Banquosghost

quotes by Musk and Hannah Arendt

“In my work with the (Nuremberg Trial) defendants, I was searching for the nature of evil, and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy... a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

- Captain G.M. Gilbert, US Army

This can't be correct. The NZ Govt is adamant that:
- we can't do anything about climate change, only other people can
- the science is in contention
- technology will solve it (that's unrelated to the massively cutting research budgets)

“The real boogeyman this Halloween is the Trump Regime.”

More Caesar the No Drama, Anti-Fascist Llama is the best character at Portland ICE protests! #iceout #portland

CBS News just gutted its climate team Paramount and Bari Weiss aren't off to a great start. Here's why David Ellison should change course.

NEWS: CBS News gutted its climate team as part of the big Paramount layoffs this week. These journalists had been doing incredible reporting on extreme heat, flooding, clean energy investments and more.

I've got details for Climate-Colored Goggles: www.climatecoloredgoggles.com/p/cbs-news-g...

Gayle King expected to depart ‘CBS Mornings’ in latest restructure: report King, who has fronted the broadcaster’s morning show for over a decade, is expected to step down from her anchor role on next year, according to a report

Bari Weiss makes a clean sweep, firing all women, Blacks and Hispanics in high-profile positions at CBS News. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

I don't feel bad for Usha Vance or Melania Trump.

Neither should you.

They know EXACTLY what they're doing.

Complicit every single step of the way. They chose this. They participate in it to this day. They're all in.

One thing we don't say enough about Trump is that he's a little bitch.

Top Intel Democrat rips Trump administration over exclusion from boat strike briefing A briefing held only for Republicans in Congress on U.S. military strikes is drawing a fierce rebuke from a key Democrat

This literally makes no sense:

"The administration says it is relying on the same legal authority used by the Bush administration when it declared a war on terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."

And the reporting doesn't question it.

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Also, @mattyglesias.bsky.social, why do you assume voters will understand these raids purely as an immigration issue? Maybe, just maybe, they'll see them as law enforcement and executive branch abuses of power. Surely raising the "salience" of *those* issues doesn't help Trump/GOP. Does it?

In Utah, Trump’s Vision for Homelessness Begins to Take Shape

Under Trump, the draconian future of homelessness policy is coming into focus: mass internment. Utah is building a 16-acre site to detain up to 1,300 homeless people inside locked "accountability centers." This is profoundly alarming.

Vital reporting from @ellenbarry.bsky.social and Jason DeParle:

At least 61 people have now been killed by Trump/Hegseth's military blowing up vessels in the Caribbean Sea & the Pacific.

@stevevladeck.bsky.social answers the question “Is this s—t legal?!”

Added BONUS: We also discuss the latest unusual development from SCOTUS.

youtu.be/s5UwTnXVX7c?...

Vladeck: Even if you accept the predicate that these drug cartels are foreign terrorist organizations, that still doesn’t get you anywhere close to legal authority to use military force. They’re trying to blur and sort of collapse the distinction between two regimes we have…

Column | Before Trump gutted the White House, Erdogan built his ‘White Palace’ As long as there’s been human civilization, there have been leaders with vanity projects.

@ishaantharoor.bsky.social channels everybody who watched Turkey's descent into pure authoritarianism and is now watching Trump do the same damn things in this piece

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

This is the kind of blatant abuse of fiscal discretion that Charles I used during Personal Rule, when he tried to govern England as an absolute monarch without ever having to call parliament again.

IOW, it's king shit & represents the most dangerous possible breach of the constitutional order

So Trump held military briefings on strikes in and around Venezuela and only allowed republicans to attend today? Am I understanding that only one party is now being briefed on military plans and actions?

I really wonder if people realize how deep we are into the process of fascist consolidation.

There’s a $6 billion emergency fund ready to keep food aid flowing. The Trump Administration is refusing to use it, putting millions of families at risk of going hungry during the shutdown. This is just cruelty, plain and simple.

THE HYPOCRISY: When Patel was just a MAGA podcaster, he slammed former FBI directors for “jetting around on taxpayer dollars.”

JD Vance is lying. He knows he’s lying. But he doesn’t care. Trump has taught Vance & all the others in my former political party that the truth doesn’t matter.

These people have civilian jobs. It's one thing to mobilize them for an emergency or a legitimate war, another thing to send them to American cities to stand around and mill about. You're messing with people's careers to further a hostile and idiotic agenda.

Brian Beutler spelled this out here— www.offmessage.net/p/the-suprem... —and it's been haunting me ever since. This shady shit from the Roberts crew will handcuff the next Dem administration unless Dems start laying the groundwork now for serious SCOTUS reform—and follow through on it.

A Trump hack prosecutor brought a guy up on incitement charges for posts on Bluesky wishing for Trump's demise. The jury acquitted him in 2 hours. But I still worry about it here:

in a shutdown while food stamps are being cut

The Democratic Establishment Has To Wake Up and Embrace Mamdani

Mamdani is the present and future of the Democratic Party and is poised to be the next mayor of NYC. The establishment's response is more Islamophobia, billionaire hit pieces, and contempt.

open.substack.com/pub/thelefth...

ICE grabbed a dad and his 12 and 15 y.o. kids. 200 activists made a human chain to stop the kids from being taken away. ICE shot pepper spray & rubber bullets at them.

Franci Stagi, the woman who was attacked, is 57. Not sure that's "elderly." A paramedic saw her; but, she stayed at the action.

Attorneys General Sue Trump for Using Shutdown to Disrupt Food Assistance for Millions Critics say Trump is exploiting the federal shutdown to unilaterally slash the safety net and cause unnecessary pain.

Three Democratic state governors and the attorneys general of 23 states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday for refusing to deploy emergency funds and keep food assistance flowing as lawmakers in Congress negotiate an end to the shutdown.

Leaked memo details National Guard plan for a 'quick reaction force' in US cities Each state is standing up a quick reaction force of National Guardsmen trained in civil disturbance and crowd control, a leaked memo shows.

Leaked memo details National Guard plan for a ‘quick reaction force’ in US cities trib.al/x0X3nmk

Oh I'm sure that is going to go over well at the White House