Kiel Ortega

I mean this is viscerally upsetting because it's really genuinely him treating the white house like it's his own personal property; he's the king and it's his palace. No other president ever thought like this, even if they were a fucking horrible person, because it goes against our founding creed

Seriously, cancel your NYT subscription if you haven’t already. It’s garbage. The crossword and games aren’t worth supporting this.

When someone uses this emoji 🤣 they are more mad than they have ever been in their entire life

The Trump shit video is basically this, but I will reiterate that if a Dem is critical of conservative voters it’s a generational scandal and when Republican pols literally post themselves shitting on their opposition virtually the entire elite politics and media class treats it as fine and normal

Benz of freshly picked apples

H-2A apple workers in upstate NY tell us a lot of farms are getting rid of piece rate pay, but are still forcing outrageous daily bin requirements. If workers don't meet the requirements, they won't be rehired next year. That's why they want a union to protect them. #WeFeedYou

A party that cares about health care wouldn’t enact historic cuts to Medicaid.
Or trigger 500 billion in cuts to Medicare.
Or be working to sabotage the Affordable Care Act.

And while some policies are obscure and escape public understanding, people know whether they can afford to see the doctor.

Image 1

Mines could be visible from the Capitol Reef, Zion, Bryce Canyon and Grand Staircase-Escalante park units.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2025/10/08/trump-admin-will-allow-coal-mining 

what if I told you that taking accountability for your actions was traditionally considered a load-bearing feature of masculinity?

We have not just the right but the obligation to disagree with the government. It is the essence of what it means to be free.

The apartments acted alone, pulling the adults and children out of them without anyone’s else’s participation

And they should do it sooner rather than later, being clear about the reason.

Angry goose meme where in the first panel the goose says "“Adults and children alike were pulled from their Chicago apartments" then in the second panel the goose is chasing the person angrily saying "WHO PULLED THEM, CNN?".

Interesting use of the passive voice you've got there, CNN..

the left: retail workers should be treated fairly and get good benefits

the right: it is my duty and right to torment everybody who makes even a dollar less than me

THIS IS AN ENGLISH OR COMMUNICATIONS DEGREE! JUST DO THOSE INSTEAD JESUS IN HEAVEN

wow I wonder why my entire body was in the air in the first place

I don't know about you, but I'm happy when my tax dollars go to helping sick and injured poor people.

From the New York Times: Breaking news: U.S. attacks Venezuelan boat for fourth time, challenging legal bounds

Zodiac killer murders again, challenging legal bounds

Lmao you guys. Just stop

= WIRED The furor over DxE's activism within the animal agriculture industry reached a fever pitch two months later with the launch of Project Counterglow, an online interactive map of more than 27,500 farms and animal-ag facilities drawn from public regulatory and business records, reporting by individual activists, and artificial intelligence that scanned satellite imagery to reveal previously unknown facilities. Citing Project Counterglow the following month, the Food Protection and Defense Institute, a university-based consortium working alongside the Department of Homeland Security, disclosed in a memo that the FBI and AAA had jointly "profiled the current risk environment" at an industry-government coordinating event within days of the map's launch. According to the memo, the FBI was in the process of supplying the AAA with a list of WMDD coordinators with whom members were encouraged to share knowledge about activists.

government agents seem to generally find people using maps alarming. from another story this spring:

Won’t be the last. I wouldn’t be surprised if web hosts receive similar requests about other browser-based OSINT tools. DHS has been circulating lists of them to law enforcement and claiming, without evidence, that they can be used to plot attacks.

Feel like @durbin.senate.gov @schiff.senate.gov @whitehouse.senate.gov @klobuchar.senate.gov @coons.senate.gov @welch.senate.gov should maybe answer that fairly basic question?

People who coax chatbots into sensible answers are basically opening and closing the fridge until it contains something you wanna eat, yes, eventually you get hungrier & eat the stuff in there. But what changed was your cognition. The fridge stayed the same. You changed your mind about the contents.

Apparently, Trump commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, didn't get the "ixnay on the epsteinyay" memo.

Who Goes MAGA? With apologies to Dorothy Thompson, whose 1941 essay in Harper’s, “Who Goes Nazi?” remains a worthwhile read on the cultural archetypes of who is drawn to fascism, and who would never go down such …

*cough*

www.techdirt.com/2025/07/08/w...

Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson

Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later.

harpers.org/archive/1941...

Some schools will be starved of resources. Other schools will be offered bribes. The end goal is the same. To make the universities an extension of the Trump administration. Shame on any of these institutions willing to take the bribes.

So now, both Trump and GOP Congressional leaders have endorsed Russ Vought's agenda of using the shutdown to engineer back-door impoundments.

Something I keep thinking about while watching the creation of right-wing heroes in real time is how clearly this demonstrates the structure, the apparatus, that underlies what we think of as fame or celebrity

Oklahoma: Impact on net benchmark Silver plan premiums if enhanced ACA tax credits expire

24. OOOOOOOOKLAHOMA: ~300,000 ACA enrollees

Avg gross rate change: +25.2% (preliminary)

Avg gross 2026 premium: $771/mo

NET 2026 increase for 64-yr old couple earning $90K/yr if enhanced tax credits expire: +313%

acasignups.net/ira-subsidy-...

The Institutions of American Democracy are Hanging by a Thread Trump has brought the United States further down the path of democratic backsliding than many realize. The election is the only barrier left. https://www.arcdigital.media/p/the-institutions-of-american-democracy

But if he wins, if the American people see him do all this and elect him anyway, the final barrier breaks, and Trump will sweep away any remaining parts of the others. No previously enacted restrictions will matter. With newly empowered Trumpist forces unbound by rule of law or concern about losing reelection, things could get very dark. American institutions contained the threat for a full presidential term, but it left them hanging by a thread. If Trump and his anti-democracy movement get institutional power, they won’t give it up, and no brilliant plan, no degree of rightness, no passionate resistance will be able to stop them. You can say that’s unfair, it shouldn’t have gotten this far, the American people rejected it in 2020, institutions should’ve done the rest, and the fact that they didn’t is a sign of serious problems. And you’d be right. But that won’t change what the United States faces in November. The 2024 presidential election is an up-or-down vote on Constitutional democracy. From: https://www.arcdigital.media/p/the-institutions-of-american-democracy

You’ll Miss the Pax Americana When It’s Gone The post-Cold War international system has its flaws, but the alternative is worse. https://www.thebulwark.com/p/youll-miss-pax-americana-when-gone-trump-postwar-international-system

The theory here is simple: Trump will do what he has repeatedly promised to do and what he started doing in his first term. He will impose widespread tariffs, undercutting the postwar open trade regime, which disincentivizes conflict by promoting economic interdependence. He will break commitments to democratic allies and cozy up to authoritarians. Defenders of the U.S.-led international order from Trump’s first term, such as Secretary of Defense James Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly won’t be there to slow it down. In their stead will be enablers, including Russia sympathizers. The administration will act without fear of impeachment, legal punishment, or loss of re-election, because Trump already overcame all three. From: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/youll-miss-pax-americana-when-gone-trump-postwar-international-system

If we're doing "who could've known it'd be this bad?," I'd put my record up against anyone's.

But if someone specifically predicted the new Trump admin bringing in a handful of 20-something computer operatives to do what was basically a major cyberattack on the United States, a big hat tip to them.