The United States is destroying itself | Rebecca Solnit The daily news can’t adequately convey the administration’s sabotaging of our government, economy, alliances and environment

At some point the whole is worth less than the sum of its parts and we need to start thinking about what comes next. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I'm planning to use the JD Vance technique when buying a new car today - call the sales executive a wanker, offer £50 and tell them if they don't accept I'll torch their showroom.
Wish me luck.

High turnout isn't a proxy for an honest vote count.

You could bet (literally!!) that greedy U.S. kleptocrats couldn’t get Iran deal | Will Bunch Drunk from war profits on everything from crypto to drones, Trump’s team of kleptocrats has no idea how to end their failed Iran War.

Will Bunch: Were Vance and his outgunned Iran-deal negotiators working for you and for peace, or for the next Polymarket trades, crypto deals, drone contracts or their stock portfolios. I went deep on the kleptocrats getting rich off the war, and now prolonging it. www.inquirer.com/opinion/iran...

Someone remake this image with a mega yacht; the class this tax break was intended for.

This is the sort of thing most politicians claim they didn't know was in the text of the bill; not something they brag about.

an orange cat is snuggled into blankies like a fat little shrimp with his back feet in the air showing his pink toe beans. he has one eye slightly open

Sorry I can’t help clean up right now I’m actually super busy

Reagan’s OMB Director:

I'm going to guess that JD Vance said something to the Iranians about them not having the cards, and asking whether they even said "Thank You"

Vance flew all the way to Pakistan to stall for time with sham peace talks. That'll be 3x the US has held "talks" and then attacked.

No one will ever want to deal with America again while Trump and MAGA are in charge.

Russia invades Ukraine and presents an agreement for peace that takes land away from Ukraine. Ukraine rejects the deal and counters with proposal for Russia to leave and pay reparations because they started the war. Switch out Russia for the U.S. and Iran for Ukraine.

Did JD have a date night he had to get back to? He “negotiated” all of 21 hours, aka less than 1 day. Maybe he thought Iran was CBS but with different accents. Just bully. Jester + Delusional = JD

People who like blinds over curtains have never had cats

This is the side that JD Vance was campaigning against this week

Two kittens sitting on kitchen stools

These two are one year old tomorrow

The economy isn't compatible with having kids. Until it is, fewer people will do it. This isn't hard. It's only "complicated" because it's inconvenient to short term shareholder returns, and running literally everything in the country around quarterly earnings cycles.

It's an obscure one called swhosting

This is a new one. Domain registrar added a "free" Web hosting service that I don't want and never used. They then started charging what they're calling a "symbolic" $1 per month for it, which increases the cost of my domain registration by about 50% annually. Doesn't seem that "symbolic" to me.

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

the future is already here it's just unevenly distributed. the USA will have gone from being a leading edge EV maker in the early 2010s to a global laggard by 2030, mostly because we elected Trump twice (and it'll probably kill the US auto industry)

Your periodic reminder that what we call "far left" in the US is moderate anywhere else in the world. @aoc.bsky.social would be considered conservative in Canada.

GenZ hates the idea of career stability and fair pay. They really don't want to plan their lives. You all believe this, right?

...right?

Who in their right mind would want to work for the federal government, though?

This just about sums it up. Democrats don't want to govern. They like being the opposition, whining and raising money on it. It's a great gig if you can get it. That's why I have stopped giving them money.

Dwight Eisenhower had a much better idea.

1/2. Notice that after losing the war Trump threatens his allies rather than Russia — even though Russia quite literally helped Iran defeat the US and he knows it.

One of the most brazenly corrupt events in history will take place tomorrow when Jared Kushner represents the U.S. in critical negotiations with Iran to end the war while he accepts millions in fees (and billions in investments) from the Saudi gov’t which has been lobbying Trump to continue the war

My husband spent $117, to fill up his car. Regular gas. In NC. Pre-war it was $70. The elite think they’re going to lie their way through this as if people won’t notice that their gas bill is up $100 a month.

yesssss! Haven't seen this in awhile!

“You’re doing some shady and unconstitutional shit. Keep doing it for another year” is quite something.

If you weren't thinking about the Strait of Hormuz and skyrocketing gas prices before Trump started his war, it appears nobody at the Treasury Department was either.

That's according to a top Treasury official who was asked by my staff.