It’s NO FUN.

🙁

(I blame Republicans, btw, along with voters who just don’t give a shit.)

«Tear gas still hung in the air as Albany Park neighbors and elected officials hugged and cried, processing the scene they had just witnessed Sunday afternoon after at least four vehicles full of federal agents had taken a man and tear gassed their neighborhood as residents responded.»

https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/12/ice-chicago-albany-park-tear-gas

Ya know… this just doesn’t seem very cost-effective.

Ya know… I live in North Carolina. Zoran Mamdani means nothing to me. Trans people don’t really resonate with me. (I’m an old white Christian cishet male.)

But…his latest ad on the Christopher Street Pier slaps. The most marginalized among us are the canaries in the coal mine (“first they came for the….”).

The Democrats of NYC chose him.

I don’t know what to say after that. I hope he wins.

«Both sides also seemed convinced that they had the advantage and that the other side had overplayed its hand.»

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/world/asia/china-trump-tariff-threat.html

Thucydides Trap.

I wonder what will happen in Gaza.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/greg-bovino-trump-border-patrol-escalation

I really hope this is the last three years of Bovino’s career, and after this, he gets assigned to Alaska or West Texas or, I dunno, Haiti or Myanmar or something. Or just plain fired.

«It’s unclear whether all 12 panel members, who were handpicked by Kennedy, were aware that the move would undo his decision.

…

Children under six months old cannot get vaccinated against Covid-19, so vaccination during pregnancy is seen by many providers as a key tool for protecting vulnerable infants from the infection.»

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/08/cdc-covid-vaccine-pregnant-women-recommendation-00599151

TIL.

This just seems like a confederacy of clowns, with Kennedy maybe not knowing what I didn’t know (except it’s his job) and the committee not knowing how things work (which is their job).

«Senate action on appropriation bills would also heap more pressure on Johnson to bring the House back to work.»

https://www.axios.com/2025/10/08/shutdown-senate-republicans-military-pay

How far will House Republicans go not to seat the new Representative (Grijalva) from Arizona who will provide the 218th vote on the discharge petition to release the Epstein files?

«“There will come a point when we have to face reality. We need to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. But we hope it doesn’t come to that,” a White House official said.»

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/07/politics/white-house-strategy-federal-firings-shutdown

God forbid they have to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. That would be awful.

(Unless they’re maybe dreading something else and they’re just lying.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/us/north-carolina-confederate-statues-park.html

This is awesome. Every municipality in the US should send Denton NC their unwanted Confederate monuments (which should be all of them). They can be a boneyard of Confederate statues, solitary mustachioed men holding rifles, and generals on horseback. People can visit as part of learning of Jim Crow (and other) era statues, and then they can go over to the Bentonville battlefield in NC to see the graves of the last people to die on the wrong side of history and be sad for the stupidity and racism that caused people to “lay down their lives” for this evil cause. I mean… there is tragedy in that.