Interesting questions/minirant, Shah.

Hours after I awoke this morning (we had overnight, well-behaved rain) I went up to awake the pup. She sleeps late, growing. I had to lengthen her collar and her Seresto collar because she's growing. She wakes up and yawns and rubs her face with front paws like a cat. She also rubs against walls, like a cat. Not my legs, she bites my feet, dog. She had her second obedience class last night and came back exhausted. early bed. Not sure that learning occurred.

I have spent over a week now trying to email a signed contract to an attorney in Canada. I cannot find a witness, guess that says something about my local friend base. I am suing for fraud. Mucho bucks poured into a hole. Contractor, I was informed by a neighbor, went to the cottage with OPP escort to remove rental equipment. Or something. I have not seen the disaster, too hard. New doors, he has a key, I do not. My realtor does, and a neighbor does. Holy shit.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology has job openings. One is an appointment to make a database of pictures of charismatic creatures. We all have a sense of what those are. Personally, I find lichens charismatic. I am now decorating all my potted plant soil with bark pops growing lichens. Some of them green up with water, very satisfying to human-control color. I also have lichen rocks, but I leave them outside.

I have to determine whether it is possible to buy garbage can lids separate from bottoms. Raccoons and car tires do a job on lids. I prefer them intact and weather-proof. I am offering a broken one in my recycling bins today. Are Rubbermaid products recyclable? Dog fast asleep, again. Growing. New teeth soon. Good orthodontia for deciduous teeth. Well-spaced as the jaw lengthened and straight.

and c99ers. Hope all is well with everybody as much as possible.

We're in a heat wave. 90s F for a few days past, and expected to continue all week. Clear and sunny, no rain.

Haven't heard of any pot problems here in Colorado either, Shahryar. Haven't looked it up in awhile, but last I looked, tons of money is pouring in.

Big fire in the Manzano mountains, here. I hear it started in the Fourth of July campground, which is my very favorite hiking trail head, so I'm worried about the damage. They are evacuating the mountain villages as the fire has spread to 2000 acres. I could see the flames along the mountain ridge last night, and it was distressing. The smoke is horrific, as the fire started Tuesday and is 0% contained. No rain in site and a heat wave to boot. Sigh.

Have a beautiful day, my peeps!

[video:https://youtu.be/uad0eMq2wLQ]

I am a German non-religious protestant (lutheran) Christian as much as you are a non-religious Jew.. In Germany I am called with regards to my affiliation to a religion "evangelisch", our protestantism based on Martin Luther, that's all I know about it. So I was baptized as a baby and confirmed as a teenager. If you want a pastor to marry you or bury you, you need to be affiliated with a religion and its churches in Germany, either Roman Catholic or Lutheran Protestant. If you declare your affiliation that was given to you as a baby, you pay a small tax automatically once you start working. If you don't want to do it, you have officially to leave the church, it's up to you and you can do so freely without repercussions. It's your right to choose what you want to be.

Like you, I just acknowledge just one religious holiday and that is/was Christmas, though we never went to church during Christmas Eve or Christmas day. No midnight mass like the Catholic Church has etc.

We simply didn't go to church, though my father was active in the "Kirchenvorstand" or something like that. He used to say, "if you have been at the arsehole of the world, you know that you need something like a belief in God, everything else is your personal, private choice and nobody's business".

He too never went to church. My mother never said a word about religion, churches or faith. She simply never talked about it. We as kids believed and I still do believe today, she had seen too many pastors. priests, bishops and clergy failing during the wwII not living up to what they preached and taught.

She accepted the cultural norms of getting married, buried, baptized and confirmed, without saying anything. I think we learned that way to respect whatever a person chooses to do with regards to their religious beliefs. So we went to church to get married, baptize our babies, put our totally uninterested teenage kids through the confimation and we went to church to get buried and have a place at the cemetery (has to be bought for a period of 25 years or so).

Some of the people had something like a "click or get-it" in their lives and actually became believers in a good sense, others had another "click or get-it" and left the church, because they just couldn't believe and couldn't take "the books" literally, nor had they have the experience that a pastor actually could help them "understanding the teachings of the "books".

I have witnessed several marriages and funerals over the years in my home country, Germany, witnessed family members officially leaving the church, witnessed family members crossing or being heavily brainwashed into cults and /or extreme Catholicism, witnessed Catholic raised in-laws arranging with protestant spouses for a marriage ceremony in the protestant churches etc.
All in all, nobody had a real affiliation or belief into anything other than some basic moral guidelines all the religions claim to have and basically most people have as a conscious in them anyhow by their dna.

I became aware about the role the church and religion had for me, only through living in the United States. Before coming here I really didn't care and didn't think about it.

But I couldn't just stand either churches here in the US, neither the evangelicals, nor the baptists, nor the Anglicans, nor the Roman Catholic or anything else, I got so tired of all those nominations and said to myself how on earth can you quarrel about different religious texts. Completely lost me in the way they interpreted everything literally to the single letter of the books and to the pennies of their profits (for some churches at least). So, I remained without a church to go, and without a religious education of some church groups or so.

oh, I had to talk more about it, but it gets too long.

What I really wanted to say here, is that because I am German and very aware of our historical guilt of my father's and grandfather's generation of the holocaust, there is no way to talk about it for me on forum like dailykos, or pretty much on any online, allegedly anonymous online blog.

When I began reading more on dailykos, I just got the two "rules", don't discuss the I/P problems and never, ever talk something about Hitler, Nazis, don't violate the Godwin law etc. etc.

I was silently watching and reading and got more amazed by the day. I obeyed by the rules, and out of fear to get caught up in those diaries, I didn't read ANY I/P diary and stood out of commenting at all on anything that touched Germany's history, Nazis, Hitler, Israel, anti-semitism etc. And the more time I spent over there, the more senseless I considered these regulations.

I am just here to tell you that I support your point of view very much, ie that

The idea that I/P is too touchy so we can't talk about it makes no sense to me. It's a complicated issue that can't be solved by avoiding it. It's something the people in that region should be re-examining daily instead of taking positions and stubbornly sticking to them. And if, as I believe, they should be talking about the ins and outs, pros and cons of each possible solution, so should we.

yes, exactly, otherwise you end up like me, never read and get informed about anything with regards to the I/P conflict other then it's, especially for a German with their baggage of historical guilt, too "dangerous" to talk about it.
That is really baloney.

The opposite of it is also baloney. But I am too tired to tell you a story, which demonstrate why that is the case as well. Another time.

Just one more thing, the rule here is "do not be an asshole". And attack the message but not the messenger, ie here meant to be the author of an essay or a specific commentator in a thread.

Both rules make sense, but that doesn't mean they will help much. Because even though you do not attack a messenger directly, you, as a reader, still feel you are a member of a group of people, like being a Jew, or being a Christian, or being a white person or a person of color or being a woman, feminist etc.

Because of that, even if something wasn't an attack on a specific person, but a general message attack, people, who read it, feel emotional and hurt about it, as they feel themselves as members of a group of people, who has been attacked through that message. There is no way around that.

After having read so much online, I simply do not believe, that readers don't feel an affiliation to any kind of group of people. There is the dna driven need to be a member of a group of people. Any message attack on that group of people, pains most people in the same way as if they were attacked personally.

That's the reason why free speech online has such magnifying intense effect on any reader. People need to discuss that fact more than the actual issues.

This emotional pain people experience in the virtual conversation is what makes the medium so dangerous. Basically you can witness it happening here as well. It's very hard to try to minimize that pain.

The efforts of the moderators to come up with simple DBAA and don't attack the messenger are reasonable, but unfortunately it will not help as much as one would think. We have to live with that, consciously.

But there is always something one can be "soothed" with, music, art, food, critters, nature pics etc. All good.

So, for the heck of it, say what you want to say, try to be kind and that's it. No word police, no quarrels over which kind of word someone has used. It's usually not worth it. Try to express yourself in ways that you would feel comfortable with when reading a comment or essay from someone who has a different opinion than you have, I think will do it. And don't forget the forgetfulness of people. Try to make clear snark, jokes, lingo and abbreviations you know as a member of one group of people. Not everyone is member of your group. If you want to be for the 99percent then you have to consider that not all of the 99p belong to a specific group of people you happen to be member of.

Sorry for the long messy message.

and has to send him to prison. WTF. Was this discussed at all here? Just because print media journalist did some good investigative reporting and it was published in the NYT and USA Today doesn't make it bad journalism.

How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions - By RUSS BUETTNER and CHARLES V. BAGLIJUNE 11, 2016
or
How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Casinos, Left Contractors Unpaid, Ruined Investors & Made Millions

A series of new investigative articles have revealed Donald Trump’s shady business dealings in Atlantic City, his failure to pay contracted workers over the years, and his decision to partake in what may amount to "calculated tax fraud"—a felony. We begin by looking at how Donald Trump bankrupted his Atlantic City casinos, but still earned millions. "Even as his companies did poorly, Mr. Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acu Dishwashers, Plumbers, Waiters & Lawyers: Hundreds Accuse Trump of Failing to Pay for Their Workmen," wrote Russ Buettner and Charles Bagli in The New York Times. They join us to discuss their piece, "How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, But Still Earned Millions"

A new USA Today exposé finds hundreds of former employees and contractors have accused Republican presidential presumptive nominee Donald Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Victims have included a dishwasher in Florida, a glass company in New Jersey, a carpet company, a plumber, 48 waiters, dozens of bartenders at his resorts and clubs, and even several law firms that once represented him in these labor lawsuits. We speak to Steve Reilly, an investigative reporter and data specialist for the USA Today Network. His new exclusive is called "Hundreds Allege Donald Trump Doesn’t Pay His Bills."

I Hate Acronyms. So WTF is I/P? Israel / Palestine from context? If so, what is gained by abbreviating it? You're a wordy guy, surely a few extra keystrokes won't kill you.

I am for regular reportage of the shah/shaz conversations. ; )

And I am for these Jew Gun Nuts. They do not serve in any military, and when the police try to come to arrest one for "draft dodging," they make the police go away. If everybody did this, there would be no militaries. And thus a helluva lot fewer gun nuts.

I thought you could be Persian. Your handle is made of two words, "king-friend," though with incorrect grammar.

Perhaps you are descended from the once-vibrant Jewish community of Iran.

Whatever the truth may be, I shall never call you shah mat.

Peace and love be with you, reader.

the OT the place that when the treads get to hot to handle I use as a hidey hole? /s Armed and dangerous, describes both America and Israel. Why does anyone need an Uzi or any automatic assault rifle/gun in their gun collection safe? I guess the feel their right to the pursuit of happiness is a

Bowling for Columbine

JEW gun nuts.... Didn't find it.

Like you I am a JEW by Birth but can't remember the last time I attended services that weren't connected to a wedding, death or bar mitzvah

I DO bristle at diaries about I/P issues, mainly because most of them desolate into negative comments about JEWS in General instead of political discussions about Likkud.

I am NOT a fan or a supporter of Bibi or Likkud but I will not tolerate I/P discussions about The JEWS. It's ANTISEMETIC because The JEWS doesn't exist. There are liberal. Moderate and conservative Jews... And we have very different opinions about the Middle East. for this reason I steer clear of I/P diaries UNLESS I happen on a comment by someone who forgets that THE JEWS is not a correct way to address Jews. WHICH Jews is the commentor talking about... Jews like me and Bernie ?

Had an interesting conversation with one of my neices a while ago... She is a lovely young lady from a very Observant wealthy Fam. Out of the blue she sent me a text asking if I was still supporting Bernie. I texted back... YES and she responded why and I said "because I would like to see a JEWISH president of the USA before I die... Her response "I never thought of it that way, me too"

(Smile)