This is an interview with two doctors who served in Gaza. They tell of Israeli soldiers taking the baby formula the doctors tried to take in. They talk of the starving babies they can’t feed because Israel refuses any baby formula into Gaza. They talk of the systemic targeting of women and children by drone copters. The male doctor describes a game the IDF plays with using teenaged boys 11 to 16 for target practice. One day they would target heads, the next day they targeted chest, then abdomens, then arms, then legs. The most horrifying was the days the hospital was brought teenagers again 11 to 16 who had been shot in the testicles. Yes Israeli soldiers felt it was a great idea to shoot boys in the balls and dicks to make sure they couldn’t create any more Palestinians. I have no use for the government of Israel nor any use for the people of the country who support this. The public knows what is happening, the military knows what they are doing. This is a genocide of the Palestinians so that Jewish people can have the land. Jewish people of all people should understand this is wrong. Never again did not mean just never again to the Jews, it means never again for any genocide. Yes the US government is complicit in this act and should be held to account, but while we did not do enough at least democrats were willing to try to stop it, tRump and the republicans endorse it. There are chapter markings on the progress bar to help you get to the most damning parts of the interviews. Israel is not letting new doctors go in to help. They are killing the doctors and aid workers. Hugs
Is there a way to block someone who’s creeping me out, liking my comments on other blogs? Any assistance will be appreciated. That is all that’s happening right now, but it’s creepy, due to the handle the account is using. Thanks!
Kennedy Center Honors could see some changes under Trump
The Kennedy Center has slightly delayed naming its list of annual lifetime achievement honorees until closer to the event in December, and the award itself, known for its rainbow-hued ribbon, may be redesigned in favor of a simpler version, sources familiar with the decisions told CBS News.
The announcement of the Kennedy Center Honors recipients, usually made annually in August, will happen in the next several weeks, one of the sources said.
Although some of the arts center’s staff and those who closely follow the event have worried the televised gala would be completely revamped and renamed in favor of a patriotic-sounding moniker, the Kennedy Center Honors name will remain untouched, sources said.
The rainbow theme won’t disappear entirely, but the ribbon for the lifetime achievement medallion will likely to be redesigned — possibly with a black or gold ribbon.
President Biden with 2022 Kennedy Center Honorees Amy Grant, Bono and The Edge of U2, and Gladys Knight during a reception at the White House on Dec. 4, 2022.Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
The Honors weekend will be revamped, with a more streamlined schedule instead of multiple gatherings at the State Department, the White House and elsewhere, sources said. The events were expensive and time-consuming, and honorees sometimes skipped portions of the non-televised events.
After criticizing the Kennedy Center‘s artistic fare and its finances, President Trump earlier this year named himself as its chairman, longtime aide and supporter Richard Grenell as its president and several White House officials and Trump allies as board members. That triggered a number of artists to cancel performances and some staff members resigned.
The Kennedy Center Honors ceremony is directed and produced by CBS and airs on the network.
The size of the Kennedy Center’s development team has been severely downsized, several sources close to the matter said. That team has shrunk from more than 60 to less than 20, and some departments have been slashed altogether.
Giving by Democratic donors has collapsed, although aggressive fundraising has continued and has outpaced past years with more corporate sponsors, several sources said.
Grenell told CBS News: “I don’t want to lose a single Democratic donor. We’re working hard to keep them and expand the donor base. The arts should not be political.”
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump at The Kennedy Center for the opening night performance of “Les Misérables” on June 11, 2025.Craig Hudson/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
During his first term, after several award recipients criticized him, Mr. Trump skipped the Honors shows, breaking a tradition of presidential attendance at the cultural venue.
President Biden attended during all four years of his term, including last year’s ceremony that recognized singer Bonnie Raitt, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, surviving members of the band the Grateful Dead, trumpet player Arturo Sandoval, and Harlem’s Apollo Theater.
Two of the sources said Grenell has been an effective organizer but is only occasionally at the Kennedy Center. One was critical of Grenell’s salary. Grenell started off taking zero salary and is now paid $175,000, sources said, which is less than the previous president, Deborah Rutter, whose salary topped $1 million, public tax records show.
Roma Daravi, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy Center, declined to comment on Grenell’s salary or changes to the award design.
She said they’re not making changes to ceremony itself. “If anything,” she said, “it’s going to be more exciting.”
August 6, 1890 At Auburn Prison in New York state, William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in the electric chair, developed by the Medico-Legal Society and Harold Brown, a colleague of Thomas Edison. William Kemmler received two applications of 1,300 volts of alternating current. The first lasted for only 17 seconds because a leather belt was about to fall off one of the second-hand Westinghouse generators. Kemmler was still alive. The second jolt lasted until the smell of burning flesh filled the room, about four minutes. As soon as his charred body stopped smoldering, Kemmler was pronounced dead. ——————————————————————————- August 6th, 1945 – 8:15 AM ANNIVERSARY OF HIROSHIMA The United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan. Hiroshima ruins An estimated 140,000 died from the immediate effects of this bomb and tens of thousands more died in subsequent years from burns and other injuries, and radiation-related illnesses. President Harry Truman ordered the use of the weapon in hopes of avoiding an invasion of Japan to end the war, and the presumed casualties likely to be suffered by invading American troops. The weapon, “Little Boy,” was delivered by a B-29 Superfortress nicknamed the Enola Gay, based on the island of Tinian, and piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets. Voices of the Hibakusha, those injured in the bombings <Hiroshima survivor Found watch stopped at the time of explosion> Documents related to the decision to drop the atomic bomb On August 6, 1995, up to 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing. —————————————————————————— August 6, 1957 Eleven activists from the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) were arrested attempting to enter the atomic testing grounds at Camp Mercury, Nevada, the first of what eventually became many thousands of arrests at the Nevada test site. —————————————————————————– August 6, 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Johnson, making illegal century-old practices aimed at preventing African Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote. It created federal oversight of election laws in six Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia) and in many counties of North Carolina where black voter turnout was very low. Black voter registration rates were as low as 7% in Mississippi prior to passage of the law; today voter registration rates are comparable for both blacks and whites in these states. The laws has been re-authorized by Congress four times. Introduction to the Voting Rights Act —————————————————————————— August 6, 1990 George Galloway The U.S. imposed trade sanctions on Iraq. As a result, the lack of much-needed medicines, water purification equipment and other items led to the death of many innocent Iraqis. According to British Member of Parliament George Galloway in his testimony to a committee of the U.S. Congress on May 17, 2005, these sanctions“ . . . killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to be born at that time . . . .” When asked on U.S. television if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children (due to sanctions on Iraq) was a price worth paying, then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” -60 Minutes (5/12/96) Were Sanctions Worth the Price? by Christopher Hayes ————————————————————————– August 6, 1998 Nearly 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing which killed nearly 200,000 Japanese with a single weapon. The headlines when it happened ————————————————————————— August 6, 1998 Calling themselves the Minuteman III Plowshares, two peace activists, Daniel Sicken [pronounced seekin], 56, of Brattleboro, Vermont and Sachio Ko-Yin, 25, of Ridgewood, N.J entered silo N7 in Weld County [near Greeley] in Colorado operated by Warren AFB, Cheyenne, Wyoming. With hammers and their own blood, they symbolically disarmed structures on the launching pad of a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo.
August 2, 1931 Albert Einstein urged all scientists to refuse military work. “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” – Albert Einstein (April-May 1949) Book review of Einstein on Politics Other Einstein thoughts on the military
Snippet: here are your heroes of the day: the Swedish state-owned energy company Vattenfall, who hired Samuel L. Jackson to star in a commercial entitled “Motherfucking Wind Farms.”
(original hanging in the Hay-Adam’s Off the Record bar)
My colleague KAL has also a post about the coasters he, Matt Wuerker, and I created for the bar.
(Note from A: Click through on KAL’s-you’ll love it!)
Irritating Screechy Blowhole by Clay Jones
Look, Europe! Our president (sic) is a raving lunatic Read on Substack
It’s one thing for Donald Trump to display his deteriorating mental state here at home, like ranting about lightbulbs or batteries so heavy that they sink boats to waiting sharks, but it’s another thing for TACO to go overseas and reassure our friends and allies that the United States of America has an insane racist at the helm (he howled about immigration into Europe).
While sitting next to European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, Trump went on a rant about windmills…again.
Trump said in a long-winded rant, “And the other thing I say to Europe, we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States, they’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery, our valleys, our beautiful plains. And I’m not talking about airplanes, I’m talking about beautiful plains, beautiful areas of the United States, and you look up and you see windmills all over the place, it’s a horrible thing. It’s the most expensive form of energy; it’s no good. They’re made in China, almost all of them. When they start to rust and rot in eight years, you can’t really turn them off, you can’t bury them, they won’t let you. But the propellers, the props, because they’re a certain type of fiber that doesn’t go well with the land, that’s what they say. The environmentalists say you can’t bury them because the fiber doesn’t go well with the land; in other words, if you bury it, it will harm our soil. The whole thing is a con job.”
Keep in mind, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is fighting its own power to fight Climate Change. Talk about a con job. (snip-yadayada [Trump] I mean MORE)