New from @OliviaCGeorge—
What happens after you ask Trump to ‘have mercy’? Threats, praise and hope.
Bishop Mariann E. Budde returned to Washington National Cathedral on Sunday for her first public service since her viral inauguration sermon.https://t.co/tsolPAdGCF
— Pablo Manríquez (@PabloReports) February 3, 2025
Hey, it’s Sunday…Per the Washington Post, “What happens after you ask Trump to ‘have mercy’? Threats, praise and hope”: [gift link]
… It had been 12 days since the Right Rev. Mariann E. Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, pleaded with President Donald Trump to “have mercy” on immigrants, LGBTQ children and others who might be scared by his return to power.
Twelve days since the media storm began. Twelve days since praise started pouring in from around the world — and vitriol, too. Twelve days since a U.S. House member called for the New Jersey-born bishop to be “added to the deportation list.”
Now, Budde made her way to the altar for her first public service at the cathedral since that sermon, the final event of Trump’s inauguration. Congregants craned their necks and rose to their tiptoes. They stretched out their arms to snap a photograph…
Her direct appeal to Trump on that January day — some 24 hours after he had ascended to the highest office in the land for the second time — ushered in a deluge of reactions.
Was it a moment of political catharsis? An act of public resistance? An inappropriate politicization of the pulpit?
For Budde, it was an expression of basic Christian theology.
“It was rooted in Jesus,” she said, “not a partisan agenda.”
Trump demanded an apology and called her “nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”
On Sunday, the cathedral appeared more full than for the post-inauguration service, which was not open to the public. The wooden chairs were packed with a diverse crowd of young and old: people who had walked to the cathedral from nearby homes and those who had driven upward of an hour and across state lines.
“How nice is it to have Bishop Mariann back in our midst?” said the Very Rev. Randolph “Randy” Hollerith, dean of the cathedral. “We’re so glad she is here.”
Claps began to ripple through the incense-scented nave.
“Stop it,” she appeared to mouth, smiling and batting away the applause with her hand as it grew louder and louder until hundreds were standing and clapping: The crowd, the choir, the bishops, all on their feet…
The interfaith service, a tradition for almost a century, was the final inauguration event, capping a presidential election cycle marked by turbulence, threats and violence.
She drafted and redrafted her remarks. She wanted to focus on the three principles of unity. But listening to his inaugural address, watching his flurry of executive orders and noticing the little resistance he had so far encountered, those pillars felt incomplete and insufficient.
So, she added a fourth: a plea to the country’s new commander in chief for mercy on behalf of all those frightened by the ways he has threatened to wield his power…
Baud
Oh you sweet summer child…
Suzanne
If I were her, I’d put that on a T-shirt. Love it. Love her.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Also, nominated for the rotating tag.
satby
@Baud: Well, for her it was. For the so called “Christians”, using the teachings of Christ are very political. They know that the prosperity gospel they prefer is heresy, so are greatly offended to hear mentions of Christ’s teachings.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Seconded.
different-church-lady
One of these days someone is going to say “Fuck you, asshole” right to his face, and he’s going to be confused into helplessness.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Everyone here supports your decision.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: You think that’s never happened to him?
zhena gogolia
Luckovich has captured the alarming new skin tone
Baud
Via reddit, #HeadlineGore
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: It’s really freaky, isn’t it? Almost like reverse black eyes. The last time I saw live footage of him, I think about a week ago, I audibly gasped.
If someone actually loved him, they’d take him to a Sephora to get matched. Maybe throw in a BeautyBlender. But, well, that’s what happens when one is a wretched person and every relationship is transactional.
ETA: I am certain that Melania knows he looks like crap and lets him look that way.
mrmoshpotato
@different-church-lady:
And hopefully add “What a nasty fascist shitstain.”
MomSense
Being a PK, I know the feeling when the minister fulfills their calling to deliver the truth. Doesn’t always go over well. Reminds me of when the Mobilize for Women’s Lives campaign began with worship at my dad’s church. For some people it was life changing and affirming.
Then the hateful and threatening phone calls and mail started. I went back to school, but my poor sister had to endure that stress for months.
Gloria DryGarden
She is wonderful! I can see her getting a presidential award, with a different president. Thank you Bishop Budde.
Embarrased again, is so accurate.
also, enraged again.
wish we could become excellent again, in whatever ways we used to be excellent, up until executive orders day, Jan 20.
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne:
If someone (his POS father) really loved him, he wouldn’t be such a fascistic, manbaby pile of shit. (And maybe he wouldn’t paint his fat, orange, fascist face with a can of paint from Home Depot.)
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: I know we’ve talked about this here, but don’t his kids worry about him at all? I guess not.
TBone
The Right Reverend Budde’s courage is contagious. She gave me courage to face all the sucktastic currently going on in my personal life as well as our political lives. She helped me to stand up when I wanted to curl up. Along with youse guys and this place.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
Were we excellent before? I’ve never gotten the sense that many liberals thought so.
pluky
@different-church-lady: I’m sure that’s already happened, many times. New Yorker’s are not known for subtlety.
Matt McIrvin
When it happened I heard many people assuming she was going to lose her job. Have there been concrete moves in that direction?
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia:
They probably worry about their inheritances a lot.
NotMax
Music is fine — however, is it me or is that dress too damn long?
;)
Elizabelle
Bishop Budde got better crowds, and they showed up for free. I love that WaPost worked “diverse” into that description.
WereBear
Why should they? He sees progeny as ego ornaments and they seem him as an ATM.
Elizabelle
Luckovich cartoon needs a few flies, too.
Spanky
@mrmoshpotato: I don’t think he’s a Home Depot kinda guy. More into booteek colors. Maybe Tangerine Dream?
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Flies have self respect.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
I think you’re confused. Her message was rooted in Jesus, not in any partisan agenda. But as I’m fond of saying these days, the love of God has implications with respect to this world.
“Christians shouldn’t be bullies” isn’t inherently a partisan message, but if it turns out to be so, the message is still anchored in Jesus. It’s that one party has stepped smack into the way of what would be a nonpartisan message if we had two decent and humane political parties.
Suzanne
@mrmoshpotato: Last weekend, when I first witnessed whatever-the-hell is happening to his face, I was reminded of watching Bob Ross episodes on PBS when I was a kid, and he’d mix up some Vandyke Brown with some Yellow Ochre, grab a palette knife, and scrape the paint onto the canvas to add an outhouse.
chrome agnomen
@Baud: well, if you grade on the curve, yes. compared with the current situation, W was excellent. well, maybe OK. no, scratch that, they were both shit, but W was manure, T is non biodegradable shit.
Spanky
@Elizabelle:
More likely that the author slipped it past the WaPo editor.
sab
@zhena gogolia: Judging by their behavior at their mother’s funeral they don’t much like either parent or each other. Their childhood must have been like growing up in a fox den.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
I’m not confused about what she meant.
Raoul Paste
This is a fine post for a Sunday morning. Good people standing up for decency and courage. They are out there.
Spanky
@sab: Why slander foxes?
NotMax
Definitely among the more enigmatic series encountered in a while, The Light Shop on Hulu. Deceasad? Alive? Depends on your POV.
RevRick
@zhena gogolia: Do you think he ever really cared for his kids? I suspect with almost certainty that he was emotionally abusive to them.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Then please translate “Oh you sweet summer child…” into normal English for me. I’ve always taken it to mean basically “how naive and innocent to think that way” but maybe I’ve misread it all this time.
Suzanne
@Spanky: It’s amazing how certain animals become semiotically associated with human qualities. When I was an undergrad taking many semesters of art history, I remember learning that, in classical painting, cats were symbols of licentiousness. So putting a cat into a painting was a way of implying something really untoward about the subject (almost always a woman, of course).
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle: And a massive pile of poop on the hat.
Elizabelle
The last photo of Bishop Budde in the Post story is especially stunning. She is standing in the dark cathedral, resembling a candle in the darkness, a beacon of light.
Photos of The Felon make him look particularly lizardlike. You can just imagine him, sunning himself on a rock.
NotMax
@Suzanne
Something familiar ’bout that.
;)
satby
@Baud: nope. Some years better than others, but never excellent.
mrmoshpotato
@Spanky: I see. What shade would his face be now if he’d choked on a Big Mac when Tricky Dick was in the White House?
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne: LOL!
Elizabelle
@mrmoshpotato: You and I know that that is always under the hat.
Luckovich cartoon is what should actually go into the National Portrait Gallery. It captures his debased and decaying Florida Man qualities quite well.
Kay
Their faces are so funny in photos from the church service – pouting- like children. The snowflakes can’t bear to hear anything that conflicts with their nasty, narrow world view.
Scout211
In the category of excellent links (but not political), I watched YouTubes of the “buzziest” Super Bowl ads. Some were clever and some were sweet and some were wild. Here’s two:
The Bud Light one was over-the-top wild and crazy. Fun.
2025 BUD LIGHT SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL | BIG MEN ON CUL-DE-SAC
But the ad for Dove was my favorite again this year, all about supporting young girls.
These Legs: A Dove Big Game Film
Geminid
@Suzanne: These days I mainly run into pictures of Trump on foreign sites like Al Arabiya and Clash Report. He keeps looking rougher and rougher. Some of that might be due to crappy makeup and/weight loss but even so, this is not a healthy guy.
TBone
@mrmoshpotato: hopefully Prussian Blue. Oh wait, you said what if he choked years ago.
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle:
Lizard slander!
Also, that would mean the shitstain might get an actual tan.
NotMax
@Scout211
In the category of cute, VW ad wasn’t chopped liver.
:)
RevRick
@lowtechcyclist:
@Baud:
As a pastor, I have heard the assertion that the church shouldn’t get into politics many times. What that really amounts to is one of the following:
You’re making me uncomfortable.
I don’t agree with your position.
I believe you are crossing the boundary between church and state.
Don’t challenge my comfort zone.
You’re taking sides.
You’re challenging me (and my favorite media) and I don’t appreciate it.
I come to church to escape the world.
This is too complicated/ too difficult for me to process.
The problem for any faithful pastor, however, is that everything about the Bible, both the Hebrew and Christian texts, involves politics.
In fact, the six fundamental sacraments and practices of the church are political, starting with baptism, which is all about inclusion, and Communion, which is all about radical sharing.
Aristotle situated politics in his discussions about ethics. It’s fundamentally about the question of how do we live together as a society?
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
Slandering children – on Superb Owl Sunday (Sunday! Sunday!)!!
FOR! SHAME! Also, FIVE SHAME!
Scout211
@NotMax: Yeah, that one stands the test of time, maybe of all time. The ones I posted will air today. We’ll see how the viewers react.
TBone
Is the big game today? I can haz reach across the
aislestreet today because we’re ALL cheering for the Iggles? (My Rumpy neighbors have been very kind to us about Noah, checking in periodically to offer help with anything they might do for us and being very supportive – when we had to bury Josey, the dad dug the grave for us, cheerfully at out request, since we’re both too disabled to do it). We are ALL Eagles fans here! I don’t even care about football except when The Brotherly Shove may be involved.Taking care of their Golden Retriever puppy was a Godsend for hubby during tough times too, we both needed that extra love.
Steve LaBonne
@RevRick: Whenever religion comforts the comfortable and afflicts the afflicted, instead of the other way around, it’s bad and harmful. I’m very confident that there’s no danger of that in your church!
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: I took it as “oh you poor sweet summer child, there’s no fucking way in hell those vile vicious monsters in front of you would give a good goddamn about the teachings of Jesus.”
Which I don’t find too far from factual, and adds more points to Bishop Budde’s side of the scale… better to be a “sweet summer child” than a Trumpkin.
Suzanne
@Geminid: Agreed. He looks terrible. I don’t know if he’s actually ill, or just a lifetime of eating poorly, not exercising, being stressed out, neglecting skincare, etc. is just showing.
It’s notably different. When I was a teenager, my grandfather got skin cancer on his ear. He had a freckle on his ear, and never thought about applying sunblock to his ears, and it turned into melanoma. He understandably became much more concerned with sun exposure, but he started wearing long sleeves and pants all the time, moved to a cloudy place, and wasn’t getting enough vitamin D. He deteriorated really, really fast. Pictures taken a year apart, you almost wouldn’t recognize him. His skin got this weird pallor to it, almost gray. FFOTUS’s face, where the orange spackle isn’t applied, looks like that.
mrmoshpotato
@TBone: Mahomes and Maauto!
And hopefully Taylor dumps some Tang on the orange shitstain.
Betty Cracker
@lowtechcyclist: Paraphrasing something I saw on Bsky earlier: The problem isn’t that people are anti-Christian. It’s that evangelicals are anti-Jesus.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Geminid: What do you think of the right side of the his face? (I ask because you come across as one not prone to wishful thinking)
Matt McIrvin
@RevRick: The cruelest, most venal branches of Christianity are most definitely into politics, to a degree that has poisoned the reputation of the religion as a whole among young people, because those churches claim loudly to be the standard-bearers of Christian faith and these kids take it at face value.
If churches that aren’t like that just stay out of it, they’re ceding the field.
Elizabelle
prostratedragon put up a great comment (#92) on Cole’s overnight thread. Wanted to be sure you guys saw it.
Starfish (she/her)
@different-church-lady: He has been shot at, but no one has really thought of throwing a shoe at him like they did with George W. Bush.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Advocates of Jesus’ brother, Mycroft Christ?
:)
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
See satby at #4. She got it.
TBone
@RevRick: on our first Sunday at our new Episcopal church just after Election Day, the priest pointed out that although “we” may not be interested in politics, politics is interested in us, and proceeded to say what you just said in other words. Hubby and I felt at home immediately. I can’t believe we didn’t go there sooner – I’d been eyeing it with the pride flags and solar panels for three years before we decided it was time.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: I haven’t had my coffee. I read that as “Florida Attorney General Allegedly Strikes Slimmer Man…”
Which could’ve happened, too.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: They’re obsessed with Jesus but specifically with his death as a talisman of salvation from Hell. Anything he said kind of falls by the wayside–they’re more likely to quote things that can be spun as “believe or burn”, particularly from Paul’s letters.
It’s Jesus considered as something like the product of a multilevel marketing scheme. The characteristics of the product are secondary at best; the important thing is that you should always be working on expanding your downline.
Jeffro
@Scout211: several years ago, Bud Light did a mash-up of Flo Rida and The Cult in a Super Bowl ad, and I nearly lost my mind.
so good
(that was the extended audio-only version)
(this is the actual ad – “Eternal Optimism“)
TBone
@Elizabelle: AWESOME
Starfish (she/her)
@Suzanne: Ivanka could show him how to fix his makeup, and I am not sure why she doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t like ladies with ideas?
Suzanne
@Starfish (she/her):
Assumes facts not in evidence.
I will concede that “shoe” and “coconut cream pie” and “horse turds” and “Molotov cocktail” are categorically different.
Steve LaBonne
@Matt McIrvin: They often have the same problem as Democrats: their voices aren’t amplified by the corporate media.
Starfish (she/her)
@zhena gogolia: If you were related to him, wouldn’t you be getting through every day with “I have to be nice because when he dies, I might get an inheritance.”
TBone
@mrmoshpotato:
FLY E-A-G-L-E-S FLY!
NotMax
@Suzanne
In the name of efficiency, why not Road Apple Pie?
Chief Oshkosh
@TBone:
That’s a good sentiment.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: The Black church has always been inherently political; its very existence mandated by the political reality of white supremacy.
TBone
I really wish I could be at new church today. BUT I reached out to young Father Kevin a few weeks ago to explain why we haven’t been able to attend lately and we now have an email relationship during this absence. He is really cool and supportive and understands about fur babies being family members. He has offered wisdom, solace, and support as well as prayer. I sent him my favorite kd lang cover of Leonard Cohen and he was into it too!
suzanne
@NotMax: Works for me!
I’m a terrible enough person — but honest enough — to admit that if someone covered FFOTUS in horse poop…. it would absolutely make my day. 100%.
TBone
@Chief Oshkosh: I wanted to hug her fiercely so I did (in my mind’s eye) and I felt hugged back.
Starfish (she/her)
@lowtechcyclist: I took what Baud said as dismissive of the times we live in than dismissive of Budde.
She gave a sermon and meant one thing, but there was no way that folks were going to view it without a political lens, and Republicans were going to use it to feed their persistent victimhood narrative.
Republicans are like the kids who punch you in the face and then start crying cause their fist hurts.
Jeffro
@Elizabelle: this is great news – my thanks to prostratedragon and you!
Sharing far and wide on social media. File under, “fight the arsonists” ;)
Elizabelle
@NotMax: Love that VW ad from 2012. A few points:
As with life, the villains sometimes get the best lines and music. (Imperial Storm Troopers March.)
Realized for first time: their Darth Vader could be a little girl.
Last, in 2012, a VW Passat started at $20,000.
TBone
@Chief Oshkosh: also I want to thank prostratedragon again because it was she who linked to the National Cathedral Service when it went live.
Without PD, I might’ve missed it that day.
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: Oh, I know. As a matter of fact, I rely on the political wisdom of Black church ladies in South Carolina to inform my decisions about Presidential candidates. They know me better than I know myself, because their survival has always depended on navigating a white male supremacy world.
TBone
@Starfish (she/her): just wanted to see this again
Starfish (she/her)
@Professor Bigfoot: Yes. This is a point that was missing. The civil rights movement was deeply rooted in the church.
Matt McIrvin
@Steve LaBonne: While most religious denominations have been dropping in affiliation lately, that decline started earlier with mainstream Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and in the 1980s-90s-2000s, the really fear-based, right-wing evangelical denominations and megachurches were mostly showing robust growth. They’ve only started declining more recently and the worse they are, the more resistant to the decline they’ve been.
So there hasn’t been much incentive for them to moderate. Their effect seems to be to poison the well such that many people find Christianity repellent, but the denominations those people are driven away from are the less hate-filled ones. Until, as I said, very recently.
Geminid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I haven’t looked that closely; it’s hard just looking at that goon. But last summer he was having trouble with his words, like he’d had some sort of neurological event.
Last month I joked with a friend that Suzie Wiles probably had a speech pathologist review Trump Inauguration speech and edit out the more difficult words; it was a joke but I would not be surprised if Wiles actually did that herself.
But we’ll see. You can’t hide mental and physical decline but for so long.
Wiles knows this firsthand. She spent the her early career working on Ronald Reagan’s campaigns and White House staff. After he retired, Wiles became his chief of staff and watched him fade.
zhena gogolia
@lowtechcyclist: I think maybe it means that EVERYONE IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY CONSIDERS THE WORDS OF JESUS OF NAZARETH TO BE NASTY AND OFFENSIVE
zhena gogolia
@Kay: It’s very instructive to watch the video of the sermon in which the camera stays on them. As soon as she says, “Jesus of Nazareth,” Vance gets a vicious scowl on his face.
Suzanne
@Starfish (she/her): As this country has historically shown a great deal of suspicion and discrimination toward atheists, I’ve always wanted to make more room in the Dem Party coalition and leadership for avowed atheism, naturalism, rationalism, secular humanism, etc.
Baud
@Starfish (she/her):
@zhena gogolia:
I think that’s what he meant too.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
“How dare she say the J-word in a church?”
//
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: That’s what’s written all over his face.
Starfish (she/her)
@TBone: The way I wrote that sentence makes me so anxious.
Balloon Juice comments used to be filled with strong literary types who would know that the way I mixed up the plurals and singulars in that sentence is a little off.
They would show me a way to make it better, and I would be grateful.
I think at some point they realized they were not getting paid to edit the comments, and they stopped.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Atheists are overwhelmingly Democrats–it’s like 80-10.
That actually surprises me, because the atheists I hear making the most online noise about their atheism tend to be obnoxious libertarian “rationalist” guys who are probably 100% with Trump at this point. Their animus toward religion tends to concentrate on brown foreigners and they regard feminism as the other great menace.
Matt McIrvin
@Starfish (she/her): That particular kind of statement is weaker when it’s phrased in Chicago Manual of Style formal language.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
The Cat Herder Soooper Bowl commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MaJDK3VNE
The Monster.com When I Grow Up Sooper Bowl commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fK2hMQSDgE
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
In general, I think online people hate Dems more than people in real life.
ETA
The Other Great Menace is a great band name for an all girl punk band.
Starfish (she/her)
@Matt McIrvin: The Atheists who are trying to convert you to Atheism are a different type of person.
Those Atheists are stupid people who are rooted in the religion of their youth and believe that they should be out there converting others. Bill Maher falls into this category. He says he is an Atheist, but he is deeply Islamophobic and thinks the Christianity he grew up with was better. I think Christopher Hitchens was like this too. There are some skeptics who say they believe in science, but they don’t know any science and believe in science as religion, and I think Michael Shermer, the founder of Skeptic magazine was like this.
Most atheists are like “I don’t believe in God or gods. No big deal.”
Baud
@Starfish (she/her):
Probably was, because Western civilization had been heavily influenced by the liberal traditions for centuries by that point.
Take away the liberalism and everything turns to shit.
suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, I know. The loudmouth minority are a minority.
But it’s still seen as deeply suss at best to be an atheist or agnostic in much of public life. So that’s another fault line in our coalition — religious people who may be personally socially conservative but can find common cause, religious liberals, and nonbelievers.
catclub
When Jesus said Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar’s and unto God that which is God’s”
Everything is God’s.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: Yep. I used to be an “avowed atheist” until the so-called New Atheist douchebags came along and ruined it for the rest of us. Now, if asked, I just say I’m not religious. ;-)
Elizabelle
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I love the sloths on Monday morning commercial.
Scout211
Another sweet commercial airing today. If you love those Clydesdale Super Bowl ads, you will enjoy this one.
Budweiser | Super Bowl LIX ‘First Delivery’
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
You beat me to it.
That being said, there is still a lot of trepidation it seems among the Party to be, I dunno, more accepting of atheists in being fairly public about it when running for office or as an elected leader.
Crap, I can’t articulate this somewhat inchoate perception well but I wonder if we polled every House (D) about their religious affiliation specifically in the context of Western religions, what the responses would be?
Then drill down to various state and local levels and start noting the differences. It’s as if you are an outright atheist, they unspoken message is “be quiet about it”.
Scout211
@Elizabelle: yeah, a good one airing today:
Coors Light – Slow Monday :60 – Big Game Commercial 2025
catclub
I wondered how my editing check from George Soros got lost.
kalakal
@Starfish (she/her): Couldn’t agree more. There’s even idiots who want an Atheist Church which spectacularly misses the point. The liturgy must be hilarious. Atheists that I know, and I’m from godless, commie Yurp, don’t think about religion at all unless forced to do so by the god botherers trying to force it on them
TBone
@Starfish (she/her): dear sweet Starfish: your literary chops are perfect, please don’t change a thing!
We don’t need perfection – we need greatness!
We all know that the spirit contained in your comments is the most important part! That’s what makes them perfect.
ETA if someone were always perfect, who could live with them?
Today’s TBone challenge: hubby spilled the entire extra large container of coffee while I was still asleep on THE ONE DAY I wanted coffee! Off to Dunkin he went, and he’s been grumbling all morning. I’ve been giving extra kisses to almost no avail. Now he’s taking it out with the vacuum cleaner hahaha!
Baud
@kalakal:
I thought that’s what UU was.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: If people ask me about my beliefs, I tell them I’m a Deist. That works out ok because nobody hates us…yet.
DMalcolm
@Matt McIrvin: I prefer to hide my darkness under a bushel basket.
cmorenc
@Betty Cracker:
Many evangelicals approach to Christianity is transactional – it’s the praise and subjugation to Jesus as the price of a ticket to Heaven in the afterlife, rather than the way Jesus taught to his followers to be in this life that is their focus. The prosperity gospel is a malign extrapolation of the transactional approach, in that your earned worthiness through praise and subjugation is reflected in your material well-being, i.e. prosperity.
Kosh III
Since it’s an open thread: help me Obi-Wan.
My work health coverage ends Feb 28. I’ve rejected Medicare Advantage for obvious reasons, now I’m undecided between Traditional Medicare Part F and Part G. Any advice?
I’m bummed that I’ll pay more for my meds with Part D but that’s life. I think it’s absurd that no plan covers Synthroid considering that it’s inexpensive for the legal narco trafficantes to manufacture–guess they gotta gouge something.
Thanks
Betty Cracker
@Starfish (she/her): Interesting perspective. I’ve worked as a writer and editor for my entire career, and it’s not something you can just turn off, so I notice mistakes even when reading for recreation, looking at menus, etc.
To me, it seems impertinent to correct people’s grammar or spelling unless the meaning isn’t clear or they ask for my input. I figured most people shared this view, but maybe not!
narya
@suzanne: @Betty Cracker: My parents, and, especially, grandparents were circumspect about their atheism–in their day, it was even dicier to say so. I’ve been more outspoken about it, but only to the extent of saying out loud that I am; I’m not trying to convert anyone, merely pointing out that there are folks who don’t have deities in their lives. What I find most amusing, honestly, is that I often know more about more religions that many believers, who only know THEIR religion. The best was explaining transubstantiation to a mainline protestant.
Starfish (she/her)
@Kosh III: That is bullshit that they won’t cover synthroid. So many people have some sort of thyroid issue.
Kosh III
@Betty Cracker: I do that too!
MomSense
@Matt McIrvin:
To be fair, Jesus was into politics. It’s just that the modern, Christianist brand of politics runs completely counter to all of Jesus’ teachings.
He railed against wealth inequality, he preached radical hospitality and care for the stranger, the immigrant, the poor, the sick, the hungry.
He didn’t say one word about sexuality. If anything we can infer from the company he kept and the way he treated others, that he practiced non judgment and love regardless of how society treated people.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
That’s going to vary depending on where you are.
But it does feel like in the online communities I’ve experienced, both left and right, it hasn’t been cool to be a Democrat for decades. Either you’re basically fascist or you’re basically communist; both sides bash liberals all the time.
narya
@Kosh III: I went with G. And someone I know who sells insurance also recommended G. I did NOT do high-deductible, though.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: I do (she says, prolly unnecessarily)
Matt McIrvin
@narya: I’m dicey about it. I learned in school that just stating I didn’t believe in God and explaining some of the reasons why would offend people, like they were being personally insulted, or else they’d see me as conversion fodder and start offering literature. My intuition is still that it’s a touchy thing to talk about.
Elizabelle
Another WaPost gift link: superb article on a ghost post office on an island in Japan. People write to their dead loved ones (family, pets, kamikaze pilot fiancé) and to their former selves. Even to the dolls they outgrew.
Beautiful photos, and a wonderful concept. Do check it out.
The sorrow, hope and longing of Japan’s Missing Post Office
And maybe they are ahead of us here:
I swear, one of the letters could have been written by Adele.
Scout211
Check the generic versions. I have Tricare part D and they cover all versions of the generic levothyroxine sodium. I haven’t had any issues with the generics and I’ve been taking the medication for close to 30 years.
sentient ai from the future
@Starfish (she/her): i’m an evangelical agnostic. i don’t know, and YOU DON’T EITHER
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Starfish (she/her):
“You’re born, you live, and you die.”
Reading about the evolutionary origins/explanations of religion has always been fascinating. This is one of the more recent ones:
https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2019/08/19/where-did-religion-first-come-from
This one is a slog, and from an organization that definitely has an agenda. But the writer references most of the more popular studies on the subject over the last 30 years and provides a broad overview of the main areas of analysis and debate on the subject:
https://ffrf.org/fttoday/november-2004/articles-november-2004/the-evolutionary-psychology-of-religion/
Kosh III
@Scout211: I checked levothyroxine, I just said synthroid since the name is more recognizable. I’ll look for Tricare but I don’t think it’s offered out here in this rural county.
TBone
@sentient ai from the future: HA! Love that
Kosh III
@narya: Yeah, high deductible is anathema.
TBone
I’m with Einstein & Spinoza on religion, mostly…but I have my doubts even so. Then something amazing happens AGAIN and I doubt my doubts!
This sort of thing has been going on in my life for decades. I won’t tell the stories because y’all will then know my crazy for certain.
narya
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve reached the point where I don’t much care. Don’t try to convert me, I won’t try to convert you. And I think it’s important that at least some of us come right out and say so, otherwise it’s ceding the moral field to folks who think that religion is the only way to be ethical. Also: Ron Reagan is quite amusing. “Lifelong atheist; not afraid of burning in hell.”
sentient ai from the future
@narya: i think it is important for non-believers to speak up, if only to try and highlight for people that yes, we have moral and ethical frameworks too, they are not the sole province of religion.
Professor Bigfoot
A further example of what I’ve been railing about: apparently Trump’s approval floor has moved upwards, indicating that the majority of white Americans approve his lurch toward outright white supremacy.
“But Professor Bigfoot’s schtick!”
kalakal
@Betty Cracker: I share that view
RaflW
Budde’s courage is one reason why I am infuriated when I read that some Senators are privately saying that death threats ‘explain’ some of the shitty votes on Trump cabinet picks.
I understand that congresspersons don’t get 24/7 security for themselves or their families, but neither does Budde. But she doesn’t have the Capitol Police protecting her workplace or staff. If the National Cathedral has security (they probably do), it’s going to be private guards, not sure if they’re armed, and probably not full time coverage (and expensive – our Minneapolis congregation is spending 10K a year for security because we’ve gotten threats, and some UU congregations in the area have had protesters).
Starfish (she/her)
@Betty Cracker: Do you remember a time when the commenters were correcting each other more? I think we used to be less circular firing squad about Democrats and more likely to correct each other about language usage. This may have been pre-Twitter.
Matt McIrvin
@MomSense: Jesus’s politics was of this interesting, almost passive-aggressive type that, according to the stories at least, the authorities didn’t know how to deal with–he didn’t openly challenge political authority over secular affairs, disclaimed any pretensions to state power, but his assertions still made him a threat.
Of course a few centuries later his little cult turned into the state religion of the Roman Empire, and I think a lot of today’s political Christians consider that situation the right and proper state of affairs.
Suzanne
@Baud: Some UUs are believers, some are not.
sentient ai from the future
@RaflW: “death threats”, like “economic anxiety”, are a rationalization, not a reason
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: fake news (*winks)
Elizabelle
@Professor Bigfoot: Meh. Dolts still in the FA* stage.
Stick around.
ETA: Fuck Around (prior to Find Out).
oldgold
This week Trump set up a task force with an office in the White House “to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI and other agencies.”
Remarkably, he appointed the unctuous grifter Rev. Paula White as the head of this new White House faith office.
If you have a very strong stomach, here is the greedy fraudster “preaching” gibberish in support of Trump that insanely becomes more cogent as she lapses into speaking in tongues. It so bad, when I first saw it, I thought it was a SNL parody.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RgowhCDa-s4
TBone
Latest entry from my favorite UU minister guy. It involves a blue cow on roller skates.
https://www.robertleefulghum.com/reincarnation/
Starfish (she/her)
@Matt McIrvin: So Democrats.
In areas where there are few Democrats, everyone is quick to say Democrats are stupid because the people who run as Democrats in the 65+% Republican districts are generally not the best politicians, and they might not have much of a real party or any competition.
In areas where there are a lot of Democrats, your local Democratic Party is a bunch of retirees. You go see them, and they are definitely not concerned about the issues that you are concerned about, and they won’t STFU about dark sky ordinances or something like that.
The Democrats are commies thing is very online behavior.
TBone
@RaflW: if the Right Reverend dies because of her speech, she will have died just as she lived.
Fearlessly. Courageously.CCL
@Betty Cracker: …and if they request my help, before I agree, I ask for clarification of what they want…light proofread for typos etc. ? Help with a few infelicitous sentences? Edit? or, Rewrite. Has saved me from tarnishing many relationships by getting that cleared up first.
Kay
I’m trying to get some sense of how much of Trump’s deportation push is bullshit performance for media and how much is real. Because no one in media is verifying Trump Administration claims. In fact, the NYT “embedded” a reporter and she recited back exactly what Trump Administration people allowed her to see- small groups of undocumented shuffling along in chains. That’s a political performance. It’s not a big deportation.
We’ve ALWAYS deported people – it’s not new or unique to Trump, and I keep reading and hearing anecdotal reports that ICE and Trump and media are lying and they’re not deporting anymore people than Biden was. ICE is appearing in full tactical gear and picking people up with a lot of shouting and threats and breathless media coverage and then those same people are being released in time to get to work the next day.
Radley Balko went out and talked to immigration lawyers on the front line and they say this trump effort is underwhelming (so far)
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/a-q-and-a-with-immigration-attorneys
I’m just trying to figure out what is real and what is being invented by media/ Republicans.
Someone called this whole thing an “expensive, made for media performance” – not real.
CCL
@NotMax: You have been seen.
Scout211
@Kosh III: GoodRx says 100% of part D plans cover levothyroxine sodium but the copays vary by plan.
You might want to make an appointment with a Medicare navigator in your county to have them check plans for you or just call the part D company you are thinking about and ask them if they cover it.
Added: Tricare is only for retired military. I was just using it as an example. If the doctor prescribes Synthroid, they switch you to the generic version.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@narya:
An anecdotal observation from over the years of historic preservation/renovation work:
The most unethical contractors (or whoever somebody might hire to do significant home project work) tended to be the ones that wore their christianity on their sleeve. Again, I’m not talking about somebody who attends a religious service on a regular basis but somebody who’s web page makes sure you know about THEIR HOLY CHRISTIANITY (or whatever), have their little fish symbol on their truck, basically telegraph their god-bothering nature.
They always tended to be the ones who tried to dick over customers on billing, surprised them on services and costs, etc. Sure, costs and “project creep” in what we’ve done for 30 years is a occupational hazard. But when you’ve done it long enough, you learn to recognize the unethical types by their word and deed.
And again, not a universal observation, but any time we’ve been asked about a specific source for work, we always say “look for the little fishy first and if you see it, dig hard on their reputation”.
Elizabelle
@RaflW: Commenter Lobo had a great slogan last night.
sentient ai from the future
@Professor Bigfoot: OTOH, i believe polls and pollsters less than the tidbit i saw recently that the Musk Coup and EOs caused a 40x increase in calls to congress. not four, forty.
so something is definitely happening that it doesnt sound like the polls are capturing adequately.
RaflW
Budde was also shockingly correct to use that prayer to point out Trump’s lack of mercy. Children with cancer are going to be more likely to die because he has ordered (or cause to be ordered, because who the f–k knows what details he’s even aware of as he both decays, and obsesses over bullshit like the Kennedy Ctr daring to have ‘drag’) drastic, devastating cuts to NIH funding.
I know there’s a ton of fronts in this war, but his cold and callous abandonment of people desperate for new and innovative cancer treatments seems to me like a huge and very soft target. Yeah, the hard MAGAs won’t care. But they’re not who we need to reach.
The days of telethons are gone, but there’s a reason children’s cancer has used TV to elicit funds for a long time. People are touched by these tragedies, and we need to touch a bunch of folks who may right now be pretty busy just getting by. Trump destroying our medical advances is, I sure think, at least one big opening.
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: De Jure, there’s absolutely nothing to keep atheists from ascending to the highest offices in the land.
De Facto, we all know that if you’re not a Christian, LARGE segments of the American polity will consider your citizenship— your very humanity— suspect.
Elizabelle
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Yes. I have noticed that too.
That fish symbol says “Run!”
sentient ai from the future
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: another, better writer put it a different way:
If you’re doing business with a religious sonofabitch…GET IT IN WRITING. His word isn’t worth shit. Not with the Good Lord tellin him how to fuck you on the deal.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: UUs are “non-creedal”–they vary from atheism to something more like traditional theism.
Kay
If we DO start actually deporting substantial numbers – more than Biden was deporting – that will show up in empty meat processing room floors and fields and orchards and restaurants and building sites. That has to happen. If it doesn’t, they’re lying.
Suzanne
@narya:
Agreed.
As part of our political project, I think it’s important to be visible. It’s a potentially uneasy alliance, though. For example, on the issue of abortion, I want to vote for candidates who are pretty maximalist and vehemently in favor. I don’t love the “personally opposed but safe/legal/rare” position — though I absolutely recognize that it’s better than anti-choice.
So. My struggle between “I’m personally more progressive but I also am pragmatic enough to accept half-loaves” continues.
RaflW
@Professor Bigfoot: Some YouGov recent poll data says Trump is not doing what people want:
– Only 30% of Americans believe that all or most of the executive orders issued by Trump in his second term have been constitutional.
– 51% of Americans believe that Elon Musk has a lot of influence within Trump’s administration, while only 13% say they want him to have a lot of influence. Nearly half — 46% — say they’d prefer for Musk to have no influence in the administration while only 4% say he has none
– The share of Republicans saying they want Musk to have a lot of influence over Trump’s administration has fallen in recent months, to 26% from 47% just after the November election
Elizabelle
@sentient ai from the future: I think those stories, and a lot of the polls, are to depress Democrats and other non-Trump voters, and to stifle protest. (“There are less of you than you think. People actually like him.”)
The NY Vichy Times also cannot help themselves (narrator voice: yes they can) with going for all the “Democrats Flailing” headlines. Fuck ’em.
AM in NC
@zhena gogolia: I would LOVE to see billboards all over heavily evangelical and heavily catholic areas with that message:
THE WORDS OF JESUS OF NAZARETH ARE NOT “NASTY AND OFFENSIVE”, PRES. TRUMP.
THEY ARE THE WORDS OF GOD.
And every time he does something anti-Christian, a new round of billboards. Plant the seeds, and some Conservative Christians will be peeled away.
My friend said that for her super Catholic mom and her friends Elon’s literal Nazi salute is what got their attention as just morally wrong. It broke through their rightwing info bubble.
Spanky
@Kay:
Well, completely on-brand for Trump, so there’s that.
AM in NC
@Starfish (she/her): I ONLY edit when asked. But am happy to edit when asked! (for future reference)
sentient ai from the future
@Matt McIrvin: i am officially splintering from the UUs to form a group that is both non-Creedal and non-Nickelbackal
Matt McIrvin
@sentient ai from the future: Since Trump is President now, we’re back in the zone where “job approval” polls are the relevant ones to look at. I don’t see a strong post-inauguration upward trend for Trump there–if anything the polls that repeat are trending slightly down, though there’s a lot of noise and some right-leaning polls are flooding the zone:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/
We are in the “honeymoon” days of a presidential administration where people are instinctively inclined to lean positive or withhold judgment. The one thing I can really say here is that Trump’s second honeymoon is maybe a few approval points higher than his first one, but significantly lower than Biden’s, way lower than Obama’s.
And approval-disapproval is not going to capture intensity among the opposition either.
Baud
@sentient ai from the future:
The religion we all need.
Kay
Because this is EXACTLY what the assholes in media and the GOP would do – they’d satisfy the GOP base’s love for cruelty by big showy performances of shackling people and dragging them off WHILE not actually deporting any more than Biden or Obama did, so the work undocumented do still gets done and the economy stays humming and their owners can stack up some more billions.
TBone
@Elizabelle: hard agree
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot:
Yes.
But…. I have often said that there’s some Christians who love nothing more than telling other Christians that they’re going to Hell. I have noticed, on this divide as well as many others, the most vehement hate is reserved for those who are most adjacent.
Betty Cracker
@Starfish (she/her): I do remember that. I always felt ambivalent about it for the reasons outlined above. Some of the most prolific pedants here were among the sweetest, most helpful commenters, which made me question my view that correcting people is kind of rude.
PS: A person with whom I’m very close IRL corrects people’s grammar constantly, even mine when I use colloquialisms and even though she knows I know what’s correct, which I find irritating but she thinks is helpful. My years-long passive-aggressive retaliation is to let her go on mispronouncing “espresso.” ;-)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Liberals never have learned to deal effectively with the fact that normies operate on a completely different information plane.
Kay
@Spanky:
The embedded reporters again.UGH. This bullshit again. Trump “minders” walk the NYTimes around in a leash and the NYT obediently pumps out the cruelty performance.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I used to think an expresso was coffee served more quickly.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: Peyton Place in your honor 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MqJ3p3xkRes
That’s my idea of church music!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Professor Bigfoot:
The irony in all of this is the oft-discussed decline in regular church attendance:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/642548/church-attendance-declined-religious-groups.aspx
I discuss this with the president of one of the two Registered Neighborhood Org boards I’m on, he’s a retired pastor, wonderful communicator (not a pissed off, cranky wonderful communicator like me) and we all bemoan another well documented aspect of modern life: the general decline in group participation as first outlined in the “Bowling Alone” book and now the “Join or Die” documentary.
We see a decline in regular attendance but does that translate into a decline in belief? Which then translates into exactly what you said. Beats the hell outta me.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker:
“Intensive purposes”
“Free reign”
“Needs fixed”
“Febuary”
“Axe a question”
“Way bigger”
“Was gifted”.
Is it too early for a cocktail?
Elizabelle
@AM in NC: I would change that a tad, leaving out “word of God.”
I think this would reach everyone, atheists included. You can absolutely make a case that there was a historical figure named Jesus. The miracles, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, maybe not so much.
But Jesus had a LOT to say about living a humane and compassionate life. As do many from other religions.
Make them squirm. It’s the political evangelist types that are lying.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: It’s the low-engagement/high-engagement divide. We’re all into arguing with and anathematizing other factions of high-political-engagement people, but low-engagement people are going to drive this kind of result.
I think the average person on the street does not grasp the extent of what Musk’s people are doing to the federal government and won’t do so until checks stop coming or services they actually use start to break down. Since the remaining people in the civil service actually care about things and are trying to keep these online, there’s an inertia there that delays effects.
sentient ai from the future
@Suzanne: feral intensive porpoises
RaflW
@Matt McIrvin: YouGov’s Feb 2-4 poll did show a 4 point drop in Trump’s net approval. Could be noise, but if this trend continues, given that news of his chaos is probably just really percolating out to the normies since Feb 4, he might elicit some panic from the dozen or so vulnerable House Rs. Not that Johnson will let anything move on the House floor to try to corral Trump-Musk.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle:
Though the loud online atheists I was talking about are the ones most likely to embrace the claims that there was no historical Jesus at all (I gather these claims are considered fringe by actual historians).
Starfish (she/her)
@Betty Cracker:
Yes!
My husband is always correcting my pronunciation, and usually he is right.
Yesterday, I was helping my son with Spelling Bee words, and my son, his father, and I had different pronunciations for “deluge.” I had the correct American English pronunciation. My husband had the UK pronunciation, and my son had the pronunciation of a reader who has never heard anyone actually use this word in real life.
RaflW
@Baud: Gonna go back to that item where “only 13% say they want [Musk] to have a lot of influence.” Almost nothing polls that lopsided. Musk being where he doesn’t belong is breaking thru.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: I cannot get over how many people, in the military too, cannot pronounce “nuclear” correctly.
Maybe some of them can, but go with “nukular” to signify they are in the tribe.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Agree. I happen to think that divide is what makes a lot of our advocacy ineffective.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: Or people they know and care about are out of a job.
Or their rural medical services/hospitals shut down or have even longer waits.
Professor Bigfoot
@Elizabelle: I hope I live to see the day when we can say, “when we told them this was coming, they scoffed and told us we were overreacting.”
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: I think that should be considered a variant/dialect pronunciation, not an error. The late Jimmy Carter said “nucular”. He was a nuclear-engineering expert who was involved in mitigating the Chalk River Incident.
There are a lot of English words for which we do this. Does anyone pronounce “comfortable” as “com-fort-a-ble” with the syllables as written? I don’t.
Elizabelle
@Baud: That is why I really like the protest sign up today:
It’s true, it’s short, and can’t be refuted.
Elizabelle
@Professor Bigfoot: Me too. Hope you and I and all of us jackals do.
MomSense
@sentient ai from the future:
UUs are already non creedal and I’ve never heard of Nickelback ever being played in a UU congregation.
Starfish (she/her)
@Elizabelle: The nukular pronunciation existed before George W Bush used it. Here is a YouTube short on it
Oh, I mean, I agree with @Matt McIrvin.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: see #182 in that regard
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, you are right about Carter. So maybe a regional dialect sort of thing too?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
Hah! My very first, college-level history class was History of Christianity to the Reformation. And the first lecture (I’ve still got the lecture notes from the Fall of 1979) was about the historicity of Jesus. This is a decent enough read:
https://bigthink.com/thinking/was-jesus-real/
TBone
@Elizabelle: yes but they would have. Fuckers.
CCL
@Kosh III: My endocrinologist insists on synthyroid .. no generics… Enrolled me with a mail order pharmacy that saves me a ton of money. Before this doc, I was on the generic though I had heard for years that synthyroid was one of the drugs where generic vs brand does matter …
AM in NC
@narya: I stopped going to church as soon as I turned 14. I’m agnostic, in that I don’t believe in a sky god who controls everything, but then again, what the fuck do I know? Our friends are pretty much all like us – none go to church. But we don’t advertise our non-belief.
My husband and I didn’t raise our kids in any church. They think the idea of believing in an all-powerful, invisible sky-god who tells you what to do is batshit insane. They have zero problem saying they are atheists. Nor do many of their friends. And they are definitely moral people who think about moral frameworks. They know there are good moral teachings to be gleaned from the worlds’ religions, but that there are terrors there too. They want the “do well by your fellow humans” and to leave behind “my magical being says you MUST obey”.
I am heartened by this.
Professor Bigfoot
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The most underhanded, unethical people I’ve had the misfortune to work with were all VERY out-and-proud Christians (praise Jesus!)
I long ago concluded that a “good Christian” was almost certainly not a good human.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I hear he was a superstar.
Professor Bigfoot
@sentient ai from the future: Aye, but how many of us here on this fine blog have called multiple times?
I take your point, though, with a heapin’ helpin’ of “from your keyboard to God’s monitor.”
narya
Hah! ideally, I’d say I’m an anarcho-syndicalist–but there is NO pragmatic way to work toward that. If pressed, in the right conversation, I might talk about that a bit, but I’ve basically had a long life thinking about what’s actually possible rather than what’s ideal–accepting half loaves, as you say.
@Baud: I struggle with this a lot–when I catch glimpses of Faux or whatever, I’m blown away by the idiocy and, often, the complete lack of facts.
AM in NC
@Suzanne: And THE most used error (in my experience): All of THE sudden. It’s All of A sudden. Not THE sudden. Not THE!!!!!
TBone
@Baud: Mom played that album SO loud hahaha! Grandparents didn’t know what to say while we danced in go go boots.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: Aha. Wiki even has an entry for Nucular.
With this:
In that list, notice that GHWBush is NOT on it. So W’s pronunciation is an affectation. Unless nature (being raised in Midland, Texas) overtook nurture (by parents born in New England, and well educated at that). Or, more likely, W just did it for his Good Old Boy posturing.
narya
@AM in NC: I think I am your kids in this scenario :-) Or maybe THEIR kids, if they have any. Dad’s father was a deacon in the presbyterian church, but Mom’s dad was an atheist, so I’m really third-generation atheist on that side of the family. Makes it very matter-of-fact.
Soprano2
@Baud: They think Jesus is too woke now. 🙄😅
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
With a hellluva vocal range…although Pliny and Tacitus never mentioned that so it could be a modern embellishment.
p.a.
My pat (too pat?) answer to why I’m not a believer in any religion (as opposed to a religion’s ethical teachings) is: I don’t believe in magic. Except in Vegas.
jefft452
@mrmoshpotato: “If someone (his POS father) really loved him, he wouldn’t be such a fascistic, manbaby pile of shit”
Same for Musk
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: Maybe they’ve given up trying. You probably can’t tell him anything he doesn’t want to hear.
Elizabelle
In moderation from embedded wiki links, so editing this to:
@Matt McIrvin: Aha. Wiki even has an entry for Nucular.
Eisenhower, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Walter Mondale used the “nucular” pronunciation. (Weirdly, Jimmy Carter is not in that list.)
In that list, notice that GHWBush is NOT on it. So W’s pronunciation is an affectation. Unless nature (being raised in Midland, Texas) overtook nurture (by parents born in New England, and well educated at that). Or, more likely, W just did it for his Good Old Boy posturing
ETA: Lol. Wiki also apparently has an entry for “Bushism.”
Professor Bigfoot
Will any of those Republicans do ANYTHING to cross their Leader?
(One hopes. One does not trust, but one hopes.)
satby
@Kosh III: I have the G supplement too. I have very few health issues other than asthma, so it’s been fine for me. I didn’t want an Advantage plan because I like to travel and didn’t want to be locked into a network.
Chief Oshkosh
@Geminid: I was raised to not worry about other people’s faith as being none of my business. Since college days, I’ve been telling people I was rigorously raised in The Church of Mind My Own Goddamned Business.
…A long time before that guy from Minnesota-by-way-of-Nebraska starting using the watered down version. ;)
AM in NC
@Professor Bigfoot: I for one have been calling my 2 GOP Senators every day to protest and try to get their staffers aghast at what their choices are doing to all of us, and my Dem. Representative regularly to thank her for her actions.
My women friends are also all calling every day.
White, wealthy(ish) wine moms would probably be how they’d describe us. And we are (and have been) angry, worried about people more vulnerable than we are, and trying like hell to do the work every day. We see you and hear you, and we are working with you to beat this evil back.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: HARD agree.
jefft452
@Starfish (she/her): “and my son had the pronunciation of a reader who has never heard anyone actually use this word in real life.”
When I was young and foolish I used to make fun of people like that
Now I look up to them – they are better educated then their peers
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: does Angus King count as one?
Nelle
Deleted.
TBone
@jefft452: “than”
Hahahahahahahaha! Could not help that one. Apologies!
Professor Bigfoot
@AM in NC: Was just saying that the volume of calls may not be as indicative as we would hope, as many people are calling multiple times.
But it is a hopeful sign.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: He’s an Independent, isn’t he?
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: I should have used my snark face a little.
Did you see ‘You Can’t Steal My Shine’? I feel ignored hahahaha.
NeenerNeener
@Kosh III: Part G may be all you can get. I think F is only for people who turned 65 before 2020, or something like that. I could be mistaken though.
WaterGirl
@Starfish (she/her): Well, we lost Steeplejack and Amir, both of whom knew the english language far better than most.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Elizabelle:
Yes, it is a good message but I’ve already seen people on the Left twist themselves into knots because it has to be wrong it’s so simple and to the point.
Again, I really want to know who got to Harris and Watlz when “weirdo” was being effective.
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
At least they didn’t criticize the grammar.
MagdaInBlack
@Nelle: I was in complete agreement with what you deleted ;-)
TBone
More vagina coffee needed.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: great day in the morning, fellow citizen!
ETA (*Pierre Robert voice)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Professor Bigfoot: The other hopeful sign is this is happening in Red States. Turns out all that a lot of that USAID money was being spent buying crops from Midwestern farmers.
Bill Arnold
@Starfish (she/her):
True.
It is useful, as an exercise in strengthening one’s epistemic humility, to look at overturned scientific dogmas/theories of the past. This is a good example:
The Scientific Study of Meteors in the 19th Century (Mary F. Romig, 1966)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Oh, the people who pull that crap are easy to ignore.
TBone
@Bill Arnold: IRL I tell the fundies that God invented science for a reason.
Glory b
@Kay: There’s this, cause for skepticism:
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/02/08/trump-chicago-ice-arrest-immigration
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: Installing coffee before breaking the seal and going ” OUT THERE.”
Good Morning
TBone
If there is a humorless God, I am completely screwed.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: I fucking love you very much!
I’m 💀 from laughter again!
Spanky
“Nukular” goes back at least to Hyman Fucking Admiral Rickover, and he was enough of a fucking martinet that I bet that pronunciation was enforced, either implicitly or explicitly.
He was Carter’s CO on the nuclear side of the Navy.
eclare
@Jeffro:
Wow that ad is awesome!
Not watching tonight, TCFG will be there and you know cameras will be on him, maybe even do an interview. Can’t take it.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne:
“Needs fixed” is the worst for me.
What’s wrong with “was gifted”? I don’t use the phrase, but it is common usage and not someone goofing something up.
Oh, and you forgot “nucular”!
Glory b
@TBone: Lol, I will casually say (not to fundies, I don’t know any) “This is why God gave us cellphones/microwave ovens/vaccines/indoor plumbing/etc.”
TBone
Things I am grateful for:
1. Mu-mus with pockets.
Moo moos?
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
zhena gogolia
I have to say I am shocked that Caroline Kennedy’s statement was completely and utterly ignored.
Kayla Rudbek
@TBone: “man wrote the Bible and God wrote the rocks” is one of my favorite lines
Kristine
@Elizabelle:
It’s like reverse-Dorian Gray. The portraits (by certain painters) look better and better and the living person looks more and more like a decaying fungus.
Ohio Mom
@Kosh III: Write David Anderson. Somewhere on this page is all the frontpagers’ contact info.
He was a tremendous help to us five years ago when we were at an insurance crossroads, and I remain forever grateful.
P.S. you’ve already made a smart move rejecting the Advantage option.
Anyway
it’s a doggie-dog world out there
Bill Arnold
@oldgold:
Paula White is a servant of the Prince of Lies.
And his understudy, [the] D.J. Trump [package].
(Expressed as concepts in her “theology”.)
Sure Lurkalot
@AM in NC:
At least until the next election, where they will vote for any and every one with a dash R after their name.
Ohio Mom
@RaflW: Most synagogues have some sort of security detail during services , usually off-duty police. I suppose it makes some people feel safer. I think they are as useful as school resource officers in preventing or aborting attacks, that is, not at all.
On a related note, it’s often joked that American Judaism is a region full of atheists.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Spanky:
OT but I had a friend who was an officer on a nukular submarine, and he had a story about standing in Admiral Rickover’s closet for a couple of hours. Apparently Rickover gave that claustrophobia test personally to every prospective submarine officer.
On topic, we heard Bishop Budde’s sermon live and while we were cheering her daring to speak those sentiments knowing who was in the audience, it was a pretty bog-standard Christian sermon on taking care of the poor and downtrodden. I’m appalled but not exactly surprised that practically quoting Jesus verbatim gets you death threats from certain “Christians”.
RaflW
@Kosh III: A friend who was unceremoniously ‘retired’ a few months ago just did a pretty exhaustive analysis of all the Medicare Plan G carriers offering coverage in this part of CO. He finally landed on Mutual of Omaha. The companies are all supposed to cover the same things, but the premiums vary, and just as important, their complaint data varies too. He felt Mutual of Omaha had the best balance of price (and, hopefully, price stability because changing carrier is hard) together with a low complaint rate. Dunno if that helps, or applies in your market.
Anyway
That’s why you’re a mensch, BC (sorry don’t know the fem version. Is it unisex?)
Miss Bianca
@Matt McIrvin: Umm, we are talking about the Episcopal Church here. Which endured a split into factions over ordaining gay ministers, and is still going strong. No, I don’t think she’s going to get fired. If anything, she may get more people interested in joining the Episcopal Church. (I’m even thinking about getting reacquainted with my old denomination myself.)
Miss Bianca
@Baud:
Probably why they picked Mike Pence over FFOTUS.
MagdaInBlack
@Betty Cracker: As along as the person gets their point across, I don’t worry too much about punctuation and grammar, either here or in casual conversation. And “impertinent” is what my mother would call it.
In professional settings, I pay more attention to those sort of things.
jonas
@RevRick: There has been a strange divergence in Christianity in the 20th/21st century, certainly accelerated by MAGA and Trumpism, wherein evangelicals increasingly embrace the barest form of Christian theology — “believing” in Jesus or whatever — but without any content, while the content, namely ethics, is preserved largely by those with a secular humanist (or at least non-fundamentalist) outlook. So we have now people claiming to be true “Christians” who basically disavow any of the teachings of Jesus involving mercy, concern for the poor or marginalized, or the abandonment of wealth on one hand, and very liberally Christian, agnostic or atheistic people on the other hand embracing them. This dissonance is largely what has driven David French from his former rightwing evangelical positions — most of his erstwhile “Christian” colleagues have become raging pagans glorifying violence, wealth, and ethno-nationalism while calling anyone who expresses any concern for the poor tools of Liberal Satan.
RevRick
@TBone: God sits in heaven and laughs. Also, since God is in heaven and present everywhere, that means heaven surrounds us every moment… and is within us, too.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
RaflW
Circling back to the OP, here’s a piece in the current issue of Texas Observer. I lived near Cypress many years ago. My would-be stepmother (they only ever were engaged, not married) still lives quite near there. It’s a remarkable read. I know “not all Christians” is a trope. But also true.
Sure Lurkalot
@Elizabelle:
And those things overlap. When the hospitals and clinics close, lots of people lose their jobs and the surrounding businesses lose customers and they shutter and so on down the line to where they suffer enough misery to vote Republican in the next election.
MagdaInBlack
@RevRick: That is my belief, which I think I mentioned one early morning: we are all immersed in this all encompassing consciousness we call God.
Other MJS
@MomSense: Sorry, “PK”?
Glory b
@Bill Arnold: AND, actually got her start in the big time in the black church, T.D. Jake’s, The Potter’s House.
Then moved past that to bigger and better things, calling Black Lives Matter a servant of the anti Christ.
Funny that no one seems to mention that anymore.
But, as Ragnarok Lobster on Bluesky says, Pepperidge Hood remembers.
RevRick
Our in-person service was cancelled today, since we received an inch of sleet and freezing rain. So MrsRev and I will watch/participate this evening courtesy of YouTube, which we mirror to our TV via our Apple TV device.
I feebly attempted to shovel the walks, but decided to dump salt instead. Hopefully, by 1:30 we’ll be able to get to the car and go to our Mahler and Wagner concert at 2.
suzanne
@WaterGirl:
“Was given” is sufficient. “Was gifted” seems to have come about due to social media cooking our brains.
RevRick
@Other MJS: Preacher’s kid
zhena gogolia
@Other MJS: Preacher’s kid
Baud
@suzanne:
But what about “I was gifted as a child but I’m no longer smart”?
suzanne
@Baud: You might be telling on yourself. ;)
Miss Bianca
@Kosh III: No Medicare Rx plan covers Synthroid?! Are you kidding me?
@Scout211: Yeah, that was going to be my next question, “what about generics”. I’ve been doing levothyroxine as as generic for years now. No insurance problems covering it either.
Baud
@RevRick:
@zhena gogolia:
Dusty Springfield. Good song.
different-church-lady
In a sane country you wouldn’t need to beg the president for mercy.
Sure Lurkalot
@AM in NC:
Me too! Being kind to others is a human value, no divinity required. Be kind to others so you don’t languish in purgatory or rot in hell I guess works for some but reeks of “don’t make me hit you.” So many mean and vindictive gods, Yahweh could brook no competition and drowned his creations, Zeus was a prodigious rapist, his father and grandfather took extreme measures to make sure they were t superseded and the world suffered wars and privation.
TBone
@RevRick: amen!
Today’s Noah sign of vast improvement (I’m in Heaven):
“Mom, I’m just gonna stare at that bathroom sink until you lift me up there for my usual cool drink from the faucet and subsequent small leap from countertop to window perch on top of sill height towels cabinet! What are all those crazy bird and neighbors DOING out there? I need to know!”
different-church-lady
@Kay:
Here’s the paradox: it is both entirely bullshit performance AND entirely real. They will attempt both. They genuinely want to hurt people. But if they find nobody, they will still be satisfied with the theater. They’re not mutually exclusive. They’re not pretending to hurt people for the cameras, they’re genuinely trying, and they want to make “entertainment” out of it as well.
TBone
@Kayla Rudbek: that’s a classic I hadn’t yet heard, thank you!!!
M31
yeah didn’t work out for Jesus either
Anyway
Go Birds!!
I normally never watch – go to friends ‘ place for the nachos and beer — but it’s the local team – gotta watch today. Will bogart the remote and mute/switch channels when FF comes on.
I’ve managed to evade him since his debate with MVP — hope to maintain the streak.
TBone
@Anyway: that’s gotta be my favorite faux paw.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: I was paid to do it for so long and that might be why I take such great pleasure in messing around with language and grammar now that I’m not under that yoke anymore.
Also I don’t have to muzzle my creative cussing IRL anymore thank God!
Oh the law office stories I can’t tell, I’m sworn to secrecy!
kalakal
@Professor Bigfoot:
In the UK it’s practically political suicide to run on being gung ho Christian. People will consider you to be a relgious maniac and we have enough maniacs already without adding more to the mix, thank you. The last big attempt to impose religious dogma was the Alton Abortion Bill in 1987 which came worryingly close
Miss Bianca
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: And again I’ll point out that Americans don’t seem to be natural joiners, at least for most of our history. The “Bowling Alone” guy seems to think that the immediate post-WWII period was a norm for American society. More and more, it seems to me, that it was a glaring exception to our general rule.
Same with SCOTUS – that post WWII spasm of liberal rulings appear to have been very much the exception to the general rule of conservative, if not downright reactionary, court decisions.
TBone
@M31: bwahahaha! Someone here gave me a meme about pre-reserving my place in hell for inappropriate laughter and THIS is why! I wish I could repost it, the little demon looks almost contrite under the disapproving gaze of the gatekeeping, list keeper Saint!
My reservations may be canceled with proper notice.
Miss Bianca
@CCL: Really? I will have to do some research on that.
M31
I wonder what will happen when Trump gets booed at the game. Most likely the TV will suppress the audio.
Wasn’t there a time when he got booed at a game and he really was about to cry? lol or was that Elon at some tech event?
M31
@TBone:
lol “Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company” — Mark Twain (probably, and if not it’s certainly been attributed to him as are most good quips)
see you there
TBone
@Glory b: at every opportunity no matter who/what/where, I hope!
TBone
@M31: I adore someone who knows the classics! I’ll bring the weed!
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia: Are you? Now, if JFK Jr had still been alive and said the same thing, pretty sure it would have made more of a splash.
Let’s wonder why I think that JFK’s *son’s* words would have more affect than his *daughter’s* when it comes to modern Republicans paying attention to anything…
TBone
@M31: yes I have (appropriated) actual photos of people flipping him the bird at one such sporting event!
GO BIRDS!!!!!
RevRick
@jonas: This is, in part, due to the baleful influence of Plato on Christian belief with his trashing of earthly existence and the immortality of the soul. White Evangelicals see Jesus as a get-out-of-jail card, a means of escaping Hell, fear of which is continually cultivated in their churches. It’s “he died for our sins” with sin defined in an individualistic way, and see what “he did for you!” His life and ministry become almost irrelevant.
The result is that Jesus becomes the Christ of Culture*, where Jesus is subsumed in the world as it is = baptizes white male supremacy. I’m of the Calvinist Christ Against Culture* model, where the aim is radical transformation of the world as it is.
*Two of five typologies identified by H. Richard Niebuhr.
narya
@RaflW: That’s beautiful; I love the idea of a renaming liturgy. Atheist though I am, I recognize the deep importance of ritual and ceremony in our lives. We had to create our own mourning ritual when my sister died, and it was deeply painful, but also so very important.
Captain C
@zhena gogolia: They worry about their notional inheritance, nothing more.
TBone
@Anyway: I am getting in the very fucking CHUFFED spirit way too early – thinking about getting into the
Communionexpensive cooking wine already! I don’t skimp in that area hahahaha!kalakal
@Baud:
As an atheist I don’t know how to love him
TBone
TIME TO FILL THE TUBE not the wine glass!
jonas
Interesting point. There were actually some late Roman writers who claimed Constantine’s embrace of Christianity was a cynical ploy to assuage his guilty conscience for having had his wife and stepson murdered. So it goes back a ways…
Geminid
@M31: I think Trump got bood at a Nationals baseball game during his first term..
Sister Golden Bear
@Suzanne: Trump does his make-up entirely himself.
As for the look, I’m convinced he’s replicating the tanning bed look from the 70s/80s, where you had to wear the little protective eyeshields while in the bed. Yeah, it looked unnatural, but it was a status marker that you could afford to do it a time when it was expensive. IIRC, he boasted about having a personal tanning bed.
Central Planning
@Suzanne: “10 Items or Less”
The local Wegmans corrected theirs during a remodel at the self-checkout: “20 Items or Fewer”
Matt McIrvin
@jefft452: That was my favorite running joke in the underrated movie Megamind— Will Ferrell as the title character mispronounced all sorts of very common words, such as “school”, with eye-pronunciations as if he’d primarily learned them from books. Which actually jibed 100% with his character’s backstory.
Glory b
@TBone: Yep!
Matt McIrvin
@kalakal: “And all the good you’ve done
Will soon get swept away
You’ve begun to matter more
Than the things you say”
Kayla Rudbek
@TBone: thank you!
when I was in belief, I would tend to think of the Christian Bible as a message that is being twisted and misinterpreted by enemy forces, from the time that it was first written down through today. It’s the opposite problem to cryptography (one of my freshman courses wound up being a semester on cryptography, long story) where you are trying to keep a message secret from being read; if there is a God, the communication is through messed up channels that can absolutely be counted on to misinterpret or conceal the actual message. So the important parts to watch for are the redundancy, that the important part of the message has to be repeated over and over again in the effort to get it through to the recipients through a unreliable and hostile transmission process.
Spider Robinson had a great scene in his Callahan’s Chronicles series where it turned out that St. Paul of Tarsus was actually an alien in disguise who was working on making the human race fodder for the alien species, over a few millennia or so (twisting Jesus of Nazareth’s words and messages being one of the techniques used). Robinson was raised Roman Catholic and joined the seminary in high school, left and became a Buddhist and SF writer.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: I remain completely convinced that God has a wicked sense of humor.
What is Trump but a cosmic joke, after all? [LOL/sob!]
Professor Bigfoot
@Spanky: As I understand it, while Rickover was a right bastard, he’s also the reason the US Navy has never had a reactor accident.
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia: She’s just a girl, what do they know?
TBone
Renaming Noah again. Noah
TwoThree Miracles.The round the clock care being rendered has almost ruined what’s left of my, and hubby’s, precarious health situations. There are so many hurdles and great physical strength is required on top of sleep deprivation (pushing the food through the syringe and tube at all hours requires Herculean effort and that’s just one example).
Love has given us the necessary strength to persevere all this time, and that’s another miracle!
Not finished!!!
A Ghost to Most
So many enablers and apologists.
AM in NC
@Sure Lurkalot: She didn’t vote for President this past election because Pope Francis said there were major issues with both candidates. It’s just insane to me.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: Exactly so.
**Even though I saw your reply, and wrote this comment, and forgot to send it. LOL
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: Connected to that, there’s the strange sort-of-under-the-radar phenomenon of right-wing Protestants converting to hard-right Opus Dei Catholicism basically because it’s more theocrat-statist-authoritarian. The Southern Baptists were always an odd fit for being Baptist because of the denomination’s anti-authoritarian roots, but the Roman Catholic Church has no such problems.
And then a few of them get dissatisfied with that and move on to being Eastern Orthodox because they feel it’s even harder-core–in the aesthetics, at least. (While people who are Eastern Orthodox from birth are going, who are these freaks?)
It seems like the old enmity between conservative Protestants and Catholics has also been buried so they can unite against the liberal wings of their own belief systems.
Kayla Rudbek
@Matt McIrvin: the Roman Catholic Church is facing a schism within the USA. And yes, it’s going to wind up being a freaky merger between the Opus Dei and tradCaths and the evangelicals. These are the people who go to Steubenville and Ave Maria because Notre Dame is too left wing for them.
Matt McIrvin
@Miss Bianca: You never know–over the past couple weeks there’s been this seeming flood of nominally liberal institutions just instantly folding and saying “okay, we’re just going to drive out Black people and LGBT people and women, kiss Trump’s ring and be haters now,” and it’s hard to tell where the limit really is.
dnfree
@Kosh III: I don’t think you can get Plan F anymore unless you were grandfathered in. We have Plan G and it is fine. Small deductible at the beginning of the year, although of course that could be changed in the future to a larger deductible.
dnfree
@sentient ai from the future: Good name for it! That’s the argument I most often have with fundamentalists/evangelicals. They think they KNOW.
TBone
@TBone: Narrator:
she is taking the Communion wineglass into the jacuzzi tub momentarily. Aight – put it in a Solo cup first!
evodevo
@Geminid:
LOL most talibangelicals don’t even know what that is – and when I tell them G. Washington and the rest were Deists, not Xtians, they are flummoxed…
brantl
@Baud: compared to what that asshole wants it was fantastic.
NotMax
@evodevo
Can’t spell Deist without DEI.
;)
Baud
@NotMax:
A top 10.
evodevo
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: A friend of ours who has a welding business said the same thing: when he sees that Xtian fish, he makes sure NOT to hire them for anything, because he’s had bad luck dealing with them.
evodevo
@Matt McIrvin: Yep, the thesis is popular in some quarters (See: Richard Carrier). However, my usual go-to for that question is that some of the letters of Paul (Saul) are widely considered to be authentic and historical, and HE wrote as if Jesus was an actual human historical figure, along with Jesus’ brother James and some of the apostles… So…
Kosh III
@dnfree: I’m 73 so it appears I still qualify for F.
Kosh III
Speaking of pronunciation: back in 2005 after Katrina, all these British reporters came over here and talked about New Or-le-ans. They didn’t do any research or they would’ve known no American EVER pronounces it as it is spelled. I usually say Nu Orlunz. LOL
lowtechcyclist
@cmorenc:
They apparently didn’t notice that John the Baptist already had some words for them. When the Pharisees said essentially the same thing when they said “we are children of Abraham,” John told them God could make children of Abraham out of the stones on the ground, and they needed to prove their repentance by the fruit it bore.
I don’t know who gets into Heaven and who doesn’t, but it’ll be a long way off for them, as nobody gets to bring their sin with them into Heaven.
lowtechcyclist
@Kosh III:
I recall that the theme song from the mid-1960s TV show “Maverick” pronounced it “New Or-leans” with the accent on the second syllable pronounced just like it’s spelled. My parents regularly watched that TV show, so for years that’s how I thought it was pronounced.
Gvg
@Professor Bigfoot: I meant to mention that you and we should not stop thinking and make racism the whole answer, like Bernie for instance, makes income and class the whole answer, ignoring race or other factors.
Racism is a big factor. I don’t think it’s exclusive. I think some people have multiple motives.
Right now, when we are seeing some obvious and to us expected face eating leopard moves on minority’s that “supported” Trump, I am thinking that a lot of people just hate thinking about how complicated “modern” times are, and go with simple slogans that promise to make them feel good. Times have always been complicated and a lot of people always think the past was better and hate the present.
Don’t forget how much hate is being directed at women too.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: all the agencies that have had their funding interfered with recently, were parts of a kind of excellence we might sorely miss. All our soft power that has been kneecapped. All our strength, and might, and negotiating bodies, and balance of powers, that while sometimes inappropriate and bullying and overpowering, also sometimes made safely. And the line between overpowering, and keeping the peace, is a whole other discussion.
it’s good to appreciate what was working, as well as notice what needed a lot of improvement or wasn’t perfect. So I’m not promoting grandiosity about how great we were.
It makes sense, what you’re saying. I know how disappointed I felt when I understood I’d been fed a pack of lies about American history and our “greatness” and superiority. It’s natural to get picky about what’s wrong.
And there’s the rub. It messes up our branding and messaging, and maybe our coalition building during election campaigns.
In the interest of tenseness, I’ll put this on my list of haiku assignments; I’ll see what I can do.
G33k
@Matt McIrvin: highly unlikely
SWMBO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moYi2tdXMeI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moYi2tdXMeI
whatsleft
@Kosh III:
Plan F is only available to Medicare beneficiaries who became eligible before January 1, 2020.