BREAKING: @NYCMayor just announced COGE (Commission of Government Efficiency) and he takes a shot at Elon Musk in the process.
"COGE, COGE, yes. Now, Elon Musk manipulated the fact that so many people across this country want to see a government that is more efficient. He used that as a justification to simply slash and burn so much of the services that Americans rely on. What we are speaking about is a sincere fulfillment of a vision that ensures that city government is operating with the same level of focus that a working class New Yorker is when they're trying to balance their bills. And that means looking at the processes we have, that means looking at the procedures of city government, and that means looking at anything we can do to deliver a more efficient and more excellent government... It's just the name and what it should have been. I think government efficiency, these are words that somehow have been understood as if they are Republican priorities when in fact they are the priorities of anyone who believes in the public sector. And yet Elon Musk took that language and used it to cut as many jobs that were as critical as possible for so many of the neediest people across the country and across the world. Ours is going to be a focus on actually delivering efficiency, not as a byword for cutting services, but actually a sincere commitment to efficiency."
On September 11, 1974, a ten-year-old boy named Stephen Colbert lost his father and two of his closest brothers, Paul and Peter, when Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 crashed into a cornfield hillside just three miles from the Charlotte, North Carolina airport. Only 13 of the 82 people on board survived. In a single afternoon, the youngest of eleven children in a warm, intellectually curious Catholic household went from a boy surrounded by laughter and big family energy to a kid sitting in a suddenly very quiet, very dark home with only his grieving mother for company. The two leaned on each other in a way that most people never experience. Lorna Colbert held herself together not out of bitterness, but out of a fierce, quiet love, and Stephen watched that and absorbed it into his bones. He later said his mother was never bitter, just broken, and that her example became the blueprint he carried for the rest of his life. For years, though, the real weight of the loss stayed buried. He floated through prep school detached, unbothered by the things other kids cared about, because nothing felt quite real anymore. It wasn't until he went off to Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia that the grief finally cracked through, and it hit him hard. He dropped from 185 pounds down to 135 during his freshman year, barely eating, barely functioning, consumed by a sadness he had held at bay for nearly a decade. But something remarkable happened on the other side of that collapse. He found theater. He found improvisation. He found that making people laugh was actually a way to connect with human suffering rather than run from it. He transferred to Northwestern University, stumbled into the world of Second City, and slowly built himself into one of the most empathetic, genuinely funny voices in American media. He later reflected that losing his father and brothers gave him an awareness of other people's pain that allowed him to love more deeply and connect more honestly with what it means to be human. That is not a small thing. That is everything. Via Chronicles Through Lenses
Kyle Kulinski on Trump: โWe donโt have a government anymore yโall. This is a crime syndicate. He is an endless black void of a man that has no honor, no integrity, no dignity, no values. The man actively wants the worst for everybody. He is the embodiment of all that is evilโ