mtutiger

Seems applicable lol

I definitely think this system is probably in better shape overall than it has been at most points during my lifetime. But I understand the skepticism as well in the sense that you need to see some guys meet their potential and there isn't a history of that happening in this organization.

This is a lot of what I see below Greene/Tork when I look at the Tigers prospect lists... they have some talent that projects to be major league material, but nobody who is can't miss or projects to be much beyond serviceable. Things can change, but that's the status quo at the moment

Or whether they would be withdrawing from Belarus and into Ukraine?

Just to expand on this, there are parts of the country (Atlanta, Houston, DFW) where Section 2 helps the GOP more than it hurts them. On the whole, i think the decision is more bad than good in terms of minority representation, significantly so even.... but, for instance, if state lawmakers in Texas were, in practice, to eliminate the VRA vote sink district that spans between Fort Worth and Dallas and allot it to other adjacent districts, it would potentially be a net negative and could potentially put a couple of districts that are 15> GOP in play. A ruling against Section 2 seems like it would be symbolically pretty terrible, but how it would play out in practice would just vary based on the geography.

I'd guess the comparison is pretty apt in that the average person probably doesn't like freeways being blocked regardless of whatever political message is being pushed.

Idiotic as Bob may have been, I'd be surprised if he were calling the shots from the afterword lol

This one has "Ron Gardenhire" hire written all over it.

From this past draft? Or just historically? Certainly past results don't justify trust, I'm on board with that, but I do think we need to keep an open mind about who is in the system currently and entered the system in 2021. Past results may not predict future performance, particularly with the org turnover they have had.

This is the distinction between what Murphy is doing and what Youngkin is trying to do in VA. Local versus state control.

I take it the meeting with Macron isn't going well for someone....

Connecticut joins NJ, OR, CO as well....

I get it.

It really depends on whether one believes that what has happened in the past will largely continue going forward. There have been enough organizational changes that have happened in the past 1-2 years where I don't know that's a safe assumption to make.

This makes sense to me.... again, it's a numbers game. What is Canada's vaccination rate, 80% or something? The outsized voice that a small minority of the citizenry gets during the age of COVID is puzzling... I suspect the need for the mainstream media to frame everything as two equal sides plays a factor, but the reality is that both messages are not proportionally represented at all in the population as a whole.

There's no defending it, it's really dumb IMO. I do question how much resonance it will have as a political issue, particularly if masks do largely go away come campaign season.

Starting to see movement, but I can already predict that this won't go far enough for some folks considering that local districts may still require them.

I'm not really presenting a vision more than the status quo as it currently exists may not be as unpopular as some seem to believe. Whether that remains the case in time? I dont know. I just see a lot of dialogue (mostly on social media and in mainstream media) about how politically suicidal mask mandates in schools are when there is data out there that, at this current point in time, give or take a couple of weeks, that suggests that it isn't. And ultimately, it may take public opinion moving in order to see these mask mandates go. That may happen when Omicron fades, we shall see.

To be clear, I think everyone wants COVID/Masks to end. I certainly want it all to end. But the population at-large may be savvy enough to be able to distinguish between what they want and what they feel is necessary. Certainly the poll referenced from Texas earlier would suggest that.

This would have been a career-ender not all that long ago... but we live in strange times

But ultimately, while the CDC needs can issue guidance (and maybe they should revise their guidance!), we don't have a system where the feds can tell all schools what to do or not do. At the state level they are trying in some, but even here a lot of districts (including ones that aren't exactly liberal hot beds) haven't always followed suit and have defied that order at points of time. Ultimately, I don't think mask mandates go away until the general public in all of these individual school districts and communities start to demand it in a meaningful way. And I just dont think we are there yet... ultimately its gonna take putting Omicron fully behind us before I see it happening

I think this is right.

With respect to this mask mandate discussion, I decided to go ahead and consult the crosstabs of the latest poll of the red state that I reside in (survey taken during mid- late January by Dallas Morning News/UT-Tyler) - https://www.uttyler.edu/politicalscience/files/dmn-uttyler-jan2022.pdf) On the question of whether masking in schools, require/allow schools to decide was combined for 69% of respondents, 25% said no mandate at all. Local governments being allowed to require masks in some public places was 57-35 in support. Again, this isn't New York or Illinois or California. This is Texas. When I see numbers like this and then I see this debate about how long masking should go on and how unpopular it is broadly, it just doesn't seem tethered to reality. There will be an inflection point most likely where masks will be underwater. Particularly if Omicron crashes and burns. We just aren't there yet.

Pretty much. After the last parliamentary election, a lot of the American commentariat (particularly GOP commentariat) seemed to suggest that the CP would never lose another election again in the UK. This scandal sort of shows that while polarization may be a factor elsewhere, applying American conventional wisdom about polarization to an entirely different population and political system isn't wise.