Shocked to discover two guys who like one another would proudly show off a picture together

Maybe there can be some kind of NFL style trade.

All y’all thought there was going to be a US Civil War, but it turns out the first shots are getting fired across the Alberta/Saskatchewan border.

Damn, dude. Whatcha gonna do about it?

So the issue is not ICE, but who’s managing ICE.

You can say that about any organization. If the Nazis had been run by Rosa Luxemberg, they wouldn’t be the Nazis. They’d be a totally different thing.

But we’ve been staffing ICE with ice chewing psychos for decades. I don’t believe a reformist bureaucrat can lead ICE. The organization’s rank-and-file would rebel, in the same way the CIA rebelled under Kennedy and the FBI rebelled under Obama.

The issues, Bernie, are both who’s managing ICE and ICE itself. ICE are terrorists, you can’t just say that you will give money to ICE if they remove those two assholes ignoring all the shit each ICE agent has done so far, Bernie.

Even the most left-wing Democrats are still convinced that an organization dedicated to terrorizing migrant workers and extra-judicially deporting Enemies of the State is too popular to dismantle. That’s a bleak prospect for the nation’s future.

He’s in the minority of the minority. Chuck Schumer will be out an hour later saying he’s ready to sign off on ICE funding in exchange for a kick back and a high five.

The Republican justices have already signaled that they probably won’t strike down California’s maps

In fairness to the Court’s Republicans, they did suggest in their LULAC opinion that the Texas and California gerrymanders are mirror images of each other. The majority opinion in that case begins with the observation that after Texas drew its new map, “California responded with its own map for the stated purpose of counteracting what Texas had done.” Justice Samuel Alito, a Republican, also wrote a separate opinion stating that it is “indisputable” that “the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.”

More Epstein file distractions!

I’m still waiting to hear what happens the day after the Epstein Files get released.

Because the Renee Goode and Alex Pretti slayings put hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans into the streets. The on-again/off-again tariffs have been reshaping international trade relations. Mass arrests and deportations are rewriting the composition of entire cities and states.

What’s been the upshot of the Epstein releases? Anything? Is it a mobilizing event in any tangible way?

Plenty of 3rd spaces exist in Texas. You just have to pay to play. The hyper-capitalist dream is alive in the Lone Star State.

I always imagined thats why there were so many drunk people out and about. Because the only habitable place outside of homes were bars if you didn’t have a gym membership.

I gotta wonder how much of the decline of alcoholism in the subsequent generations boils down to affordability.

Gym memberships are way cheaper than bar tabs.

One could argue that the currency system itself legitimizes the amassing of enormous wealth into the hands of a tiny minority.

Those fringe groups can grow in size and power to challenge, and thus change the institution itself.

Was that the case at the Battle of Blair Mountain or via the anti-war movement during Korea and Vietnam?

Slavery was institutional at first. But then the Republicans, an institution, were created to counter slavery.

The Republicans, as an institution, existed for a historical heartbeat. They took power in the midst of the Civil War in 1861, struggled for 16 years, and then surrendered to the slavers in exchange for a single term of the Hayes Administration. Lincoln ended the plantation system and gave a single generation of African Americans an opportunity to flee their southern oppressors, before “moderates” in the party slammed the doors shut. Then it was another century before civil rights for African Americans was raised to national prominence again.

The Radical Republicanism of the 1960s couldn’t survive the end of the decade. The 13th amendment’s “prison” clause was ruthlessly exploited almost immediately, creating a state sanctioned plantation system that persists to this day. And the expansionist policies of the Republicans during and after the post-war era turned the white supremacist tendencies of the Confederate South into transcontinental genocide and imperial expansion, culminating in the globe-spanning American Empire presided over by the Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan Administrations.

We didn’t end slavery. We internationalized slavery.

Might as well just get rid of title VII of the civil rights act.

SCOTUS is way ahead of you.

Farías’ bill doesn’t stop at law enforcement. It prohibits those employed by ICE since the start of Trump’s immigration crackdown to the end of his term from working across state public school systems.

…

Farías’ bill would extend the background check requirements to include an investigation of prior employment with ICE — along with employment at the Correction Departments in Alabama and Georgia from 2020 to Jan. 1, 2026.

…

Representatives for unions representing California law enforcement and teachers told the Chronicle they were not yet ready to weigh in on the bill.

Committee hearings for the bill have not yet been scheduled. The bill would need to pass both houses of California’s Legislature and win the signature of Gov. Gavin Newsom to become law.

:-/

I feel torn about this.

By and large, the second group is always in the electoral and organizational minority. It’s always on the back foot, always in retreat, always losing.

Talking about the America That Is Imperial versus the America That Is Protesting is like talking about Vichy France relative to the French Resistance. This latter group isn’t institutional. It isn’t endemic to the social project that is the nation state. What you’re pointing to is a kind of weed that the national government needs to root out every so often in order to grow its fascist garden.

These groups may be American by residency or outward fashion or in the superficial tokens of identity. But they are enemies of America as an administration. They are anti-American in deed. They’re an insurgency that the American socio-economic system seeks to snuff out.

Both Sidesing

A Tale of Two Resolutions: 75 Dems Join GOP in Resolution Praising Trump’s Mass Deportation Regime

We have two Democratic Parties - the party aligned with the general public and the party aligned with the national government. If you’re voting for Henry Cuellar in the next election cycle, who are you supporting exactly?

Since GenA slang made it a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam

At approximately 9:00 a.m., two women approached Kim with separate components of the VX nerve agent on their hands, combining it into the lethal weapon when touching his face. He died about 15 to 20 minutes later while being transported to the hospital.

Every museum is a smell museum and every piece of art is scratch-and-sniff if you’re brave enough

Given the popularity of the AfD at the moment, I’m not sure what message that sends