Profile avatar
mrunfocused.bsky.social
New Yorker by birth, Chicagoan by choice. Husband, newly empty-nest Dad, ADHD, Peloton rider, Pathfinder/Starfinder player & GM, attorney, and scratching post for two Cornish Rex cats
157 posts 155 followers 613 following
Prolific Poster
Conversation Starter

WYOMING: “Thank you, Madam chairman.” “I prefer ‘Mister’ chairman.” “Well you all voted preferred pronouns cannot be compelled speech.”

I don't believe in Hell, but if I did I would die happy knowing there was a special seating section for anyone currently railing against "the sin of empathy," and every one of those seats is made with hot rusty barbs

Today is February 21st, 2025. Fuck Ron Johnson🖕

Did Musk’s or Bannon’s Hitlergrüẞ better reflect our traditions? Whose Sieg Heil did more to Make America Great Again? Ross Douthat and Josh Barro drop by to discuss.

I would love to see the branding of this admin as free speech advocates die. They’re thin-skinned censorious egomaniacal losers who are blowing up the world bc they can’t handle criticism. We don’t have to accept their framing of anything.

This is brilliant

Trump wants you to forget that he gutted the Aviation Safety Committee and ousted the FAA administrator during his first week in office. Don’t forget.

Re-upping this post this morning: Big Pharma CEOs are finally starting to speak out about the Trump administration. Unfortunately, they’re smiling and clapping.

Mass layoffs of IRS agents who catch tax evaders. Once more, Elon Musk's very sincere crusade to cut "waste and fraud" out of the federal government just so happens to weaken government power over billionaires like him. What an incredible string of coincidences we've had here.

I’m surprised Trump didn’t sign one of his petulant executive orders trying to recall these quarters on day 1.

The GOP's response to the air crash in DC illustrates the moral decay of today’s Republican Party. Make no mistake, the recent plane crashes are a harbinger of what is to come. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Winner of the “sum up the first four weeks of the Trump administration in one article without mentioning Trump” challenge.

I’m going to a conference out of state in late March and last night out of the blue my wife asked whether I had already bought my plane tickets. I thought she was just reminding me - I tend to wait for the last minute - but now I think she was worried about something else.

The Washpost, which is bleeding millions of dollars and shrinking its staff, accepted -- and then rejected -- a $115,000 ad that criticized Elon Musk. Anyway, here's the ad that the Post's business side didn't want its readers to see ⤵️ thehill.com/media/514849...

Schools across the country received a racist threat letter from the Trump Administration on Friday effectively stating that schools that receive taxpayer dollars cannot address the stark racial inequalities in education by any means. #THREAD ed.gov/media/document…

Oy the Barnett-Wurman NYT op-ed. I have now read it. It is shoddy, pernicious stuff. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/o...

I think attitudes towards government employees are a bit like attitudes towards race and religion and sexuality. Plenty of people are unregenerate bigots in the abstract but have That One Black Friend who They Don’t Think of As Black. There are exceptions in the particular, unreconciled. /1

Well worth a minute of your time.

This is where you go to tell the National Park Service to restore the word "transgender" in its entry on the Stonewall monument. (Scroll down.)

These stories are not from Substackers, or newsletter writers, or pundits (as wonderful and valuable as they are.) They are from the NYTimes, the WaPo, NPR and Politico, major news institutions that have the resources to investigate this. Again, I urge you, support them however you can.

you have the musk hat trick here of being genuinely ignorant — the president isn’t an elected sovereign — and also incredibly dishonest

This every goddamn day since Jan 20.

Good thing for Republicans that they never get sick or need novel treatments. This will suck for the rest of us, though.

Evergreen: Edmund Burke's political insight in one cartoon.

Save USAID

Good thread.

I’ve unfortunately needed to add more material to my post from yesterday. The re-election of Donald Trump is looking like the biggest act of American self-destruction since the Civil War. Same link, new title and some updates.

Frost: You mean to tell me a man worth over $400 billion is going to decide what happens with my grandma’s social security check?

In this exchange, @andycraig.bsky.social does a nice job in explaining just how lawless Elon Musk's autocratic power grab has truly become. Read these four screen caps: newrepublic.com/article/1911...

An important, essential column. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/o...

This is evil. Doing so risks collapsing food delivery and humanitarian aid to the most needy people on Earth. It risks restarting conflicts, casts away all goodwill toward the US, and hurts millions in dozens of countries. And for what? Just sickening.

Imagine if this happened under a Democratic president. We’d have GOP reps & senators mobbing the Treasury building with the Proud Boys marching in the streets.

Good article with links to others.

how it started at USAID > how it's going