Note for new subscribers: On Fridays I send out a post with a list of various notable quotes from the past week, along with links to some of the best reading material I’ve come across. You can opt out of these posts by simply clicking on the top right and going to “manage subscription.”
“I find something fascinating about people like Taibbi & Greenwald who skip from leftist to rightist politics without ever even dabbling in being chill and moderate.” — Matthew Yglesias
“The Trump policy is to deport everybody, whether they have a green card or not. And just to eliminate all immigration, essentially, because they do not want people who are not white to come into this country. It’s plain and simple.” — Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), in an interview with News Nation
“I think Trump won the moment, if not ‘the debate.’ It’s odd, but I really think so. Corporate media outed itself, a magician which overly exposed its tricks. The swing voters the candidates were vying for noticed this. What they didn’t get was any acknowledgement of their plight, or the country’s, by Harris. Or any idea of her plans. Nothing to grab onto.” — Walter Kirn
“I know many people in Washington D.C. that would unplug your life support to charge their cell phone.” — Senator John Kennedy, in an interview with Baton Rouge’s WBRZ
“The most widespread BlueMAGA behavior, currently, is an absolutely rabid dedication to the idea that any polling that does not show a decisive lead for Harris is the product of Russian disinformation or the evil of Nate Silver or the machinations of The New York Times, which is alleged to be a dedicated anti-Kamala publication despite publishing five pieces a day with headlines like ‘How a Kamala Harris Victory Could Create a Time Loop That Would Prevent the Assassination of Medgar Evers.’” — Freddie DeBoer
“It’s smart of Harris to do no media interviews since she doesn’t believe in anything and that’s unappealing.” — Matt Stoller
“No event has traumatized me so much as watching nearly the whole of the professional, media, and academic class be entirely fine with the sudden imposition of totalitarian controls on association, movement, and speech provided they could luxuriate at home - believing there to be a killer virus extant - and hang out on video chats as the workers and peasants kept society running and delivered groceries to their front doors. That same group was thrilled to receive trillions in payments for having done this. Again, nearly the whole of the top 1/3 of society was just fine with this, and certainly raised no objection. Many within this group manufactured excuses for their deeply disgusting disdain for others. I doubt I can ever recover the respect I once had for the wealthy, the educated, the credentialed, and the successful. In the Covid period, they deployed their privileges as a weapons against modern ideals and against all the people they (secretly) regarded as their lessers. This really happened. And it revealed everything. In the end, they were rewarded for their disgraceful attitudes and behaviors. This reality, again, more than anything I’ve ever personally witnessed, has shaped my views on nearly everything and fundamentally disrupted much of what I once believed.” — The Brownstone Institute’s Jeffrey A. Tucker
“The thing that’s most baffling about Democrats is their suggestion that they have a Secret Plan to curb mass shootings which they never implement when they’re in power.” — The Wall Street Journal’s Kyle Smith
“Everyone wants to touch the sex kitten before they come out here.” — Jimmy Kimmel, in reference to Doug Emhoff
“So, I talked to 20 voters [in Michigan], not one of them was undecided. Not one. And headlines come and go, but let me tell you this: support for former President Trump is real and resilient. I encountered that everywhere I went.” — Major Garrett, CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent
“In 20 years, history will not look kindly at the fact that it took 1.5 hours of a debate to (briefly) get to climate change.” — ESPN’s Mina Kimes
“The US has no functional president and has not had one for months, and it’s barely noticeable and barely matters because there’s a permanent unelected machine that runs the government.” — Glenn Greenwald
“If literal Adolf Hitler were found alive and said bad things about Trump, he’d have a popular afternoon MSNBC show within weeks and a regular stint on Morning Joe.” — Also Glenn Greenwald
“[Trump’s] act is so stale that Fox doesn’t even really cover him live any more. It’s very rare that they take him because I think they’ve even started to realize that it’s unhelpful to their preferred candidate to show him. And the more that you actually watch him, which is why we all debate whether to show him, we do show him sometimes, because you watch it and what you really see is a decrepit mind. You see a person who is declining. He is the oldest person ever to run for president, and it is clear that he is in some form of cognitive decline.” — MSNBC’s Joy Reid
“Kamala Harris is modest in stature, but is considered by some to have Tall Energy.” — The New York Times’ Abby Ellin
“What’s been obvious about Democrats & their partisans for the past decade is that they never see Trump’s misconduct & sins as a problem, only as an opportunity & a permission structure that expands what they can get away with.” — National Review’s Dan McLaughlin
“The reason why it doesn’t end his career is because his supporters are just as despicable.” — The Nation’s Elie Mystal, musing with Joy Reid about why Trump pays no consequences for his “constant lies”
“When I was a kid growing up in Nebraska, being gay was illegal. It’s still technically illegal.” — Tim Walz, speaking at the Human Rights Campaign’s national dinner
“Each year, as I reflect on my own reporting on the floods that keep getting worse and the toxic pollution building up in all forms of life, I find myself questioning whether I could ever justify bringing my own children into this world.” — The Los Angeles Times’ Rosanna Xia
“The only reason Trump might win is because of white people. Not because the media is too timid, or for any other reason. Blame white people. Be brave, white liberals and admit it: our people are the enemy. Now, reject whiteness and embrace humanity. It’s easy if you try.” — Critical Race Theorist Tim Wise
If you need to get past a paywall, use Archive Today or 12ft.io.
A Buzzfeed piece on the life of one of America’s bloodiest hitmen.
“The Fight to Find John Wilkes Booth’s Diary in a Forgotten Subway Tunnel,” from Newsweek.
Harper’s: “Jay Miscovich spent his life wanting to hunt for treasure. In 2010, after just a few months of trying, he found half a billion dollars worth of emeralds at the bottom of the Atlantic. A few years later he killed himself.”
Spiked: “There is now very little doubt that Covid leaked from a lab”
An Atlantic story about “Grief, conspiracy theories, and one family’s search for meaning in the two decades since 9/11.”
Esquire: “In the days after 9/11, a photo of an unknown man falling from the South Tower appeared in publications across the globe. This is the story of that photograph, and of the search to find the man pictured in it.”
A Washington Post piece on Chris Mark, a man who has worked for decades within the federal government, improving the job safety of miners—one field-tested equation at a time.
Jeffrey Tucker's eloquent description of the authoritarian COVID insanity and its effects on his outlook about our culture and politics is powerful and describes almost exactly the feelings I have about the whole pathetic shitshow.....
that Jeffery Tucker quote perfectly describes my entire experience and perception about Covid and the world after. the veil was fully lifted.