Abe Sauer

Love that Wisconsin Congressman Orden is essentially lunatic tea party John Slatterly character from 30 Rock.

Imagine being a pilot hunted through 18,000 foot mountains, struggling for breath, and your clown-ass President is tweeting fucking war crimes while his son is making money off gambling whether you’ll live or die on Polymarket.

Just had a call with my accountant about my tax bill. In unrelated news, I am now a Republican.

In a few years, people will pretend they never supported Trump. It’s already happening.

The historical antecedent for this was all the Asia experts who lost their jobs to McCarthyism for telling the truth about Chiang Kai Shek's nationalists being unpopular, incompetent, and cruel, so were not around to advise as America slid into Vietnam. newrepublic.com/post/207857/do…

**I bet if I put the anecdote about shooting my puppy for disobedience in this chapter it'll show that I'm a tough decision maker not weighed down by emotionality**

This might be the bleakest picture of modern American I've ever seen. Should hang in a museum.

About opposition to those Minnesota tab increases. Pick one.

She did all that and still managed to create two restaurant businesses employing dozens of people while York, with a much larger head start, has the same job for decades basically just taking my net fir opinions. Byron's hurt because she's better at Americaning than him.

The New Yorker's art department never misses

it’s going to be really funny when we find out volatility is decreasing rapidly across markets because literally every hedge fund manager is on a glp1 and no longer can take pleasure in risk

@Uncrewed Looks like 13% of dem voters from Nov 2024 #47A turned out while ***blinks*** less than 1% of 2024 47A Republicans did the same? Ouch.

Final results in the Minnesota #HD64A (Harris+71) special election: Meg Luger-Nikolai (DFL)- 95.5% Dan Walsh (R)- 4.5% A 20(!) point overperformance from 2024 for the Democrats in St. Paul!

@DeRushaJ @ryanol It starts out "Hi Brad". That suggests it's him no?

@ryanol I hadn't considered that it was from the white house.. interesting. I assumed "approved by staff" meant his own staff

With the Finstad X post bru-ha-ha... I assume most posts are written by staff, right? Or at least goes through a process? Why are people acting surprised here?

Congratulations to Greg Bovino on his new office.

GOV: We have a housing crisis. Prices are too high. ME: I agree. Supply is too low. GOV: So we have a plan. We’re going to subsidize demand. ME: …What does that mean? GOV: We’re going to give people money to buy houses. ME: But there aren't enough houses. GOV: Right. So we’ll help them bid harder. ME: If you have 10 people fighting for 1 house, and you give them all cash... the price just goes up. GOV: Then we’ll give them more cash. ME: That’s not a solution. That’s inflation. GOV: It’s "First Time Homebuyer Assistance." ME: Okay, let’s back up. Why are houses so expensive in the first place? GOV: Because we made them the perfect investment vehicle. ME: How? GOV: First, the 30-year fixed mortgage. ME: That’s standard, right? GOV: Only in America. In other countries, rates float. Here, you can lock in a low rate for three decades. ME: Why would a bank take that risk? If inflation goes up, they lose money. GOV: Banks don’t take the risk. They sell the loan to us. ME: To the government? GOV: To Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We guarantee the liquidity. ME: So the taxpayer subsidizes the risk so I can have cheap leverage? GOV: Correct. ME: And then I get to deduct the interest? GOV: Only on the first $750,000 of debt. ME: That seems... high. GOV: It used to be a million. We trimmed it. ME: But wait. If I rent, can I deduct my rent? GOV: No. ME: If I buy a small business, can I deduct the interest on the loan? GOV: It’s complicated. ME: But if I buy a giant house, I definitely can? GOV: Absolutely. We wrote it into the tax code. ME: So you’re paying me to borrow money to buy a bigger house than I need. GOV: We’re "incentivizing ownership." ME: What happens when I sell? GOV: The Capital Gains Exclusion! ME: How does that work? GOV: If you sell a stock for a $500,000 profit, you pay taxes. ME: Roughly 20%. GOV: If you sell your house for a $500,000 profit? ME: What do I pay? GOV: Zero. ME: Zero tax? GOV: As long as you lived there for two years. ME: So housing is the only asset class where I get subsidized 30-year leverage and tax-free profits? GOV: Pretty sweet deal, right? ME: So you turned shelter into a speculative financial asset. GOV: We call it "Generational Wealth." ME: Okay, so demand is juiced to the moon. Can we at least build more supply to bring prices down? GOV: Oh, absolutely not. ME: Why? GOV: Zoning. ME: I own land. Can I build a duplex? GOV: Illegal. Single-family only. ME: Can I build a granny flat? GOV: Only if you provide two parking spots and pass a shadow study. ME: So you made it illegal to build cheaper housing? GOV: We protect "Neighborhood Character." ME: But you spend billions on roads and utilities for the suburbs. GOV: Infrastructure investment. ME: So you subsidize the expensive sprawl, but ban the cheap density? GOV: Now you’re getting it. ME: This system seems designed to keep prices high. GOV: It is. ME: But you started this conversation by saying we have an "Affordability Crisis." GOV: We do. Prices are too high! ME: So we should lower them? GOV: No! We can’t lower prices. ME: Why not? GOV: Because then the voters lose their "Generational Wealth." ME: So we need high prices for the voters... and low prices for the buyers? GOV: Exactly. ME: That’s a paradox. GOV: It’s politics. ME: So what is your actual plan? GOV: We’re going to give first-time buyers $25,000. ME: Okay. I’m a seller. I list my house for $400,000. GOV: Uh huh. ME: I know every buyer just got a free $25,000 from the government. GOV: Right. ME: What do I do? GOV: You... keep the price the same? ME: I raise the price to $425,000. GOV: You wouldn't. ME: I absolutely would. The buyer can afford it now. GOV: But that just transfers the subsidy from the poor buyer to the rich seller! ME: Econ 101. GOV: We don’t think that will happen. ME: Just like you didn’t think $7,500 EV credits would make Ford raise the price of the F-150 Lightning by exactly $7,500? GOV: That was a coincidence. ME: You are trapping us in a box. GOV: It’s not a box. ME: What is it? GOV: It’s a Single Family Home with a 2.5% mortgage rate that you can never afford to sell. ME: ... GOV: Welcome to the American Dream.

@plattMSP What this misreads about the kinds of bizes participating is that "community" is one of their products. By participating they are doing brand differentiation. It's a kind of marketing to their base customers. Surprised a biz writer doesn't seem to understand biz.

I wrote a thing about Friday. tcbmag.com/platt-day-of-e…

Big step up from rural Georgia district attorney to US representative at Davis. Congrats.

Shared today by Bev Perry in the Expand Dem Values in the House and Senate Facebook group. I need to say something that's been bothering me for a while, and I'm saying it as a Marine Corps veteran who leans center-right. This isn't partisan. This is observation. We've slow-faded into accepting militarized police as normal, and nobody seems to notice or care. Even as a USMC pilot, I went through six months of infantry training as an officer before flight school. I've worn the gear. The helmet, the tactical vest, the whole kit. And I can tell you from experience, it changes you. There's a psychological shift that happens when you strap that stuff on. You feel different. You carry yourself different. You start seeing the environment differently. In the Marine Corps, that shift was appropriate because it's a combat culture and organization. But these are American streets. American citizens. And we've got law enforcement dressed like they're kicking down doors in Fallujah to serve warrants in suburbia. What happend to high standards and real policing tactics? Think Adam-12...Officers Reed and Malloy. Crisp uniforms. A revolver. A baton. High standards and professionalism. They looked like public servants because they were public servants. They de-escalated. They talked to people. They were part of the community. Now? Tactical gear, beards, ball caps, Oakley sunglasses, sleeve tattoos, and a tactical kit that would make special operators jealous. And we've turned it into a fetish. We celebrate it. We assume that because someone looks hard, they must be a professional. They're not. I loved the Marine Corps. But I'll be honest, I was also blinded by it for a while. Mission first. Unit over everything. And that mentality made sense in that context. But law enforcement doesn't get that critical examination. "Back the Blue" has become a shield against accountability. A blanket assumption that a badge plus gun equals hero. That tactical gear equals competence. It doesn't. Most people who join law enforcement aren't special operators. They're average people who desperately want to belong to something bigger than themselves. I understand that impulse deeply, it's why I joined the Marines. But wanting to belong doesn't make you qualified. Looking the part doesn't mean you can perform under pressure. And wrapping yourself in warrior aesthetics doesn't make you a warrior. Old school law enforcement represented something. Standards. Bearing. Discipline. Professionalism that was demonstrated, not costumed. A revolver and a baton meant you had to rely on your training, your words, your judgment, not overwhelming firepower. What I see now in law enforcement is the costume without the culture. The gear without the training. The authority without the accountability. Are there good people in law enforcement? Of course. I know some personally. But this reflexive "law enforcement can do no wrong" mentality is lazy, dangerous, and intellectually dishonest. A woman is dead. And before we sort ourselves into teams and start assigning blame, maybe we should ask harder questions: Why do we accept a militarized police force as normal? Why do we assume tactical gear equals tactical competence? Why have we let "Back the Blue" become a substitute for actual standards? I wore the uniform. I went through the training. I know what that gear does to your head. It shouldn't be normalized on American streets against American citizens. And we shouldn't pretend everyone wearing it is qualified to carry it. The fact that he called her a “fucking bitch” after he shot her three times should be a huge red flag for all of us.

The ghost of Christopher Hitchens embodying a billionaire really is an ironic twist.

ICE vs ice at 44th and Hiawatha earlier today.