RockyColo

My American neighbor asked me if I had a chair. I have six chairs. They are in my apartment. That is where chairs live. This was the wrong answer. "No, man. A chair. For the game." His son plays Little League on Saturdays with the other American kids at a field in Tokyo. I had agreed to come watch. Nobody had told me about the chair. He looked at me the way you look at a man who has come to the beach in a suit. Here is what I have learned since. Every American owns a folding chair. It is forest green, or it is a blue that does not occur anywhere in nature. It has a cup holder in the arm. It lives in the trunk of the car. Nobody remembers buying it. I asked Bryan where his came from. "Came with the car." It did not come with the car. In old Japan, a folding stool on the battlefield meant one thing. You were the general. The general sat. Everyone else stood. In America, everyone has the stool. It is a nation of 330 million generals, and every one of them commands a cup holder. At the field, forty parents had set up forty chairs along the fence in a perfect line, like a council of war gathered to discuss a seven-year-old's batting stance. I stood behind them. Like a foot soldier. For about four seconds. Then a dad I had never met reached into a bag and pulled out a second chair. I want to be very clear. He was one man. He had brought two chairs. "Spare," he said. Bryan explained it to me later. Every American dad carries a second chair. It is for "the guy who doesn't have a chair." Nobody has ever seen this guy. Every dad in America carries a chair for him anyway. That day, I was the guy. The spare chair had a cup holder. In the cup holder, there was already a cold Gatorade. Nobody had asked me if I was thirsty. The chair had been prepared for me before anyone knew I existed. I sat down. I have never been so well received by furniture. There is a ranking. I did not know this. I know it now. Chairs with a little umbrella attached belong to grandmothers. You do not sit in an umbrella chair. You will be removed. Chairs with a footrest belong to men who have stopped coaching and started judging. The chair that rocks belongs to someone's uncle. He has been coming to this field since 1994. Nobody knows which kid is his. After the game, I did the polite Japanese thing. I tried to return the chair exactly the way it had been given to me. Folded. In its bag. It would not go in the bag. I tried for forty minutes in the parking lot. I watched two videos. I sent photos to my brother-in-law, who designs bridges. He looked at the photos. Then he stopped answering. I carried the chair back to the dad in both arms, unbagged, with my head down, and apologized for my failure. He looked at me like I had said something very sweet and very stupid. "Buddy. Nobody gets it back in the bag." "Nobody?" "Nobody. That bag's a lie. Everybody knows." I have thought about this many times since. Three hundred thirty million people. Every one of them owns a bag they know will never be used again. Not one of them has complained to the company. That is not a design flaw. That is a national agreement. (I am aware that I am now writing about a chair bag. I cannot stop.) This summer, I bought my own chair and took it to the fireworks festival by the river in Tokyo. In Japan, you watch the fireworks sitting on blue plastic tarps on the ground. Thousands of people. Shoes off. Knees folded. I unfolded my chair. Blue. The unnatural blue. The old man on the tarp next to me stared at it for the entire first half of the show. Not at the sky. At the cup holder. At intermission, I reached into my bag and took out the second chair. He sat down without a word. He placed his beer in the cup holder. He looked at it for a long time. Then he nodded once. Slowly. The way a general nods. Last week, I saw him at the train station. He was carrying two chairs. Neither of them was in its bag.

There's a saying on American social media: "Be the American that Japanese people think you are." I'm Japanese. I've lived in Tokyo my whole life. So let me tell you what we actually say about you, when you're not in the room. "When someone falls down on the street, we pretend not to see. We're protecting their pride. Americans run straight at them. They don't care about the pride. They care about the knee." (Office worker, 38) "An American will stop four lanes of traffic for a family of ducks. And then everyone in the cars claps for the ducks." (Taxi driver, 61) "If you lend an American a pen, you will never see it again. If you need a kidney, they'll ask your blood type." (Nurse, 45) "At kids' soccer games, they cheer when the other team's kid scores. The other team's parents look confused. Then they cheer too." (Youth soccer coach, 52, lived one year in Ohio) "A man sneezed on a bus in Chicago. Eleven strangers said 'Bless you.' He said 'thank you' eleven times. Nobody on that bus thought this was strange." (University student, 21) "At an airport in Texas, I watched a soldier try to pay for his lunch. The cashier said someone already had. He asked who. She said, 'Somebody who didn't want you to know.'" (Retired teacher, 70) "American fathers cannot braid hair. But they will watch a video at midnight for an hour so their daughter's hair looks right on picture day." (Hair stylist, 33) "I ran the Chicago Marathon once. Strangers stood in the cold for hours holding signs for people they will never meet. At mile 20, a man I'd never seen read the name off my bib and screamed it like he'd raised me." (Runner, 48) "When Americans get lost, they ask a stranger. If the stranger is also lost, they become a team." (Tour guide, 39) "They ask the waitress her name. And then they remember it." (Restaurant owner, 66) And one more. From my father. He's 76. He doesn't say much about anything. This is the longest thing I have ever heard him say about another country. "Every time something terrible happens in America, I watch the news, and I look for one thing. The people running toward it. There are always so many." So, America. You don't have to become the Americans we think you are. We're not imagining you. We're remembering you.

Christian here. American here. WE do NOT call the United States “the House of God.” The USA is decidedly NOT, nor has it ever been, called “the House of God.” Reject the Donald Trump lie and heresy of Christian Nationalism. Reject idolatry. Reject blasphemy!

She is Bobbi Gibb. When she applied to run the Boston Marathon in 1966, she was denied entry with the comment, "Women are not physiologically capable of running and enduring a marathon, and we cannot be held responsible for that."  So, nearly 60 years ago, on the day of the marathon, Bobbi Gibb hid in the bushes, waiting for the race to start. When half the runners had passed, she broke into a run. She was wearing her brother's athletic shorts, a pair of men's sneakers, a bathing suit, and a sweater. After a while, Gibb began to sweat, but she didn't take off her sweatshirt. "I knew if they saw me, they would try to stop me," she said. She even thought they might arrest her. But it didn't take long for the other runners to quickly figure out that she was a woman. Gibb thought they would push her off the road or call the police, but instead they were supportive and told her they would do everything they could to ensure she could run undisturbed. Feeling safe, Gibb took off her sweater. As soon as it became clear that there was a woman running the marathon, the crowd reacted, not with anger but with pure joy. Men applauded. Women cried. By the end of the race, the news had spread everywhere and the female students at the university where the race had been held were waiting to greet her, screaming with emotion. The governor of Massachusetts was also there to meet her at the finish line and shake her hand. The first woman to run a marathon had finished with a medal around her neck! Bobbi Gibb remains a legend in women's competitive sports to this day

"So, in Alaska, if Mary Peltola wins, her victory is inherently suspect and must be investigated. And in Minnesota, if Peggy Flanagan bests Michele Tafoya, her victory is inherently suspect because Trump has declared that Tafoya can’t lose, period, unless Democrats cheat. This is the long, stupid shadow of the 2020 election." publicnotice.co/p/trump-elec…

She didn't monetize her sacrifice—she answered the call. The Senate hearing room went cold when the insult landed. Tammy Duckworth sat across from J.D. Vance, waiting for him to answer her question. She'd come prepared with policy, with specifics, with the kind of detailed inquiry that veterans' issues demand. But instead of engaging, Vance chose a different route. He compared her to Forrest Gump. Let that sink in for a moment. A sitting senator, facing a decorated combat veteran who'd left parts of herself on an Iraqi battlefield, thought a fictional character was the appropriate reference. Duckworth's response was surgical. She didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to. When you've piloted a Black Hawk helicopter through hostile fire, when you've felt the explosion that tears through metal and bone, when you've woken up in a hospital missing both legs and part of an arm, petty insults from small men barely register. November 12, 2004. That's the day her helicopter was hit by an RPG over Iraq. She was co-piloting, focused on her mission, when the world turned to fire and shrapnel. The rocket-propelled grenade destroyed her aircraft and nearly destroyed her. Most people would have let that be the end of their service story. Duckworth spent a year in recovery at Walter Reed. She learned to walk again on prosthetic legs. Then she went back to work. No book tour about resilience. No cable news circuit trading on sacrifice. She didn't monetize her Purple Heart or turn her injuries into a personal brand. She served in the Illinois National Guard, then ran for office to continue serving in a different capacity. Retired Lieutenant Colonel. Combat veteran. Purple Heart recipient. The first disabled woman elected to Congress, then to the Senate. The first senator to give birth while in office, bringing her newborn onto the Senate floor because the rules hadn't contemplated a working mother who'd also taken shrapnel for her country. When Vance tried his cheap shot, she treated it exactly like what it was: noise from someone who'd never answered a question he found uncomfortable. She'd faced real danger. She knew the difference between actual courage and performance art patriotism. That's who Tammy Duckworth is. Remember it.

Commentary: One unintended side effect of the attack ad being promoted by Ohio Republican candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy is it's now bringing attention to the American success story embodied by his opponent Amy Acton and the adversity she overcame. ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/…

Maybe this is crazy. But a woman who built herself up from being a homeless child to an accomplished physician, seems preferable to a man born into the privileges of private education and frequent international family vacations but never learned decency.

Amy Acton: As a young child, my brother and I experienced a lot of child abuse and neglect. We moved countless times as kids, and even wound up living in a tent in the middle of winter. And now my opponent has chosen to exploit my childhood to save his struggling campaign. But it's not going to work.

If your voter machine took several punches to get the correct candidate selected... or... your name was not on your voter rolls don't let it pass, don't be silent! ☎️The DNC has a National Voter Protection hotline to report any issues! 1-833-336-8683📞

🚨 BREAKING: New poll finds Democrat Annie Andrews ONE POINT AWAY from beating Darline Graham. She is running to ban Congressional stock trading.

Pete Hegseth demanded his team to bring Eisenhower's globe in his office, despite warnings that only historians should move the iconic globe. His staff dropped it and broke it.

🇺🇦 Zelenskyy delivers a blunt message to the United States: “Just give us Starlink back. If you refuse, Ukraine will survive. We will continue defending ourselves with or without it. But why would you restrict a country fighting for its survival? Why make it harder for us to defend our people? I simply cannot understand the reasoning behind this decision. It is a mistake.” Ukraine isn’t asking America to fight its war. It’s asking America not to stand in the way of its defense.

The idea that we need businessmen in politics because they’ll “run the government like a business” has NEVER made sense to me. A COUNTRY IS NOT A CORPORATION. CITIZENS ARE NOT CUSTOMERS. AND HUMAN LIVES ARE NOT PROFIT MARGINS. The government’s responsibility is to SERVE the people, not maximize profits, protect shareholders, or treat basic human needs like financial liabilities. PUBLIC SERVICE IS NOT A BUSINESS MODEL. HUMANITY SHOULD ALWAYS COME BEFORE PROFIT.

How do you go home when your child isn’t coming with you? Their bed is still there. Their favorite cereal is in the kitchen. The clothes you washed for them are waiting to be put away. That’s what I keep thinking about as I read about Oregon. The parents who woke up with plans for an ordinary day and now face something so different. So difficult. My children have heard me say, “Be safe,” more times than they could count. You say it because you love them. Because you know you cannot go everywhere they go. If Sandy Hook wasn’t enough to bring us together to better protect our children, what will be? I seek change. I seek change.. I seek change… I support the Second Amendment. I also believe people with violent histories or those found through due process to pose a danger to themselves or others should not have access to firearms. Gun owners should secure their firearms. Threats should be taken seriously and followed up on. Families who are asking for help need somewhere to turn before someone gets hurt. Teachers need to be heard when they raise concerns. Schools need the resources to address them. First responders deserve support for the things they see and carry home. We need to talk honestly about how people who pose a danger get access to firearms and what can be done to stop them. My years in public safety taught me to look upstream. We will always need people ready to respond, but we also need to find the places where we can step in before a family’s worst day. We cannot ask grieving families to keep telling us about their children while we refuse to move. A child does not have to be mine for their life to matter to me. I seek change. 🇺🇸

I dislike qualifications tied directly to education. I think accreditation should be a separate thing. Anyone should be able to sit for any accreditation, and if they can prove their knowledge, gain the qualification. Mostly only those who studied officially will pass.

It's become painfully clear that structuring our whole society around maximising profit instead of the wellbeing of people and planet was a REALLY terrible idea.

He made his name selling gear for the wild. Then he bought the wild itself. The founder of The North Face, Doug Tompkins, put his money into more than 800,000 hectares of Patagonia. Not for a resort. Not for timber. He did it so the land would stay exactly as it is. The natural beauty stays untouched, and the habitat that wildlife depends on stays intact. Most people with that kind of money buy a bigger house. He bought a piece of the planet and made sure nobody could wreck it.

This is the man who punched a woman in the face at a Trump rally for daring to ask Trump about Epstein from the crowd, as Trump and other attendees cheered him on. Anyone know his name? Let's make him famous.

USA właśnie zablokowało działanie Starlinków na Ukrainie. Oznacza to, że w wielu przypadkach Ukraińcy pozostaną bezbronni przeciwko rosyjskim pociskom - oznacza to po prostu śmierć ludzi, wielu ludzi. Co za skurwysyństwo.