Radical Middle

@apriland3dogs @Acyn True, agents do things at the behest of the FBI Director, but they all work for the president. So, these firings make it more likely that agent will decline to be involved with anything political in the future.

@RadicalMiddle4 @Acyn Except Biden didn't assign anything to any FBI agent.

Blanche: When it comes to the FBI… Director Patel has cleaned house there too. There is not a single man or woman with a gun, federal agent, still in that organization that had anything to do with the prosecution of President Trump. President Trump for the first time in modern history has said I am the president and if you work in the executive branch, you work for me. And guess what? We can all read the constitution. He's right. And unfortunately, past administrations, Republican included, have just resigned themselves to putting up with partisan actors within the DOJ. We do not.

@Geschuetzwagen @David_J_Bier @cyrusmehta Im sure you have broken some laws. You deserve to be in prison.

@RadicalMiddle4 @David_J_Bier @cyrusmehta Illegals, especially those living here over 10 years, need to be deported and barred future entry for the disrespect they have demonstrated towards our laws and culture.

Our immigration laws are so poorly written. You can know every single word of the INA and still not really know what so much of it means. What is "seeking admission." The Constitution should resolve all such ambiguity in favor of freedom...

AOC: Schedule I drugs are supposed to have no potential for medical use and a high risk for abuse and addiction. What are some examples of Schedule I drugs? Dasgupta: Cannabis, LSD, ecstasy. AOC: Is there zero evidence that they have no potential medical application? Dasgupta: I think the medical literature is clear that they do have clinical benefits. AOC: So right now, our law says that these drugs have zero medical application, but the science says something else.

@Handre Hard to believe after Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward (1958-1962)

Tanzania's forced collectivization under Julius Nyerere killed more people per capita than Stalin's agricultural disasters, yet Western intellectuals still romanticize ujamaa as "African socialism." Between 1967 and 1975, Nyerere's government forcibly relocated over 13 million Tanzanians—roughly 80% of the rural population—into collective villages called ujamaa. The state promised modern amenities, shared prosperity, and liberation from "capitalist exploitation." Instead, they delivered mass starvation. Agricultural output collapsed by 50% within five years. Food imports skyrocketed from 50,000 tons in 1970 to 400,000 tons by 1974. Rural villagers who had fed themselves for generations suddenly couldn't grow enough grain to survive winter. The mechanics were predictably Austrian. When you destroy private property rights and eliminate price signals, you obliterate the knowledge that makes agriculture work. Farmers knew their local soil, rainfall patterns, and crop rotations. But central planners in Dar es Salaam decided that "scientific socialism" trumped centuries of accumulated farming wisdom. They forced communities to abandon fertile ancestral lands for designated plots that bureaucrats selected from maps. Villages that resisted faced military force—troops literally burned homes to drive families into the collectives. And the damn tragedy continues reverberating today. Tanzania remains one of Africa's poorest countries, importing food despite having some of the continent's best agricultural land. Per capita income in 2023 sits at $1,192—lower than Bangladesh. You can draw a straight line from ujamaa's destruction of property rights to Tanzania's persistent poverty. But mention this at any development economics conference and watch professors explain how Nyerere had "good intentions" and the real problem was "insufficient implementation." Lesson: Collectivism fails equally hard across race, language, geography, population size, education level, continent, or any other possible metric you can dream of.

@ttttttater @Acyn “Standard signing pens, including the customized Sharpies often used for U.S. presidential signings, are affordable, typically costing $1 to $20.”

@Acyn This is Trump at his best. Explain explaining the foolishness of things. $1000 a pin. Yes anybody in the right mind would say that’s ridiculous.

Trump: You see this pen right here? This pen is very inexpensive. But it writes well. I like it. Sharpie. I came here. They had $1,000 pens. You hand out pens. You hand them to people. 30, 40 people. They were $1,000 a piece. Beautiful pen, ball point. I hand out to kids that don't know. It's kid getting a pen for $1,000. They have no idea what it is. I had another problem. They didn’t write well. I sign—no ink. I have all you people looking and say there must be something wrong with Trump. There is no ink in the pen. It cost $1,000.

@PolybiusChamp @dgm2 @tonywendice1954 Werner Herzog watches Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

@dgm2 @tonywendice1954 Lots of people watch shows with Kardashians in them too.

If you want to see how bad so-called "prestige TV" can be these days have a look at this mess. Scarpetta is based on the books by Patricia Cornwell about a brilliant Italian-American forensic scientist named Kay Scarpetta. In this series you will see very little ... 1/2

@MortifiedGenXer @David_J_Bier @cyrusmehta Good point. Turns out the bill was sponsored by Lamar Smith (R) but it had overwhelming bipartisan support. But nothing about it indicates Democrats crafted for their ends.

@RadicalMiddle4 @David_J_Bier @cyrusmehta In 1996, there were 47 D senators and 53 Rs. For that Act to pass, they had to have 60 Senators.

@arlenparsa Having a degree in socialist economics is worse than no degree in economics.

AOC graduated with honors from Boston University with double degrees in Economics and International Relations. Markwayne was the only Senator without even a bachelor’s degree. Hope that helps.

They are flying illegal immigrants ON PRIVATE JETS at a cost of $413K PER PERSON. The outrage about spending money on immigrants was fake, fake, fake, fake.

NEW: A Senate report estimates it costs the U.S. $413,000 to send a deportee to Eswatini, a small African country participating in third-country deportations. A detainee released today said they were flown in a private jet to a prison with few resources. apnews.com/article/immigr…

Six weeks after September 11, 2001, twelve American soldiers were quietly loaded onto a helicopter in Uzbekistan and flown over the Hindu Kush mountains in the dead of night. No tanks. No armored vehicles. No air support waiting on the ground. Just twelve Green Berets, over a hundred pounds of gear each, and a mission that their own commanders privately doubted any of them would survive. They landed in a remote Afghan village called Dehi, in the pitch black, surrounded by a country they barely had maps for. And then someone handed them horses. Not metaphorically. Actual horses — Afghan stallions, tough as nails and famously difficult to control. Wooden saddles covered in carpet scraps. Stirrups so short their knees rode up around their ears. Captain Mark Nutsch, who'd grown up on a cattle ranch in Kansas and competed in collegiate rodeos, became trail boss on the spot. For the other ten men on his team — Operational Detachment Alpha 595 of the 5th Special Forces Group — the learning curve was immediate and unforgiving. The first words one of his sergeants learned in Dari were: "How do you make him stop?" They had linked up with General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a Northern Alliance warlord who controlled thousands of fighters and knew this territory like the back of his hand. The deal was simple: the Americans would call in precision airstrikes from horseback. Dostum's cavalry would do the charging. Together, they would take Mazar-i-Sharif — a Taliban stronghold of 250,000 people — and crack open northern Afghanistan. Military planners had estimated it would take two years. Task Force Dagger gave ODA 595 three weeks. For 23 days of nearly continuous combat, the Horse Soldiers lived like men from a different century. They ate what the Afghans ate. They slept on the ground in freezing mountain passes. They rode trails so narrow and sheer that one wrong step meant a thousand-foot drop. Staff Sergeant Will Summers started the mission at 185 pounds. He left Afghanistan five weeks later weighing 143. The Taliban had tanks. Soviet-era armor, antiaircraft guns, fortified positions dug into the mountains. Against this, twelve Americans on horseback radioed coordinates to aircraft circling invisibly above, and watched the positions erupt. On November 9, 2001, they rode into the kind of moment that people are not supposed to experience in the modern world. Nutsch and his team joined hundreds of Dostum's horsemen in a thundering cavalry charge across an open plain — directly into entrenched Taliban lines. Under fire. At a gallop. Calling in close air support between strides. It was the first cavalry charge of the 21st century. It was also the last. The next day, Mazar-i-Sharif fell. The Taliban's northern stronghold collapsed. Within weeks, the regime itself began to unravel — a domino effect that started with twelve men and borrowed horses in the mountains. All twelve of them came home. Zero American fatalities. Against a fortified enemy that outnumbered and outgunned them at every turn. Today, across from Ground Zero in New York City, there is a bronze statue — sixteen feet tall — of a Special Forces soldier on horseback, rifle across his lap, looking west. It honors ODA 595 and the teams who rode with them. Most Americans walk past it every day without knowing the story. Now you do.

@altdireita @David_J_Bier @cyrusmehta I’m not using resident in the legal sense. People reside places, and many people without any immigration status have been residing in the United States for decades.

@RadicalMiddle4 @David_J_Bier @cyrusmehta long standing residents of our country who don't have status?! They arrived and were admitted? If not, they're not residents.

Reagan didn’t have a problem with the pre-1996 laws, in fact, he promoted the last amnesty. The Republicans, not the Democrats, were behind the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996. Teddy Kennedy was a leading opponent. Clinton signed it because he wanted a second term.

@RadicalMiddle4 @David_J_Bier @cyrusmehta Democrats crafted those laws as a way to get Republicans to vote for more immigration. They made the rules hopping no one would seriously enforce it to get R votes. Senators Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Emmanuel Celler all Ds made the rules.

I get that, I really do. But consider this: most crimes have a statute of limitations. You can commit most crimes, and avoid punishment if the government doesn’t come after you within a period of time. And, it used to be the law that you could stay if you weren’t deported within five years of entry. And up until 1996, 70% of the time an illegal could stay by proving deportation would be a severe hardship. Now you can say that is all bonkers. But I think it’s crazy to treat non-criminal illegals who have been here for a long time, particularly those brought here when they were young kids, almost as if they’re not human beings worthy of some positive consideration. (that’s the echo of Dred Scott) I also get the public benefits and census / congressional representation angles. Immigration is complicated. #Immigration

@RadicalMiddle4 @David_J_Bier @cyrusmehta The only injustice is this batshit insane idea that breaking the law long enough should mean immunity from it.

39 years ago today: As Justice Scalia puts it in dissent, Justice Brennan’s majority opinion in Johnson v. Transportation Agency “completes the process of converting [Title VII] from a guarantee that race or sex will not be the basis for employment determinations, to a guarantee that it often will, and it thus “replace[s] the goal of a discrimination-free society with the quite incompatible goal of proportionate representation by race and sex in the workplace.” In sum: “A statute designed to establish a color-blind and gender-blind workplace has thus been converted into a powerful engine of racism and sexism, not merely permitting intentional race- and sex-based discrimination, but often making it, through operation of the legal system, practically compelled.”

Esta es la cripta de la catedral de Anagni, en Italia. Es única. Entrar en ella es penetrar en un mundo de fantasía. El suelo, el techo y las paredes se decoraron así en el siglo Xl.

@aakashgupta “Blacklash”

HBO is spending $100 million per episode to reboot Harry Potter. That’s more per episode than the average Harry Potter film cost to produce. Seven seasons. 56 episodes. A potential $5.6 billion total production budget. Paapa Essiedu signed a 10-year contract for this role. He’ll be 45 when it’s finished. He’s receiving death threats on Instagram. People telling him to quit or they’ll kill him. His response: “The abuse fuels me.” Here’s what the people sending those messages don’t understand about how this actually works. The original eight Harry Potter films grossed $7.7 billion at the box office on a combined $1.2 billion production budget. That’s a 6.4x return before merchandising, theme parks, and streaming revenue. Warner Bros. is spending $100M per episode because the Wizarding World generates roughly $2 billion per year across all revenue streams, and they need a new content engine to keep that machine running for the next decade. Essiedu was one of the first actors attached to this project. Emmy and BAFTA nominee from I May Destroy You. Jason Isaacs, who played Lucius Malfoy across all eight films, called the backlash what it is: racism. The casting controversy has generated more press coverage for this show than any marketing campaign could buy. Every article about the death threats includes the trailer link. Every outrage tweet puts the show back in people’s timelines. 13M views on this single tweet are proof. Warner Bros. has run this playbook before. The internet raged when Heath Ledger was cast as the Joker. When Daniel Craig was cast as Bond. When Michael Keaton was cast as Batman. Each of those performances became the definitive version of the character. Essiedu grew up reading these books at a local library because his mom couldn’t afford a babysitter. Now he’s anchoring the most expensive TV series ever produced. The people threatening him over Instagram DMs are going to watch the show anyway. That’s the part they’ll never admit.

Homeowner waits until construction job is nearly done—then calls ICE on 6 of her own workers. Woman even provides the ladder used by agent to detain men—who she owes $10,000 for 3 day job. "She called the damn law on us and now we're totally screwed!" men yell in Spanish. "They surrounded us!—They surrounded us!" Agents even left behind the workers' van with doors wide open—filled with thousands of dollars worth of tools. The arrest was broadcast live for about 30 minutes by a co-worker—identified as Bryan Polanco. "Seeing it is not the same as experiencing it," he explains. "I’ve seen many videos, and sadly today I had to experience it." At the end of the video he gets the woman who called ICE on camera: "It is the same woman. Tidying up the house, and still with hatred in her heart." The incident occurred in Cambridge, Maryland.