Notes from Underground – November 2023

11/28/23 – This needs to become a nation-wide policy. “‘What’s shocking to people often is not only how much we waste … but also the impact,’ said Emily Broad Leib, a Harvard University law professor and director of the school’s Food Law and Policy Clinic. ‘Food waste causes about 8% to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.’ Broad Leib says 20% of water in the U.S. is used to grow food ‘that we then just throw away, so we’re basically taking water and putting it directly into a landfill.’”
Tackling climate change and alleviating hunger: States recycle and donate food headed to landfills

11/28/23 – Wherever there is discrimination, in any shape or form, we must eliminate it.

11/28/23 – Europe has an antisemitism problem.

11/28/23 – The half-black Kamala Harris supported vetoing an anti-caste discrimination bill after wealthy upper-caste Hindus intervened to protect their interests. Why are wealthy, upper-caste Hindus opposing the bill? Well, why are racist white people opposing anti-discrimination bills? Why did Newsom veto the bill? The wealthy upper-caste Indians threatened to pull their funding and support. This is politics in America. It’s a disgusting game where revolting rich people use power and money to oppress others. They are all so corrupt.

11/26/23 – Happy Sunday! God bless the United States of America. Long live the Republic under God.

11/26/23 – Section 3 of the 14th Amendment must be protected. It must not be watered down. It must be used now – against the evil one, trump, the most dangerous threat to the Republic in its history.

11/24/23 – In a Christian centering prayer practice, we try to connect with the divine, our God, with a focus on doing God’s will and releasing ourselves from our ego. A daily practice of connecting with the divine and other activities, such as a gratitude journal, promotes spirituality, a love of all creation, and mental health.
Giving thanks is good for you. Here’s how to make it a habit

11/24/23 – We should all try to incorporate features of the monastic life. It makes us all better. “Sannyasin Tillainathaswami, a monk who has lived here for more than a decade, said the ancient practice drew him in because it delves deep into the meaning of one’s existence.” Lovely sentiment, and beautiful temple!
How a massive all-granite, hand-carved Hindu temple ended up on Hawaii’s lush Kauai Island

11/24/23 – India is a country that does not value or respect human life. The Hindu caste system treats some people as less than others and as slaves into familial perpetuity. It also treats women as objects to be abused, exploited and raped. India needs to value and respect all human life!

11/24/23 – White Evangelicals in America don’t love the Lord. They love their whiteness, power and money. They also love the evil one, Trump. They are agents of the devil. “It is a rather remarkable indictment of those who claim to be followers of Jesus that they would continue to show fealty to a man whose cruel ethic has always been antithetical to Jesus’s and becomes more so every day. Many of the same people who celebrate Christianity’s contributions to civilization—championing the belief that every human being has inherent rights and dignity, celebrating the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount and the parable of the Good Samaritan, and pointing to a ‘transcendent order of justice and hope that stands above politics,’ in the words of my late friend Michael Gerson—continue to stand foursquare behind a man who uses words that echo Mein Kampf.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Taking a stand for conscience, even long after one should have, is always the right thing to do.

‘When we engage in dehumanizing rhetoric and promote dehumanizing images,’ the best-selling author Brené Brown has written, ‘we diminish our own humanity in the process.’ We are called to find the face of God in everyone we meet, she says, including those with whom we most deeply disagree. ‘When we desecrate their divinity, we desecrate our own, and we betray our humanity.’

Far too many Christians in America are not only betraying their humanity; they are betraying the Lord they claim to love and serve.”
Have You Listened Lately to What Trump Is Saying?

11/23/23 – This and every Thanksgiving, we’re thankful for a planet that teems with life and for the God who created it. We pray that others are also thankful for this gift and will work to protect it.  

11/19/23 – God created all life – not just human beings. We need to respect all of his creation. Happy Sunday!

11/19/23 – People need to stop having children so our planet can recover. There are simply too many people.

11/18/23 – City slickers with their technology addiction have nothing on these people who live simple lives in rural America or around the world. These farmers and ranchers are connected to the land and to the food we eat. They deserve more respect and gratitude from the rest of us.

11/18/23 – Consumers should have choice in the matter also. Any rancher who puts this much care into their livestock and the environment should have the benefit of it being displayed prominently on the packaging.
Also, meat tastes good, but how can people actually digest this much beef? It’s harder on the digestive system than any other common meat product. If people would just eat smaller amounts, both they and the planet, which we need for our survival, would be healthier.
“That thinking eventually led her to the theories of regenerative ranching, which harken back to the 30 million bison that once thundered through the Plains states. Herds would seemingly annihilate grasslands by eating all the vegetation and pummeling the ground with their hoofs. The ground looked trashed, but those hoofs stimulated the soil, and the animals coated the ground with nitrogen-rich waste. Then, the animals left for months or even years, allowing grasses to grow and establish deep, sturdy roots.
Regenerative ranchers try to do roughly the same by moving cattle frequently. They’re kept in spaces where they can trample the grass and soil and then move on, allowing the land to recover for weeks or months. The goal is to produce more grass that will generate deep roots to take carbon from the air and permanently store it underground.”
Raising Better Beef

11/12/23 – From Christians to the Jewish people: thank you so much. We would have nothing if it weren’t for you. The faithful among us, the true followers of Jesus Christ, a Jew, will never abandon the Jewish people.

11/12/23 – “The Book of Job solves no problems. It gives no answers. It is a one long, poetic attempt to grapple with what ails many of us — all of us.” The Book of Job answers everything. We just don’t like the answer. The most important relationship we can have is with God. He gave us everything, and he asks us for everything that actually matters. We either love and trust him completely, no matter what happens to us, or we don’t. If we can love and trust him completely, we will have no more questions of him or of anything or anyone else. It is the choosing of our own free will his will. If we can do this, everything else becomes moot.

11/12/23 – If one reads one book in the Old Testament, let it be the Book of Job. It’s so illuminating! “The Book of Job is wildly disturbing — and that is the point.” “In effect, what God is saying is this: Even if you quote the Bible, you’re wrong. It’s completely subversive, and necessary.” “And Elie Wiesel himself asked for a volume of Talmud, so he could return to his Jewish learning. Like Job, he had suffered, but he was not about to turn away from God — he expected answers.” Wow!
What Elie Wiesel Taught Me About the Book of Job

11/11/23 – Maybe Hamas needs to stop using civilian Palestinians as human shields. Let’s face it. Like other terrorist organizations in the Middle East, the terrorist organization Hamas has no value for human life, including their own people.
The brutal calculus of war: Is the killing of civilians ever justified?

11/11/23 – Ukrainians, what a great people! Heart, heart, heart. It’s beautiful how people in the global veteran community help each other. We are put on this earth to make each other and all creation whole. We are not here to horde anything. Only inferior people with low intellects and morals give in to such base desires.
A program helps Ukraine’s veterans find sexual healing after the trauma of war

11/11/23 – The Department of Veterans Affairs is totally incompetent. Why are so many of our important institutions unable to function properly at the most basic levels?
Thousands of veterans face foreclosure and it’s not their fault. The VA could help

11/11/23 – Our service men and women sacrifice everything for the freedoms we take for granted. They are our frontline in protecting our democracy. We appreciate them so much!

11/11/23 – God bless our veterans. They are our best! We need to treat them much better than we do. Instead of allowing worthless rich people, who don’t sacrifice anything for our country, to horde wealth, we should redistribute their ill-begotten gains to veterans and others who make our country great. Happy Veterans Day!
Biden says America’s veterans are ‘the steel spine of this nation’ as he pays tribute at Arlington

11/11/23 – Many rich people, who have always been nuttier than the rest, have completely lost it, and in their psychosis, they flatter themselves by thinking this makes them smart. It doesn’t. Many rich people are not and have never been smart. They are greedy a—holes who have psychological problems, and they pose a danger to the rest of us. In their insanity, they are contributing to our destruction, who aren’t crazy like they are. We must create laws to prevent this extreme wealth and their threat to humankind.

11/11/23 – How to put this delicately? Peter Thiel, like many other Germans, is a f—king moronic nutcase. Also, Tolkien was a devout Catholic. Perhaps he could read Lord of the Rings again bearing that well-known fact in mind, and if has any brain cells in his skull, it might make more sense. When Thiel dies – and he will die – let’s hope he goes straight to hell.

11/11/23 – “He also seemed bewildered by the passions he arouses on the left. ‘I don’t think they should hate me this much,’ he said.” The left should hate him even more, not because of his political positions, but because he has no respect for God, for life, for anything in the order of the universe. Instead, he wants to be god.

11/11/23 – Being perpetually cynical, detached from everything and everyone, including reality, and having unrealistic expectations doesn’t make one cool or insulate them from others’ judgment. It just makes them crazy a—holes.

11/11/23 – Perfect description. “‘“Make America great again” was the most pessimistic slogan of any candidate in 100 years, because you were saying that we are no longer a great country,’ Thiel told me. ‘And that was a shocking slogan for a major presidential candidate.’ ‘Voting for Trump was like a not very articulate scream for help,’ Thiel told me. He fantasized that Trump’s election would somehow force a national reckoning. He believed somebody needed to tear things down—slash regulations, crush the administrative state—before the country could rebuild. He admits now that it was a bad bet.” It wasn’t a bad bet for Thiel because the evil one nearly destroyed our democracy. It was a bad bet for him because the nebular dystopian vision that he wears like a safety blanket around his infantile mind and absurd ego wasn’t realized according to his fluid and unrealistic expectations.
Peter Thiel Is Taking a Break from Democracy

11/7/23 – Governor Walz of MN should run for president. Biden should step aside.

11/7/23 – Biden’s ego might very well cost us our democracy.

11/7/23 – How is the evil one, trump, winning? How is ____ evil person winning? The world has gone mad. Yes, that likely includes you. Any other questions?

11/7/23 – To those who don’t believe God exists: Imagine today you find out that, in fact, you were wrong, and he does. Then what?

11/7/23 – Yes, the Jewish people are smart and successful, and the self-proclaimed superior white people can’t handle it. They can’t handle it when other people are objectively better than they are. It’s all about jealousy. That’s what it’s always been about. It’s not about Palestine. It’s not about justice. It’s not about righteousness. White people’s antisemitism on both the right and left is about ego. The left also hates God.

11/6/23 – Europe and much of the American left has an antisemitism problem.

11/6/23 – The evil one, trump, is unfit for any political office. That’s the truth.

11/6/23 – Almost everybody has lost it. They are detached from reality.

11/5/23 – Before we close out this sad and frustrating Sunday, please pray for the innocent Israeli and Palestinian lives lost. The world does not need any more hate, war or lies. It needs more love, compassion and truth. For us a human family to get through this dark period, we need to remember each other’s humanity and be honest with our past and who we are as a people. No side is more deserving of life than another. No side is more human than another. God made us all in his image.

11/5/23 – The left is getting played – again – because it’s stupid.

11/5/23 – It is entirely possible that Iran and other Middle Eastern countries, possibly even China and Russia, are behind this entire thing, funding Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations and even helping them plan these attacks. It is harder for these despicable regimes to maintain control of their people if their plight is getting international attention. If they create an international conflict, they can manufacture solidarity within the Islamic world, which doesn’t actually exist, and feign international outrage while they oppress and exploit their own people. It also distracts the world from these abuses, who will then focus on…well yes, of course, the Jewish people as the source of all of the world’s problems, the perpetual scapegoats.

11/5/23 – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, they are all Hebrew names. Why? Because they were all Hebrews, who became Israelites, Jews, you know the Jewish people who wrote their religious texts, the Hebrew Bible, which Christians call the Old Testament. They were not Christians, and they were not Muslims. These are the facts. The linguistics are part of the proof. None of them have names in Arabic, English or whatever other language because they were all Jews. It’s called history. It’s called linguistics. It’s called facts. Science. Deal with it.

11/5/23 – The only sane people left in this country are the Christian left. Happy Sunday!

11/5/23 – A Palestinian state should be created by the awful Muslim countries that do nothing but violate their citizens’ rights and that have rulers who don’t care about anything but money and power. They definitely don’t care about God or his creation. They should all contribute land or money to create a state for the Palestinian people.

11/5/23 – Jerusalem is a Hebrew name: Yerushalayim (Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם‎). It is recorded in ancient Egyptian texts as well – 4,000 years ago, predating Islam by about 2,500 years. The Jewish people have been living on that land for millennia. It’s their land. People can say whatever they want. Show us a single piece of evidence that Islam existed as a religion before 610 AD.

11/4/23 – Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. There is absolutely no doubt that this is the case. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks or says, not the Palestinians, not any Muslim country and especially not the loony left. It is absurd that the youngest of the Abrahamic religions thinks they can claim it as their own. Are they delusional? Do they live in some fiction? Even Christians don’t do that, and Christianity precedes Islam by over half a millennium. Go read the Bible – the Hebrew Bible, the one Christians call the Old Testament (because it’s really old). Get a grip on reality. You know actual f—king history, not the crazy stories you’ve made up in your brain.

11/4/23 – One of the temptations in a period such as this is to make seemingly neutral, anodyne statements. To say that one is on the side of peace in Russia’s war against Ukraine is an insult to the Ukrainian people who are fighting against evil and genocide. To be on the side of peace is to be on the side of Ukraine.

In the Israel-Hamas war, the same rules apply. If an organization chooses to engage in terrorist acts against a people, in this case, the state of Israel, the side of peace is the side of Israel. The confusion lies in equating Hamas with the Palestinian people. Are all Muslims the terrorists who attacked us, Americans, on 9/11? Are all Muslims the terrorists who carry out terrorist attacks throughout the world: Europe, Africa and Asia? How is this fair to Muslims, the vast majority of whom simply want to live in peace and have been the primary victims of the evil Islamic regimes that govern them?

Israel and the Jewish people have a right to exist and to their own state. There will be no compromise on this point. Muslims throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East, who have been suffering for decades under brutal regimes that have no value for their humanity also have a right to exist. A Palestinian state is a political discussion that needs to be had, but let us not deceive ourselves into thinking this is the primary problem in that region. It definitely is not.

People need to get their heads on straight and stops associating terrorists with broader groups to which they don’t belong. Also, if one doesn’t agree with Netanyahu, which is entirely fair game, or the Israeli strategy to deal with Hamas, then make those arguments. Stop with simplistic associations based on cults/tribes/political identities and with meaningless statements that prevent intellectual and moral clarity.