Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

“They all knew.”

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

This fight is for everything.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

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Open Thread: RETVRN (to the Religious Wars)

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Eh, I grew up Catholic, it's not like we make a fuss about Good Friday or anything, I'm sure no one will be upset.

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— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) April 3, 2026 at 1:46 PM

I’m sure things have changed a bit over the last 50 years, but when I was growing up In The Church, we not only had mandatory Good Friday mass, it was a special extra-long ceremony where the presiding priest marched all around the chapel, trailed by altar boys, marking all 14 Stations of the Cross with a (mumbled) recitation of horrors…

To all the people and AI bots online insisting that no Catholic church holds Mass on #GoodFriday, I give you the literal Pope officiating at Mass on Good Friday.
I also suggest people engage their brains before they speak/post, but yeah, I know, good luck with that. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuNM…

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— Kat4Obama (@kat4obama.bsky.social) April 3, 2026 at 3:12 PM

Turns out these guys really do respect some traditions of Western Civilization! Sure, they hate art, culture, self-reflection, civic responsibility, and democracy, but they're game for some good old Catholic/Protestant conflict.

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— Max Kennerly (@maxkennerly.bsky.social) April 3, 2026 at 3:07 PM

Catholic converts from evangelical Christianity born after 1980 have their own self-contained culture and aesthetic that basically looks like “Lord of the Ring” to cradle Catholics and associated ethnic whites.

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— Sarah Archer (@sarcher.bsky.social) April 3, 2026 at 2:04 PM

The big MAGA Catholics are increasingly anti-Vatican, I wouldn’t be surprised if Vance etc spin off their own thing with the MAGA evangelicals.

Not a single one of these smartphone catholics is even remotely catholic and I’ve been going insane pointing it out for over a decade. They are just mean snobby big city evangelicals who think megachurches are for hicks

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— Patrick Cosmos (@veryimportant.lawyer) April 3, 2026 at 2:21 PM

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Sunday Morning Open Thread

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thinking about the medieval cat door in Exeter cathedral again

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— weird medieval guys (@weirdmedieval.bsky.social) March 16, 2026 at 3:58 PM

In the Kurdish regions of the Middle East, Nowruz celebrations — honoring the arrival of spring — are a fundamental expression of Kurdish identity. n.pr/4skpvgo

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— NPR (@npr.org) March 21, 2026 at 4:06 PM

AKRE, Kurdistan Region of Iraq — For many people, the vernal equinox — which marked the beginning of spring Friday — is just another date on the calendar. But in Iran, it’s celebrated as the Persian new year, known as Nowruz. In the Kurdish regions of the Middle East, Nowruz celebrations are a fundamental expression of Kurdish identity.

Today there are more than 30 million Kurds in a contiguous area in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey divided by external borders and historic internal differences. The ancient town of Akre, nestled against craggy mountains in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, has been the focal point for Nowruz celebrations for decades…

Here, Kurds gather to light flaming torches at sunset, carrying them up the mountainside to symbolize the victory of light over darkness. The women wear flowing, sparkly Kurdish dresses that look as if they came out of a medieval painting. Many of the men are dressed in traditional baggy trousers with woven cummerbunds — cotton sashes worn around their waists.

On Friday, hundreds of Kurds carried flames in a procession up the mountain under purple-black storm clouds, leaving the burning burlap torches lighting the darkness next to a giant Kurdish flag unfurled by the path…

The torches reference a story in Kurdish mythology in which a courageous blacksmith assembles an army of villagers and kills a murderous king — signaling with the mountain-top flames that the Kurds are free.

This year, they also spelled out in flames the numbers two and one — referencing a saying that “two plus two equals one” — meaning the Kurdish regions across four different countries together form one united Kurdistan…

Thirty million Kurds! For comparison purposes, Google says there’s about 15 million Palestinians, in the region and the diaspora… and 70-80 million Irish, only about a tenth of us still living in Ireland.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread

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Thank you, Adam:

😻🌸 The sky is blue, the mood is cheerful, and only this red-haired beauty knows the secret to true happiness: find a warm brick, stretch out comfortably, put your face in the sun, and forget about all your problems! It's spring!

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— Vitalis Viva (@vitalisviva.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 8:02 AM

Stand Up For Science, March 7th, 2025 and again next week. Spread the word, please. www.standupforscience.net/march7

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— Matt Beckman (@daphsci.bsky.social) February 27, 2026 at 9:59 AM


List of local rallies

Every Lunar New Year for the past 14 years, a Southern California Buddhist temple has displayed what it calls the "10,000 Buddha Relics."

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) March 1, 2026 at 1:00 PM


(Even though my parents were college educated, I grew up in a home with plaster saints, scapulars, holy cards, and an array of ‘special’ rosaries. People like aids to religious belief that they can see & touch.)

Hundreds of people gathered here at a temple believed to be the birthplace of Lord Krishna, one of the most revered Hindu gods. They are here to celebrate Holi, the festival marking the arrival of spring.

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) March 2, 2026 at 1:00 PM

Elon Musk is expected to take the stand in a shareholder trial Wednesday in San Francisco, where he’s accused of making false and misleading statements that drove down Twitter’s stock price before he bought the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022.

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) March 4, 2026 at 5:00 AM

BREAKING: State Rep. James Talarico wins the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Texas.

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) March 4, 2026 at 2:50 AM

BREAKING: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Sen. John Cornyn advance to a May runoff in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate. bit.ly/4b0Ldyz

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) March 3, 2026 at 10:52 PM

What just happened in Dallas County is one of the most blatant voter suppression operations I've ever seen—and it happened in a *primary*.
In March. Imagine November.
I broke it down here:
open.substack.com/pub/objectio…

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— Eliza Orlins (@elizaorlins.bsky.social) March 3, 2026 at 11:29 PM

Wednesday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (202)

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Trump’s ‘Perfect People’ At the National Prayer Breakfast

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He’s certainly done a lot for pedophiles.

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— Rep. Jim McGovern (@repmcgovern.bsky.social) February 7, 2026 at 6:04 PM

Lots of stuff going on last week, but I wanted to highlight the distinction between our own Democratic Christians and the GOP’s ‘perfect’ Christianists…

The difference could not be more stark.

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— Democrats (@democrats.org) February 5, 2026 at 3:56 PM

"Trump has become a parody of a 1980s televangelist, openly grifting his followers for massive amounts of cash. (His ballroom is practically his own Heritage USA.) But Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart put on a more convincing show." — @playtyperguy.com

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 14, 2026 at 12:50 PM

Trump’s ‘Perfect People’, per Stephen Robinson at Public Notice:

… According to a recent Pew poll, 69 percent of white evangelical Christians approve of his job performance. That number has dropped slightly from last year, but the investment Trump made in winning over religious conservatives continues to pay dividends.

The question is what any self-proclaimed religious person gets out of the deal…

The closest Trump ever comes to genuine religious conviction is his insistence, despite all contrary evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Otherwise, he sees religion through the same distorted funhouse mirror that he views the world. It’s all about dominance and power, never humility and compassion.

For instance, Trump boasted about his administration’s effectiveness killing people in countries that are far less powerful than our own.

“We knocked the hell out of them the other day in Nigeria because they were killing Christians,” he blathered. “When Christians come under attack, they know they’re going to be attacked violently and viciously by President Trump.”…

Peter Wehner at The Atlantic argues that Trump’s evangelical supporters regard his “viciousness as a virtue,” and at the prayer breakfast, Trump invoked Southern Baptist Pastor Robert Jeffress’s cynical description of him: “He may not have ever read the Bible, but he will be a much stronger messenger for us.” …

Trump even flexed his mobster muscle at this year’s breakfast — not so subtly threatening his own supporters if they don’t stay in line.

“We worked hard on getting rid of the Johnson Amendment,” he said. “You can say anything you can. Now, if you do say something bad about Trump, I will change my mind and I will have your tax exempt status immediately revoked.” …

There is no clear blueprint for religious faith. People can choose to find in the scripture either moral inspiration or callous vindication. Religious conservatives had long sought someone who’d help them justify their own selfishness and cruelty. This makes Trump their ideal leader. He wields religion as a blunt instrument, one that can only injure and never heal. He’s incapable of even trying to seek grace through his faith, as that would require admitting his sins and working toward genuine redemption.

The reason Trump’s unhinged, hateful remarks at this year’s prayer breakfast don’t disgust his far-right evangelical supporters is that they share his seething cultural resentment and endless persecution complex. For them, his unrestrained rage and open contempt for their mutual enemies resonates greater than a true sermon.

Back in 2017, Trump read from the script he assumed was necessary to maintain his support among evangelicals, who he probably didn’t fully understand. Almost a decade later, Trump knows religious conservatives and their motivations well enough that he doesn’t feel a need to perform anymore. Like his supporters, he’s stopped pretending he’s anything other than his worst self.

Devil worshipper

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— Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24.bsky.social) February 5, 2026 at 9:08 PM

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Excellent Read: “The Second Death of Charlie Kirk”

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A great piece from @yair-rosenberg.bsky.social on how Charlie Kirk’s assassination unleashed infighting among maga elites www.theatlantic.com/politics/202…

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— Adam Serwer (@adamserwer.bsky.social) February 5, 2026 at 7:17 AM

If you want to see an ugly scrum that isn’t sports-related… Anti-Semitism has been part of the GOP’s appeal since at least the heyday of Richard Nixon, but it used to be disguised & dogwhistled. Charlie Kirk’s death gave a whole crew of far-right grifters a chance at claiming part of his very valuable audience, if they could only spit vitriol the loudest and soonest, and they did not hesitate to shiv each other in this pursuit. Yair Rosenberg, at the Atlantic [gift link]:

At the close of 2025, just a few months after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, thousands of his followers came together in Phoenix for AmericaFest, the annual convention of Turning Point USA. A casual observer might have expected this gathering to serve as an opportunity for conservatives to regroup, celebrate Kirk’s legacy, and recommit to his fight against the left. Instead, one by one, MAGA’s leading lights took the stage and began shivving one another in public.

“Today, the conservative movement is in serious danger,” warned Ben Shapiro, a co-founder of The Daily Wire. He lambasted right-wing “charlatans” who “traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty.” And he named names. Shapiro slammed Tucker Carlson, perhaps the most popular conservative commentator in America, for mainstreaming pro-Nazi sentiment, and dubbed the former Trump strategist Steve Bannon “a PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein,” the convicted sex criminal (fact-check: mostly true). “These people are frauds, and they are grifters, and they do not deserve your time,” Shapiro said. Awkwardly, several of those people were scheduled to speak after him.

“Ben Shapiro is like a cancer, and that cancer spreads,” retorted Bannon the next day from the same podium. “I just got here, and I feel like I missed the first part of the program,” quipped Carlson, who went on to accuse Shapiro and his allies of practicing “the style of debate where you prevent the other side from talking or being heard,” conflating the latter’s criticism of his conduct with censorship.

When Kirk was killed, conservatives believed that his death would galvanize his cause. “Millions of Charlie Kirks were created today,” declared Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado. But as it turned out, Kirk’s assassin didn’t kill just one man; he destabilized the entire Trump coalition by removing a pivotal person who had been holding it together. In doing so, the killer helped unshackle dark forces—chief among them anti-Semitism—that now threaten to overtake the conservative movement…

For years, Kirk was dogged by the overtly racist followers of the young white-nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes. An avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler, Fuentes sought to subordinate racial, religious, and sexual minorities to white Christians. “The problem is that Jews run America,” he said in a representative livestream. “And the only reason we have Muslims here is because Jews are letting them in.” His supporters, known as “Groypers,” badgered Kirk with anti-Semitic and other bigoted questions at Turning Point events. “Charlie Kirk is a fake patriot, a fake Christian, and he hates his people, he’s anti-white,” Fuentes told his online audience.

Kirk recognized that this crude conspiracism was poisonous to his project of popularizing the conservative cause. When a caller to The Charlie Kirk Show asked why he wouldn’t debate Fuentes and his faction, Kirk responded: “We succeed—we win; they blame the Jews.” But Kirk also saw that Fuentes had real appeal, especially among disaffected youth, and so he tried to split the difference, repeatedly rebuking the Groypers themselves while partially co-opting some of their talking points. “If you are blaming less than 0.2 percent of the world’s population for all of your problems, that is not going to be good for your soul,” Kirk said shortly before his death. “Any young person that goes into this hyper-online brain rot, you are serving yourself over to your own demise.” Before he was killed, he drafted a now-best-selling book about the benefits of observing the Jewish Sabbath. But Kirk also blamed “Jewish donors” for being “the No. 1 funding mechanism of radical, open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions, and nonprofits.”…

Excellent Read: “The Second Death of Charlie Kirk”Post + Comments (47)

Sunday Morning Open Thread

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hang it in the fucking louvre

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) January 24, 2026 at 7:21 PM

Minnesota’s justice system will have the last word.

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— Governor Tim Walz (@governorwalz.mn.gov) January 24, 2026 at 5:06 PM

One year after she urged Trump to have mercy, Bishop Budde leads clergy protests in Minneapolis religionnews.com/2026/01/23/o…

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— Ian Kremer (@leadcoalition.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 6:35 PM

MINNEAPOLIS (RNS) — Almost exactly a year ago, the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, stood in a pulpit in front of the newly inaugurated President Donald Trump and preached a sermon that called on the commander in chief to have “mercy” on immigrants and other communities.

The sermon quickly drew backlash from the president himself, who called her “a Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who called her message “radical.”

But if Budde’s message was radical, it’s one that has resonated nonetheless. A year later, she stood in another church in Minneapolis, this time surrounded by an array of clergy who represented the hundreds of faith leaders who flocked to the city this week to protest the administration’s mass deportation campaign.

“In our varied and united faith traditions, love of neighbor is not optional,” Budde declared.

The bishop sat down with Religion News Service shortly after that appearance on Thursday (Jan. 22) to reflect on the year that has passed since her barn-burning sermon and on what she expects will be even more faith-based activism on behalf of immigrants…

What brought you out here? Why did you want to be a part of this particular convening?

The call was issued. This is my home state — where I raised my family. I saw how the ICE raids across the country have been happening — they seem to be increasing in intensity and in vitriol and brazenness. It just seemed like whenever there’s a possibility to show up and cast a light on that and shine a national spotlight, that felt really important.

You’re about a year removed from your sermon, in which you called on this administration to have mercy. JD Vance is actually here right now talking while we’re here. Do you have any reflections on that sermon now that you’re here with hundreds of clergy who are issuing a similar call that you did a year ago?

I don’t think a year ago we could have fathomed how quickly and how dramatically this country would change. The degree to which the goals and aspirations of the Trump administration as they came into office, how soon they would actually come into being and what it has cost the country. And then also, as has been said today, history is calling us to step up. I’m doing this for the country that I’m passing on to those coming up behind me and for the people who are here. It feels like a generational struggle. I wish it weren’t so, but here we are. And it’s our country to preserve and protect. It’s heartbreaking, but here we are…

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A Dream Come True

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The Church of Trump Is Not Happy. Me? I Feel a Renewed Sense of Hope and a Bit of Peace. 1

I dared to hope, but this is most excellent news!

Official announcement:

WASHINGTON – Pope Leo XIV has accepted the resignation of His Eminence Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, 75, from the pastoral governance of the Archdiocese of New York, and has appointed Most Reverend Ronald A. Hicks, currently Bishop of Joliet, as the Metropolitan Archbishop of New York.

The resignation and appointment were publicized in Washington, D.C. on December 18, 2025, by Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

The Archdiocese of New York is comprised of 4,683 square miles in the State of New York and has a total population of 5,445,700, of which 1,572,580, are Catholic.

Cardinals are required to submit their resignations on their 75th birthday, and they are sometimes not accepted for years. I had hoped in this case, the resignation would be accepted the day after Dolan’s 75th birthday.

This wasn’t the next day, but I’ll take it!

Scuttlebutt:

Dec. 15 began a most unusual week for the U.S. Catholic Church. A Spanish publication, Religión Digital, reported late on that day that Pope Leo XIV would appoint Bishop Ronald Hicks of Joliet, Illinois, to succeed Cardinal Timothy Dolan as archbishop of New York. The appointment, the story said, was expected the next day. In fact, two more days would pass before the appointment finally came, as Catholics in the United States speculated wildly.

Bishop appointments rarely leak. Many new bishops are named each month around the world. Confidentiality is kept with remarkable effectiveness, given that for each appointment the process is lengthy and consultative, and a lot of people know which candidates are being vetted. It works in part because everyone’s participation in the process is constrained by what is called a pontifical secret: To leak word is a grave sin for someone, and it can incur penalties under canon law.

It is shocking that Hicks’ appointment was leaked, but it also raised the fascinating question of why it was leaked at all.

As we waited to learn whether the rumor was true, it seemed at least possible that Hicks’ appointment was leaked as an attempt to derail it and embarrass Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago. Cupich is the most influential American on the Vatican committee that nominates bishops for the pope’s approval, the Dicastery for Bishops. For two years, Cupich worked closely on selecting the church’s new generation of leaders with Cardinal Robert Prevost, who, until he became Pope Leo XIV, was the head of the dicastery. Hicks is a protégé of Cupich.

Earlier this fall, several U.S. bishops made a bold move to embarrass Cupich after he announced he would honor Sen. Dick Durbin, who is Catholic, for his lifetime of work on U.S. immigration policy. The bishops who objected pointed out that Durbin is also pro-choice, and that honoring him would send the wrong message. Leo intervened personally, seeming to take Cupich’s side, but by that time Durbin had declined the honor.

Were Cupich’s opponents at it again, leaking word of the New York appointment?

Some more history may be helpful. In their 2010 vote for president of their conference, the U.S. bishops broke with tradition and skipped over their vice president, the moderate Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Arizona, instead electing Dolan, who was seen as more conservative. This ugly flex of brute power set the bishops on their 15-year-long campaign to stand athwart the broader American culture, and, as it turned out, the coming direction of the church. Francis was elected pope barely two years later, and most of the U.S. bishops remained out of step with him until he died.

Read the whole thing – it’s a great peek behind the curtain.

It ends with this:

The Catholic Church in the U.S. faces extraordinary challenges — declining Mass attendance, declining vocations to the priesthood, the vast scale and ramifications of financial settlements for clerical sex abuse. Hicks will be on the front line of many of these challenges. But there are other challenges too. They face everyone in the church.

The greatest of those challenges is to end the sense among Catholics that one “side” is winning or losing. Dividers have dominated the church for too long. We have spawned a culture of online Catholic influencerism that has poisoned the church, twisted it into two opposing camps locked in a seemingly endless contest that does little to advance the reign of God but raises a lot of money and exerts remarkable political influence. That was not what Francis wanted. We have good reasons to think it is not what Leo, Cupich or Hicks wants, either.

But more Catholics must want it. They must stop listening to those who claim to speak for the church, but who only divide it. It would be better to pay heed to the church’s pastors whose greatest ambition is to accompany and serve their people.

We have more and more of those bishops now. Hicks is one of them. Much success to him.

Gotta love an infallible guy who smiles all the way to his eyes!

A Dream Come TruePost + Comments (81)