🚨 1️⃣New long-form essay is live on Medium: “They’re Eating the Dogs: A Thousand Years of Fascist Lies.” From medieval monks inventing blood libel to Trump raving about migrants eating pets, it’s the same smear recycled for a thousand years. medium.com/@brian.ragle...

1️⃣ The Dallas shooting at an ICE facility is once again raising more questions than are being answered, especially by the law enforcement dribbling out information. They released this photo of ammo recovered at the scene and it's....odd.

I mean, it looks like a hand signal. He's either greenlighting the shot or telling someone to steal third base. No question those guys are signaling someone or something.

5. ...among black communities as protection against white nationalist/supremacist violence. In that very real and karmic sense, Charlie Kirk lost the gun debate.

4. Charlie Kirk died as part of the price *he* believed was necessary for the white Christian nationalist veneration of gun ownership, a peculiar ideological strain of conservatism that became more pronounced in the 1960s and 70s, following the encouragement of gun ownership...

3. Conservatism bends toward fascism because fascism is an extreme albeit natural conclusion to what conservatism preaches and holds, especially in the US and Europe, which are dominated by white Christians for centuries.

2. ...becomes more overt and open about the fascism that has influenced their policy positions since the 1950s. Conservatism in the US has always been rooted in white Christian nationalism and the "fascism" name for an ideology constructed around that came in the 1930s.

1. Let's be clear here, #CharlieKirk was a white Christian nationalist. That's a key component of the kind of #fascism that political conservatism has held for 200+ years in the US. To call this out isn't unfair or "demonization". It's accurate and it's timely as the #Republican party...

Spent the evening photographing tiny people with large cows. Yes, really. More a little later.

Nice Me does the same things as Rude Me, but nicer.

🚨 New longform drop 🚨 America’s labor shortages are colliding with the Constitution’s ugliest loophole: “except as punishment for crime.” Trump’s farm crisis “solution” is prison labor...slavery with patriotic branding. 🧵 A thread:

America’s crops are rotting, construction sites are stalling, and Trump’s (likely) answer is #slavery via loopholes and Executive Order fiat. My new piece digs into the 13th Amendment loophole fueling the prison labor “solution.” Read it before your strawberries come with chains. Tomorrow!

RFK Jr. probably thinks food safety regulations are just another government plot to keep us from enjoying that delicious old-timey chalk milk experience.

And I meant what I said: Trump has never had an original idea in his life. It's ALL drawn from his own little swiss-cheese memory of pop culture he has been exposed to.

Because #Trump does not have original ideas and never has, the source for the claim by MiJo that Trump was an #FBI informant targeting Epstein comes from this moment in history, which Trump wants to put himself into.

I have said it before and I will say it again, if we had hanged all the Confederates, there would likely not even be a Donald Trump, let alone a section of America that constitutes his mouth-breather cult of followers.

📊 New essay: Nate Silver thinks he’s discovered a new disorder called #Blueskyism. Spoiler: it’s not real. It’s just what happens when nobody here likes Nate very much. vagabondvisions.beehiiv.com/p/what-nate-...

1️⃣ On Sunday, I am publishing what I personally consider the most densely researched article I have ever done. Certainly among the longest. It's about #Hungary, a small European country most Americans couldn't find on a map without Google's help. vagabondvisions.beehiiv.com/subscribe

📊 Nate Silver thinks he’s diagnosed a new disease: #Blueskyism. Tomorrow I’ll explain why what really bothers him isn’t the platform’s “pessimism”… it’s that nobody here likes him very much. Stay tuned. vagabondvisions.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Checking in from #Tennessee where I just got my 71 year old mother her #COVID, #RSV, #flu, and first round #Shingles #vaccines. I'm 50 and got a free flu vaccine but they wanted $190 for the COVID vax (writers/photographers don't have great #insurance ...or any insurance). Not today, RFK!!

The right wing helpfully provide me with a LOT of fodder to dismantle with a fact-blender.

How far back in US history do you want to go? We didn't hang all the Confederates would be a good starting point for how we got here. But more recently, we imported a bunch of fascists who took over the GOP, Hydra-style and have been working toward this for half a century:

1/6 The war on abortion was just the beginning. The war on contraception is the real prize: controlling the very conditions of women’s independence. #BirthControl #Politics New deep dive: The War on Birth Control: White Replacement, Musk’s Pseudoscience, and the GOP’s Obsession with Women’s Wombs.

Seriously, this was cool as hell for me.

Legacy lessons from the balloon-man himself: preach virtue, live fraud. I took his “11 Life Lessons” video and dismantled every single one. Spoiler: he’s broken them all. #Politics vagabondvisions.beehiiv.com/p/trump-s-11...

Trump’s not posting, he’s live-blogging his own meltdown. 50 rage-burps in a day is less strategy, more symptom. The emperor’s mind is fraying, and all he’s got left is caps lock and imaginary rallies in his head. Even if he is physically alive, he's mentally spiraling, hard.

The Democrats who would rather bow and snivel to fascism than to share power or the limelight with a Democratic Socialist deserve their own place against the wall with the fascists, eventually.

BTW, he really does mean "white people". vagabondvisions.beehiiv.com/p/the-gops-w...

Sigh

The weird factor keeps going up. www.mediaite.com/media/news/g...

Preview of tomorrow's post. I couldn't let that stupid PR video slide by. Subscribe to get it directly into your veins (and inbox) as soon as it drops! vagabondvisions.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Right-wingers always accuse that which they are most guilty of themselves.

Tomorrow's post is gonna be...interesting. Click to subscribe and be notified the minute it drops: vagabondvisions.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Sad. 😔

3/3 ...is about to heat up again with a lot of hot button topics involving him. He's back to shitposting, which is his second favorite kind of autofellatio, but he's going to avoid public appearances while he feels puny and weak.

2/3 This could have caused some major cognitive problems like slurred words, vision issues, balance, and while he's back on two-legs now, they are making sure his appearances are under very tight control. The real story will be told this coming week. Congress comes back and the news cycle...

1/3 He's physically able to walk, though he looks slumped over more than usual and all the photos of him show his mouth hanging open. My best guess is transient ischemic attack...a mini-stroke. He's been under observation and recovery for the last few days and with a lot of clot-buster drugs.

Labor Day isn’t a picnic. It’s a receipt. vagabondvisions.beehiiv.com/p/labor-day-... #LaborDay #Unions #PeoplePower #UnionStrong

When someone is in the public spotlight and holds such loathsome positions as Qahwaji, the lengths she goes to in further ingratiating herself to those interests is subject to examination as well. She is, of course, free to want to change her appearance to suit her lived or chosen identity.

Lebanon-born Hanan Qahwaji (known by her stage-name as Brigitte Gabriel) is another example of an #immigrant who has latched onto the #MAGA World as a means of chasing clout. This is also true for Kashyap Pramod Patel (Kash Patel), born to Indian immigrants.

A new visitor showed up, likely wondering when the restaurant I am apparently running will open for evening business. Young and skinny, and very feral, but gorgeous. #Caturday #Photography

Turkey Vulture above my house, looking for dead things. Keep looking east, friend vulture. Shot this with a long lens against the sun and I like how it turned out without cropping in, and just working with the color as I got it. #Birds #Photography #BirdsOfBluesky

For a few glorious hours, there was a glimpse of a shared reality, a community, a sense of relief and resolve for what comes next. We all felt it. And now it's gone, like a pleasantly weird dream we wake from and try to grasp at the details of as we come back to consciousness and its pain.

False alarm, everyone. As you were.

More backstory on the new "addition" to my local group of cat masters. New Site, New Friends #Caturday vagabondvisions.beehiiv.com/p/new-post-0...

Happy #Caturday to the new friend who has been hanging out around my house. He's wild and skittish, but he can't resist the allure of leftovers from the pack of ingrates who leave food on their food on their plate when it's a variety they aren't fond of. vagabondvisions.beehiiv.com

This is a test of a scheduled post. I will set it to post at 1:55 PM CST.

You can keep your #PumpkinSpice whatevers at #Starbucks. The Pumpkin Creme Pies at #McDonalds are back today and I am unashamedly eating one right now. www.msn.com/en-us/foodan...

If you are a follower of mine, I will be splitting my posting from here on out. This account, my personal one, will be for more general interest and less political posting. My professional account, @vagabondvisions.bsky.social, will be where my writing and professional photography goes up.