mtutiger

Gotcha... yeah, I don't think abortion matters much in a local election in Chicago, particularly given the city is in Illinois and not Texas

I was thinking the other fella... lol

I, for one, am shocked that an organ of the Russian government would parrot Russian talking points.

It doesn't in most cities as races are non-partisan... in a city like Chicago, it also doesn't matter in the sense that a member of the GOP hasn't won a Mayoral election in over 100 years. In general, in one party states/cities, its more about ideological wings at this point... it's no different than what you would find in California and Hawaii or other states... the vast majority may be all of one party, but the views and issues of emphasis are not at all uniform.

At the risk of getting too far out of my lane, Paul Vallas, at least in the reporting that I have seen, has never been a registered Republican. Was even a Democratic Candidate for Illinois LG during the 2014 cycle. Whether he holds the right views or not is another matter, but I dont see the lie in saying that Vallas has always been a Democrat.

I do think they got something in Nick Maton...

I thought the bullpen was pretty good today, sans Rony Garcia.... that was ugly.

Goodness, the Gregory Soto trade looks ****ing amazing right now haha

Tigers bullpen shining today.... largely guys who stand decent chances to head north.

Would be curious to see if our resident Chicago expert makes an appearance, but from the outside looking in, we really have this split between what Twitter/Reddit/etc. think is going to happen (ie. Vallas has a ceiling, Johnson will win the lion share of the other candidates vote) and what is more likely to happen in this case (ie. voters are complicated, some subset of Chuy/Lori actually will vote for Vallas over Johnson). If Vallas had won between 25-30% of the vote, the split is maybe more difficult for Vallas... but at 34% in the first round, I just see a lot of people overestimating how much it's going to take for him to win.... he really doesn't have to pick off that much to get to 50%+1. And for better or worse, his base of voters actually shows up at every election.

Lightfoot, unsurprisingly, goes down in defeat in the First Round in the Chicago Mayoral Election. Really interesting race.... I have a feeling it's another one where social media may end up surprised after the next round.

Blue Jays announcer trying to "Lipcius" and failing miserably lol

The media doesn't need to move away, I'd just prefer they focus on the people on the ground, the facts on the ground (vis a vis statistics on occurrences of events of this nature and policy that can prevent it going forward) versus making everything about politics and personality. People are not educated about the incident or the issues when it becomes a finger pointing contest with half pointing at Pete Buttigieg and half pointing at Donald Trump. When neither really bear responsibility and the issues run far deeper. The same is the case here... the issue has been optimally politicized and I'm not sure how, let alone (like Ed wonders) why it even matters that much in the grand scheme of things.

That's a fair point, but really the point still stands.

I dont have a dog in this fight, I've heard compelling reasons to believe it could be both human error or naturally occurring. Like with East Palestine, I'm gonna sit it out and wait for the facts to come out in order to make a judgment. Having said that, in terms of "wanting" within the context of this debate, nobody "wants" more than politically animated commentators who are vehemently in favor of the lab leak hypothesis as far as I can tell

Jeff Nelson? That's my guess

Don't want to draw many conclusions off of spring training... but if Baddoo can get on base consistently this season, watch out.

Incredible.... Fox State Media.

And now we see why....

Of course, to quote Marge Gunderson, it's all for a little bit a' money...

What happened in East Palestine, with the big towering fireball that resulted, was also bound to draw headlines.... train derailments generally get little to no publicity, with the exception of accidents at grade crossings or those involving passenger lines. Like CMR, not trying to downplay what happened at East Palestine, it's terrible for everyone involved.... but the fact that people are paying attention to this one is the result of a unique set of circumstances that ended up causing it to break through to the American consciousness; unfortunately, this stuff happens more than gets noticed in realty tho. One hopes that some good can come of this from the policy end, but I fear that this is being turned into the usual cudgel that one side uses against Politician X and the other against Politician Y... like frankly most things turn into these days.

CMR's later post provides the numbers, but while individual derailments can involve more individual cars, rail as the mode of transport overall is safer than trucking. Fatalities is a big difference as well... generally derailments don't result in big numbers of fatalities in general unless it involves interaction with roadways (ie. grade crossings). Incidences of trucks accidents involving interaction with other vehicles, OTOH, is quite high.... I don't have the numbers, but I assume most accidents involving trucks involve other vehicles, and that fatality rates are relatively high when you get a smaller vehicle and larger truck together.