Matt Steinglass, quitting this fascist platform
@mattsteinglass
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Europe correspondent at the Economist. @mattsteinglass .bsky.social is where I mostly post now. Almost done with Musk’s crap platform after his latest idiocy
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Pinned Tweet
Wrote about how debates over enlarging the EU raise the impossibility of defining exactly what “Europe” is—and why that isn’t actually a problem. from
@TheEconomist
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My son just suggested a foundation to bring young tortoises to important events so that 150 years later people can say “this tortoise witnessed Biden’s inauguration” etc
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A theory about why Putin invaded Ukraine that circulates in the anti-corruption community is that it was triggered by Ukraine's steady sidelining of the corrupt oligarchs and power structures which Russia counted on to surreptitiously control the country. 1/
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Fantastic video—bridge in Vladivostok is closed to pedestrians. Locals try to circumvent this by disguising themselves as a bus
Золотой мост во Владивостоке закрыт для пешеходов, но эти парни нашли почти идеальный способ обойти запрет (спойлер: охрана моста это не заценила)
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Sorry: is Trump saying his university's fraud was actually much bigger than $25m?
I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award because as President I have to focus on our country.
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The single biggest contribution ever to slowing climate change was the collapse of the Soviet Union
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Even in catastrophic storm conditions, the Dutch remain neat and orderly.
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I can attest that Trump is right about the exploding trees here in Europe -- a constant worry as we bike around carrying baguettes and being socialist
"In Europe they have forest cities ... they don't have fires like this, and they have more explosive trees ... they maintain their fire" -- Trump on the link between climate change and wildfires
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Brexit negotiations, the Dutch view
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But if you think of it as a mob hit to intimidate states from exiting the protection racket that delivers corrupt rent streams to Russia's ruling kleptocrats, then it at least made sense--until Ukraine fought back. 14/14
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A telling event here was the sanctioning of pro-Russian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk in February, seizure of his oil pipeline and other businesses and banning of his three TV stations. Russia invaded 5 days later. 2/
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@eclecticbrotha
@KevinMKruse
@nilgirian
@yashar
@BLEXIT
@RealCandaceO
I don’t know, I’m inclined to think a professional historian tweeting under his own name is less authoritative than Space Pirate Ninja Assassin
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The corruption frame isn't the only way to think of what Russia was trying to accomplish by invading Ukraine. But it's a very helpful paradigm, and in my view the only one that clearly makes sense on its own terms. 3/
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A good way to think about it is to imagine Putin as Tony Soprano. He has a racket that extracts wealth from a lot of businesses in the region he controls through a combination of longstanding relationships and the threat of force. 4/
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I was equivocal on student loan relief. But Republicans’ nasty condescending tone has turned me into a woke socialist. This is your fault, Tucker
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As a former
#Arthur
writer, I can only say: this is exactly the show we were trying to write
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Apart from the words "SKIN HEAD" tattooed on the suspect's eyebrows, that is
http://t.co/uplrmbyZWe
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But then Maidan happened, and Ukraine started to turn away. It shifted from the kleptocratic Russian model and towards the rule-of-law-governed EU. 8/
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The Soviets built Ukraine’s subways deep in order to double as bomb shelters. They probably didn’t anticipate which direction the bombs would end up coming from.
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This is the way Putin's regime operates inside Russia: it seizes or threatens all the country's major businesses, especially in the energy sector, and awards them to trusted cronies, while skimming off a huge amount of vigorish.* 5/
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P.S. for a more detailed explanation of the anti-corruption paradigm and how it describes Ukraine's recent history, the new USAID "Dekleptification Guide" is terrific. 15/14
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Anyway, the point is that if you think about Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an old-fashioned attempt at territorial conquest, it makes no sense. States don't gain power by conquering territory anymore, this isn't the 18th or 19th century. 13/
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Unfortunately it turns out the grocery clerks are packing shotguns and Tony's soldiers, who were overconfident, get shot up and retreat. Now Tony has worse problems: he's lost the grocery chain and he looks weak. 12/
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Tony Soprano obviously cannot tolerate this. It's not just the loss of revenue: it's that letting it go unpunished tells everybody else who's paying him protection money that they can leave, too. 10/
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For a long time this was how Russia's control of Ukraine worked too. Kleptocratic Russia-friendly networks headed by oligarchs ensured that the gains from corruption in Ukraine flowed to Russia or to people Russia was happy with. 7/
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(*Interestingly "vigorish" comes from the Russian "vygrish" or "winnings", it seems to have been an Odessa mafia term.) 6/
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In the Sopranos analogy, a business, let's say a chain of groceries, at the edge of his territory decided they were going to stop paying protection and start trusting the police. 9/
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Ik vind onze oosterburen heel erg passief-agressief. Steeds weer Nederlandse IC-patiënten opnemen en coalitieakkoorden bereiken. Alsof ze de hele tijd moeten bewijzen dat ze beter zijn
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I would like to join the chorus of
@HJoyceGender
’s numerous Jewish colleagues in saying that this is utterly ludicrous.
I see a number of people are accusing me of antisemitism. This is profoundly untrue, hurtful and damaging. I will give people who have tweeted such accusations 48 hours to delete their tweets. If this isn't done I will consider legal action.
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@francis_scarr
If drafted, I will absolute fall asleep next to the runway, wake up after everyone is gone and wander off vaguely in the direction of Alaska
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It’s impossible for a press organ in Russia to openly oppose the war. So Kommersant prints a page of quotes from great figures (Tolstoy, Mayakovsky, Hugo, Einstein) condemning war as such.
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@Popehat
@mtgreenee
It does get at the disturbing truth that reactionary populists don't care about passing legislation useful to the people who voted for them. They just want to make sure their Twitter fights go viral.
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Highly considerate of the aliens to appear mostly near US naval air bases and in a fashion that can almost, but not fully, be detected by fighter jets' radar and infrared
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So Tony decides to hit the groceries, take out the owner and ensure a more pliable one is installed, to send a message to anybody else who might get ideas. 11/
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The reason America has 300,000km of highways and 1200km of subways is that you can't build a trillion-dollar industry on conning people into taking out loans to buy the coolest new subway car.
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I generally read Politico as an outlet I can trust to report the sense of EU politics. This distorted, tendentious Daily Mail-style bs misconstrual of Castex’s letter calls that into question.
NEW: Huge escalation of French fishing row tonight
Extraordinary letter from French PM Jean Castex to European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen obtained by POLITICO
France tells Brussels it must demonstrate that Britain has been damaged by leaving the EU
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Yet he may have inflicted enough damage that his other businesses hesitate to leave; who needs the trouble? Similarly, Ukraine's economy has shrunk by a third. 13/
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So, the couch arrived missing its feet. won’t send me the feet. But they will ship me an entire new couch from which I can take out the feet, then return the rest of the couch. Wait time 14-16 weeks
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@RezaC1
I agree with you that building apartment complexes near train stations is a great idea but it seems unnecessary for you to dox these house owners and post their financial data
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Oh for Christ's sake. I was barely managing as it is.
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@charles_gaba
“We developed a metric to show which states performed worst on—“
“Mississippi and Alabama.”
“How did you know that when I haven’t said what the—“
“Mississippi and Alabama.”
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It’s five days before the election and the Dutch media have decided to again put the populist right on TV all the time, a dynamic which we already know leads to meaningless bs yelling matches and higher populist vote share. I thought they’d grown out of this.
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Facebook is objectively pro-Republican
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@CarlaHSands
In 2019 under Trump US households spent 17% of their income on transportation. In 2018 Danish households spent 12.5% of their income on transportation. They bike and take the train because they can. Americans can’t.
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Ben Shapiro's schtick here is actually important. Sneering at the idea that there is a Constitutional right to things is the way majorities guard the government's bias towards themselves. To explain: 1/7
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Remember when preventing creepy men from walking into women's changing rooms was a GOP gender-panic talking point?
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This is kind of remarkable. The UK’s leading Brexit MP spends 3 mornings a week working at a hedge fund where he owns more than 15%, which is expanding investments in Ireland and elsewhere just as Brexit starts to threaten the City
Rees-Mogg's investment outfit opens a *second* Irish fund. Honestly I didn't think this venal, cynical man could get more hypocritical:
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Putin's excuse for invading Ukraine: the West was pouring weapons into Ukraine, our neighbors were joining NATO. In case it needs saying, these are lies that reverse the order of cause and effect
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An ABC correspondent masterfully figuring out how to report on an anti-war protest without using the banned word "war". In Imperial & Soviet Russia this was called "Aesopian language": saying it without literally saying it.
The security presence in Moscow is extraordinary. But there are groups of people here, quietly making their presence known. Not shouting or screaming in protest. Just walking. Eerie.
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@DedWhaleson
@RoelSchrein
1. De wet is de wet. Het zijn rechters die de wet interpreteren; daarover wordt niet gestemd.
2. Europese wetten kunnen niet weggestemd worden door 20% van de kiezers in een klein land.
3. Je kan stemmen zo lang je wil, maar ammoniak blijft ammoniak.
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Looked at this way, it's not exactly that diversity is the strength. It's that building a system that welcomes diversity, instead of wasting energy on enforced conformity, allows you to unleash the energy of everybody who wants to come. And that's what makes America great. /end
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Full transparency: I am hiding things from you
Full transparency: I'm deleting old tweets. Past views evolved & shouldn't be a distraction. I serve
@POTUS
agenda & that's all that matters
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Apologies, I got the timeline claim made by anti-corruption folks confused. The point was that the first deployment in Putin's building in February 2021 came 2 days after the sanctioning of Medvedchuk:
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Interesting how Ukraine war is fraying relations between the populist allies Poland and Hungary. Orban fighting EU sanctions on RU energy while Morawiecki and Kaczynski visit Kyiv. No PiS presence at the pro-Fidesz "peace march" yesterday in Budapest.
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No, Europe solved this by mostly never following through on the 1950s fantasies of car culture: not tearing down its trams and trains, and making new development accessible via public transit. Why it's so hard for DC to rebuild the 1920 Connecticut Ave trolley line...beats me.
Europe has neatly solved this problem by being really dense and having a lot of streets that were constructed centuries ago. America neglected to size its urban centers to the span of a donkey's hind-quarters, so it's going to be harder to get folks out of cars.
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@DavidSacks
"A quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing." -- Neville Chamberlain, 1938
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In other news, Obamacare still works
New analysis lost in the blizzard of news Friday: Insurer profits are high in the ACA marketplace. That's why average benchmark premiums are decreasing in 2019. If not for actions by the Trump administration and Congress, they'd be decreasing even more.
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@oryxspioenkop
This new “I’m not seeing any footage of the war” disinfo narrative is the craziest tack I can imagine. Very good Big Lie, it’s so immense it baffles the response.
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Just putting a marker here because it's a work day but: this is wrong, Tsarist Russia was industrializing fast and the 1905 revolution could have started a long road to constitutional monarchy. WW1 and the October Revolution were unremediated tragic disasters.
The Soviet Union was shitty in many ways, but the fact that it managed to reverse Russia's multi-century decline for even a few decades is genuinely impressive
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@AlexKokcharov
@ArtyomLukin
Also, why is he praising Putin for addressing the Bundestag in German and dissing Zelensky for addressing Congress in English? It’s the same thing!
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@MehreenKhn
@LorcanRK
Am I allowed to RT to this tweet, or would that now be violating your copyright on the photo of the electronic vote-tally screen?
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@francis_scarr
When you have to spend all day pretending you’re not losing a war, and decide to take out your frustration on the social-media intern
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@DavidSacks
@AlexBerenson
The problem is that you are acting like interest-bearing, fully insured deposit accounts come from God. If you want every account in the US to be fully insured above $250k, people/businesses with more than $250k in the bank will have to pay for that.
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It suddenly makes sense that MC Escher was Dutch
Dutch Supreme Court: No referendum allowed on law retracting recently-introduced law allowing referendums on new laws.
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Dutch “free-thinker” tells pro-EU Ukrainians, who are about to be tortured and disappeared, that they are getting what they deserve. Nice
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The counterintuitive answer starts by pointing out that Tucker Carlson has the question upside down (as usual). It doesn't take effort to make societies diverse, it takes effort to keep them monocultural. /3
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Good point. OTOH, David Frum wrote the speech in which George W Bush referred to Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil", probably the single most disastrous misapplication of a WW2 analogy ever
As I endlessly repeat, one of the reasons to study history is to furnish your mind with a wider inventory of analogies than everything = Third Reich
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In Schalkwijk, a neighborhood across town from me, anti-curfew rioters hit a journalist in the head with a brick. Reports of attacks on police and looting.
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I’m sorry but this is utterly terrifying. I don’t care that it clearly won’t work. That supposedly sane and responsible adults can utter this madness in public is horrifying.
"We will not be intimidated...We are going to clean this mess up now. President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it. And we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who vote for freedom."—Sidney Powell
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Listen, I feel silly RTing my own tweet but I get the sense that people are systematically misunderstanding what stories are the most important right now. It's this story: nationalist populism and corruption. Hand in glove, all over the world.
My piece this week: Corrupt ruling classes are tormented by fear that they may face justice. That's why Bulgarian luxury real-estate merchants tell their clients they're Christian patriots, and that their penthouses will keep them safe.
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I think "credible threats to kill Antifa" outweighs "baseless rumors of Antifa throwing cement-laced milkshakes", but the latter gets a mainstream media moment and the former gets a few tweets from smart analysts
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“What if we used anti-Semitism but never said the word ‘Jew’?”
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It appears Dutch anti-Muslim pol Geert Wilders had $200k in legal costs in his hate-speech trial picked up by a far-right US foundation, and didn’t declare it as a contribution. Could be a big deal in election March 17.
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@N3on_Online
@atrupar
Person who graduated 7th grade and watched “Cosmos” here, I can confirm this
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I crossed from Ukraine to Poland 2 hours ago. Grain cars are stacked up at the border. Yesterday Poland announced it is blocking grain, veg oil etc imports from Ukraine to protect its farmers. 1/3
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I'm starting to think one reason the Zwarte Piet argument has such purchase is that Dutch are peculiarly insistent on seeing themselves as correct. The accusation that you've done something improper, which in some countries is met with a quick "sorry", sparks more anger here.
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The rhetorical device, making fun of rights to particular things, is used by bigots and authoritarians who want to ensure the government favors them. But they're wrong. We have a Constitutional right to have the government treat us all equally. 7/7
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If working-class white Southern men don’t start turning out in bigger numbers for elections, there’s a danger they may get health insurance
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The average Dutch person works just 30 hours a week. They spend the rest of their time writing poems for each other and creating complicated cardboard gift-wrapping packages
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@natashaloder
Given that everything is terrible, it would probably lead to some horrible endangered wildlife trafficking.
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Guys, I know you all want to doomscroll and revel in how terrible everything is, but I’m afraid that in Moldova things are going *incredibly* well. /1
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@panyiszabolcs
Szabolcs, we *don't know* that it was a gangbang. It may have been just a regular sex orgy. This is why people lose trust in the media
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We who sit here in the West have never had to do anything political as brave as what this woman has just done.
Marina Ovsyannikova, the woman who ran onto a live state TV news broadcast, even recorded a message beforehand. In it, she says her father is Ukrainian. She calls for anti-war protests, says she’s ashamed about working for Kremlin propaganda, and she denounces the war absolutely.
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I hear from my daughter’s teenage friends in Brighton, who I think are close to the frilly leading edge of such matters, that the kids are getting bored of the gender-fluid pronoun wars.
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Chief suspect in Utrecht shootings arrested. Horrible events. But the speed of the arrest and the clear communication by Dutch police and government were all very reassuring.
De NCTV brengt het dreigingsniveau voor de provincie
#Utrecht
terug naar niveau 4. Aanleiding is de aanhouding van de hoofdverdachte van de schietpartij. Hiermee staat het dreigingsniveau in heel Nederland weer op 4.
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Ik hoor van veel niet-joodse mensen vanavond dat ik als jood geen solidariteit mag tonen met Nederlanders van Marokkaanse afkomst. Kennelijk zou dat betekenen dat ik de Holocaust niet goed heb begrepen.
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Dutch trade minister Sigrid Kaag says Brexit on Oct 31 is now preferable to an extension: “At some point enough is enough.” Notes the current chaos in UK.
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Important to keep in mind. The Senate could vote not to remove Trump, and the next day the House could with perfect legitimacy impeach him again on dozens of charges.
Things Trump is not being impeached for:
- obstructing Justice ten times (per the Mueller Report)
- sexually assaulting two dozen women
- locking kids in cages
- conspiring to violate campaign finance laws
- violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution
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Amsterdam is taking London’s businesses and now Madrid’s titles. All the ancient enemies defeated
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The doctor who saved Navalny's eye when a thug threw green poison at him can also play a magnificent glissando.
Wow. What a scene from
#Russia
: Navalny’s doctor Anastasy Vasilyeva plays the Piano as Police search her home.
Part of crackdown in chasing Navalny’s allies ahead of protests planned this weekend:
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@cath_haddon
@davidallengreen
Dear Catherine, a serious response: please tell your mum that typos are now a deliberate PR strategy employed by populist parties. First, they catch attention by breaking a rule. Second, they communicate that the party is anti-elitist. This is awful and her fury is warranted.
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My colleague Charlemagne withering on NL’s pathological obsession with farming, failing to adapt to ecological limits it knew about for decades, and BBB getting 1.5m votes in a country that employs just 244,000 people in agriculture.
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Noah's thread is interesting. I would try to answer the question two other ways: one simple, one a bit counterintuitive. /1
1/Tucker Carlson's question - "How is diversity our strength?" was not asked in good faith, but for purposes of racist demagoguery.
But I will try to answer it in good faith, because it's an important question in its own right.
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If you think conservatism means liberty, the rule of law, secure property rights and free markets, identifying with Viktor Orban is an odd choice.
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I reviewed Amazon's "The Boys", which I loved, because it correctly understands that superheroes are the enemy of any law-governed democratic society and should be regulated, jailed or, failing that, killed.
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I am increasingly in favor of this form of journalistic frankness.
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