Culturicide...It's What's For Breakfast

The Western Bamiyan Buddha of Afghanistan
before and after

I learned a new word today: CULTURICIDE. [Note: this is the correct form if you're talking about cultural genocide.]

I used to call it cultural genocide but today I found out this is an actual word. Let me lead you down last night's rabbit hole so maybe you can follow my thinking. Granted, it's not always all that cogent, but maybe you'll let the idea. 

There's lots of different ways to think about cultural genocide. I'm not talking about the cancel culture movement. I'm talking about what the US did to the indigenous populations here, what the Nazis did in Europe, and what the Taliban did to the magnificent Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.

Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt supervised Native American prisoners in Florida and  believed strongly in the premise that one had to kill the Indian, save the man. Ultimately, he founded the Carlisle Industrial Indian School in Pennsylvania and was the architect of cultural genocide large swaths of our indigenous population. History.com provides an excellent description of how that worked in its article How Boarding Schools Tried to ‘Kill the Indian’ Through Assimilation; Native American tribes are still seeking the return of their children.

As part of this federal push for assimilation, boarding schools forbid Native American children from using their own languages and names, as well as from practicing their religion and culture. They were given new Anglo-American names, clothes, and haircuts, and told they must abandon their way of life because it was inferior to white people’s.

But that's only one kind of culturicide. The Nazis rounded up and slaughtered millions of "undesirable" people...like jews, Romani, and homosexuals, but they didn't  stop there. They looted art and monuments. They burned synagogues, churches, and museums...but not before scooping up their cultural artifacts. A huge repository of art and artifacts was hidden in of salt mines in Altaussee in Austria. While the movie THE MONUMENTS MEN shows those guys as the heroes saving the cache, it was actually the miners themselves who disarmed the Nazis plan to blow up the mine, thereby saving it all from destruction. [note: the Wiki article does go into the historical accuracy of the film.] 

As for the Taliban in Afghanistan...they followed the principles of ISIS and other Islamist regimes. They set out to obliterate anything that was not of Islam. They did not hide their loot in salt mines; they simply destroyed everything. If the rich cultural and artistic history of the Afghan people no longer existed........

We, the People, are not immune from being looted culturally. President Felon's desire to change the name of The Kennedy Center is the perfect example. Named for a president and first lady who embodied the expansion of America's cultural achievements deserves to be honored with that theatre. Neither President Kennedy nor Mrs. Kennedy stripped portraits of presidents they didn't like from the White House. They didn't decry exhibits that recognized the failures of America as well as the successes. 

But wait! There's more. A romance writer is cited as having written a superb description of culturicide in a rather dreadful (yes, I actually read it) book called JAKE. Adrienne Bell wrote:

...by destroying a culture’s art, you destroy the people. If you erase every reminder of their history, their symbology, everything... everything that made them special and distinct in this world, then you can make those people forget who they really are. And that’s what conquerors truly want.

Feckless President Felon is trying to rewrite our history in the most revisionist of ways. He is removing entire classes of our armed forces from recognition based on sex. Yes, sex. Whether it is homosexuality, transgenderism, or how about just gender...it doesn't matter. He's got people in his cabinet who actively believe women should not vote. 

To be very blunt: the White House is carefully curating what they think we should think. That, folks, is a form of culturicide. 

Now for the rabbit hole. Here's where my thought trains runs amok. 

I got to thinking about how President Felon is trying to build a garish addition for the rather sedate yet elegant White House. Here's what the White House says about it:

The White House State Ballroom will be a much-needed and exquisite addition of approximately 90,000 total square feet of ornately designed and carefully crafted space, with a seated capacity of 650 people — a significant increase from the 200-person seated capacity in the East Room of the White House.... 

The White House Ballroom will be substantially separated from the main building of the White House, but at the same time, it’s [sic] theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical. The site of the new ballroom will be where the small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits. The East Wing was constructed in 1902 and has been renovated and changed many times, with a second story added in 1942. 

This rendering is a little too ornately designed for the simple taste of the nation's house. I mean, it's like more Versailles than the image America usually presents....non-royal. This is the antithesis of who we are....or who we like to think we are. He is not an Ottoman Sultan, nor is he a king of any kind. He is OUR frickin' temp employee. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

He thinks we don't notice what he's trying to divert us from seeing with this bullshiht sidestep. But sometimes, he cannot keep his big trap shut....and he didn't keep it shut enough on Monday (today as I write this.) 

In taking control of Washington, D.C.'s police force, he not only tipped his hand, but he exposed himself. Let me explain.

January 6th was, much like more recently in LA, a dry run in taking control of a city. He tried to overturn the election and used orchestrated violence to demonstrate how out-of-control the city of Washington was. It didn't work. He tried to take over LA, but while a little more successful, he did not end up running the government of LA or California out on a rail. He is attempting to try it again with this morning's announcement of wresting control of the DC police force using home-rule law. 

His claims that the crime rate is DC is higher than it's ever been is total bullshit. Go look for yourself: Fact check: Violent crime in DC has fallen in 2024 and 2025 after a 2023 spike. No other city in the US is subject to home-rule like DC, but that's not gonna stop him. And he said as much in his speech:

You look at Chicago how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore they're so -- they're so far gone. We're not going to let it happen. We're not going to lose our cities over this.

There it is, folks. This is nothing more than a harbinger of authoritarian control. Read the whole speech; it's a dilly.

You deny us the right to our own history. You change the facts in museums and the public square. You convince enough people you really just want to protect them....

And then you cancel elections because the people are being denied their true voice....the one that kowtows to him and his rhetoric.

Remember, you might not have seen it here first, but you've seen it here. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

If you haven't seed SIDESTEP

you need to see it. 

Now. 

A War of Attrition...And Then Some

Yahya Sinwar

In an article for The Free Press, Michael Oren points out that Yahya Sinwar is a betting man. I would agree with that. Sinwar made a couple of strategic bets when it came to wiping Israel off the map.

The first was that once Hamas terrorists broke through the Gaza border fence and began slaughtering Israeli civilians en masse, much of the Muslim world—Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Shi’ite militias in Syria and Iraq, and the Palestinians living in Judea, Samaria, and in Israel itself—would join in the onslaught. Israel, overwhelmed, would be destroyed.

Sinwar’s second bet was that Israeli society, already torn between those favoring and opposing the government’s judicial reform, would remain unbridgeably divided. Israel would be, in the words of Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah, “a spiderweb”—easily swept away.

He did not bet wisely. Neither of those two gambles came to fruition; he was not counting on Israel's response to an existential threat. But he made a third, less obvious bet: he believed in his ability to control the narrative, manipulate the news cycle, and turn the victim into the victimizer. Hold on to that thought for a moment. 

As of this moment, the remaining hostages have been held for 668 days. 20 of those who are still being held are believed to be alive. 30 are thought to be dead. That's how they returned the Bibas family. In body bags. That's how they returned about 57 hostages. Who is their right fucking mind keeps dead bodies? Oh, wait, we know the answer to that. The world saw what they did to dead bodies in the days after October 7th, 2023. And I am sure Hamas treated the bodies they took back with the utmost respect and dignity. NOT.

This past weekend, Hamas released videos of Evyatar David who was taken from the Nova Festival. In the video itself, he is shown digging what appears to be a trench. What he says, however, is 

What I'm doing now is digging my own grave. 

Word is that there are no negotiations for the release of hostages taking place at this time. 

But there is plenty of outrage and anger directed at Israel. Claims of mass starvation and refusal to provide humanitarian aid bounce around the press like ping pong balls. Never you mind that misinformation is spread uncontrolled by The New York Times and the BBC. They publish garbage, make sure it gets picked up by every antisemitic Tik Tok influencer, only to publish retrations so small they are all but invisible. Hate toward all Jews spreads like wildfire: we are child-killers, women-starving, family destroying Nazis bent on cleansing the world of Muslims. Never you mind all the documentation that says otherwise, the millions of tons of food, potable water, electricity, and other services Israel provides the people of Gaza. That is merely inconvenient tale-bearing. If you're interested, Humanitarian Efforts - Israel provides statistics on food air delivery.

HOWEVER....and isn't there always a however...remind me again in which war the party that was attacked provided food and water to keep the enemy alive? I seem to have forgotten which one that was. Is Russia currently providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine? What about the Saudis? Are they providing aid to the Houthis in Yemen? 

But never mind. If Israel is involved, all the rules are different because, after all, most Israelis are Jews and they are all rich and have to pay for everything because they control all the banks, right?

But getting back to Sinwar. He hit big when he figured out there was no terrorist attack too gruesome that would stop Israeli retaliation from being demonized as unnecessary aggression causing suffering to civilian populations. He guessed, rightly so, that Hamas could lob missiles at school yards and send suicide bombers into restaurants and hotels with impunity because the PR machine would call is justifiable resistance. 

So Hamas murders 1200 civilians and somehow, in the public eyes, it is not an act of war or aggression, but a form of legitimate resistance and Israel is blamed for the death of its own citizens. Hamas then uses its own people as shields, embeds itself in a labyrinth of tunnels beneath schools, houses, libraries, and hospitals in order to use them as launch points, but no one sees all those dead Gazans as anything but victims of the IDF.

Case in point, al-Ahli Hospital was hit by a misfired Hamas rocket, but the IDF was blamed... and continues to be blamed.

So here comes the attrition part. People bandy about the phrase "war of attrition," but not as many actually understand what that means. According to Wikipedia:

Attrition warfare is a form of military strategy in which one side attempts to gradually wear down its opponent to the point of collapse by inflicting continuous losses in personnel, materiel, and morale.The term attrition is derived from the Latin word atterere, meaning "to wear down" or "to rub against", reflecting the grinding nature of the strategy.

Israelis are tired. The Israeli government is fractured, There are rallies in the streets demanding the government do this, that, or the other thing. In the world arena, Israel is vilified again and again and again for defending itself.

And all Hamas has to do is sit back and wait. Seriously. 

According to the GOV.UK on July 29th, 2025,  Prime Minister Keir Starmer issued statement, part of which reads,

On the 7th of October 2023 Hamas perpetrated the worst massacre in Israel’s history. Every day since then, the horror has continued. The hostages are still being held today.  

The Palestinian people have endured terrible suffering. Now, in Gaza because of a catastrophic failure of aid, we see starving babies, children too weak to stand: Images that will stay with us for a lifetime. .....

The suffering must end. So today – as part of this process towards peace I can confirm the UK will recognise the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a Two State Solution. 

And this includes allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid, and making clear there will be no annexations in the West Bank. 

Meanwhile, our message to the terrorists of Hamas is unchanged and unequivocal. They must immediately release all the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza. 

We will make an assessment in September on how far the parties have met these steps.  

But no one should have a veto on our decision. So this is the way forward. We will keep working with all our international partners to end the suffering, get aid flooding into Gaza and deliver a more stable future for the Middle East.  

Huh? If you follow the link from GOV.UK, you can read the whole statement. What bothers the shite (that's British, you know) outta me is that nowhere in his statement does he hold Hamaes accountable/responsible for the debacle that is Gaza. Nowhere does it mention that they are the ones who put their own people at risk. NOR does it mention that the various governments of Palestine have repeatedly been offered statehood and have refused because they do not want a two-state solution. Their only goal is to wipe Israel off the map. 

The baseline truth at the end is that Hamas has no endgame, no exit strategy that does not include annihilation of Israel and a globalization of intifada. Right now, intifada is directed at Israelis and Jews in general. Will that ultimately expand to include other groups? Who knows....but the Druzim have been under attack in Syria. So far, I don't see anyone protesting those massacres. 

I would be exceptionally surprised if Hamas accepts such an offer with strong guarantees that they will leave Gaza. Oh, a few might take a symbolic exit, but if you think they're just gonna go away, I have a canal to sell you near Suez. 

Oren ends his piece thusly:

The supposed Israeli genocide of the Palestinians is now widely accepted as truth. A June 2025 Leger poll found that more than half of Democratic voters and all Americans under the age of 35 believe Israel is guilty of committing genocide in Gaza, as do a shocking 78 percent of Democratic primary voters in New York.

Typically, the charge has united both radical left and right—Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene with academics like Brown University’s Omer Bartov and lunatics like Candace Owens. Added to the brands of antisemitism I’ve experienced in life, along with deicide, pedocide, and conspiring to destroy civilization, Jews now stand accused of annihilating an entire people. And each day, it seems, more people co-sign this lie.

Yahya Sinwar died last October 16, felled by an Israeli bullet, but indeed his gamble on Jew-hatred continues to pay off. The impending recognition of a Palestinian state by Britain, France, and Canada not only punishes Israel for imperfectly defending itself, but incentivizes terror and strengthens Hamas’s hand in the ceasefire talks. Sinwar’s successors can now walk away from the negotiating table, perpetuate the war with yet more civilian casualties, and further immiserate both Palestinians and Israelis.

What better bet could have assisted the terrorists to obscure their atrocities of October 7? What wager would enable the West to finally cleanse its own genocide guilt by imputing that sin to the Jews? In his grave, Sinwar is still counting his earnings.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week 

Sometimes, pictures actually do speak louder than words. 

This is one such case:

notice the arm hand Evyatar David the can. 

Does that look like food is an issue for a Hamas operative?

 

Still captured from the video released by Hamas

Things That Pissed Me Off This Week

Let me just start with a strong suggestion that if you've not seen the season premiere of South Park, I urge you to stream it any way you can. Right now, Season 27 Episode 1 is available to view on Comedy Central.  I don't have to say anything about it...just watch it and make your own decision. For the record, I am not not a South Park fan, but I will make an exception for this.

If you've never heard of the British think tank, the Henry Jackson Society, you might want to check them out. Especially Andrew Fox who writes on the Middle East. His paper with Salo Aizenberg, Hamas's Human Shield Strategy in Gaza is a superb analysis on the use of civilian populations and tunnels as a defensive strategy. Fox has spent significant time in Gaza and has seen the reality up close. 

He is worth listening to. Recently, Fox delivered a lecture on the rules of war which is, quite frankly, a must hear. The speech was delivered at the Nordic Israel Congress in Oslo last May and although the intro in Norwegian, the speech is in English. It is, to say the least, enlightening. Mr. Fox is a former office in the British Army and is neither Israeli nor Jewish. Go grab a cuppa something and listening to him talk about war. He talks about responsibility, something no one wants to talk about in regards to Hamas....and that pisses me off BIG TIME. 

How the world has managed to accept Hamas as the victims in this war is beyond me. I keep coming back to the expression that the only good Jew is a dead Jew. We, the Jewish People, are blamed, excoriated, persecuted, and massacred until the only way to survive is to fight back....and then we are blamed for fighting back. 

And the hostages are still hostages.

You gotta hand it to Hamas; they have the best PR machine ever assembled. They have deceived the entire world. But then again, they're fighting Jews so the only way they can win is with controlling the PR narrative. At that, they are champs. 

Meanwhile, back in the states, between the weather and the mass shootings, it's been a really shitty week. And it's only Monday night. Three today alone, including a guy who walked into a midtown Manhattan skyscraper with a rifle and started shooting.

So far in July, there have been 65 mass shootings. 

Here are the stats: 

Total shootings: 296 – 

Shootings per day: 1.42 – 

Killed: 334 – 

Wounded: 1228 

Go. Look for yourself. Oh, and most are Shooter Unknown. 

These are devastating statistics. But wanna know what really pisses me off? 

No one is talking about gun violence. It's as though it has been shoved to the side.

And all those pro-life people? They're basically full of merde because if they were really pro-LIFE and not simply pro-birth, this would be a totally hot button issue for them. Yet, they remain silent. Maybe because their mouths are continually full of shit.

And the big story about Feckless President Felon is that he was caught cheating on his own golf course. Just watch the caddie on the right.

[Note: Since I posted this video, there has been speculation that it is fake. It very well may be, but on the other hand there are a lot of reasonable news sources that used it. If it proves to be fake, I will report accordingly.]

Of course, just as he cheats at golf, he cheats We, the Taxpayers by charging us for his use of his club for presidential meetings. As per The Washington Post:

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met Monday morning with the president near the fairway to hash out a trade deal and discuss the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. On Sunday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the contours of a trade deal at the private club.

The meetings provide the latest example of how Trump uses his presidential power not only to govern, but also to help his family businesses. The engagements provide publicity for the courses and funnel taxpayer funds to the Trump Organization, as the U.S. government pays to lodge staff and security details at the properties.

Can you say emoluments clause, boys and girls? It's worth a moment to read the Brennan Center for Justice's explanation of the emoluments clause. Even if President Cheater is skirting the letter of the law, this is what We, the Jewish People would call Marit Ayin: 

the concept in Jewish law which prohibits certain actions which might appear to be in violation of Jewish law, even if they are actually permissible, in order to prevent onlookers from drawing false conclusions.

Appearances do matter. Even if a significant portion of this country refuses to recognize that. On the other hand, it could be that he believes the law no longer applies to him personally since SCOTUS saw fit to expand his powers.  And that pisses me off. 

I would continue my screed, but the thunder-bumpers are now overhead and the lights have flickered. I wanna get this out the door now.

The weather-dweebs promise the violent weather siege will end tomorrow. I can only hope.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

When the weather-dweebs are using words like golf-ball hail

and straight line winds,

it's okay to bring your fancy-shmancy pots 

into the house as a protective measure.

I did. 

We have comedians in Russia...

Yakov Smirnoff has long been a favorite comedian in this household. His signature line might be What  a country! ....my dad's favorite...but mine is:

Many people are surprised to hear that we have comedians in Russia, but they are there. They are dead, but they are there.

All week my thoughts have drifted back to the Soviet entertainers like Smirnoff or movies like Moscow on the Hudson and White Nights. Comedy in today's Russia isn't much safer than it was under the Soviet Union. Aleksandr Dolgopolov had to flee Moscow after he said, along with a few other pointed remarks,

Our population has split into two camps. On one hand there are those who support Putin; on the other, there are those who can read, write, and reach logical conclusions.

Last Monday, July 15th, Stephen Colbert referred to President Felon's settlement with CBS/Paramount thusly:

As someone who has alway been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don't know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company. But just taking a stab at it, I'd say $16 million would help.  

Paramount knows they could have easily fought it because in their own words 'the lawsuit was completely without merit.' And keep in mind, Paramount produced Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, they know 'completely without merit.' 

You may take our money, but you will never take our dignity. You may, however, purchase our dignity for the low, low price of $16m. We need the cash."I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It's big fat bribe because this all comes as Paramount's owners are trying to get Trump administration to approve the sale of our network to a new owner, Skydance.

Two days later,  on July 17th, CSB announced the cancellation of Late Night with Stephen Colbert at the end of May, 2026....but only for financial reasons. 

Sure. And I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. 

Of course, President Felon celebrated this turn of events with a post on NoTruth Social:

This week public broadcasting took major hits on both the radio and television side. 

What objections could the White House possibly have to classical music on the radio or in depth science programs and British dramas on tv? I mean, how can you not like Sesame Street or Dora the Explorer? And who takes the biggest hit here?

The smallest, least funded radio and tv stations will be hit the hardest. Blue Ridge Public Radio continued to broadcast after power, internet, and cell service was out for a week in North Carolina, becoming the only source of news and weather for a large part of that state during the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. KSUT in Colorado services remote communities where internet and cell service is unreliable. In parts of Alaska, public radio is the only source of weather reporting in places where weather can kill. Those stations, and stations like that will be hard pressed to continue operations. Minnesota Public Radio's classical station provides classical programs to stations across America and the globe. Someone has to pay for those programs and with MPR losing millions of dollars in federal support funds, those programs will disappear with no one to buy them.

According to MPR News 16 Minnesota public broadcasting outlets stand to lose more than $17 million in funding:

This includes funding for MPR News, the Current, YourClassical, regional PBS stations, north Minneapolis’ KMOJ, Jazz 88, KFAI and small radio stations transmitting from across the state. 

American Public Media President Chandra Kavati said between the federal and state cuts APMG, MPR’s parent company, is facing a $6 million deficit for this fiscal year. 

This administration has also cut funds for Voice of America, with Kari Lake declaring it ideologically biased. White House VOA bureau chief said:

It would be comical if it weren't so tragic. My colleagues and I are not just losing our jobs and journalism, we are abandoning the 360 million people around the world who depend on us weekly for independent news and abdicating the United States' voice and influence in the world.

As kids we used to joke about state run media and how that could never happen here because of freedoms guaranteed in the constitution. Like most Americans, we know Colbert won't be the last to be disappeared. Jimmy Kimmel will probably be next, or Jon Stewart will.  I imagine someone in the bowels of the White House is already working on how to revoke John Oliver's newly minted citizenship papers. A new form of blacklisting,eh?

Back in the 1950s, McCarthyism lacked the technology we have today; it relied on rats, informers, and stoolies to put together their blacklist. In hindsight, no one thinks what McCarthy and his cronies did was good, right, or just. We still talk about it as a nightmare of political censorship. Are we heading down that same path now? The current administration is doing a great job of whitewashing American history as it erases Blacks and Latinos from libraries, museums, and other institutions. Joe McCarthy would be proud. 

The deal cut by CBS/Paramount to merge with Skydance is nothing  but a harbinger of what's to come. They paid off President Felon and have attempted to silence one of the most influential voices in the United States. Sure. he's a comedic actor, but so was Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Will going after Kimmel, Oliver, and Seth Meyers be enough to make We, the People, understand that this is real time? And speaking of Real Time, despite his wishy-washy stand with MAGA, he won't escape unscathed. When all news programs are clones of FOX News, will that be enough?

Interestingly, the Jeffrey Epstein debacle has shown MAGA has an unhappy underside. If President Felon is not on the client list...if there even is one....who is being protected? Is it even remotely possible that parts of the base are glancing behind the curtain?  Or are these unhappy few looking to establish an even more conservative regime?

Everyone is writing about the late night talk hosts, but what's got me up at night is looking beyond that. Purges at other networks and news organs are not far behind. In 1976, NETWORK hit the big screen and Paddy Chayefsky's character, Howard Beale, brilliantly excoriated his audience:

Peter Finch as Howard Beale

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job, the dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter, punks are running wild in the streets, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air's unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit and watch our tee-vees while some local newscaster tells us today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We all know things are bad. Worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like every thing's going crazy. So we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we live in gets smaller, and all we ask is please, at least leave us alone in our own living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my tee-vee and my hair-dryer and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything, just leave us alone. Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad.  

I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to write your congressmen. Because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the defense budget and the Russians and crime in the street. All I know is first you got to get mad. You've got to say: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more. I'm a human being, goddammit. My life has value." So I want you to get up now. I want you to get out of your chairs and go to the window. Right now. I want you to go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell. I want you to yell: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!"

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!" became an anthem for the ages. You still hear it referenced, applied to a whole lotta stuff. But that was not the most important thing Howard Beale said. That honor goes to:

The world is a business; it has been since man crawled out of the slime."

That's the excuse they are using on Stephen Colbert. It's the same excuse this regime is using to kill scientific studies in medicine, the environment, agriculture, and food safety. The human has no place in this equation. It's about profit, not people. It's not about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or even the Emancipation Proclamation. It's budget cuts to maximize profit and if people die along the way, well, everyone's gotta go sometime. 

What's happening in America is the harvesting of hope, of dreams, of the belief that one generation can do better than the next...and tossing it all into a trash compactor. RIght now, America is about creating an underclass that cannot afford food, shelter, or health care while servicing the rich. 

Money buys manipulation of the media. Just ask the Emir of Qatar how much he spent to make Hamas look like heros to the west. Lester Holt is missing from NBC Nightly News, Norah O'Donnell has been replaced at CBS. This is not coincidental. Just keep your eye on 60 Minutes; President Felon already has a hard on for that group. 

And when all of your news spins right, and anyone who doesn't fall into line is disappeared, ask yourself why. Ask yourself why you didn't notice while it was happening. 

Go ahead; close your curtains then tell yourself you just didn't know. That's what the good Germans did.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

On July 19th, The Wifely Person Speaks

turned 15 years old. 

That's 786 episodes, about 420,000 page hits.

Whaddya think?

We Hold These Truths To Be Self Evident....Sorta

David Corenswet

Sitting in a movie house, munching popcorn, and wearing 3-D glasses is a perfectly acceptable way to spend an afternoon. The weather was hot and muggy with lousy air quality due to wildfires in Canada so sub-zero temp air conditioning was a plus. SUPERMAN was okay. I really do think Christopher Reeve was the best Superman ever, although Henry Cavill is fun to look at. This new guy who everyone is so happy is Jewish, David Corenswet, may have a Jewish father, but his own admission, does not necessarily track as Jewish having stated:

If I had any religious upbringing, it was probably a Buddhist upbringing.... Not in a religious sense at all, basically just mindfulness meditation. My family went to a mindfulness retreat center every summer for a week.

Not that it matters. But his "Jewishness," like that of Spielberg's Fievel the Christmas Mouse, should only be regarded as a tangential curiosity, not as some claim to Jewish presence in a film, especially one that is somewhat regarded as anti-Israel, despite the refugee origins of the superhero. Never mind Shuster and Siegel gave Superman the Kryptonian name Kal El...which happens to mean Voice of G-d in Hebrew... let's all dump him in the spin-cycle and make him into whatever. He's fiction, people. 

Still, cultural appropriation is cultural appropriation.

As for the movie, the first half was painfully slow, but the second half moved like gangbusters and was pretty exciting. The absolute best line in the entire movie was about the garage door. I won't tell you what it is, but I'm still laughing at the thought. I had the exact same response in my head before the actor said it. 

So, in the twisted way my mind works, I thought a lot about the messages sent in Superman comics, tv shows, and films over the years. There were the anti-racism posters from the 50's, reissued multiple times with visual adjustments to keep it fresh. Superman himself was a refugee, in fact, an undocumented alien who arrived in a spaceship. Would the government at the time deport him? This one would. As American as Superman is, he is not. Does anyone take that into account? I'm guessing not.

And that got me thinking about national origins. There is a logical leap somewhere in there. Stick with me. I'll get to it. 

I was listening to a podcast about British colonialism and whether or not Israel was a colonial entity as a result of the partition. Unlike the Europeans who came to the "New World," we have tons of documentation tying us to Israel and the land itself. That fracture, in turn, got me thinking about the Declaration of Independence. I hadn't read it in a while, so I pulled it up. After the breath was sucked from my body, I realized what I was reading was not an updated version of public grievances against our government, it was the list submitted to King George III. Written by the "Committee of Five, John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert Livingston of New York, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, it is commonly believed Jefferson wrote the first draft. There are no surviving notes or documents that describe the actual process. 

Everyone knows how it starts:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

 

But when was the last time you read the list of grievances that led to the separation of the 13 Colonies from the Crown? Do that now.

He [King George III] has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.  

 

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

I had to double check that I wasn't reading some kind of revised version. I was not. Too many statements on that list just sounded too familiar. How do we break away from that which has become abhorrent ? Perhaps not now,  but when health care fails,  when crops rot in the fields, when classrooms no longer teach science and history but replace them with creationism and revisionism will the vox populi demand action? A change? A revolution?

As we all watch the dominos fall, and they are falling right now especially in agriculture, what action is the wisest course? Will the have-nots settle on a scapegoat like Jews or Mexicans to vent their collective spleen? Or will they finally demand the government respond to the needs of all the people? 

We, the People, broke away from England because the needs of the citizens were simply unmet, they were ignored and denied. Right now, we have a government that is actively working to deny food and healthcare to the lower strata of the population. Insurance companies, medical institutions, and universities all put profit ahead of outcome. I'm not suggesting socialism or, G-d forbid communism, I'm thinking the profit margins are much too deep. Yes, reinvest in research et al, but when is too much profit too much?

The fundamental issues of the 18th century have not changed. The economic pillage of our America now is no different from what King George III and Parliament did to us then. The only difference now is that the enemy is not across the sea....it is us...and it's not a good thing.

Meanwhile, back at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson made the most interesting observation about a paragraph that spoke ill of the English people and was subsequently removed.

The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offense. 

That's a class act. As repugnant as the idea that we had any friends at all, the committee still chose not to piss them off unnecessarily. Our current leaders could learn from this. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Keep your eye on the availability 

of fresh produce in the coming weeks. 

It's likely to become scarcer and increasingly expensive.

There are no adequate words.

photo:Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP

I wrote a complete episode on the bull-hockey email I received from the Social Security Administration. It's no longer relevant. I cannot stop seeing the Camp Mystic signs in my head. I cannot wrap my head around what happened in Texas. Mostly I want to throw up. 

I spent a summer as a sleepaway camp counselor. I had a cabin full of Debs...the youngest campers. We had a week of torrential rains that summer, and even moved the kids to the dining hall one night because our roof was leaky, but never did a wall of water crash down on us. I cannot help but think of the counselors trying to save their kids. I want to retch thinking of the kids trying to save each other. 

And my heart stops when I think about my granddaughter who will leave for camp on Monday.

Did the National Weather Service fail to issue appropriate warnings to the area that floods were imminent? Were recent cuts responsible for their inefficiency? Over 600 NWS workers were removed from their posts, including senior meteorologists, and, as a result, field offices were closed, many were no longer operating 24 hours a day, and concerns about forecasting and dissemination of information were already at the forefront as the US heads into hurricane season. 

There will be lots of finger pointing. President Felon intimated his predecessor was responsible for the National Weather Service's shortcomings

I’ll tell you: You look at that water situation, that was really the Biden setup. That was not our setup. But I wouldn’t blame Biden for it either; I would just say this is a hundred-year catastrophe, and it’s just so horrible to watch.

But the truth is sadder than that. There were no sirens on the ground in Kerr County. Cell service was spotty. Unless you had a weather radio, you probably did not recognize the danger you were in. 

The NWS did issue warnings in a timely and detailed manner. But it was in the middle of the night with no human follow up as there might have been in a more populated area.

The first warning was sent on July 3rd to Bandera County only at 11:53 p.m. Kerr County, the location of Camp Mystic, was not included in that initial bulletin.

JULY 4Th

• 1:15 a.m: the first warnings issued for Kerr and Bandera Counties 
• 3:35 a.m., Bandera and Kerr Counties — NWS sends a repeat of its earlier warning to the two counties, but in the warning language it adds: "It is important to know where you are relative to streams, rivers, or creeks which can become killers in heavy rains. Campers and hikers should avoid streams or creeks."  
• 4:03 a.m., Bandera and Kerr Counties - This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!" and "Move to higher ground now! This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation. Do not attempt to travel unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding or under an evacuation order.

• 5:34 a.m., Kerr County — NWS sends a repeat of its earlier warning to Kerr County, which includes Camp Mystic. "This is a FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY for the Guadalupe River from Hunt through Kerrvile and Center Point. This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!" and "Move to higher ground now! This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation." 

• 6:06 a.m., Bandera and Kerr Counties — NWS sends a repeat of its earlier warning to both counties. It reads in part: "Local law enforcement reported numerous low water crossings flooded and major flooding occurring along the Guadalupe River with rescues taking place. Between 5 and 10 inches of rain have fallen. Additional rainfall amounts up to 2 inches are possible in the warned area. Flash flooding is already occurring. This is a FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY for South-central Kerr County, including Hunt. This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!"  

• 6:27 a.m., Kerr County — NWS sends a repeat of its earlier warning to Kerr County, saying "This is a FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY" and "SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!" 

All those notices are functionally in the middle of the night. If there are no sirens, no warning system, no modern way to get the information out, how is anyone going to respond to an emergency? WTF did they think was gonna happen? 

Obviously the NWS was ill prepared to think. You'd think they would've been trained about middle of the night emergencies with tornados. Apparently not. 

According to PBS News, there is no county flood warning system:

Kelly said the county considered a flood warning system along the river that would have functioned like a tornado warning siren about six or seven years ago, before he was elected, but that the idea never got off the ground because of the expense.

“We’ve looked into it before … The public reeled at the cost,” Kelly said.

He said he didn’t know what kind of safety and evacuation plans the camp may have had.

“What I do know is the flood hit the camp first, and it came in the middle of the night. I don’t know where the kids were,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of alarm systems they had. That will come out in time.”

The public reeled at the cost? Are we now to accept child sacrifice on the altar of public hubris? Are weather alert systems to go the way of vaccines? If you die, you die? Well, I guess it's okay since Senator Joni Ernst said, "We're all gonna die."

What kind of country has the technology to get the word  out, but doesn't do it? President Biden and others before him have consistently urged Congress to allocate funds for weather warning systems and other safety infrastructure programs. But does congress respond? No. They are too busy denying other attempts at repairing and restoring our infrastructure. Oh, yeah, wanna talk about Air Traffic Control? How about highway bridge safety? The list is endless.

Don't even get me started on the derailment of FEMA and how it's been turned into a political reward and punishment football in the last  6 months. Just ask anyone in Arkansas, North Carolina, West Virginia, or Washington State.

It's not enough to force people out of health care, food programs, and other safety nets one might think is the reasoning behind having governments in the first place. There are dozens of dead people in Texas because We, the People, do not insist our government serve We, the People who elected them in the first place. 

This should be but will not be a wake up call. That Muskrat wants a third party? Maybe he should find out what people expect from their government first, because his tenure at DOGE certainly didn't serve the people at all. Maybe someone, ANYONE, could think about what We, the People need, not what oligarchs and billionaires want. There is a bit of a disconnect between the two.

My cousins and their toddler went to Austin to the Hill Country last week for a bit of vacation fun. They left for home in Austin earlier than planned to get ahead of the storms. I can only think Baruch Ha'Shem ...thank G-d. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

For G-d's sake, hug someone you love.

You may never know when they'll be ripped from your arms.