caulfield12

Douglas Ginsburg took himself out of the running for pot smoking, for an example.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/o-rourke-leading-cruz-2-163048000.html First polling with O’Rourke leading...still don’t trust it quite yet, because the GOP is desperately trying to save Cruz, Heller and McSalley, with the TN race wide open right now.

Both teams trying their best to lose this one...

Which we've heard for years are the two easiest "Moneyball" positions to fill. Of course, the reasons here are Dunn, Konerko/Abreu and LaRoche, for the most part.

Real in the sense that half the remaining Sox fans are cheering for a draft position loss?

I guess he's probably set a record for taken called 3rd strikes in the history of baseball? Last time they published the numbers, it was either Judge or Stanton that was like 15 behind him...

He's probably been stuck within that band range of 690-710 OPS for most of the last 4-6 weeks as well. You can say the same of Yolmer and Anderson, although Tim's been 5-15 points higher on average than Moncada. Right now, sitting on an exact 700 ops with 204 strikeouts, 11 games left to go.

Then we'll hear it's all "Inside the Beltway" gossip, only the pundit class cares about stuff like that, not the farmer in Iowa...

Extended.

Let’s not forget the biggest “political party” in America is non voters, around 100 million...either as a result of hopelessness, gerrymandering, difficulties getting to a polling station, age/feeling their voice doesn’t mean anything. It wasn’t Bernie Bros that stopped Clinton, it was the fact that millions and millions of Americans had a pretty strong indication what Trump would be like and still voted him over the alternative...which was a bunch of warmed over platform items that excited pretty much nobody. Trump at least excited his supporters and energized them to vote or buy hats. Even today, there isn’t a really exciting set of proposals for the Dems...only the most “outlandish” ones (Medicare for All, abolish ICE, free college for everyone) that have split the party into two. The only thing saving the party is the womens’ vote (Roe vs. Wade when it might be too late), young people in some states and then the elderly have flipped away from Trump over the last year due to the ObamaCare failure, threats to Medicare/SS and the fact that Trump’s simply the most likely politician to get everyone in the US killed prematurely by his actions.

Is there any GM more likely to get $2-4 billion in investment behind him?

Michael Moore said that the GOP goes for the jugular, the Dems pillow fight. He’s 90% right. The GOP never would have allowed Merrick Garland to go down like that...

Anita Hill, Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones are more famous to the general public than most Supreme Court justices. Why would any woman want to put herself through that willingly if there wasn’t any truth to the allegations? It’s not like the Jones case where there is money involved for the complainant, either. This is more about weighing personal/reputational cost versus the opportunity cost of not doing anything and knowing this guy might have been the key vote to overturn Roe. How many women, though, would do the same? She’s a Stanford professor with an established career, after all. And it’s also not like anyone can control the next nominee’s view/s on this issue, although we can all theorize they might be more moderate. Knowing Trump, he’s just as likely to do the opposite...pull Kavanaugh and attempt to jam someone through (even before November elections) that’s more conservative. Or put another way, what would you do if your wife was the accuser...with this allegation going back 36 years to high school...? Tell her to let bygones be bygones after all the therapy she has been through? It’s an incredibly complicated decision for any family, especially if you had children, no matter what age/s.

But few prosecutors in the 1990s would have pursued an extensive criminal investigation over perjury into a middle-aged man’s lies about adultery if that person had not been President Clinton. In his zeal at the time, Kavanaugh, like Starr, may have worked himself into a belief that this was about sacred principles of law, but to many others—and ultimately to a clear majority of the country—it was obvious that the case was fundamentally about political power. Kavanaugh’s fate, too, now depends on precisely the same thing: Do the allegations change the calculation for the perhaps half-a-dozen senators—including Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—whose minds were not already made up by earlier political calculations? With the benefit of hindsight, Kavanaugh later concluded presidents should be shielded from criminal investigations of the sort he helped wage against Clinton. At the time, however, he was filled with righteous indignation. “It is our job,” he wrote colleagues in Starr’s office in an email, “to make his pattern of revolting behavior clear—piece by painful piece.” politico.com

Since this administration took office, what issue hasn't been politicized? About the only thing MOST of the country was unified around was striking back at Syria/Assad after the chemical weapons attack, but, if you read the Woodward book, that decision itself was a highly politicized one as well. Would it be better if the reported victim came forward after the next Citizens United decision of the court? As the Roy Moore election showed, even giving voters the evidence on both sides and allowing them to decide is better than them never knowing it existed at all. As much as the GOP tried to attack Obama, they never could do it through Obama's personal life, other than the marijuana and cigarette smoking...nary a hint of an affair or untoward glance in all that time. Generally, you don't need to find character witnesses for individuals who "are of good character" in the first place, right?

The Democratic Party Is Changing Forever. New York Just Showed Us How. https://www.yahoo.com/news/democratic-party-changing-forever-york-002352909.html

Fwiw, the victims were reportedly local prostitutes already in Texas, and this occurred over a number of months...as opposed to the Border Agent targeting illegal immigrants at the border, specifically. Not that it makes it better, obviously. Guess we will learn more on Monday.

We can start to ascertain who’s winning and losing between progressives and centrists/moderates when we come out of the recession that’s about to hit in 2019-20. At some point, Dems will have to decide how hard they’re willing to fight to preserve Social Security and Medicare. The GOP will happily cut back those programs 15-25% and refer to them as entitlements rather than benefits earned. And it’s not just corporate tax cuts, cuts for the Top 1-2%, it’s that 10% increase in the defense budgets that’s being used as one of the rationales for cutting back on social programs. Of course, the category of corporations/corporatist also include major defense contractors.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dianne-feinstein-what-in-the-hell-were-you-thinking?yptr=yahoo here would be another reason...supporting candidates like Diane Feinstein, that are the equivalent of Chuck Grassley in our party, out of touch and out of their depth

Because nobody cheers for Chuck Schumer, Fake populist Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, Tim Kaine, moderation, the establishment, the status quo, accommodation, corporations...etc. It’s the same reason Collins, Murkowski, Flake, Corker, Sasse are not going to survive long on the other side the aisle. Dems are sick of being reasonable to the right being obstructionists and bomb throwers. What did all that patience and haughty reasonableness get Obama? https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/14/michael-avenatti-2020-democratic-primary-219910 On the other hand, this might be more to your liking, arguing Avenatti is enticing Dems like Booker and Harris to act more and more like Trump. Let’s just see if the two sides can unite under the banner of Liz Warren. Somehow, I doubt it. Biden and Sanders are the past, old white men. Oe we can go with Beto O’Rourke and let the chips fall where they may.

And yet the Dems didn’t learn that lesson in 2008 from the Clinton campaign...? That’s half the reason the Supreme Court will have a “Reign of Terror” the next 20-30 years, that “you’re likeable enough” issue wasn’t ever fixed, despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on her behalf.

Couldn't we same the exact same thing about Trump and Obama...?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/13/opinions/the-question-woodward-book-doesnt-answer-zelizer/index.html The one question Woodward's book doesn't attempt to answer Fifty years after it seemed that George Wallace's brand of politics was banished forever, his legacy lives on in the White House. Our political processes were so broken that a political novice with a checkered business history and claim to fame from reality television rode his way to the presidency. While many people in the electorate were not happy with Trump or the system that produced him, and he actually lost the popular vote, the President was still able to win, thanks to the Electoral College. His victory was likely enabled by a combination of factors -- including growing inequality and the uneven recovery from the Great Recession, the rot in our campaign finance system, the failure of Congress to govern effectively, the flaws of his opponent, the growth of conservative news media, the use of social media by Russian hackers and the continued popular strength of reactionary social ideas in certain parts of the nation (you can probably add the Comey investigation of Weiner e-mails the last two weeks MY EDIT). Trump's support among Republican voters is currently at 85%. The answer to the state of our electorate won't be found in the portraits of the insiders who rule the roost in the White House. So Woodward has once again offered a fascinating account of parlor politics, this time in the Trump White House, but he has not provided an understanding about why this all happened and why it is allowed to continue. While this is not the story that Woodward intended to tell, it can't be ignored since it is the only way to get to the bottom of what is going on in American politics today. We need to start looking more carefully at the big picture -- understanding the trends and dynamics that created the toxic political environment that allows the presidency depicted in Woodward's book to occur. Until we have answers to these questions, we won't be able to have any assurance this will turn out OK, or that after Trump's presidency ends, his brand of politics won't outlast him.

In N.H. election stunner, a onetime refugee knocks off entrenched incumbent He’s a veteran state representative who has railed against immigrants “getting everything” at the expense of people born and raised in the state. She’s a 27-year-old former Afghan refugee making her first run for political office. So when the tally from Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Concord, N.H., was announced, even Safiya Wazir said she was astounded. She hadn’t just beaten state Representative Dick Patten, a 66-year-old former city councilor. She crushed him, winning 329 votes to his 143. Read the full story.

Getting closer and closer to having 6 guys with 20 homers...the only problem with that is only Anderson and Moncada are part of the future, with the POSSIBILITY that Palka/Davidson can be a workable platoon split at DH I guess.