john b comments

my comment was cut off

Biden SAID he would choose a woman before he chose Harris, and he SAID he would choose a black woman for the supreme court before he chose Jackson. He didn't just CHOOSE these two women and leave us to infer that they were DEI hires; he SAID he would nominate them because they were women and black and then he CHOSE them. Is remembering that and reminding others 'DEI labeling'? Can you really condemn me as a racist for making a clear connection between what Biden said and did?

While writing about DEI here, I can't stop chuckling about the 'first openly gay transportation secretary' and what that might mean, and I'm not chuckling about what it might MEAN because I can't even guess?! Any guesses? What have we accomplished here?

remember how it used to work:

when an elected government is either losing a war or thinks the cost of the war is to high for it's people IT SURRENDERS.

then the fighting should stop, and then aid should pour in.

i bet this would still work.

There're the airplanes, and then there is the maintenance. Both of these airplanes took off from Japan. I imagine airplane maintenance, like car inspections, involves checking a lot of boxes, maybe boxes that don't seem much to matter to you or your immediate boss. So you end up checking the box without checking the thing the box refers to and then...

Rep. Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, said, “Since performance last night, I had to take a few more antidepressants than usual.”

how about gavin newsom and some california dreamin'?

i quickly read the headline and thought the story was about columbia UNIVERSITY. i was thinking 'whoa, i didn't know all that happened". what a world: it's possible, if only for a few seconds, to confuse a banana republic and an ivy league university!

i've noticed by shopping online from overseas sellers over the years that taxing by japan is erratic and inconsistent. of course, items purchased from sellers in japan is taxed properly, and the burden of seeing that this is done is on the japanese merchant. i guess the REAL purpose of this law is to get all taxes collected and make it the merchant's job, not the customs inspector's.

just curious, how does ebay work under this new scheme?

'A QR code is sent to climbers' smartphones to be scanned at the gate, which is halfway up the mountain in an area known as the fifth station, where the Yoshida trail begins. There are 10 stations on the mountain.'

i'm a lifelong hiker, and i've never had a phone. can the wall be scaled?

someone needs to say it: boycott!

i know it's easier to say than do.

the us immigration system is HORRIBLE for legal immigrants. it's slow, unresponsive, expensive. shoudn't a government of the people, by the people, and for the people fix that before it sets out to offer more?

when i look for what's 'fair and just', i look at how i, an american, am treated by japan immigration versus how my wife is treated by us immigration and the light is clear. maybe obvious, but should be said, if we were each illegal in the others country my wife would be much better off in the us.

It was decided in 2012 to move these Marines. Would the same decision be made today?

Might be a little controversial, but I bet Taiwan would welcome a US base.

and then try to plan for retirement by investing overseas. if you like sleeping, don't look into how the japanese government handles that.

Sorry to be obtuse, but I have two questions:

Why is it always 'far-right' and never 'right'?

Could someone provide a working definition of 'far-right'?

...and a short comment:

It seems to me that there is whole lot of space between the open borders of the far-left and the concentration camps of the far-right. Yes, this election is a move away from the former, but I think not at all meaningfully closer to the later.

"I'm not anti tourism but the idea of people being incapable of flying to Japan because some middleman will not make money on the fuel that goes in the plane amuses me. The accepted verson of Adam Smith's invisible hand of capitalism is supposed to solve problems like this."

I agree with the first sentence. I think the problem with the second sentence is thinking that Japan markets are classically capitalistic. I think in this case and in Japan in general the middleman is there and can't be removed, changed, or gotten around. If you showed up in Tokyo Bay with a fleet of tankers all carrying jet fuel that could solve the problem, I think the only way to get it into the stream would be to work through that same middleman. If rational self-interest operated here unhindered, just think about how different so many things would be!?

so, so let's review a little:

there's an akiya problem which can't be solved because each of these houses does have an owner.

the guvment wants to start the nuclear power plants, but the local guvments block them.

but now that a white paper says it should be done, all the cedar trees, most of which are on private property, are suddenly going to be cut down. on whose order? with whose consent? by whom? on whose nickel?

a commitee has declared 'let there be no cedar trees!' but the commitee doesn't have the power of God.

let them start on my land! (and please replant hinoki). alas, i don't have the power of God either.

'However, the restriction carries no penalty or fines.'

The good will sheepishly follow the rule, the bad will flout it. I am a foreigner possessed of completely different mental equipment, so I would drink in Shibuya without compunction. Absent a benign, all-pervasive ijime, Japanese society would degenerate. It doesn't, so we should be grateful but not bullied.

"Still, it has yet to achieve its main goals of dismantling Hamas and returning scores of hostages captured in Hamas' Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war."

Israel will have a tough time 'dismantling Hamas', but Hamas could capture some moral high ground by returning the hostages. The hostages can't be providing any real protection for Hamas. Releasing them would make Hamas look good in the eyes of the world. Why don't they do it? Wouldn't you if you were them?

I have two questions which have been nagging me. Maybe someone can help me:

Gaza’s Health Ministry does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its count. Is that because they don't see a distinction? Is it because Hamas does not see a distinction? Is it because the Gazans don't see a distinction?

I often see the number of women and children broken out. I can imagine a 6-foot-tall, 17-year-old bearded man carrying a machine gun with a giant necklace of bullets draped over his neck. Is he a child?

labor productivity has been flat for 20 years. it would be difficult and risky to pay workers much more.

Pardon me if I go slightly off-topic: Twice in the last month, once in Nagoya and once in Takayama, I saw signs outside stores in both Japanese and English saying 'don't come in the store unless you want to buy something'. The store in Takayama added 'children are not allowed in the store' This was a stationary (sic) store. This just seems wrong to me, maybe not illegal, but wrong. Where is Debito Arudou when you need him?

striking to get better redundancy terms...that might work

When I see this, I assume cell phone. My wife does the driving, so I can look around all I like. A lot of truck drivers are looking at the phone I can I can see in their hands or down at something that...I assume is a phone.