OpelYourMind

Artist Scholar Filmmaker Musician who believes another world is possible. climate comm, VR Prod.

[OpelYourMind @andyopel]

So true - the @nytimes wants to take out Platner over old texts, meanwhile we have a convicted rapist handing out gov contracts to friends and family. . . “All the news that’s fit to distract”

[Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they) 🪬 @DoctorVive]

Ok I’ve just read the Platner story. It is built entirely on the claims of a Heritage staffer whose accusations lack even one shred of contemporaneous corroborating evidence. Two other women Platner dated felt dissed, but that’s all.

The NYT is running oppo for Collins.

[OpelYourMind @andyopel]

Old texts get all the attention while rape island is just another vacation destination for the Epstein class. . .

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

It's kind of wild to find out that the Republican in the NYT story that says she had a toxic relationship with Graham Platner is Lyndsey Fifield. Having been in DC for too long, I know a decent number of people who know her quite well. For a long time she was the co-host of a podcast with her best friend Bethany Mandel, called Ladybrains, though she has also worked for multiple super PACs, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Heritage Foundation.

Some background, presented without judgment: In 2014, Fifield began work as digital director for American Action Network, a Republican Super PAC that oversees House races. The next year she became social media manager for the Heritage Foundation, where she stayed for the next seven years.

In 2022, she joined the Super PAC backing Nikki Haley for president, switching to the official campaign side the next year, and staying until the campaign flamed out. She now lists herself as a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, a prominent dark money group that is best known for helping usher Brett Kavanaugh on to the Supreme Court and giving Susan Collins the talking points she needed to make her decisive speech in his favor.

The NYT breezed past all this, saying she was "a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns."

In an interview for a news outlet called Red Alert Politics that named her to a “30 under 30” list back in 2016, she said that she wanted to “emulate the late conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s approach to online activism.” Breitbart, known for pushing the boundaries when it came to political combat, is perhaps best remembered for having exposed Anthony Weiner’s penchant for sending nudes to young girls, and for his work elevating James O’Keefe.

That she worked for Independent Women's Forum recently is even wilder since IWF played a critical role in Kavanaugh's confirmation and in persuading Collins to support it.

Heather Higgins, chair of IWF, laid out the group’s role in a talk several years ago. “We wrote a memo. It was used by a lot of members of the Senate and the House, Fox News, and elsewhere. Most important, Susan Collins told me that without that memo, she would not see how to support him,” Higgins said. “And if you look at the speech she gave on the Senate floor, it’s entirely the playing out and architecture of how we said to structure the argument — what to say and how to say it, which is just so gratifying. We’re watching TV and we’re like, ‘That’s ours! That’s ours!’”

Meanwhile, the timeline Fifield gives of their relationship is confusing, because during at least some of that time she was actually dating a different person, her longterm boyfriend who became her fiancee before she called off the wedding in 2018. We all know this because she and Mandel did a podcast episode on it that went mega-viral in Republican circles back then. Apparently this is the kind of thing the NYT thinks is important now, so I guess it requires more reporting. I'll report back.

Here is Heather Higgins celebrating IWF's role in getting Susan Collins to confirm Kavanaugh:

[Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf 🌏 🦣 @rahmstorf]

I'm afraid that this is why the US administration wants to shut down ocean observations: they don't want the people to know what is happening in our oceans, as it does not fit their ideology and the interests of their fossil fuel industry funders.

https://t.co/G1E5zXdyid

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

Capitalism built a system where doing the right thing is treated like bad business. We can’t have sustainable energy because it threatens the oil industry. We can’t have healthcare because it threatens insurance. We can’t have peace because it threatens the weapons industry.

[Ansley Brown @Ansleysgarden]

Another day of the Coweta County referendum petition signing! I included the clip of me signing so everybody could see how easy it is. WE want to be the voice of our community, not the sell out commissioners.

[Acyn @Acyn]

AOC: When people see a ballroom and, at the same time, see their health insurance getting cut off, they know that they are paying for that ballroom with no health care, higher grocery prices, and increasingly unaffordable housing.

And so I think people are pissed off about it, and they should be. It’s wrong. This is a complete theft of our money. This is what I want people to understand: this is our money. When you pay your taxes, that money is being stolen to pay for a vanity project like a ballroom, or to renovate the Kennedy Center, or whatever it is that this guy wants to do, instead of what it should be used for—paying for things that actually benefit you: better roads, health care, and more affordable groceries.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is so insanely corrupt, I can’t even believe it.

More than half the donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom just won over $50 billion in new federal contracts in six months.

And here’s the part that should make your blood boil.

Sixteen of these 27 donors were facing federal enforcement actions, antitrust reviews, labor cases, securities charges. Many of those cases have been quietly dropped or scaled back since Trump took office. You write a check, your legal problems disappear. That’s not a coincidence.

The White House won’t even release the full donor list. They’re hiding it on purpose, because daylight is the one thing pay-to-play can’t survive. A federal judge already ruled ballroom construction has to stop until Congress authorizes it.

Government is supposed to serve the people, not auction itself off to the highest bidder. When access goes to whoever pays the most, working families always end up paying the price.

We either end the corruption, or the corruption will end us.

https://t.co/4MGFzSseFl

[David Vargas Araujo @DavidVargasA18]

Le gritan a Marco Rubio, en las escaleras del congreso:

¡¡Eres el lacayo de Israel!!
¡¡Te recordaremos como a un criminal de guerra, por el resto de tus días!!
¡¡Saca tus manos de Palestina, del Líbano y de Irán!!
¡¡Saca tus manos de Cuba!!
RT👇

[Senator Chris Van Hollen @ChrisVanHollen]

Yesterday, the IDF seized 4 students from their homes in the West Bank, including 20-year-old American, Sama Safi.

The Israeli govt didn’t tell her family or the U.S. Embassy where or why she was being taken & is holding her without charges.

America must secure her release NOW.

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

Floridians are tired of a corrupt system that delivers for corporate interests.  

Unlike Ashley Moody, I’m not in the pocket of elites — I’m in this race to fight for working families.

[Paolo Mossetti @paolomossetti]

Leen Hijaz, valedictorian at her high school in North Carolina, said the following in her graduation speech:

"Before I leave the stage, I have one last thing to say. Every single person here has a voice; we have the privilege to use it when millions around the world are struggling and suffering to be heard. Whether it’s the millions suffering in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan and so many other countries around the world, or families being torn apart by ICE. These are not just an issue here; they are happening there, they’re happening right here as I speak. My point is, we’re not given a voice to stay silent."

Corey Robin, a political theorist at Brooklyn College, writes: "The mere mention of Palestine—maybe ICE, too—sent the high school principal, Melissa Moore, hurtling across the stage to seize the microphone from Hijaz, and stop her from saying these unapproved words.

Just look at this photograph: A young Muslim woman, speaking out, and a desperate, terrified principal trying to shut her down, lest the student say something unauthorized, disapproved, discordant with the views of an increasingly small clique of government officials and voters.

It's so pathetic. It reads like a comic play by Václav Havel. It looks like the desperate last days of the Soviet Union. I can only hope Hijaz speaks for a generation that will, one day, sweep all this garbage into the dustbin of history".

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

Jennifer Welch: “Boycott every fucking thing on CBS News. From the morning all the way through to the evening. These are the same people that fired Stephen Colbert because Trump got his feelings hurt by a comedian. These people are the biggest bunch of pussies that masquerade with these grandstanding letters like they’re such badasses. These people don’t care about the truth, they don’t care about journalism, they don’t care about the Constitution, they don’t care about a free press. It’s just absolutely devastating what these oligarchs have done to our country”

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

They want to distract you with stories about Trump yelling at Netanyahu while, in the real world, Israel is destroying southern Lebanon.

[Sludge @Sludge]

NEW: Two shadowy Delaware nonprofits have pumped $750k into attack ads against Graham Platner. One faces a straw donor complaint, and both are part of a sprawling dark money network with ties to AIPAC, Kristi Noem, and a Hakeem Jeffries-aligned super PAC. https://t.co/g7ydvjow7i

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

I'll be introducing the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, a bill giving the public a direct stake to determine AI's future.

When a public resource generates wealth, the public should share in that wealth. https://t.co/pqlQyEKDKT

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

I will soon be introducing a bill to give the public a 50% ownership stake in the largest AI companies in America.

This would guarantee that the trillions created by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — and block oligarch decisions that harm the American people.

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

My opponent Ashley Moody voted to block key funding for FEMA — she’s part of the problem.

She’s a rubber-stamp on this administration’s agenda, even when it puts Floridians in danger.

[Jennifer Get In Good Trouble @TheJenniWren]

They beat men for having a translator. Gassed them. Then cleaned the blood off the floors hoping no one would find out. But HE CALLED. We heard it.

We’re not letting this disappear. The world will know what’s happening inside Delaney Hall. #ShutDownDelaneyHall

[Furkan Gözükara @FurkanGozukara]

🚨 BREAKING: Al Jazeera confirms Israel bombed a Lebanese hospital for the THIRD time. The ICU is completely destroyed.

A mother desperately rushed to find her premature baby alive amidst the rubble. Washington is fully complicit in these war crimes!

[Cenk Uygur @cenkuygur]

Democrats are now attacking @grahamformaine with no shame. Same Democrats who told us to "vote blue, no matter who" when it was to back establishment candidates are now stabbing Platner in the back. Why? Guys like @CoryBooker 100% work for Israel. That's who is organizing this.