“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.'” ― St. Anthony the Great
The progressive forces of identity politics started this poisoning of America’s favorite spectator sport last year by making a hero of Colin Kaepernick for refusing to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner” before games. They raised the stakes this year by turning him into a progressive martyr because no team had picked him up to play quarterback after he opted out of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers.
The NFL is a meritocracy, and maybe coaches and general managers thought he wasn’t good enough for the divisions he might cause in a locker room or among fans. But the left said it was all about race and class.
All of this is cultural catnip for Donald Trump, who pounced on Friday night at a rally and on the weekend on Twitter with his familiar combination of gut political instinct, rhetorical excess, and ignorance. “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired. He’s fired,’” Mr. Trump said Friday.
No doubt most Americans agree with Mr. Trump that they don’t want their flag disrespected, especially by millionaire athletes. But Mr. Trump never stops at reasonable, and so he called for kneeling players to be fired or suspended, and if the league didn’t comply for fans to “boycott” the NFL.
Jimi Hendrix: I don’t know, man. All I did was play it. I’m American, so I played it. I used to sing it in school. They made me sing it in school, so it was a flashback.
Dick Cavett: This man was in the 101st Airborne, so when you send your nasty letters in…
The contextual caveat refers to Hendrix playing the national anthem at Woodstock. Lesser known was Hendrix's call to stand and sing the British anthem, "God Save The Queen," the following year at the Isle of Wight Music festival:
Hendrix to the British crowd: "In fact it'd sound better if you'd stand up, for your country, and your brother...and start singin'! And if you don't, fuck ya."
Of course, this all went to hell a scant seven years later.
Via Drudge: "When I see women doing that (supporting Trump), I think why are they publicly disrespecting themselves? Why are they opening the door to have someone say that about them in their workplace? In a community setting? Do they not see the connection there?" Clinton said in an interview on AM Joy.
She added that the fight against sexism is ongoing, even for women. She also pointed out that, while more women voted for her, she lost white women's vote. However, she said progress was still made because she won more votes from white women than former President Barack Obama did.
"We had such a public and still an ongoing movement to expand civil rights. Again, I'm proud of the progress, but we still have a lot of problems we have to confront," Clinton told Joy Reid during the interview.
“My decision had been coming for a long time,” Maxwell said, citing his own experiences with racism while growing up in Huntsville, Ala., which is where Trump on Friday made disparaging comments about NFL players who choose to kneel for the anthem. “The only way we can come together is by informing. ... To single out NFL players for doing this isn’t something we should be doing — I felt it should be a little more broad.”
Maxwell plans to continue kneeling for the anthem.
“He’s very courageous,” said A’s outfielder Khris Davis, who hit his 40th homer Saturday. “I respect his decision, he’s just exercising his rights as an American.”
The product of a U.S. military family, Maxwell placed his hand on his heart and faced the flag during the anthem while taking a knee before the game.
It's a long video. Relaxing. Even if you have no interest in this hobby it's still worth viewing to see what other people get up to by way of good clean fun. Plus you can speed it up. No alcohol. No team loyalty. No fights. No swearing. No national anthems. No patriotism required. No broken bones. No CTE injuries. No club owners. No league presidents. No ticket scalping. No tailgate parties. No jersey merchandise. No arguments.
So what fun is that?
It's peaceful and creative and beautiful fun. And that's all.
This is a British outfit using Takashi Amano's method. They're using Takashi Amano products. The gravel and the additives are all Takashi Amano as well as the style. The idea of how to do this is entirely Takashi Amano. And I'm a little bit jealous that Great Britain has such a great ADA distributor as this. They're loyal to his conceptualization. They speak his language of Latin names for plants. It's the weirdest thing, you can go pretty much anywhere in the world that carries these aquarium plants, Japan, Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, England, France, Netherlands, United States, Australia, Canada of course, Mexico, and other Central American places, and all the hobbyists speak these same Latin plant names, these very strange names roll off their tongues as if they were all real words and not at all so highly specialized. This phenomenon occurred in my lifetime because of Takashi Amano. His affect on this endeavor cannot be overstated. All those sacks of pebbles that James is pouring in come from Takashi Amano as do the specific stones that he's using. The thing that he's doing is copying Takashi Amano. Their business relies entirely on Takashi Amano.
Don't you think England has its own perfectly fine stones? James wants this specific kind.
I'd use Rocky Mountain stones. I'd just go up there and get some.
One time Mum said, "Ew, look at how pretty that driftwood."
They're actually weather worn tree roots. I asked, "Mum, which ocean do you imagine that wood drifted in on?"
She goes, "Smartass.
Iwagumi means "rock formation." James is creating a hardscape. The softscape plants are secondary. And the fish are tertiary. They're afterthoughts.
After much thought I decided I don't like it.
All that glass, all that effort and expertise for mere serenity when it could be truly spectacular and dazzling. All the elements are right there. But James didn't do that.
I understand the choices. It's that I wouldn't have made them. I wouldn't waste the middle on nothing. I wouldn't miss the chance for wild bizarre spectacular driftwood or for gigantic stones. I'd choose different plants. And I'd choose different fish.
But what the heck, he's got a hundred tanks and he can do whatever he wants. This is just another example.
Notice the tiny fish don't actually swim. They dart one yard at a time in pulses. Other fish swim gracefully from one side to the other but the small tetras do not. To get from one side of the tank to the other they go, zoop, zoop, zoop, zoop, as if handicapped, constantly stopping, where other species tear across the whole thing or glide across or dart like rockets. These all swim like a local bus and not an express. James missed his chance for spectacular fish. He thinks small fish make the tank appear larger, they don't, they make the tank look like wasted space. The fish would feel better in a smaller tank or in a tank that's more cluttered. Fish like clutter. Hiding places.
I've been studying plants for quite a while and I'm baffled by James choices given all else that's available. These are James' choices.
Staurogyne repens. The densely planted foregrounds. There are a thousand foreground species. This is a rather odd broadleaf choice. He wants the tank to seem larger, other foreground plants would do that better.
Echinodorus Vesuvius. Hobbyists use this one for odd corkscrew accent plant. It's another strange choice for background bulk and filler. It's something weirdly stringy, scraggly that James is using for bulk. Not odd having the plant here and there, but the sole plant used to anchor the flora portion. He's really deemphasizing the plants by using this thin twisting specimen for main background bulk. It cannot fill out suitably to appear lush. Apparently James doesn't want an extravagant lushly planted tank. That would take away from the rocks.
Hydrocotyle jepartica japan, another scraggly weed-like plant. They'll take off and invade other areas. They'll move right in among other plants. They'll fill in but with as much stems as with foliage. Looking a bit like clover. Its appearance is tangled and somewhat weak and delicate. F'or a midground plant it is diaphanous.
Echinodorus tennelus, the grass species among a hundred that James chose. There are a lot of grass species. This is good as any other. Did you notice when James was inserting the grass tufts here and there among the protruding rocks to appear as if the top side gardener cannot quite get in close enough to trim them with a Weed Whacker, with the stones jutting upward and with smaller stones to each side that the tufts look like pubes on male sexual organs. As if James is being just so careful in pube placement. It's funny. This actually makes an excellent foreground or carpeted area as he did with the staurogyne repens to look like an unkempt lawn.
Riccardia chamedryfolia, lastly James added a moss. The narrator said "liverwort." I learned by experience with five different species of moss never to put them into a tank. They take over militantly. They're beautiful and they do what you want them to but they break off and invade every other area of the tank where you don't want them taking up at the bases of all other plants and robbing them of fertilizer and carbon dioxide and light. They get into all the equipment. The narrator said that James is placing it where he wants them on the rock and once established James can relocate the wire mesh but James won't have to do that. On the contrary, James' new job will be to control the utterly unmanageable moss. The plant will move everywhere by itself. And grow so densely that it fills the entire tank completely if allowed a few weeks. There is no way to knock it all back. You need a microscope and 29 hour days to do that. It's going to be an endless battle for domination from here on out.
While James chose Hydrocotyle jepartica japan, there is another plant in the same group that's better. They didn't mention this one but I like this better and for the same reason that James chose his species. It's wispy and tanged and delicate random silly appearance. This one is Hydrocotyle verticillata
Actually, I'm ready to place my own order. James chose all green plants. I did that one time too. My younger brother came over and he and his Navy diver friend helped set up the lights. The lights were heavy. The men were really into it too. They had a blast. When finished I asked what they thought. Always so religiously honest they both said, "too green."
I took a second look and realized it really was too green. It was boring unicolor green. No matter how dynamic, it was monochromatic. While there was variation in foliage size, and shape and texture there was no variation in green tones or green value just straight green as if a can of green paint was dumped into the tank and reflected back brilliantly. As if there is only one green crayon in the box. And I realized that if these two guys can notice that then anyone will have the same impression. They're not designer types. Whereas with red plants there are hardly any two shades alike among various plant species. That wide variety that includes gold depending on conditions, and near black, contrasted with green is spectacular.
But this is not what James in the video wanted. He wanted serenity and he designed a hardscape, not an underwater softscape. He was looking for see-saw balance, he named the design Reciprocity, after all. And he wanted a naked unused barren area in the center, and he wanted scraggly wispy plant tuffs here and there, not lush luxuriant flora, and he wanted insignificant fish with their handicapped swimming to emphasize size and luxuriously sweeping slopes of gravel and with emphasis on unused wasted central space. The bulk of the tank is empty. As if you can climb in and lay down in it.
All that thoughtful design and advanced aquascaping techniques, CO2 injections and splendid lighting and expensive fertilizer supplementation and layers of substrate gravel of various sizes. while relying on United Nations style cheap ass granite tiling for their aquarium base. Stuck on with glue. A tank that looks like a million £ with a base made of cheap Home Dee-pot scrap granite. It's an irreconcilable dichotomy that shows where their heads are at. In the tanks, and nowhere else.
Edwards, who left Congress earlier this year, called Trump a "white supremacist who squats in our White House" in her tweet.
Trump suggested at a rally Friday night for Alabama Senate candidate Luther Strange (R) that NFL players like Kaepernick who kneel during the national anthem should be fired and fans should walk out.
"Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a b---- off the field right now,'" Trump said, adding, "'He is fired.'"
"When people like yourselves turn on television and you see those people taking the knee when they are playing our great national anthem – the only thing you could do better is if you see it, even if it's one player, leave the stadium," Trump added Friday. "I guarantee things will stop."
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell responded to Trump's remarks on Saturday, calling them "divisive" and saying they show a "lack of respect" for the league and its players.
More than 48,400 women and girls in the state of New York are at risk of or have undergone FGM, estimates the Population Reference Bureau.
And the AHA Foundation — a global activist group fighting for an end to violence against women — says these terrifying and brutal procedures are happening right under our noses.
Senior director Amanda Parker told Metro US: ‘With that number of at risk women and girls from communities where FGM is practiced in the state, with a large concentration in New York City, we are deluding ourselves if we think it’s not happening right in Manhattan.
The dossier is a collection of what former FBI director James Comey called “salacious and unverified” allegations of collusion between Russia and Trump campaign figures in the 2016 campaign. The Russia allegations were compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, who was commissioned by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which is thought to have been paid for the work by wealthy supporters of Hillary Clinton. The FBI reportedly considered taking over the dossier project in the fall of 2016, when the campaign was at its height, leading Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley to say the dossier matter raised “questions about the FBI’s independence from politics.”
Both Grassley and the House Intelligence Committee have been interested in learning if the FBI ever used the “salacious and unverified” dossier as a basis for requesting surveillance on anyone in the Trump circle. Those questions only intensified this week with reports that the FBI wiretapped Trump associate and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort during the transition period.
Four weeks ago, the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed the FBI and the Department of Justice to produce documents, including:
…all internal FBI reports “incorporating, relying on, or referring to” information provided by Steele, his sources, or Fusion GPS. The committee also asked for documents on any FBI or Justice “efforts to corroborate, validate, or evaluate” Steele’s information. And the subpoena sought any surveillance applications that included any information, or were based on any information, provided by Steele.
The original deadline for production was September 1. The deadline has been extended twice, most recently until today, and the FBI still has not responded.
The glitch has had no impact on elections, as the number of people mistakenly registered was small, but Schmidt thinks that statewide there could be many more and he wants the state to review registrations. He also wants it to cross check all active voter registration records against all current PennDOT records containing INS Indicators.
Secretary of State Pedro Cortes issued a statement saying PennDOT is changing its system to prevent the problem in the future and has already made improvements. He did not address reviewing and cross checking registrations statewide. A spokeswoman for Cortes said they are conducting their own review.
There is nothing in this video that you don't already know very well. You could have written this video yourselves without any research, right off the top of your heads. The thing that is new is a new generation of young people discovering what you've known from the beginning.
How do I know that Jacob Laukaitis is Lithuanian? He answers common questions on his YouTube profile page.
By Wikipedia:
In the midst of the Second World War, Lithuania was first occupied by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany. As World War II neared its end and the Germans retreated, the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania. On 11 March 1990, a year before the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, Lithuania became the first Soviet republic to declare itself independent, resulting in the restoration of an independent State of Lithuania.
1990-1944= 46 years of Soviet domination.
Jacob is 23 years old.
2017-23=1994 Jacob was born into Lithuanian independence. Has not experienced straight up Soviet domination.
It's fun. I found the content a little teensy bit boring while the rest compensates with fun. I like seeing Jacob having so much fun. I like seeing him smile. He's having his own strange adventure. He reminds me very much of a one-time friend named Frank whose last name Seibert must be kept secret. Still alive, still nearby, but we no long speak due to Frank's obnoxious politicalization of everything along common media and Democrat lines. Truly obnoxious. I've never had anyone tell me who I must despise in order to comport with civilized people while their information is derived from the worst and most obnoxious of all Soros funded sites, moveon.org. He knows better than to confront me with that material. Frank made himself into the perfect little Soros soldier so that even a haircut is incomplete until the customer is envenomated by a political asp. He closed the subject. Then kept persisting. He decided to make me a project of indoctrination. The only way remaining to shut him off was shut him out completely, he was that obnoxious. I was fond of Frank until then, so it was a great loss. They're both rather short legged. And Jacob's nose is wider. Other than that, they're alike and that's what kept me watching as Jacob discovered things we already know. His realizations so shocking.
Not.
But it's not just Jacob being surprised, it's all the followers of Jacob's channel. All his viewers are similarly shocked and dismayed. They're all young. This is all new to them. They're discovering all this on their own. And that is simply beautiful. By sharp contrasts they're led to appreciate the great political system that they've inherited. 95% of the comments to this video consider it excellent and new and mind blowing. They're all young.
But one thing sticks out more brilliantly than others in comments.
* Those kids singing for Kim Jong Un made me so sad :(
* Tears came to me when I saw those northkorean children performing
* The Children singing about Kim Jong un made me sad
* I feel bad for those brainwashed kids in north Korea.
* 9.32. Those faces are sooo clueless... (children singing)
* Those children ):
They look so confused and lost, having to be forced to perform to strangers singing and dancing not even understanding that they're being completely brainwashed by that sick fuck that they call a leader.
* The kids singing in north korea... their face was so sad :(
Really? Then you'll be dismayed when you see the same thing here in the United States. You'll recognize propaganda as it's delivered.
The comments go on forever, apparently. I got tired of reading them. They all say the same things over and over and over and over, they become quite wearisome. He looks like like Matt Damon, He he looks like PewDiePie. The game is called kickball. But the most ridiculous of all are the few gratuitous vapid anti-American comments, so common, so trite, so thoughtless, just axiom, and from slogging European socialist countries, that Americans are stupid, stupidly assuming wrongly that Jacob is American, thus revealing their own dumb lazy displaced socialist arrogance. They see a video that strikes them as silly for whatever reason, too much smiling perhaps, their engrained prejudice is that Americans are stupid, by their socialist media drilling, video matches their prejudice therefore the uploader must be American. Must be. There is no other possibility by their dimmed lights. And they're too thick to know what they're hearing is no way an American accent. While they do know for certainty that all Americans are stupid. So they're free to display their own bottom lingering stupidity. And if they were to be challenged, but nobody does, they'd maintain, well, it's axiomatic, Americans are the most stupid people on earth, and their being wrong specifically here doesn't change the generality. Even though they're too stupid to check the guy's nationality before commenting. That's how strong their own ridiculous prejudice. And that's why engaging them, any European really, on anything whatsoever political is pure waste of time better spent picking your nose because you'd be arguing with a malevolently poorly programmed very stupid socialist robot.
All those comments about children being programmed, how sad all that is, without mentioning or even recognizing our own political party doing precisely the same thing through public schools.
I searched [schoolchildren singing obama] while a new one arose involving Hillary's book, and there are far more results than I was aware of. One site lists six videos of elementary school children singing paeans to Obama. They're all terrible. Some are re-worded religious songs, "Jesus Loves Me."
Incidentally, speaking of that song. Okay, now I'm off the subject of North/South Korea for a minute.
I got into trouble at five years of age for questioning that song. I recall the scene distinctly because it was big for me at the time. The cold harsh uninviting cement walled basement of a scary looking Presbyterian church in Coplay Pennsylvania where they stuck us little kids for babysitting to get rid of us while the adults attended regular services. Or maybe they were just partying. I knew I was left abandoned for indoctrination and I didn't like it one single bit. I didn't like being separated from my brother who was put with another age group. We were singing this song. When we finished I asked.
"How do you know Jesus loves us?"
"Because, the song says, the Bible tells you so."
"That's just a song."
"It says, the Bible tells you so."
This was not convincing. The woman charged across the floor to my little chair and loomed over me menacingly. I was terrified. It looked to me like an attack. Adults are irrational. They hit wildly unpredictably. I recall her purple floral print dress swirling in the aggression. I nearly pissed my pants. But I just couldn't be expected to go along with this song. It was worse than Frère Jacques and all the dormez-vous-ing, worse than all that plumaraing le alouette. Worse than the weird songs from other places. Adorable. But ridiculous. Adorable. I got that. I could do that. It's how I got my way all the time. But ridiculous.
"So."
I was already told not to believe everything that I read. I didn't even read anything, and that came as a surprise because I was willing to trust anything. And now contrarily this woman is telling me I must believe something that I can't even read because it is written. I don't know anything. My mind is empty of facts and I'm trying to fill it, but this doesn't match. And that's why I'm asking. How do you know what to believe. I don't even know what belief means. I'm trying to understand this strange idea, so I'm asking. That's all. To believe something you cannot see or even know for sure. How does that even work?
"So! So! The Bible was written by God!"
How dare I disbelieve the word of God, or a children's song that purports to derive from His word, or a minder I only just met insisting the song is truth. Who is this woman trying to fool? God didn't write a book.
"People wrote the book."
She snapped, "God inspired people to write it. The Bible is inspired writing. Inspired by God Himself directly! God filled the peoples' hearts and they wrote the books."
"All books come that way."
I didn't even know what inspired means. While I still thought even coloring books seemed untouchably inspired. But this woman was trying to tell me that the Bible is different, unique from all other books ever written in history, and five year old children know better than that. Eventually I would grow up and be able to read the Bible myself. Multiple times, as literature. As the best collection of ancient literature available. Back then the woman actually reported to my parents that I'm a non-believing problem, that I'm a disruption for her whole kindergarten babysitting thing they were doing. But I wasn't. I was just sincerely trying to get a handle on the very strange idea of belief. And I never did get a satisfactory straight answer from anyone. Not once.
She delivered a serious smackdown to my incipient spiritual journey. All over a question about a children's song.
And it's fine to go all John 20:29 on my butt. I'm familiar now with the beatitudes, "Because you have seen me you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet still believe."
Yes, bless their pointed little heads for believing their kindergarten church minder and their charming children's song and the inspired books that they read, but I can't. I'm just not blessed that way. If this is the best you've got you're going to have to try a lot harder at this whole indoctrinating thing. The dissatisfaction of that early incident put me off religious indoctrination for the following decades. After that I really was an agnostic little shit, from five years old onwards well past my twenties. She should have done better than repeat the refrain, "because the Bible tells us so."
So much smarter to say, "I don't know" about the things you don't know. Don't you think? That was my attitude.
North Korea contrasted so sharply with South Korea is its own object lesson for all to see plainly and they don't need us poking our noses into their bizwax. At this late historic point the conflict between us is contrived. Except for the part about North Korea being menace to the whole world, and U.S. being presumptive world leader.
But all that is harsh and it puts us in a personally negative space where we don't need to abide. It causes our atoms and molecules, our organelles and our cells, our internal organs to form rigid patterns that over time become destructive for our souls to inhabit. Like a white board it must be erased but not forgotten and written over with something more pleasant, more enduring and good. To avoid the early fate of my Japanese birthday fake twin Takashi Amano here is something better than all that, along similar lines.
Searching YouTube for Jacob Laukaitis' video a lot of other similar North / South Korea videos display for selection. Any one of them will say similar things. The Korean people are compared, war readiness is compared, soldiers are compared, sports, 10 differences between them, weaponry, surprising things that North doesn't know about South, differences in language, statistics, and cold noodles.
Cold noodles? Now that's interesting. Another bright happy dude with another broad nose.
Wow, that's amazing. When this guy smiles all his teeth show at once. He's got like every single tooth that he was born with. No cavities. None pulled out. All lined up, and his mouth can open wide enough to show all of them at once. It's amazing. If I used my fingers to open my mouth wide as possible I still couldn't open wide as this guy does automatically unassisted. Let's count them.
That's awesome! I bet this guy can really chew.
The buckwheat-tasting noodles are actually made from flour of various starches including buckwheat, but also potatoes, sweet potatoes, arrowroot and kudzu. Buckwheat is not related to wheat, rather, the plant is related to sorrels. It was used to put nitrogen into soils. Less so today.
The large N. Korean dumplings are called Mandu and they contain the usual dumpling ingredients beef, pork, dark soy sauce, ginger, garlic, kimchi, bean sprouts, tofu, chives. Here's a recipe from International Cuisine.
The trick for making the dough is add baking soda. This changes the pH making the dough more elastic. It's how Chinese make outrageously long noodles that they keep stretching and dividing exponentially so that within a few folds they go from one fat noodle to a few hundred thin noodles.
