It is a wet and stormy Saturday in Seattle. It is 0900 and I am here in my Hunker-Bunker overlooking the Puget Sound. At some point this morning, I have to get up off my ass and head to the Home Depot to get a toilet flange repair kit and some Quikrete to properly set a toilet on a tile floor. I don’t know which I’m dreading more: going out into the storm, or dealing with idiots in Home Depot on a Saturday morning.
It’s a toss-up. The toilet repair issue itself is easy. Raise the flange up 3/8″, seal the subfloor transition, and install a new wax ring and set the toilet. Follow me for more bathroom repair tips…
Here Are The Headlines That Caught My Eye This Morning:
Item 2. Rashida Tlaib Posts Video Accusing Biden of Supporting ‘Genocide’
Item 4. Alabama Supreme Court allows first US execution by nitrogen gas to proceed
Item 5. ‘I refuse to put people over politics’: Speaker Johnson fundraises with apparent typo
Item 6. GOP Rep. Zinke proposes bill to Expel Palestinians from the United States
Item 7. Jayapal one of only 23 to vote against condemning expressions of support for Hamas at colleges
Item 8. These 12 Democrats bucked their party to support GOP’s Israel aid bill
Not a lot of new stuff to choose from, and I get bored with having to repeat myself…
Now for my stupid, unsolicited commentary on the headlines:
I haven’t read the articles attached to these headlines. I may have caught bits and pieces of the story while listening to the radio in the car, but other than that, I am just winging it here just to see how spectacularly I can get this wrong. Here goes…
RE: 1. Well
, you’ve got to give them points for their chutzpah. But then, you have to expect it from this group. War is hell, and it is going to take patience and a lot of luck to get only the right people out. I can only imagine how rough it is for those people who had nothing to do with anything, just trying to get out of harm’s way. But me sitting here wringing my hands and lamenting their plight isn’t going to change anything in the immediate. Do I wish it was all milk and honey over there? Sure, I can fantasize with the best of them. But in the real world, we are talking about animosities that go back centuries. Old Testament shit, and beyond.
I posted this a while back to illustrate the recorded history of the land:
This land is MINE
A brief history of the land called Israel/Palestine/Canaan/the Levant.
People have been fighting over this dirt as long as anyone can remember. It doesn’t seem that there will ever be a solution.
RE: 2. It is possible to disagree with what a person says, and still defend their right to say it. It doesn’t stop you from feeling however you want in reaction — that’s all in your control — just as we all say things that might upset and/or offend someone else’s sensibilities. I have NO problem talking shit about something someone has said, and if you are honest, you are the same.
That said, US Representative Rashida Tlaib comes from a congressional district with a large Muslim population. Whatever she says pretty much has the backing of the majority of her constituents. She is doing her job and representing their points of view at the seat of government. There WILL be times when the minority view runs counter to the rest of the Party, or the rest of the chamber. To disagree is about as American as you can get. We seem to miss that part of the formula that makes this whole bloody thing work. The Right and ability to dissent. There is no requirement in a democratic republic that everyone has to agree. In fact, in order for all this to work, there HAS to be opposition. There has to be conflict, a push-back, or a drag. Change needs to be deliberate, not reactionary. Someone has to have their foot on the brake. I see people like Rashida Tlaib and the rest of her ‘squad’ as people who are doing their job by representing the people of their particular district. If my POV doesn’t match the majority of people in that particular district, the so be it. Rashid Tlaib is just one of 435 other humans who gather in the Beltway to represent their constituency. There are bound to be issues which draw a couple of flags.
RE: 3. War is hell. I know that it might sound a bit callous, but I’m 6757.42 miles away from it all, and the only thing I have to go on is what Israel or Hamas has to say about it. Take for example the initial news on Israel bombing the hospital. Wait forty-eight hours and the real story comes out: a Hamas rocket misfired and exploded over the parking lot. The more we learn about the 250km of underground tunnels, the more appreciation you have for the task ahead of the Israeli military. This is a cancer that has to be eradicated.
But we also have to take into consideration that the cancer has a host: in this case, the roughly two million basically innocent civilians that have been under the control of Hamas. Yes, much like the Nazis did with the German people.
We may find one of two things: either it was a misfire, or Israel deliberately targeted the ambulance. I use the word, “may”.
RE: 4. If I ever find myself in the position of having to choose my execution, I would want to go out on an overdose of morphine. A slow-drip IV. I’d just drift off to sl….. Look, it doesn’t have to be barbaric or inhumane. The “punishment” is death, not a painful death. Can’t find a vein? Muscle it. Just a jab and squirt. No need for a technician to spend hours trying to find the right vein.
RE: 5. More like a Freudian slip. He said the quiet part out loud. He’s new.
RE: 6. I think I heard that his bill only refers to Palestinians with visas who came here after October 1, 2023. I can’t imagine the list being very large, maybe enough to put on a Greyhound bus? There was virtually NO travel from October 7th on, so we are only talking about the period of 10/1 – 10/7. Now I don’t know about automatically expelling these people, but certainly a closer look at them is warranted, if not necessary.
RE: 7. US Representative Pramila Jayapal is my Congresscritter. She lives about a half mile from me, in the more expensive view area. It is not unusual to find “Free Palestine” bumper stickers on their Teslas and Toyota hybrids. They have empathy overload for the underdog and the downtrodden. These are her supporters. Just like what I said above, in #2.
RE: 8. Now THIS one has a really simple answer: the rest of the Democrats in the House voted against the bill because they wanted to vote for an entire package that included Ukraine, like the one that has already been voted on in the Senate and ready to go. It’s the ONLY one that will pass both the Senate AND get signed into law, so it’s one of those “take it or leave it” things. It will be why the new speaker doesn’t last all that long.
Okay. That’s it for the commentary. I’ve got a toilet to fix.
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Regarding the nitrogen gas method. it’s been extensively tested, usually by accident. There is no gasping or choking, you simply pass out.
It also doesn’t damage any organs that can be harvested for transplants. The other methods, such as lethal injection, wreck the organs, and that would include morphine.
On that ambulance. Were there any secondary explosions?
As a general rule, donations of tissue and organs by condemned prisoners are denied by both prison authorities and the medical teams that do transplants. Mostly for ethical reasons. Even donations by regular prisoners are typically restricted to close family members.
I could see where you would get “enormous secondary explosions” if you hit a hospital. Oxygen tanks can create quite the explosion.
I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t there.
My suspicion is that someone told the Israelis that a convoy of ambulances probably contained injured Hamas fighters, and Israel blew them off the map. I doubt that they would have packed the ambulance with explosives if they were trying to evacuate these fighters out for medical reasons. But hey, who knows? Crazy shit happens in war, right?
C’est la vie.
They could have been moving munitions. Hiding them in Ambulances is something that regimes have been known to do.
Of course, there have been news reports that Hamas has been trying to smuggle their wounded out.
Another issue are all the tunnels running under Gaza. A few air strikes have done far more damage then intended, not because of secondaries, but due to the ground collapsing under the buildings. (No doubt due to the Insha Allah methods of engineering and QA)
Sure, they could have been moving munitions. But as you point out, there are the stories of Hamas smuggling their wounded out. Six of one, half dozen of the other…
The reason why there is such a vast network of tunnels in Gaza is due to the soil. It’s sandy, and great for digging tunnels. But it sucks for protecting from heavy bombs.
I watched a video last week of Hama digging out tunnels using nothing more than sticks to hollow out ‘rooms’.
Some of the tunnels were made by trenching, then lining the walls with cement. It looks like they’ve taken concrete culvert pile, split it and used it as a ceiling. Then covered up the whole thing with dirt.
Drop a large enough bomb on it, and it will collapse.
UN Nooze
Iran is now in charge of the HOOMAN RITES council
China is now in charge of the SECURITY council
WTF? – time to exit, close it down and bulldoze the entire facility into the river
I’m ambivalent. While I see the need for the UN, I don’t think that it is really all that effective in keeping the peace any longer.
Or effective in general.
What’s the point of a security council if the members of that council are the focus of the security issues? If we try to hold either China or Russia accountable for bad behavior, they’d only veto it. And vice versa.
My humble opinion is that the UN has followed the League of Nations for incompetence/graft and should be disbanded. The U.S. can recommend that Switzerland or Belgium host a quarterly meeting of 1 week duration wherein nations with things to seriously attend to, send their negotiators to meet with those that give a rats ass and/or want to attend. Each on their own dime of course. There are plenty of hotels with suitable meeting rooms in Bern, Zurich or Brussels that would love the business.
The U.S. can maintain a 3 man office for this within the embassy o either country and call it a day. One international ambassador at large, an aide and secretary. Full stop. Our general policy is to listen to what is going on, then tell them to sort it out on their own with their own funds.
Besides, all that prime real estate where the ugly UN building is located should bring in quite a pretty penny for re-development. Heck, maybe the Trump organization would be interested.
Why redevelop it? With all the homeless people in NYC, it would make the perfect place to house, assess, and treat the homeless.
IF the Trump Organization still exists, it will most certainly never operate in New York state again.
I suspect that the Trump family will be stripped of much of the assets they currently hold, after being found to be ill-gotten gains by the current trial Trump is set to testify at today.
Or haven’t you been paying attention?