Usefulidiot_ver3.14

[Sam Stein @samstein]

The algae infested reflecting pool is a metaphor

[Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian]

8D Chess

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

On June 13, 1777, a 19-year-old French teenager landed on a beach in South Carolina, uninvited, to fight in someone else's war. He would become one of the most important men in American history.

The Marquis de Lafayette was one of the richest young aristocrats in France. He had a beautiful wife, a fortune, and zero reason to risk any of it. But he believed in the American cause so fiercely that when the French king forbade him from going, Lafayette bought his own ship and sailed anyway. He literally went AWOL from a life of luxury to bleed for a country that didn't exist yet.

Congress was annoyed at first. Another foreign officer looking for a paycheck? Then Lafayette offered to serve for free and pay his own way. That got their attention.

He met Washington and the two formed one of the great father-son bonds in American history. Washington had no biological children. Lafayette named his only son George Washington Lafayette.

He took a bullet in the leg at Brandywine and kept rallying the retreat. He was instrumental at Yorktown, the battle that won the war. He went home a hero on two continents.

A foreign teenager believed in America before America did. 249 years ago today.

[Jon Favreau @jonfavs]

Elon Musk held up a chainsaw, fed USAID into the wood chipper, and at least 600,00 people have already died as a result - two-thirds of them children.

History's first trillionaire.

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

You have to read this. 

Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House and replaced it with a private ballroom funded by corporate donors. Now we know what they got for it. 

More than half of the publicly identified donors to that $400 million project won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion in the 6 months after they gave. Most of those same companies also had federal enforcement actions against them suspended by the Trump Administration during the same period. 

There is no honest word for that other than corruption. 
https://t.co/r40hZyargd

[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

[The Green Dragon Tavern @greendragonhq]

Family wealth generated while holding office.

We are not angry enough about this.

[Punt Road @punt_rd]

This Primus video is proof that you can never really change who you are…🤣

[Ballislife.com @Ballislife]

5 YEARS AGO TODAY
DAMIAN LILLARD had one of the most impressive playoff games ever🔥

55 PTS (Playoff Career-High)
12 3PT (Playoff Record)
Forced OT
Forced 2OT
1st 55-PT, 10-AST in NBA Playoff history

[Dave Hale - Concerned Republican @CountryFirstRep]

It is legitimately a tragedy that the 250th anniversary of this country's birth will be presided over by a president who is EVERYTHING the founders warned us against -- a partisan demagogue who fundamentally loathes the separation of powers and denies election results he dislikes

[Stuart Falk @stufalk]

(Gift Article) There Has Never Been an Example of Presidential Corruption Like This

Trump's corruption and subversion of democratic tradition risk becoming the norm.

By The New York Times Editorial Board

https://t.co/dRELLrNEgQ

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

Within one 24 hour period, Trump:

- got out of a $100 million IRS fine
- secured "immunity" from all future tax investigations for his family and friends
- created a $1.8 billion slush fund for lawbreaking supporters
- was reported for likely insider trading worth nearly $1 billion

All of the obvious things to say about this are true. It's bad. Nobody even tries to defend it. The closest thing to a defense you get is something about how "but Democrats suck" and "woke was also bad," which is not a defense, but rather a kind of moral blank check made out to the administration to give them the right to do anything.

But what I'm most curious about is whether this sort of lurid corruption creates a countermovement that successfully returns government to rule of law or whether it's establishing a norm of executive imperialism that every future administration will use to achieve its ends, which can always be justified by the moral blank check of "the other side is worse, so let us do whatever we want."

[Cozyreads @Cozyreads_]

I am in love with this quote from Fahrenheit 451.

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

Tolstoy believed most men die without ever truly living.

He explains in his novella, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich."

Protagonist Ivan spends his entire life doing what society told him was "proper":

Get a good career, model wife, follow aristocratic social practices.

To an outsider, he looks successful, but a closer look reveals that Ivan's soul is rotting from the inside out. He grows ill, and on his deathbed, becomes haunted by a horrifying realization:

"What if my entire life was a lie?"

Ivan's life of vanity and decadence led to emptiness and loneliness. Even his friends and family don't care for the dying man.

Tolstoy's insight is that the greatest human tragedy is not death itself, but reaching death only to discover that you never truly lived at all.

Modern people tend to think of death as a distant abstraction that applies to humanity in general, but somehow not to themselves personally. Tolstoy shatters this illusion:

He shows that most know intellectually they will die, yet they live as though they are immortal. They distract themselves with status, entertainment, careerism, and social approval, such that they never have to confront what mortality actually means. But the terrifying power of death is that it destroys one's illusions.

And in that moment, all the things society told you mattered suddenly reveal themselves to be hollow.

However, Tolstoy does not present this realization as nihilistic... in fact, quite the opposite.

He suggests that only by fully confronting death can man begin to live authentically. Only when you realize your time is finite do cowardice and conformity lose their grip over you.

The fear of death, then, is not something to suppress, but something capable of awakening the soul.

A man who learns how to *die* is finally capable of learning how to live.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

Pigs are among the most intelligent and emotionally complex animals on the planet. Look at the sickening and sadistic conditions in which factory farms keep them.👇

That industry is trying to federalize animal abuse laws to bar bipartisan reforms led by @RepLuna. Please read:

[Usefulidiot_ver3.14 @ericdhag]

@trailblazers We are here

[Portland Trail Blazers @trailblazers]

Steel meets story. The city leaves its mark. Find Rip City’s wall.

How to Win:
1️⃣ Be the first to arrive at correct location
2️⃣ Follow @trailblazers
3️⃣ Like & share this post
4️⃣ Reply to this post on site, wearing it your way!

[Maj. (Ret.) Richard Ojeda @Ojeda4America]

Let me be clear: this SICKENS me. I spent YEARS writing letters to get my interpreters in America because they SAVED OUR LIVES. One of my interpreters was a 15 year old kid. One day, we were working with the Afghan police and he went stone quiet. After we left, I asked him what was wrong. He told me that the Afghan police had just threatened to cut his lips off for helping us. He was FIFTEEN. And he risked EVERYTHING for our soldiers.

[Rob B @RobBfromDerby]

“Open the Strait of Hormuz or I’m closing the Strait of Hormuz”

[Barney Panofsky's Best Intentions @mynamesnotgordy]

10/10. No notes.