A key point whether protesters are held acxountable for breaking laws. People are going to protest and sometimes break laws will doing so. What I find frustrating is government selcting when to enforce laws appropriately based on politics. If I stood in an intersection and stopped traffic I would expect the police to compel me to move... By force if necessary. The same should apply to everybody else. It is entirely reasonable to regulate the time place and manner of protesting. We have come a long way since the civil rights movement. There is ample opportunity for protesters to make there statements in places where they will be seen. I have seen marches in thw loop where the marchers stayed on the sidewalk and were allowed to use spaces in parks.
Oh and I doubt there is much debate about us being fuddie duddies, but not the arch conservative variety.
Considering that the court order in Alabama was undoubtedly written by a racist local Dallas County Alabama judge, if the marchers had appealed it, there was probably a good chance a federal judge would've OKed it & overturned the racist local Dallas County judge.
When the system does not permit what ought to be lawful protests, people have no recourse but to engage in civil disobedience. The march across the Edmund Pettus Birdge is illustrative. The public saw solemn, peaceful, well-dressed protesters walk defiantly yet calmly across the bridge, only to be attacked by state troopers on the other side. It was a turning point, because it showed Wallace's police to be the unruly ones. (I'm not positive, but I think the bridge was empty. The protest had been announced and was expected. This wasn't an improvised spill on to Lake Shore Drive or some such.)
It's an example of the persuasive approach adopted throughout the civil rights movement by Lewis, King, and others of their mind. For them, it seems, protest was serious business, where you come correct, with a sort of righteous dignity that's plain to see.
Unless the goal is literal revolution, the goal must be to persuade. Somebody else mentioned protest "theater" in negative terms, and I know what they mean, but it *is* theater. There's an audience, one you're trying to engage, not turn off. Maybe hitting the donkey works for the donkey, but I defy anyone to show me a bruised donkey who changed its mind on Israel and Gaza.
Occupy Wall St was a reaction to bank bailouts after the mortgage crisis. It advanced the premise that the system is rigged in favor of "the top 1%" that still gets traction today. Without the OWS protests I think we would not see the likes of AOC and Elizabeth Warren in Congress. Nor would Bernie have been able to spoil Hilary Clinton's campaign for president.
The problem though is that conservatives are overall more active than liberals as they have a greater sense of entitlement, their value system is not about fairness and well-being, as is the liberal value system, but about authority, piety, and tribe. Therefore, it is very difficult to get people to care about others when innate selfishness is so powerful. Liberalism makes small progress in the face of conservative reaction, which isn't enough for some.
1. These idiot Hamas supporting protesters are just an even more asinine version of the climate loons splashing paint on art in museums or the even crazier ones gluing themselves to streets.
2. "Exposed pipes with raw sewage in them"? Lots of building have exposed sewer pipes, I think those people meant broken sewer pipes, but maybe I'm wrong.
3. Edward Benn is an obvious fool that leans towards the cop union all the time. White racist cops treat black criminals better than Benn treats the city.
4. Dibs in Chicago is disgusting, so it figures a jerk like Kass loves it, especially now that he's thankfully removed himself to Indiana. Anytime some does that on my block, I take that crap to the alley, as garbage.
5. You want the Bills to beat the Chiefs? Watch out for the Swifties to come after you Eric!
6. As for the streaming game, I guess the NFL wants Congress to force them to put all playoffs on free TV, just like Congress forced them to end the 75 mile blackout rule for local TV years ago.
I doubt that the protesters actually support Hamas as you allege. So much for you actually understanding what the protesters are really about! Most of these people are against the "settlers" stealing Palestinian property in their bid to drive out all nonJews from what they see as Jewish territory. They don't argue well and muddle their real point.
As for "climate loons", the same holds for them, they don't argue well. However, you obviously don't appreciate the threat of a sixth extinction event that our use of fossil fuels presents. As humans have been driving a faster than Permian Era extinction event, wildlife populations have been plummeting due to human activity and overpopulation, climate change will be the straw that pushes life over the tipping point and when it happens, it will be catastrophic. The fossil record proves this at every climate change event.
The protesters hate Israel & Jews, so they do support Hamas.
The settlers haven't stolen any property, they actually buy it from the Arabs that own it & then build on it. Blame the sellers, not the buyers!
As for the climate loons, I know exactly what's going on, many species of animals are going extinct, but splashing paint on art or gluing yourself to a street or floor isn't going to stop it!
As Eric stated at the beginning, it's counter productive & just pisses off all the rest of us.
You mean that Amnesty International which is viciously anti-Semitic & always finds that Israel is doing something bad to Arabs, while never finding anything wrong with Arab countries having actual slaves & Qatar killing the workers it imported from Asia. Or never calling out Hamas or Hezbollah for sending rockets into residential parts of Israel?
That Amnesty International? At least Hitler & the Nazis were honest in their hatred of Jews & didn't cover it up like your fellow travelers do!
LOL! You're the obtuse one! They stole property. It was titled to the people who occupied it before the settlers took it, as happened when those that created the state of Israel took property titled to people under the Ottoman Empire prior to its dissolution. European Christians created this mess with the culmination that was the Holocaust that was the cherry on the cake that were their pogroms against Jews since Christianity's founding. Christians should have made the Jews whole by giving them land in Europe for their own country and if that failed, made the victims of theft in what is now Israel whole.
Again, I doubt that the protesters hate Israel, like most people they rail at Israel as a whole, rather then refining their target, the right-wing terrorists that have been stealing from Palestinians in their effort to drive them from what is now Israel. Sure, there may be some antiSemites in the crowd, there always are, but most just want justice which is what a lot of Israelis want to but have been and are thwarted by the right-wing religious zealots who feel entitled to whatever they want.
If someone has been wearing. "Free Palestine" button for years, I can repect that. If they only start doing so after the assault by Hamas then the meaning is entirely different. It would be like wearing a "support police" button right after George Floyd was killed.
Not necessarily. You'd have to poll people to see if they truly support Hamas and its terrorism or not. There is a spectrum of understanding that come from what people pay attention to and when they started paying attention. IMO, this is Cupp's point, people need to engage rationally to avoid misinterpretation and misinformation as well as outright lies. Not everyone expresses themselves clearly and not everyone has a deep understanding of events. Don't jump to conclusions, engage. That is but one point in this discussion.
while i agree with you that the pace of species extinctions exceeds significantly the pre-industrial / human population explosion rate of extinctions, i doubt you could find a credible scientist who can credibly support your claim that anthropomorphic climate hange '... will be the straw that pushes life over the tipping point and when it happens, it will be catastrophic. The fossil record proves this at every climate change event.'
and i'd be curious as to how you would define 'climate change event.'
I define "climate change event" as what we're experiencing, global temperatures are increasing due to our use of fossil fuels. I doubt that there is a credible scientist who wouldn't agree that global warming is exacerbating the human caused population declines that will push us over the sixth extinction's tipping point.
i did some of my own research, and it tends to support your position - so touché on that.
but i wonder about a couple related matters - 1] to what extent does human activity, other than releasing greeenhouse gases - e.g., deforestation, development in biodiverse ecosystems, dumping garbage [especially plastics] into water bodies - contribute to a potential large-scale extinction? 2] what is the ability of species to adapt to climate change?
not asking/challenging you to answer these - just ruminating on the subject.
Growing up I had friends whose parents worked at the Beech-Nut plant that made the Fruit Stripe gum. The parents brought home "seconds" - where the color stamping was off or other issues that made them not pretty but still safe to consume. For many years, I thought the quick fading of the flavor was because these were seconds. Only later did I learn that the flavor faded quickly in the retail ones too
Your comments on Fruit Stripe gum was timely for me this week. I recently heard of WTTW's show "Chicago Stories" and looked it up recently to see an episode devoted to the big business of all things "Candy" in Chicago that ended for many in the 60's-70's. In early 70's, when I was in college, I worked at the Cracker Jack factory at 6400 S Cicero for a few summers on second shift. There were a few other candy manufacturers in that area-I recall one making a variety of candies including Tootsie Rolls. Such an interesting place and a long long history beginning sometime in late 1800's. I read that there is no evidence that it's debut was at the first world fair in Chicago. At any rate, it was an interesting place. Some of the machinery looked like it was that old and pretty loud and scary. Some people working there-worked there a very long time-they made rations there for soldiers in WWII I recall. I did a lot of different jobs in that buildiing-none them very well. I just had a hard time keeping up with the machines. Getting the prizes in was just intense and people did it for a whole shift. If that machine malfunctioned, the line shut down and I had to supply the boxes from a wagon. I taped the 3 boxes together for a few days when they gave up on me-I believe the woman who operated it did it for like 40 years. She likely thought I was a bleeding dunce. Sorted out bad peanuts. I did "quality control" was was hated by more that one shift manager for shutting down lines-uppity college student. Campfire Marshmallows was in the building and for a sad week, I mopped it with a mop that was like 1/4 my body weight it seemed-from one end of the room to another. Then turned around and did over again. The experience was a great incentive to stay and do well in college. "Chicago Stories" is very interesting! Check it out!
I think it's fair to say that protests have made gigantic changes in the U.S. Rosa Parks' protest and the Civil Rights Movement protests led to changes, still in progress, but definitely great changes. And the BLM protests have led to a lot as well. I know many people who simply will no longer call the cops for any reason, who record the police while they've stopped people of color for traffic stops and for any other reason. Many school districts have removed the police officers that were stationed in their schools. These protests are telling the leaders that there is a great deal of frustration and anger that they need to be paying attention to. And I think it might cost us our democracy that they aren't listening or taking their concerns seriously.
Any form of un-permitted protest that "inconveniences" people should not be allowed. The Pro-Palestinian protest on Lake Shore Drive a couple weeks ago is a perfect example. They shut down both ways of LSD for over 2 hours. SB Motorists between Irving Park and Belmont were stuck and could not exit. I witnessed a woman who exited her vehicle to pee on the side of the road. EVERY side street was gridlocked with drivers who exited the drive. Ambulances and Fire trucks had a difficult time navigating, making this a safety issue. Blocking airports and causing travelers to miss flights? I lay the blame squarely on the City and the Mayor who turns a blind eye and allows protesters to do this. It is the city who has failed the majority of its citizens for a small group of vocal activists. If protesters were carted off the street, arrested and fined, and then more severely punished for repeat offenders, you would see people thinking twice about being so disruptive. But then again, the city doesn't even punish criminals, so why should we expect protestors to be treated differently.
Or consider the number of people who may be suffering life threatening medical conditions whom are denied urgent medical care. Life threatening crimes of this sort need to be dealt with with the tools that have historically proven effective: pepper spray, billy clubs, taser jolts and mass arrests. You can contemplate the injustice of your treatment whilst dabbing away the stinging tears in the cell you so richly deserve to inhabit. If all of this sounds harsh, try finding a less pious outlet for your extracurricular endeavors. There are plenty of porn sites out there.
The discussion on protests was interesting. I could not answer the poll because I kept asking “depends on the subject of the protest”. I could not agree that all protests were okay nor that no protests were okay. It depended on my subjective view of the world.
For example:
1. Protest that Donald Trump is being unfairly treated by the Courts. Shut that baby down now!
2. Protest against restrictive abortion laws. Okay.
3. Fruit stripe gum going off the market. Shut it down
4. Help the people in Palestine. Okay
5. Free Tibet. I guess okay.
I cannot get my head around protest for any reason as being acceptable, yet I think protests are necessary - but I have to agree with the subject matter.
I guess I could handle a protest that I disagree with if it was scheduled, advertised and had a permit.
I think the issue is about protests that mess up traffic or impose other costs.
I think it was in 2018 when people protested Rahm in wrigleyville. They intended to shut down LSD but the police shut it down for them and no one was arrested. Within a month they raised the stakes and threatened to walk out on the expressway by ohare right before the labor day weekend. The police handled it very well. They announced to the protesters a specific time for which they had to get a certain distance away from the road to avoid arrest. They police made good on there threat and issued tickets to those who did not comply for the misdemeanor of being on the expressway as a pedestrian. It was the lightest possible touch and it is all that was needed to keep order. Also it made it hard for the leaders who got tickets to claim they were martyrs for the cause.
Hey Peter - Respectfully, I must heartily disagree with your position on this. If a person in charge were to allow unlawful disruptive protests they agree with, but not allow those they disagreed with, it seems like a form of fascism where people advocating certain views are allowed to violate the law and others are not. This subjectivity would depend wholly upon the person in charge and their own personal views. Rather, I think our society works best when laws and rules are applied equally to all people.
Haha. I suggest we put Peter in charge of defining worthiness of the protest. I suggested giving the same power to EZ a couple years back when he thought it was OK to remove Columbus and Jackson statues, but not Jefferson or Washington statues. How about those Roman emperor's statues, EZ? Caligula, Nero,...
Yes, points well taken. This is where my brain says you are right but my heart is not in it.
Being in ROTC in the 1960s era, I got demonstrated against ALOT. Baby killer! You white N word of the military industrial complex! Nixon ass kisser! Got hit by rotten vegetables, SDS tried twice to blow up our ROTC building by filling a beater car with gas, parking it by our heating/cooling unit, opening the gas tank and lighting a rag to create a big Molotov cocktail. Each time the rag failed. School administrators deemed it unnecessary to investigate.
Their intent was to get ROTC off campus, and they succeeded. My class of 9 was the last class ever. Did it stop the war? No. Did it hurt ROTC? Not really, the Navy just increased their enrollment at Auburn and Alabama.
So David, you got me. I wish to be a Roman God, go back in time and spank each of those upper middle class privileged white jerks.
By the way, that is why I work hard at tolerance, I could never dig up any empathy for these folks. Yo Eric, empathy can be hard, near impossible to do!
The alpha funny message sign on Chicago expressways had to be: "NO SPEEDING / NO TEXTING / NO KETCHUP". It went viral! No long after that, we got: "PLEASE DO NOT / TAKE PICTURES / OF THIS SIGN".
About claiming the rights to something unearned, John Kass called dibs on dibs. Just because it may have first appeared in print in his column doesn't mean the term hadn't already been commonly used for securing access to a shoveled out parking space -- or anything else for that matter. I'm old enough to have helped my father clear the space in front of our 2-flat in January 1967, and my friends doing the same for their parents up and down the street. We called dibs on those spaces then, as we called dibs on just about anything we wanted primary and solitary access to, earned or not. Kass has a history of taking undeserved credit for something everyone else simply took for granted (beer can chicken anyone?). Whether of not parking space dibs deserves to die, giving Kass credit for the term certainly should.
I believe protests are a necessary tool of democracy, without which many wrongs would never be recognized, or change achieved. But, it's up to local governments to police and/or manage them.
I distinguish between actual protests and protest theater.
Actual protests, such as the Million Man March, bring attention to a serious issue without ruining the day for people who are just minding their own business.
Splashing paint on art is protest theater - done just to feed the ego of the perpetrator. Blocking bridges / streets etc. is not going to bring any supporters to their cause.
I hate when republicans say the 2020 election was “stollen” just because they were outsmarted, outworked, or out legislated. Democrats have fought for and continue to fight for expanding the ability to use mail in ballots (which may have turned the election by itself), not requiring ID’s to vote, making Election Day a federal holiday, requiring lines be a maximum of 30 minute wait, restoring voting right to those who have served felony convictions, allowing voter registration on Election Day at polling place, allowing non-citizens to vote in state and municipal elections, smart redistricting, etc. Their GOTV efforts are far superior to republicans.
I, like you, knew that JJ McCarthy would jump to the pros. The possibility of pre-pro career injury are too high to chance the occurrence before getting paid (well, paid an actual salary) for his talents - which were actually underutilized this year. (Michigan was smart to emphasize the run during the grueling portion of its schedule - Penn State, OSU, Iowa, Alabama and Washington, as it was the best strategy to remain on the field during long drive and deprive their opponents of possessing the ball.) I am going out on a limb in predicting that McCarthy will be Tom Brady-like during his Pro career. (Although perhaps not so many Super Bowl rings.)
Like you, during the 1970s-1990s, the Lions were always 2nd place to the Wolverines in football enthusiasm in our house. (5 U of M Alumni). Although the Lions had some great players over the years - Erik Kramer, Billy Sims, Al "Bubba" Baker, Megatron (Calvin Johnson), Matthew Stafford - its only (very short) window of realistic playoff hopes occurred during the Barry Sanders Era (which, incidentally was the last time the Lions were in the playoffs). I went all-in on the Lions after they started their win streak last year, and was very much looking forward to this NFL season - something I haven't been able to do (at least in the context of the Lions) in decades. Dan Campbell is the real deal. I've savored this season.
Eric - I am compelled to call out your demonization of white Evangelicals in the wake of the Iowa caucus results. In fact, I also reject demonization of any person based upon who they vote for or support. (I am confident that a good number of the PS readers will immediately find personal moral fault in anyone who would vote for Trump, but I can tell you there are also many on the right who are just as ready to demonize any one who would vote for Biden. We are all better than this!)
With regard to your generalization about white Evangelicals, I was a member of Willow Creek North Shore campus when I lived in Chicagoland. (My very best buddy there is Jamaican, and our small group circle included a Chinese couple, a Korean couple, a woman from Guatemala, a Mexican couple, and for a time a Nigerian family while the father was here on a visa studying for his doctorate. But, reflecting the demographics of the area, Willow Creek North Shore campus was overwhelmingly white and with significant Asian members.)
In the years we were members of Willow Creek, the main and remote campuses were incredibly active in being the hands of Christ in this world to those in need. A very partial list of some of the church activities included the following:
* A Christmas care package gift to every prison inmate in the state of Illinois, about 75,000 people. These would include a usually modest gift, snack items, a New Testament and a letter of encouragement and an offer to be contacted. One year, We were advised that the primary juvenile facility was very drafty and cold, so all the inmates at this facility received a new warm sweat suit. The church also had a very active ongoing Cook County prison ministry.
* Upon hearing there was a profound lack of dental care in the underprivileged community, the main campus set up a certified dental facility staffed by volunteers from the membership who would provide free dental service to people in need.
* The main campus also set up a car repair facility where again, church volunteers would perform car repairs for people in genuine need who could not afford them.
* Church missions went to South Central Africa to dozens of areas where people literally walked miles with jugs to get water during the dry season, and dug wells so that the people in these areas would have easy availability of clean water on a year-round basis.
* The church had an annual seed packing event where we would measure out and prepare a million packets of various types of seeds, and then deliver these to impoverished African areas with trainers who taught the people how to plant and harvest gardens. Videos the following years would reflect how people who had been living in food poverty were now well fed and also were able to now generate income from the sale of their surplus crops.
* A church mission partnered with locals in Central America to construct a medical clinic and provide equipment in an area that had an absence of medical care.
* Following a mudslide in a rural village that destroyed their very rudimentary homes, a Willow Creek mission constructed 40 new concrete block homes with indoor plumbing and electricity that these people had not previously had.
* Except for wealthy families, girls in many areas of Thailand still do not receive formal education. Partnering with locals, Willow Creek funded a school for girls in a rural area of Thailand.
This is a very partial listing, as there are many, many more service activities that are done and ongoing by the church. My fellow members at Willow Creek were incredibly generous with both funding and their time in serving others in need on an ongoing process. It gave us great joy to be members of a church that afforded us the opportunity to participate in so many things that truly made a difference in people's lives!
We were a totally apolitical Church - I never knew what our pastor's personal politics were, I did not want to know and it did not matter. But I believe we clearly fall within the categorization of white Evangelicals, and I strongly reject your harsh judgment of us as a group.
I wish everyone a good day, and take heart, the weather warm up is coming!
I think that’s wonderful, K Mason. There are and have been wonderful people in prison, many of whom find meaning in various religions. I think of Malcolm X who converted to Islam when imprisoned for burglary in Massachusetts. What really bothers me is the assumption that some folks have that people drawn into the criminal justice system are “bad people” somehow different from us (the good people). To be sure, there are sociopaths in prison, just as there are sociopaths in corporate boardrooms, but it’s my experience that the majority of people who get caught up in the criminal justice system are no better or worse than the average. Many of them are people who made the wrong choices when faced with very difficult situations, either social, familial, emotional, or financial. I remember, when I was an Appellate Defender in the early 1980s, a case out of Lake County where a defendant with a prior record for theft got three years in prison for stealing some packages of Buddig meats from a grocery store.
Cupp makes a good point, the "protest" problem, being irritating and not winning hearts and minds, stems from leaders not doing what the protesters want. They may have a point and leaders may not agree with the protesters or they may feel no need to "do the right thing", whatever that may be, because they are corrupt or feel no allegiance to the cause. It does come down to the saying attributed to Churchill that "democracy is the worst system except for all the others".
Making change requires time and as Cupp notes, engagement, and when that doesn't happen fast enough for enough people, then irritating protests happen. Therefore, I don't think that this will change, ever. What needs to happen though is the engagement that Cupp calls for because if the protesters' position is right and just, it will prevail over time.
A key point whether protesters are held acxountable for breaking laws. People are going to protest and sometimes break laws will doing so. What I find frustrating is government selcting when to enforce laws appropriately based on politics. If I stood in an intersection and stopped traffic I would expect the police to compel me to move... By force if necessary. The same should apply to everybody else. It is entirely reasonable to regulate the time place and manner of protesting. We have come a long way since the civil rights movement. There is ample opportunity for protesters to make there statements in places where they will be seen. I have seen marches in thw loop where the marchers stayed on the sidewalk and were allowed to use spaces in parks.
Oh and I doubt there is much debate about us being fuddie duddies, but not the arch conservative variety.
You saying I am a fuddie duddie? Wait…damn there’s my f/d card underneath my grumpy old man card.
But no arch conservative star on the card…so you got me pegged.
Considering that the court order in Alabama was undoubtedly written by a racist local Dallas County Alabama judge, if the marchers had appealed it, there was probably a good chance a federal judge would've OKed it & overturned the racist local Dallas County judge.
When the system does not permit what ought to be lawful protests, people have no recourse but to engage in civil disobedience. The march across the Edmund Pettus Birdge is illustrative. The public saw solemn, peaceful, well-dressed protesters walk defiantly yet calmly across the bridge, only to be attacked by state troopers on the other side. It was a turning point, because it showed Wallace's police to be the unruly ones. (I'm not positive, but I think the bridge was empty. The protest had been announced and was expected. This wasn't an improvised spill on to Lake Shore Drive or some such.)
It's an example of the persuasive approach adopted throughout the civil rights movement by Lewis, King, and others of their mind. For them, it seems, protest was serious business, where you come correct, with a sort of righteous dignity that's plain to see.
Unless the goal is literal revolution, the goal must be to persuade. Somebody else mentioned protest "theater" in negative terms, and I know what they mean, but it *is* theater. There's an audience, one you're trying to engage, not turn off. Maybe hitting the donkey works for the donkey, but I defy anyone to show me a bruised donkey who changed its mind on Israel and Gaza.
Occupy Wall St was a reaction to bank bailouts after the mortgage crisis. It advanced the premise that the system is rigged in favor of "the top 1%" that still gets traction today. Without the OWS protests I think we would not see the likes of AOC and Elizabeth Warren in Congress. Nor would Bernie have been able to spoil Hilary Clinton's campaign for president.
The problem though is that conservatives are overall more active than liberals as they have a greater sense of entitlement, their value system is not about fairness and well-being, as is the liberal value system, but about authority, piety, and tribe. Therefore, it is very difficult to get people to care about others when innate selfishness is so powerful. Liberalism makes small progress in the face of conservative reaction, which isn't enough for some.
1. These idiot Hamas supporting protesters are just an even more asinine version of the climate loons splashing paint on art in museums or the even crazier ones gluing themselves to streets.
2. "Exposed pipes with raw sewage in them"? Lots of building have exposed sewer pipes, I think those people meant broken sewer pipes, but maybe I'm wrong.
3. Edward Benn is an obvious fool that leans towards the cop union all the time. White racist cops treat black criminals better than Benn treats the city.
4. Dibs in Chicago is disgusting, so it figures a jerk like Kass loves it, especially now that he's thankfully removed himself to Indiana. Anytime some does that on my block, I take that crap to the alley, as garbage.
5. You want the Bills to beat the Chiefs? Watch out for the Swifties to come after you Eric!
6. As for the streaming game, I guess the NFL wants Congress to force them to put all playoffs on free TV, just like Congress forced them to end the 75 mile blackout rule for local TV years ago.
5.
I doubt that the protesters actually support Hamas as you allege. So much for you actually understanding what the protesters are really about! Most of these people are against the "settlers" stealing Palestinian property in their bid to drive out all nonJews from what they see as Jewish territory. They don't argue well and muddle their real point.
As for "climate loons", the same holds for them, they don't argue well. However, you obviously don't appreciate the threat of a sixth extinction event that our use of fossil fuels presents. As humans have been driving a faster than Permian Era extinction event, wildlife populations have been plummeting due to human activity and overpopulation, climate change will be the straw that pushes life over the tipping point and when it happens, it will be catastrophic. The fossil record proves this at every climate change event.
Good grief you're really obtuse!
The protesters hate Israel & Jews, so they do support Hamas.
The settlers haven't stolen any property, they actually buy it from the Arabs that own it & then build on it. Blame the sellers, not the buyers!
As for the climate loons, I know exactly what's going on, many species of animals are going extinct, but splashing paint on art or gluing yourself to a street or floor isn't going to stop it!
As Eric stated at the beginning, it's counter productive & just pisses off all the rest of us.
The Israeli settlers haven’t stolen any property?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_expropriation_in_the_West_Bank
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/
Seriously, you're quoting Wikipedia, a place that absolutely anyone can write anything & we're supposed to believe it?
I’m citing Wikipedia and Amnesty International. And you are citing, well, nothing. 2-0.
You mean that Amnesty International which is viciously anti-Semitic & always finds that Israel is doing something bad to Arabs, while never finding anything wrong with Arab countries having actual slaves & Qatar killing the workers it imported from Asia. Or never calling out Hamas or Hezbollah for sending rockets into residential parts of Israel?
That Amnesty International? At least Hitler & the Nazis were honest in their hatred of Jews & didn't cover it up like your fellow travelers do!
LOL! You're the obtuse one! They stole property. It was titled to the people who occupied it before the settlers took it, as happened when those that created the state of Israel took property titled to people under the Ottoman Empire prior to its dissolution. European Christians created this mess with the culmination that was the Holocaust that was the cherry on the cake that were their pogroms against Jews since Christianity's founding. Christians should have made the Jews whole by giving them land in Europe for their own country and if that failed, made the victims of theft in what is now Israel whole.
Again, I doubt that the protesters hate Israel, like most people they rail at Israel as a whole, rather then refining their target, the right-wing terrorists that have been stealing from Palestinians in their effort to drive them from what is now Israel. Sure, there may be some antiSemites in the crowd, there always are, but most just want justice which is what a lot of Israelis want to but have been and are thwarted by the right-wing religious zealots who feel entitled to whatever they want.
If someone has been wearing. "Free Palestine" button for years, I can repect that. If they only start doing so after the assault by Hamas then the meaning is entirely different. It would be like wearing a "support police" button right after George Floyd was killed.
Not necessarily. You'd have to poll people to see if they truly support Hamas and its terrorism or not. There is a spectrum of understanding that come from what people pay attention to and when they started paying attention. IMO, this is Cupp's point, people need to engage rationally to avoid misinterpretation and misinformation as well as outright lies. Not everyone expresses themselves clearly and not everyone has a deep understanding of events. Don't jump to conclusions, engage. That is but one point in this discussion.
while i agree with you that the pace of species extinctions exceeds significantly the pre-industrial / human population explosion rate of extinctions, i doubt you could find a credible scientist who can credibly support your claim that anthropomorphic climate hange '... will be the straw that pushes life over the tipping point and when it happens, it will be catastrophic. The fossil record proves this at every climate change event.'
and i'd be curious as to how you would define 'climate change event.'
I define "climate change event" as what we're experiencing, global temperatures are increasing due to our use of fossil fuels. I doubt that there is a credible scientist who wouldn't agree that global warming is exacerbating the human caused population declines that will push us over the sixth extinction's tipping point.
ok, give us some references, specific to climate change leading to the 'sixth extinction' - names, books or papers, etc
Humans the THE problem now:
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/climate-change-will-accelerate-earths-sixth-mass-extinction-180955138/.
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/without-action-on-climate-another-mass-extinction-event-will-likely-happen-in-the-worlds-oceans-180979991/
- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe9039
- https://theconversation.com/mass-extinctions-and-climate-change-why-the-speed-of-rising-greenhouse-gases-matters-56675
- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aav736
Wildlife population have been in severe decline for decades from human overpopulation and activities:
- https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115
- https://www.worldwildlife.org/press-releases/69-average-decline-in-wildlife-populations-since-1970-says-new-wwf-report
- https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back
- https://e360.yale.edu/features/insect_numbers_declining_why_it_matters
- https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/50/8/653/243214?login=true
- https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammal-decline
Climate change, without humans being around, have caused extinction events:
-https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25019-2
- https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/what-caused-earths-biggest-mass-extinction
- https://ourworldindata.org/mass-extinctions
i did some of my own research, and it tends to support your position - so touché on that.
but i wonder about a couple related matters - 1] to what extent does human activity, other than releasing greeenhouse gases - e.g., deforestation, development in biodiverse ecosystems, dumping garbage [especially plastics] into water bodies - contribute to a potential large-scale extinction? 2] what is the ability of species to adapt to climate change?
not asking/challenging you to answer these - just ruminating on the subject.
Growing up I had friends whose parents worked at the Beech-Nut plant that made the Fruit Stripe gum. The parents brought home "seconds" - where the color stamping was off or other issues that made them not pretty but still safe to consume. For many years, I thought the quick fading of the flavor was because these were seconds. Only later did I learn that the flavor faded quickly in the retail ones too
Your comments on Fruit Stripe gum was timely for me this week. I recently heard of WTTW's show "Chicago Stories" and looked it up recently to see an episode devoted to the big business of all things "Candy" in Chicago that ended for many in the 60's-70's. In early 70's, when I was in college, I worked at the Cracker Jack factory at 6400 S Cicero for a few summers on second shift. There were a few other candy manufacturers in that area-I recall one making a variety of candies including Tootsie Rolls. Such an interesting place and a long long history beginning sometime in late 1800's. I read that there is no evidence that it's debut was at the first world fair in Chicago. At any rate, it was an interesting place. Some of the machinery looked like it was that old and pretty loud and scary. Some people working there-worked there a very long time-they made rations there for soldiers in WWII I recall. I did a lot of different jobs in that buildiing-none them very well. I just had a hard time keeping up with the machines. Getting the prizes in was just intense and people did it for a whole shift. If that machine malfunctioned, the line shut down and I had to supply the boxes from a wagon. I taped the 3 boxes together for a few days when they gave up on me-I believe the woman who operated it did it for like 40 years. She likely thought I was a bleeding dunce. Sorted out bad peanuts. I did "quality control" was was hated by more that one shift manager for shutting down lines-uppity college student. Campfire Marshmallows was in the building and for a sad week, I mopped it with a mop that was like 1/4 my body weight it seemed-from one end of the room to another. Then turned around and did over again. The experience was a great incentive to stay and do well in college. "Chicago Stories" is very interesting! Check it out!
I think it's fair to say that protests have made gigantic changes in the U.S. Rosa Parks' protest and the Civil Rights Movement protests led to changes, still in progress, but definitely great changes. And the BLM protests have led to a lot as well. I know many people who simply will no longer call the cops for any reason, who record the police while they've stopped people of color for traffic stops and for any other reason. Many school districts have removed the police officers that were stationed in their schools. These protests are telling the leaders that there is a great deal of frustration and anger that they need to be paying attention to. And I think it might cost us our democracy that they aren't listening or taking their concerns seriously.
Any form of un-permitted protest that "inconveniences" people should not be allowed. The Pro-Palestinian protest on Lake Shore Drive a couple weeks ago is a perfect example. They shut down both ways of LSD for over 2 hours. SB Motorists between Irving Park and Belmont were stuck and could not exit. I witnessed a woman who exited her vehicle to pee on the side of the road. EVERY side street was gridlocked with drivers who exited the drive. Ambulances and Fire trucks had a difficult time navigating, making this a safety issue. Blocking airports and causing travelers to miss flights? I lay the blame squarely on the City and the Mayor who turns a blind eye and allows protesters to do this. It is the city who has failed the majority of its citizens for a small group of vocal activists. If protesters were carted off the street, arrested and fined, and then more severely punished for repeat offenders, you would see people thinking twice about being so disruptive. But then again, the city doesn't even punish criminals, so why should we expect protestors to be treated differently.
Or consider the number of people who may be suffering life threatening medical conditions whom are denied urgent medical care. Life threatening crimes of this sort need to be dealt with with the tools that have historically proven effective: pepper spray, billy clubs, taser jolts and mass arrests. You can contemplate the injustice of your treatment whilst dabbing away the stinging tears in the cell you so richly deserve to inhabit. If all of this sounds harsh, try finding a less pious outlet for your extracurricular endeavors. There are plenty of porn sites out there.
The discussion on protests was interesting. I could not answer the poll because I kept asking “depends on the subject of the protest”. I could not agree that all protests were okay nor that no protests were okay. It depended on my subjective view of the world.
For example:
1. Protest that Donald Trump is being unfairly treated by the Courts. Shut that baby down now!
2. Protest against restrictive abortion laws. Okay.
3. Fruit stripe gum going off the market. Shut it down
4. Help the people in Palestine. Okay
5. Free Tibet. I guess okay.
I cannot get my head around protest for any reason as being acceptable, yet I think protests are necessary - but I have to agree with the subject matter.
I guess I could handle a protest that I disagree with if it was scheduled, advertised and had a permit.
But ambush protests…I would have a problem.
What do other folks think?
I think the issue is about protests that mess up traffic or impose other costs.
I think it was in 2018 when people protested Rahm in wrigleyville. They intended to shut down LSD but the police shut it down for them and no one was arrested. Within a month they raised the stakes and threatened to walk out on the expressway by ohare right before the labor day weekend. The police handled it very well. They announced to the protesters a specific time for which they had to get a certain distance away from the road to avoid arrest. They police made good on there threat and issued tickets to those who did not comply for the misdemeanor of being on the expressway as a pedestrian. It was the lightest possible touch and it is all that was needed to keep order. Also it made it hard for the leaders who got tickets to claim they were martyrs for the cause.
Hey Peter - Respectfully, I must heartily disagree with your position on this. If a person in charge were to allow unlawful disruptive protests they agree with, but not allow those they disagreed with, it seems like a form of fascism where people advocating certain views are allowed to violate the law and others are not. This subjectivity would depend wholly upon the person in charge and their own personal views. Rather, I think our society works best when laws and rules are applied equally to all people.
Haha. I suggest we put Peter in charge of defining worthiness of the protest. I suggested giving the same power to EZ a couple years back when he thought it was OK to remove Columbus and Jackson statues, but not Jefferson or Washington statues. How about those Roman emperor's statues, EZ? Caligula, Nero,...
Yes, points well taken. This is where my brain says you are right but my heart is not in it.
Being in ROTC in the 1960s era, I got demonstrated against ALOT. Baby killer! You white N word of the military industrial complex! Nixon ass kisser! Got hit by rotten vegetables, SDS tried twice to blow up our ROTC building by filling a beater car with gas, parking it by our heating/cooling unit, opening the gas tank and lighting a rag to create a big Molotov cocktail. Each time the rag failed. School administrators deemed it unnecessary to investigate.
Their intent was to get ROTC off campus, and they succeeded. My class of 9 was the last class ever. Did it stop the war? No. Did it hurt ROTC? Not really, the Navy just increased their enrollment at Auburn and Alabama.
So David, you got me. I wish to be a Roman God, go back in time and spank each of those upper middle class privileged white jerks.
By the way, that is why I work hard at tolerance, I could never dig up any empathy for these folks. Yo Eric, empathy can be hard, near impossible to do!
The alpha funny message sign on Chicago expressways had to be: "NO SPEEDING / NO TEXTING / NO KETCHUP". It went viral! No long after that, we got: "PLEASE DO NOT / TAKE PICTURES / OF THIS SIGN".
About claiming the rights to something unearned, John Kass called dibs on dibs. Just because it may have first appeared in print in his column doesn't mean the term hadn't already been commonly used for securing access to a shoveled out parking space -- or anything else for that matter. I'm old enough to have helped my father clear the space in front of our 2-flat in January 1967, and my friends doing the same for their parents up and down the street. We called dibs on those spaces then, as we called dibs on just about anything we wanted primary and solitary access to, earned or not. Kass has a history of taking undeserved credit for something everyone else simply took for granted (beer can chicken anyone?). Whether of not parking space dibs deserves to die, giving Kass credit for the term certainly should.
My wife made me aware of an inexpensive air pod connector from Amazon. Clip them on the air pods and if they fall out of your ears, saved. $10
I believe protests are a necessary tool of democracy, without which many wrongs would never be recognized, or change achieved. But, it's up to local governments to police and/or manage them.
I distinguish between actual protests and protest theater.
Actual protests, such as the Million Man March, bring attention to a serious issue without ruining the day for people who are just minding their own business.
Splashing paint on art is protest theater - done just to feed the ego of the perpetrator. Blocking bridges / streets etc. is not going to bring any supporters to their cause.
I hate when republicans say the 2020 election was “stollen” just because they were outsmarted, outworked, or out legislated. Democrats have fought for and continue to fight for expanding the ability to use mail in ballots (which may have turned the election by itself), not requiring ID’s to vote, making Election Day a federal holiday, requiring lines be a maximum of 30 minute wait, restoring voting right to those who have served felony convictions, allowing voter registration on Election Day at polling place, allowing non-citizens to vote in state and municipal elections, smart redistricting, etc. Their GOTV efforts are far superior to republicans.
Good crop of Tweets this week!
I, like you, knew that JJ McCarthy would jump to the pros. The possibility of pre-pro career injury are too high to chance the occurrence before getting paid (well, paid an actual salary) for his talents - which were actually underutilized this year. (Michigan was smart to emphasize the run during the grueling portion of its schedule - Penn State, OSU, Iowa, Alabama and Washington, as it was the best strategy to remain on the field during long drive and deprive their opponents of possessing the ball.) I am going out on a limb in predicting that McCarthy will be Tom Brady-like during his Pro career. (Although perhaps not so many Super Bowl rings.)
Like you, during the 1970s-1990s, the Lions were always 2nd place to the Wolverines in football enthusiasm in our house. (5 U of M Alumni). Although the Lions had some great players over the years - Erik Kramer, Billy Sims, Al "Bubba" Baker, Megatron (Calvin Johnson), Matthew Stafford - its only (very short) window of realistic playoff hopes occurred during the Barry Sanders Era (which, incidentally was the last time the Lions were in the playoffs). I went all-in on the Lions after they started their win streak last year, and was very much looking forward to this NFL season - something I haven't been able to do (at least in the context of the Lions) in decades. Dan Campbell is the real deal. I've savored this season.
Eric - I am compelled to call out your demonization of white Evangelicals in the wake of the Iowa caucus results. In fact, I also reject demonization of any person based upon who they vote for or support. (I am confident that a good number of the PS readers will immediately find personal moral fault in anyone who would vote for Trump, but I can tell you there are also many on the right who are just as ready to demonize any one who would vote for Biden. We are all better than this!)
With regard to your generalization about white Evangelicals, I was a member of Willow Creek North Shore campus when I lived in Chicagoland. (My very best buddy there is Jamaican, and our small group circle included a Chinese couple, a Korean couple, a woman from Guatemala, a Mexican couple, and for a time a Nigerian family while the father was here on a visa studying for his doctorate. But, reflecting the demographics of the area, Willow Creek North Shore campus was overwhelmingly white and with significant Asian members.)
In the years we were members of Willow Creek, the main and remote campuses were incredibly active in being the hands of Christ in this world to those in need. A very partial list of some of the church activities included the following:
* A Christmas care package gift to every prison inmate in the state of Illinois, about 75,000 people. These would include a usually modest gift, snack items, a New Testament and a letter of encouragement and an offer to be contacted. One year, We were advised that the primary juvenile facility was very drafty and cold, so all the inmates at this facility received a new warm sweat suit. The church also had a very active ongoing Cook County prison ministry.
* Upon hearing there was a profound lack of dental care in the underprivileged community, the main campus set up a certified dental facility staffed by volunteers from the membership who would provide free dental service to people in need.
* The main campus also set up a car repair facility where again, church volunteers would perform car repairs for people in genuine need who could not afford them.
* Church missions went to South Central Africa to dozens of areas where people literally walked miles with jugs to get water during the dry season, and dug wells so that the people in these areas would have easy availability of clean water on a year-round basis.
* The church had an annual seed packing event where we would measure out and prepare a million packets of various types of seeds, and then deliver these to impoverished African areas with trainers who taught the people how to plant and harvest gardens. Videos the following years would reflect how people who had been living in food poverty were now well fed and also were able to now generate income from the sale of their surplus crops.
* A church mission partnered with locals in Central America to construct a medical clinic and provide equipment in an area that had an absence of medical care.
* Following a mudslide in a rural village that destroyed their very rudimentary homes, a Willow Creek mission constructed 40 new concrete block homes with indoor plumbing and electricity that these people had not previously had.
* Except for wealthy families, girls in many areas of Thailand still do not receive formal education. Partnering with locals, Willow Creek funded a school for girls in a rural area of Thailand.
This is a very partial listing, as there are many, many more service activities that are done and ongoing by the church. My fellow members at Willow Creek were incredibly generous with both funding and their time in serving others in need on an ongoing process. It gave us great joy to be members of a church that afforded us the opportunity to participate in so many things that truly made a difference in people's lives!
We were a totally apolitical Church - I never knew what our pastor's personal politics were, I did not want to know and it did not matter. But I believe we clearly fall within the categorization of white Evangelicals, and I strongly reject your harsh judgment of us as a group.
I wish everyone a good day, and take heart, the weather warm up is coming!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOi2cYz5nXE
Giving an inmate in prison a New Testament is as useful as giving a fish a bicycle.
Although it could be more useful as toilet paper.
Haha, As I was reading the post, I knew someone would cherry pick that item...
I volunteer with U - C Books to Prisoners. We get requests for Bibles and Qu'rans all the time from prisoners all over the State.
I think that’s wonderful, K Mason. There are and have been wonderful people in prison, many of whom find meaning in various religions. I think of Malcolm X who converted to Islam when imprisoned for burglary in Massachusetts. What really bothers me is the assumption that some folks have that people drawn into the criminal justice system are “bad people” somehow different from us (the good people). To be sure, there are sociopaths in prison, just as there are sociopaths in corporate boardrooms, but it’s my experience that the majority of people who get caught up in the criminal justice system are no better or worse than the average. Many of them are people who made the wrong choices when faced with very difficult situations, either social, familial, emotional, or financial. I remember, when I was an Appellate Defender in the early 1980s, a case out of Lake County where a defendant with a prior record for theft got three years in prison for stealing some packages of Buddig meats from a grocery store.
Cupp makes a good point, the "protest" problem, being irritating and not winning hearts and minds, stems from leaders not doing what the protesters want. They may have a point and leaders may not agree with the protesters or they may feel no need to "do the right thing", whatever that may be, because they are corrupt or feel no allegiance to the cause. It does come down to the saying attributed to Churchill that "democracy is the worst system except for all the others".
Making change requires time and as Cupp notes, engagement, and when that doesn't happen fast enough for enough people, then irritating protests happen. Therefore, I don't think that this will change, ever. What needs to happen though is the engagement that Cupp calls for because if the protesters' position is right and just, it will prevail over time.