Kass is, and always was, the biggest douche canoe who ever wrote opinion pieces at the Trib. Nobody whined more than he did. Good riddance to him, from "the paper", from his suburban home and from Illinois.
I was wrong when I thought that I made mistakes due to youth and inexperience. I take comfort in the thought that with age comes self-knowledge, and that I will be making mistakes well into the future.
What I find most interesting about the Kass home-buying item is the timing. He wrote a column in May 2020 about his move "back to the City", but then - also in 2020 - he buys a house in NW Indiana? It appears (to me at least) as if he's making a big deal by very demonstratively "moving back to Chicago" (and, ostensibly, his roots), to burnish his Chicago bona fides. He then subsequently surreptitiously decamps to St. John, IN. He writes a friggin' column about his move to the City, but then we hear nary a peep from him about his move out. Why the move? Was he or his family the victim of a crime? Was there a family reason for the move? Was it pandemic related? We get bupkis. The fact that it took almost 2 years to acknowledge his departure is interesting.
In my view, this is all part of his schtick for his MAGA audience - the white-ethnic, big city native - son of a butcher - taking shots at the "others" who have "taken over" the Democratic (and increasingly less white) big cities to the detriment of their remaining populaces. Kass knows his MAGA audience; and by maintaining the facade (as long as he did) of his being a "Chicago person" added credibility to his "insider's" criticism of Chicago. I'd love to hear from him about the timing/reasons for the multiple moves over such a short period of time.
As I emailed you a couple of weeks ago, I was wrong about Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health. I had predicted it would end in a messy compromise that would leave Roe intact, if under stress. WRONG. I did not anticipate that Roberts' position would be completely ignored by the conservative wing. (You also claim I was wrong about "A Gentleman in Moscow" but I won't concede on that.) BTW, I salute you and the NYT for offering up these mea culpas. I'm actually more willing to consider someone's position if they admit they're not infallible.
No credit for your “I was wrong” confession, which reads like a humble-brag. “The one time I was really wrong was when I understated how horrible Trump and his fans are. Never again.” I know you can find something truly cringy.
I thought that I was wrong once, but that was a mistake. :) Actually, my big duh was not thinking that Covid would be a big deal back at the beginning of 2020. I thought it was a SARS sort of thing. I was taking it seriously by April 2020, but I still expected it to be over by the end of 2020. I gave up that pipe dream in July (?).
Another semi-confession. In early 2011, my son (a couple of years out of college) said that he wanted to borrow $1,000 to buy Bitcoin, which could be had for about a dollar. Of course, I said no. I could not believe that anyone would pay real money for vapor money. It also seemed certain to drop back to zero as soon as everyone worked out that it was a scam (or only useful for money laundering). Duh, today that thousand would be worth $20 million-ish (and peaked around $65 million). But I still think it is a scam, it will ultimately collapse to zero value or be used primarily for money laundering. So, I admit that I could be wrong, up to now I have been wrong, but I will be vindicated (yet poorer) in the long run. My only rationale now is that if I got in, I wouldn't be right about when to get out, so I would lose most of the profit.
As for a position I took and vigorously defended, like in bull sessions with friends, I guess I was wrong about Crimea and Putin. My attitude at the time was, Big deal. Russia didn't seem like much of a threat, the Russian claim on Crimea seemed historically plausible (its having been gifted by the USSR mid-century), it didn't seem like one people was subjugating another, I didn't have great sympathy for Ukraine which seemed like a thoroughly corrupt backwater, and I saw Putin as a thug but a relatively unimportant one who wanted power and wealth, had it, and wouldn't be so stupid as to take on the West in a big way. There were commentators (and friends of mine at the time) who saw it much differently -- as an outrageous encroachment on another independent, (sorta) democratic nation's sovereignty in Europe, as Hitler-ish, as akin to basically how we feel about Ukraine today, and that Obama's (and, to be fair, just about *everyone else's*) functional acquiescence (amid near-universal lack of interest in doing anything serious about it) would be taken as a green light for worse to come. But I pshawed those arguments as overwrought. It seems they were right, and I was wrong.
First, I highly recommend reading the entire Bret Stephens column on "I was wrong about Trump supporters" to all liberals who generally have a very difficult time understanding how in the world so many people supported Trump in 2016. Stevens does a surgical dissection of the perspective and feelings of many of us who supported the Trump presidency.
Second, I can share with you that there will indeed be an epic battle in the GOP 2024 primaries if Trump runs for re-election. Many of us who voted for him in 2016 believe that our interests are best represented by another conservative candidate so that the election will be more about competing ideas and issues instead of Trump personally, but there is a sizable percentage of his original supporters who remain loyal to him. Ron DeSantis appears to be the leading alternative GOP candidate to Trump, but it is perhaps likely that multiple candidates including Pence, Pompeo, Haley, etc will split the anti-Trump vote, thereby allowing him to win primaries and become the front runner for what could be a very interesting contested convention.
Finally, I regret that your personal animus toward John Kaas is on full display in your remarks about him. The insinuation is that his ability to write about Chicago people and events is somehow no longer credible since he has moved just across the border into Indiana, and also that he is hypocritical in wanting to maintain the privacy of his residence. The first insinuation is fully without support, and the second represents a very real concern for any conservative public figure, given the left's newfound tactics of targeting people whom they are unhappy with at their family residence.
Further, I am also among the ranks of the tens of thousands of people who have fled Chicagoland for greener pastures. I now live in a slightly larger home with a larger yard where I am paying less than 20% of my Chicagoland property taxes, and where I live in a dramatically lower crime area with better streets and infrastructure, and much more efficient delivery of government services without the infamous Chicagoland and Illinois political corruption. There is ample reason why Illinois has led the entire nation in net population loss the past few years, most recently losing net population of over 100,000 people - essentially a medium-sized city disappearing Into the night. I give thanks every morning upon awakening to have escaped from the dysfunction that is perpetrated by the stupidity of voters who continue to return the same people to office who have brought such misery to their lives.
I was definitely wrong in my support of Ralph Nader for President in 2000. Not just for the fact that he swung the election to Bush. Yes, the electoral college takes a lot of the blame for this but there is no doubt that if Nader is not on the ballot in FL Gore wins. The idea of a third party is very attractive but our system is set up in a way that makes it very hard for third parties to get a foothold, and they way to get one going is not to start at the top and run for President. Get local town council seats, state house reps, get some traction in congressional races, etc. Start from the bottom up.
By some miracle Nader wins, then what? A President without a single other federal office holder (except VP) from his party, how does anything get done? Having the entire Congress as the opposition party would not bode well for passing legislation.
Not only did Nader help give us Bush but what he started eventually led to Jill Stein helping to give us Trump. So those are some pretty devastating reasons I was wrong.
And if I'm being honest with myself, as much as I respect and admire what Nader has accomplished in his life, in retrospect I really doubt he would have even been a very good President anyway.
"...there aren’t enough cops to handle 9/11 emergency calls." Shouldn't that read 9-1-1 calls.
Lightfoot's Soldier Field 'notion." Whose votes is she trying to get from these suggestions?
😂
Kass is, and always was, the biggest douche canoe who ever wrote opinion pieces at the Trib. Nobody whined more than he did. Good riddance to him, from "the paper", from his suburban home and from Illinois.
Indiana can have him.
I love Garfunkel and Oats!
I was wrong when I thought that I made mistakes due to youth and inexperience. I take comfort in the thought that with age comes self-knowledge, and that I will be making mistakes well into the future.
Not a good week for funniest tweets.
What I find most interesting about the Kass home-buying item is the timing. He wrote a column in May 2020 about his move "back to the City", but then - also in 2020 - he buys a house in NW Indiana? It appears (to me at least) as if he's making a big deal by very demonstratively "moving back to Chicago" (and, ostensibly, his roots), to burnish his Chicago bona fides. He then subsequently surreptitiously decamps to St. John, IN. He writes a friggin' column about his move to the City, but then we hear nary a peep from him about his move out. Why the move? Was he or his family the victim of a crime? Was there a family reason for the move? Was it pandemic related? We get bupkis. The fact that it took almost 2 years to acknowledge his departure is interesting.
In my view, this is all part of his schtick for his MAGA audience - the white-ethnic, big city native - son of a butcher - taking shots at the "others" who have "taken over" the Democratic (and increasingly less white) big cities to the detriment of their remaining populaces. Kass knows his MAGA audience; and by maintaining the facade (as long as he did) of his being a "Chicago person" added credibility to his "insider's" criticism of Chicago. I'd love to hear from him about the timing/reasons for the multiple moves over such a short period of time.
As I emailed you a couple of weeks ago, I was wrong about Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health. I had predicted it would end in a messy compromise that would leave Roe intact, if under stress. WRONG. I did not anticipate that Roberts' position would be completely ignored by the conservative wing. (You also claim I was wrong about "A Gentleman in Moscow" but I won't concede on that.) BTW, I salute you and the NYT for offering up these mea culpas. I'm actually more willing to consider someone's position if they admit they're not infallible.
Step Right Up by Tom Waits is very funny, especially on first listen.
No credit for your “I was wrong” confession, which reads like a humble-brag. “The one time I was really wrong was when I understated how horrible Trump and his fans are. Never again.” I know you can find something truly cringy.
Thanks for the reference to Spike Jones. We had a number of 78s of his songs and our family would sing along.
Kip Addotta's "Wet Dream" and "Life in the Slaw Lane" were favorites of mine (and Dr Demento).
I thought that I was wrong once, but that was a mistake. :) Actually, my big duh was not thinking that Covid would be a big deal back at the beginning of 2020. I thought it was a SARS sort of thing. I was taking it seriously by April 2020, but I still expected it to be over by the end of 2020. I gave up that pipe dream in July (?).
Another semi-confession. In early 2011, my son (a couple of years out of college) said that he wanted to borrow $1,000 to buy Bitcoin, which could be had for about a dollar. Of course, I said no. I could not believe that anyone would pay real money for vapor money. It also seemed certain to drop back to zero as soon as everyone worked out that it was a scam (or only useful for money laundering). Duh, today that thousand would be worth $20 million-ish (and peaked around $65 million). But I still think it is a scam, it will ultimately collapse to zero value or be used primarily for money laundering. So, I admit that I could be wrong, up to now I have been wrong, but I will be vindicated (yet poorer) in the long run. My only rationale now is that if I got in, I wouldn't be right about when to get out, so I would lose most of the profit.
As for a position I took and vigorously defended, like in bull sessions with friends, I guess I was wrong about Crimea and Putin. My attitude at the time was, Big deal. Russia didn't seem like much of a threat, the Russian claim on Crimea seemed historically plausible (its having been gifted by the USSR mid-century), it didn't seem like one people was subjugating another, I didn't have great sympathy for Ukraine which seemed like a thoroughly corrupt backwater, and I saw Putin as a thug but a relatively unimportant one who wanted power and wealth, had it, and wouldn't be so stupid as to take on the West in a big way. There were commentators (and friends of mine at the time) who saw it much differently -- as an outrageous encroachment on another independent, (sorta) democratic nation's sovereignty in Europe, as Hitler-ish, as akin to basically how we feel about Ukraine today, and that Obama's (and, to be fair, just about *everyone else's*) functional acquiescence (amid near-universal lack of interest in doing anything serious about it) would be taken as a green light for worse to come. But I pshawed those arguments as overwrought. It seems they were right, and I was wrong.
First, I highly recommend reading the entire Bret Stephens column on "I was wrong about Trump supporters" to all liberals who generally have a very difficult time understanding how in the world so many people supported Trump in 2016. Stevens does a surgical dissection of the perspective and feelings of many of us who supported the Trump presidency.
Second, I can share with you that there will indeed be an epic battle in the GOP 2024 primaries if Trump runs for re-election. Many of us who voted for him in 2016 believe that our interests are best represented by another conservative candidate so that the election will be more about competing ideas and issues instead of Trump personally, but there is a sizable percentage of his original supporters who remain loyal to him. Ron DeSantis appears to be the leading alternative GOP candidate to Trump, but it is perhaps likely that multiple candidates including Pence, Pompeo, Haley, etc will split the anti-Trump vote, thereby allowing him to win primaries and become the front runner for what could be a very interesting contested convention.
Finally, I regret that your personal animus toward John Kaas is on full display in your remarks about him. The insinuation is that his ability to write about Chicago people and events is somehow no longer credible since he has moved just across the border into Indiana, and also that he is hypocritical in wanting to maintain the privacy of his residence. The first insinuation is fully without support, and the second represents a very real concern for any conservative public figure, given the left's newfound tactics of targeting people whom they are unhappy with at their family residence.
Further, I am also among the ranks of the tens of thousands of people who have fled Chicagoland for greener pastures. I now live in a slightly larger home with a larger yard where I am paying less than 20% of my Chicagoland property taxes, and where I live in a dramatically lower crime area with better streets and infrastructure, and much more efficient delivery of government services without the infamous Chicagoland and Illinois political corruption. There is ample reason why Illinois has led the entire nation in net population loss the past few years, most recently losing net population of over 100,000 people - essentially a medium-sized city disappearing Into the night. I give thanks every morning upon awakening to have escaped from the dysfunction that is perpetrated by the stupidity of voters who continue to return the same people to office who have brought such misery to their lives.
I was definitely wrong in my support of Ralph Nader for President in 2000. Not just for the fact that he swung the election to Bush. Yes, the electoral college takes a lot of the blame for this but there is no doubt that if Nader is not on the ballot in FL Gore wins. The idea of a third party is very attractive but our system is set up in a way that makes it very hard for third parties to get a foothold, and they way to get one going is not to start at the top and run for President. Get local town council seats, state house reps, get some traction in congressional races, etc. Start from the bottom up.
By some miracle Nader wins, then what? A President without a single other federal office holder (except VP) from his party, how does anything get done? Having the entire Congress as the opposition party would not bode well for passing legislation.
Not only did Nader help give us Bush but what he started eventually led to Jill Stein helping to give us Trump. So those are some pretty devastating reasons I was wrong.
And if I'm being honest with myself, as much as I respect and admire what Nader has accomplished in his life, in retrospect I really doubt he would have even been a very good President anyway.