@Jar3d__ @RichardHanania @MorePerfectUS Yes that’s why we elect leaders. To make important decisions. It’d be stupid to have representative democracy only for mundane, unimportant issues. Besides, everyone thinks their issue is important
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Raj Grewal
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@RajMahal819 @RichardHanania @MorePerfectUS This isn’t each and every decision. This is one very big one.
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Kevin O'Leary's massive data center was approved by a county commission in Utah last night.
At 40,000 acres, it would be 2.5x the size of Manhattan.
The commission approved the proposal despite opposition from hundreds of locals.
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@Jar3d__ @RichardHanania @MorePerfectUS The people show up to vote for politicians. They can’t also be asked to signoff on each and every decision. It’s too taxing and undesirable
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@RichardHanania @MorePerfectUS That’s like saying elections shouldn’t be decided by the people who show up and vote. If policy isn’t made by the citizens who show up and actively participate, then what is your alternative?
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@musharbash_b @DouglasLFarrar @mattyglesias That was a negotiating tactic silly 😂 he wanted to enhance Jetblue’s offer
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@RajMahal819 @DouglasLFarrar @mattyglesias Spirit’s own CEO said this deal was blocked and went on CNN to say it should be blocked. x.com/douglaslfarrar…
Douglas Farrar@DouglasLFarrar
Watch Spirit's own CEO explain why the JetBlue deal was doomed! JetBlue even admitted to Spirit that a DOJ lawsuit was "100% certainty." They took a huge and ill-advised risk, knowing they would end up in court. youtube.com/watch?v=wKWJ4T…
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The usual suspects are blaming Biden's DOJ for blocking the JetBlue merger. They're wrong.
Spirit was killed by three things: shareholder greed, corporate mismanagement, and Donald Trump's war with Iran.
Eric Daugherty@EricLDaugh
🚨 NOW: Sec. Sean Duffy JUST WENT OFF on the Biden admin and Elizabeth Warren for CANCELING the Spirit and JetBlue merger in 2024 that would've saved the budget airline Now we have LESS COMPETITION, despite them claiming the merger would've harmed consumers. YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS UP "Elizabeth Warren cheered the BLOCKING...saying this was a 'Biden win for fliers.'" "We CARE about pricing! We care about competition. But if the markets say there needs to be a merger because of health issues with an airline, we HAVE to make sure we make the right choices." "History has judged the denial of the JetBlue-Spirit merger under Biden as a MASSIVE MISTAKE!"
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@DouglasLFarrar @mattyglesias It may go bankrupt this year partly b/c it couldn’t grow thru merger. You can’t assert a legal opinion as “fact”. Post comments from companies saying it was illegal. I’m curious if they were that dumb and improperly advised
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@mattyglesias JetBlue planned to raise fares 24-40%. Its own founder says it may go bankrupt this year. Completing this deal could have killed two airlines instead of one.
And the baseline fact: this deal was illegal and both companies knew it and said so.
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@max_slegaal @ZeeshanAleem @mattyglesias @hasanthehun There are often more than 2 candidates. That Mamdani couldn’t consolidate more vote means his win less impressive. Look, I mostly like Mamdani and hope he does well. He’s just overhyped
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@RajMahal819 @ZeeshanAleem @mattyglesias @hasanthehun No shit when there’s 3 candidates the margin is gonna be lower that’s just how math works
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the entire establishment wing of the party either chose not to endorse Zohran, or tacitly supported the right wing spoiler candidacy of andrew cuomo. kristin gillibrand called Z a jihadist!!!!! chuck schumer never endorsed him! also, janet mills HASNT ENDORSED platner yet!!!
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@HBendaas @mattyglesias @hasanthehun de Blasio. And also Mamdani was lucky his competition was weak af
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@mattyglesias @hasanthehun New York City’s previous mayors this century: Giuliani, Bloomberg, de Blasio, Adams.
Which part of this is “very progressive”
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@mattyglesias @hasanthehun “Weak performance”? lol. Zohran went from sub 1% in the polls and effectively won two Dem primaries while cartoonishly vilified as a terrorist communist by the Dem establishment and capital.
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@JerusalemDemsas While there's plenty of mistakes made by climate NGOs and I pick on them all the time. This is a bad take from someone who has no idea what they are talking about.
If they represent 95% of the "groups are bad" discourse then that says more about the "discourse" than the groups
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@DavidGriscom @mattyglesias Kamala tried as hard as she could to pivot and thankfully saved us from true catastrophe if Biden had continued running. Alas it wasn’t enough b/c the Biden record was so unpopular
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@mattyglesias Kamala Harris ran the 'anti-Trump' campaign - that's why she galivanted around with Liz Cheney and a big ass banner, "Country over party," and talked about 'saving democracy.' It was a total loser. Trump outflanked her on the economy. Being anti-Trump isn't enough.
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I know it is easy to dunk on Matthew, but lord, the Democrats not only lost to Trump with this strategy, but lost by such a historically bad margin people were arguing it was a realignment
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@AliceFromQueens Obama pushed for Hillary tho and Biden would’ve lost to Trump in 2020. I like Obama, but says something that our choices were Biden, Hillary and Trump afterwards. I thought Obama was gonna Change politics
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This has become conventional wisdom though it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
If Biden—Obama’s VP—had been the nominee instead of Hillary, he obviously would’ve beaten Trump.
Would that have proved Obama’s presidency a success?
Seems like a useless metric altogether.
Luke Savage@LukewSavage
No denying Obama's popularity, but if his presidency had been a success Donald Trump would never have been elected
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@JessicaBRiedl @brianros1 I genuinely want to increase size of court b/c 9 is too few. It would release a lot of tension (by lowering stakes) and make everyone happier to have 13 justices. Congress cld do it as a package deal, Repubs and Dems pick 2 new justices each
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@brianros1 Respectfully disagree on 2016 & 2020. Schumer and other Senate Dems have long admitted they would have done the exact same thing in those situations. Moreover, if we're looking at judicial escalations, there's a lot with Harry Reid. etc. Both sides playing similar hardball.
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I've always felt the way Jessica does, but I do think the tactics deployed by Mitch McConnell in 2016 & 2020, while perfectly legal, pretty much guaranteed that Democrats would look to structural reform. It was one of those moments when a party that cared about the system
Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦@JessicaBRiedl
Sorry, I voted yes on VA redistricting, but I've always been a firm "no" on packing the court. Its easy to harshly question justices on the other side (we all do it), but this is a radical escalation that leads only to worse outcomes (retaliation, further illegitimacy concerns).
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@DeathLepricon @JerusalemDemsas Good point on overall tax brackets. Still not sure it’s fiscally sound. I don’t necessarily want larger social welfare spending tho, so maybe i shld be cool w/ lower or nonexistent middle class taxes
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@RajMahal819 @JerusalemDemsas 1) why are you focused on harmoing rich people more than helping poor people?
2) Not even true since Booker included a raise to overall tax brackets in the bill
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Booker's defense of his regressive tax proposal is to point out that a household earning more than almost 75% of America will get a $10,000 tax break.
I'm begging Blue state senators who want to give their high-income residents relief to simply BUILD MORE HOUSING instead of ongoing demand subsidization.
Cory Booker@CoryBooker
Matt. I hope we can discuss my bill. Someone making 900k would pay an additional $2,917 because we raise the top tax brackets from 35 and 37 percent to 41 and 43 percent. The median American family would indeed get an 85% tax cut. So a married couple with two kids earning 150 k would get to keep an additional $10,360 of their money. A Single Mom making 60K with one young child would keep an additional $5,693.
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@DeathLepricon @JerusalemDemsas No that’s not how taxes work. You don’t tax people, you tax income. Wealthy ppl will no longer pay tax on first 75K of income. Since middle class ppl already pay less income tax, most of benefit will go to rich ppl
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@JerusalemDemsas What the fuck are you on about? This isn't regressive it's literally targeted at people earning less than $75,000 per year.
Watching democrats freak out over tax cuts for the poor has been eye-opening
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@badguy974 @mattyglesias a lot of that $ got spent on US contractors making weapons employing Americans. And the notion our taxes went up 2% to fund Ukraine is absurd
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@mattyglesias also kind of ironic we spend 200 billion on ukraine and matty never said anything.
see, politicians think everything is free because they print money.
If we said "we'll pass 200b aid to Ukraine, but your taxes go up 2% to pay for it"
How do you think that would have went over?
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@mattyglesias @Noahpinion Do you support Ukraine aid? US also doesn’t share regions w/ Russia or NK but we help out anyway. We have obvious interests in ME, Europe and Asia worth defending. (Not necessarily defending this action fwiw)
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China's strategy is to have one "attack dog" in every region to tie down any possible rival. Russia ties down Europe, North Korea ties down Japan, Pakistan ties down India, and Iran ties down America.
Hudson Institute@HudsonInstitute
Tehran was not just another partner for Beijing; it was central to China's grand strategy. China invested over $400 billion in long-term infrastructure and energy investments in Iran, purchased roughly 90% of Iran's oil exports, and Tehran's geographical location was key to Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative. In addition, by backing militant proxies and sustaining regional instability, Tehran has kept the Middle East in constant crisis and the United States out of the Indo-Pacific. Now, a weakened, internally strained Iran can no longer function as a reliable diversionary magnet for American attention, @milesyu10 writes in @PostOpinions. Read: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/…
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@Aesop_NPV @MichaelRStrain @marcthiessen Voicing skepticism of the strikes is equivalent of being pro-Iran? Are you daft?
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@MichaelRStrain @marcthiessen ALL of them except Fetterman!
Are you deaf???
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For the life of me I can’t understand the logic of Democrats siding with Iran. Just boggles the mind.
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@DocIppon @MarcoFoster_ Glad you’re speaking out against Trump’s heinous actions against citizens, legal immigrants and valid visa holders 🫡🇺🇸
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@MarcoFoster_ Shes absolutely right, immigrants deserve rights.
Just as soon as they become citizens, or they immigrate legally.
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Alysa Liu: “I think it is really important also to notice the faults in our own government. Things are a little rough. There’s so many protests that are going on and I’ve attended. Coming from a family of immigrants, I think immigrants deserve rights”
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@surlygopher @Noahpinion Yeah okay, but that’s a different question. Does money make you happy? has been a q humans have grappled w for millennia. I also disagree life was “more fulfilling or meaningful” in the past. Most ppl toiled until they died
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@RajMahal819 @Noahpinion What he’s getting at w/ “in any meaningful sense” is that wealth in dollars doesn’t matter if it’s not making life more fulfilling or meaningful. Lots of 0s padding the end of the account balance doesn’t matter if you’re more miserable.
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It's not often that I agree with this guy, but here I do. There has been real, significant progress in health since 2006 -- better cancer treatment, GLP-1s, vaccines, etc. But the devastation of human society from phones/social media has outweighed that progress overall.
wanye@xwanyex
I just completely reject that we are wealthier than we were 20 or 30 years ago in any way that matters. Whatever data seems to show that we are is very clearly not measuring what you want to measure. I don’t think burrito taxis matter. I think the phones have made us miserable. I don’t think the advancements in communication are important. I don’t care that the cars have more features. I don’t think any of this stuff matters like even a little bit. And I certainly wouldn’t trade my country for more of it. I think we long ago reached a level of comfort that’s sufficient. We aren’t hungry. We aren’t cold. We aren’t worked to death in fields. I wouldn’t trade my family for more stuff. I wouldn’t trade my country for more stuff. The people who see all this so-called material wealth and think that the opportunity costs are just too large to have children or that we need to give away the country to foreigners to keep the train rolling are in my view demented, deranged, lost. And their addiction to antidepressants and other mood-altering pills seems to confirm it.
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@Noahpinion Also… “wouldn’t trade my country for more of it” and “wouldn’t trade my family for more stuff”? Wtf is he talking about?
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@Noahpinion It’s not often i disagree with you, but… he said “wealthier”, which is unequivocally false. Are we realizing wealth doesn’t necessarily translate to better mental health? Perhaps. But… that’s a different question
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