I would not want to be bad at all the stuff my voters want to be good at when my force of personality only works in high-attention, high-turnout elections with me on the ballot and also a bad economy.
Definitely his specialty
"well, Biden.."
Shush, with crude >$120 and diesel >$200 in mid-2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that was also a good time to use it—and importantly the war wasn't Biden's choice.
TRUMP CHOSE THIS, and he did so on this timeline knowing the current state of the SPR
Academy Award nominee Timothée Chalamet set the opera and ballet worlds abuzz recently when, in an interview for Variety and CNN, he insinuated that "no one cares" about the art forms. The actor—whose grandmother, mother, and sister were ballerinas—is currently nominated for his performance in Marty Supreme.
hmm
I think if you’re OK with Graham Platner working for Blackwater, you have officially lost the moral high ground required to yell at anyone else for working for a military contractor or being in the military ever again
Like sorry you gotta choose!
hazing and gang initiation are very similar activities that produce similar outputs
Johannes M. Koenraadt: I just learned that Iran is an extremely mountainous country. If anyone in Tel Aviv or Washington thinks they can beat Iran, they are mentally unwell.
Geopolitical commentator and author of “Revival of the West” just learned Iran has mountains everywhere and is ready to lecture US leadership on the war lmao
In their defense, I don't think (at least from the ones I've seen, as you might be talking about a different crew) they expect to succeed either and for similar reasons. But there's not a lot else to do but try; the need will never not be there
Lots of people are rightly objecting to the "once & for all" part but my objection is to the "deal with it" part. Why would you trust someone to "deal with" any of your problems when they've demonstrated a consistent pattern of trying to fix the plumbing with hammers
It used to be that U.S. wars that ended disastrously were at least popular in their initial moments, as presidents benefited from a "rally around the flag" effect.
Not anymore. One innovation of the Trump administration is choosing wars that are deeply unpopular from the start.
“Just show your ID,” they say. “What’s the problem? You have to show ID to buy beer in this country. What’s the big deal?”
Chart showing front month gasoline futures advanced 2 weeks versus retail gasoline prices.
Seeing a lot of retail gas price posting and just remember that is a LAGGING indicator of the impact. Wholesale gas prices are consistent with $3.70 national average/gallon. That’s baked in.
I mean this is the bottom line: there really isn’t a good way to meaningfully ban children from accessing social media without requiring all users to use real, government ID on all social networks
It solved all their problems so hard that they went from a republic to a dictatorial empire, and then back to a monarchy for a bit, then back to a republic for a few years, then back to an empire, then to a republic that did lots o'colonizing, then the Nazis, then finally liberal democracy
Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302
The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.
What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.
Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.
Attempted federal prosecutor Lindsey Halligan sent me a screenshot of a Trump Truth Social post which featured a screenshot of a Pam Bondi X post which said Lindsey Halligan “did a great job!”
This is the big irony; the best-case scenario for Trump is that the Islamic Republic survives, which lets everybody declare victory in three weeks and go home so the media can anoint him with a Triumph and make fancams of explosions.
State collapse or civil war makes this impossible to end.
tapping the "people underestimate how many of our society's elites are motivated not by self-interest, but by sadism" sign
The Gordon Ramsey meme where he is soothing a child in one panel and calling somebody a fucking donkey in another
To put it another way: consider a pediatrician trying to soothe fears of a vaccine hesitant parent vs President AOC instituting a nationwide vaccine mandate for school attendance
While we are all looking at topographic maps for the first time, please everyone look at one of Taiwan before your next take.
Summary of recent HHS departures:
-Unqualified weirdo Jim O’Neill out as CDC Director
-“Measles outbreaks are the cost of doing business” Ralph Abraham out as his Dumbass Deputy
-Venomous podcaster Vinay Prasad out at FDA.
Yet human cassowary and denim enthusiast RFK Jr. remains.
Not just Netanyahu. This is also the result of Iran's war planning, which ensured local commanders would have final orders and authority to independently act to wreck the global economy and destabilize the whole region.
One of my friends* said he found Candace Owens takes on Israel reasonable and I had to spend ten minutes over pints explaining why no, they're not reasonable.
*A friend who is *not* right-wing.
I don’t know if they’re doing it intentionally, but Costco continues to fuck with Trump’s political agenda in such delightful ways
Imagine writing Stabbed In The Back narratives about a war that will never have even plurality support
you're going to have jake tapper whine about how president AOC/pritzker betrayed the troops
Especially because the Israelis are going to be blamed for this--indeed, not just appropriately blamed for their part of this but in fact thoroughly scapegoated--which is great for Iran's strategic goal of fucking over Israel.
Israel is going to literally kill the negotiators if it has to. It's not letting leadership even arrange the meetings that would be necessary to make peace with the US.
Trump is used to having way more control over events than what he does over war with Iran and so he and the people around him don't know how to deal with that.
He is *trying* to TACO but there is no TACO button left. Iran is going to keep breaking shit, and it’s not like the war will stop because Israel is still all-in on wiping out the Iranian state apparatus.
