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Pass on Maldonado. He can go be a 35-year-old sub-replacement catcher on someone else's roster. Bonus: he's 1-for-24 with nine strikeouts in the playoffs for the Astros.

Wouldn't the Supremes have to overturn their own decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts to rule against state vaccine mandates?

Anyone who can be that easily swayed from one extreme all the way to the other has either zero integrity of convictions, or have no real convictions at all. They haven't thought anything through, so they can be swayed way back to the other side just as easily. Basically, they're in it whatever the thrill of it is.

Perfect summation.

Call Tyler eight seven one-oh-oh for a home improvement date.

To 1984's point, there is a distinction between "masterminding" and "Inciting". Trump definitely incited the riot. The thing that distresses me is how the right wing media are whitewashing the riot, which we have clear video evidence of, as being a peaceful protest, and how much traction that gaslighting is getting.

I could agree with Picture ID only in the narrow circumstance that (1) state-issued ID is free; and (2) the state proactively delivers ID to every eligible voter in the state, as opposed to requiring people have to schlepp anywhere and jump through any number of bureaucratic hoops to have to pick it up themselves. Also, to do it right, a state would not be able implement their voter ID requirement until the Federal Elections Commission had reviewed their situation and ensured that every eligible voter had been delivered their required voting ID. Of course, the devil is in the execution here. I can see any number of states failing to carry out the obligation adequately, or challenging the proactivity or free aspects of it in court, essentially, having to give it away for free. But my point of view is, if the left have to compromise in order to address a phantom problem, then the right at least has to implement universal free ID delivery.

I would agree that people who have been touched by such violence, and have actually buried children as a result, are far more likely to set aside all the niceties of liberty and give it all up for safety. I would not agree that makes up a majority of people living there, not even a slim majority. The news media may make it sound like Detroit is one big dystopian minority-ruined wasteland in which everyone who trods its ground is inevitably going to be murdered there, and I'm sure any number of posters here would affirm that belief. But I would bet more people who live there would not want to unilaterally disarm against their idea of a jacked white suburbia that has been hostile to them for decades, so granny down the street can feel marginally safer. This is all hypothetical anyway, since there will be no handgun ban passed in America anyway. Well, not at least until the Trumped-up fascists take over. 😉

So ... there's a chance they might lift the mandate after Thanksgiving? That would be a plus, since I fully expected it to last into next spring.

You might be underestimating the desire of the average Detroiter to allow the average suburbanites to maintain their arsenals just so the cops can come through his own neighborhood and confiscate the guns. What was it the man said? "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." A 21st Century amendment of that phrase might read, "Those who would cave on their own freedoms while allowing others to maintain theirs, just to obtain some theoretical safety from some theoretical guy down the street, deserve the unequal society they get in return."

I don't know about house to house. How did they do it in Australia? However they used the police to do it there, my theory—or hypothesis, I guess—is that if they did the same here, communities of color would certainly be cleaned out of their firearms, and white communities would go largely untouched. Is that a good thing? Sure, you'd possibly get some reduction in certain crimes, but is uneven application of the law, in which historically-marginalized communities are the most heavily-policed yet again, the only or best way to get there? Seems to me this would be such a very clear and obvious case of othering that it would create an uproar.

How do you tax bullets made by 3D printers? (Yeah, remember those things?)

I have an armchair theory for you: If the police were charged with confiscating illegal firearms after a handgun ban in America, a high percentage of cops would focus their efforts on people in communities they have no respect for, and would completely look the other way when it came to people they are simpatico with.

But anyway ...

OK, that's different from where I am. There is a statewide indoor mask mandate, and compliance is practically 100%. If my state didn't have the mask mandate and the place I go into is mask-optional for vaccinated people, I wouldn't mask up, either. But then, that would also mean we'd be in a different place re the trajectory of the pandemic.

Here's another question: if laws are only for the law-abiding, then why do we prosecute non-law abiding people? After all, Bunker says laws aren't for them.

To be clear, are you saying that people are actively spurning a mask mandate in, for example, a store that has a sign at the door that requires a mask?

Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people.

Where are all these vast majority of people who don't wear masks? Where I live, there is an indoor mask mandate at most indoor establishments, and mask compliance is near 100%, same as it was a year ago. There are still a high percentage of people who walk the street in masks, which I think is overkill, but hey, that's their choice, and it's a much safer choice than someone being deliberately unvaccinated and deliberately unmasked around others, because they care only about themselves. Are people in Michigan actively spurning indoor mask mandates to make a point?

Wait until they sue for the right to terminate employees who got the vaccine because religious freedom. That’ll be fun.

Well, in republican leadership’s defense, they lie only because they believe everything will work out just fine.

OK, I misspoke. He is not engineering a fascist takeover. He is the Potemkin leader of the fascist takeover.

Yeah, what lawyer would want the inside track potential that comes with working for the guy who's engineering what could be a successful fascist takeover of Amerika? I would bet a high percentage of them are true believers and are besotted by his orange celebrity sheen.

Good thing he can't lob any nukes at Ch-EYE-na to distract us from all this.