Tag: politics

‘Giant Turd’: Progressive Dems Continue To Rage At DNC 2024 Autopsy

This past week the DNC released its autopsy of the 2024 election. DNC chair Ken Martin sat on it for months, assured us there was no smoking gun, promised he’d already been sharing the lessons, and then finally dropped the 48,000 words on a Thursday with a note on the front saying the findings don’t reflect the views of the DNC. He released the autopsy and disowned it simultaneously.

I get why he’d disown it. It’s a big turd. But the whole time he buried it, Martin kept saying the lessons from this report were already being put to work. Lessons. We’re keeping the focus on the lessons, he’d say. We’ve been releasing the lessons. I read it, most of it. It’s not that there are no recommendations. There are plenty. Go heavier on digital and connected TV, lighter on broadcast. Organize earlier. Rebuild the state parties. Those are the lessons. If they’ve taken any of them, they’ve taken the wrong ones, and there’s a reason for that.

Every question in the report is a variation on the same question. How do we campaign better with what we’ve got? How do we market this thing more effectively to the people we’re trying to sell it to? Never once do they stop and ask whether the thing they’re selling is bullshit. Whether the product is any good. Whether a single promise in it would fix a single person’s life.

Every problem this autopsy was built to diagnose is still here in 2026, we’ve yet to solve a damn one of them.

It was never about governing. It was about winning for the sake of winning, with no theory of what to do with the power once they have it. The DNC still isn’t looking for a mission of its own. It tells the campaigns to build their own contrast and definition and leaves the meaning to everyone else. The party is a machine with no idea what it’s for.

To the contrary, it’s pretty pleased with itself. The report never once treats the Biden record as a failure. Its gripe about Bidenomics isn’t that it failed people, it’s that the message leaned on big macro statistics instead of the daily reality people were actually living. When the party lost down the ballot, the report decided strong local candidates just needed to define themselves better. They’re certain Democrats are doing a great job, and that it’s just their inability to explain how awesome they are that keeps them out of power.

What I see in this report is the Biden administration in miniature. Biden was sold to us, by the press and by his own people, as proof of what Democrats could do if they got back to their FDR roots. We got the CHIPS Act. We got the IRA. We got the bipartisan infrastructure law. We were told it was the most historic spending in generations. But the rubber never hits the road. Lives weren’t transformed. Why? Because these people refuse to admit that the systems they are funding are no longer productive.

They refuse to look at the difference between an input and an output. Effort and results. You can pour trillions into a financialized housing market and a six-trillion-dollar healthcare industry, but if you never touch the monopolies and the middlemen and the rot underneath, nothing useful comes out the other side. It’s worse than that. Pour more money into an out-of-control healthcare industry and all you’ve built is a stronger monopoly, a more powerful opponent.

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Democrat Senator Andy Kim Pepper Sprayed by ICE During Memorial Day Riot at ICE Facility

Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) was pepper-sprayed by ICE agents while participating in a riot outside of an ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, on Monday.

Instead of spending Memorial Day honoring our fallen troops, Kim joined the rioters attacking law enforcement alongside New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill and Reps. Rob Menendez, LaMonica McIver and Nellie Pou.

Masked leftist rioters were seen vandalizing the city and removing large blocks from the sidewalks to set up barricades outside of the Delaney Hall Detention Center to block vehicles leaving the facility. In multiple clips circulating online, the insurrectionists could be seen searching through the vehicles with flashlights before allowing them to pass.

Kim was seen at one point attempting to negotiate with the insurrectionists, asking them to stop throwing things at vehicles and to clear a path in the parking lot. Kim is then seen apologizing to the protesters and instigating further unrest after ICE agents pushed through the crowds.

“I don’t trust them,” Kim told the left-wing rioters after blaming ICE for failing to make a “deal.”

Pepper spray and pepper balls were later deployed during a clash between agents and rioters. Kim was seen screaming at agents on an armored truck as they used crowd control measures.

Video from the scene shows protesters pouring water into Kim’s eyes following the incident.

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The international significance of Erdoğan’s preemptive coup against the CHP in Türkiye

The regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Türkiye is staging a preemptive political coup before the eyes of the entire world. Erdoğan first removed the elected leadership of the Republican People’s Party (CHP)—the main parliamentary opposition party and leading party in the polls—through a politically motivated court ruling, then ordered riot police to forcibly seize the party’s headquarters.

What is unfolding in Türkiye is not a purely national event but a manifestation of an international collapse of democratic forms of rule rooted in the deepening crisis of the capitalist system. US President Donald Trump, having lost the November 2020 elections, mounted a failed coup on January 6, 2021, seeking to remain in power illegally. Erdoğan, for his part, is attempting to forestall a likely defeat in the next elections by neutralizing his principal rival.

Workers and youth must oppose this preemptive coup—which threatens fundamental democratic rights and whose target is ultimately the working class.

The Turkish working class is entering this struggle in a mood of explosive opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the US war against Iran. In the first days of the war against Iran, workers at the Polyak mine in İzmir tore down a gendarmerie barricade and seized control of the mine. Last month, Turkish politics was dominated by the struggle of Doruk Mining workers in Ankara.

Though polls show that more than 90 percent of the Turkish population opposes the war against Iran and the presence of US military bases in Türkiye, Erdoğan has effectively aligned himself with the Trump administration’s aggression in the Middle East and continues to facilitate the flow of oil from Azerbaijan to Israel. Across the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of the population is seething with anger at their ruling elites’ collaboration with US imperialism and Israeli Zionism.

Erdoğan and his allies are working to suppress the emergence within the Turkish, Middle Eastern and international working class—already battered by a severe cost-of-living crisis—of a movement against genocide and imperialist war.

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Even the Big, Blue Towns Are Sick of the Democratic Freak-Show

Albert Einstein wrote the following in a letter to his son in the 1950s about American politics: “There’s something amazing about America’s democracy, it’s got a gyroscope, and just when you think it’s going to go off the cliff, it rights itself.”

Some 70 years later, we see that gyroscope is once again at work. 

As the communists who cosplay as Democrats continue to push “woke” codswallop down the throats of any American still too daft to recognize cultural Marxism, even as a bearded lady showers next to their tween daughter, many Americans living on the West Coast — including those who hopscotch to work through hypodermic needles and human feces, which I call “Democrat street kabobs” — are starting to realize that Democrats are communists and communism sucks.

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Carney Calls Alberta Referendum a ‘Dangerous Bluff’, as Oil-Rich Province Set To Vote on Leaving Woke Canada

Alberta separatism is a reality, despite establishment figures such as Carney trying to deny the facts.

As the oil-rich province of Alberta gears up for the October referendum on separating from globalist Canada, the pushback from defenders of the status quo is relentless.

Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney is one of them.

After branding Alberta essential to Canada, Carney has criticized its upcoming referendum as a ‘dangerous bluff’, comparing it to the Brexit process of the UK leaving the European Union.

BBC reported:

“Carney, who led the Bank of England during Brexit, said that 10 years on from the referendum the UK was ‘trying to undo what people didn’t think they were voting for, but what they ended up having’.

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California Dem Governor Candidate Xavier Becerra Wants Free Healthcare for Illegals, Boasts About Jobs They Take From Americans

Xavier Becerra, the former Obama Biden lackey who is running for governor of California as a Democrat, wants the state to continue to provide free healthcare for illegals. Big surprise, right?

He confirmed this during a recent appearance on CNN.

The remarkable thing about the segment is that he admitted that illegals take jobs away from Americans, not just in farming, but in construction, healthcare and more.

You can tell from the smug look on his face that he thought he was being so clever about this.

Breitbart News reported:

Host Elex Michaelson said that Hilton “says he wants to take the undocumented off of healthcare rolls. Why do you want to keep them on there, and how much is that going to cost the state?”

Becerra answered, “He looks at them as people who don’t have documents. I look at them as hard workers. I look at them as people like my parents. I am the son of immigrants. To me, I want you to build, help me build California. If you’re working hard, I want you to have healthcare. I guess Steve Hilton doesn’t care if they work really hard. He looks at their status, and that’s about it.”

Michaelson then said, “Well, he says that they broke the law. And he says that he immigrated here legally and that spending money to give somebody healthcare is incentivizing bad behavior.”

Becerra responded, “He doesn’t seem to mind that the price of food is a little lower because these are the folks that are picking the crops. He doesn’t seem to mind that the places that you can buy to live in are places that these folks built. He doesn’t seem to mind that they’re the folks that are taking care of probably one of his relatives, probably taking care of his yards. He seems to mind that they don’t have documents, but he doesn’t seem to mind that they do so much of the work in California.”

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NYC Mayor Mamdani’s Housing Plan Sparks Property-Rights Alarm Over Forced Transfers To Nonprofits

NYC socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani released “Block by Block: The Housing Plan for a New Era,” which presents a sweeping, deeply troubling blueprint to tackle the metro area’s deepening housing crisis.

Mamdani told the crowd:

When necessary, we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers. And for buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards. Stewards include community land trusts, nonprofits, or even the tenants themselves.

X user Difficult Froyo outlined what he described as the obvious playbook by the socialist mayor:

Rent control so landlords cannot raise rent to properly maintain the property. NYC takes the property and gives it to his political friends that donate to him. This is all going to be a theft scheme.

Another X user asked:

“Insane. If this isn’t communism, I don’t know what is. Has America really reached the point of communism?”

Mamdani’s backdoor property-seizure strategy will likely spook lenders, insurers, and small landlords. That’s because it caps landlord income, allows residential buildings to become distressed, then uses the city’s enforcement to push properties into nonprofit, community land trust, or tenant ownership.

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The Republican Party Is Nothing More Than a Cult of Trump

The Republican Party is dead. Long live the party of Trump, which wears the GOP like a skin suit.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump took down libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), to whom he’d taken such a profound dislike that he backed a primary challenger in the form of MAGA stalwart Ed Gallrein. Massie was highly ranked for his voting record by conservative organizations, but so were other candidates Trump pushed out of office—and out of the party. In truth, it’s been years since the Republican Party was a conservative organization; these days it’s a cult of personality around the president.

“Tom Massie of Kentucky, the worst and most unreliable Republican Congressman in the history of our Country, is an even bigger insult to our Nation than Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana,” President Trump snarked on May 17. That was the day Cassidy lost his state’s Republican Senate primary to Trump-backed challenger Rep. Julia Letlow and State Treasurer John Fleming, who now head to a runoff.

By that point, Trump-backed primary challengers had already turned out five Republican Indiana state senators who resisted the president’s drive to gerrymander congressional districts to gain advantage in this year’s midterm congressional elections.

“Good luck to those Great Indiana Senate Candidates who are running against people who couldn’t care less about our Country, or about keeping the Majority in Congress,” the president posted on Truth Social prior to release of the Indiana results. “There are eight Great Patriots running against long seated RINOS — Let’s see how those RINOS do tonight!”

Massie in turn lost this week to Gallrein, who was backed 54.8 percent to 45.2 percent by Republican primary voters responding to the president’s call. Massie had won 99.6 percent of the general election vote in his district in 2024, 65 percent in 2022, and 67 percent in 2020, according to BallotPedia. He was popular until dismissed by Trump, who won 64.5 percent of Kentucky votes in 2024.

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The Left Seems to be Waking Up to Racist Gun Control Laws

What does one’s race have to do with one’s right to keep and bear arms? Well, nothing. The Second Amendment covers all American citizens and legal immigrants. Asking race is, at most, an identifier to help differentiate a black John Smith from a white one, and that’s about it.

Unfortunately for us all, that wasn’t how many people viewed it back in the day. They thought anyone who wasn’t white was someone who needed to be disarmed. Whether it was because they didn’t want to be overthrown or they just thought non-whites (and Catholics, for some reason) were particularly dangerous isn’t relevant. The truth was, they did.

Luckily, we’re more enlightened these days, right?

Not really.

We’ve talked a fair bit about the issues in New Jersey, particularly with racial disparity in permit issuance. Our own John Petrolino, who unfortunately lives there, has done a lot of work bringing this issue to light.

But let’s be real here. None of the people who need to be outraged are probably reading pro-gun sits like Bearing Arms. They’re reading Slate, and what are the odds of Slate covering this?

Well, better than I thought they were. Aymann Ismail’s firsthand account of the exhausting process of becoming a New Jersey gun owner may be eye-opening to the website’s more progressive readers. 

So in 2020, I applied for a Firearm Purchaser Identification, a permit to purchase a firearm that is required in New Jersey. After fingerprints, references, application fees, and months of waiting, I was told over the phone that I had no choice but to withdraw my application. The issue was a misdemeanor trespassing charge in New York from my street-photographer days. Under New Jersey law, that should not have disqualified me from owning a gun. I had never been convicted of a felony. No domestic violence charges. No mental health issues. It didn’t matter. The Newark Police Department’s firearm permitting office told me my application was being withdrawn. They insisted they were doing me a favor, and that a denial would bar me from reapplying if I got my record expunged.

Again, I wasn’t even sure I wanted a gun. But the interaction was curious. It didn’t matter that I pointed out I met the legal requirements. Again and again, I was unsuccessful. It had me thinking about who is presumed “safe” to own a gun, and who isn’t. I began speaking with Black and brown gun owners across northern New Jersey, particularly in cities where violence, policing, and race overlap in complicated ways. An Afro-Cuban neighborhood friend I went to high school with in Newark told me he had applied for his own permit and received it in just two weeks. When I explained that I tried multiple times and was still waiting months after my latest application, he looked genuinely confused. Then he asked what race I’d listed on the paperwork. “Other,” I told him. He burst out laughing. “You idiot,” he said. “You’re supposed to put white.”

The more people I spoke to, the more I learned I was far from alone in making that “mistake.” The greater question of who gets to, and should, own a gun turned out to far more complicated than I knew. Few people—on the left or the right—want to talk about it. The ending of my own story helps explain why.

Oh, on this side of the right, we’re more than willing to talk about it. It’s just that no one on the left seems interested in listening.

Now, the author did, finally, get his license and didn’t have to lie about his race on his application, which is good news, but the fact that New Jersey did that in the first place is a major issue. It’s one that does need to be talked about because it clearly illustrates the bright string from the racist gun laws of the old days, and how little has changed.

Here in Georgia, many of our now dead gun control laws could be similarly linked. The prohibition of carrying a firearm at a “public gathering” was a reaction to armed black men and women responding to a violent attack that’s now called the Camilla Massacre. It wasn’t the shooting itself, but the fact that marchers, after being attacked, went home and got their own guns to fight back.

So it’s unsurprising that New Jersey didn’t have a law in place forbidding black gun ownership or concealed carry, but the application wasn’t much different than if they did.

It’s why subjective gun laws are always going to be an issue, and largely an issue for minorities. It’s part of why Bruen stuck them down. Anything that can be misused to cause harm to a particular group–any particular group–will be used or misused to cause harm to some group or another for no reason other than the people impacted are part of that group.

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Oregon petition to criminalize hunting, fishing reaches signature threshold

Supporters of an effort to criminalize the killing of animals for food in Oregon are one step closer in getting a measure on the November ballot.

Initiative Petition 28 would make it illegal to injure or kill animals and would effectively ban hunting, fishing and the breeding of animals.

Supporters have been collecting signatures for this since 2024 and this past week, they reached the number necessary to make it onto the November ballot.

But it’s not official yet. The Secretary of State’s Office still needs to verify the signatures.

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