Ben Soller 🌎

POlitics, War, and History... with pop culture and sports on the side

[Jessica Tarlov @JessicaTarlov]

Guess we’re back to our Sunday ritual so the markets don’t flip out tomorrow morning.

[unusual_whales @unusual_whales]

Trump has said he plans to build “one of the greatest golf courses in the world” in D.C., saying it will be open to the public.

[Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins]

The name of the Kennedy Center remains covered by a tarp and scaffolding. Two guards are standing in front of it.

[Unseen Japan @UnseenJapanSite]

ICYMI: Today's geisha are known for elegance, but Edo's original female geisha, the Tatsumi of Fukagawa, were famous for grey coats, masculine names, and bare feet in winter. They owe their start to one cast-out dancer: Kikuya.

[Pubity @pubity]

Jeff Bezos' ex-wife MacKenzie Scott has given over $26,300,000,000 to charity, making her one of the biggest individual donors in history.

She wants to spend the majority of her Bezos fortune on helping others and making the world a better place.

[Wu Tang is for the Children @WUTangKids]

Lmao "thousands"

[Julian Andreone @JulianAndreone]

I’m here and can confirm it’s completely empty, but at least they randomly hung an Israeli flag?

[Jonathan Martin @jmart]

there it is, the ossoff model: weekend rally, clips delivered for social media and a tight corruption focus

[Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 @PollTracker2024]

#MichiganSenate

WSJ: Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) has privately told associates that Democrats need to coalesce around one candidate to face off against Abdul El-Sayed and suggested Mallory McMorrow should drop out of the race

https://t.co/Afkk6MdrRA

[David Frum @davidfrum]

Few of us have access to full information on how Trump lost the Iran War. But we can all see the fiasco Trump has made of the 250th anniversary celebrations. Watching Trump fail at something easy helps illustrate why he was doomed to mess up anything difficult.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Ossoff: "Citizens United was the most destructive court decision in modern American history. It's unleashed a flood of secret money, corporate money, billionaire money on both sides. Donald Trump's rise is a symptom of this deeper disease. Our task is not just to contain his wickedness, but to cure the rot that gave rise to it."

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

The US-Iran MOU and the Israeli-Lebanese agreements are incompatible as I see them.

If both are pursued, neither will be achieved.

It appears the administration is working against itself, and Trump appears too disinterested in the details to recognize this.

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

TAYLOR: Russia's invasion of Ukraine started in Crimea in 2014, and they've been there ever since. Now, Ukrainians are finally on the front foot. They've got the momentum, and they are squeezing Russians out of Crimea right now. Zelenskyy's really getting into Putin's head here.

[David Axelrod @davidaxelrod]

How can you not smile?

[Tommy Vietor @TVietor08]

I want to roll this speech up and smoke it

[Peter Baker @peterbakernyt]

The average life expectancy of a new Russian recruit—from arrival at a training ground to death in a combat zone—lies somewhere between 10 days and three weeks. Once sent onto the battlefield, they survive an average of 20 to 35 minutes. @peterfrankopan https://t.co/W3UhBerdH0

[M. Nolan Gray 🥑 @mnolangray]

I haven't studied it in detail, but from what I have seen, the natural experiment that Buenos Aires ran over the past six years seems like yet more clear evidence that rent control limits supply and (ironically) raises rents.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Karl: Republicans are going to make you the poster child for the Democratic Party.

Mamdani: Let them. We don’t have to ask ourselves what life looks like if a socialist wins. I won last November, and over the course of these last six months, what we’ve delivered for working people are the very things we were told were impossible.

We’ve delivered free child care for two-year-olds for the first time in New York City history. We’ve delivered tens of millions of dollars back to tenants who were taken advantage of by bad landlords. We’ve delivered 165,000 potholes being paved. And we’ve done all of these things while also delivering the lowest recorded crime in our city’s history.

That’s what it looks like to have democratic socialism. And what you’re seeing is that New Yorkers experienced this for six months and made the decision that they wanted to see more of it on the national stage as well.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Ossoff: "The president was so humiliated in Hormuz he threw his toys out the stroller and refused to sign the affordable housing bill. That's after he gave some felon donor a no bid contract for the reflecting pool and it filled up with algae, which for some reason required the deployment of the National Guard. And then because of his war and tariffs, inflation rose to over 4%. He promised to bring down prices on day one, do you remember that?"