Latest posts
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Kash Patel’s $60 Million Date Night. Wait, Someone Would Date Kash Patel?
Every great American scandal begins the same way: with a man insisting it’s not a scandal. FBI Director Kash Patel, the latest maestro of taxpayer-funded romance, would like you to know that when he took a $60 million federal jet for a “date night,” it wasn’t corruption. It was patriotism. Because his girlfriend, a self-proclaimed
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When the Substitute Teacher Runs the School: Obama’s Return and the Democrats’ Echo Problem
There are few sights as surreal as watching a former president outshine his successors while trying not to. Barack Obama, ten years out of office, has become the most effective voice in the Democratic Party again, not because nostalgia sells, but because competence apparently does. His reemergence on the campaign trail for down-ballot Democrats feels
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Deportation Nation: The Purge of ICE and the Rise of Border Patrol Theater
Every administration has its signature moment of bureaucratic chaos—the thing historians will point to and say, ah yes, that’s when the clown car caught fire. For Trump 2.0, that moment has arrived in the form of a mass decapitation inside ICE, where up to a dozen field office chiefs are reportedly being removed or reassigned
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Divide, Distract, Deregulate, Disappear: Your Anger Was Focus-Grouped
Culture-war noise keeps you busy while antitrust is gutted, noncompetes spread, and public money builds luxury towers. The Hand in Your Pocket Is Wearing a Cufflink The oldest magic trick in politics begins with a sigh and ends with your wallet. The sigh is theatrical, “What is happening to our great nation?”, and the wallet
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The People’s Propaganda: Beijing Declares America Dead While Measuring Its Own Pulse
China has officially diagnosed the United States with “terminal democracy.” According to Chinese state media, America is “dying from within,” “a failed state,” and—if you believe the new string of editorials—just a few supply-chain snags away from the global hospice ward. The declaration arrived perfectly timed with the Chinese Communist Party’s closed-door Fourth Plenum, where
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I Like My Dallas Neat, With No ICE
There’s an old saying in Texas politics: if you can’t fix a problem, create a new one that sounds expensive. Enter Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, a man so enamored with federal “partnerships” that he’s now trying to marry local policing to ICE, as if that’s the sequel anyone wanted. You’d think the recent ICE facility
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Fascism, ‘Woke,’ and $7 Lattes: How We Got Played While the Billionaires Cashed In
From immigration panics to crime bait, the outrage machine drowns out the boring policies that actually save you money. A love letter to boring policies in a country addicted to feelings “Kitchen table issues” sounds like a placemat you forgot to rinse. It lands in the brain like a PSA about flossing. Everyone nods at
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Blood, Synergy, and Severance: How Paramount Skydance Turned Layoffs Into a Business Model
There’s a certain elegance to corporate cruelty when it’s delivered in PowerPoint. The font is soothing, the charts are blue, and the word “transformation” is used at least three times before anyone says “job cuts.” Paramount Skydance, the newly merged media hydra now helmed by David Ellison, has decided that the best way to impress
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Soap Operas, Talk Show Thrones, and the Gospel According to Drew Barrymore
There’s a special kind of American optimism in handing out golden statues while the world burns. On October 17, the 52nd Daytime Emmy Awards beamed from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, where a theater full of people in sequins and spray tans cheered for the institutions that have taught us to cry at noon, gossip at
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Operation Campaign Reel: The War That Started Because Trump Got Bored on a Yacht
The Caribbean has always had a cinematic allure: turquoise water, tropical breezes, and now, apparently, a naval blockade that could double as the trailer for a Michael Bay reboot of Bay of Pigs. Since early September, President Donald Trump has pushed the United States to the brink of open war with Venezuela, cloaking the move