Consumers obsess over inflation; like egg prices topping $4; but barely notice a green card holder’s arrest for peacefully criticizing Israel. The contrast is sharp: grocery hikes since 2022 spark loud gripes; while a free-speech crackdown gets muted shrugs. Eggs hit wallets daily; tracked by CPI; the detention feels remote; abstract. Economic woes drown out systemic overreach; showing how personal costs overshadow eroded rights.
Egg Prices Soar, Free Speech Sinks
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The TMI Show" talk show. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Yeah, pretty much. That’s democracy for you: its main advantage over other forms of government is that it makes it harder for the government to act against the self-perceived interests of the majority. But something that only impacts a minority is easy enough to slip by unless the majority is somehow convinced that it concerns them too. Grocery prices affect everyone in practice; crackdowns on free speech may affect everyone in theory, but how many would actually consider themselves likely to run afoul of them, if they even think that such a crackdown will be extended beyond the obviously anomalous and nasty “anti-Semites”?
I’m curious if ted rall would consider it a peaceful protest.If people were outside his house screaming, that ted rall doesn’t deserve to live?
That’s literally what this university green card holder, was saying Except he was saying, zionists don’t deserve to live.
Or a more accurate analogy, suppose ted rall had two guest in his house and one was screaming the other guest doesn’t deserve to live.
Would he request the murderous guest to leave?
That is really all that’s happening to this green card holder.
He’s an impolite guest in the usa and he’s being asked to leave.
It depends upon what we mean by “Zionist.” If “Zionist” means all Jews or all Israelis or all who voted for the Netanyahu government then saying that they don’t deserve to live is evil. But if “Zionist” means the West Bank settlers who are murdering Palestinians and who proudly call themselves Zionists, then indicating that they shouldn’t live is advocating for capital punishment for murderers, not antisemitism. Did anyone ask Mahmoud Khalil which he meant and then listen to the answer?
Hint: those who have an interest in continuing the fighting don’t want to know the answer. However, the rest of us know that most people on both sides are simply trying to achieve peace and security. Talking with them would be ever so much more effective than maligning, deporting, or killing them.
Did anyone prove Mahmoud Khalil said what he is accused here of saying?
There is no claim that Khalil said anything like that. To the contrary, he was known to be calm and conciliatory. There was a report that someone said something like that, but that person is someone else and is probably a U.S. citizen.
Are eggs even an issue? It’s four to six months for a chicken to reach maturity for egg-laying purposes. And chickens take three weeks to hatch. A hen lays something like four eggs a week, so call it 100 eggs every six months.
How many chickens were culled? And what’s that as a percentage of total laying hens? I think that what happened is that the egg people (Big Egg) used this as an excuse to jack the prices into orbit. But even if there was a shortage, chickens grow fast. It’s an ideal crisis for Trump to claim “I’ll fix it!” because natural increase will resolve the problem in a few months regardless of what Trump does.
“Unintent’s” framing of the situation is highly inaccurate. As far as who’s in whose house, screaming that they don’t deserve to live, Zionists first started showing up in large numbers in Palestine about a hundred years ago. With the help of the British, who were ruling Palestine at the time, they started chasing Palestinians from their homes, “screaming at them that they didn’t deserve to live.” (Displacing native people and moving in Europeans was standard operating procedure for the Brits, btw–Kenya, “Rhodesia,” India, etc.) Zionists screaming at the residents of the house of Palestine reached a fever pitch in 1948, and has only escalated since.
But, to people of Unintent’s persuasion, any pushback by the Palestinians is “aggression” and “screaming that (Zionists) don’t deserve to live.” Is Unintent really that blind, or merely disingenuous?