406W30th

Hard to see Bernie picking a white male as a running mate...

By no means am I an expert in unions, but as I understand it leadership is, above all else, trying to preserve the existence of the union. A major benefit of union membership is a good healthcare plan; if a good healthcare plan is available to literally everyone, then the union can no longer use that as a selling point for membership. Thus leadership sees single-payer healthcare as a threat and tries to scare its members into thinking M4A is against their best interest. The counterargument is that if the union doesn't have to flex all of its muscle trying to negotiate for better healthcare, it can fight for better family leave time, more sick days, etc. There's also this:

I didn't realize that the Bloomberg campaign's sponcon is this extensive, going so far as to pay people to post this hilarious shit on Texas Football message boards.

Any notion that this doofus would fare well against Trump in the general was obliterated tonight. That was honestly the worst debate performance I've ever seen in my life; when he wasn't being disemboweled for his racist policing policies or for the sexual harassment, he was smugly looking into the camera and bragging about how much money he has. How can anyone honestly say he's anything but a more polished Donald Trump? Trump will likely refuse to debate any of the candidates, except Mike Bloomberg, who he will absolutely skin alive as he rolls to reelection.

I love Liz and it was so good to see her back to her best tonight. I would be ecstatic to see her as our next president. I think she missed an opportunity to drag Klobuchar, after Warren generously (and correctly) defended Klobs for forgetting the Mexican president's name; Klobuchar showed exactly zero knowledge or substance on Mexico and Warren should've called her out on that. (The debate moderator did but it would've been better coming from Warren, who could really use some separation from Klobuchar.) I hope Liz can get back some of the voters who fled to Pete or Klobuchar after a perceived faltering of her campaign. And for god's sake if you're voting for Biden what the hell is it going to take to get you on the Warren wagon. Her big misstep tonight was not calling for the DNC to nominate the candidate with the plurality of votes. I realize that's self-preservation, as it's likely her best shot at the nomination, but merciful Christ that cannot be what she believes in her heart.

I really have no idea, but I read someone suggest the Mayor of Puerto Rico, Carmen Yulin Cruz. She'd tick a few boxes, demographically, and would be an unorthodox and interesting choice, however unlikely. Nina Turner has to be Chief of Staff, I would think. Barbara Lee? @Js1 put together a good list of no-go's from Congress, due to their replacement having to face either a special election in a purple/red state or appointment by a R governor. That rules out my preferred pick of Tammy Baldwin. Andrew Gillum?

Not defending the FA or their implementation of VAR, but that's a common myth from people that only/mostly watch the Premier League, myself included. I heard a podcast recently with Dale Johnson, who has been chronicling VAR's use all over Europe, and apparently it's even worse in Italy and France. They seem to get it mostly right in Champions League, however.

My mistake – I was misremembering the latest revelations about oral sex as a wedding present. Hard to keep it all straight at this point.

Yup. Angry about a racist, billionaire Republican with 60+ sexual harassment/assault lawsuits trying to buy the nomination.

I keep meaning to subscribe. Thanks for the reminder.

Obviously this is 100% real and could in no way be faked. "Dox" is a very common word in Nigerian vernacular, I've heard.

There's a missing tweet but it said something to the effect of "I just woke up and found out I'm a sock puppet of Lis Smith", which was posted at 5pm local time in Nigeria.

So my father-in-law was at the Houston Bloomberg event. My kids Facetimed w/ him the other night and he's wearing a goddamn Bloomberg 2020 t-shirt. Ideologically, he's for Bernie or Warren but he is afraid of Republicans labeling Bernie a socialist and doubts his electability. He also likes Bloomberg's story, which resonates with his own – Jewish kid who grew up and realized the American Dream as a business owner. (Net worths are quite different, however.) I asked him if he supported George W. Bush or the Iraq War. He said no, of course not. I asked him why he supports a candidate who endorsed both. He has no answers for Bloomberg's misogyny, sexual harassment, racist policies, racist comments, or Bloomberg's political interference/bribery; he's just hellbent on Anyone But Trump and thinks Bloomberg represents the best chance at that. This is a guy who voted Trump in the Texas primary because he thought Trump would get smoked in the general, so ya know, stellar political instincts. I told him I wasn't speaking to him if he votes Bloomberg on Super Tuesday, only half-joking.

Keep doing work!

His apologies are complete horseshit though. He took credit for shutting down stop & frisk, when it took a federal judge to strike it down as unconstitutional. He's demonstrated exactly zero understanding of why it was wrong, has not explained why he was wrong to do it, and fucking lied in the process. "I don't think those words reflect how I led the most diverse city in the nation." WTF is that?

He expanded stop & frisk sevenfold, a policy where the NYPD straight up grabbed men of color and threw them against the wall, searching them for weapons. 99.8% of stops found no weapons. Bloomberg has since stated that the problem with stop & frisk was that they stopped too many white people. (White people made up approximately 10% of stops.) His apology and claim that he "inherited" stop & frisk was a fucking lie; under Bloomberg stop & frisk ballooned. Also a lie: his claim that he voluntarily shut down the program, which was actually struck down in federal court. To suggest otherwise is a goddamn lie that does a disservice to the civil liberties advocates who worked their ass off to stop this racist policy. Crime in NYC has dropped since the policy was stopped. Then there's his comments on redlining, a practice made illegal in 19fucking68. Bloomberg said that the elimination of that racist policy was responsible for the financial crisis of 2008. We haven't even scratched the surface of the sexual harassment stuff, which could be an entirely new can of worms. I realize how wild it sounds to suggest that Bloomberg isn't much different than the piece of shit in the White House, but he's not. He's simply a more polished, more successful, more competent piece of shit. To my mind, that makes him a lot scarier.

Can I talk you into a senator from Vermont named Bernard Sanders?

This is my position as well.

Feels like forever since we've played. In case you're looking for some reading on a former player, here's The Athletic on the winger who was once seen as the next Raheem Sterling: When Jordon Ibe Crashed His Car Into a Coffee Shop Safe to say £15M for him was fantastic business. Hope for his sake he can get his career back on track.

Shit. For some reason I thought it would be Evers' appointment. The WI GOP have made a mockery of democracy and wouldn't hold a special election for years.

Wisconsin is arguably the most important state for Dems to win and she's won some big elections there, beating former WI governor Tommy Thompson in 2012 and cruising to re-election in 2018 by flipping a 17(!) Obama->Trump counties. She's got a great record on foreign policy (voted against the Iraq War, the Patriot Act) and healthcare (she's sponsored single-payer legislation, including cosponsoring Bernie's M4A bill), which would appeal to the left/progressive wing of the Democratic party. Klobuchar just tells people they don't deserve anything and they won't get it.

Tammy Baldwin is a better option.

Admittedly I don't know a ton (okay, anything) about the machinations of PA politics, but at the very least it's disheartening that a Democratic candidate for President gave $6M to a Republican senator's campaign, in which he eked out a narrow victory. Also, Bloomberg is decimating local and state campaigns for Democrats all over the country: