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As I mentioned, Atlanta is just beginning their race to the bottom now. Once they get all the same laws just punish just as hard in place, we won’t see practically anyone who’s not a modestly educated Christian wanting to live there anymore. And if Virginia follows suit, it’ll happen there, too.

My wife and I are taking a driving trip through the south. While here, we have stayed in downtown hotels in Louisville, Jacksonville, Montgomery, and now Birmingham. Nashville is next. The thing that has struck me about these downtowns is how ragged and rundown they are. Lots of buildings vacant, hardly anyone on the streets at night, some street lights are out, and people without homes the only ones on the streets after maybe nine o'clock. It's not like that in my city, which is very clean and well-lit and well-trod by people both resident and tourist well into the night. So what's the difference? Why are things like that in these southern downtowns but not in mine? I think the original difference is slavery. People think that ended in 1865 and that everyone just did a 180 on it, but we all know that's not true. The south tried to keep de facto slavery going with Jim Crow laws for as long as they could afterwards, finally starting to crack a century later. One of the things that started turning states around on Jim Crow was economics: corporations started refusing to even do business in Jim Crow states, let alone relocate there, until that was finally changed. Economics is what got their attention. Still, the south is way behind the north in economic development. I looked up which Fortune 5000 companies have their headquarters in Birmingham, which is the #41 market in America. There is not a single company I'd ever heard of, and in fact only four of the top 500 are there. Why is that? I believe because the legacy of slavery in the south, with its lingering social impact, has hampered economic development in the deep south for generations still to come. Companies relocate to other city downtowns (like Chicago) all the time, but none of them go to deep southern cities, despite the favorable weather and corporate tax advantages, because no company with a highly-educated executive workforce could ever get their people to relocate to Birmingham, Alabama. And as states like Alabama race to the bottom to punish people for having pregnancies they don't want or otherwise can't handle, they are not only never going to have highly-educated people wanting move there, but they will also experience a brain drain of people who grow up there as these states enact more and worse punishing fascistic laws. And that's perfectly OK with the evangelical Christians who run politics in the deep south because of the book of Genesis. Always remember that Eve did not tempt Adam with fruit from an apple tree. The story is that she tempted him with fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It is knowledge that so many people who run politics in the deep south fear. They fear smart people. They don't want them around. Smart people are too smart for them. Smart people make people who run things in the deep south feel inadequate about themselves. That's what these retrograde abortion laws (not to mention voting restrictions and open gun laws and all the rest of that) will finally accomplish: they will keep highly-educated smart people from moving there, and they will drive the highly-educated smart people who are still there away as well. Detractors might point to Atlanta and say see, you're wrong, they're in the deep south and look, they have a thriving economy. To which I would say, all that came when Atlanta tried to be like the north when it came to social and legal protections. Now that Georgia is engaged in a race to the bottom as well, that will eventually change because sooner than later, no one will want to live there anymore, either. I promise you.

Well, they're going to be very disappointed by the supply they see on the shelf.

LOL! Ah, Bunker, you were funnier in the 70s, but this one is a hoot!

I'm'a big fan.

I was watching a network newscast while relaxing in my hotel last night. A story about the Russian takeover of Mariupol was introduced, and the news presenter warned that the story would contain disturbing images. The only images shown that could have even come close to fitting the description of "disturbing" was of a guy being carted off on a stretcher with his face blurred, and some destroyed ordnance and cityscape. No bodies or blood or anything like that was shown. At first this got me wondering how we Americans had become so soft that we need a trigger warning about a blurred face on a stretcher. But then it occurred to me: maybe this is being done on purpose to keep people shielded from the real damage that weapons do to people. Some of us remember the images on the network newscasts of yore of dead American soldiers, and of their caskets being shipped home from Vietnam. We know that the networks showing that on their newscasts was a key turning point in support for that war: viewers were so horrified by what they saw that they changed their minds about supporting their government's war. The networks have never shown anything like that since. They know that doing so would have cratered public support for all those more recent wars in the Middle East. The networks knew that showing dead soldiers in the Kuwaiti desert and on the streets of Baghdad which would have pissed off the government, perhaps resulting in the withdrawal of network access to insiders in Washington, or even regulatory pressure from aggrieved parties there. That's why we will never, ever see images of dead American soldiers or caskets ever again on American news networks. The networks have a business to protect, after all. Perhaps the same principle applies to gun violence in America. You know the old TV news phrase, "If it bleeds, it leads?" Have you ever noticed that whenever your local newscasts run a story about some shooting in your city, they never show any actual blood, or the dead victim lying on the ground, or the spot where the shooting occurred even after it's been cleared away? Instead, all they show are close-ups of yellow tape strung up far from the scene, and a bunch of cops milling about. That's always the entire video, right there. So much for leading with bleeding. So I wonder whether this might be a key to why so many people are indifferent to gun control: we viewers are being shielded from ever seeing the effects of actual gun violence. Maybe showing the actual effects of gun violence on the TV news would finally change people's minds about controlling access to guns, at long last. I'm not talking about the 2A absolutists, the "the more guns we have on the street the safer we'll be" people. They are completely gone and can't be reached. And those who are already horrified by the very thought of gun violence are already on board. I'm talking about the great majority in the middle, the people who hardly ever give any thought to gun violence, because they are never confronted with the reality of it in any capacity. Certainly not on the TV news. I would bet that if ordinary everyday people tuning into the TV news saw at least one dead body—a real person, not a video game villain—riddled with bullets on every newscast they saw, they would be completely horrified in the same way their parents and grandparents were when they saw dead American soldiers on the nightly newscasts of half a century ago. I feel certain that would change a lot of otherwise unengaged minds, because ordinary everyday people would be so shaken by seeing the actual gun violence they've been shielded from for so long that they would demand true effective gun control, just like their parents and grandparents were so shaken by images of dead soldiers that they demanded the end of the Vietnam war.

Yes, Bunker has always realized that.

You may be right. OTOH, a lot of people put their hopes in the Mueller investigation, too.

Not sure I’d’ve been down for that!

Boy did I ever pick the right game in the series to see!

There’s something to that. I also believe retailers also have to absorb the increase cost of labor too. I don’t think they can compartmentalize increased costs from transient issues that they cannot pass on, versus increased costs from labor which they feel they can totally pass 100% onto us. At least not at first.

The J6 committee really is going to fizzle out into a big nothing, isn’t it? Mob chaos FTW.

No doubt. Buy low on them. Point is that with all the increased costs they cite, they couldn’t just pass it all on to the consumer in the form of higher prices as though it’s no big deal and we have no choice but to pay the increase. Target has to absorb some of those cost increases because people will go elsewhere for substitution goods.

They're obviously not reading minds for hate crime prosecutions. Sometimes there is enough hard evidence to know exactly what the killer is thinking. Most of the time there's not. That's why hate crime cases are so hard to prosecute and win. The Buffalo case should be a slam dunk.

I was repeatedly told during minimum wage debates that raising it would be disastrous only for consumers because retailers could simply pass on 100% of increased costs to consumers.

"Not mass shootings, per se", says who?

That was a pretty big thing among the righties in the old forum in the 10-15 year ago range.

If only they would post minimum wage, insulin prices, and paid leave amounts on street corner signs.

Best showing yet! Wordle 332 2/6 ⬛⬛⬛🟩🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

When I read this I immediately thought of Neifi Perez. I thought, here's a guy, worst player in the majors at just about any given point in his career, and yet he managed to generate some 5,000 at bats across 12 years in the majors. I remember thinking at the time, how does this guy keep getting work as a major league regular? Is he some force of nature in the clubhouse who serves as a leader and a catalyst for the teams he is on? But then I concluded for myself that's kind of silly, and it's been proven out because as far as I can tell, he is out of baseball in any capacity now. I was actually going to post that Tork might be the next leader on this team, because of all the fire he shows on the field and his poise in being interviewed ... but I decided against it because it would have undermined the entire point of my post! 😆

He was completely off my radar, too, so anything we get from him is a bonus in miNd. That said, he gave up a lot of hard contact both early and late yesterday and got assists from good defense and Lady Luck. So, I need to see more.

Everyone expects the best player on the team to be the leader of the clubhouse and the mentor of all young players. People expected that of Miggy, too. He wasn’t, at least not in the way we’d like to have seen. I think people expect the same of Javy, and he does present as a leader on the field, maybe because the act of playing is such an emotional experience for him. But he’s always been known as a quiet and thoughtful guy off the field, maybe in part because of his sad past (e.g., he lost his sister to spinal bifida early in his career). So the kind of player leadership every clubhouse needs is probably going to have to come from someone else.

I was thinking about Schoop hitting a line drive on the screws right atvyye second baseman last night. He looked so frustrated and it’s gotten me to wonder what his batting record on line drives is. Through yesterday, Schoop is hitting .400 (10-25) and slugging .640 on line drives. The league overall is batting .615 and slugging .847 on line drives. So yeah, I can see why Schoop is frustrated.

I was looking at this picture some after posting and it occurred to me it would make a great painting. The Hall of Famer at the plate, the fan pointing him out to his kid, that kind of thing. Something like Rockwell.

What a great game to be at. The outing by the kid, the two bombs, the catwalk homer (!), walking the tightrope and still getting the win. What a thrilling game. Fast, too! They should all be like that. 😏