Chris Gittins
@chrisgbedford.bsky.social
320 followers 190 following 890 posts
Scientist turned systems engineer. Pro-democracy, rule of law, and Constitutional government. Town of Bedford, MA Planning Board Member.
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Reposted by Chris Gittins
The so-called Homeland Security Secretary is a corrupt and malignant fraud.

This video she sanctioned is fake.

Manipulated by cowards who hide behind masks while violating the law.
Reposted by Chris Gittins
Oh it’s not appropriate for your program to air the president wearing a crown and shitting on American citizens?

You’ll talk about it in euphemisms? Maybe call it the “crown video” and ignore the shitting part? Because that’s appropriate?

Tell me, was it appropriate for the president to do it?
Reposted by Chris Gittins
as described, this is just murder
With alt text.

Executive summary: the US killed at least 3 Colombian fishermen who’d put up a distress flag. In Colombian waters
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He has a point. I can't remember a SecDef inviting a reporter to their classified Signal chat either.
KARL: Why is the Defense Secretary afraid to interact with journalists who cover him?

JOHNSON: I reject the premise

KARL: The guy has only had 2 briefings and he basically forced the press out

JOHNSON: I can't remember a Secretary of Defense who has been so transparent and out in the open
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The most upsetting part of this story to me is the line where the Times says it is “unclear” where the money came from.

Under our constitution,
it is either extremely clear where money comes from - a congressional appropriation - or an illegal channel. So so, @nytimes.com
"How Santos Won His Freedom"? "Won"? Seriously?
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icarus: just flew in from the sun and boy are my wings fires,,
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“You can win elections by tacking to the middle; lots of people have. But you can also win elections by staking a moral position and convincing people to agree with you. You can earn support by demonstrating what is important to you instead of just being determined to nod along with what you hear.”
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We are going to fucking win
This is what democracy looks like. #NoKings
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notice the general mood of the timeline? how everyone is in a good mood and there’s a lot less misery and dooming? how there’s a lot of “we’re going to beat these assholes”?

anyway that’s why these events are important
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Take note of all these people turning out for protests in small towns in red states.

Remember them the next time you’re inclined to write an area off because “they voted for this.”
Estimating we had about 600 in Bedford. (That's out of 10k voters.) Very positive crowd. No troublemakers. It was a good day.
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Harold Brown to President Carter about false nuclear attack alerts, 1980 (courtesy of Foreign Relations of The U.S.)
Top Secret/Sensitive

This is why you want sensible, steady hands on the wheel.

history.state.gov/historicaldo...
Historical Documents - Office of the Historian
history.state.gov 3.0 shell
history.state.gov
We figure we had about 600 in our suburb northwest of Boston. The crowd was very mellow and positive. No troublemakers. It was a good day.
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Bedford 11:00-1:00 at Veterans Park across from the Whole Foods Plaza.
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🚨 Driving drunk with your kids in the car and thinking that is okay because you are an ICE agent answers all the unasked questions.
One of the teens and I watched Brazil tonight. I hadn't watched it since it came out. Didn't lose any of its impact over time. Fair to say it hit harder now with ICE snatching people off of the street. Its malevolent paper-based bureaucracy being replaced by a real-life digital one also sticks.
Not great that a TRO is necessary to discourage use of excessive force against people exercising their First Amendment rights.
Never mind legalizing 4 units/acres (5?) like they did in VT, even legalizing 2-family homes on those lots would be progress.
2/2 And the intermediate products were not good. Wooden. Prone to cliches. Articulating a vision, even a very modest one, is hard work. theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/re-sourcin...
Re-sourcing the Mind
The Convivial Society: Vol. 5, No.
theconvivialsociety.substack.com
1/2 Developing a stump speech was the most challenging thing about running for local office. I'm a one-on-one conversations person. My thought was to create a "pitch" that integrated the best parts of conversations I recalled. I think I eventually got there but it was really hard.