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Zelenskyy is a better representative of the values that America stands for than America itself under its current regime.
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I could never post this one enough.
God has no hands but ours.
We are here for a reason. Not by accident. Not by mistake. We chose this time, this place, this life.
But what will we do with it?
The world is loud, full of fear and division. It wants to pull us into its drama, make us forget why we’re here. But we are not here to fight battles that were never ours. We are not h…
You made it, you own it
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My dad called me this afternoon to tell me that the field between our houses was covered with robins, that it wasn’t just one robin that arrived as a sign of spring but a whole field full.
What he didn’t say was that birds were my mom’s thing. She would have been the one to notice. He did in her stead and made sure to bring them to my notice, too.
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I love talking Vulture's annual stunt awards with Brandon Struessnig. Lots of fun stuff this year about FURIOSA, THE FALL GUY, those ads during the Oscars that featured stunt performers, and more.
taps microphone “is this thing on?”
Hello Substack, I’m an acquisitions editor at Baker Books and would love to connect on here. Feel free to shoot me an invite and send me a pitch any time.
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You really can’t understand our current moment without understanding the history of the American South.
Because you better believe that the bad guys understand it.
Do not miss this piece.
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This is the best short speech about Trump's desecration of our democracy since he's re-entered office.
Read it, absorb it, but most of all, share it.
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Put a chick in it and make it gay!
When it’s cold enough to see the melody
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Not sure if I’m supposed to say this here, but here goes:
Lamenting the loss of what once was on another site, I love “following” people here simply because I cannot get emails on the regular from all the ones whose wonderful work I want to see.
I also love that there is no follower/following count here (at least that I can see—I’m inept at such things). Who cares?
I also noticed recently that I can’t see how many likes, etc. there are on a note without a further step.
I know this place is for lo…
MICKEY 17 is, sadly, not very good. It's neither funny nor fun nor exciting, the central metaphor is unbearably belabored, and the movie jettisons all the interesting ideas from the book in favor of tedious timeliness.
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A reminder: Vladimir Putin could end the war in Ukraine right now, just by ordering his soldiers to go home. No need for treaties or negotiations.
You made it, you own it
You always own your intellectual property, mailing list, and subscriber payments. With full editorial control and no gatekeepers, you can do the work you most believe in.
Norway has just decided to increase its support to Ukraine for 2025 from 35 to 85 billion Norwegian kroner ($7,81 billion). Compared to the size of the population, the Norwegian aid equals $483 billion from the USA.
Tusen takk, Norge!
And here we go with the perfectly-timed Wall Street Journal article about government debt ahead of Trump’s State of the Union, targeting Social Security as the major culprit, with defense spending right behind it.
Don’t fall for this. We fix SS by raising the corporate tax rate and payroll contribution cap, not reducing benefits or telling seniors to work longer.
We fix defense spending by cutting off all the parasitic contractors fleecing the government and getting them back into competitive bidding. It’s that simple.
You could have fixed it by congress not raiding it every time they wanted a new hand out
Agreed. Unfortunately, what’s done is done. So now we have to sort out how to fix it going forward. Raising the cap/corporate rate is the way to do that.
So punish the corporations for what congress did? Ok
So I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. Let me address your point first. You’re right, SS money was misappropriated and that can’t happen again. So we need to put strict protections on the program to ensure the money is only used for retirement payments.
Regarding corporations, that’s a different part of the issue and it’s not punishing them to restore their tax rates to where they’ve historically been. The corporations keep selling Congress on this idea that if we lower their tax rates, …
Yes that is why when Reagan got into office and slashed the rates we game back from the Carter fiasco
He actually has to raise them back up, because even Reagan realized that they weren’t doing what they were supposed to. There’s a reason why the only time we had a budget surplus in the last 50 years is when Clinton moved them back to 39% in 1993.
And then we got the recession after that. Which was one reason Bush lost that election
Um, Bush lost to Clinton. After Clinton signed that adjustment, we had a massively hot economy and paid off our deficit. Then W Bush came in, cut the rates back down, and our deficit ballooned. And please, don’t take my word for it. Just look at historical data for corporate tax rates and economic performance. They need to be at about 40%.
The national debt grew while Clinton was in office from 4.6 trillion to 5.6 trillion.
Andrew, why do you think Social Security was created in the first place?
What were the senior poverty rates before and after the implementation of Social Security?
They are testing and retesting how dumb and gullible America is and how much bottoming we will take.
SS is OUR money. We, and our employers contribute, in good faith, to the fund. ITS NOT TRUMP’S MONEY. It’s OURS.
NO entity can touch that money. It’s OURS.
Plus, in the years I freelanced I paid my own SS tax in April. When you don’t have an employer you foot the whole bill yourself.
Exactly- you can see them all working the angle at the town halls - oh, but the govt debts , oh SS is a ponzi utter crap.
Raise the corp tax rate, raise the payroll cont tax - have millionaires and billionaires pay their share - no tax cuts over 400k. No cuts to soc safety nets or fed work force .
Compel them to find hard evidence of fraud waste and abuse and present that to Congress , they’ll make the cuts and handke layoffs .
Not just find it but prove it and show the American people.
Social Security pays for itself.
$1.3 Trillion in, $1.3 Trillion out.
Does it have a shortfall? Give everybody a raise, fixed. Or raise taxes on the rich.
Most maddening - We are not in debt.
The debt doesn’t have anything to do about Social Security. It’s a wholly separate account!
This is what happens when billionaires own the media.
Lies and disinformation spread to suit their biases.
Related notes
Many people believe that if Trump is removed from office the destruction of our country and economy will cease. That’s not true. We have to remove Vance, Speaker Johnson, the Trump cabinet and Republicans in Congress. Then the hardest part-we must remove the corrupt traitors on the Supreme Court. Only voters can do this, if they show up for all elections.
The president likes his name on stuff. Wouldn’t it be fun to name all of his accomplishment:
Trump Recession
Trump Unemployment
Trump Measles Outbreak – each death – another Trump Measles Death
Trump Retaliatory Tariffs
Trump Government Shutdown