Abundance!

The Abundance guys attempted to code all Nimbysm as misguided lefty stuff, knowing that was the easiest way to get all the usual marks on board. If hippies oppose something, it must be good!

West Jordan • When a data center campus moved in across the street from her quiet neighborhood, Susan Jurges said the first thing she lost was the view.

The Oquirrh Mountains once stretched across the horizon beyond a grassy field, where goats and other animals roamed. In the mornings, from her kitchen window, she could watch the sun crest over the peaks.

Now, three data centers obstruct that view, surrounded by generators that pump out what looks like black smog.

Even so, Jurges said, “I could live with that.”

Then came the noise.

Actual yimbyism was a lefty urbanist project, which they repurposed as right wing tech overlord  "build smog belching unbearable noise factories next door" project.

It did serve as a useful way to flush out bad faith actors.

Morning

Thorsday

FALL FUNDRAISER DAY 1 EVENING EDITION

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We Got This

Jokes aside, it is the people with millions of dollars in campaign budgets, and who are extremely well-compensated, who are responsible, along with others with genuinely large platforms. I don't think this humble blog has zero influence on the world  - and  I do take that tiny responsibility seriously - but it is much much less than that of  the CNN green room residents, your NYT "liberal" columnists, and the CEO of the Center for American Progress.

If things go well in the midterms, all of those people will take credit. If they don't, they will be desperate to blame people with much less power than they have.

And if those people can't pull it off when Republicans are this unpopular...

More Like This

Though most senior Dems haven't been better.

Today, while protecting Palestinians, Brad Lander & a group of American rabbis & others were taken by the IDF. Releasing Brad isn't enough, the Israeli govt must release them all. If this is how they treat Americans, imagine how they treat Palestinians. Trump & Rubio's silence fuels this impunity.

— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@vanhollen.senate.gov) 21 October 2026 at 19:00

Miserable Failure

Getting closer to sub-30...

More than three-quarters of voters see this election as their chance to change things up in Washington, the poll finds. Trump’s approval rating stands at a record low of 32%, and voters express broad dissatisfaction with both the economy and the state of the country nearly two years into unified GOP control of the federal government. 

Our Greatest Ally

He has been released.

Sounds Bad

Our approach to war is that it's always unfair to respond in any way. And, well, maybe it is, but that doesn't stop it from happening.

Iran has threatened to cut undersea internet cables that run beneath the Strait of Hormuz to choke the global banking system.

Gen Hossein Mohebbi, spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), described the communication lines on the seabed as “legitimate new targets”.

Severing the cables could affect global systems, disrupting financial markets, bank transactions, healthcare and the consumer internet.

FALL FUNDRAISING 2026 DAY 1

The election is in less than two weeks. If Dems win, it will be, of course, due to the power of mighty blogs! Vote blue no matter who!

If they lose, it will also be, of course, due to the power of my mighty blogs! Centrist Dems suck!

It's all on me!

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This Year's Soccer Moms

Every election cycle, savvy pollsters invent an important voter category, like "Soccer Moms."  This year it's "Pedophile Parents" and Ramaswamy is gonna make sure those people go to the polls.

Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign for Ohio governor is pouring $4 million into a bombshell ad in which his opponent's estranged mother attacks her daughter — doubling down on the message despite fierce bipartisan backlash, Axios has learned.

Extremely savvy politics.

Asked for corroboration of that report, police and court officials in the Youngstown area could not immediately produce records from the 1970s. But the Acton campaign produced documents showing that Dr. Acton’s stepfather pleaded not guilty, was indicted by a grand jury and fled the state before trial. Though another warrant was issued for his arrest, he never appeared before a judge. He died in Pennsylvania in 2004.

Seize It

Not a surprise of course.

Musk Ordered Starlink Slowdown That Blindsided Ukraine

The SpaceX founder authorized the move and has been discussing Ukraine with Trump, but the president has denied ordering the restrictions

A feisty European prosecutor might meet him at the border, too.

Seems to be some buck passing between Trumpers and Musk, too, so who knows.

Some U.S. officials say that Musk acted unilaterally and that Trump didn’t specifically order any retribution against Ukraine. But a person familiar with the situation said Musk talked to multiple senior administration officials, including with Trump, before imposing the new speed cap, which Ukrainian officials said had allowed Russian missiles to evade their defenses.

Fundamentals

Most economic news seems to be average-to-bad, yet the stock market keeps soaring!

Who will be the bag holders?

Our Friends In The Middle East

Being a lefty noninterventionist (this is not an absolute position, just a strong lean), I, or people like me, get screamed at a lot for being too soft on whoever the Big Bad of the Day is. Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria, Russia... 

When we urgently have to go bomb the shit out of the Big Bad's innocent civilians, people like me tend to object, and not because we love Saddam or Gadhafi or Ahmadinejad or Assad or Putin usually, but because we don't like blowing people up and don't think we have a very good record of accomplishments when we do.

And then there's our ally Saudi Arabia. It might be the worst regime in the world, by whatever measure. Close to it, anyway. It isn't that I want to go bomb Riyadh, but I do wish that some of the people who love to scream at hippies for loving dictators would explain their silence on the country, occasionally.

The UK will deploy RAF Typhoon jets to defend Saudi Arabia in response to escalating Houthi missile and drone attacks, the government has said.

Sure there are always Realpolitik arguments, but lefty RealPolitik arguments generally don't get much consideration. 

Real Men Go To Tehran

 And there are no realer men than Bibi and Donald.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says both he and President Trump are “committed to completing the ⁠elimination of the Iranian ⁠regime” and recently “discussed this”.

The great thing about regimes is once you eliminate one then there's a new regime and  you get to eliminate that one too.

There is no actual vision, real or fake, for what the next regime should be or how to achieve it.

No I have no idea what will happen. 

Welp

20 years ago I would've said (and likely did, on this very blog) that while the US had an immense amount of ignored corruption, it was somewhat segregated from actual lawmakers themselves. Now I don't think this is true at all. Corruption in congressional offices is the norm, not the exception. 

In early 2025, the FBI opened a sweeping investigation into bribery on Capitol Hill with Graham’s steakhouse dinner at the center. Kao confessed to federal agents that his business model consisted of bribing public officials in exchange for government contracts, and that the research Navatek was providing to the government was often worthless.

The scheme involved some of the most powerful figures in Congress, he said — in both parties. In South Carolina, Kao told agents, Navatek made a campaign cash-for-contracts deal not only with Graham, but also with the state’s top Democrat, Rep. James Clyburn, and another influential Republican, Rep. Joe Wilson.

Kao told agents that Graham in particular left little room for ambiguity: “This is how much I want, and how much I am going to give you,” Kao remembered Graham saying, according to notes one agent took during their debrief in late 2024.

Resistance to new electeds who don't come from within the normal channels is to some degree about ideological and clan replication, but it is also because newcomers might be shocked to find all the gambling in the casino.

Trump made all these investigations go away.

The Supremos have made bribery an almost nonexistent crime, but something doesn't have to be a crime to be incredibly corrupt, something many journalists have been pretending to forget lately.

It's Evening In America

I keep saying this, but I do think it's important to understand that an increasingly senile malignant narcissist will happily burn the world down on his way out. Things cannot go on without him. 

His monuments (ballroom, Kennedy Center, arch, etc.) are his attempts to live forever, though in true Trump style he can't imagine doing that by putting his name on anything actually good, or spending his own money to do it.

Trump is very good at fucking things up with good intentions (I don't mean he is ever good, just that in his own mind his crackpot plans are genius). Imagine what happens when he fully turns to wrecking things on purpose?

He's already done some of this, such as destroying the Kennedy Center. That blast radius could grow.

Oh Canada

I also know nothing about Canadians politics. I don't think all separatist/independence movements should be dismissed out of hand, but this seemed to be Chud magnet.

Though in all these situations, "voting for independence" is the easy part. It's the details of the divorce agreement that matter, and can't be captured in an aspirational vote.

Nobody really knew what they were voting for with Brexit, for example, which was its own kind of separatist vote. It could've allowed for "Norway" or the shitshow they ultimately agreed to.

Morning

 Totally Tuesday

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Why They Changed It I Can't Say

Americavania, Americachusetts, Amermont, Amerhampshire, Amerorado...