if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

and if you support fascist movements, you're a fascist.

and, i still think that the only good fascist is a dead one.

if you're going to choose to align with the most right-wing, most conservative, most religious political movements that the world has seen in decades, that is your choice, but stop calling yourself a liberal and stop calling yourself a socialist.

you are a fascist.

if you have any intelligence, you should be able to pass the mirror test, to look at yourself and see yourself for what you are.

generate some self-awareness for the movements you are standing with and supporting and be honest with yourself: you are a fascist, and you support fascism.

if george w. bush had gone after the wahabi cultists and salafists, who were mostly in saudi arabia at the time, i would have supported that. i would have supported regime change in saudi arabia as a result of the sept 11 attacks.

however, he didn't do that; he launched a war against a state that did not listen to american demands and hadn't for decades in order to dismantle a difficult state that the militants that attacked the united states had long wanted removed. instead of going after the terrorists, he did exactly what the terrorists wanted him to do. that war eventually extended to a regime change process in syria, which had the same baathist political movement in power.

i did not oppose the iraq war because it was an attack on muslims and i actually don't know anybody that held to that position, at the time. there may have been some backtracking near the end, but the baathists were officially secularists and iraq, despite it's problems, was using the state to redistribute resources in ways that the other states in the area (except syria) were not. iraq had the least muslim government in the middle east, which is exactly why they were targeted.

the arguments at the time were not in solidarity with islamic fundamentalism, which doesn't even make sense, but arguments that toppling the government would create issues with islamic fundamentalism, and that you can't enforce democracy with tanks, you have to let the people do it themselves.

what's happened in the last 20 years is that the liberal media has abandoned it's previous position on iraq, which was correct and principled, and replaced it with horrific talking points written by state media from islamic theocracies, that are in support of the movement for islamic fascism in the area. they've completely flip-flopped from opposing the removal of saddam hussein because it would lead to islamic fascism, which was universally seen as worse, to supporting the islamic fascists themselves on grounds of "religious freedom" and criticizing attempts to bomb or contain them by force. in the process, the liberal media has thoroughly aligned itself with contemporary fascism, and today acts as a mouth piece for fascist governments and as a vector for fascist propaganda, and has even helped generate fascist movements on the ground in the west.

frankly, i'm not even convinced that bush even understood what he did, but his daddy's goons, which he let back into power, took the opportunity to advance the aims of the muslim extremists that bombed him in removing the godless, unislamic, socialist government in iraq, which led to the country being taken over by religious lunatics, which is exactly what the saudis wanted.

obama then had to come in and try to contain the pandora's box that removing the baath party opened up and that is still wreaking havoc across the world. the point was to oppose that pandora's box from opening, and to oppose the forces it would unleash; but, today, the liberal media is aligning itself with the consequences of that pandora's box, and standing in solidarity with, and not in opposition to, the forces it unleashed.

my support for bombing isis is because i opposed toppling saddam hussein, and opposed toppling assad, who, together, were preventing gulf-backed islamic fascists from militarizing the region. i had a clear understanding of that at the time, and i have a clear understanding of the issue now.

i have always supported using the american military to fight the terrorists and i entirely understand that this is a conflict that will last for centuries, as other similar conflicts in history always did. this isn't a three year war, it's a generational conflict. yes. that's a correct observation, and that's the point; they're not going to give up in three years, they're going to keep trying to take over our secular society and enforce their dark age value systems, until we're able to wipe them out and force them to stop. i don't know what to tell people complaining that the war to save them from being enslaved by islam is taking too long, other than that fighting for one's freedom is not like buying fast food, and that things that matter sometimes take a long time. the criticism that we should give up and stop fighting for freedom because it is taking too long to win is amongst the most shallow and stupid arguments that i've ever heard, but you get what you deserve, in the end. if you don't want to fight for your way of life, don't be surprised if it's taken away from you.

i would continue to support overthrowing the governments in saudi arabia and iran, and i now would support overthrowing the al qaeda backed fascist dictatorship that took over syria and i would support driving the taliban out of afghanistan. my solidarity is with the forces of secularism, socialism and modernism. my solidarity is with the apostates fighting for freedom and democracy. i have always and will continue to condemn the religious groups trying to enforce their laws on people that don't want to follow them.

our man in the white house, he won't even usurp the power of the purse on us. he expects us to do it. what's up with that? - said no republican, ever.

even as little as ten years ago, could you imagine we'd be standing here in 2025 and watching far right republicans complaining that the president isn't interfering enough in their exclusive constitutional jurisdiction?

this is actually a deflection by the outgoing representative:

She said she wants Trump to focus on spiking health-care costs and affordability concerns — not what's going on overseas.

"No one cares about the foreign countries. No one cares about the never-ending amount of foreign leaders coming to the White House every single week," she said in a recent interview with NBC News.

the president of the united states has no mandate whatsoever to deal with health care or the economy. these concerns are the exclusive concern of the congress, and particularly the house of representatives.

it's her decision whether she wants to do her job or quit and go home, but it is her responsibility to write these bills, and not his. the president's job is to oversee the military and interact with foreign dignitaries, not to concern himself with domestic policy.

the maga supporters should be asking why ms greene is abandoning her post rather than writing the legislation she campaigned on. it's her job. it's not his job.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-bombing-strikes-peace-president-9.7028340

tomatoes are actually fairly low in nutrients compared to other fruits for sale in the store. they aren't bad for you, so there isn't any good reason to restrict tomato consumption, and i eat a fair amount of them myself, but i eat them with more nutritious fruits like red peppers, limes and avocados, and/or with high nutrient roots like beets or carrots and high-nutrient greens like kale and broccoli. tomatoes are better thought of as a low nutrient spice, like pepper or salt, whose primary purpose is to add flavour, than as a nutritious part of the meal. however, they aren't quite as useless as lettuce or cucumbers; they're in a middle category, with apples and peaches and pears, of fruits that you can do better than and should if you can, but shouldn't necessarily be actively avoided, if you like them. have a pear or an apple or a tomato if you like, but realize it has almost no nutritional value. if you don't want to do the research, just make sure you always have a red pepper and/or an avocado in any meal you eat with a tomato in it.

i would also suggest buying hydroponic tomatoes to maximize nutrients and to avoid organic tomatoes, as the pesticides that organic farmers use are more dangerous than the ones conventional farming uses. 

adding more carotenoids won't do much good. these are very poor sources of vitamin a (your body will convert them to retinol, but only if it has to, and at a much lower efficiency rate than previously thought. humans are in truth actually not very good at converting carotenoids, like beta-carotene and lycopene, into vitamin a. it is advised to seek true retinol, which is only found by eating meat, or consuming milk products, like cheese. i eat a lot of eggs, partially for that reason.) and there is no good science upholding any sort of benefit of lycopene, despite many attempts to find one in order to market tomatoes as healthy fruits. at best, lycopene is a very low potency form of vitamin a. lutein has a more established role to play in eye health, but you're still better off eating an avocado or a bell pepper, or a carrot.

tomatoes don't have much vitamin c and adding more would likely make them more citrusy. that would be a better addition, in my opinion. i'd like that, myself, but americans like sugar in ways that i don't. i prefer tarty citrus foods over sugary cakes and candy, but i'm a little weird. i would drink fresca or sprite when i was a kid by preference and choice, and not coke or pepsi, and i still prefer caffeinated mt dew to any cola, and dr pepper to coke. i used to get key lime or lemon or rhubarb pies for my birthday when i was a little kid, instead of chocolate cake, which i found made me bloated and sick. i preferred a good fruit filling - apple or cherry or rhubarb or lemon or lime - over chocolate filling or icing or sugar. i have always liked sour and have never really liked sweet. i'd get big turks instead of sugary chocolate bars. i'd prefer sour patch kids to smarties.

there are lots of sources of vitamin c in western diets and we don't really need more, but it would still be a better option than trying to cram more low potency vitamin a into the fruit, with little to no actual benefit to it.

i'm not opposed to genetically modifying food if there's a potential benefit to it, but i don't see any value in this, and will stick to the red ones. 

the tomato industry has been struggling for decades to market it's product as healthy because it's a fruit and it has this perception that people want tomatoes to be healthy because they're fruits. it should abandon this. tomatoes will sell as flavouring without the need to try to market them as healthy. it's enough for them to not be unhealthy - for them to be neutral - for them to be good flavouring agents.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/winnipeg/article/why-you-might-see-purple-tomatoes-at-the-grocery-store-next-year/

from what i can see, these people are accusing each other of doing the same thing to each other, but it was the fake left (who are authoritarian conservatives masquerading as a left) that started the fight. now, when faced with a counter-attack, they respond as though they're being attacked without cause. but, they started the fight!

the root cause of the problem here that needs to be addressed is the false moral superiority of the fake left that led it to decide it had some objective basis to censor speech it didn't like that is somehow different than when the authoritarian right does the same thing to it.

i'm left with little to no sympathy for the groups being targeted, as they brought this on themselves, and would rather point to the centuries old lesson of free speech that real leftists learned eons ego: if you censor your opponents when you are in power, they will retaliate when they gain power. so, don't do that.

free speech is absolute or it doesn't exist. you can't moderate free speech. and, as chomsky said, free speech means free speech for your opponents, it doesn't mean free speech for you.

....and certainly don't bitch and complain when they do to you what you did to them, if you insist on censoring them, despite the lessons of history that are right in front of you and which you refuse to learn. get off your fucking cross.

these groups are not leftists and are not allies of the left, they are conservative groups in disguise that are seeking to control what you think, feel, write, sing, draw and believe. they can go fuck themselves, and i hope trump's cronies take them down a notch.

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/europeans-push-back-trumps-authoritarian-sanctions-anti-disinformation-rcna250791

i support striking islamic militants everywhere and anywhere they are, for any reason, at any time. they are a scourge, a parasite, a disease, that needs to be eradicated.

the details of trump's claims about nigeria may be a little sketchy, but they are also more solid than the liberal media is claiming. if the basic claim is that isis is killing christians in nigeria, that basic claim is correct.

but it doesn't matter that they're christians. isis might instead be killing secularists, modernists, animists, buddhists, socialists, women, pagans, gays, gypsies, jews, slavs (all groups that isis would target), whatever; isis should be wiped out, regardless of what particular group they are targeting in whatever region. it is not the fact that the islamic fascists are killing christians that makes them a vile parasite that needs to be eradicated, it is the core of their religious beliefs, which have no redeemable qualities, and cannot be tolerated in a civilized global community.