1/ For those just now coming of age or tuning in, the Social Security Trust Fund was created in 1983. It was funded by an increase in the payroll tax and a phased in increase in the age for full benefits on people born after 1937 from 65 to 67. 2/ This created a surplus of money that was invested in U.S. Treasury Bonds, instantly creating a bunch of Republican memes about how the money was being stolen from seniors to finance Democrat deficit spending or "just backed by pieces of paper."

@KariLake 1/ When Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address, he articulated the aim of the Civil War: to save government of the people, by the people for the people from the assault of those who wanted government of the people by the few, for the few. 2/ The 117,000 young men who drowned in the North Atlantic, were slaughtered by artillery and machine guns and had their lungs liquified by gas in World War I did it to make the world safe for democracy, not to make it safe for "constitutional republics."

1/ I spent close to two decades doing complex civil litigation with insanely "lean" staffing. As a result, I have far more experience in making photocopies than your average senior partner of all eras for whom the process is "order minions to make copies and copies happen." 2/ I'm not talking about a couple of copies of a document or two now and then. I'm talking about the process of making a lot of copies of a lot of documents that are stapled, two hole top punched and bound on pleadings boards with clasps, organized in individual folders.

1/ For those in the MSM hurr durring "whut's teh big deal?" and "this is the wrong Trump crime to go after," let me introduce you to 18 U.S.C. § 793, entitled "Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information."

law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18… 2/ Statutes can be very dense and full of lists and and clauses and stuff. It's easy to get lost in them. Like "whoever shall, spit, expectorate, drool, secrete, or otherwise deposit oral bodily fluids onto public sidewalks, streets, curbs, or ...." blah blah blah.

1/ And, c’mon, can we please cut the shit? If any former federal employee is caught with a trove of classified documents—much less code-word access documents as reported, FFS—there is only one reasonable assumption about why that employee has them.

https://twitter.com/tcfka_ncsteve/status/1557846502357213184

2/ The presumption would be espionage and the burden of establishing a less treasonable explanation would be on the person with the documents. There is absolutely no valid reason for giving Trump the benefit of an assumption that there just *must* be some other explanation.

1/ The Daily, NYT ‘s NPR show had Mags on tonight. Clear she holds him in contempt and sees him as a repulsive spoiled manbaby, but likewise clear she is blind to his systemic criminality and malignancy and never took the idea him being co-opted by foreign powers seriously. 2/ Seems like sho only sees the banality, selfishness and stupidity, but she’s willfully oblivious to the psycho-pathology that makes him so dangerous to democracy, so entirely captive of the compulsive need for narcissistic supply, avoidance of shame and humiliation and revenge.

1/ I had an exchange that compels me to say this even knowing it will only enrage everyone who doesn't already agree with me.

I'm not insensitive to the rage and fear driving the frantic calls to Do Something. I cannot feel it the way women do, but I am sick with rage and fear. 2/ It's not the pain and fear of the victim of cruelty and oppression. It's only the rage and fear of the witness. But I feel it.

I am not out of compassion, not yet out of hope, not drained of the sense of urgency as the walls of hateful minoritarian tyranny close around us.

1/ The list of terrible things that are going to happen is long. But one no one has noticed yet is that red state OB-GYN malpractice premiums are about to skyrocket, adding to all the other factors that will drive an exodus from the area. 2/ Those of us of a certain age will recall when OB-GYN malpractice premiums were a cause celibre for Republicans in the 90's, the posterchild for the insurance industry's "tort reform" campaign. A big part of the problem was, of course, centered in Florida.

1/ As an Appalachian, and someone whose first job was in economic development in Appalachia, it is typical that economists only discovered the core problem driving Appalachia's intractable poverty problem when it spread to places that aren't Appalachia.

npr.org/sections/money… 2/ This is part of the cultural Othering of Appalachians, the caricaturing of them as genetically inferior inbreeds that necessarily accompanied the neo-colonial exploitation of its coal resources beginning in the 1880's.

1/ Forewarned is forearmed. So let's talk contraception. (Yeah, not meant to be a joke, because nothing is funny now.)

Expect red states to pass laws banning every form of contraception they claim are "abortifacients" over the next few months. Plan B first. 2/ As to contraception generally, There are two cases you should know. Better known is Griswold v. Connecticut, which first found the right to privacy upon which Roe was based. There, in 1965, the Court struck down a law forbidding *all* sale or distribution of contraceptives.

1/ Everyone acting surprised at the response to the 10k move, or treating it as if it's a thing that can be rationally discussed with them is missing the point that this was always going to be the response no matter what they got. 2/ The entire purpose of the ratfucking accelerationist left's reductionist abstraction of complex policy proposals down into symbolic shiny baubles is to breed grievance and discontent to keep their followers from voting for Democrats. That's it. Nothing else.

1/ Wait and watch: if Roe is completely overruled, the "pro-life" movement will move on to:

a) making it unconstitutional for states to permit abortion under any circumstances;

b) making getting an abortion murder;

c) illegalization of birth control. 2/ a) and b) are inherent in their position. They cannot rest at "let the states decide." The logic of their belief system, which they've turned into an other-directed mission, compels them to do so and if they declare victory, they have to get a new job/hobby.

1/ Twitter for the last two weeks is all about how badly Democrats suck at messaging. And here's my contribution. And the problem is, a lot of Democrats aren't even going to get the point. 2/ For weeks I've been seeing variations on this theme: "Democrats suck at messaging!!!! We have got to do a better job of breaking through the media filter and communicating how awesome all of our policies are for ordinary people!"

Guys, I love you, but no. Just no.

1/ Today on @1a News Roundup

Reuters reporter: The real question is why it took Biden so long to do the vaccine mandate.

Politico hack: Why Republican politicians are doing things to make the pandemic worse is just totally inexplicable. 2/ Various pundits and reporters on Twitter today.

"Boy, it's just really hard to understand why Republican governors and politicians are hardlining policies that are killing their constituents."

@blankslate2017 @jkfecke 1/ People are not getting the full picture on the extent to which the Texas law represents a frontal assault on the Constitution, rule of law, the right to property, and everything we are raised to believe about the purpose of law in a free society going back to the Magna Carta. @blankslate2017 @jkfecke 2/ The law expressly authorizes localities to completely ban abortion as well as expressly refusing to set aside the old laws on the books making abortions in Texas illegal.

@EricBoehlert 1/ Notice how all the grassroots earnest parents in schoolboard meetings demanding an end to CRT have professionally designed and printed protest signs with focus-grouped slogans.

CRT is just the GOP's latest rerun of its "fill the summer news gap with astroturf outrage" gambit. @EricBoehlert 2/ This was the Tea Party in 2010. Manufactured by GOP black PR firms and shadowy billionaire "think tanks" backed by coordinated messaging from right wing media.

And it depends on their certainty that the MSM will report it as a genuine, authentic, grassroots uprising...

@azaustinsmith 1/ The first Amendment right of free speech is subject and abridged by to the law of libel and slander, incitement to riot, copyright infringement, unfair competition, and criminal conspiracy. @azaustinsmith 2/ The First Amendment's Establishment clause does not forbid secular prayers by government, putting "In God We Trust" on currency nor require the government to permit religious snake handling, bigamy, child abuse, or human sacrifice.

1/ People keep being baffled at what the insurrectionists are thinking and how they think it plays out. But they’ve been quite explicit in laying out all the pieces. They just haven’t officially put them all out in one place. They think it goes like this: 2/

1. Pence declares himself Arbiter of Succession and declares Trump winner of the Electoral vote.

2. Protesters immediately pour onto the streets to protest the autocoup.

3. Heavily armed Proud Boys, Nazis and Q-Nuts hit the streets too to go to war with the Antifa hoard.

So how long will it take the NYT and NPR to reduce this the extortion and election interference conspiracy into a "On One Hand, Democrats Say it's a Crime, but OTOH, Republicans point out that the recording itself might be the only real crime?" narrative? Tomorrow A.M. or P.M.? To be clear, Georgia and D.C. are both one-party consent jurisdictions so it isn't a crime. But under the "a Republican need only say a thing to make it the functional equivalent of truth" standard used by NYT/NPR that's irrelevant.

1/ I just need people to be clear on where this "one in a quadrillion" thing the morons are being fed came from in case you run into your crazy uncle this Christmas.

It starts with the assumption that vote distribution in a state is uniform geographically and by voting method. 2/ That is, it assumes that every precinct in a state, whether urban, suburban or rural, rich or poor, majority white or majority POC, has the exact same proportion of Trump and Biden voters and that Biden and Trump voters used absentee ballots uniformly.