When you can’t solve life’s big problems, solve the small ones. Here are 10 everyday experiences that are no fun, and how to make them a bit more enjoyable.
10. Make the Most of Your Long Commute
Top 10 Unpleasant, Daily Experiences You Can Make More Enjoyable
Driving to work can seem like hours stolen from your life, every single day. But it doesn’t have to be all bad. Make it a bit more productive and fun with some audiobooks or brain-boosting podcasts. Sit up straight and do some “desk exercises” to keep yourself from getting cramped. Practice a little mindfulness. And, most importantly, test different routes to keep things interesting (and find the fastest way there).
How Can I Make My Commute Suck Less?
Dear Lifehacker, I have a long commute. Traffic makes it much longer. It’s incredibly boring… Read more
9. Turn Boring Small Talk Into a Real Conversation
Top 10 Unpleasant, Daily Experiences You Can Make More Enjoyable
Nobody likes small talk—it’s boring, awkward, and plays out the same way every time. “Nice weather we’re having…what do you do for a living? Oh, verrrry interesting…” But it’s not hard to take that small talk and turn it into a real conversation. For example, when someone asks you how you’re doing, respond with a small detail instead of just “good”. Arm yourself with relevant topics to the event or situation at hand. And, when in doubt, fall back on the FORD technique: Ask them questions about their family, occupation, recreation, and dreams. Chances are, you’ll find something you have in common.
How Can I Turn Small Talk Into a Conversation?
Dear Lifehacker, I hate small talk. I never know how in-depth I should go into a conversation and… Read more
via Top 10 Unpleasant, Daily Experiences You Can Make More Enjoyable.
Category Archives: American
Act of Kindness- Police Officer
Senate Democrats Purge the Record | National Review Online
“Its report on enhanced-interrogation techniques amounts to intelligence birtherism.”
By Tom Rogan via Senate Democrats Purge the Record | National Review Online.
“Senator Dianne Feinstein and the Democrats of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have released their summary report into the Bush-era CIA detention/interrogation program. While senior Democrats have little credibility on this issue — consider Nancy Pelosi, who has consistently misrepresented her CIA briefings — today they proudly claimed the mantle of honest objectivity.
The summary makes four key claims:
The CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” were not effective.
The CIA provided extensive inaccurate information about the operation of the program and its effectiveness to policymakers and the public.
The CIA’s management of the program was inadequate and deeply flawed.
The CIA program was far more brutal than it represented to policymakers and the American public.
The product of selective half-truths and deliberate deception, these claims are ludicrous, because the CIA’s enhanced-interrogation techniques (EITs) were manifestly successful.
Breaking key figures in al-Qaeda’s international network, the EITs afforded America a unique window into al-Qaeda’s network structure, operational methodology, and strategic intent, as any honest examination of the record will show.
While the report claims that the CIA acted far more aggressively than represented by its officials, the simple fact is that the EITs were not designed to be pleasant. Moreover, as former CIA deputy director Jose Rodriguez outlined last Friday, Democrats knew about and supported the EITs.
They were right to do so, for the program was designed to defeat al-Qaeda training manuals. Those manuals inculcated AQ officers with the belief that U.S. interrogators would attempt to trick and manipulate them but would not apply measured physical or psychological force. And by applying the EITs, CIA interrogators were able to wrest control over their subjects and gain crucial intelligence.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report also argues that CIA management failed to supervise the program and brief government officials. But this requires the suspension of reality. First, just last week, former president George W. Bush again insisted that he was kept fully informed by the CIA.
The committee’s claim is also weakened by its assumption that the CIA’s inherently bureaucratic nature was impossibly suspended. After all, were the report to reflect reality, it would mean that successive CIA leaders, mid-level management officials, and operations officers engaged in a collective multi-year conspiracy of lies, for absolutely no reason. Aware that Beltway politics are radioactive, CIA officials are obsessed with limiting their institution’s vulnerability to political blowback. And so, when it came to the EITs, officials would have known that the program’s inherently controversial nature induced major political liabilities. But that they nevertheless decided to continue the program even with those risks speaks to a basic, undeniable truth.
A large number of officials were convinced that the program was necessary and was generating irreplaceable results. And it was. Responding to the committee report, the CIA notes that EITs led to critical intelligence. Cross-referenced with other sources, the following CIA assertions, I am confident, are true. Read more via Senate Democrats Purge the Record | National Review Online.
College prof makes students recite anti-American ‘pledge of allegiance’ | Fox News
College prof makes students recite anti-American ‘pledge of allegiance’ | Fox News.
If you sign up for Denver college professor Charles Angeletti’s American Civilization class, be forewarned that you’re going to have to recite his invective-filled ‘New Pledge’ — and according to some of his students, also be ready to swallow a big helping of his politics.
Angeletti, who teaches at Metropolitan State University of Denver, has students learn an anti-American spoof of the Pledge of Allegiance that denounces the U.S. as a Republican-controlled bastion of injustice, all while spewing his own far-left brand of politics, according to current and former students.
“I pledge allegiance to and wrap myself in the flag of the United States Against Anything Un-American,” reads Angeletti’s version. “And to the Republicans for which it stands, two nations, under Jesus, rich against poor, with curtailed liberty and justice for all except blacks, homosexuals, women who want abortions, Communists, welfare queens, treehuggers, feminazis, illegal immigrants, children of illegal immigrants, and you, if you don’t watch your step.”
“We’re very racist, we’re very repressive, we’re very Christian oriented, we don’t tolerate other kinds of thinking in this country.”- Charles Angeletti, professor at Metropolitan State University
The anti-U.S. recitation, first reported by higher education blog Campus Reform, was a satirical pledge aimed at getting students to question their nation’s leadership, Angeletti said. The self-proclaimed atheist and socialist told the site that he has been distributing the pledge in his classes for nearly 20 years as part of his lesson plan.read more- College prof makes students recite anti-American ‘pledge of allegiance’ | Fox News.
Pearl Harbor survivors reunite in Hawaii to mark 73rd anniversary of attack | Fox News
via Pearl Harbor survivors reunite in Hawaii to mark 73rd anniversary of attack | Fox News.
More than a dozen Pearl Harbor survivors, each more than 90 years old, gathered in Hawaii this week to share stories as they marked the 73rd anniversary of the Japanese attack that killed 2,400 sailors, Marines and soldiers.
The gathering has been called the last meeting for the USS Arizona Reunion Association – comprised of the remaining nine survivors of the USS Arizona, a battleship that sank in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack.
But Louis Conter isn’t ready to talk about the end.
“I don’t think this is going to be our last. … We’ve still got time to go,” said Conter, 93, of Grass Valley, Calif. “We’ll be back out here no matter whether the rest of the crowd can make it or not.”
“I feel very proud of them and I think they’re like a national treasure and when they say that they were the Greatest Generation, I have to fully endorse that,” Col. Robert Brooks, whose father, Eddie Brooks, was a Pearl Harbor survivor, told KHON2.
“I don’t think this is going to be our last. … We’ve still got time to go.”
– Pearl Harbor survivor Louis Conter, 93
Donald Stratton, 92, of Colorado Springs, Colo., was one of the few survivors of a gun director in the forward part of the ship. More than 65 percent of his body was burned. Stratton was hospitalized for more than year and then was medically discharged from the Navy.
He re-enlisted a year later. “The good Lord saved just a few of us,” he said.
During a private event Sunday, the men will toast their shipmates, drinking from replicas of champagne glasses from the Arizona. They will share a bottle of sparkling wine that was a gift to the survivors association from President Gerald Ford’s visit to Spain in 1975.
The men arrived at the Pearl Harbor visitor center on Tuesday to military salutes, music from the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet Band and photos from tourists. At the news conference, they reminisced about memories of the attack.
“I learned something about faith,” said John Anderson, 97, of Roswell, N.M., recalling that he had just gone to church services and was heading to breakfast when someone said they saw the planes coming. He became teary-eyed as he discussed his twin brother dying in the attack.
“It’s always like yesterday when we’re out here,” Conter added.
The survivors on Tuesday also watched a live-feed of a dive along the Arizona’s sunken hull, which still holds the bodies of more than 900 of about 1,177 men who died on the battleship.
Ashes of 38 survivors are interred there.
National Park Service Historian Daniel Martinez, moderating Tuesday’s discussion, seemed overcome with emotion when he announced that Arizona survivor Lauren Bruner, 94, of La Mirada, Calif., last year signed paperwork for his intentions to be interred there. Conter plans to do the same, he said.
“It seems like after a while nobody pays attention to them anymore, after about five years,” Bruner said of his decision not to be buried in a cemetery. “I hope a lot of people will still be … coming over to the Arizona and we’ll be glad to see them.”
via Pearl Harbor survivors reunite in Hawaii to mark 73rd anniversary of attack | Fox News.
Congress demands Obama explain rumored sanctions against Israel
While he hands Iran approval for its nuclear program on a silver platter, Obama is apparently considering sanctions against Israel. He turns allies into enemies and enemies into allies — the latter in his eyes only, not theirs.
“Congress Demands Obama Explain Rumored Sanctions Against Israel,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, December 5, 2014 3:06 pm
Members of Congress are demanding that President Obama come clean about controversial reports that he is considering leveling sanctions on Israel, according to a letter sent Friday afternoon by lawmakers to the White House.
The Obama administration has found itself engulfed in controversy since reports emerged Thursday that the White House and State Department had met in secret to strategize about imposing sanctions on Israel for its continued building of houses in contested Jerusalem neighborhoods.
State Department and White House officials have continued to dodge questions from reporters on the matter, maintaining that they will neither confirm nor deny the reports.
The administration’s evasive position has prompted outrage among pro-Israel leaders and prompted Congress to demand that Obama start answering questions about the delicate issue.
“We urge you and your administration to clarify these reports immediately,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R., N.C.) and nearly 50 other House lawmakers wrote Friday afternoon, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
“Israel is one of our strongest allies, and the mere notion that the administration would unilaterally impose sanctions against Israel is not only unwise, but is extremely worrisome,” they state. “Such reports send a clear message to our friends and enemies alike that such alliances with the United States government can no longer be unquestionably trusted.”
Congress, which traditionally has purview over such measures, has never given the White House permission to sanction Israel.
“At no point in time has Congress given the administration the authority to sanction Israel,” they wrote. “In fact, Congress has continued to show its unwavering support for Israel and has recently taken steps to increase our economic and military cooperation.”
As the White House leaves the door open to sanctions on Israel, it is lobbying Congress against leveling more sanctions on Iran.
“At a time when you have requested an additional seven months to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear weapons program, any attempts to undermine the U.S.’s support of Israel will only further diminish the administration’s ability to get congressional support for any potential agreement with Iran,” the lawmakers wrote.
When faced with questions about these reports—which state that classified meetings were held between the White House and State Department about possibly sanctioning Israel over the settlement issue—Obama administration officials have refused to provide a clear answer.
“I’m not going to talk about any sort of internal deliberations inside the administration and certainly not inside the White House,” Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters on Friday, a refrain also echoed by State Department spokesmen….
via Congress demands Obama explain rumored sanctions against Israel.
Be Holy! 