Short Skirt Long Jacket

Ron Swanson for President

[Antonio García Martínez (agm.eth) @antoniogm]

These numbers are somewhat bogus (and I'm the first to claim Euro supremacy in some areas).

US institutions are far older than many European ones.

Spanish democracy is younger than me.
Florida is older than Italy, Germany, Norway, Finland, Hungary, Poland, etc.
France has had 15 or so constitutions or regimes in the time the US has had one.

You can cite micro-examples like San Marino or some deliberative body in some tiny ethnostate as examples of political continuity, but in the big-country leagues, there isn't much older than the US.

Yes, the church my grandmother was baptized in is much older than the US, as is Galician/Spanish culture itself. But in terms of political bodies or law, not so much really. The US has been shockingly stable...only one civil war! Spain has had four during the same time.

[Peter Schweizer @peterschweizer]

There have been 4 major revolutions in the past 250 years: American, French, Russian, and Chinese. Only one led to individual rights and prosperity. The others led to mass death and tyranny. The US revolution was unique because it said two things: 1. Our rights come from God not from the govt. 2. Humans are power -hungry so we need to limit govt power. So the next time someone attacks the nation of one revolution that succeeded and recycles the the idea of those that miserably failed, you can ask them: are you ignorant, or malicious?

[David Burge @iowahawkblog]

America is exceptional because the people who bitch about it the loudest refuse to leave

[Christian Heiens 🏛 @ChristianHeiens]

We dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, twice, and 80 years later they light up their cities in our colors as a show of how much they love us.

Meanwhile, we bailed half of Europe out, twice, and their governments take every last opportunity to signal how much they despise us.

[Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry @pegobry_en]

When I was a child, my grandfather would sometimes solemnly intone at the dinner table: "The purpose of socialism is to organize scarcity."

As a kid it sort-of didn't register in my brain as meaning anything beyond "socialism bad", but eventually when I was 12 or something, I did ask what he meant by those specific words.

And he said: socialists establish control of valuable resources and then create an artificial scarcity of these resources, so that they can then use them as a tool of control by deciding who gets and doesn't get those resources.

And I thought that was wrong. I mean, are socialists misguided? Sure. But to claim that they deliberately create scarcity as a means of political control? That seemed far-fetched.

But, of course, he was entirely correct.

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

Disappointed to see this using the “conservative pounce” formulation.

I’m Gen X. All of us, including liberals like me, were there when we watched a nation filled with brilliant people put its best minds to making socialism work. It was an unparalleled disaster — not just economically, but environmentally, and certainly from a human rights perspective as well.

The fact that we now have people on both the right and the left who think Lenin was on to something, or that “real socialism has never been tried,” is mind-blowing. It represents a massive generational failure of our K–PhD system. They didn’t learn the history, philosophy, or economics that would have prevented them from falling for the same midwittery that too many of our grandparents fell for.

Sure, it sounds nice. Utopia always does. But it was a colossal disaster that we must not repeat.

So no, Axios. The news isn’t that the GOP is sounding the alarm. It’s that more genuine liberals aren’t.

[Short Skirt Long Jacket @thmpsnx]

@jarvis_best

[Melissa Chen @MsMelChen]

🚨 YOUR TAX DOLLARS TRAINED CHINA’S WEAPONS BOSSES FOR 20+ YEARS.

A public university in red-state Missouri - Missouri State University in Springfield - ran a direct pipeline from 2001 to at least 2025 that handed American MBA and EMBA degrees to more than 1,500 Chinese executives.

These weren’t random students.

Many came from and returned to leadership roles in China’s defense industry, state-owned aerospace giants like AVIC (sanctioned by the US as a military company), surveillance tech firms, and other entities the US govt has flagged as national security threats.

The university took the money, asked almost no questions about where the students came from or what they’d do with their American credentials, and kept the revenue flowing.

This was done with full institutional buy-in, signed off by the leadership. The CCP and Chinese state entities picked the participants. The program ran for over two decades while China built up its military machine.

Your taxes helped pay for it.

This is how you lose a technological edge - one credentialed executive at a time.

The report exposing this was put together by our firm @StrategyRisks.

Every public university in America should have to explain their China program(s).

https://t.co/3ZgdUClIP7

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

This is rad.

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

Harvesting just one kidney from 20% of America’s politicians would give a new kidney to EVERY SINGLE PERSON currently on the transplant waiting list.

[Short Skirt Long Jacket @thmpsnx]

@MsMelChen Japanese tourists at a sporting event: Great. If you are trying to view art at a museum: Not so much. Politeness goes out the window for a good photo.

[mert @mert]

elon could solve world hunger literally this second

all he has to do is full stack dump all his shares, cause a stock market recession, wipe out trillions, delete tens of thousands of jobs, and then he'll be able to fund the federal government for about 18 minutes

[Melissa Chen @MsMelChen]

Florida had an election meltdown back in 2000 and they ripped the entire system apart and fixed it.

California has had decades to fix this garbage and deliberately chooses not to. It’s an ongoing, intentional middle finger to every honest voter. The voting system is such a corrupt clown show disaster that drags on for weeks while the rest of the country is done counting in hours.

This mess is an insanely stupid but deliberate policy choice and we should treat it with escalating contempt until they fix it.

If a bunch of conspiracy theories about all those harvested ballots and 3 am vote dumps lights a fire under their asses, then GOOD. Whatever it takes to stop this stupid circus.

Oh, and obviously the current voter records and rolls should be abolished and redone from scratch. Clean the house up.

[Michelle Maxwell ™ @MichelleMaxwell]

With everything we are hearing right now about ticks this seems like good information to share.

“Here’s what I’ve learned after more ticks than I care to count.
First, whatever your uncle told you, forget it. No matches. No nail polish. No Vaseline. No soap on a cotton ball. All of those do the same terrible thing, they stress the tick out, and a stressed tick empties its gut back into the bite before letting go. Which, if you think about what that actually means for a second, is literally how Lyme and the rest get transmitted so you’re not speeding up its exit. You’re making it throw up into you.
Fine-tipped tweezers. Grip right where the mouthparts enter the skin, not the body, the head. Pull straight up, steady, no twisting, no jerking. It’ll feel like it’s resisting because it is, the mouthparts are barbed. Just keep the pressure on and it lets go in a few seconds. If a piece breaks off in the skin, leave it alone. Your body pushes splinters out. Digging around with a needle does more damage then the fragment ever would.
Clean it with alcohol or soap. Wash your hands.
Now here’s the part most people skip: don’t flush the tick.
Tape it to an index card. Clear packing tape right over the body, write the date and where on your body it was, and stick the card in a drawer. If you come down with anything weird in the next 30 days, rash, fever, joint pain, that flu-that-isn’t-flu feeling, that tick goes with you to the doctor. Some labs will test the tick itself, which is faster and often more reliable than waiting for antibodies to show up in your own blood. A dated tick taped to a card is one of the most useful things you can hand a doctor who’s trying to figure out what’s wrong with you.
The other thing worth saying out loud: if the tick was engorged when you pulled it, and you can’t swear it was off your body within 24 hours, call your doctor that same day. Don’t wait for a rash. Fewer than three out of four Lyme cases even produce the classic bullseye. A single preventive dose of doxycycline within 72 hours of a deer tick bite cuts the Lyme odds way down, and most docs in tick country will write that prescription without giving you a hard time, especially if you walk in with the tick taped to a card and a clear timeline.”

[James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames]

👀👀👀

[Naval @naval]

The latest IQ test involves data centers and water.

[Hans Fiene 🦬 @HansFiene]

I know you're stressed but keep in mind things will not actually calm down in a couple weeks

[Short Skirt Long Jacket @thmpsnx]

@annbauerwriter @KemalOnor Yes! It was not an enjoyable read.

[Kassy Akiva @KassyAkiva]

This🔥

“There’s a question that I get a lot these days. People will come up and say, ‘What happened to all of these people? What happened to Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly, and all the rest?’

And I don’t know the answer, because I am not a psychiatrist. But here is what I do know:

Nobody has ever asked that question about me. No one. Because my worldview has not changed. It has not changed. My principles have not changed, because I think those principles are true and good. And those principles are not going to change.

So, in the end, take it or leave it.”

[Melissa Chen @MsMelChen]

What Steve is describing here, this "near-identifical phrasing," is all part of China's linguistic strategy for cultural and political programming.

Basically it's a mechanism for enforcing uniform thought, speech, and public behavior not just domestically, but internationally as well.

It is INSANE once you actually understand how it works.

One thing you will notice is that there are specific formulations that keep coming up in official communications by the CCP, and it gets repeated ad nauseam by the media.

Some common examples: mutual respect, win-win cooperation, shared future, non-interference, peaceful development, socialism with Chinese characteristics, One China.

These are called 提法 (tífǎ): precise, officially approved linguistic formulations, slogans, key phrases, or coded wording that the Party leadership uses to convey policy directives and ideological positions.

Once issued, a 提法 (tífǎ) becomes the only permissible way to discuss a topic. Deviating from it (or using an older or outdated formulation) signals disloyalty or error. This ensures everyone echoes the exact same terminology which creates a unified narrative.

The second concept you should be familiar with is called 表态 (biǎotài). It means to publicly declare one's position or loyalty, often by repeating a 提法 (tífǎ) verbatim.

Once the leadership issues a 提法 (tífǎ), everyone else from officials to bureaucrats, media and even ordinary citizens, must 表态 (biǎotài) by openly endorsing and echoing it in speeches, articles, social media, meetings, etc.

By requiring exact repetition (tífǎ) and public affirmation (biǎotài), the system trains people to internalize Party lines rather than question them. The system is perfectly engineered for ideological discipline and thought control, which is how YOU get politically programmed to first say what the Party wants you to say, which eventually leads to you to believe what the Party wants you to believe. It is so powerful that it has the power to shape global discourse.

I want you to analyze everything coming out of the readouts and media articles from this China summit knowing this.

Notice the standardized, repetitive language, especially the peaceful, harmonious, win-win framing.

This is catnip for utopian, empathetic WEF types who never met a TED talk they didn't like because it's a linguistic pattern that maps neatly onto post-Cold War liberal priors: multilateralism, anti-unilateralism, suspicion of Western "hegemony," and a belief that economic interdependence magically produces political liberalization.

Meanwhile, CCP's actions belie the rhetoric - mercantilist trade surpluses, currency manipulation, IP theft on an industrial scale (estimated hundreds of billions annually), militarization of the South China Sea despite "peaceful" promises, debt-trap infrastructure via Belt and Road, tech transfer coercion, United Front influence ops, hacking into US telecoms and critical infrastructure, and domestic totalitarianism ramping up under Xi.

The effectiveness of these tactics is inversely proportional to your awareness of it. Spread the word.