Or to help a potentially capable legislator clear the decks after contending in the wrong contest, in hopes that they'll be encouraged to try again in a contest where they can prevail.
Fascinating debate! Using the forefingers as the crossbar is easier on the wrists and lets the fists serve as a proper stanchion. Plus it's easier to score as, yes, the goalposts are awfully wide. I don't know that there is a
Should Democrats want a non-Trumpian nominee? It depends on what you mean by "Democrats". A person who usually votes in Democratic primaries and wants Democrats to be elected is very different that someone who has a job as a politician or works in the Democratic party. The former category usually wants good government and they happen to think Democratic politicians will do a better job of that than Republicans. Voting Democrat is a means to an end. For the professionals Democratic Party power is the end goal.
I advocate that voters who identify as Democrats vote for the most likely Trump alternative in the next primary even if they don't want that person as president. Put every obstacle you can to stop Trump, even if the outcome is a Republican president. I don't expect to get much traction with this. Which primary you vote in is public information, and people incorporate their political party as an important part of their identity.
I would also hope that Trump's primary defeat would also further erode, if not eliminate, his influence on the party, candidates, and office holders. Let the trumpian's and fringies return to the fringe.
It’s my understanding that Highland Park ( North shore 112 or 113) spends LESS per student than CPS. As does Glencoe ( in the New Trier district) or New Trier. Zorn may be able to confirm.
Comparing CPS to New Trier and HP is comparing apples to oranges. Those are high school districts that always spend more and you would need to average in all the elementary feeder districts. An accurate comparison is Barrington or Naperville # 203 or 204,as they are unit school districts like CPS. They spend less, but also have less challenging student populations and infrastructure issues.
Inclusion around winter solstice holidays. This seems a lot less touchy than it was in the 80s. I think that is an indicator of progress. I had a job a few years ago where they still called it a "Christmas Party" at an event in December. I was not aware of any complaints. In fact a Jewish person came to the event wearing a Hanukkah sweater (it was an "ugly sweater" party). I told the person I liked the sweater than the response was "got to represent".
I hope no one felt excluded. The event was always a celebration of the work we did together and the end of the year (based on the "year of our lord" calendar) was the time to do it. There was nothing at the event even remotely religious.
One year at a place where my wife worked a Muslim intern was angry that the office had a "year-end" party for employees, because it was not the end of the year on her calendar. For people who engage in recreational outrage, you can't win.
Well, that tweet is leading the poll right now, so a fair number of readers disagree. Are you advocating cancelation based on your personal opinion, thus depriving others of their opportunity to opine?
That photo should be offensive to anyone who lost a loved one in 9/11, and to the memory of the over half million people who died in the incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan that followed after that disaster. To me that photo epitomizes the beginning of the longest war the the US has ever engaged in and the legacy of that blunder that will play out for decades to come. And compared to that, my depriving anyone of their chance to capitalize on the insensitivity that this “joke” represents, is miniscule.
I think you did not represent my point correctly. Parents faced with their child going to a dangerous public school should get funding to move the child to another public school or to a private school.
This relief should only go to parents/guardians who cannot afford to do this with their own resources.
Further I do not support dropping children who have learning problems or behavior problems.
I support dropping kids that are gangbangers, drug dealers or violent (like bring a gun to school violent).
And I agree my “solution” is not a final answer, but a method to help kids NOW to find a safe school to get an education.
I agree that we should not fund “ school choice” for kids that have the means to move or go to a private school. I agree with you that some conservative folks want to use public money to fund private schools and we should oppose that. I want to fund only poor kids to be able to move/attend a more distant public school or a private school as a way out from a violent public school.
You lived in a district where your kids got a safe education, I paid added money so my kid could learn in a safe environment, why not fund poor kids so they can get an education in a safe environment?
Meanwhile we can all can work on solving making violent public schools safe. Added funding will help but that is not the total solution. Are there any examples of turning violent public schools to safe schools? Is there any methodology out there?
In order to fund "only poor kids to be able to move/attend a more distant public school or a private school as a way out from a violent public school", how would a public school achieve designation as a violent school? What proof would the parent have to provide to show their child is forced to learn in an unsafe environment? What would be the income status of parents allowing them to take advantage of this funding?
I agree more money should be spent on school safety, with vigorous action taken to restructure these schools to promote student safety.
I would not deal with whether or not a public school is designated as violent or not.
I would look to the parent or guardian applying for aid by describing his/her kids issue.
For example, my kid came home and was beaten up for the third time. He has required medical attention for injuries. He is being threatened daily concerning joining a gang.
And then include a request to attend another public school or private school. Why that particular school and the funding needed as well as their income status.
I look at this as an emergency solution on a case by case basis. You would get in a red tape nightmare by playing around with official designations as to whether or not a school was an official violent school.
But you could use the history of requests to indicate where what public school have violence problems once the program was underway.
I have said this time and time again. Yes, I admit to not liking Trump's policies. He is overboard in support of business with no restrictions and did what he could to dismantle most consumer and environmental protections. His poohpooing of foreign relations is both unrealistic and short sighted. But it goes further. He is simply a sorry human being, a poor example of a leader. Even if I agreed with his policies, maybe one of his supporters can explain to me why conservatives can't find somebody with the same ideas that is not totally morally detestable.
Hi Laurence - I'm a conservative who finds Trump abhorrent personally, and dearly wish the GOP would nominate a different candidate for president (my strong preference being for Nikki Haley). But because about 40% of the GOP base continues to see Trump as the champion of their views and defender against the excesses of the left, and the remainder of the GOP field is splintered, all signs point to Trump being the eventual nominee.
Also.... national opinion polls consistently reflect that a majority of Democrats would prefer that Joe Biden does not run for reelection. However, neither RFK Jr nor Congressman Dean Phillips at this point appears capable of garnering the necessary level of support to mount a serious challenge to Biden, and in fact, the Democratic National Committee has already announced that they will not sponsor nor support any debates between Biden and any challengers. Gavin Newsome is not at all shy to let people know that he is available, but says that he is not going to challenge Biden if Biden does in fact run for reelection.
So there you have it. The strong odds are that the 2024 presidential election will be a rematch of Biden versus Trump despite the fact that the majority of American people would prefer different candidates. Just think how refreshing it would be to take in an actual debate of policies and issues between Nikki Haley and Gretchen Whitmer! But, that does not appear likely to occur.
Regarding democracy - allow me to give the most simplistic version of the difference in the parties (and, of course, we citizens often believe some things from each party). Here goes: a "friend" has repeatedly reminded me that our country is really a REPUBLIC. This can even be seen in Cassidy Hutchinson's interviews where she uses the word "republic" to remind everyone that this is the Republican view - and it is true. However, no one strives to come to the USA because of that. They come for an ideal - the ideal of DEMOCRACY - and that is the Democratic view. As I said, this is truly a simplistic version of the differences in the parties. Ask yourself why this is true? It will make you think. (And I expect to hear some strong words from both sides.)
Contra your "friend," I think the distinction between a democracy and a republic in usages both common and academic is irrelevant to contemporary political debates in America. We are both.
The difference arises in two contexts:
One: A republic, by definition, does not have a king or queen. Rather, the people are sovereign. Thus, the United States is a republic but the United Kingdom is not. Both, however, are democracies. In the UK, the nominal sovereign's power is severely limited by law and custom, and practical power resides with the people's elected representatives, said to act, in a bit of legal fiction, in the monarch's name. The monarch is thus little more than a talismanic representation of the state, like a flag.
Two: Historically, the difference recalls the difference between ancient Athenian democracy and the ancient Roman republic. (Democracy is a Greek word, meaning rule by the people; republic is a Latin word, meaning res publica, inartfully, "thing of the people.") In Athens, the citizens voted on laws directly. In Rome, the people were represented by officials. A popular assembly chose the heads of state, the consuls. The system was complicated, but it entailed a decent dose of indirect democracy. The Athenian form is what we call "pure" or "direct" democracy, and it lives on to a limited extent in popular initiatives and referendums. The Roman form, albeit without the class distinctions that prevailed then (e.g., the Senate represented the patricians), is what we call "representative democracy." No democracy today uses the Athenian system, which would be far too unwieldy. In other words, if representative democracies are not democracies, there are no democracies.
The names of our parties may have a little to do with these distinctions, but I suspect not much. It's true that a thematic continuity for the Democratic Party, the oldest party in the world, has been an emphasis on the interests and concerns of the common folk (at first, white male, much later, everybody). Thus, "Jacksonian democracy" represented extension of the franchise to non-property-owners. They thought it was a good idea to elect judges, too, for example. Then again, the Republican Party was born to resist the Southern Democratic slave power (the "Slaveocrats"), which was not only virulently racist but elitist too, celebrating a sort of landed aristocracy in a country founded to abolish such distinctions.
With respect to "ideals," I think it's possible to be more or less democratic in the sense of more or less responsive to popular will, but I don't think that being more democratic in that sense is necessarily and always a good thing. After all, there's a reason "populism" has a negative connotation. It makes more sense to me, for example, to appoint judges rather than elect them. Meanwhile, one of the cornerstones of our system -- equal individual rights enforceable *against* majority will -- is democratic only if you stretch the definition of democracy to entail such protections. The protesters in pre-war Israel made just that stretch, claiming that a reform that would be more majoritarian would destroy Israel's democracy, properly understood. To me, you need another word to capture such protections of individual rights, and that word is "liberal." Thus, we are a *liberal* democracy, in contrast to, say, Victor Orban's illiberal democracy in Hungary.
While it's possible to be more or less democratic, I'm not sure it's possible to be more or less of a republic. In any case, I don't understand small-r "republican" to mean less democratic. The concepts are not in opposition. The word "republic" was popular with the founders, who, reasonably enough, looked far more to Rome than to Athens, and they waxed eloquent about "republican virtues," but what they had in mind were the civic-minded virtues necessary to sustain a nation of, by, and for the people, and not one ruled by kings, nobles, priests, or tyrants. And today's Trumpist Republican Party, in the grip of stupid, mean-spirited populism, has nothing whatever to do with such republican virtues, of course.
Sorry to have gone on. Next up: the real difference between fruits and vegetables....
I also enjoyed flick football. I wouldn't be surprised if few kids play today. I also wouldn't be surprised if it had been banned as too dangerous, with those pointy ends so near to faces!
"I could find no good answer to the question, “Why in hell would anyone donate to an utterly dead candidacy?”)" Pity?
Or to help a potentially capable legislator clear the decks after contending in the wrong contest, in hopes that they'll be encouraged to try again in a contest where they can prevail.
"With the index-finger crossbar and the thumb uprights?"
You have that backwards. The thumbs are the cross bar, the fingers are uprights, as your image shows.
We always used the thumbs as uprights (wider area to "kick" (flick) through.
That puts the uprights too far apart and is inconsistent, ratio-wise with real world uprights
Fascinating debate! Using the forefingers as the crossbar is easier on the wrists and lets the fists serve as a proper stanchion. Plus it's easier to score as, yes, the goalposts are awfully wide. I don't know that there is a
Should Democrats want a non-Trumpian nominee? It depends on what you mean by "Democrats". A person who usually votes in Democratic primaries and wants Democrats to be elected is very different that someone who has a job as a politician or works in the Democratic party. The former category usually wants good government and they happen to think Democratic politicians will do a better job of that than Republicans. Voting Democrat is a means to an end. For the professionals Democratic Party power is the end goal.
I advocate that voters who identify as Democrats vote for the most likely Trump alternative in the next primary even if they don't want that person as president. Put every obstacle you can to stop Trump, even if the outcome is a Republican president. I don't expect to get much traction with this. Which primary you vote in is public information, and people incorporate their political party as an important part of their identity.
I would also hope that Trump's primary defeat would also further erode, if not eliminate, his influence on the party, candidates, and office holders. Let the trumpian's and fringies return to the fringe.
If more money doesn't produce better outcomes, why do the taxpayers of New Trier and Highland Park spend so much on their students?
It’s my understanding that Highland Park ( North shore 112 or 113) spends LESS per student than CPS. As does Glencoe ( in the New Trier district) or New Trier. Zorn may be able to confirm.
Comparing CPS to New Trier and HP is comparing apples to oranges. Those are high school districts that always spend more and you would need to average in all the elementary feeder districts. An accurate comparison is Barrington or Naperville # 203 or 204,as they are unit school districts like CPS. They spend less, but also have less challenging student populations and infrastructure issues.
On the visual tweet menu, September 11th based humor rarely works. It didn't this time either.
I like to think candy corn is not so bad for you.Corn is a vegetable after all.
Inclusion around winter solstice holidays. This seems a lot less touchy than it was in the 80s. I think that is an indicator of progress. I had a job a few years ago where they still called it a "Christmas Party" at an event in December. I was not aware of any complaints. In fact a Jewish person came to the event wearing a Hanukkah sweater (it was an "ugly sweater" party). I told the person I liked the sweater than the response was "got to represent".
I hope no one felt excluded. The event was always a celebration of the work we did together and the end of the year (based on the "year of our lord" calendar) was the time to do it. There was nothing at the event even remotely religious.
One year at a place where my wife worked a Muslim intern was angry that the office had a "year-end" party for employees, because it was not the end of the year on her calendar. For people who engage in recreational outrage, you can't win.
There is a photo in “You gotta see these tweets” that disturbed me.
I believe that it is the moment when Geoge W Bush was told by a staff member of the Twin Towers attack.
Over 2000 people died in the attack on US soil and it led to policy decisions where tens of thousands died needlessly.
I find it personally offensive and most insensitive and I would ask that you please remove it.
Well, that tweet is leading the poll right now, so a fair number of readers disagree. Are you advocating cancelation based on your personal opinion, thus depriving others of their opportunity to opine?
That photo should be offensive to anyone who lost a loved one in 9/11, and to the memory of the over half million people who died in the incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan that followed after that disaster. To me that photo epitomizes the beginning of the longest war the the US has ever engaged in and the legacy of that blunder that will play out for decades to come. And compared to that, my depriving anyone of their chance to capitalize on the insensitivity that this “joke” represents, is miniscule.
Why, exactly, is a photo of the President being informed of the attack supposed to be so offensive?
If I have to explain it then you’re not going to get it anyways.
We played the game with three coins. I think we called it penny hockey, but this calls it penny football:
https://www.families.com/penny-football
Wonderful writing in this post, especially about the school voucher issue. You all found the words I have been wanting to see.
Trump doesn't make Bush 2 look like Abraham forking Lincoln. He makes GW look like Millard forking Fillmore.
Candy corn is... fine. I'll take a few pieces if offered. But I'd rather have literally any chocolate candy, if given the choice.
I think you did not represent my point correctly. Parents faced with their child going to a dangerous public school should get funding to move the child to another public school or to a private school.
This relief should only go to parents/guardians who cannot afford to do this with their own resources.
Further I do not support dropping children who have learning problems or behavior problems.
I support dropping kids that are gangbangers, drug dealers or violent (like bring a gun to school violent).
And I agree my “solution” is not a final answer, but a method to help kids NOW to find a safe school to get an education.
I agree that we should not fund “ school choice” for kids that have the means to move or go to a private school. I agree with you that some conservative folks want to use public money to fund private schools and we should oppose that. I want to fund only poor kids to be able to move/attend a more distant public school or a private school as a way out from a violent public school.
You lived in a district where your kids got a safe education, I paid added money so my kid could learn in a safe environment, why not fund poor kids so they can get an education in a safe environment?
Meanwhile we can all can work on solving making violent public schools safe. Added funding will help but that is not the total solution. Are there any examples of turning violent public schools to safe schools? Is there any methodology out there?
In order to fund "only poor kids to be able to move/attend a more distant public school or a private school as a way out from a violent public school", how would a public school achieve designation as a violent school? What proof would the parent have to provide to show their child is forced to learn in an unsafe environment? What would be the income status of parents allowing them to take advantage of this funding?
I agree more money should be spent on school safety, with vigorous action taken to restructure these schools to promote student safety.
I would not deal with whether or not a public school is designated as violent or not.
I would look to the parent or guardian applying for aid by describing his/her kids issue.
For example, my kid came home and was beaten up for the third time. He has required medical attention for injuries. He is being threatened daily concerning joining a gang.
And then include a request to attend another public school or private school. Why that particular school and the funding needed as well as their income status.
I look at this as an emergency solution on a case by case basis. You would get in a red tape nightmare by playing around with official designations as to whether or not a school was an official violent school.
But you could use the history of requests to indicate where what public school have violence problems once the program was underway.
I have said this time and time again. Yes, I admit to not liking Trump's policies. He is overboard in support of business with no restrictions and did what he could to dismantle most consumer and environmental protections. His poohpooing of foreign relations is both unrealistic and short sighted. But it goes further. He is simply a sorry human being, a poor example of a leader. Even if I agreed with his policies, maybe one of his supporters can explain to me why conservatives can't find somebody with the same ideas that is not totally morally detestable.
Hi Laurence - I'm a conservative who finds Trump abhorrent personally, and dearly wish the GOP would nominate a different candidate for president (my strong preference being for Nikki Haley). But because about 40% of the GOP base continues to see Trump as the champion of their views and defender against the excesses of the left, and the remainder of the GOP field is splintered, all signs point to Trump being the eventual nominee.
Also.... national opinion polls consistently reflect that a majority of Democrats would prefer that Joe Biden does not run for reelection. However, neither RFK Jr nor Congressman Dean Phillips at this point appears capable of garnering the necessary level of support to mount a serious challenge to Biden, and in fact, the Democratic National Committee has already announced that they will not sponsor nor support any debates between Biden and any challengers. Gavin Newsome is not at all shy to let people know that he is available, but says that he is not going to challenge Biden if Biden does in fact run for reelection.
So there you have it. The strong odds are that the 2024 presidential election will be a rematch of Biden versus Trump despite the fact that the majority of American people would prefer different candidates. Just think how refreshing it would be to take in an actual debate of policies and issues between Nikki Haley and Gretchen Whitmer! But, that does not appear likely to occur.
Regarding democracy - allow me to give the most simplistic version of the difference in the parties (and, of course, we citizens often believe some things from each party). Here goes: a "friend" has repeatedly reminded me that our country is really a REPUBLIC. This can even be seen in Cassidy Hutchinson's interviews where she uses the word "republic" to remind everyone that this is the Republican view - and it is true. However, no one strives to come to the USA because of that. They come for an ideal - the ideal of DEMOCRACY - and that is the Democratic view. As I said, this is truly a simplistic version of the differences in the parties. Ask yourself why this is true? It will make you think. (And I expect to hear some strong words from both sides.)
Contra your "friend," I think the distinction between a democracy and a republic in usages both common and academic is irrelevant to contemporary political debates in America. We are both.
The difference arises in two contexts:
One: A republic, by definition, does not have a king or queen. Rather, the people are sovereign. Thus, the United States is a republic but the United Kingdom is not. Both, however, are democracies. In the UK, the nominal sovereign's power is severely limited by law and custom, and practical power resides with the people's elected representatives, said to act, in a bit of legal fiction, in the monarch's name. The monarch is thus little more than a talismanic representation of the state, like a flag.
Two: Historically, the difference recalls the difference between ancient Athenian democracy and the ancient Roman republic. (Democracy is a Greek word, meaning rule by the people; republic is a Latin word, meaning res publica, inartfully, "thing of the people.") In Athens, the citizens voted on laws directly. In Rome, the people were represented by officials. A popular assembly chose the heads of state, the consuls. The system was complicated, but it entailed a decent dose of indirect democracy. The Athenian form is what we call "pure" or "direct" democracy, and it lives on to a limited extent in popular initiatives and referendums. The Roman form, albeit without the class distinctions that prevailed then (e.g., the Senate represented the patricians), is what we call "representative democracy." No democracy today uses the Athenian system, which would be far too unwieldy. In other words, if representative democracies are not democracies, there are no democracies.
The names of our parties may have a little to do with these distinctions, but I suspect not much. It's true that a thematic continuity for the Democratic Party, the oldest party in the world, has been an emphasis on the interests and concerns of the common folk (at first, white male, much later, everybody). Thus, "Jacksonian democracy" represented extension of the franchise to non-property-owners. They thought it was a good idea to elect judges, too, for example. Then again, the Republican Party was born to resist the Southern Democratic slave power (the "Slaveocrats"), which was not only virulently racist but elitist too, celebrating a sort of landed aristocracy in a country founded to abolish such distinctions.
With respect to "ideals," I think it's possible to be more or less democratic in the sense of more or less responsive to popular will, but I don't think that being more democratic in that sense is necessarily and always a good thing. After all, there's a reason "populism" has a negative connotation. It makes more sense to me, for example, to appoint judges rather than elect them. Meanwhile, one of the cornerstones of our system -- equal individual rights enforceable *against* majority will -- is democratic only if you stretch the definition of democracy to entail such protections. The protesters in pre-war Israel made just that stretch, claiming that a reform that would be more majoritarian would destroy Israel's democracy, properly understood. To me, you need another word to capture such protections of individual rights, and that word is "liberal." Thus, we are a *liberal* democracy, in contrast to, say, Victor Orban's illiberal democracy in Hungary.
While it's possible to be more or less democratic, I'm not sure it's possible to be more or less of a republic. In any case, I don't understand small-r "republican" to mean less democratic. The concepts are not in opposition. The word "republic" was popular with the founders, who, reasonably enough, looked far more to Rome than to Athens, and they waxed eloquent about "republican virtues," but what they had in mind were the civic-minded virtues necessary to sustain a nation of, by, and for the people, and not one ruled by kings, nobles, priests, or tyrants. And today's Trumpist Republican Party, in the grip of stupid, mean-spirited populism, has nothing whatever to do with such republican virtues, of course.
Sorry to have gone on. Next up: the real difference between fruits and vegetables....
I also enjoyed flick football. I wouldn't be surprised if few kids play today. I also wouldn't be surprised if it had been banned as too dangerous, with those pointy ends so near to faces!
Hilarious