For The Worse

Never trust a computer to remember your login info. Formerly @protest_poster

[For The Worse @protest__poster]

Every single one of my D&D characters.

[Mohammad @MargBarAmerica]

personally i believe graham planter should have died in iraq, and i just don’t give a shit about electoral politics. but his republican accuser has no issues making up bullshit about mahmoud khalil, rumeysa ozturk and other palestine supporters so her credibility seems bad.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

It's kind of wild to find out that the Republican in the NYT story that says she had a toxic relationship with Graham Platner is Lyndsey Fifield. Having been in DC for too long, I know a decent number of people who know her quite well. For a long time she was the co-host of a podcast with her best friend Bethany Mandel, called Ladybrains, though she has also worked for multiple super PACs, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Heritage Foundation.

Some background, presented without judgment: In 2014, Fifield began work as digital director for American Action Network, a Republican Super PAC that oversees House races. The next year she became social media manager for the Heritage Foundation, where she stayed for the next seven years.

In 2022, she joined the Super PAC backing Nikki Haley for president, switching to the official campaign side the next year, and staying until the campaign flamed out. She now lists herself as a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, a prominent dark money group that is best known for helping usher Brett Kavanaugh on to the Supreme Court and giving Susan Collins the talking points she needed to make her decisive speech in his favor.

The NYT breezed past all this, saying she was "a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns."

In an interview for a news outlet called Red Alert Politics that named her to a “30 under 30” list back in 2016, she said that she wanted to “emulate the late conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s approach to online activism.” Breitbart, known for pushing the boundaries when it came to political combat, is perhaps best remembered for having exposed Anthony Weiner’s penchant for sending nudes to young girls, and for his work elevating James O’Keefe.

That she worked for Independent Women's Forum recently is even wilder since IWF played a critical role in Kavanaugh's confirmation and in persuading Collins to support it.

Heather Higgins, chair of IWF, laid out the group’s role in a talk several years ago. “We wrote a memo. It was used by a lot of members of the Senate and the House, Fox News, and elsewhere. Most important, Susan Collins told me that without that memo, she would not see how to support him,” Higgins said. “And if you look at the speech she gave on the Senate floor, it’s entirely the playing out and architecture of how we said to structure the argument — what to say and how to say it, which is just so gratifying. We’re watching TV and we’re like, ‘That’s ours! That’s ours!’”

Meanwhile, the timeline Fifield gives of their relationship is confusing, because during at least some of that time she was actually dating a different person, her longterm boyfriend who became her fiancee before she called off the wedding in 2018. We all know this because she and Mandel did a podcast episode on it that went mega-viral in Republican circles back then. Apparently this is the kind of thing the NYT thinks is important now, so I guess it requires more reporting. I'll report back.

Here is Heather Higgins celebrating IWF's role in getting Susan Collins to confirm Kavanaugh:

[For The Worse @protest__poster]

@jakebrodes She's gonna love the Raid 2

[For The Worse @protest__poster]

@tybuddhaboy It's gonna be like Last Jedi where the brilliant rebel girlboss literally gets so many soldiers killed that the entire remaining rebellion can fit in the common area of a light freighter.

[Handsome B. Charming @CTachio83984]

jaunty SNL style montage intro of me doing classic big city stuff then i get a hot dog and it seems like the guy messed it up and the montage is stopped on this one scene and im getting angrier and angrier going ballistic on the guy while the sax music plays

[Sophy Romvari @SophyRomvari]

Alphabet song from NTBTSTM wins best original song at the Canadian academy awards, truly extraordinary and lmao

[Mohammed El-Kurd @m7mdkurd]

You know, the killing is so relentless that you almost get used to it. A classroom of children killed every single day. You write about it, you read about it. Someone’s mother digs herself up from the rubble. Someone’s father is split in half. There was a video of wounded man using his arms to crawl across the road. Another man is so hungry he weeps. You read the stories. Each one is more brutal than the next and somehow the brutality is banal. You are numb, for better or for worse. But there are moments in the day, maybe just a singular moment, when you actually contend with the magnitude of the tragedy, when you are able to quantify the loss and in those moments you feel crushed—there are no adjectives. There are people mourning their lovers. Students missing their teachers. Orphans. Widowers. Grandmothers who look just like your own. I cry when I think about the people who were martyred just hours before they could apologize for something, or confess to something, or have something to eat. Or the slain who believed they would survive. And as the rancid rotten people of the world pontificate and debate the definition of genocide, you are at war with yourself, trying desperately to ignore the material meaning of the word. You read the news and you read the news and it is so hard to accept that the dead, the thousands of people they are slaughtering, they are your loved ones and your loved ones’ loved ones. This isn’t just a bad dream.

[For The Worse @protest__poster]

@alecrobbins First time I ever saw any of it I only caught the academic decathlon bit on tv, Buschemi shooting the villain and the "I'm glad I called *that* guy!" line hits so hard even as a total non sequitur.

[Jesse Brenneman @Jesse_Brenneman]

Stories like these, along with the countless tales of ancient lawmakers refusing to step down, make little sense if you assume Congress sees its role as making laws and representing voters. They make a lot of sense if you realize they don't.

[Neeva Gang 2.0 @PunishedGramsci]

I guess the memo went out today for the commentary class to start priming the water for true blue actual austerity here, an ill portent of late Trumpism

[For The Worse @protest__poster]

@TychoBrahe The Errol Flynn one is interesting if only for the frankly cyclopean scale of the castle sets and matte paintings. The Imperium of Man built the castles in that movie.

[For The Worse @protest__poster]

@i_zzzzzz Without the cutaway, it would have the confidence of a Simpsons joke.

[For The Worse @protest__poster]

@hausofdecline Museum display that is playing clips from The Mask on a loop. Tex Avery asks them to pause it on the frame while Cameron Diaz is on screen.

[For The Worse @protest__poster]

@GirlfriendHaver Sometimes make myself laugh thinking about the one old guy who says something like, "Some nights when it's cold in the house I'll still tell my wife, 'glad I'm not in Bastogne.'"

His poor wife. 50 years of hearing him say that shit.

[For The Worse @protest__poster]

@KelseyTuoc @MattBruenig Let me help you out:

"Hasan is guilty of stochastic terrorism" = false

"Healthcare CEO was guilty of social murder" = true

[Mark @AgingRanchHand]

Jeopardy! should allow masked contestants every once in a while and when it's story time they should get to shake their head "no" and not say anything

[Prem Thakker @prem_thakker]

Does he realize what he just admitted lol

[Faust 🧙‍♂️☢️ @toffee_32]

you have this guy just yelling GOY GOY GOY GOY while harassing palestinians and people on here still act outraged when the goys use it as a reappropiated slur for stupid memes and go NOOOO IT'S NOT ACTUALLY USED AS A SLUURRR lmao

[For The Worse @protest__poster]

@daveryder This guy looooooves rapists

[For The Worse @protest__poster]

@ContraPoints Comedy is okay, but clown is more difficult.