Mr.TaterSalad

Manchin also watched an insurrection happen that tried to take down our democratic institutions and threatened the future of free and fair elections. What was George W. Manchin's response to that, coming out and still opposing the For the People Act. Again, Manchin is not a serious political actor, he's just your run of the mill hypocrite.

Manchin is an unserious person. Just like the GOP, he only cares about the deficit or inflation when it politically suits him. He had no problem voting last week for a $745 billion dollar defense bill which was $25 billion more than the original asking price.

I'm in the playoffs this week in fantasy and expected a big week out of Kyler Murray and instead he's out there playing like he's Mike McMahon.

If you want one of Hutch or Thibedeaux you've got to be picking #1 or #2 most likely. I'm not blaming anyone if they lose. They got off the 0-17 snide which I wanted, now I just want a top 2 pick so we can get one of the two elite pass rushers in this draft.

Welp, who do we like at #3? Kyle Hamilton? George Karlaftis? Matt Corall?

We're going blow this and be drafting #2 or #3 now.

I don't know if this post is supposed to be a gotcha post or what, but I'll address it. Yes, more people have died in 2021 than 2020 from Covid because we've had an entire year of a full blown pandemic versus 9-10 months of one as we had in 2020. It isn't for a lack of trying on Biden's part to prevent hospitalizations and deaths. His administration has carried out a nationwide vaccine rollout, tried to implement a vaccine mandate, offered free vaccines to every American who wants one, encouraged everyone to mask up and get vaccinated, and more. In-terms of deaths, where they are happening, and who they are happening, it is still true that older people, those with pre-existing conditions, and those at higher risk factors because of health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, smoking, and more are dying at a higher rate. You know who else is starting to get seriously sick and die at a higher rate, then unvaccinated. You know who make up a big number of the unvaccinated in this country, Republicans and people who voted for Donald Trump. Have you looked at the data showing whose dying from Covid at a higher and higher rate as time goes on? Trends are tragically showing it is Republicans and Trump voters. New York Times: Red Covid Akron Beacon-Journal: COVID Killing 2.3 Times Faster in Trump Counties in Ohio Urban Milwaukee: How Republicans Are Killing Their Supporters

Many of those same people you are referencing above are staunch opponents of public assistance and social welfare programs like TANF/AFDC, WIC, SNAP, Section 8 housing vouchers, increased funding for public health and mental health, universal pre k, universal childcare, Medicaid, and wrap around services at school. They are also against using government funding for anti-recidivism programs like job and skills training and drug addiction services. So the lack of care and concern in regards to urban violence on the streets is compounded with the fact that they are against most government-sponsored programs that can be used to lift people out of poverty and out of the hopeless situations they face. They also support public school vouchers that take money out of already failing and resourced starved schools and have generally opposed increases in K-12 funding. Other than the tired narrative of "give people the chance to get a good job so they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps" they aren't offering solutions on the right side of the fence. How is someone supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they don't know there their next meal is going to come from or if they are a child born into a home with a drug-addicted, unemployable parent? How can you pull yourselves up by your bootstraps if you're working 2-3 jobs and over 40 hours a week just to get by and keep a roof over your families heads? How do you pull yourself up by your bootstraps in an area where the free market has all but abandon any commerce and development? What job opportunities will there be for folks in those economically challenged communities? Throwing around words like opportunity, freedom, liberty, and personal responsibility offer no tangible solutions to the problem. Rather they are just empty talking points. So thevery resources needed to help people prosper or get a leg up, and ultimately help end urban violence, are broadly opposed by the right and some centrist Democrats in this country. Also, this narrative from the right that direct cash assistance programs like TANF or food assistance programs like WIC or SNAP somehow lead to increased dependency which ultimately somehow helps fuel urban violence is ridiculous. In fact, socio-economic data and research shows by in large if you take away any level for people to subsist, by drastically reducing public assistance programs, you'll increase extreme poverty rates and with higher rates of extreme poverty, can come increased crime as hope about the future and opportunity fade with despair.

When people on the left say they want more Democrats to take a page out of the Bernie playbook when campaigning and politicking, this is what some of us are talking about. Bernie came to Battle Creek today and gave a speech in support of the striking Kellogg workers. Joe Biden should be in town doing the same thing. There's no reason Biden couldn't have come in, stood on the picket lines and made a show of it with a big speech. Where's that middle class kid from Scranton at right now? If Democrats want to win back white working class voters, standing on the picket lines in support of them is a great place to start.

I once honked my horn at someone because their car had a Bernie Sanders bumper sticker on it and I smiled and gave them a thumbs up for it. But that's about the extent of my rowdy behavior for Bernie in public.

What are the odds that Donald Trump even knows who Robert Taft is?

From the same article I shared above,

The website itself is focused on Wisconsin, but the graphs plotted out below from the site show just how damning a partisan lean Covid has. The MAGA movement and Republicans are killing their own base. https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2021/12/08/data-wonk-how-republicans-are-killing-their-supporters/

Right, which is why you can look at county maps of the state and see where new case loads are exploding and where death, as a percentage of the counties entire population, is highest among red-areas and growing higher. https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98163_98173---,00.html

It's not that I don't care for human life and value it, I most certainly do. But when I see these Herman Cain Award pages on Twitter that spotlight people who mocked those of us who believed Covid was real and then later died from it, how bad am I supposed to feel? I can't help but think about the disinformation spread by the right wing media and social media sphere that took their lives and how they fell pray to pseudo-science and nonsense. It's a hoax, it's no worse than the flu and hardly anyone dies from it anyway are some of the original greatest right win hits. Vaccines supposedly have 5G microchips in them or aluminum siding or whatever in them. Bill Gates is then using them as a way to formulate a new world order. And then an entirely different crowd of people who think Covid is real, but want to take horse paste or other scientifically unproven treatments instead of a more sure thing with the vaccine. Sorry to break it to you Hollywood Hogan, but many of us new this was bullshit because we didn't listen to right wing media and follow along with the social media death spiral. We just listened to our doctors and public health experts smarter than ourselves and took it seriously from the start by masking up, social distancing and most of all, vaccinating ourselves. The New York Times Red Covid piece is one of the most insightful publications I've read on just how ideologically and partisan biased Covid has become due to people on the right not taking it seriously. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/briefing/covid-red-states-vaccinations.html

LOL! Jordan was literally speaking with Trump on January 6th and forwarded over a text the night before from a Republican Lawyer on how Pence could stop the certification of the election. GTFO Jim Jordan.

I don't see how with Goff as our starting QB, playing as he is right now, we can be substantially better next year. I mean maybe through another good draft class and free agency we can net ourselves 3-4 more wins and become a 4/5/6 win team next season. Speaking in baseball terms though, as our starting QB, Goff has provided us with a negative WAR this season and if he doesn't somehow turn it around or get replaced as the starter, I can't see us making big strides next year. All of this is to say, it is probable that we'll be drafting in the top 10 yet again next season and setting ourselves up to get one of Stroud or Young.

Great victory speech by the winner Helen Morgan.

I guess Boris won't be throwing or attending any more Covid parties anytime soon.

When there will be better QBs in next years draft, Bryce Young and CJ Stroud, there is just no need to trade draft capital to get a (perceived) lesser QB in this year's draft. I'd hate to lose a 2nd round pick just to move up for someone inconsistent like Malik Willis or Sam Howell or a one year wonder like Kenny Pickett.

His second round pick doesn't look like a complete waste of space. So by drafting Onwuzurike and him having thus far looked like a football player and not a dud, he's a step ahead of Quinn. It's great to see everyone has been a contributor, even if being a a generationally bad team forced everyone into playing time.

Yep! Not only did people on the right call them crisis actors, I saw this meme being WIDLEY shared on social media in the aftermath of several different mass shootings.

Life throws things at you and it gives you choices. How could I sit there and watch my dad lose his home and literally live off of government-sponsored programs and still go on about the very programs keeping him subsisting. The other thing that was really important for me was getting outside the echo chamber of libertarian/right wing media and the group think that comes along with any ideology or form of indoctrination. The echo chamber effect hurts people on both sides of the aisle and cuts through all political ideologies to be sure. That said, the amount of misinformation, disinformation, straight up lies, and meaningless anecdotes that seem to get spread in the right wing/far right echo chambers seems to be far worse and far more damaging to the individuals exposed to it than those on on the left/far left. Getting out of the echo chamber and allowing myself to gather news and information from a new host of sources, allowing myself to go out there in the real world and see how others live, those were important for my own personal growth and ability to make different choices. When you watch Fox News/OAN every single night, read Breitbart articles, and listen to right wing talk radio all day you aren't doing your own research and information gathering, you are merely regurgitating what you heard or saw that day without any critical thinking involved. The same can be said if you sit around and watch MSNBC, Vice News, read the New York Times, and listen to Pod Save America. The key difference that even though these news sources (MSNBC, NYT, Vice, Pod) may get details incorrect from time to time or offer a slanted opinion on something, they aren't outright lying or manufacturing a story to drum up fear or fake outrage. I'm somewhat of a unique case in that I did escape the right wing/libertarian echo chamber. Thanks to years of Republican misinformation, Trump, Fox News, right wing talk radio, social media, attacks on academia and school teachers, cuts to public education, and a lack of critical think skills being taught in schools many will be unable to escape. It's a phenomenon that is dragging this entire country down. On a global scale you've seen entire countries like Belarus, Hungry, Russia, and Poland across Eastern Europe get drug into the same far right vortex.