Ron Loutzenhiser

Thank you!

The people showed up in the streets for "No Kings."

They did their part.

The people showed up at the polls on Tuesday.

They did their part.

8 Democrats in the Senate surrendered last night.

They did not do their part.

"I promise there will be a vote in December to extend healthcare subsidies. I mean it this time."

I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

Boom. Get fucked, bigots.

My family has been without half our income for 40 days. It has been.. very hard.

We are willing to feel that pain so people can have health care next year, or to undo these illegal recissions.

We are not willing to have been put through this for NOTHING.

Donald Trump claims to be "Pro-Life." Indeed, he was the first sitting president to attend the annual March for Life.

But this didn't stop him from conspiring with Elon Musk to kill 600,000 (so far) people, 2/3 of them children. You see, when Elon says we need more children he means *white* ones.

I don’t agree with a lot of what he’s done/said, but as a CA resident I’m a Republican who would vote for him over just about every Republican right now.

Top left: bored. Top right: pretending to care. Bottom left: astral projection. Bottom right: full reboot.

Top left: bored. Top right: pretending to care. Bottom left: astral projection. Bottom right: full reboot.

Meme shows Trump standing facing away from a moment of need. Behind him a group of people have to rushed to help someone.

No, please. Don't strain yourself. We'll do it. 🙄

Our pooches at home and our temporarily adopted pooch while staying with friends on the other side of the country! (Cam doesn’t like it when we pack for a trip and thinks if she sits in a suitcase we won’t leave.)

Even if AI ever develops to the point where we trust it in certain engineering tasks, there has to be human oversight and review. Details matter. And data acquisition in certain fields requires human judgment and record keeping. The ramifications of failure are too big to abdicate responsibility.

Nah, my specialty in particular is pretty safe from any AI (just attended a seminar on AI “analysis” in my field and it was DREADFULLY bad). And engineering in general is likely safe. No US state is going to buy off on a “Dell” or “HP” signature on engineering plans soon. Public safety is paramount!

I’m an engineer that uses Excel a LOT. I can see a writer perhaps not using a keyboard much, but data entry, equation formulation, etc., etc., is definitely going to require some type of convenient manual entry. I’m not going to be doing that with a mic. What’s the alternative?

The guy obsessed with Biden’s auto-pen has no clue who he’s pardoned.

Elf
Spaceballs
Airplane

A few other favorites:

Young Frankenstein
RED
The Ref

A couple older ones:

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
We’re No Angels (1955)

#LightTheBeam

Dementia Don is at it again.

Imagine that.

FAA warns of ‘surge’ in air traffic controllers calling out of work The agency reported “widespread impacts” across the aviation system as the shutdown drags on.

FAA warns of ‘surge’ in air traffic controllers calling out of work

Federal judge orders Trump administration to pay SNAP benefits out of contingency fund The ruling came one day before funding for SNAP, more commonly known as food stamps, was set to lapse.

The courts had to step in and tell Donald Trump to feed the people. Let that sink in.

He was perfectly fine letting millions of Americans go hungry—in the middle of a shutdown that Republicans created.

Do what the judge said, Donald. Release the funds and stop playing with folks’ livelihoods.

Fantastic! This is why I donate. If you can, please do! Give blood and save a life! #Vitalant

The top three things Jesus was on about were feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and welcoming the stranger. Rich men have convinced so-called Christians to starve the hungry, gut health care, and deport the stranger to enrich themselves. It’s astoundingly anti-Christ.

my god, what a paragraph

(from tonight's @hcrichardson.bsky.social)

One way to think about the tariffs is as a means for Trump (and his family) to establish leverage over other countries, which he can use to enrich himself and establish a separate base of power from Congress.

MAGA hypocrisy

Exactly

The President wants to use the military to crack down on Americans who are exercising their 1st Amendment rights to oppose him. I can’t think of a better reason to insist on exercising those rights.

"I supported the For the People Act when the the Dems put it forward in 2021. Do you remember how many Republicans voted for that bill?"

"No on Prop 50" Chair: [silence]

"It was zero. Not a single Republican voted for independent redistricting commissions nationwide."

California is actually much more tax friendly to low and middle class than many (most?) red states. Looks like top 5 in progressive taxation.