Disqus - Latest Comments for kimc

Re: Rebecca Solnit: It’s the Pundits Who Have Turned on Biden, Not the Party

kimc — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 05:41:27 -0000

Biden is not incoherent. He has always had a problem with words, and it is no worse now. If you read the transcript of the debate, he was making much more sense than Trump.
You young people are impatient. Biden was clearly working on a negotiated peace between Israel and Gaza that worked for both sides and brought the hostages home. Negotiating peace takes a lot longer than just threatening one side or the other, but it works better and is longer lasting. Biden is a negotiator, not a dictator. He is going that route. You just don't have the patience for it. This fight has been going on for thousands of years, you can't expect to end it overnight. Many presidents have tried, and no one has succeeded yet.

Re: Rebecca Solnit: It’s the Pundits Who Have Turned on Biden, Not the Party

kimc — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 05:35:25 -0000

Biden had that cognitive test in February of this year. Why should he do it again? His brain is working fine, it's his words that never worked well.

Re: Suddenly, Trump Is Interested in Democracy

kimc — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 16:46:40 -0000

I maintain that if they can ignore the 14th Amendment at will, then we should be able to ignore the 2nd Amendment, and ban all guns.

Re: Is Earth close to ‘the great dying’?

kimc — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 19:42:58 -0000

This is what you sound like:
"I once almost choked to death while eating food. I did my own research and discovered that I am not alone. Thousands of people choke every year while eating, and hundreds of those people die. That's why I don't feed my kids. It's dangerous. Now plenty of people will point out that food supposedly "prevents starvation," and that might be true, but it's not fair to completely ignore all the dangers food poses, like choking, allergies, gingivitis, and garlic breath. I'm just saying, do your own research and decide what you think is best for your kids. If you choose to give your kids potentially deadly food, that's your problem, but as a parent, I don't thing the government has any right to tell me that I need to feed my kids." Gordon Scott

Re: Is Earth close to ‘the great dying’?

kimc — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 19:32:32 -0000

Rand Paul is not a credible scientist who studies this issue. He has no standing, and his "proof" was not valid. You believe in conspiracies because you are the kind of person who would start a conspiracy. Unfortunately for you, not many Democrats would be capable of a real conspiracy, so that leaves the Republicans and Libertarians to be responsible for them.

Re: Is Earth close to ‘the great dying’?

kimc — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 19:25:49 -0000

Chicken Little was right.

Re: Is Earth close to ‘the great dying’?

kimc — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 19:23:59 -0000

That record-holder might well be DJ Trump.

Re: The (Wonderful) Downside of Electric Cars

kimc — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 08:23:07 -0000

That $45,000 you saved will easily pay for replacing the big battery -- which (the big battery) is the thing anti-EV people throw at you to say EVs are no good.

Re: The (Wonderful) Downside of Electric Cars

kimc — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 08:20:17 -0000

things I have to do annually, I try to do in my birthday month because that helps me remember it.
We traded in our used 2013 Leaf for a used 2019 Leaf. On a whim.

Re: Happy New Year. The Red/Blue COVID Death Rate Divide is no more (for the moment).

kimc — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 08:10:15 -0000

Are they going to make a vaccine for the newest variant? We have had all of our vaccines, and still wear masks to church and the grocery store, but we also eat in restaurants and try to wear the mask to and from the table, but sometimes forget. We don't go anywhere else.

Re: The Ugliness We See in Human History is Not Human Nature Writ Large

kimc — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 05:37:43 -0000

Isn't Putin right now making the decision to gamble -- either he wins an empire, or he destroys his country (and maybe the rest of the world)? It's more Russian roulette than suicide, but....

Re: How The Federal Reserve Steals from the Poor and Gives to the Rich

kimc — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 16:29:55 -0000

Good explanation of how it works, but I have heard it before. What you don't say is what to do about it. It's probably too late to go back to the gold standard, so what's your solution? Do away with interest? Have each of the 1% adopt ten people from the other 99%? Connect the minimum wage to top wages? Every few years execute the five richest people? Make the 1% wear pink armbands in public? What's your solution and who would implement it?

Re: 101 Things Jesus Didn’t Do That Most Christians Do

kimc — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 04:49:34 -0000

I'm not too sure about #49 and #89. It is quite likely that a Jewish boy went to schule and learned to read Hebrew for his bar mitzvah.

Re: 101 Things Jesus Didn’t Do That Most Christians Do

kimc — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 04:46:11 -0000

In the bible there are two places where Jesus is accused of being a drunkard.

Re: Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway

kimc — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 06:31:47 -0000

You are not really adding to the discussion.

Re: Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway

kimc — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 06:30:54 -0000

I beg to differ with you. All politicians talk about "jobs". They don' t do anything, but they talk about it. Jobs are disappearing, and I haven't seen any real solution offered, other than a lot of solar jobs for the Green New Deal, but no one wants to hear that. You haven't offered any real solutions for any of the problems you listed either -- jobs, housing, education, infrastructure, food, health care, equality. What solutions do you want? fixing all of those problems will require change, and about two thirds of Americans are horrified at the idea of change, so how would you do it? Plus, now we have a pandemic keeping us from fixing things. We took a wrong turn at Reagan, and we have never recovered from it, and may not.
Nevertheless, the solution is not to treat each of those problems as separate things, but to look further and find the cause behind all of them, and work on fixing that. Figure out how to make most Americans want to fix those problems, even if it means giving some stuff to people they don't approve of. Many Americans, now, would rather live in poverty themselves than give anything that might also lift others they don't like. this is behind all of the problems.

Re: Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway

kimc — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 06:15:02 -0000

I don't know how much attention you have been paying to what is going on in our Senate, but for several years now, the Republicans have been refusing any compromise at all. An example is the ACA, or Obamacare, which was originally a Republican proposal. They have been dead set against it for years now because it was from the Democrats, not because of what is in it. They do not want to give in -- they have discovered that if they hold their breath until they turn blue, they get their way, and their way is all they want, besides "sticking it to the Dems". They are tribalists who want to be cruel to those not in their tribe.
Your other point is that some of the Trump followers are not so bad. This might have been true for people who have voted for Republicans who are actually human people, but Trump is another case altogether. He is a sociopath, he has no conscience whatsoever, and will do anything that he thinks will be to his advantage. He cares about no one except himself. this has been apparent to New Yorkers for many years, but the rest of us have been shown by now who he is and what he is, and anyone who would vote for him a second time is, indeed, a bad person. It's not like he made a single mistake, or one transgression, his whole life is a transgression, and if you feel good about him, you are to be blamed. At least for allowing yourself to be conned by this stupid but talented conman, if nothing else.

Re: Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway

kimc — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 06:00:54 -0000

Nonetheless, those jobs are not coming back. There are five reasons (at least) why the jobs are gone for good: 1) Automation 2) mergers and acquisitions 3) inter-generational competition (due to older people not being able to retire) 4) over-population and 5) climate change.
As far as I know, no one has come up with a solution for this. My suggestion is that we convert most companies to worker-owned, democratically run businesses. This allows the workers to be dealt with as the main assets of the company rather than as the liability current economic theories consider them. It cuts out the high cost of management, but increases the pay of the people who actually do the work. It allows everyone a say in the direction a company goes, and teaches people democracy -- and how to win and lose and accept it. It makes businesses more responsible to the community they are in because the workers have a sense of responsibility because they own the business, and because they live in the community they are less likely to be destructive of it.

Re: Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway

kimc — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 05:49:56 -0000

Michael, below. lists racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, and implies Antisemitism, as something the Trumpists have but don't want to reckon with. The part we are not getting is that all those isms and phobias are all parts of the same thing I will try to leave a link to this great article that explains it better than I can, but the basic idea is that the difference between liberals and today's "conservatives" is that liberals believe we should act morally toward all people, while the Trumpists and their Nazi friends believe they only have to behave morally toward people in their in-group. They believe they are entitled to treat everyone else as a resource for their use or cruelty. They, knowing their position was not mainstream, have been hiding it somewhat, but Trump has given them permission to bring it out into the open and claim that it's perfectly alright to put kids in cages as long as they are not our kids, and it's alright to kill black people because they are not our people. It may even be an unconscious position, but it is there -- and we have to acknowledge it before we can deal with it. We are losing our Enlightenment values, and we must reclaim them before we go into another Dark Age. Here's the link: The Two Moral Modes https://siderea.dreamwidth....

Re: From Escaped Nuns to a Knight in Disguise, 10 Facts About the Life and Legacy of Martin Luther

kimc — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 20:12:21 -0000

I suspect that not ALL the peasants were illiterate. The one who could read in the village, would read it aloud to others.

Re: From Escaped Nuns to a Knight in Disguise, 10 Facts About the Life and Legacy of Martin Luther

kimc — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 20:08:19 -0000

did Luther ever kill anyone or have anyone killed?

Re: Sheriff Resigns After Defending His Use of Racist Slurs: “I’m a Christian Man”

kimc — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 05:17:53 -0000

From the right wing Christian, hypocrisy is a core value.

Re:

kimc — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 16:46:10 -0000

We are not young, but 5 years ago we moved from the SF Bay Area to rural Washington state. We love it, even though there are things we miss (especially the great restaurants). An influx of young people might re-vitalize a small town and help modernize it. On the other hand, what about politics and religion?

Re: California Declares Independence From Trump's Coronavirus Plans - Bloomberg

kimc — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 17:11:37 -0000

First of all, those statistics are from 2014, which is 6 years ago. and if you read down toward the bottom of the article, it says that the poverty rate is largely due to the high cost of housing in California.
California has high housing costs because so many people prefer to live there. Maybe they know something you don't.
When I was a child growing up in California, my mother belonged to an "organization" called Cal-De-Pop that tried to get people to move out or stay away. It didn't work. Have you ever been to California? You seem to have an irrational hatred of it. It's really just like any other place, but with better weather. I mean it has the full range of things that any state has -- rich areas and poor areas and medium areas, nice people and not nice people, Beautiful places, and ugly places. Urban areas, rural areas, and suburbs. Just like any other state. the infrastructure is crumbling to the same extent as the rest of the US, because the Federal government hasn't been functioning since Moscow Mitch got in there. What is your reason for hating it so much?

Re: California Declares Independence From Trump's Coronavirus Plans - Bloomberg

kimc — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 16:38:08 -0000

California is no longer bankrupt. That was back when it had Republican governors. Now, California is doing just fine. If it has a high poverty rate, it's because $120k per year is poverty in California. the rents are high because everyone want to live there.