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[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

Anthropic 'distilled' millions of copyrighted books without asking. They knowingly used pirated materials for training.

The entire U.S. ecosystem of AI is based on similar theft and extraction. But it's unfair when China does it to us? Grow up.

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

Our top AI firms are holding back innovation, not promoting it. If we had broken up Google and forced open sourcing we would have far fewer data centers and much better AI.

Basically Lina Khan is correct.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

I'll admit to having struggled to find coherence or consistency in liberal rules of identity politics.

But even given this "complexity,", I will never understand why AOC has license to use a fake black preacher accent when speaking to black audiences:

[Joyce Carol Oates @JoyceCarolOates]

Odysseus is the thinking man's Homeric hero. he is closer to Hamlet than to a muscle-man.

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

Platner quit after they threatened to cut off access to Actblue and the voter file, but he never humiliated himself and insulted his supporters. The left abandoned him for the same reason El-Sayed apologized for his supporters. Weakness.

People can smell it.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

Not only are people instantly branded as rapists by online mobs without bringing it to law enforcement for judicial scrutiny and evidence, but the Emily Lists of the world have decreed that any denial by the accused -- anything short of confessing -- is itself a new moral crime.

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

The broader point here is that the left simply cannot govern. They are easily frightened and manipulated by a tiny bit of scandal or controversy, they cannot possibly challenge Wall Street or anyone else with power. They'll be easily scared into submission, as they were here.

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

Since lots of gossips are now gunning for me, I'm redoing this thread. It's clear something messed up happened in Platner's relationships, and he hasn't hidden that. But there's a big difference between 'normal people in bad relationships who hate each other' and 'crime.'

So let's be adults. This is a political attack.

Top Maine Democratic Party donors in recent years are Reid Hoffman, Haim Saban, and David Ellison. David Ellison! As in the Trump ally who fired Stephen Colbert and is taking over TikTok, CBS News, and CNN. These names should mean something. Saban may be the single most important AIPAC donor in the Democratic Party.

Another big donor to the Maine Democratic Party is the founder of Zynga, Marc Pincus, who said in 2024 that "an attack on Amazon is an attack on America." It goes beyond big tech and Wall Street. Crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried’s partner Nishad Singh at FTX gave $100k to the Maine Democratic Party in 2022.

The insiders running the party are the people funded through these streams of revenue, they are the ones dealing with the donors and currying favor with them. And while I will not speak out of school, the Maine Democratic establishment simply cannot be trusted and that is well-known.

Platner may be a fatally weakened candidate, that is for others to decide. It's a wave year in a blue state, but I get that Susan Collins is a strong incumbent. Winning this Senate seat matters, so I get why people might see value in ditching him. I generally think that polls and electoral guesses are mechanisms to get ordinary voters to focus on anything but policy. It's a disciplining mechanism, since no one can tell the future. But it's not crazy to see Platner as a poor candidate.

Let's be clear, the goal of pushing Platner aside is to destroy the agenda on which he was elected, which is about taming oligarchy and reorienting us from endless war. That is why the Maine Democrats aren't saying 'let's respect Platner voters and transition to someone else,' they are taking a sanctimonious 'he gets NO say in ANYTHING.' Those are not the actions of people who want to win a Senate seat, those are the actions of nasty insiders claiming factional power for themselves.

If Platner steps down, he will be characterized as a deviant, and that's just how it'll be forever. True or not. And everyone will be tarred as supportive of immoral behavior. It doesn't matter if you are a liberal, centrist, young, old, whatever. People are saying the Bulwark, a centrist outlet started by ex-Republicans who were skeptical of Platner, are tarred by this. Punchbowl is reporting that Senate progressives will never have credibility going forward. The ploy here is obvious.

That is, even though the actual immoral behavior at issue here is the genocide in Gaza, the corruption of DOGE and Musk, and the neoliberal turn in American politics for 40 years that has destroyed our faith in society and each other.

Platner has been consistent about his platform, and there's no reason to assume that will change. 70% of Maine Democrats picked him as their candidate, and he has the right to represent their views. So he should stay in the race or, if he feels he cannot win, leave on terms that will ensure his platform, and not that of Maine Dem Party oligarch donors, is the one on the ballot in November. The Maine Dem establishment cannot be trusted.

And frankly, this kind of ugly scenario is how power works. They make ordinary people pick among ugly scenarios, and then they make it seem like the obvious path is the one that accords more power and wealth to oligarchs. And if you don't choose that one, you're a bad person who deserves approbation and scorn. That's why I had to delete the original thread and rewrite it, because endless numbers of reporter gossips - who don't report on government policy - are using this extremely obvious ratfucking to try and destroy people like me telling you the truth.

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

Platner is offering to step down and Maine insiders are demanding he let them pick an Israel supporter. That’s playing with fire and deeply evil.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

It’ll be amusing to hear people say, “Ok, Ben Gvir may be prime minister, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some moderate people in the government who truly represent Israel. It’s not a dictatorship after all. He’s just one govt official.”

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

Oh Megan

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

You might think to yourself: why would AIPAC waste this money when they know Abdul will win the primary?

Answer: so they can soften him up for the general and beat him with the Republican, but make the attacks look like they’re coming from a fellow Dem.

By not banning AIPAC, a GOP-leaning group, from spending in Dem primaries, Dem leadership paved the way for this.

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

The right doesn't understand why their anti-woke frame worked during the Biden era. Trump didn't run anti-trans ads, he ran ads saying that the left is spending YOUR money on trans stuff instead of YOU.

That same frame works *for* the left when it comes to Israel.

[Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein]

How the fuck are there still 30-year incumbents in Congress. Who is voting for these people

[Zaid Jilani @ZaidJilani]

Abdul El Sayed is likely to be the country's first Muslim Senator, but he barely talks about it. And that's how it should be. People don't like ethnic and religious chauvinism. Once you can judge people by content of their character, any minority can succeed.

[Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein]

It’s going to be so funny watching all the 2028 presidential hopefuls rebranding as populist insurgents

[Zaid Jilani @ZaidJilani]

Amazing that Mamdani went from polling at 1 percent to now being admired by Barack Obama and Donald Trump and becoming some kinda de facto kingmaker in the Democratic Party.

Generational talent.

[Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein]

George Washington warned about the dangers of political parties in his farewell address, which feels eerily prescient today:
https://t.co/4hyyUKY5gj

[Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein]

anyone who's on good terms with party leadership should be primaried

[Aaron Maté @aaronjmate]

From “I’m speaking” to “can we speak?”