Madaboutthat

Whistle past the graveyard, even the dead deserve a song - Twin Forks

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

Now, would be a great moment to have in place a disaster relief organization to help the people of Venezuela. We once had one -- USAID -- but Trump destroyed it.

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

They will NOT make a billionaire contribute to the basic needs of the community BUT they will make the whole community bear the electrical, water, and often building costs of a data center owned by a billionaire.

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

This is the Welfare you cannot afford.

[Warren Gunnels @GunnelsWarren]

If California voters approve the 5% wealth tax on billionaires:

Sergey Brin, Google’s founder, would pay $13.65 billion more in taxes.

He’d still be worth $259 billion and healthcare would be saved for 3 million people.

Instead, he’s spending $57 million to defeat it. Obscene.

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

Just the Speaker of the House pledging that if you vote Republican he will continue to make sure all the corruption and criminality happening in the Trump admin will be covered up by him and his do-nothing committee chairs. https://t.co/ESI9rxdgFX

[Alethea Bernard @Tush27J]

They arrested and sentenced Peter Murrell, Nicola Stugeon's husband.

Why can't Michelle Mone and Doug Barrowman be arrested?

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

🚨HOLY SHIT: Thomas Massie is spitting some FACTS right now that should SHUT MAGA UP:

“I think it's ironic that we control the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and the White House, and we're yelling 'election fraud'? I mean, we won all the damn elections.”

[Gordon Fielden @GordonFielden]

Chris, there are rare occasions when an author dismantles his own argument before the reader has progressed beyond the opening paragraphs. This is one of them.

You readily concede that much of your reporting over recent months rested upon anonymous briefings, unnamed sources, private conversations and opinions offered only on condition that they could never be subjected to public scrutiny. You then ask your audience to accept that such material provides an accurate account of events. With respect, that is not evidence in any meaningful sense. It is an interpretation of events, constructed from assertions that the reader has no means of testing, verifying or challenging.

No serious observer disputes that confidential sources have a legitimate place in political journalism. They always have, and they always will. But there is a profound distinction between using anonymous sources to illuminate established facts and using them to construct an entire political narrative over many months. The former is responsible journalism; the latter risks becoming an exercise in reinforcing assumptions until they acquire the appearance of fact simply through constant repetition.

Indeed, your own article inadvertently exposes that very process. It repeatedly invites readers to accept what unnamed MPs supposedly believed, what unidentified advisers were allegedly saying, and what anonymous insiders privately thought. Such accounts may well have reflected genuine conversations, but they remain assertions rather than verifiable facts. There is an important distinction, and one that ought never to be blurred.

More striking still is the omission at the heart of your analysis. You devote thousands of words to explaining how Westminster concluded that Sir Keir Starmer's premiership had become untenable, yet you devote scarcely a sentence to examining whether the relentless stream of anonymous briefings and speculative commentary from sections of the political media played any part in creating that very outcome. That question surely deserves examination.

Nor do you grapple with the constitutional consequence of what follows. The British people elected a Government led by Sir Keir Starmer. Should he be replaced by another individual through internal parliamentary manoeuvring alone, the process may be constitutionally lawful, but that does not automatically confer political legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate. Those are two entirely different questions.

Many of those now defending such a transition were previously among the most vocal critics of Rishi Sunak for assuming office without seeking his own mandate from the country. Constitutional principles cannot be invoked when politically convenient and quietly abandoned when they become inconvenient.

History has a habit of punishing such inconsistency. If Andy Burnham were to become Prime Minister in these circumstances, I believe the pressure upon him to seek his own mandate from the British people would become irresistible. In my view, he would have little practical choice but to call a General Election within six to eight months. Whether Labour would survive such a contest is, of course, for the electorate to determine. My own judgement is that they would face a severe electoral reckoning, with the country returning either a Reform UK-led government or a hung Parliament.

Journalism should chronicle events, not become so intertwined with Westminster's internal conversations that it begins to mistake the mood of the political class for the settled will of the British people. That, in my view, is the fundamental weakness running through your analysis.

https://t.co/8vSBlsVlze

[Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom]

It'd be nice to have a Speaker who'd say: "And let them, we have nothing to hide, and they'll look like fools for doing it."

But what he's saying here is: They're gonna uncover a lot of stuff, and you don't want that.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Massie: "I think it's ironic that we control the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and the White House, and we're yelling 'election fraud'? I mean, we won all the damn elections."

[Scott Dworkin @funder]

🚨 ELECTORAL COLLAPSE: Donald Trump tried to quietly execute a double plot to hijack state elections and choke off mail-in ballots. The courts just stepped in and slammed his hand away twice in 48 hours. RT to break the blackout & see the rulings: 👇 https://t.co/S19LPCu5W4

[Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen]

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson: "If we were to lose the midterms heaven forbid these Democrats y'all impeachments not even the big concern They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body and they'll go after the president's family the cabinet his donors and friends."

This is exactly WHY Democrats need to win the midterms! Thanks for selling it @MikeJohnson.

[Socialist Opera Singer @OperaSocialist]

Since Brexit everyone in the UK is on average £11,400 worse off.

Except Nigel Farage.

He received £5 million as a reward for Brexit.

[Don McGowan @donmcgowan]

Day three of Nick Ferrari on @LBC, bemoaning the state of our country reacting to the heat.

Guests phoning in to complain about their grandchildren being sent home from nursery because they're snowflakes ... seriously.

1976 — blah, blah, blah.

This wilful ignorance about our climate emergency is feeding the doubt across a large swathe of the country who refuse the science.

I challenge Ferrari to turn off the air conditioning in his studio for one three-hour session during a heatwave. Just once.

He would not be able to work.

And his working day is less than half of that of every school child in the country.

Come on @NickFerrariLBC — turn the AC off now and give an honest report.

[Don Winslow @donwinslow]

THIS is exactly what @ABC and others should have done to Trump instead of caving and giving in and paying him off with millions of dollars.

[John Brennan @jmbprime]

If Democrats are serious about winning the midterms they need to hire a seasoned spokesperson to hold daily press conferences. They need to challenge the lies and misinformation that the White House spits out every single day.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

Judge finds AG Todd Blanche has conceded that he is violating the law and must unredact certain Epstein documents or justify those redactions.
https://t.co/QApfaEoYNL

[Alex Taylor @AlexTaylorNews]

Oh look ! The pesky EU refusing to buy UK food containing pesticides and fungicides which it has banned, but which the UK allows "under its Brexit freedoms"
"Freedom" to use dodgy chemicals, eh ?🤡

and of course that's the EU "punishing" the UK again. Of course it is ...

[Tim Chapman 💙 @timchap]

When the history of this period is written up, people will forever ask how a Manchester Mayor in a matter of weeks became PM of the UK with no leadership contest and no clear policy platform. Ejecting in the process a sitting PM with a massive majority! A spectacular coup.

[Jim Acosta @Acosta]

Went looking for the 300 foot “slit” or “slits” in the reflecting pool Trump keeps lying about. Didn’t find any of that. But did find plenty of signs the paint on the bottom of the pool has simply disintegrated. My latest pool report.