Immigrants BELONG here/Wear a Mask

The thread this is attached to demonstrates what my dad calls the “Black aide” problem, which is: Does this non-Black politician enter Black-majority spaces on their own terms or with their one (always one!) Black aide as a buffer/interpreter? Most politicians are the latter kind.

Everyone should not have to have a direct line to elected officials in order to ensure that we are not kidnapped by the government.

it says you birthed this kid

it’s a made-to-order identity *just for you*

if you don’t like the idea that #adoptees are treated as other people’s property—despite there being a $34 billion market in children—then maybe we can agree that adoptees’ legal identities are other people’s property. “I want a child to call my own.” OK, here’s a piece of paper that proves it

The ones who can enter Black-majority spaces on their own terms, without having their hands held or their space guarded by the Black person they’ve hired for that purpose…they don’t need help courting Black voters. The Clintons had it (esp. Hillary); Biden had it; Mamdani has it.

Apparently Statler has passed on already, but this is just splendid.

Baturday
Bat World Sanctuary

Not all the angelic powers are in Heaven, y'know? There are days when God says ro one or another of them, "Hey, it's *your* day to walk with the one who flies the Bat."

as somebody who planned two unmedicated births and ended up having two medicated births, the only person in the room who gets a goddamned say is the person giving birth and it’s really good to make sure everyone involved is extremely clear on that before anyone gets pregnant

My brother, we had to explain a 1/3 pound burger was bigger than a quarter pound burger and still failed

According to a federal court, Trump's IRS illegally shared confidential taxpayer information with ICE 42,695 times.

Sign that says "I stand with Jenna and NIH"

Speaker Dr Jenna Norton NIH and NIDDk has fans in DC!

One of the things that distinguishes both AOC and Mamdani are that they are fine in these spaces because they grew up in or around Black communities (AOC in New York and Mamdani in Uganda)

Those Dems you hate who sat their for hours have decades of history within those spaces.

I don't love their policies and I tend to vote progressive in primaries before falling in line for general elections.

But that comfort in 90+% Black spaces? That's not nothing. It is something. Pay attention.

Progressives may not like to play identity politics, but many...are not very comfortable within majority Black American spaces and it shows. My God, it shows.

Even if progressive candidates don't "pander" by "showing up and swaying at a Black church," they need to at least fake it til they make it.

And I think it says something that a white person who shows up for Black folks and doesn't stab us in the back, who is OK with playing second fiddle and not taking over, is seen as this huge thing.

Kamala's mother is talked about among elders in the same way: she lived among us. By choice!

Biden got the nomination in 2020 not just because of Clyburn. He got it because a half dozen Black Boomers told me that Biden was the kind of white man who "stood behind a Black man for eight years and supported him."

I didn't vote for Biden in the primary, but for a Jim Crow survivor, that's huge.

One final note: these people are desperate to be taken seriously and have an allergy to whimsy and goofiness. They have no joy in their soul.

I know some of you might read this and say "these people can't be stupid! These people run companies! They make huge deals! They read all these books!" and my answer is that some of the stupidest people I've ever met have read more books than you or I will read in a lifetime. While they might be smart when it comes to corporate chess moves or saying "this product category should do this," none of these men - not Altman, Pichai or Nadella - actually has a hand in the design or creation of any of the things their companies make, and they never, ever have. Regardless, I have a larger point: it's time to start mocking these people and tearing down their legends as geniuses of industry. They are not better than us, nor are they responsible for anything that their companies build other than the share price (which is a meaningless figure) and the accumulation of power and resources. These men are neither smart nor intellectually superior, and it's time to start treating them as such.

I also recommend if possible to find whatever humor you can. Make fun of these people. Lampooning them doesn’t discount the seriousness of their actions or the destruction of their works - it undermines their power and status and names, and lightens the soul

www.wheresyoured.at/make-fun-of-...

Also disclosing sensitive info to the Saudis. Wild scenes.
Full story link: www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Trump says Iran was “two weeks” from a nuke.
Experts say months. Congress briefed on intel says no evidence. Rubio said Iran isn’t even enriching right now..
and Trump already claimed he “obliterated” Iran’s program 2 months ago!

So which is it? Same pattern. More Lies!

#USDemocracy
#Pinks

What happened in Texas was intentional. Designed to discourage voters, and it’s part of a national plan led by the same Republicans who tried to overturn the 2020 election.

🚨 Trump officials attended a summit of election deniers who want the president to take over midterms.

Watch all of this.

So I live in an area that was traditionally progressive, with elected leadership that is mostly all Democrats, @peigibheag.bsky.social and I never have to wait more than 5 minutes or so to vote. And there are chairs.

Yes. They (typically republicans, but maybe not exclusively) eliminate polling locations to make it take longer and make it harder for working people or poor people to vote. Those along with draconian voting ID laws really suppress the vote sometimes.

Im mystified by huge queues at US voting. I vote every time for nearly 40 years (Scotland). Never a queue, in, vote, out. Is it deliberate to put people off?

It feels like a lot of local Dem orgs are really, REALLY bad at organizing anything. Heard similar from a friend in OK this week about the Dems in OKC just not having any contact with any groups in outlying cities, so unable to even distribute whistles broadly. How. Why.

"This is what democracy looks like" they said at the beginning, but this is actually what gatekeeping people out of democracy looks like.

Them: we have to let hundreds of people into the zoom meeting by hand, so everyone just hang out for an hour and a half while we try to do that

My internet: what if we go down for three minutes and you get kicked out of the zoom, ha ha get back to the end of the queue

Just sitting here for the last 20 minutes waiting for the Democrats to let me into the caucus meeting!

I’m responding to a take I saw that bombing a data center that hospitals use is not bad because all they do for the hospital is paperwork