Douglas Kelso

Here's the conclusion to that "Ai sucks" comic.

First they came for the Transgender
And I did not speak out
Because I am not Trans.
I'm sure they'll stop after that...

for all of the disingenuous screeches about government spending, we'd sure save a lot of fucking money if the police just stopped violating people's rights

In the century leading up to 1975, nearly 6000 freighters went down in the Great Lakes.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was the last.

The last. In 50 years, not a single commercial freighter has been lost in the Great Lakes.

Why?

It's NOAA. Of course it's NOAA.

From a Bluesky post on which the author chose to disable quote-tweets (fair enough, and I wouldn't quote it if I weren't complimenting it: "Instead of saying this was good strategy, maybe senate dems should say: "the republicans were going to kill people by starving them to death, and because we aren't monsters, we decided to let this fight go. We'll keep fighting. Stop electing monsters.""

This is actually good spin, or would have been. But the fact that the Democratic cave happened without even a coordinated, agreed-upon message like this indicates the depth of the leadership void.

The ‘deal’ that passed out of the Senate last night was an insult to the American people. I’m headed back to DC to hold the line for your healthcare.

In the wake of the disgraceful cave-in (AGAIN!) by Vichy Dems, it's clear the Senate Democratic caucus needs a REAL leader. You need to call for Chuck Schumer to step down immediately. Find someone with a spine to take his place.

I think tonight shows why “moderate to win elections” is a real risk

the big divide in the Dem caucus, as many have noted, has been less moderate vs progressive than fight versus don’t fight

but it’s not a coincidence that basically everyone in the “don’t fight” camp is a moderate

Trump is 30 points underwater. Dems swept the special elections. People know the GOP is responsible for the shutdown. So the Dem Senators pulled out their big guns... and shot themselves in the foot.

Chuck Schumer Helps Pull Democrats Back From Brink Of Courage

Chuck Schumer Helps Pull Democrats Back From Brink Of Courage

Every single person in Little Village fighting ICE/BP this week, each one of those people had more courage than the entire party leadership put together. Every single person in the street resisting in LA, Portland, Chicago, they're ALL showing more backbone than useless top tiers of Dem apparatus

I was also thinking this gives Dems a shot at another shutdown fight in January when the new CR expires, with USDA fully funded (so, theoretically, no more SNAP hostages) and a lot of irate Republican voters screaming at their reps about skyrocketing health insurance premiums.

One of two things is true:

1. Chuck Schumer genuinely felt this is a bad deal, so he voted against it, but he couldn't keep Senate Dems in line because he's a lackluster leader.

OR

2. Chuck Schumer orchestrated the shutdown deal w/ retiring Dems because he's a bad strategist and got rattled.

It’s flabbergasting that you could pick just about any random American off the street and they would show infinitely more political willpower and courage than our entire cadre of alleged leaders and titans of business. We’re a nation occupied by a tiny upper class of cowards.

Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ Critics of New York City’s mayor-elect have said his pledges of free bus service and universal childcare are unrealistic, but in Europe it’s a given

This perfectly encapsulates how I feel living in the US. The republican party is an insane death cult, the democratic party is 3 corporations in a trench coat, and the "socialists" are just the completely normal left-wing capitalists you'd find in any of 2 dozen European nations.

The Republican administration has now come out against religious freedom and public prayer.

Of course, the FedSoc justices are now blatantly legislating from the bench and rewriting the Constitution to match their political views with no respect for settled law. They *are* the corrupt judicial despotism that Jefferson warned would someday take over in the wake of Marbury v. Madison.

Quote with a 10/10 album.

"We don't need socialism. We need public-private partnerships."

One of the things that kills me about all this is that it’s just, like, maybe ten guys.

The arc of history is a foot-long, but it bends towards justice.

The Trump voter coalition is based on applying high charisma sales tactics to uninformed people. It couldn't work in 2020 because people had direct experience of it.

It did work in 2024 because there were a lot of new voters who had aged into the electorate.

Are State AGs The Secret Weapon To Defeating Trump and Republicans? Bottom Line Up Front (B.L.U.F.): Prosecuting corruption stands as a core necessity for dismantling the power structures that enable fascism.

I've been saying this for months now. State AGs can pursue state criminal charges against corrupt federal officials, as long as there was any type of crime committed under state law in their jurisdiction.

For example, every shakedown of a university or law firm is a potential extortion charge.

The truly maddening thing is that, unlike when I was a young man in science and the materials and engineering just weren’t there yet, the future is *right there.* The problem is *solved*. What’s holding us back is not just greed, but this bizarre nostalgia, an obsession with petro- masculinity.

Federal agents have Supremacy Clause immunity for state crimes committed while doing their jobs. But it's an affirmative defense. If they get arrested, they need to PROVE they were doing their jobs when they did the crime.

So yeah ... indict, arrest, jail. Let THEM show they were within the law.

Ride the Blue Wave A great night for Democrats nationwide.

"Republicans across the country spent the past several months engaging in the most vicious anti-trans propaganda as part of their primary messaging. *** And they lost every single race tonight. It completely failed to resonate with voters."

Re-Sharing this again for no reason at all.

a man in a suit and tie is sitting in a chair and making a funny face . ALT: a man in a suit and tie is sitting in a chair and making a funny face .

After those results, the Democratic response to GOP pressure to cave on the shutdown should simply be

The American electorate tonight

Breaking the 12 year long GOP supermajority in Mississippi seems like a big deal. A bunch of Black women mayors seems like a big deal.

Can’t wait for the hot “How Democrats winning is bad news for Democrats” takes.