Steve Casburn
scasburn.bsky.social
Steve Casburn
@scasburn.bsky.social
750 followers 550 following 1.5K posts
Librarian. Data analyst. Music lover. Native of Benicia, California. Now in Portland, Oregon. Stops in Ohio and Texas along the way. May Bluesky change the world rather than the world change Bluesky.
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Just to plant my flag in the earth on this point:

If my posts to Bluesky are in any way making your life worse, then please block me. I'm begging you to go ahead. I want to be shut out of your life if I'm somehow making it worse. You deserve better.
A thousand apologies for overlooking the alt-text, which should have been: “A street mural shows the cartoon character Cold Miser celebrating Christmas with ice cream sundaes.”
An early Merry Christmas from war-torn Portland, Oregon. [[Photo taken on the 100 block of Southeast 3rd Avenue (October 25, 2025).]]
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man, the whistles are *very* effective
More from the scene
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ok where do i get this
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While pretending to deplore it, this administration has been basically doing everything possible to calculatedly provoke violence against ICE agents as a pretext for ratcheting up brutality.
When ICE comes to Philly it’s going to be brutal
Portland resists with whimsical improv theater, Chicago resists by screaming at weird jagoffs that don’t belong in the neighborhood. Every city brings its own strengths to the fight
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Hope is not a sentimental optimism that things will somehow work out; hope is the subversive conviction that injustice and death will not have the final word and acting on that belief. Hope is not passive waiting it’s active persistence. Hope prays, peacefully protests, weeps, and keeps showing up.
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i really resent the continued assertion that there’s so much anger on both sides, as if the causes of the anger are equally legitimate. we’re angry because masked maniacs are violently snatching our family and neighbors off the street, and they’re angry because we’re calling them out for it.
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Bannon says that Trump is an"instrument of divine will." In other words he's been ordained by God.

Just don't say that we don't have a Kings in America. That makes you a terrorist-loving Commie.
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Americans have no rights that a federal agent is bound to respect.
Trump flunkie Todd Blanche says it's a crime for states to hold violent ICE thugs responsible for their crimes. He is wrong.
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A Canadian friend of ours with US citizenship who’s lived in the country for decades is worried about attending protests for exactly this reason.
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This is what fascism is folks. They're kidnapping and disappearing people and telling us it's a crime to oppose it.
“The use of force that I’ve seen has been exemplary — the least amount of force necessary to accomplish the mission,” Bovino told @cbsnews.com Friday. “If someone strays into a pepper ball, then that’s on them. Don’t protest and don’t trespass.”
FULL STORY: U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis ordered Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who has led a series of increasingly aggressive raids across Chicago and the suburbs, to appear in her courtroom in person at 10 a.m. Tuesday. @wttw.bsky.social
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I detest this framing. Most men aren’t running for Senate. Thats *literally* the prerequisites for the job. Doing politics and being a Senator are two very different things.

I don’t love presuming that men need to be handled with children’s gloves. Men can handle being told when they fuck up
Graham Platner to @daveweigel.bsky.social:
"How do you expect to win back men when you go back through somebody’s Reddit history and just pull it all out and say: ‘Oh, my God, this person has no right to ever be in politics?’"

DSCC Chair Gillibrand: “It’s up to the voters of Maine to decide.”
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What gets me about this line is the entitlement.

There are so many more ways to “be in politics” than “become a US senator.”
Graham Platner to @daveweigel.bsky.social:
"How do you expect to win back men when you go back through somebody’s Reddit history and just pull it all out and say: ‘Oh, my God, this person has no right to ever be in politics?’"

DSCC Chair Gillibrand: “It’s up to the voters of Maine to decide.”
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If you have to lie to make your point, you don’t have a good one.

People responded completely differently to the Reddit posts and the tattoo, which is a result of the fact that there is a big difference between posting comments on the internet and inscribing a symbol on one’s body for decades.
Establishment Democrats spent a full year complaining the Left forced them to be “woke.”

But then a left populist, Graham Platner, threatened to win in Maine, so they went right back to trying to cancel someone over old internet posts.
Democrats Cynically Wield “Wokeness” Against Graham Platner
Establishment Democrats spent a full year complaining the Left forced them to be “woke.” But then a left populist, Graham Platner, threatened to win in Maine, so they went right back to trying to cancel someone over old internet posts.
jacobin.com
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"Don't protest"

-A Law Enforcement Officer employed by these United States
“The use of force that I’ve seen has been exemplary — the least amount of force necessary to accomplish the mission,” Bovino told @cbsnews.com Friday. “If someone strays into a pepper ball, then that’s on them. Don’t protest and don’t trespass.”
FULL STORY: U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis ordered Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who has led a series of increasingly aggressive raids across Chicago and the suburbs, to appear in her courtroom in person at 10 a.m. Tuesday. @wttw.bsky.social
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poor areas of the country are poor by national standards BECAUSE their most influential people are republicans
The trend is real, but this NYT analysis at the Congressional district level has big ecological bias

Poor *areas* vote Republican, but it's often the richer *individuals* within those poorer areas that are most Republican

And many poor *individuals* rich blue urban *areas* vote Dem
In 1999, John Peel made a list of 400 recorded musical tracks from the 20th century, four from each year.

Here is track #89 (1922).
My Word You Do Look Queer, spoken & sung by Ernest Hastings
YouTube video by Paul Harrison
www.youtube.com
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Look, it's just an unnamed foreign national paying the army's salaries. What's the worst that could happen?
“The department declined to answer questions about whether the donor is an American citizen or a foreign national.” Jesus Fucking Christ
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With all the things currently going wrong in this country, Democrats are *insanely* incompetent if they can't work this into ads.

Mention a problem.
Play this Leavitt clip.
Mention another problem.
Play this Leavitt clip again.
Mention another problem.
Play this Leavitt clip again, etc., etc.
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I grew up on a Marine base and around Marines and have spent a decade on the Community Assistance Panel at the CDC literally representing the Marine Corps community and this push to say all Marines just play around with Nazi symbols is simply wrong in my experience with Marines.
my brother has a SS tattoo on his body.

you read that right. a literal SS.

he was a 'S'cout 'S'niper. Marines often used the flag, yes the flag youre probably thinking of, as their own symbol in group pics.

as he told me many times "we take our enemy's symbols. just be glad you dont understand."
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William Faulkner is often attributed for saying, "to understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi."

Brandon Friedman says, "to understand America today, you must first watch The Twilight Zone, S3E8, 'It's a Good Life,' starring a young Donald Trump as Anthony."
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Hes going to dig a big ass hole get the entire Republican Party to defend it and then just die. A kind of a metaphor
The more I think about the Epstein Ballroom and the big dumb Arch, the less this feels like a guy intending to stick around and the more it feels like a guy desperately attempting to secure a legacy.