gehringer_2

IDK - I tend to believe the messaging in every modern campaigns has been thoroughly strategized and market tested and none of it is accidental - unless you have a totally undisciplined candidate - like Trump. The Dems may well be wrong, but I would guess they have internal data that is telling them to keep talking about Trump. After all, neither you or I are the target audience here, so how it strikes us isn't where they are aiming.

maybe rightfully, but I still don't think they would be. Trump pushes immigration and the border and it works for him in so many places were there isn't even any immigration problem, because he's making immigrants the 'scape goat for the dwindling middle class's anger and there is a big dose of retribution sentiment there - thus all the talk about deportation. IMO - the Dems would never have taken that ground from Trump even if they had never given the 1st 'open-boarder' believer a microphone because they were never going where Trump is willing to. OTOH - yeah 'defund the police' was shot placed directly in the foot.

I'd say it's probably because the modern 'extremism' of the right is on economic issues that are complex and poorly understood by the public, while the modern 'extremes' on the left tend to be about lifestyle and cultural issue on which everyone is their own certified expert. Unfortunately, the damage to society is much greater by the former than the latter.

It's going to be hard because what we have thought we understood about information and truth since maybe the Renaissance has been turned on it's head by the explosion of information of the IT age. Today the challenge isn't to get the truth heard, it's to prevent it being buried in a barrage of false noise. The practices and procedures that worked for the former problem are obsolete to deal with the latter.

The public cynic isn't new per se, Mort Sahl, the above mentioned George Carlin - the role has always had a niche. You may be right that Maher's twist is to be more overtly political and take his stance between two specific poles instead of just being critic at large. To me the bigger problem with Maher is that it's easy to believe nothing or at least say you believe nothing, but it's also fundamentally fallacious. Everybody believes something, at least everyone who is able to motivate themselves to get out of bed in the morning. The question is do you actually understand your own belief system and it's consequences? And is it driving you into a meaningful life or an empty one?

Of course they can't. But even that would not make any difference. You need both real data *and* a validation system that people accept to vet that data so they believe it. Even when the data is present, it makes no impact because our society has lost any semblance of a validation system for public truth.

He didn't have to shout her down though, he simply could have laughed and politely said "OK - give me one example"

Before a Hitler ends up where he is, he has to start somewhere. It's fair enough if Wartsk doesn't like the Dems devaluing the singularity of Hitler's end game, but the rest of us should remember that it was the reporting of Trump's invocation of "Hitler's Generals" and an ex-Trump chief of staff calling him a fascist that has brought the Hitler discussion to the fore.

LOL - I watched him some when he first hit the scene, but this episode is exactly why I don't anymore. Every time he gets you half persuaded he's trying to be a truth teller, he drops a turd like this, the mask falls and you see he's just another profiteer playing to the niche where he perceives his audience to be.

I can't disagree with anything in this post - but if they are playing this way because Lalonde wants them to it's madness for the long haul because no goalies are going to be able to stand up to that kind of 40 out of 60 minute, 42 SOG per night pressure. Eventually GA will end up drifting up no matter how much they try to play rope-a-dope trying to keep it down.

I agree completely here. It was a singular failure for the Dems, and the gift that has just kept on giving for bad politics in the USA, that the Dems couldn't draw the line when Clinton lied under oath. I don't care how venal the sin actually was, how popular he was, and how craven or unjustified Starr was, that was a line that should not have been crossed, and once it was, crow-barred open the door for where we are today.

LOL - I just killed JD! Was actually thinking of Ashcroft before he left the admin.

Liz will land on her feet if/when the GOP is reconstituted after Trump. She just will have to move out of Wyoming to do it.

Right. The question is which player will Torkelson be next season? 2023 + Sept 2024, or April-May 2024? We can kick around our theories about him and make our predictions, but the answer doesn't come until we see how he plays when they come back.

Not sure 10% arm passes the smell test if you watched his DP turns in the 2nd half. If he is at 10%, all the other 2B on the team must be lower! Arm strength metrics for the right side are generally tough, there are so few throws where arm strength was going to be the difference between an out made or not made.

And depending on whether you believe they have gotten a couple of goal-tending performances that are above average for the goalie involved, even that distance to the right may be unsustainable.

Bush administration also went all in with political hackery in appointments, both in the courts and the cabinet. He had the most straight up incompetent government in my life time - worse than even Trump at many departments. Bush screwed up DOE, EPA, interior and the Park Service, not to mention the really big messes at AG with Gonzales and with his defense and intelligence services, and of course Alito - maybe the worst appointment to the court in history. Colin Powell was the only person in that whole admin worth their salt, and they cut him out of the loop when it mattered. (ok, John Danforth before he died)

The man’s fundamental ignorance is appalling. Pretty obvious that the people who say he won’t read anything are telling the truth. He has the knowledge base of a person who hasn’t read a book since 5th grade. And the fact that on countless occasions doesn’t seem to remember when he was president is about equally appalling.

It certainly has been a weird episode - weirder than at the LAT exactly because of the above. And of course if Bezos actually does think he has a deal with Trump that is worth more than a copy of the W. Post that's been rolled up and left out in the rain for a week, he's losing his marbles faster than Trump or Biden.

I wouldn't have minded Mitt for himself, but by the end of Bush II, I was already soured on the GOP in toto and have been wanting/hoping to see that party crash and burn completely enough so something useful could could re-emerge ever since

what we learned tonight was that Warren in the only guy in the QB room that actually has a major college arm. Problem is that as could be seen on his very 1st attempt where he couldn't pull the trigger to a wide, wide open Loveland, his decision making talent is way behind his arm talent. QB situation notwithstanding, I don't think I have been that surprised by a UM win since OSU three years ago.

True it was his first year back, but he was a lot longer coming back than average so in terms of total time since surgery he is already a long way out

It's a great diversion though - sort of the ultimate straw man argument, because the key point that is glossed over is that the underlying premise is of the controversy is completely false. Even if voting procedures were somehow changed improperly (and the courts ruled they were not) there isn't a shred of evidence or logic to support the idea that that in any way should favor one side or the other. If your guy is more popular, he's still gonna win if more people vote. That's the beauty of straw man arguments of course - get the conversation pinned on some point where you think there is room to argue and use the noise around that aspect of the argument to obscure that none it makes any difference in the real world anyway.

LOL - Don't get me started on Whirlpool. A couple of years ago we had a new Kitchenaide dishwasher go south while still under warranty. What a total cluster trying to work though the claim was. After about 6 weeks of screwing around and service calls by two different guys who had no clue what they were doing, they decided they couldn't fix it, so they bought me out of the warranty for $800. You can guess the rest. I fixed it myself for $125 (all it needed was a control board.) True story. Still working fine.

I knew a lot of Pfizer employees in Ann Arbor and it was the same deal, all your retirement money went into Pfizer stock and a lot of folks got hosed by not getting out of that when it started on a long decline.