One of the most infuriating things about the whole Dr. Ford affair is that the media has completely let Republicans get away with their lie, over and over again, that there is "no corroborating evidence" to support her allegation. Republicans have basically moved the goalposts to define "corroborating evidence" as just eyewitnesses, physical evidence, and that's it.

Actually, corroborating evidence is *anything* that supports a person's account.

What pisses me off about arguments like this is not just the minimization of rape. It's the entire premise that Kavanaugh has some fundamental right to be on the Supreme Court because he won the lottery of birth and rose through politics through his connections and family wealth.

https://twitter.com/mmfa/status/1042060715257987072

I mean, when @bariweiss laments that something he did when he was 17 could take away his future, what's being taken from him is something 99.9999999% of Americans will never have, a great many of whom would be just as smart as he is if they had the educational opportunity.

This is certainly a moral flaw in Kavanaugh, but it's also a deeper flaw in our entire standard for who should be appointed to federal courts.

We overvalue prestigiousness of credentials and undervalue real world experience.

https://twitter.com/jonathanalter/status/1037140984633667585

I'd happily accept more judges on the federal bench whose law degrees aren't Ivy League and who didn't clerk for the existing Washington judges, but who, say, ran a nonprofit for battered women, or served as a public defender in a rural place a million miles from anywhere.

Nice fake history.

Actually, public universities were first created in the U.S. in the early 1800s, and many state run land-grant schools established under the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 initially offered free tuition.

Many still did in the 1930s. politifact.com/florida/statem…

https://twitter.com/morlockp/status/1036688266827915266

In fact, @MorlockP, tuition costs began exploding in the 1970s for two reasons: state governments started slashing taxes that previously went toward funding public universities, and the federal government started creating privately-run middlemen to handle lending and collections.

The most stunning part of this is not that @GlennKesslerWP considers a black kid playing with a toy "armed," although that's certainly bad enough.

It's that he doesn't even seem to get what makes shootings of unarmed black children by police a social problem in the first place.

https://twitter.com/BrandyLJensen/status/1035270555195387906

Kessler seems to think if the rate of unarmed black kids being shot by police is not high enough that it can be expressed per 100,000 people, it can't possibly be a "frightening level" as @BetoORourke said.

He misses the point. Beto wasn't talking about a quantitative hazard.

Which is basically what liberals are complaining about too.

@jack is more concerned with "showing that we are not adding our own bias" than really applying the rules consistently, because so many right wing extremists are on his platform that real enforcement would look biased.

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1031336766559723520

Here's the problem.

We have reached a point where enforcing Twitter's rules as written is incompatible with Twitter execs' desire to insulate their company from complaints from conservatives.

Because conservatives are just plain more likely to abuse the rules than liberals.

There is a lot to be disgusted by here, but I think one of the most viscerally nauseating aspects of the push for Medicaid work requirements is @SeemaCMS's Orwellian doublespeak that Americans deserve "the dignity and respect of high expectations." politi.co/2nGYrtc Let me clarify this for you, @SeemaCMS: the government treating human beings as commodities who must produce market value to access basic services they need to be healthy and secure is not "dignity and respect." It's the exact opposite of it. It's devaluation of human life.

I've said it before. The idea people vote Republican to redress class greivances is a fiction. People vote Republican to redress racial grievances.

The media's decades-long willful refusal to understand this is what set the stage for Trump to take over the GOP with ease.

https://twitter.com/marcushjohnson/status/1029954274384650240

Trump didn't really even need to do that much to reshape the GOP in his image. He didn't really change them on policy.

All he did was smack down the code words and decorum the GOP has used for years to hide their appeals to white supremacy.

The problem is clear. There is no shortage of jobs, but there is a shortage of good-paying jobs.

Decades of corporate consolidation and union-busting has removed all market pressure for corporations to share rising profits, and falling tax burdens, with their workers.

https://twitter.com/kamalaharris/status/1026272144416751616

In many sectors, the markets keep chugging along because low wages mean higher, cheaper production, so people can afford more with less.

The problem is, that doesn't apply to the biggest, most inelastic goods people need to survive: housing, health care, and education.

I have news.

Starting on Monday, I will be joining @AlterNet as a breaking news reporter.

I am excited to be moving to a new platform and will be keeping on my fight to tell important stories that matter to the American people. I would like to take a moment to thank @Shareblue.

The past two years I've spent working with them has been an incredible journey that has grown my perspective and sharpened my voice.

There are times when I think maybe, just maybe, Capitol Metro has learned its lesson about what makes a good or bad approach to public transit. And then they go do shit like this. austinmonitor.com/stories/2018/0… To be clear: Cap Metro is not moving to do the Green Line first because it would serve the most important communities, or have the highest ridership. They admit ridership will be pathetic.

They're doing it because it's the cheapest and they want the illusion of progress.

I've curious how Mercatus came to the "$33 trillion over 10 years" figure. It strikes me as suspicious for one key reason.

If you take the amount spent by every US household on health care per year — taxes, premiums, OOP, all of it — and multiply by ten, you get...$33 trillion.

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1023915217615507456

It seems to me like all Mercatus did was go "hurr durr this is what health care costs Americans in one decade, and Bernie wants to make the whole government do all of it, ergo the plan will cost $33 trillion."

@tcddoyle @Amyloukingery @WhstleBritches The problem is that Republican economic theory doesn't acknowledge wages *need* to grow.

Their thinking is, if you cut taxes on the rich, they invest and produce more, supply rises, and purchasing power rises with it so the poor are no longer poor with the same amount of money. @tcddoyle @Amyloukingery @WhstleBritches In practice, that hasn't worked. Several core living expenses, like food, health care, housing, and education, have either extreme price inelasticity or suffer market distortion when the economy is overcapitalized. So purchasing power hasn't gone up with supply like GOP promised.

If you want an actual example of a "witch hunt" in our government, look at the concerted attempts by Republicans to strongarm Facebook to change its content review and algorithms based on a completely fictional belief that conservative content is getting blocked or suppressed. To be clear: there is NO EVIDENCE Facebook is interfering with conservative content. None. Every review of their traffic and statistics shows it simply doesn't happen.

And even if it did, Facebook is a private company that can do what it wants. How is this a matter for Congress?

This op-ed by former Trump NSC advisor Michael Anton is disgusting and wrong for many reasons.

But I want to draw attention in particular to one argument he made, because it's a very popular, dishonest argument made by white nationalists. washingtonpost.com/opinions/citiz… Specifically, the part where he quoted Michigan Sen. Jacob Howard, the author of the citizenship clause, saying: "This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers."

Oh poor you. You'd love to stop committing wage theft but it's impossible because...why exactly? You haven't really explained that?

https://twitter.com/adam22/status/1015000010579013632

You can tell yourself the "experience" you're giving kids is better than giving them money, @adam22, but study after study shows unpaid internships have ZERO impact on a young person's likelihood to find a paid job later. cnbc.com/2014/02/03/int…

I read this thread and the only thing I'm getting out of it is: you think your feelings matter more than the basic rights of women, POC, LGBTQ, unions, teachers, journalists, and every other group Trump has spent the past two years terrorizing.

Let me be blunt: no, they don't.

https://twitter.com/grummz/status/1013467014193541120

You do not have a right to have your ego stroked, @Grummz. You also do not have a right to have your beliefs and actions treated as legitimate by people who are losing the right to health care or voting rights because of you.

That's not part of "free speech" and never has been.

One question every single Democrat should ask Trump's eventual Supreme Court nominee:

"Trump has toyed with the idea of pardoning himself or his inner circle if they are prosecuted. Will you recuse yourself from any case that, directly or indirectly, affects his power to do so?" I believe that is the most compelling reason Trump should not be allowed to appoint a justice at this time.

Not because it's an election year. Not because that justice is sure to be radical.

Because it's a conflict of interest for a potential defendant to appoint his own judge.

I have to point this out.

There was another time Republicans had absolute control of all three branches plus most states, and passed a gigantic unnecessary supply-side stimulus into a rapidly-inflating financial sector along with sweeping protective tariffs.

That was the 1920s. No one seems worried because the economy is growing quickly. But it was also growing quickly in 1929.

And there are danger signs: the yield curve, one of the best indicators of a recession, is getting dangerously low.

TAKE NOTICE DEMOCRATS.

The far-right activists who are advising Trump on judges don't want to talk about Roe v. Wade. GOP senators are running from reporters asking them about Roe v. Wade.

They know it's a poisonous subject for them.

https://twitter.com/willwilkinson/status/1012321479302803456

Already I'm seeing pundits warning Democrats it will backfire if they warn people Roe is on the line.

Don't believe it.

Roe is popular. Americans oppose overturning it 69-28. Even REPUBLICANS oppose overturning it, 53-44. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017…

Anthony Kennedy is like John McCain. We all had to suck up to him not because we particularly admired him, but because he held a unique power of there being no one else. He was actually as far right as Roberts on nearly every issue.

https://twitter.com/tomscocca/status/1012039003862978560

Honestly, my last pretense of respect for Kennedy died with the knowledge that he is willing to leave now.

He's not an idiot. He knows all of the potential ramifications of bailing out at this juncture.