Wednesday

Mayor Brandon Johnson debuts our new Chicago Snowplow “Abolish Ice” 🪏🧊 Video from ABC7’s livestream

Delivery robots are good to the extent they reduce car traffic. But they should be in the streets, not on the sidewalks (and not in the bike lanes either.)

I’m not sure what to make of this. CPD was a train wreck under Lightfoot. The troika of Johnson/Gatewod/Snelling got it back on the tracks, restored basic competence. I don’t know where it goes now.

Murdoch makes makes money on Fox. Ellison is less interested in money than influence, like the influence Musk bought with Twitter, or Bezos bought with WaPo. It’s just not about making money.

Sacks was the Rahm-Whisperer, but his influence survived Rahm’s fall. He’s the 1% funder behind Rahm’s neoliberal establishment, a toxic influence on Chicago politics.

You’re never to old to serve as cannon fodder for Pete Hegseth’s doomed Crusade.

Burke protects ICE.

This one’s fash.

I stopped reading the NYT in the late 70s because its coverage of the conflict in Ireland was toxic. Everything it’s done since confirms my decision. History demonstrated it was dead wrong on Ireland, and history will show it’s dead wrong on trans rights too.

I’d rather they were just twiddling their thumbs in airport terminals, but these scarecrows trigger terror in the wake of Operation Midway Blitz

Every picture of ICE agents in airports is just this again

TSA is malignant security theater. Replacing them with ICE is just dropping the benign pretense.

Air travelers are advised to bring their whistles to the airport.

Fascism gaslights and exhausts.

Distinguishing bad wars from the soldiers who fought them is a time-honored Democratic strategy for deflecting the meme that Democrats are weak on defense. But it’s a distinction without a difference.

I’m predictable on this one. Since I was a little boy my parents’ rule was “The *only* Republicans we support are in Ireland.”

My son, Grendel, is so based he decapitates Saxons (Angles too.)

TSA is enough to induce me to avoid air travel. Put ICE thugs at those checkpoints and I’ll never darken their doorway.

Mueller was just fascism with a respectable face, and stupid. Trump played him like a fiddle.

“Guillo-teen” was right there.

A case ginned up by a British establishment that will never get over the fact that they lost the war. You’d think they’d know better than to believe their own bullshit.

Most conspiracy theorists are clueless, incapable of the subtlety required to resist imperialism. That ignorance fosters confusion, promotes assimilation into the imperialist project.

Can we put him on The Rack first?

I’ve always bonded with Big Oafs. I think it’s an Irish thing; String Bean and Wall in combination is unbeatable.

Yeah, we have to kill our heroes, but still . . . 😢

“Sugar, Sugar” haunts me to this day. But I’m a relic of modernism, when everyone consumed the same canon, and avoiding annoying songs was impossible. Post-modern atomization of the music market has relieved the torture somewhat.

Reilly got the cop ghettos, and some badge bunnies. He was strong where Trump was strong.

Our hero triumphs

They know Johnson will veto this for them. So they can pose as business-friendly for campaign cash, without hurting their voters.

Is Brendan Reilly the new Bob Fioretti?

For my newsletter, I wrote about all the ways @katmabu.bsky.social's campaign challenged the conventional thinking about modern campaigning: www.burnsnotice.com/kat-abughaza...

It’s the piggy bank that got Burke and Madigan indicted. Hynes’ father had the slot for many years.

“We certainly live in coarse times. I would suggest coarse language is the least of our concerns. It is the crudeness and vulgarity within people’s hearts that is the true offense.”

She earned my respect catching an indictment from Trump at the Broadview Detention Center.

Congrats to Raja Krishnamoorthi on his new position as guest contributor to the Chicago Tribune editorial board

I like Kelly, but she didn’t get traction, so I rallied to Stratton to beat Krishnamoorthi. She’ll be a huge improvement on Durbin.

He succeeded only in demonstrating how weak he is. Alderman 32% is begging to get primaried.

We’ll forgive him for waffling on Irish unification.

NEW, from me: I used 35,000+ leaked messages to create a map of the communication network inside Patriot Front to identify key influencers within the secretive white nationalist group. 🧵 www.splcenter.org/resources/re...

Israel is a US proxy, *not* the other way around.

We start them young.

i just realized "incel hitting himself in the face with a hammer to become more appealing" is the plot of fight club

With the Trump Court driving the federal judiciary off the rails, Illinois judicial elections are more important than ever. If you’re making the effort to vote intelligently on these races, I recommend this guide.

I ❤️ Pynchon, but I think Sinners earned more Oscars than it got.

The US is *always* an unreliable ally, both on the individual level, as here, and on the collective level, as with Ukraine and the Kurds. Never trust the US.

Having a hard time believing this ides of March story, you're telling me senators did something other than send out fundraising texts

I knew the guy who started the tradition of dying the Chicago River green for Paddy’s Day. He was a stalwart Irish Republican, rad af.