Some old music that seems right for these times.

She sings this for everyone. There is a lead in before she begins singing, which blends in well with the song when it starts.

Israel's apparent goals in fighting Hamas.

This is how the Israeli goals and actions appear to be shaping up, from what I've heard in BBC and NPR interviews with Israeli officials (including one IDF officer), and various ME experts on the Israeli/Palestinian conflicts.

The Israeli shut off of power in Gaza is a bargaining chip for the hostages and a threat of what will happen indefinitely if the hostages are harmed or if Hamas carries out its threat to start killing them.

The bombing is clearing a way for ground troops to go into Gaza, retrieve hostages, and capture or kill Hamas terrorists. Israel does not want to get the hostages back through hostage bargaining. They have done that in the past and it obviously emboldened Hamas to commit more attacks for more hostages.

Several posters have said that their concern for Palestinian children and other civilians does not mean that they condone the terrorist attacks on Israel. The other side of that is that people who support Israel going after Hamas does not mean a desire to see innocent people in Gaza harmed or killed.

Inevitably, Gaza civilians will be harmed in the war that Hamas started against Israel with the attacks last weekend.

I've been thinking about WWII when thousands of civilians lost homes or their lives or were permanently maimed when the Allies invaded Europe to defeat the Nazis. British and American planes bombed facilities in Germany. German civilians (including women and children) in or near the targets were killed and had their homes and businesses destroyed. Stores and hospitals ran out of supplies or got destroyed due to proximity to the bomb targets. Starving, homeless German civilians roamed the streets searching for food or garbage to live on. They sought shelter in the remains of bombed out buildings. They had nowhere to go for treatment of injuries, or had no medicine even if they found a hospital or doctor. The shelling of Germany was brutal because Germans would not give up.

Right to the very end, the German soldiers and even civilians tried to fight off the Allies from behind makeshift barriers as the Allied armies reached Berlin. In the death camps, the SS rushed the killing process to complete as many exterminations as possible before the Allies reached them. When they could not kill off enough people fast enough, they marched them on foot to other locations, causing several to die because they were too weak. In other cases, they put weak and emaciated camp prisoners on trains to ship them out of the camps, then blew up the camps and tried to cover up what had been happening there.

Allies sped up their attacks and brutal onslaught in order to defeat Germany with no negotiations. FDR had declared "Unconditional surrender" was required of Germany, Italy, and occupied countries.

Thousands of civilians in France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, died from allied bombings and ground fighting. Some of them were people who opposed the Nazis and had looked forward to the Allied invasion.

Then there was Japan and the deaths of millions of civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Should the Allies not have invaded Europe in order to avoid killing civilians? Should they not have bombed Germany? Should we have chosen military targets in Japan instead of 2 cities of civilians? (IMO, yes, we should have targeted the Japanese military, not civilian cities.)

When you retaliate against a brutal and ruthlessly cruel enemy, the strength and power you need to use will injure and kill innocent people. It will leave innocent people homeless and without food, water, and medical help. That's why war is a terrible thing.

But when a ruthlessly cruel enemy attacks you, you cannot sit back and do nothing.

Whew! Still some honest people in the world.

Got home from grocery shopping today and realized that I'd left my purse in the store grocery cart, in the parking lot, when I loaded my groceries to go home.

I keep my keys in one back pocket of my jeans and my bank card and driver's license in the other pocket. But there were things in the purse that I did not want to have to replace - papers, inhaler, cosmetics, etc. Plus a $50 Amazon gift card.

Called the store and had to describe the purse and give my name. Yes, they had it. So, back across town and to the suburban store.

Everything was intact, including the gift card and my change purse, which only had $8.50 in it.

Whoever turned it in saved me the loss of the gift card and cost and hassle of replacing items . Good to know that there are still people like that around.

False belief that FBI has officially declared MAGAs a domestic terrorist group.

There is a false belief going around DU that the FBI has officially declared MAGAs to be a domestic terrorism group. This belief is based on claims in RW publications like Newsweek. This RW talking point supports claims by Donald Trump and his MAGA followers that DOJ and the Biden administration are weaponizing DOJ and the courts for political attacks on the right.

Do a Google search for the claim that there is an official designation of MAGAs as a domestic terrorism group. You will NOT find any such official declaration because it does not exist. But you will find RW publications like Newsweek and RW websites making this claim.

The FBI and other LE and security organizations do investigate acts of domestic terrorism, along with threats of it and conspiracies to carry it out. That is their job. Most domestic terrorism threats today do come from the right, from such groups as neo Nazis, RW militias, various White supremacy organizations, and anti government groups. But the FBI and LE have had those types of groups under surveillance since BEFORE Trumpism and MAGAs. Those groups now align themselves politically with MAGA Republicans, but they are NOT being investigated or charged for being MAGA Republicans. They are targets of the FBI for their criminal behavior against fellow Americans and attacks on infrastructure.

When we support the false claim that DOJ is officially targeting MAGAs for being MAGAs, we feed right into Trump's narrative that he is a victim of political attacks by BIDEN and DOJ.

Cats - male versus female

Federal government shutdowns cause economic distress for tribes

Marketplace (NPR) segment on the effects of the shutdown in tribal nations and their governments.

By treaty agreement, several tribal government offices and services receive federal funding, which is cut off during shutdowns. This affects healthcare, fire departments, and other services. The tribal governments then have to make up the difference if they have any reserve funds, or do without.

https://www.marketplace.org/2023/09/28/federal-government-shutdowns-cause-economic-distress-for-tribes/

National Native American organizations oppose federal shutdown.

https://narf.org/federal-shutdown/

Do you enjoy watching your dog or cat figure out things?

I love to see their thought processes in action. Recently, my 7 year old cat, Ember, tried to figure out the difference between a movie scene and the real world.

Like most cats, she looks out the window. She perks up in spring, when snow melts, more people are walking outdoors, and it's warm enough for me to open the window a crack for fresh air. More birds in the air, too.

When it snows, she bats the snowflakes at the window as if trying to chase winter away.

So the other night I was watching Day After Tomorrow. Ember came into the room at the opening scene, which shows 3 scientists in Antarctica, dressed in heavy winter clothing, standing on a field of ice and snow as far as the eye can see. She got alert, like doing a double take. She glanced at the window, looked at me, and back at the TV screen. Went to the windowsill to look outside, then looked back at the TV screen like WTF? No snow outside. Then she came back to the couch next to me, eyes glued to the Antarctic scene.

When the scene changed, she relaxed and wandered away.

She also reacts to helicopters in movies. I live a few blocks from a hospital in a small city. Their medical helicopter that transports people to Buffalo hospitals flies by her favorite window. When she sees a helicopter on TV, she checks the window.

I suspect that she thinks the TV is another type of window to the outside world.

Effective ways to tarnish the orange mobster in his campaign.

Feel free to come up with your own ideas, but while watching the mobster's interview with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, a few ideas occurred to me on how Dems can define him in the campaign.

First rule is to use ridicule. He will turn any serious attempt at criticism around to make himself look good, so don't bother trying that. He is very good at twisting things because he has had a lifetime of experience. He never accepts facts and always creates a fantasy "reality" out of them.

So, don't engage him or his followers in serious discussions of facts. Make fun of him instead. Authoritarian blowhards always have overblown egos and take themselves too seriously. So ridicule him.

1. Rambling. He uses off topic rambling to avoid answering questions and to insert his own fantasy world into interviews and at rallies to his followers. So instead of serious criticism of him for that, just ridicule him as a doddering old fool who can't remember the topic or stay on track. Hammer him with it so that it sticks and defines him.

2. He keeps disparaging the cabinet members and former advisors that he fired. So paint him as someone with very poor judgment who is not competent enough to hire good people. Point out that other administrations did not have nearly as high of a turnover, so it has to be his own incompetence.

3. Each time he and his followers whine about being mistreated and the election and courts being rigged, just sigh and say, "It's always something, isn't it?" An eye roll goes well with that comment. Or, "There are meds for paranoia. You should get some."

4. When his followers tell you how great he is, just laugh and remind them that, in a July 4 public speech, he praised the Revolutionary War Army for protecting the airports. Also a good come back to anyone who criticizes Biden for stuttering or a gaff when speaking.

5. Akin to #4. When a MAGA says how great Trump is, remind them that he said at a rally that Biden would get us into WWII and at the same rally, Trump said that he won against Obama, whom he never ran against.

Add your own ridicule. The idea is to defineTrump with mocking ridicule as an incompetent fool that has no business trying to run the country when he does not know who his past opponents were, or that airplanes did not exist in 1776.

My healthcare provider on latest covid booster

I called my primary care office about availability for the latest covid shot. The woman that I spoke with said that they will have it sometime next week. My insurance is Medicare and United Healthcare. She said there is no charge, no copay. Totally covered.

They will call me for an appointment when they get the vaccine. It will be Moderna, the one that they (and I) prefer.

OMG. Just had weird conversation with anti vaxxer.

There's a clerk at a nearby convenience store that I sometimes chat with when she's not busy. Seems nice and average intelligence.

I just came home from the store. The subject of the latest vaccine came up. She said no way was she getting it and had never had any of the covid shots. I asked how many times she had covid and she said only once, and it was a mild case. Then she said that it probably was only the flu and not covid, so I asked if she tested for it. She said yes, she did the home test, so the positive result didn't really mean that she had covid because her doctor told her that the covid home test detects any virus.

I said that the covid test is designed specifically for covid in order to rule out other viruses like the flu, but she insisted that her doctor told her that covid tests do not distinguish between covid and any other virus. I said I'd get a second opinion from another doctor.

Then she said that the covid vaccines are not safe because you don't know what "they" put in the vaccines. She understood so little about DNA and RNA that I decided it was not worth trying to explain it to her. So I just said that, from my high school and college biology courses, I trust the vaccines and feel safe with them.

Then she said, "But what about the microchips that 'they' put into the vaccines? 'They' can track you wherever you go and everything you do." It was so off the wall and unexpected that I burst out laughing. She looked a bit sheepish so I said that I thought she was smarter than to believe something like that. I also said that I'd heard of people who believed that microchip nonsense but she was the first person that I'd actually heard say that face to face.

She got another customer then so the conversation ended. So much for me thinking that she had average intelligence.

Can't blame US schools for her lack of knowledge and critical reasoning. She was born in Canada and grew up there. Her father is American so she has dual citizenship but went to school in Ontario.