Bruce Wilson

this is not an amount of money any individual or household should be able to have and we have to abolish both billionaires as a group and the economic system that makes them possible

OK, thanks.

me too

Also - maybe this was from Bill Nye the Science Guy, but there's a moderately simple experiment you can do in your kitchen to prove that global warming is real - by demonstrating the heat-trapping power of CO2.

If only it were taught in schools.

YouTube video by Thomas Dolby Thomas Dolby - She Blinded Me With Science (Official Video - HD Remaster)

But science can be tricky (I couldn't resist)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=V83J...

hey, per SCOTUS money is free speech, right? so they are merely exercising their 1st Amendment rights by buying up the commons where we discuss & get our news, and using that common space to promote fascism, which shuts down free speech.

Me too.

YouTube video by wallywallington Ancient Stonehenge Technology Reveal By Wally Wallington Part 2

Humans are absurdly ingenious.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgkX...

In the Spirit of the Earth Rethinking History and Time

Oh, you're a broad ranging thinker. You might like this book:
www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

The author thinks we made a wrong turn when hunter-gatherers decided (or presumed) to imprison & selectively breed animals & plants, for our purposes (& It's got a wild elemental/nature spirit anecdote.

"Special" used to be a euphemism (or pejorative) or "developmentally disabled". Just saying.

We can’t clean up Washington without restoring integrity to the Supreme Court.

That’s why I believe we should expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices. And then, institute term limits.

Because an appointment to the Supreme Court shouldn’t mean a lifetime lack of accountability.

But, to my mind, they're all bad news. The white charismatics (called the New Apostolic Reformation) trace back to a 1950s KKK covert rebranding initiative, and they also have ties to German fascism.

The Dominionist tendency spans both the "Armageddonists", the Christian Reconstructionists, and the independent charismatics (all Protestants. BTW.)

There's a deep history to this tracing back to a 1980s initiative to get the various factions to work together to achieve political power.

Yes, that's the one. Eventually, I learned that all big powers (and most nations, truth be told) commit awful human rights abuses. I wish I had a solution. But I think democracy is the better path.

In the 1970s, I wrote a history paper on the CIA-engineered 1954 coup in Guatemala that overthrew democracy there (the ensuing military regime, by the 1980s became genocidal.) It's been a learning process. To my mind, democracy, human rights, & the good of all is a never-ending fight. But worth it.

PERFECT, thank you!

It leaves out the Mormons and the Moonies, but that's fine for our purposes.

Complete with 21st Century recapitulations of Aimee Semple McPherson's 1920s charismatic Christian Nationalist hoo-haws, yup.

Those Shaheds will just keep on comin'

Ry Cooder won what now?

Consciously admitting what was going on in their party was, for them, I think, a painful psychological realization. It wasn't a fully rational process.

Thank you.

But I want to remember "handjob grandma" - it could prove useful one day.

Those "normie" Republicans have been gradually peeling off for about 4 decades, literally - since Pat Robertson's "Christian Coalition", in the 1980s, started taking over local GOP party structures. I have a half a bookshelf of their books, about realizing that theocrats had taken over.

Well, not graphic. But imagination can be so much more vivid.

All the good US military officers read Sun Tzu (or used to). But I think his lessons extend beyond warfare, as we typically think of it.

That quote of yours doesn't incorporate 3rd generation warfare concepts -- but there may be some Sun Tzu that does.

China gave us Sun Tzu, perhaps the most brilliant military strategist of all time -> who taught that the best victory is achieved with no fighting whatsoever.

Yeah, I also think China will evolve. They've had kind of a rough century, but now they're very close (at least in global terms) to being the adults in the room.

Hitler's family was wealthy enough to have a servant, but - prior to entering politics (or fascism) he clearly was going nowhere fast.

I think China's going to get Taiwan eventually. But China is *very* patient. Benefit of a 5,000 year-old culture, people think in long time horizons.

I meant the technology of war. In the Ukraine/Russia war, a lot of the fighting is w/absurdly cheap, remotely guided drones dropping little bombs on people's heads. Russia & Ukraine learned to jam the controlling radio signals, so they started guiding the drones with miles-long fiber optic cables.

I don't think we'll face invasions from either Canada or Mexico any time soon. Invading a huge country with ~350 million people is a big thing to take on.