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Exactly. I’d estimate that maybe 20% of people in this country would gladly pay twelve bucks for a carton of eggs in exchange for the pleasure of seeing millions of people they feel superior to rounded up into concentration camps.

Just a word from Trump and those votes will be in the bag.

New Gilded Age, here we come!

Absolutely true, this, which also conveniently skates right by what Jesus says right in Matthew 6:2: “… when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” So right here, right out of Jesus’s mouth, in black and white, is the idea that you are rewarded by God for your good works. Personally, I think this in-vogue evangelical nonsense about “being saved only by the blood of Jesus” began to be formed in the 17th Century by acolytes of King James so they could excuse themselves for the brutal sin of slavery.

And y’know, the whole claim that “childless cat ladies” don’t/can’t have a genuine desire to improve America's future is an insult to altruistic people in general, since it implies that one can feel for a cause only if they themselves have a material stake in it. IOW, If someone avers they want what’s good for society, they must have some ulterior motive in which they materially gain, otherwise they’re de facto being a disingenuous phony baloney about what they tell us they desire.

Indeed. As as the bold-faced part below indicates, he uses what’s convenient to support his own secular goal, and discards the rest of it. https://www.ncronline.org/news/jd-vances-catholicism-helped-shape-his-views-so-did-little-known-group-catholic-thinkers Catholicism provided [Vance] a new way of looking at the addictions, family breakdowns and other social ills he described in his 2016 bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” “I felt desperate for a worldview that understood our bad behavior as simultaneously social and individual, structural and moral; that recognized that we are products of our environment; that we have a responsibility to change that environment, but that we are still moral beings with individual duties,” he wrote in a 2020 essay. His conversion also put Vance in close touch with a Catholic intellectual movement, viewed by some critics as having reactionary or authoritarian leanings, that has been little known to the American public until Vance’s rise to the national stage as the Republican vice presidential nominee. These are not your father’s Catholic conservatives. The professors and media personalities in this network don’t all agree on everything — even on what to call themselves – but most go by “postliberal.” Vance has used that term to describe himself, though the Trump-Vance campaign did not respond to questions about where Vance sees himself in the movement and whether he shares some of the beliefs promoted by many postliberals. Postliberals do share some longstanding Catholic conservative views, such as opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. But where Catholic conservatives of the past have seen big government as a problem rather than a solution, the postliberals want a muscular government — one that they control. They envision a counterrevolution in which they would take over government bureaucracy and institutions like universities from within, replacing entrenched “elites” with their own and acting upon their vision of the “common good.” “What is needed … is regime change — the peaceful but vigorous overthrow of a corrupt and corrupting liberal ruling class and the creation of a postliberal order,” wrote Patrick Deneen, a prominent author in the movement, in his 2023 book, “Regime Change.” Vance has signaled his alignment with some of what Catholic postliberals advocate. He’s said the next time his allies control the presidency or Congress, “ we really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power” and said Republicans should seize institutions, including universities “to make them work for our people.” He’s advocated for government policies to spur childbearing, a notion reflected in his digs at “childless cat ladies” with allegedly no stake in America’s future. Scholars who study this movement caution that Vance does his own thinking and doesn’t necessarily embrace everything proposed by postliberals — or by a subset of them known as integralists, who want a state working in tandem with the Catholic Church. The latter is not a label Vance has used for himself. But Vance has spoken alongside prominent postliberals at public events and praised some of their work.

Unless y’think Christianity is all a load of crap and yer just using it as a way to placate the people with fakety-fake pious talk in exchange for their votes and their consent and their indifference … 🤔

This, right here. This is what people voting for. This guy.

I wish you were right, but I don't think they are even close to there yet. Remember, they get their disinformation from a very different place from where we get our news, and all they are hearing is that Biden killed pretty little figure skaters.

Of course, while many are rooting for Trump to somehow step aside, look who's a heartbeat away ... Oh, and hey, look! Bluesky embeds now!

A hundred million people love him madly and are willing to follow him off the cliff, and that is a crucial ingredient in the fascist overhaul of America, of which he is the face if not the architect. So his cabal are going to do everything they can to keep him propped up for four years and beyond, even if it practically kills him. If they have to Bernie the guy to do it, so be it. It's anybody's guess how far he makes it.

I wouldn't bet against it. I also wouldn't bet against Trump getting a net gain out of this episode in terms of accelerating changes he's planning to make, not just with FAA and the armed forces, but across his whole government. I acknowledge this particular story is still hot and it feels too soon, but he has faced certain defeat many times on numerous fronts and came out of them better and stronger than before. Put it this way: I'll believe he takes a political loss on this when we see it, and not before.

Wow, eleven days. That was fast. But then, with the fire hose of abject terribleness on full blast from the start of this redux, I can see how it's simply too hard to effectively defend it. Good strategy. Cut your losses and retreat to somewhere friendly where they don't talk about inconvenient things like the truth sitting in plain sight of everyone. Take care and all the best.

Eleven. Don't shortchange us. Every day closer to the end counts.

I don't think we should sign Bregman for six or more years, and I don't think signing Flaherty for any more than two years tops is a good bet. Can you imagine the mishegoss that would occur if we signed Flaherty and he sucked and then got hurt? The peanut gallery would be screaming for Harris's head.

Check that: the Red Sox are not in need of a third baseman, although Bregman is on record as being willing to move to second base for the opportunity to play there. So among the non-Astros teams, they would appear to have the inside track on Bregman if they want him.

You might be right, although I will sense the Tigers are going in a direction similar to Tampa when they actually go in a direction similar to Tampa. We’re not the only team not signing Bregman. The Red Sox, Blue Jays, and Cubs, all of whom are in need of a third baseman, have also not signed Bregman. Only the Astros have a live offer for Bregman at 6/156, so for us to sign him, we would have to substantially beat that offer in, I assume, guaranteed money and possible more years—if he even wants any years here. Not sure where you stand, but I would not want to commit to Bregman for six or more years, and I would think none of the other teams outside of Astros are eager to, either. As for Flaherty, his track record makes him too risky that he’ll either be hurt or just flat out suck (a la 2023). Plus, his lipping off publicly by essentially blaming Harris for costing the Tigers the ALCS by trading him this past July can’t help his case to re-sign here.

Presidential.

I don't know why you apparently think Harris is not working on bringing more talent to the team, but the evidence indicates that is wrong.

To Shiv's point (I love that name—"Shiv"), he's talking about the red hats who voted people into government for the purpose of destroying the government, under the naive notion that taxes will plummet and they'll get to keep almost all of their money from now on. The people they voted in have a slightly different agenda: destroying the government by stripping it for parts and pocketing the tax money that they will never, ever give back to mere red hats. Never. Ever.

They are actively working on this as we speak.

If you're dreaming of no political forum, then you can always forego posting in the political forum and leave it to the people who don't share your dream.

well, that was fast ...

If we can’t politicize an incident in which a US army helicopter crashes into a civilian aircraft after the government offers buyouts to every one of its employees with the specific goal of decimating the civil service and replacing lifetime experts with political hack appointees; the SecDef goes on the air to whine about DEI instead of managing a fatal incident on US soil involving aircraft he is responsibility for; and the President of the United States goes on social media to start blaming everyone and anyone instead of fulfilling the traditional role as Comforter-in-Chief—if we can’t politicize an incident even under those circumstances, then we might as well just shut down the political forum right now and stick to baseball.

I do not regret selling off NVDA at 125 this past summer.