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Category: Government

THE ASCENDANCY OF STUPID!

Published by Richard Kimball on October 17, 2022

First, they took my civics education.

Then they de-funded my school.

Then uneducated, ignorant of democracy and unable to think critically, I was set free and found my faith in what I wanted to believe rather than what I should believe.

Once American education was the envy of all, our student performance second to none, our skill at self-governance a beacon the world over.

The attack on education, truth, and the facts is no accident. The dimmer we become, the more malleable we are.

The only remedy is to sustain at least one source for trusted facts that any citizen can turn to in confidence — facts without interpretation and protected from influence.

VoteSmart.org is exactly that, but requires a people’s will to use it, believe in it, and to support it. A source to which all conservative and liberal citizens can turn in confidence for the facts and the truth that is dependent upon those facts. Without that, we cannot sustain an ability to self-govern successfully.

It can be done, ensuring its integrity with an elected board balanced between the multiple sides on major national issues. Supported without dependence upon self-serving interests and operated by those willing to commit their time and expertise in the national interest and not financial self-gain.

That is what VoteSmart.org strived to be. As a young man, my boss once said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” Without VoteSmart.org or an organization very much like it, it is not the meek that shall inherit the earth, but the stupid.

Richard Kimball

Vote Smart Founder

Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org

or

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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ARE YOU PEOPLE?

Published by Richard Kimball on October 10, 2022

You decide on November 8th.

If you are not white, male and don’t own land, you can’t vote. That is the way we introduced self-governance to the world, with most people still not being actual people, as in “…of the people, by the people, for the people.” Women and most non-whites were not really defined as people in that wonderous American phrase.

It wasn’t till 1920 that most Americans would finally be considered people and allowed to vote — but not all, including the first Americans, native Americans. For those that were first, one or maybe two gazillion years before anyone else — well for them, it would take a tad longer.

The freedom and the liberty that comes with that vote, has been a slow, torturous march for most of us, with barriers erected by the people, against those not yet people, all along the way.

Your vote is your personal hard chunk of power, fought for through the suffering of others, and finally giving you a say. If you do not use it, your power doesn’t go away, it simply marches over and adds its power to those other chunks that are used, by the people who get to order you about.

VOTE !

And use VoteSmart.org to vote smart.

Richard Kimball

Vote Smart Founder

Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org

or

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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PATSY I AM AND SO, ARE YOU?

Published by Richard Kimball on September 25, 2022

You Must Be Rich

“If you’re young and conservative, you have no heart. If you’re old and liberal, you have no brain,” a favorite Churchill quote and spot-on description of me.

For me the money I earn is a super-efficient warehouse where I can store my future needs, food, clothes, shelters, etc. And the taking of it (taxes) a levy I willingly pay for the items I need but cannot afford on my own: roads, schools, protection from fire, crime, war, and yes, even my desire to assist those amongst us in trouble who cannot take care of themselves.

But why should you be forced to give what you earn to those choosing not to earn or those taking and not repaying? Those that demonstrate no sense of responsibility or value you. There are all kinds of bailouts, some given before they’re needed or requested. You experience and pay for bailouts of banks, insurance companies, the health care industry, military contractors, right on down to students, the poor and even a member of my own family.

Expectations of paying back, performing better or even a thanks are not required but should be. Requiring those we give to, to participate in the giving or to pay back as their conditions advance does not sell well, as you have seen with all that “Too Big to Fail” nonsense, but it also applies to some you may not have thought of. I remember one of my old bosses, Sen. Daniel Moynihan of New York saying that millions would be plunged into poverty, and we would “find children sleeping on grates,” back in 1993 if we changed welfare programs that simply gave away cash into less generous, time-limited, work-required programs. It is hard to argue that that switch had nothing to do with child poverty and family welfare rolls being cut in half.

Politicians — Democrats and Republicans — all like bailouts for their friends or those they hope will become friends, blue collar or white. It is just easy to spend other people’s money and amongst politicians your money is just other people’s money.

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org

or

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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AMERICA’S LONGEST MEETING

Published by Richard Kimball on September 18, 2022

VoteSmart.org

It was America’s longest private meeting. With the windows and doors closed they argued for months in the gluey heat of a Philadelphia summer. Then on September 17th the doors and window were finally opened.

When a Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy,” Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

F

Perhaps more clearly than ever, every single American adult will be asked to respond to Dr. Franklin when they stand alone in that voting booth this November 8th.

Dr. Franklin feared what all the founders feared, and what every thinking American now fears. Are the institutions the Founders and a dozen other successive American generations made possible and built these past 244 years all to be swept away? Is every citizen to be allowed to vote? Is all future opposition journalism to be oppressed? Is every fact to be cloaked and skewered?

Your knowing what you are doing on that first Tuesday in November is what Dr. Franklin and all who have championed freedom for over two centuries bet on. It will be time for you to stand and answer.

Please use VoteSmart.org to get the facts, the truth and defend yourself and your fellow citizens.

Richard Kimball

Vote Smart Founder

Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org

or

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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To all the lovely people: Are they coming for you?

Published by Richard Kimball on September 8, 2022

IGNORANT AND LETHAL

I think the world of compassionate people, often value their judgment more than my own, even as I disagree. The other day one let me know that saying bad things about evil people would not help heal.

Where is that point of departure, when a lovely person, smart, kind and gentle, decides, “OK, I gotta fight.”?

If it is not when they bludgeon YOUR capitol, YOUR institutions, YOUR schools, YOUR books, science and the facts, can that point ever come? Does it even come when they come for you?

Richard Kimball

Vote Smart Founder

Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org

or

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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WILL WE HAVE FUN AGAIN?

Published by Richard Kimball on August 27, 2022
Image result for free pictures of children having fun

For our children yes. For us maybe no.

We are all products of the sources of information we choose to absorb, and those sources have latched on to what every other species on earth has always known — fear sells.

The basic difference is that no other species would ever think of screaming fire in a theater if there were not an actual fire.

Pick your source for information, doesn’t much matter which one, watch for a bit and see if they do not tell you to be worried about stuff, often with who to blame or even hate. That is what sells. That is what builds audience and cash. We are all simply wired to pay attention, to tune in when someone says, “WATCH OUT!”

Hell, information sources have become so fear mongering that Americans can no longer agree on what is right and what is wrong.

Institutions that could only have been created by a free people for protection and justice, like the Congress, the FBI and Justice Department, are now seen as enemies by millions of Americans. If abandoned, replaced by what, by whom?

A leader of the French revolution famously said, “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” In today’s vernacular it might be put: “I cultivated a mob and will follow no matter where they go.”

No, there is not much fun in it, but as in all past American epochs, and I believe with this one, someone in the mob will eventually stop, then someone else, then others and a sense of common commitment to each other will win the day. It is then that sensible leaders both conservative and liberal will be exposed and politically survive, stand on solid common ground, and turn us back to reason.

Richard Kimball

Vote Smart Founder

Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org

or

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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Old vs New

Published by Richard Kimball on August 11, 2022
smoke filled room

                                VS

Big Lie

” I miss seedy old politicians who met in smoke-filled rooms but wouldn’t tell really “BIG LIES.”

Richard Kimball

Blog Richardkimball.org

Richard Kimball Medium.com

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YOU-WILL-NEVER-AGREE

Published by Richard Kimball on August 3, 2022

 DISAGREEMENTS 

 Few things make one more miserable than that moment in an argument when you realize you’re wrong!   

  For that reason, two words have never been heard in debate, “I am wrong.”

  Once you invest in a point of view, you’re done.  In fact, research has shown that exposing people to contradictory facts only intensified their existing beliefs, making them more inflexible.  You see this reality with participants on January 6th, opposing sides on the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, at your job and in your personal life.

 If you want to be persuasive and impact someone’s misguided beliefs, you’d better start by agreeing with them.  Only that approach can expose any unfrozen receptors and open potential for adjustment.

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AND THE DEMOCRAT MONEY GOES TO ?

Published by Richard Kimball on July 29, 2022
guns
Pro-abortion
Election Deniers

        GUNS, PRO-LIFERS, AND ELECTION DENIERS

  Millions being spent by Democrats to support election fraud, pro-life and Uzi-supporting Republican candidates?

                                   W T F !

 Of course, they do it in the hopes of getting unelectables as Republican nominees in the general election, or at least get more viable Republican challengers to burn through their cash defending themselves before facing a Democrat.

 They are having so much fun with voters it gives them the giggles.    You know, the same giggles Trump gets when surrounded by evangelicals he privately says are full of shit, scammers, and hustlers.

 These Democrat 2.0 versions of Trump deserve an equal amount of your derision.  If you do not think so, just imagine if this idea gets legs.  Democrats funding extremist Republicans and Republicans funding extremist Democrats.  That is a world you DO NOT want to see or in the end, live in.  

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    O M G > G O P> W T F

Published by Richard Kimball on July 12, 2022

7/12/22

Saw this little bumper sticker:

    O M G >    G O P>    W T F

  Wasn’t sure what it meant until someone steeped in this new language explained.  It was then that I

LOL.

 It made me think of those I had worked with, those Republicans I most respected in politics both in the Congress and state legislature.

 I am not sure why I always got along better with Republican colleagues than my fellow Democratic ones, but it was always so.  None were or ever would have been Trump-pets, and those that have passed on are certainly smoldering in their graves over that despicable, traitorous ass.

 They were simply conservative, came to their judgements by experience and thinking often different than my own, and most notably, always fun, challenging, and educational to talk with. The result: contentions could be, if not resolved, at least adjusted, and advance toward a common goal.

 GTG

 Richard Kimball, Vote Smart

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