Saturday came around fast! I hope you’re able to enjoy the waning days of summer before the fall is upon us.
We are smack dab in the middle of launching this labor of love and, like every other newsletter, are trying to find that sweet spot where you’ll become a paid subscriber. This is my shameless pitch: A paid subscription is $80/year or about 21 cents a day. If you are enjoying the terrific articles our lead writer Andrea Thompson is bringing, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting our effort to bring more talented writers on board. I understand that there are limited dollars to spend on subscriptions, but we are striving to be one of the ones you can’t do without.
Onward.
Brian Beutler’s barn burner is the article of the week. He completely debunks the notion that Democrats have to have the supermajority to make substantive change and lays out the steps to making serious, permanent change right away.
To restore pluralistic democracy, Democrats need just enough power to:
Abolish the filibuster;
Expand the Supreme Court;
Create at least two new states (but ideally more) out of existing territories of disenfranchised American citizens.
That’s it. This wouldn’t be the end of the project. But it’s the threshold. What’s necessary, but not sufficient. It can be done without a supermajority.
He gets very specific. It’s 100% worth the time to read.
Hunter Biden’s latest essay, Saturation not Suppression, is a walk through the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the path to election denial as told through his perspective instead of the hysteria of the right-wing echo chamber.
The laptop narrative became a rehearsal, not metaphorically but operationally. By Election Day, the claim that powerful institutions were conspiring to hide damaging information about the Bidens was already in place. The psychological infrastructure had been built. Millions of people had been conditioned to believe that official explanations could not be trusted and that hidden information was being kept from them.
All that remained was to transfer the infrastructure from a story about a hard drive to a story about ballot counts. January 6 wasn’t spontaneous. It was the conclusion of a narrative that had been built across years and tested across months, and the laptop suppression myth was one of the rehearsals.
Darcy Burner’s Teacups and Wood Chippers challenges her readers to shed false dichotomies and solve the unsolvable.
There is an obvious false choice dividing dinner tables, campuses, and coalitions in the US right now, which is: Whose side are you on, Israel’s or the Palestinians’?
This question is fundamentally flawed. It assumes the only answer is to pick a side and in picking accept anything that happens to the people on the other side. Mourning a starving child in Gaza is seen as ignoring a family killed on October 7.
That false choice is terribly dehumanizing. We can grieve for every person killed on October 7 and simultaneously grieve for every person killed in Gaza. Most people believe that killing a child is wrong, regardless of who the child is. Most people believe that the basic rights of everyone in Israel and Palestine should be protected. But that answer is often dismissed as naive, evasive, or a dodge.
Over at Judd Legum’s Popular Information, Caleb Ecarma exposes Vivek Ramaswamy and his mother for the con artists they are.
However, by omitting huge segments of the original trial data, a “responder analysis” co-authored by Geetha Ramaswamy concluded there was enough evidence to “support the initiation of a Phase 3 confirmatory study evaluating the efficacy of RVT-101 [intepirdine] in mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease in the second half of 2015.”
Instead of measuring patients’ exact cognitive performance while on intepirdine, her analysis merely divided them into two classifications: “responder” and “non-responder.” Put another way, if it were an academic test, a responder analysis would use pass-or-fail grading instead of a numeric system.
That’s some evil con artist stuff right there. How that guy is running for Ohio’s governor and not wearing some of his crookery is beyond me. You’ve got to read the whole thing to get the gist of the ripoff.
Liz Dye at Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice has a wonderful article about Disney tiring of Trump’s bullshit and pulling out their big guns. Don’t piss off the mouse, guys. It won’t end well.
If Disney needed a wake-up call, this clearly did the trick.
The company hired three heavy hitters to run its defense: Paul Clement, the former Bush solicitor general and legendary Supreme Court litigator; Beth Wilkinson, an incredibly accomplished trial lawyer who recently trounced the FTC’s bid to block Microsoft’s $75 billion acquisition of Activision; and Jennifer Tatel, the former general counsel of the FCC. They filed a blistering opposition that revealed the extent of Carr’s harassment over the past 18 months.
I love Jeff Tiedrich’s writing because he has a way of saying exactly what I wish I could say in exactly the words in which he says it. So this piece: no one gives a shit about your White House helipad, you out-of-touch fuck perfectly expresses exactly how I feel when I’m fantasizing about taking a sledgehammer and a bulldozer to his stupid helipad and ballroom.
yup, you guessed it. that’s exactly what Preznit Fuckwit is babbling about. yesterday, Donny gathered up the White House press pool, and dragged them all outside, so he could show off his latest vanity project that no one wanted, needed, or asked for.
while the entire world around us goes all to hell, this malignant toad remains laser-focused on stupid shit that absolutely does not matter to anyone but him.
listen to him, getting all excited about the million-year lifespan of granite in his Epstein Helipad. he’s so out of touch. nobody gives a shit, you self-absorbed, narcissistic fuck.
Reading that article is cathartic. You’ll need a drink afterwards. I recommend Matthew Hooper over at Wonkette’s Black Garlic Martini. Damn, that sounds awesome. Just what I need about now.
Happy Saturday, happy reading, and we love you all, devoted readers!