37 Comments
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Jan 31
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Can you give us some specific details about which police killings were found to be justified and yet sparked protests?

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Jan 31
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Stop trolling. You were asked a reasonable question. Be a big boy, one your mother would be proud of.

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Jan 31
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You are not making your mother proud. I wasn’t asked the question, you were. Either answer the question or go pout somewhere else.

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Jan 31Edited
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But there have been shootings of “innocent” people that have spawned protests. No one statement is absolute.

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Dennis really! You’re heading off the rails again, I’ve read to the bottom of the thread. Obviously, you know the truth look familiar?

“One bit of pushback we heard over and again when reporting on far-right extremism is - well, what about far-least extremism? What about Black Lives Matter?” Hirsch said. “People, including law enforcement here, incorrectly claim that that movement has been more violent than the far right. But that is simply not true. That’s a movement to protest the police killings of innocent black people, and it’s been overwhelmingly peaceful.”

There is a lot in the above to play with although you will need to do some research before you jump back in. you could start with “incorrectly claim that that movement has been more violent than the far right” you could start with “more violent”. “More” is a degree in postion and somewhat subjective. How about just violence? Next “police killings of innocent black people” how about black people killing police in revenge?

Dennis, your mission if you should decide to accept it, find the information, it’s out there. Myself being a bit anal I'll want see links to all source material (read it before linking) and not from some wing nut claiming it came to them in a dream. Along with an attempt at some form logic that most here can follow. As for I’m off to see the wizard the wonderful wizard of Oz, not really how wacked do you think I am. Its earbud time and I’m off to find a song

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Jan 31
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Dennis every hear the idiom “The pot calling the kettle black” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pot_calling_the_kettle_black

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Jan 31
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Dennis you got me on that one, what is it?

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I think the issue that everyone in this thread of conversation is dancing around is that the exact percentage of killings of black people by police that can be defined as “innocent” or “justified” is irrelevant. What is important to understand about BLM is that they are protesting the fact that police actions against black people have taken place in a manner that has led to many innocent people being harassed, unfairly prosecuted, beaten, or killed. Or sometimes, as in the case of George Floyd for example, a fairly low level, non-violent infraction leads not to a simple arrest but escalates in a manner out of proportion to the actual threat level. And it happens to black people exponentially more than it does to white people. And the police have historically gotten away with it. And it’s not OK, and it needs to change.

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Jan 31
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I believe “white nationalism” is an accepted term for people who seek to “ensure the survival of the white race and the culture of historically white states.” I suspect that belief has been around for generations, but I couldn’t give you a time frame for the usage of the term.

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“WHITE Nationalism” started in the South when sadistic, perverted, cowardly WHITE Men with torches started wearing WHITE Sheets with slits over their eyes, searching for people of Color whom they could systematically attempt to exterminate.

Sometimes I wonder what planet you’ve been living on, Dennis. Though FOX Toxic TV and Putin-sponsored websites seem to be fulfilling your appetite for injecting divisive info into the Front Page.

Since banning of books on segregation, and proof of cruel torture and killings of human beings with skin that wasn’t WHITE is a new phenomena in our country, surely you know of this dark era of our past and current racism and religious discrimination and violence. It is disingenuous of you to purport otherwise.

Yeah, I just took the bait I’ve been advising others to avoid…feeding your need for narcissistic negative attention. Enjoy your morning snack.

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Jan 31
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Jan 31
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I think the Nazi’s had a lot to do with that for the people we are talking about. Nationalism, we should remember, is not the same as patriotism. There are 2 words for a reason. And we see nationalism of various kinds around the world, but there is a very distinctive, highly racist form of it that is quite strong among fascists, racists, and MAGAt’s. In order to distinguish it from other forms of nationalism it is known as white nationalism due to its inherent racist nature. I understand that you are likely find some nitpicky problem with my explanation. That will indicate to me that you are more interested in defending racists and fascists than in finding common ground with people who care deeply about saving the good America’s founders created.

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Good point! Patriotism is very different than nationalism.

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Jan 31Edited
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My recollection is that Zayas took over the job he promised to move tournaments around the state to different locations. When GF lost the tourney to Binghamton the first time, the same thing happened. The state basketball committee voted to keep it in GF, but Zayas recommended Binghamton. So this is a repeat performance by Zayas.

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Zayas has always rained on our parade. When JG3 was on his way up in 8th grade, it was apparent GF would have huge attendance at the state tourney down the road. How do we slow down attendance in GF and increase attendance in another venue? Move it out of GF. GF loves their sports and they'll travel to Binghamton to watch JG3 and boost their numbers. Coincidently, the current GF squad is dominated by underclass men and should go a long way in future tournaments. Zayas is a genius and found a way to make it look like he's not the wizard pulling the puppets strings. "It's the Committee." Right.....

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I listened to NCPR's . "When All Else Fails", and I found it to be one of the best I have heard in quite a long time on the rise of the far-right fringe and their ideologies. As you said, it is well worth the listen and kudos to Emily and Zach.

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I agree 100 percent.

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On learning of Elise’s deletion of her Jan. 6th statement from her website, Liz Cheney posted Stefanik’s Jan. 6th statement in its entirety on “X.”

Liz’s exposure of Elise’s “erasure” has had wide coverage on cable TV stations and other news outlets…along with her statement that Stefanik “will have to explain how and why she morphed into a total crackpot. History, and our children, deserve to know.”

If Taylor Swift was a New Yorker, with her influence on voters of all ages, we might have a chance of un-seating Elise and preventing her candidacy for VP any other Gov’t office ever again!

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Anyone who was born and raised here in the North Country since WWII (GF North and greater ADK Park region) has always known that there was an underbelly of poverty and ignorant, very poor people who were living on the fringe of society. The end of the Industrial Revolution was also the end of the decent paying jobs in paper making, logging, timber processing, mining, and even seasonal tourism. The end of small, rural hamlets, villages and towns as self sustaining communities ended. Cost of living (especially housing) was reasonable back in those years so even low paying tourism jobs combined with other off seasonal work was enough to make ends meet. That era is gone. The "have nots" became the "deplorables" and the losers in the game of doing better than the generation before. It left a culture of people who truly were left behind and a downward spiral of abusive marriages, child abuse, drugs, alcoholism, and welfare recipients. Last election cycle I noticed more Trump and Confederate flags in my travels in the more remote parts of the ADKs than ever. And those locations tended to be run down old single wide mobile homes and shacks with junkyards surrounding them including derelict vehicles and trash. It reminded me the stories I had read about the hillbilly hollers and poverty exposed in rural Appalachian regions, but the reality is we have the exact same problems here. You can't fix stupid, because if you don't get a decent education as a young person (learn critical thinking and understand history), grow up in a happy and healthy environment, and have any hope for the future you will remain stunted in intellectual, emotional and physical growth forever. Very sad, and now we have social media that can exacerbate the bullying and loneliness and hopelessness of the situation. Toss in expensive vacation homes driving out the poorer working people, and lack of access to broadband to create new businesses/jobs, and you have Trump and MAGA madness as the new cult religion in North Country. Elise knows how to bully and convert stupid in to a cult following. Just my opinion...

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Good points. One other thing to think about.

The diminishment of our industrial base coincided with the rise of the economics of people like Walter Rostow (also known for his enthusiastic support for the war in Vietnam, even greater of a supporter than McNamara) that focused on building a mass consumer society. Consumerism has changed the psychology of our nation and divided us subtly but powerfully. Even as a small child, maybe especially as a small child, we begin to see the differences the appearance of wealth provides. Almost inevitably the envy we feel for people who have nicer stuff affects how we interact with others and the idea of equality of a free people is diminished. We have replaced democratic ideals with greed and envy and it has consequences we are seeing.

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The reality goes further back than that. Henry Ford is credited with the assembly line success story and the mass production of vehicles that were all the same but CHEAPER and more AFFORDABLE (thereby supposedly giving the "average American" a better life--what is a definition of a better life?). That was the death knell of hand crafted, locally produced, higher quality goods (and higher priced). And where has that gotten us? Fist fights at Target stores for the special edition of the latest Valentines version of the Stanley Cup? Seriously, this is the nonsense level of consumerism we now deal with daily. We have gigantic super sized warehouses of cheaply made products from China, Vietnam, India in the numerous local Walmarts, Targets, BJ's Clubs, Costcos, etc. In years past (when I grew up in GF) we had 2 locally owned lumber companies, Woodbury and AC Warner. A few locally owned hardware stores, etc. Now we have Home Depot and Lowes, although there is still room for higher quality service and products at Curtis and TC Murphy. But long gone is the small hamlet where my grandparents lived in Hammond NY in St. Lawrence County, where 2 local brothers owned and operated the mill where you went to get your lumber (and if you were on hard times, that's OK you can pay your bill when you get the money). My mother and father bought the little hardware store after the was (they met at Pine Camp now Fort Drum). Dad knew (having grown up in Niagara Falls aka city boy) that the end of small hamlets like mom's hometown was over. They moved to Watertown so she could drive to run the hardware store while he drove to Syracuse to law school. The mass produced assembly line and mechanized production drained all the smaller communities that were left with almost nothing to support the community. Ask anyone who lives in ADKs outside of a couple of the biggest villages like Saranac, LP and Tupper Lake where they have to go to buy groceries, clothes, hardware, etc. and they will tell you the nearest larger community usually an hour or more away. Plattsburgh, Glens Falls, Utica, Potsdam, etc. What a coincidence that McNarama (and don't get me started on the role that Rostow POS played in the Vietnam war fraud) was a FORD Motor Company executive. JFK's saying for McNamara and a few others were "the best and the brightest" except they were just power crazy rich white boys from Ivy League colleges who happened to get lucky and be friends with a Kennedy. And now our latest Ivy League mistake is our very own E-Lies Satanic from Harvard! She should be given the ultimate "MISS" award. Misstake, Missinformation, Missrepresentation, Missunderstanding...LOL. Please TAYLOR SWIFT, announce at halftime at Super Bowl that everyone should vote for Biden/Harris!!!

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What a coincidence that McNarama (and don't get me started on the role that Rostow POS played in the Vietnam war fraud) was a FORD Motor Company executive. JFK's saying for McNamara and a few others were "the best and the brightest" except they were just power crazy, rich, white arrogant boys from Ivy League colleges who happened to get lucky and be friends with a Kennedy. And now our latest Ivy League mistake is our very own "E-Lies Satanic" a carpet bagger from another part of the sate and from Harvard! She should be given the ultimate "MISS" award. Misstake, Missinformation, Missrepresentation, Missunderstanding...LOL. Please TAYLOR SWIFT, announce at halftime at Super Bowl that everyone should vote for Biden/Harris!!!

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Regretfully, MacNamara, Westmoreland, and countless other civilian and military senior personnel made it off the planet without paying any consequences - no time served at Fort Leavenworth military prison or other prisons, or loss of their retirement pay for their lies which perpetuated the war and continued loss of American troops in VN.

Purposely miscounting casualties/ body bags, (both American and Viet Cong) to ensure their own promotions… and preserve their post-military/Cabinet aspirations… were and still are unforgivable sins. Not everything can be erased like Stefanik’s website.

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A soulless, empty suit and puppet. The NEW REP woman of the future! Evil, selfish, greedy and power hungry beyond imagination. Sound familiar? Power Corrupts. Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely and we are in the stage of the mega billionaires with possibility that Musk might be the world's first trillionaire in the future. Sad state of affairs.

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Gee Bob don’t stop now I was just starting to find it interesting. Although you may think about looking a little further back before Henery ford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_line scroll down to history

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I think my comment was also related to the decline of rural America at that time, quality of life, trade off for cheap, mass produced items and the guy who basically made the assembly line almost synonymous with his FORD plants in USA and the world? What did he bring us?

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Don’t know Bob interesting question. What makes it possible for you to communicate in this little echo chamber and ask that question?

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Thank you for your historical as well as personal chronology of the evolution of mass consumerism and its impact on the North Country and all levels of our American culture of “more means more.” Would love to see this as special edition essay in the Post Star!

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Also born and raised and now retired in this beautiful part of the country. However, please take care not to make a positive correlation between poverty and ignorance. Many of the poor appreciate and are support education and utilize public education. It was also possible years ago for a “poor” child to gather scholarships sufficient to fund quality higher education.

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There are always exceptions to the norms but if you look at the data for people living in the ADK Park, you will find that sadly the statistics tend to show lower income, rural people also have less formal educations. On a National basis, the reason Trump has done so well in his party depends on people with less education. Just the way it is... Here is the US average education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States and here is ADKs: https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/NY/Thousand-Island-Seaway/Adirondack-State-Park-Demographics.html BIG DIFFERENCE.

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Ken as always your writing is spot on and deeply thought provoking. I read in part the transcript of how the reporting was done.

I stopped because I have driven to Greenwich and Schuylerville for years in Washington County. I am DA/ aide in a medically frail group home for NY State.

I have seen it, heard it and all the above. It has effected me deeply.

I have a multi racial mixed family. Foreignly and domestically adopted. I proudly served this country and despise the hate spewed by Donald Trump and continued by Elise Stefanik.

I stopped because it's personal.

When I see the flag that will be draped across my coffin flying a driving vehicle I cringe.

The other day in the little Walmart in Queensbury I spotted a car with a flag. Curious I looked,

a pissed off 40 something white male?

No an elderly white woman.

All these people forget where they live? WTF! Seriously..

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About the vote on the press freedom bill, we should remember that people like James O’Keefe of the far right Project Veritas consider themselves journalists and Republicans have an interest in protecting them.

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The Post Star should be asking why Ms. Martin was creeping around stalking the board members.

This woman has made it her personal mission to promote Biochar - I honestly can say she's the only person living in Moreau that I've heard be welcoming to it.

She has sent several community members nasty correspondence and berated some of us publicly. She has written derogatory and untruthful things about people in this community on social media.

I can't begin to explain to people who don't live directly in Moreau how important this fight against Biochar is to us.

I lived here in Moreau during the toxic dump GE took on our town. We left and moved north.

Later in my life I moved back here.

Went for a walk behind where I live and was met by KEEP OUT HAZARDOUS MATERIAL signage .... GE spread poison everywhere.

Please if you could all help my community we'd be so appreciative.

Biochar was turned down everywhere they applied. They claim they were invited here by former supervisor... who we managed to stomp out of his position by uniting parties for the cause.

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Excellent article! Keep up the great writing!

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Just listened to the 12 and 1/2 minute NCPR podcast - excellent audio quality with printed transcript you can follow. A pleasure to listen to well researched journalism - including the interview with Beth Wadleigh! I signed up to get their daily news emails. Between The Front Page, the VTDigger and NCPR there are rich online resources to augment TV coverage.

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