It occurred to me to take on this topic when everyone in Portland’s No Kings march looked beautiful. Lodged in my mind all week has been how three pressurized years might play about so many Oregonian faces.
Yet another reason we why we need to slow this thing down quickly, before the bunker’s built.
More than once since summer, my sister has asked why I am looking so handsome. My response is that I’ve been practicing.
It’s said as a joke, but kind of is not.
Beyond Grandma Geneva’s genes and a strict orgasm and cannabis regimen, I’m looking great because I am not trippin’ off the losers who are presently on top. Live it up, assholes is my message to the entire clique of demented zealots at the heart of Trump’s bullshit operation.
Since their home stadium was rented out to memorialize Charlie Kirk, the Arizona Cardinals have gone oh-and-five.
If I end up wrong I’ll go out smiling, because I never bowed down to MAGA. (How soul-dead do you imagine Tim Apple is right now?) Researching WCS and writing it to you each week and engaging your post-publication thoughts is the handsome practice.
(All-) American Beauty
Quarterback Dante Moore shows off the Grateful Dead-inspired unis that will be worn by the Ducks of Oregon tomorrow, when the sixth-ranked squad hosts Wisconsin.
I don’t even look that great right now. My clothes suck and I am only in the ballpark of fitness. (Editor’s note: Parking lot of fitness; we’ve seen him nude.) Illuminating you freely is my fountain of youth.
Before Chauncey so rudely interrupted…
There was a Trail Blazers point to be made about the previously most compelling feature of the young Portland season.
However awkwardly.
Dip into our fully intersectional podcast ep. The episode is free, wide-ranging, and contains roughly five laugh-aloud moments.
10 Like tonal verité for football truths
This pair of relatively bright young men is so fucked up about football. They contradict and out themselves right and left. But that doesn’t make this poor podcasting.
The opposite turns out to be true. Listening to smart fellas who get that the football is a version of “safer cigarettes” struggle with why they still watch is amazing.
IRL there’s too much going on for most to think about the brain trauma we’re watching play out, never mind talking about it.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Dom Foxworth cites Shane Tamura, that Vegas casino worker who drove to Manhattan to shoot up NFL, thinking he had CTE from amateur football. Tamara killed a security guard and then himself.
That young QB above in the Nike Dead gear has likely been concussed multiple times. Dante Moore has only begun to get concussed, as next year he’ll likely be playing on the league’s least competent franchise.
Lil Hit
A Salt Lake City trucker has the Whites House in court over a disgusting new rule that prevents immigrants with legal work authorization from getting commercial driver’s licenses.
KATV
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If you stay ready…
… you don’t have to get ready.
9 Trump’s busts America’s most progressive league, in least favorite town
Sounds like a new opportunity to criminalize, the likes of which we’ve never seen.
If only our authoritarian times would allow me to view Thursday’s breaking NBA gambling scandal though innocent eyes—if the president’s penchant for stagecraft didn’t make even the press conference timing feel like hype—I could maybe get down to the business of judging Chauncey Billups, who is now on leave from his Trail Blazers head coaching gig.
That’s not where we live though.
Media Outlet
The FBI has brought a complex, three-part case. The Billups piece alone could be its own Ocean’s 11-meets-mob movie piece.
Basketball is our most nuanced sport. I don’t trust the Whites House to not make political theater of these cases. (I don’t even trust them to distinguish a charge from a block.) Tanking isn’t wholly disapproved of, for starters.
For a quick and resonant insight on NBA gambling culture, peep the Untold documentary Shooting Guards.
I honestly think Trump may try to discredit the NBA, shortly before he votes to extract jazz from the national fabric. MMA would benefit.
Lil Hit
Mayor Daniel Lurie is credited with talking POTUS out an SF invasion. Meanwhile servile turncoat CEO Marc Benioff is down to his most butt-sniffing sycophants to lunch with.
San Francisco Standard
8 No Kings Trump-dump said too much
This professor and historian observes that “the country’s political and media ecosystem treated a sitting president’s fantasy of defecating on citizens as if it were entertainment.”
But this video of King Trump shitting on protestors mirrors the leaked Young Republican chats where party operatives let loose Jew-gassing fantasies as well as those about burning Black people and torturing LGBTQ community members.
“What those men whisper and masturbate to in private, Trump performs from the cockpit,” writes Patton.
When Kenny Loggins demanded the removal of his song “Danger Zone” from the video, the Whites House didn’t issue a formal statement. Instead, officials circulated a Racist X meme of “a crying woman, taunting critics and signaling that they found the outrage amusing.”
Lil Hit
ICE and US Border Patrol tapped into Washington surveillance data from 18 agencies to obtain immigrant information.
Spokesman-Review
The Full Herb Caen
LA Taco is selling baseball caps that let’s Dodgers fans root, “while also not providing more money to pendejo billionaires to invest in private prisons and detention centers,” which is an acceptable compromise, I suppose…
Reporters have got to stop leaning on the shock value of calling Whites House transgressions being “unprecedented,” as precedent is yesterday’s concern…
It is cool, however, to use “unprecedented” in describing the unfunny doings on SNL…
Look up Jean Doumanian’s catastrophic season for the closest comp…
I respect the hell out John Oliver for putting out 20 minutes on the Air Bud franchise last Sunday, a follow-up to 15 awesome 2022 minutes that nobody asked for…
7 Respect Portland zoning, no matter what
By the time you read this, a judge may have already decided that Washington is allowed to send troops into Portland, because reason and law are there stuff of implanted dreams that Trump Insurance will have removed at a low, low price in 2029.
Amirite?!
In the off chance that a more optimistic outcome results in court today—or even if it doesn’t—let’s take note of Portland’s ingenious use of zoning law to repel ICE. May other municipalities use their local ordinances so creatively.
Streetsblog
The unabashedly fascist president has aimed to deploy National Guard troops to cities run by Democrats, arguing they are needed to protect immigration enforcement operations, put down protests, and fight crime. Fuck that nigga.
Lil Hit
Women’s professional baseball is coming to for American cities, and San Francisco is one of them.
Go Magazine
Reach back beyond a century…
…and maybe you will find an SF free of wokeness. Can you imagine how awful that version must have been?
6 Understand The South, get a grip on MAGA. Period.
When Tressie McMillan says 47 invested himself in southern value, the three southerners podcasting with her nod in agreement. And I didn’t fully get what she meant.
After listening through though? I absolutely dig where she’s coming from.
NY Times (The Opinions)
“In addition to the political and cultural piece, I would identify the economic agenda of this GOP as a kind of national vision for what The South has been,” chimes in Jamelle Bouie, “of weak or no rights for labor, right of surveillance, of control, of low wages, of low services… of not just low taxes for those who already have wealth and privilege, but for their right to dominate the entire economic and political sphere.”
Lil Hit
Portland’s new WNBA franchise has a new coach, and she’s a 30 year-old Brit.
The Oregonian
‘No Kings’ cool down
Last Saturday in Portland, post protest.
Caen You Ever Forgive Me?
No way are we seeing Michael Jordan on his NBA pregame gig again before Thanksgiving…
Referring to evil actions as merely strange or weird is a shameful way to be complicit…
Since their home stadium was rented out for the Charlie Kirk Memorial, the Arizona Cardinals are 0-5…
The Sandusky High School head basketball coach wept in front of me when I was the team’s equipment manager…
The Barstool Era, brave-enough-to-court-racism-allegations talk-media personality is upon us, and I have my eye on the revived career of Draft Kings’ Dave Dameshek…
Is it my imagination or is White America adopting Black English—Ebonics—faster than ever?
Still more of our widely-unacknowledged contributions…
5 Why are Oregon’s senators so effective?
On Tuesday and Wednesday you might have heard Senator Jeff Merkley giving that historically long speech, reminding a nation that the imperfect lifestyle that it’s been accustomed to is slipping into a viciously-segregated country club culture.
Thanks to the state’s other representative in the Senate, one day earlier Jamie Dimon got raked over the coals of BlueSky, where reasonable people exercise their attention spans.
Ron Wyden BlueSky / Politico
Treasury Secretary Bessent is sitting on a massive Epstein file containing thousands more bank documents that would help us continue to follow the money through his sex trafficking ring.“
Meanwhile, Merkeley listened to the people at his town halls and took away that he needed to maximize his platform. It’s all about us, not DC’s Trojan horse.
Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff need to maximize and represent, as do Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. Demand it.
Lil Hit
Credit the Buster Posey for going outside the box and choosing a hot young leader from the University of Tennessee to lead the listless Giants.
ESPN
4 NSPM-7 and the Antifa cases coming your way
In September and on the heels of August’s Texas ICE facility attack, the Whites House weaponized the government yet another degree by designating Antifa a terrorist group.
We saw just how far in the chamber of corporate culture this corrupt, malleable idea has gotten when CNN cut off Cali progressive organizer Saikat Chakrabarti for mentioning National Security Presidential Memorandum 7.
The Take (Al Jazeera)
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