Jesse Herro

I'd love to see someone art it up good and proper, because it's a good idea.

The attack on Portland was supposed to make the place look like a lawless hellhole. Instead, the authorities have succeeded in making it look like the most fun city in the world.

The US federal attack on Portland has resulted in the best advertisement for a city that I have ever seen. Round-the-clock joy, community solidarity and silliness that much of the West has lost and longs for.

Every community has its fault lines and its dysfunctions. In Oregon, many communities outside of Portland project all of their own anxieties and dysfunctions on to Portland, thus making it an object of special hatred. Why is my kid gay/into hip hop/smoking pot/watching AOC content? Because Portland!

I'd add just one wrinkle to what C.E. has said here--and that has to do with the place of Portland in the imaginations of the more reactionary Oregon libertarians who live outside of Portland (or Eugene). Nothing says "Oregon libertarian" like wanting to impose authoritarian control over Portland.

What The Hell Is Going On, a thread:

I’ve seen some thinkpieces and posts about Portland protests that fail to understand the long-term hyperspecificity of Portland culture/humor, and frame it as a sort of shitposting meme-pilled ironic thing. Which is wrong.

So I’m gonna give you my breakdown.

Trying to figure out how to run a trial on this.

The regime gets more deranged every day. A rightwing conspiracy theorist assassinated a Democratic lawmaker - which the attorney general presents as an example of leftwing political violence in order to justify an authoritarian crackdown on the opposition…

We’re in incredibly dangerous territory.

"well what are the Democrats supposed to do" I don't know! They're supposed to know! I'm not the one who sought and obtained a political position that would require me to know what to do when the ruling party attempts to install the President as a dictator!

Costumed protesters in Portland defy description of the city as a 'war zone' Dancing frogs, peacocks and unicorns outside the federal immigration building present a joyful contrast to the Trump administration's portrait of the Oregon city, they say.

PORTLAND, Ore. — A small group of federal agents in camouflage and face masks watched from atop the immigration processing center Thursday night as a unicorn, peacock, dinosaur and raccoon danced to Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time.” www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Correction. Taking down prior posts.

It's incredible the extent to which Congress just utterly refuses to defend itself. You'd think for entirely self-interested reasons you would stridently oppose having the power of the purse arbitrarily ripped from you, ya know?

Why would you allow yourself to become the Roman Senate circa 27 BC.

So the Dems need to be clear again that any FMer carrying out direction to implement mil paychecks in the absence of appropriations will be subject to anti-deficiency act criminal penalties, because to be clear even with the reconciliation slush fund BS there is no way to legally so this, period

This is the fucking Prussian constitutional crisis. If you let them fund the military without Congressional authorization you've just given up on constitutional government. Congress is a dead letter.

The Office of Management and Budget sent a notification to Congress about their intent to use research and development funds to pay members of the military, two sources with direct knowledge tell NBC News. A spokesperson for the OMB confirmed to NBC News that it plans to use the research and development funds and that there are two years' worth of funds available within the Department of Defense.

Unconstitutionally taking money that the law says must be spent on one purpose & using it for something else—when it's to establish personalist control over the FUCKING MILITARY—is about as dangerous a constitutional crisis/failure as you can imagine

Via: www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

These are not simply employees, they are the scientists, field epidemiologists, and outbreak responders who form the backbone of our nation’s public health defense.

The damage being done tonight will echo far beyond what you are reading. These are the people who protect this nation #CDCMassacre

It always looks silly from these guys but this basic logic where the most marginalized people are actually elites representing “the machine” is also the shared understanding people running newsrooms and universities believe as well.

this is fucking obscene

I very distinctly remember all of the elders in my family that lived through (and fought in) WWII having an unambiguously negative view of fascists.

Congratulations Sebastian, very cool.

What if Russia invades the Baltic? A tabletop game offers answers “Littoral Commander: The Baltic” depicts a Russian invasion of the Baltic region around 2030.

My "Littoral Commander: Baltic" #wargame is featured in Defense News!
www.defensenews.com/global/europ...

My weekly post. Today: Two words I've tried not to use.

The autocrat's toadies destroy functioning governance and launch crisis after crisis in order to create a nation that runs on patronage in which he's the only one able to do anything for anyone.

anyone else notice that the west took a turn for the worse once the concept of signaling one’s own social virtue became derogatory, almost as if cynically deriding all displays of charity and good will is indicative of a deeply cynical and nihilistic society capable of collaborating in genocide

Absolutely. Virtue signalling is good, actually.

Load bearing even.

you do not have to be a parent to fully appreciate the horrors of this but also it is so hard to be a parent and to know that other people who have the same role and love as you do are going through this needless, random and permanently damaging terror

ICE secretly kidnap autistic boy during bathroom break—never notify parents.

Mother reported him missing a week ago—turns out ICE had him detained the whole time.

He was helping sell fruit and asked to go to the restroom—by the time she was done helping a customer he was gone.

Houston, Texas

They don't even bother to lie badly anymore. I suppose that's the final humiliation.

It’s this multiple times a day

Absolute trash tier newspaper and an(other) abject failure of journalism.

Portland is a real place that people can go to themselves. Whether it is a war torn burning hellscape or not does not, actually, depend on the narrator.