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Some thoughts on what we "get" from our education. brokenhand.substack.com/p/the-things... #blueskyeducationpeeps

Idiocracy

The purpose of the federal government is protect and enrich Donald Trump, his family, his friends, and Republican officials, in that order. Republican voters are to be propagandized, buttered up, suckered, and placated as necessary, but never actually served. The rest of us can go to hell.

Best Bunny

Beautifully said. Thank you, @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social and @nancyfrench.bsky.social, for sharing so much of yourselves and helping someone like me, raised so differently in so many ways, see our common cause and our shared inheritance.

The point of midrash--and the right to analyze and interpret our sacred texts rather than being forced to swallow them without thought or opinion--is that our stories are our stories, to do with as we please. Bravo, @miriamanzovin.bsky.social. rebooting.com/article/jewi...

Some thoughts on what we demand for ourselves and what we're willing to give up in order to get it. brokenhand.substack.com/p/limitation...

Heads are going to explode 💥 Cato Institute just nuked the lie. Immigrants have cut U.S. deficits by $14.5 TRILLION since 1994, slashing the national debt by a third. All that “immigrants are bleeding us dry” noise? Absolute bullshit. 1/3

Give yourself a moment, and read this little excerpt from 'Anne of Avonlea' by the wonderful Lucy Maud Montgomery.

The idea that we need more government tellung us what we can read and who we can marry, but less government protecting our air, food, and water, is monumentally stupid.

5 year old Liam is home, according to @ilhanmn.bsky.social and @joaquincastrotx.bsky.social!

Everything the extreme Right feared and obsessed over for decades has turned out to be true, except it's their own people who are doing it, and now they think it's all fine.

Knowing how our brains are (and aren't) different from AI can help us understand the proper place for each. brokenhand.substack.com/p/a-meeting-... #blueskyeducationpeeps

Read things. Real things, unreal things; it doesn't matter. Read things, then talk about them. Ask questions about them. Make kids write about them. Have them read what they wrote. Then talk about what they wrote. And repeat. Everything else is icing. Or unnecessary. #blueskyeducationpeeps

Dog is weathering the blizzard just fine.

In case you've forgotten that government's job is not to blackmail, insult, divide, terrorize, and steal from the people.

Donald Trump has spent his entire life claiming the right to do whatever he wants, to whomever he wants, whenever he wants, leaving other, lesser people to clean up his messes. He has done it in business and in his private life, again and again. He should never have been given political power.

brokenhand.substack.com/p/why-must-s... #blueskyeducationpeeps

One of the reasons I am so insistent that everyone remember that only 22% of the US population voted for Trump is that the Christian Nationalists want the myth of a mandate in circulation. We need to reject it. They never had a mandate, and their coalition is shrinking.

Striding boldly into the past.

Clearly there is more than one way.

Congratulations, Republicans. You've finally convinced me that too much power in the hands of the federal government is a bad thing. Could you start believing it, yourselves, please?

If this is national greatness, then fuck it.

Nothing is stronger and bolder and more confident than the decision to live by mutually binding laws and to accept limitations on individual power for the health, happiness, and security of the group. "Might makes right" is a creed loved only by weak, insecure cowards.

These two images are the party affiliations of elected officials who were guests on Fox News vs. PBS. In some cases I included lawmakers who were interviewed by a Fox News correspondent too. No kidding this is what they look like. PBS was almost perfectly 50/50.

The amount of violence and abandonment of principle required to remove from this country everyone who can't trace their roots back to early 18th century White people is beyond horrifying, and the fact that elected and appointed members of our government are fine with it is equally horrifying.

Can concerned be far behind?

John Steinbeck had such an understanding of humans and how they operate. This is a wonderful piece that is at least as true today as when he wrote it in a letter in the late 1950s. #Steinbeck #JohnSteinbeck #Booksky

On this day 134 years ago, Jan. 1, 1892: Ellis Island opens as America's primary gateway for immigrants, which it remains for over half a century. As immigrants have chosen to become American rather than merely happening to be born here, surely they should be considered the true heritage Americans.

To be human is to make art. And vice versa.

"But of all the three hundred statues of Demetrius of Phalerum, not one acquired rust or dirt; they were all destroyed while he was still living; and those of Demades were melted down into chamber-pots." – Plutarch

Walking along the rillito in Tucson on a crisp post-Christmas morning, listening to the @profgalloway.com pod's excellent discussion on what AI might do to our economy and our souls, while passing one homeless person after another.

Every day is the right day to stop supporting evil and enabling damage. If you didn't do it today, do it tomorrow. Better to stop a little later then to continue forever.

The Founders believed this to be a virtuous nation, so they didn't natter on endlessly about it being a Christian one. Today's Republicans know their party and their leadership have neither virtues nor values, nor any respect for the Founders. And so they bleat and bray in the name of Jesus.

"“Theater kids always crumble if you actually press them?” Bullshit. Theater kids know how to make something out of nothing, how to work together towards a goal, how to make life a little more open and joyous for us. What have you done, other than strew misery in the path of your countrymen?

Donald Trump is not a mistake. He's not an oopsie. He is exactly what you end up with in leadership when your culture starts celebrating greed, selfishness, the bending or breaking of rules to advance oneself, and the using and abusing of dumber, weaker people to benefit yourself.

Is there one, single thing Donald Trump has done as president that is a sign of calm, centered strength and confidence, rather than a grasping, desperate, scared, needy, weakness?

"The world is sacred. It can't be improved. If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it. If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it." tao te ching, Stephen Mitchell translation

Animal Farm is just the beginning. brokenhand.substack.com/p/youve-got-...

Donald Trump has ruined, poisoned, and befilthed everything and everyone he has touched in his 79 self-aggrandizing,gold-plated years. He serves nothing but his own ego and his bottomless need.

Years from now, no one will understand how we allowed this madness to happen. I barely understand it now.

Donald Trump is responsible for all of the good things that happen and none of the bad things, in the same way that the election he lost was rigged, but the same election, using the same ballot, that other Republicans won, was not rigged.

The smallest man who ever lived www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/p...

This one goes to eleven. You can't handle the truth. I'll have what she's having. Inconceivable. The man knew how to make great screenwriting sing its way into the culture.

For 2026, I’ll be channeling my best John Adams: “Now is the Time, never was so good an Opportunity, for my Countrymen to turn out and crush that vapouring, blustering Bully to Attoms.” founders.archives.gov/documents/Ad...

Standardized testing was supposed offer insights into the efficacy of instruction. Instead, it became the entire purpose, especially in English, where "developing testable skills in order to pass tests" seems be turning into the entire point of learning how to read. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Some thoughts on Chanukah, which starts on Monday night. brokenhand.substack.com/p/revisiting...