Thatcher Bean

@mtracey That's not what is happening. Some accusations are that they were not conscious & did not consent. There is contemporaneous evidence backing them - which is adequate for his supporters to determine they don't want to help him become gov or stay in congress. He's not a victim.

It's amazing that so many people feel entitled to decree, to all of society, that any sexual or romantic interaction that might entail some sort of "power differential" or "power disparity" is hereby deemed inherently abusive, and therefore impermissible. A blanket rule to be imposed on all private adult behavior: regardless of individual circumstances. Because the decree-proclaimers believe they can somehow know, as a matter of pure dogma, that no "consent" can ever be freely given in such scenarios, even if both adult parties consciously believe themselves to be consenting. It really takes extreme arrogance to think you can authoritatively generalize, in such an imperious and self-certain way, about the totality of human experience. Especially regarding a dimension of human experience with such infinite subtle complexities as sexual/romantic interaction. Still, they believe they're entitled to police everyone else's behavior with their top-down dogmatic dictates, based on this weird moral absolutism they demand everyone else uncritically accept.

@DKThomp What are you even getting at here? What aspects of modern political commentary do this?

It’s interesting how many aspects of modern political commentary hold up the 1945-1971 postwar period as the natural state of things that was broken by our weird new modernity, when instead maybe it’s more accurate to see this period as profoundly unusual. I think about this with media commentary all the time: “Why can’t we get back to Walter Cronkite, shared sense of reality, etc” A brief and strange information oligopoly created a scarce number of radio/TV stations, which enforced a news monoculture on radio/TV audiences. Whether that was altogether good or bad, it was extremely weird! Look at the 19th century. A zillion newspapers, many of them insane and terrible and partisan. The chaos is what’s normal.

de grands discours sur la souveraineté industrielle, sur l’IA souveraine, sur la France puissance technologique du 21ème siècle et en 2026 on arrive même pas à trouver des pièces détachées pour faire fonctionner les tapis roulants de Châtelet la plus grande station de métro d’Europe on parle de conquérir l’espace, de construire des réacteurs nucléaires de nouvelle génération et de rivaliser avec la Chine sur l’IA mais on est incapable de maintenir un escalator en état de marche dans sa propre capitale, c’est ça la réalité de la souveraineté industrielle française en 2026 on écrit des rapports de 300 pages sur la réindustrialisation pendant que les pièces de rechange de nos propres infrastructures sont fabriquées à l’étranger et qu’on attend 6 mois pour les recevoir, un pays qui n’arrive pas à faire tourner un tapis roulant veut rivaliser avec des gens qui construisent des villes entières en 3 ans à un moment il faut arrêter les discours et regarder l’état réel du pays parce que la souveraineté ça commence par être capable de faire fonctionner ce qui existe déjà avant de promettre ce qui n’existera jamais

🔥🔥🔥A thousand writers, directors, and actors signed a letter opposing the Paramount-Warner merger. That's a HUGE deal, since there was massive fear in the industry. It was organized by @MarkRuffalo, who is as far as I can tell the Mayor of Hollywood. Ruffalo almost single-handedly turned the town.

People will be closely studying how Hungary's opposition pulled off their win in such a pro-incumbent system. Important to note that the theme was corruption. Democrats need to get much better at calling out Trump's corruption.

Americans are generally tolerant good people, whose flaw is they are too naive and deferential to the powerful.

There's a simple reason for hostility to American culture among elites. When a society is governed by predatory oligarchs, there are messes everywhere. Yet elites can't admit that such messes are a result of corrupt governance, hence they say 'oh Americans lack virtue.' Nonsense.

@paulalexlewis @PeteRicketts Agreed on all of that - but it doesn’t answer the question. It is shifting and as SOH has recently reinforced, economic levers can beat military levers. It’s why I disagree with Rickett’s approach but share his alarm. China has become the world’s manufacturer.

@thatcherbean @PeteRicketts Chinese global hegemony doesn’t exist. When you look at the amount of wars, bombings and election manipulation and political interference initiated by America as well as its military threats and overseas military bases there is no comparison.

Communist China is our most serious foreign threat. Xi Jinping aims for China to dominate the world by 2049. They want to reshape the world to fall in line with their authoritarian vision. We must protect our freedom. That's why I voted to deliver $150 billion to strengthen America's deterrence against Communist China.

@mtracey Even if this part was concocted, how does that negate the presentation of contemporaneous evidence from others supporting claims of sexual assault? What evidence discredits that reporting? If one element is faulty must everything be thrown out? What are your standards?

One of the four women whom CNN characterizes as alleging "sexual misconduct" by Eric Swalwell was essentially an adult woman whom Swalwell asked on a date, she agreed, they meet up, drink alcoholic beverages, end up having sex, and then she starts to feel bad about it because he's married. Although the anonymous adult woman says she felt "emotionally vulnerable" after the hookup, she continued to send him "friendly messages," and told him he would make an "amazing governor." That's it. If you want to expose and moralistically opine on the private sexual activity of adults, that's your prerogative I guess, but lumping it under the umbrella of "sexual misconduct" is preposterous. There's nothing non-consensual even alleged here. The woman only "came forward" when she started hearing rumors on social media about Swalwell's other flings. Sure, it looks like the guy was cheating on his wife. If you want to bombastically scold him for that, go ahead I guess, but it's also trivially common behavior (see also: the current governor of California, the current president of the United States). To vaguely categorize it as somehow constituting RAPE (or even "misconduct") is an assault on the English language, common sense, and public rationality. Did no one learn ANYTHING from the embarrassing excesses of "MeToo"? Below is the entire CNN excerpt chronicling the anonymous woman's story. (This adult woman DID NOT work for Swalwell in any capacity.) Feel free to explain how it's anything other than what I've described above, despite the obvious selectivity in how CNN assembled their ridiculous reportage. Surely there must've been plenty of additional details strategically omitted in service of the narrative CNN decided to concoct, in collusion with the Dem activists and "influencers" who ginned up this whole fiasco. --------------- CNN, April 10, 2026 ‘All you did was harm me’ Another woman, who had an interest in Democratic politics, said she began messaging with Swalwell online in 2025 after responding to one of his Instagram stories, joking that she might run for office herself. A couple of days later, she said, Swalwell followed her and encouraged her to get involved in politics. He later sent her his phone number. The woman and Swalwell began texting over several weeks, including late at night, discussing politics and their previous work experience as bartenders, screenshots of messages she shared with CNN show. She said she was shocked that a congressman was paying her attention. “I kind of almost felt like I was getting catfished,” she said. In spring 2025, Swalwell said he happened to be coming to her city and asked to meet. He asked for her suggestions for a hotel and places to go, the messages show. Swalwell and the woman met for dinner and drinks at a steakhouse. She said she told her mother about the meeting with Swalwell in advance, and her mother confirmed that in an interview with CNN. Swalwell asked her about her work history in what seemed almost like a job interview, she recalled. Partway through their conversation, Swalwell told her that he had to do a CNN interview, and went back to his hotel room. As he was waiting for his live TV hit, Swalwell texted her a photo asking her how he looked, according to a screenshot she provided to CNN. That photo matched Swalwell’s appearance in the interview, and Swalwell also told the CNN anchor that he was visiting the city where the woman lived, according to CNN’s recording. Afterward, Swalwell took the woman to another bar, where they sat in a back booth, she said. “He was sitting against me, and so I kind of moved away from him, and every time that I would move away from him, he would get closer to me,” she remembered. He touched her leg and ordered a drink for her. The woman said she tried to turn the conversation to her partner and Swalwell’s wife and children, but Swalwell continued to touch her. She began to get more intoxicated and felt “really fuzzy,” even accidentally walking into the men’s bathroom in the bar, she said. After she returned to the booth, Swalwell kissed her, she said. “I was shocked that he would do that right in the middle of a public bar,” she said. She said she told him it was wrong, but didn’t want to burn a bridge with a prominent congressman, so she stayed at the bar even as she was getting more intoxicated. The woman said she then ended up in Swalwell’s hotel room without any memory of how she got there. She said that her memory of what happened in Swalwell’s hotel room is “a blur.” She ended up leaving the hotel at 5:41 a.m., according to a screenshot of an Uber receipt she provided to CNN. The next day, she said, Swalwell sent her disappearing iPhone voice messages saying that he wanted to ensure that his wife didn’t find out about what happened, she said. She felt emotionally vulnerable and distraught in the following weeks, she said, telling her mother about a month after the fact about what had happened, and later telling two close friends. All three confirmed to CNN in interviews that she had shared her story with them. One friend said that she told them about her experience with Swalwell in December 2025, while the other said she could not remember when specifically she was told. She said she told Swalwell that she felt “really disgusted and ashamed” about what happened, but he continued contacting her, including offering to use his position to help her renew her passport or saying he could write her a letter of recommendation for her law school applications. A few days before he announced his gubernatorial bid in November, he texted her, asking how she was, according to screenshots she provided to CNN. The following month, she sent him a long message telling him that “all you did was harm me,” and asking him not to contact her again. “I won’t bother you again!” Swalwell responded. “Sorry.” The woman said she continued to stay in touch with Swalwell after that, however, exchanging some friendly messages with him, in what she likened to Stockholm syndrome. In the cease-and-desist letter to the woman, Swalwell’s lawyer argued that some of these text messages, including one in which she said “you would be an amazing governor,” raised doubt about her account. The woman told CNN she decided to speak out about what happened to her after hearing rumors about other women accusing Swalwell of misconduct, and realizing she wasn’t alone. “I suffered a lot in silence. … I had no desire to ever come after him or ever come out saying something,” she said. But she concluded that Swalwell “used my vulnerabilities and the fact that I looked up to him to be able to get something from it,” she added.

@paulalexlewis @PeteRicketts I don’t think what Ricketts is proposing is good & there are major problems w/ US hegemony (especially now) but China has an extremely authoritarian system of governance. That doesn’t negate their technical prowess / development. But tradeoffs, of liberties, are real.

@paulalexlewis @PeteRicketts Assuming neither are all good or all bad, do you think it is better to live under China’s system of governance, or the USA’s? Chinese global hegemony or the USA’s?

If you credit their findings--which are odd, as the price effects ostensibly occur well before wages increased--the price of a $5 hamburger would rise by ~3 percent, to $5.15. (The reason why it's so small is that the employer is absorbing a portion via smaller margins.) This is a small price for society to pay to ensure that workers have shelter over their heads and can afford transport.

So this piece drew a snarky reply from the lead author, which I won't amplify. It's just sad that six-figure economists in their cushy academic campuses feel the need to keep fast-food workers earning a subsistence wage. How about instead of punching down for your corporate overlords, we try punching upwards instead?

Today’s fresh hell: The same private equity termite that has rolled up much of the fire truck manufacturing industry has also rolled up the vast majority of the ambulance manufacturing industry — and it has spent the last several years cashing in: tripling the price of new ambulances, delaying deliveries for years on end, and fueling a preparedness crisis at EMS departments around the country.

Today I released an investigative piece on something most people don't think about until they really need it - ambulances. The price of ambulances has skyrocketed since 2012. Why? It's likely... private equity. thebignewsletter.com/p/code-red-why…

@AD31N1 @mtracey He sets no real standards. Just casts doubt & frames himself as the most objective regardless of the situation. It's annoying self-righteousnessnous and prevents meaningful discussions that can lead to right action. It's hollow noise... instead of FANCY WORDS!!

@thatcherbean @mtracey Listen bro never once did he imply that only "he" and a court of law can make a valid assessment. Op simply lifted up the context behind the allegations and argued from those. Also tell your AI to stop overanalyzing and using fancy words. It backfires

I personally can't stand Eric Swalwell, but the idea that EVERY DEMOCRAT would instantly renounce him, and demand he exit the race of which he's been front-runner, without doing a shred of due diligence to verify anything, just reflects an ongoing disease endemic to the party

@AD31N1 @mtracey Good talk - way to make a great point. Proud of you bud.

@thatcherbean @mtracey Turn off your chat gpt and rest for the day please. You're wasting water with your yapping soup

@AD31N1 @mtracey When followed, his argument implies that only he and a court of law can adjudicate rationally, which is not only insulting, it causes political paralysis. He is drawing false equivalencies because they serve his brand. What was presented in the article contains due diligence.

@thatcherbean @mtracey No point is that it's not black n white from the get go. You shouldn't just label him as a rapist or wtv because of allegations that went public literally yesterday. Neither should you label the alleged victim as a liar because of her irrational behaviour Await investigations

@IndependnTexan @mtracey

@thatcherbean @mtracey And where is that evidence, care to share?

@mtracey Just to make sure I track your argument: If someone does not act in a way you determine to be totally logical, at all times, any contemporaneous documented accounting of a sexual assault (by a medical provider) should, by default, be minimized?

She continued to text him "dozens" of times, in just the past two years, including about working for his gubernatorial campaign? OK