Baleful Tom

@bookhouse.bsky.social

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Just happy to be here

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Baleful Tom

I’m going to start with the absolutely jaw-dropping news that The New York Times deceptively edited a quote to make it appear that JD Vance opposes a national abortion ban. — @jessicavalenti.bsky.social

GOP Platform Author Admits There's a National Banjessica.substack.com 7.16.24

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Baleful Tom

also and I feel like I buried the lede here: it calls for the people who CREATE queer media to be imprisoned. That'd be people like me. Or any other queer creator you love. Any queen who's been on drag race. Chappel Roan. Janelle Monae. Anyone who's made a piece of queer media. Imprisoned.

Psst: Project 2025 is terrifying for a lot of reasons but also because on page 5 it calls for teachers and librarians who grant access to books that are maligned as pornography (which just means anything LGBTQ) to be registered as sex offenders. Pass it on.

Reply to

The Book of the Void

To be clear I am talking about the 5% least-engaged voters in this election. You and I are engaging on a niche discourse platform and IRL there's a 3rd party candidate expected to draw votes from Democrats based solely on his last name

Reply to

The Book of the Void

I'm not saying that the change would happen in October, I'm saying that a significant number of swing voters are not going to tune into the election until the very last minute and that should probably figure into the way we think about this

Every discourse social network is cooked in its own way, but Twitter is cooked (to borrow a phrase from that Grinch diss track) "with arsenic sauce"

You know, I'd be a lot more amenable to the idea that Bluesky is a bubble if I didn't go over to Twitter and see people frantically sharing anonymously sourced pieces and private statements all the time and acting like the sky is falling.

Reply to

Nerd

I hear this, but since 2020 there have been events that meaningfully radicalized people against Trump and R's, 1/6 and Dobbs in particular. What is the countervailing force here?

Reply to

🏳️‍⚧️ High Plains Grifter

It's been like 20 years since I watched but this storyline also had some Striking Imagery when it was Kurt Angle vs Eddie Guerrero

Reply to

Max Berger

"lingering questions remain" is gonna be the death of us

Reply to

Tom Scocca

Donald Trump's long-term plan is to rule like a king and avoid prison until he dies peacefully, at which point the world will cease to exist

Reply to

Dan Lavoie

What cost do you price in for switching nominees? How do you calculate the expected value of lawsuits trying to hold a replacement nominee off the ballot? What is the expected polling value of people tuning in in October to hear that the Democrat president resigned? These are complex systems

Reply to

elias

Extraordinary claims require, if not extraordinary evidence, at least something more substantial than pointing to another set of polls. Do you think a 60-point swing among young voters is an extraordinary claim?

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Baleful Tom

I think a big mistake liberals make is constantly making up an imagined "normal voter" in their heads to triangulate their opinions around. NO! What do YOU THINK? What do THE PEOPLE YOU ACTUALLY KNOW BELIEVE?

I don't know who Trump is going to pick as his VP but JD Vance is the most Trusted Vizier-coded mf in American politics. This is the look of a man who simply loves plotting and scheming

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Baleful Tom

He still thinks this, his position on the necessity of an American Hitler is what’s changed

Vance in a private message in 2016: "I go back and forth between thinking Trump might be a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he might be America’s Hitler."

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Baleful Tom

AXIOS + conservative columnists: "Trump is about to take a new TONE to usher in an era of civility and unity!!" Trump allies at the NY Young Republican Club: "Hold my beer."

Take a moment to think about your most politically unengaged friend - mine is named Kenny and he is a drummer - and ask yourself if they would consider this behavior to be in the realm of possibility for Donald Trump at any point in the last 4 years

I have never read anything more credulous than Axios’s thing about Trump this morning. Like…

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Baleful Tom

Wow! More money is now going into solar PV than all other electricity generation technologies combined says International Energy Agency (IEA). iea.li/3zxRsuC

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Baleful Tom

It’s weird that the last few years have involved having to wrestle with the NYT and CNN being full of shit while People and Teen Vogue of all things are doing their job for them

Just a reminder that People mag has a great Project 25 write up that you can share with your less politically aware friends and fam people.com/what-is-proj...

What Is Project 2025? Inside the Far-Right Plan Threatening Everything from the Word 'Gender' to Public Educationpeople.com Donald Trump's far-right allies created Project 2025 as a blueprint for his possible second term. The controversial plan would push a Christian nationalist agenda that dramatically reshapes the U.S. g...

Perfect lad 2

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Baleful Tom

On one level it is terrifying to see all of these rich and powerful people eagerly lining up to usher in fascism. On the other hand, they're not actually that good at predicting the future! They thought the meta chatroom where you didn't have legs was gonna be a hit!!

Exclusive: Meta removes Trump account restrictions ahead of 2024 electionwww.axios.com The changes to Trump's Instagram and Facebook accounts aim to ensure parity among candidates, the company says.

Reply to

Robert Black

Heritage Foundation is literally sponsoring the conference!

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Baleful Tom

hey, go, People! what a great, brief, accurate read on what Project 2025 means by porn

PEOPLE Magazine! What Is Project 2025? Inside the Far-Right Plan Threatening Everything from the Word 'Gender' to Public Education people.com/what-is-proj...

Reply to

Brittany Wilson

I think that's true, but a lot of self-identifying liberal NYT subscribers think that absent Bouie, the paper would still have mainstream liberals like Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Nick Kristof, and Michelle Goldberg (to be very clear I do NOT agree w this - just think their audience isn't there yet)

Reply to

Brittany Wilson

I think their coverage has crossed a line, but their reputation (and audience) among the public hasn't yet

"I wish the war was on I know this sounds strange to you I miss the war-time life Anything could happen then" www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DV9...

MK Ultra - The Dream Is Over [FULL ALBUM]www.youtube.com YouTube video by Blue Emerald

Really loving this season of The Boys as another example of writers in 2024 taking time to say "okay, so this is what loss of democracy would look like ,that's bad right???" Also at this point the guy playing Billy Butcher is just going "oi bruv" and trying to mimic the face from a Guy Fawkes mask

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Baleful Tom

Increasingly seeing this stuff on non-politics social media

Reply to

Cooper Lund

"Man is the greatest computah of all. And women ... are even coolah" a phrase that plays in my head regularly

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Baleful Tom

When they do cover it they find things like taxes on a household making $100k a year would go up by $2600 and taxes on a household making $5M a year would go down $325k. The kitchen table issues are just mind-bogglingly bent in Biden's favor.

As we're seeing with interest in Trump's Project 2025 the media is desperate not to have this conversation because an election fought on the issues would wind up being a boring rout for Democrats

Project 2025 would overhaul the U.S. tax system. Here's how it could impact you.www.cbsnews.com Project 2025, a blueprint for the next Republican president, proposes major economic changes that could impact millions of Americans.

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Baleful Tom

As we're seeing with interest in Trump's Project 2025 the media is desperate not to have this conversation because an election fought on the issues would wind up being a boring rout for Democrats

the country is in a really grim place, and it would be really great if the national conversation were "who's foreign policy do you like" or "wow what great economic ideas the two candidates have, but I prefer this one instead of that one", but alas, that is not where we are