PeterMP

But again, all of them aren't waving Hezbolah or Hamas flags. (Here's the link to the opinion piece I talked about with the video of the Jewish students/group that are part of the protest: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/opinions/columbia-university-protests-greenblatt/index.html with no Hamas flags.) You are ignoring the opinion of everybody that is protesting based on the actions of I don't know the % of actual protestors, and I doubt you do either. All of them haven't jumped to extremes. Some of them are extreme. Ignoring the ones that haven't jumped to extremes because some of them have doesn't make any sense.

Pretty sure that it is a 4 year contract with a team option for a 5th. So no real way he gets out after 3 years unless he gets cut. Also pretty sure any young QB that makes it to FA after that contract is going to take the most money. Doing otherwise would be stupid. Seems like an unreasonable hit against Daniels.

They aren't protesting Hamas. Columbia (or any other college) isn't doing things that result in supporting Hamas. They aren't going to burn a Hamas flag because that isn't what their protest is about. Burning the American flag isn't a crime. If somebody shows to the protest and decides to burn the American flag, what should they do?

Good cops should weed out bad cops by reporting their crimes and misbehavior to the police and things like internal affairs. Burning an American flag isn't illegal.

I'm not a huge fan of the pick, but is there any evidence liking being thin and getting (seriously) injured in the NFL? He's played a lot at a high level at college and doesn't have a history of injury. This isn't RGIII situation where he tore up his knee in college already.

How do you suggest that they "weed" them out? Are you suggesting that they use violence to deter people from protesting that show up that don't agree with many of the other protestors' views. On Columbia's campus some of the protestors were Jewish. Should they resort to violence to eject more extremists Muslims that are also protesting? (There was actually a funny dichotomy the other day on cnn.com. They had an opinion piece by somebody that was Jewish that visited Columbia talking about how awful the situation was. At the top of the same page, they had a link to a group of Jewish protestors that were protesting Israel's actions in Gaza by camping out and were celebrating Passover as they did so. And the one guy was talking about how he couldn't imagine celebrating Passover doing anything else.) (In general, that's just such a bad talking point that at least goes back to the 1960's and the Vietnam war. Yes, some of the Vietnam war protestors weren't serious. Some of them were criminal and violent and weren't helping. But many of them were young people that saw what the US was doing was screwed up and wanted to make thing better. Discounting them all because of the first two groups does them, this country, and really everybody else a disservice.)

But they weren't stuck in the 7th century. For hundreds of years through the 13th-17th century in terms of women's rights and religious tolerance the Ottoman Empire was ahead of Europe in many cased. They did fall behind some in the 1800s but in the late 1800s they started a modernization effort and were catching up. The ME is what is largely because of who western powers decided to support before and after WW1 and 2 and people like Reagan doubled down on during the Cold War. We and other western countries have consistently supported extremists that have 7th century beliefs. We had a hand in making the problem and likely will need to have a role in fixing it.

Rome took much of Europe too and through war. Napoleon invaded multiple European countries. Both were European and created plenty of death and misery among Europeans and in Europe. The Mongols invaded into Central and Eastern Europe too, and their invasions displaced people causing a cascading affect of conflicts and death and misery throughout Europe. None of those cases were specific or unique to the ME. Popes caused plenty of death and misery in Europe first by contributing to wars against pagan countries to convert them into Catholic countries, and then pitting Catholic countries against Protestant countries to try to contain Protestantism. And if we are going to talk about death and misery wars started by European powers in the ME cause death and misery of and to Europeans. To talk about the wars started by them as if they are specific to death and misery in the ME doesn't make much sense.

WWII was fought outside of the US because neither Germany or Japan had the ability to project power to the continental US. The Japanese didn't think they could even hold Hawaii. I guess if you imagine a scenario where Germany is able to knockout Russia and the UK without lend lease and Japan China and they're able to build a military directed at projecting power to the US, then maybe that changes things.

I'm certainly not going to tell you there has been more violence in Europe than in the ME. Especially post-WWII and even post-WWI. But I'm not sure the ME has been worse longer term, especially post-WWII, to single it out. It is especially odd to single out ME for violence and start talking about wars started by European powers.

The Crusades in total lasted about 250 years. 250 years during which there were plenty of wars in Europe too. And it isn't like the Crusades didn't include Europe. To talk about the wars in the ME and the Crusades and ignore that they involved much of Europe is dishonest. Between the 1st and 5th crusades there were 7 different conflicts between France and England alone (including the French invading Normandy to take back control from English control/influence). Prior to WWI, the area was heavily Muslim and there wasn't much conflict between them and the small Jewish and Christian populations there and certainly not any more than the Catholic and Protestant populations that existed in places like Ireland.

I just want to point out that the ME hasn't been then bad for 3,000 years. I'm not at all sure it has been worse than Europe. The Ottoman Empire successfully and relatively peacefully governored over the Middle East and much of N. Africa for hundreds of years. The Ottoman Empire was multi-cultural generally religiously tolerant and diverse country/government. What you see in the Middle East today is heavily the result of post-WW1 and WWII decisions/foreign policy by/of western powers coupled with the rise of the importance of oil.

That's what we did, but we got very little back in compared to what we gave. And even after lend-lease expired we sold them equipment at a 90% discount. And then after the war we "gave" them more money through the Marshall plan and other programs. For example, we ended up giving Britain $3.3 billion dollars after the war for promises related to tariffs, balancing a budget, etc through the Marshal plan. In totality, what we gave was much more than what we got back through lend lease. We were giving money out in one hand taking some of it back with the other so that we could say something had been paid back through lend lease. If Ukraine wins, they are going to have rebuild much of their country which they'll need money for. That they'll have money to pay anything back is just so unlikely it isn't worth considering. The only way we gat paid anything at all meaningful back is if we do what we did with much of Europe after WWII and through another program give the money.

Just to be clear, it was the President of Student Affairs. Though, I'm not sure why the President of Student Affairs would have been involved in or known about case of assault on the campus 20 years earlier.

And if, as it states they were reported to the police, paying off the University wouldn't do any good. There would be a police record. Paying off the university doesn't do any good if there is a police record.

I think there are people out there that don't think he's actually a committed pro-life person. The more doubt they have the better (in terms of him losing). (I don't think Trump is really pro-life. I think he'll do what is best for him. If he thinks somehow becoming pro-choice as President will help him, I don't doubt for a second that he'll flip. It is hard for me to imagine a scenario where that's the case. But that's what I suspect.)

Somebody needs to push him on the legality of crossing state lines to get an abortion. Where does he stand on that?

Neither CA or NY are considered to be very gerrymandered so in those particular states that seems to unlikely to be an issue. And the worse gerrymandered states tend to be Republican (there are some exceptions) that again if they were suppressing the vote, it seems likely they would change.

Debt, including credit card debit, are at all time highs for the time they've been measured. Not just high compared to the Covid era. https://www.statista.com/chart/19955/household-debt-balance-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/chart/19955/household-debt-balance-in-the-united-states/ The numbers don't take into account balances being carried on credit cards vs. somebody that charged a lot on their credit card and so until the next payment has a large "debt" but will pay it off on time. But delinquency rates are staying pretty low, which is good and suggest that people are charging things that they are able to buy. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS And household debt service payments as a percent of disposal income are pretty low compared to where they've been historically and staying pretty flat back to where they were pre-Covid (after a Covid dip). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP Which also suggest that people are charging things and then paying the bill rather than be charged interest Though things like 401K savings are also going down. Some are interpreting the totality of the data to indicate that post-Covid people are spending more, charging on credit cards, and paying those bills on time but at the cost of saving for retirement. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-americans-reducing-retirement-savings-194421157.html

Given those districts are largely GOP in terms of the House and state governments, I think very few. Enough of them are showing up to vote GOP for the house and state representatives. That people would show up to vote for the House and in state elections and not vote for President or Senate seems unlikely. I'm pretty sure if the GOP felt like that abolishing the EC would help them by brining out more votes in national elections, they'd be all over it.

I think @tshile has been pretty clear he's worried about the future. Right now, there might not be a big issues where that's happening but that doesn't mean in 20 years there won't be. But I think you can see an area of concern now in terms of climate change actions and land preservation/water management. There was a lot of water management post-WWII where a lot of dams were built and land was gained that has been used for farming and agriculture where those dams are not being changed or torn down, and it has people living in those areas concerned. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2023/klamath-river-dam-removal/ But New Orleans floods and it's we're going to rebuild. Much of the NY and NJ coast line get destroyed and it is we are going to rebuild and even do things like build a sea wall for Staten Island. There's no sense that part of the solution to mitigating climate change is depopulating costal regions along the east coast and allow areas that were historically water ways (much of Boston and NYC are built on old landfill), wet lands, and flood plains become what they were and instead in a lot of cases we're doing more building right up against the water. My mom lives in rural MD. They've lived there since I was young. She lives 200 yards from a small stream. Over time there have been nothing but more and more restrictions on what can be done with the land while building and infrastructure in the more populated parts of the state get bigger and things like the Baltimore Inner Harbor were redone and "revitalized". If you care about the bay bringing people into that area and even into Camden Yards with the traffic and associated pollution doesn't make much sense.

I don't know why it would be any more chaoitc. But the bigger thing is that more congressional districts likely changes political climate. Actually knowing more of your constituents and your constituents actually knowing you would become more feasible and voting would be based more on those personal interactions/knowledge and less on the platform of the national party or what people see in tv commercials.

China is different because it is on the security council. That pretty much prevents any UN resolution from passing. The other conflicts haven't been going on to nearly the same extent for nearly as long. But there are UN resolutions that cover them. For example, there has been a UN investigation of what is happening in Ethiopia that went on for several years and ended partly because Ethiopia made some promises (which I don't think they've actually followed through on) in exchange for some money from the EU. So the west ended the pressure for the investigation. The same is not happening with respect to Israel and the Palestinians because the US won't allow it. We are not okaying the creation of a UN investigative force to go into Israel/Gaza and investigate atrocities or other war crimes committed by either side.

We have some idea of how well people read over time. There's data going back to the early 1970s on reading level by 12th graders, and it isn't like there was/has been a big fall off. (The lines are really pretty steady. https://www.winginstitute.org/have-naep-reading-scores924 And basic/general literacy rates have gone up. ) I'd generally agree that there really haven't been any real studies done. But the context of your first post wasn't an indication of a lack of information on the effect.

Doing good studies in education, especially at the level of tracking long(er) term out comes, is hard and there is really minimal support for it. Getting a grant to track out comes of people over any real time is extremely difficult. Really, we know very little about how to teach people for longer term retention, or the impact on different teaching approaches on larger society. There's very few studies that track how well did people really learn a specific topic based on different teaching approaches where they look at the impact more than a month or 2 later. In terms of larger societal impact, there has been some work done on things like early childhood education (i.e. head start), but beyond that essentially nothing. (In the context of this conversation, Head Start was dismissed for a period of time as useless because much of the education gains achieved through head start are lost by middle school. Later studies suggest that head start has larger longer terms impacts that reach into adulthood even if as kids through middle school the kids don't do better in school. In the context of homogenous vs. heterogenous classrooms, there's been essentially nothing done at that level.)