A WGN-TV video editor and producer was roughly detained by two Border Patrol agents on Friday morning during a highly visible rush hour enforcement action in Lincoln Square.

Another expert on authoritarianism leaves the country Rutgers prof who taught course on anti-fascism left the US a day after being blocked from boarding a flight to Spain following a WH event where Trump promised “very threatening” steps against antifa activists www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Would I could find a fine frog!

Great time to be an actual criminal of any kind because federal agents are busy hog tying children and grandmas bsky.app/profile/wash...

On the 18th we need to be vigilant for increased violence and provocation by both law enforcement and counter-protestors, both of which will be used to try to justify more violence and authoritarianism.

💀

Ukeleles being strummed en masse. Chickens openly addressing government officials. Line dancing in a public thoroughfare. Frogs, unicorns and dinosaurs getting their interspecies groove on. Portland is lost. May God and Donald Trump save what's left of the United States of America.

Hoorah! apnews.com/article/mit-...

Ah, yes, the city bus, famously a luxurious means of travel favored by the wealthy

[Me, a poor, on the subway, glowering jealously at all those fat cat, fancy pants rich people on the public bus]

White House staff should just make and show him an AI-generated video where he wins, fly him to Duluth and tell him it’s Oslo, and dare the New York Times to say anything more than “Experts disagree about whether Mr Trump was awarded the Nobel Prize”.

Reporting live from Chicago, there’s no “hellscape” I’d rather be in.

'When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognize courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,' the Norwegian Nobel Committee said as it announced Maria Corina Machado as the winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, in a statement announcing its decision to recognize Maria Corina Machado with the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025:

Authoritarian, trollish, smug: it's the perfect memorial.

Up the sky in silence holy Comes the young moon slowly, slowly, Softly with her light divine, Filling, like a cup with wine. Elizabeth Chase Allen Born October 9, 1832

O sleep! O gentle sleep!

What Governor Pritzker is doing is right for his state, but it is vital for the Republic.

“This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues…” Malcolm Macbeth 4:3

We are the richest shithole of a nation to demonstrate our inhumanity in the long, miserable history of this failing planet.

If I believed in Hell I’d want Marco Rubio to experience it for eternity

“Millions of dead children” will be in the first line of Marco Rubio's obituary. Nice that the only State Department comment here is that “the U.S. 'continues to stand with the people of Burma.'” Myanmar hasn't been called Burma since 1989, but since Trump is forever stuck in 1983, that checks.

Imagine that. The terror inflicted on immigrant workers is now being used to lower wages.

Folks, if ICE shot a pastor in the head with a pepper ball on camera, what do you think they do to people behind closed doors?

John Roberts Colorblind Constitution bsky.app/profile/dlkn...

Thugs

Stephen Miller said the quiet part out loud. Trump has “plenary authority,” then suddenly went silent. Their plan wasn’t to be public yet. Clearly, someone hit the panic button in his earpiece. It gets weirder: CNN uploaded the interview with the “plenary authority” comment edited out. 1/2

An encomium for the late Jonathan Lear, and thoughts on his books and those of others, including Laplanche on Freud and sex, Bion on psychosis, and Todd McGowan on Hegel and alienation--and many others! booksinpsychotherapy.blogspot.com/2025/10/an-e...

glad to be born at a time when i got to see what life was like before the internet and will be dead before AI completely destroys humanity

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

Members of the GOP openly calling for a "cleansing."

About 1 in 3 US Nobel prize winners are immigrants. About 1 in 4 were government employees at some point. About 44% of all Nobel prize winners were educated in US higher education. As Trump demands a Nobel prize, he is destroying the means by which America came to dominate the prizes. Sources below

It's a pretty big deal that the NYC Bar Association--one of the most prominent and respected bar associations in the country--is accusing the President of ordering the "unlawful summary execution," i.e. murder--of civilians in violation of US and international law. www.nycbar.org/press-releas...

Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending

Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness I am his Highness' dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you? Alexander Pope Image courtesy @robertallenpoet.bsky.social‬ briefpoems.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/d...

There are other examples but the Revolution is the most relevant for us, and that took years of escalation, of attempting peaceful politics, of protests and petitions, and of organizing for the eventuality. It's not some flip a switch and then ok, fight's on. That is how you get crushed, not win.

There is an escalation ladder here and he understands how that is the absolute last step, one you don't touch until all else has failed and you've done a lot of laying the groundwork. Things are bad, heading that way, it's deadly serious. But we're not there yet and he is right to not say it now.

The problem (at least in IL) is not that we have a feckless governor or mayor unwilling "to stand up to Trump." The problem is that over 80 years+ we the people have ceded vast powers to the Fed govt for good and necessary reasons and then, last November, we gave all those powers to Donald Trump.

Melville ever the Platonist

The More Loving One -W. H. Auden

Mrs. Gloria Richardson, head of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee, pushes a National Guardsman's bayonet aside, 1963

Sandy Denny ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes?’ youtu.be/jsqztvHIB9Y

“And still dark stains appear on palace floors Which no amount of scrubbing can wipe away.” The Lights Are On Everywhere -Charles Simić Seems relevant

When you got it

After Balthus by Courtney Kampa The Atlantic, October 5, 2025

“…we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Kevin Roberts president, Heritage Foundation, July 2024

Texas proudly invading Illinois. It’s hard to describe the level of potential constitutional crisis here.

John Roberts’ Constitution: The federal government protecting people’s right to vote or giving them health care violates the sacred principle of state sovereignty but if the deranged POTUS and his bloodthirsty advisers want to use the military to invade other states for being too liberal that’s fine

“…we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Kevin Roberts president Heritage Foundation, July 2024