Kamala Harris should now put energy into stopping Gaza war

With due respect to members of the “punditry class,” individuals who bravely perform the job of converting intricate mental contortions into credible civic discourse … I disagree.

I disagree with everything and anything; however, I specifically disagree with most of the presidential election post-mortems.

Kamala Harris received some ten million fewer votes than Biden (and Harris) did in 2020. Ten million! Did they all go to Donald Trump or Jill Stein? No, the stats don’t lie — if she could have simply gotten half of the voters who simply chose not to pull a lever for her, she would have been in the driver’s seat and the “joy” promised by her supporters at the DNC convention just a few months ago … would not be relegated to the political equivalent of cottage-cheese-from-the-back-of-the-fridge status.

Let’s be clear, no matter where the Dems go with their platform over the next few years, we aren’t going to be hearing the word “joy” trotted out anywhere near the dais at the next convention. If someone lets that word slip out of their mouth they’re likely to have their mic cut while being hustled off the stage.

Of course, the failure of the “joy” motif can’t possibly be the whole ball of goo regarding the “blue” voter drop-off.

As a Jewish person opposed to the genocide occurring in Gaza, or what I and much of the international community currently recognize as genocide, the idea of actually pulling a lever for the candidate completely and obviously involved with supporting it … was an impossible task. Both the genocide and continuing U.S. support for it provide moral injury and empathic distress to millions of people, and … I think the injury is a real one … often enough for people who would not choose to use terms like “moral injury” and “empathic distress,” who simply feel deeply that Israel must be stopped from exterminating all of the living humans in Gaza.

If Kamala Harris wants to redeem herself with the many voters who “just said no,” she should immediately take up the cause of a complete weapons embargo and get publicly involved with stopping the industrial-scale mass murder occurring right now, in real-time, as we speak.

Everyone everywhere should do the same.

— Rob Smoke, Boulder

Standard time should be permanent

Sen. Bennet is asking Colorado to weigh in on the issue of daylight saving time. If DST were permanent, we’d experience more health problems as our bodies struggle to adapt to yet another man-made scheme devised to wring every last dime out of us. In their insatiable pursuit of the almighty dollar, the retail, recreation and ever-looming oil industries want you to believe the extra hour makes your life fuller. Wrong. Check out the overwhelming medical research warning that additional light exposure late in the day suppresses melatonin, resulting in a host of health risks.

Gov. Polis is lamenting higher Medicaid costs. Can Colorado pay for the increased accidents, heart attacks, cancers, diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s, suicide, strokes that research shows are adverse effects of sleep disruption caused by DST? School kids who drag out of bed in the dark will be standing at bus stops in pitch darkness while sleep-deprived Colorado racers speed around the residential streets.

If your family’s health is priority, tell your legislators to step off the corporate greed wagon for a moment and fully consider what will improve people’s lives — not corporate profit! Contact Sen. Bennet https://www.bennet.senate.gov and tell him your body’s circadian clock runs best on permanent standard time.

— Karen Staley, Longmont

Focus on words that pull us together

What a terribly divisive editorial Garrison wrote for Sunday’s edition of the Camera. How about words that pull us together rather than drive us apart?

— Lew Frauenfelder, Superior