Andy Flach

Newspeak.

Republicans, please listen to Mike Johnson. The polls are wrong and Republicans are going to win big, so don’t stress about voting in this election. Save yourself some time and hassle and stay home on Election Day

I am talking about a law passed in 1982! One of the things TEFRA did is mandate that all states use "experience rating" to finance unemployment insurance. ie, firms are charged higher taxes as a function of their layoff rate.

More than 40 farmers and agricultural industry groups are warning Washington leaders that the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration is affecting the nation’s food supply, hurting farmers and risking higher grocery prices. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

NEW, from Bloomberg News: “Elon Musk has now given more than $445 million in the current election cycle.”

“We’re making the assumption that the president is not going to accept the results of what looks to be a very challenging election for him and his party.”

Total coincidence that TikTok banned the Elon documentary.

Who's in charge of this country because it sure isn't us and it doesn't even appear to be the government anymore A bunch of paunchy moon-faced degenerate dead-eyed parasites forming a human centipede of investment in each others' vanity conglomerates, not a scintilla of civic virtue among them

President Trump called Elon Musk and asked him to lift restrictions on a military-grade version of Starlink in Ukraine that the SpaceX chief throttled, U.S. officials said www.wsj.com/world/trump-...

It's remarkable how much money you can sometimes save by going to cancel a subscription and then accepting the discounted deal they offer you to stay. Just saved myself $36 a month with a few clicks.

WTF?

Just been such a revolution in my worldview to realise that people like Musk actually believe this, this isn't just the nonsense they feed the rubes so they can do coldly rational mercantile calculations in smokey rooms among themselves. No. It's rubes all the way down, they're that stupid.

"If you’re a Lyft driver in Massachusetts and you lose your job, you’re unemployed, but not eligible for unemployment insurance." Very good point - we need to reform UI finance so that gig workers can be eligible for UI. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/21/o...

The intersection of virtually unrestricted cash gifts to the executive, an unrestricted executive pardon power, and a Congress unable or unwilling to utilize the impeachment power is virtually fatal to democracy.

He stopped Ukrainian interceptor drones in flight, letting Russian missiles and drones through that were aimed at civilians.

Growling “Quiet!!” at someone like that is actual mad king territory

Disgusting

Leaked audio: Michigan Republican Mike Rogers asking for officers at polling stations to intimidate voters "We called the RNC early and said hey... Let's put police officers, retired or off-duty police officers as our poll watchers in Detroit because go ahead, try to intimidate them. Please."

I suspect Trump asks to take the cognitive test over and over bc it makes him feel like a winner, and his medical team finds it really annoying

Somehow I missed this but incredible reporting by the Reuters visual investigations team detailing the extensive damage being done to Gulf infrastructure by Iran. www.reuters.com/investigates...

Dumbest tweet yet. And that’s a high bar.

This is a genuine conspiracy, an outrageous attempt to use regime-friendly media to ban unwanted topics. (I also think we should be careful about conflating it with the Meta No Kings account freeze, which seems pretty likely to be an accident. Don’t dilute the real conspiracy with fake ones!)

Right-wing billionaires now own the Washington Post, the LA Times, CNN, CBS News, virtually every local TV station, virtually every news radio station, most local newspapers, X, Facebook, Threads, and TikTok. (Did I miss any?) They own almost the entire information environment.

This is Tommy. Tommy had a question about my allegiances. Listen to the end to hear about his.

Interceptor drones are defensive. They are used to knock down Russian missiles and drones targeted at civilians. What would be the justification for cutting them off?

Update from @hesherman.bsky.social: Texas school district now says the play was canceled not due to state's (unconstitutional) anti-drag law, but rather its anti-DEI law. Still unclear how casting a girl to play Seymour violates the anti-DEI law. hesherman1.substack.com/p/little-sho...

US steel prices climbed to the highest in more than four years as Trump’s tariffs restrict foreign supplies, boosting domestic producers while raising costs for American manufacturers www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

What’s astounding to me is how “the president builds himself a palace with money given directly to him in secret by the richest people in America,” literally the most straightforward and worst executive-branch corruption story in US history, just gets shrugged at because Trump is unapologetic

The federal investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar aims to build a case to strip her of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with the probe www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

"CFTC staff began to investigate ... then were told to lay off." It's no exaggeration to say that the country is being run by a criminal syndicate.

Billions of dollars’ worth of contracts predicting oil would fall and the S&P 500 would rise were placed about 15 minutes before Trump announced a U-turn on Iran in a post on Truth Social. CFTC staff began to investigate...then were told to lay off. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

US politics today, in 2 charts

Mission accomplished!

Also it’s time for the news to stop treating this administration’s racist war against Somalis as “Trump being Trump.” They targeted Minneapolis because they hate an ethnic group here, and now they’re targeting the most prominent political figure in that group with thinly rationalized state violence.

We saw this stuff constantly during and after Metro Surge here in MN; you see it in how Trump has stripped the protected status of Haitians. “You’re in a racial group we detest, but you’re an American or have a legal right to be here. No matter: we’ll simply change the rules, now you’re illegal.”

If there’s evidence of fraud or other financial crimes, let’s see it. But trying to denaturalize and deport a sitting member of Congress over mistakes a parent allegedly made on immigration forms when she was a child is immoral and reprehensible. We can’t stand for it.

Pirates. That's all they were, from the start.

This.

The central issue of our times is that the President of the United States is certifiably insane. Nothing else really comes close.

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So many things wrong with this "deal," but also: it's not a "massive" amount. If we actually receive 1,800,000 tons of diesel from Russia, that's equivalent to: * 3.3 days of US consumption, or * 10 days of US *exports*. It's a drop in the bucket. We send more than that overseas every two weeks.

The new Survey of Consumer Finance is out! www.federalreserve.gov/publications... For Matt Darling aficionados: - Median household net worth is $215.9k (up 2% since 2022) - Median assets in transaction accounts is $8,200 (-6% since 2022) (Percent changes are in real (adj for inflation) terms.)

Trump's overtly racist refugee policy - the only refugees he has allowed in, over the past year, are white South Africans - deserves more public attention than it's been getting.

We've reach the "people chained to each other in the hold of ships" part of the story.

Never forget: www.theguardian.com/media/2019/f...

For the first time on record, a majority of Americans have not much/no confidence in the government to ensure food safety. news.gallup.com/poll/715430/...

Trump admin is suspending a bunch of tech companies (Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Capgemini) from participation in the H-1B PERM program, alleging fraud. Some other tech firms (Apple, Amazon, Google, etc.) notably absent from the list.

Maybe he has them confused with ICE.

Because trade imbalances aren’t due to competitiveness, they’re due to the mix of consumption, savings, and investment in an economy.