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davidwfortin.bsky.social
Dave Fortin
@davidwfortin.bsky.social
740 followers 880 following 4.2K posts
History teacher in Philadelphia. APUSH, AP Govt, AP Euro. Dogfather. Irish dance dad. STL Cards, Blues, and STLCity fan. Army vet (Gulf War). Notre Dame alum. Gen X. "The air tasted of lies.” S. De Beauvoir
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davidwfortin.bsky.social
Dave Fortin @davidwfortin.bsky.social · Aug 19
Rewatching "The Watchers of the Skies" which is a hard but beautiful film on genocide. Rafael Lemkin quote:

"It is not the cargo of a vessel that is at stake, but humanity with its spiritual heritage in which the whole world partakes."

youtu.be/1e0HFCKcVhc?...
Watchers of the Sky Official Trailer 1 (2014) - Documentary HD
YouTube video by Rotten Tomatoes Indie
youtu.be
davidwfortin.bsky.social
This one highlights the absurdity of ICE detention centers and deportation flights. At a time when federal $$$ is being taken from USAID or health care, we still have money for flying deportees all over the world. There's no economic utility in this--it's just about the cruelty.
Hannah Arendt QOTD from The Origins of Totalitarianism: “The incredibility of the horrors is closely bound up with their economic uselessness. The Nazis carried this uselessness to the point of open anti-utility when in the midst of the war, despite the shortage of building material and rolling stock, they set up enormous, costly extermination factories and transported millions of people back and forth. In the eyes of a strictly utilitarian world the obvious contradiction between these acts and military expediency gave the whole enterprise an air of mad unreality. This atmosphere of madness and unreality, created by an apparent lack of purpose, is the real iron curtain which hides all forms of concentration camps from the eyes of the world. Seen from outside, they and the things that happen in them can be described only in images drawn from a life after death, that is, a life removed from earthly purposes.”
November 30, 2025 at 5:13 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
@lyndonbajohnson.bsky.social Houston beating Baylor is a good thing.
November 30, 2025 at 4:50 AM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
Just back from seeing Penn State at Rutgers---enjoyed Rutgers' old school stadium (except for the constantly on jumbotron)...
November 30, 2025 at 4:20 AM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
Hannah Arendt QOTD from The Origins of Totalitarianism: “Forced labor as a punishment is limited as to time and intensity. The convict retains his rights over his body; he is not absolutely tortured and he is not absolutely dominated. Banishment banishes only from one part of the world to another part of the world, also inhabited by human beings; it does not exclude from the human world altogether. Throughout history slavery has been an institution within a social order; slaves were not, like concentration-camp inmates, withdrawn from the sight and hence the protection of their fellow men; as instruments of labor they had a definite price and as property a definite value. The concentration camp inmate has no price, because he can always be replaced; nobody knows to whom he belongs, because he is never seen. From the point of view of normal society he is absolutely superfluous, although in times of acute labor shortage, as in Russia and in Germany during the war, he is used for work.”
November 28, 2025 at 5:41 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
“You’ll be visited by three spirits.”

The three spirits:
November 28, 2025 at 5:21 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
Father Graf is a parish priest in Chicago Heights and is walking from Pope Leo’s boyhood home to the Statue of Liberty. He’s a member of Priests for Justice for Immigrants

www.witf.org/2025/11/19/c...
Chicago priest walks across Pennsylvania during 800-mile protest against immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump | WITF
Gary Graf — or Father Gary, as he calls himself — started walking in Dolton, Illinois, at Pope Leo XIV’s childhood home. Over the last five […]
www.witf.org
November 28, 2025 at 12:22 AM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
I used a dry rub on the bird last night and wiped it off today the covered the Bird with butter and it’s excellent
November 27, 2025 at 9:33 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
T-Day is a little weird for me because 35 years ago I was in the middle of a 36-hour all-nighter in Manheim, Germany loading our equipment on trains for Bremerhaven for the Gulf War. I can’t believe it’s been 35 years!
November 27, 2025 at 8:44 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
Washington’s Thanksgiving proclamation for November 26, 1789:
November 27, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Reposted by Dave Fortin
rubenbolling.bsky.social
This week’s comic now up on @dailykos.com
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Hollingsworth Hound reveals who’s really the cause of the housing crisis. And you won’t believe who it is!
¡Ay, Caramba!
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www.dailykos.com/stories/2025...
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug's Hollingsworth Hound explains the housing crisis
Two-Week Black-Friday Sale on signed Tom the Dancing Bug books! �Get your loved ones a Holiday Six-Pak or a Super Fun Two-Pak! Info here . Please join the team that makes it possible for your ...
www.dailykos.com
November 27, 2025 at 3:52 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
www.politico.com/news/2025/11...
AI gives coal plants a lifeline as Trump makes them dirtier
At least 15 coal-fired plants are being kept online to power artificial intelligence as the administration rolls back pollution rules.
www.politico.com
November 27, 2025 at 3:32 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
The segment of OofT I'm working through is on concentration camps and is not easy reading. As we celebrate T-Day---that GW declared in thanks for our Constitution--let's give thanks that we're not where Arendt discusses in her book.....yet...
Hannah Arendt QOTD from The Origins of Totalitarianism: “There are no parallels to the life in the concentration camps. Its horror can never be fully embraced by the imagination for the very reason that it stands outside of life and death. It can never be fully reported for the very reason that the survivor returns to the world of the living, which makes it impossible for him to believe fully in his own past experiences. It is as though he had a story to tell of another planet, for the status of the inmates in the world of the living, where nobody is supposed to know if they are alive or dead, is such that it is as though they had never been born. Therefore all parallels create confusion and distract attention from what is essential. Forced labor in prisons and penal colonies, banishment, slavery, all seem for a moment to offer helpful comparisons, but on closer examination lead nowhere.”
November 26, 2025 at 11:33 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
@lyndonbajohnson.bsky.social nuts up and down the political ladder
robertdownen.bsky.social Robert Downen @robertdownen.bsky.social · 4d
A prominent Texas Republican is running for Railroad Commission in order to fight the "Islamic invasion." He's vying for a seat vacated by a former commissioner, who is now running for Texas Comptroller on a vow to protect girls' sports.

The latest on Texas' (increasingly Islamophobic) primaries:
What Does the Railroad Commision Have to Do With “Radical Islam”? Everything, One Candidate Says
Tarrant County GOP chair Bo French, known for his incendiary online presence, recently tendered his resignation to seek a position on the regulatory body that oversees the oil-and-gas industry.
www.texasmonthly.com
November 26, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Reposted by Dave Fortin
vulture.com
Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’
Even God Is Worried About ChatGPT
Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’
www.vulture.com
November 26, 2025 at 3:10 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
This is VERY good highlighting the assets that have been deployed in the Caribbean and what it all might mean from Evan Ellis at the US Army War College:\

stories.theconversation.com/tracking-the...
We've tracked the US military build-up in the Caribbean. Here's what it could do
The world's largest warship is now patrolling the Caribbean north of Venezuela. It carries 4,000 US sailors and 75 fighter jets. We've been tracking it for the past week.
stories.theconversation.com
November 26, 2025 at 3:55 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
theconversation.com/as-us-hunger...
As US hunger rises, Trump administration’s ‘efficiency’ goals cause massive food waste
Despite the administration’s claim of streamlining the government to make its operations more efficient, a range of recent federal policies have, in fact, exacerbated food wastage.
theconversation.com
November 26, 2025 at 3:41 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
Philly
November 25, 2025 at 10:55 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
Hannah Arendt QOTD from The Origins of Totalitarianism: “It is the appearance of some radical evil, previously unknown to us, that puts an end to the notion of developments and transformations of qualities. Here, there are neither political nor historical nor simply moral standards but, at the most, the realization that something seems to be involved in modern politics that actually should never be involved in politics as we used to understand it, namely all or nothing—all, and that is an undetermined infinity of forms of human living-together, or nothing, for a victory of the concentration-camp system would mean the same inexorable doom for human beings as the use of the hydrogen bomb would mean the doom of the human race.”
November 25, 2025 at 2:53 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
Gift link for those of you who make green bean casserole for thanksgiving

share.inquirer.com/No6464
The green bean casserole, an iconic Thanksgiving side dish with a N.J. connection, turns 70 this year
To celebrate the green bean casserole, the inventor’s family ordered a six-foot inflatable lawn decoration for their home in Haddonfield.
share.inquirer.com
November 25, 2025 at 3:17 AM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
Hannah Arendt QOTD from The Origins of Totalitarianism: “In any event, the fearful imagination has the great advantage to dissolve the sophistic-dialectical interpretations of politics which are all based on the superstition that something good might result from evil. Such dialectical acrobatics had at least a semblance of justification so long as the worst that man could inflict upon man was murder. But, as we know today, murder is only a limited evil. The murderer who kills a man—a man who has to die anyway—still moves within the realm of life and death familiar to us; both have indeed a necessary connection on which the dialectic is founded, even if it is not always conscious of it. The murderer leaves a corpse behind and does not pretend that his victim has never existed; if he wipes out any traces, they are those of his own identity, and not the memory and grief of the persons who loved his victim; he destroys a life, but he does not destroy the fact of existence itself.”
November 24, 2025 at 5:21 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
Here's some more "lawfare" for Jim Jordan to investigate. I'm sure he'll get right on this...
peark.es George Pearkes @peark.es · 6d
latest sham investigation just dropped
Department of War 🇺🇸 @DeptofWar OFFICIAL STATEMENT: The Department of War has received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.). In accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. § 688, and other applicable regulations, a thorough review of these allegations…
November 24, 2025 at 5:12 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
Just spent two hours with the 13 year old going through my playlists and her adding things to Spotify that I play in the car.....every time she yelled "I love that song" to my 80s stuff made me smile inwardly knowing that our music is better than today's....
November 23, 2025 at 7:01 PM
Reposted by Dave Fortin
chrisgeidner.bsky.social
BREAKING: Federal judge rejects DOJ's effort to subpoena the names and medical records of children who have received gender-affirming medical care from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA IN RE: SUBPOENA NO. 25-1431-014 : MISCELLANEOUS ACTION : : NO. 25-39 MEMORANDUM KEARNEY,J. November 21, 2025 Our elected Congresspersons granted the Department of Justice limited authority in 1996 to investigate federal health care offenses involving the labeling and distribution of prescription drugs. The Department of Justice is now investigating the labeling and distribution of prescribed clinically authorized puberty blockers and hormone therapy. It subpoenaed fifteen categories of records from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia including billing and insurance records, communications with manufacturers and sales representatives, and the names and complete medical and psychological records of children receiving gender-affirming care. The Hospital agrees to produce most of the requested materials. But it objects to producing the identities of its child patients and their families along with their confidential medical files. Its objection requires we study two questions: whether Congress authorized a subpoena for the children's confidential medical records, and, if so, whether the children's privacy interests outweigh the Department of Justice's need for these confidential medical records under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. We find the answer to both questions is "no." We strike the three requests for these child- identifying and treatment and disclosure records as beyond the authority granted by Congress. We also find, even if this private information could be relevant, the heightened privacy interests of children and their families substantially outweighs the Department's need to know the children's names, addresses, and treatment along with disclosures for gender-affirming care at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
November 21, 2025 at 10:26 PM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
Gift link: Gordon Wood on American identity:

www.wsj.com/opinion/why-...
Opinion | Why America Is a ‘Creedal Nation’
The distinguished historian says the U.S. isn’t like other nations and never has been. There is no American ethnicity to back up the state.
www.wsj.com
November 23, 2025 at 3:18 AM
davidwfortin.bsky.social
What could possibly go wrong?

www.politico.com/news/magazin...
The Strange and Totally Real Plan to Blot Out the Sun and Reverse Global Warming
A 25-person startup is developing technology to block the sun and turn down the planet’s thermostat. The stakes are huge — and the company and its critics say regulations need to catch up.
www.politico.com
November 23, 2025 at 2:47 AM