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Joseph Britt Profile picture
Joseph Britt
@Zathras3
Wisconsin and the world. Opinions my own except for RTs, which are other people's. Once a Republican. @Zathras5.bsky.social
3 subscribers
Aug 30, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
"In this third iteration of Senator Graham’s arguments, just as in the prior two, there is no role for this Court
other than to serve as a rubber stamp for his own conclusions." Fani Willis, an Atlanta District Attorney, thinks Sen. Graham should testify. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… But Trump thinks Graham shouldn't, and what's most important to Graham is showing loyalty -- loyalty! -- to Trump. He'll try to stonewall a court, and even threaten riots, to show his loyalty to Trump.
Apr 26, 2022 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
So @BeschlossDC has a question. I've been thinking about it. [ 🧵] To begin with, I have no predictions as to what @elonmusk will do with Twitter if he completes his acquisition. I don't think he knows himself, so anything I could say would be just a guess. Frankly, I think Musk is making this play for Twitter because he's bored.
Dec 14, 2021 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
Flagging a couple of essays by the observant and vastly experienced @JamesFallows about American governance. One is a lament about venerable American institutions (like the Constitution) not meeting the needs of modern American society. fallows.substack.com/p/fools-drunks… The second is a set of prescriptions, to address the mismatch Fallows perceives between inflexible institutions, laws, and rules on the one hand and modern society on the other. fallows.substack.com/p/were-stuck-w…
Sep 20, 2021 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Timely essay by @joshtpm on the handful of Democrats threatening to wreck @POTUS Biden’s agenda. They’ve created a sticky situation, no doubt. How to get past the obstacles they’re throwing up? [short thread] My theory on the reconciliation bill from the beginning has been that its taxes (more precisely, revenue-raising provisions), not its spending, would be its weakness among self-styled Democratic moderates. I see little reason to doubt that theory now.
Sep 18, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A think piece from last year by @AbrahmL for @propublica. Lustgarten focused on how climate change affects the risk of living in certain places, all in the United States. He speculated about a coming great migration. It’s actually worse than that. [Short but depressing thread] Climate change, of course, is a global phenomenon. People in much of the world live on narrower margins than most Americans do. And, the other factors that prompt people to leave their homes in search of new places to live are still active.
Sep 8, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
@JessicaHuseman You should re-up this thread, but this time specify who "y'all" and "a lot of people" are supposed to be. Let's have some names. In my state, the people who want to spend money on rural broadband, public education and road maintenance are all Democrats from Madison & Milwaukee. @JessicaHuseman The Republicans from the rural north like to bang on instead about mask mandates and Critical Race Theory. And, of course, they're very upset about the last election. There's no practical difference between rural and suburban Republicans here, incidentally.
Sep 3, 2021 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Thread. @ThePlumLineGS is alarmed by what Sen. Manchin’s queasiness about reconciliation means for US leadership on climate change. He’s not wrong about how bad sabotage of President’s agenda would be in that regard. 1/2 2/2. But in a 50/50 Senate, Manchin’s concerns about the federal deficit must be taken seriously. I suggested yesterday that the Biden administration & Congressional Democrats do just that, by raising more revenue.
Sep 1, 2021 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
Analysis of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan at once incisive and, frankly, a little obtuse from @joshtpm here. It's focused, right in the title, on American media reaction. In perfect fairness, that's an important aspect of the story. [thread] After years in which American media in general and political media in particular gave the war in Afghanistan hardly any thought, the events of the last month brought journalists and commentators roaring in with shock and outrage. This was buttressed by the reaction of....
Jul 24, 2021 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
@AJentleson @sahilkapur We should consider whether voter attitudes get such attention because they are decisive with legislators, or because they can be measured accurately and tracked over time. @AJentleson @sahilkapur That legislators track surveys of voters attitudes is beyond question. What about large donors? Legislators hear what donors think — most of the spend more time talking with donors than they do with ordinary voters — but donors are hard to survey.
Jul 24, 2021 • 18 tweets • 6 min read
Short climate change thread. Earlier this month, "...scientists did not hide their alarm that an usually cool part of the Pacific northwest had been turned into a furnace." As a @guardian editorial warned, uncertainty about climate change goes both ways. theguardian.com/commentisfree/… Some models may overestimate the effects of climate change. But even very good models can be wrong the other way, too: bigger changes hitting us sooner than we thought, and more difficult to reverse or adapt to.
Jul 23, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Between @joshtpm and @JakeSherman, I think Josh is closer to being right where Biden and the Senate filibuster are concerned. It should be possible to pass Biden’s spending & tax priorities in legislation that cannot be filibuster — in practice, a significant limitation.... ....of the filibuster by itself. When the Senate does get to democracy promotion legislation is when the rubber will truly meet the road. Democrats will need public attention to be on the popular things they want to do — on voting rights, election rules, government ethics.
Feb 19, 2021 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
I promised myself to stay away from direct comment on Rush Limbaugh. @conor64 has some thoughts worth the time here. I did want to say something about Limbaugh's audience. [thread] Limbaugh was all about opinion without responsibility. Obviously. He was a radio host. He never had to write a bill or get a road fixed or negotiate with a foreign government or do any of the things that people in government need to do for the government to work.
Feb 17, 2021 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
A perspective on Texas by @englund washingtonpost.com/business/2021/… Here's another perspective, in a thread by @historianess, a former Texas resident.
Feb 9, 2021 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
We can look at the argument @ThePlumLineGS makes here from a different, more institutional standpoint. What took place on January 6 was a physical attack on the national legislature, incited by the executive. What recourse does the former have in such a case? [thread] The majority Republican position, as of now, is that the legislature — Congress — has no recourse. The attack on Congress was incited; it was made; and Congress must simply accept it. Impeachment cannot be a remedy, because the President is no longer in office.
Feb 8, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It’s been 30 years since the Gulf War, celebrated at the time as a great American victory. Officials in GHW Bush’s administration never stopped praising themselves for it. Samuel Helfont takes a more jaundiced view, & it’s not hard to see why. [thread] tnsr.org/2021/02/the-gu… A “precision” air campaign that struck many more targets than it needed to; ideas for the postwar period that assumed Saddam Hussein’s departure with no plan to make this happen; reactive diplomacy that led Gulf War allies to distance themselves from the US.
Nov 19, 2020 • 22 tweets • 6 min read
The United States passed a quarter of a million offically reported #COVID19 deaths today. Counting people who died at home, and others who died from other causes because #COVID19 cases were swamping local hospitals, we actually passed that milestone weeks ago. [a thread] At this moment, the President is preoccupied with watching TV, plotting to overturn the results of the election he lost by millions of votes, and making transition to a new administration as difficult as possible. He hasn't met with his White House #COVID19 task force in months.
Nov 17, 2020 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
I don't take this already much-shared @NBCNews report by @carolelee @kwelkernbc & @mikememoli as definitive of anything about the incoming Biden administration, including @JoeBiden's personal thinking. Early days still. With that said...[thread] nbcnews.com/politics/justi… A good rule of thumb for looking back at the Trump administration is this: you either defend the rule of law, or you don't.

Trump has objected violently throughout his life to being bound by the rule of law. He will object violently to prosecutions, investigations, anything.
Nov 13, 2020 • 28 tweets • 6 min read
Now that all states have been called, I wanted to record a few thoughts about the election while they're still fresh -- what seems to have been important, and what was evidently not. Follow along if interested. I suppose it's only fair to disclose my priors, many of which were summed up in something I wrote just after the 2016 election. This characterized support for Trump by Republicans -- particularly the better-off among them -- largely as a moral failing.
Nov 11, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
How differently are we thinking about Trump compared to to how we would think about any other white rich person in America? Particularly a celebrity. A white rich person can certainly obey all the laws and respect all the traditions of his or her community. There are lots of wealthy Americans who do — they’ve earned what they have (or inherited it, which is fair enough, that being the law now) & are perfectly lovely people.
Oct 30, 2020 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
May I be so bold as to introduce a theological concept into the election campaign? This is A Sign From God. A candidate inviting you to a rally where you may contract a contagious disease after falling over from heatstroke is A Sign From God to vote for the other guy. A candidate inviting you to a rally where you may contract a contagious disease and then stranding you in freezing weather miles from transportation is A Sign From God to vote for the other guy.
Oct 28, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Thread. I don’t do much commenting on polls, leaving that to experts like @NateSilver538 @LarrySabato & @WisVoter. A whole bunch of polls have dropped in the last 24 hours, mostly showing Biden with a solid lead. Some still hint at ways Trump could make this a close race. But I wonder. If turnout nationally will be up as much as many seem to think (@TargetSmart, a Democratic polling firm, thinks about 16 million non-voters in 2016 have cast ballots already this year), is Trump likely to get most of them? It seems unlikely. Another thing....