John Roberts

Lawyer. Political Junkie. Occasional writer of flash fiction and short stories of indeterminate quality.

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@SeanTrende Marginle #20733 - 4/15
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https://t.co/mGqvjVr7bt

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@JacobDVandever

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@JonahDispatch

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@grok @SeanTrende Got 'im.

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@geoffschwartz Absolutely agreed. Losing is the worst possible outcome because you've played the championship game and then still have 3 games to play. The real issue is that playing in the championship and losing is worse than not playing at all. Ohio State's in a better spot than PSU

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@SeanTrende Whether real or staged, this is the greatest bit and election day distraction of all time.

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@geoffschwartz They are. Was at the game and the TV timeout timer on the field was generally 2 mins 50 seconds. Not that long ago it was 2:10.

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@mattcolville "Why can't you do as I did and come with us, for fellowship!"
"And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?"

[John Fetterman @JohnFetterman]

This is a family in crisis and the recreational cruelty I see on social media needs to be out of bounds.

I know the impact this has on children. I'm calling for restraint because cruelty has substantial collateral damage.

We can't ever forget that they didn't sign up for this.

[John Roberts @pubby88]

OR House Democrats spendi g tha short session doing their best Captain Renault impression: They're shocked, shocked to find overregulation going on in here! #orleg #orpol

[OR House Democrats @ORHouseDems]

We need to build more homes to stabilize the cost of housing in Oregon.
Rep Maxine Dexter spoke with KOIN today about how we are working with local leaders, housing experts, the Gov, and land-use advocates to remove barriers to building critically needed housing.
#orleg #orpol

[CBS News @CBSNews]

"I've attended more funerals than I care to share with y'all," singer Jason DeFord, known as Jelly Roll, tells lawmakers during a congressional hearing on fentanyl.

"I was a part of the problem. I am here now standing as a man that wants to be a part of the solution."

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@mattcolville "No, those humans focused on the future. On making a better world... for all of us. A world many of them knew they would not live to see. That is a sacrifice... I can scarcely imagine."

Fuck dude. Chills. Well done. Most pumped I've felt to play a human in an RPG.

[☘️LegalizeQuack☘️ @Legalize_Quack]

Every Oregon Fan should hear this story.

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@SeanTrende @KFILE The replies on this tweet are a great reminder of how toxic this place can be. Outback is a great example of something where when your price goes up at your location, you notice. People here quibbling that the price is either not that high or that outback is a luxury are nuts.

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@BarstoolDucks 45-42, game winning redemption kick by Camden Lewis.

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@johncanzanobft The contrast between Smith's answers and Lanning's could not be more stark. #GoDucks

[John Roberts @pubby88]

@joey3harrington I sometimes dream of the CFB committe having the guts to punish this. Hold teams that play these cupcake games to their current rankings; treat it like the bye it is! But I won't hold my breath for that to happen.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Latest Russian joke:
-- What does mobilization have common in Russia and Israel?
-- Long lines for flights to Tel Aviv.

[AG @AGHamilton29]

So the last 5 days have been among the most mentally draining of my life. I’ve been trying to figure out why it has been so bad. This conflict is not new to me. Jew hatred is not new to me. Death is not new to me. So I’m gonna do something I rarely do on here and just ramble a bit about my personal history to explain why this feels different.

My family left the Soviet Union in 89. At the time, most Jews were desperate to get out. Jews were basically second-class citizens in the USSR. My parents and my 3-year-old self were lucky enough to get visas to the United States. Most others, including my grandparents and much of my extended family, escaped to Israel. Identifying as Jewish was always really important to my parents. It was a source of pride. Not because they were religious. Far from it. But as I would later understand, when half your family is massacred for their identity, it becomes a lot more than just a religious belief that you can just change one day.

We came to the U.S. with about $60. A local Jewish organization was kind enough to cover 2 months of rent in a small apartment and fill up the fridge. I can remember how tight the money was from visiting a store once we got here. I saw a cheap toy that I, being a little shit, demanded to have. My dad was unable to say no to me so it caused a fight between him and my mom. I somehow remember him skipping the meal that night to offset what my toy cost. My dad knew about 3 words of English at the time, but he loved to talk. So he would still manage to have hour-long conversations with everyone we met somehow. Don’t ask me how I remember any of this, but I confirmed it years later. My parents almost immediately got 4 low-wage jobs between them. Not only did they need to earn for us to survive, but my dad was committed to us visiting my grandparents in Israel as soon as we could.

The first chance we got to go there was in 1991. It happened to be during the Gulf War. I know this because I will always remember being woken up in the middle of the night for my parents to put one of those ridiculous gas masks on me. Every household in Israel had them by then. I couldn’t comprehend why someone was trying to hurt us. I remember being told at some point that it is because we exist. A few years later, when our situation was a little more stable, I started going to Israel every summer to stay with my aunt and grandparents. My grandfather was the youngest of 7 siblings, but 3 of them had been gone since the war. One of his brothers had the numbers on his arm and it took me some time to learn what they meant. I would spend half my days playing outside with friends. I didn’t speak Hebrew but I learned to understand it and the kids who spoke Russian would often translate. The other half was with my grandparents. They eventually moved to a very large hostel, which is essentially a retirement home. That hostel happens to be about a mile from where a rocket hit today in Ashdod. I would walk there daily and play dominoes and cards with the retirees (Durak was their favorite game and I was great at it). I noticed that a lot more of them had those numbers and by then I understood what they meant. Very few of them liked to tell their stories, but I would pry some details out of them from time to time when I got a little older. It was always amazing to me how they could recount the most horrifying events imaginable without really getting too emotional. I would get more upset about them than the people who survived them. But the message was always the same at the end: “Now we are here in Israel. Now our kids are here. We survived and that’s what matters.” The "we" they were using wasn’t themselves individually, but we as a people. They could not kill us. Or as the saying goes, The People of Israel Live. Survival was their accomplishment and they took pride in it.

I kept coming back most summers, even once the Second Intifada started. I remember my teenage friends wanting to go to the pool on Saturday, but I was afraid of getting on a bus. I couldn’t understand why my friends didn’t seem to care given all the bus bombings, but they had been desensitized to it, and being targeted for existing became the norm. One of those friends would later die in a bombing. By then it was well understood that they wanted to kill us because we are Jews and that would not change any time soon, but life must go on. I would come back years later and by then they were still trying to kill us, but it was no longer busses and suicide bombers. Instead, they were using rockets that meant we would have to regularly run to bomb shelters, but again Israel had taken steps to ensure its people could live.

What I found amazing in thinking back is that no one in Israel ever let the hatred or attempts to kill us define their lives. Not when Saddam was firing missiles, not when the PLO was blowing up buses, and not when Hamas was firing rockets. Those around Israel always did what they had to survive, but they still went on with their lives. They went to school to learn math and science, not how to hate Palestinians. The goal was never death for a cause, but prospering at life. The previous generation had survived and the mandate for future generations was to not waste it.

That brings us to this past weekend when a group of modern-day Nazis again committed to our destruction unleashed the type of hell that our people hadn’t seen since so many were branded with those numbers. The trauma of the reality that this could happen again is just devastating to those of us who know the history. Too many took survival for granted. The anger we feel isn’t just at the killers, but at ourselves for letting it happen. it feels like a betrayal of the survival stories we heard from our grandparents. We had a shared responsibility to those who survived the last time our families were left to fend for themselves against evil to not let it happen again, and we failed. We have to do whatever it takes to make sure we do not fail again. That will mean some very hard days ahead, but there is no choice. Our survival depends on it. The people of Israel live.