Brent

"You can't block someone just for being annoying!" Those are actually the most important people to block

Extremely funny to go "I can't believe the Poles didn't insitute reforms that would have upset Moscow" with a header image of What Happens When You Upset Moscow

Trump and Republicans are restarting their voter fraud misinformation machine ahead of the midterms. When I checked, Republican candidates were implicated in voter fraud at up to 38,000x the public’s rate. If they were actually worried about voter fraud, they’d start with their own candidates.

691 words about Cheesecake. 434 words about rape.

Young ‘uns: this stuff happened once a week during Obama’s presidency. Dijon mustard. Moving a bust of Churchill. Inviting a rapper to the White House. Putting his feet up on his desk. They’d scream and cry for days about how effete and snobby and Black he was and how misinderstood they were.

this is something Dems can just hammer on for the next two years televised hearings every week about Epstein, Epstein, Epstein make the drumbeat so loud the media doesn’t have a choice in covering it

One party is anti-rape and one party is pro-rape, so prominent coverage of rape accusations of one party’s leader would be biased. The job of the press is to be objective. Or: Voters already knew Trump was a rapist, it’s baked in. The job of the press is novelty to influence electoral outcomes.

i don't think anyone should run explicitly on banning online gambling but i do think that a democratic-led government should just quietly take steps to undermine the industry and create an inhospitable regulatory environment

excuse me ‘obama’ but our nation’s proudest and most toothless yokels think of the cheesecake factory as a sort of high end golden corral which fyi means a lot in their culture. i know this because a lot of them used to janitor for my young republicans meetings at yale

You can do the same thing, buying a house and borrowing against it—ha ha, just kidding, normal people get taxed annually on their wealth via property taxes, the "you can't tax wealth, the economy will collapse!" rule applies solely to the super-rich.

There are credible allegations of rape against the president, and evidence his administration has taken steps to cover up his relationship with the world's most notorious pedophile. This story is being covered more aggressively by People Magazine than the NY Times, Wash Post, or Wall St Journal.

New in PN: Strong & right "For decades, an article of faith among party apparatchiks was that if Dems simply published detailed policy platforms & then ran on those policies — or clever bywords like “affordability” or “abundance” — voters would swoon. Wrong. And Dems are finally figuring it out."

My second essay on how under Trump we’ve already gotten used to a level of fascism, authoritarianism, and corruption that would be unthinkable to us just years ago. Today: The corruption of the Justice Dept and *EIGHT* scandals on par with Watergate: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/trump-s-ty...

"Not only are [reporters] overcompensating — being harder on Democrats in order to demonstrate how objective they are — but they also bring their own elitist filter to discussions of who is and isn’t out of touch, buying into conservative myths about who regular people are."

Major press failure: treating Jared Kushner taking foreign bribes and shaping US foreign policy as less relevant than Hunter Biden not taking bribes nor influencing policy. Covering Kushner accurately was considered partisan, biased. Lies about Hunter or his minor actions treated as more important.

A Palestinian won the Nobel Prize last year

this might rank as one of the most important outcomes of the night if it happens. would give dems the ability to begin to make north carolina a democracy

Big if we can do it because the NC GOP control the statehouse through pretty wild gerrymanders that normally give them super-majorities when the state is evenly split. If you break those permanently, NC government gets really competitive, really fast in a way that will be good for the state.

The vile attacks on Amy Acton need to be seen in the context of a party that *needs* people to believe women fabricating sexual assaults is common as rainwater. Because it’s pretty much the only way to evade the conclusion that the president is a rapist.

things i did not expect to see in a parking lot in 2026:

RIP to an incredible actor, Alfred Bester is one of my all time favorite Lawful Evil villains

Everyone keeps asking me how I’m feeling about early voting so far. I’m feeling like nobody *actually* knows anything, and this is the most important midterm of our lives. I’d rather be us than them, but we can’t get comfortable. We can’t get complacent. Go vote like we’re down 3%.

"We're glad you're a subscriber but you need to be a PREMIUM subscriber to read this article." Oh, honey, no. You don't understand. Nobody cares that much.

Amazon keeps telling me I've "landed a complimentary gift." Gifts are complimentary by definition you tautologists.

It's not crazy. Data centers can be built anywhere. If one jurisdiction is run by Luddites, developers go to the next one. Location is commoditized this way, enabling economic growth. Rail has to go in specific places, which can extract surplus or even destroy it due to anti-development ideology.

32% of eligible US voters chose Trump in 2024, yet it was presented in the American media as an amazing landslide. Lula's reelection was significantly bigger, but it will be presented as eking out a win.

Lord I see what Brazil and Serbia have and I want it for myself

America is currently on the soft side of The Baddies in Ukraine, which sucks so much and as an American, embarrasses me to my core Luckily, we have an election in like 8 days, and another one in 2 years and between the two we can turn this ship around, even if we cant undo the damage

We fought a war over this. 1 of every 30 Americans died. And then we amended the Constitution to add “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States”

I fundamentally don't care if the people of Brazil want more or less regulation, more or less taxes, etc. Their choice, not my business. But I *do* care if they're electing (or in this case, defeating) a figure who seems likely to become part of a global authoritarian movement.

I also think it is important here to distinguish between a sports-esque 'rooting interest' and a recognition that populist authoritarian leaders and movements tend to understand themselves as allies of each other. Orban and Putin spent a lot of money promoting authoritarianism abroad.

Once more - people's chief beef with Democrats that we hear consistently in focus groups and see in surveys is too weak, not too woke.

Quick reminder that "Congress has capitulated to Trump's lawless authoritarianism" should really be read "Congressional Republicans have capitulated." Democrats, being in the minority, aren't in a position to forcefully oppose Trump. I'm looking forward to them getting the chance next year.

I regret that I have but one like to give to this post.

There is a lot going on here.

The speed with which so many execs cozied up to this authoritarian says more about their revealed preferences than long term strategic thinking. They saw a chance for what they saw as a "business friendly" autocrat and oligarchic consolidation and jumped at it.

Even though Trump caved in to great pressure over Starlink/Starshield, it doesn’t change the basic fact that the US is more and more an open ally of Russia. The US is still refusing to deliver purchased Patriot missiles, buying Russian diesel, has neutered Graham-Blumenthal, and there is more…

Three moments broke Trump 2.0: 1) Kimmel and other attempted censorship after Charlie Kirk. Made public see the attack on speech. 2) Minnesota anti-ICE protests, Goode and Pretti killings. Made public see the attack on rights. 3) Iran war. Made public see bad foreign policy affects them directly.

The biggest reason his would-be regime has basically been stillborn is that he's not capable of the long-range straegic planning necessary to do regime change. Most of his closest subordinates are also either incompetents or fanatics. Hence the persistent overreach and obviously-doomed endeavors.

The competence of the authoritarian side isn't usually analzyed because the paradigmatic cases feature talented political minds — Orban, Chavez, Modi, Netanyahu, and (early) Erdogan. The US case is exceptional. Trump is a savant at controlling the GOP but a total policy idiot.

I agree with this in broad strokes, but the underlying connective tissue here is more of a character problem: this administration is simply bad at authoritarianism. Their policy judgment and execution has been ham-handed and incompetent because *they* are ham-handed and incompetent

I think the fact that Marissa Mayer would voluntarily disclose this to a reporter is a pretty good demonstration of how deeply the culture of Silicon Valley has diverged from the rest of humanity

if only there had been a way to predict this might happen based on nearly every midterm election cycle in modern american political history