So the Alabama Supreme Court has decided that liquids and molecules in test tube are human and labs could be prosecuted for not properly babysitting them. So I have a question or two for y'all. If a healthy woman, presumably full of eggs, gets her tubes tied or otherwise refuses to fertilize her eggs, is she guilty of murder? If she has sex not all of her eggs are fertilized, so what is the legal status of the others? How about a healthy man, presumably full of permanent. Has he committed a crime by not having sex? Wow- in a society where the religious right has always pushed sex only within marriage, that raises some interesting philosophical questions. Will all healthy men and women now be required to get married? Do we return to the good old days of "shotgun weddings"? Well, I'm going to sign off now. I have never been married or had children, so it's time to go into hiding.
On why those who oppose Trump should be grateful for Dan Proft:
You might wish would for him to shut-up. But think of it this way: he is using up bandwidth allowing less room for a more savvy commentator. Note that Proft's statement is not inconsistent with the notion that many or even most people charged in Jan 6 were breaking laws. His claim that there were hundreds persecuted who did nothing but peaceably assemble is dubious, and his statement could only appeal to people who already agree with it. A Trump booster would do better to highlight stories of two or three individuals who were arrested unreasonably and leave out any mention of whether or not they were charged or if charges were dropped. I remember at the time a story of a man who was confined to a wheelchair attending the rally. According to his statement to the press, he was outside and looking for how to leave the area. He asked a policeman if he could direct him to a way to leave, and the policemen arrested him.
Anecdotes like that would rile the base and appeal to some who are not already on board with the message. I say, "Thank you Dan Proft for not being good at what you are trying to do"
I agree that WBEZ needs to focus more on locally produced radio. Otherwise, why should I listen to my local NPR station when I can listen to all those national shows on demand or streaming from *any* NPR affiliate? I love and support local public radio and WANT local content as well as national programs.
I'm a DePaul alum. I'm mystified as to why the men's hoops program is so bad. They've changed coaches, the AD, the arena, and they're now worse than previous rock bottoms.
I am not at all surprised by the result of the tax supported private schools vs. public schools. We live in an area where many choose Catholic schools over public (though fewer and fewer do this now). My husband interviewed for an Ivy for many years. The Catholic school students were uniformly less prepared and had also taken fewer AP classes, primarily because these schools don't offer them. Not one of these students were accepted, though he did get some public school students accepted.
I spend a fair amount of time in my car and listen mainly to Sirius. I do regularly flip to WBEZ hoping to get a shot of local news and culture, or national events, etc. The requirement that every story contribute some kind of diversity and inclusion, if that’s not the entire point of the story, gets tedious. I listen to WBEZ a LOT less than I used to.
“ The term "medical debt" shouldn't exist. A sign of the broken system of the past, it's become one of the leading causes of bankruptcy. “
Also, housing debt leads to foreclosure. Education debt? That should be erased. Transportation debt? Seems like a necessity that shouldn’t require debt for anyone. In fact, why do allow debt? It’s a sign of end stage capitalism.
I think Governor Pritzker was making the point that we as a society have a duty to see that all people get the health care that they need, regardless of their financial circumstances, and that people should not have to go bankrupt in order to get necessary health care. People on Medicare tend not to have a lot of medical debt as most of the costs of their medical care are paid by the government, but in the U.S., of course, only people over 65 years of age may participate in Medicare. In Europe where countries have a more adequate social safety net, medical debt is not as great a problem. Wikipedia states, “Research based on available data from 2018 indicated that the amount of unaffordable health care by individuals in the USA (7.4%) was considerably higher than European states such as France where only 1.9% of people faced concerns regarding medical bills, Germany (2.4%), the UK (1.4%), the Netherlands (1.1%), and non-European countries such as Australia (3.2%) and Japan (2.6%).”
Hi Pete. I enjoy reading your comments in this forum. In this case I am not sure your point was clear to me. I thought you were implying that the govenor did not have a good point and you were using sarcasm to point out that it is not logical to focus on medical debt singulafly. I thought you were being sarcastic when you challenged allowing debt to even exist. Debt is obviously very useful and we would be much worse off without it.
You have some links to some interesting takes on what is happening today to the Republican Party. Heather Cox Richardson made an interesting observation today when she wrote, “This moment looks much like the other times in our history when a formerly stable two-party system has fallen apart and Americans reevaluated what they want out of their government.” It was the Whig party vs the Democratic Party in the years leading up to the Civil War. According to Wikipedia, “The Whigs collapsed following the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854, with most Northern Whigs eventually joining the anti-slavery Republican Party and most Southern Whigs joining the nativist American Party and later the Constitutional Union Party.“ And it was the Democratic Republicans vs the Federalists in the years between Presidents Washington and Jackson. I wonder if we are in the middle of what will be a new realignment of political parties in the United States. Will the Republican Party go the way of the Whig Party and the Federalist Party? MAGA has little in common with the Republican Party that I observed when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. Will some Republicans form a MAGA Party and others create a new party? Or will Trump be reëlected and the American government become a dictatorship under a cult of personality, like the government of China under Mao Zedong or the government of North Korea under Kim Il Sung?
By the way, Dan Proft once called me a “thug” on his conservative talk radio program on AM 560. This was back when my law practice required me to serve a subpoena in a criminal case on Republican Rep. Jeanne Ives, and then Jeanne Ives, in a speech at the City Club of Chicago, said that I looked like the man pretending to be transgender woman in her infamous political ad which targeted people of color, transgender people, immigrants, and women who wish to control their own bodies. You know, the usual Republican bogeymen. After that, there was a blizzard of right wing social media comments, publicly mocking me, comparing my appearance to that of the Crypt Keeper, etc. The weird thing is that I was able to laugh at the nasty jokes. For some reason they didn’t bother me.
The WBEZ announcement has me questioning a lot now. I truly believe in the importance of local journalism and the need to support it but I've struggled watching the Tribune fade to a shadow of its former self and now feel BEZ may be going the same route. I detest the Tribune's scammy billing practices and what the current owners have done to it but yesterday renewed my subscription from a sense of guilt and obligation. I've donated to WBEZ for decades but wonder who the audience is they cater to now. I used to think it was people probably like me, college-educated who like being informed and who care about this city and the wider world. Now it seems local coverage means nothing more than public schools, despite a small % of Chicagoans having kids, and the police, but only when there's a scandal. It's been over a decade since either has had anyone covering science (a huge industry in the region that is mostly ignored), and it seems they're leaning more into sports and celebrity coverage. Block Club is fluffy and Axios is thin. It's a very depressing state in local journalism these days and there doesn't seem to be a ray of hope anywhere.
After learning about the pricing shenanigans at the Trib looked at what I was paying and cancelled. They offered me a much lower price, but I refused it. I don't want to have to remember to call them up to haggle on price. I have been a subscriber for as long as they have been charging for web access. By the time I cancelled, I probably paid them a lifetime's worth of their lowest price subscription fees. I have done my part supporting the Trib. I am open to re-subscribing. If they offered me a deal that guaranteed my subscription cost would never be above the lowest subscription cost charged to anyone, and rebated the amount I have paid them over the years that is excess of what their lowest subscription cost was, then I would be happy to resubscribe. Of course, I do not expect that, and did not ask for it.
I believe the report on the lesser math and reading performance of children who had been in the Invest in Kids program is misleading. In reading the linked story, it compares the math and reading performance of these kids to the Illinois state student averages.
But my belief is that the overwhelming majority of children in this program are in the City of Chicago - I believe a key objective of the program was to offer children an alternative to the failing CPS schools. So for a true apples to apples comparison, their reading and math performance should be compared to CPS students. Given the abysmal percentages of CPS students who can read and do math at grade level, I believe the Invest in Kids students would reflect superior performance.
thanks DL - like you, i'd like to know more. to me the only valid comaprison is to the public schools in the areas surrounding the private schools that the Invest in Kids kids attend.
i shd also note that i sent to EZ a link several weeks ago to a study that shows [and i paraphrase w/o context] that charter schools' achievement levels across the country now exceed those of non-charter public schools. EZ chose not to publish or comment on the link to the study in the PS, which is certianly his right as publisher/editor of the PS. but it gives me pause.
EZ - I enjoyed more than 1/2 the TotWs this week. Funny though, your issue this week didn't seem to be engaging nearly as many commenters as normal. What gives, ya think?
Reading the “gaslit vs gaslight” tweet is the first time in about three years I actually laughed out loud at one of Eric’s tweets; at the time I voted it was in about sixth place with 9%… WHATS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
This week's tweets...all funny !(to me)
Wow. Not me. Maybe two.
I haven't listened to anything on WBEZ since Click n Clack went into reruns.
I find their live talk boring, tendentious & utterly unnecessary.
But then I've totally tuned out all of talk radio, WGN, WCPT.
I just don't need talking heads anymore.
I agree that there aren’t many listener call-in shows that are tolerable. In fact zero that I’m aware of.
So the Alabama Supreme Court has decided that liquids and molecules in test tube are human and labs could be prosecuted for not properly babysitting them. So I have a question or two for y'all. If a healthy woman, presumably full of eggs, gets her tubes tied or otherwise refuses to fertilize her eggs, is she guilty of murder? If she has sex not all of her eggs are fertilized, so what is the legal status of the others? How about a healthy man, presumably full of permanent. Has he committed a crime by not having sex? Wow- in a society where the religious right has always pushed sex only within marriage, that raises some interesting philosophical questions. Will all healthy men and women now be required to get married? Do we return to the good old days of "shotgun weddings"? Well, I'm going to sign off now. I have never been married or had children, so it's time to go into hiding.
Forgive my crummy one finger typing. Sperm, not permanent.
On why those who oppose Trump should be grateful for Dan Proft:
You might wish would for him to shut-up. But think of it this way: he is using up bandwidth allowing less room for a more savvy commentator. Note that Proft's statement is not inconsistent with the notion that many or even most people charged in Jan 6 were breaking laws. His claim that there were hundreds persecuted who did nothing but peaceably assemble is dubious, and his statement could only appeal to people who already agree with it. A Trump booster would do better to highlight stories of two or three individuals who were arrested unreasonably and leave out any mention of whether or not they were charged or if charges were dropped. I remember at the time a story of a man who was confined to a wheelchair attending the rally. According to his statement to the press, he was outside and looking for how to leave the area. He asked a policeman if he could direct him to a way to leave, and the policemen arrested him.
Anecdotes like that would rile the base and appeal to some who are not already on board with the message. I say, "Thank you Dan Proft for not being good at what you are trying to do"
I agree that WBEZ needs to focus more on locally produced radio. Otherwise, why should I listen to my local NPR station when I can listen to all those national shows on demand or streaming from *any* NPR affiliate? I love and support local public radio and WANT local content as well as national programs.
I'm a DePaul alum. I'm mystified as to why the men's hoops program is so bad. They've changed coaches, the AD, the arena, and they're now worse than previous rock bottoms.
Maybe they need good players.
I always read the Brenda Starr strip. I did not know that Mary Schmich was a writer for the strip. Yet another reason to admire her.
I knew, but had no idea it was for 25 years. An actually coherent comic strip story line!
I am not at all surprised by the result of the tax supported private schools vs. public schools. We live in an area where many choose Catholic schools over public (though fewer and fewer do this now). My husband interviewed for an Ivy for many years. The Catholic school students were uniformly less prepared and had also taken fewer AP classes, primarily because these schools don't offer them. Not one of these students were accepted, though he did get some public school students accepted.
I spend a fair amount of time in my car and listen mainly to Sirius. I do regularly flip to WBEZ hoping to get a shot of local news and culture, or national events, etc. The requirement that every story contribute some kind of diversity and inclusion, if that’s not the entire point of the story, gets tedious. I listen to WBEZ a LOT less than I used to.
“ The term "medical debt" shouldn't exist. A sign of the broken system of the past, it's become one of the leading causes of bankruptcy. “
Also, housing debt leads to foreclosure. Education debt? That should be erased. Transportation debt? Seems like a necessity that shouldn’t require debt for anyone. In fact, why do allow debt? It’s a sign of end stage capitalism.
LOL
I think Governor Pritzker was making the point that we as a society have a duty to see that all people get the health care that they need, regardless of their financial circumstances, and that people should not have to go bankrupt in order to get necessary health care. People on Medicare tend not to have a lot of medical debt as most of the costs of their medical care are paid by the government, but in the U.S., of course, only people over 65 years of age may participate in Medicare. In Europe where countries have a more adequate social safety net, medical debt is not as great a problem. Wikipedia states, “Research based on available data from 2018 indicated that the amount of unaffordable health care by individuals in the USA (7.4%) was considerably higher than European states such as France where only 1.9% of people faced concerns regarding medical bills, Germany (2.4%), the UK (1.4%), the Netherlands (1.1%), and non-European countries such as Australia (3.2%) and Japan (2.6%).”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_debt#:~:text=Research%20based%20on%20available%20data,(1.1%25)%2C%20and%20non%2D
Yes - that was clearly his point, which I was responding to.
Hi Pete. I enjoy reading your comments in this forum. In this case I am not sure your point was clear to me. I thought you were implying that the govenor did not have a good point and you were using sarcasm to point out that it is not logical to focus on medical debt singulafly. I thought you were being sarcastic when you challenged allowing debt to even exist. Debt is obviously very useful and we would be much worse off without it.
Your interpretation is correct. Pritzker clearly was making a point - it didn’t require any further explanation- and it was a poor take.
You have some links to some interesting takes on what is happening today to the Republican Party. Heather Cox Richardson made an interesting observation today when she wrote, “This moment looks much like the other times in our history when a formerly stable two-party system has fallen apart and Americans reevaluated what they want out of their government.” It was the Whig party vs the Democratic Party in the years leading up to the Civil War. According to Wikipedia, “The Whigs collapsed following the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854, with most Northern Whigs eventually joining the anti-slavery Republican Party and most Southern Whigs joining the nativist American Party and later the Constitutional Union Party.“ And it was the Democratic Republicans vs the Federalists in the years between Presidents Washington and Jackson. I wonder if we are in the middle of what will be a new realignment of political parties in the United States. Will the Republican Party go the way of the Whig Party and the Federalist Party? MAGA has little in common with the Republican Party that I observed when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. Will some Republicans form a MAGA Party and others create a new party? Or will Trump be reëlected and the American government become a dictatorship under a cult of personality, like the government of China under Mao Zedong or the government of North Korea under Kim Il Sung?
By the way, Dan Proft once called me a “thug” on his conservative talk radio program on AM 560. This was back when my law practice required me to serve a subpoena in a criminal case on Republican Rep. Jeanne Ives, and then Jeanne Ives, in a speech at the City Club of Chicago, said that I looked like the man pretending to be transgender woman in her infamous political ad which targeted people of color, transgender people, immigrants, and women who wish to control their own bodies. You know, the usual Republican bogeymen. After that, there was a blizzard of right wing social media comments, publicly mocking me, comparing my appearance to that of the Crypt Keeper, etc. The weird thing is that I was able to laugh at the nasty jokes. For some reason they didn’t bother me.
https://www.advocate.com/politicians/2018/2/06/trans-attorney-illinois-gov-candidate-jeanne-ives-dangerous
The WBEZ announcement has me questioning a lot now. I truly believe in the importance of local journalism and the need to support it but I've struggled watching the Tribune fade to a shadow of its former self and now feel BEZ may be going the same route. I detest the Tribune's scammy billing practices and what the current owners have done to it but yesterday renewed my subscription from a sense of guilt and obligation. I've donated to WBEZ for decades but wonder who the audience is they cater to now. I used to think it was people probably like me, college-educated who like being informed and who care about this city and the wider world. Now it seems local coverage means nothing more than public schools, despite a small % of Chicagoans having kids, and the police, but only when there's a scandal. It's been over a decade since either has had anyone covering science (a huge industry in the region that is mostly ignored), and it seems they're leaning more into sports and celebrity coverage. Block Club is fluffy and Axios is thin. It's a very depressing state in local journalism these days and there doesn't seem to be a ray of hope anywhere.
After learning about the pricing shenanigans at the Trib looked at what I was paying and cancelled. They offered me a much lower price, but I refused it. I don't want to have to remember to call them up to haggle on price. I have been a subscriber for as long as they have been charging for web access. By the time I cancelled, I probably paid them a lifetime's worth of their lowest price subscription fees. I have done my part supporting the Trib. I am open to re-subscribing. If they offered me a deal that guaranteed my subscription cost would never be above the lowest subscription cost charged to anyone, and rebated the amount I have paid them over the years that is excess of what their lowest subscription cost was, then I would be happy to resubscribe. Of course, I do not expect that, and did not ask for it.
I believe the report on the lesser math and reading performance of children who had been in the Invest in Kids program is misleading. In reading the linked story, it compares the math and reading performance of these kids to the Illinois state student averages.
But my belief is that the overwhelming majority of children in this program are in the City of Chicago - I believe a key objective of the program was to offer children an alternative to the failing CPS schools. So for a true apples to apples comparison, their reading and math performance should be compared to CPS students. Given the abysmal percentages of CPS students who can read and do math at grade level, I believe the Invest in Kids students would reflect superior performance.
thanks DL - like you, i'd like to know more. to me the only valid comaprison is to the public schools in the areas surrounding the private schools that the Invest in Kids kids attend.
i shd also note that i sent to EZ a link several weeks ago to a study that shows [and i paraphrase w/o context] that charter schools' achievement levels across the country now exceed those of non-charter public schools. EZ chose not to publish or comment on the link to the study in the PS, which is certianly his right as publisher/editor of the PS. but it gives me pause.
EZ - I enjoyed more than 1/2 the TotWs this week. Funny though, your issue this week didn't seem to be engaging nearly as many commenters as normal. What gives, ya think?
Reading the “gaslit vs gaslight” tweet is the first time in about three years I actually laughed out loud at one of Eric’s tweets; at the time I voted it was in about sixth place with 9%… WHATS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?