jab retweeted
Accountability for the wealthiest people on Earth is hard to come by.
Thank you for believing in the power of independent journalism to accomplish it.
(And, yes, more to come.)
pablo.show/p/it-happened
jab retweeted
It turns out the great egg price increase that helped topple Joe Biden's presidency was <checks notes> due to an alleged conspiracy among egg producers to artificially increase prices and the coverage of that fact is a blink-and-you-miss-it story on the NYT website 🙃
jab retweeted
I doubt many people are going to read the 55-page report "From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday" put together by Democratic staff of the House Natural Resources Committee so here's how it ends
ALT The deepest harm is not the sum of what has already been taken, but what the country is being asked to accept. Left unanswered, the methods catalogued in these pages do not expire with this anniversary; they become a manual, usable against any institution, any commemoration, any store of public trust a future administration finds inconvenient or lucrative. So, the question this record calls to answer is larger than the conduct of any one official. It is whether a self-governing people, shown in detail how the corruption of its own founding milestone was carried out, will shrug and conclude that this is simply how things are done now. The semiquincentennial was meant to remind Americans of what they hold in common. Let the record of how it was abused remind them of what they must never consent to lose.
I got crypto scammed. Transacted crypto for 15 years, first time scammed. Feel like a fucking idiot.
Do not use or interact with @usePolyArb or any variation (ArbPoly, poly_arb) it's all fake.
In hindsight it was obv too good to be true.
jab retweeted
People in authoritarian regimes don't wake up thinking, "I'm in an autocracy!" Leaders never declare, "Hey, I'm a dictator!" They stage "elections" like Russia's sham votes. Folks just live relatively normally: binge-watching shows, catching movies, chilling with loved ones, scraping by.
But insidiously, free speech erodes. Minorities face persecution. Political opponents are targeted. History gets rewritten. Troops patrol streets. Businesses bow to state pressure. Independent media silenced. Judiciary packed with loyalists. Dissent labeled treason.
Sound familiar?
jab retweeted
On Monday I’m introducing the FAIR BET Act, the Fair Accounting for Income Realized from Betting Earnings Taxation Act, to permanently restore the 100% loss deduction from gambling winnings.
I welcome all other members to join this common sense fix.
jab retweeted
Republicans hurt Las Vegas gamblers and the gaming industry with their BS budget.
I am working on a bill now that would reverse this unfair anti-gaming tax provision.
jab retweeted
Buried within the BS Republican Budget bill is a provision that harms poker players and those who gamble by limiting loss deductions. I’m working on a legislative fix that fairly treats gaming losses in the tax code.
jab retweeted
🚨🚨🚨This is exactly how I feel. 🚨🚨🚨
CHARLES PIERCE WRITES:
“In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and say, "And we shall overcome."
I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over.
I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City.
I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job.
They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.
"And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators.
Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
"The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides.
We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.
"Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents.
jab retweeted
My website is almost complete.
You enter any baseball savant search query and it will collect all the videos from that query and combine them into one video for you to download.
Here's a test example. It was made in less than 1 minute with just 2 clicks of a button
jab retweeted
America is indeed a land of opportunity. Why else would so many immigrants want to come here — all the time — in search of freedom and prosperity.
There is no America as we know it without the stories and ambitions of immigrants.
jab retweeted
NEWS: Chief Justice John Roberts has issued an administrative stay pausing the court order requiring Kilmer Abrego Garcia, a man wrongfully sent to an El Salvadoran prison camp, to be returned by midnight tonight.
jab retweeted
🚨 BREAKING NEWS: the Republican-majority on the N.C. Court of Appeals rules to overturn the decision of the Wake County Superior Court (and the voters in the state) in a 2-1 decision to disenfranchise more than 65,000 voters from LAST year’s election. ⬇️
appellate.nccourts.org/opini…
jab retweeted
So let’s recap:
-DoJ found “Operation Good Ol USA” of Russia spreading Ukraine disinfo in the US
-Sec of Def Hegseth has a Russian burner phone and email that has received payments from National Security Advisor Mike Waltz
-DNI Gabbard is constantly retweeting Russian state propaganda from RT.
-Gabbard also has a multi-decade long history of supporting Russian causes, meeting with Russian lobbyists and was an FBI person of interest in the DNC email hack.
-Multiple former Trump campaign officials pled guilty to being unregistered foreign agents for Russia.
-Trump, Vance and Rubio ambushed Zelensky in the Oval Office.
-Trump has repeatedly withheld Ukrainian aid and support to coerce Ukraine, while doing nothing to Russia.
-Trump refuses to directly be critical of Russia.
-Musk has been lobbying Russia for access to rare earth minerals.
-Musk shutdown USAID while it was investigating Starlink for misconduct on its Ukraine grant, including shutting off access on Ukrainian troops.
-After months of strength in Kursk, Ukrainian forces suddenly started having positions compromised after connecting to Starlink.
-Trump has discussed easing sanctions on Russia, leaving NATO, and directly vetoing Ukrainian involvement in NATO.
-Trump has repeatedly promoted Russian talking points as the cause of the war.
-Trump has threatened to invade Canada and Greenland, which provide NATO security monitoring of Russia and blockade any Russian shipping through Northern passages.
-Trump has threatened to invade and take control of the Panama Canal which doesn’t allow Russian ships.
At this point, anyone who turns a blind eye from how compromised this administration is, is complicit.
Whether through stupidity, greed, or kompromat, Russia has infiltrated the highest levels of the US government, and Congress must meet its obligations to investigate and hold accountable every last traitor.
jab retweeted
I went to the Senate floor to lay out for my colleagues the stunning story of brazen, open corruption during the first 6 weeks of the Trump presidency.
I think it's a story everyone needs to know.
1/ So a🧵with the highlights from the speech.
jab retweeted
if you’ve ever wondered how easy it is to spread fake information
i made this stat up while laying in bed at halftime of the game😭
INTERESTING 👀
This is now Jared Goff’s 7TH career game with at least 4 interceptions.
His record in those games?
6-0.
Does Goff have the Texans right where he wants them? 🤔
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Jared Goff has thrown 4+ interceptions in only two games of his NFL career. He is 1-1 in those games.
statmuse.com/nfl/ask/jared-…
jab retweeted
I think it's tempting to think of this election as if everyone was working from the same information and the country just made a very dark choice. How could all these women vote for someone who hates women? How could all these latino men vote for someone who hates latino men? Et. Cetera.
But the data doesn't really support this. Everywhere (except the Dakotas) that abortion rights were on the ballot, it won a majority. Which means there were people who voted for Trump (who took away abortion rights) while voting highly in favor of abortion rights.
Same with the economy. There are people (most Trump voters!) who say the economy was the biggest issue. Yet, Biden built the best economy in the world and endless economists agree Trump's policies (such as one can discern them) would crash the economy.
Finally, no, latino men are not voting for their own deportation. They're just not. There's something more complicated going on.
In all of these cases, PROPAGANDA WON. Trump said he would protect women (he won't). Republicans said they would build a better economy (they won't). Et cetera.
So this gets to the heart of the matter: the issue is the INFORMATION. By large majorities, voters are pro-choice, they are pro-Bidenomics and anti-deporting millions of people. Poll after poll said this and statewide measure results confirm it. Yet the anti-choice, anti-Bidenomics, pro-deporting millions of people candidate won.
The only logical conclusion one is left with is that we are simply not reaching voters with the information they need to vote their interests.
Some of this is no doubt the right-wing media propaganda machine. Some of it is that we have always been bad at messaging these voters.
And if there's some soul searching we should earnestly do in the coming months, it can't just be doomsday, "America hates women! America wants inflation!" stuff, tempting as it may be.
And instead, to start asking the question which can turn the tide, which is: How do we COUNTERACT the right-wing media propaganda machine? How do we reach voters who care about Democratic priorities and basic American values with messaging that speaks to them?
That is a question with an answer. That is an answer which change the direction of the country.
