Posted this in the baseball thread, but those who follow here might also be interested:

Some spectators don’t want to be confused for Trump supporters. What’s a Phillies fan to do?

No way I'm putting aside my Phillies cap. People can take the big white "P" to mean whatever they want.

https://www.newsweek.com/istandwitheric ... go-1450330

Black Georgia representative told to go back where she came from

swishnicholson wrote:Posted this in the baseball thread, but those who follow here might also be interested:

Some spectators don’t want to be confused for Trump supporters. What’s a Phillies fan to do?

No way I'm putting aside my Phillies cap. People can take the big white "P" to mean whatever they want.

I mean especially living in the philly metro area during baseball season (or Cincinnati, saint louis etc.), if you automatically assume someone wearing a fitted red had is a trump supporter, you are an idiot.

The Sarge wrote:Who uses straws at home? I know kids do, but aren't those washable?

My sister does. I think it’s to keep coffee from staining her teeth.

Gimpy wrote:

The Sarge wrote:Who uses straws at home? I know kids do, but aren't those washable?

My sister does. I think it’s to keep coffee from staining her teeth.

She drinks coffee with a straw and you still call her your sister?

The story in the WP about the opioid epidemic and where pills were shipped is something else.

A lot of people just wet themselves. People will be going down at every level of this, I think. Presidential administrations, FDA, DEA, drug companies, pharmacies, etc,etc. I would have to think there will be obvious patterns that were ignored and there were most likely plenty of hands being greased.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investig ... 09d6bfe2b3

The best Frank Bruni Op-Ed I've ever read. The emphasis is mine.

How Democrats Defeat Donald Trump

It’s that Democrats can’t afford to take unnecessary risks, dream deferrable dreams and engage in avoidable distractions as they set about the urgent work of defeating him. The 2020 election isn’t about getting everything that Democrats want and that Americans deserve. It’s about getting rid of Trump, because the price of not doing so could be this nation’s very soul.

Stop hypothesizing about Democratic voters’ political priorities and policy appetites and look at the actual evidence of where Americans really are. That’s the 2018 midterms.

It may have minted young progressive superstars like the congresswomen in the squad, but they aren’t especially popular beyond their progressive fan clubs. More important, their victories had zilch to do with why or how Democrats regained control of Congress and have dubious relevance to how Democrats can do the same with the White House in 2020. The House members they replaced were Democrats, not Republicans, so their campaigns weren’t lessons in how to move voters from one party’s column to the other.

Other first-term House candidates’ bids did offer such lessons, so look harder at that crew. Lauren Underwood in the exurbs of Chicago, Xochitl Torres Small in southern New Mexico, Abigail Spanberger in the suburbs of Richmond, Va., and Antonio Delgado in upstate New York — these four defeated Republicans in districts where Trump had prevailed by four to 10 percentage points just two years earlier. None of them ran on the Green New Deal, single-payer health insurance, reparations or the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

They touted more restrained agendas. And they didn’t talk that much about Trump. They knew they didn’t need to. For voters offended by him, he’s his own negative ad, playing 24/7 on cable news.

Of the roughly 90 candidates on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of 2018 challengers with some hope of turning a red House district blue, just two made a big pitch for single-payer health care. Both lost. While first-time candidates endorsed by the progressive groups Justice Democrats or Our Revolution certainly won House elections last year, not one flipped a seat. The party did pick up 40 seats overall — just not with the most progressive candidates.

According to a May analysis by Catalist, a data-analysis firm, 89 percent of the Democratic vote gain in 2018 was from swing voters. That’s just one set of numbers, one way to slice the pie, but it does raise questions about the progressive insistence that partisan turnout and a surge in new voters, attracted by bold policy positions, is the path to victory in 2020.

There’s something else funky about that insistence — about the theory that a more progressive Democratic nominee would get all the votes that Hillary Clinton did in 2016 plus ones from people who stayed home in disaffection and much of the left-wing spoiler Jill Stein’s share. A more progressive nominee might lose some of the votes that Clinton did get. Who’s to say that the math, in the end, would be all that favorable?

Reeling from the ugliness of his actions and words — which are meant to make them reel — Democrats want to repudiate him as forcefully as possible. But that can lead to a reaction that’s neither smart politics nor good policy.

Nancy Pelosi knows this. It’s why she hasn’t been talking up the Green New Deal, single-payer insurance or impeachment, and the suggestion that this makes her some squishy centrist pushover — some musty relic from a timid era — is bunk. She has her eyes on the most meaningful prize, one she pursued successfully in the midterms: Democratic victory. And she can see that in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published a little over a week ago, just 21 percent of registered voters said that there was enough evidence for Congress to begin impeachment hearings.

Single payer polls well, better than any other health care reform idea. And it has since the Clinton era. (One of the best books on public opinion I've ever read, Politicians Don't Pander goes into this.)

Illinois GOP group calls the Squad Jihadists, and while a Louisiana police officer posts to Facebook that AOC should be shot, based off his reading, and citing, a "Taters Gonna Tate" spoof piece.

For Calvin:

Here is what Scalise, the minority whip, said over the weekend....

“The Squad is the face of the Democrat Party now. They stand for socialism, open borders, the anti-Semitic BDS movement, free healthcare for illegal immigrants, & the job-killing Green New Deal. Republicans & Donald Trump won’t stop battling this radical, anti-American agenda.”

Like I said, this is a big part of their game plan. Make the brown women the face of the party and then lie about what they stand for. Once a nominee is chosen, that nominee will be pushing for this liberal agenda. Even if they aren't pushing for it, the GOP talking heads will say they are. The democrats, in this GOP fantasy world driven by fear, will be pushing to give america to the brown people, the ones who are taking our jobs, eroding our values, and stealing money through our social programs.

Couple this with some efforts to pay lip service to the opioid epidemic, which neither side has done much to prevent, and that's how they will get to their voters. It will work with 40% of the population. The question is how many others it will attract. We know republicans will come home to roost because tribalism and because they have been taught for 40 years that the liberals are something they are not.

JH, what is your feeling on who will be the Dem Nominee for US Senate in TX? A state senator from Dallas declared today.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019 ... al-franken

Excellent article on Al Franken.

This is exactly what happens when you champion throwing due process for people to the side and make rash, ridiculous decisions regardless of facts.

Lol

what is humorous about that article

Bucky wrote:what is humorous about that article

the idea that franken was ever funny

gr wrote:

Bucky wrote:what is humorous about that article

the idea that franken was ever funny

"He only took tips"

Maybe he can run for his own seat next time it comes up

Bucky wrote:what is humorous about that article

Well, for one thing, it goes on and on and on about how Tweeden’s memory is faulty and how after all she participated in bawdy sketches, the implication of which seems to be, “so it’s perfectly understandable that Franken would pretend to grab her boobs while she is asleep.” This is deeply ironic considering much of the point of #MeToo is to combat exactly those sorts of retrograde notions, that somehow if a woman, for example, consents to participate in an off-color sketch then of course she consents to be part of an off-color photograph while she sleeps. Or maybe, if we don’t want to go as far as that, that the former should somehow mitigate how we approach the latter. Kind of like a much less consequential version of the idea that some people have that a prostitute can’t be raped, or that her rape shouldn’t “count” in the same way.

It also significantly downplays what #MeToo broad to the forefront recently, the notion of “rape culture.” Frankly, the sketches that are supposed to exonerate Franken are really themselves Exhibit A of what is meant by “rape culture.” The idea that an entire sketch can be made about a man consistently making unwanted sexual advances toward a woman, and it is presented not as problematic behavior but instead something to be laughed at and about - particularly when said sketch is performed in what amounts to a professional setting (USO Shows are not unlike the equivalent of hiring a comedian to do a corporate convention) - is “rape culture” in a nut shell. The man isn’t punished or shunned for his behavior, the incident is presented as trivial and worthy of mocking laughter, all of which degrades women who experience this very unfunny behavior in real life. Presenting this type of behavior for laughs also gives license to men who know about such behavior and are in a position to do something to stop it to instead try to convince the person to whom the behavior is directed that it’s no big deal, that they should just deal with it, etc.

The photograph was in poor taste and a Franken is where he belongs: out of work as a Senator.

CalvinBall wrote:JH, what is your feeling on who will be the Dem Nominee for US Senate in TX? A state senator from Dallas declared today.

I dunno besides a sense that Hegar ran a solid race in a tough district last go around, but have seen some Twitter stuff that folks weren't totally convinced by how her campaign is going currently. I don't think Texas is a majority maker seat though think it is in play in the right year.

Colorado
Arizona
Maine
North Carolina
Georgia
Iowa

Then there's a pile including Texas - Alaska, Kentucky, Kansas - that are possibly competitive but heavy GOP leans.

Dems will need to win 4 if they lose Alabama but win the presidency.

Boris Johnson is prime minister as this version of reality continues to deliver