TJ Biel

The media desperately wanted to give the right a cultural moment and the problem is that they have no culture.

I'm hardly the first person to note this, but it's enormously instructive that our President and his followers saw the message "THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE" and understood it, correctly, as an attack on them

Difficult to believe it's accidental at this point

Also: Is it NOT already illegal to deport US citizens? What?????

The officer who shot Alex worked for DHS for 8 years. The officer who shot Renee worked for DHS for over 10 years. Both are considered “highly trained.”

The problem isn’t "training." DHS was built to violate our rights and has been empowered to act with impunity. We must MELT ICE and dismantle DHS.

LAPD wants nearly $100M to police the Olympics. Who's going to pay for it? City Hall is already in dispute over the department's current budget. Now, LAPD wants new vehicles and equipment for 2028.

Another week, another $100 million that a broke city will magically conjure up for a megaevent that's not supposed to cost taxpayers a dime

Column: When this is over, we will need another Nuremberg "Regardless, we need to establish a few fundamental values: no grace for fascism, no tolerance for state terror and no illusions that compromise will beget accountability."

The Daily Tarheel 🔥

www.dailytarheel.com/article/5671...

A warrantless arrest on the curtilage of his home. The pro freedom party at work.

over the course of 1871, congress held seven months of hearings on ku klux klan and other white vigilante violence in the south, they took detailed testimony from hundreds of black men and women attesting to klan terror. (1/?)

THIS is what makes my head spin: The president is not a moral figure in any idiom, any land, any culture, any subculture. I'm not talking about the liberal enlightenment that would make him want the country to take care of the poor and sick. I mean he has no Republican values either. He has no honor among thieves, no cosa nostra loyalty, no Southern code against cheating or lying, none of the openness of New York, rectitude of Boston, expressiveness and kindness of California, no evangelical family values, no Protestant work ethic. No Catholic moral seriousness, no sense of contrition or gratitude. No Jewish moral and intellectual precision, sense of history. He doesn't care about the life of the mind OR the life of the senses. He is not mandarin, not committed to inquiry or justice, not hospitable. He is not proper. He is not a bon vivant who loves to eat, drink, laugh. There's nothing he would die for - not American values, obviously, but not the land of Russia or his wife or young

son. He has some hollow success creeds from Norman Vincent Peale, but Peale was obsessed with fair-dealing and a Presbyterian pastor; Trump has no fairness or piety. He's not sentimental; no affection for dogs or babies. No love for mothers, "the common man"" veterans. He has no sense of military valor, and is openly a coward about war. He would have sorely lacked the pagan beauty and capacity to fight required in ancient Greece. He doesn't care about his wife or wives; he is a philanderer but he's not a romantic hero with great love for women and sex. He commands loyalty and labor from his children not because he loves them, even; he seems almost to hate them — and if one of them slipped it would be terrifying. He does no philanthropy. He doesn't - in a more secular key - even seem to have a sense of his enlightened self-interest enough to shake Angela Merkel's hand. Doesn't even affect a love for the arts, like most rich New Yorkers. He doesn't live and die by aesthetics and health practices like some fascists; he's

very ugly and barely mammalian. Am I missing an obscure moral system to which he so much as nods? Also are there other people, living or dead, like him?

Virginia Heffernan wrote this shortly after the 2016 election and it still holds true

When it comes to the LAPD, the City will always find the money to fund them no matter what's been approved in the budget or what the City's spending plan is.

If they overspend, rack up liability claims, etc., City Hall will just take the money from elsewhere to give to LAPD.

Bar chart of the City's budget showing youth development near the bottom with a budget at $2.5 million and LAPD at the top with a budget of $3.3 billion

Currently, the City is scrambling to find $4 million to fund more officers even though the compromise to avoid City layoffs was to reduce class sizes.

For context, the total LAPD is budgeted to get this fiscal year is $3.3 billion. Youth Development Dept. is $2.5 million.

One of the worst parts of the modern condition is having to listen to billionaires airing out the stupidest policy ideas, random musings, and other mental detritus. It’s unbearable.

And how much Transportation is hidden in the other categories? What portion of Housing costs is the garage under your apartment building? What portion of Food is the sea of parking surrounding the supermarket? What portion of Healthcare is car-related injury and respiratory disease?

So little patience for the people perfectly content riding the tiger of white resentment and nativism while it was helping them push through tax cuts, who now stare at it running loose and feral in the streets and are like, "the left should reflect on how it let things get this far."

Reimagining Growth: Corridor Urbanism Washington state is growing fast. By 2050, our urban cores and rural communities will experience demographic and economic shifts that demand a new model of development. This plan integrates housing and land use planning with transportation strategies to encourage growth along key transportation corridors with mixed-use, mixed-income housing within walking distance of highcapacity transit. It suggests reformed zoning to encourage flexible, mid-scale development that matches community context and transportation capacity. It offers strategies to streamline development and lower development costs, which promote affordability. By linking where people live, work, and shop with how they move, we can reduce commute times, lower emissions, and support vibrant, walkable neighborhoods. This approach offers substantial potential benefits: increased housing density, reduced reliance on single-occupancy vehicles, and enhanced transit accessibility. Environmental advantages include decreased energy and water consumption and lower carbon emissions. Studies estimate that, compared with traditional suburban development, dwellings in mixed-income and mixed-use developments consume 39% less energy and 62% less water. Driving is reduced by 55%, and household costs by 53%. These developments can significantly boost the local tax base through increased property values.11 By strategically redeveloping existing corridors, we can create more sustainable, equitable, and economically vibrant communities, alleviating transportation pressures and fostering responsible urban growth.

I'm really interested to know exactly how "corridor urbanism", which is another name for focusing housing growth on our widest, loudest, and dirtiest arterial streets so other areas don't have to change, got literally baked into Washington's statewide transportation plan.

Not exaggerating when I say that SB 79, a bill making it easier to build housing near mass transit, is the most consequential piece of legislation that the Democratic Party has passed all year. Saying no to the worst people in our coalition proves we're serious about the future.

a heartwarming story of how being an unethical and talentless hack is no barrier to success when you are willing to endlessly flatter the wretched views of rich dipshits

Ironically, a very loser attempt at attention

A friend of mine was on Charlie Kirk's "watch list" of Black professors. She received so many death and rape threats that her university offered her a security detail for the walk to class.

This is Kirk's legacy.

You would never know it from reading all of these legacy newspaper op-eds about him.

The fact that Matthew Dowd lost his job for pointing out Charlie Kirk’s hate speech, while Brian Kilmeade openly suggests we should euthanize the homeless and there is zero outrage, shows exactly what is terribly wrong with today’s political mainstream media.

Separated Bike Lanes Means Safer Streets, Study Says — Streetsblog USA Cities that build protected lanes for cyclists end up with safer roads for people on bikes and people in cars and on foot, a new study of 12 large metropolises revealed Wednesday.

Never forget, a 13-year study found that protected bike-lanes led to a drastic decline in fatalities for all road users.

ALL ROAD USERS.

And painted bike-lanes? No safety improvement at all.

For sharrows, it’s actually safer to NOT have them.

Via @usa.streetsblog.org @nyc.streetsblog.org

I think it’s fair to lay a good portion of the blame for the quality of a polity’s electeds on their voters. Much of the time people really do get the governance they deserve.

Except Los Angeles, a city filled with lovely, compassionate people governed by Demons.

90% of Angelenos are hard working people bootstrapping a hard situation but the city’s elites have what can only be described as a psychotic death drive.

CBC News Network's Ian Hanomansing speaks with Brent Toderian about transit congestion this fall Get the latest on CBCNews.ca, the CBC News App, and CBC News Network for breaking news and analysis.

WATCH: What are BETTER SOLUTIONS for traffic congestion in cities, especially as big employers are now forcing people back to the office? PLUS how politicians claiming bike-lanes cause congestion ARE LYING TO YOU! Watch my CBC interview with @ianhanomansing.bsky.social that played across Canada.

The Abundance Bros seem to have believe they’ve invented a framework to make Democratic ideas palatable to voters but in fact seem to have invented a framework that often makes right-wing ideas palatable to themselves

My statement on Ai from the mini-comic as syllabus i made for new class I'm teaching that starts tomorrow! It robs you of your decisions & struggles - and the joy of being surprised. We won’t to be robbed of our learning - this is essential. This & the full mini at post:
bsky.app/profile/nsou...

I have almost completely lost the ability to discuss this issue with folks who don't at least have some baseline anti car leanings. Or at the least, to do so with grace.

We probably need to start a support group that meets regularly and has coffee and donuts in the back of the room.