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In the morning, thank you, thank you

In the evening, thank you, thank you

In the middle of the day, thank you, thank you

In the deep dark night, thank you, thank you

Yeah, I’ll second that. The words are from the Sara Thomsen song “Rhapsody of Rest,” but more specifically, they were sung by my sister a few days ago at – can you believe? – the third annual Bob’s Rhubarb Lounge event, a mélange of poetry and music, stained glass and vulnerability.

Let me prance and jump around like a four-year-old for a moment. This happens at my house. I participate in it – I read poetry and add to the mix. But so many people participate in making it happen that I feel myself pushed beyond my own ego, beyond my sense of singularity. As a writer, I am embedded in the belief that I work alone. And I do work alone; we all do, to some extent. And some people become the ones who get singled out as cultural bastions, as though that’s the primary point: to be celebrated, to become famous individuals.

Antonio Gramsci was not a professional philosopher. His intellect was refreshingly situated within an inherent bias towards the common people, the 'subaltern' classes, particularly the working class. 

 He argued that all people are essentially intellectuals, in the sense that all people possess the intellectual faculties for rational thinking and deduction, though “not all men have in society the function of intellectuals”.

 Thus, intellectualism should not exist for its own sake, but as a direct response to the collective needs of society. 

I ran for president twice in 2004 and 2008, in an attempt to truly protect and defend the Constitution by ending perpetual war, stopping government intrusion into Americans’ private lives, and transforming America’s role in the world so that we would have the capacity for a true domestic agenda of national prosperity.   

I understand the tactics of the DNC and their media counterparts. I understand how they attempt total control of the nomination process, and attempt to silence opposition in order to advance internal and institutional agendas, which are destructive to our nation. 

The meltdown of the 2024 nomination process began in August of 2022 when the Democratic National Committee (DNC) declared unity for the re-election of President Biden, heading off any challengers, and then, that December, approved rules so onerous as to make an effective run inside the party impossible.  

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Human "pig butchering" scams have stolen billions of dollars from Americans rendering them financially devastated, heartbroken from fake love, and in worst cases suicidal, according to a new U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) report on Chinese-dominated transnational crime based in Southeast Asia.

In a terrible twist, many of the estimated 300,000 lying, sweet-talking scammers -- overwhelmingly from developing countries -- also suffer because they are allegedly imprisoned and brutalized by the Chinese-run gangs.

The armed gangs lure or kidnap them to Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos and "deploy torture to engage victims in forced criminality," the USIP report said.

"At the moment, there is no record of any currently trapped Americans in these compounds but there have been a small number," USIP visiting expert Jacob Sims said in an interview.

"A couple of years ago, an American was in a compound [in Cambodia] -- and treated as a criminal once he got out, by the Cambodian government -- and eventually found his way back to America.

America’s highly esteemed president who should be called Doodle-Head every time he opens his mouth came out with a beauty last Tuesday, claiming that if it weren’t for the existence of Israel “every Jew in the world would be at risk.” No Joe, you got it wrong. The reality is that Israeli behavior is precisely what fuels anger directed against what might be referred to as the “International Jewish Conspiracy,” whereby the wealthy and powerful Jewish diaspora enables Israel to literally get away with war crimes and mass murder without any consequences.

The First Gulf War back in 1990 was a big huge success. One of the things it accomplished was a major U.S. troop presence in Saudi Arabia. Muslims around the world were outraged. Bombs were repeatedly set off at Khobar Towers where troops were stationed. In 1998 Osama Bin Laden declared:

“For over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples. . . . The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.”