The evidence is very strong that DOGE cuts are not efforts to control waste and fraud, but efforts to collapse agencies entirely. Project 2025 and their “thinker“ Curtis Yarvin want to break our government so that they can replace it entirely with themselves as dictators.

YouTube video by Sen. Adam Schiff Schiff Demolishes Trump for Ridiculous Speech to Congress

Two minutes, and it's all you need to know.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=s74S...

“For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”
Hosea 8:7

It will be interesting as some folks have to confront the reality that their failures to get jobs or promotions are not because of DEI.

Integrity on display.

Convicted US Capitol rioter Pam Hemphill turns down Trump pardon Former "Maga granny" Pamela Hemphill tells the BBC the Trump government is trying to "rewrite history".

Pamela Hemphill has refused a pardon from Trump for her role in January 6. "Accepting a pardon would only insult the Capitol police officers, rule of law and, of course, our nation.”

Win!

Good morning. I thought this appropriate today, on so many levels.

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?"
- Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

One of the more dismaying aspects of our current oligarchy is the prominent role of narcissistic child-men reaching middle age without wisdom or insight, propelled by a “he who dies with the most toys wins” philosophy and a desire to force us all to pay attention to them.

I have made a decision. This time around, my attention will be placed on the collaborators and the harm that this administration will be doing. I have no interest in showing any photos of the Mango Mussolini.

Lincoln would have made a fine anthropologist. It is almost always true. Even the end of the Bronze Age in Anatolia and the Levant is now understood as made possible by the growing internal weakness of local states. The Sea People just took advantage of pre-existing weakness to finish them off.

A fine how do you do to everyone here on BLUESKY! The air seems so much less toxic in these parts. Good to be here and can’t wait to be all over the new administration like raven on roadkill.

SCOTUS had to have known that they were facilitating an oligarchy with Citizens United. The statement in the decision that citizens would not be discouraged by seeing the ultra wealthy buy their government officials wasn’t believable then, sure isn’t believable now.

Some personal thoughts on public funds (including lottery funds) for private schools, and on the historically and factually inaccurate claims that the current constitutional prohibition is a "Blaine Amendment" (anti-Catholic provision) -- open.substack.com/pub/lteague/...

NEW: Speaker Mike Johnson:

“On Jan 20th, the flags at the Capitol will fly at full-staff to celebrate our country coming together behind the inauguration of our 47th President, Donald Trump. The flags will be lowered back to half-staff the following day to continue honoring President Jimmy Carter”

I cannot believe we are relitigating, in the United States Senate, whether women are equal, but here we are.

A vote for Hegseth is a vote for war crimes overseas. It's also a vote for using the military domestically to crush dissent. It's a vote for fascism.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen says she tried to meet with Pete Hegseth before the confirmation hearing but that he did not ever respond to her request.

"I've been on this committee since 2011 ... Every one of those nominees met with me ... As you can imagine, I was disappointed when no one ever followed up."

Sen. Gillibrand confronts Hegseth:

HEGSETH: "Commanders meet quotas to have a certain number of female infantry officers or infantry enlisted—"

GILLIBRAND: "Commanders do not have to have a quota for women in the infantry. That does not exist. It does not exist … There are not quotas."

Sadly, we all know the answers to these questions 🫤🇺🇸

This billboard says it all.

We have two systems of justice, and did even before amplification by the terrible Roberts immunity ruling. I don’t know what conclusion we are to draw other than that the wealthy and powerful can get away with pretty much anything. www.justice.gov/storage/Repo...

Good for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for scorching Hegseth right now.

He refused to meet with her before today’s hearing.

She’s calling him out for saying things like “I don’t want moms in the military.”

She is one of the people I most respect & admire, someone from whom I have learned, a woman whose wisdom always inspires & empowers me.

She was one of the students who desegregated Charleston schools in 1963.

This weekend, there's no one better to teach us than Millicent Brown.

You're invited.

Hegseth is trying to be a smooth-talker today during his confirmation hearing…

But he’s sexist, against diversity in our armed forces, and is unqualified to serve as Secretary of Defense.

That’s the substance over style that the Senate must focus on.

"Indeed, but for Mr. Trump's election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial."

Hammond School here in Columbia is named for this sterling character.

A message of special significance
for Christian & Jewish investors
in weapons & fossil fuel companies

via Musical Left

In every arrival there is a leave-taking; in every reunion there is a separation; in each one's growing up there is a growing old; in every smile there is a tear; and in every success there is a loss. All living is dying and all celebration is mortification too.” –Henri Nouwen.