Mara

Suit turned Democratic rabble rouser. Dog and kid mom. Audiophile, New Yorker, deep breaths.

[Mara @mrgsteen]

@esglaude Latino and black men too

[Elie Mystal @ElieNYC]

People are dunking on Dr. Phil, but voting for Trump because a pretty woman wouldn't talk to them is THE KEY DEMOGRAPHIC of Trump's supporters.

[Nick Knudsen 🇺🇸 @NickKnudsenUS]

I have a confession and a plea to folks who are flirting with voting Jill Stein.

When I was a 20 year old college student in 2000, I voted for Ralph Nader instead of Al Gore. I loved the progressive message Nader offered, and Bush and Gore seemed kinda the same to someone who was paying peripheral attention.

I've regretted that vote for my entire adult life.

Ultimately, George Bush won by a margin of 500+ votes in the state of Florida over Gore. And that was the ballgame. Ralph Nader peeled 97,000+ votes away from Gore. If only 600 of those 90,000 had voted for the major party candidate that more aligned with their values, things would have been very different.

When I was in my senior year of college, 9/11 happened. The country and western world rallied around Bush's resolute response to the traumatizing terror attacks. I was in NY at the time, and it was a terrifying moment for the nation.

But the consequences of Bush being in office at that moment were immense.

Bush's disdain for his dad's nemesis, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, led him to invent a rationale to invade a country that literally had nothing to do with 9/11. End result? He killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people, thousands of American troops, and spent over a trillion dollars of taxpayer money in the process.

Beyond the completely immoral and indefensible Iraq War, Bush was a complete disaster as a president. His "No Child Left Behind" effort turned public schools into standardized testing centers. He tripled down on fossil fuels and ignored climate change. His tax cuts for the rich helped contribute to the 2008 economic downturn that led to the Great Recession.

He was a terrible president.

In an alternate reality, Al Gore would have been president in 2001 when terrorists attacked America. Would he have gone into Iraq? Absolutely not. Would he have ignored global warming? 100% no! Gore was perhaps the preeminent proponent of fighting climate change at that time. Would he have passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy? No way.

This is a sliding doors scenario. What would have happened? We can't be sure. But one thing is for sure: those votes for Ralph Nader (in Florida in particular) were EXCEPTIONALLY consequential for the lives of millions around the world. Gore would have offered a more forward-facing, environmentally conscious & peaceful presidency that wasn't so rooted in grievance and privilege.

My point is:

Either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will win the election. That is a fact. You might feel the need to submit a "protest vote" as I did in 2000.

Just be ready to wear it when Donald Trump wins, strips away reproductive rights from all Americans, implements an economy-destroying tariff, dismantles the entire federal government, eliminates the Department of Education, prosecutes his perceived enemies, and devolves America into chaos.

There are no perfect choices. But rest assured, there are only two.

Trust me - I've been wearing my vote for a quarter century.

[Zack Bornstein @ZackBornstein]

until the day I die I will never understand why he was even still allowed to run after this

[Elie Mystal @ElieNYC]

Please understand that this platform is about to become the very least reliable source of information in the aggregate if Trump starts losing tomorrow.

Coup Two requires people to feel "robbed" and Musk is going to go into overdrive making the MAGAs feel that.

[LeBron James @KingJames]

What are we even talking about here?? When I think about my kids and my family and how they will grow up, the choice is clear to me. VOTE KAMALA HARRIS!!!

[Mikel Jollett @Mikel_Jollett]

I keep hearing that I shouldn’t let politics interfere with friendships.

Motherfucker, if you think 11 million immigrants need to be rounded up and put in camps, we are not going to be friends.

[Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1]

🧵So this is a report-out on the lived experience of phone-banking for Dem candidates from a squirrelly biologist who’d rather give a speech to a thousand people—without notes and in my underwear —than cold call a stranger.

So what’s it like? 1/

[Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1]

This passage from Michelle Obama:

"I hope you'll forgive me if I'm a little frustrated that some of us are choosing to ignore Donald Trump's gross incompetence while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn. I hope that you'll forgive me if I'm a little angry that we are indifferent to his erratic behavior. His obvious mental decline. His history as a convicted felon. A known slumlord. A predator found liable for sexual abuse. All of this while we pick apart Kamala's answers from interviews that he doesn't even have the courage to do, y'all."

[Zack Bornstein @ZackBornstein]

how dare you call America a sexist country when a competent qualified woman with no scandals is running tied with a convicted sex predator who attempted a coup on live TV

[Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆 @RachelBitecofer]

🧵What (Really) Happens If Trump Wins?

Like Hitler, Trump Has Made Clear His Plan is Dictatorship, Not Democracy

January 30th 1933 dawned cold and clear in Berlin as Adolph Hitler took his oath of office and promised Germans he would uphold the constitution. It would ultimately take him less than 30 days to dismantle it.

[Mara @mrgsteen]

@aziz0nomics If you look at the history the answer is obviously yes. Israel has never fought an offensive war.

[AG @AGHamilton29]

When Hezbollah was starving entire Syrian towns and murdering civilians for Assad, the world was silent.

When Hezbollah was regularly persecuting and attacking Christians in Lebanon, the word was silent.

When Hezbollah stockpiled a hundred thousands rockets from Tehran and put them in residential buildings and towns preparing for a war they wanted, the world was silent.

When Hezbollah started launching daily rocket attacks and displaced hundreds of thousands of Israelis after 10/7, the world was silent.

But when Israel started taking out or blowing the nuts off the group that has been terrorizing the region for decades, suddenly the world is very concerned.

Just once it would be nice if the concern started when the terrorizing was happened instead of when the victims of it started fighting back.

[Julia Ioffe @juliaioffe]

Was killing Osama bin Laden a "major escalation"?

[I Smoked Lindsey Graham @BlackKnight10k]

Now that Trump is officially the oldest presidential candidate ever, I expect the media to spend weeks focusing on his age and his mental capacity.

[Brianna Wu @BriannaWu]

1/ Why should Israel exist? It’s a “settler-colonialist” atrocity, right? Didn’t they just steal the Palestinians' land in 1948?

No. The truth is, no one knows more about getting genocided and kicked out of their homes than the Jews. I’m not a historian, but with all the heated Twitter conversation, I thought I’d read a book or two to have an informed opinion about Israel/Palestine and whose home the region is. Is Twitter’s portrayal of Jews as warmongers who stole the Palestinian’s land accurate? Or is this a selective, one-sided history?

It is wildly one-sided and ahistoric.

If you truly care about people living in peace and safety and not getting “settler-colonized” you should STRONGLY support the existence of Israel. This thread will educate you on the 2,500 years of history BEFORE 1948. It will explain how the land of Israel is the historic home of Jews, how they were slaughtered and evicted repeatedly in an event called the Jewish Diaspora. And as long as this thread is, it’s going to be a FRACTION of a FRACTION of the atrocities.

[Mara @mrgsteen]

via @NYTimes Do I need to toss all my frozen embryos before I get accused of being a serial killer? ⁦⁩#seriouslythough ⁦⁦@nyulangone⁩ https://t.co/cjJ95NMWhx

[Marshall S. Billingslea @M_S_Billingslea]

1/13 Having just spent a week in Israel, I offer a few thoughts

As graphic as the internet images of the Oct. 7 attack are, one cannot truly appreciate the depravity of those who assaulted Israel without seeing it firsthand

Seen many bad things in my life, but nothing like this

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

Let me help you out and give you my thoughts on DEI
1. Diversity
Good businesses look where others don't, to find the employees that will put your business in the best possible position to succeed.
You may not agree, but I take it as a given that there are people of various races, ethnicities, orientation, etc that are regularly excluded from hiring consideration. By extending our hiring search to include them, we can find people that are more qualified. The loss of DEI-Phobic companies is my gain.

1a. We live in a country with very diverse demographics. In this era where trust of businesses can be hard to come by, people tend to connect more easily to people who are like them. Having a workforce that is diverse and representative of your stakeholders is good for business.

[Kiwi ✡︎ 🇮🇱🕊 ויסמן 🎗 @Kiwi_Ships]

If you want to throw in robot dogs, Mossad dolphins & space lasers into the mix to make us sound hardcore, that’s your business & honestly I kinda dig it.

Makes us sound way more cool than just a bunch of anxious Jews enduring awkward shidduchs in the hopes of procreating. 8/8