@cbinsa
Retired high school finance teacher. I've also run non-profits, consulting, tech services, and stuff. Love to travel and take pictures. Pretty damned liberal and probably going to get even more so now. Unfortunate Texian. #voteblue
“You now live in a country where volunteers deliver babies at home, in secret, off the books, because mothers fear that if they go to the hospital, they will be abducted by masked, armed agents of the state while giving birth.”
Ghislaine Maxwell filed a petition claiming there are 29 individuals — four alleged co-conspirators and 25 men who reached secret civil settlements connected to Epstein’s abuse — whose names remain hidden and protected from public disclosure by the DOJ.
www.thedailybeast.com//ghislaine-m...
Screenshot of a data visualization titled “The Cost of American Exceptionalism,” subtitled “What would change if the U.S. matched the OECD average?” The page explains that each card shows how outcomes would change if the U.S. matched the average of 31 peer democracies. Below, a section labeled “Economy & Inequality” displays eight cards comparing U.S. figures to OECD averages. Highlights include: +$19K per household per year in redistributed income and +$96K in redistributed wealth if the top 1% matched OECD shares; a 71% lower CEO-to-worker pay ratio (from 354× to 101×); 50 million more workers with union coverage; 26 million more people with health insurance; $2.1 trillion saved annually in healthcare spending; $691 less per person per year in prescription drug costs; and intergenerational economic mobility being twice as high. Each card shows the U.S. value alongside the OECD average.
If there's one empirical insight I'd want everyone to understand about American politics, it's this:
America's problems are solved problems. Just not here.
What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵
“Leave Greenland alone!”
Heckler interrupts Star-Spangled Banner at NBA game in London, wins cheers from crowd. (Video via Reddit)
WATCH — @nikkiglaser.bsky.social : “The Golden Globe for best editing goes to… the Justice Department! And the award for MOST editing goes to CBS News.
Yes, CBS News: America’s newest place to See B.S. News.’”
Funny, the White House's Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) threatening a veto of the Venezuela war powers resolution (SJ Res 98) doesn't mention "keeping the oil" at all.
So strange.
🤷🏼
"Triggered much?" is what a troll says when one of their targets gets bothered by their posts. Here, senior US official Greg Bovino redeploys it to defend/celebrate a literal murder in the physical world.
A government of, by, and for the Online Right.
New in PN: Republicans in Congress show signs of life
"Amid the understandable despair, it can be easy to miss flickers of hope. But the fact is that the regime is ramping up violence and terror in part because its grip on the nation, and even on its own party, seems to be slipping."
Every week is overwhelming evidence of what we saw with our own eyes, but which our credulous media was afraid to print: the Nazi salute was a Nazi salute
This one’s for the people dismantling fascism.
For everyone defying the rise of the right.
Every society that has ever existed has had views that are mainstream and views that are fringe. The free-speech frauds who captured the discourse over the past decade understood this, but their true objection was that they did not unilaterally have the power to define which was which. For example, in a 2018 Times column, Weiss complained that “leftists” were engaged in a “concerted attempt to significantly redraw the bounds of acceptable thought and speech.” This was meant to sound sinister, menacing. In fact, this is politics. Every faction is always trying to “redraw the bounds of acceptable thought and speech.” In a free society, the government allows people to have those arguments. Such disputes are not a threat to free speech; they are free speech.
When I say that CBS News’s Bari Weiss understood this, you needn’t take my word for it. In November, shortly after being given the reins to one of the oldest broadcast-news organizations in the country, Weiss used identical language to describe her own project: “I think it’s about redrawing the lines of what falls in the 40-yard lines of acceptable debate and acceptable American politics and culture,” Weiss said at the Jewish Leadership Conference. “And I don’t mean that in, like, a censorious, gatekeeping way.” What’s the difference between her “redrawing the lines” of acceptable speech and other people doing it? What makes one “censorious” and “gatekeeping” and the other not? Well, because she gets to decide. That’s what so much of the free-speech panic was ever about: making sure the right people were in charge of what you see, hear, and read. Notably, this has very little to do with reporting the news, which is supposed to be what CBS News does. But if the point of installing Weiss was to ensure that she would gatekeep on behalf of right-wing interests, that is precisely what she appears to be doing.
The people who profited most from the cancel culture/free speech panic were less interested in actual freedom of speech than establishing their own control over public discourse. You don't even have to take my word for it. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
The $1,776 Checks for Troops Trump Claimed Were ‘Because of Tariffs’ Are Actually Congressionally-Allocated Housing Allowances
He takes every opportunity to twist things to his favor. That’s why you have to check him on everything.
Wow! Gorgeous.
The 6 richest men in the world are all Trump allies.
They control your algorithms and data on X, TikTok, Twitch, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads, and YouTube.
Just in case you’re wondering why more isn’t done to stop right-wing bots and misinformation on social media.
VARNEY: The latest jobs report showed unemployment hitting 4 year high. You must be disappointed. Do you trust the numbers?
LORI CHAVEZ-DeREMER: When I look at the numbers, I think we saw a solid report
V: Interesting diplomatic move, to say a 4 year high for unemployment is actually good news
Question(s): If Congress has approvd $2.9 Billion dollars for each 1,450,000 service members to get a housing stipend of some sort. Doesn't that = $2,000 per member? And, if Trump is sending $1,776 to each - what happens to the remaining $324,800,000? Grifting it for him self?
I'm not holding my breath on this. I would love it but I sure don't expect it.
Old church in Norway taken during golden hour.
Traveling through Norway looking at areas where my ancestors came from.
#VisibilityBrigade in #SanAntonio today. Stop starving kids.
#FundSNAPnow
@visibilitybrigade.bsky.social
@50501satx.bsky.social @indivisible.org @50501texas.bsky.social
#VisibilityBrigade in #SanAntonio today. Stop starving kids.
#FundSNAPnow
@visibilitybrigade.bsky.social
@50501satx.bsky.social
OMG. What an ad!
Been doing that for years. It's the only way to treat education.
Spare us the patronizing 'bless her heart' comments. It took Speaker Johnson less than 24 hours to swear in his Republican colleagues.
He’s stalling because he’s scared of his puppet master Donald Trump.
This delay isn’t about process. It’s about obstruction. #ReleaseTheFiles
Whatever Speaker Johnson says:
He sent the House home for YET ANOTHER WEEK because he cares more about protecting the Epstein files than he does about protecting the American people.
Dear Murkowski, Thune, Collins, Tillis, Ernst, Cassidy, Capito,
When the ICEStapo shatters glass on a baby in a car seat… and pulls a zip-tie tight on a child’s hands… and throws a woman to the ground…
Those are your hands doing the harm EVERY time in EVERY place.
You have failed as humans.
Republicans just shut down the government to rip away healthcare and hand Trump another blank check for his illegal power grab. Instead of negotiating a budget that protects families, Republicans chose to throw working families under the bus. This is the GOP’s shutdown & they own the damage from it.
