Dianna Pendleton

Attorney, Volunteer, & Animal Lover.

[Andrew—#IAmTheResistance @AmoneyResists]

OMG James Talarico was on SNL and helped crush this cold open

[Mrs. Butters 🥧 @MrsButters]

Mississippi, you beautiful bitch, you better hurry up and get over here!

[david D. @secretsqrl123]

Open letter to my dad.

Recently, you said that trump attacking my farm was not personal; deal with it.
Attacking my business was not personal; deal with it.
Cutting off funding for my wife and her cancer research was not personal, and deal with it.
And how great trump was doing…. And deal with it.

Yesterday I had to have a tooth extracted; it was painful. But not nearly as painful as hearing my dental hygienist, whom I love, was just served with deportation papers. She is here legally with her 3 children from eastern Ukraine. They escaped the war, where she was a dentist and had a full practice there. Her sister, a citizen, sponsored her. She has a job, she pays taxes, and she used to like it here. She didn’t take anyone's job; the practice had the job opening for over a year. Trump just changed the rules, and just to be a shit head, said Ukraine was no longer in danger, and the TPS and visas of all Ukrainian women and children were canceled, and they have 60 days to pack up and leave or face being attacked by ICE as criminals. They now have to go back to Ukraine, they have no home, no job and temple will not have her in a job they need. For what??????

I have news for you guy, 80% of the US population like Ukraine. And this is personal.
Trump has sunk the republican party, if he ran today he would be lucky to get 30% of the vote. I would love to debate you on that from now blue TEXAS.

You can continue to hide behind your bible while you praise a pedo and liar who is stealing from the USA and making golden statues of himself.
How can you still follow trump when he promised to help suffering marine vets with the contaminated water lawsuits ONLY if he won the midterms. Former Marines are fucking dying due to the Camp LaJune water, and Trump said he could have the DOJ do the right thing today. But he is now not going to due to losing the midterms. How can you, as a “proud Marine, and a patriot, be ok with your brothers and sisters being attacked by Trump like that???
I warned you what was coming and due to trump the dems now control the country.
I would say at this point that YOU helped trump, that means YOU gave the country to the dems… if as you say I am not a patriot for pointing out what was coming..

What does that make you?

I'm sure the fact that Trump will have a ballroom will comfort you when you know that for the rest of your life the Dems will have control of the country… and yes, you helped that.

If we had done the right thing and elected Nikki Haley or anyone else, this would not have happened. But no, you wanted revenge against biden, just like a lot of other MAGAs.

If being a trump supporter makes you a “patriot,” then that word has the same meaning today as loser.

I love the USA, im a conservative, I don’t hate the Rs and I don’t hate the Ds, I saw and warned you what was coming. And I hope that after trump and the magas are gone we can fix things. But that day is not here yet and Rs need to clean things up inside the party or they will never have the government again. and the first thing that needs to happen is that trump needs to pay a price for what he is doing.

no hate, just the truth

[CSPAN @cspan]

Veteran on President Trump's proposed arch: "We reject the vanity, the worship of a single man, over the 400,000 that have earned the right to be remembered; that have earned the right to keep an eye over our nation as they look towards the Lincoln Memorial."

[Brent Terhune in Ashville Nov 14 @BrentTerhune]

MAGA After Midterms

[Fr. Chris Vorderbruggen @FatherChrisVor1]

I have been holding my tongue about something that happened during the Ohio gubernatorial race. I refused to speak while the election was underway because I did not want my words mistaken for an attempt to influence anyone’s vote.

But now that the election is over, I have something to say.

For nearly twenty years, my ministry has taken me among the homeless, the abused, the exploited, and the forgotten. I have sat with victims of sexual violence and witnessed the lifelong wounds of childhood trauma.

What Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign did to Amy Acton was among the most morally repulsive things I have witnessed in American politics.

They took a woman whose stepfather was indicted for raping her when she was twelve years old and featured her mother, from whom she had been estranged for nearly fifty years, in a political advertisement attacking her credibility.

The advertisement challenged Acton’s account of her childhood without mentioning the sexual abuse allegations or the circumstances of that estrangement. When people expressed their horror, the campaign defended it.

Imagine examining another person’s childhood suffering and fractured family relationships, then deciding those wounds might help win an election.

Anyone who has worked with survivors of childhood sexual abuse understands the painful realities of denial, betrayal, shame, and estrangement. A child growing into a successful adult does not erase what happened. Nor does a parent’s denial make that suffering disappear.

I find it equally disturbing that an elderly mother, whom Acton herself described as unwell, was brought into this spectacle. Whatever her own struggles or responsibility for the past, exploiting that fractured relationship was grotesque.

To everyone who defended this, consider the message you sent to survivors. To the young woman whose family refuses to believe her. To the man who has carried the shame of childhood abuse for forty years. To the frightened child who has yet to tell anyone.

What did you teach them about the value of their suffering?

I am a priest. I believe in repentance, forgiveness, and redemption. But none of those things requires me to pretend that deliberate cruelty is anything less than a grave moral failure.

Your political allegiance does not absolve you of moral responsibility. You do not get to set aside your conscience during an election and retrieve it afterward.

If your loyalty requires you to defend the exploitation of a childhood sexual abuse survivor, your loyalty has become an idol. And if your conscience cannot recognize the wrong here, examine what political tribalism has done to it.

This is not about Republicans or Democrats. We have a choice as a people: continue excusing cruelty from our preferred political camp, or summon the courage to condemn it wherever it appears.

Amy Acton deserved better. Every survivor who watched this unfold deserved better.

And God help us if we have reached the point where winning an election matters more than protecting the dignity of a wounded human being.

[Covie @covie_93]

Pete Hegseth wanted people to watch a public execution, well they're seeing it tonight.

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

"Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it."
-- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis (#1)

[Bill @BillWiIdin]

My daughter works full time here in Texas. Let me run her numbers.

State minimum wage is $7.25. She's making $16.

Forty hours a week equals $640 weekly.

That’s roughly $2,700 a month before taxes.

Texas has no state income tax—the thing they sell you on. So after federal and FICA she takes home roughly $2,300.

Average one-bedroom in our city runs about $1,550.

That’s 67% of her entire paycheck gone to rent before she eats a single meal.

Leaves her around $750 a month for:

- groceries
- gas
- car insurance
- health insurance
- phone
- emergencies
- savings

Car insurance alone eats a huge chunk of that in this state.

She works 40 hours a week and cannot save a dollar. Not because she's careless because there's nothing left to be careless with.

I spent thirty years paying off a house here. She's doing the same job I did at her age and she can't afford a basic apartment.

That's not a discipline problem. That's not avocado toast.

The floor moved and nobody lowered the ceiling.

Working full time should cover a roof. In Texas it barely covers the rent on one.

[Suzie rizzio @Suzierizzo1]

Watching Trump walk down the stairs from Air Force One & keep tapping his leg where there’s a sensor to make his foot lift after having a stroke on his right side. He’s wearing an exoskeleton device likely from Cyberdyne Hal that attaches around waist & has sensors he pushes.

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

Well that was one hell of a closing argument tour by Trump on behalf of candidates. He salivated over men’s body parts, said high gas prices are good because oil companies are making billions, bragged about his ballroom, and said if he gave people $5k they still couldn’t afford to buy dinner at his club.

[Bulwark Clips @BulwarkClips]

John Legend: "When Vivek Ramaswamy hears of an indicted child abuser who fled the state rather than face charges, instead of siding with the victim, he takes the side of the abuser…Do we want a man with this sort of depraved moral compass to lead our state?"

[James Talarico @jamestalarico]

It was actually our 250th anniversary.

Not that you would know — you spent it with the British.

[Sean Johnson 🔥 @intentionally]

PSA: This week was kind of a turning point for AI and cybersecurity. Please take this weekend to do some simple cleanup for your family. Some suggestions:

- Set up a password manager like 1Password and give your spouse or partner access to a shared vault. Teach them how to use it.

- Update your passwords for critical stuff - your email account, your bank or financial stuff, etc. Store in your password manager and use the strongest password you can.

- Use two factor auth for everything you can. SMS is not ideal although better than nothing. Google Authenticator or a passkey is better. Hardware key is safest.)

- Add a sim pin to your phone. Makes it harder to sim jack.

- Update your phone and your computer to the newest releases. Turn auto-updates on.

- Freeze your credit - takes 5 minutes.

- Get an IRS Identity Protection PIN.

- If you’re using claude code or have AI agents that browse the web, they’re probably using Node.js. It’s also vulnerable. Update claude code, update node on your machine.

- If you’re building stuff on your computer, ask claude or grokbot (which is connected to twitter and likely has the most current info) to audit any of your repos for vulnerabilities. Ask grok to make it a scheduled task so it can do this daily - things are moving very quickly in the space right now.

- Consider some light resiliency stuff. This probably sounds silly, but it sounded silly at the beginning of covid too. Having printed out copies of important stuff - especially financial accounts. Having some cash on hand. Having some shelf-stable food and clean water or a water filter. Having a map. Having a generator that can at least power your fridge or some devices. Cheap insurance.

Again, I don’t want to alarm people, but I was taught that you should have a Secure plan, a Comfortable plan, and a Wealthy plan. And it seems pretty clear the secure plan needs to now factor cybersecurity risk as a legit threat. Take a weekend and shore yourself up.

[Judd Legum @JuddLegum]

Ramaswamy has produced an attack ad weaponizing the rape of his opponent, Amy Acton, when she was 12 years old. It features Acton’s mother, who abandoned Acton after she was raped by her step-father, fleeing the state with her husband.

Here is the corporate money helping fund that ad.

[Columbus Dispatch @DispatchAlerts]

Opinion: Reckless behavior of this Ohio governor candidate can't be ignored. We're endorsing rival https://t.co/kIN9Ud5icW

[Sheldon Whitehouse @SenWhitehouse]

While Trump supports Putin, “Moscow’s top diplomat pledged support for Tehran’s ‘just cause’”; so Trump is pretty directly supporting Iran.

[anyone_want_chips @anyonewantchips]

We thought Mueller would expose him but Barr stepped in, or Jack Smith would indict him but Cannon stepped in, or Congress would impeach and convict him but McConnell stepped in, or the judiciary would stop him but SCOTUS stepped in. It’s up to us. #VoteBlueToSaveDemocracy

[Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 @jurgen_nauditt]

A historic video – November 22, 1994:

The U.S. President thanks Ukraine for giving up its nuclear weapons. In return, the U.S. promises to stand by Ukraine’s side to safeguard its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity well into the future.

That future has arrived—yet today, Trump and his circle act as if none of this ever happened.

https://t.co/T7kFSRKgsJ

[Mike Nellis @MikeNellis]

Brutal ad

Acton going for the kill