Pat Thompson

@pattho.bsky.social

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Friends School plant saler, co-op fan, gardener, Transition Town member, recovering grammar curmudgeon. She/her.

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Pat Thompson

We have to get back to the Dem party that doesn’t do anything! Geniuses.

It’s interesting that so many donors and their clients see major progress on environmental sustainability, wage growth, labor protections, queer equality, anti-monopoly policy, and debt relief, and think “we have to make a clean break from this,” as if that doesn’t reflect very poorly on them.

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Pat Thompson

Super awesome to watch the manufacturing of consent in real time. Cool cool cool

🙃

Tone. What he said incoherently doesn’t matter.

I saw this after reading the Star Tribune’s email alert headline and blurb, which make the speech sound coherent.

We're at an important moment for reflection on the media practice of turning Trump's rambling soliloquies into semi-coherent narrative accounts. Are reporters going to again fail to convey just how bizarre and discursive this speech is?

A St Paul truth: at least as many streets as cross I-94 should also cross the railroad tracks and yards that divide the northern parts of the city.

Just turned on MSNBC for a minute. Going to a break, Rachel Maddow started to stumble as she spoke and it seemed as if she was starting to say, "More of the Criminal National Convention to come, stay with us." It has an accurate ring to it.

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Pat Thompson

Just a reminder: Trump inherited the lowest homicide rate of any president in 50 years. He was the first president in 30 years to leave office with a higher homicide rate than when he entered. And the rate has dropped every year since he left. www.foxnews.com/video/635815...

RNC day 2 to focus on crime and safety as victims' families speak out | Fox News Videowww.foxnews.com Erin Rachwal, who lost her son to fentanyl poisoning and Sheri and Aaron Sparks, who lost their son in the Waukesha parade attack, on the need to hold criminals accountable and stop the influx of illi...

I have more claim to being from Appalachia than J.D. Vance does.

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Pat Thompson

The populist, working man ticket will be led by a Manhattan real estate mogul who owns a bunch of exclusive country clubs, and a Yale grad, ex-venture capitalist whose rise was funded by Bay Area billionaires.

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Pat Thompson

I wonder if the writers for the bear thought at any time about telling a story this season with a beginning middle and end. Even just once.

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Pat Thompson

Remembering that word cloud of survey responses about Trump that Trump then posted to his own social media

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

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Pat Thompson

The rapid response cartoon that ate my Sunday. www.dailykos.com/stories/2024...

Cartoon: Our top storywww.dailykos.com As always, if � you find value in this work I do, please consider helping me keep it sustainable by joining my weekly newsletter, � Sparky’s List! � You can get it in your inbox or read it on ...

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Pat Thompson

This is the kind of good journalism we need. People with expertise in a specific beat laying out the stakes.

Rachel and I dug into what Project 2025 means for the environment and it’s actually not as bad as you’d think. Nah I’m kidding, it’s worse. thehill.com/policy/energ...

What Project 2025 would mean for the fight against climate changethehill.com Project 2025, a controversial conservative roadmap that aims to guide the next Republican administration, calls for the elimination of multiple energy- and environment-related offices and…

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Pat Thompson

so uh on top of decimating HUD... project 2025 is proposing to kill the 30 year mortgage. good luck ever buying housing again

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Pat Thompson

Permanent fixes for our streets cost money and take time - we have huge backlogs. In the meantime, we should implement cheap and quick fixes that trick people's perceptions of the streets to inspire good behavior. I'm thinking roadrunner style painting murals in the street

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Pat Thompson

Remarkable finding in new Marist poll: By 68-32, voters say they're more concerned about a president who doesn't tell the truth than one who is too old to serve. Maybe we should cover Trump's serial lying as a sign of his unfitness for the presidency. 1/ (new piece) newrepublic.com/article/1837...

Shocker Poll Suggests Trump’s Lying May Be Huge Weakness for Himnewrepublic.com One possible reason the polls haven’t moved as much as pundits expected: Voters still don’t like or trust Trump. Can the Democrats shift focus to that?

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Pat Thompson

The IRS has allowed some conservative non-profits to call themselves "churches" to avoid transparency and decrease the likelihood of getting audited. Several House Democrats are now urging the IRS to crack down on this deception. www.friendlyatheist.com/p/democrats-...

Democrats to IRS: Investigate right-wing groups that pretend to be "churches"www.friendlyatheist.com Non-profit groups shouldn't be allowed to call themselves churches to "avoid public accountability,” say House Dems

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Pat Thompson

perhaps enough of us unsubbed to provoke this, but here’s the latest. I’ll take it. (gift link while I still can :) www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Opinion | Donald Trump Is Unfit to Leadwww.nytimes.com He failed the tests of leadership and betrayed America. Voters must stand up to him in November.

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Pat Thompson

Minnesota lottery a regressive tax on the working class, state data show

Minnesota lottery a regressive tax on the working class, state data show • Minnesota Reformerminnesotareformer.com The Minnesota Lottery delivers tens of millions of dollars to state coffers each year, funding everything from parks to education to gambling addiction services. “Each dollar spent on a lottery ticket...

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Pat Thompson

Delta claimed to this passenger that they have "a policy against showcasing political messages of any kind" so be sure to bring it to their attention if you see a passenger wearing Trump gear.

In a grossly anti-Semitic move, Delta Airlines threatens to throw Jewish passenger off plane for wearing a T-shirt expressing an unapproved political opinion. truthout.org/articles/del...

Delta Airlines Forces Passenger to Remove T-Shirt in Anti-Palestine Movetruthout.org Louie Siegel describes how Delta Airlines threatened to kick him off a plane over his “Jews Say Ceasefire Now” T-shirt.

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Pat Thompson

For perspective, this is the place they want to open for mining.

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Pat Thompson

I got a call at 8 a.m. this morning I’d been dreading. Pioneer Press columnist Ruben Rosario, a titan of journalism, dies at 70. A worthy obituary written by @MaryEDivine. www.twincities.com/2024/07/10/r...

Rubén Rosario, New York crime reporter, Pioneer Press columnist and journalism mentor, dies at 70www.twincities.com You can take the boy out of the Bronx, but you can never take the Bronx out of the boy.

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Pat Thompson

Former MN AG Mike Hatch was wrong about a lot of things. But one thing he was right about is that vertical integration in the healthcare “system” is horrible for patients and premium payers in almost every way (F@ck outta here with your “healthcare consumer” language)

Each of the largest three PBMs—CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx—is part of a much larger corporation that also owns a top-10 health insurer. Together they handle nearly 80% of prescription-drug transactions on behalf of insured Americans, according to the FTC. Via @ohiocapitaljournal.com

Federal regulator: Pharmacy middlemen appear to be raising prices,...www.newsfromthestates.com The federal trade watchdog this morning released an interim report saying that sprawling health care conglomerates are driving out competition in the pharmacy sector and appear to be increasing prices...

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Pat Thompson

The question we answer in part 2 (coming out in two weeks) is what effect Forester had on cycling levels in the U.S. even through today. However many people he got on bikes was much smaller than the number who would have gotten on bikes had the infrastructure that he fought been installed.

I'm not a particular proponent of forester's ideas, but this snickering hit piece does you a disservice. he gave people the tools they needed to *actually ride* their bikes for many decades, and ably fought ordinances intended to banish bicycles from the road altogether.

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Pat Thompson

Reply to

Cate Eland

Project 2025's concerns about porn are less about protecting children from being sexually exploited than they are criminalizing adults who allow teens to read age-appropriate books about gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse/assault, which don't align with conservative ideology.

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Pat Thompson

I want this for us

Thousands in the streets of Paris celebrating and cheering “no pasaran” or "They will not pass” as the far right falls out n France’s election. Just absolutely amazing scenes tonight across France as they fight the fascists back. Now it’s our time to be brave and come together to for a united front.

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Pat Thompson

Four NASA volunteers are exiting a simulated Mars base after a year of isolation. I don't know how much news they had access to but can you fucking imagine re-entering the world in July of 2024. www.scrippsnews.com/science-and-...

A NASA crew is about to finish a yearlong Mars mission isolation experimentwww.scrippsnews.com NASA is concluding a yearlong Mars mission experiment — and four volunteers are set to leave a simulated Mars habitat that they've been living in since June of last year.

On top of everything else, the AI hucksters have ruined the word “generative.”

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Pat Thompson

Anywho, show up every day to do what you can with others and make sure that you're attending to people's material needs while doing so. That basic political engagement will put you in good stead. The rest is noise.