Free Republic

Massacred? Hardly. Lots of video and pictures of Gaza terrorists individually killing and maiming children and babies. There are no videos and pictures of Israelis individually killing and maiming children and babies, because it doesn't happen. Gaza residents are baby killers, often of their own kind. No comparison to compassionate Israelis.

San Jose has grown tremendously in the last 40 years, and has gotten all the problems of a big city. My older sister lived there back in the 1980s when it was quiet, in a rural neighborhood away from downtown. Then explosive growth happened, with a light rail train built a block away. She and her husband moved. One of my daughters lived in San Jose, in the Willow Glen neighborhood, in the early 2000s. Middle class neighborhood, then crime started encroaching from other areas. She moved when gangs started problems.

Now many areas of San Jose are experiencing homeless tents and shantytowns, and there is rampant crime downtown. A lot of stores are boarded up and vacant. Not as bad as Oakland, but give it time. I would not want to live there.

That judge is going to reap what he sows, when others seek to take action against leftist judges across the nation. This cannot continue.

One of my favorite memories of "All in the Family" was where Archie Bunker said he could solve airline terrorism instantly. "Just allow all passengers to board the plane with guns, no terrorist would dare take over the plane.", or something to that effect. Makes sense when you think about the 2nd Amendment and how that keeps criminals in check.

For sure, but that was long before Islam came along. Islam has suppressed any creativity by Arabs since Mohammed, which allowed other cultures (Europeans, Americans, Jews) to leapfrog them in science and culture. Israeli Jews post thousands of scientific articles every year while the billion Arabs worldwide post maybe dozens. Islam kills creativity (as well as killing innocent lives).

Just really smart AI learning to drive like human A-H*les.

I was driving in San Francisco today, and saw numerous Waymo robotaxis. While behind one on the freeway going into the city, it appeared confused, slowing for no reason and hesitant. I quickly went around it. Should change the name to "Oh-No".

What does that matter? Islamic Arabs have suppressed Christians and other religions for centuries, to the point that not much that matters creatively is happening. Even to this day, Christian churches and historic sites are being vandalized in Arab countries. So no, I guess they don't count as long as the majority are Islamic. At a church today, while talking to a woman friend she told me how she was suppressed by her father (muslim), forced to read the koran and not allowed to express herself, while her mother (Catholic) gave her freedom and secretly baptized her - friend is American born here. She cried telling me her story.

Oh yeah, the WTC towers - not built by them, but busted to debris.

Yes. I got my Apple II PC in 1977. They were advertised as "PC" back then. All of 4K RAM memory, of which only 2K was usable by me for programs, written to cassette tape. I soon added floppy drives, more memory, then a hard drive and modified the motherboard with my own code in EPROMS. I still have that machine, upgraded to run on a flash drive with thousands of programs built in, with speech and music processors, still runs.

But, for my jobs I needed IBM PCs, got a 80186 running 6MHz. Faster and better machines came out at a brisk pace in the early 1980s, and got cheaper. The thing I liked about early machines was the ability to easily manipulate the hardware and software, even controlling floppy and hard drives at the byte level (where you could defeat copy protection on hidden tracks). All concepts that matched the big machines I worked on (mainframe and mini computers).

All this was similar to automobiles. One of my hobbies was working on cars, where I rebuilt engines and transplanted them in different cars. Now, I won't touch modern engines with all the computer components in them. I still have a couple 1960's era cars that are very easy to work on, modified the intake ports and cams. I imagine that it is the same case with early EVs, easy for hobbyists to tinker with, before they become too complicated as they are improved. I have an EV that I've owned for 5 years, and might tinker with it when it gets older just for the heck of it.

I think you have a typo there. I was playing with NT (forerunner of Windows) and Windows 1 in the mid-1980s, soon after the Apple Mac came out and Microsoft copied the code. I later became an NT & Windows server admin in the early 1990s. Anyway, I still have bundles of those floppy disks and hated installing Windows, a painful experience (then there were all the OS updates to apply after the install).

New technology is like that, with hurdles to get over until the technology improves. What comes to mind, are the cranks people had to insert into cars in order to start their ICE engines (still present in some makes into the 1950s). My dad had problems with his first car, a Model T, and often had to do repairs on the side of the road. First adopters always hear "it'll never catch on".

That is a disaster for everyone, notably their re-election chances. ICE vehicles will always be necessary. The EV market is a niche market, and ICE will always prevail. There is room for both vehicles. Of course, the Democrat plan is to deprive citizens of private ownership of vehicles, in favor of public transportation. That's why we need to stop election of Democrats, they're out to destroy our nation and our constitutional rights to..., well, anything we like.

I do own Tesla stock but no Tesla car. I would recommend buying some at these low dip prices, because the rebound is happening. The articles authors would have one believe Tesla is in trouble. As if growing $1.13 billion in profits is a "problem"! They make a profit on every EV they make, while GM, Ford and others lose thousands on each EV produced. Last I heard, they're losing $132,000 on each EV. Tesla is able to cut prices because they still have healthy profits on each EV.

They're breaking out the "slump" late this year, with the ramp-up of factories and several new factories getting built soon. And it isn't just about cars, it is Jetsons-level technology that they're working on which haters fail to observe.

Wrong choice of names for the bill, which is what Democrats do in order to trick gullible Americans into supporting the bill. $9 billion for Hamas. It should be called the Hamas-Israel Strife bill, because it fosters strife with no end to hostilities from Hamas. If any aid is given, it should strictly be given to Israel! Giving to Gaza/Hamas is pure stupidity.

Normally, before a dump is cleaned up, you remove the people. Plenty of land in surrounding Arab countries to take them in, and use their billions of petrol dollars to clean up the dump and make it a paradise. But that will never happen. Residents of dumps are like cockroaches. Squash them, kill them, vaporize them, whatever it takes so the dump won't spread.

Old Joe Biden is enjoying the free assisted living Marine escorts, speech therapists for his teleprompter speeches, and ice cream while getting his diapers changed. Of course he thinks everything is great.

We really liked First Republic up to a couple decades ago. We were earning up to 9 percent on CDs there, better than other banks in the SF Bay Area. Such a difference from the less than 1 percent a decade ago, before the bounce upwards in interest rates lately. JPMorgan is gobbling up a lot of banks.

I've seen things, and have been able to ignore them. I've been to outdoor rock concerts in the park where there were topless women, not a problem. But what I couldn't ignore was the sight of a near-naked woman being tossed in the air by two men, and she was wearing a feminine hygiene thong belt. That is something I can never un-see.

I also read that about Japan. Lots of vacant homes outside the cities. Government begging people to come and get them for almost free. But... you have to spend a lot of money to bring them up to new standards and it is too expensive.

Investigate thoroughly regarding Trusts. We got a living trust on our home, so if we die it will pass to our adult kids. But we had some regrets about doing it. My wife's mom had a trust on her property, and my wife and a brother were trustees. Became a nightmare for my wife to handle, to the point where a few of her siblings unfairly took legal action against her. Every point of the way, she could not do anything without dragging her elderly mother along to sign, even though wife had trustee authority. Our lawyer successfully challenged her siblings and their lawyer, got them to drop any legal challenge. Mother-in-law passed 4 years ago, and my wife settled the estate, glad to no longer have to deal with a few siblings. You would be surprised how siblings can turn on each other when inheritances loom.

Alternatively, one of our friends added their adult sons onto the house title, thinking if she dies it will automatically go to them. One son moved out and married, the other remains there. And the two sons are fighting over who gets the house. Our friend can't kick out the adult son living there, because he says he owns the house since his name is on the title. Oops. Same situation for a couple other friends.

No easy answers. Thankfully our adult kids have their own homes and families and get along very well, no problems. If we die, they'll sell our home and split whatever is left. We've been giving what we can to them, all along, because we know we can't take it with us when we die.

Hope it works out for you, seriously. Here in California, they changed the law regarding passing on your home to adult kids when you pass. The property gets re-appraised at current property tax values - a big hurdle for adult kids to pay. The exception is if the kids continue living in the home after your passing. If you have two kids, one of them will lose out. California is after all your money if you pass. Don't know about other states, but some follow what California does in order to get your money.