Mike Sakasegawa

@sakeriver

Photographer, writer, podcaster. Host of Keep the Channel Open. Co-host of Hey, It's Me. He/him. Please no unsolicited advice. Amassing frequent flyer miles with @jejunebug77.bsky.social. sakeriver.com keepthechannelopen.com heyitsmepodcast.com

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Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· 14d

Good evening

Breaded butter beads served over romesco in a wide, flat bowl

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· 15d

From today's @voiceofsandiego.org Morning Report: voiceofsandiego.org/2026/07/28/c... A few years ago I would not have expected Ryan Clumpner, a former GOP operative who worked (works?) with the Lincoln Club to someday have me pumping a fist and saying "Preach, brother!" And yet here we are.

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· 17d

The things I cook when nobody else is around don’t necessarily make a lot of culinary sense but they do sometimes have the advantage of not costing any additional money. Anyway, good evening.

A bowl of rice and black beans, topped with meatballs and cotija cheese

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· 21d

how i flirt

A screenshot of an old post of mine, in which I say “That’s very kind of you but tbh I’m probably better in text form than in person”

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· 23d

Good evening

A bowl of chicken soup with egg noodles, chunks of chicken, carrots, and celery in it

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· 24d

It’s not the most picturesque thing, when you’re making broth. But it smells nice.

A pot of chicken broth simmering. Chicken bones and mirepoix and parsley are visible in the broth.

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jul 13

I saw on TikTok someone making reference to Frederick Douglass's address at the graves of the unknown dead in 1871 so I went to look it up. This was the passage referenced in the video I saw: www.loc.gov/resource/mss...

An excerpt from Frederick Douglass's address at the graves of the unknown dead, Arlington, Va, 1871, written in Douglass's own handwriting:

"We are sometimes asked in the name of patriotism to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal admiration those who struck at the nation’s life, and those who struck to save it—those who fought for slavery, and those who fought for liberty and justice.

I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant, but may my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted and bloody conflict."

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jul 13

Well, I for one have fulfilled my obligations today

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jul 12

Pentagon City Station, Arlington, VA. 11 Jul 2026. 📷

An abstract-looking photo of the side of a metro car in a dark station. A light with a square grating shines upward from the bottom of the frame, making a glowing wavy line pattern on the metal side of the train car.

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jul 12

An excerpt from Scot Nakagawa’s “The Breakthrough Trap.” It doesn’t seem like Schiff understands that the pre-Trump status quo is what allowed Trump’s rise, and that includes both Graham’s and Schiff’s pre-Trump actions and inactions. antiauthoritarianplaybook.substack.com/p/the-breakt...

“The failure mode has a shape. A wide negative coalition assembles to remove an authoritarian. It succeeds. Then, in the consolidation window, it discovers that it had no shared theory of what comes next. Its median member wanted restoration - a return to the conditions that preceded the authoritarian. But the conditions that preceded the authoritarian are precisely the conditions that produced the authoritarian. Restoration hands the arsonist back the matches.

This is the breakthrough trap. And the American pro-democracy movement is walking straight into it.

The restoration problem

Begin with a sentence that is uncomfortable to say out loud: the United States before 2016 was not a consolidated democracy. It was a managed democracy with severe minoritarian features.”

The line “Restorstion hands the arsonist back the matches” is highlighted.

The Senate gave Wyoming the same representation as California. The Electoral College allowed the presidency to be won without winning the country. State legislatures gerrymandered themselves into permanent majorities. The federal judiciary was being captured, slowly and then quickly, by a faction with an anti-democratic theory of its own power. Campaign finance amounted to legalized oligarchy. Voter suppression targeted the electorate’s Black and brown edges. Felony disenfranchisement removed millions. The carceral state governed entire communities as subjects rather than citizens. The immigration system was already inhumane, already dysfunctional, already long overdue for transformation, years before anyone heard the phrase “build the wall.”

“Donald Trump didn’t create this architecture. He exploited and deepened it, but the machinery that he is using was already, substantially, in place. The coalition that put him in power was already coherent. The project of minority rule he accelerated was already underway. Any honest account has to grapple with the fact that 2016 was not an accident that befell a healthy democracy. It was a symptom of a democracy that had been sick for a long time, in ways that were visible to anyone looking.

Restoration, therefore, is not victory. Restoration is a short pause before the next, harder wave.”

The last two sentences, “Restoration, therefore, is not victory. Restoration is a short pause before the next, harder wave” are highlighted.

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jul 4

Every time I come into the bathroom, I hear this bottle in a Dalek voice

A small bottle of Paula’s Choice liquid exfoliant, which says “EXFOLIATE” on it in large capital letters

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jul 2

I saw a hawk in my yard today. A Cooper’s Hawk, I think.

A hawk perched on a tree branch, surrounded by dense eucalyptus leaves. The hawk has a brownish head and a white and gray bar pattern on its breast, and its feet are yellow. It is facing toward the camera but with its head turned to the right of the frame.

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jun 25

#MyNextRead 📚💙

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jun 24

This is just brutal 😂

Screenshot of two replies to the post I quoted.

Reply: “They didn’t remain?”
Reply to the reply: “No, they’re just remains now”

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jun 23

Here are the receipts. It's not a lot but it's something, and doing something is always better than doing nothing. 4/

A donation receipt to the Trevor Project, showing a donation of $100 plus processing fees, made today.

A donation receipt to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, showing a donation of $100 plus processing fees, made today.

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jun 13

I usually take the dust jacket off of my books when I read them so that the cover doesn’t get dinged up, which means I end up seeing things that otherwise wouldn’t get noticed.

The front cover of the hardcover edition of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El Akkad, as seen with the dust jacket removed. Silver text is debossed on black wrapped book board: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this. -Omar El Akkad”

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jun 13

#MyNextRead 📚💙

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El-Akkad

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jun 12

Good afternoon

Some braised beef from a Texas-style all-beef chili with a little rice, in a green bowl

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jun 9

Good evening

A rice bowl with miso-glazed salmon, diced avocado, hard boiled egg, edamame, kimchi, and a sprinkling of yukari

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jun 4

Good morning

A bowl of rice topped with sautéed kale, two fried eggs, kosher salt, and shichimi

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· Jun 3

As it's looking like Measure A is going to fail, I can't help thinking about this op-ed from a No on A spokesman, in which, among other things, he talks about "retirees who maintain a second home to be closer to doctors, family, or grandchildren." voiceofsandiego.org/2026/05/29/i...

It includes retirees who maintain a second home to be closer to doctors, family, or grandchildren. It could impact military families deployed for extended periods if they fail to properly file paperwork with a new city bureaucracy. It affects people navigating inheritance, relocation, family illness, or other life transitions. These are not faceless investors gaming the system; they are real San Diegans with legitimate reasons for how they use their homes.

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· May 28

#MyNextRead 📚💙 (h/t to @hmsraindogs.bsky.social and @maggietokudahall.bsky.social)

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· May 27

I went to grab a bookmark this morning from the little stack on my nightstand and realized that over the years I’ve amassed quite a little collection from @mystgalaxybooks.bsky.social.

Six bookmarks from the bookstore Mysterious Galaxy. The first one shows a book on top of a card catalog under a shelf that looks like it’s from an Edgar Allen Poe story. The other five all depict a cartoon dragon reading or reading in space or blowing out candles on a 30th anniversary cake or sitting atop a hoard of Mysterious Galaxy coins.

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· May 27

Got some good mail

My copy of Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis, edited by Kelly Hayes

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· May 23

Yes, this is my breakfast. No, I am not accepting critiques.

Two Costco hot dogs with ketchup, yellow mustard, pickle relish, and onions

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· May 21

This is all pretty factual, AFAICT. The takeaways should be: 1. The party should commit to aggressively fighting gerrymandering, voter suppression, outside money, and the dismantling of services and worker protections. 2. They need to be seen as fighting even when they're in the minority.

The losses in the states – coinciding with the decennial Census – have had lasting repercussions. With many Republican trifectas in place, Democrats were on the wrong side of severe partisan gerrymandering at the state legislative and federal levels in 2012. Subsequent federal court decisions have enabled and encouraged partisan gerrymandering, stripping even the idea of competitiveness out of the broader electoral and civic ecosystem. Consequently, Democrats have invested less and less in what is now seen as non-competitive terrain, compounding and reinforcing partisan disadvantages in many states and jurisdictions.

Worse, Republicans have been relentless at the state policy level, reversing worker protections, enacting restrictions on voting, gutting essential services that Americans have paid for and depend on for their quality of life, and denying pathways of opportunity to and advancement to those most in need. While state legislative Democrats combat these changes when and where they can, in too many states they lack the legislative numbers to stop Republicans.

Voters in these states may see Democratic policy as the preferable alternative to Republicans authoritarian advancement, but the inability to offer any substantive effective electoral opposition impacts perspectives and opinions about the party.

2010 also saw federal court decisions enabling a tsunami of “independent” spending and the easing of restrictions that facilitated the injection of dark money into the political ecosystem. In 2010, there was approximately $500 million in outside spending, with super PACs spending $62.6 million. This has now grown to $4.5 billion in outside spending on federal campaigns in 2024, with $4.1 billion from super PACs and hybrid PACs.

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· May 21

If this is building to an argument that the party should embrace economic populism, I could get behind that. I sort of doubt that's where it's going, though.

The 2008 election cycle was the high point for the modern Democratic Party. With a landslide in the Electoral College, a 9.5 million popular vote advantage for President, and wins in the House, Senate, and in the States, Democrats were poised and positioned to lock in those gains for a generation.

For the first time since the 1964 election of President Johnson, Democrats gained seats in both chambers while winning the White House. Democrats expanded their House majority to 257 seats, gaining 21 seats, and grew to 60 seats in the Senate, with wins in New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, and Alaska.

In the states, Democrats flipped six legislative chambers, while Republicans flipped four. Democrats retained the governorships in New Hampshire, Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina, Montana, and Washington, and flipped Missouri.

These gains did not last long – as Democrats failed to capitalize on the economic disaster of the Bush presidency by cementing a relationship with working Americans.

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· May 21

This I largely agree with but I also think centrists are going to take the wrong lesson away here, as groups like Third Way already demonstrably are doing. The key point for me is that, yes, the party has largely abandoned local- and state-level organizing, and that's a problem.

These hair-splitting margins of defeat may lead some to argue Democrat leadership and candidates may need less changing of their message and approach and more massaging of their ideas for widespread adoption. The arguments have run nonstop since November 2024 – with a better political climate, or advancing slightly different policies, or with a different candidate, victory could have been assured. This kind of thinking – denialist at its core – prevents the Party from seeking real accountability, and from making the changes we need to deliver on our promises to the American people.

To grow, we must admit and accept some hard truths about our Party. Since the high point of the 2008 Obama landslide, when he received nearly 10 million more votes than John McCain, the Democratic Party has vacillated between stagnation and retrogression. In doing so, we have lost the confidence we once received from everyday Americans – and election results show it. In the sixteen tumultuous years since that historic election, Democrats have lost ground at every level of government. These losses are the direct result of missed opportunities to invest in our states, counties, and local parties and candidates.

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· May 21

It is probably true that we have been and remain a divided nation, and if that's true then it's important to acknowledge. But I think it's also a mistake to base the analysis on percentage of votes cast without including the context of who didn't vote and why.

Yes, many are deeply angry with the outcome of this most recent national election. They feel cheated, abused, and taken advantage of by a broken system. At the same time, we must acknowledge how close the margins actually were. 7,309 votes across three districts decided control of the US House of Representatives. 327,557 votes across four states decided the US Senate. And 270,607 votes across four states decided the Presidency – around two-tenths of one percent of all ballots cast for President.

The 2020 cycle was also very close – a narrow win for the Presidency, a narrow Democratic majority in the House, and a tie in the Senate based on a runoff in Georgia.

The 2016 cycle was also close at the presidential level – with a split between the popular vote and Electoral College (with seven faithless Electors).

This demonstrates a basic truth – we have been and remain a nation divided. It is not unique to the 2024 election

Mike Sakasegawa@sakeriver· May 21

My inclination is to dislike the idea that the party should pander more to the heartland, both since I think that the party's base constituency is more urban and since the population in general is more urban. OTOH, I do also think it's a good idea to fight and try to win everywhere.