philippos42
banner
philippos42.bsky.social
philippos42
@philippos42.bsky.social
540 followers 250 following 2.2K posts
Redhead. Missourian. I like hornets.
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
There are apparently colleges out there teaching "economics" but with little J. M. Keynes or Adam Smith--probably taught as "business" or "finance"--and telling young people that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

Which is doing a disservice to those young people.

1/7
Reposted by philippos42
Opening public lands in the Arctic to drilling was a priority of the first Trump administration – and is rising to the top of the agenda again, even as the federal government is shut down and Alaskans contend with the aftermath of Typhoon Halong which devastated several coastal communities.
Reposted by philippos42
I feel like it shouldn't be possible to have a secret personal home insurance policy on the White House. But if anyone would try, it would be this guy
🤔
Wow. Tell your farmer friends & family.👇🏽😡

Q: “What do you say to farmers who think the deal helps Argentina more than them?”

Trump: “Look, Argentina is fighting for its life, young lady…
You understand what that means? They are dying...
l happen to like [their] President.”
youtu.be/hb1sscIbYg8?...
Trump says Argentina is 'dying' and 'fighting for its life' | REUTERS
YouTube video by Reuters
youtu.be
Reposted by philippos42
Nazism is not normal and should not be normalized. Say no to Nazis.
Putting a Democrat with a Nazi tattoo in the Senate normalizes Naziism in our federal politics for a long ass time.

All these recent stories about secret Nazi group chats? Anytime that happens going forward will be met with "But Platner."

It's not a purity test. Think through the consequences.
Reposted by philippos42
telling that labour hears "low income immigrants earn too little to pay the amount of tax we want" and immediately thinks of ethnic cleansing rather than, i don't know, raising the minimum wage??

you'd think that a party called LABOUR—
I think this is a reasonable conclusion.

Ex-Nazi who still has a Nazi tattoo, that's one thing.

Secret Nazi being planted by the zillionaires as a trick, that's very bad. It's also actually regular US politics. Remember that the Walmart corporation sprang Bill Clinton on us, and he's still around.
It's been a problem for years!
He's not MY Jon Favreau!

Seriously, we do not need TWO Jon Favreaus. We need only one and we know which one that is. And I'm fully assuming there are only two of them because my brain cannot imagine or handle there being more of them
Different Jon Favreau. And apparently worse.
GenX fans of Jon Favreau & Jon Lovitz just double-take at their names either way.
As a fifty-something, my own political understanding has developed a lot, and parts of it embarrassingly late.

I thought Bonaparte was cool for a long time.
Maybe?

I know some pretty iffy veterans.

In a country where people get Sith runes tattooed on themselves to look badass, a Nazi death's-head may not be that strange.

I don't know what to think.
Is it plausible conservative, right wing, fascist iconography in the USA is now just so prevalent, mainstream, common, that some may get tattoos of various symbols without realizing they're fascist, Nazi, right wing, racist symbols? Are that sort so cavalier when it comes to their tats?
Larry Ellison
Larry L-ison
Lɛʀj Lyθsəɾ
Lex Luthor

🤔
Reposted by philippos42
Setting aside The Horror for a quick second, what is even the business strategy here?

They are making their stores actively hostile to and unsafe for the guys who go in to make big bulk materials purchases every day
For folks asking if they've made it *inside* a Home Depot yet as the business has clearly just continued letting agents do whatever they want in their lots, the answer is yes. This is from yesterday in Evanston.
One who seeks to become Lex Luthor does not typically study floor management closely.
Reposted by philippos42
A special edition of Behind the Bastards where a bunch of us actually sneak up behind the bastards and...well you'll have to tune in to find out
Reposted by philippos42
You can't wake them up because they (at best) are only pretending to be sleeping. They're fine with authoritarianism because they're business.

bsky.app/profile/jgbr...
Most people don't realize they spend nearly their whole life existing in anti-democratic systems: family, school, religion, work.

Almost no structures that people interact within provide them a voice that is equal to other voices.
I think the party leadership are fully complicit, but the populace are getting fed up.
"The laws of the Republic do not constrain the god Augustus."

Octavian also wore elevator shoes, oddly enough.
Reposted by philippos42
Once again, one reason Trump says & does whatever he wants is bc every societal institution, including the media, has totally normalized & internalized the idea that the laws, the Constitution, & the international treaties we have signed & ratified simply don’t apply to this one guy. It’s maddening.
No mention at all of the fact that Trump doesn't have the legal authority to do this, that plans haven't even been reviewed (because the office is closed for the government shutdown), that the size and cost estimates keep changing, etc., etc.
Part of White House Is Reduced to Rubble. Trump’s Ballroom Will Rise in Its Place.
www.nytimes.com
Reposted by philippos42
Just because he's acting like he's never leaving is no reason for you to act like he's never leaving.
Oh! The idiot in the Oval Office is tearing up the White House?

Maybe you should have done something about him before now!
Oh no!

Anyway, the country is being run by a man who wants to brutally murder every Latin American, everywhere.

If y'all on the East Coast aren't gonna rise up and overthrow these Nazis, losing your public buildings is the least of what's coming.
Scoop: Trump has started demolishing the White House's East Wing facade to build his ballroom. The president had claimed construction of the $250 million building wouldn’t ‘interfere’ with the existing White House structure. /W @ddiamond.bsky.social wapo.st/4hqBNiU
Reposted by philippos42
The NYT just published a profile of Katherine Boyle of Andreessen Horowitz. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/b... Below is a thread w/ additional info on her. 1/
Reposted by philippos42
There's an ugly aspect to the Monroe doctrine that isn't really dealt with, the idea that the whole continent is America's de jure imperial holdings, wholly subordinate to the US without having any of the protections of the citizens in the imperial core.

1/rant