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

Just so we're clear was it not a crisis when it was the other way around?

submitted 1 day ago • 187 comments

It's pretty rich to hear a guy like Musk who is into crypto call Social Security, which has been in place for almost 90 years, a "Ponzi scheme." If rich people just paid the same percentage of their income in Social Security taxes the rest of us do, SSA would be solvent for generations to come.

submitted 1 day ago • 34 comments

When James Meredith integrated Old Miss, white student segregationists refused to put his picture in the yearbook. Hegseth has the same energy.

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

"Last year, there was a big news story that MTV News was shut down.... And I [said], 'Hi, um … check the Wayback Machine.' They were like, ‘Oh my God, you guys got it all. What did you do?’ We didn’t do anything when the site went down because we’ve been doing our job all along."

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

FBI returns materials seized at Mar-a-Lago to Trump, White House says www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

submitted 2 days ago • 36 comments

Wall Street Journal Editorial Board comes out swinging against JD Vance. Indeed, key moment in downward spiral was Vance lashing out in response to Zelenskyy's point on diplomacy with Putin WSJ: "It is bewildering to see Mr. Trump’s allies defending this debacle as some show of American strength."

submitted 2 days ago • 508 comments

I'm struggling to get over what we saw today. The amount of gaslighting, cruelty, ignorance, abject cowardice, arrogance, indifference to human life, and deceit we saw from Trump and Vance...we saw behavior we associate with enemies of the United States inside the Oval Office. That's traumatizing.

submitted 2 days ago • 713 comments

It’s nice how they’ve replicated the middle school dynamic of the insecure bully and his sniveling sidekick picking on someone surrounded by a circle of scared little boys who also try to talk shit so the bully doesn’t come after them. Or as the right calls it, “masculinity.”

submitted 2 days ago • 440 comments

Thinking today of Benjamin Franklin, who wore an old suit (and no wig) before the king and court of France, to represent his nation—while it was fighting for its existence

submitted 2 days ago • 14 comments

worth saying again that this was a bait and switch. if trump had openly announced he was running on allowing companies to discriminate against women and minorities he would not have won wapo.st/43aVQg1

submitted 2 days ago • 306 comments

NOAA Cuts Leave Wind Chimes As Sole Predictor Of Approaching Hurricanes

submitted 2 days ago • 193 comments

"History will remember this day— when an American President and Vice President abandoned all we stand for."

submitted 2 days ago • 3156 comments

Obama and Biden may think they are honoring the office of the presidency by keeping quiet at a moment like this — if so that’s just preening vanity — they owe it to the office and to the Republic that until last month it served to speak up loudly and clearly and without relent.

submitted 2 days ago • 528 comments

Trump’s disgusting behavior in our Oval Office in the company of a genuine hero and defender of democracy like Volodymyr Zelensky may be the most disgraceful public behavior by any president in our history.

submitted 2 days ago • 496 comments

This is the first time in US history that a state has repealed statutory protections for a specific group.

submitted 2 days ago • 71 comments

Here I react to the shameful encounter between American leaders and media and the Ukrainian president. No doubt there were more, but I saw five failures on our side: of hospitality, decency, democracy, strategy, and independence. Please watch and share. snyder.substack.com/p/five-failu...

submitted 2 days ago • 1108 comments

If you were in Congress, what would you do for the State of the Union? What do you think Dems should do?

submitted 2 days ago • 34971 comments

Okay... we feel like we say this every week but a lot of stuff happened. Let's break it down, starting with @brbarrett.bsky.social on why the DOGE takeover is worse than you think... (sorry, but you gotta read this one.)

submitted 3 days ago • 210 comments

"Language Police Have Taken Over the White House" www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/o...

submitted 3 days ago • 16 comments

The Republican Party is taking away your vaccines.

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

submitted 3 days ago • 768 comments

Happy Rex Manning Day, the first of many.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

It is a glorious day to buy audiobooks from Libro.fm

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

The Atlantic | Democrats say they offer a better path than the grifting, bigoted, economy-tanking chaos of Trump and Musk. But when will they answer for unelected teen activist David Hogg tweeting "defund the police" in 2020? by Josh Barro

submitted 3 days ago • 21 comments

There is a belief in MAGAland that the private sector will just fund this stuff. For example, Sean Hannity said that “most of the solutions for cancer are going to be found in the private sector, not with public money.” But thats simply not true.

submitted 3 days ago • 51 comments

Trump Education Department opens snitch line to rat out diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at local public schools. The snitch portal was launched in association with anti-LGBTQ group Moms for Liberty: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

They just fired hundreds of FAA employees.

submitted 3 days ago • 4684 comments

How rich.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

If you live in NY State, please consider signing on to this petition in support of calling upon Erie County District Attorney Michael Keane to exonerate Geraldine Pointer and Martin Sostre. Petition and Details are here: www.martinsostre.com

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

Has Bezos studied American history at all? Does he know anything about federal subsidies for railroad and canals? Does he understand the enormous government role in the creation of the Internet? There has been no point when "freedom in the economic realm" existed in the form of pure "free markets."

submitted 5 days ago • 89 comments

Elon Musk's only profitable company, Tesla, has created a cumulative grand total net income of $34 billion in its more than 20 years of existence. That's less than the total amount of US federal subsidies his empire has collectively received. The economics of Elon Musk are as bad as the politics.

submitted 5 days ago • 95 comments

Elon Musk, who has said the beneficiaries of federal spending are a "parasite class," runs businesses that have pocketed $38 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies, loans and contracts www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

submitted 5 days ago • 126 comments

SCOOP: WaPo Opinion editor David Shipley is out. Jeff Bezos emails staff about a change to Post Opinions: "We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets."

submitted 5 days ago • 777 comments

From the “Trump Gaza” AI hype video Trump just posted — shirtless Trump and Netanyahu sipping on drinks at an imagined resort, presumably in Gaza

submitted 5 days ago • 16 comments

My fellow historian of early America, and fellow student of the very conservative historian Gordon Wood, wrote a very sober piece recently that came to a similar conclusion. It's truly crazy-making how many of our fellow Americans look upon what's happening as if it's totally normal.

submitted 5 days ago • 45 comments

Had a conversation with a non political person whose buddy works for the forest service and was 10 months into his job supplying hard to reach parts of a national forest and was fired. The guy talking to me was like “I don’t really think my buddy’s $50,000 salary is gonna balance the budget.”

submitted 5 days ago • 488 comments

The long-term goal is to radically undermine the US system of higher education. This is just a small first step. The function previously served by institutions of higher ed will be picked up by cheap, for-profit startups that do instruction via youtube videos and AI instruction.

submitted 5 days ago • 26 comments

It’s said that we live in a post-fact society. We disagree. Now, more than ever, facts matter, and ProPublica is going to continue to track how and when patently false statements are injected into conversations about the country’s future. By @sengelberg.bsky.social

submitted 5 days ago • 37 comments

The DOGE vision: 50 year old VA nurses will now work in steel mills and chip fabs

submitted 6 days ago • 14 comments

We love merit, don’t we folks?

submitted 6 days ago • 507 comments

A life lesson I can attribute to my former contrarian students: the more you have to twist yourself into a pretzel to prove that a thing isn’t a thing, the more likely it actually is that thing.

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Like it’s about the email, Matt. How does this tactic work?

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments