@Phil i know it was a tiny fraction of the Federal budget, saved thousands of lives for a tiny cost, was an institution on which people relied upon for decades but was then abruptly uprooted when Elon decided to skip some great parties one weekend. i know the people who destroyed it understood nothing at all about the institutions and ultimately lives they were destroying beyond the prejudices and arrogance they brought with them to instant power.

@VeroniqueB99 they’re doing their best to make it a rain check.

@Phil no. it’s murder when it is gratuitous. sometime policy leads to death. a higher speed limit. gun laws. we make considered tradeoffs. that’s not murder. but when ideologues mindlessly pull the plug on someone’s lifeline without any judicious consideration of the tradeoffs or consequences, yeah, that’s murder.

it’s rather astonishing how a news event that to a first, second, and third approximation has nothing at all to do with trans people has nevertheless been dominated by controversializing about trans people.

@Phil you have supported murderers, quite actively. it’s understandable at a human level that you are reluctant to recognize that.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/04/14/g-s1-59863/hiv-aids-drugs-usaid-zambia

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/world/africa/south-sudan-cholera-children-deaths.html

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-rubio-usaid-musk-death-toll-malaria-polio-tuberculosis

@Phil you are suffused to in what to me are obvious evils. the first thing your movement did in power was to gratuitously murder thousands of people by withdrawing food and medicine abruptly, and you actively defend it. i love to spend time in cities, even though yes they are badly misgoverned in the US. of course the most dangerous cities in the US are in red states (New Orleans, Memphis, St Louis), but that’s inconvenient.

@Phil surely not. but we disagree about what constitutes evil and destruction. so we must tolerate one another, or destroy one another, which would be evil.

@Phil founding principles like religious toleration, separation of church and state, freedom of conscience and way of life?

@Phil sure. that’s what democrats do, rally their base with EVIL. and of course those who characterize them that way are icons of decency and toleration.

(i don’t know that “democrats” constitutes anything that can be described as a political movement.)

political movements that center martyrdom tend not to be great political movements.

some of the most horrible ways to murder people are to starve them, or to take away their lifesaving medication abruptly, leaving no plausible path to find a replacement source in time.

one can just consistently disapprove of murder. one will find one has a great deal to disapprove of.

@hfinyow Putin, both personally and on behalf of his (bad) conception of his duty to his country. He saw the superpower he served reduced to depression and chaos in the 1990s. He himself, an experienced intelligence agent, had to drive a cab to get by. That’s what he wants, no doubt 10x, for the US, which he blames for all that.

Trump doesn't understand that this guy he admires, this person Trump wants desperately to pretend is his friend, hopes with a burning passion to see the country Trump leads (and therefore Trump himself) in crisis and humiliated. Putin, very much like Trump, takes an interest in vengeance.

pretty convenient how quickly The Left has forgotten sandwich guy.

it is troubling, on a day like this, to have not so much faith in the competence, honesty, or intentions of the current FBI.

This is a good @mattyglesias piece. https://www.slowboring.com/p/national-conservatism-is-un-american

“you will hate us, but you will pay us anyway.”

the new capitalism.

the automobile can be a great servant, but has proven itself (especially in the United States) a terrible master.