Recent Comments

1. 2 days ago on For Better or For Worse

   The statement was “intellectual equal,” which does not just mean equal intelligence. A more important kind of intellectual equality is having the same level of interest in knowledge and mental exercise. Choosing to expend the time, money, and effort to get a degree says a lot about how much you value those things. A college graduate is much more likely to enjoy reading, visiting museums, playing bridge, and discussing politics, history, and science.

2. 6 days ago on Doonesbury

   “Overturned” is the wrong verb to use for keeping the existing certified results. “Circumvented” would be a better word to use for preventing better results from being developed. Would you call it overturning a guilty verdict if a judge accepts the jury’s not guilty verdict, just because the jury was wrong?

   Also, it doesn’t matter. The vote was so close, either candidate was a perfectly reasonably choice. That’s why election law accepts that elections won’t be perfect; it’s more important to have a clear winner in a short time than to be accurate within a few hundredths of a percent.

   I did misremember the results of the various scopes of recount. The recount that was requested, and was before the court, would have resulted in a Bush win, but various other scopes that were not in legal question, like statewide as you said, would not.

3. 7 days ago on Doonesbury

   Overrode the election? Let’s review the actual history: Scotus ordered that the results of the election, the only results that existed at the time, be used. It’s hard to call that overriding the election.

   The question before SCOTUS was whether votes should be recounted to possibly arrive at a different election result. Nobody had any reason to believe the existing count was wrong, they just thought it might be, since the count was so close.

   Still, the fact that it was exactly the Democrat judges who said Florida law required a recount and exactly the Republican judges who said Florida law prohibited a recount is really fishy.

   (FWIW, a team of journalists did the recount in question. It took a year, and they reported that the the result was the same: Bush won. And this was true under every possible interpretation of the ballots (partially punched out holes, etc.) and every suggested scope of recount except one).

   And, in spite of the fact that the people voted for Bush according to the law, it’s obvious that they meant to vote for Gore (there was a confusing ballot in Palm Beach County, Florida that caused enough accidental votes for Bush to swing the election).

4. 7 days ago on Baby Blues

   The fact that santa means saint is a coincidence; santa is for female saints. Also, it comes from Spanish or Italian, whereas Christmas traditions in the English speaking world do not come from Spain or Italy.

   “Santa Claus” is a corruption of the Dutch “Sinterklaas”, which itself is a corruption of the Dutch “Sint Nicolaas”, meaning “Saint Nicholas”.

5. 9 days ago on Monty

   It’s the illegal immigrants. Has to be. As if it weren’t enough that they commit all those crimes, eat our pets, smuggle in all the drugs and guns, and drain the Social Security fund.

6. 14 days ago on The Duplex

   I keep trying to figure out where the money for US healthcare is going, comparing it to the cost of the same care in other countries. I have a few conjectures, but that’s all they are.

   One theory is that US patients aren’t allowed to assume the risk of medical injury. If a patient is injured, he has to be compensated, so he has to pay for that risk (or to eliminate the risk) in the price of the service. Injuries can be worth a lot of money.

   Another theory is that liability rules are too complex, so lots of lawyers’ time is wasted trying figure out who is accountable for a medical injury.

7. 18 days ago on The Duplex

   It’s misleading to mention who was president at the time; it makes it sound like the budget was or was not balanced because of who the president was.

   People seem to have a great need to attribute everything that happens to them to a person, and the president seems to be only individual in focus.

8. 18 days ago on Baby Blues

   And some people seem to think that matters. It doesn’t.

9. 20 days ago on Doonesbury

   I really don’t get the impression that Donald Trump doesn’t think poorer people matter when he comes up with his ideas that hurt them.

   He just doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has no idea who will benefit and suffer when he does something like impose a tax on imported steel or borrow $1.7 trillion dollars and hand it out to people as tax cuts and rebates. Or lock anyone with certain passports out of the country. And he seems to be immune to people trying to teach him, as his own advisors often do.

10. 20 days ago on Doonesbury

    And if the Republicans follow through with Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate income tax on Social Security, that lowers payments for the lowest earners even more (and makes the insolvency two years earlier).

    (The income tax on Social Security is special: it is earmarked for funding Social Security and has different brackets — it’s designed to shift money from the retirees with the highest earning history, and thus highest SS benefits, to those with the lowest).

    But I suspect that was just an empty, pandering promise.