Hal Duncan @hduncan.bsky.social

US expat living in Aotearoa. Gym owner and patent examiner.

[Trump Lie Tracker (Commentary Account) @MAGALieTracker]

BREAKING: Doug Ford just unveiled a massive sign reading “Lake Ontario Now and Always” on the shoreline of Lake Ontario.

Trump would hate it if this went viral.

[Wu Tang is for the Children @WUTangKids]

Just when you think you couldn’t love David Byrne more he goes to the Hollywood Bowl playing "Life During Wartime" projecting ICE raids 🔥

[StronglyWordedLetter @louisa_oeffling]

Over the weekend, Republican Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain's 2008 campaign for president, was interviewed on MSNBC.
In response to a very general question regarding the Trump Presidency, Mr. Schmidt spoke for two solid minutes and gave the most insightful and brutally honest response of what the Trump Presidency has done to our great country.
“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And, I don't say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And, he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And, there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.”
"When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don't use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We've never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.”
"It's just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he's the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he's brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale."
"And, let's be clear. This isn't happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you're the most likely to die from this disease. We're the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are, because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.

H/T Clarence Tucker

[Ellen Barkin @EllenBarkin]

Anti-Semitism is a hatred of Jews.
Anti-Zionism is a hatred of Israel.

@MarkRuffalo seems to understand the distinction. Why can’t you?

[Nightingale🇺🇸 @nightbird39]

#JEdgarBoozer

[Jennifer Tilly @JenniferTilly]

I also worked with Tim Curry on a staged reading of “All About Eve” for the Actor’s Fund. He played the most cutting incisive Addison DeWitt I’ve ever seen, and brought the house down.
Later he told me, that night lit a fire under him. He said he went home and swam in the pool at midnight and looked at the stars and wondered what he was doing with his life. Shortly after that I heard he was starring on Broadway in a Tony nominated role in Spamalot.
A brilliant comedic actor. Gone too soon.

[George's Dad @Gdad1x6]

Imagine

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

If America is ever to prevent another obscenely criminal presidency, Trump must go to prison.

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

It’s hard to imagine many people having a bigger impact than Dolly Parton. Born in a one-room cabin, she earned 11 Grammys and an Emmy, built a business empire, helped millions of kids learn to read, and — as if that wasn’t enough — helped accelerate the research that led to the Moderna COVID vaccine. What a life. Michelle and I are thinking of Dolly’s family and her many, many fans.

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

The disgraced former mayor of New York, Rudy (I was just tucking in my shirt) Giuliani, has threatened to sue me for defamation over an interview in which I never said his name. No one even mentioned him.

I want to apologize to Rudy. Going forward I will be certain to say his name directly.

Rudy, you worked with known Russian agents and their proxies to spread lies about me and my father. Their names are Andrii Derkach, Konstantin Kulyk, Andriy Telizhenko and Oleksandr Dubinsky and more. Kulyk handed you a dossier filled with disinformation. You flew to Kyiv in December 2019 to sit down with Derkach, then went on television with him to sell his bullshit tapes.

Trump’s own national security adviser warned the White House that what you brought back was Russian disinformation. You kept going.

Then Trump’s own Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, sanctioned Derkach in September 2020 as an active Russian agent for over a decade, for spreading the same lies you are still spitting. Four months later, on his way out the door, Mnuchin sanctioned the rest of your sources. Kulyk. Telizhenko. Dubinsky. Eleven people and four media front companies in all. Not sanctioned by me. Not by my father. By Donald Trump’s Treasury Department.

And remember Vienna Rudy. In October 2019 you, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman had tickets to fly there to collect a hard drive, courtesy of Dmytro Firtash, an indicted oligarch who has spent a decade in Vienna fighting extradition to the United States. Lev and Igor were arrested at Dulles holding one-way tickets. You canceled yours the next morning. That was way before a computer repairman in Wilmington was ever a twinkle in your eye.

So please, @RudyGiuliani. Please, please sue me. Discovery will be a joy for everyone.

[Devin Duke @sirDukeDevin]

I heard a line that sums up the MAGA pretty well:

Wealthy Republicans tolerate Trump’s racism because they want the tax cuts. Poor Republicans tolerate the tax cuts because they want the racism.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

The year is 1936. A charismatic politician named Buzz Windrip runs for president. He promises to make America great again. He rails against the press, the intellectuals, the weak politicians who sold the country out. He talks about restoring honor, putting people back to work, cleaning house. People love him. They pack rallies. They chant his name. And when he wins, he immediately suspends Congress, declares martial law, and starts putting his opponents in camps.
Sinclair Lewis wrote this in 1935. He was watching Hitler rise in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, and he thought: what if it happened here? So, he wrote a novel about it. It's not subtle. It's not subtle at all. It's a warning shot fired directly at the American reader, and it lands.
The main character is Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor in a small Vermont town. He's middle-aged, cranky, skeptical. He doesn't take Windrip seriously at first. Nobody does. Then the Constitution gets suspended. Then his newspaper gets shut down. Then his friends start disappearing. Then his daughter joins the fascist youth movement because it's exciting and her boyfriend is in it. And Doremus has to decide whether to keep his head down or fight back.
The book follows the rise of the American fascist state over several years. Windrip's cronies take over. The paramilitaries roam the streets. The camps fill up. The people who said "it can't happen here" say "well, maybe it's not so bad" or "we just have to wait it out" or "he's not targeting me." Lewis shows you how it happens slowly, legally, with applause from the crowd.
It's not a great novel in the literary sense. The prose is clunky. The characters are sometimes cartoonish. Lewis was in a rage when he wrote it, and it shows. But that's also why it works. It's a book written by a man who saw something coming and tried to scream loud enough to wake people up.
BOOK: https://t.co/e3CuyOMHAm

[The Shallow State @OurShallowState]

Trump is unique among malignant narcissists in being of below average intelligence, inarticulate, and poorly read. We almost never see this.
Even malignant narcissists who didn't hold political office (like Ted Bundy) had high IQ's. And "cult of personality" malignant narcissists (like Jim Jones and David Koresh), are especially literate, charismatic, and sharp. The pervasiveness and persuasiveness of cult leaders is almost always enhanced by intelligence, articulacy, clever repartee, and even wit.
Yet Trump is such a loud, boorish, and obvious con, that his political rise speaks as much to our celebrity culture, our consuming of media in echo chambers, his craven enablers, and our aggrieved society. This convergence has created a phenomenon that's made too much of our electorate ... well ... I'll just be nice and call them "susceptible."
At this point, he's so flawed, so owned by his disorders, and so enfeebled, he can't even navigate the very chaos he inflicts - he can't pivot, and can't be contrite, so he gets in deeper. He's become too old, too desperate, too fearful and too unable to process his own mortification. He never had strategic thought nor an ability to play from behind. And he's a lame duck.
All he has now are his cravings, a fantastical desire to reclaim grandiosity, a panicked fear of humiliation, and layers of toxicity. He's unable to satiate from incoming narcissistic nutrition, no matter how often they give him the North Korea treatment; and now Natalie has been tainted.
He is flailing. He keeps making mistakes and keeps screwing up - everything, everywhere, all at once.
His decline is unmistakable. His demise will be spectacular.

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

Richard Gere: We're living in the darkest moment that I've experienced on this planet. Whoever thought America could turn like this?

Whoever thought that a maniac like this would be president of the United States and dismantle all the good things?

America has never been a perfect place, but it has a perfect ideal that it's moving towards and always has, and it's been self-corrective.

First day, this guy dismantled almost everything that was good about the US government and the US people.

How is this even possible? Because we went to sleep. We didn't care. We didn't vote. We didn't really listen.

You know, of course, I didn't vote for this guy, but I didn't do enough work to skillfully convince people around me.

People close to me, not close to me, that this was insane to elect this person as president of the United States.

We all have to take responsibility for this. But how quickly, this was in weeks, he had dismantled America.

And you see how quickly our world can be taken from us if we fall asleep. And so we have to see the cues.

We have to see the cues, this dictatorship of the monsters. How quickly it happens. We have to be vigilant.

We can't sit back and go, "Ah, life is good, I'm fine. You know, I've got food, I've got money, blah blah, I've got my house, I've got another car, I'm thinking about this, blah blah, I'm okay. I know he's a bad guy, but it's okay."

It's not okay! It's never okay.

[matt bernstein @mattxiv]

reposting hannah’s words because i couldn’t have said it better

[Maryam @hell_line0]

The first time I watched Return of the Jedi, I wondered how we were supposed to believe that a gelatinous slimy mound of evil who could barely move around and wholly depended on sycophants to cater to his every whim could have possibly amassed such a fortune that he would inspire fear and be running things.

I get it now.