iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

We can thank the Iran War for one thing, at least: this year we haven't had to listen to Trump whining about how he ought to win the Nobel Peace Prize

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

The SCOTUS majority is colluding with Trump to sow chaos in the midterm elections. There won't be time before the elections to vet and reinstate people wrongly dropped from the new "state citizenship" lists. And the USPS is totally unequipped to play its designated role in this farce

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

The stock market keeps hitting record highs because investors believe AI is going to boost corporate profits by killing off millions and millions of jobs

001 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

The last three presidential elections were all won by the candidate from the party that didn't control the presidency, which suggests that if anybody has been trying to steal elections, they've been doing a really crappy job

000 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

The birthright citizenship case was really about whether the plain words of the Constitution still have any meaning. Three justices said they don't, and a fourth (Kavanaugh) based his vote supporting the majority on a law enacted by Congress, not the Constitution

000 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

You can't help but wonder if the SCOTUS majority in the Trump v. Slaughter case ever heard of the concept of checks and balances

000 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Trump's "Iran deal" is just a plan to talk about developing some future plan with as-yet-to-be-determined details. The Strait of Hormuz had always been open before he started this war. So he's just gilding a nothingburger turd in his usual fashion

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Trump "settles" his own bogus lawsuit by giving all his family members immunity from IRS investigations and creating a nearly $2 billion slush fund he can disburse however he chooses. The corruption and self-dealing here are mind-boggling in their scope and brazenness

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Calling it discrimination to protect groups from discrimination happens only in SCOTUS and Alice's Wonderland

000 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

In The Totally Unsurprising News Dept.: Corporations passed tariffs on to consumers. Now the corporations are getting their tariff payments refunded, and consumers are getting zero

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Somebody should have told Viktor Orbán that an endorsement from J. D. Vance is the kiss of death

000 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

So let me see if I have this right: after a month of war and Trump's threats of war crimes and genocide, we're back more or less where we were before all this started--the Strait of Hormuz is open again, and a different but arguably more extreme group of hardliners is ruling Iran

000 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

How To Tell If You Have a Mad King #37: Does he try to persuade people that war crimes are grand and glorious things?

000 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Trump doesn't seem to grasp the concept of a mutual defense alliance. In a MDA, the members agree to come to the aid of a fellow member who's attacked by an outside power. They haven't agreed to join any member who starts a war by attacking an outside power

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

In a war, it's always so annoying when the enemy refuses to fight in the manner that would be easiest and most convenient for your side

000 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

RIP the metaverse. And thank heavens--if Big Tech had succeeded in creating fully immersible virtual worlds you could adjust to suit your whims and desires, who would ever have wanted to deal with the real world again?

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

The lesson Trump has still never learned: if you treat people like shit, they won't rush forward to help you when you need it

041 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

It's always interesting how gas prices go up really fast when crude oil goes up, but come down really slowly when crude oil comes down

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

The Epstein Files make it plain that concepts from gender studies are crucial for analyzing how economic and political power operate in contemporary society. Gender studies should be required in schools and colleges, not banned

000 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Iranian protesters just got burned/massacred by believing Trump's promises that he would protect them. I'm dubious how willing they're going to be to trust him again

000 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Really looking forward to the State of Trump speech tonight

100 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Trump's policies on climate change and Kennedy's policies on vaccines read like a multipart suicide note

110 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

The stream of blatant, undiluted racism emanating from the White House these days (courtesy of D Trump, S Miller, et al) is something to behold

000 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Get ready for lots of posts saying that the big snowstorm that's heading toward NYC is all Mamdani's fault

100 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Nothing the US might gain by forcibly seizing Greenland could come close to compensating for the destruction of the NATO alliance that has kept member states out of war in Europe for the past 80 years. Vladimir Putin is chortling with glee at the prospect

020 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

If you don't want to be compared to the Gestapo, don't act like the Gestapo

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

There's a good reason why the rules of war forbid disguising military aircraft as civilian planes--once you start doing that, every civilian airplane looks like a potential military threat, and becomes a potential target

020 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

"Only time will tell" how long the US will be involved in trying to control Venezuela--now there's an encouraging statement, with powerful Iraq and Afghanistan vibes

020 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Because regime change has always worked out so well for us in the past

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

Planes and then missiles made battleships totally obsolete starting 90 years ago. Sitting-duck "Trump Class" battleships are the last thing we should be spending billions of dollars on

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Trump isn't even very good at trolling anymore

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Wtf, SCOTUS? Some legal provisions are obscure or ambiguous, but birthright citizenship is not one of them. Its meaning and application have been clear and consistent from the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 right up to the present

021 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Trump's "peace plan" for the Russia-Ukraine war rewards the instigator, punishes the innocent victim, and prepares the way for further Russian aggression toward its neighbors in the future

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

It shouldn't be surprising in the slightest that when idealists become billionaires, their ideals tend to get swamped by anxieties about preserving their wealth and power

020 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

I hate to break it to you, moderate Dem senators, but the deal you just made with the Republicans is a meaningless gesture--now that the pressure to end the government shutdown is gone, no Republican is going to vote to continue the ACA subsidies

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

When Dem candidates respond to their base good things happen

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

A "Let Them Eat Cake" moment for our times: Trump hosts a lavish "Great Gatsby"-themed party at Mar-a-Lago hours before tens of millions of Americans are going to have their SNAP benefits terminated

220 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

So for 2026, the US will allow only 7,500 international refugees to enter the country, most or all of them white South Africans. Stephen Miller's dirty hands are all over this policy. Suck it, Afghan translators and associates who risked your lives helping the US troops in your country

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

In a democracy, government programs need to be enacted and funded by duly elected representatives of the people. When wealthy private citizens start bankrolling public programs with their "donations," there will always be strings attached, explicit or implicit

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

For this administration, the views of democratically elected officials count for nothing next to the opinions of a couple of billionaire oligarch cronies

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Nothing could be more fundamentally and quintessentially American than to say that we don't want to be ruled by a king or dictator, that we aspire to be a nation of laws and not of men, and that all citizens should have a voice in creating the laws we all live under

020 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

There's absolutely no need to be laying off federal employees during the shutdown. They're already suffering enough because the politicians haven't been doing their job. But the layoffs are entirely on Trump, Vought, and the Republicans

031 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

If that project succeeds, redistricting and elections themselves will become irrelevant in the future. So yes, CA Proposition 50 is the best option out of the less-than-ideal alternatives facing us in real life, to keep a level playing field and preserve meaningful democracy

021 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

Ideally, every state should have an independent redistricting commission. But that's obviously not the world we live in, and the aim of the one-sided middle-of-the-decade redistricting currently under way in red states is to create permanently rigged elections and minority rule

100 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Somehow ending the intelligence reports on future threats to the US doesn't make me feel more secure

000 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Another addition to the list of products it never occurred to me we needed: hard ice cream

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

Recent events have provided a crash course in who really believes in freedom of speech, and who is a poser who supports it only for themselves, but not for people who don't share their opinions

010 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

Heading at breakneck speed toward a broadcast universe in which Jimmy Fallon and the talking heads on Fox News are the only shows allowed on late night TV

040 0

Bob Shephard @rpshephard.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

The only ways to vanquish repellent ideas are through reasoned argument, or through mockery. Using violence just gives them the added strength of martyrdom.

010 0