[Pops]

So, as an advanced economy, we face other economies in what fashion? Do we always compete?

David Ricardo, I think, is the one who suggested the importance of trade between partners who each had something they did well, that the other didn't, that sort of thing. Then, the whole world can, theoretically, at least, self-assemble according to markets.

Very good. Yes comparative advantage works out great when there is a candle maker, a baker and a butcher in town. And it works out good when the rancher runs his beef on good upland pasture and the farmer raises wheat on the bottomland black dirt.

But now we have 75% of chips made in Taiwan and half by one company. The result of such a monopoly is the current inflexibility shortage and I assume monopoly pricing that is affecting a large number of other industries.

I don't have a guess how China will turn out. There are pitfalls to a controlled economy but as is obvious now, there are great advantages as well. China is kicking our butts on everything from solar panels to rare earths to steel pipe. China produces ten times the steel we do! Ask them if they care if they aren't playing fair, LOL US General so-n-so said the other day the Chinese hypersonic missile is a sputnik moment—or it would be if our government hadn't shined the whole episode.

And by putting it that way, I suggest it is absurd to say that it applies to right wing panic. They are not actually being stripped of their dignity, but they do perceive they are.

As for old, white, rural evangelicals and their angst, they are entirely correct in assuming the culture is leaving them behind and is ready for them to be gone. None other than Dickey Nixon said, paraphrasing: "If Goldwater wins the Republicans will become a white man's party." Unfortunately for them, white people are no longer 80% of the country. This incarnation just can't last long, though I'm afraid they will do more damage before it is over. The corporate sponsorship of the party went just a little too far in ignoring the blue collar folks (not to mention the Ds turning their backs as well) and they revolted. Just like on 1/6/21 they haven't figured out what to do now that they've knocked down the barricade. As well, they haven't figured out that the last guy who was gonna get back at "those" fat cats gave them and himself a huge payout at their expense, perhaps they just don't care.

I think at most there will continue the low level violence. The anti-democratic urge is more concerning. Not sure how many that tell pollsters they think the election was crooked actually believe it, but the gullibility and willingness to suspend their common sense in service of their wounded pride is kinda breathtaking.
.

[ROCKMAN]

Choking??? LMFAO. The USA is the leading consumption nation per capita on the planet.

God help me!!! I'm out of Grey Poupon Dijon mustard. Oh, wait...I just found all needed on Amazon. LOL.

[evilgenius]

I know that the Evangelicals absolutely believe that the election was stolen. They are the 20% in a very disturbing scenario for America, wherein we have one of those situations where 80% of a company's business comes from 20% of their customers. The only direction they can go, at a certain point is toward revolution.

Now, they could reserve that impulse for the coming wrangle over abortion, at the Supreme Court level. The rest of us, the 80%, are we going to just sit there and let them take something like the world of abortion rights away from us? The 20% have the numbers.

There doesn't appear to be any way to stop them, other than to appeal to their sense of humanity, which they have directed at the fuzzy being in the whole argument, the one that could even be said to be begging. There is a whole other being that they reduce to begging, for control over what happens to her own body.

She is most often desperate. It takes more than lies to sustain her. And she has to be sustained for a very long time, if their version of the future is going to unfold. I suppose, in their deepest imaginations, they think they can get away with affording the level of support they really must provide by changing the nature of society, such that they can cluster those women together, in some nostalgic way. I smell Puritans. I sense a theft of freedom by those who most often stand up on soapboxes and complain about how much their own freedom is always being threatened.

They will not accept, casting it off as too expensive, any real approach that offers unmitigated support to single mothers. Number one, it makes for a cohesive group, all of those single mothers, who vote together, and are not likely to vote for them. It gets at the issue of how people feel that everybody has to earn a place in this world.

They ignore their own inner critics, who necessarily must say to them from time to time that they are crap because they tend to shun all criticism. That's what it means to have your view of the world handed to you rather than figured out.

But they are the attentive audience of their Evangelical masters, who have no qualms about lying to them. They have no qualms about lying to themselves, why should they have any qualms when speaking to the 80%? Their story comes with some sort of stiff necked refusal to enter into a relationship with uncertainty. They like a package that shows their best side to the critics, and condemns all others to the pits of hell. Even God has to dance, to say anything to them.

[JuanP]

There doesn't appear to be any way to stop them, other than to appeal to their sense of humanity …

Thanks for my first laugh of the day!

[Pops]

I know that the Evangelicals absolutely believe that the election was stolen.

If you watched Man In The High Castle you might remember the little coffee klatch where the nazi wives were siting around talking about race, etc. Our heroine was suitably disgusted. The ladies seemed "good people" except for the casual hatred.

I was born and raised in a Southern Baptist extended family, Deacons and Pastors and Sunday School teachers. Sunday dinner was just like that coffee klatch, all sweet talk and honey with the occasional, casual, and to me, jarring ugliness.

They, after all, called themselves "Southern" Baptists for a reason. Christianity could be a loving, caring nurturing belief if one follows Jesus, and many of my "church aunts" were the sweetest things you can imagine. But it is also was founded under oppression, no surprise why white grievance finds a home there. Baptists are evangelicals because they feel empowered and compelled by their rightness to convert others to their thinking. The proof of their faith is the exclusion of any competing thought.

Unfortunately that absolute belief in their own rightness in the most important realm almost inevitably leads to their conviction that they are right in every other realm, in every other question. All one needs to do is listen to a believer say they were "called" to their job, hobby, mate. Or that they prayed over a trivial decision and received guidance directly from the creator. Or how it was god's plan their relative survived some disaster where others died. Talk about the ultimate plea to authority! As well, it leads to the siege mentality and the very real belief that "you're either with us or against us."

I'm ambivalent on the question of abortion. Many "godly" people still think of unplanned pregnancy as a shameful retribution for sin. They ostensibly revere "life" while they are the first to call for the death penalty and the last to support parents or poor kids. Many surprise babies have wonderful lives and are a joy to reluctant parents. Many are miserable. The last thing a woman needs is me to decide for her—of course I don't believe I have a direct line to the ultimate.

We should start with free education and universal free contraception. 8 (billion) is enough.

[evilgenius]

I believe that if one attains to one's highest mindset, the one that doesn't have any more questions, one will realize that there are others.

Having come to that realization, I offer that it is not an abundance of rules, but an understanding of right of way that should direct men's understanding about right and wrong. The only thing we need, aside, to consider is how large the suffrage? Right of way is about standing. Some arguments are within families. The kind I am alluding to are society wide. I say every human being has standing.

But that doesn't mean that the fetus has right of way over its mother's body. Another thing about right of way that is important is that it is transferable. Through the process of love, a mother can transfer right of way to her child. Understood that way, you can see why it would still be murder for someone to assault a pregnant woman, killing her child, if she wanted it, but not if she didn't.

[evilgenius]

There doesn't appear to be any way to stop them, other than to appeal to their sense of humanity …

Thanks for my first laugh of the day!

I know. It's terrible, and that sort of terror is the secret of humor. That is why they say timing is so important. Using timing, the comedian can obfuscate the terror long enough to put it into a context where you have a choice to laugh or cry. As long as we don't actually smell the smoke of the ovens, our collective choice is almost always to laugh. The same can be said for facing uncertainty. Some people are brave, they laugh in the face of that. I tend to cry because I feel that is more authentic. People who casually know me might think I was happy, since I smile all of the time. They don't know, that's almost a Zen thing.

[AdamB]

Baptists are evangelicals because they feel empowered and compelled by their rightness to convert others to their thinking. The proof of their faith is the exclusion of any competing thought.

Boy does that sound eerily similar to the peak oil circa 2005. A cult or religion was about the best description of blind faith in geologic ignorance as it gets.

We should start with free education and universal free contraception. 8 (billion) is enough.

And compulsory education in resource economics.

[noobtube]

I would be satisfied if the United States just taught its own history.

The typical 'MURICAN has no idea of the massacres, murders, and atrocities committed in the United States against the helpless, the defenseless, and the weak. Yet, these same dummies will talk about how FREE and OPEN the country is.

Personally, the South should have been demolised after 1865. All the traitors should have been hung, their families scattered to the wind and doomed to wander the land penniless and without pity.

They should have at least gotten the Nazi treatment. But, oh no. Can't have the scumbags who tried to destroy America getting what they deserved. And, these Southern scumbags are defiling the country to this day, with their idiotic nonsense.

For this reason, I believe America is doomed to a disastrous outcome, despite all of its natural wealth and beauty. When you have walking southern trash around, they will screw up anything good the country tries to produce.

[JuanP]

There doesn't appear to be any way to stop them, other than to appeal to their sense of humanity …

Thanks for my first laugh of the day!

I know. It's terrible, and that sort of terror is the secret of humor. That is why they say timing is so important. Using timing, the comedian can obfuscate the terror long enough to put it into a context where you have a choice to laugh or cry. As long as we don't actually smell the smoke of the ovens, our collective choice is almost always to laugh. The same can be said for facing uncertainty. Some people are brave, they laugh in the face of that. I tend to cry because I feel that is more authentic. People who casually know me might think I was happy, since I smile all of the time. They don't know, that's almost a Zen thing.

Same here!

[mousepad]

Baptists are evangelicals because they feel empowered and compelled by their rightness to convert others to their thinking.

What a stupid statement. Practically everybody tries to "convert" others to their way of thinking, including you.