January 20, 2025

Tech bros as Thoreau? No really!

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/heather-cox-richardson-and-jen-rubin

And you look at the tech bros in the present. And, you know, it's funny, I just recently compared Peter Thiel to Thoreau, which, as I always say, will infuriate people. But, you know, when Henry David Thoreau is sitting there at Walden, looking at the men around him living what he calls lives of quiet desperation.
9:33
He is literally living on somebody else's land and he goes home for meals and somebody else does his laundry. And what he's looking at is he's looking at a community of people who are working together to construct a life for their families and their wives and their children and their husbands.
9:51
And he's looking at it as a young man who has no ties of anything, you know, no responsibilities and saying, boy, you know, you people are really pathetic. Look at me. I'm the one who knows how to live my life. And that just seems to me to be the tech bros in a nutshell.

January 26, 2024

Biden has been racking up some pretty good numbers lately.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/opinion/trump-biden-obamacare.html

As you may have noticed — as many Americans finally seem to be noticing — Biden has been racking up some pretty good numbers lately. Economic growth is still chugging along, defying widespread predictions of a recession, while unemployment remains near a 50-year low. Inflation, especially using the measure preferred by the Federal Reserve, has fallen close to the Fed’s target. The stock market keeps hitting new highs.
Oh, and murders have plummeted, with overall violent crime possibly hitting another 50-year low.

Biden deserves some political reward for this good news, given that Donald Trump and many in his party predicted economic and social disaster if he were elected, and that Republicans, in general, are still talking as if America were suffering from high inflation and runaway crime. (Trump, of course, has been dismissing the good jobs numbers as fake. Wait until he hears about falling crime.)

November 27, 2023

Maybe Biden's experience lets him make smart moves.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/27/biden-israel-bear-hug/

Lots of good points from Ms Rubin. There are no good choices, only bad, really bad and maybe a little bit good for now. There are no white hats as far as countries and leaders. Only ones with no sin are the civilians caught up in the war.

We do not control any other country’s actions, only influence them. The fighting has stopped, more aid is going in and hostages are being released. My assumption is that all the people demanding one or all of these will now be giving Biden tons of credit since he has been personally involved in the negotiations, and has made it a priority. Right….?

Yes it is for now but it is always for now when fighting stops. Really be honest and give credit whee it is due.