Noem's out, eh? Well, there goes my "First Trump 2.0 Cabinet Secretary Fired" bracket. Still have the "First Trump 2.0 Cabinet Secretary Indicted" pool, though.

[Patient with dementia the middle of a long ramble about his dad buying a farm down the road and needing help with the cattle they'll have to get]: What's going on over there in Iran?

The other thing I'd caution people against is seeing Talarico's faith as something new for Dems, or a silver bullet. People tend to vote their race, class and faith in roughly that order. What's new is likely that white independents in TX are willing to give him a listen.

The Texas of it all is a big factor.

I don't disagree, but I'd caution people from investing too much in Talarico or any other pols. Candidates of hope almost always wind up disappointing (see: Obama, 2008).

What surprises me about Talarico is that he's a pretty standard religious-left candidate, not very different from a host of Dems who have run on their faith over the last twenty years or so. But the moment is apparently right for him to capture the zeitgeist.

Minister and railway conductor (Grandmas were a teacher and general ass-kicker, respectively.)

It would be truly wild if Dems retook the Senate with a seat in Montana

Oh, myyyyyy

are we all dead yet

It looks like his attacks on Tehran won him strong support from...three guys standing around the backyard in Texas drinking cans of beer?

Letting Fetterman score clean dunks like this is a threat to national security

People ask "What will it take for someone to stop Trump?" The answer is, "When that 68% gets to about 75%." I swear, we are very close to that point already.

It should be stated that end-time believers are a very small minority in the Christian faith, and those who think you can bring on Armageddon are even smaller. Unfortunately, they're also the base of Trump's base.

"Who knew that putting a guy with a Crusades tattoo in charge of the military would lead to an attempt to turn the largest military in the world into an instrument of his own jihad? Besides everybody, I mean?"

There have been dedicated Bibles sold to each arm of military services for decades. I own an Army one. Guns were given to soldiers with Bible end times verses engraved on them. Whole churches with Rapture ideas on bases for decades. Buy your local religion scholar a drink

Anyway, I never did much care for performative cynicism.

Looking at Today's Discourse™, and you know, it's really not hard to be a decent person online. 1. Be kind. Ask yourself if what you are about to post about someone is true. And if it is true, is it something that needs to be said? Before you repost that Sick Burn, ask yourself the same things.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Did Trump depose Khamenei so he could rule Persia as the new Cyrus? Conspiracy kooks want to know!

Vanity, eh? Seems like there's something in the Bible about that. "Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one bungler destroys much good." —Ecclesiastes 9:18

I have some ideas about getting justice for those service members

Oh Jesus. bsky.app/profile/dand...

I guess it's time to remind everyone that Walter Brueggemann was in fact a prophet:

reading Levinas today

i see we have entered the “get mad at Democrats about unilateral Trump action” phase of the thing and, whatever makes you happy I guess most of the criticisms are correct and almost all of them are irrelevant

I mean, it's not like the location of certain compounds utilized by supreme leaders in South Florida are exactly unknown

I get why people are upset with Schumer's statement: it is kind of bloodless. At the same time, I do not understand why people do not understand that Schumer is playing Good Cop in the opposition to Trump, insulating others from the inevitable hippie-bashing among Very Serious People. 1/2

The day before I preached at a small Presbyterian church in January, the Trump administration attacked Venezuela. I'm back at that church tomorrow, and they've attacked Iran. This suggests: 1. Cuba should get nervous on May 2nd, and 2. I should probably stop preaching at that church.

این یک ایده وحشتناک است.

As with the pedophile cabal running the nation, turns out there's not much hidden about religious extremists getting the Gog and Magog on.

Ooh baby (tip o' the pin to @deanbarker.bsky.social)

In WI town hit hard by ICE, this 'abuelita' tries to keep families afloat www.jsonline.com/story/news/l...

I can assure you that I do not eat my jelly beans like a Godzilla tossing puny human snacks into his maw. What I *cannot* tell you is the degree to which this unlikeness is sustained, which is why you should establish a perimeter and keep a safe distance nonetheless.

Appalling: ICE and CBP contracted for $144 million in weaponry and accessories in Trump's first year, per data obtained by Sen Adam Schiff. For ICE it's a fourfold increase, much of it for military-style weapons. A heavily armed secret police force. 1/ (new piece) newrepublic.com/article/2069...

To put this into some context, Trump just rambled longer about...not much of anything than Woodrow Wilson arguing the U.S.'s way into WWI.

My message to the Bluesky community brave or foolhardy enough to watch the State of the Union address tonight:

Brandon is correct. During the heyday of the progressive blogosphere, I was mostly ignored. Today, on Bluesky, I am mostly ignored. This has to do with the nature of social media, of course, nothing to do with my charm, wit, or personality.

Due to prevailing rhetorical conditions, the discourse level this evening is DANGEROUS and potentially LIFE THREATENING. All avenues of discourse are hereby CLOSED and discourse is PROHIBITED until the discourse emergency has passed. This has been a message from the National Discourse Service.

Well, it's that time of year again In Europe: www.facebook.com/reel/8690636...

Wife reminds me* that Bluesky and Democrats more generally would be a lot easier to get along with if they realized that what they want isn't actually so much Dems Speaking Out as a coordinated and amplifying messaging system.

Late, and everyone's distracted by hockey and TSA, but sometimes this stuff comes to me in a dream. The Roberts Court this past Friday:

I concur with this obviously 100% sober analysis.

Just explained to a younger colleague that Firefox was a web browser — like Chrome, only good. Which isn't a big deal in itself, but it reminded me that I'm so old I used to make the same joke about Internet Explorer.

- No left-side facial drooping - No arm-clutching or ashen face - No sudden aroma of feces in room 0/10 press conference would not recommend

Well, that took a sudden homoerotic turn.

Who did Trump call on first, and why the OANN reporter?