Top recent posts by Online Political Thinkers on Bluesky

Millions of American voters wanted to be villains. They came to believe it’s the key to success, while goodness is weak, woke, loser stuff, done only to signal. Offered the option of unvarnished villainy, they enthusiastically took it. Seeing others suffer more made them feel big. And here we are.

You know what? I'll admit it. The credible threat by a madman to wipe out a nation of 90 million people for basically no reason (presumably using nuclear weapons) successfully distracted me. I am now distracted.

Markwayne Mullin floats that his first major move as DHS Secretary might be to massively disrupt international air travel into and out of the United States by pulling customs officers out of cities like New York and Los Angeles, a move that would have international ramifications.

Imagine being a moderate Republican and getting outflanked on decency, morality, and basic humanity by these four nutters

The media told us, based on the amount of coverage they devoted to it, that the number one military-related issue of the 2024 campaign was whether Tim Walz retiring from the National Guard after 21 years was too soon or not.

Nuremberg was an important symbol of German nationhood so I say with 100% sincerity that this is a job for Philadelphia

While Trump's assertion that "a whole civilization will die tonight" represents a discrete threat of genocide against Iran, the fact that it comes from a U.S. president, while Congress does nothing, actually represents a broader civilizational collapse — whether he follows through or not.

"Tucker Collins, an 18-year-old freshman at USC, attended a 'No Kings' protest in Los Angeles on Mar. 28. He ended up getting shot in the eye with a less-lethal projectile by a Department of Homeland Security agent and is now blind."

I hate the too-cool-for-school attitude of dismissing this with a "but they won't." That is surrendering in advance. The pressure should be put on them, the message should be unrelenting that this is what must be done and they're the ones refusing to do it. Don't act like they don't have agency.

The leaders of the free world - leading liberal democracies - have a moral responsibility to organize a world wide boycott of #FIFA #WorldCup games in the U.S. and demand all matches be moved to Mexico and Canada. Same consideration should be in play for #Olympics in LA.

The Artemis II mission seems good because it is. People seem excited by it because they are. It looks like a testament to the value of teamwork because it needs many people working together to succeed, and it’s succeeding. One of the best things about this is how straightforward it is. Authentic.

A sitting Senator has more power than a grunt in the military and you pass the buck to them. You're a shithead. you know that right? Go do your job. Make a scene. Get your lazy ass back to work

I love how people are cheering on NASA like it’s their sports team EXCEPT everyone is cheering for the SAME team!

Whenever someone says "there are no civilians in [country]," they are making an argument for genocide.

Today is a good day to remember that Carl Sagan was as outspoken about the dangers of war and nuclear weapons as he was an advocate of space exploration.

If you really want to game out the confrontation, taking this last point seriously is how Congress can force a president from office even if supermajorities are unobtainable. The power of the purse is the ultimate power. Not one dime for a tyrant, demand he resign or else *nothing* gets funded.

One House Republican pushes back on Trump's Iran threat today — Rep. Rep. Nathaniel Moran of Texas: "I do not support the destruction of a 'whole civilization.' That is not who we are, and it is not consistent with the principles that have long guided America."

Ways to get there: - 25A (by far hardest, useless) - Straight impeachment (H. majority + 2/3 S.) - Fund nothing until he's gone (fewest votes needed, just a willing majority in either house, but takes the longest) - Congress declares him 14AS3 disqualified (simple majorities) - uhh... [redacted]

the next mentoring day has been canceled

does any body want to talk about whether or not things are sandwiches

Imagine if the roles were reversed and Iran had the madman with nukes. A guy who destroyed a 250 year old democracy in about a year. Started a war for no reason. And then he posted that he was gonna end American civilization. How would you feel about Iranians saying "relax he's not serious"

A moment of sympathy for our president, who is being 'poorly served' by the people he appointed to carry out these inhumane policies. 1/

Just noting - Tucker's son works as a comms staffer for checks notes .. JD Vance.

Netanyahu has been running this play trying to drag the US into war with Iran for literally decades and Trump is the one who was stupid enough to fall for it

We gotta bring back the productive kind of national shame. Not the throwing up your hands and going “what can you do, we suck” kind but the “I’ll be GODDAMNED if I let the fucking FRENCH have better TRAINS” kind

Every morning I wake up to the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever read and it’s from the president of the United States

1) Issue ultimatum with demands that can't be met 2) Back down, which makes them think their counter threats worked and hardens their resolve, or unleash war crimes on civilians, which makes them think the threat is existential and hardens their resolve 3) Repeat step 1 WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING?!?!

Called my Senators and Representative, urging them to cut their recess short, show up in DC, and prepare articles of impeachment against Trump for violating "18 US Code § 1091 prohibiting the crime of genocide," as so clearly explained by my @cipolicy.bsky.social colleague @dylanwilliams.bsky.social

In honor of Michigan clinching the NCAA here's my multi year goal to capture the full milky way arch over a body of water, taken last July over Lake Superior from a state park in Michigan. 🗺️

not only are wire services the core of an enormous amount of reporting, AP plays a very specific and authoritative role in election calling

It doesn't matter what Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Candace Owens has to say as long as Republican members of Congress are fully behind Trump on Iran.

replies have people doing emotional support leftism about how Harris would have been made to do this by Israel

At least we made Kamala Harris feel bad by giving Bibi Netanyahu the American president he wanted. That's what really matters.

I think what I find even funnier is so many of the "calm down" people don't realize that maybe freaking the country out is a good way to get him gone. You're tired of low info voters deciding the future of the country? Me too! Maybe tell them what's really on the table and they'll take it seriously

The military must not follow any orders to destroy "a whole civilization." Sane members of Congress should say this loudly now.

ICE just shot another person

Just an outline drawn in crayon saying “you can’t prosecute Republicans.”

Six Supreme Court justices, the Roberts court majority, were very concerned about the risks of Donald Trump personally, and a future president hypothetically, not being able to commit crimes without consequence. It was a top priority for them, and they used their power to ensure it wouldn’t happen.

Along these lines, this is how Alex Jones is responding to the latest.

The fate the entire Middle East region relies on CNBC hosts deciding today to convince Trump that the stock market will go unhappy bad red if he decides to murder millions of people.

Think about where our world would be if Mitch McConnell and 9 other Republicans had taken a different course 5 years ago www.cnn.com/2021/02/13/p...

Democrats needs to be heading to DC tonight and gather in Congress to move for impeachment even if Congress led by Republican bootlickers is “on recess.” Schumer/Jeffries should be issuing calls for Dems to get back in DC now while have their leadership staffers prep impeachment resolutions now.

Does Vance think he’s popular in Europe

I went to college in the South. The failure of Reconstruction and accountability for the Confederacy meant monuments to the confederacy on my college campus and streets named after Jefferson Davis.

Good time to remember that rich people are okay with this in exchange for tax cuts

The good news is that my lecture on the Cuban Missile Crisis scheduled for tomorrow just became a lot more relatable for my students!

Is no elected official even going to move to impeach here?

In authoritarian regimes, apparatchiks publicly debase themselves to credibly signal fealty to the leader

The story didn't "fall apart." ICE leadership deliberately lied and you're failing at journalism by not saying so.

If you elect a madman he's gonna do madman things. He tried to overthrow the government and not only did nothing happen to him, we invited him back in. Lol

I've warned for years that Republicans planned to reroute federal family planning dollars to crisis pregnancy centers—groups that won't even talk about birth control. I re-upped that prediction just last week. A day later, this Politico piece dropped. jessica.substack.com/p/the-white-...

1. Tell me your source without telling me your source 2. Also, explain to me exactly how your source reconciled these two seemingly opposed statements in a way that satisfied you, because I can't find that in the writing

even if you think political violence is the solution, imagine this being where you choose to shoot your shot right now

DOJ, with an embarrassing typo in a section heading, writes that renaming the Kennedy Center is “an action that does conflict with the Center’s governing statutes.” /they forgot the “not”

Everyone in his orbit spent the whole day shorting crude for the plunge in the hour after the "deadline" passes in silence or with some phony "deal." They will all wake up tomorrow six or seven figures richer. This is not a sustainable system of government but it is inarguably our present system.

The EU has one dictator so we have to be his fanboys.

It's the same as how rote civic platitudes about democracy and the Constitution and the like now sound politically coded only because Trumpism is opposed to them.

Bragging about an intent to commit war crimes.

Jesus fucking christ, the President is threatening genocidal war crimes

Another ICE shooting! As always, we don't have all the facts in. We do have a dashcam, though. DHS claims, as it has during multiple prior shootings (claims at times proven false), that the person who was shot tried to "weaponize" his vehicle. See for yourself (there are no visuals of the victim).

you realize how insane like 80% of data center discourse shit is if you substitute another light-industry land use with comparable negative/positive externalities is. like you wouldn't shoot someone for voting for a pharmaceutical packing plant or industrial greenhouse.

We’ll see what Iran says they agreed to.

The United States is about to commit war crimes because some dudes got mad at a trans woman in a beer advertisement on Instagram.

You can write a nice longer resolution with articles of impeachment laying out the case in detail; I've done it before and seen it introduced. But it is not a procedural necessity. The House can vote on a literally one-sentence impeachment resolution if it wants, that's perfectly valid.

Great call. It’s not like we’re hosting the World Cup

Even if nothing happens tonight, the President of the United States of America has already threatened to use the Armed Forces to end a civilization in order to secure policy and regime change. That ketchup doesn't go back in the bottle.

we can be pretty confident that the US government doesn't have secret UFO programs or similar because there's no way Trump wouldn't have talked about them

Yesterday the same accounts as always were saying "stop freaking people out about nuclear weapons it'll never happen" and I swear no one has been paying attention to the decisions this guy has been making since day 1. Will it likely happen? No. But to pretend it's off the table is crazy

It's @professormusgrave.bsky.social o'clock again, alas

Happy 17776

Thinking once again about how Eric Adams said the best concert he ever saw was the one where Curtis Mayfield got paralyzed when Mayfield didn't even play any songs before he was hurt

The supposed defenders of national sovereignty and opponents of internationalism have incinerated the longstanding principle that members of one country's government shouldn't show up to campaign and tell people how to vote in another country's elections.

Israel is bragging about war crimes

you have to understand that by 'youth' what Hasan's fans actually mean is 'underemployed 30-somethings looking for someone to blame'

great job refusing to vote against this guy, all you D senators who skipped the vote out of deference to a colleague. well done.

I don’t think anyone is surprised that a man so entirely devoid of morality, so fully defined by his desire to dominate and punish, would revel in violent fantasies of destruction and mass murder. But this is utterly shocking nonetheless. A deranged horror show. An acute threat to humanity.

At the same time, elected leaders must also commit to prosecuting those who commit war crimes. Make clear now that anyone who carries out an illegal order will be held accountable during the next administration.

Reuters: A rapidly aging and increasingly unpopular warlord who, since rising to power ten years ago, has inspired worshipful loyalty from his small but politically influential core comprised of radicalized nihilists and fundamentalist believers, elicits worldwide panic by tweeting “Death to Iran.”

Some real good news.

The Senate envisions itself as a body that should be a check on the president's most imperial impulses. And yet, it does absolutely nothing as the president threatens war crimes and says a civilization will die. So what's the point of the Senate?

Basically every poll there is showing something similar. We've found the median voter's ideal candidate and I hate it!!!!

Yep. Normalizing the insanity piece by piece. And the "stop freaking out" people are the useful idiots in this scenario. He needs them to make the slow creep look less ominous. We are already accepting all kinds of horrible shit in this country right now that I never thought was possible!

The best time to impeach Donald Trump was 9 years ago. The second best time is now.

China’s CGTN: US-Israeli attack destroys synagogue in center of Tehran

Merrick Garland turns on the news, hears the president he refused to jail promise that a "whole civilization will die tonight," and thinks "golly, I hope someone will do something about that." He finishes his toast, then checks the availability of pickleball courts.

Uh, Bret, I was KIDDING. You absolute dolt. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/o...

merrick garland dead enders are really annoying and I think harmful. Garland dragged his heels prosecuting trump because he didn't want to look partisan. his overriding priority was not justice, but legitimacy in the eyes of republicans and the media.

We used Claude to target some kids and blew them up with Tomahawk missiles and absolutely no one batted an eye and now people are shrugging off Trump and Vance threatening to use nukes as bluster. We are cooked through, man

I feel like this is in fact quite a common combination!

"Bloomberg examined Trump’s record of following through on threats to attack other countries and non-state actors. "Looking at his first term, he made good on threats roughly 20% of the time. "In his second term to date, that rate has risen to 50%." www.bloomberg.com/news/live-bl...

The threat itself — entirely on its own — warrants his removal, by whatever means that may come to pass.

Fascist Internationale Deploys Senior Personnel In Effort To Avert Potential Setback

this is a major reason why the ultra-rich used their control of media to promulgate stories about how bad the Biden economy was and to help Trump win the 2024 election:

The deafening silence of the crowd. The bricks because of the lousy sight lines. The vamping during replays. This is what championship basketball is all about.

🚨 TRUMP: “I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks.”

House Democratic leaders' joint statement on Trump "threatening to eradicate an entire civilization": "The House must come back into session immediately and vote to end this reckless war of choice in the Middle East before Donald Trump plunges our country into World War III."

This is not enough. Democratic prosecutors need to be publicly drawing up the language of indictments for war crimes the second he’s out of office. www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-pet...

Ethnic cleansing secret police at home, genocidal wars of aggressions abroad, but hey let's not lose sight of the real issue: marginal tax rates.

I agree w/ frustration they need to be bolder and say directly he must be removed. But this isn't nothing. It is still unprecedented in American history, the opposition party directly insisting POTUS is literally insane. That's not trivial, this is real escalating constitutional crisis territory.

First Ballot Hall of Famer Rick Steves did two fantastic episodes of his show from Iran where you don't just see the beauty of an ancient, historic civilization, but plenty of young folks blasting heaters like in the OP's video. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYoa...