Peter M. O’Donnell

USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving. Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free. I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these." "They just come with the table, man." They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner. This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat. I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared. "Did we…?" "Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless." Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined. My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude." Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man. I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy. Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived. I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most. Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

Both Hamas and Hezbollah were only created because Israel wouldn’t stop attacking Palestine and Lebanon, and neither had a military that could compete with the IDF. So the citizens formed militias. You can’t tell me Americans would react any different if we were in their shoes.

Honestly, i don't understand this economy when nursing homes are so expensive they bankrupt our grandparents but nursing home aides need to use food banks. daycare is so expensive it eats up one parent's entire paycheck and yet daycare providers only make $10/hr and need second jobs. college costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and puts students into debt for life and yet we have thousands of professors living in their cars. everything we need is astronomically expensive and yet almost none of the money we pay is going towards the people actually doing the work and providing the services.

Q: You just mentioned you planned to hit Iran and strike them hard tonight. If the response is hitting bridges and infrastructure, how would that not be a war crime targeting civilian infrastructure? Hegseth: That is precisely the kind of disingenuous question I am used to from the media.

US Army Delta Force seen through a hotel balcony conducting CQB during a training operation in Long Beach, CA last week.

Israeli minister calls for kidnapping of Lebanese women and children to break Hezbollah morale —— Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir urged the political-security cabinet to abduct and imprison Lebanese women and children as a psychological warfare tactic against Hezbollah, according to a closed-door leak published by Hebrew news outlet Walla. During a high-level ministerial meeting reviewing expanded military calculations, Ben-Gvir demanded that Tel Aviv abandon conventional strategy and explicitly target the social and familial core of the Lebanese resistance network. "We must think outside the box regarding Hezbollah," Ben-Gvir asserted to his fellow cabinet members, according to the report. The Israeli minister added that alongside occupying southern territory and intensifying lethal strikes on personnel, Israeli forces should actively round up civilians. "We should arrest their women and children and take them to prison; this is what hurts them the most," he stated.