Mr.TaterSalad

Are you suggesting that Canadians are not free people and that they don't live in a democratic society? https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort=desc&order=Total Score and Status Canada ranks a 98 on the world freedom and democracy index and we rank an 83. WUT? https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/02/02/global-democracy-has-a-very-bad-year Don't trust Freedom House's statistics on freedom and democratic governmental norms, how about the Economists rankings. Canada ranked 5th in terms of how democratic a country is and the US ranked 25th. https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking Or this German University study that created a Democracy Matrix where Canada ranked 24th as a Working Democracy and the Untied States ranked 36th as a Deficient Democracy. Also on that matrix Denmark was #1, Norway #2, Finland #3, Sweden #4, Germany #5, Switzerland #6, Netherlands #7, New Zeeland #8, Belgium #9, Costa Rica #10. Guess what ALL 10 of those countries have: some form of universal healthcare. Oh noooooo, the horror of being both free and healthy.

Trump should have followed the lead of John McCain from 2008. When people would bring up conspiracy theories about Obama being a Muslim, an Arab, a terrorist, etc. McCain would take control over the situation, grab the microphone, and rebut those people right on the spot about their misunderstandings and outright lies. Trump needed to do the same thing at his rallies in regards to Covid and he did not. McCain was a real leader, Trump hasn't been.

If Trump had just come out from the beginning of the pandemic and from the beginning of the vaccine rollout and taken a different approach, we may well be in a different situation. He needed to hammer home the gravity of this virus, the destruction it can cause and the benefits of the vaccine. Hell, he could have been far more serious and then gloated about all the lives he personally saved by going around the country and telling everyone to mask up, socially distance, stay home when you're sick and get vaccinated. People would have been happy to give him credit had he taken it seriously from day one. Instead, he played both sides of the fence, called it a hoax as you said, was dishonest when saying things like it will be gone before you know it, and has associated himself with individuals that downplay and lie about the effectiveness of the Covid vaccines. People look up to President Trump, some even worship at his alter. He had a moral and ethical responsibility to look after those people and encourage best practices and give sound, scientific advice to them. I don't know if he even half assed doing that really. As a result, more people than necessary are dying. Sadly, ignorance about science and refusal to either believe Covid is real or get vaxxed is the real population control, not the vaccine with 5G and Bill Gates microchips in them.

That's true. I hear Canadians have to wake up everyday and lay flowers at the feet of Justin Trudeau statues. They were required to weep in mourning for 100 days when Pierre Trudeau died. I would hope at very least that Canadians get at least some enjoyment from guns or fireworks or big trucks with coal runners on the back of them. Hopefully AR-15's are still legal over there (I believe they are).

Those poor Canadians, dropping dead over there because they have socialist universal healthcare. I mean, forget that they have a longer average life expectancy by 3 years and a longer healthy years expectancy by two years.

“There’s a 99.9% chance it’s anthrax,” Oltmann said on his podcast, even though no one had tested positive for anthrax poisoning and none of the other 3,500 attendees have so far reported suffering the effects of anthrax. I wonder how many got Covid tests afterwards instead of testing for Anthrax. Prolly very few unfortunately because if they did get tested for Covid and it turned out to be positive, then the covid is a hoax theory looses street cred with MAGA.

You watch and/or read about the news every day and night more than likely. Whether it is local news, Freep/Det News, MSNBC, CNN, NYT, WaPo, social media or a progressive leaning source like The Intercept, Salon, Daily Kos, New Republic, Pod Save America, etc. Tens-of-millions of people and Democrats voted for Joe Biden and don't pay attention to the everyday details and news cycles like you and I do. There are lots of assumptions you have to make and questions you have to ask about those voters. Do they watch the news? How often do they watch the news? Where do they get their news sources from? Do they even know the insurrection even occurred in the first place? Do they know what an insurrection is? If they do know what an insurrection is, do they know or see it as a bad thing? Do they think insurrectionists were just rowdy protestors who got a little out of hand or do they think it was something more serious? Do they understand what a coup de'tat is and how close we could have been to one? Are they aware of terminologies like democracy, republic, authoritarian, etc. When the average person is out there just trying to live their life, take care of their family, go to work, feed and cloth their family, battle with Covid, and so forth, the news is only a very small, if at all, part of their day. You, me, Fife, Oblong, Gehringer, Chas, SMR, 84 Lives we all sit around debating politics on a message board. We all watch and read the news and are up-to-date on all the issues of the day. big and small. The average person is not and thus, a reason they may not take the insurrection as seriously as the rest of us do.

All of this above is why when people say "Manchin has been negotiating in good faith and clear about what he wants all along" I call BS. Manchin has added things in the 11th hour, like inflation concerns, to what he has been negotiating for. Additionally, he claims that he has concerns about the deficit, all the while voting in favor of a deficit expanding $745 billion defense budget. What I believe to be the real issue though, above all else, is what you said about Manchin's family and their financial interests in coal companies. Manchin is no less a grifter than Trump or his daughter Ivanka who caught getting applying for trademarks from the Chinese government for her clothing and shoe line while serving as a White House Aide to her father. Manchin's grift is to protect his, his son's and his families overall financial interests in the coal energy. It's a clear conflict of interest that he has with the climate and clean energy provisions in BBB and he's letting his financial itnerests take precedent over the good of the country. That to me is not negotiating in good faith and I think all of his other alleged objections are hypocritical and really just a bunch of bupkis.

Manchin said this on Monday to a reporter. . . GTFO with that fiscally responsible bullshit. You just voted for a $745 billion defense budget that is not at all deficit neutral.

WOMP! WOMP!

Popped on the new Brandi Carlile album yesterday and damn, what an album. Thus far, Letters to the Past is my favorite tune.

Considering the region Jesus was purported to live and grow up in, the modern day Middle East/Palestine, chances are higher that he looked more like an Arabic/Palestinian person than he did a sandy haired, blue eyed white guy.

From the White House Press Briefing today, Jenn Psaki not playing around. This is what MAGA wants right? Someone who will tell it like it is?

With the historically inaccurate birth of Jesus Christ right around the corner, I would like to remind everyone that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were a refugee family who had to flee their own country. That would also make Jesus an anchor baby by MAGA standards I guess.

But the Lions already have a sizable Canadian fanbase in Windsor. So can't the league just acknowledge that folks in the Windsor/Windsor metro area are Lions fans?

One of Hutch, Thibs, or Evan Neal I would think. Teams do surprising and crazy things all the time (see the Raiders taking Clelin Ferrell over Josh Allen) so there most certainly no garauntee that Jacksonville would take either of those three players. But going based off most draft boards from insiders and analysts, that seems to be the pre-combine consensus on the best players in the draft.

I don't think it is viewed as hyperbole by progressives. After Trump won, who was organizing and attending all of the woman's marches, tax day marches, climate marches, social justice marches. It sure as heck wasn't moderate suburban voters or former Republicans' from the Lincoln Project. While there may well have been a fair number of moderates who attended these events, it was from my experience largely progressives that were doing the leg work to organize those events, knock on doors, and drive a voter mobilization efforts ahead of 2018 and 2020.

Bernie and Trump share voters because they share, sort of, a populist identity. The difference is far and wide in that populist identity as Bernie is authentic, smart, caring, compassionate, tolerant, not racist or xenophobic. Trump's populism is rooted in ignorance, racism, xenophobia, sexism, and the like, Bernie's is not. I think there are a percentage of voters like to have a villain to go after and are easily swayed to vote one way or another based on that. Here on this board Trump is the villain that others like to go after and most posters will continue to vote Democrat to eliminate the threat of Trump. Other villains include Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, the Christian right, left wing activists, black lives matter activists, teachers, school board members, critical race theory, cancel culture, and on. I think Democrats can win with populism if they focus their message on the right villain and simultaneously commit to putting forward policies that will substantially improve hope, opportunity, and prosperity in the lives of everyday people. They need to do this without talking about abolishing ice, defunding the police, and regulating every word that comes out of someone's mouth. That villain would be rich people and greedy corporations, and the messaging around how the filthy rich are indulging themselves at your expense and how corporate profits are at record highs. It's the FDR model updated with Bernie or Sherrod Brown style populism. Now I know, Biden won and Bernie didn't, so that somehow invalidates everything about Bernie, his approach, and his messaging. And I also know that FDR comes from a different era without the internet, social media, and rightwing media outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. But there is still something to be said that the most progressive and populist Presidents in American history (FDR and Teddy) were also two of the most beloved at the time and still are regarded today. If culture is really king and all people care about is culture-based issue or some non-existent threat to whiteness and being a white person, well then I'll concede that economic populism won't work. I'm not ready to concede though that a Democrats can't win with a populist, progressive, economic message. Populism on the economy doesn't mean you have to also be talking about abolishing ICE, defunding the police, using academic speak like Latin X and other wedges that hurt Democrats. It also doesn't mean you abandon the fight for civil rights, voting rights, and social equity. There are two candidates I am following closely this election cycle and that is Tim Ryan for Senate in Ohio and John Fretterman for Senate in Pennsylvania. Conventional wisdom states that Ryan will lose by a pretty wide margin and Fretterman has a chance in Pennsylvania. But thus far, Ryan's basically emulating the Sherrod Brown populism in his campaign with his whole "cut workers in on the deal" messaging. Fretterman is doing the same in Penn. Most predict Ryanto fail, I don't feel as certain about that just yet. We will see how this ends up going. Somehow, someway, a lefty like Sherrod Brown keeps winning in Ohio. Same for Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin. We'll see if populists like Fretterman and Ryan can replicate that success.

What's invisible about places in Florida (like Miami) and along the gulf losing inches of coastline every few years or hurricaines getting worse and more frequent or California set ablaze with wildfires. Those don't seem indivisible. Those seem like drastic threats that Republicans don't believe in and moderates like Manchin could care less about solving.

Does Manchin really feel he's going to lose because he passed universal pre-k, childcare, and helped to negotiate lower prescription drug prices? We need to stop pretending that Manchin cares about the political consequences of this bill or that he has some principled stand against deficit spending and inflation. If he did, he'd have voted down the $745 billion dollar, not deficit neutral defense bill last week. This is about a man with numerous climate-related conflicts and ties to the coal industry. A man whose looking to continue his grift and profit off the office he's in. This has nothing to do with principal or politics.

Joe Manchin is the quintessential example of the problems we have with grifting, financial self promotion, and big corporate money in politics. In the case of Manchin, he falls into all three categories. He's a grifter whose family coal company is benefiting from his being in office, he's all about promoting his own business interests over those of the people, and he's beholden to lobbyists and corporate interests, particularly from the energy sector. If we are going to sit here and go nuts about Trump, his family, his cronies, and their grift, than equal scrutiny needs to be given to Joe Manchin.

Voters in West Virginia support Build Back Better "We then tested whether or not likely voters in the state see an economic, rather than just moral, rationale for investing in caregiving. We find that by a 36-point margin, likely voters agree that investing in the caregiving sector creates economic growth by allowing the family members of those receiving care to enter the workforce (64 percent agree, 28 percent disagree).Majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans agree with this arguments, doing so by margins of 75-points, 20-points, and 29-points, respectively."

Joe Manchin has made $5.2M from his coal company — and gets big donations from fossil-fuel industry He's more than supporting an industry, he and his son are profiting off coal energy while the world burns. So we are supposed to sit here and watch Nero continue to fiddle I guess.

Study: Association of Rates of Obesity with Voting Patterns in the 2016 Presidential Election One of the hot topic items related to Covid is how people with higher rates of preexisting comorbidities die from Covid. In particular, those who are obese are more likely to suffer serious health effects from catching Covid. I was browsing through a study on obesity rates and the 2016 electorate. Unsurprisingly, there were higher rates of obesity among those who voted for Trump. So not only do Republicans have the problem of not getting vaccinated, they have the problem of having a higher percentage of their voting base suffer serious health problems and possibly event death from getting Covid-19.