Matthew Sitman Profile Banner
Matthew Sitman Profile
Matthew Sitman

@MatthewSitman

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writer (matt.sitman at gmail dot com) // au courant lefty podcaster ( @KnowYrEnemyPod with @samadlerbell ) // editorial board @dissentmag

New York, NY
Joined August 2012
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
When I was a kid, a family in our church fell on hard times, people were bringing them groceries. My Dad insisted on bringing them ice cream in addition to staples. Everybody deserves some ice cream, he said, and everyone else is going to give them cans of soup
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
8 days
He was shot in the head while handing out bulletins on a Sunday morning at his church, where he was an usher
@MoiraDonegan
Moira Donegan
8 days
George Tiller, a Kansas abortion doctor, was assassinated 15 years ago today. Very few people are willing to do as much for the cause of women’s freedom as he was. The anti-choice movement murdered him for it.
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Amy Coney Barrett’s father, an attorney for Shell Oil for many years, must be so proud of her!
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Listen, the Thomases are a team. When I was a Heritage intern as a young conservative, Ginni brought in Clarence to visit with the interns. The idea that there’s some wall of separation btw their respective, uh, professional activities is willful naivety
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
The idea that throwing trans people under the bus would mollify the right instead of emboldening the right is delusional
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
Times Sq lit up in the background is a hell of a thing to see as you're asking New Yorkers to conserve power
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Sometimes I think about this. He’s a good guy. Who does that?
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
This morning I randomly remembered the time Reagan told the BBC that there was no word for "freedom" in the Russian language lol
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Thomas and Alito especially are clearly people who have nursed massive resentments most of their lives, and now have a chance to let it all out. The shoddiness of their work is itself an expression of their power
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
10 months
This is a genuinely insane thing for a Catholic archbishop to say
@nilepostnews
Nile Post
10 months
“The poor will not go to heaven”- Archbishop Ssemogerere. More details: I #NilePostNews
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
1 year
Hating women’s bodily autonomy so much you destroy their ability to have more children in the name of being “pro-life”
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@chrislhayes
Chris Hayes
1 year
These stories are not going to stop. It is a form of state-sanctioned torture to make women endure this.
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Amazing to see these takes on the right
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Incredible.
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
10 months
Pack it up boys, they found the fatal flaw in the case against Trump
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
4 years
Yesterday was the 3-year anniversary of the Las Vegas mass shooting, the largest perpetrated by an individual in the history of the United States. I remain amazed at the way it's been mostly forgotten, and no one seems to care that we have no idea why he did it
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
1 year
Big if true!
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
The DeSantis human trafficking operation, the more I read about it, really seems like they were like, "we'll send you to Massachusetts, where they'll help you, wink wink"—and then the people were mostly quite nice, and the right absolutely lost their minds
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
I’m going to submit Buckley’s 1986 NYT article saying people with AIDS should be required to get tattoos indicating that, but change all the references to Monkeypox
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
One of the most important tasks of our time is to see extremely obvious things and not pretend they’re anything other than they are because our brains’ have been poisoned by the idea that telling the truth and holding corrupt, lawless actors accountable is “partisan”
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
1 year
I think that as I've gotten older, and thus seen a bit more of the world, noticing all the various ways a life can go wrong—a person can fall on hard times, the unexpected disaster that lays you low, etc—the more my politics have just become about alleviating the suffering we can
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
10 months
Huh, I wonder what happened in 1980?
@DLeonhardt
David Leonhardt
10 months
I consider this chart to be the clearest indictment of our country’s path over the last several decades: In 1980, the U.S. had a typical life expectancy for an affluent country. Today, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy of any affluent country:
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
10 months
An amazing prompt in this week's "Ethicist":
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 months
There's such a massive lane, politically, to de-scamify the country, which I do realize would mean, probably, changing the essential character of how we operate. But everything is a scam, everyone is out to rip you off, nothing works here
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
1 year
One thing I notice when I read American history—the Hoover bio we did an episode on recently comes to mind—is how often in the past relatively young people rose to positions of importance, in ways that are simply unfathomable now
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
@dougmastriano If you had alarms set, why didn't you do anything?
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
1 year
Me: the conservative movement is smaller than you think Every conservative writer on Twitter: *raises hand* I’ve been to the Nazi artifact collector’s house too
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
4 years
My theory is that Bernie broke so many lib brains because their politics is based in self-congratulations: we’re not like the dumb, racist conservatives. For someone to say that’s not good enough is deeply threatening
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
10 months
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Wait, the New York gun law that the Supreme Court struck down was *108 years old*?
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
1 year
It’s hard to understand this as something other than incitement to kill or attack LGBTQ people
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
In my naiveté, I really thought the pandemic might cause us to realize the way all of our lives and health are bound up together, and that things like sick leave, health care, etc are not just necessities for individuals, but things that in a broader sense make our society better
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
9 months
Today’s young posters don’t know how good this site used to be—imagine seeing this thread in the wild in real time
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
9 months
Jimmy Buffett lived the American dream, becoming incredibly rich from performing songs about getting drunk and eating cheeseburgers
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
This is almost a parody of GOP policy—stoking the culture war with one hand, making their voters (and everyone else) worse off materially with the other
@ryanlcooper
ryan cooper
2 years
"Disney’s loss of control also hands it a $163 million per year tax break ... “I don’t see how Orange County doesn’t raise property taxes by 20% to 25%,” Randolph said."
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
1 month
lol
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
The Pelosi comments really lay bare how retrograde a certain generation of Democratic leadership has become—the very idea of paying taxes that might support social goods that not every individual tax payer will benefit from is viewed with skepticism
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
Given how tirelessly Bernie Sanders has championed the Biden administration's agenda and how he's obviously negotiated in good-faith with both Biden and his colleagues in Congress, I'm wondering if we'll get anyone admitting that they were terribly wrong about him?
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
8 months
My Not-Cool opinion is that, while it does nothing to lessen the consequences of American militarism, it's extremely good these are the impulses of our leaders in the armed forces
@HerbieZiskend46
Herbie Ziskend
8 months
“And we don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator...We take an oath to the Constitution.”
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Thinking out loud, my sense is that the twin disasters of Iraq and the financial crash mean that it can be easy to forget how religious the George W. Bush administration was—stem cells, Terri Schiavo, "partial birth abortion" ban, const. amend. against SSM, Alito/Roberts
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
Hashtag MyPillow, Hashtag MartialLaw
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
9 months
He’s 81 years old and his health is failing, but he still gets up every morning trying to make our country just a little bit worse
@SawyerHackett
Sawyer Hackett
9 months
Wow. At an event in Kentucky covered by @WLWT , Mitch McConnell once again completely froze after a question about running again. Clearly he is not just “lightheaded” as aides suggested last time. This is serious.
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
I’m losing my mind
@FDRLST
The Federalist
2 years
The SCOTUS Abortion Decision Leak Is What Actual Treasonous Insurrection Looks Like
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
9 months
I'm sorry but dudes rock
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@washingtonpost
The Washington Post
9 months
A new social media trend prompting women to ask the men in their lives how often they think about ancient Rome reveals that it crosses the minds of many men on a weekly basis. Even daily. Or more — to the surprise and confusion of their loved ones.
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
If this is the response after Roe being overturned—about a highly salient issue to which core Democratic constituencies are dedicated—imagine the response to a bad ruling about the confusing, somewhat obscure issue of independent state legislatures
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
The gap between the best and worst Atlantic articles is astonishing
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
Guaranteed paid leave seems like such low-hanging political fruit—something that would materially make people's lives better in very obvious ways, as well as appeal to voters from a range of backgrounds. Just incredibly, incredibly dispiriting to see it get the axe
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Lmao
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
One of the strange dynamics in our politics is that Republicans aren't deemed responsible for what their elected officials do, while Democrats are held accountable for what every professor, teacher, or random school board member anywhere in the country says or does
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
4 years
I’ve been sick over the utterly wasted social isolation/lockdown that so many people tried to follow with good will, assuming their government would use that time wisely. It’s really criminal how we’ve been failed.
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
8 days
One annoying thing that I notice, the latest example being Seinfeld, is when someone is, if not cancelled, then put on the Bad Politics Person List, is people retrofitting all their other views on them—they were an untalented mediocrity all along!
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
Look at what they bury at the bottom of this, as opposed to the inflammatory headline: "More than 99 percent of the system’s roughly 35,000 employees have followed the mandatory vaccination program."
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
My new thing is checking the ages of former political leaders I haven’t thought of in awhile to see how much younger they are than the people running the Democratic Party. Today was *John Major,* who is 78
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
11 months
For the past few months, my @KnowYrEnemyPod co-host and friend @SamAdlerBell and I have been dealing with a lawsuit from the Young America's Foundation—to be honest, it's been a lot of anxiety and worry. Thank you to the ACLU & our comrades at @DissentMag
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
SMH at woke ideologues like Cori Bush focusing on the boutique concerns of Oberlin graduates like *puts hand to earpiece* not evicting people during a pandemic
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
1 year
Did an edible and then my parents said we’re going out for dinner—to a “Mennonite” home style place in central PA. Anyway, we’re here
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
5 days
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@YairZivan
Yair Zivan
5 days
I’m excited to announce the upcoming publication of my new book on why centrism is the answer to the extremism and polarization tearing society apart. It’s available for pre-order on Amazon: UK @eandtbooks US @ArminLear
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Also, I know Twitter is a cesspool, people say all kinds of crazy things all the time (including personal attacks and insults), but throwing terms like groomer around indiscriminately is going to get someone hurt or killed
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
17 days
This really is an almost perfect distillation of the rightwing view of freedom
@mattyglesias
Matthew Yglesias
17 days
????
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
5 months
Sad this is the best our country could do
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
The most radical thing that could happen on TV today would be to have well-informed people talking about something important for more than 30 seconds at a time
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 months
Which is the point obviously. If you try to feed starving Palestinians, you're taking your own life into your hands. If delivering food turns into a death sentence, fewer people will do it, which is precisely what Israel is hoping for
@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 months
It's so dark to realize that giving Israeli forces your coordinates to help safely feed starving people actually is just putting a target on your back
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
8 months
I know it makes me a shitlib who believes in "bourgeois rights" or whatever, but I'm glad we have the First Amendment
@spectatorindex
The Spectator Index
8 months
BREAKING: France's Interior Ministry to ban pro-Palestinian protests
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
I think one thing that's happening is that, because the Republican Party has gone so far off the rails, there's a resistance to speaking and writing honestly about that because to do so *feels* like you're being almost absurdly pro-Biden or pro-Democrat as a kind of by-product
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
8 months
The left of the Democratic Party has goals that require actually building legislative majorities to achieve; chaos, dysfunction, and shutdowns are, on the other hand, the tools of nihilists of on the hard right of the GOP. I think comparisons should take that into account!
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
I think you could argue that the single best feature of Twitter is that it reveals that elites otherwise obscured by social distance, handlers, and marketing are in fact total idiots
@chrislhayes
Chris Hayes
2 years
@alexnpress I think it a minority opinion but really think it’s good when the most powerful people on earth post! Murdoch’s feed was just incredibly revealing.
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
9 months
The thing about this tweet is that it's not cynical enough; the hoodie wearing has actually garnered more outrage
@DougJBalloon
New York Times Pitchbot
9 months
Whether it's John Fetterman wearing a hoodie or Bob Menendez taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, both men have done a great deal to diminish the norms of the Senate.
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
You mean the candidate who literally has never won more votes than his Democratic opponent?
@JacquiHeinrich
Jacqui Heinrich
2 years
GOP source tells me “if it wasn’t clear before it should be now. We have a Trump problem”
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
My first column for @gawker takes up something I've been thinking about for a while now: the anti-social impulses animating the right, why it strikes me as part of their strategy, and (some) of what we can do about it
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Pretty much every time someone important, or at least in a position of power, has to resign I'm struck my how mediocre they are, how they're actually very easy to replace, and that it's an utter fantasy to think that the people running our society in any way do so bc of merit
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
10 days
“I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!” —Kurt Vonnegut
@foxnewspolitics
Fox News Politics
10 days
Louisiana to become 1st state to require Ten Commandments be displayed in schools if governor signs bill
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
Fun facts: Barry Goldwater voted against the 1983 legislation that made MLK Jr Day a holiday. One current senator also voted against it: Chuck Grassley
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
4 months
A few more lectures from octogenarians should turn this around
@Politics_Polls
Political Polls
4 months
Biden Job Approval, Among ages 18-29: Approve 27% Disapprove 71% . @pewresearch , Adults, 1/16-21
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
4 years
It doesn’t excuse or erase what he’s done, at times, in his political career. But as a son who has fucked up a great deal, I can’t tell you how what it’s like to read this
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
This is superb, a true work of art
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Credit where credit is due: Sen. Mike Lee told us he doesn't believe the United States is a democracy. His honesty about what that means—the right for Republicans to overturn an election—is blessedly without euphemism or evasion
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
A lot going on here, but...that subtitle lol
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
7 months
The AOC tweet about AIPAC is important. We know who AIPAC will go after in the next round of Democratic primaries. It's good for the left to go on the offense, call them out for their pathetic embrace of Jan 6 election deniers, and, generally, try to set the terms of debate
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
5 months
There is no “dustbin of history”; there is only the constant fight for decency and love against barbarism
@CBSNews
CBS News
6 months
A teen's death in a Wisconsin sawmill reflects the growing number of children and teens around the U.S. working in hazardous jobs meant for adults.
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
9 months
The truth is I actually do think about the Roman Empire with some frequency
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Gang, you're right, Manchin's stated rationale doesn't make sense—we got him. Logic puzzles for the win
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
Campiest president in living memory, at least
@bluestein
Greg Bluestein
2 years
“When Trump descended into rage, his staff resorted to summoning an aide, nicknamed the Music Man, to play favorite show tunes they knew would soothe him, including ‘Memory’ from the Broadway musical ‘Cats.’”
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
7 months
I think it’s genuinely insane to tell a foreign country that literally no matter what they do, there will be no consequences in terms of our aid to them
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
It'd be lousy if Twitter became a poorly moderated, at times nearly unusable platform owned by a rich guy
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
What happens when rightwing groups don’t buy your book in bulk:
@Mediaite
Mediaite
2 years
Meghan McCain’s New Memoir ‘Bad Republican’ Flops With Fewer Than 300 Copies Sold
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
9 days
This is really incredible, lmao
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
1 year
I gasped
@jbouie
b-boy bouiebaisse
1 year
Thomas, if this is how it’s going to be, I have a question for you. In your first memoir, you describe assaulting a girlfriend. If, today, someone witnessed you speaking aggressively to a woman, and assaulted you, would you consider it justifiable given your own background.
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
Men will literally expect the Pope to have read their book instead of going to therapy
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
I guess the woman who ran the homeless shelter said they probably couldn't stay on the island forever, since it's a small, seasonal community without a lot of resources for that kind of thing, and that clip outweighs literally everything else? lol
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
Sinema being in the pocket of MLM/pyramid scheme money is just too perfect
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
You know, when you look at where we’re at right now, it makes you wonder if it was helpful to spend the first 45 min of every Democratic primary debate talking about whether or not Medicare4All would “raise taxes”
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
4 years
"She criticized Scalia for his 'faint-hearted' originalism, and instead argued for a 'fearless' originalism that recognizes no legal duty to preserve non-originalist precedent, no matter how entrenched or widely accepted it may be today." Very important:
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
9 months
If they can indict Bob Menendez for being bribed with bars of gold, they can do the same to YOU
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
If Twitter goes away, how will writers defend sweeping claims at the start of an article by linking to three random tweets?
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
The things you see on this website
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
9 months
I'm glad to see we're seeing a post-Dobbs surge in pro-family legislation that supports parents and kids from the right!
@JStein_WaPo
Jeff Stein
9 months
NEW: House GOP making enormous cuts to safety net price to avert shutdown Including 1M low-income mothers & young kids excluded from nutrition aid ~70% cuts to home heating $ ahead of winter months ~80% cut to $ for schools w/ poor kids & much more
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
1 year
Put the replies to this in the Museum of Mistaking Fandom for Politics
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
4 years
Imagine being a Kennedy and all the opportunities it affords you. And then what you decide to do with your life is primary a Democrat from the right because you believe a senate seat is your birthright. Incredibly disgusting.
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
8 months
The enthusiastic hate directed at trans people tonight, talking about people I care for in the most lurid and nasty terms, is disgusting. I don’t think we should concede anything to these bigots
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
2 years
This aspect of Obama's rhetoric always drove me crazy. Still does. What does "perfection" mean here? Anything more than Obama wanted to do? His reliance on false binaries to make himself seem reasonable was and is so dumb
@DJKoessler
DJ Koessler
2 years
Still thinking about this line from @BarackObama ’s eulogy for Harry Reid: “In a battle between perfection and progress, Harry always chose progress.”
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@MatthewSitman
Matthew Sitman
3 years
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” (Frank Wilhoit)
@KaivanShroff
Kaivan Shroff
3 years
🚨NEW: South Dakota’s Republican Attorney General, who killed a pedestrian and fled the scene, is investigating South Dakota’s Republican Governor, who called on him to resign, for abusing her position to help her adult daughter by intervening in a state agency’s decision.
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