plinythemiddle.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Three things made the US a rich and powerful nation: the rule of law, its science & innovation system, and openness to foreign talent. Remarkable how Trump has taken a sledgehammer to all three. No enemy of this country could do more.

submitted 1 hour ago • 117 comments

Succinctly states where we are and what's happening. These three things, in addition to doing much else, are the sheet anchors of American wealth and power.

submitted 1 hour ago • 24 comments

Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

submitted 10 hours ago • 19 comments

KIMMEL: “.. Say what you want about Joe Biden being old. He never forced other world leaders to watch deepfake videos posted by ‘meemaw’ on Facebook.” @mediaitenews.bsky.social www.mediaite.com/media/tv/jim...

submitted 9 hours ago • 12 comments

A sincere welcome back to George Kirby, the best pitcher in baseball who also looks like a minor character in a John Steinbeck novel

submitted 4 hours ago • 43 comments

The Trumper obsession with Harvard is a cringe-inducing drama around status envy.

submitted 3 hours ago • 146 comments

Make it stop, for the love of god. (CNN must be getting a cut of sales, right?)

submitted 8 hours ago • 134 comments

The Pitt Noah Wyle >>> ER

submitted 23 hours ago • 67 comments

Update: Treasury rates continue rising up, up, and away. These rates alone could add $500 billion more to annual interest costs within a decade (relative to the CBO baseline of 3.6% govt interest rates). Caution: Depressing charts to follow: 🧵

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

SCOOP from me: the mass exodus of employees from NOAA is decimating a tiny office that literally keeps our measurements of latitude and longitude accurate — and, former employees tell me, endangers the science of how the US understands global measurements:

submitted 1 day ago • 48 comments

Profits made. Profits kept. 🤡 @forbes.com @zacheverson.com www.forbes.com/sites/zachev...

submitted 1 day ago • 151 comments

The entire Republican Party has lined up solidly behind a would-be fascist dictator with a narcissistic psychopathic personality disorder. But the real problem is that Democrats spent too long backing a president who often looked and sounded old.

submitted 1 day ago • 58 comments

I think the real "monsters" are the people who would - without any due process - dump Asian refugees in the middle of a civil-war-torn African nation just for the sport of it. But that's just me

submitted 1 day ago • 54 comments

The FDA’s explanation for restricting Covid boosters: 1) The Volk are smart enough to understand age- and risk-based factors. But also, 2) Making the Covid booster available to everyone contributed to the moronic anti-vaxx movement. www.thebulwark.com/p/the-arsoni...

submitted 1 day ago • 5 comments

The Democratic Party’s age problem isn’t just bad, it’s much worse than Republicans’. Half of registered Democratic voters are under 50, yet half their senators are over 67. Despite claiming to represent the future, party leadership systematically blocks younger voices from gaining power.

submitted 1 day ago • 40 comments

Two days before President Donald Trump announced dramatic plans for “reciprocal” tariffs on foreign imports, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sold stock in almost three dozen companies www.propublica.org/article/sean...

submitted 2 days ago • 32 comments

Unironically they should buy up the domains for about 60 defunct local newspapers in swing states. Hire two reporters to write almost exclusively about highschool sports and new restaurants opening with every 10th article about how the local GOP is screwing over people.

submitted 1 day ago • 340 comments

Burn it all down "Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth led a Christian prayer service in the Pentagon’s auditorium on Wednesday morning, during working hours, in which President Trump was praised as a divinely appointed leader."

submitted 1 day ago • 424 comments

LOL www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

submitted 1 day ago • 6 comments

Yeah that tracks. 🤡 @ryanlcooper.com itep.org/analysis-of-...

submitted 1 day ago • 26 comments

In the middle of the night tonight, Republicans are voting on whether or not their dangerous tax plan will come to the House floor for a vote. I’m offering an amendment that will stop millions of Americans from losing their health care. It’s time to put them on the record.

submitted 2 days ago • 12 comments

This might be the most foolish decision by a government since the acceptance of the Trojan horse. 🤦🏻‍♀️ www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/u...

submitted 1 day ago • 137 comments

Ramaphosa probably thought his joke would shame the President. But the President has no shame.

submitted 1 day ago • 37 comments

"And then I told them...get this...I told them I was going to REDUCE the deficit"

submitted 2 days ago • 10 comments

When you’ve been stranded overnight far from home, a chocolate beignet for breakfast with a cappuccino is mandatory. #LittleRiker agrees.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

“.. ‘We need to do some rewriting” and more analytic work “so this document is not used against the DNI or POTUS,’ Joe Kent, the chief of staff to Ms. Gabbard, wrote in an email to a group of intelligence officials on April 3 ..” @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/u...

submitted 1 day ago • 156 comments

Angie Craig: "I have no idea why we think it's a good idea to repeal a tax on silencers when we are going to feed fewer children in our country as a result of this. It's a moral damn failure is what it is."

submitted 1 day ago • 424 comments

When we add to this the Cato Institute report showing how many migrants sent to El Salvador had in fact entered the country legally, THIS is the top story of the night. The U.S. is sending people to horrors in foreign prisons. People who have had no due process. An actual nightmare.

submitted 2 days ago • 39 comments

10 years ago today I was about to drive from Oregon to the middle of nowhere in California's Central Valley on a whim that would forever transform my life. What a long, strange trip it's been... and I've never been so convinced it's almost over. This piece is from 2022 👇 slate.com/technology/2...

submitted 1 day ago • 22 comments

Musing: one side effect of constantly defending (eg an institution or a political party) against disinformation and bad faith criticism is that you can become habituated to ignoring all criticism (as bad faith), which makes it difficult to learn, adapt, grow, and address your actual weaknesses.

submitted 1 day ago • 14 comments

* MAJOR AIRLINE CEOS SAY AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM IS "FAILING AMERICANS", URGE CONGRESS TO ACT QUICKLY ON FUNDING NEW SYSTEM -- LETTER @reuters.com $XAL

submitted 1 day ago • 250 comments

30 year Treasury above 5%. Also, I successfully used AI to do a Trump/Truss crossover, putting a Trump wig on a lettuce paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-liz-trus...

submitted 1 day ago • 44 comments

Pedro Pascowl

submitted 2 days ago • 294 comments

My latest @nytopinion.nytimes.com evaluates the House tax plan & finds it wanting. In addition to issues w/ revenue, growth & simplicity there is distribution: it gives more to the 1m households making >$1m than it does to the 127m households making <$100K. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/o...

submitted 2 days ago • 5 comments

You'll notice that each of the major dailies has now run a "Musk is pulling back" ... "Musk won't be spending more on campaigns" article in just the last few days. But look closer and US diplos keep working to rack up Starlink contracts for him overseas and more USG contracts keep piling up.

submitted 1 day ago • 69 comments

In an interview pegged to the publication of his memoir, billionaire Barry Diller and I talked about the nine law firms that settled with President Trump. “I would never employ one of those law firms that did that, that essentially folded under these circumstances,” he said.

submitted 2 days ago • 13 comments

Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) says he has recordings of business associates of President Trump’s pick to lead the IRS, Billy Long, saying they expect to get favors from him once he is in office thehill.com/business/530...

submitted 2 days ago • 41 comments

Offered a dozen chances to say that it’s illegal for the president to “conduct or terminate an audit on a taxpayer” (the exact wording in the statute), Trump’s nominee for IRS declines to do so. youtu.be/4Dtuf3AdMfg?...

submitted 2 days ago • 33 comments

🚨UPDATE: In a late-night court hearing, the Trump admin says that it deported the Burmese man to Burma, but is REFUSING to say where they deported the Vietnamese man, claiming it’s classified! The judge ordered ICE to tell everyone involved they may face criminal contempt.

submitted 2 days ago • 85 comments

House budget bill would lead bottom income quintile to lose ~4% of their income on average ($800), but top percentile would see their incomes rise 4% (nearly $70,000). If tariffs remain in place, the overall impact on families would be even more regressive. budgetlab.yale.edu/research/dis...

submitted 3 days ago • 23 comments

One of the free state of Florida's biggest counties just blocked schoolkids from reading "The Handmaid‘s Tale," "Beloved" and "Anne Frank’s Diary" www.tampabay.com/news/educati...

submitted 1 day ago • 30 comments

Economists in a May 14-21 Reuters poll were unanimous the Trump administration's policies have hurt the economy, with over 55% saying "significantly hurt" www.reuters.com/world/china/...

submitted 1 day ago • 17 comments

Thanks for playing, tho.

submitted 2 days ago • 82 comments

They are so dumb. So very, very dumb.

submitted 2 days ago • 1052 comments

someone’s taking this mafia state transition really seriously

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

God bless you @markleibovich.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

submitted 2 days ago • 65 comments

submitted 3 days ago • 66 comments

The Trump tariffs are "stackable," and so average tariff rates are higher than you're seeing in most media reports. Lemme 'splain.

submitted 4 days ago • 38 comments