I'm seeing many of my liberal friends (and more than a few conservatives) saying Charlie Kirk's shooter HAD TO BE a professional to make the shot. Either military or law enforcement trained sniper.

No. 200 yrds may seem like a long way (2 football fields!). But it's just not. 1/ I grew up shooting guns of all kinds and calibers in the Midwest. Ask any whitetail deer hunter and they will tell you 200 yrds against a stationary target, especially while prone, is a chip shot. And they would be right. While hunting, 300, 400, even 500 yrds is common. 2/

I keep seeing people saying Vance will be worse if Trump dies, resigns, is removed, etc.

They're right in one respect. Trump is a chaos agent driven by megalomania, while Vance is a conniving, meticulous, patient snake.

But he also has all the charisma of a damp gym towel. 1/ Vance, like Pence before him, was chosen as VP because he poses no threat to Trump's command of the MAGA cult. He has no political base. Literally no one likes him inside the party or outside.

If Trump exits, no one is taking over as the head of his personality cult. 2/

Because the media is already getting everything as wrong as they possibly can, let's go over what actually happened with Colombia yesterday.

Under Biden/Harris, Colombia accepted more than 400 deportation flights, 120 just in 2024 alone. These were normal commercial planes. 1/ Every was fine. There were no issues. And then Trump came along.

Instead of just sending the same chartered commercial flights of deportees Colombia had accepted hundreds of times, Trump took Colombias, shackled them, and threw them on US Military jets at exorbitant cost. 2/

Learned more about the story of this photo and now I'm mad.

This was taken today at Arlington National Cemetery. The grave belongs to Sgt Nicole Leeann Gee, USMC. She was among the 13 US service members killed in a suicide bombing during the Afghan withdrawal 3 yrs ago. 1/ Donald Trump is directly responsible for her death.

When negotiating the Afghanistan withdrawal, he deliberately cut out the Afghan government in Kabul we had been supporting for 20 years.

Instead, he negotiated exclusively with the Taliban. The enemy. 2/

What the last week and a half has taught everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear is a press beholden to profit can never be free or objective.

Biden is bad for the business of the news. His administration has been hugely focused, successful, and free of scandal or leaks. 1/ With only the mundane, boring work of actually governing the country to report on, the business of the News has suffered under Biden. Thier stocks are flat, their readership/viewership is down.

They're starving under the weight of Biden's quiet competence. So, he has to go. 2/

There's a disconnect among people, especially on the Left, about money in politics.

On one hand, you need a lot of money just to buy your way into the game. But once you're there, money quickly hits the point of diminishing returns.

No amount of cash buys a 17 point margin. 1/

https://twitter.com/WajahatAli/status/1805831061705810006

Please don't misunderstand me. Citizens United and the flood of unaccountable dark money it injected into our politics was one of the most damaging, distorting decisions inflicted on our democracy by a bought and paid for SCOTUS majority we're only now beginning to recognize. 2/

A lot of otherwise very sharp people are saying "I can't believe the defense called Costello!"

The defense didn't call Costello. Trump did.

The defense did finally manage to get it through Trump's thick skull he couldn't take the stand without 1 of 3 equally bad outcomes. 1/ 1) Self incrimination
2) Contempt of Court charge
3) Perjury charge

There was no other possible outcome. I sincerely doubt Trump would've made it through his own defense questions, much less cross examination. He's just too stupid, arrogant, and combative. 2/

An open letter to the "Genocide Joe" crowd:

Biden is not the President of Israel or CiC of the IDF. He doesn't control Israeli foreign policy nor its military.

The man who does, Bibi Netanyahu, is a far-right fascist actively hurting Biden and trying to elect Donald Trump. 1/ Israel is a major developer, manufacturer, and exporter of weapons in its own right. They are fully capable of standing on their own in a limited engagement like the Gaza invasion, and Bibi has said he would do exactly that if need be. 2/

The problem isn't ICE cars vs EV cars.

The problem is cars, period.

EVs are only /marginally/ better for the environment than gas or diesel. But mining their lithium, shipping ore for refinement, shipping again to make batteries, shipping AGAIN to the EV factory... 1/ ...refining the steel and AL for their bodies, all creates a CO² deficit the EV has to "work off" before it's truly carbon neutral. This deficit means the average EV has to be in the fleet for nearly ten years before working off its carbon debt. Only then is it a net positive. 2/

Multiple things are true at once:
-Hamas is a terrorist org
-Netanyahu is guilty of war crimes
-Neither are interested in peace or helping their people
-Student protests have been infiltrated by outside agitators
-Police responses have needlessly escalated a tense situation. 1/ -Many protestors have turned explicitly pro-Hamas and echo their anti-semitic rhetoric.
-Israel and the IDF are worsening the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
-The only people benefiting politically are Hamas, Netanyahu, and Putin, at the expense of democracy and Biden. 2/

Welcome to SCOTUS with an enforceable Code of Ethics;

Amy Coney Barrett: I was nominated by a man who's on criminal trial for stealing the 2016 election via fraud and is the defendant in this immunity case. It's not clear my appointment was even legitimate. I must recuse. 1/ Gorsuch: Ditto

Kavanagh: Samesies and also that same guy's FBI threw over 1,200 tips about my sexual misconduct into the circular file during my nomination process, and ignored the fact someone paid off $200k of my credit card debt, my mortgage, and country club membership. 2/

To all the accelerationists trying to engineer a Biden loss so they get a "better" Dem after we "get through" a 2nd Trump term.

If Trump takes office again, there won't be another Democrat, because there won't be another election, you vacuous imbeciles.

J6th was 3 YEARS AGO. 1/

https://twitter.com/AngelliAngelo/status/1764098155896037409

It's not some obscure historical event confined to the sands of time, fallen from living memory. It JUST FUCKING HAPPENED. We all just lived through it.

How did you forget already? The man has said he will be a dictator on Day 1 and argues the right to murder his rivals. 2/

What the hell happened in New Hampshire last night? A thread.

The New Hampshire primary yesterday is a tale of two very different 54s.

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump received 54% of their state party primary votes. But how they got there couldn't be more different. 1/

Indeed, both results were historic in very different ways, revealing a great deal about the state of the race.

Let's start with Biden. This election cycle, the DNC ditched Iowa as the 1st in the Nation state it had traditionally been. Instead, the party wanted SC to go 1st. 2/

Spoke with a younger friend today who thought Danny DeVito got his big break with "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and it made me realize just how much fucking work we have to do to get Gen Z caught up on Israel/Palestine and, well, literally every other goddamned thing. This is not a stupid friend, btw. He's a studied poet. It just opened my eyes to how much of what we perceive as "common knowledge" is a moving window.

That window leaves the people who come after us blind to the past just as much as it leaves us behind in the present.

Another day, another round of politically charged SWATTings and bomb threats against politicians and gov buildings.

And another round of incredulous folks asking "Why can't they catch these people?"

Well, after 46 times, we might be the most SWATTed house in the country. 1/

https://twitter.com/GabrielSterling/status/1742693675954774120

We've therefore had to learn more about SWATTing as a tactic, how it's executed, and the types of people behind it than we ever cared to know.

But for concerned citizens, journalists, and politicos put there with questions about SWATTing, here's a primer, an FAQ. 2/

This bold attack on the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea by Ukraine says several important things about the state of the war.

The missiles that carried this out were most likely Anglo/French Storm Shadow cruise missile air launched by, most likely, Ukranian Su-24 strike bombers. 1/

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1739595465530683833

There was a Russian S-400 AAA battery on the other side of the bay from this landing ship, their most advanced anti-air system. The Storm Shadows were launched from near their max operational range and still penetrated with ease. 2/

A lot of ink has been spilled over the rise of a new alliance of Authoritarian states including Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea. Let's call it CRINK. This new Axis of Assholes is being portrayed as ascendant and emboldened to challenge the West.

I have a different take. 1/ Authoritarianism, fascism, it doesn't emerge from prosperity and stability, but from a demand for it. A population turning to strongmen to solve their domestic political problems is already unstable. That doesn't have to mean economic instability. Look at 2016 here. 2/

I feel like I need to expand a bit on the true scope of the operational impact the unilateral decision by Elon Musk to protect the Russian Black Sea fleet from attack has had on the war.

First, you need to understand the role of modern naval warships. Thread 1/

https://twitter.com/stealthygeek/status/1699996671440990360

A modern naval frigate, destroyer, or cruiser isn't just optimized to fight other ships or submarines on the water as they were in WW:II. They are multi-role vessels that can wage war on the ground, in the air, or on the seas.

Long gone are the days of big gun battleships. 2/

This is a big damned deal. The Ukranian counteroffensive has broken through the primary line of Russian defenses and are approaching Robotyne. This whole green and blue area represents a strategic breakthrough. Reports are the RU units on defense have no reserves. 1/

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1695482283568890242

Ukraine's counterpunch has been bogged down chiefly by lack of air support and minefields which need to be cleared while under artillery fire before they can advance. RU forces had all winter and spring to build these defenses, but the first line is breached now. 2/

Here's what I think is happening in GA right now.

Trump spent the weekend attacking the DA, witnesses, judges, everyone. They expected grand jury testimony to take two days, but now with Trump intimidating witnesses they decided to run a hurry up offense and knock it out. 1/ They don't want it to bleed into tomorrow and give him more time to witness tamper and whip up his crazies who might turn up in the morning in response to anything he says tonight. Too much risk. So they're staying in session and will vote out a true bill today. 2/

This man was killed in a shoot out today as the FBI tried to arrest him for threatening President Biden hours before he visited UT.

He's already being labeled a "lone wolf" by media.

He was not. He was part of an extensive network of people radicalized by rightwing propaganda. These people don't exist in a vacuum, and they don't act without orders. A vast rightwing political machine fills their blank heads with disinformation, makes it as easy as possible to acquire massive arsenals of weapons, and spins them up to attack their perceived enemies.