Guy Chamberlin

You're presuming the young peson's interest is entirely self-interest; motivated to avoid being drafted rather than drawing attention to the immorality of the Vietnam war itself, waged by people they couldn't vote for. It's comparable to every social justice movement where young people have a natural and often knee-jerk rejection of authority, and align themselves with the underdog. In terms of foreign conflicts it's always about anti-Western colonialism, Palestine being the latest in a long line. Some of the protesters are just anarchist d******ds larping out. Many are not. The d******ds will always get the camera time. People used the same disgusted language to describe white kids attending sit-ins with negroes and being arrested protesting the Vietnam war in the early '60s. Now those same kids are celebrated in black and white retrospectives. Gaza could be a blip on the radar, neither Civil Rights nor Vietnam, but the way the narrative has flipped in six months and the potential for a full scale Middle East reckoning suggests the young protestors may have a case.

Sure. But that's the case with most social movements, including Civil Rights and Vietnam. The original message was also considered extreme, naive, and/or unrealistic until it started getting echoed by more establishment sources. People block traffic and bridges and take over lunch counters insisting their cause can't be ignored. Because, in truth, it's pretty easy to ignore. People still mock the protestors, but chances are they are now using language the protestors introduced to the Gaza debate. I have to use the Golden Gate Bridge Wednesday. Let's see if I remain forgiving.

Again, while everyone hates their methods, their key messages have been gaining a lot of support from mainstream sources. It happens without you even noticing.

Yeah, as soon as you get off your a$$ and start blocking traffic. You can spell Sunni without "u" Teach.

Appears to be. Thanks.

If you hate Donald Trump and love wordplay and memes, this is the most glorious time of the internet.

Uhm......regardless of what policies Obama proposed and pursued, he was the same radical community organizer and socialist who couldn't wait to take your guns away. Just like any other Democrat the Republicans would face. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are cut from the same moderate and willing-to-compromise cloth as Barack Obama. That's how the Dems held their center. I doubt many Americans can list, much less compare the difference in their policy goals. I think you can trace the GOPs lurch to the right to 2009. A group of leading Republicans gathered to do the post-mortem on the 2008 Presidential spanking and decide what the GOP needed to stand for moving forward. IIRC, someone like Mitch McConnell emerged from the meeting and told the press that leadership could reach no conclusion, and would for the moment reject whatever Obama proposed as they reconfigured their platform. Pretty soon Republicans realized the opposing whatever Obama proposed WAS their platform, and it was working pretty well. Because the semi-organic local resistance to Obamacare had created the Tea Party, which solidified and energized the GOP base. The GOP establishment was thrilled at the time, never quite realizing that the unsophisticated base they were exploiting was about to take over the party itself.

This should go on another page but.....there's a lot about student loan forgiveness that offends the sensibilities, including mine. It would appear to play to an already entitled segment of America and ignore others more worthy of relief. And it's only part of a much larger issue of higher education that has multiple culprits and demands an almost complete retooling. But it's also not a simple pandering handout -- if left untreated this unprecedented student loan debt is going to have a negative impact on the larger economy for years. And it's not like these students haven't been repaying their debt: in most cases they've been paying in tens of thousands of dollars in interest without touching the principal, a ridiculously predatory practice also plied on underclass borrowers. If you've got the time and can handle a host with a liberal bent, John Oliver does a good job walking through this with vetted numbers and jokes.

So you could provide the additional context Knapple wanted, at no risk to real person.

Everyone is in a weird situation. Nobody wants to see a full proxy war between the allied Middle East and the West, and deep down Iran knows it can't win. Iran's proxies were just attacked and pride dictated a calculated response -- likely with the understanding that the Iron Dome would prevail. It's such a literal and political minefield. Many of the countries that hate Israel also hate Iran, and tribal allegiances divide the Muslim world as they do the U.S. The SOP for terrorism is to get your vastly more powerful adversary to over-react and unite opposition, and escalation would serve Hamas' original motives for October 7.

True, but if you in any way involve American lives in an unwinnable war, it only fuels the Republican drumbeat that the world is going to hell under Biden and none of this would have happened under Trump (lacking a war, they will do the same with gas prices). The far left sides with the underdog, as they typically do, but it's not like they're fans of Iran or fundamentalist Islam. I mean, wouldn't it be weird if there wasn't an anti-war argument out there? There's not really a "pro-Hammy" crowd as you keep insisting, but there is a growing willingness across parties and interest groups to stop Netanyahu, question Israel's aims, and support relief for the Palestinians. You want to keep laying this at the feet of entitled college students blocking bridges, much like you view Kent State as a frat party gone sideways. Again, zero people who think peace in the Middle East is as simple as a cease fire, but it's the one thing that can save some lives and chaos right now. The classic move here is a calculated show of force to counter Iran's calculated show of force, followed by the kind of diplomacy practiced by two sides that want to save face without escalation, creating a long boring process where vengeance loses steam and everyone is free to ignore the root of the problem. If Biden handles this perfectly, the GOP can resume its outrage over student debt forgiveness.

You mean the anonymous person in the anonymous anecdote under your pseudonym on a message board?

How so? Show your work, Teach.

If the U.S. helps escalate the war by attacking Iran, do you honestly think the blowback on Biden will come from the students? Can you think of anyone else who might advocate against U.S. troops engaging in a Middle East war?

In fairness, Republicans nominated John McCain and Mitt Romney and lost handily. They regained their groove when they went psychotic and obstructionist, including state and local levels.

I mean, Matt Gaetz is being duplicitous, but he isn't wrong. It's been an interesting political evolution over the last generation or two.

No big deal, but the All Huskers scroll at the top of the page keeps running "breaking headlines" that are up to a month old. Just feels like someone somewhere stopped trying.

It's crazy, isn't it? When times get tough, Americans buckle up, double-down and make the necessary sacrifices. Well, except for the tiny minority in ownership, who see an exploitable opportunity and have no trouble profiting from it. The cherry on the sundae is how some of those profits find their way into political messaging, where the business class is the victim, workers are lazy and selfish, and the government is to blame for pretty much everything. Or haven't you heard how raising minimum wages would kill the free market?

It's always fun to speculate, but it's always a we'll never know scenario. Kamala Harris looked like the horse to back in 2020 before people actually started voting. Some pollsters claim Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump in the 2016 general, but Bernie had a far stronger primary showing than DeSantis did. How would a Gavin Newsom v Haley/DeSantis general election play out? No idea, but it would have been interesting. You could say Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer would have been President if not for Biden, and that's as true as it is pointless. The Republicans in 2024 may be somewhat like the Dems in 2016: are you going to lose a substantial number of voters who simply don't like the candidate? Had you dumped Hillary or now Trump, would you bring in enough new voters to replace the loyalists who would feel betrayed? Obama won handily in 2008, but it was reported that 20% of Hillary Clinton primary voters voted for John McCain rather than Barack Obama, apparently considering Obama more of a backstabbing rival than McCain/Palin. The only scenario you're talking about is if Donald Trump wasn't running at all, at which point the candidates are fighting for his endorsement rather than distancing themselves from him. Trump hated his GOP rivals about equally. Again, hard to tell.

"Prior to Iowa" was a magical time when anything could happen.

Voters have their choice in the primaries, and Republicans chose to dislike Ron DeSantis. The more they got to know him, the more they disliked him. Not my opinion, just math. If you're wondering if having Trump removed from the equation would have made DeSantis or Haley better general election candidates, we will never know.

There have been multiple times since 2015 when the Republican establishment and donor class let it be known they didn't want Trump. Even Rupert Murdoch tried to take out Trump. The majority of high profile Republican lawmakers immediately conceded Biden's election as fair, and strongly denounced January 6 and Trump's role. The table was set to move on. But every time a Republican came out against Trump, they were savaged by their home state voters, and primaried by MAGA loyalists. No surprise that they would use ugly language and threats. So it's not simply that Republicans are afraid of losing the base, they are literally afraid of the base. The handful of elected Republicans who had the courage to call out Trump's unsavory hold on the party either chose not to run for reelection, or lost to a Trump loyalist. I will never fully understand the spell Trump has on people so unlike him, but between the cult of personality and the more traditional Republicans who will vote for any Republican over Biden, this demented demagogue has more than a chance at regaining the White House.

Well a funny thing happened. In the immediate wake of October 7, the college students of the activist Left began protesting Israel's prosecution of Hamas in Gaza, warning that it would be indiscriminate and devastating to the Palestinian people, and advance Netanyahu's longstanding intention of simply seizing Gaza. They made some pretty outrageous claims about the IDF lying, threw the word genocide around, questioned why American taxpayers were funding it, and went directly at Biden. At the time, roughly 98% of the media and politicians were sticking extremely close to unconditional support for Israel, and the college kids were roundly mocked. Six months later, coverage has leaned heavily towards concern for Palestinians, criticism of Netanyahu has grown louder (in Israel as well), IDF propaganda was exposed, there's been a nearly universal call for a cease-fire, and both Democrats and Republicans are now open to reviewing our military support of Israel on a contingency basis. That's the very definition of change. Maybe the kids were right. Or at least half right. Somebody has to pull the discussion to the center, where truth often resides. If you want to talk about lazy ill-informed folk who only lift a finger to b!^@h on social media, I'd value your input.

Who the f#&% is liking Teach's incoherent posts?

According to my math, you spend much of the school day posting here. At the very least I hope you share with the students the schooling you get on this board.