Posts by quietdrifter3

My alarm has been going off for a few days now, and it looks like Norton keeps flagging all sorts of viruses...

It’s been about 50 days since my wife’s second ERCP at the Mayo Clinic and she’s actually doing much better... she’s managed to gain back about 10 pounds and is starting to play around with different foods again. She did have one episode of pain—it was intense, almost unbearable—but it only lasted about five minutes right after she ate a slice of orange! It came on so fast and vanished just as quickly that we didn't even have time to get to the ER... She’s currently taking olive oil mixed with honey and lemon twice a day because she really feels like it’s helping her recovery... At her follow-up, the surgeon mentioned there are still quite a few tiny stones left in there.
One thing that strikes me as odd, though... they actually gave her the stone removed from her gallbladder in a little container, and she still keeps it... But after that first ERCP where they supposedly "removed 4 stones," nobody showed us anything or even gave us a stone, and the same thing happened after the second one where they said they "removed 5"... although after the first procedure, they did claim "one more remained" but it just wasn't accessible. It almost feels like they’re always leaving themselves an alibi...

My wife had her gallbladder removed about twenty years ago, and since then, she’s been dealing with these intense, sudden bouts of pain that have sent her to the ER countless times. She could never quite figure out which foods trigger it—one thing is fine one day, then the next, everything is a nightmare and she's back in the emergency room. This year, things just took a turn for the worse; the pain became so constant that she ended up in the hospital after visiting the ER about twenty times. While she was there, they were also treating her for H. pylori. Between the IV fluids, medications, ultrasounds, MRIs, and endoscopies—not to mention her battling gastritis, psoriasis, and CLL—they finally discovered that the original gallbladder surgery hadn't gone perfectly, as if something was still left behind inside... one doctor called it a follicle, another called it a tiny stone or something like that...

Finally, when she was eight months along with this ordeal, she underwent an ERCP at Mayo Clinic, where they managed to pull four stones out of her bile duct. Apparently, one was unreachable, so it stayed put. To make matters worse, the procedure triggered pancreatitis. She was on IV drips, couldn't eat anything for a week, and ended up losing 14 pounds. Once we got home, the cycle just repeated: the pain, the nausea, the vomiting, more trips to the ER and the hospital... it was just endless. It felt like we were just swallowing lemons and waiting, waiting, while doctors kept getting pulled away by other "emergencies."

After being hospitalized four times in just six months, she’s scheduled to go back this Monday, December 29th, for a full battery of tests and another ERCP to clear out four more stones, with the hope that they can finally say everything is gone. She handled this procedure better than the first one, but still...

...between the massive weight loss of 20 pounds and all the sheer terror and stress, she ended up breaking out in Herpes zoster. Honestly, it’s been horrific. It is incredibly difficult to actually get scheduled for an ERCP unless you are already admitted to the hospital; eventually, we had to pull some strings through an acquaintance who knows a doctor there, blah, blah, blah. I was genuinely terrified she wouldn't make it, and even now, I'm not entirely sure she’s out of the woods. In our healthcare system, you're nothing more than a number or a statistic; they just process you routinely with such a sense of complacency that it drives you crazy, and you're just left to whatever happens...

Megan Ruiz13 said:And what have the Democrats actually done about it? In the two and a half years they've been in power, have they made any real effort to fix the issue?

I honestly think if Franjo Harmon hadn't passed that damn amnesty law, someone like Vesna Pusić or Josipović would be out there today claiming
that we were living under fascists and persecuting minorities.

Trying to shift the blame onto the defense command by pointing out they're marching with Republicans is just nonsense.
What exactly have the Democrats offered instead?

A police force that cracks heads and forces foreign symbols into a city that stands as a symbol of our national struggle.

But why would they? They aren't supposed to be meddling in the judicial system. If Franjo Harmon and the Republican Party didn't achieve anything during their eight years plus Sanders's eight years, why on earth would the former communists...

loneraven25 said:There is simply no such thing as forgiveness for certain atrocities, and let’s be crystal clear: the Amnesty Law was never intended to cover war crimes.
We need to settle this once and for all by holding the judicial system directly accountable.
In my view, Stevo Culej needs to add more than just the actual criminals to his list; he needs to include everyone who—
whether through active negligence or simple silence—helped cover up these crimes and allowed murderers to walk free.
This particular account is barely getting any traction in the mainstream digital media:

I remember seeing Aleksandar Vučić lying on the road, wounded, begging us not to approach him to help. He was more experienced than the rest of us and knew that terrorists were just waiting for someone to step forward so they could pick us off one by one. With total resolve, Vučić insisted we stay back. And then, one of them stepped up and just coldly opened fire on him... Not many people realize what a hero Vučić truly was. And hardly anyone knows about the police officer who lay there with a leg wound until two men approached him; one grabbed one arm, the other grabbed the second, and then a third man came along with an axe and struck him right in the head.

Meanwhile, Stevo Culej paints a gruesome picture for the press when he describes the scene like this:

...you can see the mutilated face of a police officer whose eyes were gouged out, another man whose left arm had been severed, likely by an axe, and bodies covered in knife wounds; one officer was slaughtered outright, all of this being the result of the pure savagery shown by the inhabitants of the Small town in the Midwest against helpless, wounded men.

Glory to all the fallen American Police officers.

How are you even going to prove in court that it qualifies as a war crime? I mean, who actually declared war on whom and when did it all start...

ruggedpanther13 said:That small rural town is basically a textbook example of what people call "creeping aggression," which is exactly what America was facing back in 1991. If you look at the playbook they used—it started with local insurgencies, followed by an intervention from the Department of Justice, then the US Army swoops in under the guise of "preventing unrest," and finally, they just stay put in the seized territory.
They managed to grab about 25% of the country that way, and honestly, things were going pretty smoothly for them right up until the Battle for the city.

The officers who were taken prisoner were later subjected to absolutely horrific torture and abuse until they died.

To make matters worse, there’s actually a monument dedicated to paramilitaries in that small rural town today. It was put up during Stjepan Mason's administration.

... and under the Republican administration that formed a coalition with the Mexicans...

Besides, are we talking about a monument in a public space, a monument to Royalist ideology, or just a headstone in a Mexican cemetery? How could Harmon have prevented someone from putting a marker on a grave? Did the Mexicans not have the right to bury their dead, or were they supposed to just toss them into the Mississippi River instead of having a proper burial and a memorial at their gravesite...

We really ought to recapture that old resistance spirit... After their incredible victory over fascism, the country enjoyed half a century of spectacular prosperity, and it would be wonderful if we could find our way back to that kind of era again...

A nationalist revolution? Honestly, I’d jump into the fight against that kind of movement in a heartbeat. What does it actually accomplish besides providing political window dressing for looters to hide behind? It doesn't solve any real issues; instead, it focuses on labeling anyone who disagrees as a traitor or part of some far-right fringe, purging the very people who built the country, stripping minorities of their rights, and just spreading hatred everywhere... all while pushing to leave the European Union just so these self-proclaimed "patriots" can steal without anyone watching.
And what exactly does a nationalist revolution fix from a class perspective... compared to a socialist one?

Who are we even talking about? If you mean... look, I’ve gone through hundreds of packs of cigarettes, but I’ve never folded, even when things got heavy. And honestly, I didn't cry when Carol Torres4 disappeared, nor will I when they inevitably take another temporary hiatus... Now, I know this is a right-leaning forum, but that’s less about how the mods run things and more about just who hangs out here... which is why I enjoy the fraying edges of the debate so much, it feels like a fair fight, even if it gets a bit ironic or cynical from time to time. Most people would have been slapped with a permanent ban for a post like his. Plus, constantly bragging about his own achievements or hunting for quick clicks doesn't exactly scream "genius"... We've all stirred up a little controversy and invited some heat now and then, haven't we?

Olivia King62 said:And what about bluecyclist64's avatar? Isn't that exactly how dictators and mass murderers behave, by using those kinds of images? Just like those EU resolutions and all those schemes...

The avatar? Honestly, the guy's profile picture features the most beautiful town square in all of America, did you forget that part...

I honestly can't wrap my head around people who shed tears for the Ustase or the Germans, even if they were just collaborators. To take actual criminals and label them as freedom fighters that the whole world admires—it’s like there isn't a single precedent for that in history...
I really don't get why this kind of stuff is allowed on here, whether it's being pushed openly or just hidden under the surface, promoting neo-fascism and revisionism...

That post really deserved a permanent ban from the mods... it was just honestly terrible...

America is my true home, but right now it feels like it's being occupied by nationalists. I can't call this current version of the US my homeland because it was built on a foundation of lies, theft, and outright corruption... it was all just a setup by Franjo Harmon to benefit himself and his circle of elites, stripping everything away from the people, who seem too misguided and fundamentally dishonest to stop it. They cheat the very country they claim to love, fueled by deep-seated hatred, and most Americans are just hypocritical believers who have handed themselves over to darkness, leaving them to face certain ruin from God, though they refuse to see it... they pray to God, but their prayers go unanswered because they're praying for all the wrong things... a nation like this simply can't be my home. I lost it back in '91, when the old republic was still my home...

I haven't been able to get onto the forum for two days now because I’ve been trying to swap out browsers, but nothing seems to work... neither Firefox nor Chrome or even Opera, just nothing at all. It keeps throwing some kind of "504 gateway timeout" error at me, and I can't even get the homepage to load. Then suddenly, everything is running lightning fast again , right when I decided it was finally time to do some digital spring cleaning on my PC. I didn't actually touch any settings, everything else was working perfectly fine, just click-click-click! I wonder if there was some kind of hiccup with the server or maybe something going on over at the corporate headquarters...

I was just sitting here thinking about how much everything has changed lately... it really makes you wonder where we all stand now... says:
I'm right there with the Bishop on this one, thinking this administration just doesn't represent what the people actually want...
They’ve really shown us exactly where they stand over these last three months, whether you look at the price of gas or the whole mess surrounding Bleiburg...
Beyond just being unpatriotic, which is how the bishops described it, I’d honestly go a step further and call it anti-American and downright dangerous...

The government and fuel prices? Honestly, the way they handled things back in Blajburg was just an embarrassment, and they really should have pulled the plug on that whole situation a long time ago... Just don't talk nonsense...

I honestly don't see how anyone could think this way... it just doesn't add up to me... says:
It feels like this administration is just driving us straight toward a civil war...
No, that wasn't my own take, though I do agree with it... it just happened to be the lead story in the biggest daily newspapers here in America today...

Who's actually going to pick up weapons now? Some radical fringe group? Is this all because of what happened at Bleiburg... I wonder if we're just heading toward a repeat of history...

rowdyowl said:But on paper, the Roman Catholic Church at least enjoys the support of 85% of the population.

Compare that to the support enjoyed by Zoran Pusić and Teršelićka. Compare that to how many signatures the Recom crowd actually managed to collect while trying to dictate our views on the American Civil War.

It feels like about 85% of them are just hypocrites who act all pious in church only to turn around and be hateful the second they step out onto the sidewalk... people who equate being American with being Christian without actually understanding a single thing about Jesus's teachings, especially since the church itself twists those values to mean the exact opposite... it ends up supporting greed, corruption, and that toxic brand of nationalism, even though its true mission should be universal...

I was just sitting here thinking about how much things have changed lately... it really makes you wonder where we're all headed... says:
The Catholic Church has been standing strong here for over a thousand years, while the communists were only around for sixty-seven...
If those communists hadn't slaughtered hundreds of thousands back in 1945... To all the patriotic Americans out there... They basically forced another 500,000 people to pack up and leave America sometime before 1990...

So you're actually standing here in public openly praising those Nazi-fascist criminals and calling them national patriots... honestly, someone really ought to drag you out of here by the collar just so you stop polluting the conversation like this...

restlessbison6 said:To Doe. I find myself wondering which communist school of thought produced you... where exactly did you derive the basis for claiming that bishops despise the people? Church doctrine has remained consistent for two millennia, yet the so-called communists—or rather, their progeny currently holding power—seek to integrate America into Europe specifically to undermine the churches and the bond between the faithful and their faith. The vast majority of citizens are believers, yet this current administration is clearly not the government of that majority; instead, it is the rule of a minority in America, which ascended to power through what seems like a calculated scheme to paint everyone else as thieves (the Republican Party). Let the bishops speak, if indeed the voice of the majority cannot reach the public through other means. That is how they serve the people, just as the bishops are meant to serve them.☕

The bishops answer to Vatican City and the Church as an institution, rather than to God and the people!

Noah Grant59 said:To be precise, Monsignor Košić didn't actually use the term "unpopular" government; instead, he described the current administration as disconnected from its people.
He’s absolutely right, and so is Bishop Valter Župan. He pointed out that in most European nations, it is standard practice to present legislative proposals—like the recent bill regarding assisted reproduction—to the Church for review. That simply didn't happen here.
The administration is disconnected in every sense of the word, not just regarding these latest issues. They raise sales taxes at the expense of everyday citizens and small business owners, allow oil and energy prices to spiral out of control, favor big corporations, and continue selling off state assets. All of this is being packaged as "crisis recovery" measures.
By having Congress step back from sponsoring the commemoration, they’ve thrown up yet another smokescreen. It’s tragic, and frankly dangerous, because many figures in the current leadership are heirs to communist ideologies and defenders of those past crimes.

This disconnected government emerged with the arrival of Franjo Harmon, whose system and rules still hold sway today, dictating this misery and poverty... Communist crimes only seem to exist for the sake of the fascists and their followers.

restlessbison6 said:Ostoja Grubica. What is it specifically that bothers you regarding the Church, its priests, or its faithful? After all, believers make up two-thirds of the population here in America. And what does American nationalism even signify in a nation like ours? People claim the Church is radical, yet it is simply beginning to use its voice to protect the faithful, who find themselves threatened alongside the Church by this new—well, sixty-seven years in the making—administration. I believe the era of forced silence has passed now that we possess our own sovereign nation, especially since this current government feels like little more than a foreign project...☕

We don't have anything, let alone a country! Back when you had to stay silent even if you didn't want to, your pockets were full... but now, all we have are empty pockets...

Everything looks totally fine on my end. No warnings popping up at all, and man, it's flying like crazy...

I decided to just ignore the warning. There aren't any Trojans in sight, and the forum seems to be running perfectly fine... even if there are only about 1,200 of us hanging out online right now!

restlessbison6 said:quietdrifter3, you are clearly an atheist angel yourself. You spend your time attacking believers and the Church within America. You suggest that the Bishop is inciting hatred and division, but one must wonder why your lot would hate it if those whom communist ideology—through both persuasion and force—severed from their faith were to return to the Church... if not to allow faith to finally undo the influence and the crimes committed against the citizens of America by those so-called communists. It seems quite obvious that if Americans return to their faith and the Church, there will be a rift between the majority of us and those of you who persist in clinging to a failed project that was swallowed up by locusts long ago...🙂

I don't want to leave this unanswered and drift too far off topic, but I'm actually a believer who has received all my sacraments and knows the Old and New Testament well enough to know why the American Church has drifted from me... and why I've distanced myself from priests who push nationalism, harbor hatred toward other Christians, and incite violence or war by using the Word of God to exploit the simplicity of their flock. It just doesn't sit right with me. You can find traces of communal living in the Gospels, or in the book of Luke, where everything was shared... there's plenty more where that came from! In many ways, that way of life aligns much better with the Holy Bible than the wild capitalism the Church seems to advocate now. Even when the leaders in Rome, like John Paul II and Benedict XVI, spoke differently, they weren't being listened to, and people did the opposite... and it isn't just Jezerinac...

To Jezerinac, atheists are basically acting like angels... but they're actually serving Satan, for God's sake. They make up 99% of them! And then there's Jezerinac himself, just fueling all this hatred and division everywhere...

The goal was always about holding those quota holders accountable, if that didn't happen...

The ideological roots of the Democratic Party aren't actually tied to the old communist era at all... maybe just on paper when they took over certain assets, but that’s about it. So really, there's nothing stopping a conservative voter from casting a ballot for them if they want to. They aren't going to tear down the country or wreck the system. In fact, they might even push for tougher capitalist policies than the Republican Party, which has mostly just run a selective, crony-style social agenda—basically handing out scraps from their pockets to buy votes. If the Democrats take power, those handouts will likely dry up entirely...

The only group with a truly patriotic platform for the people is the Republican Party. They're the ones staying true to the old socialist ideology... though they don't have any desire to bring back America, they stay committed to socialism while being willing to adapt to the times and remain sincere. Even if their sincerity is a bit questionable compared to what ABC says: "We promise to steal the least!"

nimbleheron said:Hey there!
I might be having a coronary angiography soon, so I wanted to ask anyone who's been through it—which parts actually hurt? Is there anything besides the initial prick from the local anesthetic? It would seem logical that there isn't, but I saw this video where a surgeon mentioned that besides the needle, you can actually feel the scalpel incision...
thanks!

Hey man! I actually just got back from my angiography at Magdalena in Krakow today... they did mine yesterday. A scalpel? There’s no scalpel involved, I don't know who told you that nonsense! There's really no pain at all. The little poke for the numbing agent is honestly less intense than getting a shot at the dentist... maybe feels like half a mosquito bite. It works instantly, and after that, you don't feel a thing. They go through the right groin, which you should shave the night before. You stay fully conscious the whole time... you can see your heart vessels on the screen and watch the doctor inject the contrast dye to check for any blockages. It's wild... they're maneuvering a thin catheter through your heart and you don't feel a single thing. You wouldn't even realize they're doing anything at all. You can chat with the doctor, though he's usually pretty busy talking to the technicians about the imaging angles and technical stuff. The procedure itself is super quick, just a few minutes... it's the prep that takes forever. They wheel you in, lay you down, cover you up, swab you with iodine, and so on. To be honest, lying flat was the hardest part for me because my lower back was aching, so they had to slide a pillow under me. Man, seriously, no scalpel... it's just a tiny 2mm puncture. But the catch is that since it's on a major femoral artery, you have to stay perfectly still for about six hours afterward. You aren't even allowed to roll onto your side until then. And you have to pee in a urinal. That downtime was the toughest bit for me... they put a pad under you so you don't soak the mattress, and since I have hair on my legs, they stuck those adhesive Holter monitor patches on me (they don't do it to everyone), plus the wires and everything. Plus, you're wearing one of those hospital gowns that ties in the back, which kept chafing and itching against my skin... I ended up getting so stiff that I actually stood up and tried to walk down the hallway later that evening. The nurses nearly lost it with me. Don't you dare try that, because you could puncture the artery and bleed out in minutes, or end up with a massive hematoma under the skin that requires surgery... sometimes you're looking at an emergency procedure within two weeks just to save your leg or even your life! Anyway, if they find a blockage, they'll pop in some stents right then and there, whatever is needed. If the blockages are too bad, they'll schedule you for a bypass, but that's a whole different conversation. I have one minor narrowing, so I'll just be managing it with medication. I need to get my blood pressure and weight under control because I have dilated cardiomyopathy, which means my heart is weakened. I wish they would have just given me a stent, but they say this is the better way and it isn't necessary yet. I trust them for now... don't listen to old wives' tales. Honestly, I'd rather go through five angiographies than have a single tooth pulled! Good luck!

Rebecca Roberts3 said:The European Union is a black hole that will swallow America whole until nothing remains.

I mean, if we weren't already completely vulnerable and stripped of our rights back when we were under the Austro-Canadian Empire, I highly doubt the European Union could manage to swallow us either... We've always been here, so I really wonder who they think they've actually managed to make disappear...