The New Face of the NRA | CH Shorts YouTube video by Dropout

For some reason (don’t know why..) I’ve been remembering this old college humor sketch. …

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“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!”

So there were, y’know…edits?

And the two are usually two processions (generation and spiration)

More or less! The four are paternity, filiation, spiration, and procession.

The universities are simply falling apart before our eyes.

Why are universities contemplating closing entire humanities and foreign language programs, you ask? This. This is why.

What? You haven't heard about this existential threat to these subjects across Every. Single. R1. Research. University. in the country?

No, I suspect that you haven't:

I was just informed that our Country’s “Jobs Numbers” are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory. This is the same Bureau of Labor Statistics that overstated the Jobs Growth in March 2024 by approximately 818,000 and, then again, right before the 2024 Presidential Election, in August and September, by 112,000. These were Records — No one can be that wrong? We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes. McEntarfer said there were only 73,000 Jobs added (a shock!) but, more importantly, that a major mistake was made by them, 258,000 Jobs downward, in the prior two months. Similar things happened in the first part of the year, always to the negative. The Economy is BOOMING under “TRUMP” despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates, where they lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the Presidential Election, I assume in the hopes of getting “Kamala” elected – How did that work out? Jerome “Too Late” Powell should also be put “out to pasture.” Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Unquestionably the most dangerous and corrupt attack on the independence of US economic data in American history. Trump is firing the head of the BLS, a longtime civil servant confirmed 86-8 by the Senate, simply because the job numbers came in below his expectations today

So I made our summer fave tonight (and I think it turned out great…) and then I felt sad, because I saw that this was Anne Burrell’s @annburrell.bsky.social recipe. Thanks, Anne. May grace abound, and may you rest.

CNN: The Wall Street journal is reporting that in May, AG Pam Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the white house that his name was in the Epstein files.

ICE agents scatter as SD Bishop Pham, other clergy visit immigration court "Our presence made a difference," one priest said, quoting an immigration lawyer saying their client was given more time to prepare for another hearing.

“…masked immigration agents weren’t leaning against the off-white walls, waiting to grab people. They scattered Friday after seeing a clergy delegation led by Bishop-elect Michael Pham…Like the story of Moses and Exodus, the Red Sea parted.” timesofsandiego.com/life/2025/06...

That observation of Ricoeur’s stuck with me, too. It’s super important at every level —personal, familial, social, political, ecclesial. It may seem like a truism, until one starts to pay attention to the way (again at every level) we constantly replay the past as we try to cope with the present

Utterly demonic to leave people contemplating suicide unable to talk to someone who understands their problems. And I say “demonic” because it denies the centrality of the essential divine gift that is one’s own existence. Wish we had more funding and training for the hotline and not less.

And I think this can be equally true in the pro life and pro choice arguments, I should say.

Right. I’m not a moral theologian, so I’m sure there are people doing a better job of this, but public discourse around pregnancy and abortion seems to fail catastrophically at thinking about how unique a moral sphere it is… the interdependence is hard to analogize helpfully.

I was discouraged by the responses. I mean, I think dignity and rights are related, of course, but we get into trouble when we make them convertible. It doesn’t make sense to me to say, “the dead person has a right to their organs”. Even if the bodily integrity of the dead might be important.

Yes I found the whole piece better than the excerpt would suggest, but still. She intends to point to the limits of the legal discourse itself in the excerpt, not exactly her own view. But it’s certainly not offering a robust alternative framing.

Brothers in Arms. (West Wing)

Those who militarize hope to provoke you. Don’t give them what they want, you are doing good work by just staying clear as best you can. Your voice and your presence speak volumes. It has to be enough.

And if this is a stretch for you, just try to follow others’ lead. Stay in the middle of the crowd. Follow directions, and keep your distance.

So protest for justice needs to find its root in love, or it will be goaded into returning hate for hate

Bring prayer ropes, rosaries, etc, not for display, but for grounding, continually rooting protest in the deeper truth of the “love that moves the sun and other stars.” As Cornel West has said, “Justice is what love looks like in public, just as tenderness is what love looks like in private.”

For all those who are planning to be out there tomorrow, remember that nonviolence is strategic, as below, but it is also a discipline and a spiritual practice. It is not “natural” for humans not to react to provocation, so it takes a bit of rootedness and a bit of work. Sing songs together.

So Trump’s pet autocrat is in business with MS-13? Of course he is.

Have I got a potter for you…

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Besides which, your point seems to be premised on a knowledge of what voters like about Trump and so what Dems should mimic. Evidence?

Not those focus groups. Try it.

Evidence for your claim? Check out the Bulwark’s Focus Group podcast over the last month or so. Dems popularity seems tied to the perception of deception around Biden.

Again, you act like this is an either/or choice. Honesty isn’t groveling. It’s not even apologizing. It’s just speaking the truth. If your counsel to Dems is “lie with more cojones”, well….