A Pathetic Little Boy Named Trump

So true. Republicans are so corrupt and/or stupid, they don't even understand the virtues they profess to admire.

The Painter Who Sells Stockings

“He who belies his talent, the born painter who sells stockings instead, the intelligent man who lives a stupid life, the man who sees the truth and keeps his mouth shut, the coward who gives up his manliness, all these people perceive in a deep way that they have done wrong to themselves and despise themselves for it.”

— Abraham Maslow

Hit the Republicans Hard, Then Do It Again

“Biden prefers to project an image of confidence and smiley-faced bipartisanship,” wrote The Week magazine. “But with Republicans committed to obstruction, ‘partisan and cultural conflicts’ are inevitable. And most issues, including mask and vaccination mandates, Biden has popular opinion behind him. For the good of the country and his presidency, Biden should drop the pretense that bipartisan agreement is possible, and ‘fight on more polarized issues instead of trying to dodge them.’”

I never want to hear that worthless, dangerous damned word “bipartisanship” again. Playing “bipartisan” with the Nazi GOP is the same thing as offering your throat to their sacrificial knife.

Hit them, hit them hard and then hit them again and again and again!

All Those Little Goodies Your God Gives You

Evangelical Christians will burn the whole Earth to warm their pie in the sky.

 

Arise Before the Stupid Stir

Impressionist landscape by Bart DeCeglie

Jim Hampton wrote: "A cool, early-morning walk in the sunrise does wonders for a person’s disposition.

"The dangerous stupidity of the world isn’t awake yet."

A Religion Born on Earth

'Colors of the Rain' by Xangzi Xu

“Among the founders of religions, the Buddha was the only teacher who did not claim divine authority in any form. He attributed all his realization, attainments and achievements to human endeavor and human intelligence. 

“His philosophy is entirely based on observation and reasoning. His characteristic doctrines such as impermanence and dependent origination have an empirical justification. 

“His rejection of metaphysical speculation is based on the philosophically sound insight that such questions are unanswerable on the basis of observation. For example, he compares the question, ‘Does the saint exist after death or not?’ to the question ‘(Has) the flame that has gone out gone north or not?’”

— Narayan Champawat

You Can Always Get What You Don’t Want

“Everybody knows the pain of getting what we don’t want: saints, sinners, winners, losers,” wrote Pema Chodron in The Places That Scare You. 

“I feel gratitude that someone saw the truth and pointed out that we don’t suffer this kind of pain because of our personal inability to get things right.”

Buddhist insights “...encourage us to relax gradually and wholeheartedly into the ordinary and obvious truth of change,” said the American Tibetan Buddhist. “Acknowledging this truth doesn’t mean that we’re looking on the dark side. What it means is that we begin to understand that we’re not the only one who can’t keep it together. We no longer believe that there are people who have managed to avoid uncertainty.”

The Quotation That Begins My Day

Stocism offered wisdom broad enough to appeal to both a philosopher-emperor (Marcus Aurelius) and the philosopher-slave (Epictetus).

 

To Those Who Use Science to Hate Science

“The minds of our young people are being poisoned by knowledge,” Stephen Colbert said. “And the source of this toxic cerebral sludge is our schools. They fill our kid’s heads with dangerous concepts like evolution and PE. Happily, there is one bright spot in education, Texas, the large hadron collider of denying science. I have long praised the Texas Board of Education for their valiant work rewriting our nation’s history textbooks. But now, I believe they’ve got some stiff competition from the Texas GOP, who recently put a plank in their 2012 party platform regarding children’s education, that says, and I quote, ‘We oppose the teaching of critical thinking skills.’ Amen brother. For too long we have blindly accepted the idea of not blindly accepting ideas.”

I've always said that I'm surprised televangelists don't give up broadcasting by technology created by that science they so despise, and transmit their message to the masses through that "Power of God" they're always going on and on about.

Surfing Your Brainwaves

Art by Wade Koniakowsky

Jiro Taylor: “The Alpha-Theta border area of around 8 Hz is recognized as being the signature wave state for flow states. This is unsurprising given that one of the standout hallmarks of flow is the absence of conscious thought. Many people have defined their ‘flow state’ experience as a zone where things happen automatically, so it stands to reason that it occurs at the Alpha-Theta brain wave, the border between the conscious and the subconscious.

“Alpha and Theta are also the brain waves most commonly associated with meditation, and as many people have noted before, flow sometimes feels like meditation. It’s fascinating that the voice of intuition has been linked to this same alpha-theta border, and it confirms my belief that synchronicity and flow are extremely connected.”

My Kind of Corvid

I love crows and ravens for their wisecracking voices and for that black-on-black gleam of sagacity in their eyes. They figure things out. They see us. They know us for what we are, which is why they keep a wary distance but remind us, with their taunts, that they are not overly impressed.

Saving Those Too Stupid to Save Themselves

Savvy wrote: "My mom broke down today. There were over 80 patients in the ER last night, understaffed, and today she had to hear family tell her COVID isn’t real and that feeling burnout makes you a terrible nurse. She just kept crying and said there’s no help to be seen."

Facing the Terrors of Theocracy

Irrational, inhuman tribal brutality can be washed down much more easily with a big dose of divine sanction. Always nice to know that an omnipotent being has your back and approves of your crimes, that his rod and his staff they comfort you.

This Is Where We Have Failed, Abjectly

I've been warning about America's obvious death march to fascism for 20 years, only to get sneers from people too cowardly or too stupid to face facts.

You never win playing "Mother May I?" with Nazis.

The Uncertain Fate of Certain People

"Certainty itself is really an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To create a feeling of certainty, the brain must filter out far more information than it processes, which, of course, greatly increases its already high error rate during emotional arousal. In other words, the more certain you feel, the more likely you are wrong. 

“Life can be hard for the certain — reality simply won't cooperate with their view of it. Fortunately, life can also be exciting and more valuable for those who embrace its inherent uncertainty.”

— Psychologist Steven Stosny

Ancient Advice about the Right

Let's PLEASE abandon the pretense that Trumpettes know what they’re doing.

Baited by blatant racism, they were duped by corporate media propaganda into cutting their own throats to fill the jeweled goblets of America’s poor, victimized vampire billionaires.