Grubble, grubble, toil, and trouble

from people magazine Donald Trump Confuses Dementia Screening for 'Very Hard' IQ Test as He Brags About Results The president predicted that Democratic Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could not perform as well as he did in a cognitive exam By Greta Bjornson | Updated on October 28, 2025 10:24AM EDT

from people magazine Donald Trump Hosts Great Gatsby-Themed Halloween Party as 42 Million Americans Brace for SNAP Benefits to Expire The president hosted the Roaring '20s bash at Mar-a-Lago on Oct. 31 amid the ongoing government shutdown By Bailey Richards Published on November 1, 2025 06:19PM EDT

someone invited people magazine to the kitchen and they brought their own knives

Q: “Most hospitals + people who will lose insurance are in rural areas. If Trump & Republicans are so intent on sticking it to their own voters, why not let them?”

@aoc.bsky.social : “That’s the difference between us & Trump. I don’t care if you voted for me, I want you to have health care.”

the president has destroyed the east wing of the white house without so much as a word of input from anyone else to build a royal ballroom paid for with bribes

Federal agents invaded even the offices of The Crisis and the National Association for the advancement of colored people and asked searching questions: " just what, after all, were our objects and activities?” I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, “We are seeking to have the constitution of the United states thoroughly and completely enforced.” It took some ingenuity, even for Southerners, to make treason out of that.

How W. E. B. Du Bois responded to government policing of "anti-American" sentiment during the 1910s:

"I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, 'We are seeking to have the Constitution of the United States thoroughly and completely enforced.' ”

Look. Invading our own country is about as straightforward a case as you can have for impeachment. The GOP abandoning the Constitution is kind of the only story there is and it gets no coverage.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that intelligence shows anything “without a doubt,” but even if the intelligence was water-tight, this strike was still murder. No law permits the deliberate, premeditated killing of civilians.

Today marks the 7th anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.

“I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.”

—Molly Ivins

🔥

I.R.S. Says Churches Can Endorse Candidates From the Pulpit

This is so bad. IRS claims it can override an act of Congress (signed by Eisenhower & Reagan) to let churches endorse candidates: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/u...
This is bad for democracy but even worse for Christianity, pushing partisan pulpits: publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/the-partis...

ICE Goes After Church Leaders and Christians Fleeing Persecution - Christianity Today On Tuesday, Iranian asylum-seekers were detained in Los Angeles, adding to the count of church members taken despite lawful status.

No refuge for the persecuted.

Genuine Question because I Do not understand… so if these men roll up in plain clothes and masks, grab a human being… even a child, and throw them in an unmarked vehicle I am just supposed to look the other way and say nothing ?? Ask Nothing ?

This is what fascism looks like - using a conspiracy theory about a dehumanized outgroup as a pretext for seizing political power and wielding arbitrary authority. What you read about in the history books is happening right here, right now.

a new washington post / GMU poll finds trump 15 points net negative on immigration, soft disapproval of his handling of LA protests (with lots of don't knows).

the narrative that these protests are good for trump is not supported by data at this point. see: www.gelliottmorris.com/p/why-the-la...

The airlines also sold our data to ICE. Jesus.

It's been really demoralizng how much the press mindlessly repeats the lie that the National Guard was sent to quell violence.

It was sent to start violence. People know this, so just say it.

This is not a good sign.

CATO Institute Director of Immigration Studies

note that this completely inverts the public justification for the deportation scheme. they claim they’re deporting criminals, but they deported Kilmar without knowledge of a crime, and now that they supposedly found one they’re bringing him BACK.

"The fact that the country has to constantly be in court to fight its own president is really wearying"
-- anon

A tweet from NBC news: Measles vaccination among babies skyrocketed in Texas as the outbreak grew, new research shows. Reply by Alex Griswold: Because in practice anti-vaxx is a luxury belief based on the assumption that your neighbors' vaccines do in fact work

I've never seen it so well put before.

🇺🇸 “Rolling Stone reached out to all 53 GOP senators after the president said he didn't know whether he needs to honor the nation's founding document. None replied.”
www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

I'm also experimenting with alternatives to take-home, revised essays with my HS curriculum, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to share any basic assignment templates or additional syllabus info. I'm building out a library of targeted tasks to build the component skills of analytical argument.

It’s almost as if, unable to make computers smarter than people, we just settled on getting computers to make people dumber.

The best thing to do politically is to just do the right thing.

Democrats should defend the innocent, the rule of law, and our democratic values as a country.

Going back to the exact status quo ante bellum that enabled Russia to invade Ukraine is not a serious approach to end the war in Ukraine — as everyone knows.

If Jesus had focused more on kitchen table issues and less on unpopular outcasts like lepers and prostitutes, he might have won more support from white working-class Judeans.

A New York Times headline and sub-headline that reads: The Trade Adviser Who Hates Trade Once sidelined, President Trump’s counselor Peter Navarro has returned to Washington and quickly upended the global trading system.

This headline construction could apply to nearly anyone in the Trump 2.0 administration.

"The EPA Head Who Hates the Environment."
"The HHS Secretary Who Hates Science-Based Medicine."
"The Education Sec. Who Hates Education."
"The President Who Hates Democracy."

The nihilism is a throughline.

There is only one way to end the war: put pressure on the Russians. The Trump people did the opposite: put pressure on Ukraine, and relieved pressure on Russia. They have made the war worse while talking of "peace."