Jody Seaborn 🇺🇸

Melania Trump Says She Has Been Working With Putin to Reunite Missing Ukrainian Children

Perhaps instead she should establish “an open line of communication” with her husband regarding the whereabouts of the 1,300 children who remain unaccounted for after being separated from their families during her husband’s first term.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

Are there other inside countries that I can move to instead?

We're being run by a corrupt administration for whom "The Godfather" is an instruction manual not a dark mirror of American capitalism.

You cannot understand politics in the United States in 2025 without understanding Gamergate.

It is the Rosetta Stone for our current nightmare.

How the Electoral College Could Tilt Further From Democrats Amid Redistricting and Population Shifts With red states growing fast, the Democratic Party will have a tough path to the White House without making more states competitive, according to a New York Times analysis.

California lost a House seat after the 2020 Census not because it lost population, but because it didn’t grow as fast as other states *and* because the House has been stuck at 435 since 1929. That cap violates the Founders' vision and locks the EC in place. Remove it.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Republicans are not America’s conservatives; they’re its reactionary radicals. It’s Democrats who are trying to preserve American institutions and democracy and fulfill the founding principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Again, and always with MAGA: Every grievance is a projection, every accusation a confession.

Donald Trump received 56% of the vote in Texas in last year's presidential election. Republicans hold 66% of Texas' congressional seats (25 of 38).

If anything, Republicans are overrepresented in Texas.

2025 Emmy Awards nominations highlights: 'Severance' and 'The Studio' top the list Nominations for the 77th annual Primetime Emmy Awards were announced July 15. "Severance" and "The Studio" dominated, with nods for "The White Lotus," "Andor," and "Adolescence."

Only in the world of the Emmys is The Bear a comedy … and The White Lotus a drama.
apnews.com/live/emmy-aw...

Moby-Dick

My top 10 movies of the 21st century, give or take 60 others The New York Times this week released its list of the 100 best movies of the 21st century and invited readers to vote for their top 10. The movie buff and former film critic in me couldn’…

The New York Times this week released its list of the 100 best movies of the 21st century and asked readers to pick their top 10. Challenge accepted.

But why stop at 10?
everpresentsubject.com/my-top-10-mo...

And while the three branches of government are equal, the Founders considered one branch -- the Legislative -- more equal than the others. They never imagined Congress abandoning its responsibilities the way congressional Republicans have abandoned theirs.

I have no doubt she's right, but to paraphrase Bo Diddley: Before you accuse them, take a look at yourself.

What the tea party protests lacked in people, they more than made up for it with misspelled signs. ...

The antiwar protests in February 2003 attracted hundreds of thousands here and millions abroad. What coverage there was of them was largely dismissive as I recall.

I said it so often four and five years ago that I got tired of hearing myself, but:

Those who think it is tyranny to be asked to wear a mask during a pandemic to protect their neighbor will be the first to embrace actual tyranny to punish their neighbor.

This provision was widely reported before the vote, but I guess you wouldn’t know that if you don’t read the news any more than you read the bills you vote for.

It's hard to find a movie worth watching twice, yet there are easily two dozen movies I've watched multiple times. Duck Soup, Citizen Kane, The Third Man, Touch of Evil, Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, Daisies, The Godfather, The Godfather II, Annie Hall, Apocalypse Now ...

I've been on this soapbox for 20+ years: Those of us born in the early 1960s aren’t late Boomers, we’re the first Gen Xers.

Consider: Douglas Coupland (b. 1961) essentially named Gen X. Richard Linklater (b. 1960) first filmed its soul in "Slacker." Their work defined us. We’re the Gen X vanguard.

If someone is arguing against due process, just ask them if they believe someone is innocent until proven guilty. It's the same thing.

Even if you (wrongly) believe that some immigrants lack due process rights, what’s to stop the government from claiming that *you* are an undocumented immigrant; removing you to El Salvador; citing an “administrative error”; and refusing to do anything to bring you back?

The answer is due process.

You mean we renamed French fries “freedom fries” for nothing?!

Criminals deserve due process because due process is literally how we determine whether someone is, *in fact*, a criminal

A Cybertruck on the streets of Chicago

They never don't look painfully stupid

In any other administration, and with any other Congress, the president would be huddled with lawyers trying to stave off an impeachment conviction.

Misspelled signs are out, legible outrage is in.

Democracy in action—with correctly spelled signs.

And Musk has stolen our data.

No, efficiency isn't the goal. The goal is the dismantling of the New Deal and the policies and programs that followed it. Conservatives have been longing to destroy this version of our country for decades. They’ve never been closer.

It’s cold comfort to say that only 31.6% of eligible voters supported Trump. Because here we are.

Here we are because some portion of that 31.6% voted for Trump *because* of what they know about him, not despite it. And because another 34% couldn’t bother to vote at all.

A more apt analogy than Germany 1933.

Or, we could be living through Hungary 2010, when Victor Orban began undermining democracy while the EU fluttered uselessly.

Or, we could be living through the US 1877, when the government abandoned Reconstruction to a South built on corruption & segregation.