Alan Stamm
@alanstamm
Recovered journalist in Michigan. Upper Manhattan roots.
2/ "They create a public record, force answers under oath that can't be taken back, and reveal whether senators are willing to demand independence from the Justice Department. "We [have] low expectations in that regard."
"What does a bully do when he is backed into a corner? He lashes out. "That is what Trump did by ripping up the [cease-fire] memorandum of understanding, attacking Iran again and claiming control of the strait/" -- @thedanrather.bsky.social | substack.com/home/post/p-...
2/ "When he walks into Main Justice every morning, the man he serves is not the American people. It is the man who signs his continued employment."
📺 "That’s the smile of a Make-a-Wish kid whose wish was that everyone else in the hospital lost their health insurance due to his fucking poicies." — Jon Stewart, @thedailyshow.com 📺 "Looks like a husband-and-wife ventriloquist act.” — @jimmyfallon.bsky.social
2/ ". . . designed to close the case emotionally before the facts have closed it intellectually. . . . "The official statement never answers the central question. We get spin, sentimentalization, childhood illness, electoral trust, family, duty, prayer, a strategically placed newspaper."
2/ "[I'm not ashamed] of the addiction, not of the collapse, not of the long grinding work of coming back from both. "The laptop is a record of a man who almost died and chose to live. I own that story now, and no one will tell it for me again."
😲 This eye-popping reality at @nytimes.com today is among many reasons I'm glad my post-college job searches began a half-century ago.
2/ ". . . more companies don’t get in on the sale grift. Just ping the White House every time you already have a promo going on. "Heck, every bar in America should commit to slash prices at happy hour to celebrate how happy they are that Sleepy Joe is gone."
2/ "They deserve our gratitude for serving as a critical line of defense for the most important elections of our lifetime.
2/ "He was calling from somewhere underneath the version of himself he had been holding up for me my whole life. By the time he left that voicemail, I had been disappearing in and out of myself for months."
2/ "[Last week] I left a city where too many institutions have withered, too much expertise has been discarded, and too much energy is devoted to winning the next news cycle."
"We are at something of a strategic dead-end. . . . The more we attack, the more the Iranians attack the Gulf oil and energy infrastructure. "And the administration still has not figured out how to defend those sites." — Richard Haass, longtime U.S. diplomat, to @David E. Sanger of @nytimes.com
In late summer, Minnesota hosts an American state fair that actually *is* great. These are among “over-the-top inventions” for 2026 that were announced today, as the @startribune.com puts it. The paper asks a question it mercifully doesn't answer: "Why did nobody think of this before?" [1/2]
After seeing the news via @douglasmack.bsky.social, I came for this @startribune.com tradition -- though not by you this time. Thanks for the gift link. And yes, white chocolate, pickles and dill weed shouldn't be nearby in a sentence or in a cookie.
Yup . . . blood sugar spikes just from seeing it. Same for Strawberry Ube Sunday Tart and French Chouxnut Sundae.
Pickle pie and pickle cookies are waaay down my list too (as in: at the bottom). As if white chocolate, dill pickles and fresh dill belong in the same sentence, not to mention in a baked item.
@hcrichardson.bsky.social sees him sweat and calls out the “red scare” subtext:
2/ "It will take every democratic-loving voter, judge, lawyer, political activist, and election official in both parties to stop Trump."
It's fun when @pkrugman.bsky.social talks Latin to us: "What we have is President Sundowner. This guy is non compos mentis."
2/ "Trump is who he is, and a nation that elected him twice simply can't be trusted. . . . The world no longer takes him seriously."
Politics writer @sjdemas.bsky.social on Graham Platner, expected to drop his Maine campaign for U.S. Senate soon:
➡️ Caption challenge: ⬅️ Real photo by Evan Vucci of @reuters.com from Oval Office ceremony Monday about a federal pledge to deposit $1,000 into IRA-style accounts for kids born in 2025-28. 💠 What might be a thought bubble above the child props❓
"Not so long ago, an American president was considered the leader of the free world. That title has been eroded as we watch walls go up and relationships shatter. Instead, Trump is hunkering down in isolationism, with no strategic endgame" -- @thedanrather.bsky.social | substack.com/home/post/p-...
2/ "And in 2028, when we're trying to rebuild after Trump and we need . . . the women who knocked on doors because they believed the party stood for something, we're going to have to reckon with what we asked them to swallow in Maine."
3/ "Too many [Democrats] have convinced themselves that our politics are clean because our enemies are worse. They're not."
@nytimes.com landing page on our 250th anniversary weekend in this sweet land of liberty . . . if we can keep it:
2/ "We desperately need a new vocabulary for this turbulent age. "Our politics, especially the naked, reckless reach for power practiced by the majority on the Court, cannot be adequately captured by the inherited political vernacular of a bygone era."