Tom Rothacker

In a surprise twist, the Epstein files released the attorney general.

@JonahDispatch That’s a lot of fundraising emails from the Trump team. 😉

@PhilWMagness The biggest reason why Vance won’t be the nominee is that he’s a complete dud personality-wise. Most voters evaluate a candidate on an emotional level, and Vance simply doesn’t cut it in that respect.

Reasons Vance won't be the nominee in 2028: - His polls are cratering. - He loses head-to-head vs most Dems - even to AOC. - 2026 midterms are going to be a brutal test of his electoral coalition. - He's also losing influence inside the Trump admin. - Being a frontrunner 2.5 years out is a poor predictor of becoming the nominee (see Jeb! in 2016 and Giuliani and Hillary in 2008) All of that belies the weird Postliberal wishcasting about how he's the anointed one to usher in right wing socialist theocracy. And they get very, very mad when you point that out.

@scottlincicome I might actually tune in to it myself!

The first Dem candidate to conduct a live, townhall-style "Airing of Grievances" and "Feats of Strength" will have my primary vote.

@nickgillespie By then, he had tragically accepted a teaching position in Australia.

Where is Leggy Mountbatten?

@HistoryBoomer I always think about this song when it comes to Trump and will gladly dance along when the end comes. youtu.be/o2vdCm4tZDA?si…

I am all about being decent after someone dies. I expressed regret and sympathy when Charlie Kirk died. I will keep doing this. Except for Trump. I hereby officially excuse myself from any restraint. Upon Trump's death, I will laugh, I will sing, I will dance the Macarena.

@WarMonitor3 Even with our armaments depleted from the Iran war. That should tell us something about China’s own assessment of their capabilities.

Beijing views an amphibious assault on Taiwan as risky and likely to fail, particularly if the U.S intervenes.

@RadioFreeTom @RobGeorge Fool me once…

We could argue that Trump 1 was a one-off, a freak occurrence. But electing him *twice*? Raises reasonable questions about what kind of electorate would do that.

@WHMTE @davidfrum That will be fun. Just don’t mention the war!

@davidfrum Could really be quite something when the German Chancellor visits.

It was not a good idea for the prime minister of the politest nation in the world to accept a face-to-face meeting with this American president

@EYakoby Isn’t the president in this current regime already a useless figurehead anyway?

BREAKING: Iran’s President Pezeshkian is weighing resignation. He told aides: “The IRGC blocks me from all military and strategic decisions and won’t even let me speak to the Supreme Leader. I feel useless.” The regime is falling apart.

@JustinWolfers So, by keeping an investigation open, Trump will only prolong Powell’s stay at the Fed. There’s some 4D chess going on right there.

BIG NEWS FROM FED PRESSER: 1. Powell will stay on as Chair pro-tem if a successor has not been confirmed by the end of his term. 2. He will stay on the Board even after that, until the current investigation is well and truly over "with transparency and finality." 3. After that: It depends on what is best for the institution and the people the Fed serves.

@CathyYoung63 @robkhenderson I agree that that is silly, but one thing to consider is that Russia had the highest rates of child mortality in Europe in the 19th century. That was just an indication of how much more advanced the Brits were at the time though.

@robkhenderson That is incredibly silly. 1. British birth rates dropped precipitously in the 20th C statista.com/statistics/103… 2. Russia (among others) had higher birth rates in the 19th

"The reason English is the world's lingua franca and America is the sole superpower now is because British women had loads of kids for a hundred years. The reason Britain defined the 19th century and much of the 20th century is because of birth rates." louiseperry.co.uk/p/who-doesnt-w…

@StationCDRKelly @zanehkoch Dosage is everything.

When I was on the ISS for my nearly year long mission, there was a telomere experiment comparing my telomeres to my earth baseline and my twin brother as a control. Hypothesis was they would get damaged and worse due to the environment. Turns out they got better. Initially NASA thought maybe it was due to exercise and diet. After I returned we learned JAXA had a telomere experiment on some small worms the same time I was there. Their telomeres got better too. Never saw the worms doing any exercise. After further study determined it was the radiation.

for a while i've had a slight fear that the bluetooth from my airpods could be frying my brain this weekend i pulled the raw data from a $30m government study of 1,679 mice blasted with cell phone radiation and reanalyzed it what i found was...not what I expected? 🧵

@conor64 It's the digital equivalent of monkeys flinging feces.

That these are highly successful media entrepreneurs who know what sorts of rhetoric will appeal to the huge audiences that they've cultivated is... rather disheartening.

@scottlincicome Didn't many of those fastest declining jobs already decline by a significant number already?

"Ranked: The U.S. Jobs Losing the Most Workers by 2034" visualcapitalist.com/us-jobs-losing…

Iran built a military designed to fight without a head. Now it cannot stop fighting because the head is gone. The Mosaic Doctrine divides the IRGC into 31 autonomous provincial commands, one per province, each with pre-delegated authority, local weapons stockpiles, independent decision-making, and sealed orders that activate upon central command failure. The doctrine was formalised after the Iran-Iraq War for one purpose: ensure that the decapitation of Iranian leadership does not stop the Iranian military from fighting. It was designed to survive exactly what happened on 28 February. The Supreme Leader is dead. His successor cannot stand. The defence industrial base is rubble. The communication infrastructure that would transmit a ceasefire has been degraded by 15,000 strikes. And the 31 commands are still firing. Not because someone is ordering them to fire. Because the doctrine orders them to fire until someone orders them to stop, and the someone who would order them to stop is in a hospital bed issuing written statements through a television anchor. The Quds Force overlays the Mosaic with a second network: the proxy architecture. Hezbollah in Lebanon launches hundreds of rockets at Israel. The Houthis in Yemen attack Red Sea shipping and fire at Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Iraqi PMF militias, Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, strike American bases in Iraq and Syria. The coordination flows through secure fibre-optic lines, satellite backups, encrypted applications, and physical couriers carrying cash and operational directives. Funding: $100 to $350 million annually through tunnel smuggling, cryptocurrency wallets, and Hezbollah intermediaries. The proxies have hit American diplomatic facilities. A missile struck the US Embassy helipad in Baghdad. Two Iranian drones hit the US Embassy compound in Riyadh, starting fires. A drone struck near the US Consulate in Dubai. The Kuwait Embassy closed under threat. Three to four verified diplomatic incidents across the region, each producing limited damage but each crossing a line that has governed international conflict since the 1961 Vienna Convention: you do not strike embassies. And then Hamas, the proxy Iran armed and funded for seventeen years, issued a public statement asking Iran to stop targeting neighbouring countries. The organisation that started the war the Mosaic Doctrine is now perpetuating told its patron to stand down. The Axis of Resistance is arguing in public for the first time since its creation. The fracture reveals the Mosaic Doctrine’s fatal design flaw. The system was built for survival, not termination. It ensures that 31 commands continue fighting after decapitation. It does not contain a mechanism for 31 commands to simultaneously stop. Each command fires under sealed orders with local authority. No central node can broadcast a ceasefire because the central node was the target of the first strike. The doctrine that makes Iran impossible to defeat also makes Iran impossible to negotiate with because the entity that would accept terms does not control the entities that would implement them. Hezbollah fires because its orders predate the ceasefire that does not exist. The Houthis fire because their funding pipeline operates independently of any command they would obey. The Iraqi PMF fires because the militias answer to local commanders who answer to a Quds Force whose leader is in a bunker. And the 31 provincial commands fire because the doctrine says fire and nobody with authority has said stop. The war’s most dangerous feature is not what Iran can still launch. It is what Iran can no longer recall. The machine was built to run without an operator. The operator is gone. The machine is running. And the off switch was never installed because the doctrine’s designers believed the machine should never be turned off. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@GeorgeSelgin Is there anyone in this administration who isn’t a psychopath?

Disgraceful.

@benryanwriter @IMAO_ Poor people also spend a greater share of their income on food itself, clothing, rent, etc. This is a surprise?

I’m unclear on what she’s getting at. Who is she suggesting are the sympathetic characters in this equation?

@DRBiGuy1 @jimgeraghty A good share of the pipeline gas is going to Hungary and Slovakia (Serbia is not in the EU), while most of the LNG is going to Western Europe, mainly France. They were scheduled to end their Russian LNG imports in 2027, but I’m sure those plans have thrown for a loop.

@jimgeraghty How much of that NG was purchased by Trump’s buddy, fat little Orban, who he and Putin are both campaigning for in the upcoming Parliamentary election? Then add in Slovakia and Serbia with their pro Russian governments

One, you won't find many louder critics than me of Putin and our current so-soft-it's-plushie U.S. policy towards him and his regime. Two, if you want to play the "who's helping Russia" game, countries in the European Union do not have as strong a position as you seem to think. Check out the chart on liquefied natural gas. energyandcleanair.org/january-2026-m…

@Noirchick1 Following the original with Groucho in Duck Soup. Both hilarious.

Impreccable timing - with straight faces - in this wonderful bit of Lucy and Harpo....