Brian Ward

  • SCOTUS isn’t buying this shit: www.politico.com/news/2025…

  • Detained without cause for 12 days. Outrageous. www.the-independent.com/arts-ente…

  • Here’s a one line platform for the Democrats: Liberty and Justice for All.

  • I suggest that this misalignment is the problem with the Democratic Party.

  • I’m gonna boil the problem with the Democratic Party down to one simple idea: We’re selling the wrong thing. We’re trying to sell social liberalism (and we’re barely even doing justice to that) when we should be selling social democracy. It’s the wrong product and nobody is buying it.

  • Chuck Schumer's Surrender is Clarity

    Great discussion with Senator Chris Murphy about the CR: Watch here

    It boils down to this: The Democrats are like watered-down seasoning – there’s a hint of something great, but ultimately, they’re ineffective. Nothing made that clearer than Chuck Schumer’s preemptive surrender to Donald Trump last week. Instead of using his power to stand firm, he caved. And this is the cycle we see over and over again.

    For decades, Democrats have positioned themselves as the party of working people, of big, bold governance. But the truth is, they’ve been seduced by corporate interests and have stopped fighting for systemic change. In some ways, that’s even worse than what Republicans do – at least the GOP is upfront about their allegiance to the wealthy and powerful. The Democrats, on the other hand, keep dangling hope in front of us, only to let it slip away. Where was the public option? Why should we accept that as our stretch goal when we should have been fighting for Medicare for All? Why do we keep lowering our expectations instead of demanding what we actually need?

    This is what Jon Stewart was getting at: At some point, the Democratic Party stopped being the party of big government solutions. Bill Clinton even said it outright: “The era of big government is over." But why did we accept that? Why did we buy into the conservative framing that government is inherently inefficient, when history tells us the opposite?

    The New Deal coalition built the 1950s America that everyone nostalgically worships – when the middle class thrived, unions were strong, and the economy worked for ordinary people. That happened because government took an active role in lifting people up. The Democratic Party of today could reclaim that legacy, but instead, they’re too busy playing a game that’s already rigged.

    If Democrats actually governed like Bernie Sanders, they could build an unstoppable coalition in this country. A movement that doesn’t just settle for the least-worst option, but actually demands and delivers change. Because we know what’s possible – we’ve done it before. We can do it again. But first, we need leaders who will actually fight.

  • The world doesn’t trust us anymore: www.youtube.com/watch

  • By the way, Columbia University and any other schools which accede to the demands of the regime are cowardly: www.pbs.org/newshour/…

    Same calculation that Schumer made and it’s getting us nowhere.

  • Something that has either gone unnoticed or least hasn’t been emphasized in a lot of the debates about Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act is that it only applies during a time of war: Only Congress can declare war. They haven’t done that, and therefore the invocation itself is legally unjustified.

  • Doesn’t like ruling; defies court order; tries to remove judge: www.reuters.com/world/us/…

  • Braveheart hits different when you are witnessing your own freedoms being taken away from you in real time.

  • They are openly violating court orders now: www.bbc.com/news/arti…

  • The passed CR contains language that declares the rest of 2025 to be a single day for legal purposes in order to avoid congressional oversight of Trump’s tariffs! 🤮 It remains to be seen if this deeply fascist move will fly in the courts: www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-day…

  • Diversify Your Information Gathering

    With Donald Trump’s direct attacks on US media sources like CNN or MSNBC, we should anticipate that we won’t necessarily be able to rely on them all the time. Consider that we may be cut off from them entirely, or that they will self-censor themselves for preservation purposes. Potentially they will be turned into right-wing propaganda outlets for the regime. This might not be immediately evident if it occurs, so I’m not sure it’s wise to trust any US-based mainstream corporate-owned news outlets at this stage. I’m currently maintaining deep skepticism of everything I see right now.

    We should also disabuse ourselves of the notion that we can trust algorithmically sorted news gathering via social media networks like Facebook, Bluesky, and Threads. Of these, I tend to trust Mastodon the most since it’s a decentralized open source federated network, which makes it resistant to manipulation. Sites like Reddit can be good as a means of gathering information, but due to their centralized nature are potentially easy to be compromised by bad actors.

    I’ve made a list of news outlets I think are reasonably reputable and have gotten myself a nice RSS reader in order to obtain direct feeds of their content on an ongoing basis. You should consider getting one as well if you don’t already have one. You can subscribe to lots of feeds on there and export an OPML list of your subscriptions to clients on other platforms. I’ve included a download link at the end of the article to help you get started.

    Here are some of the news sources I’m choosing to prioritize: Al Jazeera English, BBC News, CBC News, Democracy Now, DW News English, Jacobin, Le Monde English, NPR, ProPublica, RFI, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, The Stranger (it’s a Seattle institution), WBUR, WGBH.

    I’ve also got a VPN provider called Nord VPN, so I can use the British version of the BBC News website, which is somewhat different than the US version.

    Consider getting yourself a shortwave radio. While I don’t use these as news sources, with a simple handheld unit (I have a Tecsun R9700DX), I’ve been able to pick up Radio Nikkei based in Japan, Radio New Zealand, Radio Havana Cuba, and various other broadcasters as far as the Philippines, China, Russia, Central America, and even Canada. There’s a long history of using shortwave radio to send information across borders to suppressed populations. That’s what we were doing with Voice of America and others until Trump shut them down this past day. It is possible this form of information dissemination will become necessary again in our time for our own use to gather news from abroad.

    With regard to long distance radio, by the way, here’s a fun fact: You can also pick AM radio stations located across the country over long distances at night. From Seattle, when I’m DXing, I can often pick up AM broadcasters located in San Francisco, Reno, and Colorado.

    Get yourself a ham radio. I have a handheld Baofeng UV-5R. You’ll find that there are local repeater groups regularly broadcasting that you can tune into and hear from people all over your region and indeed the world. It’s fun to listen to them, and hear people talk about things happening on the ground in your locality. Get a ham radio operator license. I haven’t yet done this, but I would like to eventually. Even if you don’t have a license, you can still listen, and in a life and death emergency situation, it is also permissible to use them unlicensed under specific conditions (see exceptions 97.403 and 97.405).

    Above all else. Keep an open mind. Be skeptical of what you see and hear. Think before you share. Consider the source and keep in mind any biases the sharer might have had.

    Good night, and good luck.

    –

    My OPML file: While I tend to follow lots of tech news sites and bloggers as well, I’ve extracted just the information sources I’ve put together that are relevant to me for the purposes of this post. Maybe you can use it as a starting point for yourself: Download

  • A man was “violently interrogated” at Logan Airport for hours yesterday. Stripped naked, put in a cold shower by federal officials, and pressured to give up his green card.

    Source: www.wgbh.org/news/loca…

  • One of the most incredible tenor sax solos I’ve ever heard. Remember the name Santosh Sharma.

    Listen to this: youtu.be/Qccc89eBt…

    I’ve not heard anybody since John Coltrane himself pull off that sound so faithfully.

    America’s in the 1930s, but this group is solidly in 1964. 🎷

  • Ignore This Warning At Your Peril

    The excuses are always the same:

    • I didn’t take him seriously.

    • I had no idea something like this would happen.

    • He said he was fighting for me.

    These are all catastrophic failures of critical thought. Ignorance is not an excuse – what is knowable is your responsibility to be aware of. Take it from Hitler’s personal secretary, Traudl Junge: youtu.be/-aVI3gvIS…

    Right now, America is witnessing the systematic dismantling of the rule of law. It is not normal for a president to stand at the Department of Justice podium and publicly name political opponents he wants eliminated or investigated. That happened today.

    It is not normal for a president to declare that two major news networks are now “illegal” in his view – and then promise to act on it. That happened today.

    Historically, the DOJ has operated as a nonpartisan institution, a firewall against political corruption. But Trump doesn’t believe in that. He follows a deeply flawed “unitary executive” theory, where the president wields unchecked control over the federal government. This is not democracy – it’s the architecture of authoritarian rule.

    You might not feel the impact yet. But it is happening.

    And I’m sorry to say: you’re not safe either.

    Politics is no longer functioning as normal. It has been consumed by one man’s unquenchable thirst for power. You might not see yourself as a target, but to him, you don’t exist. And if you get in his way, he will destroy you.

    He doesn’t care about you. He is using you. He lets you keep things that don’t threaten him while he consolidates more power for himself.

    If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

    The window to stop this is closing fast.

    –

    Credit to @danielpunkass for his post, which inspired me to write this one up.

    For some additional follow-up about what fascism is and how it works, I recently made a playlist to try to explain it all. It’s not an easy concept to understand.

    Finally: The most important thing you can do right now is to get involved in protests. Show up. Speak out. Talk to friends, neighbors, and strangers about what is happening: Make sure nobody has an excuse to claim ignorance.

  • This is fascism: www.youtube.com/watch

  • Bernie Sanders responds to today’s CR vote: www.youtube.com/watch

  • Donald Trump is attacking law firms he doesn’t like, but not without purpose. This is a direct assault on the legal system in order to break the rule of law and we’re underreacting to it: www.tiktok.com/@cohen489…

  • Downtown Seattle viewed from Jose Rizal Park late afternoon today.

  • Bellevue this evening as seen from Leschi.

  • It’s worth asking the question: Does Schumer truly believe what he says, or is he being coerced?

    Nancy Pelosi understands the mechanics of a shutdown and she seems to be against Schumer’s position: www.politico.com/live-upda…

  • Senator Murray on the CR situation: youtu.be/Xefx8iV0_…

  • Not as clear this time, but it boggles my mind that a shot like this is even possible from a phone. During totality at 11:40pm PDT.

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