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It is Trump’s Fault that Two National Guard Members Were Shot in DC.

  By Tump

Trump is responsible for the shooting of two members of the national guard in multiple ways. —The national guard should not have been deployed to DC and —The Afghans should not have lost their special immigration status promised them at the end of the long war we fought on their country and —The shooter has legal status granted by the Trump administration. Continue reading

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Waymo in Philly?

  By Science and Technology

Saw a Waymo self-driving car here today. Philly is just the wrong place for this technology. It will have no idea how to handle our freedom from traffic laws. Tesla’s partial self-driving is now fine on the highways. It only tries to kill me about once every ten days. It is ok in the suburbs and the outer neighborhoods. I have to take over 3 times every 10 miles to stop it from doing something dumb and dangerous. I’ve never tried it in Center City and have no intention of doing so until it gets a lot better. Continue reading

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IGNORE THE NAYSAYERS–COME OUT TO NO KINGS PROTEST

  By Uncategorized

I have seen some folks on Facebook with a fairly large following making utterly wrong and irresponsible claims about the No Kings protests. They are wrong. Our country, our future, our kids,  need you to come out tomorrow.  Find an event here. 1. I don’t there is much danger to attending the protests. I see absolutely no evidence that Trump intends to invoke the insurrection act and send either national guard units or federal troops anywhere that are not already there. The federal government can’t do this quickly and without warning. As far as I know,  federal government does not have Star Trek style transporters than can move thousands  of troops into a city without there being obvious movements that we and the press will see. As long as the protests are peaceful, I don’t think either the police in most places let alone federal forces will interfere with them.… Continue reading

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Trump’s Greatest Threat is to the Idea of Civilized Life Itself

  By Fascism, Philosophy, Political philosophy, Racial Justice, White Supremacy and Structural Racism

To understand Trump and his politics and what we have to do to stop it, we must recognize that he is ultimately a threat to the central idea of human political and social achievement, that human beings do better when everyone is included and our aim is the collective good of all. Let me start with one example, and then return to this general point. There is an interesting and complicated discussion in Machiavelli’s Discourses about whether it is better, when one is in a conflict with another state, to fight abroad or at home. There is a lot to be said on both sides when it comes to conventional war. But when it comes to dealing with infectious disease, isn’t it obvious that it’s better to fight abroad? That is, we protect our own citizens from infectious diseases by helping other countries contain outbreaks of them in their own… Continue reading