Erik Loomis
@ErikLoomis
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Labor historian. 1st Gen. Receipt keeper of American evil, then & now. Academic union thug. Beer. Music. Energy is my currency.
Providence, RI
Joined November 2008
Sigh--it is supposed to give Republicans who don't like Trump permission to vote for Harris. This is a good thing. This is what candidates do who want to win. Not everything has to excite the left, who after all are not exactly the most reliable part of the Democratic coalition.
who is this for. who is this supposed to excite.
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If Trump loses, he is 100% still the head of the Republican Party and far and away the most likely 2028 Republican nominee, if he is still alive.
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This Harris-Walz campaign has really figured out how to fight Trumpism and it's so obvious but yet took a long time to get to it: . You make fun of it.
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I maintain the problem leftists face is thinking their views are popular.
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If your politics require you to say #STFUHillary on June 6, 2020, the problem is with you.
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Anyone so heavily invested in this Warren/Bernie thing to the point of attacking the other needs step away from the internet, go outside, take a walk, and realize that either would be the farthest left Democratic president since FDR if not more so.
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Donna Reed was a leader in both the anti-Vietnam and anti-nuclear movements.
Trump complains about tough questions from two standout women correspondents, @PaulaReidCBS & @weijia, and suggests they should act more like ‘50s housewives. “It wasn’t Donna Reed, I can tell you that,” he said, referring to TV housewife actress.
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Greek literature, a field without homosexuality.
This is great news. We've hired the classicist Spencer Klavan to teach at New College of Florida. Goodbye gender studies; hello, Greek literature.
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WOW!!! A friend who is a Teamsters member sent me this letter from Teamsters VP John Palmer absolutely lambasting Teamsters President Sean O'Brien for meeting with Donald Trump. You don't see this kind of internal dissension coming out in the public very often!!
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100%, this is the moment when American democracy began to die.
A 5-4, unsigned, good-for-this-case-only decision handed down by justices who owed their jobs directly, or indirectly to the father of the guy they handed the presidency to. THAT is when the modern Supreme Court decided "fuck it, we're just gonna do what we want, screw democracy"
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Time for my annual reminder of the greatest advertisement in American history.
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I mean, honestly, if you are a leftist, what more do you want the Democratic Party to do? President walked a picket line. Speaker after speaker railing against corporate greed and monopoly. Going on the attack politically. All in on defending abortion. Like, this is good!.
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This is arguably the most pro-union public statement by a president in support of unions in the entirety of American history.
Workers in Alabama – and all across America – are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace. It’s a vitally important choice – one that should be made without intimidation or threats by employers. Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union.
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One major problem the modern left has vis-a-vis Democrats is thinking they are the "base." . But they are not. The base are the people who vote and work for Democrats with great excitement every single election. Having to convince you to vote for Democrats means you aren't it.
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This should have been the headline of every newspaper every day for the last 150 years.
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If you ever wondered how you'd respond to the rise of Nazi Germany, the answer is whatever you are doing right now.
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This Day in Labor History: April 9, 1865. Robert E. Lee surrenders, effectively ending 4 years of Treason on Defense of Slavery. Big part of the reason it failed is that slaves engaged in a general strike, walking away from the plantations. Let's talk about this.
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BIDEN LITERALLY ENDED A FOREVER WAR AND THE LEFT DOESN'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK BECAUSE IT DOESN'T ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT FOREIGN POLICY!.
@RelentlessYapp @ErikLoomis once again we see that getting out of Afghanistan, which was/is *way* more consequential than anything he's done or hasn't since 10/7, did him literally no good at all 🤷♂️.
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I cannot overstate how important this is. Unions have looked to organize the South for a century. They never really succeeded. Oh, here and there, they'd win something. But the mainstream of southern factories? No. This is HUGE. A gigantic victory for the UAW!!!!!.
I'VE SEEN ENOUGH. with roughly 50% of all possible votes in, UAW holds an insurmountable lead which would either require a massive tallying error or statistically improbable remaining vote share to flip. Vw workers voted #UnionYes to join @UAW.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg chose to make her death a political issue by refusing to retire. Her legacy is permanently tarnished for not stepping down in 2013. Love her, her job is not to inspire you. It's to keep abortion legal. And she probably failed.
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Biden is the first president ever to walk a picket line, while Trump appointed 3 Supreme Court justices who vote against unions in every single case. But I guess the American left doesn't actually care about unions.
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This is 100000% not what is happening here.
Part of what could be going on here is that the Teamsters are trying to organize Amazon and Uber and Harris is perceived of as tight with those two.
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My Civil War class for the spring is full. Always love getting a lot of dudes in a class ready to learn about battles when in fact they are going to learn about slavery and the Black freedom struggle.
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There's always a reason these people can't vote for a Democrat. Always. Every single election of my lifetime.
I would love to be able to disagree with this and join the party etc. But I can't because @natashalennard is absolutely right about liberal silence around an ongoing genocide that is armed, funded and diplomatically shielded by the Biden administration and most of Washington.
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Joe Biden voted against Clarence Thomas' confirmation to the Supreme Court.
I love the idea that the guy who helped Clarence Thomas get confirmed is gonna save us from conservative court packing.
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There are many disturbing things in this absurd Bernie-Warren "fight." One of them is that people are attacking the other like they are the enemy. As if either can ever ever ever win the general without the supporters of the other. What world are people living on?.
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This would be a lot more accurate with a colon instead of a period.
The big lie. We all support coverage for preexisting conditions.
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Employers and their lackeys have lied about the effect of the minimum wage ever since it was established in 1938.
Seattle's $15 minimum wage was supposed to crush hiring. Look at what happened instead
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The problem is that Chapo Traphouse's thing was also Hating Democrats!.
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Just fucking own what happens when you don't vote for Biden. If you don't want to, fine, but quit the goddamn whining. Grow up and own the consequences. Are you 9?.
@ErikLoomis keep shaming people into voting for biden, that's a winning strategy.
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Why is every Democrat not supporting her? She’s so outpacing the field in terms of ideas.
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Unlike elitist Glenn Greenwald, I grew up working class, son of a plywood mill worker and 1st generation college graduate. And unlike Glenn, I know that sexually harassing girls in high school is not part and parcel of working class culture.
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This Day in Labor History: December 28, 1973. Astronauts at Skylab go on strike in space! Yes, space has a labor history! Let's talk about this unusual strike.
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And if we don't re-elect Biden, it all turns to dust. Say what you will about Biden, his NLRB totally slaps. Trump appointed Antonin Scalia's idiot son as Secretary of Labor. If you claim to care about workers, you have to vote Biden.
@ErikLoomis Seems like we have a perfect storm of high public support, workers wanting to unionize, aggressive leadership & a friendly admin/NLRB.
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Remember, your task for today is to honor the Union dead. Not those people who committed treason in defense of slavery.
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Actually seeing 1968 as a positive for either the nation, the Democratic Party, or even the left itself shows an utter and complete ignorance about the past. And the present.
We may not be able to get Biden to change course, but with enough angry people outside the convention center we can make the DNC a complete political disaster for his campaign.
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Thoughts and prayers.
Hearing about huge layoffs at NRA HQ in Fairfax. One employee is telling me it was “everyone”. That might be overstated but this apparently is massive folks.
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Let's remember that the reason there are 2 Dakotas is that Republicans responded to losing in 1884 by fixing the game after they won power back in 1888.
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The responses to AOC on saying a nice thing about Elizabeth Warren sum up every reason why people think online Sanders supporters are just awful. These people seem to forget that even if Bernie was president, the closest person to him in the Senate would be Elizabeth Warren.
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Two thoughts: 1) All the liberals who were tut-tuting the protestors at Carlson's house were played like violins and should feel shame and look inward at their reactions. 2) Why would anyone ever take what Tucker Carlson says as face value? This is why Republicans win.
Many people, including myself, took Tucker Carlson's account of a protest at his house at face value. That was a mistake. This is an important thread.
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One of my favorite sites in America: Jefferson Davis' prison cell.
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This Day in Labor History: December 1, 1868. A young black former Union soldier named John Henry was among a group of convicts sent from Richmond to West Virginia to blast a railroad tunnel, where he would soon die. Let's talk about the real John Henry, the man of legend!
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Remember that through the entire history of labor law, employers have said this kind of thing for every proposed law--banning child labor, the minimum wage, basic safety standards, unionization, etc. And it's always---ALWAYS--a complete lie.
Of all the bad ideas before Congress, The PRO Act is among the most odious. If it passes, 70,000,000 independent contractors across the country will lose their independent status. And thousands of small businesses that can’t hire full time employees will be forced to close.
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Third party voters are morons who intentionally do not understand the American political system.
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Warren would make the best president by a country mile over any other contender, including all those that have dropped out. Combination of extreme competence, vision of fighting the structural problems in our politics, and left-liberal politics is great.
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What kills me about a lifetime of people not voting for Democrats because of the given issue of the election cycle is the complete lack of introspection over whether such a strategy has ever accomplished anything at all.
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This Day in Labor History: June 15, 1990. The Los Angeles Police Department beats 400 striking janitors in LA. Let's talk about the Justice for Janitors movement and why it is so critical for us today!
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In 1934, FDR told the NAACP he would do nothing to fight for anti-lynching legislation because it would destroy the entire New Deal. Knowing this, W.E.B. DuBois voted for FDR 4 times. But modern leftists can't learn anything from this except they probably think DuBois sucks.
I was really hoping Kamala would force some change in course on Gaza, and I was willing to be called all sorts of names by people I agree with for saying so. Well, they were right, my hopes seem to have been in vain, and I can't see participating in the election as it stands.
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For younger lefties who think the Democratic Party sucks today, you have no idea how abjectly horrible it was 20 years ago. It is so, so, so much better today than in the early 2000s.
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If you've never read Jourdon Anderson's letter to his old master, a masterpiece kiss off and possibly the single greatest document in American history, treat yourself on this, Crushing Treason in Defense of Slavery Day.
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I really can't believe how many people I am hearing say that this is it for Trump if he loses again. Why would anyone believe that?.
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I know this liberal would be owned. Oh please, don't do this.
NEW POLL: 64 percent of GOP voters say they would join a Trump-led new party
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The number of people I've seen--including several I really respect--take a New York Post story that is completely bogus seriously is depressing. When "hating libs" is your politics and thus you take Republican propaganda as automatic truth, you need to be thinking about things.
Democrats knew the entire time that this would be Trump’s final move, and that this would roughly be how it rolls out. If there does turn out to be a ton more that is legit and credible, they can blame Russia all they want, but they’ll have themselves to blame for walking into it.
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The idea that this is even a question is absurd and yet another sign of how the elite media refuses to recognize what the Republican Party has become.
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This Day in Labor History: December 28, 1973. The crew of Skylab goes on strike. That's right--space strike! Let's talk about the labor history of outer space!!!!
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If Trump wins after locking Latino babies in cages because of Latino votes, it's going to be a hell of a thing to try and comprehend.
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As an academic, I have so much fucking power. Not enough to make my students do the reading, but enough to control American culture.
Democratic elected officials have definitely been less polarized than Republican ones, that's absolutely correct. But a lot of the left's power comes through unelected elite institutions: the media and academia at a bare minimum.
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At least they are finally ending the pretense that their love of guns is anything more than an excuse for treason.
The Second Amendment is not about hunting, recreation, or sports. The Second Amendment is about the ability to maintain, within the citizenry, an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary. I hope it never does.
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Every liberal who saw Vance as their White Working Class Explainer after the 2016 election has a lot of soul searching to do about how they engage in media, how they think about conservatism, and how they don't talk to actual working class people. Vance is and was a fascist.
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I see "Fascism" now means "Things Democrats Do That I Don't Like." Because you can criticize Biden in many ways, but the idea that he is a fascist is ahistorical nonsense and also places the person who says it partly responsible for what Trump is about to do if he wins.
Biden is already a dictator, folks. Fascism is already here under Biden. Please pay attention to how popular will is being completely ignored because Biden doesn’t give af what the public thinks if he can maintain his grip on power.
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What I am trying to figure out is how Freddie DeBoer--a man who has admitted to accusing someone he disagreed with on the internet of sexual assault to get back at him--is continued to allow to write at major publications? . I actually know the answer--he hates Democrats.
How the most promising leftist of her generation lost her political identity.
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If Harris is really up 5 in Maine's Republican district, that would really mean a lot more than just the 1 additional electoral vote.
2024 #ME02 GE:. Harris 52% (+5).Trump 47%. Harris 49% (+5).Trump 44%.Kennedy 2%.Stein 1%.Oliver 1%.West 0%. @UNHSurveyCenter, 432 LV, 8/15-19.
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Pretty clear that an anecdote based on one old white conservative totally rewrites the entire 2020 narrative and that the only way Democrats can win is to run the skull of Andrew Jackson's dead body.
My 87 yr-old dad is a lifelong Republican (writes $100 checks to GOP orgs) who left POTUS blank in 2016. Couldn't vote for either. Says if Dems run Liz Warren he will sit it out again. However, he WOULD/COULD vote for @JoeBiden. Let that sink in. It's very useful information.
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The thing to remember about Senators is that many of them are very stupid people, much less smart than you are.
Barrasso says on the floor that under the Green New Deal people would no longer be able to buy ice cream because its made out of milk and that requires cows….
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That is extremely depressing. It will pull the Senate to the right. This race should be getting a lot more attention from the left than it is. Markey is excellent. Kennedy is a name, a head of hair, and a neoliberal lobbyist's dream.
Massachusetts Senate - Democratic Primary:.Joe Kennedy 58% (+16).Ed Markey 42%. @EmersonPolling/@7News 5/5-6.
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I have said this for years--the left CANNOT win without black voters. It is not possible. This is brutal.
Black voters in Virginia via preliminary @CNN exit polls:. Biden 63% (!).Sanders 18%.Bloomberg 10%.Warren 7%.Klobuchar 1%.Steyer 1%.
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I can't really blame students for being careless about COVID. They have spent 18-22 years being told to be selfish. This is a central point of American culture--be selfish, be an individual, live your best life. You can't teach that for generations and then expect to turn it off.
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Unions are good even for non-union workers.
"Toyota is raising the wages of its factory workers — all of them non-unionized — after the UAW strikes at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis culminated in pay hikes for unionized employees."
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People--what athletes are doing today is a STRIKE. A boycott is a refusal to purchase a product. Athletes are withholding their labor in solidarity with Daniel Blake and those fighting for racial justice. Not even close to the same thing as a boycott.
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This may be an unpopular opinion, but banning alcohol on flights entirely would probably be a very good thing.
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Lol.
.@BillOReilly isn't allowing his son to attend @universityofri due to the radical positions of one of their professors. @ErikLoomis has called for the death of the @NRA Chairman, celebrated the execution of a Trump supporter, & more.
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This Day in Labor History: May 19, 1920. The Matewan Massacre took place in the small town of Matewan, West Virginia. This key event in the coal wars later became famous because of the excellent John Sayles movie. Let's talk about the real story!
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Biden's in, now let's get with the real agenda: . 1) Piss Christ goes up in the National Gallery.2) Christmas, abolished.3) Chick Fil A is forced to open at Sunday.4) Tacos on every corner.5) Boys and girls forced to wear each other's clothes starting in 1st grade. What else?.
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This is why the media has to report on the Republican Party as they are--extremists. But they just can't do it. They won't call them out for what they are. There always has to be a both sides paradigm, no matter how destructive and crazy Republicans get.
I have minimal capacity to understand how we are talking about whether or not to keep the United Postal Service running.
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This Day in Labor History: November 19, 1915. Utah executes the IWW organizer and songwriter Joe Hill for a murder he did not commit. Let's talk about this iconic labor martyr!
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The "logic" here, such as it is, is thus that 400,000 people in North Dakota are thus competent enough to dictate to 9 million people in Los Angeles County what the government should look like. This my friends is how white supremacists came to dominate the American government.
Chaser: 9 million people in Los Angeles county arent competent enough to legislate for farm communities in Iowa. Federalism is good because it gives a representative voice. Representation is the goal of free government, not raw majoritarianism.
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This Day in Labor History: July 28, 1933. The powers of Homestead, PA tried to stop Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins from giving a speech in the town. So she marched to the post office and gave it on federal property! Let's talk about this tough woman!
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This Day in Labor History: April 17, 1905. The Supreme Court issues its hideous decision in Lochner v. New York, overturning a law limiting the hours of bakers to 60 a week. This decision is the ultimate in the conservative belief that workers have zero rights at all. Like today.
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Say hello to George Thomas, the Rock of Chickamauga, a southerner who refused to commit treason in defense of slavery and a very real American hero
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Waiting for Walker Bragman to say these uber-rich people acted this way because of the poverty neoliberalism has caused them.
Missouri governor says he'll pardon St. Louis couple who pointed guns at protesters after indictment
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Yeah, I mean, once Republicans figured out COVID was going to affect people of color and the poor disproportionately, they stopped caring about doing anything about it.
Trump is objectively pro-Covid.
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Greenwald being anti-fighting COVID really gives away the game as to his true politics.
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All the focus on replacing Pelosi, who is actually good at her job, is deeply mistaken. We should focusing on replacing Schumer, who is bad at his job.
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Am I amused that Jacobin bought fake Twitter followers to promote its brand, the most capitalist move imaginable? Yes, yes I am.
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This Day in Labor History: April 9, 1865. The traitor in defense of slavery Robert E. Lee surrenders, ending the Civil War. Let's talk about how slaves freed themselves and created this great day.
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The performative left will always find a reason why these people suck and they are not going to vote. It's very frustrating in the face of this amazing shift to the left. This is the farthest left the Democratic Party has been in my lifetime.
I think Shawn Fain and AOC speaking in prime time at the DNC reflects a massive shift in American politics that the left should be excited about
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Pat Robertson is dead and every decent American is glad of it. Here's my obituary of this monster.
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The way that leftists will immediately turn on anyone they get elected is not to their credit.
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Beltway media realizes that THIS Republican they loved is actually awful, but will learn nothing about the next Republican Daddy that they want to love so so so bad.
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For those of you watching this Gilded Age show, let me recommend a show about the Gilded Age that is actually good and also gets into some of the key issues of the era. That show is Deadwood.
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Given how the Marshall Plan was the greatest foreign policy success in American history, that we don't repeat it in all sorts of ways always baffles me.
I think there is every reason for the US to basically treat global vaccination as our absolute key global priority, a spare-no-expense, war-footing kind of undertaking.
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Remember, a sizable minority of southern-born officers DID NOT commit treason in defense of slavery in 1861. The idea that it was automatic for them to choose state over nation is a post-Reconstruction white supremacist myth.
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Yesterday was Confederate Surrender Day. So today is the anniversary of when Southerners started claiming the war wasn't about slavery.
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Seeing some people saying that the NBA players shouldn't return to the court. This is just flat out wrong. The point of a strike is to win gains. They won those gains. If they don't return now, they lose all their power. They can strike again for more goals if they choose.
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