The Rose Garden and White House happenings: Listening to voters’ concerns
mtierney said:
Just because I can, here are photos of the region.. that very old pick-up truck, fitted out with wooden benches, no seatbelts, took us across the desert….
Also because anybody can, Lawrence’s book inspired the name for the rock formation in Wadi Rum half a century after his death, not the other way around.
@mtierney, You have posted a cartoon about protestors saying "first pay off my student debt." but whatever your feelings about loan forgiveness, and as I think this is becoming a talking point for Biden detractors, I am sharing an explanation of those who are eligible. This was copied for CBS news in January.
MONEYWATCH
Biden forgives $5 billion more in student loan debt. Here's who qualifies and how to apply.
By Kate Gibson
Edited By Alain Sherter
January 19, 2024 / 12:18 PM EST / CBS News
- The Biden administration a week ago said that, starting in February, people with less than $12,000 in student loans and who have been making payments for at least 10 years would get their remaining loan balance erased. Borrowers also have to be enrolled in the White House's new Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan.
Nearly 44,000 of the borrowers approved for debt relief are teachers, nurses, firefighters, social workers and public servants with at least 10 years of service. The remaining close to 30,000 borrowers have been making payments on their loans at least 20 years, but who did not get relief through income-driven repayment plans.
Morganna said:
Nearly 44,000 of the borrowers approved for debt relief are teachers, nurses, firefighters, social workers and public servants with at least 10 years of service.
I think mtierney would prefer the President focus on tax cuts for billionaires. At least that was what her guy did.
GoSlugs said:
If Maga Marty posts a swastika, is he just the “messenger”? I mean, he didn’t draw the thing, he just cut and pasted it off some conservative website.
RealityForAll said:
Ronald Reagan also said ketchup was a vegetable. Dude was wrong about a lot of things. That said, don't kill the messenger.
RealityForAll said:
GoSlugs said:
If Maga Marty posts a swastika, is he just the “messenger”? I mean, he didn’t draw the thing, he just cut and pasted it off some conservative website.
Congratulations! you have successfully posted something someone said. Take a cookie.
That said, Reagan knew about fascism. He would often tell people (including the Israeli Prime Minister) how he personally liberated the Nazi death camps.
Of course, it turned out that he actually just narrated a film about the liberation of the death camps while sitting in an air conditioned studio in Culver City.
A true hero....... but don't shoot the messenger.
ridski said:
RealityForAll said:
GoSlugs said:
If Maga Marty posts a swastika, is he just the “messenger”? I mean, he didn’t draw the thing, he just cut and pasted it off some conservative website.
Congratulations! you have successfully posted something someone said. Take a cookie.
In that excerpt from "Snopes", they also make the following very relevant observation about that statement, which Reagan made in a 1975 interview: "We've found no record of anyone, other than Reagan himself, having made the 'profound' statement that 'If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism'."
Morgana, thanks for sharing facts, rather than the campaign rhetoric 24/7 which, sadly, grabs all the attention. Since a great deal of information on what’s happening world events come in easy to digest sound bites
Frankly, right now, I would hope none of students involved in the disruption in education of their fellow students, and the physical destruction on college campuses across America would ever receive student loan relief!
I do believe outside agitators — noticed a comment today how Russia, China and Iran are reportedly enjoying the college meltdowns — may even have played a role — but are our students that uneducated about the dangers democracies face? Parents need to think long and hard about spending, or borrowing $90,000 a year tuition, for indoctrination in place of education.
nohero said:
ridski said:
RealityForAll said:
GoSlugs said:
If Maga Marty posts a swastika, is he just the “messenger”? I mean, he didn’t draw the thing, he just cut and pasted it off some conservative website.
Congratulations! you have successfully posted something someone said. Take a cookie.
In that excerpt from "Snopes", they also make the following very relevant observation about that statement, which Reagan made in a 1975 interview: "We've found no record of anyone, other than Reagan himself, having made the 'profound' statement that 'If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism'."
because the statement is mind numbingly stupid
mtierney said:
Morgana, thanks for sharing facts, rather than the campaign rhetoric 24/7 which, sadly, grabs all the attention. Since a great deal of information on what’s happening world events come in easy to digest sound bites
So why did you then post a "cartoon" with a flagrantly invented (and anti-semitic) claim?
mtierney said:
Morgana, thanks for sharing facts, rather than the campaign rhetoric 24/7 which, sadly, grabs all the attention. Since a great deal of information on what’s happening world events come in easy to digest sound bites
Frankly, right now, I would hope none of students involved in the disruption in education of their fellow students, and the physical destruction on college campuses across America would ever receive student loan relief!
I do believe outside agitators — noticed a comment today how Russia, China and Iran are reportedly enjoying the college meltdowns — may even have played a role — but are our students that uneducated about the dangers democracies face? Parents need to think long and hard about spending, or borrowing $90,000 a year tuition, for indoctrination in place of education.
I know you don't particularly care for reality, but I thought I'd reply with some:
People who have actually reported from the protests (see here or here) have by and large found them to be well-behaved. Are there problematic things being said at some of them? Yes there are. Have there been antisemitic incidents around some of them? Yes there have. But nearly everything resembling “chaos” has come in the crackdowns. Scenes of violent confrontation you’ve witnessed on TV or social media have occurred when the police moved in, often in riot gear to remove and arrest students and sometimes faculty (and in at least one case, when counter-protesters stormed a protest). At the universities where the administrators had the sense to just let the students have their say, there has been almost no violence. But this is how Republicans portray what’s happening:
mtierney said:
I do believe outside agitators — noticed a comment today how Russia, China and Iran are reportedly enjoying the college meltdowns — may even have played a role — but are our students that uneducated about the dangers democracies face?
You forgot Israel. It was pro Israeli thugs who attacked the encampment at UCLA with clubs and bear spray, setting off the violence that happened there.
nohero said:
mtierney said:
Morgana, thanks for sharing facts, rather than the campaign rhetoric 24/7 which, sadly, grabs all the attention. Since a great deal of information on what’s happening world events come in easy to digest sound bites
So why did you then post a "cartoon" with a flagrantly invented (and anti-semitic) claim?
FWIW, that cartoon made my very liberal wife chuckle.
mtierney said:
Morgana, thanks for sharing facts, rather than the campaign rhetoric 24/7 which, sadly, grabs all the attention. Since a great deal of information on what’s happening world events come in easy to digest sound bites
Frankly, right now, I would hope none of students involved in the disruption in education of their fellow students, and the physical destruction on college campuses across America would ever receive student loan relief!
I do believe outside agitators — noticed a comment today how Russia, China and Iran are reportedly enjoying the college meltdowns — may even have played a role — but are our students that uneducated about the dangers democracies face? Parents need to think long and hard about spending, or borrowing $90,000 a year tuition, for indoctrination in place of education.
I have both ran and participated in peaceful protests. The head of a group (animal rights) instructed me to politely notify the police of our gathering in advance, which turned out to be about 2,000.at one and 4,000 at another. As one of the heads of our NYC group, I volunteered to be among the few that would be arrested but would not resist arrest, or make the police carry us. We courteously explained that we would not leave the premises until arrested but would offer no resistance. The arrest was the only way to get news coverage of our cause, (redundant painful and fatal experiments on cats at Cornell, government funded for 12 years.) We did not destroy any property and the policed treated us with respect and sympathy. Later we gathered signatures for months outside and eventually the experiments stopped.
I do not know who started what at these many protests, so I withhold my judgement, but I do not agree with the destruction of property, obstructing other students or taunting the police. I'm mistrustful of people covering their faces.Each of the cable news stations has covered this extensively and can edit the content to highlight their viewpoint. There seems to me to be a great deal of finger pointing so I have decided to neither point my fingers nor roll them into a fist.
GoSlugs said:
mtierney said:
I do believe outside agitators — noticed a comment today how Russia, China and Iran are reportedly enjoying the college meltdowns — may even have played a role — but are our students that uneducated about the dangers democracies face?
You forgot Israel. It was pro Israeli thugs who attacked the encampment at UCLA with clubs and bear spray, setting off the violence that happened there.
have right-wing charges of "outside agitators", which they raise like clockwork, EVER been shown to be true? I mean, like, going back to civil rights demonstrations from the 50's?
nohero said:
mtierney said:
Morgana, thanks for sharing facts, rather than the campaign rhetoric 24/7 which, sadly, grabs all the attention. Since a great deal of information on what’s happening world events come in easy to digest sound bites
So why did you then post a "cartoon" with a flagrantly invented (and anti-semitic) claim?
so Soros, a Jew, is financing anti-semitism.
got it.
drummerboy said:
have right-wing charges of "outside agitators", which they raise like clockwork, EVER been shown to be true? I mean, like, going back to civil rights demonstrations from the 50's?
I agree. I didn’t mean to suggest that the thugs who attacked anti apartheid protesters at UCLA were literally backed by a foreign power rather I was just pointing out that the charge could just as easily be leveled at Israel.
drummerboy said:
have right-wing charges of "outside agitators", which they raise like clockwork, EVER been shown to be true? I mean, like, going back to civil rights demonstrations from the 50's?
Undercover Giants fans started booing and throwing snowballs when Santa Claus appeared at a 1968 Eagles game in Philadelphia.
GoSlugs said:
drummerboy said:
have right-wing charges of "outside agitators", which they raise like clockwork, EVER been shown to be true? I mean, like, going back to civil rights demonstrations from the 50's?
I agree. I didn’t mean to suggest that the thugs who attacked anti apartheid protesters at UCLA were literally backed by a foreign power rather I was just pointing out that the charge could just as easily be leveled at Israel.
oh, I didn't mean to accuse you of anything. was just asking the question.
I've been avoiding broadcast news lately so I haven't seen much reporting on the protests, but I have seen a couple of segments where the notion of outside agitators was treated as wholly credible, even probable. Absent any evidence. One guy, practically in the same sentence, claimed there were outside agitators and then said they should be sanctioned by their schools.
But, if they're outside agitators, that means they're not students. So, can't be sanctioned.
Do they hear themselves when they speak?
I've been avoiding broadcast news lately so I haven't seen much reporting on the protests, but I have seen a couple of segments where the notion of outside agitators was treated as wholly credible, even probable. Absent any evidence. One guy, practically in the same sentence, claimed there were outside agitators and then said they should be sanctioned by their schools.
But, if they're outside agitators, that means they're not students. So, can't be sanctioned.
Do they hear themselves when they speak?
I can believe “outside agitators” were also involved, but are these students and grad students so stupid and/or naive and unaware that they follow and join in the destructive, damaging and insulting behavior toward their $$$$ schools and fellow classmates?
How did these student morons get into college in the first place? Or, scary thought, do elite colleges create these students’ mindsets?
Did they all miss Kindergarten and rules on playing nicely?
Were they not raised to learn right and wrong by parents?
The students who were arrested, caught red-handed participating in the melees, should be suspended and held responsible for the disruption of classes, repairs, cleanup, and cancelled graduations.
The students who participated, but were not arrested, have. to live with their shame. From what I have heard, many of these “lucky” students may well be spotted by identity technology available to employers to screen prospective job applicants.
I'm struck by the vehemence mtierney displays toward these protests, in contrast to her dismissal or even support for the mob that attacked the capitol and attempted to nullify a presidential election.
Some of the group’s campus chapters have been suspended by universities, including at Columbia.
For the last decade, donations to NSJP have been received and administered by the Wespac Foundation, according to Howard Horowitz, Wespac’s board chairman. The donations are passed on to NSJP “for projects in the United States,” he said, declining to provide further details.
Wespac, a nonprofit based in Westchester County near New York City, is decades old, according to its website. It has supported humanitarian causes, as well as organizations that propagate antisemitism, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Wespac has posted support of pro-Palestinian protests on social media and posted videos in which protesters held signs that refer to President Biden as “Genocide Joe.”
Robert Herbst, a representative for Wespac, said “Wespac has not coordinated, trained or strategized with protest participants, nor do we support organizations that have supported violence, antisemitism or terrorism.”
Resistance 101
In March, there was a “Resistance 101” training scheduled at Columbia with guest speakers including longtime activists with Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based group that celebrated the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. The administration twice barred the event, citing some of the organizers’ known support of terrorism and promotion of violence. Columbia students hosted the event virtually nonetheless, which prompted Columbia President Minouche Shafik to suspend several of them.
During the session, which lasted nearly two hours, Samidoun coordinator Charlotte Kates encouraged students “to build an international popular cradle of the resistance,” according to a recording posted on YouTube.
“There is nothing wrong with being a member of Hamas, being a leader of Hamas, being a fighter in Hamas,” Kates said. “These are the people that are on the front lines defending Palestine.”
Samidoun didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment. The German government banned the group last November after saying it supported terrorism and antisemitism, and incited the use of violence to enforce political interests.
Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who studies political violence, said outside organizers are only one factor in the protests. He said they are successfully leveraging student anger over the violence in Gaza, which many young people not conversant in the region’s complicated history are watching on social media.
Anne-Marie Jardine, a student arrested in a protest at the University of Texas at Austin, said images from the war on social media helped motivate her involvement in the movement. “It’s one thing to hear it on the news, but another to see children covered in blood,” she said.
Pape said university and national leaders should expect protests to continue through the summer and fall. “You have a major dynamic happening in the world that is a major concern,” Pape said.
Jacob Schmeltz, a senior political-science major at Columbia, went home to Montclair, N.J., for Passover and said he felt so uncomfortable with the antisemitic rhetoric on campus, he hasn’t come back.
“This should be the time I should be able to enjoy my senior year,” he said. “But instead I have felt so rejected by much of the Columbia community that have refused to call out the incidents of antisemitism on campus.”
Protesters have denied assertions of antisemitism, noting that many of those in the encampments are Jewish themselves.
Discipline and rigor
Polat said student organizers at Columbia learned the discipline and planning needed to pull off an effective protest movement not only from their work with veteran demonstrators and outside groups, but from participating in Black Lives Matter marches or student labor organizing.
Some tools they learned were practical, such as how to raise money via student fundraisers and donations from friends and supporters to buy tents for encampments.
Saree Makdisi, a University of California, Los Angeles, English professor and member of the school’s chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine, said his school’s encampment had organized self-defense teams on the front lines. Participants, who were confronted several times by pro-Israel counterprotesters, had to undergo nonviolent de-escalation training. The training was put on by students who themselves had received prior training in nonviolent resistance. “There’s a whole set of discipline and procedures that go into it,” he said.
UCLA’s encampment was taken down following a confrontation with police Thursday morning.
Makdisi said that his generation of pro-Palestinian student protesters in the U.S. during the 1980s weren’t nearly as disciplined and organized as the students he encountered at the UCLA encampment.
“We had a lot of affect and feeling. But there’s a different kind of rigor to these students that is really striking,” he said.
If I can suffer through another attempt at cut and paste later, I will post the beginning of this WSJ article later
true to me word….
Activist Groups Trained Students for Months Before Campus Protests
Left-wing groups and veteran demonstrators provided guidance and support before rise of pro-Palestinian encampments
The recent wave of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses came on suddenly and shocked people across the nation. But the political tactics underlying some of the demonstrations were the result of months of training, planning and encouragement by longtime activists and left-wing groups.
At Columbia University, in the weeks and months before police took down encampments at the New York City campus and removed demonstratorsoccupying an academic building, student organizers began consulting with groups such as the National Students for Justice in Palestine, veterans of campus protests and former Black Panthers.
They researched past protests over Columbia’s expansion into Harlem, went to a community meeting on gentrification and development and studied parallels with the fight over land between Palestinians and Israelis. They attended a “teach-in” put on by several former Black Panthers, who told them about the importance of handling internal disputes within their movement.
“We took notes from our elders, engaged in dialogue with them and analyzed how the university responded to previous protests,” said Sueda Polat, a graduate student and organizer in the pro-Palestinian encampment.
Though there isn’t a centralized command overseeing the student movement opposing Israel’s invasion of Gaza, there are connections between longstanding far-left groups and the protesters.
The National Students for Justice in Palestine, or NSJP, has been around some two decades and has more than 300 chapters across the U.S., many of which have helped organize the college encampments and building occupations.
NSJP has for months called on students to stand strong against colleges until they divest themselves of investments in entities doing business with Israel. Its social-media pages have become a scroll of encouragement to protesting students, with videos showing activity at encampments and around the world. As early as October, NSJP was promoting a “day of resistance” with demonstrations at colleges.
Morganna says (in her valuable description of civil disobedience): "I'm mistrustful of people covering their faces."
mtierney gives a reason why masking may be prudent: "...students may well be spotted by identity technology available to employers to screen prospective job applicants."
Not to mention current employers, school administrators, police, and any opponent or random internet surfer who'd like to dox them. Seems sensible to me, though maybe not at the level of integrity and civic-mindedness Morganna described.
PVW said:
I'm struck by the vehemence mtierney displays toward these protests, in contrast to her dismissal or even support for the mob that attacked the capitol and attempted to nullify a presidential election.
Maggie Maga (TOTR) hates as directed. I think there is a little something extra in it for her though if the targets are women trying to educate themselves like those in the photo. Double points if they happen to be brown.
mjc said:
Morganna says (in her valuable description of civil disobedience): "I'm mistrustful of people covering their faces."
mtierney gives a reason why masking may be prudent: "...students may well be spotted by identity technology available to employers to screen prospective job applicants."
Not to mention current employers, school administrators, police, and any opponent or random internet surfer who'd like to dox them. Seems sensible to me, though maybe not at the level of integrity and civic-mindedness Morganna described.
If you believe mask wearing students, “proudly” involved in civic protest, should be permitted to hide behind masks to avoid being identified for a cause important enough to them to desecrate school grounds, smash glass windows (surely a terrifying thing for Jewish students who remember history) and barricade themselves in classrooms, etc, disrupting exams, classes, graduations, etc. then they are dishonest to themselves and their cause.
Cowards have to hide, fearing retaliation from the school authorities who the protesters had put on notice for their failure to protect all of their students.
Technology is available to identify who took the law into their own hands — the students, educated at elite universities, must have thought the risk to future employment, etc, worth the risk. Right? Or were they that stupid?
If, indeed, outside agitators see their work disrupting and getting students to work along side them, what do you suspect may happen at future American events — the political conventions will surely be a target for these evildoers.
mtierney said:
If you believe blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
I feel your hate but, unlike the Sith Lords you so admire, it has not made you strong.
Happy May 4th!
Rentals
Sponsored Business
Promote your business here - Businesses get highlighted throughout the site and you can add a deal.
If Maga Marty posts a swastika, is he just the “messenger”? I mean, he didn’t draw the thing, he just cut and pasted it off some conservative website.