🇺🇸🏳️🌈 Bronx-born, Queens-raised son of a Brooklyn dad & Manhattan mom who met in Staten Island. My novel, LOWER THAN THE ANGELS, is out now on https://t.co/UljyPEaqjz
Mar 18 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Wanna do a thread about popularity and politics because I keep hearing "But Bernie is the most popular politician in the country." Thsi is a story about the infamous 2021 City Council race in my neighborhood where DSA and Chuck Schumer both lined up behind the Democratic candidate in my Biden +16 district and she ended up losing 2-1🧵(1)
During the campaign, some of the people working on the Democratic candidate Felicia Singh's campaign told me they believed she would win because "she's likable" and her oppoent, now Councilwoman Joann Ariola, was not. It is true Ariola was a bit of a divisive figure in the neighborhood and she had lost two previous elections, but the politics was shifting here by 2021 (2)
Mar 3 • 22 tweets • 2 min read
We are gay tweeting the #Oscars tonight
Ariana Grande changed out of her lampshade and into Dorothy’s left slipper. #Oscars
Feb 23 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
In Frankfurt. CDU is on top, but Greens are outperforming SPD in the city. Frankfurt has typically been a Green stronghold. #GermanElections
Greens are holding on to Stuttgart I and thier seat in Munster, and are locked in a very tight race in Berlin's Tempelhof-Schöneberg constituency, which was an SPD seat. The Greens pretty much are responsible for a lot of the recent fuckups but not really paying a political price. #GermanElections
Talking to some friends in the trans/non binary community yesterday and today. A lot of anger, not so much at voters or Democrats, but at activists, mainly those outside the community, who prioritized issues like sports over housing/jobs/healthcare and helped trigger a backlash against it all. Progressive groups are in a world of hurt going forward
One said progressive activists are like “locusts” who move from one cause to the other, “exploiting marginalized groups and using them to spark unwinnable fights and leaving them in a worst place than before.”
Another said trans people feel like the Left’s “pikemen” saying “we were placed in the front lines by people who have nothing to lose if the battle goes badly.”
She added “we just wanted basic rights and instead we lectured people about pronouns. I just wanted to make sure I can get HRT, I don’t care if some asshole calls me a ‘he.’”
She added “they took down black people by losing the policing issue, immigrants and now us. Palestinians better realize they’re next.”
Brutal. Writing this up.
Aug 15, 2024 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I’m older. My progressivism dates to the Bush era. Back then progressives believed the only acceptable reason for the US to interfere in international affairs was to stop genocide. Then Syria happened and progressive said “actually no, that’s not our problem either.” (1) 🧵
We sat back and allowed genocides to happen in Rwanda, Darfur, Syria, China, Burma and did nothing. Fine. I can accept that. But now the crocodile tears over Palestinians? Suddenly it’s all too much for you to bear? Suddenly the “genocide” is too much?
Fuck off. (2)
Nov 4, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
My favourite thing about this election cycle are white women who called Trump supporters ignorant and stupid in 2018 are now irate that liberals are calling Trump supporters ignorant and stupid and pretend like they aren't a reason why that's a thing.
It's no wonder people like Kari Lake. Like most white women, treats politics like the breakfast at the Hilton Garden Inn.
On Monday, she scarfs down a cheese danish by herself, but Tuesday the dining room is packed, she has a Yoplait while telling guests about her healthy diet
Nov 3, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
I like @jbarro but I think his argument that Democrats should have been more careful about alienating swing voters because it was too important to lose the midterms is dismissive of Democrats vote. (1)
It assumes that had Democrats moderated their agenda (i.e. passed a smaller spending bill, been tougher on crime) it would have moved enough votes to save their majorities while not leading to the base demoralizing. 1994, 2010 and 2014 tell us that doesn't work (2)
Oct 22, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I think the "Dems were mean to Romney, so we decided to go full-on fascist" just shows how weak, cowardly and thin-skinned Republicans are.
We endured swiftboating, "palling around with terrorists," birtherism and "lock her up" and still want to give you sorry sacks healthcare.
It's these dumb defenses of the rise of Trumpsim that make me realize how much stronger and tougher I am being a liberal. Perhaps it comes from growing up bullied and different, idk, but Jesus Christ these people can't take on iota of adversity without losing their shit.
Oct 20, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
You covered it for right-wing publications with longstanding anti-trans agendas, and this thread shows it. This thread is full of anti-trans tropes and misinformation. For example...
You can "respect the rights of transgender adults to live as they please" and then complain about "troubling trends." it's like saying "yes, trans people, we support you, just as long as there are only a handful of you." Trans people see through this.
One of the reasons for bail reform was that if you were poor and part of that 86 percent, you likely spent weeks or months at Rikers only to have your charges dismissed and record clean, but you lost your job and reputation anyway.
Most people don't understand that many at Rikers are awaiting trial, so if you're someone who gets arrested, can't afford bail, and waits at Rikers only to have charges dismissed, now everyone labels you a criminal despite never having been convicted of anything.
Oct 18, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A lot of people in this thread blame women for having higher standards, but we're missing the part of this we don't want to talk about. Some of those standards are shallow. Hot men get laid, ugly men don't.
This is not only because men who treat women like shit aren't getting laid, but it's also men who look like me; bald, overweight and short, aren't getting laid regardless of how nicely they treat women, and it's turning them into angry incels.
Oct 17, 2022 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
I don't know why I'm sharing this on Twitter of all places, but I thought maybe some of these "liberals are so scolding" folks can find a bit of understanding of how we got here from this story, so here it goes. 🧵
Just before I left for Maine, I had an argument with my childhood best friend, who in 1998 was the first person I ever came out to and who said she'd always have my back and always be my ally. She confessed that she keeps her son away from me because "she's just nervous (2)
Oct 16, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Once you leave the big city and talk politics, you begin to get a real sense of how hopeless progressive ideas are and how much of Bernie 2016 was basically about Hillary and not Bernie’s policies.
Like Black Lives Matter triggers even moderately liberal people in ways that I still find amazing.
“It implies that black people don’t mater to us and that’s not true!”
It isn’t?
Oct 13, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Going over our Wisconsin focus group and its wild how Democratic factions weaponize Republican Party against each other. Moderates telling the left if the candidate isn't moderate, fascists will win, leftists telling moderates they won't vote for moderates, and fascists will win.
There is one Trump-Barnes voter in the focus group and she's a 37-year-old married woman from Winnebago County who is ANGRY AS FUCK about abortion. She voted for Trump because she had hoped he'd "gut" Black Lives Matter, which she calls "a terrorist organisation"
Voters are fun.
Oct 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is why I gave up journalism. Bad faith sources who give you scoops and then deny them publicly and claim you made it all up because you're a biased hack.
A certain party-hopping City Councilman from Queens did this all the fucking time and my editor still trusted him.
The commanding officer of the 102nd Precinct once told me the man they arrested for a rape was the wrong suspect. Second source confirmed it. When I published it, he publicly denied it and called me a liar, then privately said "Sorry, I need to get 1 Police Plaza off the scent"
Jan 4, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Holy shit.
Just got done with a conversation with a local black progressive leader in Southeast Queens who absolutely laid into fellow progressives regarding #COVID shutdowns and school closures. I mean just eviscerated them.
"White bleeding heart leftists think COVID is the biggest threat to black children because in their den of privilege its their biggest threat. The wanted collectivism, but instead of listening to us, they projected their biggest concerns onto us as ours as well"
Jan 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Being 38 years old is weird, because I was born 38 years after the end of World War II.
It really reminds me, that history is not that far removed from my timeline. My grandparents lived it.
Mrs. Linklaater, my fourth grade lunch mother was a Dutch orphan who when her village in the Netherlands was liberated by Americans, she and her brother were evacuated and saw their parents' bodies hanging in the town square, executed by Nazis for being Dutch Resistance.
Jan 1, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
My aunt keeps trying to move every conversation to the lawsuit against the cop that killed the teenager in the dressing room, which for some reason is really bothering her.
Like we were talking about buying a car and getting a loan and she was like “you know, it’s very hard today, you have to watch yourself. I mean look at those people suing that cop, I mean come on.” 🤷♂️
