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Israel is a friendly country, and an occasionally balky ally, but no more so than other countries towards which we have contributed much more

??

https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts

Israel has long been the leading recipient of U.S. foreign aid, including military assistance.

At the fourth paragraph there is a chart. From 1946-2024, we gave Israel $308 billion in economic and military aid. No other country is close.

The United States provided Israel considerable economic assistance from 1971 to 2007, but nearly all U.S. aid today goes to support Israel’s military, the most advanced in the region. The United States has provisionally agreed via a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to provide Israel with $3.8 billion per year through 2028.

Then there's QME (Qualitative Military Edge)

QME has been a conceptual backbone of U.S. military aid to Israel for decades, and it was formally enshrined in U.S. law in 2008..

Under the 2008 law, the United States must ensure that any weapons it provides to other countries in the Middle East do not compromise Israel’s QME.

Restate the Ten Commandments in a nondenominational form.

Yeah, I never could figure out why Moses spoke Olde English.

It was this kind of music that put disco back where it belonged.

I was a teenager at the time, and mostly got on the anti-disco bandwagon.

Looking back, and listening to someof it again, I wpuld maintain that it was much more like real music , with melody and harmony than much of the popular material today.

No, the studio production is spent on special effects like auto-tune, getting a "sound" but not making MUSIC.

But look at some of the lush arrangements, like Barry White's "Love Unlimited Orchestra" ("My First, My Last, My Everything") and some of the singers who could really belt it out like Laura Brannigan ("Gloria").

I think the real problem was that musical tastes were segmenting, and Disco got too popular, too fast. If it had stayed at the same level of popularity as the Soul Music and Funk that were its progenitors, it would have stayed unhampered in its niche, as country-western/bluegrass were.

But the teenage hard rock/heavy metal types decided that their music had to define the era. Interestingly, some of the electronica, and avant garde (Robert Fripp with his Discotronics) incorporated the electronic repetition found in Disco of the era. Frank Zappa mocked everything, so of course he mocked Disco ("Dancing Fool"). Some talented performers either struggled with it (Elton John touched upon it with his worst album ["Victim of Love" . . . mailed in], plus two singles "Bite Your Lip" and "Mama Can't Buy You Love".) or just avoided it because they were largely album acts. (e.g. David Bowie)

It is not all BeeGees and Donna Summer, check each song on its merits.

Wow, a special contraption! Linda, you are pretty serious about your Chocolate cream froth! (Yes looks great!)

President Trump needed a big tent to win, and he made a big tent. Now he doesn’t need people on the fringes telling him how to run our country, and I hope he goes full medieval on their ass. Well, actually not, he will just ignore them and that is the best thing to do. But I’m so disappointed in people like that woman, one poster made the observation and nothing good camed out of Hawaii and he was absolutely 100% right.

A badge of honor.

Yes Jane.
I did see that Tulsi Gabbard is closing the daylight between her position & Trump’s. I do think the media was hoping to create a wedge and get her ousted.
It gets murky with so many voices which is why I went back to the March testimony to see what Tulsi actually said. Her response was spun by the left, who as usual did not include the whole content.
POTUS response suggests that he does believe she was not in full alignment since usually he supports his cabinet members robustly. IMO this will blow over shortly.

If you don’t want any AI involvement in the procedure, ‘Person to Person’ is what happens on a park bench, or in the checkout line at the grocery. I highly recommend those for authentic human communication.

I can’t stand the morning brain fog of even 1/10 a 3g melatonin pill (300mg). However, 8g of pistachios before bed, providing only about .64mg, helps with no side effects. I think melatonin sensitivity varies.

Permit me to state my reluctant objection another way.

I send my child to a public school to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic (and a little science, too). I do not want my child to be subject to any political or religious indoctrination. Such things should be the purview of the parents, exclusively.

That is, I think, a conservative stance.

But there is a good compromise. Restate the Ten Commandments in a nondenominational form. As I said before, they contain great wisdom.

Do not steal. Do not lie, etc. Post that.

“ Since when did Massachusetts give a crap about people doing drugs? They’ve legalized the use of medical and recreational marijuana.”

Treasury money grab.

Yes I very much liked these Brit songs. Did you notice # 18?

Another of my favorites.

Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005) Docket No. 03-1500 Granted: October 12, 2004 Argued: March 2, 2005 Decided: June 27, 2005 Annotation Primary Holding The Establishment Clause does not prohibit per se all forms of government action that may have religious content or a religious message. Read More Syllabus SYLLABUS OCTOBER TERM, 2004 VAN ORDEN V. PERRY SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES VAN ORDEN v. PERRY, in his official capacity as GOVERNOR OF TEXAS and CHAIRMAN, STATE PRESERVATION BOARD, et al. certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the fifth circuit No. 03–1500.Argued March 2, 2005—Decided June 27, 2005 Among the 21 historical markers and 17 monuments surrounding the Texas State Capitol is a 6-foot-high monolith inscribed with the Ten Commandments. The legislative record illustrates that, after accepting the monument from the Fraternal Order of Eagles—a national social, civic, and patriotic organization—the State selected a site for it based on the recommendation of the state organization that maintains the capitol grounds. Petitioner, an Austin resident who encounters the monument during his frequent visits to those grounds, brought this 42 U. S. C. §1983 suit seeking a declaration that the monument’s placement violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and an injunction requiring its removal. Holding that the monument did not contravene the Clause, the District Court found that the State had a valid secular purpose in recognizing and commending the Eagles for their efforts to reduce juvenile delinquency, and that a reasonable observer, mindful of history, purpose, and context, would not conclude that this passive monument conveyed the message that the State endorsed religion. The Fifth Circuit affirmed. Held: The judgment is affirmed. 351 F. 3d 173, affirmed. The Chief Justice, joined by Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Thomas, concluded that the Establishment Clause allows the display of a monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments on the Texas State Capitol grounds. Reconciling the strong role played by religion and religious traditions throughout our Nation’s history, see School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 212–213, with the principle that governmental intervention in religious matters can itself endanger religious freedom requires that the Court neither abdicate its responsibility to maintain a division between church and state nor evince a hostility to religion, e.g., Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306, 313–314. While the Court has sometimes pointed to Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, for the governing test, Lemon is not useful in dealing with the sort of passive monument that Texas has erected on its capitol grounds. Instead, the analysis should be driven by both the monument’s nature and the Nation’s history. From at least 1789, there has been an unbroken history of official acknowledgment by all three branches of government of religion’s role in American life. Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U. S. 668, 674. Texas’ display of the Commandments on government property is typical of such acknowledgments. Representations of the Commandments appear throughout this Court and its grounds, as well as the Nation’s Capital. Moreover, the Court’s opinions, like its building, have recognized the role the Decalogue plays in America’s heritage. See, e.g., McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 442, 462. While the Commandments are religious, they have an undeniable historical meaning. Simply having religious content or promoting a message consistent with a religious doctrine does not run afoul of the Establishment Clause. See, e.g., Lynch v. Donnelly, supra, at 680, 687. There are, of course, limits to the government’s display of religious messages or symbols. For example, this Court held unconstitutional a Kentucky statute requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in every public schoolroom. Stone v. Graham, 449 U. S. 39, 41–42. However, neither Stone itself nor subsequent opinions have indicated that Stone’s holding would extend beyond the context of public schools to a legislative chamber, see Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U. S. 783, or to capitol grounds. Texas’ placement of the Commandments monument on its capitol grounds is a far more passive use of those texts than was the case in Stone, where the text confronted elementary school students every day. Indeed, petitioner here apparently walked by the monument for years before bringing this suit. Schempp, supra, and Lee v. Weisman, 505 U. S. 577, distinguished. Texas has treated her capitol grounds monuments as representing several strands in the State’s political and legal history. The inclusion of the Commandments monument in this group has a dual significance, partaking of both religion and government, that cannot be said to violate the Establishment Clause. Pp. 3–12. Justice Breyer concluded that this is a difficult borderline case where none of the Court’s various tests for evaluating Establishment Clause questions can substitute for the exercise of legal judgment. See, e.g., School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 305 (Goldberg, J., concurring). That judgment is not a personal judgment. Rather, as in all constitutional cases, it must reflect and remain faithful to the underlying purposes of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses—to assure the fullest possible scope of religious liberty and tolerance for all, to avoid the religious divisiveness that promotes social conflict, and to maintain the separation of church and state. No exact formula can dictate a resolution to fact-intensive cases such as this. Despite the Commandments’ religious message, an inquiry into the context in which the text of the Commandments is used demonstrates that the Commandments also convey a secular moral message about proper standards of social conduct and a message about the historic relation between those standards and the law. The circumstances surrounding the monument’s placement on the capitol grounds and its physical setting provide a strong, but not conclusive, indication that the Commandments’ text as used on this monument conveys a predominantly secular message. The determinative factor here, however, is that 40 years passed in which the monument’s presence, legally speaking, went unchallenged (until the single legal objection raised by petitioner). Those 40 years suggest more strongly than can any set of formulaic tests that few individuals, whatever their belief systems, are likely to have understood the monument as amounting, in any significantly detrimental way, to a government effort to establish religion. See ibid. The public visiting the capitol grounds is more likely to have considered the religious aspect of the tablets’ message as part of what is a broader moral and historical message reflective of a cultural heritage. For these reasons, the Texas display falls on the permissible side of the constitutional line. Pp. 1–8. Rehnquist, C. J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., and Thomas, J., filed concurring opinions. Breyer, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, J., joined. O’Connor, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Souter, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Stevens and Ginsburg, JJ., joined. Read More Opinions Opinion (Rehnquist) Concurrence (Scalia) Concurrence (Thomas) Concurrence (Breyer) Dissent (Stevens) Dissent (O’Connor) Dissent (Souter) Hear Opinion Announcement - June 27, 2005 OPINION OF REHNQUIST, C. J. VAN ORDEN V. PERRY 545 U. S. ____ (2005) SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES NO. 03-1500 THOMAS VAN ORDEN, PETITIONER v. RICK PERRY, in his official capacity as GOVERNOR OF TEXAS and CHAIRMAN, STATE PRESERVATION BOARD, et al. on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the fifth circuit [June 27, 2005] Chief Justice Rehnquist announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Thomas join. "The question here is whether the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment allows the display of a monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments on the Texas State Capitol grounds. We hold that it does." I don't know how the Roberts court managed to square this circle.

“Children’s cancer research sees $35M investment to advance blood therapies
https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6374612993112“

A lot is already being done by Homeopath Drs. with blood and plasma for people with pain.

https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/treatment/joint-surgery/preplanning/the-future-of-joint-repair

Platelet Rich Plasma & Bone Marrow Concentrate Overview

Wow. Music really sucked that summer.

Re Moving post:

Wow! You must be an extremely adaptable person!

Remember when they said the "cloud" was safe and secure?

“Bad Mam’s Song” = Bad MAN’S Song...

Note to self - don’t post after a long day and three shots of tequila.

OK. Respectfully, I have to sign off.

LOL
Undocumented nap =unplanned!

Keeping her fat does her no favors, Cotton.
I know how tenderhearted you are CB, but you
could be killing her with kindness, too.

Teega really is NOT fat. He’s just plain LAZY!
How lazy you may ask?
SO lazy, that I had to buy mouse traps this spring!

WE could hear something “scritching” in the kitchen,
and he just slept through the whole thing!
He caught one here and there, walked around the house
growling like a mighty jaguar-and then LET THEM GO!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When they are well fed, they do not have the urge to hunt
because they are full, and not hunting to survive..
I cut back on Teegas food, still waiting to see
if that pays off-
as soon as I wake him up!