offbalance @offbalance

vanityfair.com/story/jared-ku…

Weeks before the midterms, Dems are frantically trying to find ways to stop surging demands for Medicare For All. Why? Because party elites see the public as a bewildered herd and see themselves as brave "pragmatists" who must always say "no" on behalf of their paymasters.

No citizen or corporation should have this much power over any communications system or public information platform. It will only lead to Fkry as we have seen time and time again with Elon Musk and his hands on the scale for Russia. His massive political disinformation campaigns on X, causing chaos throughout the world, and his tampering and defunding of the agencies that have been investigating him, using his sham “Department of Government Efficiency”. londonlovesbusiness.com/congressman-sa…

Cool, it only took these galaxy brains 25 years to figure out what the populist wing of the party has known and argued for for literally our entire lives. I wonder how many millions of dollars consultants and pollsters were were paid to discover such amazing revelations…

Andrew Prokop @awprokop

3 days ago

New: The consensus among Democrats' strategic brain trust is the issues of affordability and corruption should be tied together. That's good news for the party's progressive wing on economics — because it fits with the rhetoric and policy ideas they've long preferred.

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This is beautiful.

Michael & Rebecca @Michaeljos92972

4 days ago

THE HORROR OF BEING LONELY AT SEVENTY. by Michael Whelan The cruelest part of growing old isn't knowing that life is getting shorter. It's wondering how much of it you'll have to spend without being loved the way you once were. At seventy, loneliness is not simply an empty

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When the Cost of Policy Reaches the Street I live in Milan. It is not a city accustomed to riots. This weekend, the center of the city filled with smoke, shattered glass and police in riot gear. The images looked sudden. The crisis was not. What happened in Milan was the moment when years of distant political decisions finally arrived in the street. And it is a cocktail that is mixed and ready to explode in cities across the US and Europe. The demonstration began around legitimate concerns about wages, housing, public services and the rising cost of living. Most of the people participated peacefully. But then, masked groups broke away, attacked police and damaged property and looted stores. The violence does not explain the pressure that produced it. That pressure begins outside Italy and applies across the western world. War, corruption and economic failure have displaced people across North Africa and the Middle East. (And South America) Many travel north because they cannot find security or economic opportunity at home. Europe has mistakenly allowed large numbers of people to enter without building the institutions required to integrate them. Governments rarely establish or enforce clear expectations for employment, legal conduct and civic participation. The immigrant is admitted but not incorporated. The host community is ordered to absorb the consequences without being permitted to discuss the cost. This is often defended as compassion. It is not. Immigration without integration is abandonment twice over. It abandons the immigrant to the margins of society, and it abandons the host community to absorb social and economic costs its government refuses to acknowledge. Those costs are not distributed equally. The wealthy experience immigration as a source of inexpensive labor. The professional class often experiences it as an abstract political question. Immigrants and working-class citizens experience it in the same housing market, the same schools, the same public services and the same competition for low-wage work. They are then encouraged to blame one another. The people who designed the policy remain insulated from its consequences. The same transfer has occurred through monetary policy. Since the financial crisis, I have watched governments and central banks respond to instability by creating money, supporting financial assets and protecting large institutions from losses. The losses did not disappear. They were transferred. People who owned stocks, property and businesses benefited as asset values rose. People who depended primarily on wages confronted higher prices for housing, food and energy. Inflation is not just an economic statistic. It is a system for distributing the cost of government policy. For people with substantial assets, inflation can be profitable. For the upper middle class, it is an inconvenience. For people living on wages, pensions or public assistance, it is destructive to the point it will send people to riot. It is a stealth currency collapse that targets the most vulnerable. The war with Iran increased the pressure. Energy and fertilizer prices rose. Those increases moved through transportation, agriculture and food production until they reached the household. The officials making those decisions did not have to choose between paying an energy bill and buying groceries. Other people did. Each policy has been considered separately. Immigration is discussed as a humanitarian and cultural issue. Monetary policy is discussed as a technical financial matter. War is discussed as national security. Housing is treated as a local problem. Actual people experience all of them at the same time. That is the convergence we saw in Milan this weekend. Social order depends on more than policing. It depends on the belief that the rules are fair, that work will be rewarded and that government can respond when conditions deteriorate. When those beliefs disappear, public order becomes harder to maintain. None of this justifies attacking police, burning property or looting stores. Those acts usually damage the same communities already carrying the greatest burden. The people responsible should be held accountable. But accountability cannot stop with the people in the street. It must extend to the political leaders who accepted immigration without integration or respect for the existing community, financed prosperity through monetary expansion, pursued wars without accounting for their domestic cost and protected concentrated wealth while the price of basic life increased. The people who make policy must no longer be insulated from its consequences. Milan will repair the damage. The broken glass will be replaced and the streets will reopen. The underlying pressure remains. A society cannot displace people through war, admit them without a plan, inflate the cost of essential goods, protect concentrated wealth and then demand social peace from the people required to absorb the consequences. The violence arrived in Milan this weekend. The policies arrived years ago. Subscribe to Dylan Ratigan at dylanratigan.substack.com

Latest on Heidi Levine: broken rib, four broken vertebrae, her finger was nearly cut off, multiple potential stabbing wounds. Surgery first thing in the morning.

jasper nathaniel @infinite_jaz

a week ago

Heidi is going to be okay, but her injuries are significantly worse than initially thought. It appears that she may have been stabbed. She’s getting ready for surgery.

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This would be a presidency-ending scandal for anyone else btw.

Swamp Watch @Swamp__Watch

a week ago

NEW: Companies whose federal cases Trump dropped gave $210 million to his super PACs.

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It’s beyond sad. It’s beyond disappointing; at this point, it’s disqualifying for anyone with ambitions for higher office as a Democrat, or a Republican, for that matter, to be fighting to keep billionaires from being taxed while kids don’t have health insurance and the cost of living goes sky-high. These billionaires are also the ones hellbent on replacing entire workforces with the AI they are developing with our tax dollars (watch the “Musk” doc). We are also living through the largest wealth gap in modern history. At this point, the only way to balance out the economic forces that have bought our politicians and keep rigging the game against working people is through taxes. Let’s hope Gavin gets some sense and walks this back. It’s crazy that this is what he chooses to spend his political capital, and part of his legacy, doing. He vetoed the bill that would have put a “kill switch” on AI for our protection. He vetoed a bill that would have gotten forever chemicals out of cookware. Time and time again, he goes with corporate interests over the well-being of the people, even after his own bipartisan legislature votes for something. And here we go again. Gavin, we aren’t looking for the Democratic version of Trump. That was a good goof. Please try something else. It’s tired. The people need a champion, man. A real, bona fide champion who isn’t just tough in tweets or press conferences, but tough when it comes to the real imbalances people are struggling with every day: billionaires vs. people and the planet.

Ro Khanna @RoKhanna

a week ago

It is so sad to see Gavin Newsom be the poster child to ban any new wealth tax on billionaires. I received this text and it is going to all California voters.

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Axios: Trump's MAGA allies openly discuss martial law MAGA activists are pushing for President Trump to resort to extraordinary measures — including martial law — if they believe the midterm elections are "rigged." Some of the proposals go far beyond Trump's legal authority — and there's no evidence that the elections will be rigged. But people in this orbit have close access to the president. axios.com/2026/10/16/tru…

I would go out and vote for bro for president right now if I could.

Trump has engaged in more brazen criminality and corruption than any president ever, and is now sending immigration investigators after his political enemies

The Associated Press @AP

2 weeks ago

BREAKING: Federal agents searched Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar's home as part of a criminal investigation, AP sources say. apnews.com/article/ilhan-…

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I kind of think that Donald Trump believing he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, after launching a war that is disrupting the entire globe, is by itself 25th Amendment worthy.

“Basically, you're done, Trump. You're done, Hegseth. It won't be long before you're politically thrown down that dark, deep hole.” - Lieutenant Colonel Malcom Ritchie (retired) from the U.S. Army Reserve. “…. And I'm here today, not as a candidate, making that disclaimer. I am here to express my outrage at the meeting in Quantico, Virginia between Hegseth, Trump, and all of the senior officers in the United States military and the senior NCO corps. Those generals, Admirals, and senior NCOs sat there in stone face silence, listening to the most outrageous speeches ever made in United States military history by the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States. Secretary of Defense on his this ridiculous rant. Trying to take to school, Generals, Admirals, senior NCOs with 10 times the leadership ability, the education and the experience. that the failed Major Hech could ever begin to understand. And then they have to listen to the cognitively declined President of the United States who I would now name as dictator of the United States. tell all this audience that they will be expected to wage war against the American people. That's exactly what Trump said. So don't get on here and try to tell me that he didn't say it. training grounds in American cities. What's that mean? They're going to go in locked and loaded into American cities, American neighborhoods and use American citizens as pop-up targets on a live fire training. range, This is absolutely astounding. Abuse of power which makes by my estimation Donald Trump a domestic enemy of the Constitution. Because my oath is to the Constitution and don't you think for one minute, Mr. Trump, that there aren't millions of other veterans and retirees that feel exactly the same way. We are enraged, we are beyond enraged, and we will protest peacefully. And we will go out and vote for the candidates of our choice in the 2026 midterm election, which you better not even try to stop. If you try to stop that by force, that's the nightmare scenario. And I'm not saying by violence, I'm saying politically. Basically, you're done, Trump. You're done, Hegseth. It won't be long before you're politically thrown down that dark, deep hole. But don't think it's not going to cause a lot of trauma on the American people, as they clutch to the roots of the hole on the way down, trying to survive something that they cannot possibly survive because this nation is a republic and it will not fall to a fascist regime.”

To make it a truly typical MAGA event, the only thing missing from this streamed firing-squad execution of a paraplegic is the issuance of exclusive pay-per-view broadcast rights to a company owned by Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff's son and a consortium of Emirati billionaires.

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald

2 weeks ago

Not only has the US never televised public executions in its history, but not even the Nazi defendants sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials had their executions televised (it was deemed violative of the human rights that post-WW2 institutions were trying to re-establish).

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“Prices would’ve DECLINED without the tariffs” 😕 The Trump Tax is real

The trade deficit in August was $36 billion larger than the Biden average. Trump's tariffs have failed.

@Mollyploofkins It’s absurdly naive to assume Trump isn’t fully rigging the midterms 😵‍💫

idk how we're ever going to deal w/ how much of the public square is controlled by a couple billionaires who tweak the algorithm & allow disinfo to spread against the left all around the world. we have no way to combat it. these guys are spreading maga all over the world

Everyone needs to watch this. Angie Nixon is one of the greatest political talents that has emerged on the American left in the 21st century. Like this is not a drill.

Jim DeFede @DeFede

3 weeks ago

As Republicans demonize @AngieNixon, and JD Vance tells her "you don't belong in America," they run the risk of having it backfire. Nixon can be a compelling figure. Here she is getting emotional when I asked her to tell voters something personal about herself. @CBSMiami

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