Homer_Rice

People who smoke pot ought to have their lips cut off. I feel strongly about this, so let me repeat myself: "mmh...hmm...mmh...hmm."

Yanis Varoufakis: “As Bombs Are Raining Down on Gaza Again, It Is No Longer About Hamas or Netanyahu. It Is About OUR Humanity Being Tested

Just Another Guy

Matters are almost always more complicated than they seem. Anyhow, Joe Biden thanks you for your support, clapton!!

Thanks for reminding me of Ted Abernathy!

Jamie, I'm surprised at you. Who killed Yitzak Rabin?

This made me very happy. A guy I know from my old newspaper days just got a National Championship ring. He was a sportswriter back then but is now part of the PR crew for Men's hoops at UConn. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy!

Don't look away.

That said, here are a few more bits and pieces to reflect upon, with respect to Gaza and the general conflagration in geopolitics today: Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children Egypt Is Playing an Extremely High-Stakes Game in Gaza That Could End in Genocide “A Textbook Case of Genocide” SCOTT RITTER: John Kirby v. Russian Military The Jewish American Dilemma Nasrallah’s Speech Confirms that “MAD” Has Been Reached Between Israel-US & the Resistance Axis Israel’s Long-Held Plan to Drive Gaza’s People Into Sinai Is Now Within Reach The Self-Isolation of the West Pure madness

It's personally sickening to me, metaphorically. I said metaphorically because the past year for me has been a real struggle for life. Hospitalized three times, ICU for a while, almost kicked the bucket on a couple of occasions, and had a heart valve operation on top of it all. Like most people in dire circumstances, I fought like the devil for those small victories which stack up to some semblance of a recovery. I'll never be the same as before, but I'm glad I made the fight. Only recently have I begun to resume life's tasks we tend to take for granted: driving again, taking an actually stand-up shower instead of Marine wash cloth baths. I'll probably always need to have a cane nearby, just in case I get a little wobbly. Most importantly, my mind is coming back to what I consider normal, for me. Early on, there were moments when I was really confused, couldn't process information, could barely hold a conversation. A doctor would outline four things, and I'd still be struggling to understand the first. I'm not looking for sympathy, that's not the point. Think of people like indianabengal, Onyx, and probably a few others who have come and gone just from this small Bengals community. People who have gone, like we are all going to go. Or people like Ryan or Bengalbacker and no doubt some others here who have had personal, up close, fights with mortality. Has anyone heard from Bunghole in recent times? I hope he is doing well. The point is this, as cliche as it sounds: We are all going to go, and many of us will struggle through final illnesses and last moments. Speaking for myself, I'd like to go quietly in my sleep, or quickly from a heart attack. But that's not likely. And while I was sick, two of my mentors passed away. This hit home even harder than some of the personal stuff I had to endure. The people we look up to, who help influence us and help shape our lives--well they are mortal, too. In these instances, both of them were in their 80s, so it was not a surprise, but it was a revelation. The point is to be Good, to do Good, and to call out the people who are amoral, immoral, or just plain evil--lacking any sense of right and wrong. Most importantly, it means engaging in the wonderful pursuit of truth-seeking, despite all our personal flaws. Yes, I did a bad thing on February 24th, 1976, or whatever, but embrace the process. As we all know, the hunt is often more fun than the result. And if, in that hunt, we have to change a few of our closely held ideas, because we care, then all the more better.

A couple of weeks ago Slavoj Zizek wrote an interesting op-ed. Here's the beginning premise, which I found insightful and not often acknowledged as part of the general discourse: While Hamas's outrageous acts of terrorism should be condemned unconditionally, one must not confuse what is really at issue in the Holy Land. The choice is not one hardline faction or the other; it is between the fundamentalists on both sides and all those who still believe in the possibility of peaceful co-existence. Part of the reason this concept doesn't get much play is because of the polarization of our society in general. The "fundamentalists" of various stripes have taken over the discourse with respect to many ongoing controversies/policy debates/events. Personally, I find this to be not only very sad, but also very dangerous. And I say this with full understanding that our history is full of similarly upsetting periods and events. The itch that I cannot seem to scratch away is that I cannot help but conclude that, here in the U.S.A., we are becoming less and less capable of solving the problems which confront us. This will only become more pronounced as time passes and the solutions we try to offer for problems throw us into dangerous negative-feedback loops which make the problems not better, but worse. It isn't that the general populace doesn't instinctually know right from wrong. At least generally so. But the damn "fundamentalists" who live to drive wedges, who are blind to that pursuit of truth for the most part, and who are more concerned with the turds in their diapers than with making life, in general, better for everyone--universally--keep fucking things up and thereby creating the aforementioned negative feedback loops. Everything's upside down anymore, or so it seems. I have a buddy who often says, "The masses are asses." And he is correct so far as he goes. Because he knows, and I know, and you know, that human beings are basically decent people who, in many cases, just do not know how to handle the complex issues which demand our attention. Damn near anybody will help an old lady across the street--it's in our core to desire to be, and to sometimes actually be--decent, good people. The problem is with our elites and leaders. And I say that as someone who is personally committed to the concept of elites as leaders. They are the immoral asses who are flushing the future away via greed and grandiose self-importance, and this explains, in part, why so many people who purport to lead, willingly embrace evil, or at a slightly lower level, find themselves unconsciously ensnared in systems which are evil, in and of itself(s). It's personally sickening to me, metaphorically.

Having worked at a newspaper in the middle of my working life, I understand some of the basics of how the news-sausage is prepared. And, if a journalist aspires to high levels of career attainment--especially the newsreaders--then at some moment they have to accept the parameters of what is permissible and what is not permissible as a matter of discourse. And nowadays, I have to ask, "How do some of these people sleep at night?" Because, either they are dumber than a box of rocks and actually believe the things they read out to us common folk, or they are lying, and lies on that scale are truly reprehensible. I once was part of a roundtable conversation with a notable person who got trashed by 60 Minutes. This was a couple of decades ago. And one of his remarks struck me as striking the core of how insidious all this misinformation is. He said (and I paraphrase) that he was appalled and angered by how his story was edited--he knew it to be untrue in some very important ways--yet, when the next story came on, he found himself more or less accepting the "truth" of the narrative of that story. Kind of an eye-opening event, eh? Then there are cases like SecState Powell holding up the vial of powder at the U.N. in the run-up to the Iraq War. Did he know, I mean truly know, that the info was false? Was he duped? What about the related dust-up about yellow-cake uranium at more or less the same time? My point is this: this shit is hard to figure out without digging deep into whatever the subject matter is. One always has to keep one's guard up, but even more important, one has to develop a method for determining just what counts as "truth." And that can mean a lot of different approaches, everything from a highly detailed and developed expertise in a given area, to incredibly lazy hot-takes that come from thoughtlessly parroting the ideas/propaganda/lies from another person or institution. It's the process which is more real that the uncontextualized, isolated moment. The path to wisdom is in being able to understand that one may be provisionally incorrect, in the moment, the which requires more moments to provide deeper insight. Simply put by Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living."

Up early and restless. I'll take another stab along the lines of what I wrote the other day. "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." --Seneca the Younger All ideologies are pathological belief systems. And I mean all. Left, Right, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Socialist, Communist, and all the varieties of religion are, at their core, belief systems that allow us to take shortcuts when we have discussions within and between communities. They are convenient, and most people overlook the myths that serve as premises for X ideology. Or even worse, they insist that those myths are truths--without being able to articulate just how one arrives at that specific truth. And that is ironic, because the only way to place ideologies in proper context is to have a rock-solid, methodologically sound, approach to pursuing the truth. This notion, which is transitive, emphasizes the pursuit. It is an ongoing process, and process is ontologically superior to any isolated, frozen-moment, instantiation of the given process. If one can keep this idea as a central part of one's approach to walking through life, then there is a better than decent chance that one can acquire some actual wisdom, instead of parroting something that someone told you, which may, or may not, be truthful or even on a glide-path to truth. That's why propaganda is so effective, especially now, when most of what is presented to people via our governments and mass media--including astroturf groups that are set up explicitly to mislead and misinform the populace-at-large-- is pure, unadulterated bullshit.

I wrote a thing, but I forgot that the site logs you out if you don't post fairly quickly. So, I just copypasta'd my bookmark folder. Anyhow, the essence of my lost post was this: people spend too much time looking left and right, but not enough time looking up.

"...ultimately became a silent messenger of Peace, who taught us that life is best when you build bridges between people, not walls."

My Gaza Bookmarks: Israel envoy wears yellow star at UN, drawing criticism from Holocaust memorial centre | The Straits Times US Declares ‘War’ Chartbook 248: "American leadership is what holds the world together." Joe Biden October 2023 ... just let that sink in. Meagan Brown on X: "Amir Weitmann, head of Israel's ruling Likud Party, promises revenge on Russia for insufficient support of Israel in an unhinged live RT interview. He stated “we will do everything to make sure Ukraine wins!” He states; "Russia will pay the price!" "Russia supports Nazis!" https://t.co/xDdU7BLh0t" / X Why Biden lied on Gaza hospital attack - Indian Punchline 𝕏ohnny 𝕏raz™ on X: "In case anyone is still wondering, Israel has just entered Stage 9. https://t.co/cV3ARoKww2" / X Michael Tracey on X: "Just back from Israel, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) calls for "striking" Iran "We can't afford not to act," says Sen. John Thune (R-SD) Coons is Biden's key intermediary in the Senate. Thune is the GOP's second-in-command https://t.co/lRdEV2o7J9" / X Briahna Joy Gray on X: "Who Has a "Right to Exist?" (w/ @mikopeled) "This is genocide, this is mass murder of civilians, without question. And Israel is not behaving strategically. Israel is behaving like a gangster who was humiliated, & is taking their revenge out on innocent people. That's it."… https://t.co/ems5Y23ETP" / X What they mean when they say America is 'indispensable' - Responsible Statecraft The five-front war that the US is unprepared to fight | The Hill Katie Halper A Jew For #CeasefireNow on X: "This is abhorrent." / X James J. Zogby on X: "Please read these statements by Israelis dehumanizing Palestinians & therefore justifying the killing of civilians - because they are animals. Ask why the US hasn’t condemned them? And compare it w/ what the reaction would be if Palestinians made similar comments about Israelis. https://t.co/Nx0FGW9h9V" / X Televangelists Invoke Holy War to Push for Weapons for Israel, Strikes on Iran Craig Murray: Something Has Snapped David Sheen on X: "Founding father of the exterminationist Kahanist wing of Israel’s ruling Likud party, Moshe Feiglin, rose to the post of Deputy Speaker of the parliament, and helped pull the right-wing party towards its current position of enthusiastic support for burning non-Jewish babies alive" / X Craig Murray - on X: "Want to talk about hostages? Israel has taken 1,360 political prisoners from the West Bank since 7 October, the vast majority of whom have no connection to Hamas. 3 female political activists taken from the university overnight." / X Corporate Enablers of Israel’s War on Gaza – Eyes on the Ties To show empathy (US officials when Palestinian civilians are killed) : therewasanattempt Justin Amash on X: "People who claim the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force authorizes military action in Iraq or Syria, or against Iran, either haven’t read it or don’t care what it says. The 2001 AUMF doesn’t authorize operations in or against any of those countries. Nor does it…" / X "Autumn of the patriarchs." - by Patrick Lawrence Sprinter on X: "The intensity of the air bridge to the Middle East... In the last 24 hours, there have been 49 US Air Force C-17A transport aircraft alone, and this does not include allied CONUS C-5M, A400M and C-130 aircraft with the call sign RCH/REACH. The list is not complete and does not… https://t.co/jr2y4rtIqy" / X MoA - Two Middle East Outlooks SDL on X: ""Reagan called Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. 'Menachem, this is a holocaust.' […] Twenty minutes later Begin called back, saying he had ordered Sharon to halt the attacks." If the United States wanted to stop the bombing, we could. https://t.co/VdCk1sDShY" / X Patrick Lawrence: Full-Dress Irrationality – scheerpost.com Scott Ritter on X: "The true face of Israel." / X Angelo Giuliano on X: "Pure madness. This is not for Hamas, they will go for Iran. They just need to invent a reason, then they will have to get us to swallow it, to pay for it, to die for it. https://t.co/juJw9hQdqu" / X Don't Confuse Me With Facts. - by Aurelien Chris Hedges: Exterminate All the Brutes – scheerpost.com The Self-Isolation of the West – Russian & Eurasian Politics Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children The Peace of Westphalia as a Lesson in Solving Religious Wars Past Present or Future. How Much of the World Will the US Burn in the Transition to Multipolarity? | naked capitalism MoA - An Interview On Gaza With Dominique De Villepin (As Translated By Arnaud Bertrand) Censored Men on X: "#BREAKING: The Director of The Al-Ahli National Baptist Hospital in Gaza Delivers A Speech Surrounded By Dead Bodies. “The IDF told us, ‘we warned you yesterday with two bombs. So why have you not evacuated the hospital until this moment?” https://t.co/yaLGVNmHjR" / X The Rules Based Order - by Chuck Lindeberg Dances With Bears » MEMO ON THE FINAL SOLUTION FOR ONE STATE – ISRAEL OR PALESTINE Genocide Unfolding - Craig Murray Doomsday Diaries | Sarah Aziza Let my people in: Why Gazans are not welcome in the Arab world This is another Iraqi WMD moment. We are being gaslit How Israel uses its own civilians as human shields while assaulting Gaza - The Grayzone MoA - West's Pro-Israel Position Accelerates Its Loss Of Power This was a brilliant interview. The last part is so true. : PublicFreakout Revisiting Yeshayahu Leibowitz - JSTOR Daily ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’: The surprise is that some are surprised | Al Mayadeen English PATRICK LAWRENCE: Decency Becomes Indecent Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas Press Conference on Al-Aqsa Flood operations - Google Docs Beyond Moral Condemnation - Boston Review Extremist Politics in Israel and Ukraine - Alastair Crooke, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen - YouTube Why Hamas needs terror, escalation and global disruption - Asia Times Thomas Fazi on X: "As an old-school socialist, in recent years I’ve often found myself more aligned with people on the right than on the left — on issues such as national sovereignty and the EU, opposition to the Covid regime, the defense of free speech and the whole gender ideology madness. This…" / X The Qatari elephant in the room - by Jordan Schachtel Why I no longer stand with Israel, and never will again Arnaud Bertrand on X: "A helpful reminder of what De Gaulle used to say about NATO and American hegemony over Europe. This is all extracted from the book "C'était de Gaulle" which gathers his words as compiled by his confidant Alain Peyrefitte. De Gaulle said: “France’s objective is to build Europe… https://t.co/AmX2gTUfD4" / X Hamas's Attack on Israel Just Torched Biden’s Deal to Remake the Middle East - Bloomberg MoA - 'The Source Of Russian Brutality' As Proven By Fiction The End of a European World Order and the Search for a New International Order — Valdai Club They’re Repeating The Word ‘Unprovoked’ Again, This Time In Defense Of Israel – Caitlin Johnstone Hamas Attacks, What Does It Mean? – Ian Welsh Antisocialism and the rehabilitation of fascism George W. Bush Is Building a Memorial to the War on Terror. He Wants Your Feedback. The House of Anti-Communists, and the Nazi Monster it Spawned — The Canada Files Jewish leaders to Biden officials: ‘We’ve never seen anything like this ever’ - POLITICO Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addresses the UN General Assembly: what you should know – Gilbert Doctorow Arabian Dreams The September 11 Legacy of Forever Wars, the Patriot Act, and Loss of Legal Rights | Black Agenda Report The End of America’s Special Relationships With Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and the Middle East

I could turn a platypus loose in a room full of keyboards and it would come up with a better article than this. The Bengals are fine. And no, not every dink reporter is smarter than a G.M.

You seem like a nice guy, so here's some advice: Educate yourself, nurture your curiosity, and learn how to think. Because, when it comes to matters about which you know very little, you come off as a nutter. US Declares ‘War’

Why House Republicans Keep Couping Each Other

This is a pretty powerful commercial being run during this KY Governor's race. Lots of respect for the young woman who has the heart to go public like this.

I'm guessing that because this was Fox, and hence, NFC commentators for the most part, that the imbalance in general knowledge was apparent. As another example of this, I was amused by Sanchez depth of knowledge about Dobbs--at times he made it seem like Dobbs was the next big thing.

Controversial, but tasty bit from above piece.

My secular opinion: There is nothing worse than an ill-informed nutcase howling at the moon. Here is a better piece, although not perfect: Rob Urie: Americans Are Unleashing Monsters They Have No Idea How to Contain

Fascism as triage "In this old debate, “economic anxiety” versus racism, the mistake is to choose sides at all."

The Life and Death Stakes of Labor Power - Inequality kills, and it's getting worse. "A college degree is not an achievement worthy of admiration so much as it is one more example of capitalism’s tendency to see any life necessity as a good place to erect a tollbooth."