NCSteve

“Somehow I always forget that I’m going to feel it. And then I do. It’s still there. Like something truly exceptional is happening. And we all get the fruits of that labor. The whole world gets to share it. Feels good.” --Hank Green youtu.be/oaXRREHVkHo?...

Ooooeee! Lookit all them Mississippians who went to a segregation academy stand up and cheer for that!

I'm going to learn more about this story by Googling "Tim Scott sexuality rumors"

Seeing how little coverage that house report that added another rape accusation to Trump's tally got today, I looked back on just the front page Benghazi stories (there were many, many more inside over these months).

It would be awesome if we finally managed to at least temporarily wash the last of the Third Klan element out of the Senate this year.

Obama pushed two buttons and got Trump talking about his White House renovations for the rest of campaign.

We're eight days out and up ten points on the generic ballot. The Senate seats in Kansas and Mississippi are in play. The CNN guy is saying fifty plus house seats at least. Does anyone really still want die on the "Jefferies and Schumer should have made themselves the faces of the party?" hill?

Whether it’s Republicans openly demanding bribes or Democrats investigating the payment of bribes, both parties have created a tense and politicized environment for CEOs.

My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today. Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man.

Remember when a bunch of people told us we were idiots to believe that there would be midterm elections?

bsky.app/profile/brad...

Congrats to Lula on overcoming Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump to defeat Hospital Pervert Jr., even as his opposition literally blocked off roads and turned off bus service during election day. Fascists are scary but they are always, 100% of the time, ultimately gigantic fucking losers.

"It's not funny!" 🤣

“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam opened up a Cheesecake Factory" Obama just spoke to an ELECTRIC audience in Ohio, skewering Trump & Hegseth and making the case that while we may be stuck with the same POTUS until 2029, we are not stuck with a spineless do-nothing Congress Highlights:

If Mississippi voters put that abominable goblin Cindy Hyde-Smith out on the street this election, I may have to pretend to be mildly religious for Christmas.

Still covering Elon Musk as a business mogul and not foregrounding his murderous white nationalist politics is like doing a piece on only the clown career of John Wayne Gacy.

I’m glad Congress isn’t alive to see this.

You have to hold two things in your head at once here: This is embarrassing shit that will get laughed out of court, and also, the fact that the president is even trying it is fucking terrifying www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

It's obviously dumb to apply how-to-win-elections logic to non-candidates who are reacting out of moral outrage. But standing by this position is essential because if Matt acknowledges that his ability to predict what makes candidates successful is wrong, it kneecaps his entire approach.

All these so-called “independent” Republicans will go right back to voting for Johnson as speaker, confirm every Trump nominee, vote with Trump on everything, and continue doing zero oversight on his corrupt regime. A vote for any one of them is a vote to continue all of that.

The next time a Republican “accidentally“ refers to “the Democrat Party” I’d like to see the Democrat “accidentally” refer to “the Rapist Party”

Today, I had to pass a "Fight Communism Vote Republican" yard sign at my chosen early voting site, a mere four steps away from the Republican state legislator who asked for my vote. I don't know why he wasn't expecting my scorn.

on some level, this is just a form of anti-politics.

Who needs the tourism revenue from RAGBRAI, a massive weeklong ride across Iowa, that is the largest cycling event in the world?

Total respect for NBC's Monica Alba, who asked Trump exactly the question he needs to answer. By refusing to answer, and attacking her, he has effectively told the world that no, sexual abuse allegations do no mean a thing to him. Imagine if she wasn't there. We'd be the poorer for it.

This sick, vile, disqualifying ad, siding with a monster who abandoned her 12-year-old daughter in favor of the boyfriend who raped her, and hasn't seen her daughter in 50 years, accusing Acton of lying about, it is being headlinezed into normalcy. It's NOT normal. Don't do that.

Please do not describe it as an "attack ad" in which Acton's "estranged mother" "calls her a liar." It's a "taboo-breaking ad accusing Acton of lying about being raped as as child"

You can twist it into a some creepy kind of intimidation, but to me, it's the sign of people who know they've been ordered to engage in a grossly unconstitutional abuse of power signaling their desire to be witnesses rather than defendants in the lawsuit. www.thedailybeast.com/maga-nemesis...

i'll take this as confirmation of my argument that had Epstein lived he'd now be a major MAGA influencer

Vivek Ramaswamy's latest advertisement has drawn criticism from some of his strongest supporters, former Intercept reporters Glenn Greenwald and Lee Fang.

This is what "media capture" looks like.

I don't know if the more disquieting thing is how most of the MAGAteers chosen to be his backdrop look shocked, disgusted or traumatized or if it's the handful who are smirking or smiling triumphantly.

That Vivek Ramaswamy ad drives home the point that Republican politicians think rape – even the rape of children – is no big deal. That disgusting ad is fully consistent with Republicans covering up the Epstein files.

Has anyone noticed that the Uncanny Valley problem in AI slop, whether as propaganda, advertising, porn, cartooning, or satire, was not improved by the last two generations of LLM's?

In case facts still matter — we have abandoned Ukraine in favor of Putin Russia was never a hoax

Analysis | No one could have predicted that a slick businessman who made billions selling cancer drugs he knew didn't work would run campaign ads weaponizing the fact that his opponent was raped as a girl.

When the Trump regime announced its $25 million "Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program," a.k.a. snitch fund, it reminded me of this.

There's a chance, unquantifiable but greater than for an average man of his age, wealth and ill-health that, a long night of rage and humiliation will actually kill him before he can get any sleep. But if not, holy fuck, shit is going to get real crazy real fast. Even by current standards.

can't believe nobody has posted this yet, but

"In my mind, all political outcomes are identical" is one of the most popular opinions of dim people who consider themselves sophisticated like to say.

Sean Casten is one of the smartest members of Congress.

I do think it’s worth noting the political intersection here of the GOP on parental estrangement and defense of child abuse. This is increasingly explicit as a foundation of the GOP, rather than just being a part of the coalition via homeschooling, religious exemptions, etc.

Apparently someone used the term shylock last night in a blatantly anti-Semitic way at a political rally but the ADL doesn’t want to say who it was. For some reason.

the idea that empathy is dangerous has been permeating right-wing spaces for a while, but it's not an actual element of their ideology as much as it's a defense mechanism against confronting the reality of their cruelty

We wanted to understand Vivek Ramaswamy’s latest ad, in which Amy Acton’s estranged mother calls her a lifelong liar. So we talked to three undecided voters at a Panera in Columbus who say the real story is the refusal to center the lived experience of mothers who stayed married to pedophiles.

Damn. I sure wish I had some insight into now the coming wave election is going to interact with the thinner General Assembly margins the Republicans gerrymandered themselves into. The most NC Dems will do in public is express tentative hope they'll break the GOP's legislative veto grip.

Arise, Sir Beta of Grovelshire, sworn knight of King Donald the Needy and Protector of the House of Mar-a-Lago.