David Barnhart

Tonight is an “I Can’t Even” Evening, which means last night was I Can’t Even Evening Eve.

I’ll take Time Travel Paradoxes for 300.

Donald Trump thinks he stopped eight wars but he can’t stop the one in Ukraine or all the ones he wants to start. Did I get that right?

5. The movement is not just continuing to spread into previously unrepresented parts of the country, but also maintaining its geographic reach: Protests occurred in at least 20 percent of US counties for four consecutive months in 2025 — something we never observed during Trump’s first term.

Private health insurance is a scam.

Opinion | Two Words: Plastics Treaty

Two Words: Plastics Treaty www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/o...

Fun Chant for Saturday: Small Hands, Small Feet, All He Does Is Golf and Tweet

…and it is important to note that it was not until the year 2000 that they allowed interracial dating—thirty-three years after Loving v. Virginia. A mere 25 years ago.

Photo from Wikipedia, devotional link below.

Happy Loving Day!
thisistheday.beehiiv.com/p/june-12

The current fascist regime rode to power on decades of white grievance and racism, and the Christian right coalesced around a religious strategy of enforcing segregation. Bob Jones University was at the center of this fight…

…"I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.”

“Surrounded as I am now by …children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, & how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry." …

…"and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation's fears and prejudices have given way, and today's young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry…"

…In 2015, 17% of newlyweds, 11 million people, had a spouse of a different ethnicity.

Mildred Loving said:
“My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God's plan to keep people apart…

Today is National Loving Day. On June 12, 1967, the SCOTUS overturned laws forbidding interracial marriage. Mildred & Richard Loving were married in Virginia in June of 1958 & were arrested in July. They were forced to leave Virginia, & eventually filed suit, which led to the ruling 9 years later…

Something tells me that a $5000 baby bonus ain’t gonna move the needle.

I know they are invasive sky rats where I live, but starlings have hilarious calls. They sound like they are saying:
“WhaaaaaaAAAAT!? WooOOOoow!”
#birds #birdwatching

May 4 Saint Monica, Abdullah Ansari, Carl von Ossietzky, National Bird Day, and the Haymarket Incident

thisistheday.beehiiv.com/p/may-4

6. The Torah claims that the land will have its rest from humans; either voluntarily or by destruction and exile (Leviticus 26:43). Perhaps then the land will recover.
Christians need to find their voice & proclaim Good News to the Poor, instead of being chaplains to the wealthy.

5. Today, billionaires and their bribed congresspersons threaten to exploit all of us once again, and Christian defenders of a right to rest are few and far between.
We must demand a sabbath not only for human beings, but for the planet as well.

4. The slogan was “eight hours for work; eight hours for sleep; eight hours for what you will.” Some Christians who supported the movement recognized that the Biblical idea of a sabbath was about protecting the right to rest.

3. In the last century, mainline churches and organized labor worked to ban child labor, create worker protections, and establish many things we take for granted—like a “weekend.” The movement that led up to the Haymarket Incident was about limiting the work day to eight hours.

2 …and "A People’s History of the United States," and connected the dots in my seminary education with Methodist history. Samuel Fielden was a Methodist pastor who spoke at the Haymarket rally. He was tried and convicted of being part of an anarchist conspiracy, but later pardoned.

1. May 4, 1886: The Haymarket Incident.
I do not remember learning about the history of the Haymarket Incident or about organized labor when I was in high school. I learned about it and multiple other stories of class conflict when I read "Lies My Teacher Told Me"…

He said,
"The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders."
Rest in power, Paulo Freire.

His goal was not to elevate liberation-minded leaders (who can be manipulated, bought off, distracted, or killed to stop a movement), but to empower the whole community to liberate itself.

Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, said, “We are not leaderless; we are leader-full.” This statement captures a lot of the thinking of Paulo Freire as well.

May 2 Saint Wiborada and Paulo Freire

Today marks the death, in 1997, of Paulo Freire, educator and author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. His teaching has influenced generations of teachers and organizers in social justice movements.

thisistheday.beehiiv.com/p/may-2

I’ll Be Glad When You Dead…

Buck Woods tells German-speaking Nazis what he thinks of them while performing in France. Somehow feels relevant these days.

From REUNION IN FRANCE, starring Joan Crawford and John Wayne, released on Christmas, 1942.

"…who denounce the hideous social arrangements that make war inevitable and human desire omnipresent; which fosters corporate selfishness, panders to appetites and disorder, and wastes the earth.

Daniel Berrigan