Cliff Bargar

OBAMA: "Trump is focused on enriching himself & his family/friends. A Venezuelan billionaire wanted a pardon, so he paid a Trump lawyers $50 million — and lo & behold! The pardon falls out of the sky... We’ve never seen a president straight-up grifting on your dime like this."

They both did it, it was a joint effort, it’s one of the crazier things to happen in the national security space (which is really saying something) and every government should be scrambling to reduce dependence on—and as soon as possible get off—Starlink/shield or any Musk product, including the US.

Ossoff: "Maybe you saw that Donald Trump was in Dalton yesterday, oblivious to the collapse of his presidency. A crowd smaller than this one enduring two hours of senile babbling while the price of oil hit its 5 month high"

The next DOJ needs to follow this example for a certain South African businessman who falsified his visa status and has committed a number of election crimes in the recent past

Ossoff: "If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club"

the Vice President of the United States has gone on record citing this man as one of his biggest intellectual influences if you didn't know this, it's probably because for some reason literally no mainstream political media outlets think it's worth mentioning

San Francisco needs a strong transit ally in Congress, not someone who will “hold their nose” when it comes time to advocate for the hundreds of thousands of working people who ride BART, MUNI, and Caltrains every day.

Exactly this. I can respect the position of those who consistently oppose ethno/religious states for any group. But "no Jewish ethnostate" is not that.

It's fascinating to learn how many more kids die in ATV accidents every year than in e-bike accidents, then observing that there is a moral panic about kids riding e-bikes but not about kids riding ATVs.

I was in NC this weekend and had some great bagels from a Jewish bakery next to a mosque down the road from an FBS stadium. This is the America that MAGA wants to take from us

There's a way yesterday's failed attempt to frame up Jack Smith for perjury could've been covered as part of the same story — the deadly serious abuse of the DOJ by Republicans to ruin the lives of who they perceive as political opponents — but instead it was like "EMBARRASSING WHOOPSIE"

Why do people act like Scott Wiener is the only one with agency when it comes to housing? We are here (in a housing shortage), because people like Connie Chan have actively resisted new housing and implementing state law! www.sfchronicle.com/politics/art...

Absolutely scorching endorsement, bringing serious heat for Weiner and against Chan, but a blast furnace at Pelosi for her role in this race and her true reasons for it. Never read an editorial this heated in Chron www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/edit...

it’s genuinely fascinating how establishment democratic politics in big cities has become so ossified and incompetent that they’ve created a huge lane for the left to embrace good government reforms and build a broad coalition of socialists and technocrats

sf.streetsblog.org/2026/09/23/h...

It’s September 21, San Francisco. Time for a little Earth, Wind & Fire. 🎶 And a little emergency prep.

Very quick and dirty Jev test for hiring bias. One resume for a Wall Street job; asked whether the applicant should get a first-round interview. 76 evaluations, changing only the first name. 19 of each: White-associated men/women, Black-associated men/women. console.typesafe.ai/playground?s...

Continued proof that Supervisor/Board President Mandelman is more interested in freezing the City in amber than in finding workable solutions for San Franciscans. Moving up the date for 'amnesty' for nonconforming buildings is probably the laziest possible 'solution' to this problem.

I totally believe that there are alignment issues but I find it implausible that OpenAI can coordinate thousands of agents to solve a Millennium Prize Problem while simultaneously losing control of a bunch of other ones

Saw this on the news last night (visiting some family in MA), I was pleasantly surprised to see @wcvb5.bsky.social taking a story on cyclist safety this seriously - I don't think that's common for local TV news. (cc @thewaroncars.bsky.social @theoverheadwire.com)

Rockwell's depictions of Roosevelt's Four Freedoms (shown at the Norman Rockwell Museum) are possibly more relevant today than ever

This will devastate our research+innovation capacity, bedrock of the 21st century economy. 35% of *all* employed people in the US with STEM PhD degrees are both foreign-born *and* graduated from a US university. —> nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/292... Shutting them out is extremist folly.

The funny thing about this is that Mamdani is without question a bigger YIMBY than Lurie, but Preston just likes Mamdani's vibe more. www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s...

gallego is already saying we need to bulldoze the arch and he’s right

Racking up almost $1m in citations over a year and a half in just one city seems like a sure sign that Waymo isn't ready to scale

Could @kqednews.kqed.org really not find anyone more persuasive than this guy from the Hoover Institute to interview? I'm still leaning No on the billionaire tax but listening to this pushed me closer to Yes www.kqed.org/news/1209787...

Some potentially high ROI spending would be to boost these into Trump's view and get him to put these Republicans on blast on Truth Social

Welcome to Bluesky. Please familiarize yourself with the following accounts to understand the range of opinions it is acceptable to express.

"I was not shocked that he helped somebody. My shock is that he was murdered. And no one has given us the complete truth or anyone has been held accountable. And it's been 7 months! ... there was more effort in vilifying him than pursuing justice" -- Alex Pretti's parents

Massive L for @colorado.gov

What this doesn’t say—but everybody in SF politics does—is Pelosi is suspected to be backing Chan largely out of pique that Weiner announced running to succeed her before Pelosi could essentially hand her seat to her daughter: www.sfchronicle.com/politics/joe...

both Jon Ossoff and Chris Van Hollen have been opposed by AIPAC and backed by the much less awful J Street, but Ossoff is Jewish while Van Hollen isn’t so guess who gets the Evil Red Monochrome background

Lying, thieving, grifting, law-breaking, constitution-shattering fascist murderers are furious that someone suggested the adjudicated rapist of a president who's been linked to a pedophile sex trafficking ring might be wasting too much time lounging about on his luxury plane with an aide.

Great piece, this also applies to people and communities who consider themselves apolitical/nonpolitical. They may think that they can ignore Musk’s politics, or be unaffected by it, but even for those primarily on Twitter for technical discussions they engage a very skewed portion of the population

New Public Comment on the self-interested case for quitting X publiccomment.blog/p/it-is-past...

Not only does this scheme sound stupid but it’s also apparently corrupt

This is a good example of something that is entirely political (the government dislikes higher ed and foreign people) and has large economic impacts but will get less attention than "woke one" from our pundit class.

Another great episode from @99pi.org. I visited HK for the first time this spring and bamboo is everywhere. It's sad to see this as another instance of erasure of HK's culture.

They openly admit their election crimes & are actively doing everything they can to undermine & outright steal the Midterm Elections. Any surprise he fired the remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission? He knows if he loses he's headed for a 3rd Impeachment & an orange jumpsuit. 🤞 👍

Amidst a housing affordability crisis, there is legislation moving through City Hall right now to arbitrarily double the number of historical landmarks and make it harder to build housing, and put us at risk of violating state law. www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/arti...

One more interesting point: this spring I sat down with Sharyn Alfonsi of 60 Minutes for an extensive interview about my Epstein investigation. Subsequently, CBS pulled the segment and fired the reporter. The MAGA buyout of media has unquestionably aided the Trump administration’s cover up here.

We are so cooked

To be clear: Senate Republicans are caving on a deal that gives Donald Trump and his family immunity from tax audits potentially worth $100 million.

Kinda wild that @jamellebouie.net is the only person saying this clearly in a high-profile media outlet, but I'm so glad he is.

Only in Marin

There is one candidate running for Congress in SF with a fully fletched out policy platform on how to fix federal funding for transit AND housing. We can choose competence or we can choose virtue signalling this November. We'll likely live with the choice for 20+ years.