+++Bill Proposal: WORK REQUIREMENTS FOR CONGRESS+++

No medical insurance or other benefits (salary, office, staff, etc.) to be given unless congressperson can demonstrate a required minimum number of hours worked for employer We the People.

(Fundraising for self does not qualify.)

I am an American.

My grandfather was Russian.
My grandmother was Ukrainian.

They met and married in the US and became citizens together.

My best "vacation" ever was working for two weeks on an archeological dig on Cyprus, via Earthwatch, excavating a 5th C Roman church. I paid them for the privilege of working in dirt in high heat digging up roof tiles and pottery shards, and it was worth every penny.

We are having to deal with too much wild stuff now, so I will be visually snatching these and mentally running away with them anyway. Thank you.

I have some sympathy with anyone looking for a good hiding place right now.

Thinking about how we're just so bad at loving each other.

We act out of the need to protect and hide ourselves, when underneath it all is our holy fool who just wants to stumble out into the open with both arms stretched out to embrace it all.

My brother died this week.

Disturbing article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/o...

Booker defeated Strom Thurmond on multiple levels last night.

As a woman who worked in a male-dominated technical field for ten years, I felt it.

Then we said, "We will get there." Now we are saying, "WE ARE HERE, and doing a damned fine job."

Unlike the "merit hires" of the Signal fiasco.

It would feel... I don't know, just spitballing here, but... like they were open to bribery or something?

Every time I see these flower gifts, I say,

"Me. And thank you."

Well, right about now I'm thinking that that would at least be simpler.

We are told not to take things personally, but I have decided to take this personally: Thank you.

One characteristic of authoritarianism is that the rules are different for in-groups versus for out-groups.

Hence the pardons for the rioters.

Don’t even expect them to obey the laws.

Bob Altemeyer laid all this out for us years ago.

Thanks to those who maintain a deep love of this country and all its people today.

The coinciding of MLK Day with this inauguration reminds us that this country is never just one thing.

That even the triumphal ugliness we’re facing can, against all odds, be the ground for renewed love and mission to arise.

Conditioning aid? Sure. Let's condition hurricane aid to Florida on their taking steps to do something about climate change.

Many MAGAs seem to have found their highest aim in (an imaginary) “owning the libs.”

So why are we expecting them to care more about the (real) price of eggs than about the self-inflation they’ll feel with an (an imaginary) renaming of the “Gulf of America”?