A Call to Arms

People killed: around three quarters of a million.

I knew a rapist who was an absolute ride-or-die friend to his gamer bros. Like, give the last dollar from his pocket to a friend who got a flat tire, and then turn around and go rape a Freshman that evening.

I knew a vicious child abuser who wept like a baby when her dog died.

The nastiest human being on the planet nevertheless feels obscurely melancholy sometimes, or has high spirits when they step out doors on the first warm day of spring, or has opinions on their favorite TV show and which side the toilet paper should hang on and whether or not the room should be cold or warm when you go to sleep.

We're all still just people. Complex, with fully-realized interior worlds.

None of that will save you from becoming a monster, if you decide to do monstrous things.

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NY man files First Amendment lawsuit against DHS : NPR https://share.google/5VfS8dBF3Gxb1vjbD

COVID masks were “tyranny.” These masks? Suddenly they’re tactical fashion.

If you’re so damn proud of your beliefs, show your face. Otherwise, you’re just another coward hiding behind a piece of fabric because even you know your bullshit won’t survive daylight.

White supremacy has always had one thing in common with roaches. The second the lights come on, they scatter and hide.

Take the damn masks off. Stand by what you believe, or admit you’re too chickenshit to own it.

Girl Bye.

Kevin Robillard at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON – Abdul El-Sayed is very confident he can beat Republican Mike Rogers and win Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat in November. “He generally has the charisma of a doorknob,” El-Sayed told HuffPost in a 45-minute interview last week. “He carries all the MAGA baggage, but he also has the aesthetic of the guy at a country club who sneers at you from his Lincoln. He’s not really hard to beat.” “By the time I’m done with him, his golf buddies down in Florida are going to be calling him the names I call him,” he continued, referencing Rogers’ time living in the Sunshine State following his departure from Congress in 2015. “I hope that 20 years from now, he still thinks of me.”

But his bravado is still not shared by the party establishment in D.C. or in Michigan, who fear his progressive positions ― he’s a longtime ally of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and backs Medicare-for-All, abolishing ICE and cutting off aid to Israel ― could cost the party support from moderate voters and ultimately hand the state’s Senate seat, which has been in Democratic hands since 1978, over to Rogers and the GOP. Party leaders, however, don’t seem to be making much headway with their assertions that establishment-oriented Rep. Haley Stevens is actually the most electable pick for the Aug. 4 primary: El-Sayed has led the last seven publicly released polls of the race.

In the past, worries about electability have sunk many progressive candidacies before they could even begin. Before this cycle, the last time a progressive candidate defeated the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s pick in a primary was 2010. Although Democratic voters are still hardwired to care far more about electability than their GOP counterparts, both progressive and moderate party strategists say primary voters no longer trust the party leaders’ judgment on who can win — not after establishment candidates lost to President Donald Trump in 2016, narrowly beat him in 2020 and lost again in 2024. “The last people who have any right to lecture us about electability are the establishment who lost to Donald Trump twice,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said while campaigning for El-Sayed last month. “If you were part of those campaigns, please sit down or exit stage left.”

The stakes for the race are high: Democrats’ relatively narrow path to winning the Senate essentially evaporates if Rogers wins in Michigan. A primary victory for El-Sayed, a Rhodes Scholar and former leader of Detroit’s public health department, would mean the party is counting on left-wing candidates to win in both Michigan and Maine in November. Failing to do so would dramatically undercut the progressive movement, which has gained momentum throughout this primary season. If the Democratic establishment can’t make the case El-Sayed would be a general election loser, they hope GOP interference can do it for them. The National Republican Senatorial Committee recently began running digital ads that attack El-Sayed in ways designed to make him sound more appealing to Democratic primary voters.

[...]

El-Sayed said his campaign would balance trying to win over voters who backed Trump and turning out Democratic voters who might otherwise stay at home, rather than copy past progressive efforts, which have narrowly focused on driving up turnout. He argues voters are ready for a campaign focused on how the proliferation of money in politics is “rigging the system against us.”

[...] Indeed, many parts of the Democratic establishment agree the old model of an electable candidate no longer applies, even if they aren’t quite sold on the full-fledged progressivism of a candidate like El-Sayed. “It’s not a binary choice between overcautious, under-imaginative old guard types on the one hand, and folks who seem to think that any society could exist without law enforcement and borders on the other,” said Andrew Bates, who was a spokesperson for Biden’s 2020 campaign. “The people who win majority-making races create their own big tent that’s both true to themselves and fits their community; they don’t force themselves into a prepackaged box.”

Democratic Socialists are not communists or socialists, who want to see the end of private property. Democratic Socialists call for a robust system of private enterprise, alongside government control of the aspects of society required for people to participate in the economy on a level playing field. While Democratic Socialists embrace a wide range of policies, they generally don’t think schools, or medical care, or roads, should be profit-making industries.

11h

Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON – It was just last week that Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton was a big advocate of in vitro fertilization, or IVF. “Every child is a blessing, and every family hoping to welcome a child deserves support and compassion,” Paxton, who is currently the state’s attorney general, told HuffPost. “I am a strong supporter of IVF and pro-family policies that help Americans experience the wonders of parenthood.” His stance was somewhat surprising, considering the Texas GOP just added an IVF ban to its newly approved party platform. But suddenly, Paxton is walking back that support, saying he’d put “restrictions” on the fertility treatment that Americans used nearly 450,000 times in 2024, and that produced more than 100,000 babies nationwide. “We need to have restrictions, so that we don’t lose fertilized eggs, if that’s possible, and we need to just examine the issue,” Paxton told the Washington Examiner on Saturday. The attorney general’s curious change of heart puts him in line with his party, erasing a potential conflict that could have hurt his chances at victory in November in his race against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.

Going further still, Paxton also told the news outlet he “would not commit” to supporting a bill for national protections for IVF — the complete opposite of what he told the Texas Tribune earlier this month, when he said he’d back pro-IVF legislation currently sponsored by Sens. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) if elected. “It’s easy to say I’d support a vote, but I would need to read the bill, find out exactly what it does, find out what protections are in there,” he said. “I want couples to be able to have babies, but I also want protection, so I can’t say blanketly I’d support any bill.”

Texas AG and US Senate nominee Ken Paxton (R)’s changing of his previous pro-IVF stance to a stance supportive of IVF restrictions will make fetal personhood fetishists happy, but not the majority of Texans.

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But less than twenty-four hours later, that post would mark one of Donald Trump’s most frantic social media spirals we have seen from him in a very long time. Over the course of the day, Trump posted or reposted more than 100 times, including 67 posts in just two hours.

He shared content with white nationalist language, attacked a federal judge, shared an image of himself arm-wrestling a celebrity, reposted a racist caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama, declared that a “RESTRAINING ORDER IS NEEDED” against an American ally, a foreign leader who was once considered one of Trump’s closest European partners, and flooded his feed with pictures of his family from the early 1900’s and of his father who he claimed was his mentor.

But perhaps the most disturbing image of all appeared without warning: an unmistakable piece of authoritarian propaganda depicting Trump as a towering, shadowed military figure, arm outstretched as if commanding a nation toward war, while fighter jets roared overhead against a sky consumed by fire, smoke, and explosions.