Watching the Democratic debate
and hearing about all the issues
facing the United States, he thought
that it would be a really good idea
if all the men left the stage and left
the women to fight it out because
of all the injustice women have en-
dured over the years and how they
can identify with the “wretched of
the earth” because, by and large,
that is the way they have been
treated — yes, just that way.

This from Quartz’ Sarah Todd:

The Four Things That Make Practically Everyone Feel Loved

When someone shows compassion toward them in difficult times.
When a child snuggles up to them.
When their pets are happy to see them.
When someone tells them “I love you.”

All I can say is “Amen.”

She does wish that it be otherwise
but that is simply a wish and, unlike
Jiminy Cricket, she doesn’t wish upon

a star. She also doesn’t pray for a
cure because she knows that the
situation can’t be reversed but she

does pray for healing to get the whole
thing in perspective and be reconciled,
not so much in Stoicism or fatalism, as

in the reality of genetics and things
inherited and that, in spite of dis-
appointments and prospective hard-

ships, in faith that life is, at root, good.
Then she remembers the serenity prayer
and decides, it is what she will pray,

and so she does.

After the official questioning, during a break,
Several of the white, male, minority committee
Members and their white, male assistants
Stood around yucking it up showing for the
Cameras that they were confident of what had
Preceded. During the confab, two assistants
Chuckled nervously (with their ample waists
Bobbing up and down and their double chins
Flapping back and forth like two Santas at
Macy’s listening to eager kids), but their over-
Exuberance and the disconcertingly rapid
And persistent nail-biting by one of the
Committee members told a very different
Body language story.

So many we are encountering, so many who now
seem so important and more than we ever thought

were around or we would ever have to encounter,
tell us things that over time will be forgotten be-

cause they are false and because they are out
there by these people who wax so important but

are just blips on the face of history, forgotten and,
by the grace of God, never to be heard from again.

He stood at the commode thinking about a potential
major surgery and a conversation he might have with
the surgeon, “I’m not afraid of the surgery. I’ve had

a lot of surgeries over the years, but I don’t want pain,
because I have had a lot of psychic, mental, physical,
emotional, spiritual pain in my life and I really don’t

want anymore. I’m not an addictive personality so you
can give me whatever it is that will keep me in la-la land
until my body can get along by itself and don’t worry

about constipation; things move along pretty well for
me. If I were given a death sentence today, it would
be all right with me, speaking as a former hospice

spiritual provider, and as I heard from so many
of my hospice patients echoing what I just said,
‘I don’t mind dying; just keep me out of pain.’”

It is all closing in. He is the only species that
acts in one’s self-interest but only because
that species doesn’t have any alternatives or

choices. This example of a species has had
alternatives and choices but he doesn’t see it,
thus making him the equivalent of a pure species

without knowing he has alternatives or choices.
He is a pure animal, one who acts totally in his
self-interest as with all other pure animals be-

cause he doesn’t have choices about any of that
except that all those animal species know enough
to stop when enough is enough and then they will

stop fighting and killing and will go away except
the rats and this guy who would go on killing and
killing and killing in his own interest if he per-

ceived that that was the only alternative which
for him would be no alternative at all except to
do it.

Are the Kurds the Lord’s new covenant people —
Searching for a home, being persecuted everywhere,
Reviled by surrounding nations and now betrayed
By the great distant nation under the leadership of a
Crazed wannabe dictator, a man without a conscience
And concerned only about his hotel business and
Pleasing a once-great nation but now a third world
Country with a small economy but a lot of nuclear
Bombs, another crazed true dictator and a liberal
Policy of loans to the real estate developer disguised
As the president of the United States? The Lord calls
What is despised by the world but precious in God’s
Sight to find safety in the arms of unconditional love
And to reveal the bankruptcy of those who whore
After mammon, illusory political power and con-
Sequent nation-numbing violence through war after
War. Kurds have suffered from horror upon horror
But the Lord does not abandon the chosen and we,
Chosen to identify with the wretched of the earth but
The beloved of the Lord, must not abandon them either
For they are our brothers and sisters who through their
Unjust suffering for simply being human beings and
Pawns among the nations are helping us to see the
Universal covenant we have with all peoples of the
Earth.

The Republicans on the House
Intelligence Committee, obviously,
never had a basic philosophy nor
basic debate class in college be-

cause they don’t seem to know
the difference between Socrates
and sophistry/Sophocles and
sophistry. Socrates was a great

philosopher chronicled by Plato
as being victimized by lies and
false testimonies and finally killed
by the power politicians’ sophistry.

Sophocles was a great tragedian
recounting the tragedy of sophistry
because the Greeks were living the
tragedy of sophism. And Republicans

repeat the tragedy by telling the lies of
sophism in defending the Occupant
who is the Great Pretender, the
dispenser and defender of sophistry,

which he doesn’t even know but thinks
he, the self-proclaimed stable genius,
practices a philosophy as great as
Socrates and writings better than those

of Sophocles even though he doesn’t read
and only tweets. And the lies are dis-
pensed and defended by the Intelligence
Committee, sycophants of the Occupant’s

sophism, the Know Nothing’s of true
philosophy and the honorable practice
of debate with integrity without even
knowing they don’t know it just like

the Occupant.

I thought I had been fighting for the
environmental health of the world but
I had no idea how insidious the des-
truction of the planet was by simple
chemicals that are destroying us every
day in every way of every month of
every year of our life — chemicals which
now are in our DNA and we are concerned
about external things like hybrids vs. hy-
brid plugins vs. electric vehicles, which,
still are good things to be concerned
about when each and every day I see SUV
after SUV after SUV traveling fast up
and down the highway. We want to have
it our way as we move every which way
but loose because we aren’t loose of the
global warming noose hanging us up
every which way but loose.