How to Reduce Digital Distractions – Lessons From Medieval Monks The Wire
Is this the world’s most dangerous sea route? BBC
International Garden Photographer of the Year: Black & White Photo Project Guardian
Attendance drops for 12 MLB teams, as loss of gate takes on more permanent look USA Today
2020
Joe Biden’s past 24 hours could not have gone more perfectly CNN UserFriendly:”I’ll agree with one thing, Trump is elevating him for a reason.”
We are (still) the 99 percent Vox (martha r). The title is inaccurate, but this an interesting rundown.
The Media Can’t Figure Out How to Cover Elizabeth Warren The Nation
Bills For All-Mail Voting, Mandatory Recounts Clear Legislature Honolulu Civil Beat (martha r)
Is Trump going to repeat Hillary’s big mistake? The WeekNew York City Board of Elections Selects Only 38 Early Voting Sites WNYC (martha r)
The Coming Technological Cold War Project Syndicate (david l)
Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release Nature (martha r)
Venezuala
Venezuela – Bay of Pigs Redux? Sic Semper Tyrannis (re Silc)
Venezuela’s Embassy: Activists vs. US Government Real News Network. From last week, still germane.
Venezuelan Embassy Complex in Washington Heads for Showdown amid Tug-of-War Latin American Herald
Venezuela’s Guaidó Falsely Claims Military Uprising in Progress: Mainstream Media Falls in Line Real News Network
Venezuela – Random Guyaidó’s New Coup Attempt Turns Out to Be A Dangerous Joke Moon of Alabama
If The Agenda To Oust Maduro Was Honest Instead Of Dishonest Caitlin Johnstone
NSA Reports 75% Increase in Unmasking U.S. Identities Under Foreign Surveillance Law in 2018 WSJ
Health Care
Medicare-for-all advocates get their first hearing on Capitol Hill WaPo
Corporate Media’s Open Hostility to Medicare-for-All TruthDig
THE FIRST-EVER MEDICARE-FOR-ALL HEARING WAS STRANGELY COLLEGIAL The Intercept (ChiGal)
Bill Clinton Prepping for Podcast About His Presidency: ‘Why Am I Telling You This?’ The Blast. Can’t they just go away. I mean, there’s a reason we have a two-term presidency, right?
Obamas’ Netflix slate features period drama, family show about vegetables Reuters re Silc:
Gilets Jaunes
Tipping Point: The Gilets Jaunes are winning, what’s next? Off Guardian
Class Warfare
Silicon Valley is a political force, or five of them Quartz
Want to decrease suicide? Raise the minimum wage, researchers suggest CBS News (martha r)
Gentrification of the Sea Counterpunch
Now Marriott is advertising private homes for holiday rental, does it signal the death of disruptors like Airbnb? Independent. Hamish McRae.
EU court rules for Airbnb against French restrictions Jurist
Google Shows First Cracks in Years WSJ
They’re Haunted by ‘Ghost Warrants’ Years After Their Arrests Marshall Project
Workers barely benefited from Trump’s sweeping tax cut, investigation shows Guardian
Absolute vile, unconstitutional insanity. Prosecutors realize change is coming to end mass criminalization. So theyre requiring anyone pleading guilty TODAY to waive rights to benefit from smarter, fairer laws TOMORROW. Want to lock in as much pain as possible before they can’t. https://t.co/TMDp5nzWMC
— Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) 30 April 2019
(chuck l)
Trump Transition
Measles
Measles Scare Delays Flight to NYC; JetBlue Accused of Profiling Orthodox Boy NBC New York
China?
US and China will have many more battles to fight when the trade war ends SCMP
The New Silk Roads reach the next level Asia Times. Pepe Escobar.
Indonesia’s planning minister announces capital city move BBC (martha r)
India
Donald Trump’s Iran oil sanctions may severely damage India’s economy (and the world’s) Scroll
Mehmood Khan’s journey from top Unilever exec to fighting Lok Sabha polls Business Standard
India student leader ‘a symbol of protest’ against PM Modi BBC
How to tax a multinational Social Europe. Jayati Ghosh.
No roads, no water, no vote: Why villagers across Hindi heartland kept away from polls in Phase 4 of Lok Sabha election First Post. This is interesting: unlike the US situation – where voters register their dissatisfaction by choosing not to vote – voting turnout has stayed high in India. Could this now be changing? Could India now be developing a party of non-voters?
Antidote du Jour (via):
And a bonus Antidote (martha r):
If you found this video cute please share ? pic.twitter.com/OZJjodNG4h
— NativeAmericanSoul (@Nativeesoul) 30 April 2019
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
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Related to “The Media Can’t Figure Out How to Cover Elizabeth Warren” The Nation
They have figured how to cover Tulsi Gabbard – by not covering her at all. The establishment realizes she is the biggest threat to their dominance.
Unfortunately, the Tulsi2020 website is garbage — but for a great one go to tulsigabbard.org.
And here’s the exception that proves your rule: a relatively recent story from her swing through Iowa:
Here’s https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/government/presidential-hopeful-tulsi-gabbard-talks-foreign-policy-medicare-in-iowa-city-touts-military-experience-20190416
P.S. — the part I really like about http://www.tulsigabbard.org is the Issues tab. It’s a pretty stark contrast with the other 30-something running in the presidential sweepstakes.
Thank you! I didn’t even know that one existed, and was frustrated with the “2020” one. How did they (family blog) that up?
BTW, I think they should update this about Assad: “Those who criticize her meeting fail to understand that leaders must willing to meet with our adversaries to further the cause of peace.”
I would rewrite it to “Those who criticize her meeting pretend to not understand that leaders must be willing to meet with our adversaries to further the cause of peace but they actually aren’t interested in peace for brown people at all” :)
I think “2020” sites are ActBlue…
Tulsi’s Twitter feed has the video with the Afghan women asking the very articulate questions that was taken down for awhile. Tulsi’s response is what I want to hear from the democratic candidate running for president in 2020.
https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard
Also, “Knock Down The House” is now streaming on Netflix. It is about the 4 upstart candidates who are changing the Democratic party – spoiler alert – only one won their election.
> Also, “Knock Down The House” is now streaming on Netflix. It is about the 4 upstart candidates who are changing the Democratic party – spoiler alert – only one won their election.
Takes more than one cycle. And of course DNC/DCCC are doing their best to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.
Tulsi has quite a genuine smile. A big plus!
hahahahahahahah! thank you!
Re MLB attendance drop off, who can afford to go to games anymore? As a kid my family could afford to take two grown ups and two kids to games at Shea and Yankee Stadium, and as a young adult it was easy for me to catch a game on the spur of the moment–I saw David Wells pitch a perfect game with a $10 upper deck ticket, that I walked down to better seats because the stadium wasn’t full. I can’t float tix at the new stadium, much less float tix for my kids (plus travel plus concessions)
I can’t speak to the teams they mention in particular but surely I’m not the only kid who grew up loving the game that can’t pass it on to my kids properly
My brother was at the Wells game!
They never should have built the new Yankee Stadium – but I’m old enough to remember when the monuments were in play, and believe they never should have changed the old configuration either. Wasn’t old enough to appreciate the change when it happened, but that outfield must have been vast! Nothing like these pint size fields built to goose home run figures. Different time, different game.
We lived in northern NJ when it was a real hike into the City – no route 80. And one of my fondest memories was being in Mass with the family, and Dad looking at Mom, and Mom looking at Dad, and all seven of us walking out, before Communion, imagine! – to go to the ballgame. We were attending the cathedral of baseball, and what just God could object to that? You could decide to do that then, on the spur of the moment, on teachers’ salaries.
“We were attending the cathedral of baseball, and what just God could object to that? You could decide to do that then, on the spur of the moment, on teachers’ salaries.”
Exactly.
I’ve been to the new Shea er, ‘City’ Field (in my pronunciation) once and I’ll admit it’s nicer than the fishbowl of old, but that was a very special trip. I’ve been a guest at the new Yankees stadium, but didn’t feel the same sense of improvement over the old.
I’ve taken my kids to a minor league game, closer, much cheaper, to spark some interest, and my son seems to like little league, but gone are the childhood days of multiple live games a season, that create a connection and passion that lead to watching games on TV that feeds itself into a lifelong relationship
Until about 1983, the Cubs always held one-half of their seats from sale until the day of game, including bleacher seats. The line for seats was a giant party, starting sometimes at 3 a.m. What camaraderie!
High A baseball feels like stealing.
Local Rochester Red Wings (Twins parent team) – is very affordable and kid friendly. They have a promotion on Mondays – Kids 12 and under eat free. Yes, with a paid ticket, but you get a hot dog, drink & snack included.
$13 per ticket (and up)
Ditto for Toledo Mudhens: somebody might be called up to Detroit any time. Lansing Lugnuts and Great Lakes Loons are also fun. Early on for the Vermont Lake Monsters, I emailed to ask about their schedule for our summer visit — got a reply from the General Manager.
I’ve been to the new Shea er, ‘City’ Field (in my pronunciation) once and I’ll admit it’s nicer than the fishbowl of old, but that was a very special trip.
In good news, Fenway has been a dump for over 107 years!
Hey, even as Yankee fan, I won’t talk smack about Fenway. I enjoyed my one game at Fenway, a 40th bday present years back, even if it was ‘enemy’ territory. I was there for the fun/history connection of it. Just like I enjoyed my one day game at Wrigley (v the Cards).
I went to games in the old stadiums back in the day if I was in an MLB city, and my Fenway seat had an obstructed view, on account of a steel pillar a few feet in front of me, if memory serves.
Which reminds me of a story I once read, perhaps apocryphal, of George Bernard Shaw being assigned to review some opera performance. He was seated behind a pillar and could see nothing of the stage at all. So he wrote exactly what he saw during the opera: what happened to the pillar during the performance.
Good one!
As far as I know those obstructed view seats are still there. They are reserved for Yankee fans.
“Obstructed view” defines Boston in many ways; Cambridge, especially.
For me, tickets at Fenway are not the issue. It is the cost and difficulty of getting into central Boston: traffic jams and parking above all (our public transportation is of course a joke outside the core where rents are among the highest in the world). This is the same for every attraction in Greater Boston. We need to greatly improve public transportation and build new housing centrally but there is no political leadership and much upper middle class opposition.
It’s a soul crushing nightmare, parking rates are exorbitantly jacked up for games. Boston and the neighboring towns are openly and vehemently hostile to drivers. Once through the traffic jams, it cost me and my wife $48 to park our car to attend a city wedding Saturday evening. Daily wage slave parking in the Kendall Square area is around $40. Need a car to get home in the afternoon early for your kid’s or any other appointment? Have a heaping side order of financial rape to go along with it. A private real estate developer has been putting up a condo to profit off a mass transit extension along a major thoroughfare for a year and the city allows them to fully block a lane of traffic during rush hour. Same area closed another adjacent thoroughfare from April to November for a (seemingly) simple rail bridge replacement.
I enjoyed the few games I attended there (this was back in the Curse days). I was fortunate enough to live within moderate walking distance and also worked right next to the stadium for a while, which is probably the only reason I went – I’m not enough of a fan to tackle the traffic/parking. I did end up having to plan my work day to avoid games when I was working further away and commuting by car, otherwise the bottleneck-heavy Boston road system would funnel me through the heart of the game day congestion and it would double my commute time.
Agreed on the poor public transport. I used to commute using the T and was always annoyed at how unreliable and crowded it was. I remember having occasion to take it on Sunday once, which I looked forward to as I figured it would be lower usage and more pleasant as a result. More fool me. They apparently scaled services down to meet capacity and then some more, so it was even more crowded than the weekday service.
On reflection I probably went to more PawSox games, and enjoyed them just as much. Easy drive and parking, crowds big enough for some atmosphere but small enough to feel like a community event. The games were generally good and there would often be one or two of the Red Sox stars playing, for injury rehab or something similar – not to mention the up and coming players in the farm system, some of whom later went on to become household names.
This might be an issue across the board with professional sports. It would be interesting to compare this with attendance for football, baseball, hockey, etc., as well as the television ratings for these sports. In my experience, baseball is one of the better sports to watch live (having all those built-in bathroom breaks does make a difference). That being said, costs for attending a game are getting pretty ridiculous, and not just for tickets (which are cheaper than a lot of other sports). Bringing a family of four to a game? That can get kind of pricey. At least baseball games don’t have quite the prevalence of belligerent drunks in the stands as other sports – unless the Phillies are in town.
This is the heart of the problem. As scheming businessmen chase the almighty Market god’s golden eggs, they are simultaneously ruining the spirit of the things they strangle and pushing people away from those things. This reminds me of how Las Vegas has been transitioned out of its family friendly period to the new, innovative, sleek, stench of indistinct technocratic professionalism. The same thing is being done to professional sports.
I much preferred the non-family friendly period myself, when Vegas was for degenerates. Riviera, Sands, the old Flamingo. Nothing too glitzy – just cards, dice, booze and smokes.
Fly down for free, and drink for free as long as you had chips at the table, with cheap if not free eats everywhere. And there were $1 or $2 tables, none of this $20+ minimum bet nonsense.
I feel MLB is suffering from the same malady as the Sport of Kings, in that although both pursuits have incredibly quick action as in a 98 mph heater, or a 1:34.06 mile, but the bottom line is that in between that race and the next one, there’s a yawning gap of 30 minutes.
Nobody has time for waiting these days…
With baseball, it’s always been akin to watching latex dry with very adept pitchers trying to paint the corners on one end, and batters usually missing with a mighty swing, or fouling off a bunch of pitches before popping up to the third baseman, how droll. A brawny chess match, of sorts.
Heck, even the 7th inning stretch ditty of olde suggests premeditated murder via allergy in the very first four lines, no wonder many teams have gone to alt-a tunes to fill the gap, of mysteriously missing fans, hmmm?
We went last August 1st to watch the Braves in their new stadium in Smyrna, just north of Atlanta. It was difficult to enjoy the game because of all the distractions. The music is too loud, a center field tv screen appears as large as the playing field, hundreds of smaller screens circling the stadium at eye level are constantly changing images. The spectacle and the deafening noise hurt our eyes and our ears. Three tickets, a hot dog and a coke cost nearly two hundred dollars. My last time going to a pro baseball game.
Who do they build such venues for? Is this what they think that this is what the fans want? Or has it been designed so that it looks good on TV? We hardly have baseball in this country (we have cricket instead) but through films like “The Natural” we are familiar with the ethos of baseball in America’s culture. It’s sad to read about your experience at that new stadium and I find it difficult to believe that the people running the game are so out of touch with their fanbase.
Many of the stadiums built in the 60’s-70’s were dual baseball-football stadiums, which were totally utilitarian. (and awful, in retrospect)
There was very little in the way of blocs of luxury boxes hidden away from the rest of the crowd as one sees now in stadiums built since the 90’s, it was quite egalitarian.
As a kid, I remember going to a Dodgers game after they abandoned Brooklyn.
The game was in the LA Coliseum (that was used for the LA Olympics of 1932).
They played here from 1958-1961.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Memorial_Coliseum
They needed a high screen in the short left (as I remember it was left field) field as the Coliseum was not designed for baseball.
Pop-ups to far left became homers as they cleared the screen.
Our family had a very good time in this repurposed venue, and a batting practice ball bounced into our seats as a souvenir in one game.
In my view, any fancy, taxpayer subsidized, stadium is an economic waste inflicted on the local taxpayers.
And current minor league baseball can be closer to the major league experience of the 60’s.
Funny baseball tickets story:
A friend gives me a couple of mint-never used NY Giants tickets to sell for her on eBay around the turn of the century, and back then the wording was vague on the actual ticket, but what she had was tix to the very last game @ the Polo Grounds, and the reason they were never used, was her mother-in-law and her husband were really hung over from the night before.
I think they fetched $600 per ducat…
p.s.
I am the average age of an MLB fan, and typically I catch snippets of games before boredom sets in, and will not watch a full game more than likely in the course of the 162 game season, only getting interested as the playoffs come along, where i’ll watch maybe 6-10 games.
Not much of a fanatic for the 4 corners, really.
Baseball has the oldest fan base of any pro sports in the USA.
Older than golf?!? Although I’m not entirely sure that’s actually a sport.
Sorry, whacking off repeatedly while trying to squeeze the object of your desire into a small hole, isn’t actually a sport.
Part of the problem is the corporate boxes. During the roaring twenties – when the Stadium was built from ticket revenues from people coming out to see Babe Ruth smash home runs – there was no such thing. Sure, the seats were different – but that was based on some locations being closer to the field, or in a better position to watch play onfold – rather than amenities.
One major rationale for building a new Yankee Stadium – across the street from where the old one had stood – was the need to get with the program and create lots and lots of corporate boxes. I’ve only been back to the new Stadium less than a half dozen times since they built it. And the corporate boxes have ruined the communal feeling of attending a sporting match with thousands of like-minded people.
The Stadium always had an organ. And silly stuff on the big scoreboard over centre field. Really lame stuff – including a mock race among three simulated NYC subway cars on which would make it to the Stadium quickest. As I said, lame!
But people essentially came to watch the games. And every New Yorker knew the best way to get to the Stadium was via the subway. After the games, one would queue up to get to the exits – as Liza or Frank belted out New York, New York over the tinny loudspeakers. And then the crowd would surge into the subway stations, never quite overcoming them, before each passenger would board the train to where you wanted to go.
2 years ago I was able to attend a Toronto Jays game in a corporate box. For the most part, you could spend the entire game without even seeing the field, or knowing that a game was being played. Sure, there were TVs with the game on, but there was a back area near the food & bar (all private in the box) where you could sit on couches the whole time and have someone waiting on you and if you didn’t face the TV, it would be just like at some hotel conference room. (the food & booze were ‘free’ to the extent that the box owner/renter paid for it along with the tickets)
If I can switch sports…
Sometimes a group of friends would decide to go catch an LA Kings game on a last minute notice, everybody show up @ Staples, and this one time 6 of us got there and tix @ the ticket office were onesy-twosey $75-100 a piece, yikes, we just wanted some ‘get in’ seats.
So I gather everybody together, as the puck is about to be dropped and tell them, look for somebody trying to sell tickets, and we need 6-the value of which is dropping as the game is progressing, and I spot a guy that is facing the stadium (when you’re hawking tix on the street-pros at the game looked for customers the other direction) and I ask if he’s got any, and he asks if i’m a cop, and man oh man, I know I have a rookie of a seller, what does he have for me?
Well, he’s got 6 tix for a luxury box, but we can’t go there, because it’s got some of the regular occupants in it, and all the tix will do is allow us to be on the hallowed floor, segregated from the rest of the crowd largely.
So, I offer him $100 and he laughs, and I tell him time is running out, and he says $300, and I split the diff @ $200, yeah baby, $33 a head.
We try and go in the regular entrance, and no way jose, we have our own personal entrance away from the hockey polloi, the Habs and Habs not.
We can’t get in the restaurant, so a friend goes checking doors on luxury boxes, and finds one empty and it holds around 20 people, but it’s just us, and whomever owned never showed up, but we drank their booze.
great story & also cool about the triple play below. When I was at Wells’ perfect game the neighbor who decided to go with me had no idea what was happening, and I was a little jinx-worried about explaining (no I’m not usually superstitious, it was just so slow-motion cool to watch it develop I didn’t want it ruined…) And yeah, $75/$100 tix when you just want ‘get in’ seats is exactly the problem
A company I worked for in 1988 had 4 season seats (and parking pass) about 40 rows behind the plate, slightly to the left a bit, and on game day sometimes over the p.a. @ 5 pm would come the news that Dodger tickets were available, and a friend and I being bachelors could move quick on our feet as far as making the decision to go, and we went to around 30 games that special season. We’d invite friends to fill the other seats, it was a nice perk.
One of the unheralded players @ Dodger stadium, for which the game stopped in your section as he came by to pitch, was Rogers Owens-the Peanut Man-in his prime, with an around the back toss with great accuracy from 15-20 rows away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Ask792az8
Went to a Dodgers-Mets playoff game, and the 2nd World Series game. (missed the Gibson homer game, d’oh!)
Perhaps i’ve been to a few dozen games since…
I didn’t realize they ditched the organ at the new ballpark, that’s awful. And as silly as the train race was, I always rooted for the D (since that’s the one I usually took). Do they still do the baseball-under-cap three card monte graphic? Or is that too much of a shoutout to the days when Times Square was seedy? Surely they still do the YMCA during the 5th inning field grooming?
Didn’t mean to suggest they ditched the organ. I suppose that’s how you’d read what I wrote though. I think the new place has an organ. Maybe it doesn’t?
Those were the days – when Times Square was so seedy! Better sleaze than hordes of tourists and soulless suburban chain stores blown up to Gotham City scale.
I believe they do the YMCA thing. Can’t believe fans wouldn’t stand for it otherwise. When the dudes first started their routine – management didn’t like it. I think it was Mr. Steinbrenner who objected. The Mr. Steinbrenner. Someone explained to him he needed to lighten up a bit, and it’s become an integral part of the game.
I believe the new one does have an organ. Haven’t been to the new Yankees stadium but in other venues, they still play way too much loud rock music (I love loud rock music, but at a rock concert, not a ball game) with the organ being an afterthought. Fenway was like that last time I was there – still had the organ but it wasn’t played nearly as often as in the past.
Which brings to mind an old trivia question which may possibly be outdated at this point –
Q: Who is the only person to play for the Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics?
A: Organist John Kiley
My cousin’s husband was gifted Red Sox box seats, not through the usual source which is reliable but has always provided great seats for Virginia exiles even when Pedro was scheduled to pitch, so he took their daughter to her first Red Sox game she would remember (yeah, we are that kind of Catholic; we had Fenway cat; my dad snatched a cat from outside the stadium). The seats were the box next to John Kerry’s box. So when little Em went to her first obstructed view game, she was not happy.
Having just toured the shamefully named, “Little Caesar’s Arena”, this is absolutely on the mark, and this is the design philosophy of these stadiums. It is for catering to high value business contracts, while over-charging the average people for the inconvenience of having to play host to the plebes. I lost count of how many sponsored clubhouse boxes and special areas there were.
$200…that’s 10 bucks a strikeout! Yawn.
It was more like $20 per punch thrown in a couple of unscheduled boxing matches that happened in the 1st & 3rd periods…
I have no idea what a luxury box holding 20 people cost, circa 1999, but i’d guess $7k a game?
…our price was much more reasonable
I run several concessions stands at the profession basketball arena. The team is focused on season ticket sales to corporations. Individuals buying season tickets usually split them with other people and divide the tickets. Like most nba teams, they want the expensive lower bowl seats sold, mostly to corporations. The cheaper upper decks are of minor importance. It is mostly for the food vendor contracted to the arena to make some money. The team gets a cut too. Some season tickets get sold in upper decks and team uses it as justification for not just having $5 tickets. The nba doesn’t really care if seats are empty as long as lower bowl seats are sold. (Unless threatening to leave.) The teams charge the rich a lot and half the time people aren’t watching the game. It is all about tv contracts. Even when team was good, it lost $40 million (but valued at a billion). The team didn’t actually loose money because of revenue sharing. These teams are shiny toys for the .001%. The economics of professional sports are grotesque. I’m not sure what the appeal is, but it gives me and my workers a job so we are stuck with it till the move to Seattle or Las Vegas in a couple years and doubles the value of team. Joshua Kushner just bought a stake in the team.
Thanks for this insider post.
The games are almost exclusively on cable networks or paywall streams. People who don’t/won’t/can’t afford to pay for that never get to see games without going to the ballpark. Without seeing the local team on TV, and from that developing any ties to the local club, going to the ballpark becomes a pricey form of entertainment just like the opera, a museum, etc.
Baseball (and hockey, same deal) has themselves to blame for losing future fans by not broadcasting games for free on rabbit-ears TV over the last several decades. MLB ate their seed corn and are now complaining that they are having a hard time planting crops.
I suspect with the NHL, the problem as far as getting the sport on the free rabbit ears TV networks is a lack of takers. Due to the TV ratings for hockey being low compared to the other major sports, it either gets no offers from the major networks or the offers are so low ball that they aren’t worth taking.
The NHL gets better money, if not great ratings from the cable networks. However, most the big market teams get terrific money from their cable deals, e.g., Islanders get like 25-30 million a year.
Local tv, not national. Local tv is where fans are cultivated, and making people pay to watch all of the the local team’s games cuts off a whole tier of potential fans.
It ends up being a class issue- only a certain income level can afford to watch the games, let alone go to one.
Even the MLB playoffs are cable only until the final, and by then so what?
Isn’t it interesting how so many of us have such vivid memories of baseball?
I’m remembering summer afternoons at Cleveland Indians games in the vast Municipal Stadium. When I was a kid we got a bunch of FREE tickets from the Cleveland Press if we got A’s in at least 3 out of 4 of our major subjects in the final grading period.
(Probably the most amazing thing is that our parents let go on our own, taking a municipal bus to the stadium.)
When my husband and I moved to the Syracuse NY area thirty-one years ago we soon started going to the AAA baseball games. We had season tickets for two box seats while making frequent use of the two company-owned seats in front of us.
We took a lot of nieces, nephews and children of friends to baseball games and they still talk about those summers. The old MacArthur park was a bit shabby but it was built so adults could see the kids wherever they went in the stands and the ushers knew almost everyone because there were so many ‘regulars’.
Of course they eventually tore down the old park and built an entirely different park. They haven’t had the same attendance since and we were only going to few games every season ourselves.
The last straw for me though was the recent implementation of a so-called security check at the entrance. About the time vehicles were being used terrorist attacks in Europe the county-owned NBT Bank Stadium decided to line up the fans along the edge of the parking lot as they waited to be scanned and have their bags inspected.
Meanwhile I’m just happy to fork out $20 every season for an MLB audio subscription so I can listen to Tom Hamilton and Jim Rosenhaus call the Cleveland Indians games. Baseball is still the soundtrack of my summer.
First game at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. Stepping out of the tunnel to the seats, the sight of green grass shining in the sun was so striking I still remember it. Al Kaline and Rocky Colavito.
30 years ago the guy that owned the roach coach which provided for our sustenance @ lunch, told me that when he was a kid in the great depression living in Detroit, they’d let people in for free after the 7th inning and he reckoned he saw more MLB games only after the 7th inning that anybody else.
He told me he had an autograph book, and I got excited and related i’d love to see it, so the next day he brings it with him and shows me, and it’s a 4×6 boring black autograph book-very plain jane, but full of names. He said it was easy to get Tigers signatures, and the best one was Lou Gehrig. He never got Babe Ruth’s, who he told me was very stingy when writing letters, er his name on anything.
There was a player’s signature on one side and another on the other of each of the 80 or so pages, and the striking thing was, it was obvious around 20% of the players were illiterate or could barely write, based on what I saw.
I tracked down a Rocky Colavito foul ball at Fenway when I was a kid.
My first MLB game involved the Indians as well, but it was played at old Municipal Stadium in Kansas City, not Cleveland. Mudcat Grant pitched for the Tribe. Municipal Stadium had been the home of the great K. C. Monarchs, and K. C. is now home to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
The second game I remember quite well. It was 1961 and the K. C. A’s were playing the mighty Yankees. Maris hit one of his 61 homers to give the Yanks the lead, but my favorite player, Norm Siebern (a Yankee castoff) hit a ball to center that Hector Lopez misplayed in the bottom of the ninth, and it turned into an inside-the-parker to tie it. Then Wes Covington hit a towering fly ball to left. As the ball reached its apex, the clouds opened and a downpour ensued, but not before Wes’s ball cleared the wall and gave the lowly A’s the victory.
When the Trump-like Charlie Finley moved the A’s to Oakland, Stu Symington got us the Royals, and before long, they were contending. I was there for the Royals’ bottom of the ninth comeback against the Cards in ’85 that tied the Series at 3 games each before the Royals blew out the Cards in Game 7.
As for those geniuses who believe that the home run, walk and strike out are the only “true” outcomes in baseball, my Royals defied Silver’s PECOTA in ’14 and ’15, winning two pennants and a World Series in that period despite PECOTA predicting them to finish under .500.
Oh, and I’m a UVa men’s B-ball fan as well. ;)
Congrats on the worst-to-first seasons, Hoo
Something right out of old-time Hollywood, that
Oklahoma City Indians, Cleveland farm team – my team in the late forties and early fifties. Lots of Cleveland players on the way up or down. The Giants and the Indians took the train from Arizona to New York at the end of spring training and played a couple of games in OKC each year. I became a Cleveland fan in 1948 when I had measles and was home for two weeks. I listened to the old Scotsman Gordon McLennan (sp?) On the old Philco. Cleveland won the pennant that year.
I nearly changed my allegiance, though, after becoming friends with the Waner family (child my age). Lloyd and Paul, Big Poison and Little Poison.
Bill James had an essay many years ago with a complex argument but the result was very simple. If the major league owners (there was something like 24 of them at the time he wrote) did not have absolute control of the minor league teams, and if the the last place major league teams got demoted every year to some AAA league and a couple new teams got promoted (they had a system like this in Euro big time soccer) fan interest in a hundred markets would be very strong.
As it is now we can be pretty sure that one of a half-dozen loaded teams is going to be playing meaningful games in October. On at least half the teams the players’ only priority is their stat line and how good their agent is at negotiating contracts. Oligopoly capitalism wrecks all. The only team I follow daily is the Astros. They got rid of the two most interesting players on the team–Gonzalez and Gattis. Gattis’ season of 10 triples is the most interesting thing in baseball in the last ten years. (He is not a fleet baserunner.)
Every Gattis triple in 2015.
Seems Bill James would make the latter part of ‘bread and circuses’ more attractively distracting to the populace.
He was (or is) way more idealistic, even if that would be the effect. Before the Greek military industrial complex really got organized the games were for pure play. Not for distraction from life. They were an essence of life. If Descartes had been around a couple thousand years before he might have wrote “I play therefore I am [a couple days a week]”.
So Descartes went into a bar and had a drink. When the barkeep asked if he would like another, he replied, “i think not.” And – poof – he was gone.
(Rim shot)
I drink, therefore I am?
While relating to English football I recall a time long ago when I was invested in my local league side and like many friends followed them avidly. But that was when the team was local and genuinely represented me. The players all spoke English, lived in houses like mine in streets like mine, could be seen in the High Street on week-days laden with shopping bags and sent their kids to the local school. And they were in the First Division playing the likes of Manchester United, Spurs and Liverpool whose own players were likely just as ‘local’ to their localities.
Now all the major football teams are composed of commodities with no local connections, pure mercenaries with no loyalties to their fans who are, as MLTPB intimates above, simply gladiators whose sole purpose is to thrill the ‘fans’ with victory or blood, and to inflate their egos with the most tenuous of associations.
I stopped ‘going to football’ when I discovered it was more enjoyable to play it than to watch it, but now that I’m too old for that and while I might occasionally watch a match on TV to appreciate the artistry I have absolutely no interest in attending let alone supporting the commercial interest that ulitises the name of my home town as the identity of its money-making venture.
Whether that has any relationship the state of baseball in the US I’ve no idea.
35 comments above related to pro sports; Everyone here is obviously interested in economics and politics, as well as some in sports.
Imagine the brainpower, energy, time, money, emotion and resources that are dedicated to pro-sports in this country among those not interested in economics and politics.
Maybe that’s the plan?
As old as the Circus Maximus friend.
Leek green man myself
Oooooh! It’s the Blues for me, apostate!
However, I must take into consideration that you might be Cymru.
One thing that is much more appealing in regards to pro sports compared to economics, is the numbers bandied about in regards to statistics, performance, etc. in the former are all pretty much completely accurate.
Same thing, sadly, happening with Spring Training games, at least the Cactus League in Arizona.
Even if you can get a decent ticket (try StubHub 2 hours before first pitch vs a crap team), the price of parking (if you live far out or in a city with no public transport) is exorbitant and then drinks/concessions of which children want a lot are totally nuts, too. Don’t get me started about the beer costs!
Dodgers Stadium 1965, I remember the upper pavilion seats over home plate being $2.50. My father said the real fans sat up there, because almost anyone could afford them. The deluxe “box seats” along the 3rd base line were $7.50, but we had friends who would occasionally let us use their “season’s ticket’s” seats. I remember watching Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitch, and Maury Wills steal bases.
It’s an economic structural decay problem. Like many other things in the neoliberal dystopia–what used to be a working class activity has become a “luxury activity,”but baseball doesn’t fit into the “luxury spectating space” as well as say, basketball and even tennis.
Pro players only ever got 1 year contracts back in the day, and the Dodgers win the 1965 World Series as i’ve mentioned in the thread below, and Drysdale & Koufax hold out for 3 year $500k deals ($166k per annum) per player, but no dice and Sandy signs for $125k and Don for $110k for the 1966 season.
Sometimes these days i’ll hear on the radio of an NBA player i’ve never heard of, inking a $75 million 5 year deal…
We have a Town Council election tomorrow. For the first time in my life I am not going to vote. I won’t vote for the watermelon socialists of the Green Party nor for the Nazis of the Labour Party (that is the historical term for anti-semitic socialists, isn’t it?). The Limp Dim socialists will likewise have to do without my support. That leaves the slightly socialist and hugely incompetent Conservatives of Theresa May: they certainly won’t get my vote while that “stupid woman”, as nice Mr Corbyn calls her, is in charge.
Start your own slightly socialist party: “Austerity for all! Except me.”
No thanks. My parents told me all about post-war socialist austerity – very different from fictional recent austerity.
“We’re here, we’re austere, get over it!”
My parents “grew up” in London during and after WW-2.
Mom would say that Britain won the war and lost the peace. She mentioned that America went all in to rebuild West Germany as a counter to Russia and let England rot on the vine. Both parents mentioned ruined city blocks of bomb destroyed buildings existing well into the ‘fifties around London. The cleanup took a decade.
Till the day he died my Dad would not buy anything made in Germany. “The buggers tried to kill me with bombs, rockets, and V-1s.” (He was in their house when it was fire bombed.)
Let the experiences of England after the end of WW-2 be a prophecy for all Americans. The British lost their “Empire” and had to suffer through a horrible transition. The same will happen here.
It’s always been apparent to me that the USA has the “special” relationship with Germany, not the UK.
I hadn’t considered that.
Would that be the post war socialist austerity that built the wonderful National Health Service, that created green belts around cities to create lungs for workers to enjoy decent air, that built record numbers of houses, and at the same time, paid back millions to the US government under the onerous lend-lease wartime arrangement? That for the first time, gave people in Britain a decent standard of living, before Thatcher started dismantling it all on the spurious grounds that ‘there is no such thing as society’ and ‘anyone over 30 who takes public transport is a failure’.
Your parents certainly indoctrinated you if you think Teresa May is a socialist, or if the anti-Corbyn new Labour is socialist (don’t get me started on the nonsensical anti-semitic rubbish), or the orange tories aka lib dems. None of the parties is socialist. Even Corbyn is only slightly social democrat.
Super. So that’s 4 separate parties that won’t have to worry about doing anything for you at all. Good move, there.
Deary me.
Just vote for the party which is most likely to destroy the nhs (tory), as you have a personal grievance with that institution
Nobody is remotely likely to destroy the NHS. Stupid scare stories, told and retold for decades, are just so much silliness.
New Labour and the Conservatives have been trying to destroy/privatise the NHS for the last 40 odd years.
just out of interest, what policies (rather than parties (all socialist apparently)) would you be willing to give your vote for?
I’d vote for a party that promised that Tony Blair would be arrested, charged, and tried for treason, as long as it seemed likely that the case would be pursued rigorously enough that he’d be convicted, sentenced, and hanged.
But, by some aberration of history, such matters don’t fall under the purview of our Town Council. Though a neighbouring borough has an energetic record in that general spirit.
“In 1327, the Great Riot occurred, in which the local populace led an armed revolt against the Abbey. The burghers were angry at the overwhelming power, wealth and corruption of the monastery, which ran almost every aspect of local life with a view to enriching itself. The riot destroyed the main gate and a new, fortified gate was built in its stead. However, in 1381 during the Great Uprising, the Abbey was sacked and looted again. This time, the Prior was executed; his severed head was placed on a pike in the Great Market.”
That’s pretty much the sort of thing that the Blessed Tom Jefferson called for, isn’t it?
What a wonderful reply,
so after your terms have been met, saudi style,what kind of society would please you?
You’re surely not comparing Tom Jefferson to some middle eastern savages are you? He’s always seemed more a Saul Alinsky figure to me. Well, a Saul Alinsky with slaves.
Anyhoo I’ll allow myself one “must” and one “mustn’t”.
Decent provision for lunatics, mental defectives, and the chronically ill.
No wars where there’s no vital national interest involved.
Thank you.
Nazis?
So you think calling out charlatans like Margaret Hodge and Luciana Berger makes you a Nazi. My gripe with middle class pretend socialist Jez Corbyn and his upper class masquerading as socialist advisers, Andrew and Laura Drummond-Murray, is that they treat these phoneys with kid gloves.
Are you aware of Hodge’s record when leading Islington council and, until the BNP showed up, her lack of interest in her Barking constituents? Her family firm’s approach to tax is rather creative and efficient, too.
Are you aware of how Berger got her seat and her lack of interest in her Wavertree constituents, including the person who starved to death a few weeks ago?
I could go on, but I won’t, but feel free to call me a Nazi. I am not a member of the Labour Party in case you are wondering and, despite being eligible for thirty years, have never voted. Socialists don’t get elected where I live, a Tory one party state since the late 19th century, and have not been elected since 1983.
The Labour Party really has fallen into the grip of a bunch of anti-semites. It’s true that nowadays you can be libelled as anti-semitic simply for criticising any aspect of Israeli government policy, but the chaps in the Labour Party are the real thing – no mislabelling required.
The fact that there are turds among Labour MPs – such as Hodge – who happen to be Jewish isn’t much of a justification for anti-semitism. Or do you think otherwise?
Yep. If you defend palestinians you are antisemitic. In this sense I would also be such “antisemitic” although, by the way, palestinians have also a semitic language so, israel is somehow an antisemite state.
I also enjoy the confusion between “semitic” as in language, which includes Arabic, and “Semitic” meaning Jewish.
Of course, you can’t really be against an entire language family, so “anti-semitic” becomes an exercise in nonsense.
However, to be clear, it’s really just a pun. For more than a millennium, Jews were the only semitic language speakers in Europe, so were equated with it. But it’s still fun to point out that Arabs are semitic, too.
And to join in on the real issue, it isn’t clear why “dearieme” takes the “anti-semitic” accusation against Labour seriously; from here, where the same thing goes on, it’s obviously just Israeli and Blairite propaganda, to say nothing of convenient for the Tories.
I wasn’t aware of the distinction. The comment made me curious and want to learn more.
From one of the references in the Wikipedia article, Semitic People (ref. 9):
The language users are Semitic. It doesn’t seem to mean Jewish.
I can’t find anything definite about semitic.
“Anti-semitism” was a term coined in (I think) the late 19th century as a euphemistic catch-all for Jew-baiting, Jew-hating, and Jew-bullying. The other Semites are nothing to do with the matter.
“obviously just Israeli and Blairite propaganda”: that would be nice but it ain’t so. Naturally the Israeli government will try to exploit the matter; that, however, doesn’t mean that the phenomenon doesn’t exist. Compare it to the mass murder of Jews under Hitler: the fact that the horror is routinely exploited for political purposes, and even exaggerated and lied about, doesn’t mean that millions weren’t murdered. The poor sods undoubtedly were.
*I* think your very elusive response, and I give too much credence when I call it a “response”, is pretty much missing the wicket here.
You asserted that Labor were “anti-Semitic”. When called on it you blathered about a Jewish member of all the weird things, and then you asserted the same bollocks again. We need something – and like I said in an earlier thread, this is a blog and it doesn’t have to be footnoted and linked and thesis-level, but just something that supports your statement.
I think you got NADA for the NAZI thing, personally.
Yep.
Soooo… How exactly is Theresa May a socialist again?
Does your definition of socialist mean, ‘anyone dearieme doesn’t like’? Or am I just missing something obvious?
No, you got the obvious.
“As Mahatma Gandhi launched his campaign for peaceful resistance, Churchill… said he “ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back.”
“I hate Indians,” he later stated… “They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”
Nor the Aborigines of Australia. Speaking to the Palestine Royal Commission in 1937, he wrote: “I do not admit… that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia… by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race… has come in and taken its place.”
He “disliked Hitler’s system” but “admired his patriotic achievement. In his 1937 book Great Contemporaries, a collection of 25 essays about famous people, he wrote: “If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.“
In an article for the Illustrated Sunday Herald in February 1920… he wrote: “This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States)… this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century…” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/winston-churchill-from-accusations-of-anti-semitism-to-the-blunt-refusal-that-led-to-the-deaths-of-9999181.html
Family members of Prince Philip, who is from the house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, were unabashed supporters of Hitler and the Nazis.
Brother-in-law, Prince Christoph of Hesse, was a member of the SS. He piloted fighters that attacked allied troops in Italy.
Several weeks before Germany invaded Poland King George VI and his wife, the late Queen Mother, sent Hitler a birthday greeting.
“I never thought Hitler was such a bad chap,” said George’s brother, the former King Edward VIII, who became the Duke of Windsor after abdicating in 1936. Edward made this remark in 1970 when it was widely known that Hitler and the Nazis had directly and indirectly killed more than 40 million civilians and soldiers.
The Nazis planned to install the Duke as leader after a successful conquest of Britain. The former head of British naval intelligence said Hitler “would soon be in this country, but that there was no reason to worry about it because he would bring the Duke of Windsor over as king.””
http://thefallingdarkness.com/the-british-royal-family-supported-hitler-and-the-nazis/
I can see why you are confused… now, what’s that bit about Labour Nazis again?
The queen! the queen! Her royal heilness
https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aLB89XP_700b.jpg
The younger girls would have not have known the significance of what they were doing but the parents certainly did. They were out-and-out Nazi sympathizers. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world just for a laugh-
https://www.thoughtco.com/why-americans-gave-the-bellamy-salute-3322328
Younger girls probably wouldn’t have recognized the ‘significance’ of a white hood in daddy’s closet. But it probably became clear on growing up that they were part of The Klan.
I love hitting that monarchist nerve.
Actually I am a believer in an Australian republic but live under a system rife with wretched monarchists. This wasn’t a ‘monarchist’ thing, by the way, but a little girl thing. A sins of the father moment if you will.
She could have stepped away from the legacy at any time.
Funny, she hasn’t
Monarchy is a “sins of the father” thing
Re the British upper class and the Nazis I saw it in a moovee. You left out Remains of the Day. Churchill did at least stand up to the Nazis and the aristocrats when it counted even if his racism was legendary. Back then he had lots of company.
RE: EU court rules for Airbnb against French restrictions Jurist
That is false and they know it. Al the agreements and pay is done through the Airbnb plataform so it cannot be concluded they are just “information services”.
Decissions like this feed brexits
This will go down well in Barcelona.
Airbnb’d in Barcelona just two weeks ago. Nice places, no problems.
The user experience might be nice, but the natives are not happy.
It has to be said that this is just an assesment after a consultation by a french court. The General Advocate says that for what he has seen this is an informational service in which conditions are not set by the platform so it should be protected by the European Directive of free transnational services. I don’t know how agencies work in France but my guess is that almost all house rental agencies independendently of the platform or physical space they use, are just “informational” as long as they are offering properties that do not belong to them and the terms are settled by the owners. Thus, he says that because Airbnb does it through internet and it is foreign it musn’t follow the same rules applied to the traditional agencies. I would say that this is unfair competition.
Is it just “information” when I pay one-half up front (in this case 4 months ahead to reserve a whole house in a village on Lake Champlain)? Who gets the float? Would Warren Buffett say he’s in the business of “information services”?
That bird in that Antidote du Jour. That woudn’t be Gypsy Rose See-Gull doing her famous Fan Dance, would it?
Good one!
I thought perhaps it’s a Killdeer, but I like your suggestion much more!
RE: Attendance drops for 12 MLB teams, as loss of gate takes on more permanent look
One possible fix – get rid of the data analytics guys increasing calling the shots these days. These geniuses have determined that the ball can’t be caught if it’s hit over the fence, so baseball has devolved in recent years into a home run derby. It’s either bash it or strike out and not much in between as players are being coached to swing for the fences all the time, because the data crunchers tell them it’s the best strategy. The game today doesn’t much resemble the sport of baseball I grew to love. Might as well get rid of the players and let computers play each other.
Of course not charging a week’s pay or more to bring your family to the game might help too.
Another possible fix – bring in AI robot players, and (AI or otherwise) robot fans, to go with those data anayltics guys (or robots, if necessary).
(This should go well with the link above, about the world beyond human-extinction, the Post Human Age).
Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children
shout,
But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out of business-replaced by a robot.
“New York City Board of Elections Selects Only 38 Early Voting Sites”
This is nothing. New York, with its fine history of helping people to vote in Presidential elections, is going to team up with Silicon Valley to introduce something completely innovative for the 2020 Presidential elections. Pop-up voting stations – just like pop-up restaurants! Their locations will be announced on Twitter by the techies running the stations and they will be open for an hour or two to serve their customers, errrr, voters. By randomly popping up in different locations, Silicon Valley assures New York’s Board of Elections that all its citizens will get a chance to vote by merely waiting in their neighbourhood for one to appear locally. You read it here first.
Don’t give them ideas.
2020.. Biden
The MSM and cable news networks are obviously in the tank for Biden. CNN released a poll on tuesday favorable to Biden that did not have anything approaching a representative sample of 18-50 year olds—so few respondents that those age groups listed as “not available”.. Maddow had a poll which was in effect pure fabrication that showed Bernie was not getting much support from women.
Just like Clinton in 2016 the corporate news outlets are promoting an inevitability meme about the Biden candidacy.
When the corporate news outlets were called out on this, their reply was “Give me a break. No, no, I have no empathy for it. Give me a break. Because here’s the deal guys, we decided we were gonna change the world. And we did. We did.”
The myth of Biden being the most electable candidate shows it is a construct of dubious integrity—a house of cards.
—“The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a populist liberal PAC, polled its own members, asking why they supported their candidates of choice, and found basically an inverse relationship between which candidate’s supporters thought their pick would make the “best president” (Warren by a landslide) and which ones were motivated by their belief that their candidate is the most “electable” (Biden). As PCCC co-founder Adam Green put it: “Barely a majority of Biden’s own current supporters believe he would be the best Democratic president.”–
https://newrepublic.com/article/153723/democrats-created-electability-monster
My take for years has been that ‘electable’ is the label the MSM applies to candidates they are putting on the approved menu. We’re allowed to choose our leaders, but only from the menu they provide.
In 2016, we had the temerity to vote off-menu. As Taibbi’s column in yesterday’s links shows, the electability con is starting to unravel.
The electibility virus is totally infecting the minds of many Dem voters it seems. Who might beat Trump? I can’t even see the point of it, vote for someone you actually want in office. Have a little hope in a hopeless world.
If in the general election they aren’t the nominee, well I could see a LOTE vote, although Biden might be the only one who would be too much to even stomach on a LOTE vote even if I was in a state where it mattered, really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Somebody as young as Buttigieg has their entire life from when they were a young adult splattered over the internet, and all it takes is one damaging thing he wrote, or supplied an image of on here, to be divulged, and it will be up to the court of public opinion to decide his political fate.
The problem with LOTE voting is marginal voters don’t get reached. If you have to yell at the young people who you need to canvass and do GOTV to vote for a candidate, they aren’t going to do the work necessary to win.
Obama had 25,000 more votes in Cincinnati, a target of GOTV, than John Kerry who lost Ohio by 10,000 votes. One city in Ohio produced 2.5 times Kerry’s margin of loss. Hillary Clinton had less votes than John Kerry. Besides the dismantling of the 50 State Strategy operation, the lack of enthusiasm from the bright, smiling young people matters. Rachael Maddow devotees don’t canvass. The only votes they bring are their own. HRC had 400,000 less votes than Kerry, and HALF A MILLION less votes than Obama in Ohio. It was like this all over competitive states.
Virginia which was flipped with demographics (Jim Webb won statewide) and running up the score in a few places made her look better, but she was abysmal, largely because the lesser of two evils only makes a person vote not organize. Guess who is more likely to rent. African Americans, young people, the Democratic coalition of voters.
Biden and Trump isn’t a LOTE vote.
It’s a wash.
Would be the first election I sat out since I was old enough to vote.
Perhaps tangentially related to the MSM being in the tank for Biden, I saw an op-ed* this morning written by David Winston (who worked as an advisor to Newt Gingrich and is now a political analyst for CBS) about how sad it is that pols these days would rather tear down their opponents on personal grounds than concentrate on policy.
Given his history I found that ironic. Cui bono?
* http://www.rollcall.com/news/trump-democratic-opposition-research
Newt will have his own place in the Hall of Shame for leading that Contract On America process with all the scorched earth politics. Some legacy :(
Biden did have a big jump, and the media was instrumental in that. Not only have they elevated him months before he even announced, but the biggest reason why he is doing well is because there has been next to no critical analysis of his actual record. None. He has voted on the wrong side his entire career, is corrupt and has a worldview wildly out of step with the country. But no media outlet really does a deep dive into any of it. Most of the critical and substantive analysis is coming from leftist outlets. Some polls looked into how much people know of his actual record, and not many do.
People are really depressed about him polling well, even though those polls are highly skewed towards older voters. It isn’t as much about their support for Bernie or someone else, it is Biden himself. Here we have a situation where we need radical changes, we have to at least move in a direction that can allow us to put in place structural changes, and who is doing well? A person that proudly says that not much will change and a person whose mindset is wildly out of touch with the present needs of society. I think people are freaking out more than anything because it is obvious that the Democratic Party never did much introspection after 2016 and seems to have collectively learned nothing from why Trump was elected in the first place. They want to defeat Trump, have no idea at all how to change the context that he emerged from or how to deal with Trumpism. There is no critical analysis as to why the far right is growing across the developed world. Even if some hack of theirs gets the nomination, if they propose no actual solutions and things continue on their current trajectory, where will society be in ten years? Evan Krugman can see social unrest unless ahead, forget what chaos the environmental crisis is going to unleash. You have to not be paying attention to have tons of confidence in the Democratic Party, its rank and file or those running the party. If, instead of the Russia nonsense, they looked inward and did far more internal changes, they would be in a better place by now. But they didn’t, and they aren’t, and Trump has got to be happy with how things look right now. Things can change, but I am sure he hopes they don’t. Ask any Democrat to explain why Biden is the most electable, for instance, and it will be the exact same logic you heard in 2016. Nothing has been learned. No lessons learned, not changes on how people think on a mass level.
One, there has been a good deal of focus on HRC’s negatives, but her positives was the co-Presidency. She was the target of outrageous GOP attacks. With cable news, it was easier to see the loony nature of the GOP which previously hid behind the ilk of segregationist proponents such a William F. Buckley. But he was less drooling than Newt or Rush. The stuff like Chelsea Clinton’s slumber party guest list was beyond the pall.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/8302/Lieberman-Leads-Field-Nine.aspx
This is a proper Gallup poll when they were doing daily tracking without such dilemmas as cell phones, so its probably as good as it get. Joe Lieberman besides the polling lead had the support of then Lt. Governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine. Yeah. Tim Kaine. As the campaigns progressed, Joe Lieberman won 8.5% of the NH vote and skipped Iowa entirely.
Obama mattered because he is black and achieved a level of success. Hillary mattered because she is a woman and achieved a level of success. The Democrats lost the House and Congress on Obama’s watch, and Hillary failed to pick up seats. The House was taken after she was off the ballot. Her husband oversaw the loss of the House and the Senate. Joe is Catholic, but he’s not John Kennedy.
Even now, his campaign is out there trumping polls that make no sense. He’s just another Lieberman style candidate.
The current results on the Democratic nomination represent a slight change from last month, when Gephardt had led the field. Between mid-March and late April, support for Lieberman rose from 16% to 23%. Over the same period, Gephardt’s support declined slightly from 19% to 15%.
Gephardt was the minority leader and made television appearances, but today, I doubt many of Gephardt’s former supporters would even remember him.
Those are fair points but they should also apply to those who are measuring the drapes and picking out running mates for Bernie. Here’s hoping you are right that Biden will crash and burn because he seems quite horrible. That said, so far the media, naturally, seem quite receptive to Joe.
Polls with no one under the age of 50 are being put out for a reason. Its an attempt to create a sense of inevitability that HRC had. There are reasons Sanders pushed Iowa (probably won) and crushed it in New Hampshire. He didn’t have the resources for South Carolina or even properly Nevada which needed dirty tricks by Harry Reid to squeak out a win.
Caucuses are fairly similar. Many of the shallow supporters who walk in will notice the lack of young people at a Biden event. Long term, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, both electable candidates, voted for the Iraq War and are 0-3. The guy who voted against the Iraq War in a non-binding resolution with a muslim sounding name and black in America is 2-0.Over time this builds. In the caucuses, there will be a cadre of “get off my lawn” kids, but when there are no young people around, people notice.
Hillary’s advantage in the South was largely due to little infrastructure in place and the sense of inevitability. Hillary didn’t push that “I haven’t seen Sanders” line for laughs. She did it because her campaign knows people were picking Sanders when they saw the two of them up close. Biden won’t have her loyalists either at the committee levels either. Nursing homes won’t be organized for Biden the way they for HER. He won’t enjoy the uniform support of elites either.
As a campaigner, he’s not very good. He’s lazy which is why the media loves him. He’s just like them, but this catches up with candidates. Its why Biden never made much noise except as a servant of the credit card industry.
yea I’m depressed about Biden HIMSELF, I was in a really depressed mood after he announced.
BTW needing radical changes including to deal with the environmental crisis, Biden is not only a living fossil, but a living fossil fuel proponent, he has to be, he’s oily, son on the board of a Ukrainian oil company (there’s the geopolitics of that which gets attention, albeit only on the real left, but the fossil fuel politics of that don’t seem any better).
I used the Burisma Holdings issue in a comment to a Mpls. StarTribune article re: Biden entering the race. All I wrote was a suggestion to google Hunter Biden, Burisma Holdings and Ukraine noting the info might give an indication of Biden ethics which were being touted by other commenters. Wow, you should have seen the “likes” and the multiples of replies. Someone suggested I was wearing a tin foil hat and one reply to that mentioned there was a tape to corroborate the info. I was encouraged by the replies. Apparently some readers actually did do my suggested search. Thanks to NC for the Burisma Holdings info, BTW.
Reading through the CNN poll release. Some interesting points:
Question 4 from the poll: “Q4. (FV1) We’d like to get your overall opinion of some people in the news. As I read each name, please say if you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of these people -or if you have never heard of them.” The entire list: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tim Ryan, Eric Swalwel, Seth Moulton, Wayne Messam.
Later Question: “DP1. I’m going to read a list of people who may be running in the Democratic primaries for president in 2020. After I read all the names, please tell me which of those candidates you would be most likely to support for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, or if you would support someone else”. The list was of 35 options, the lead option being “Former Vice President Joe Biden”.
So after eliciting a specific response (81% positive) to Biden (but not to Sanders) they give a ridiculously long list to the respondent, starting with “Former Vice President Joe Biden”
Something that has not been reported from this poll, Biden’s favorability has been steadily dropping from 58% in 1/18 to 51% in 4/19.
priming, actually used in something other than psychology experiments apparently.
Several recent articles I have seen listing all candidates used alphabetical order. Unfortunately Biden alphabetically comes in first and Warren and Sanders way down the list. So we are most likely going to see Biden listed first on all or most polls with the excuse of alphabetical order. Tulsi used to be forgotten but now is listed but Gravel I have not seen. I did point out the lack of Gravel in comments.
I just noticed that Biden’s unfavorability in the poll has increased from 28% in 1/18 to 39% in 4/19. Now there is a candidate to get behind.
If the DNC picks Biden, we’ll get four more maga years. Biden is the male version of HRC – the establishment, Republican Lite that was roundly rejected last time.
My dad worked for a stock biz in LA that traded on the Pacific Stock Exchange mostly, and Peter O’Malley, the son of the owner of the Dodgers worked there, so as a result, daddy-o got some pretty precious ducats on occasion, and I might’ve seen Sandy pitch, or Maury steal, or any classic moment of back in the day from a dugout seat @ Dodger Stadium, but it was woefully lost on a toddler who now can’t remember anything that happened to him before, say 4.
I was watching the 7th game of the 1965 World Series a few years ago, and Koufax was masterful on basically no rest, an amazing performance, and it’s a couple hours long, but if you go to 2:22 and the final strikeout to win the game, the celebration very much resembles any nothingburger win during the regular season, how quaint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeKbktNm0Mk
Thank you Jerri-Lynn for that wolf puppy video. Very cute, and…
When I played it, both of my cats woke from a sound sleep, somewhat startled (though both love dogs).
I’m going to play it again throughout the day when they’re napping.
Admittedly, as ‘payback’ for the times they’ve awakened me during the night when they’ve discovered something of mine they’ve chosen as their new ‘toy’ to play with. Heh, heh.
That is vengeful!!
Perhaps, but deservedly so.
Two days ago I awoke to find my lip balm missing from my night table. I’d heard them playing with something while I slumbered but chose to ignore it, thinking it was one of their many toys.
I knew they were the culprits, as I searched for it under the bed, chair, shelving…
Yesterday I finally found it. On the floor of a closet. In the other room.
It had apparently rolled under the door during one of their ‘hockey’ games.
We need to get better synchronized during that little time I do sleep at night, which means reducing the hours or numbers of their many cat naps during the day.
Whenever I look in the mirror, it’s become all too obvious that I’m many, many years behind on my ‘beauty sleep’! ;-)
~Just FYI, as indoor cats they get MUCH attention from me during the day (with Shredder currently cuddled up to me demanding to be petted while I type), in addition to time spent throwing a ring or ball for them to chase.
But being cats, they spend the rest of the daytime napping.
I would prefer they add one of those naps to their lesser night time sleeping.
I like that “Glimpsing the world beyond human extinction” is filed under 2020. It really takes the pressure off!
Yes, jsn. Those pictures are haunting, and I applaud the author’s courage in descending into those deep, starless places. He’s given up on humanity, hasn’t he, by assuming our extinction is inevitable. And, maybe that is the realistic attitude.
But, I checked in on the comments on yesterday’s links, earlier this morning and found a late evening comment from Ping from Arizona, to be filed under “this is so insane, I can’t believe it is really happening.” What Ping describes is happening everywhere; each one of us can make our daily list of actions ” so insane I really can’t believe it is happening.”
Here is Ping’s comment in full:
Re: Ex-federal official: ‘I got rolled’ by Trump administration to ease way for Vigneto housing development Arizona Star (Ping)
What we are fighting in Arizona comes under the category of “this is so insane, I can’t believe it’s really happening”.
Arizona and the western basin states are squabbling over the drought plan for the vital water supply in Lake Mead Reservoir approaching critically low levels. Arizona has addressed the water drought allocation like a shell game Robbing Peter to Pay Paul, reducing distributions to farmers etc. The Indian tribe’s had their attorneys out in full force to protect their allocation.
Yet Arizona and the Feds approve projects, achieved by chicanery, political influence, manipulation of regulations and research, like a 28,000 Vigneto housing development over a vital watershed that two brain cells can figure out will pump the groundwater dry eliminating the habitat, wildlife that it supports and dry the wells of the many small communities in the expanive San Pedro Valley.
We’ve (citizenry, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Save the Santa Rita’s, Earth Justice and others) fought the massive Rosemont Copper Mine, which just received it’s final federal permits to destroy the Santa Rita Mountains just south of Tucson, destroy the Santa Cruz valley watershed with tailing fill and PUMP GROUNDWATER for a Canadian company for primarily export copper while beating up our roads and infrastructure with heavy mining equipment.
Hello!!…..Arizona imports salty water via Central Arizona Project canals and these companies are permitted to arrive, deplete the premium groundwater and fly away leaving Arizonan’s with consequences after the profits are extracted. Another case of “I’ll be gone and you’ll be gone” when the SH** hits the fan.
Maddening. Ping
In big winters such as this one, the danger locally will be too much water, the most likely killer in Sequoia NP this year or any annum. I was doing a burn pile yesterday, and if you fell in the river at around 40 degrees, you’d go into crazy shock as you were being swept down the channel, every boulder and rock underneath the water being incredibly slippery-allowing scant chance for purchase, and they don’t take American Express.
The situation with the Colorado is similar to what’s going on in Wall*Street, the exception being that you can just create oodles of money willy-nilly to get you out of a jamb, they’ve perfected the art, but try turning whine into water.
Love those puns!
In AZ they are better miracle workers…They turn water into lush crops of alfalfa for beautiful Arabian horses, cities in the hot deserts and sunshine oasis for the not so spotless mine owners. Not to forget in one town, effluent into don’t face plant into that pale yellow snow.
Yes, you are referring to the Mojave region of Arizona and to put a finer point on it, legislative idiocy under the banner of “freedom” from regulation has produced unintended consequences threatening the area’s groundwater supply.
Yes, Saudi Arabia, who does not have water to grow water guzzling livestock alfalfa, was then “free” to buy 10,000 acres of land and groundwater rights to grow and export the alfalfa.
I understand other international corps quickly followed suit.
Wall St creates equity flows, C-Corps junk bonds et al, increase – decrease is a factor of investor sediment, where price taking is denoted in FRN.
Sounds like Oak Creek Canyon in Sedona might be up for a flush, boulders the size of cars singing. Memory’s of childhood at family holiday house w/ A frame guest house on said creek, old Elvis property used during movie shoot.
OK now its 5:45 in the AM and I’m having sensory feed back from grandfathers Brazilian cigars and snails at the Owl restaurant. Oh the massive oak tree limb that grew though the side of the house near the front picture windows and the huge dining table looking out on the creek. Leaves in Summer, red in Autumn, stark in Winter all inside the house …..
Eclair,
We have our own California version,
with echoes in “our” Middle Eastern foreign “policy,”
fracking, our health and future population growth.
https://surveillancevalley.com/blog/pistachio-wars-killing-california-for-a-snack-food
Eclair, sadly I must give appreciation for your pointing out Ping’s comment. As an Arizonan I am aware of the insanity of the greed and short sightedness of the state’s and Feds approving projects that, especially, deplete ground water in watersheds. We live here, for now, because our area is beautiful and we are fortunate to have an affordable house. But, all of the area housing, like everywhere in the state that has any intrinsic value, whether jobs, natural beauty, once upon a time low cost of living, college city or town, sun city retirements, are going up in price. Developers rule. AZ is seen as a state to monetize and plunder. The irony of foreign mines, Canadian and other owners, being allowed to ruin special ecological areas, like the San Pedro Valley, is the final writings of doom for a once amazingly diverse biological place. An acquaintance had a dream, years ago, where a loved one told that people would be on the move. Climate migrants from cold and/or very humid environments have come to this state for many years. Now, it’s refugees from high cost cities, such as in CA. That is understandable, but the prices of any housing has been Californificationed. Apartments are being built at huge rates. We just watched a local news show(Phoenix origin) where one of the guests was a mayor of a city on outskirts of Phoenix. It was once a low cost place to live with long commutes to jobs in Phoenix, except for local ones like gas stations and diners. Now, it’s mayor sang the praises of his growing, prosperous city. Singing the old tunes of eternal sunshine, new housing, downtown revitalization and coordination with county “opportunity and development” organizations. Yes, Ping, it is mad(denning).
Don’t be messin’ with the Canadian plunderers or you will have an ISDS suit on your hands.
NASA was sold faulty aluminum in 19-year scam [CNET]
File under Everything is CalPERS/VW/Boeing/Tesla.
I guess honesty just is not chic especially when it interferes with Mr. Market and the right to make a profit from anything and everything and the other thing as well and if one must trim just a bit at the margins doesn’t everyone and even if everyone doesn’t yet they will and I am a trailblazer on the leading edge of edgy business practices.
So why is it these cheaters don’t have to pay full restitution for their dodgy, that is less than honest, practices?
Sounds like more Boeing-style neoliberal “allow them to self-certify”-ness. NASA has a history of this sort of thing. True, you can’t independently test every component, but how about the absolutely most mission-critical ones? The infamous Hubble flawed main mirror was similar – NASA took Perkin-Elmer’s word for it that the mirror was up to spec, when a scaled-up Foucault test like that done by innumerable amateur telescope makers would have revealed the problem, and there would have been no mission delay because NASA had a ready-to-go second main mirror, a backup subcontracted by P-E to Eastman Kodak which was brought out of storage and tested after the fact and found to be fully up to spec.
I’m afraid the “Off-guardian” article in the Gilets Jaunes is misleading in a couple of respects. First, there’s no way Macron will be gone in a couple of months. Barring some completely unforeseeable political earthquake, the idea of him being overthrown is a fantasy. It is theoretically possible to remove a sitting French President, but it has never happened, and is effectively impossible with the current balance of political forces. (De Gaulle resigned after losing a referendum on political reform: Macron is not going to resign). In addition, the GJ are not Macron’s nemesis, and they are not going to bring him down. They represent one expression of a general malaise, but they are not the Bolsheviks (or even the Mensheviks) in 1917, and the degree of public support they have depends very much on how you ask the question. The real violence at the moment is not between the GJ and the authorities, as you might think from reading this, but largely from the Black Blocs, as was the case a few weeks ago in the Champs Elysées. Today is 1 May, the traditional day for left-wing demonstrations, and it looks as though the BB are going to do what they did last year, which is to infiltrate the trades union and political demonstrations and launch attacks on the police and on property, in furtherance of their “anticapitalist” ideology. Even before the parades started at 1400 CET, there had been many incidents of violence and smashing of windows and cars. I’ve just been watching the BB trying to storm the Commissariat of Police in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. They are equipped with gas-masks, helmets and the traditional black clothes. There are some people wearing yellow jackets, but it’s hard to know if they are “genuine” GJs, whatever that means.
I’ll post a summary and analysis tomorrow for those who may be interested.
I stopped reading at “The Neo-liberal state is crumbling and Macron is going be the sacrificial lamb. At this stage he will be lucky to last two months.” Whomever wrote that piece is obviously completely divorced from reality.
Quite often those BB people are cops pretending to be part of the demonstration that try to provoke the authorities into a violent crackdown, by introducing violence into the protest. Their only goal is to destroy the movement, since the media will report that the protesters became violent and that’s a no-no in civilized society. Funny how those BB types never join a protest that is acceptable to the holi-poli, like anti-abortion or white power marches.
Thanks David for your input. As a former resident of France who still has relatives there I am always interested in news of L’hexagone. I, too, was extremely skeptical of the Off-Guardian analysis. Please continue to post on this subject. You are one of my trusted sources of info.
my thought exactly. the article seemed clueless and overly optimistic. maybe in his local village in the gers the GJ have a lot of support, but that won’t manifest itself in a rebellion that would topple macron.
“Sanders suggests Disney should use ‘Avengers’ profits to ‘pay all of its workers a middle class wage’ ”
Does this sort of statement play in Peoria? Because it sure makes the person that says such a thing sound stupid. OK, the guy may have been sincere when he said it but sincere gets your a** handed to you when going up against Trump. It’s the sort of thing that a bunch of campaign wonks might come up with after a long days work followed by a longer session at a bar afterwards. If they had been any more sober they would have shot down the idea of saying this in an instant. If they had been any more drunk, they would have forgotten the whole thing by the following morning. Sanders needs to get a better grip on what he comes out with before next year.
Why is that your reaction?
While it’s not a brilliant slogan, and I can’t imagine it being used as such (rather than a quick headline/soundbite), hammering, over and over, the basic idea that wildly profitably companies can afford to pay their workers more is, I think, a good idea strategically both as a campaign matter and to win policy fights. That is, I think every time voters feel a contrast between the money being vacuumed up by the corps and sprinkled out as ordinary paychecks it’s a good thing. Particularly when the consumer base for the wildly successful product/business is large and the headlines are otherwise full of info about breathtaking profits from the product/at the company.
…+1
The reason for my reaction is simple. The earnings for a film like the Avengers, or any other film for that matter, are a one-off even if you include revenue from overseas sales, TV, DVDs, etc. To pay a bunch of workers a middle class workers, you need a sustainable revenue stream. Disney has that already but refuses to do so. But putting that fact aside, to tie in these two elements makes no real financial sense and Trump would be on that in a minute as a “crazy Bernie” statement. And just as a matter of record, I am no Avengers fan and do not plan on seeing that film so have no bias here about the film itself.
Fair, but again, I think it’s just a throwaway headline maker comment, and no real risk of what you identify.
Trump: Crazy Bernie, “the earnings for a film like the Avengers, or any other film for that matter, are a one-off even if you include revenue from overseas sales, TV, DVDs, etc. To pay a bunch of workers a middle class workers, you need a sustainable revenue stream.”
Bernie: Well, the basic point is that a company with $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ products like the Avengers can pay fair wages–last year Disney had $$$$$$$$$$$$ in profits, paid $ in tax and $ to its average employee. It could do much better. But even if we’re sticking with just the Avengers revenue stream, Disney could use that one time massive revenue to pay a one time decent bonus to all its employees…
That is, any conversation that is focused on how much Disney vacuums up allows Bernie to chat about the big picture. He’s very message disciplined and wouldn’t get caught up in debating one time revenue v recurring revenue. Viewers would come away—I believe—thinking, wow, yeah, Disney could do better by its workers….
p.s. I do like the Avengers and will be feeding that revenue stream once the lines die down
the Avengers is
Regarding Rev Kev’s point about the money being a one off event, handing out bonuses would be a way to handle that.
Perhaps that’s a better position to take for Sanders.
Moreover, the parties involves are
1. shareholders/mangment
2. workers
3. customers.
Shouldn’t Sanders advocate lowering ticket prices for that particular movie as well, in order to benefit consumers (similar to comments above about baseball and other professional sports)?
I agree with you Rev. It makes me think of the moment in Sanders’ FOX debate when he was hassled about his new millionaire status. The point is changing policy, not getting individuals to give, or for one company to donate the profits to a one time project.
Bernie could have discussed Disney CEO Bob Iger’s salary and recent raise:
“In 2018, #Disney CEO Bob Iger got a raise–a big raise. His total compensation increased 80% to hit $65.6 million.
According to a recent study by Equilar, his compensation was 1,424 times that of the median Disney employee”
https://www.fastcompany.com/90333082/disney-ceo-bob-igers-compensation-is-insane-says-abigail-disney
Mickey no longer hears Mouseket’tears. Why?
Possible he’s riffing of the Disney heiress who recently suggested exec bonuses could be spread around to pay lower wage employees a living wage?
One of my favorite MLB moments was a Pirates game @ Three Rivers stadium in Pittsburgh in the late 80’s or early 90’s that I took 3 English friends to see their very first baseball game, and in the midst of, a triple play occurred. Lucky bastards, not that they knew what had happened.
“Indonesia’s planning minister announces capital city move”
Read about this earlier and of course there were the usual arguments as in “How can we possibly afford this?”. Unsaid is the cost of doing nothing which would lead this city becoming know as Venice East with the streets underwater. Is there a maritime equivalent of a Tok Tok?
>”Bill Clinton Prepping for Podcast About His Presidency…”
Gag. I almost coughed up my cocoa when it started off with this: (emphasis mine)
“Bill Clinton may be getting ready to take his words of wisdom…”
Only to then read this:
“It’s unclear if President Clinton plans on hosting the podcast himself, or will just be providing content and occasional quips about his presidency.”
Sooo… he’s doing a Podcast where he may or may not be actually speaking (or even there?). *ka-ching*
Gee, I wonder if his treatment of the Glass-Steagall Act will be mentioned? /sarc
I’ve long believed that the reason the Clinton’s continue to claw their way into the spotlight is to keep the name of Clinton alive as they groom Chelsea to be coronated in the future. (That, and the $$$, of course)
All three just need to GO AWAY. Far, far away.
May I suggest that the atmospheric rise in MLB player salaries combined with cheating scandals, might’ve prompted Wall*Street to also do the same, in a sport represents life?
I begin to think we need to do a Naked Capitalism meet up with a minor league game thrown in, before or after…
I keep threatening to go to a minor league game in Visalia, but with no follow through.
On MSM Open Hostility to Medicare for All, National Health Care, Single Payer– shorthand; M4A;
Find out who the local advertisers on that media are, contact their headquarters, tell them you are going to boycott their product/service and encourage the other 85% of Americans who want national health care to do the same, since they choose to advertise with the enemy.
Thanks to Shrub, we have a wonderful phrase to use; “You are either with us, or you are with them…”
Suggest shift ad dollars to pro M4A media that reflects the wishes of 85% of their potential customer base.
Why local advertisers and not national? Because local markets can be affected with personal visits, local customer reviews etc.
I find it a sign of the times that most comments here were about major league baseball and the nostalgia we all have for an era long-gone and never coming back. The most important story today is in Nature yet it arouses arouse almost no interest because, perhaps, it points to the future.
We don’t really want to think deeply about how we live in this society. We are content with life as it is and regret we can’t go back in time. I too regret the death of baseball as something of a sacred national pastime that held us together in a single culture. Attending any major sporting event sober in this country is an experience I care not to experience. Fortunately there are so many more high value entertainments available that are custom fitted to my demographic as I am now just waiting for the end if the world.
The wilderness is about the only thing that’s largely unchanged from when I was a kid, there’s been no new trails constructed in Sequoia NP since the 30’s and the views are the same as when Ansel Adams was F-stopping by, taking it for granite. Trees have grown some, as they tend to do, but overall it’s like being 10 years old again, traipsing through.
#Biden
“Joe Biden’s past 24 hours could not have gone more perfectly”
He’s literally the pied piper candidate Trump wants to elevate, and suckers like Cilliza are swallowing the bait hook, line and sinker.
#EightYearsOfTrump … book it if Biden wins the Dem nomination.
But then again Trump was the pied piper candidate and look where he sits. Oh wow that’s depressing.
Trump’s president because #HRC couldn’t beat her chosen pied piper. They were two canidates with the highest unfavourables in US election history. Fair enough, though … although chances are the Dems will find a way to cock it up.
Yes, I’m so old I can remember when Clinton was the electable candidate.
Comparison shopping?
Just want to point out that of the presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard have the most concise, best categorized issues websites.
Sanders’ clean and concise issues page is a click away from his official site, health care the first addressed.
Gabbard’s UNofficial issues site is nicer looking, but it’s alphabetized, Burn Pits, the first addressed, important to veterans, but not to the majority of Americans like healthcare.
https://www.tulsigabbard.org/
Her official website is a disaster. Can someone please volunteer to help her there?
Re Venezuela:
Even for the three stooges Bolton, Pompeo, and Abrams (four if you count Trump himself), I thought events in Venezuela and the administration reaction were extraordinarily farcical. It turns out there might have been a reason:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/05/venezuela-guaid%C3%B3-got-snookered-white-house-starts-beating-war-drums.html
Charlotte Shooter today:
“I went in the classroom and shot some guys.”
Obama:
“We tortured some folks.”
Role Model Leading by Example
I love the casual attitude.
From the WSJ article:
I can’t get past the WSJ paywall no matter what I do, but 17,000 seems like rather a lot. And all under the Obama administration, oddly, or not. What could the policy reason have been for the 75% increase, what was the process used to determined who was unredacted, and what happened to them, and the list?