Has the legacy media had a stroke and lost the use of the word "amid?"

It's usually an awful word in the media. Call me cynical, but they seem to use "amid" to extend the legs of and squeeze extra revenue from a dubious, evergreen, or flagging story line. For example, they'll report, "Congressman Smith(D) belched at a beer party amid ongoing Democratic Party squabbling." The belch "event" is just an excuse to milk the assumed (and dubious at best) story line. It both milks and feeds the story line.

But they seem to forget the word "amid" when using it would be controversial, even when, for once, using it would be appropriate. For example, I would say that seems to be happening with the casualty counts from the ME crisis Hamas created.

Legacy media will often straightforwardly report something like, "Doctors and officials in Gaza report increased casualty counts in the past twenty-four hours." But they forgot to append, "amid crisis caused by Hamas terror attack." When they leave that off, it leaves the reader without essential information. That's unjust, because some readers may wrongly believe that the casualties are not the fault of Hamas and might even be the fault of Israel in some way.

About the back rent for North and South America

Deep in the past, my ancestor Og-gul was out fishing in the Northeast of what is now Asia. The story, passed down generation to generation, is that he noticed that there were rocks out in the water that hadn't been there the previous year.

Curious, he waded out into the water, watching warily for Megalodon fins. He had seen the teeth and wanted no part of that.

Reaching the rocks, perhaps a hundred shin lengths out in the water, he climbed up on them. There were more of them. He could now see them stretching to the east. One-by-one he hopped onto the next rock. Then the next.

Eventually he found he was standing in a field of grass. He had found new land! His family, his people had a new hunting ground. Perhaps they could even put up shelters. Perhaps they could live on this new land!

At that moment, Og-gul gave the claim sign and voiced the sacred chant. Most of the details are lost to antiquity, but my grandfather told me that it involved raising one's hands to shoulder level, as if to greet a neighbor. The claimant would, in effect, greet the new territory being claimed. Og-gul greeted everything to the east of where he stood at that time. He also greeted everything connected to it.

He chanted the chant of connectedness.

"By the rightful say of that which stands behind all that is, I claim this land and any lakes and rivers that touch this land in any way."

It was done. Og-gul and his heirs became the rightful owners of what are now known as the continents of North and South America.

Og-gul went back across the rocks to his village. He told his family of their new land. They were happy about the land, but the responsibility seemed daunting. Could a family of fourteen really manage all that land? How much was there? Given the sacred connectedness chant, it could be a lot. Og-gul could see a lot of land from his first ever human view of North America. But there could be much more land connected to it to the east, north, and south.

Og-gul liked his village and didn't want to move. He didn't want to live in the new land. His wife had friends in the village. His kids were in sports. So, rather than move to the new land, he decided to remain on the western side of what is now the Bering Strait, modern-day Asia.

But he told youthful villagers of his land and said to them, "You may live on my land if you wish. I ask from each dweller only one fish, each at least a shin in length, each time the moon is full."

The youthful villagers readily agreed. It was a bargain. They spoke to Og-gul the sacred chant of land use, the forebear to modern-day rental. Then, some of them moved their belongings and families across the rocks Og-gul had discovered to the new land. There, they settled, each returning to Og-gul his or her monthly rental of one fish per month.

Before long, Og-gul was "swimming in fish," and he and his descendants (my ancestors) became very wealthy from rental on our holdings, North and South America.

The rocks leading across the water became, in time, more and more visible. Long after Og-gul established ownership of our properties, there was a broadening bridge that emerged from the water. Renters crossed that bridge by the thousands, even setting up encampments and villages on the bridge itself, so wide was it.

By that time, Og-gul had long since passed to the outer world. Indeed, many generations of my ancestors followed. Many hundreds of generations. In each successive generation, the chant of connectedness tradition passed ownership of our properties to the eldest son.

Unfortunately, the many renters of our land began to fall behind in their rent. Indeed, many non-relatives who lived after Og-gul's time in what are now the continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa found a way to reach my family's land via sea and aircraft. They then moved there, not realizing that they were required by tradition to pay rent to my family. How could they know?

The back rent has reached quite a sum by this point. It's basically one good-sized fish per month per household dweller for approximately 30,000 years. Back rent at the time of Og-gul's claim accrued interest at the rate of one limpet per fish per year, compounded. I haven't completed the calculations yet, but preliminarily it appears that the occupants of North and South America owe me (as eldest son of all the eldest sons descending from Og-gul) approximately forty times the net worth of Earth.

Look, I know that's a lot of money. I would be willing to accept a fraction of that. If you act now. I'll be setting up a GoFundMe for the descendants of Og-gul (myself) to collect the back rent we (myself) are owed. I'm willing to take half, with the stipulation that descendants of Og-gul are not responsible for back maintenance. Maintenance was never a part of the original dweller chant, but I just thought it better if everyone were on the same page.

I'm being accused of flag and abbreviation orderism

I'm into knitting, but I have friends who do crochet and others who do weaving.

Lately, I can't stand my friends. They're calling me an orderist. And everyone knows what that means. It means they're not being good friends.

I wouldn't want to say that they're bad people, narcissists, egomaniacs, or selfish, a-holish jerks. Or inconsiderate dunderheads. I'm too nice to say those things. Also, I don't want to stoop to their level. They're my friends.

That said, the issue is that our group is and always has been the KCWs. That's knitters, crocheters, and weavers. In that order. But now the crocheters want to change it to CKW. The weavers, thanks to crocheter troublemaking are asking why it can't be WKC or WCK. It's all so silly.

Honestly, it doesn't really matter to me that the correct abbreviation is KCW and that the others want to go with something wrong. I respect the right of others to be mistaken but still lead dignified lives. I forgive them. I just think it will confuse outsiders if we change the order of our group's abbreviation. It doesn't bug me one bit. Not a bit.

But just to be clear. What about our flag? Three beige stripes, each with its own uniquely knit, crocheted, or woven texture. It symbolizes our unity. "From many crafts, one afghan." We literally have a dozen or more of those. They are all ordered KCW. Do we just tear out all that work and redo it all? When? I have bridge.

Reality often disappoints when compared to fantasy

Not sure if I'm the only one who has noticed this or if one or two others have. When I compare something I wish was true with something that is, I sometimes find that I prefer the former.

Is Dubya one of the two political fathers of ISIS/Hamas? (The other being Bin Laden)

George W. Bush's Iraq War seems to be easy to forget for some reason. ISIS was spawned in Iraq after Dubya's Iraq War which, as a reminder, was initiated on false pretenses.

Hamas and ISIS are just aliases, in my book, for the same cancer. Without Dubya, perhaps we would still have two weakened regimes, one Sunni (Iraq) and one Shia (Iran), keeping one another in check. One has to wonder whether Uday or Qusay Hussein (curs though they were) might not be keeping Iran's theocrats busy right now, too busy to make trouble and too weak to avoid negotiating regional peace. The whole ME might have played out differently but for Dubya's folly and arrogance.

The Hamas attack means we should double support for Ukraine

Israel's got this when it comes to Hamas. But if we want to disempower Iran and Hamas, we need to take Putin out of the picture, imo. The best way to do that is with a Ukranian victory.

I googled "Putin condemns Hamas attack," and I was unsurprised to find...nothing. But here's a Russian grift against U.S. foreign policy I did find.

"Instead of actively working on a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, these idiots have crept into our country and are helping neo-Nazis with all their might, pitting two close peoples against each other," Medvedev said.

Serving at the pleasure of the voters

One thing I often see is that people oppose a position by saying, "Well, your position creates danger or discomfort for XYZ subset of other citizens." That's a strong argument for you to make, but your argument doesn't need to be strong if you are in the majority. The government serves at the pleasure of the voters within the framework of the Constitution.

If you, for example, prefer that we order sub sandwiches for lunch, and I prefer that we order pizza, you don't have to argue that pizza will give someone in the group indigestion. You only have to say you would rather have subs. If the majority agree with you, and we're only ordering from one place, subs it is. That's despite the fact that pizza is better.

Maher is back: Outstanding and stupid

So glad Maher is back. It's hard to deal with Maher being back (beyond being grateful he is).

The guest list was completely amazing. I was astonished how great it was. Seriously, the best TV I've seen in months.

Worth watching.


The stupid part is the usual stupid part, real world versus the world that we have in our imagination. It's incredible to me we can live in a world where we can make decisions based on something that exists in reality versus that something that exists only in our minds. A 30-year-old Biden? Of course! I take that in a minute! Okay, but here we are in the real world. We have a Biden and, what?

So, Maher, whose show tonight so was remarkable, confronts us with this absurd conflict between reality and what we wish was true. Great stuff!

Tossing the Republicans an anchor wrt Trump rather than a life preserver

One thing about Trump's grifting, country-forsaking utterances is that our side might somehow think it means we can allow more foolishness on "our side." Trump says something ridiculous; therefore, somebody who decides to call themselves "left" can say something ridiculous too.

We shouldn't let that happen. We don't have one vote to spare. Trump can definitely win in 2024. Trump's rottenness doesn't give us a "wrongheadedness budget." It creates no slack for us to allow "someone on our side" to be an idiot.

We should not take Trump's rottenness as a free pass to let unrepresentative, self-elected "hangers-on of the left" go haywire. Moreover, we shouldn't let Republicans cherry pick a few haywire voices to represent us without saying, "Nope, don't know who that is. Don't care. That's not us." Toss an anchor to the Republican Party caught in riptide Trump, not a life preserver, in other words. Republicans will thank us for it later.

Neutralizing the southern border issue by making Mr. Hyde's head hurt

It's far from clear, Hyde, that waves of migrants crossing the border on the south are "destroying our country." Not sure if you actually think that, Hyde, or if you're just selling. Really it could be either. Everyone knows you're a slick SOB. That's one of the things we like about you.

Sure, sure, the migrants are going to be "happier" here, Hyde, so that's a downside. But don't you get something out of it too?

I mean, these are (let's be honest) not all going to be drug smuggling, terrorist monsters. Maybe not even most of them will be that. Maybe less than half of them are really terrible. Possibly only a minority of them are. Maybe a small minority. Maybe practically none of them are.

Mr. Hyde, I mean, your mouthy mouthpiece has been saying these migrants are really bad people. So bad we need a wall! And you apparently like the idea, even when you're not drunk. But, have you really thought about it?

Have you and Dr. Jekyll talked this over with Reverend Wallet?

What if one or two of the migrants are honest people who are interested in doing work, buying things, contributing to Social Security, etc.? You see where I'm going with this, right Hyde? It's just...not...clear. It's complicated, but worth thinking about because...money.

Anyway, sorry for messing with your certainty! But there you are. You'll thank me later when you're raking in all that dough.