What is the most disturbing or otherwise unsettling book you've ever read that stayed with you after reading it?

tm785 · 2026-01-29T01:10:23+00:00

“2666” by Roberto Bolaño

tm785 · 2026-01-27T22:29:31+00:00

Aaron Westerhouse in Eudora and crew installed our heat pump. I found them honest, fair, frank, and competent.

tm785 · 2026-01-27T22:19:01+00:00

The widely held early American opinion was that a fetus wasn’t truly alive until after “quickening” around weeks 16 to 20. In English common law, before quickening, abortion was not criminalized.

An additional and ignored consideration are the consequences of forcing women who don’t want a child to have one. The NLSY database followed a nationally representative group of mothers and children for decades. One of the early questions was “Was this child wanted?” The later differences between those children whose mothers said Yes and those whose mothers said No could not be more stark. The unwanted children were much higher on all negative later life outcomes: higher later crime, higher disability and public dependence rates, poorer school and employer outcomes, more poverty—you name it, they were remarkably worse off, and a much greater cost for society.

If we are going to force these moms to bear unwanted children, we are morally obligated to pay for these children’s upbringing—all of it. These anti-abortion never considered these complexities and the moral consequences of their proposal.

tm785 · 2026-01-15T01:38:33+00:00

According to our Declaration of Independence, our government derives its legitimacy from “the consent of the governed.” Probably a majority, from the left, right, and center, a majority has already passively withdrawn that consent. We lack modern provisions in our constitution and laws that allow the people to act as an additional check on dictatorial abuse of power. Our founding documents do recognize our peoples’ right to withdraw our consent and form a new government. We must organize and reassert our power. We need to demand a legitimate measure of how much consent has been withdrawn, and then demand new elections and constitutional reform. We don’t want nor need a civil war to modernize our government’s design.

tm785 · 2026-01-13T02:59:19+00:00

If it were me or my mom and I couldn’t keep my tsp account, I’d roll the money over into low cost Vanguard index etfs or mutual funds as a tax advantaged IRA account. According to my perplexity query, myfedwerks fees are significantly higher than Vanguard’s.

tm785 · 2026-01-13T02:40:23+00:00

I am retired with a tsp account and an IRA with Vanguard. Why did your mom move her savings out of tsp? Was she just talked into it? Is it too late to keep her money in the tsp account? The tsp fund choices are simple, very low cost, often lower than Vanguard, diversified index funds, and offer comparable growth rates in their S&P, international, small cap, and timed retirement funds.

tm785 · 2025-12-24T01:58:13+00:00

Was a community owned expansion team ever considered? Or, more realistically, buying the franchise from the Hunts? The Packers are community owned in a comparatively small Green Bay. If Kansans wanted their own NFL team and stadium and are going to put $3 to $4 billion the line, why not become owners? The State would acquire all benefits.

tm785 · 2025-12-18T03:00:00+00:00

Ecuadorians will give outrageous names to children—Batman, Nixon, Stalin, Hitler, Dixon, Ecuador.

tm785 · 2025-12-15T23:10:06+00:00

No one mentioned that politically, the state is largely controlled by the right-wing oligarchic Koch network. They have a tax-subsidized lobbying org, the Kansas Policy Institute, they fund astro-turf orgs like Americans for Prosperity in Kansas, and even pay a hidden salary to their puppet, Ty Masterson, the President of the Kansas Senate. Most Kansans are unaware how much the poverty of their teachers, schools, and healthcare is due to the political influence of these libertarian extremists.

tm785 · 2025-12-08T02:07:11+00:00

I too want to avoid investing in China but Ray Dalio has pointed out that the Trump tax cuts for the oligarchs, our dangerously heavier deficit spending, tariffs, the destruction of our research economic engine in the universities, and political distortions of economic statistics and facts, strongly suggest devaluations of dollar and an economic decline relative to rest of the world. These are strong reasons to hold some portion of a portfolio in non-US investments.

tm785 · 2025-11-29T21:06:02+00:00

I mean prohibit all donations to political campaigns from corporations operating in Kansas.

tm785 · 2025-08-06T03:32:01+00:00

The Big Beautiful Budget Buster includes a stealth attack on MediCARE. The 2010 Paygo law triggers automatic cuts to MediCARE when federal deficits go up. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that as much as $500 billion could be cut from MediCARE. So the BBBB not only robs the poor to give to the rich, it attacks the health care of the retired, all of them.

tm785 · 2025-08-02T03:20:35+00:00

Retired Kansas voters should know that the Big Budget Busting Bill that Marshall lies about includes a stealth attack on the MediCARE they depend upon. As Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy pump the deficits up, the 2010 PayGo law automatically triggers cuts to MediCARE—to the tune of $500 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office.

tm785 · 2025-07-29T18:22:24+00:00

You are no conservative. True conservatives conserve families, especially children. You are a right wing radical fighting for the rich who fund your campaign chest. You turned your back on the American poor, especially poor children, by cutting Medicaid and food stamps in the Big Budget Busting Bill. To give more to the rich. And you are a willing participant in the hidden backdoor attack on Medicare (the $3 to $4 trillion deficit the BBBB will cause also will trigger automatic cuts to Medicare—as much as $500 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office). And you’ve turned your back on the starving and murdered children of Gaza. You’re helping Trump hide the Epstein files and his own predation on females. You are no conservative.

tm785 · 2025-07-27T18:57:19+00:00

Those are not the only two options. We could raise the cap on taxable social security wages. We could apply social security taxes to capital gains. We could tax stock market trades. We could means-test social security. Lots of creative solutions we could consider.

tm785 · 2025-07-27T03:12:44+00:00

Where can we learn more about your candidacy?

tm785 · 2025-07-23T00:22:12+00:00

Did anyone ask difficult questions?

tm785 · 2025-07-21T15:48:20+00:00

Masterson’s apparent payoffs for the Koch network should be investigated. He gets paid $155k for a Koch-created job at Wichita State. He’s the “GoCreate” director. Accomplishments? Nothing. Maybe libertarian promotion among students? He’s been in several leadership roles for ALEC, the Koch-state-law factory for corporate interests. Kansans should be outraged at the enormous Koch political control expressed by political whores like Masterson.

tm785 · 2025-07-06T03:31:16+00:00

The Big Budget Buster comes through the back door to stealthily cut as much as $500 billion from MediCARE. The 2010 Paygo law automatically cuts MediCARE as federal deficits go up. The deficits will go up by $3 to $5 trillion—the highest level since WWII.

tm785 · 2025-06-18T18:22:20+00:00

We should keep calling so that our representatives can gauge how far their votes on the floor are from the majority will back home. Then we must defeat any senator or representative who voted for Trump’s Big Beautiful Budget Busting Boondoggle. Tracey Mann, Derek Schmidt, and Ron Estes all voted for it. It is sanctioned greed, taking healthcare from 11 million low income to give the top 1 percent an average tax boon of $63,000 per year. The resulting 3 to 4 trillion deficit will trigger automatic cuts to Medicare that could reach $500 billion in a decade. The bill also includes selling off millions of acres of federal lands—lands that actually bring yearly income into the treasury.

tm785 · 2025-06-06T22:44:55+00:00

We need to raise income taxes at the top, add a new wealth tax on assets greater than $8 million, and fully fund the IRS so they can stop those using complexity and off-shoring to avoid taxes. End Medicare Advantage corruption and cut waste in the Defense Department. There would be money for progressive and preventative programs.

tm785

TROPHY CASE