the green berets should be disbanded, we don't need a War Crimes Unit

I do get it's damaging to people we care about to shutdown the government and that the outcomes are bad and it might not be good for Dem popularity long run. But also, we're in a repeat prisoner's dilemma and sometimes you gotta choose the bad equilibrium even if it sucks.

I genuinely don't understand how Democrats can negotiate to fund the government under these conditions and it is why they should have made addressing recision and unconstitutional withholding of funds the key issue of the shutdown even if not as sexy or popular as subsidies.

LET'S GET READY TO LITIGATE *US PAUSES $18B IN NYC INFRASTRUCTURE FUNDING: VOUGHT *US PAUSES HUDSON TUNNEL, SECOND AVE SUBWAY FUNDING: VOUGHT *US PAUSES NYC PROJECT FUNDING BECAUSE OF DEI CONCERNS: VOUGHT

Reuters: U.S. SUPREME COURT LEAVES FED GOVERNOR LISA COOK IN PLACE FOR NOW, DEFERS ACTING ON JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REQUEST TO REMOVE HER IMMEDIATELY

BREAKING: The Supreme Court allows Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook to remain in her job, against the wishes of Donald Trump. Cook will remain in her position pending oral arguments in January on whether Trump has legal cause to fire her.

I’ve expanded my note a bit here with some more info on what SCOTUS did today regarding the Fed and Trump’s thus-far-unsuccessful attempt to fire Lisa Cook. tl;dr: SCOTUS changed nothing, but, in reality, that is doing something.

for whatever reason the legislature shrugged and codified it in 2024 because why not, increasing compliance and thereby housing production

it's eventually going to catch up to our early-2000s political system but who knows when and how! fun!

New Jersey has accidentally had like a golden decade (mostly squandered by incompetent or malicious leadership) because of a weird constitutional right to inclusionary zoning YIMBYism invented out of thin air by judges in the seventies

No seriously. Imagine you are a person who knows your key responsibility in life is “if I get the order to continue a series of events that will culminate in the deaths of at least hundreds of thousands of people, I must play my part in that chain of events” and then drunk uncle says hit the Zempy.

Imagine that you are literally in the chain of command that is potentially responsible for ending human civilization as we know it by prosecuting multilateral nuclear war and suddenly a dude from TV is your boss and he thinks you could stand to lose a few pounds.

Shocking that the people who collectively manage the greatest amassing of violence in the history of the world didn’t enjoy being lectured by a cable news pundit. Shocking. Can’t believe it.

What’s supposed to be fraudulent about this? Couldn’t it just be an individual with the means doing something heroic? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/u...

Video: youtu.be/IIF18ZEyKA0?...

Impressive how one political party can control the White House, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, but not bear responsibility for whether the federal government functions. Neat trick.

Grocery shopping on Saturday, I caught myself saying out loud "are you kidding me?"

By the same poisonous logic that held only Nixon could go to China, I suppose, only the buffoon who joked on 9/11 about his tower moving up in the tallest rankings after the WTC fell can defund counterterrorism programs in New York without the American political system rising up as one to smite him.

Mamdani “doesn’t allow that there’s a conflict between emphasizing economic populism and taking on Trump’s authoritarianism.” As @gregsargent.bsky.social suggests, there’s no reason to assume this synthesis wouldn’t work just as well in swing territory newrepublic.com/article/2011...

my latest is expanding on the observation that your view of the politics of opposition to the administration depend largely on your view of the election (gift link)

i wonder what it’s like to look around every day and see the country being run into the ground by pill-poppers and secret police and anti-vaxxers and book burners and you go into work and sit down at your computer and you’re the guy whose job it is to come up with new oreos flavors

It feels strange to be so disappointed in comedians for failures of moral leadership when those failures are everywhere you look these days. But at the same time, there’s something about a lot of comedy that sorta depends on the material being written by a fundamentally decent person.

who among us has not hacked up a journalist with a bone saw or hung a college activist from their ankles until death

Anyone with critical thinking skills or a memory of past shutdowns should be aware that this isn’t how it works. The president doesn’t gain new powers because Congress hasn’t sent over the money for the executive branch.

trying to certify a Kavanaugh Class

Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. Convincing colleagues to vote with them is the literal job of politicians - if they can’t do that, they can’t do their jobs. They own this shutdown and all of the consequences.

Don't sleep on Michelle Wu, one of this country's most quietly effective climate leaders, cruising to a second term in Boston. It's telling that business interests tried and failed to stop her and are pouting about it now Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

a wildly ignorant claim from The Telegraph www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025...

I'm kind of gobsmacked that Republicans willingly let the shutdown be nominally about modest subsidies for healthcare for middle-class voters. goddamn you guys are stupid!

refuse to learn more about the issue beyond betting $100 that Armand will endorse a Republican for federal office before I turn 30

so Brannan is presumably wrong but unfortunately he's treating Armand with the level of open contempt that future Republican deserves...

HUD putting a McMansion cul-de-sac rather than a block of apartments on its website is a Choice

Yes, Egypt was heavily leveraged from their expansion so the drop in cotton prices ruined state finances. However, US cotton ag also suffered from those low prices, international competition only expanded, & then the boll weevil took its share, so cotton was never king like it was before the war.

Imagine if he dies during the shut down.

I don't know what they're planning to do--because the Epstein files are still going to be sitting right there when they all come back.

honestly who the fuck is this for, absolutely nobody is convinced who isn’t already playing the game

loser shit

a government run by internet trolls, for internet trolls.

I have no doubt they enjoyed the comedy show. I have some doubts about whether the repressive oil billionaire royal family members have lives just like mine. And either way, they’re not exactly representative of the common experience in Saudi Arabia.

"They're just like us. The royals loved the show" is a real quote from this. Satire is dead.

Natural gas appliances should be banned anyway on climate grounds, no?

pretty remarkable level of corncobbing going on rn

so, uh, a NYC councilman is in the process of having a pretty unhinged crashout over abundance. honestly kind of sad to see, especially since the law in question seems like the exact type of technocratic issue we should be trying to understand deeper rather than just flinging insults at people

the democrats do not listen to this particular random dude on the internet, but: do not listen to the stupid headlines, hold the line, let Trump and company brag about how much damage they’re doing fuck these people, give them nothing, show the public that none of this is acceptable or normal

i need someone with access to democratic senators to get a THEY BREAK UPON US going in the group chat

so is it like a poster's strike but for government

This is the funniest messaging idea I've ever heard, yeah man let's say we're raising taxes on everyone except the rich. I hope whichever consultant gave him this idea is having a laugh

Should have called him Caffeinated Joe because he kept the government awake all 4 years.

The judges have had enough