Formerly: Washington Post, The Week, American Prospect. MSNBC columnist, co-host of Boundary Issues. Author, The Cross Section: https://t.co/NcC1hMgD9J
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May 11, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
1. One thing last night made clear is that not only doesn't "fact-checking in real time" work on Trump, it's actually JUST WHAT HE WANTS. Allow me to explain...
2. When he says "The election was rigged" or "I did complete the wall," gets corrected and then says the lie again, steamrolling over the journalist, it isn't about which of these competing versions of reality will be judged factually accurate.
Feb 15, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
With Nikki Haley entering the presidential race, people are noting that she took the Confederate flag down from the SC statehouse, and that was a good thing. But there are some things to remember about it.../1
This happened after white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered 9 people at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston. Haley said that while the flag had previously stood for "service, sacrifice and heritage" Roof had "hijacked everything that people thought of" about the flag. /2
Jan 18, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
False. I argue not that MoCs SHOULDN'T BE ABLE to read the full text of bills, but that it's not necessary because legislative language is highly technical. The member needs to know what the bill does, not whether section 1(a)34(b) is authorized by subsection 54(d)(46)a
If members want to pore over 4,000 pages of that, have at it. But it's not necessary. People who say otherwise either don't understand how legislation works or are trying to fool their audience into getting mad about something the audience doesn't understand. Usually the latter.
Oct 19, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1. A case study in how journalists allow politicians to lie, ensuring that the more cynical a politician is, the greater the rewards for dishonesty will be, courtesy of Kevin McCarthy and @PunchbowlNews . Come with me...
2. Their newsletter this morning contains this nugget from an interview they did with McCarthy
Oct 18, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There's a surreal quality to this whole thing - not this inane TV show, but the entire campaign - that everyone treats Herschel Walker like he's a real candidate and not someone whose grasp of public policy is exceeded by that of the average 5th grader
I mean seriously, it's BONKERS. There are some seriously dumb elected officials in the GOP, people like Louie Gohmert or Ron Johnson, but Walker makes them look like geniuses. And the conventions of journalism...
Sep 19, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1. Received a text with the typo "FeSantis" and I have decided that Ron FeSantis was a guest character in a two-episode story arc on "The White Shadow."
He is, of course, Salami's cousin.*
*Yes, the Italian-American character was named Salami. Just go with it.
2. Ron FeSantis transfers to Carver High, having moved into the neighborhood with his single dad. His life has been a struggle since his mom moved out, and while his aunt and uncle (Salami's parents) try to help, he keeps getting into trouble.
Sep 14, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
One problem the political media have in talking about Republican figures like Mark Finchem and Kristina Karamo is that we have a language to talk about ideology - "extreme," "out of the mainstream," "radical" - but we're not supposed to say "This person is simply bonkers." But...
...that's really what we're dealing with in many of these cases. These GOP nominees don't have "extreme" ideas. They're utterly untethered to reality. You wouldn't trust them to walk your dog for a weekend. And the GOP wants to put them in charge of elections.
Jun 20, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
1. The whole Texas GOP platform is insane but the piece that jumped out to me was the endorsement of a state-level electoral college, eliminating one person-one vote in favor of a system they could gerrymander so that the votes of white rural Republicans will count more.
2. This is not the first time this has come up. Not long ago a Colorado GOP governor candidate offered such a plan; an analysis found it would give 2,000 voters in three rural counties twice as many electoral votes as 761,000 voters in three urban counties.
Feb 22, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A case study in how mainstream outlets like the New York Times launder Republican disinformation:
Step 1: Far-right "news" site invents race-baiting lie about govt program ("Biden is giving away crack pipes!")
Step 2: Republican politicians repeat lie, claim to be outraged
Step 3: Lie is cycled through the right-wing propaganda machine, repeated hundreds of times. GOP politicians slap together fake legislation to address non-existent fantasy problem.
Aug 24, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
1. A note on the conflict b/t House Democratic centrists and everyone else: You'll notice that the centrists have almost no substantive demands re the reconciliation bill. Same is true of Manchin/Sinema. There isn't anything they're fighting for. This was predictable.
2. That is the essence of centrism: It has no actual beliefs or agenda. The centrist doesn't know where he stands until you tell him where left and right are so he can position himself between them.
Mar 3, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
As long as we're revisiting Dr. Seuss, we ought to take a look at "Tootle," the beloved 1945 book about a plucky little train that is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT a story meant to convince little boys not to be gay.
Come with me on this appalling journey...
Tootle is learning to be a good train, the most important rule of which is Staying On The Rails No Matter What. But Tootle is a free spirit. He loves to jump off the rails and prance through the flowers. This makes everyone at train school very upset. /2
Aug 12, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
The conservative reaction to @KamalaHarris, including questions about whether she's Black enough, is both fascinating and revealing. Here's a way to understand it (THREAD). /1
It's almost impossible to overstate how consumed conservatives - both media figures and regular people - are with the idea that liberals constantly accuse them, unfairly, of being racist. They talk about this ALL THE TIME. /2
Jul 11, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Even if you're lucky enough not to have lost anyone or gotten sick in the pandemic, you are the victim of a robbery.
Because of Trump's malignant incompetence and the stupidity of his followers, we've all been robbed of time we can't get back - maybe a year or more.
/1
We've been robbed of time with loved ones, education for our kids, contact with others, at least a little freedom from this constant anxiety, just the mundane but precious parts of normal life. It is a theft, and it didn't have to happen this way.
/2
Oct 9, 2019 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1. A word about Trey Gowdy, whom President Trump just hired to be part of his "legal team" fighting impeachment.
First, Gowdy is there to be a TV lawyer. He's been brought in because he delivers what Trump's base wants. I wrote about him in 2014:
2. Gowdy had a particular style as a congressional interrogator: Ask every question as though you're barely holding back your rage because the witness is so appalling, then when they answer - no matter what they answer - ask the same question again, but even louder and angrier.
Sep 9, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Oliver is right. I think some have forgotten that the phrase "the N-word" is only about 15 years old. Before then the word it refers to was not considered unutterable by white people in any context - it could be acceptable if you were talking ABOUT racism. /1
Ideas about language change, and people of good will can have different opinions about whether the current treatment of the word is the best of all possible worlds. Walter Mosely has some thoughts on that: nytimes.com/2019/09/06/opi… /2
Sep 4, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1. Obviously, Biden claiming falsely that he turned 180 degrees and opposed the Iraq war the moment it started (npr.org/2019/09/02/756…) is bad. But here's what really bugs me...
2. Like many politicians, he wants to claim that he was right about this all along, i.e. that he wanted inspections before the war but then opposed the war when it actually became a war. Again, this is false.
Apr 21, 2019 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
1. I'm not yet entirely on the impeachment train, but note this about the comparison to Clinton: The real equivalent would be Dems impeaching Trump solely for the Stormy Daniels affair. The public probably would regard that as an overreaction. That's not what this would be.
2. Any comparison to 1998 has to reckon with the fact that the public debated it for a year and decided that having an affair and lying about it didn't merit removal. It wasn't a broad "No president should ever be impeached" conclusion.
Mar 5, 2019 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
1. OK, I went off a little on this @IlhanMN controversy :
"The dishonest smearing of Ilhan Omar" washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/…
I'd love it if you read the whole thing, but let me make a couple of points...
2. First, Omar said SHE didn't want to be forced to pledge allegiance to another country, to which a whole bunch of people disingenuously replied "How dare you say Jews have dual loyalty!" She didn't say anything about Jews.
Feb 22, 2019 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1. I want to address something that seems to be missing from all this talk of Klobuchar's treatment of her staff. She says she's a "tough boss" and she "pushes her staff hard" and has "high standards." There's a problem with that.
nytimes.com/2019/02/22/us/…2. Anyone who has had even a mildly abusive boss knows that when they yell, much less when they berate you or throw things, they aren't pushing you to do your best work and your best work is not what they get.
Feb 18, 2019 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
1. Gonna confess my unpopular opinion here: Alec Baldwin's impression of Trump has nothing interesting or cutting about it and the writing of these sketches is weak. Now let's compare to previous ones...
2. Will Ferrell captured something important about GW Bush: He wasn't just a dumb guy, but a dumb guy trying to sound smart who thought he was totally killing it.
Feb 7, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1. Two months ago I wrote that the "issue" of Elizabeth Warren's Native American identity was going to become the "But her emails" of 2020. Every word is still true: washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-lin…
So let me issue a challenge to reporters...
2. I dare you to include in one of your stories about Warren an explanation of why this is important. Not politically important, not because it "overshadows" other things or because it "raises [unspecified] questions"...
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