caulfield12

We don't need someone preaching and giving sermons to the country from the bully pulpit...he's only going to divide the country even more, because, no matter what he says, the "Trumpists" are going to summarily reject anything coming out of Booker's mouth (unless it enriches their pocketbooks). Whoever it is, and it's probably not Biden due to age, and Liz Warren's not going to be taken seriously by the right either...it's going to be someone like Connor Lamb that's younger and more energetic. I would actually vote for Will Hurd of Texas (over Booker) because to be a bi-racial/black Republican in a majority Hispanic district in Texas (the biggest in the entire country by miles to cover from east to west), manage to now always parrot the party line and actually be an expert in foreign policy from his own years of military service and time with the CIA, well, that's someone who can be taken seriously by both sides of the political fence. Unfortunately, that will never happen in a million years.

Haley setting up to run against Ryan and Pence or Ivanka in 2024...no word from Chelsea, yet.

Is Taylor Swift old enough to run? Seriously, we don’t need any more Oprah’s or Cuban’s, we actually need candidates who already have a firm grasp on policy issues so they can hit the ground running in areas like education, health care, the environment, technology, infrastructure/retraining and world geopolitics. https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/09/politics/bernie-sanders-midterms-campaign-trip-iowa-south-carolina/index.html Reddy will love this, Bernie Sanders coming to Iowa and a slew of other states...not for his Reddy Millennial candidate, of course. He’s getting involved in the effort to wipe out Rep. Steve King instead.

Post secondary teaching, construction, anything to do with the medical field, computer programming and software/game/app design are the expected growth areas the next five years. If interest rates to finance $14+ trillion of bond notes increase to the 4% range from the current 2-3%, that means the government will essentially need to cut back roughly an additional 8% on funding Social Security, health care, defense and what’s left of discretionary funding. Besides, we’re already heading for a $1 trillion deficit this year even with a “roaring” economy, imagine when that long-delayed recession hits in 2019/20. Dems ultimately will have to decide if an infrastructure bill that has lots of elements of private funding is worth handing another big political victory to Trump...and he will once again try to jam wall funding into it.

And Barack Hussein Obama was better? Well, they’re definitely both memorable...and the fight for Hispanic votes is just as significant as any political battle going on today and in the future.

There’s no way in hell Booker gets the nomination in this environment...especially post-Kavanaugh (unless Trump starts World War III.) Much more likely to end up with Warren, Klobuchar, Harris, Gilibrand, etc. Id even venture O’Rourke, Avenatti or even Garcetti have better openings to win.

See Beto O’Rourke in Texas. He has a better chance to beat Booker than Cruz, realistically. We’ll find out soon enough. Any Democrat running in the Deep South, or near west states faces the same odds as you in Chicago...pretty much everywhere between the Heartland and West Coast except Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico (aka flyover territory.) Or all those hundreds of US counties with insignificant populations. (North Carolina and Georgia and even TN are trending more Dem as well, even Texas, though.) We heard yesterday that it’s basically the Dems fault for not successfully running and challenging in those areas (despite gerrymandering and voter rights violations/limited polling stations.)

Or the Chris Correa situation with the Cardinals hacking the Astros’ database...

The positive boost of a World Series title is usually pushed out 4-5 seasons. 2009/11 are when the Sox really started to lose their fans.

Such as Millennials, now the biggest voting block with the lowest percentage of active voters...

Indians’ season ticket holders are filing a class action suit against the Sox, Tigers, Royals and Twins for fielding non-competitive teams “not in the best interest of the game.” Somewhere, Greg approves.

At least we’re not the totally irrelevant A’s, Mariners or Rays!! Now, on to the Josh Donaldson signing ceremony...

Or we can look at the Tigers and now the Indians...four year division runs with nothing to show for it but rising payrolls and fan frustration. (Of course, things go slightly differently in 2016, the Indians win the WS over the Cubs and then have the additional resources to sustain things until at least 2022 or 2023.) Sure, attendance would be back up to 2-2.25 million...but then what?

OTOH, screwing up a rebuild and it going on perpetually despite having possessed 3 huge assets to dump, the Chicago media market and a division filled with rebuilding or imploding (Twins, maybe even CLE) teams would also be so White Sox. Did the Cubs, Royals, Astros, Yankees, etc., ever have so many doubts surrounding their position prospects??? We’re looking more like the Twins’ “reload” of the last five years...where they originally spent big on FA pitching (but went after 3 second tier guys) to jump start things, didn’t sign any absolute studs (Mauer excuse) and saw Buxton and Sano essentially fall apart in every way possible. They went bargain shopping again this offseason, guys like Morrison and Lynn, and it blew up in their faces. One wild card loss to show for it all. This is the nightmare scenario...even worse than the Pirates’ run the last half decade (then dumping the face of the franchise in McCutcheon and Cole turning into Cy Young for another organization.). Unsurprisingly, they mirrored the Sox in attendance for most of the second half.

Trump’s future be pretty much damned anyway climate change “policy” https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-future-damned-climate-change-policy-090015859.html

Cue reference to fans not supporting “competitive” teams in 2010, 2012 and 2016. (Note: Adam Dunn’s historically-bad 2011 and the signings of LaRoche/Cabrera/Bonifacio didn’t exactly help restore the faith.)

Wouldn’t stop and frisk more appropriately be applied to past and former Trump admin. members?

Except Yelich can’t be considered THAT good unless he can repeat this level another year...and, fwiw, the Indians already have two huge offensive talents in Lindor and Ramirez, and it still doesn’t mean a thing if they come into the post-season flat from having no competition in the AL Central. It’s going to take Jimenez being a 900 ops bat and another superstar before they can begin to even consider challenging the Indians. Or Moncada waking up. The timing’s not right, and both those guys get opt outs after 2 or 3 years, no way it will be four unless the front loading is off the charts. And, even with Machado OR Harper, they still might not have enough pitching or offensive firepower to match up with Boston, NYY or Houston. Of course, they go risk averse yet again and pick the wrong second tier free agents and get stuck at .500 again and they’ll have completely lost an entire generation of potential Sox fans.

https://eand.co/why-america-stayed-a-backwards-society-and-collapsed-while-the-world-grew-and-prospered-f1b32a413276?source=email-778470e473a0-1538867325915-digest.reader------0-50------------------4d49b46c_ca07_44a7_883e_85e1f3236229-24&sectionName=ranked This author posits the theory that America “succeeded” largely due to Jim Crow laws and forced segregation (legalized apartheid)...and has seen falling overall middle class incomes since 1971 as the rest of the world started catching up after rebuilding at the end of World War II. Europe and Canada, etc., deliberately chose more egalitarian societies with a wider social safety net and generous health care benefits.

If US House districts were as big as their contribution to the economy

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700/#red-vs-blue Red States are far more dependent on the Federal government than Blue States

It’s equally insane and disengenuous to put up a county by county map of the US and ignore population density and GDP...or the fact US districts and territories like DC and Puerto Rico have no say in the S.C., while Wyoming played a role equal to California with under 1 million residents. Should we go by which states spent more on/for Medicaid costs and related deaths for opioid addictions? At any rate, Rabbit will come to your rescue and bemoan the tenor of Filibuster. https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/06/opinions/kavanaugh-confirmation-margaret-chase-smith-opinion-gergen-piltch/index.html David Gergen has worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations and is as moderate/pragmatic as it gets. But if she wanted to keep bipartisanship alive and find the best possible outcome for the Supreme Court and country, why did she not also condemn the egregious mistakes of her own party, the party that now controls all three branches of government? She should have criticized her fellow Republicans for the withholding of documents and the empty FBI "investigation." She should have decried the GOP's rush to judgment and ignoring of Ford's own right to due process. Surely, she should have rejected President Trump's ugly taunting of Ford and the awful theory put forth that another man was the one guilty of Ford's assault. To use such a pivotal moment, with all the eyes and cameras on her, to critique just one side and cast doubt on Ford's words was not what Americans needed. Citizens and politicians alike needed to hear an honest accounting of how this process became so ugly. We needed to be reminded not only of the way Democrats tried to block Kavanaugh but also of how Republicans blocked Merrick Garland (one of the most qualified nominees to the Supreme Court) without giving him a hearing at all.

Not really. The blue states could just buy soybeans from Brazil, dairy from Canada, etc. How do you think Japan survives despite limited amounts of farmland? The irony is the overall costs to consumers would actually be less if you take away the government farm subsidies and protectionist tariffs on food imports. And the majority of those farms are not run by the middle class, they’re run by huge agribusiness corporations. Individuals in the farm economy only represent 2-4% of those Red States.

The biggest problem in the current system is small businesses/entrepreneurs/freelancers/independent contractors/(gig economy) can’t afford health care costs. That logical risk aversion...the tendency to look for the security of a bigger company or even public sector work like government employment or teaching...is really throttling what should be a dynamic element of the economy. Of course, it’s also much harder for the “small people” to compete for loans, or venture capital investment, for that matter. Trump might have wiped out a lot of regulations, but business loans are going to be more and more expensive with interest and bond rates rising. Naturally, the pool of investment money tends to be controlled by the biggest and most successful corporations...with the inequality/concentration of wealth continuing to worsen. Of course, America currently has no strategic plan for grand projects (Space Force?), infrastructure, educational reforms, etc. Some of the many reasons we are becoming increasingly divided.

And it’s REALLY hard to believe the GOP wants to limit immigration, which is the ONLY potential way to balance outgoing monies for SS, Medicare and Medicaid with declining incoming revenues. Of course, a majority of the retired or retiring Baby Boomers are white, while a majority of the younger workers supporting them in the next 20-30 years will be non-whites.