Scott Cory

It has been the honor of my life to serve as Commissioner of BLS alongside the many dedicated civil servants tasked with measuring a vast and dynamic economy. It is vital and important work and I thank them for their service to this nation.

YouTube video by Kid Creole and the Coconuts - Topic Dancin' at the Bains Douches

I'll be in the garden. IYKYK.

(FWIW, they're playing in Brighton, UK in two weeks. Might not live up to the show at the old 930 Club on F Street in the late 80s/early 90s, but hey, fin de siècle demands compromises.)

If you know, you know.

If you know, please share with @muellershewrote.com.

You do realize that acknowledging an empty calendar dooms you to unexpected commitments?

We really have become one of the shithole countries where the corruption of everything is open, and everything can be bought.

Well done, enablers and go along and get along folks. Enjoy the putrefaction of the bodies of the dead Republic and civil society.

Seriously, from a small businessman who bankrupted multiple businesses and who was convicted on 34 counts of fraud and falsifying documents?

I went to "I must not think bad thoughts" from X, for the same reason.

*sigh*

Rupert Murdoch won.

It's gonna take a lot of sage to smudge Washington, DC and remove the malicious spirits ....

The projection and lack of self-awareness is stunning.

This is the goal of Project 2025, and its creators and supporters are within sight of their finish line.

The thing is, the enablers have been preparing for this for years. Congress is full of evangelical Christians and people supporting authoritarian oligarchy; to a lesser degree, so are the courts and the press and the influencers.

This is government capture, operating much like contract capture.

With each day I'm convinced that we're one or two events away from Trump being removed from the Presidency by the invocation of the 25th Amendment or impeachment and removal from office. Vance assumes the Presidency and appoints another Leonard Leo aligned theocrat, and *boom* no more Republic.

Project 2025 is gutting medical funding that helped Russell Vought's own kid Its architect's daughter has cystic fibrosis—and benefits from a "miracle drug" backed by an agency he's attacking.

Russell Vought claimed on CNN this weekend that NIH funding is corrupt.

As @juliametraux.bsky.social reported this February, his family has directly benefited from the NIH.

Not being Christian will become a mental illness.

Being any sexual minority will be a mental illness.

Poverty will be evidence of mental illness.

We now have @planet.com SkySat imagery over this area from July 22. A zoomed-in look at the large area of IDP camps shows that they've been removed or destroyed by the IDF.

Also appears the Egyptian Cemetery, a @cwgc.bsky.social WW1 site, has been destroyed or damaged.

www.cwgc.org/visit-us/fin...

Recommendation is a really important function IRL. It should be part of digital communities as well. Tagging and quoting only go so far (and can be misused.)

We've got to give up the funk and get funked up more than ever.

I google'd "what do you call a government that abandons the rule of law" this morning. I should have gotten this for an answer.

Funk

Consul Warns Mexicans Must Take ‘Extreme Precautions’ in Florida as ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Leads to Diplomatic Tensions Citing conditions and legal issues at Governor Ron DeSantis’ “Alligator Alcatraz” facility...

Switch "United States" for "Soviet Union" and this could be a story out of the 1980s.

I'm ashamed for our national atavism, because the carceral state was our invention, and we worked hard to put it behind us.

Today marks 16 years since the federal minimum wage was last raised.

Guess how much the wage would be today if it kept up with worker productivity over the years?

It turns out that the solution the current US and Israeli governments want is a one state, one people solution, and that doesn't include Palestinians. Which is the greatest horror of all.

Worth reading. @marisakabas.bsky.social is a great writer.

What's happening in Gaza to Palestinians is horrific. It's also incredibly frustrating and painful to watch after generations of pushing for a just and equitable solution protecting the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Taking the point further: frustration at having tried to push for a just solution to what should be a tractable problem *for generations* only to see one party's needs and wants -- Palestinians -- be ignored and their very existence be conflated with bad actors among them.

It fucking hurts.

All of this applies to tending our common gardens of civil society.

Too esoteric?

It's all a conscious choice, and the health of the garden is contingent on consistently and diligently doing the work.

How you do the work of removing the unwanted plants is equally important; wholesale use of toxic chemicals is bad because of the lasting impact of the chemicals.

But here's a teaser, and important to remind all of us (and me) that the work is ongoing.

You have to remove unwanted plants from the garden all the time. Some of them are removed because they aren't useful any longer. Some of the plants are harmful, and threaten other plants and animals.

I've put writing a piece about gardening as a metaphor for the economic, political, and societal work America has to undertake to rebuild and maintain an egalitarian and just society. It's going to take a while to sort out and make sensible ideas that have been rattling in my brain for a long time.