>>176305, >>176306
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC - My having been a waitress makes me 1000x more qualified to govern on behalf of working people than whatever lifelong politician nonsense you’ve swung from your whole career. Why should working people vote for you if this is what you think of them?
Quote
Fox News @FoxNews
BAR NONE: Sen. John Kennedy mockingly compares AOC to former VP Harris after her comments at the Munich Security Conference. He says Republicans should continue to use "Operation Let Her Speak." "So far it's working, and my message to my friend the congresswoman is: You go girl, you just keep it up."
https://x.com/AOC/status/2025365676110557552

Al Goodwyn @Al_Goodwyn - A couple of days ago, my wife and I watched The Insider, the gripping 1999 film starring Russell Crowe as Jeffrey Wigand and Al Pacino as Lowell Bergman, a 60 Minutes producer. It tells the true story of Wigand, a vice president at Brown & Williamson Tobacco in the 1990’s, who became an historic whistleblower by exposing how Big Tobacco deliberately enhanced the addictive properties of cigarettes, while publicly denying nicotine’s addictiveness.
The movie powerfully draws you into Wigand’s personal life and the courage it took to come forward, the devastating retaliation he faced, and the profound impact his decision had on the industry and public health.
What made the timing eerie was that the very same day we watched it, Mark Zuckerberg testified as a non-voluntary witness in a major Los Angeles civil trial accusing Meta (especially Instagram) of deliberately designing addictive platforms, particularly targeting children and teens, in ways that cause or substantially contribute to serious mental health harms, including anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, and, in some tragic cases, suicidal actions.
Zuckerberg’s testimony felt strangely familiar. Just as the Big Tobacco CEOs sat before Congress in 1994 and feigned shock—shocked, shocked that anyone would call nicotine addictive, Zuckerberg appeared equally bewildered at the suggestion that social media could be engineered for addiction.
The same playbook: deny intent, reframe heavy use as voluntary enjoyment and “value,” hedge on scientific proof of harm, and profess deep concern for users’ well-being. Different product, same stunned surprise.
I highly recommend The Insider, not just as a good movie, but as a chilling reminder of how industries can prioritize profit while claiming ignorance… until the evidence becomes impossible to ignore.
By the way, in my cartoon, Big Tobacco is represented by a caricature of Brown and Williamson’s CEO in the 1990’s, Thomas Sandefur.
https://x.com/Al_Goodwyn/status/2024879799802437840

AlphaFox @alphafox - Video: Lets visit Mexico they said. It would be fun, they said...