James D. Smith

Bi, 420 connoisseur

[Lunwi @lunwi75]

Remember when Musk challenged the World Food Program to explain how he could solve world hunger with just $6 billion, they did, and he just completely ignored them?

[Social Security Works ❌👑 @SSWorks]

Gutting $1 trillion from Medicaid wasn’t enough to appease the greedy billionaires.
Now, Republicans are coming for our Social Security and Medicare.

@RonWyden

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

The world’s first trillionaire. Trump’s “love” for inflation. America’s testosterone poisoning.

It was another packed week.

We break it all down on a brand new Coffee Klatch.

https://t.co/7BZx3mnVeJ

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

Look at this graph.

The top 0.1 percent's wealth has never grown as fast in U.S. history as it has in the past 15 years.

And that's before Elon Musk became the world's first TRILLIONAIRE.

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

Hawaii just passed the first state law in the country banning corporations from making political donations in state elections.

Now a Koch-backed legal group is suing to overturn it.

Big Money won't get out of our politics without a fight — one that we the people must win.

(via @LeverNews)

[Being J Wood @BeingJWood]

The larger picture gives perspective.

[Democracy Now! @democracynow]

The Trump administration is dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a key monitoring system for tracking the climate crisis.

Policy expert David Helvarg calls it "the most advanced system for understanding the deep ocean," which was set to continue operating for at least another 15 years. He says the Trump administration, however, is more focused on oil drilling and deep-sea mining, treating the ocean "as a gas station and a garbage dump."

[James D. Smith @SmthcokD]

@TheMimi501 @DangerousThinkg Agreed! If his Generation is now in the drivers seat. Most of them don’t know how to drive! What would they do with reins? To venture a guess,
they‘d try to use them as seatbelts.

[FactPost @factpostnews]

Three environmental groups have sued the Trump administration for allowing SpaceX to build on a federally protected habitat for the endangered Ocelot.

[Seth Abramson @SethAbramson]

(🚨) MAJOR BREAKING NEWS: Over the past year, my 850-page Trump-Epstein Scandal epic PROOF OF DEVILRY—whose chapters get released as I have material to release—established that Trump took charge of hosting parties where girls were trafficked.

24 hours ago this bombshell dropped:

[Laiken Jordahl @LaikenJordahl]

BREAKING: We're suing the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service over their plan to give away 715 acres of a public wildlife refuge to billionaire corporation Space X.

Americans shouldn't be sacrificing their public lands to subsidize a company owned by the richest man in the world.

[Harry Sisson @harryjsisson]

This should be a career-ending scandal. But life under Trump is so hellish, it's not even front-page news.

[Micah Erfan @micah_erfan]

CNN = Owned by a right-wing billionaire.
CBS = Owned by a right-wing billionaire.
FOX = Owned by a right-wing billionaire.
WaPo = Owned by a right-wing billionaire.
WSJ = Owned by a right-wing billionaire.

Ah yes, tell me more about how the mainstream media is “far left.”

[James D. Smith @SmthcokD]

@UAPWixy Obviously no idea how gravity works

[Ted Lieu @tedlieu]

Dear @DAGToddBlanche: You don’t get to decide to “move on” from the Epstein Files or from following the congressional law. That decision can only be made by the American people and Congress.

You will be disbarred. The files will eventually be released.

November is coming.

[Suzie rizzio @Suzierizzo1]

This MAGA Pastor says that this waitress caused him to sin because he got upset with her because she brought him a small glass of water instead of a large one and he panics after he couldn’t edit his live video so it wouldn’t show it.

[Grant Certiorari @GrantCertiorari]

She’s worth almost ten million dollars on a 174k salary. Ask yourself where that came from.

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

The defamation suit against John Oliver centered on a 2024 segment about Iowa's privatized Medicaid program. The specific claim: that Oliver had "feigned outrage" at an Iowa healthcare manager for "ratings and profits."

What the healthcare manager actually said, in his own testimony at an actual hearing, about a patient with cerebral palsy who could not clean himself: "People have bowel movements every day where they don't completely clean themselves, and we don't fuss too much. People are allowed to be dirty. I would allow him to be dirty for a couple of days."

Oliver said he thought it had to be taken out of context. His team obtained the full hearing transcript to verify. It was not taken out of context. He then said what he thought about it, in the terms he chose, on television.

Judge Abrams dismissed the suit. In her opinion she wrote that "the trauma and loss of human dignity that befalls a man with cerebral palsy who has trouble cleaning himself and is left for days in his own fecal matter is the same, regardless of whether or not he wears a diaper" - disposing of the plaintiff's technical distinction between the two patients in the segment.

The plaintiff argued Oliver feigned outrage. The judge found the outrage was about a documented, verified, on-the-record statement by the plaintiff himself.

This is what accountability journalism looks like when it works. The segment was accurate. The response was proportional. The lawsuit was a SLAPP - Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, designed to make speaking up expensive enough that people stop doing it. The court said no. Oliver's record remains perfect. The patient's dignity remains the point.