daniel wills ☮️ @dmanaa

“Why do some British people dislike Donald Trump?” Nate White, an eloquent and witty English writer, gave this magnificent answer: Trump lacks certain qualities that the British traditionally value. He has no nobility, no charm, no composure, no gravitas, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour, and no grace — qualities with which, strangely enough, his predecessor, Mr Obama, was abundantly blessed. Although Trump may be ridiculous, he has never said anything ironic, amusing, or even remotely funny — not once, ever. I do not mean this rhetorically. I mean it literally: never. To the British, a lack of humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it is a fact. He does not even seem to understand what a joke is. To him, a joke is a crude remark, an illiterate insult, an act of casual cruelty. Trump is like a troll: he never laughs or enjoys himself; he merely squeals with delight or derision. And the most frightening thing is that he does not merely utter crude and stupid insults: he actually means them. His mind is nothing more than a robotic algorithm of petty prejudices and instinctive malice. There is no irony in him, no complexity, no subtlety, no depth. Everything is superficial. What we see is a man without an inner world, without a soul. In Britain, we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are courageous underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither courageous nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite. He is not even merely a spoiled rich boy or a greedy fat cat. He is more like a giant white slug, a privileged Jabba the Hutt. And, worse still, he is a bully. When he finds himself among other bullies, he suddenly becomes a whining lackey. He punches down — something a gentleman should never, could never, and must never do — and every blow he delivers is below the belt. He particularly enjoys attacking the vulnerable or the voiceless, and he kicks them when they are down. That is why the fact that a substantial minority — perhaps a third — of Americans watch what he does, listen to what he says, and then think, “Yes, he seems like my kind of guy,” is a source of bewilderment and profound distress to the British. After all, it is impossible to read a single tweet of his or hear him utter a sentence or two without staring into the abyss. He turns shallowness into an art form. He is the Picasso of pettiness, the Shakespeare of shit. His flaws are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on to infinity. There have always been stupid people in the world, and villains have never been in short supply either. But rarely has stupidity been so evil, or evil so stupid. He makes Nixon seem trustworthy and George W. Bush seem intelligent. If Frankenstein had decided to create a monster composed entirely of human flaws, he would have created Trump, and the remorseful Dr Frankenstein would have cried out in despair, “My God, what have I created?” If an idiot were a television show, Trump would be the entire set.

@TW9107 @RpsAgainstTrump It's so difficult to try and understand where this support comes from, the GOP sitting on their hands while he runs amok, sad. I used to have a good deal of faith in the American system and it's people, not so much anymore.

Collins: Do you want to respond to what the vice president said today, saying that there is something that is, quote, “very, very evil” about you? El-Sayed: Well, let me tell you what’s evil. Evil is the idea of starting wars when there is peace. Evil is the idea of stripping away people’s health care when they absolutely have no other option. What’s evil is to do that so that you can pass a tax cut for billionaires. What’s evil is putting a data center that people don’t want in their backyard despite them. What’s evil is corrupting yourself because you want a little bit more power… To come to Michigan from Ohio, where he's from, to tell us that we ought to pay for a vanity trade war, that his president is spiking with Canada. Well, that's a little bit beyond the pale, and I think he can go take himself back to Ohio, where apparently they like politics like that

@ridgetop111 @atrupar No Mike. Businesses currently pay for employee health care, instead they will pay a tax. Individuals would also be taxed. The government would fund pay of it. The government would only go bankrupt if they insisted on endless wars and corruption.

@Airaasayss 16

El-Sayed: Now Mike, I'm just going to remind you: if you don't know how to say the name, keep the name out your damn mouth. Or just call me Abdul. But I got some opinions about his name. See, it's very fitting for him: Rogers. Cause that's his answer every time a corporation or Donald Trump tells him to do something. "Mike, we need you to put a data center in the backyard." — "Roger!" "Mike, we need you to hike their prescription drug prices." — "Roger!" "Mike, we need you to rubber-stamp this war we shouldn't be fighting." — "Roger!" "Mike" — and this one's Donald Trump — "I need you to lick these boots." — "Roger!" And I think—I think I speak for all of us here in Michigan when I say that we are done with Rogers. Go back to Florida where you belong!

Born in Detroit to Egyptian immigrant parents, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is a Rhodes Scholar with two doctorates who became Detroit's youngest-ever health director at age 30 before going on to teach epidemiology at Columbia University. Calling him a "radical Islamist" makes you look stupid, not him.

@waitmaya 31

Ancient Roman couples had one rule before every difficult conversation. Modern psychology has no equivalent. Divorce rates were below 5%. Then the rule disappeared. And everything changed...

GAZA: THE SUFFERING CONTINUES Today in Gaza, most of the TV cameras are gone and media interest has declined. But, more than nine months after the announcement of a supposed “ceasefire”, the suffering of the Palestinian people continues. Today, 92% of housing units in Gaza are damaged or destroyed, 70% of the entire population lacks adequate housing and is forced to live in makeshift shelters, 86% of agricultural water wells have been damaged, the vast majority of households report significant challenges in accessing safe and clean sanitation facilities and 90% of all energy infrastructure has been destroyed. And what about the children? Today in Gaza, 91% of school-aged children do not have sustained access to in-person education, 93% of school buildings will require full reconstruction or major rehabilitation to be functional again and 70% of infants and young children under two years of age are experiencing moderate to severe food insecurity. All of this is taking place after the horrific destruction that Netanyahu’s extremist government brought to Gaza over the last three years: more than 73,000 Palestinians killed and 173,000 wounded — mostly women, children and the elderly. In addition, virtually the entire infrastructure of Gaza was destroyed. Israel now controls an estimated 70% of Gaza, well beyond what they agreed to, and has built dozens of military outposts inside Gaza since the “ceasefire” began. In the nine months since the “ceasefire” was announced, Israel has killed at least 1,150 Palestinians, including a family of six last week. Now, as if to remove any doubt about their intentions, senior leaders of the Netanyahu government are moving to make the occupation permanent. Recently, a number of government ministers led thousands of settlers to the Gaza border demanding new illegal Jewish settlements be built there. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir stood up and said "Gaza is ours." The shameful fact is that the United States is complicit in everything that is happening in Gaza. We have funneled tens of billions of dollars in military aid to an Israeli government that has consistently violated international law and whose leader is a war criminal. The good news is that the American people are catching on. More and more Americans — Democrats, Republicans and independents — are demanding that we stop all military aid to Israel and use our considerable leverage to end the suffering of the Palestinian people. Enough is enough! Congress must listen to the American people. NO MORE U.S. MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL.

I continue to follow with deep concern the ongoing and escalating violence in the #HolyLand, where, in recent days, many civilians, both in the West Bank and in Gaza, have once again fallen victim. I make a heartfelt appeal for a return to negotiations to achieve a just political solution, founded on the equal dignity and equal rights of every human person. At the same time, I urge the rejection of further military actions and unilateral decisions, especially those that violate the respect for and the status quo of the holy places of every religion.

I watched Trump’s speech at the Correspondents’ Dinner last night. It’s hard to articulate how sad it made me. Sad and embarrassed and exhausted. Here is the thing about a man who is a joke. He can’t tell one. People think humor is a talent. It isn’t. It’s a capacity. To make someone laugh you have to be able to laugh at yourself, and to laugh at yourself you have to step outside of yourself and see what everyone else sees. For one second you have to be just another person in the room. Most people can do this by the time they are nine years old. He has never once managed it. Not in fifty years of cameras. Not for a second. That is not a quirk. It is a symptom. The muscle that lets you tell a joke is the same one that lets you feel what another person feels. A man who cannot survive being laughed at cannot imagine being anyone but himself. He will only ever be generous when it is photographed. He will only ever be kind when it is filmed. There is a name for it. So he stood up there and did what he always does. He hit down. He made jokes about people’s weight. He made jokes about their intelligence. He made jokes about how women look. He read out the names of people he doesn’t like, and mocked them. Always mocking. And when no one laughed he blamed his speech writers. The cruelty dressed as humor has worn so thin. And for the 30% of you still in the cult who will inevitably call me a crackhead and blame it all on my Dad, all I can say is please, for the love of God, open your eyes. Wake the fuck up. Have some dignity. Have some pride. Joe Biden wasn’t standing at that podium last night. Donald Trump was. And at the end of it he put on a red hat that said Trump 2028 and told the room he was running again. No one laughed because everyone knows he has no intention of leaving. Just another joke at our expense.

On July 17, 2026, Retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig (a conservative, Republican judge from the 4th Circuit) stated: "Mister Blanche's testimony today before the Congress of the United States is contemptible. Every word of it contemptible. Uh as a candidate for Attorney General of the United States of America he is an embarrassment to America itself. If, again, if the Republican Senate confirms this man on his record to be at the next Attorney General it will mark the end of the rule of law in America." DO NOT CONFIRM @DAGToddBlanche

@MeidasTouch

LEST WE FORGET Chris Krebs (Trump's appointed Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA): "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. ... There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." FBI Director Christopher Wray (Trump's appointee, September 24, 2020): "We have not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise." DNI John Ratcliffe (Trump appointee): "Even if the adversaries pursue further attempts to intimidate or attempt to undermine voter confidence, know that our election systems are resilient, and you can be confident your votes are secure." These three quotes to simply say — @realDonaldTrump is full of shit. The 2020 presidential election was NOT "stolen."

At a time when millions struggle to pay the bills, virtually every Senate Republican voted for a staggering $1.15 trillion Pentagon bill, which includes funding for the illegal and immoral war in Iran and a special provision to provide even more weapons to Israel with almost zero oversight. It's time to invest in the American people, not endless war.

They want you to blame the single Mom getting $6.20 a day in food stamps, not the 88 corporations like Disney, CVS, Citigroup & Ticketmaster that paid $0 in federal income taxes last year while making $105 billion in profits ripping you off. The problem is corporate greed, boss.

The Supreme Court today made a corrupt campaign finance system even worse. The Court struck down limits on the coordination between candidates and political parties, giving billionaires even more power. Billionaires buying elections is not democracy. It’s Oligarchy.

De Niro: I hate to say it, but loving our country is starting to sound like an abused spouse saying they love their abuser. I can’t love a country that starts stupid and inhumane wars, killing thousands of innocents and indirectly causing the deaths and suffering of millions more. I can’t love a country that takes healthcare away from millions of people and uses that money to enrich their pals in the Trump-Epstein class. I can’t love a country that sends out masked militias to shoot citizens in the streets, torture our neighbors, and separate families. I can’t love a country that’s led by a racist, misogynist, xenophobic tyrant. And let me just say it: I can’t love a country that’s led by Donald Trump and his sycophant Congress.

A Daily Reminder: If Bernie's Social Security bill was enacted in 2021, Elon Musk would've paid $2.9 billion more in taxes, Social Security would be solvent for 75 years, benefits would be expanded by $2,400 and 91% of Americans would pay $0 more in taxes. Scrap the damn cap.

Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz

5 months ago

Social Security needs reform, but neither party is willing to take the lead on doing so. If we continue doing nothing, Social Security payouts will be cut automatically by 24% in 2032… That’s only two presidential elections away. 👉🏻 crfb.org/nostatespared

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