Flora F. Flora

[— • C H E E K Y • — @andreagail_k]

@RonFilipkowski

[Stephanie "LB" 🟧 @LincolnsBible]

He was installed to destroy us.

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

While much of America keeps its head in the sand and pretends everything is normal, Trump is building concentration camps across the country. The unthinkable is already underway.

[AFL-CIO ✊ @AFLCIO]

Our new Executive Paywatch report is here, and - spoiler alert - greedy CEOs are making even MORE.

Top CEOs made 312x what workers make and took home an average of $22.8 MILLION per YEAR in total compensation.

Read our full Paywatch report here: https://t.co/fFNQ5kXJAc

[Team Talarico @TeamTalaricoHQ]

.@JamesTalarico: 50 years ago, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell circulated a memo around DC — a blueprint for how corporations could amass political power, reverse the gains of the Great Society and the New Deal, and rig the system for themselves.

The Powell memo outlined a strategy. Unite corporate special interests, privilege corporate perspectives in the media, appoint sympathetic judges to the court, and buy politicians in both political parties.

And it worked. Republicans and some Democrats sold the false gospel of trickle-down economics. Trickle-down economics is not a theory, it is theft.

Since the late 1970s, mega donors and corporate special interests have been buying politicians in both political parties. And then those politicians turned around and rigged the economy to benefit their wealthy donors at our expense.

We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis.

[Flora F. Flora @JoyfulBiologist]

@michael_hoerger Fresno and Tulare counties are popping hot again. As if living in this hellhole wasn't already miserable enough.

[Flora F. Flora @JoyfulBiologist]

@Hickenlooper How can one person do all this damage? Is there seriously no way to stop the destruction to our country?

[Flora F. Flora @JoyfulBiologist]

@drseanmullen I have had the same experience with dental care these past 6 years. Those appointments are the biggest risks I have been forced to take.

[Flora F. Flora @JoyfulBiologist]

@KellyScaletta Ummm, aren't Rubio's parents Cuban immigrants? Is he saying his parents might be spies?

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

BASH: I want you to use your bully pulpit to tells parents who have not vaccinated their kids that they should vaccine their kids for measles. Will you do that? Look into the camera

RFK Jr: I'll say it right now. Parents should get their children vaccinated for measles.

[Negan @Roger_Negan]

This

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

What does it look like when a foreign government buys a president? It looks like this.

Qatar handed Donald Trump a $400 million luxury jet. He toured it, fell in love, and decided it was going to be his new Air Force One. Then he demanded the new Qatar Force One be ready for America’s 250th birthday, no matter the cost.

The Founders saw this danger coming. That’s why they wrote the Foreign Emoluments Clause into the Constitution. A president is not supposed to accept lavish gifts from a foreign government without Congress’s consent. The entire purpose is to prevent foreign governments from gaining influence over the President of the United States.

We were already paying for two brand-new Air Force One jets. That Boeing program has ballooned to roughly $5.7 billion and is years behind schedule. Instead of waiting, taxpayers spent about another $400 million retrofitting Qatar’s aircraft, with hundreds of millions more for training, support aircraft, and logistics. Even worse, the Pentagon financed much of that work through classified accounts, making it far harder for Congressional appropriators like me to follow the money and exercise the oversight the Constitution requires.

Let’s be clear about ownership. Qatar supplied the plane. The American people paid hundreds of millions to rebuild it. It belongs to the American people, not Donald Trump.

And according to the administration’s own plan, after Trump leaves office, Qatar Force One is supposed to be transferred to his presidential library. That means taxpayers could spend hundreds of millions upgrading a plane from a foreign government only for it to end up under the control of Trump’s library. If that doesn’t demand congressional scrutiny, what does?

The rush to put it into service also came at a price. The aircraft entered service without some defensive systems presidential aircraft have relied on for decades, then had to be pulled back out of service for additional upgrades that should have been completed before it ever carried the President.

The American people deserve a full public accounting of every dollar spent on this aircraft. No more hiding costs in classified budgets. 

No more stonewalling Congress. No more treating taxpayer dollars like a personal slush fund.

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

I watched Trump’s speech at the Correspondents’ Dinner last night.
It’s hard to articulate how sad it made me.

Sad and embarrassed and exhausted.

Here is the thing about a man who is a joke. He can’t tell one.

People think humor is a talent. It isn’t. It’s a capacity. To make someone laugh you have to be able to laugh at yourself, and to laugh at yourself you have to step outside of yourself and see what everyone else sees. For one second you have to be just another person in the room.

Most people can do this by the time they are nine years old.

He has never once managed it. Not in fifty years of cameras. Not for a second.

That is not a quirk. It is a symptom. The muscle that lets you tell a joke is the same one that lets you feel what another person feels. A man who cannot survive being laughed at cannot imagine being anyone but himself. He will only ever be generous when it is photographed. He will only ever be kind when it is filmed.

There is a name for it.

So he stood up there and did what he always does. He hit down. He made jokes about people’s weight. He made jokes about their intelligence. He made jokes about how women look. He read out the names of people he doesn’t like, and mocked them. Always mocking. And when no one laughed he blamed his speech writers.

The cruelty dressed as humor has worn so thin.

And for the 30% of you still in the cult who will inevitably call me a crackhead and blame it all on my Dad, all I can say is please, for the love of God, open your eyes. Wake the fuck up. Have some dignity. Have some pride.

Joe Biden wasn’t standing at that podium last night. Donald Trump was.

And at the end of it he put on a red hat that said Trump 2028 and told the room he was running again. No one laughed because everyone knows he has no intention of leaving.

Just another joke at our expense.

[Flora F. Flora @JoyfulBiologist]

@stacyrye @SenWhitehouse What are you talking about? There is zero technical language in these points. What terms are you struggling with?

[Books Behind Borders @MHTruthUltra]

They are merging the IDF and the U.S. military because they know that the U.S. military isn’t going to want to open fire on American citizens

[Flora F. Flora @JoyfulBiologist]

@EEleanor55 @amyklobuchar Cyclospora cannot be removed from produce even by commercial washing with bleach or vinegar. The spore stage, which is what contaminates produce, can only be destroyed by heat of 160° F or more.

[Flora F. Flora @JoyfulBiologist]

@minkeymagik @amyklobuchar NoT an option. Cyclospora is resistent even to commercial washing with bleach or vinegar. The spore stage, which is what infects produce, can only be destroyed by heat of 160° F or more.

[Morgan J. Freeman @mjfree]

Enjoy this mind blowing work of art 🎶🎶🎶

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

We’re obsessed with the idea that poor people might take more than they need, but we almost never question why billionaires are never satisfied with what they already have.