“Done everything right?” What fkg nonsense — torture is never justifiable. It is never justifiable to traumatize blameless people based on their ethnicity or skin color—just to prove how this nation considers their lives valueless. Only as Minn. proves, real Americans do not. We show up.

Confusion reigns for non-lawyer here. I thought Congress has the power of the purse. Period. Meaning “a surge in funding” from the pig pootiful pill was still Congress’s to approve and, well, fund. His lawyers think it’s a private trough.

The irony of asserting we need Greenland in order to secure our borders against Russian threat—when we have a Kremlin puppet in the White House…

Greenland can take lessons…

Oh we so won! China Announces Record Trade Surplus as Its Exports Flood World’s Markets

It’s not April 1st, but every day is a brand-new fool’s day

NYT is unable to abandon position that “Machado…led a successful election campaign against Mr. Maduro in 2024 and had the greatest popular legitimacy to lead the nation” although a CIA analysis suggests otherwise? Not 1st time NYT backs right over left in Latin Am either—despite deadly history.

Bibi has been promoting Hamas from its inception (in effort to destroy 2 state option). And Hamas has inflicted harm not equal to, but not insubstantial on everyone in its orbit (its own & Israelis). I cannot understand this latest willful act of immiseration however as anything but pure evil.

DeSantis is an idiot. Of the one-eyed one-dimensional island-unto-himself kind. The Odyssey is a fantastic boyhood romp. The Iliad was revered by Greeks for imparting life’s key teachings. New College of Florida Was Progressive. Then Gov. DeSantis Overhauled It. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/u...

In the first place, unlike presidential appointees career diplomats are often regional experts schooled in global affairs. In the second, embassies famously (or infamously) are the mother ships of spies. So we lose the ability to gather and act on knowledge. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/u...

The South (with western friends) rises again. But seriously — what after all were the precipitating events that led to the Civil War? Back then tried to bring in pro-slavery stares to tip congressional balance in their favor. Today trying every trick to do the same. bit.ly/497PD5P

As the fascist Project 2025 promised, RFK Jr. plans to end CDC recs for most childhood vaccines, leaving it "to doctors and parents." RFK's anti-vaccine policies will result in predictable outbreaks & resurgences of deadly diseases. We will all suffer the consequences. This is Structural Eugenics.

All good boys, girls & beings of whatever ilk deserve favor. Now we get to guess why this nice favor was bestowed. I say campaign schmampaign .. she hitched her boat to an all-screws-loose Titanic. (BTW Stefanik once helped my upstate NY-born mother. So did RFK Jr & his Pace clinic. Go figure.)

If you love Rob Reiner, focus on what is good and right. And offer up a prayer for the afflicting sorrow. But do not give that piece of putrid crud crap an iota more of your time. Help move the world forward—not back.

Who can’t be reminded of the Nazi round ups, the Velodrome d’Hiver? What kind of monster have we become? Officials Target Youth Immigration Program, Speeding Up Deportations www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/n...

What it means to be a Russian agent? “The NSS does not merely ‘shift priorities.’ It flips 75 years of American policy on its head and declares political war on Europe’s democratic institutions while elevating the far-right parties in Europe that Russia has been cultivating for more than a decade.”

It is one thing for Denmark to pussyfoot around US threats & another for NYT. Leaving out shocking degree to which we’ve teamed up with Russia (whose economy btw is failing). Plus Bannon & friends hard work pushing European neo-Nazism with idea of dismantling the EU.

Brilliant piece .. helps clarify why a former Zero Unit member might very well, one day, blow a gasket.

What could constitute a more blatant effort to overturn an election? From pressuring GA’s top election official to find votes to blasting media with false reports to tampering with voting machines and intimidating witnesses, it’s not clear what more DJT & allies needed to do to warrant indictment.

Discovering and falling in love with pockets of the country .. new citizens out flexing their rights, friend and neighbors out honking their horns

“I could have easily not gotten the story and…said, you’re a fucking pedophile and I can’t see you anymore. “But in order to get the story, … the story of Donald Trump’s relationship with this pedophile, a story that certainly many of the journalists now criticizing me have chosen not to pick up.”

Agog any serious artist can consider representing US at this year's Venice Biennale (even if we are usually a pretty craven lot). Little chance Mexico-based Alma Allen's work can (or aspires to) counteract the toxicity of this regime. Is it to his credit that we'll be spared Curtis Yarvin?

This hurts but here is a bit of glinting light on a stormy sea. In 2001, legions of Muslim men were rounded up, held, aggressively interrogated, persecuted .. and except for a few news reports, everyone stayed mum. No excuse but different times & circumstances. Question: Do we care more now?

So the good news is he is wiping out the talent, which could hurt his plans for a putsch. The downside is perhaps they are the generals with scruples? Their firings too will intimidate the rest. Who hopefully won’t delay coming to their senses, as did the good Prussian officers of the 20 July plot.

Celebrating, but had to sniff out NYT back-handed compliment.“The Mamdani campaign gave a lonely generation something to bond over. ‘Addicted to their screens, strapped for cash, spiritually unmoored and socially stunted by the pandemic, young New Yorkers needed a reason to get out of the house.”

With electricity and communications down across Jamaica, it’s impossible to know the extent of harm—but they’re saying as hurricanes go, it is one of the worst.

Thinking of Sally Mann’s Civil War battlefield photos. Wondering if we will find our way back .. no, not to some gilded non-existent past, but maybe to that one unnoticed moment when more of us were decent. www.sallymann.com/new-gallery-3

Just incase you wondered what democracy demo looks like…

How many diehard NYT readers are sick to death of their unrelenring anti-left bias. Dems not willing to kill off healthcare affordability for millions are to blame? Really? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/u...

Did Baudrillard & De Lillo get this one right? We hear about disassociated groypers & edge lords socializing in shooter games & trading memes in irony-clad echo chambers. Language is alienating as signifiers are freed from signified. Until someone wakes up with a plan, involving a ladder & a gun.

Was the shooter an extreme-right Groyper (which his meme use suggests but the NYT does not address)? OR was this revenge on behalf of his trans beloved? OR why bother seeking rational answers in irrational times? For Gov. Cox however why make claims without proof? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/u...

Astute points from another trench operative. Calls to mind parallels between, say, groyper “brain rot” & Weimar era fractures .. Dada yes, but maybe more aptly Pound, Eliot, Celine, with tech bros. standing in for Italo-fascist futurists. Now however it’s the poetics of memes & guns.

While written as an intentional misdirection toward the reader, the "...practicing the very act that gave birth to this nation" hits closer to the target when you consider the economic "machinery" of much of the pre-industrial US.

Charles Blow on leaving the NYT: “The zombie thing that came to be published under my name had a dwindling trace of my breath in it. It was no longer fully my voice.“ Even Krugman has said: “I felt that my byline was being used to create a storyline that was no longer mine. So I left.”

Redolent of the Blount, Philby and company MI6 debacle?

Beautiful outcome as long as it lasts. There is a rare and fragile habitat that warrants protection. But so does human life. Beyond incarcerating the innocent, AA appears to have been modeled after France’s notorious Devil’s Island. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/u...

Black Federal Reserve governor, Black Attorney General, both women, both same “trumped up” allegations. Starting to feel like we dialed back to 1883? www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08...

“Judge Dominic W. Lanza acknowledged that the Resolution Copper mine will destroy one of the Apache people's most sacred sites, could potentially inflict devastating environmental effects and use tremendous quantities of water as Arizona endures a historic drought.”

A fascinating account of the intersections between foreign policy-making and back rooms filled with Russian mobsters, oligarchs and despots, NY developer wannabes, the laurel-wreathed academies & more tellingly unquestioned friendships and uncertain alliances. Yum. open.substack.com/pub/journalo...

Throwback to the 1990s? Reminded of time Trump accused five innocent teenagers of an act of extreme violence — only it wasn’t true. And for his purposes it didn’t need to be. He trained the spotlight on himself while igniting racist fears of urban “wolf packs”. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/u...

As the saying goes, A people hire A people, B people hire C people…and (in this case) so on down the line www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/u...

Reminded of Reconstruction’s reversal—starting as it did with media caricatures of Black officeholders as loutish primates. Not human. Again truth here is being inverted—those who cry that DEI is racist are racism’s greatest practitioners. So little changes. www.propublica.org/article/geor...

Looks like the “Stop the Steal” folks stole the 2024 elections. Here is a nice neat breakdown of the all-important numbers. www.instagram.com/reel/DK-ud80...

Take note how the new military draft for Danish women goes hand in hand with reports that the Russia, thanks to looser US restrictions, is now acquiring the capital and matériel needed to prosecute its war against Ukraine—a war that many Europeans see as merely a first step.

Congress Dems should make a move to vacate the speaker of the House pronto. (Next on the table should be calls to impeach Noem and Hegseth.) thehill.com/homenews/hou...

From extortion to illegal quid pro quo.. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/b...

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/u... When will he finally be reined in? He’s a gattling gun launching countless nuclear warheads (oops, shouldn’t say that for fear we’ll go from the metaphoric to the literal).

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/w... Oh happy day. Nice lesson for anyone contemplating turning their national armed forces (in this case police) against civilians without the due process of law.