The NFL's "security perimeter" is just a land grab from them so they can control all the money generated by the games, especially the Super Bowl. They don't want any competition from independent sellers of gear & such. The Michael Reese site is a far better location & even has an adjacent train station on the Metra Electric line, so a reduced need for parking & less car traffic. But the facts are that the Bears bought Arlington park & then discovered that Arlington heights saw a cash cow from it & the rotten McCaskeys just don't want to give up a single penny to that city & have apparently managed to convince that incompetent fool on the Fifth Floor to go along with their insane dream, because he thinks if the Bears leave the city, he'll be blamed. More proof, he's an idiot!
Baseball has been trying to also do that with Wrigley Field, but so far, the city has told MLB to go to hell with that demand, other than the occasional & really annoying redirecting of the 22 Clark bus down Racine to Belmont on certain game days. But that appears to be more due to the huge crowds, than anything else. But both the CTA & its predecessor, Surface Lines had no problems with the streetcars on Clark when Wrigley had 5,000 more seats than it has now in the past. Even the Sahara Coal Company yard managed to keep operating during games then, the Triangle Building is now there.
No so-called Palestinians were expelled from Israel in 1948, they left voluntarily, when the various Arab countries declared war on Israel & told them to leave, because the Arabs said they needed them gone so they could kill off all the Jews in Israel without creating any collateral damage among Arabs.
"No so-called Palestinians were expelled from Israel in 1948"
That is simply not true. Some Palestinian Arabs were relocated by Arab forces and some left voluntarily due to the escalating conflict, but a very large number were in fact expelled by Israeli armed forces.
That is also true. However, it also needs to be mentioned that all Jews living in the surrounding Arab countries at the time were also forcefully expelled and their property confiscated. And while Israel welcomed those refugees with open arms and support, Arab countries refused to accept Arab refugees from the former British Mandate territories.
Governor of South Dakota, potential tRump running mate, who claims she was being a responsible dog owner when we she took her puppy to a gravel pit and killed it by shooting it in the face. The puppy was boisterous and, you know, A PUPPY, and that displeased Ms. Noem.
Sorry Marc, but I have to totally disagree with you on this one. I presently live in what is considered a rural area, and for about a decade I had a small horse farm in Minnesota. I'm a conservative, veteran, law-abiding firearms owner and NRA member, so I believe I check off all the demographic boxes.
I find what Kristi Noem did to her dog to be totally despicable. A 14-month old dog remains a total puppy, and it was her lack of training and bad judgment in taking it on a hunt before it was ready that caused the problem. This puppy needed training and love to correct it's undesired behaviors, but instead got a bullet from the person who was supposed to love her and then who threw her body down a pit to rot. That is absolutely ghoulish and reflects an appalling moral deficiency.
I am also aghast that Noem would include this sordid tale in a book about herself as part of a PR campaign to raise her profile as Trump's VP candidate. Her stated reasoning that her anger-fueled murder of her own puppy showed her "ability to make the hard decisions" is ludicrous - it simply reveals her to be stunningly cruel and heartless. I could never support her for anything, and we can all hope that the good voters of South Dakota will replace this vile person with someone else involved in the next election.
Hotel taxes have the same effect as lottery proceeds, it creates the illusion of saving taxpayer money, but in reality the budgets are simply inflated. Mayor Daley is the chief architect for creating Chicago's insurmountable long-term debt nightmare. He was able to create the hole with his immense autocratic power. Rahm and Lori were more fiscally responsible. Brandon is recklessly generous with doling out taxpayer funds, adding to the fiscal woes Chicago is going to feel in the coming years, especially when the cheapo bonds need to be refinanced at current rates. I've been saying this for nearly a decade...bankruptcy is the only way Chicago is going to get back on its feet again.
Hotel taxes really tick off the travelers who have to pay them and reconsider their future visits to Chicago when their $150 hotel room turns into a $250 hotel room after all the taxes and fees.
Chicago hotel taxes are lower than New York, but 24% to 39% higher than other convention cities - Las Vegas, Orlando, LA. Chicago also has an additional 9% (on top of the other taxes) 'home share' tax on AirBnB type rentals, which none of the other cities have. This is bad for business and tourist travelers.
aren't there enough empty lots and abandoned buildings on the West Side (or South Side) that could be bundled (with Eminent Domain where needed) to build a stadium? Run a subway through it as well. Incent some businesses to lay roots (dry cleaner, coffee shops, diners, restaurants, book store, etc) and now you have a new community.
Thank you, Eric, for posting the Federal Times explanation about why DeJoy can't be fired by President Biden. Too many postings on removing DJ never mention the pesky facts.
I'm one who wondered why Biden wouldn't remove DeJoy, not knowing that the president didn't have the power to do so, and I'm happy to have been enlightened. I do wonder though, how it is that a president can appoint, but not remove.
I think that the original idea was that the postal service should be non-partisan and operate in an apolitical way. The idea was that the board and post master needed some insulation from the inevitable political pressure.
The President can appoint but the person only gets the job if the board approves. Kind of like appointing an ambassador that has to be approved by the Senate.
Also, five of the nine appointed Board members were appointed by Biden and four by Trump. The Deputy Postmaster was also appointed by Biden. The problems with the postal service have more to do with high fixed and operating costs, declining mail volume, and political interference in setting prices and managing costs. The service has run huge annual loses since 2007 with a $6.5 billion loss on $56 billion in revenue in 2023. The Postal Service Reform Act changed the way the service funded retirement health benefits. A decade worth of 'savings' were recognized in 2022 which created a one time 'profit' of $56 billion from reduced liabilities. No actual cash was involved, so this had no effect on the accumulated debt of $120 billion. But it is always nice to have a villain to rant about.
You are maybe forgetting how the (Lack of) DeJoy ordered thousands of internal combustion postal trucks. When the postal trucks are IDEAL for electric or hybrid use. And he has proposed (implemented?) closing distribution sites here in Champaign Urbana. So a letter mailed in Urbana to Champaign has to travel 50 miles away to be sorted and sent to Champaign. All in the name of "efficiency"...
i won't defend dejoy's decision on the IC trucks, if indeed that is true [i'm not saying it's not true - it's just that you haven't cited a source for your claim].
but as to closing facilities - pls reread M Martinez' post - high fixed and operating costs, declining volume. more USPO facilities shd be closed and sold. sorry, Chambana, sorry other cities - taxpayers shdn't have to fund govt profligacy to maintain legacy costs.
EZ gives Bears President Kevin Warren responsibility for getting the Minnesota Vikings stadium built. According to Daily Herald columnist Jim O'Donnell, Warren was riding sidecar while the guy who is still there actually ran the show and got it done. I don't know the truth but should Warren be considered "responsible" for the Vikings new stadium?
I will be surprised if the Bears do not get a lot of money from the City; although I am rooting for them to not get much. It seems like teams usually get stadium subsidies.
If the Bears get nothing against the mayor's wishes then I will look forward to how he denigrates those who disagreed with him.
Off topic but has Print Media become the Landline of News? It certainly seems all these hedge funds are trying to torpedo the printing arm, likely because costs outweigh subscription revenue. That might be why they are having all those outrageous surprise increase in subscription service that you have to call and fight to adjust.
Johnson's relationship to the CTU is a bigger deal because 56% of the property tax bill goes to CPS and 19% goes to the city for police, fire, library, and other city services. About 82% of CPS budget goes to wages and pensions. Their direct and very vocal involvement in Chicago politics, ability to mobilize members during elections for votes and campaign work, their direct lobbying spending, and their significant campaign donations add up to a political elephant compared to other organizations. Add in the 23% of CPS budget that comes from the state ($2 billion), with CTU demands for much more, and there is ample reason for non-Chicago residents to be interested.
The Bears should not get a penny of taxpayer money for a new stadium, regardless as to where it is built - Chicago or Arlington heights. The Halas/McCaskey family is wealthy because if the prescience of George, and that's about it. They have plenty of dough/borrowing power to build - on their own, property (where they would realize all of the revenue themselves!) - a new stadium in Arlington Heights. Piffle to them (and all billionaire sports franchise owners) with their hands out looking for taxpayers to make themselves even richer. Imagine the long-term goodwill bestowed upon an ownership family who openly acknowledged that as the team owner which realized the benefits of ownership, it was their "duty" to pull their own weight.
Loved all but the last of the VTotWs this week - I had a hard time selecting between Kristi Noem and the Wile E Coyote sand impression.
IMHO, Gov. Kristi Noem included her killing her dog in her book for 2 reasons: (1) it appeals to a large percentage of the MAGA crowd, and (2) a "work crew" was present (witnesses) when she committed the act, and she wanted to "get ahead of the story" before it was blasted out at an "inopportune time". Unfortunately for her, there is no "opportune" time to release a story of you killing an 14-month old not-very-well-trained (but still very-trainable) hunting dog.
I think that you hit the political nail on the head with regard to the Noem story. But I think that she failed to appreciate just how badly the story would play to urban vs rural audiences.
The Internet and social media have fractured our society, isolated us into groups based on simplistic reflexive reactions to events, each reduced to a meme, and whipped those groups into a frenzy. There is no room for any nuance or context, any contradiction in fact or opinion, is taken as a grave personal offense, and online anonymity allows for dispensing with any civility or decency of discourse, easily dehumanizing anyone disagreeing with us. These are such dangerous times. We need to somehow find a way back to civility, to acknowledging each other's humanity, otherwise violence, state or group sponsored, will get out of control, and maybe it already has.
As I have been following the protests, a question occurred to me. What ideology and related groups are most dangerous to our democracy and our society - the far left or the far right? The far left seems to have a far greater influence on academia and younger people; a greater ability to mobilize large numbers across the country; a greater willingness and ability to impinge on the rights of others; a greater ability, desire, and willingness disrupt the public and damage property; and an equal penchant for embracing and rationalizing murderous and anti-democratic people and groups. To the extent that the far right can help to elect Trump, they have a bad influence, which the far left could more than offset, but do not seem interested in doing. I am curious what others think.
Trump supporters who want to give power to individuals to call elections or toss out votes seem like a credible threat to whole system. I'm not saying that leftists are not also a threat but the right has that one big one. IMO
I think that the far right poses the more immediate threat, given that the Trump cultists have already displayed a readiness to use violence to overturn elections that don’t go their way, and there’s no reason to think that they wouldn’t do it again, or resort to violence to protest their golden god being convicted in court.
The far left I think represent the longer term threat. Of all the unsettling things to consider when gazing upon and listening to the zombie hordes that are emerging on college campuses, the most disturbing is this: these unthinking, impulse driven tools are our future educators, councillors, leaders, CEOs and HR directors. Witnessing a mass collective of malleable halfwits being driven to rhapsodic episodes of trance like fever over something that they know nothing about would be merely sad if we were observing the patients of a hospital for the pathologically psychotic (listening to these protesters speak, with their robotic verbal technique of mindlessly uttering buzzwords like “divest”, and “genocide”, and “apartheid”, one can not help but be reminded of the pod people in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies), but the fact that they are students attending exceptional institutes of higher learning makes for an ominous portent for our nation’s future.
I am worried that the people and groups that do the most to influence our politics, and the majority of voters, are slaves to divisive messages. Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, wrote 'Thinking, Fast and Slow" which includes an analysis of persuasion.
Two of the key methods - simple language and telling stories - are thoroughly understood and mastered by every group engaged in politics and the media. This has resulted in increasingly emotional appeals, argument by anecdote, sanctification of one side, demonization of the other side, and tailoring of extreme 'facts' in support of the story. As most of our policy and governmental issues are complex in origin, in operation, and in evolution we are poorly served. It is very difficult to find detailed, nuanced, positions supported by data. We are left to trust in politicians and institutions which are the targets and sources of 'stories' and are therefore considered untrustworthy.
Even if we can rely on centrist politicians and objective academics to do the 'slow thinking', how do we move back to more calm stories for persuasion?
That op-ed was terrible. I can't believe they ran it. It isn't by a historian. It's by a random person who just read a book.
She mentions that her son recommended the work of Khalid Rashidi, the most respectable voice for Palestinian nationalism, but certainly a fierce partisan, whose latest book is The Hundred Years' War on Palestine.
So the Tribune gives over space to a person who was shocked to learn that Arabs lived in Palestine pre-1948. How ignorant can you be? It's not as bad of course, but it reminds me of the TikTokers who read Osama bin Laden's manifesto and who were like, "Holy shit, this guy makes sense!" My point is not to compare Rashidi to bin Laden, but to compare that op-ed contributor to those TikTokers.
Meanwhile, she replaces one glib narrative with glaring omissions with another. Totally missing context:
- Jews did not simply displace Arabs by force prior to 1948. For obvious reasons (persecution and exclusion), they bought land legally and immigrated legally in large numbers, forming a large population (60,000 in 1918 to 600,000 by 1948). They would have immigrated in yet larger numbers if Britain had not artificially restricted it. To be clear, the Arab position then was one of resistance to immigration, an odd view for progressives to take.
- The UN voted overwhelmingly for the establishment of Israel via partition, roughly half and half, with a large Jerusalem area under international control. The amount of land in the partition was a bit more generous to Jews, but only in recognition of anticipated large-scale migration. Overall it was pretty fair. It would have meant some displacement, but not huge and not very far. It wasn't what the most ardent Zionists wanted, but they took the deal. The Arabs didn't.
- The only reason Israel's state is much larger than the partition today and the only reason that Israel occupies any territory, and the only reason Palestinians lack a state of their own is because Arabs and Palestinians have repeatedly waged war against Israel. Arabs were hostile to a Jewish presence controlling any territory in the area from the beginning, and this certainly has a religious, cultural, and antisemitic aspect.
- There was a popular narrative in Israel that there was no forced displacement but rather that Arabs fled, either because they didn't want to live with Jews or because their evacuation was ordered by Arab authorities or both. This view has been strongly challenged by historians, including Israeli historians, who agree that there was forcible displacement by Israeli forces in order to establish a majority-Jewish state.
- A similar number of Jews, about 700,000, were displaced throughout the Middle East around the same time. Places with large Jewish populations, like Baghdad, were emptied of their Jewish populations during this time period. The ancestors of these refugees make up some half of Jewish Israelis, and they are just as brown, and just as Middle Eastern as any Arab or Palestinian.
- Palestinian leadership has repeatedly refused to take any deal. The 2000 Camp David summit was a clarifying moment. Barak offered his agreement to a Palestinian state under the land for peace principle that would have granted Palestinians autonomy over the West Bank and Gaza. Arafat walked away, and not only did he walk away, but Palestinians commenced the Second Intifada, a series of terrorist attacks, which prompted the building of the West Bank barrier and the government's withdrawal from Gaza (forcibly displacing Jewish residents). Arab refusal to accept, first, Jews, and then a Jewish state in Israel is the heart of the problem. It need not have involved so much bloodshed and hostility. Generations ago, some people would have had to move from their villages to an area very nearby. I'm sorry, but this doesn't strike me as the catastrophe of the century, much less genocidal.
I'm fine with reading Rashidi. People should. But it shouldn't be the only book they read on one of the most fraught and complex conflicts in the world. And why the Tribune would run a Rashidi book report like it was a useful opinion is utterly beyond me.
EZ - i've probably asked this b/4, but any chance of converting the polling for visual TotW to same as the verbal/non-visual TotW model? i thought the first 3 VTotW's this week were hilarious, equally.
to marc blumer [i can't find your post from last week about the bears' proposal for a new stadium] - i would take issue w- several of your points. but as to blaming Friends of the Parks for the current bears stadium/monstrosity for not having a roof? john mcenroe said it best: you can't be serious!
full disclosure - i support and have supported FotP for many yrs. but if you believe for a moment that they moved the needle, even a smidgeon, on whether a roof was built on the current soldiers field, you're just not aware of the dynamics that drove the decisions on how that stadium was built. FotP was at most a pimple on the elepant's butt of this white elephant.
as to your fawning praise of kevin warren and his 'success' on getting the vikings stadium built in Minne - i know a bunch of Minnesotans, and they are not pleased aobut getting stuck w- the bill for that stadium.
and oh, BTW, why shd the bears get to play football on the lakefront? how about the michael reeese site? how about The 78? let the bears and the white sox work out a 2 stadium/1 parking lot arrangment, like the chiefs & the royals in KC. and let them pay for it themselves.
A whole bunch of stuff to comment on.
First: Cate Plys has a marvelous takedown of Brandon Johnson today.
https://roselandchicago1972.substack.com/p/mike-royko-50-years-ago-today-the-912
The NFL's "security perimeter" is just a land grab from them so they can control all the money generated by the games, especially the Super Bowl. They don't want any competition from independent sellers of gear & such. The Michael Reese site is a far better location & even has an adjacent train station on the Metra Electric line, so a reduced need for parking & less car traffic. But the facts are that the Bears bought Arlington park & then discovered that Arlington heights saw a cash cow from it & the rotten McCaskeys just don't want to give up a single penny to that city & have apparently managed to convince that incompetent fool on the Fifth Floor to go along with their insane dream, because he thinks if the Bears leave the city, he'll be blamed. More proof, he's an idiot!
Baseball has been trying to also do that with Wrigley Field, but so far, the city has told MLB to go to hell with that demand, other than the occasional & really annoying redirecting of the 22 Clark bus down Racine to Belmont on certain game days. But that appears to be more due to the huge crowds, than anything else. But both the CTA & its predecessor, Surface Lines had no problems with the streetcars on Clark when Wrigley had 5,000 more seats than it has now in the past. Even the Sahara Coal Company yard managed to keep operating during games then, the Triangle Building is now there.
No so-called Palestinians were expelled from Israel in 1948, they left voluntarily, when the various Arab countries declared war on Israel & told them to leave, because the Arabs said they needed them gone so they could kill off all the Jews in Israel without creating any collateral damage among Arabs.
"No so-called Palestinians were expelled from Israel in 1948"
That is simply not true. Some Palestinian Arabs were relocated by Arab forces and some left voluntarily due to the escalating conflict, but a very large number were in fact expelled by Israeli armed forces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight
Also, those that fled or were displaced were refused the right to return and their property was confiscated by the Israeli government.
That is also true. However, it also needs to be mentioned that all Jews living in the surrounding Arab countries at the time were also forcefully expelled and their property confiscated. And while Israel welcomed those refugees with open arms and support, Arab countries refused to accept Arab refugees from the former British Mandate territories.
Who's Kristie Noam?
Well, apparently for us not in the know, I read today that it's someone who killed her dog with a gun. A Senate gun totin GOP'er perhaps?
Governor of South Dakota, potential tRump running mate, who claims she was being a responsible dog owner when we she took her puppy to a gravel pit and killed it by shooting it in the face. The puppy was boisterous and, you know, A PUPPY, and that displeased Ms. Noem.
And was a useless work dog, killed a neighbor's chickens, and bit her. This story is only shocking to people that have never lived in a rural area.
Clearly the dog's fault, eh?
I'm from a rural area and never understood the pride some took in a lack of understanding, patience, or compassion.
Sorry Marc, but I have to totally disagree with you on this one. I presently live in what is considered a rural area, and for about a decade I had a small horse farm in Minnesota. I'm a conservative, veteran, law-abiding firearms owner and NRA member, so I believe I check off all the demographic boxes.
I find what Kristi Noem did to her dog to be totally despicable. A 14-month old dog remains a total puppy, and it was her lack of training and bad judgment in taking it on a hunt before it was ready that caused the problem. This puppy needed training and love to correct it's undesired behaviors, but instead got a bullet from the person who was supposed to love her and then who threw her body down a pit to rot. That is absolutely ghoulish and reflects an appalling moral deficiency.
I am also aghast that Noem would include this sordid tale in a book about herself as part of a PR campaign to raise her profile as Trump's VP candidate. Her stated reasoning that her anger-fueled murder of her own puppy showed her "ability to make the hard decisions" is ludicrous - it simply reveals her to be stunningly cruel and heartless. I could never support her for anything, and we can all hope that the good voters of South Dakota will replace this vile person with someone else involved in the next election.
I grew up on a farm with dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, and cattle. We never lost any of them to OUR dogs.
aka Cruella de Vil
Hotel taxes have the same effect as lottery proceeds, it creates the illusion of saving taxpayer money, but in reality the budgets are simply inflated. Mayor Daley is the chief architect for creating Chicago's insurmountable long-term debt nightmare. He was able to create the hole with his immense autocratic power. Rahm and Lori were more fiscally responsible. Brandon is recklessly generous with doling out taxpayer funds, adding to the fiscal woes Chicago is going to feel in the coming years, especially when the cheapo bonds need to be refinanced at current rates. I've been saying this for nearly a decade...bankruptcy is the only way Chicago is going to get back on its feet again.
Hotel taxes really tick off the travelers who have to pay them and reconsider their future visits to Chicago when their $150 hotel room turns into a $250 hotel room after all the taxes and fees.
Chicago hotel taxes are lower than New York, but 24% to 39% higher than other convention cities - Las Vegas, Orlando, LA. Chicago also has an additional 9% (on top of the other taxes) 'home share' tax on AirBnB type rentals, which none of the other cities have. This is bad for business and tourist travelers.
aren't there enough empty lots and abandoned buildings on the West Side (or South Side) that could be bundled (with Eminent Domain where needed) to build a stadium? Run a subway through it as well. Incent some businesses to lay roots (dry cleaner, coffee shops, diners, restaurants, book store, etc) and now you have a new community.
Thank you, Eric, for posting the Federal Times explanation about why DeJoy can't be fired by President Biden. Too many postings on removing DJ never mention the pesky facts.
I'm one who wondered why Biden wouldn't remove DeJoy, not knowing that the president didn't have the power to do so, and I'm happy to have been enlightened. I do wonder though, how it is that a president can appoint, but not remove.
I think that the original idea was that the postal service should be non-partisan and operate in an apolitical way. The idea was that the board and post master needed some insulation from the inevitable political pressure.
The President can appoint but the person only gets the job if the board approves. Kind of like appointing an ambassador that has to be approved by the Senate.
Also, five of the nine appointed Board members were appointed by Biden and four by Trump. The Deputy Postmaster was also appointed by Biden. The problems with the postal service have more to do with high fixed and operating costs, declining mail volume, and political interference in setting prices and managing costs. The service has run huge annual loses since 2007 with a $6.5 billion loss on $56 billion in revenue in 2023. The Postal Service Reform Act changed the way the service funded retirement health benefits. A decade worth of 'savings' were recognized in 2022 which created a one time 'profit' of $56 billion from reduced liabilities. No actual cash was involved, so this had no effect on the accumulated debt of $120 billion. But it is always nice to have a villain to rant about.
You are maybe forgetting how the (Lack of) DeJoy ordered thousands of internal combustion postal trucks. When the postal trucks are IDEAL for electric or hybrid use. And he has proposed (implemented?) closing distribution sites here in Champaign Urbana. So a letter mailed in Urbana to Champaign has to travel 50 miles away to be sorted and sent to Champaign. All in the name of "efficiency"...
i won't defend dejoy's decision on the IC trucks, if indeed that is true [i'm not saying it's not true - it's just that you haven't cited a source for your claim].
but as to closing facilities - pls reread M Martinez' post - high fixed and operating costs, declining volume. more USPO facilities shd be closed and sold. sorry, Chambana, sorry other cities - taxpayers shdn't have to fund govt profligacy to maintain legacy costs.
EZ gives Bears President Kevin Warren responsibility for getting the Minnesota Vikings stadium built. According to Daily Herald columnist Jim O'Donnell, Warren was riding sidecar while the guy who is still there actually ran the show and got it done. I don't know the truth but should Warren be considered "responsible" for the Vikings new stadium?
I will be surprised if the Bears do not get a lot of money from the City; although I am rooting for them to not get much. It seems like teams usually get stadium subsidies.
If the Bears get nothing against the mayor's wishes then I will look forward to how he denigrates those who disagreed with him.
Off topic but has Print Media become the Landline of News? It certainly seems all these hedge funds are trying to torpedo the printing arm, likely because costs outweigh subscription revenue. That might be why they are having all those outrageous surprise increase in subscription service that you have to call and fight to adjust.
i couldn't click 'Like', because i believe your claim is sad - but true. it's a good, if depressing analogy.
Johnson's relationship to the CTU is a bigger deal because 56% of the property tax bill goes to CPS and 19% goes to the city for police, fire, library, and other city services. About 82% of CPS budget goes to wages and pensions. Their direct and very vocal involvement in Chicago politics, ability to mobilize members during elections for votes and campaign work, their direct lobbying spending, and their significant campaign donations add up to a political elephant compared to other organizations. Add in the 23% of CPS budget that comes from the state ($2 billion), with CTU demands for much more, and there is ample reason for non-Chicago residents to be interested.
The Bears should not get a penny of taxpayer money for a new stadium, regardless as to where it is built - Chicago or Arlington heights. The Halas/McCaskey family is wealthy because if the prescience of George, and that's about it. They have plenty of dough/borrowing power to build - on their own, property (where they would realize all of the revenue themselves!) - a new stadium in Arlington Heights. Piffle to them (and all billionaire sports franchise owners) with their hands out looking for taxpayers to make themselves even richer. Imagine the long-term goodwill bestowed upon an ownership family who openly acknowledged that as the team owner which realized the benefits of ownership, it was their "duty" to pull their own weight.
Loved all but the last of the VTotWs this week - I had a hard time selecting between Kristi Noem and the Wile E Coyote sand impression.
IMHO, Gov. Kristi Noem included her killing her dog in her book for 2 reasons: (1) it appeals to a large percentage of the MAGA crowd, and (2) a "work crew" was present (witnesses) when she committed the act, and she wanted to "get ahead of the story" before it was blasted out at an "inopportune time". Unfortunately for her, there is no "opportune" time to release a story of you killing an 14-month old not-very-well-trained (but still very-trainable) hunting dog.
I think that you hit the political nail on the head with regard to the Noem story. But I think that she failed to appreciate just how badly the story would play to urban vs rural audiences.
The Internet and social media have fractured our society, isolated us into groups based on simplistic reflexive reactions to events, each reduced to a meme, and whipped those groups into a frenzy. There is no room for any nuance or context, any contradiction in fact or opinion, is taken as a grave personal offense, and online anonymity allows for dispensing with any civility or decency of discourse, easily dehumanizing anyone disagreeing with us. These are such dangerous times. We need to somehow find a way back to civility, to acknowledging each other's humanity, otherwise violence, state or group sponsored, will get out of control, and maybe it already has.
Very eloquently articulated Mark, thank you.
As I have been following the protests, a question occurred to me. What ideology and related groups are most dangerous to our democracy and our society - the far left or the far right? The far left seems to have a far greater influence on academia and younger people; a greater ability to mobilize large numbers across the country; a greater willingness and ability to impinge on the rights of others; a greater ability, desire, and willingness disrupt the public and damage property; and an equal penchant for embracing and rationalizing murderous and anti-democratic people and groups. To the extent that the far right can help to elect Trump, they have a bad influence, which the far left could more than offset, but do not seem interested in doing. I am curious what others think.
Trump supporters who want to give power to individuals to call elections or toss out votes seem like a credible threat to whole system. I'm not saying that leftists are not also a threat but the right has that one big one. IMO
I think that the far right poses the more immediate threat, given that the Trump cultists have already displayed a readiness to use violence to overturn elections that don’t go their way, and there’s no reason to think that they wouldn’t do it again, or resort to violence to protest their golden god being convicted in court.
The far left I think represent the longer term threat. Of all the unsettling things to consider when gazing upon and listening to the zombie hordes that are emerging on college campuses, the most disturbing is this: these unthinking, impulse driven tools are our future educators, councillors, leaders, CEOs and HR directors. Witnessing a mass collective of malleable halfwits being driven to rhapsodic episodes of trance like fever over something that they know nothing about would be merely sad if we were observing the patients of a hospital for the pathologically psychotic (listening to these protesters speak, with their robotic verbal technique of mindlessly uttering buzzwords like “divest”, and “genocide”, and “apartheid”, one can not help but be reminded of the pod people in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies), but the fact that they are students attending exceptional institutes of higher learning makes for an ominous portent for our nation’s future.
I am worried that the people and groups that do the most to influence our politics, and the majority of voters, are slaves to divisive messages. Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, wrote 'Thinking, Fast and Slow" which includes an analysis of persuasion.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/3-keys-of-persuasion-according-to-nobel-prize-winning-psychologist-daniel-kahnman/ar-BB1ld4JQ
Two of the key methods - simple language and telling stories - are thoroughly understood and mastered by every group engaged in politics and the media. This has resulted in increasingly emotional appeals, argument by anecdote, sanctification of one side, demonization of the other side, and tailoring of extreme 'facts' in support of the story. As most of our policy and governmental issues are complex in origin, in operation, and in evolution we are poorly served. It is very difficult to find detailed, nuanced, positions supported by data. We are left to trust in politicians and institutions which are the targets and sources of 'stories' and are therefore considered untrustworthy.
Even if we can rely on centrist politicians and objective academics to do the 'slow thinking', how do we move back to more calm stories for persuasion?
That op-ed was terrible. I can't believe they ran it. It isn't by a historian. It's by a random person who just read a book.
She mentions that her son recommended the work of Khalid Rashidi, the most respectable voice for Palestinian nationalism, but certainly a fierce partisan, whose latest book is The Hundred Years' War on Palestine.
So the Tribune gives over space to a person who was shocked to learn that Arabs lived in Palestine pre-1948. How ignorant can you be? It's not as bad of course, but it reminds me of the TikTokers who read Osama bin Laden's manifesto and who were like, "Holy shit, this guy makes sense!" My point is not to compare Rashidi to bin Laden, but to compare that op-ed contributor to those TikTokers.
Meanwhile, she replaces one glib narrative with glaring omissions with another. Totally missing context:
- Jews did not simply displace Arabs by force prior to 1948. For obvious reasons (persecution and exclusion), they bought land legally and immigrated legally in large numbers, forming a large population (60,000 in 1918 to 600,000 by 1948). They would have immigrated in yet larger numbers if Britain had not artificially restricted it. To be clear, the Arab position then was one of resistance to immigration, an odd view for progressives to take.
- The UN voted overwhelmingly for the establishment of Israel via partition, roughly half and half, with a large Jerusalem area under international control. The amount of land in the partition was a bit more generous to Jews, but only in recognition of anticipated large-scale migration. Overall it was pretty fair. It would have meant some displacement, but not huge and not very far. It wasn't what the most ardent Zionists wanted, but they took the deal. The Arabs didn't.
- The only reason Israel's state is much larger than the partition today and the only reason that Israel occupies any territory, and the only reason Palestinians lack a state of their own is because Arabs and Palestinians have repeatedly waged war against Israel. Arabs were hostile to a Jewish presence controlling any territory in the area from the beginning, and this certainly has a religious, cultural, and antisemitic aspect.
- There was a popular narrative in Israel that there was no forced displacement but rather that Arabs fled, either because they didn't want to live with Jews or because their evacuation was ordered by Arab authorities or both. This view has been strongly challenged by historians, including Israeli historians, who agree that there was forcible displacement by Israeli forces in order to establish a majority-Jewish state.
- A similar number of Jews, about 700,000, were displaced throughout the Middle East around the same time. Places with large Jewish populations, like Baghdad, were emptied of their Jewish populations during this time period. The ancestors of these refugees make up some half of Jewish Israelis, and they are just as brown, and just as Middle Eastern as any Arab or Palestinian.
- Palestinian leadership has repeatedly refused to take any deal. The 2000 Camp David summit was a clarifying moment. Barak offered his agreement to a Palestinian state under the land for peace principle that would have granted Palestinians autonomy over the West Bank and Gaza. Arafat walked away, and not only did he walk away, but Palestinians commenced the Second Intifada, a series of terrorist attacks, which prompted the building of the West Bank barrier and the government's withdrawal from Gaza (forcibly displacing Jewish residents). Arab refusal to accept, first, Jews, and then a Jewish state in Israel is the heart of the problem. It need not have involved so much bloodshed and hostility. Generations ago, some people would have had to move from their villages to an area very nearby. I'm sorry, but this doesn't strike me as the catastrophe of the century, much less genocidal.
I'm fine with reading Rashidi. People should. But it shouldn't be the only book they read on one of the most fraught and complex conflicts in the world. And why the Tribune would run a Rashidi book report like it was a useful opinion is utterly beyond me.
EZ - i've probably asked this b/4, but any chance of converting the polling for visual TotW to same as the verbal/non-visual TotW model? i thought the first 3 VTotW's this week were hilarious, equally.
to marc blumer [i can't find your post from last week about the bears' proposal for a new stadium] - i would take issue w- several of your points. but as to blaming Friends of the Parks for the current bears stadium/monstrosity for not having a roof? john mcenroe said it best: you can't be serious!
full disclosure - i support and have supported FotP for many yrs. but if you believe for a moment that they moved the needle, even a smidgeon, on whether a roof was built on the current soldiers field, you're just not aware of the dynamics that drove the decisions on how that stadium was built. FotP was at most a pimple on the elepant's butt of this white elephant.
as to your fawning praise of kevin warren and his 'success' on getting the vikings stadium built in Minne - i know a bunch of Minnesotans, and they are not pleased aobut getting stuck w- the bill for that stadium.
and oh, BTW, why shd the bears get to play football on the lakefront? how about the michael reeese site? how about The 78? let the bears and the white sox work out a 2 stadium/1 parking lot arrangment, like the chiefs & the royals in KC. and let them pay for it themselves.