire has crumbled
Axios
Whenever Republicans describe Democrats as “Socialists who wants to take your guns away, I think to myself “MAN, I WISH!”
Hari Kondabolu
Every reporter should be asking republicans “why doesn’t your party want all the votes counted?”
Adam H. Domby
If all the vacuous horse race coverage -- irrelevant almost immediately on publication -- were replaced by hard investigation into the crimes of Trump admin and its backers, the US would be in such a better place. So much more prepared. But if anything, this coverage has lessened.
Sarah Kendzior
Media that refuses to cover climate change as the urgent threat to human life it is because they don’t want to sound alarmist are doing the same thing Trump did when he downplayed the virus to avoid causing a “panic”
Emily Atkin @emorwee
Scientists expect horrific global warming of 1.6–2°C by 2032, triggering the final collapse of major ecosystems, extreme crop-wrecking weather events, widespread global extinction, then more horrific warming from vicious feedbacks, yet media refuse to scream for emergency action.
Ben See @ClimateBen
Democrats couldn’t have been more “come together, move on” than Obama, and that’s how we got Trump.
@destroyideas
Trump voters are not marginalized under-represented people. Their votes count for more. Their leaders get installed with a minority of votes. They have an entire media ecosystem devoted to delivering their chosen alternate reality that supports their abusive worldview.
A.R. Moxon @JuliusGoat
No comments:
Post a Comment