Russell Elkin

✡️🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱

[Marc Polymeropoulos @Mpolymer]

This is a must read ffrom @Nadav_Eyal

[OSINTdefender @sentdefender]

Five of the seven oil tanks located at the terminal in the Russian-occupied city of Kerch on the coast of the Crimean Peninsula, along with several vessels in the Kerch Strait, were set ablaze, following overnight drones strikes from Ukraine.

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

I cheered these arguments - and made them myself - back when I was a smug, 20yo no-exceptions libertarian drenched in Ayn Rand (you know the type - I am sorry).

Back then, I would give the purist libertarian/ individualist argument for why $15 in annual taxes that help save millions abroad from HIV, malaria, and starvation was nonetheless a violation of my property rights and a path to parasitic dependency for those impoverished orphans born with HIV.

Now, I'm still generally libertarian. But also much older, with a greater sense that life is short, we're all just passing through, and ideological purity should not be an automatic barrier to making life easier for people who have it worse than me.

So while I get the libertarian argument below, I also know we do not live in theory - we live in the real world where millions of real people can die as a consequence of our decisions. And people who are THAT offended that their "coerced" $15/yr helps save millions of lives have let ideological purity sacrifice their humanity. And if that makes me a sell-out "statist," so be it.

(and I'm not trying to pick on John, who is expressing a common framework that I once adopted myself).

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

The Lessons I Learned from My Dad

I am not the man my father is.
I am trying. Some days closer. Some days farther.
He never sat me down and explained these lessons. He lived them. I’m still learning them.

Show up.
The kitchen table. The hospital room. The funeral. The picket line. The call from the son who won’t answer.
Show up.
Most days that’s the whole job.
My whole life I watched him do it. Not for cameras. Not for headlines. Not because there was something in it for him. He showed up because someone needed him.

I learned that grief doesn’t make you special.
My father buried a wife and daughter. He buried a son. Yet he never treated grief as a claim on other people’s sympathy. Instead, it made him notice theirs.
A mother who lost a child. A father sitting beside a hospital bed. A kid scared about what comes next. A son who lost his mother, his sister, his brother.
He always noticed.

I learned that power is not the point.
The people who chase power eventually confuse the office with themselves.
My father never did.
Whether he was a county councilman, a senator, vice president, or president, he was the same man.
The title changed.
He didn’t.

I learned that family comes first.
The train from Wilmington wasn’t symbolism.
It was every night.
He read to us. Showed up to games. Sat through hospital rooms. Waited up for children who were lost.
And when the day came that the country and the family could not both have him at full strength, he chose family. He relinquished the last chapter of how he wanted to be remembered. And he never complained about it.

Most of all, I learned that love is not soft.
Love is discipline.
Love is showing up at one in the morning when nobody is watching.
Love is answering the phone.
Love is staying.
Love is getting back up after life knocks you down and doing it all again tomorrow.
That love saved my life.
I’ve failed at many of these lessons, sometimes in very public ways.
He loved me anyway.

That’s the last lesson.
I am not trying to become my father.
I am trying to carry what he gave me.
And if I can do that, even imperfectly, that will be enough.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you.

[Russell Elkin @russelkin]

If only there were groups who had the capability to perform research, gather facts & evidence, summarize everything into a story that’s straightforward & easy for the public to understand, then broadcast it across the country. National news companies are choosing to NOT do this!

[Ted Lieu @tedlieu]

There is a 24/7 camera that shows the reflecting pool. If someone went into the pool and made a 250 foot gash, it would have been seen.

trump is lying again. Everyone knows it, but the people at @TheJusticeDept are randomly going after people to soothe trump’s fragile ego.

[Ford News @FordJohnathan5]

Fun Fact. This is false. FBI Director Kash Patel said no such thing, a task force hasn't been formed. John is repeating a satire account that created a meme making these false claims. Stop the fucking lying.

[Brian Tashman @briantashman]

Real Change PAC and Lead Left, which are both spending huge sums in Democratic primaries, "got all of their money so far from Conservative Americans PAC"

[Democracy Docket @DemocracyDocket]

The GOP is trying to expand the Supreme Court’s decision gutting the Voting Rights Act far beyond gerrymandering district maps.

Republicans don’t just want to make it harder for minority voters to get fair representation; they want to make it harder to cast a ballot at all. https://t.co/SulX7oRIbv

[J.J. Abbott @jjabbott]

who thought this was a good idea??

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

wHy aRE pEOpLe rALkiNg aBOuT the rEFleCtInG pOoL?

[The Atlantic @TheAtlantic]

As AI tools have become extremely good at writing code, they’ve also become extremely good at pulling off cyberattacks, @matteo_wong reports: "The attack angles are seemingly infinite. And no one is adequately prepared." https://t.co/uxddwGkae0

[Carolina Forward @ForwardCarolina]

You cheated so outrageously that your own son testified against you, and then faked an illness to dodge accountability. You're a disgrace to North Carolina and the office you occupy.

[Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian]

Everyone knows Trump is a fraud.

[The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline]

Trump’s Obama envy has been an enduring psychopolitical feature of the national landscape for what seems like forever. He mentioned Obama’s name nearly two dozen times during the three-day G7 summit.
https://t.co/t5NQwxaVGd

[Jon Ralston @RalstonReports]

It can’t help but remind me that a desperate narcissist will do anything, including a coup attempt w/fraudulent electors, to hold onto power. Trump is clearly preparing for even more extreme measures in November to avoid Dems taking the legislative branch. Scary but true.
2/2

[Steve Schmidt @SteveSchmidtSES]

Every secretary of defense inherits two armies. One is measured in tanks, ships and airplanes. The other is measured in memory. Pete Hegseth is dishonoring both.

https://t.co/P06AiNmJtc

Subscribe to The Warning at https://t.co/VHU3hfiRf7.

https://t.co/sUaXEziQTa

[Keith Edwards @keithedwards]

The FBI just showed up at my door because I tweeted about people picking up paint debris and sending it to me.

I asked them where's Savannah Guthrie's mom

[Turnbull @cturnbull1968]

Days as President with the Strait of Hormuz closed.

Obama: 0
Trump: 63

[Rick Wilson @TheRickWilson]

That fucking fraud deserves prison.

[Rick Wilson @TheRickWilson]

Imagine being so far up Trump’s ass you believe any of this.