It's unlikely that I'll die via internecine violence, but if I do, I want everyone to come to my funeral dressed in chicken costumes to illustrate the core absurdity of human politics
As Biden cancels (some) student debt, remember why the debt exists. A key Reagan advisor warned in 1970 that free college was producing the dangerously explosive "dynamite" of an "educated proletariat," and "we have to be selective on who we allow to go through higher education":
In a 2007 book, Shinzo Abe explained that he became conservative because he was angry that "some people" called his grandfather a war criminal for his actions during World War II. (His grandfather was a war criminal.)
The most amazing thing about the catastrophic US healthcare system is that the solution was invented long ago in other countries. It's like we're refusing to use wheels.
1. Biden wins the 2020 nomination
2. Sanders does more rallies for Biden than Biden does for himself
3. Biden loses to Trump
4. This is the fault of Sanders & "the left"
5. The Democrats lose the 2022 midterms
6. This is the fault of Sanders & "the left”
We've considered everything carefully and come up with a plan:
1. Reopen colleges
2. Everyone gets covid
3. Shut down colleges
4. Send thousands of infected students back home to infect every place in America
If you bought $1000 of a bitcoin ETF when Matt Damon's "Fortune Favors the Brave!" crypto ad premiered on October 28 last year, you would now have $554.
BREAKING: White House aides say Biden is "incandescent with rage" over Netanyahu's strike on Iran, and that the president vows "ironclad support for Israel with absolutely no red lines"
Who can forget the inspiring 2020 Democratic Party slogan, "Vote Blue and We'll Raise the Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour Unless the Senate Parliamentarian Says We Can't Which We Could Overrule But We Won't"
15 days ago I joked that Trump would sign the coronavirus stimulus with a bunch of pens and then hand them out, but I honestly never imagined that was possible in reality
Tesla stock is now down 49% since Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter in April, losing over half a trillion dollars in market valuation.
Just in the three and a half weeks since Musk took over Twitter on October 28, Tesla stock is down 27%, losing $190 billion in value.
You may wonder how Elon Musk can be so consistently hilarious. One key technique he uses is to come up with prospective jokes, ask his employees if they're funny, and then fire anyone who says no.
Another interesting thing about the milieu in which Shinzo Abe grew up is that his father volunteered to be a kamikaze pilot. But World War II ended before he finished training.
1. Elton John leaves Twitter citing "misinformation"
2. Elon Musk asks him what misinformation he means
3. Right-wing freak tells Musk Elton John's account was probably hijacked by his "marxist social media person"
4. Musk appears to agree with this
One might call this ironic
I had no idea Carl Reiner was on a path to being a sewing machine repairman until his brother told him about a free New Deal acting class. What a different country we could have if we wanted to spend our money on stuff like that instead of death machines.
The murder rate in Haiti is actually about 1/10th that of Baltimore (& barely higher than the murder rate in the US overall). I wonder why Tucker Carlson called Baltimore "a little bit of Haiti"? What connects them in his mind? I guess we'll never know.
It's rare to see the Fed speaking this clearly about how it works, but here the president of the Kansas City branch says Americans have too much money and that's a problem the Fed's going to solve.
If Malcolm Gladwell really wants to expose New Yorker festival-goers to ideas that will take them out of their comfort zone, he should organize a bunch of panels with their nannies and doormen
Colin Jost is the son of a doctor and engineer, went to a private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, went to Harvard, was hired at SNL immediately after graduating and has never had another adult job
ISRAELI GOVERNMENT: Our goal is to ethnically cleanse the human animal Palestinians from Gaza
US MEDIA: Biden administration uncertain of Israeli government goals
ISRAELI GOVERNMENT: We emphasize that our goal is ethnic cleansing
US MEDIA: What are Israel's goals? Who can say.
It seems inevitable that Elon Musk and the ADL will come to an understanding in which Twitter users CAN engage in virulent anti-semitism but CANNOT criticize the Israeli government, thus giving both sides what they care about most
RIP Desmond Tutu. I once saw a professor at a Canadian university condemn Tutu for comparing Israel's treatment of Palestinians to apartheid. I emailed the professor and asked him if he understood apartheid better than Tutu, and he responded that yes, he did.
Remember when the Supreme Court declared in Citizens United that unlimited campaign cash would "not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption"? Anyway, Miriam Adelson wants to straightforwardly buy US foreign policy for $100 million.
Luke Thompson, the guy who kicked off the dumb campaign finance smears of
@AOC
, used to work for the Jeb! Super PAC Right to Rise USA.
Right to Rise was just hit with one of the biggest fines in FEC history for illegally taking $1.3 mil in Chinese money:
If you're curious why NBC's Richard Engel is so upset about the US withdrawing from Afghanistan, he talks honestly in his book War Journal about how he knew the Iraq War was going to be great for the careers of people like him
13. Cotton’s nuclear attack on Iran leads to China nuking America
14. This is the fault of Sanders & "the left”
15. Humanity goes extinct
16. This is the fault of Sanders & “the left”
17. Earth is run by lovely super-intelligent squirrels
18. All credit goes to corporate Dems
By the way, Stephen Breyer just turned 82 on Tuesday. Thank you to both him and Ruth Bader Ginsburg for refusing to retire under Obama, it's working out great for us.
This is the platonic ideal of America's culture wars. 20,000 people massacred in Gaza, and we must pay attention to a (apparently false) claim about the name of the couscous salad at Yale.
You could teach an entire class about this one Bill Maher tweet during Israel's 2014 attack on Gaza. It has everything: hatred of women, hatred of the Other, contempt for the powerless, love of hurting them — and illustrates why these things so often go together.
Jerry Falwell, Jr. seems like an awful person, but given his family, I feel like you have to grade him on a curve. This is from "Strength for the Journey," a memoir by his father Jerry Falwell, Sr.
It's well, well worth watching all of this exchange between Laura Ingraham and former CIA director James Woolsey. Woolsey acknowledges that the US has meddled in other countries' elections in the past and is doing so now, and both he and Ingraham find this laudable and funny.
Tesla's stock price how now fallen 46% since Elon Musk's bid to buy Twitter became public on April 14. This has reduced Tesla's market value by almost half a trillion dollars. (For comparison, the S&P's fallen about 15% during the same time.)
It's difficult for the West to understand the irrationality of the Arab world, where it's part of their culture to get mad when someone kills members of their family
Recall that at least five of Fetterman's Pennsylvania constituents were injured in Israeli bombings in Gaza, with one 17-year-old being permanently maimed. One of their relatives said, "they are treating us like we’re nothing." Fetterman insists on this.
The Iraq War began 18 years ago today. 29 of the 50 Democratic senators had voted for it the previous fall, including:
Joe Biden
Chuck Schumer
Hillary Clinton
John Kerry
Dianne Feinstein
82 of 208 Democratic representatives voted for it, including:
Steny Hoyer
Adam Schiff
Imagine a mirror image of the Anat Schwartz scandal — a Palestinian reporter liking tweets that said "turn Israel into a slaughterhouse." Joseph Kahn, the executive editor of the NY Times, would already have resigned. There would plausibly be congressional hearings.
7. Pete Buttigieg is crushed by Tom Cotton in 2024
8. This is the fault of Sanders & "the left”
9. Cotton puts Sanders & “the left” in camps, where they die of typhus
10. This is the fault of Sanders & "the left”
11. Cotton nukes Iran
12. This is the fault of Sanders & "the left”
Jimmy Carter turned 96 years old today. I've always loved this picture, with the four other presidents putting as big a distance as possible between themselves and Carter in case being a decent human being is contagious.
1. Today is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, and Joe Biden just acknowledged that it in fact did happen. The Armenian Genocide may seem very far away, but here’s a short story from my family about how if you pay attention you’ll see everything in history is two inches from you.
Here's Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, yukking it up back in March with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose government appears to have just murdered a Washington Post columnist.
I've gotten many angry responses to this article about all the times Israel has rejected peace with Palestinians. Each time I've asked what specifically they think is inaccurate or misrepresented. But no one's responded.
75 years ago today the UN passed Resolution 194, which states Palestinian "refugees wishing to return to their homes & live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date." It's never happened & the anniversary's been barely marked.
We'll never settle the "stupid or lying" question about the right's propagandists. But as Ann Coulter demonstrates here, you should never underestimate the degree to which they are just super super dumb.
When Sen. Mike Lee described Harlan Crow as "one of the most decent, thoughtful, insightful people any person could ever hope to meet" he forgot to add "He also gives me lots of money."
Remember that in Richard Engel's book "War Journal" he said that before the invasion of Iraq he knew it "was a land where careers were going to be made" and that being there for war was his "big break"
Perhaps the biggest risk-calculation/moral dilemma of the war so far. A massive Russian convoy is abt 30 miles from Kyiv. The US/NATO could likely destroy it. But that would be direct involvement against Russia and risk, everything. Does the West watch in silence as it rolls?
The weird thing about Barack Obama is that he had the talent and timing to be one of the most important presidents in US history, comparable to FDR, but instead he just wanted to get $80 million from Netflix
When Hank Aaron was getting close to breaking Babe Ruth's home run record in 1973, the sports editor of the Atlanta Journal ordered an obituary pre-written for Aaron in case he was assassinated
The funny thing about the phrase "fortune favors the brave" is that the Roman author Pliny the Elder famously said this just before setting sail toward Mt. Vesuvius mid-eruption, and then immediately died
This is a real AP story from 1991. Yitzhak Shamir, then the prime minister of Israel, straightforwardly explained that it was fine for the Zionist movement to use terrorism to establish Israel — Shamir himself had been a terrorist — but it was unacceptable for Palestinians.
Dale's Diner in Waterville, Ohio, closed last week. More customers than anytime in its 10-year history. The problem? No applicants for its many job openings.
Jeffrey Goldberg wants the Atlantic to be "a big tent for ideas" so he hired someone who thinks women should be hanged for having abortions. But I guarantee there will never be room in the Atlantic's big tent for anyone who thinks Bush & Cheney should be hanged for invading Iraq.
People like to talk about Covid deniers dying of Covid, but Tom Wolfe wrote a whole book about how evolution doesn't exist and then quickly died of an infection from bacteria that had evolved to survive antibiotics
Back in 2006 NBC refused to air ads for Shut Up and Sing, a documentary about the Dixie Chicks, because (in NBC's words) the ads were "disparaging to President Bush." Since this was political correctness from the right, it's been totally forgotten.