johnbellessa.com - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

my cousin in the VA has to explain to a 4chan Doge tween what her day of helping elderly veterans consists of and my rage at these preposterous assholes is bottomless

submitted 3 hours ago • 41 comments

quiet part out loud.

submitted 2 hours ago • 72 comments

CSPAN Caller from West Virginia: I’m a diabetic and I’m on Medicare. When Biden was in there, my insulin was $6 for a 28 day supply. I just went to CVS, it went back up to $80…

submitted 1 day ago • 994 comments

Online leftists for whom insulin prices was a synecdoche for everything that was wrong with America under Biden, this is the moment you’ve been preparing for. I expect to see a swift redoubling of this tendency to spark change in the dastardly mister Trump.

submitted 4 hours ago • 3 comments

There's going to be news about a woman illegally detained and being forcely removed from a Coeur d'Alene Idaho Town Hall meeting taking place at the high school by men that would not identify themselves wearing plain clothes because she opposed the republican viewpoints. youtube.com/shorts/hhJdH...

submitted 18 hours ago • 495 comments

Congrats to Illinois basketball for not being the most embarrassing thing associated with UIUC I've seen this evening

submitted 14 hours ago • 1 comment

FEDERAL RESEARCH LAB SCIENTIST IN 1965: After five years and seventy million dollars we have invented a new type of plastic that prevents communists from being able to climb ladders too fast FEDERAL RESEARCH LAB SCIENTIST IN 2025: My cure for cancer was shelved because it might benefit Hispanics

submitted 18 hours ago • 98 comments

To understand the moment we are in as a country, this is incredibly important to take in:

submitted 33 days ago • 76 comments

Being a fan of Illini basketball and American democracy is such brutal combo right now

submitted 15 hours ago • 0 comments

In their last four halves, Illinois has allowed 42 points, 47 points, 48 points, and 54 points.

submitted 16 hours ago • 2 comments

Well, I'll say this much about watching this Illini team: it's not unpleasant as helping a 3yo vomit into a bowl

submitted 16 hours ago • 0 comments

If you take a drink every time Illinois misses a three, you’ll be blackout drunk in five minutes.

submitted 16 hours ago • 2 comments

I watched a journalist complain earlier this week that Bsky has reinvented the right's skepticism towards mainstream journalism without a profit motive as a way to be derisive, but honestly I feel like we are not harsh enough on institutions like the Times over here.

submitted 2 days ago • 8 comments

Truly frightening to see civil-military relations experts be so distraught today. I hadn't understood that no POTUS has ever replaced the top brass 1 month into office plus fired the JAGs. We’re in autogolpe territory, more so if Trump changes the head of Northern Command.

submitted 19 hours ago • 16 comments

With Elon’s “tell us what you accomplished last week or you’re fired” emails: I can confirm that he didn’t limit himself to the executive branch. He sent them to employees of the judicial branch as well.

submitted 18 hours ago • 155 comments

Really not looking forward to watching Illinois get embarrassed in front of the nation this evening. But I'm probably going to anyway.

submitted 18 hours ago • 0 comments

Donald Trump is making sure his friends, from Jeff Bezos to Elon Musk, are getting massive tax cuts. Instead of lowering prices for working families, his taxes will make life harder than ever. Here in Illinois, we're finding a way forward together to fight the challenges.

submitted 18 hours ago • 89 comments

To state the obvious as has been observed my countless people on numerous occasions, Dems speaking about red areas 10 percent as harshly as Republicans speaking about blue areas is treated as a massive scandal.

submitted 18 hours ago • 18 comments

(AP) — Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team is eliminating jobs at the vehicle safety agency that oversees Tesla and has launched investigations into deadly crashes involving his company’s cars. #OligarchEra 🇺🇸 apnews.com/article/musk...

submitted 23 hours ago • 249 comments

How common is it for the president to fire the chair of the joint chiefs?

submitted 1 day ago • 9 comments

They want war crimes. I do not know why the media will not say this. They say they want war crimes. Heggy got his job because he supported war crimes on Fox News. They think it is good to hunt children for sport.

submitted 1 day ago • 23 comments

NEW — 19-year-old DOGE engineer Edward Coristine turns out to be the grandson of former KGB spy Valery Martynov, who played a role in a sprawling 1980s espionage saga. www.jacobsilverman.com/p/prominent-...

submitted 2 days ago • 510 comments

major props to the associated press for not capitulating to trump. they're setting the standard for what news should be - independent, committed to the truth, and ready to stand against authoritarian governments.

submitted 1 day ago • 5 comments

Powerful. Tomorrow’s front page of the most influential weekly publication in Germany. “BETRAYED. First Zelensky, Soon Us? The radical departure of the US from its allies.”

submitted 2 days ago • 295 comments

This letter to the editor from 1961 voices the same diagnosis of the nation's ills and the same solution--to completely obliterate the New Deal state--that animates the MAGA/Project 2025 blitz we're experiencing now. That 1961 newspaper was put out by a fascist who helped found the Posse Comitatus.

submitted 1 day ago • 11 comments

submitted 1 day ago • 7 comments

It’s simple. If they planned to consider Ukr/Europe’s positions, they wouldn’t exclude them from the talks. Sounds like the plan is to gaslight/deny/walk back until they’ve worked out the deal w Ru and then paint Ukraine/Europe as warmongers or dummies for rejecting it.

submitted 2 days ago • 15 comments

Atlanticists basically need to come up with an "Agememno Contingency" of how to handle a NatCon/Collaborationist US (both in its present form and in the future) but it's also really hard to really have a meaningful strategy to handle the guarantor of the international system going rogue

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

In the UN context I’ve been describing it to people as a US administration actively seeking to transform the U.S. from guarantor to risk generator—a much harder situation than a guarantor that merely decides to become more isolationist

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Over on X, simple tweets by my colleague Greg Bluestein of the Atlanta Journal Constitution have been blocked. They were nothing but video of a town hall held by Rep. Rich McCormick R-GA where he was asked questions about DOGE

submitted 2 days ago • 276 comments

You know? I still find it remarkably easy to remain patriotic throughout this administration. Trump and the MAGA crowd are a repudiation of every single civic ideal that the United States is meant to represent—and I see no reason to stop believing in those ideals because of them.

submitted 3 days ago • 129 comments

I don't think there is a single topic where the gap between reality and the median American's opinion is larger than the question of Donald Trump's business acumen

submitted 2 days ago • 19 comments

This is not about efficiency. Giving federal employees purchase cards saves money - it reduces layers of paperwork and red tape. Imagine running a business where you stopped employees from purchasing anything. The goal is to shut down government by other means.

submitted 3 days ago • 79 comments

Goodbye healthcare for the poor, food stamps for those unable to feed their families without them, nursing home care for the elderly unable to live at home--the $$ is going to the wealthiest among us.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

First Elon, then a county official, now the lead base messenger and predidential advisor. The MAGA movement’s in-group signal of power and cohesion is now a Nazi salute

submitted 2 days ago • 9 comments

lib tea party, you're hearing it more and more

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

what's happening is the cutting down of american capacity and infrastructure. to be clear. and foreign adversaries like russia are openly cheering for trump's and musk's remarks and actions on state owned media.

submitted 2 days ago • 5 comments

I will never stop being offended over how profoundly fucking lame our self-professed overlords are my god man look at yourself

submitted 2 days ago • 53 comments

I’m not sure the world has seen a genuine supervillain until 2025. Of course there’ve been countless monsters: hitler, Stalin, pol pot. But a real life figure who fits the Gotham/Metropolis model. Plutocrat bigwig who is actually deeply evil & wants to run the world for cartoonishly stupid reasons.

submitted 2 days ago • 537 comments

THR: “.. Paramount now signaling that it’s prepared to go on the offensive .. leveraging the threat of uncovering information about Trump’s financials, including with respect to his social media company .. and the cryptocurrency he launched, in discovery.” www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...

submitted 2 days ago • 287 comments

America will likely endure and continue to be a major power. The damage to our international standing will be irreparable because 1945 USA is literally the best possible hand any country ever has or will be dealt. Nuke monopoly + only major power not destroyed after a world war isn’t replicable.

submitted 2 days ago • 13 comments

The Constitution gives Congress power to establish the U.S. Postal Service. It did, by law, during the Washington administration. Its status as an independent agency was established by Congress in law. USPS is wildly popular with the American people and its service is essential and irreplaceable.

submitted 2 days ago • 80 comments