Brandi Mitchell

UNC Chapel Hill Graduate Program. Hussman School Madame Pres.
No admittance except on party business.

[Brandi Mitchell @Brandijmitchell]

Graduate school is hard. please make my life easier by following https://t.co/UObwYaQVRA

Reading really is the best & so worth it but also I need a good grade!!

Twitter is: @thewellreadblog

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

New newsletter: THE END OF MORALITY AND THE RISE OF THE 'MORAL BLANK CHECK'

Within a 48 hour period this week, Trump:
- got out of a $100m IRS fine
- secured IRS "immunity" for his family
- created a $1.8b slush fund for his supporters
- was reported for likely insider trading worth nearly $1 billion

Trump's corruption is obvious. What I find less obvious and more interesting is that practically nobody tries to defend him. The closest thing to a defense you get is the common argument that "Biden/woke was also bad," which isn't even an attempt at a defense. It's rather a moral blank check made out to the administration that promises to cover the cost of any transgression.

When you zoom out, it is extraordinary how rare it is in modern politics to hear universal arguments for virtue or morality. Just listen to the way we talk about right and wrong, these days. We hear that 'the rich don't play by the rules, so why should I?' We hear that Democrats are bad, so why should Republicans be good? It is broken social contracts and special excuses all the way down.

We are in a world after virtue. It's the age of vicemaxxing. And that's bad.

https://t.co/t6rI2D3iat

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

I actually think reacting to Trump's post this morning with some hysteria is a good thing. It's a totally unhinged, immoral thing to say as president, and it should continue to shock us. He doesn't have to nuke Iran for it to be abhorrent and deranged. Just have some standards.

[Jermean Tabar @jtabar]

I love this excerpt from that opinion piece:

“American politics has sides. There is no use pretending it doesn’t. But both sides are meant to be on the same side of a larger project — we are all, or most of us, anyway, trying to maintain the viability of the American experiment. We can live with losing an election because we believe in the promise of the next election; we can live with losing an argument because we believe that there will be another argument. Political violence imperils that.”

Great piece @ezraklein

[T. Greer @Scholars_Stage]

This sort of video is appealing to nerds like me, but I do not know if it sells well beyond nerd ranks.

The problem is that Tucker does not close the deal. He shows that Cruz does not know anything about Iran but he does not demonstrate, in a way that sounds good to non-nerds, why not knowing things matters.

"Here is why the population of Iran matters Senator. There are three times the number of people in Iran than there are in the state if Texas--and three times the number that were in Iraq. Do you know how many soldiers we needed to surge into Iraq to keep the peace there? And Iran has three times more people than that.

Iran is also as large as three Texases senator. You are from Texas. You have driven across Texas senator. You know that you can drive an entire day, 24 hours, and not circle the whole state. And we are talking something three times as large as that senator. It is a huge country. It is large as six Iraqs. What happens if we overthrow the government of a country as large as six Iraqs? One broken Iraq was bad enough to deal with--but six?

And look senator, I did not ask you about the ethnic mix of Iraq as a pointless gotcha. I just remember things. I remember that we have fought wars with both countries next to Iran--Afghanistan and Iraq. And in both of those countries we were really pleased with how things went, at first. But then we discovered that these countries were divided by religion and language and ethnic group and that people from these different religions and languages and tribes really didn't like each other. They did not like each other enough to fight viciously. Hundreds of thousands of people died senator! Children and mothers and father died in the hundreds of thousands. All of the Christians who lived in Iraq for a thousand years were killed or forced to leave. And when these people fought each other terrorist groups settled in. Middle Eastern civil wars are the breeding grounds for terrorist groups. And I want to know that this will not happen again. When we went into Iraq we did not know the answer to the questions like "what are the ethnic groups in Iraq?" It turned out that the answer to that question mattered--it mattered so much that 2,000 American boys died because bright men in Washington did not know it.

So before we destabilize a country with 90 million people, a country a fourth the size of the continental United States, I would like for the American senators who say we must go to war to know something about this country they want to go to war with. You don' think these things matter, fine--that tells me that you are not thinking about what happens after the bombs drop. You can't tell me whether Iran is likely to end up like Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria, and what that will mean for the rest of the world if it does, because you do not know much about Iran. You can't tell me how likely it is destabilizing Iran will cause a civil war that kills another 200,000 people, whether it will flood Europe with another million refugees, whether the next Al Qaeda or the next ISIS will spring up there. But you still want us to go to war senator.

War is a serious thing. War means killing and dying. If I am a normal American, someone out there watching this who expects their leaders to know more than they do,who trusts our leaders to understand our enemies--well, I would be scared, shocked, and disgusted that you want us to start killing but don't and can't know what happens after we do."

Something like that I suppose.

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

It is really just happening in the open

[Dennis Gentilin @dennisgentilin]

A great summary of human nature by @Noahpinion here…

[McSweeney's @mcsweeneys]

"Not sure how that happened. I did not think my personal stuff was connected to this. So strange. And just a note, this is not my main bank account. I know it probably looks like a scarily low amount to have in my savings."
https://t.co/P5GGUi4f42

[ana @shivlestat]

to me, this was cinema.

[Conajam @conajam]

no better feeling than when you finish a good book & can finally eat the bookmark

[$plah¡❤️‍🔥 @BabyScoop_]

If we walking together just know imma bump into u cus I can't walk in a straight line

[Cam @harleybaghdad]

Unpopular opinion but siren songs low key kinda slap!

ⓘ 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝘀 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝗮

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

Fantastic piece on how Houston is solving it's homelessness problem. We need more reporting like this on solutions, not failures: https://t.co/mvybbvcrgp

[Laura Marie @lmegordon]

Nobody has ever been more surprised than a husband hearing about his wife's plans for the second time.

[McSweeney's @mcsweeneys]

"At our company, we are always on the lookout for top-tier candidates, typically people we already know or are related to someone who works here. That’s why it’s so impressive that your résumé made its way to us."
https://t.co/vNb50hvhIZ

[UNC Women's Lacrosse @uncwlax]

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗬 𝗜𝗦 𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗦!🏆🎉

#GoHeels 🐏🥍 x @wellsfargo

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

1/ Alright, everyone. I watched @DineshDSouza's new film #2000Mules (twice) and have put together a review of the movie. I cover what they got right, what they got wrong, and what they fail to prove. I think this is an important piece. Please share and RT. https://t.co/qp2vqSsCVL

[⭐️IT GIRL⭐️ @aliyahInterlude]

at a certain age having a twin is childish asf, like you’re 26 be fr

[UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media @UNCHussman]

2022 NC Media & Journalism Hall of Fame gala highlight: guess which 1944 grad—whose 100th birthday is coming up next week—serenaded us with the Carolina Fight Song on harmonica to close out the evening? We ❤️ you, Clarence! (Send birthday greetings via [email protected]) #GoHeels