|
Post by michaelw on Aug 15, 2021 9:33:57 GMT -5
I'm feeling pretty vindicated, cos I have a friend who insists that everything on Snopes is made up out of thin air, and now I have proof that that's not the case. Hahahahaha.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Aug 13, 2021 14:58:31 GMT -5
I'm not sure how I feel about this. It's an awful situation for the Afghan people. On the other hand, the Afghan government has had nearly 20 freaking years to get their shit together instead of just sitting back and letting us do everything for them. I had a friend in the Army who was deployed out there over a decade ago and was telling me that their soldiers were lazy as shit, never wanted to participate in any of the training drills (part of his job was to help train their troops to defend their own country), and would mostly just stand around and smoke while the US troops did all the work. So, hearing that from him and then seeing this kind of news...I'm not surprised at all and part of me doesn't feel much sympathy (at least for the failures of the Afghan government and military). I've heard similar things about the Afghan army, although it does seem somewhat out of character. Historically, Afghans have been good fighters. (Actually more than merely good, if you think about what they were up against w/ the Soviet Union.) But maybe all the good ones of the current generation are w/ the Taliban at this point? I really don't know. But it does feel like the government and security forces are falling like dominos. And maybe they do carry a lot of the blame for that, but of course, it kind of goes without saying that a lot of additional people are going to suffer because of this, including people who haven't actually done anything wrong. So to my mind, no matter what angle I try to look at all this from, it's hard for me to see these events as anything but a massive, massive tragedy.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Aug 6, 2021 23:28:10 GMT -5
FWIW, I think the Feds should provide a passport to any citizen who applies for one at no cost, whatsoever. In my mind, that service is a primary duty of the Federal Government; it's why we pay taxes. I agree on that, for sure.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Aug 6, 2021 23:20:04 GMT -5
I'm sure that's the case for some people and I'd be there are likely dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other people out there with anecdotes similar to yours. But I'm not convinced that they're a statistically significant proportion of the population. Well, there may not be a massive number of people w/ similar anecdotes, I agree, but I think the overall number of US adults without a current, up-to-date, government-issued ID is still pretty significant. Yeah that's a pretty good piece, IMO. And I think it may be true that voter ID laws don't have much of an impact, in the sense of actually swinging elections one way or the other. Of course, that could be true about voter fraud as well, don't you think? The ending to that piece (quoted below) was something I really think is crucial, though... Lopez gets it, IMO. There's nothing wrong with trying to understand the impact of various laws, but that doesn't mean impact is the only important metric here. If there are people trying to put their thumb on the scale, but they aren't very competent at doing it, I am not sure I see the latter as really compensating for the former, you know? (And, FWIW, Georgia actually does require a government-issued photo ID to vote, yet a lot of people on the right seem convinced that their election was still full of fraud. OTOH, in Kentucky, you can vote using a social security card, and apparently in Ohio you can use a utility bill. Make of that what you will. )
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Aug 6, 2021 16:59:29 GMT -5
Showing ID isn't a hardship, whether you are white, black, brown, yellow, pink, purple or whatever. A personal story somewhat related to this topic: I recently came back to the states after living in Asia for a number of years. I'm now living in Virginia, and I had an appointment earlier this week to go to the DMV to get a state ID. I thought I had all the required documents I needed, but the one thing I didn't have was my previous ID, which I had lost at some point while living abroad. It turned out that even though I had a zillion different documents, they claimed they couldn't issue me an ID without me turning in the previous one I had. Apparently, if my previous ID had been issued in Virginia, they could simply look me up in their database, but they couldn't since the ID had been issued in Delaware. When I asked what my options were, they told me--and I'm not making this up--that the only solution was to get another ID issued from Delaware, which I could then turn over to the DMV in Virginia. (Whether this would even be possible isn't clear to me, especially if it would require me to re-establish residency in Delaware. At the very least, it would require me to go back to Delaware in person, which would be a pretty major burden for me since I don't drive and also don't really have any other reason to go there.) So in the end, I just gave up. Now, technically, I'm not a person without an ID, because I do have a passport. But I do know that a lot of people don't have a passport. And after this experience, I don't find it all that hard to believe that--at least in some cases--it's pretty difficult to get an ID. All it really requires is a belief that government agencies are--at least sometimes--a Kafkaesque nightmare of bureaucracy, which I certainly feel is often the case. (Another example that I've read about but haven't personally experienced: in some states, apparently you need a birth certificate to get a state ID, and you also need an ID in order to obtain your birth certificate if you don't already have it, which sounds to me like a vicious circle.) Whether all of this should indicate that Voter ID laws are problematic, I'm not sure. In theory, I suppose they could just make it easier to get an ID. But in practice, that may never happen. Just my thoughts after this frustrating experience.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Aug 6, 2021 5:22:46 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Jul 30, 2021 12:11:29 GMT -5
He had never heard of the Uyghurs. I told him they were Muslims who are being persecuted by Chinese Communists. Jeez, imagine needing this to be explained to you.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Jul 29, 2021 8:28:36 GMT -5
LOL. That's pretty funny.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Jul 23, 2021 7:18:01 GMT -5
Well, I'll admit that his answer was a bit dickish and impolitic. But, having also spent over 20 years in the restaurant industry, at all levels (including running several restaurants), I can tell you that any restauranteur that has a clue what they're doing can absolutely afford to pay their staff livable wages, including paying their wait staff much more than $2.13/hour (Herman Cain's fault). If they can't, then they deserve to go out of business for being shitty, greedy bosses. It wasn't the wisest thing, politically, for Biden to say, but there's absolutely a certain truth to it. I know a lot of people from the restaurant industry who did all they could during the pandemic to get out of it in the hopes of never having to return. And, given how thankless, low-paying, and shitty that industry is, I don't blame them at all. I did the same thing. Yeah, I had a similar reaction. The comments seemed a bit ham-fisted (what a shock, coming from Biden, right?), but the basic idea here is right, IMO. A lot of business owners will go on and on about how wonderful competition is.... until they have to compete for labor, of course.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Jul 12, 2021 11:52:31 GMT -5
Some people say English fans are acting terribly because their team lost, but it turns out, this is incredibly misleading and unfair. In reality, they act terribly even when they win... www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-57779541
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Jul 7, 2021 21:48:15 GMT -5
Not sure assassinating Moise is going to be a great move, but he was insanely corrupt, IMO. I'm disappointed that the US ever supported him, to be honest. How do we know they aren't the ones who did it? *cue The X-Files theme* It was probably Ron DeSantis.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Jul 7, 2021 10:17:33 GMT -5
Not sure assassinating Moise is going to be a great move, but he was insanely corrupt, IMO. I'm disappointed that the US ever supported him, to be honest.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Jul 6, 2021 10:38:34 GMT -5
Funny how it ends up the most outraged are often the most ignorant. Truth.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Jul 1, 2021 8:06:03 GMT -5
Yeah, I think for the most part, I can agree w/ that. But I also see a difference between the cases of Tyson and someone like Friedman. In Friedman's case, he sucks even within his own supposed field of expertise (politics). But w/ Tyson, even though he might not be a great philosopher or cultural critic, he's still pretty good at physics. And I still think I can probably learn a thing or two from him about physics, whereas I don't expect to learn much at all about politics from Friedman. JMO, of course.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Jun 30, 2021 20:09:55 GMT -5
That's understandable. However, it doesn't apply to me or my posts above because I never said anything close to that. Right. That was from the OP.
|
|