gehringer_2

14 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

That was 8 years ago and before COVID. Since then, the Texas suburbs have expanded rapidly. It’s the type of growth that put Georgia in play. People forget Texas has the same racial makeup as California. The environment also seems to be more Dem friendly than 2018. 2018 was the first time in decades a Democrat seriously challenged for a statewide race. 

true - I was just going back to '18 to get a number on a non-presidential year Senate race/turnout.

But not all of surburbia is necessarily favorable ground for Dems either. Depends on where people came from to get there.  We've got Macomb county which is suburbia, as is the area in MN that elected Michele Bachman just as another example I remember when I lived there.

The racial makeup similarity is interesting. Still a lot of cultural differences remain, with the Texas heritage being ranching and even more so the oil field, vs the California heritage being agriculture, entertainment and now tech. This produces a lot of difference in the world view of the professional classes in the two places. Also with CA being  renowned for its educational institutions, Tx not so much.

2 minutes ago, diaspora04 said:

He injured his back.  Obviously age was also quickly catch up on him at that point in his career, but it seemed like he was never the same after that injury.

Certainly didn't help but is was mostly his right knee that did him in. He simply couldn't drive off it in the last several seasons so he was getting by hitting only above the waist. You could see that once in a while the knee would feel better and take the weight and you could tell because he would pick up his left foot on his swing, the rest of the time he was batting flat footed. On those rare occasions he could still drive the ball.

12 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

The Democrats literally have a reverend in the senate. Talarico can appeal to suburban housewives and religious Latinos. He’s not going to peel away Christian nationalists. He needs to build the Beto coalition, which he did, and pick up a few more suburban whites. 

Comparing with 2018, if Cornyn gets by the primary he's probably a stronger general candidate than Ted Cruz was, Paxton maybe about equal. We'll see if Talarico can be as good or better than O'Rouke was.

5 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

If this post is real then please endorse Ken Paxton, please endorse Ken Paxton, please endorse Ken Paxton! James Talarico is likely going to lose either way, Cornyn or Paxton. But I think he has ZERO chance against Cornyn. I'd say he has a 15-20-25% maybe against a nut like Paxton. He's the male version of Sharon Angle or Kari Lake.

Trump is triangulating for leverage to get Cornyn's support (or at least avoid losing it) for the rest of year.

17 minutes ago, guy incognito said:

Somewhere George Orwell is sad but laughing his a$$ off.

1 hour ago, CMRivdogs said:

JV Last had a good piece today talking about Talarico. Basically getting into Talarico's "WWoke Christianity" vs MAGA's Christian Nationalism. It will be interesting to see how this will eventually play out. Especially in Texas

https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/the-lessons-of-james-talarico-and-woke-jesus?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

I'm pessimistic that Christian nationalists will be swayed by any appeal to the Sermon on the Mount Jesus. Most people will gladly cede their moral freedom to any institution that will offer them God's blessing for doing what they want to do anyway.

Not too long ago I came across a John Guilgud video dramatization of a story told inside Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" It's a scene that brother Ivan is describing to his younger brother that expresses his view of "The Church".  It's couched as being a dream he had about about the Inquisition so the author could get a way with telling it in Orthodox Russia, but at its heart it can too accurately describe the relationship between any highly institutionalized religious organization and its followers. And the Evangelical church in the US is definitely institutionalized - esp in the South. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxhvTAevdU8

58 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

It’s not free exposure. Republicans are going to have to pour in money on a primary while Talarico is already working in the general. 

Paxton/Cornyn is an interesting general election challenge for the Dems. As a candidate, Paxton has anti DC status quo value and the energy of the true believer right wing. OTOH, the Dems have the chance to peel away more moderate voters or those just turned off by Paxton's grifting. I have to think Paxton would be easier to beat, but it's Tx.

49 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

It’s not free exposure. Republicans are going to have to pour in money on a primary while Talarico is already working in the general. 

sure, and you hope GOP donors have donor fatigue by the general, and they might. 

4 minutes ago, Jason_R said:

Gibson day-to-day. 

Better news!

Just now, buddha said:

compher and rasmussen for petterson and 2nd and a 4th.  vancouver retains $4million on Petterson.

i'd be fine with that but i doubt vancouver would be!  lol.

The problem for Vancouver is they are in a trading paradox. His value to the Canucks is currently negative and other teams know it and that they have to move him. OTOH, his value to another team could be positive, and the Canucks know it and still want something back.

18 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

Anybody have RFK Jr and Dunkin Donuts on their BINGO List today?

 

LOL - a true Moran. *Any* coffee you drink is at 98.6 by the time it's in your stomach.

31 minutes ago, pfife said:

Paxton cornyn is gonna be a beautiful ****show, theyre both gonna go nuclear and im totally here for it

Runoff is May 26, which will still leave a lot of time for things to settle down on the GOP side before Nov. People automatically assume it's a negative for the GOP, but depending on how the campaign goes that's a lot of free exposure that the eventual GOP candidate is going to get while Talarico has to buy any exposure he gets. The Dems hope Paxton and Cornyn mortally wound one another, which is possible but not a given.

46 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

All of it.  

Google says Iran has missiles that can target all the Middle East and into Europe.  

Oil depot tank farm is about as soft as a target gets. So if you hit a 500,000 bbl storage tank you destroy ~$40M of oil, assuming the tank farm is designed so the tanks are spaced and diked well enough so one doesn't set off others. Plus the cost of the tank - call it another $40M. There may be targets with more return than that on the cost of a mid range missile. HItting at least a couple would make for great war video though, so I'm sure they are somewhere on the list for that reason alone.

Then again do it with a cheap drones and it's Katy bar the door.

I guess I still expect Pettersson to be moved - Vancouver can let it go down to the wire hoping for offers to improve.

14 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

 

How much of that tankage is in range of Iranian missiles?

23 minutes ago, lordstanley said:

Uh-oh. 

 

Yikes. Sounds like Gibson's exam showed bad news. 

4 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Is that what he meant?  

My guess is he was talking about drafting hitters by quality and pitchers by quantity 

what I meant was more along the lines that in baseball, when you have a hole to fill, bringing in 10 stiffs on the hope one of them is a diamond in the rough is generally not great strategy - the failure rate in baseball is so high that quantity does not  insure there is any quality to be found in a sample.

1 minute ago, Motown Bombers said:

Whoever wins, it’s going to be a public brawl for the next three months while Talarico can focus on the general. Republicans money is also going to be split in Texas. 

corrections above - I was looking at another race and typed Toth in instead of Paxton - oops.

2 hours ago, Motown Bombers said:

 

also notable that the Dem senate primary had 165K more votes cast than the GOP side even given how high profile the Paxton/Cornyn race is. Still, we're talking 4 million total votes cast. In the last off year Tx senate race (Cruz/ORouke), 8 million votes were cast so still not any kind of slam dunk indicator for the general. If you do want to be optimistic, Cruz only won that race by 215K votes. If Cornyn loses, the GOP will not be running as an incumbent.

On that score, I don't know enough about Hunt to know who his voters are.  Cornyn ended up outpolling Paxton slighty, but probably whichever picks up most of Hunts voters is going to win. I think Hunt has tried to position himself closer to Trump than Cornyn, so maybe his votes go to Paxton.

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

No chance they’d be able to reduce a pitching staff to one.

that's not what the post is about, but nevermind

1 hour ago, monkeytargets39 said:

I’d be fine if Hurter and Hanifee didn’t make the team.  Go get Danny Coulombe.

Today's pitching is more evidence that in baseball, quantity is pretty meaningless. Ten guys who can't get out majors leaguers are still worse to have than one who can.

8 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

 

Is there an ICE training facility there or something?

54 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Trump is now selling insurance to ships passing through the straight. I'm not making that up.

what good is a war if you can’t grift off it?

1 hour ago, Motown Bombers said:

 

so they are going to have a hereditary dictatorship, just not the one Pahlavi Jr had in mind. 🙄

6 minutes ago, smr-nj said:

So much winning.

it's looking like the 2025 Trump bull market is out of gas. The question then is whether the market stagnates for a while or undergoes a large correction.