Bruce K.'s Comments
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Jan 4, 2010 | recommended: 2 | comments: 7
in reply to a comment by Kent Douglas
Bruce K. Jan 4, 2010, 7:09am EST
How could that not happen, you are both living in a fantasy land, so who cares about rights anyway.
Jan 2, 2010 | recommended: 5 | comments: 26
in reply to a comment by Bruce K.
Bruce K. Jan 2, 2010, 5:25pm EST
Can you imagine what would have happened had our astronauts driven the moon buggy into one of those holes and gotten stuck in there or fallen in?
Jan 2, 2010 | recommended: 5 | comments: 26
in reply to a comment by Bruce K.
Bruce K. Jan 2, 2010, 5:23pm EST
Incidentally, these lava tubes can be formed from ice in the antarctic. There was a documentary about Antarctica - I think - by Werner Herzog where he walks around in one of these things, and it is very eerie and beautiful as the light shines through the ice.
Jan 2, 2010 | recommended: 5 | comments: 26
Bruce K. Jan 2, 2010, 5:21pm EST
Yes, the moon is made of SWISS cheese and SWISS cheese has holes ... anybody knows that.
Oct 5, 2008 | comments: 7
Bruce K. Jan 2, 2010, 5:33am EST
Odd, I just wrote a very similar article to yours, but from a different slant. There needs to be an understanding of politicians. They do not get where they are by pissing lots of people off, unless polls tell them they can and get away with it. Bush's and Obama's obvious commonality is that they both inhabit the political world, and they are both looking past the people they meet to what they can do for and with them.

I think when they wind up on the opposition party they are not serious, they are trying to score points. After all these years Arlen Specter switched parties, he did not decide to do that because he was hated. Ideologues are fine until they destroy their own careers.

I have to say I think Bush was the better politician since he won with less of a majority, hardly eeked out a victory and is able to get his agenda passed. Obama is stuck in a job with a professed ideology that he cannot implement, so either he is doing a job and sooner or later will tire of it, or he is not ideological and all his talk is just talk.

He is certainly not given to trying to educate the American people, which is probably wise, but it means we have a nice guy Democrat in office that is implementing and caretaking the Republican agenda ... and though that is probably better than having a hard right nutcase it really doesn't make me happy.
Dec 20, 2009 | recommended: 10 | comments: 39
in reply to a comment by Rick McGirr
Bruce K. Jan 2, 2010, 2:59am EST
Have not read the book, and I would have seen your comment sooner if you had replied to it with the "reply to this comment" link, but I did hear Naomi talk at Kepler's bookstore in Menlo Park, CA about her last book. It was an interesting talk, kind of spooked people I think because she was talking about people disappearing and leaving the country. Agree or disagree, I'm wondering where she would go?
Jan 2, 2010 | recommended: 1 | comments: 3
Bruce K. Jan 2, 2010, 2:45am EST
Expletives can sometimes help in certain situations!
Nov 25, 2009 | recommended: 1 | comments: 30
in reply to a comment by Kent Douglas
Bruce K. Jan 2, 2010, 12:40am EST
Except Obama is NOT swinging to the other direction, he has bent over backward to maintain the status quo, all his financial advisors were neck deep in the current financial scandal, yet he picked them.

Not to mention Afghanistan and Iraq, and Guantanamo and home forclosures.

Obama a right wing Democrat.

That is OK with me, but what I think I am starting to discern in him is that he only knows how to work with things political, ie. all about talk and bargaining and the pragmatic use of power. I do think Obama has a scientific mind at all, as do not most of our Presidents or politicians.

Scientists and engineers are very underrepresented in government. Obama does not understand some of the more critical concepts of how things change over time technologically, nor the demographics of change and economics.
Jan 1, 2010 | recommended: 1 | comments: 24
Bruce K. Jan 1, 2010, 11:22pm EST
Sorry, if I was a Brussel Sprout I would want to die. A Brussel Sprout is under no threat from me, I cannot abide them. Very interesting article.
Dec 29, 2009 | recommended: 10 | comments: 102
in reply to a comment by Bruce K.
Bruce K. Jan 1, 2010, 8:44pm EST
Maybe it is you that is uninformed, it depends on how you look at it. The amount going to the rich was significant.

Plus, more of the poor are having to pay back the amount of money that is being borrowed longer too. There is no such thing as a tax cut when we owed like 6 trillion at the time.
Dec 29, 2009 | recommended: 10 | comments: 102
in reply to a comment by Bruce K.
Bruce K. Jan 1, 2010, 8:27pm EST
> The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, ill-timed or
> not (depending on your opinion of tax cuts) did ...

Yeah, that's why they called it the tax-cut for the upper class.
You are playing games with numbers.
Dec 29, 2009 | recommended: 10 | comments: 102
in reply to a comment by Bruce K.
Bruce K. Jan 1, 2010, 8:06pm EST
AC, What were the Bush tax cuts when we already had a big debt and deficit spending ... certainly not shifting the tax burden to the wealthy, in fact even Obama has not done that at this point, why, because we have one dollar one vote not one man one vote.

The interest on the debt is sucking health care away from the people. If we can afford to pay Republican and foreign bondhodlers interest on money we borrow from them in the form of the debt, we can afford to spend for healthcare - probably with the assurance that it is a better investment and will pay off FOR THE COUNTRY, more than giving interest to rich people or foreign countries many of which seek to ruin us.
Dec 29, 2009 | recommended: 10 | comments: 102
in reply to a comment by Bruce K.
Bruce K. Jan 1, 2010, 4:42pm EST
> Interesting, especially given that there has been no improvement under Obama

Obama is certainly not Liberal, he is more Conservative, as the book I mentioned says. It is not the Republicans that care blocking ... have blocked meaningful health reform, it is the Democrats, both sides are being pushed at each other while the "Conservative" movement reaps the benefits for Bush's base.

The Democrats now serve the purpose of a relief valve, to blow off excess pressure, and the right wing radio rallies the nutcases on the other side.

Most Republicans do not benefit from these hardline right wing values. They are pushed until enough of the middle wants something different and then the Democrats are trotted in, and they do nothing different but pursue the same corporate agenda, and people are dispersed and confused until the next disaster ... ie. war, or attention re-focusing event that can launch the right again.

This was OK in the past because it never got too bad. Now we the money we used to funnel to possible good government programs, and at worse wasteful programs or failures goes to those who are evolving our system away from social responsiblity, or who want to. Notice when a conservative does take power it is not long before the right wing minority starts complain they are not conservative enough.

But there is never a real question that a President is too far left ... the last real president that got anywhere near close to that was Roosevelt in his last term.
Dec 29, 2009 | recommended: 10 | comments: 102
in reply to a comment by Bruce K.
Bruce K. Jan 1, 2010, 3:09pm EST
When you contrast America and what we are fighting there are interesting and eerie differences. The US culture has done everything it can consciously or unconsciously to isolate its people. We have all moved to cities and live for our jobs in order to satisfy our needs for status and consumer goods, putting us on a competition for status that is sefish, illogical and destructive. The family is not longer the center of society, work is. The family is given a lot of lip service, and those families that run the country have large complete extended families, but the rest of us are broken up like ice into snowflakes that can be blown in the wind and melted with minimal energy. The ideal nuclear family in the 60's has become isolated workaholic spendaholic dependent serf of the 21st century.

Looking at our enemies what can be more selfless than a suicide bombing, but it is even more destructive.

The isolation that we get from our brand of inhuman consumerism can be contrasted with the isolation those born into a society there authority is claimed by the state through a claimed relationship with God. How heavy and isolating would that be to be told throughout ones life whenever you did something to perturb or question the status quo that you were not only going against God, but you would be punished for that brutally and violently.

The Taliban brainwashes people through a low-tech totalitarianism that reduces people to low resolution beasts of burden to be managed by their immediate religious superiors according to a centralized/decentralized system that is not so much united by intellect as by manipulating people's lower instincts to create a very strong social hierarchy.

In the west we backpeddling as fast as possible from our utopian democratic ideals now that we can see how fast things could get out of control in the 60's and 70's. Education is not back to being the privilege of the rich. As is survival and existence itself.

The US has split off and fallen behind the rest of the West and self-righteously locked itself in battle over nothing but status quo and identity with an even sicker social system of terrorism.
Dec 10, 2009 | comments: 11
Bruce K. Jan 1, 2010, 2:27pm EST
Luster, what luster?
Dec 30, 2009 | recommended: 3 | comments: 10
in reply to a comment by Larry M.
Bruce K. Jan 1, 2010, 1:08pm EST
The nature of the economy changed during the Reagan years, that was the beginning of gut public works and the unapologetic greedy is good years. When I went to college the CA Junior College system was practically free, now it is a shadow of its former self. I was supremely lucky to be able to do all my lower division education at the JC, for almost nothing.

You may not think tax rates used to be higher, but the huge debt and structural deficit we had since that allows the wealthy and foreign countries to lend money to the government instead of paying their taxes, which working people pay the interest on is a regressive status quo that we never used to have ... and now it is way out of control.

The budget for the Treasury Department which included the interest payment on the national debt is, for 2009, 700 billions dollars, per year ... that is almost the amount on money Obama wanted to spend on health care OVER 10 YEARS, and that is why we cannot afford it.
Dec 20, 2009 | recommended: 10 | comments: 39
in reply to a comment by Rick McGirr
Bruce K. Jan 1, 2010, 12:55pm EST
I think regular Americans have become the new Indians (Native Americans). If we get in the way of the corporate juggernauts we get pushed out. Our rights exist only if they do not conflict with the corporations, and if they do, then they are conveniently forgotten. If Americans try to stand up for themselves they will be called terrorists.
Dec 29, 2009 | recommended: 10 | comments: 102
in reply to a comment by Bruce K.
Bruce K. Jan 1, 2010, 12:47pm EST
RF, yeah, no kidding, I just finished a book called "The Death Of Conservatism" whose major thesis seems to be that the Republicans are finished, because Barack Obama and the Democrats are just as Conservative as the Republicans used to be back around Eisenhower and Nixon. So the Republican party is way too far right out in wacko land, but the Democrats have become rightwing now. With more social, media pressure and money pretty soon they will seek to force the country even more to the right.

Just the ability to ignore the rest of the world and think we know it all in the face of facts is well, always amazing.
Dec 29, 2009 | recommended: 10 | comments: 102
in reply to a comment by Bruce K.
Bruce K. Jan 1, 2010, 12:39pm EST
AC, more disinformation.

>> CNN did a report recently that found proponents of health care legislation

What's a proponent of health care favored by the President, as if that is some radical plan ... to force everyone to buy health care, but not regulate the price, yeah, or f-ing course. This is the kind of manipulative BS we see from every angle in order to protect those 3% profits, how ironic.
Dec 30, 2009 | recommended: 3 | comments: 10
in reply to a comment by Larry M.
Bruce K. Jan 1, 2010, 12:19pm EST
Larry, maybe there were loopholes in the past, but not like today. The top marginal tax rate used to be about 90%. That would take care of greedy CEOs of today and put some money in the Federal coffers. Legislation used to be more thoughtful and Liberal, we never used to worship money like we do now.

We have never been as lawless, ie. unregulated as we are now, and the Republicans still want to make that more unregulated. It's crazy.
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Bruce K.
South SF Bay Area

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