Matt Knee ((📟))

My politics origin story: The activist class at UCLA was just as comprehensively racist, anti-American, and antisemitic 25 years ago when I started there. My senior year, I cofounded a party to take back student gov. Won the majority. Had a blast running the campaign. I stayed behind at the results for a bit before going to our own election night afterparty. I watched them crying ironically about how the world is too “racist and homophobic” to give them the justice they deserve. That’s when I realized campaign work was what I wanted to do with my life. foxnews.com/media/ucla-stu…

@JenniferJJacobs @DinaPowellMcC @SenFettermanPA Y'all are missing the joke, the other Senator from PA is her husband.

Meta's @DinaPowellMcC on her "favorite" US senator from Pennsylvania, @SenFettermanPA: "I just want to say that John Fetterman is one of the most courageous people that I have ever known."

“former Tom Cotton staffer” AKA came from the hill office that has the best reputation for hiring experienced and thoughtful defense and national security professionals who go on to senior roles in the Pentagon, NSC, etc

@bonchieredstate Bass is in a tough primary against a DSA opponent who is far worse. She is unfortunately the lesser plausible evil (Pratt ain't gunna win)

“But he did it with Mamdani too! He tries to work with everyone!” Yeah, how’d that turn out? Karen Bass is terrible and shifting blame from her to banks is nuts. If any other Republican pulled this, you’d all be calling them RINOs.

Jia Tolentino is the second leftist I know whose thoughts about "the rich" getting away with crime should be viewed through the prism of their parents being criminals who didn't get away with it. The second being Wajahat Ali.

thank you for this great news about rising popular morality, gambling app account

Palantir CEO Alex Karp: “You show me rates of antisemitism, I’ll show you the health of your culture.”

@shebringsjoy Rotisserie chickens - generally made out of the chicken that's about to expire - are well-known to be great deals at many stores.

I’m not on SNAP, but I will tell you: This is an ignorant take. I don’t buy rotisserie chickens, but I do know they’re less expansive than a whole chicken. I also know that time is money, and most families on SNAP are probably working families. Cheap ready made food, that’s real food, gives poor parents time to help children with homework, or to play with them, or get caught up on housekeeping, etc. We have to find a balance between making people accountable and encouraging healthy relationships, and I think this area is one where we can definitely allow a little wiggle room.

It really is wild that calling for the death of Jews and Republicans was not enough to get Democrats to distance themselves from Hasan Piker. It was his endorsement of shop lifting at Whole Foods.

The Jones Act is one of the most quietly destructive laws on the books and it’s about time it was gone.

@maggiemoda @chadfelixg Another data point re this dumb conspiracy theory is that only about <10% of American Jews are fully kosher, with maybe 20% at home only. If the Jews are poisoning the food, the vast majority of Jews are eating the poison too.

You can buy kosher food too. There's no gatekeeper waiting at the counter to stop you. Kosher food has to undergo rigorous standards testing from certified kosher specialists. It usually costs more money, but it's fairly easy to find in any major city.

Why?

It’s unfortunate, I don’t think people grasp the sheer scale of disastrous conflicts that were erupting the last four years, or about to erupt, all at once, and that the United States was going to have to manage while being pulled away from strengthening its industries. Armenia–Azerbaijan, the Rwanda–Congo–Uganda issue, South Africa consolidating its position with Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela against Guyana, Israel against Iran’s proxies and the risk of a wider regional war, Iran nearing nuclear capability, and China leveraging those same networks to entangle the U.S. in the Red Sea, all layered on top of Russia’s war in Ukraine with North Korea sending troops. Things aren’t perfect but the world was moving towards a catastrophe.

We'll likely see the same pattern with Kelly as Carlson - Lots of Boomer support based on remembering her from Fox News, while not being exposed to or even aware of her current material. As with Tucker, her numbers will tank when people learn who she is now.

@dilanesper @SeanTrende Yea “Mc” first names in general too I take as a “might be Mormon” signal.

@SeanTrende i actually know that a handful of these are popular Mormon baby names. "McKay", for instance, was a signal someone might have LDS parents even when I was a kid.

In the tens Jamelle Bouie (I think) got hot under the collar over a question about Black naming conventions for children because no wanted to know about, say, how Sarah Palin named her kids but nah, I’d totally listen to an explanation about this:

Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska techrepublicbook.com

JUST IN -Trump says like it or not Israel has "proven to be a GREAT ally of the United States of America," unlike others.

@HaMeturgeman Good, there's proxies. Still haven't heard about missiles in a while, so still worried they might not be part of the deal anymore.

@matt_knee cbsnews.com/news/trump-say…

Notable in all the talk about an Iran deal this week: Nothing about the missile program, nothing about proxies, nothing about actually dismantling their underground facilities. Hopefully it doesn't mean the US caved on that (esp the missile program), but it very well might.

@ProfDBernstein He's often wrong, but he can provide unreliable information at times when people really want information and can't get any, so he gets the eyeballs.

Has Ravid ever had a scoop that’s turned out to be right? Do his sources intentionally mislead him? Why does he keep going back to the sources that keep giving him misinformation?

@HaMeturgeman Yeah but when was the last time the admin mentioned those issues? "Everything" has a pretty flexible meaning.

@matt_knee Well, Trump did say they gave in on everything.