November 25, 2023

I'm glad you're not leaving and understand your restraint.

As many have already said, I've been quite dismayed by the contentious atmosphere in most of the I/P related threads here at DU since 10/7. I've struggled with the whole thing myself, partly because I've never seen this as a case of "one side is all good and the other is all bad." I've always been pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. Whatever the opposite of antisemitism is, that's me. But I can't help seeing more than one side to everything, whether I want to or not.

I can understand why a lot of people are upset about some of the things that are happening at the same time that I instinctively recoil at anything that smacks of vilifying Israel. My reaction to all this has been a recognition that I didn't understand a fraction of the issues involved in how things got this way, and I've been doing a lot of reading to address that. And the more I read and learn, the more I realize the perils of oversimplifying any of this.

This awful situation didn't just come out of nowhere overnight. It's the result of decades upon decades of mistakes made by numerous different entities, going back over 100 years. As I've been reading about the history of modern Israel, I've gotten irritated with almost everyone involved at various points along the way, while also understanding why most of them did a lot of the things they did.

I support Israel and the Jewish people as much as ever, while disagreeing strongly with certain decisions made by certain Israeli leaders. I am sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza, while at the same time understanding Israel's position on certain things. I absolutely detest Hamas as I detest terrorism in general, but at the same time I'm very much aware of the complex, multilayered relationship between them and the Palestinians in Gaza. I'm keenly aware of the fact that the Israelis don't trust the Palestinians as all, and the Palestinians don't trust them, either. Furthermore, I understand why they don't trust each other, AND I'm aware that they both have reasons for their distrust.

Because of all of the above, it gives me a headache to read any post that vilifies either side and paints the other as perfect angels, no matter which side is being portrayed which way. I know it's human nature to take sides, to see good guys and bad guys and root for the "good guys," but some things are just too complicated for that to be a viable approach, imo. Trying to explain that to people when passions are runnning high isn't always viable, either, though, so I have avoided getting too embroiled in any of these discussions for the most part.

Sorry for the long ramble. TL/dr: I get where you're coming from, I'm sorry you have been running into problems, and I look forward to the day when the Israel/Hamas war isn't a constant bone of contention here at DU. Best wishes to you and yours.

November 20, 2023

Leslie Jones loses her sh!t.

This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while, and the best part? RFK Jr is the butt of the joke!

NOTE: I wasn't sure where to post this at first, under DU4's new forum setup. It didn't seem to fit either Cable News Clips or Liberal Youtubers. I thought it was entertainment rather than politics per se, so I put it in the Lounge. The Lounge moderators disagreed snd froze it, so I'm reposting it in here.

November 19, 2023

Leslie Jones tries not to lose her sh!t.

This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while, and the best part? RFK Jr is the butt of the joke!

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November 12, 2023

There aren't any restrictions on abortion ANYWHERE in the Bible!

The Catholic prohibition against abortion (and birth control as well) is based on Church tradition, not anything that's in the Bible. The LDS Church also forbids abortion (with rare exceptions), but that's not based on the Bible, either.

Abortion used to be a non-issue for most Protestants until the Evangelicals decided to jump on the anti-abortion bandwagon and team up with Catholics and Evangelicals to promote making abortion laws as strict as possible.

This unholy coalition was limited in what it could do as long as Roe was the law of the land, but once that was struck down by SCOTUS, all hell proceeded to break loose, as we all know.

The one OT verse that the antiabortion religious right really loves to quote to support their position, Jeremiah 1:5, is not even about abortion:

If you read this verse in context, it's actually about God telling a specific person (Jeremiah) how he appointed J. to be a prophet before he was even "formed ... in the womb," but Evangelicals interpret this to somehow mean that terminating ANY pregnancy is "against God's will" (yeah, I don't get it either).

This verse is used extensively by the religious right, on anti-abortion websites, etc. They've latched onto it hard, presumably because they haven't got anything else. You see, Evangelicals need something scriptural to base their anti-abortion beliefs on, because they believe whatever the Bible says about something is the final word on that particular thing. Since the Bible literally does NOT say what they want it to say about abortion, they had to gin something up somehow, and that verse in Jeremiah was the only thing they could find that even came close!

November 11, 2023

And dont forget....

In addition to everything on that list, he wants to destroy our democracy and turn this country into a dictatorship with himself as dictator for life. He want to utterly demolish our system of government and all of the things America at least tries to stand for, and he wants to do it for the most selfish and childish of reasons: to avoid punishment for his crimes, to punish those he regards as his enemies, and to indulge his own ego. I can forgive some things, but this is not one of them.

In 2016, I thought he was a jerk and a buffoon. I knew he wasn't qualified to be president in any way, shape, or form, but I had no idea what a monster he actually was. Since that time, his true nature has been revealed bit by bit, and every revelation has been more horrifying than the last. I now know that he is capable of a level of depravity I never dreamed of in 2016, and I want him gone the same way I would want an organism that causes some ghastly disease gone.

I want him gone, not just for the things he has done, but for the things that he intends to do and WILL do if he gets the chance.

November 5, 2023

Glitches I'm encountering in DU4.

I am seeing several recurring glitches when posting (either ops or replies). I didn't post about these right away, because I wanted to give myself a chance to get used to DU4 first and be sure of what was going on.

Some of these are a bigger problem for me than they would be for some people, because I am so long-winded and often preview several times before posting, but these are things that didn't happen to me with DU3.

First of all, I do most of my DU posting on a Samsung Galaxy Android tablet, in landscape view. I greatly prefer landscape for 2 reasons: because my tablet is easier for me to hold that way, and also because it's easier to enlarge the text to a size that is comfortable for my aging eyes in landscape.

When I enlarge text on my tablet, the text box gets bigger, too, and it quickly gets too wide for the screen in portrait view. In landscape view, I can make the text twice as big as I can in portrait without cutting off the sides of the text box. As a result, I greatly prefer to read AND type posts in landscape view and I never had a problem doing that in In DU3.

With DU4, typing posts with the text at a comfortable size for me is difficult, because after the first few lines, or a paragraph or so, the text I'm typing no longer shows in the text box. I have to keep scrolling down to see the line I'm currently typing, and often as soon as I start typing again, the line I'm typing disappears from view again. I think text size is a big factor in causing this, but as I said, being able to enlarge the text to a certain size is important to me.

In DU3, I could enlarge the text in landscape view until the text box filled up the whole screen and type away, and the line I was typing always stayed where I could see it, no matter how long the post got. In Du4, I can't enlarge the text the way I used to without this problem happening. I REALLY miss being able to enlarge the text on my screen the way I used to, because it's so much easier on my eyes.

Sorry that was so long and complicated. I hope I explained clearly enough, if not, I'm happy to clarify.

There are a couple of other MUCH less complicated glitches I've encountered, but I'm going to put those in a reply to this.

November 4, 2023

As some have said already, I am not anti-Palestinian. I am anti-Hamas.

I am also pro-Israel, in principle, in that I passionately believe in the need for a Jewish homeland and the right of Israel to exist, but I am becoming less and less supportive of the way Israel has been responding to this crisis. There is a difference between self-defense and retaliation, and I feel that Israel's leaders have crossed that line repeatedly. If they continue as they have, Israel's standing in the world is going to be badly damaged, if it isn't already, and I hate to see that happen. (It goes without saying that this is on top of my concern for the humanitarian issues. Bombing ambulances is beyond the pale, afaic.)

At this point, I'm strongly in favor of what Biden calls a humanitarian pause in the hostilities, and I hope to hell he and Secretary Blinken can get the Israel government to agree to one. I know they're trying hard.

I am very tired of Netanyahu's intransigence and unwillingness to listen to reason. Sometimes I wonder if he's over-compensating for the bone headed errors (ignoring intelligence, etc.) that allowed Hamas to pull off their attack on the music festival. He needs to stop.

In addition to all of the above, I am throughly sick and tired of the constant fighting about it here at DU. I've been avoiding those threads for the last few days, because it just got to be too much. Even now, I am uncomfortable saying what I really think about certain things. If I express support for Israel, I'm afraid of bring accused of being anti-Palestinian. If I express concern for the welfare of the Palestinian people, I'm afraid of being labeled antisemitic. It's easier to just stay out of those threads. (And yet I couldn't resist responding to this one. Go figure.)

November 3, 2023

Oh, boy, does this ever hit home!

I was laid off from a long term job at the age of 58, in the middle of the 2007-2009 recession. In case anyone doesn't remember what that that time was like, unemployment was soaring. With so many people out of work, the competition for the few existing jobs was fierce. To cite just one example, I attended a nonprofit job fair in Chicago, and it was so crowded that you could literally barely move.

I tried like crazy, but I couldn't find anything except temp jobs that had NO benefits, paid much less than what I had been making (which wasn't a lot to begin with, lasted for greatly varying periods of time, and could and did end at a moment's notice. These gigs were interspersed with dry spells that went on for months at a time. It sucked. Every time one of those gigs came to an end, I felt like a wadded up piece of used Kleenex being tossed out. Did I mention that it sucked?

When my 62nd birthday rolled around after several years of this, I found myself unable to resist the siren call of social security. The idea of money, even a small amount, coming in on a regular basis without my having to jump through any hoops looked like the promised land at that point. I continued to half-heartedly look for work for a while after that but I couldn't even land a minimum wage retail job, and my confidence was so shot to hell that I had to give up.

My social security check isn't very big, but it comes in every month like clockwork, and I don't have to get down on my knees and and beg anyone for anything. Retiring that early was definitely not my first choice, but it beats hell out of what I was dealing with before I decided to throw in the towel. The years between late 2008 and early 2012 (when I turned 62) were some of the worst years of my life, and I am still salty about it.

October 30, 2023

Damn Liberals 😉

October 25, 2023

Orange Foolius is my favorite current nickname for TFG, because I like puns, and he's such a fool.

And it occurred to me that there are many other possible puns for Orange Julius that could be applied to him. For example:

Orange Cruelius (for obvious reasons)
Orange Mulius (because he's stubborn as a mule)
Orange Unrulius (because he refuses to behave himself)
Orange Toolius (I don't think I need to explain his one)

And in honor of Halloween: Orange Ghoulius

Please feel free to add other creative nicknames for TFG to this list (anything, not just Orange Julius puns).

Let's have some fun with this! I need something to take my mind off the mess in Israel and the pos the Repugs are going to try to elect to the Speakership, before I start punching holes in walls.