Patrick Hardy

Looks like Cedar Rapids CSD is going to lose $4,497,190

Serve your country! Defend your culture!

Just in case it’s not already clear that ICE is a white supremacist thug army, Homeland Security is recruiting with a “defend your culture” slogan.

The president has been briefed by Mark Penn, a pollster who has worked for Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Andrew Stein, a former New York City Council president and decades-long friend of Mr. Trump, on a range of polling that showed Mr. Cuomo could still be competitive as an independent candidate. Both men have pushed Mr. Cuomo as the best candidate despite his loss in the Democratic primary, including in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. One of Mr. Penn’s firms did extensive work for a pro-Cuomo super PAC in the primary. And in a previously undisclosed call in recent weeks, Mr. Trump spoke about the race directly with Mr. Cuomo, an old associate and foil, according to three people briefed on the call, who were not authorized to discuss it.

Bombshell report from The New York Times reveals that President Donald Trump spoke directly to Andrew Cuomo about how to stop Zohran Mamdani from becoming NYC mayor. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/n...

(forlornly) there's always a Mormon connection

Very good essay

"Encountering a cop on the street might mean you are encountering a criminal and encountering an armed, masked man might mean you are encountering a cop. The line is blurry.

This blurriness between real and fake is the defining characteristic of the moment."

Part of why I was saying a few weeks ago that a grassroots cultural campaign with a simple message of "NO TO THE GESTAPO" or some other message is essential. The message needs to be repeated over and over and over again.

110. Half the world lives in a country with less than 23% women in parliament, 98% live in a country with less than 50% women. Mexico is the only country with more than 15 million people that has at least half its parliament filled by women.

Hamed AleazizNicholas Nehamas By Hamed Aleaziz and Nicholas Nehamas Aug. 5, 2025, 4:51 p.m. ET On Tuesday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced in an internal email that it would offer cash bonuses to agents for deporting people quickly, an incentive meant to motivate the staff to speed up President Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Less than four hours later, the agency abruptly canceled what was supposed to be a 30-day pilot program. “PLEASE DISREGARD,” Liana J. Castano, an official in ICE’s field operations division, said in a follow-up email to agency offices around the country.

🚨WHOA. According to @haleaziz.bsky.social, the Trump admin was actually going to implement the ICE "bounties" it has repeatedly said were false, offering $200 per arrest leading to a rapid deportation — and only walked the plan back after the New York Times got a copy of the memo.

I'd had doubts about the "deservingness" framing of that approach that I didn't quite have language for...until I saw that law review article shared in the replies.

So in other words thanks for verbalizing this thought so I could benefit from the discussion 🙏

I'd long thought the whole concept of citizenship should be centered around "easy to gain, hard to lose," with birthright, marriage, military/volunteer service, or even Outstanding Acts of Bravery being automatic tickets to it.

But

This is incredibly helpful, thank you

The Republican governor of Texas has directed state police to arrest his Democratic opponents

Migrant Death Mapping No More Deaths has created this map and database of recovered migrant remains for the southern U.S. border as a public resource. It shows known border deaths from 2002 to April 2025. This data does no...

As we move into the hottest and deadliest months on the US-Mexico border, No More Deaths is releasing a comprehensive database and map of recovered migrant remains for the entire southern land border.

AI necromancy and dreams of digital immortality are a grotesque mockery of life itself, and to apply these to victims of violence is beyond disrespectful

The ICE Detention Center Mapping Project is looking for volunteers to help contribute to a crowdsourced tracking website listing the locations of immigration detention centers, who runs them, and who may be held there. Details can be found here: www.unauthorizedcity.com/facilities

Dictatorship Across Borders: Brazil, Chile and the South American Cold War (Review) Burns's book brings South American history to the fore, explaining the regional dynamics and economic turmoil that led to Salvador Allende’s downfall and the beginnings of Operation Condor.

My latest #bookreview for NACLA:

nacla.org/dictatorship...

@uncpress.bsky.social

Black Resistance to Quaker Enslavement A moral reckoning.

For too long, the story of Quaker abolition has been told as one of conscience, but it was Black resistance that forced the Religious Society of Friends to confront its deepest contradictions.

What to make of POTUS's attempt to fire the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)?

Let's run down what knowledgable people are saying...

Economist Amartya Sen won a Nobel in part for asking: Why did India avoid the mass famines that killed tens of millions in China? His answer: a free press. Journalists could expose suffering and shame governments into action. Silence and avoidance, by contrast, can be deadly.

this is a must-read. and it's not great that zero democratic politicians/candidates have been willing to speak up about this level of corruption over the last decade. no wonder consultants are so terrified zohran

Worth remembering that the National Sheriffs' Association won significant concessions from Noem before. IMHO this is a show to wring more funding for local enforcement from DHS's new gigantic budget.

The media will continue to fail whenever they go back-and-forth with this foolishness. It’s not even fact checking, it is stopping nonsense in its tracks. Letting people on air to say “rain isn’t wet” is a disservice to the truth and facts.

Niemöller was a Nazi. He fought in the Freikorps. He was a willing participant in the Third Reich because he had sought and received assurances from Hitler himself that the Nazis would not go after Protestants. Then he ended up in a Camp. He was wrong. That’s why he wrote the poem.

My favorite k-pop demon hunters song is Golden (sue me), but I must admit the line "fit check for my napalm era" goes exceedingly hard

*taps bio*

A Democratic message that leaned in HARD into uplifting the idea of the commons and re-teaching people about importance of PUBLIC GOODS and the fact that they are GOOD and FOR EVERYONE would be an easy place to mobilize lots of people towards a project of building.

A multiracial pluralistic democracy where hierarchies of gender, race, and religion have been demolished, billionaires don't exist, we build bridges instead of borders, cops & prisons defunded, diverse family and kinship arrangements are respected, and the govt exists mainly to help, not harm.

A multi ethnic plural democracy where people have access to the things we know make a high quality of life middle density walkable communities with high quality public goods like parks , pools, and schools

"He's a piece of shit, but let's get the political science stuff out of the way," Steven told me when I asked if he thought support of Tesla could be considered apolitical. "Elon Musk has platformed white supremacists and antisemites on X. He got rid of all the moderation. He put back accounts that were clearly neo-Nazis. He's changed algorithms to promote that type of hate. Him and DOGE did massive cuts in the government, including our civil services. He's cut cancer research. Did I mention he was a giant piece of shit?" "He's cut our aid to Africa, which Will result, without exaggeration, in millions of women and children and innocent people dying. Millions," he said. "I'm not a big fan of people who give the Hitler salute. I mean, I'm kind of fussy like that. He gave it twice at Trump's inauguration," he continued. "He's a Nazi. And he cheats at video games. You have another question?"

lol at this response to a “man on the street” interview with protestors at the Tesla diner

As someone who relies heavily on government data for research (not BLS data per se), I am very worried that I am going to have a black box of omitted years in certain data sets. I have concerns with the quality of the data and it's going to take a lot of effort to validate it.