Talk about The Wire, Sopranos, Game of Thrones all you want, but the greatest US television program ever made is Sesame Street. It's not even close. 50+ years of treating kids across class, ethnicity, religion not as mini-consumers...but as citizens with a stake in this world.

Please oh please!

In the spring of 2008, I feared America was on the verge of war with Iran — and, believing that it’s good style to get to know people before you bomb them, I made “Rick Steves’ Iran,” a one-hour special that could (and would) only debut on PBS. Sadly, this special has become pertinent again today.

Angry men in MAGA hats, people shouting Islamaphobic nonsense—this is what happens when the first Muslim elected official to run for Mayor is gaining momentum. But we won’t let it distract us.

Proud to stand w/ the @nywfp.bsky.social slate in Fort Greene Park yesterday.

@schumer.senate.gov @kirstengillibrand.bsky.social are you awake? You couldn’t stand up on cloture but surely you can agree cancer is bad, right????

Schumer’s decision is an unconscionable surrender that shows he does not have what it takes to meet this moment, and the charade he pulled yesterday makes it even worse. Time for new leadership in the Democratic Party.

@kirstengillibrand.bsky.social how can you vote for Cloture???? Do you even listen to your constituents?

@schumer.senate.gov will fight like hell to primary you. Who are you working for, because it isn’t New Yorkers or the American people.

If we can "avoid a government shutdown" by voting for this CR, then why is the entire Department of Education closed today? Why is USAID closed? Why are hundreds of billions in grant contracts frozen?

We are already in the shutdown. And your votes DON'T stop it. In fact, they allow it to expand.

@schumer.senate.gov vote no on cloture, no on the Republican spending bill. Any yes vote is complicity with the dismantling of our democracy. Any yes vote shows you are not up to the task of fighting for New Yorkers or Americans.

You can't resist authoritarianism by continually defending the system and institutions and leaders that painstakingly laid the foundation for authoritarianism and then helped it birth into the world.

Authoritarianism forces opposition into becoming conservative and it is historically self-defeating

This letter appeared in the Bloomsburg PA Press Enterprise this morning. I am assured the writer is who he purports to be, an Air Force veteran.

Before I shift into holiday mode, some parting thoughts: Social media was developed by misfits and weirdos to devalue interpersonal aptitude. We opted into it. And when they made common cause with MAGA, it allowed Republicans to finally vie for dominance in the culture.

No paywall.