Good for the NYT to select a picture of Johnson that seems to convey that he knows what he did and is not sorry at all.
Bibliophile, perpetual grad student, fan of democracy, J. S. Bach, cats, bad jokes, and the Oxford comma. Episcopalian, but not great at it. Foxes over hedgehogs.
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Good for the NYT to select a picture of Johnson that seems to convey that he knows what he did and is not sorry at all.
Awhile back someone on here pointed out that over the last generation, evangelicals have substituted theology with worldview and apologetics, and it's been a disaster for Christianity and for the country, too. This observation has been stuck in my head ever since.
I don't know what to do about this.
No big whoop, just Donald Trump pissing away three decades of U.S. diplomacy due to a fit of personal pique. danieldrezner.substack.com/p/donald-tru...
I don’t expect evangelicals to follow logic and science, but I still think it wasn’t totally unreasonable for me to think they would follow THEIR OWN BELIEF SYSTEM, and yet they seem to be unable to do that.
I point this out while thinking that nearly everything that evangelicals say about prophecy and the end times is total bunk, but given what their own belief system tells them, it blows my mind that they don’t think this guy is the Antichrist.
Looks like DOJ is committing another fraud on the courts.
This is so stupid.
Ah, yes, democracy. Where someone's ignorance is just as good as someone else's expertise.
You have just 3 weeks to object to the Roadless rule rollback. Link to USDA public comments here:
YMMV, but I've found that a good pesto sauce is generally an excellent match for a bit cabernet.
The thing about a lot of these never Trump Republicans is that, unlike a lot of institutionalist Dems who think the fever will break and we can all return to comity or whatever, these guys saw the rot up close and know the only appropriate response is to tear them out of government root and branch.
Mispronounced "anxiety" for years because I was trying to make it fit somehow with the same sounds as "anxious"
The extent to which ICE is ignoring all civil rights and due process is astounding — and indicative of a culture where they’ve been told they can do literally no wrong. Agency and admin leaders must face sanctions and legal consequences.
The tacos giveth, and the tacos taketh away. Blessed be the name of the tacos.
The bad news is that this is the good news.
I’d rather that he spend his time doing that than virtually anything else that he has been doing
Spotted in a church kitchen
I live in a deep red state, and yeah, I feel this.
That’s both true and important, and “what’s politically expedient” and “what’s morally right” don’t necessarily have the same answer.
Why is the answer never to respect that voters are adults who make choices? The loud, repeated message is “close hospitals and nursing homes in my community, taking money from cities to pay for them makes me feel left behind.” You don’t have to agree, but have the respect to listen.
bsky.app/profile/orvi...
When are the rich and powerful white guys gonna get a break, man
We all have our ways of dealing with stress and unhappy news. I also have an absolutely terrible devotional book on the Psalms that a dear friend gave me, and I have been enjoying immensely. I'll finish out the evening with a chapter of that.
All of this is just too much. I'm exhausted. I'm going to have a second drink, a melatonin, and continue reading a biography of Roger Federer until I fall asleep. There will be more time to be concerned tomorrow.
Gotta admit, I first started tuning into the "is the US a Christian nation" debate about 20 years ago, and boy does it hit differently now. I mean, we're still not, but it seems to be largely because of the strenuous efforts of people that call themselves Christians
Weird that ICE doesn't post that one, I wonder why
After carefully reading the gospels, does this seem like people that are trying to follow the way of Jesus?
I'd have more sympathy for the conservatives that bemoan "we're not a Christian nation anymore" if they hadn't been voting to make sure that we'll never be mistaken for a Christian nation again
Asimov's "suddenly we all knew less and the the empire just collapsed" premise seemed silly to me when I first read it. It makes sense now
‘Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.’ Then all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’ Deuteronomy 27:19
Demonstrating more courage than all the elected politicians, etc etc
You can believe plenty in prayer and still find it utterly lacking as a concrete public policy response from an elected leader. If Biden had asked people to pray for inflation to cool off, what would these exact same people have said?
I'd argue that it requires more faith in our political system than Republicans expect anyone to have.
We can treat them like adults, respect their wishes, and let them suffer the consequences of their own actions. Or we can go in, bail them, out, earn their contempt for what they'll see as paternalism, and then they'll vote to destroy the country again. It's not possible to do both.
Folks in LA might not share this perspective
Not entirely sure what that would look like but if they want to deorbit a satellite onto the White House lawn, who am I to tell them this is a bad idea
I do not know what the morally right response is, but I'm more certain that those are the options.
You cannot both bail them out of this *and* treat them like they are responsible adults with agency. It is not possible.
You can treat them like adults, respect their wishes, and let them suffer the consequences of their own actions. Or you can go in, bail them, out, earn their contempt for what they'll see as paternalism, and then they'll vote to destroy the country again.
Ding ding ding, this is it.
I mean, that's at least a honest question that illustrates where he's coming from
Either seeing the Navy tow a destroyer down Pennsylvania Avenue or having the Space Force deorbit a satellite onto the White House lawn would make for better TV than an Army parade, gotta say.
This illustration is perfect, and helps illustrate how much respect any RFK pronouncement should be given.
Maybe someone should ask Patel why he was tweeting about his workouts instead of focusing on counterterrorism operations four days before a domestic terrorist attack? www.thebulwark.com/p/the-cdc-th...
You could cause them to smile by telling them you cancelled your subscription to the Washington Post.
The insistence of these pundits in assuming that Trump has good faith arguments, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is just astounding to me.
"Criminals can break the law, so I want to be able to do it too" is a helluva take to hear from a Federal official
Absolutely disgraceful. This is a crime against humanity. I hope Musk, Rubio, Lewin, and the rest of the doge boys are held responsible
Okay, the Biden administration wasn't perfect, but at least they weren't taking the side of the fire.
Remember when Canada and Mexico sent volunteers to help with the LA firefighting efforts? Yeah, I bet they don't make that mistake again.
Awhile back @semperfitrex.bsky.social pointed out that American evangelicalism is Christian-themed in the same sense that the Pirates of the Caribbean ride is pirate-themed. Neither teaches you much about the original source material. This has been stuck in my head ever since.
It dawns on me that "society is headed for a bad place, I must stockpile guns" and "society is headed for a bad place, I must stockpile books" come from vastly different perspectives on . . . a lot of things, really.
This is evil, and it’s also national suicide. Countries that do this decline fast.
Biographies are fun in that they sound like variations on Ruth's Chris Steakhouse: Tom Clancy's J. R. R. Tolkien: The Author of the Century
This gets real fun and real weird with esoteric and/or religious books: Tom Clancy's Theology for the Third Millennium or Tom Clancy's Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End
Take a bow, evangelicals. This is on you.
When I try to publish a book and can’t get it published, I’m gonna think about this more than is probably healthy, I’m sure
Hear me out, here: Floridians have the chance to do the funniest thing
Hear me out, here: Floridians have the chance to do the funniest thing
All y’all should just build a personal library
Is this bad? This seems like it might be bad
Why do we have young children in the workforce in the first place
Heh.
Let's be honest about the humiliation. This isn't only humiliating for Trump, or the lackeys in the cabinet. This is humiliating for us, as a people and a nation. This is who we chose to lead us.
The military is gonna have to pick one option to be loyal to, and frankly, I'm not liking our odds
Okay, this is my favorite joke about this so far
The whole thing is great, but there's one specific story in here that talks about how memory works - and how this relates to oral vs. written cultures - that helped me work through how I think about what the Old Testament is. Which is not what I was expecting when I picked this book up.
Perfect burn, 10/10
Awhile back, someone made some joke about how the sequel when Harry grows up could be called "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Commerce" and could be about attempts to start a small business, and honestly, I've thought about this joke on a pretty regular basis for a couple years, now
Really enjoying all the sandwich jokes this morning
Yeah, absolutely. I'm at the point where I just don't trust people who use this stuff at all.
bsky.app/profile/orvi...
Why would anyone believe the United States at this point
Hahaha, this is it, right here bsky.app/profile/djin...
Pretty sure that this guy could afford his own private island if he started selling sandwich flag tshirts on bluesky
Sounds like someone badly misunderstood the phrase "we need to stop the violence." I assume that sax players are next to be targeted.
I just don't even know what to say about this.
It’s weird how many media leaders see the president deploy or threaten military force in lower crime areas that didn’t vote for him, while not deploying in or threatening areas with higher crime that did vote for him, and go “this story is about crime, we should frame it as a debate over crime.”
These two quotes, next to each other, are particularly jarring. Especially given that the cunning and unprincipled man took over the political party of people that like to whap each other with their little pocket Constitutions.
Well, there's a certain justice to this, and I say that living in a red state.
This man's understanding of international relations really only makes sense when you remember that he's bragged about assaulting women
Will this stop Republicans from calling their opponents socialists? C'mon, you know better than that
Try to imagine Washington saying this.
This is far from the most important thing, but I've gotta assume that the camera this dude is using is from 1886 or something
Mildly unrelated, but on my reading list, and vital if you want to be a wet blanket at parties: www.amazon.com/gp/product/1...
I'm almost entirely sure that much caffeine would make my heart explode
Very weird behavior from someone who talks about trying to make it to heaven, tbh
Also I have no idea what was wrong with that person
Awhile back I heard someone pronounce it as TORNA-doh instead of tor-NA-doh, and that made it even more fun
Big news for the cruise lines
This makes me realize that the words for bad weather events could be, on average, a lot more fun
There is no good reason for this product to be on the market right now. None at all.
Not only is this level of obsequious groveling from the Labor Secretary just humiliating to the country, the fact that this is what Trump *wants* is just so much worse. No one with any self-respect wants to *hear* this.
Correct framing, here
Worth a read: www.honest-broker.com/p/our-shared...
Doing his best to normalize this.
I'm skeptical that they have friends at all, frankly
From what I've seen, crooks don't generally say this unless they're part of the Trump administration