

No person ought, or of right can be compelled, to attend any religious worship, or erect, or support any place of worship, or maintain any minister, contrary to the dictates of his conscience.
–Vermont Constitution, Article 3
Wish we could have got that one in the national Constitution.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
For those confused and thinking that the Wicked Witch of the West was somehow aging backwards after faking her death and escaping from Oz:
Which will work fine until they are no longer needed. Once they’ve given all their power to the fascists, they’ll suddenly find themselves very much redundant.
83 people died. If a proportionate number had died in the United States, he’d have killed 129,348 people.
Leviticus 19:33-34 When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
Leviticus 24:22 You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.
1 John 4:20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
Proverbs 31:8-9 Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.
Deuteronomy 15:11 For the poor will never cease from the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor and your needy, in your land.’
I’ve only ever found one zip-up hoodie with decent insulation and pockets deep enough that my phone won’t fall out of them if I’m not careful, and you better believe I’m taking good care of it.
I was an Elizabeth Warren supporter, but watching her give speeches I knew she was doomed when I realized that she was trying really hard to get people to think things. Every single one of her policies was fantastic, but her delivery was more about thoughts than feelings, and I’m convinced that little distinction of stagecraft, more than anything else, is what sunk her campaign.
It’s the same thing with Biden trying, legitimately trying I believe, to provide student loan relief and getting cock blocked by the Supreme Court, but then just asking people to think about the hard work he’d done, rather than picking a loud emotional fight on behalf of the students who’d just got the rug pulled out from under their feet.
You can apply this same lesson to a lot of Democratic messaging failures lately. Getting people to feel things is always going to win over getting them to think things.
Here’s a big part of the problem right here:
“Huge” “mandate”:
(if “Didn’t Vote” was a candidate)
Period. Period. Period. Period.
My mom once gave me a cat litter scoop like this one
in my Christmas stocking. This was not, to my knowledge, in the context of a conversation about needing to clean up after the cat more often, but for all I know it was her way of subtly trying to get the point across.
There are people who, disturbed by “big government” today and its tendency to curb the advantages they might gain if their competitiveness were allowed free flow, demand “less govern- ment.” Alas, there is no such thing as less government, merely changes in government. If the libertarians had their way, the distant bureaucracy would vanish and the local bully would be in charge. Personally, I prefer the distant bureaucracy, which may not find me, over the local bully, who certainly will. And all historical precedent shows a change to localism to be for the worse.
—Isaac Asimov, Nice Guys Finish First, collected in The Sun Shines Bright, 1981
Trump makes it an “official act” to send the Army division of his choice to Musk’s mansion, battering ram the door down, throw him in the back of the nearest C-17, and drop him naked at the gate of Camp Lemonnier.
I wouldn’t even be surprised.