Performative utterances & political commentary. I value rational discourse; I sing the body electric; I post about music I love and music I produce. Also, too, Denver Nuggets obsessive. Links to my musical endeavors: https://linktr.ee/longplaya
655 followers 1,626 following 4,589 posts
view profile on Bluesky 
I know, I know, but: The president of the US saying, literally, "we're going in" in reference to sending the military to an American city for no reason beyond terrorizing the local population should be the most immediately impeachable shit imaginable
oh i forgot about hochman. that's probably the nazi who wrote this www.liberalcurrents.com/missouri-sen...
It's really quite a thing to have a Secretary of Energy who does not understand, ummm... energy.
Our WASPy founders knew if they didn’t keep expanding the definition of “white” they would be hopelessly outnumbered. And the gullible fucks who adopted the designation after origin stories of oppression (conveniently forgotten) are the absolute worst.
The Schmitt speech today is beyond reprehensible, but it’s also just such a weird moment in American politics where people like Schmitt have to reconstruct an alternate history where *they* are “Heritage Americans”. Bro you are German and Catholic the founding fathers did not want you on the team
1/ Hope this thread helps break through the mental logjam for normies. For anyone in the game of technology/ innovation/development this is just basic facts now. For the first time in 2 centuries, the West is no longer the leader in future technology,but the follower www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Not much of a stretch to believe someone who told an 11 year-old girl‘s mother that he would one day be dating her and who agreed with a shock jock that his own daughter has a nice ass has it in him to rape kids.
The White House declares that it would be a “hostile act” if House Republicans voted for a complete release of the Epstein files. Trump seems desperate to cover up any connection with his friend who raped children.
I think the percentage of people joking about Trump dying is vastly larger than those that thought he actually died. And if you think it’s in poor taste, check out the Oval Office these days.
Bernie Sanders: These oligarchs lack that humanity, that sense of empathy. They believe they are entitled. They believe they have the right to rule and democracy is an impediment to their success. They want it all and they don't care who they step on to get more and more.
#BREAKING: Fifth Circuit (Southwick & Ramirez, JJ.) holds that President Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act against Tren de Aragua is unlawful, and blocks AEA removals in the Northern District of Texas (over a lengthy dissent from Judge Oldham): www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...
Laura Loomer has more power over your government than US Senators.
Scott Jennings and Ben Shapiro are currently both sitting at a panel table on CNN, not OANN. Seems like a pretty good barometer of where things are in this country. 😕🇺🇸
"Be loud for America", is an astoundingly good rallying call for US citizens to resist the Trump autocratic takeover. Actionable and patriotic. Pritzker sure brings the fire to Democratic resistance.
Khanna: It’s going to be a bombshell press conference tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. The American people will hear directly from survivors of the Epstein abuse. And they’re not just going to talk about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s abuse — they’re going to talk about rich and powerful men…
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, says he was denied a meeting with career intelligence workers because Laura Loomer objected.
I feel like in the 1980’s/90’s this would be a major plot point in a Tom Clancy novel, and the operation would be carried out as an off-book, illegal black op, with various characters trying to cover it up lest they face congressional hearings. Now the President just announces it.
The reason the original WASPs kept expanding the definition of "white" to include previously oppressed ethnic migrant groups is to make the numbers work as they became increasingly a minority. The very idea of whiteness is a lie.
Literally indistinguishable from the manifesto of neo-fascist group Patriot Front
@brennancenter.org Historians Council Member @janemanners.bsky.social filed a brief dismantling a major claim of the Trump admin's theory of executive power: that the president can fire certain agency leaders at will, no matter what Congress said when legislating those agencies into existence.
anyway it’s shocking that no one was able to predict that when the George W. Bush administration gave itself unreviewable powers to murder and imprison people, those powers were eventually going to get used intentionally on noncombatants
I do think it’s important to understand the more esoteric political threads in natconism but frankly this sounds no different from George Wallace.
The eugenics will increase until morale dwindles to nothing
Pritzker should mobilize the Illinois National Guard to oppose them. Extreme? Maybe. But I don’t see why he should just let another state effectively invade his.
Yeah this is pretty much explicitly white supremacist. Not sure how he could make it more obvious short of screaming the N-word.
Imagine if you will, the Governor of Illinois sending national guard to one of the many southern states who have higher crime rates than Illinois. The right would be fine with that. Right?
If it’s under Title 32 authority, the Texas guard remains under state control. That would mean that one state is deploying armed forces into the territory of a non-consenting state. And that’d clearly be a violation of the principle that states are co-equal, territorially limited sovereigns.
Pritzker: "I refuse to pretend that any of this is normal ... I refuse to fall into the pundit trap that demands we sacrifice vital constitutional rights if it's being done in the fake guise of fighting crime."
The president is tweeting videos of his extrajudicial murders for the sake of entertaining his hordes of followers who cry out for enemy blood.
That Pritzker press conference was... surreal, and I think marks a significant moment of escalation in the constitutional omni-crisis. This was the governor of a state saying plainly the Union itself is being torn apart and his state is being militarily invaded by an authoritarian regime.
Any moment now would be a good time for many American Catholics to realize they aren’t necessarily part of this guy’s vision of America as a distinct ethnic people and respond accordingly.
Taps the sign. www.liberalcurrents.com/missouri-sen...
When President Trump used 32 U.S.C. § 502(f)(2) in 2020, that was to have out-of-state National Guard troops sent to D.C.—which has no sovereignty of its own. Sending the un-federalized TX National Guard into IL without the latter’s consent raises *serious* Article IV problems that 2020 … didn’t.
There are people with swastika tattoos that are subtler than this
If you were an actual news organization, you would point out to your readers that this was the extrajudicial murder of people who had not been found guilty of any crime and who were not afforded due process. The story here is that the US govt is asserting the right to extrajudicially murder people.
I’m not personally aware of any legal authority for the federal government to just shoot a torpedo or whatever at someone suspected of a crime?
Judge: "There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence. Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law" "In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act" They followed UNLAWFUL ORDERS.
The “national conservatism” idea that Hazony presents a sanitized version of when in polite liberal company is built—enthusiastically—on the violent destruction and subjugation of sovereign Indian peoples. It’s a morally repugnant ideology.
I think extrajudicial execution is clearest. They state suspected them of a crime and executed them with no due process.
Lethal force against a civilian vessel in international waters is a war crime if not in self-defense. If not in self-defense, only non-lethal actions, such as warning shots or disabling fire, are allowed. "Not yielding to pursuers" or "suspected of carrying drugs" doesn't carry a death sentence.
The dumbest thing about claims like this is that Bluesky uses a chronological "following" feed by default. You choose who you see. Twitter dolts don't understand life without an algorithm feeding you slop.
JD Vance comes out and admits that the decision was purely political by saying he lobbied for Ohio but Alabama lobbied harder.
Tommy Tuberville is perhaps the dumbest person on the planet.
You need your parents’ permission to not commit suicide?
My cry is 100% based on the fact that I know trans people and he is actively attacking them with both words and deeds in a cynical attempt to triangulate using vulnerable people as punching bags.
Speculate irresponsibly: His diaper was full and they are concerned the press would notice the smell.
Speculate irresponsibly: They can't get that squirrel on his head to stay still.
via Aaron Blake - A pretty remarkable scene in this Breyer footnote: National Guard Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman objected to the Trump admin's plans for a show of force in MacArthur Park. A Trump political appointee, Gregory Bovino, responded by "questioning Sherman's loyalty to the country."
“Stay at a safe distance and don’t interfere. Video the encounter, make sure people know about it, get the person’s name and where they’re from, and their birthday,” says Lukens. “We all have to be witnesses to what’s happening and make ICE’s terror campaign public.”
/3 Also, it should be obvious, but in case not: this illustrates that the aims of the anti-trans movement are legitimizing violence against trans people as well as against anyone who doesn’t present like Bobby and Cindy Brady.
"Imagine knowing electricity or the internet were coming ... before both fully and wholly upended business, culture and life. That's the AI moment we see unfolding today" - possibly one of the stupidest things i've seen written about AI, great work Axios!
✨Shocking news✨ from NYC: When you give pregnant people w/o stable housing $1000, no strings attached, life improves for them and their baby. "It means getting to live in a safer neighborhood...getting to choose to go back to work & put your child into child care...access to more nutritional food.”
"If Trump is invading cities and you’re cowering, you look weak. If you say, 'If you hurt my people, I will pursue you until the ends of the earth,' you look strong." On the pod @jamisonfoser.bsky.social is so good on Trump's military threats and the Dem nonresponse: newrepublic.com/article/1998...
BREAKING: Federal judge rules Convicted Felon Trump violated the law when he deployed National Guard troops in California. I break down this damning opinion and explain why this decision is so important as Trump threatens to do the same in Chicago and other cities. youtu.be/ZZJD21zyHdc?...
"Harvard Law grad pressing Harvard over antisemitism praised Hitler memoir as he entered law school" is s–– that could get a person laughed out of the writers' room. What a bleak curse to instead have this as real life.
Greg Sargent: "So perhaps it’s time for news organizations to state unabashedly and affirmatively that they are not in the business of amplifying Trump officials’ lies and smears, and any official who feels entitled to such amplification can go stuff it." newrepublic.com/article/1998...
Congress returns today from its August recess, but Democrats cannot return to politics as usual. Neither collaboration nor silence will slow Trump’s march toward authoritarianism. From @ddayen.bsky.social: trib.al/dWJkzqz
I think it’s neat to take a minute and remember just how far we’ve come in such a short period of time.
Is this in part a response to threats from their southern neighbor or is that just a justification for war-machine grift?
Absolutely blistering takedown of the US government's mad climate report that rehashes the worst denier tropes of the past decade. US gov't took on a handful of self-serious denier micro-celebs, and in doing so, basically just hugely owned themselves in public sites.google.com/tamu.edu/doe...
Look at all the fascist lined up against the building like prize-pigs for the Nazi Barbie and her entourage.
Just left a very frustrated voicemail for my disgraceful Vichy Senators Hickenlooper and Bennet. If you aren't categorically opposing the fascists, you are with them.
Just a thought, but perhaps Democrats should look at the government they might be forced to shut down not as turf to defend but as territory occupied by a proto-fascist regime. nymag.com/intelligence...
Silly Matt has never watched CSI or NCIS. You probably don't think police stations are lit with an ominous blue or green glow either.
When you and your families get sick and die from poison in the air and water, the Trump administration counts it as a "victory", and quisling journalists like the one who wrote this fall in line and describe it that way.
Judge: cancelling these grants approved by Congress violates the constitution 5th Circuit: ah, too bad, you did not go to the right court so the constitutional violations have to go ahead
This point is similar to one I made in my newsletter last week -- the idea that you can avoid talking about something as big as *the president sending troops and tanks to take over American cities* is ludicrous. www.cnn.com/2025/08/31/p...
Messaging fascist power grabs as "distraction" fails to recognize politics is a shouting match not a soliloquy. Pivot to "but our prices" means you're not going to be heard. Further, you have to prove not just Trump's hurting you, but that Dems would fight back. www.cnn.com/2025/08/31/p...
"You’re dismissing (Trump’s troop deployments), and you are dismissing all of the people who are horrified by it, and all of the people who are living under this level of oppression" -- @celindalake.bsky.social
So you need parental permission to not kill yourself? Republicans want your children dead ASAP and are doing everything they can to make it happen. It remains to be seen how long a political party predicated on doing mortal and material harm to their constituents can remain viable.
The asymmetry between the parties is reflected perfectly in these bad-faith dust-ups over TV news editing. CBS edited Harris down for time; here, by contrast, edited out a bunch of defamatory nonsense from Noem. Fox edits down Trump to make him sound sane. Etc. newrepublic.com/article/1998...
A bunch of middle-manager white collars tooling around in tanks and cosplaying the working man is one of the dumbest aspects of modern car culture. People used to buy trucks so they could do stuff only trucks can do. 2/3 of people who own them use them to haul/pull things less than twice per year.
If you drive around in a huge tank of an SUV/Truck that is your primary commuter vehicle, and you aren't using it for work, you're a first-class asshole. Tooling around looking for parking for your tank makes you look lazy and uncaring, not the salt-of-the-earth rural folk you imagine yourself as.
“The rise in high-fronted SUVs poses a clear and growing threat to public safety, especially for children,” states the report. “With no benefit to society, it’s time for lawmakers at all levels to act.” Via @carltonreid.com in @forbes.com. Cap SUV/truck hood heights. And ban unsafe designs.
The problem is not the existence of a single bad-faith actor or even a handful - it’s the way these behaviors are either encouraged or penalized. If you let the ringleaders operate, they’re encouraged. Nuke the ringleaders and they’re penalized
“Don’t be a troll” absolutely does scale. You can’t get every single person but you can get the ringleaders, which is why a lot of the major far-right accounts were gradually removed from Twitter until Musk took over. Whatever token violations they committed, their real offense was being trolls
How about a little comparative analysis of Chi's per-capita violence rates vs. the most violent places in the country, which are mostly in red states/counties? The inability to gauge relative dangers and present them as stats to readers has been a major failure of crime reporting and journalism.
I saw this because somebody reposted it. :^)
Judge Pillard's dissent slams "spurious" criminal probes by Trump administration and pressure campaign that led Citibank to freeze climate funds that had already been awarded -- which she calls "sabotage of Congress' law." s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
“The supplementary forces in Washington, provided by and funded by Mr. Trump” Oh, I see he’s paying for it out of his own pocket eh? No taxpayer money involved at all I’m sure. This is the opposite of journalism.
Trump despises first responders and wants them all dead just like the people they are trying to save. It remains to be seen how long a political party predicated on doing mortal and material harm to their constituents can remain viable.
Wildland firefighters were stunned when ICE raided an active wildfire response in Washington state, arresting two firefighters and sidelining crews for hours. Wildfire veterans say the operation was nearly unprecedented, a breach in protocol that federal agents don’t disrupt emergency responders.
The Aussie press not holding back when it comes to its coverage of neo-Nazis.
NAFO see what propaganda is vomited to usa population What used to be limited to fox news is now normal bc of billionaires fawning over trump and buying media companies or being extorted in fear or bribery When you talk about why usa fell, be sure to mention media
You're trying to manufacture consent for people to cast their votes for transphobes, and that's not going to fly. I'm going to keep loudly saying that I've drawn my red line and I'm sticking to it.
in case you missed it here's a member of Congress admitting I was right to mock them for normalizing DOGE and trying to bridge with fascists
If NPR were to start their investigative reporting with the well-supported assumption that Trump, his cabinet, and agencies lie about everything nonstop, they will save themselves a lot of time and resources. Assume the lie, verify the factual record, and become journalism again.
More than 85 scientists say that a recent U.S. Department of Energy report is full of errors and misrepresents climate science.
Sure would be nice if federal judges coordinated when they release opinions with my kid’s doctors appointment schedule. But for now will just say that judge Breyer masterfully pieced together a factual record in what will some of the most consequential PCA litigation we’ve seen in decades.
key to remember in all this revisionism that the world did discover a successful pandemic defense approach that avoided most of the harms. it was "Zero Covid until you can roll out vaccines," simple as bsky.app/profile/grud...
NEWS: Judge Breyer bars the military in LA from performing police functions like arrests and crowd control. He says this was not a "one-off" violation of law by individual troops but a systmatic and knowing violation by Pentagon leaders w/ @joshgerstein.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2025/09...
As a federal judge ruled today, Trump is illegally misusing the Guard in the service of "creating a national police force with the President as its chief"
So when do Trump and Hegseth get sent to a torture prison in El Salvador?
jesus man, tell me you have no idea who Claremont is or JD Vance's record as a postliberal
For the last couple of years much of the media has had the most incredible unwillingness to learn literally anything about JD Vance. Never seen anything like it. Active resistance to learning anything about his ideas.
jk rowling accuses trans people of holding "luxury beliefs" and yes as a trans woman I am of course guilty of holding the luxury belief that I should have a livable life.
Really wish the media would speak with the same clarity as judges - absent a rebellion on U.S. soil, the President cannot deploy the National Guard to act as a police force under his control. I know the rule of law is not click bait, but it undergirds the functioning of society.
BREAKING: Trump, Hegseth violated the Posse Comitatus Act with their troop deployment to Los Angeles, Judge Charles Breyer rules after trial. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
The "moral high ground" for concern trolls like Munger Jr. is the top of a pile of bodies being readied for mass graves.
