“Building a new stadium down the street does not work unless (Ron) Lancaster spilled some DNA in the lot where they’re going to build the new stadium,” he added. “You have to refurbish (Mosaic Stadium). You’ve got to can all new ideas you might have and use the sacred ground. Fenway did that and that is why Fenway is loved. The new Yankee Stadium isn’t the same as it used to be.”
The former Boston Red Sox and Montreal Expos pitcher will not be running for the vacant mayor’s position in Regina later this year. With his opinion on the new stadium, he wasn’t sure he would garner many votes anyway. But that is nothing new to the former member of the Rhinoceros Party. Lee ran on the Rhino ticket in 1988 for president of the United States. Not surprisingly, he didn’t make the ballot in a single state. He said one of the high-ranking members within the party gave him a six-pack of Molson Canadian and asked him to run for president.
“I adhered to their funny philosophy,” Lee said. “My campaign slogan was ‘No guns, no butter. They’ll both kill you.’ And I only campaigned in federal prisons where I knew they couldn’t vote, and I only accepted a quarter in campaign contributions.”
With it being an election year in the U.S., Lee said he is all in for the re-election of Barack Obama.
“The only time (Mitt) Romney opens his mouth is when he needs to change feet,” Lee said of the Republican nominee. “If Obama does lose this, which I can’t see happening, then it’s because of a lady in Florida who works for Jeb Bush and Diebold, the voting-machine company. If Obama even comes close to losing this election, it’ll be fraud.”
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Robots, not dragons, Steve. Hence the elevator.
Try to keep up.
Try to keep up.
D'oh!
Fomerly dp:
Thanks for again confirming my thesis that you think BTF exists to give you a place to comment about every little miniscule thing that amuses you in a day. There seem to be a lot of them.
He is the mirror image of the guy commenting on every little irritation.
Harry Potter never should've written that grimoire.
I don't know what lines you ride on, but yes, I've seen it happen, many times.
again, what lines? I've seen it more than once on 2/3 trains at Penn and Times Square. Granted it's typically tourists who have no idea how hard it is to get up from their seat in the center and muscle past the SRO crowd to get to the door...
Seen that...
My favorite is when people are waiting in the rain at an LIRR platform, and the first person on stops at the very first seat and SLOWLY closes his umbrella and stands in the aisle taking off his jacket while 15 people are standing in the rain
Obliviousness is bliss.
Banks have been creating the equivalency of currency since banks were created.
They're doing it wrong.
Maybe, but without a photo ID in most states -- won't matter...
It's a good idea that can't hurt as long as Romney's never made any remarks about cutting PBS's funding. Which he has.
Only that Louden thinks it could make a big difference. It can't hurt but if that's all they have then this is stumbling to 55-45 territory and fast.
For Mitt, that's an opportunity not a wall.
No, he nailed one election, was middle of the pack in another, and was quite off the other two- but he and his fans having been leaning o the one he nailed forever.
According to Silver Rassmussen has a slight 2-3 point Repub lean- which is not a big deal, many polling outfits have leans a couple of points one way or the other. But I have noticed that on lefty sites Rass is disregarded/derided as an unreliable partisan outfit, and on Righty sites regarded as the epitome of the polling profession, neither impression is true.
Not sure what the "B" in BTF stands for...something about a game with a stick?
when the messengers are political pundits, message shooting is quite fair.
Messenger shooting typically refers to getting angry and attacking someone who conveys factual, accurate and unwelcome information.
What comes out of a great many of the pundit class is neither factual, accurate or useful.
You are allowed to attack the messenger when the message being conveyed- is not true, not factual and not being delivered- by the messenger- in good faith.
You do know that he got elected as a Repub in one of the most liberal states there is?
I think part of the problem is that the terrain has shifted under his feet- one of the organizational/ideological strengths the Repubs have is that the average republican voter is pretty much the same everywhere. Dems are not, the Dems in Mass are a whole hell of lot further left than the Dems in Oklahoma.
Now you have "moderate" Republican politicians- coming put of mostly liberal states- simply because conservative Republicans cannot get elected in those states- and the state republican electorate understands that (or used to any way)- however, in the rest of the country moderate Republicans are RINOS, despicable critters who just do not get with the program.
The Mitt who ran in Mass, could not run for national office, he quite consciously - in both 2008 and 2012, ran to the right of the republican primary median- but even though he;s been doing that for 4+ years I suspect it does not come naturally to him.
So he's running as rightwing Mitt, but what actually does rightwing Mitt believe in or stand for?
I can't imagine Romney doing it. But the EC margin between him and Obama has been so solid and static that there's going to have to come a point when the Romney campaign going to have to try something to shake things up. Kissing the base's a$$ and hiding from any media but Fox is shaping up as a nice, risk-averse swing-and-a-miss.
bongos?
bagels?
bazookas?
Barsoom?
Good point.
He believes that Mitt Romney should be president. Anything else is negotiable.
President, and wealthy far beyond the comprehension of the average human being.
Yeah, everything else can be haggled over.
Yeah - but winning "off color" in a state isn't that hard.... I mean - blue Illinois and blue California have never had a problem electing technocratic Republicans, while Wyoming, Alaska, and even some southern states have never really had a problem electing Dems.
State level races are relatively easy for off parties to win -- generally, in deep blue or deep red states -- the state party tends to get full of itself and dysfunctional. The 'off party' candidate can just essentially run as the "independent".
Presidential elections don't work that way.
He's not really a Republican then, true Republicans don't negotiate anything. (ducks)
Yes, that's what's so hilarious. He's cravenly contorting himself to fit the requirements of the "stand your ground, compromise is an obscene word" crowd.
Whose margin Nate Silver's?
He's had it between what, 280-258 Obama, 298-240 Obama?
That's a couple of States, this isn't 2008
The RCP average has Obama up 3 right now.
Though to tell the truth, looking at RCP, 4 years ago on 8/2/08, Obama was up 2.6 on McCain...
Since May Obama has been up as high as 3.6 on Romney, and by only 0.2 (RCP averages)
In May-July 2008 Obama's lead varied from 0.6 to 7.1
So the polling now is far less volatile
In 2008 Obama's average lead (using RCP's daily averages) was 5.8, May 1 through August 2
In 2012, Obama's average lead has been 3.0
In 2008, Obama's final RCP average was 7.6, he won by 7.3
The best McCain ever got was +2.4 right after his convention bounce, lasted less than a week, by comparison Kerry climbed to +2.5 after his convention-and held there for two weeks before sliding... of course McCain was also blind sided by a financial meltdown- and there was extraordinary blowback associated with his Veep pick...
My guesstimate, election held next week, 50.6 to 49.4 Obama.
He ran as a liberal republican which plays well in Massachusetts.
He's anything but that person today.
Yeah, and Romney's win in 2002 was of course the fourth consecutive Massachusetts gubernatorial win for the Republicans. People forget that and imagine that it was some sort of strange anomaly.
EDIT: I knew people who voted for Romney in MA who would never vote for a Republican for President. The theory at the state level is that you need someone to counterbalance the legislature, which will always be 4:1 Democratic. This isn't nearly as true at the national level. The point is that in an exceptionally red or blue state, the very weakness of the lesser party can sometimes be an advantage in the gubernatorial race.
This bothers me especially at Grand Central or Times Square or Union Square stations. About 80% of the train is getting off at the next stop, yet there's always some ####### who wants me to move or let go of the railing at exactly the moment when the train is starting to brake.
The most recent averages have put Obama at ~300....
As discussed the last page, the national h2h really doesn't tell the same story as the state-by-state. Just as they did in 2008, Team Obama is very much playing the map. Sure - Romney just needs a "couple of states" - but where are those couple of states? Obama's had ads up all summer 'defining' Romney and in those couple of states he needs, his fav/unfav are already toxic. Take Ohio and Florida -- both of which are almost certainly required for Romney to have a chance...
Q's latest is an LV screen -- and they've got Obama breaking 50% in both. Meanwhile - Romney continues to languish in the low 40s. Even polls that have those states closer - Romney still languishes in the low 40s.
Among other tidbits - nearly 90% in BOTH FL and OH (89% in FL and 87% in OH) say that they've already made up their minds, no chance of changing them.
But here's where I think the real story in those polls is -- Mitt Romney has underwater fav/unfavs in both states. True - slight (40-42 in OH, 41-42 in FL).... but that's an utterly amazing and scary number for a challenger.
I think it really goes back to the success Team Obama has had with relentlessly pounding Mitt, especially in a few select states.
Worse than anything listed above. It's a bunch of Lawyers.
This is perfect Lounge fodder.
Rode the subway for over ten years. Might have happened once, but I don't remember it.
Here's the key kicker, though -- and more evidence that Obama is just burying Romney when it comes to 'defining' him:
Romney national fav/unfav stands at 37% favorable to 52% UNfavorable (Obama is at 50-45) -- that's just absolutely toxic.
EDIT: BTW - this pol was in the field before Romney's remake of Turistas....
The largely unchallenged 42 states offer 438 electoral votes; Obama is currently projected to collect 247 of those, or 23 short of a winning amount. Florida is worth 29 electoral votes, Ohio is worth 18. Obama's largest polling gains in recent weeks have come in Florida and Ohio (and Pennsylvania, which the conservative ad buyers have effectively abandoned).
The Post also assesses the negativity of the various spenders' messages. Karl Rove's American Crossroads, which has spent over $41 million-- $5 million less than Obama and $9 million more than Romney-- is rated as 100% negative. 29 other groups have an equally "perfect" attack record, from the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity to the RNC all the way down to "American Doctors 4 Truth" and their $760.00 ad buy. The top pro-Obama superPAC, Priorities USA, has spent $6 million, with 91% going to negative purposes. The Romney campaign is rated as 69% negative to date (which includes primary ads), and Obama's is at 60%.
Was just going to post that, too --
ever pulled a straight playing 7 card poker?
By pure party ID registration - this isn't out of line... There are more Democrats - registered and self-ID'ed -- in the country than there are Republicans. Them's just the facts. Self-ID'ed and registered Republicans just tend to be more loyal than Democrats -- heck, my dad's still a registered Democrat, but hasn't voted Democratic (at any level) since Carter.
Now - that's not to say that Pew's sample is necessarily right -- but it's a mistake to look at the party ID composition alone for an 'ah-ha!'.... There are much better sample composition numbers to pick apart.
Here's their historical, non-election dependent numbers on national party ID since they started doing this in 1939...Other than very brief moments of parity in the mid-90s and again at the turn of the millenium -- Democrats have traditionally held a distinct party ID advantage.
Their last outing basically has the population composition at 38 Independent, 32 Democratic, 24 GOP...
Pretty cool interactive page, but that map could use another level or the levels could be spread thinner. Pennsylvania looks heavy but "only" about $11.5M has been spent in the entire state, which is less than entire cities in other states.
That is surprising to me. I didn't know it was trending so heavily towards Obama.
I hope I'm not taking this out of context, but unless this is a definable trend, i would disagree. Except in the case of people who repeatedly say things that are "not true, not factual and are not being delivered in good faith", attacking the messenger is not a very honest debate strategy. Its often a very effective one though. I myself tend to ignore it and focus on those that attack the argument. Well... Id like to think I do at least. Psychologists would tell me I’m probably fooling myself though (see Kaneman, Thinking Fast and Slow)
Which wouldn't be much reason for their current poll having a +11 Democratic sample. There are any number of polls with a much smaller partisan edge than Pew. Gallup's poll on party identification in January had a +4 edge for Democrats, 31 - 27, with 40% independents.
Folks suggesting this election is all wrapped up have partisan blinders on, IMHO. The campaign has just begun in earnest.
In this particular context, there wasn't really an argument - the excerpts were along the lines of "Mitt Romney seems to me to be out of touch and lacking in compassion". You can read #112 to get the whole thing.
Anyway, it's not "attacking" the messenger so much as taking that particular message from that particular messenger with a huge grain of salt. I have no reason to think Fallows and Wright are dishonest or argue in bad faith; but I also don't see much reason to care about their subjective impressions of Romney or anyone else. I don't even know how you'd substantively argue with something like "it is fair to wonder about Mitt Romney's basic skill level as a politician". No! It is not fair to wonder! Stop wondering!
I suspect most of the posters in this thread are Republican operatives trying to sow complacency. I see little reason why actual partisans would try to downplay the threat from the other side.
It's so bad they've hired a top PR person to make Bain look good.
And according to Silver, Gallup's been leaning Republican. It's below.
538's take on Pew poll
Oh, I'm not suggesting anything is all wrapped up -- not by a longshot. I was a Deaniac in 2003/4, so I've learned the super hardway not to count any chickens.
I'm just mainly amazed about and enjoy discussing:
1) Obama is in extraordinarily good shape relative to Romney, for an incumbent facing significant headwinds. As it became clear late last spring/earlier this summer that the economy was going to continue to muddle along - I was starting to think it was time to toss in the towel.
2) Next to baseball, politics is my favorite sport. Like baseball, I enjoy seeing it played well (I have a ton of respect and admiration for Ronald Reagan, the politician, for example - even while I hate Ronald Reagan the President). At this point, Team Obama has been playing at a HoF level. They've successfully found the right issues and notes to pound Romney, they're executing beautifully on that pounding, and it's starting to show on scoreboard.
...as a Cubs fan and a Democrat - it's not often I get to see "my team" executing so magnificently and the results show up on the scoreboard.
That's good - I like that...
Fight's over and we can go home now.
Okay, new topic - the next big spectator sport in the U.S will be a) water polo, b) fencing, c) field hockey, or d) sport to be named later. Be prepared to defend your choice in a short essay. Sports played by attractive women in skimpy outfits will receive extra consideration.
Whoops! Okay, of the choices given, I vote for field hockey. Fencing happens too quickly to follow, and water polo has weird downtime where everyone has to swim to the other side of the pool.
How about Charles Foster Kane? No one even remembers the guy he lost to.
I'll reiterate my nomination of Slamball from the Olympics thread.
Yes. I will often say, "I'm getting off also."
I like to stand with my back leaning up against the door, rather than rush to squeeze into a seat like most people. Sometimes as the train is slowing down someone will start slowly moving towards me like a zombie, preparing to get off. If the person gets to within a couple feet of me despite there being no good reason for him being that close I will put up my hand to signal to him to stop approaching.
May you please seek professional help.
How about Charles Foster Kane? No one even remembers the guy he lost to.
That election was only for New York Governor. Romney has to hope that Obama is caught in love nest with "singer."
Sarah Palin certainly was.
I think with Obama is that in 2008, he was all things to all people. He was a Leftist, he was a Centerist. He united people, he divided people, he was a secret Muslim, he was a devout Christian. He believed in Liberation Theory, he was the more conservative choice compared to Hillary Clinton. He was the most leftest president we would have in centuries. He's white. He's black. He's White and Black. He is the American dream. He's not American at all.
In 2012, he's a bit more defined than that. He's the President of the United States.
I don't see how that would help. I know how to ride the subway. It is the morons riding with me who don't.
I dunno. I've never found out.
Years ago I was reading through the tenets of the Church of Satan (why? I can't say) and one of the things that really amused me was a bit that was something like this:
"If a person bothers you, politely ask him to stop.
If he refuses, destroy him."
The Church of Satan also had some very strong parallels with libertarian philosophy, I believe. Actually a lot of it was positive, life-affirming stuff, stuff I agreed with, but for some reason it's all dressed up with very cheesy B-movie horror props and costumes.
fencing: with how long it's been around, if it hasn't become a prominent sport by now, it's not likely to ever become one.
field hockey: it's going to be held back significantly by the fact that it's perceived as a female-only sport. i mean, if womens' soccer couldn't catch on after it was launched into the stratosphere by that world cup winning sports-bra moment, field hockey doesn't have a chance.
if i had to bet, well, what do we consider a sport? competitive eating has a lot of appeal at least as a modern day freak show. competitive gaming has a built in advantage, in that a very large segment of the teenage male population would kill to make their living playing video games.
paintball and airsoft have an advantage in that its participants can shoot people in real life, and that's always appealing.
what else is there? ultimate frisbee? rugby? quidditch? crackbaby basketball?
i don't know that anything is on the horizon right now. even if the NFL collapses under the weight of the pending litigation being brought against it, the infrastructure just isn't there for any other sport to replace it.
mixed martial arts has broken onto the scene in the last 20 years, and i think the UFC was basically a best case scenario for starting a sports league from scratch. the arenas already existed, so there was no cost to the UFC to build them. the fighters had very little leverage in negotiating their contracts because there wasn't any competition for their services in the US. the bulk of their business is on PPV, so once they built up a stable audience and a stable roster of fighters, that was at least $10 million coming into their coffers every month.
plus, they have their own version of the reserve clause, which allows them to extend a fighter's contract indefinitely, so long as he holds a title.
and in addition, during the UFC's formative years, the objections from various lawmakers (looking at you, john mccain) put barriers in the way of any upstart promotion that would potentially emerge as a competitor.
basically, i don't think there's anything on the horizon that could rise to prominence as quickly as the UFC, so i'd probably vote for e, the next big spectator sport hasn't even been invented yet.
I can tell you that I'm planning to watch the #### out of the Modern Pentathalon on August 11th.
1. Fencing.
2. 200m Swim
3. Horse jumping (with an unfamiliar horse!)
4. 3KM run while ...
5. Shooting a pistol during the run
and then there was 1988, which made 1976 seem like a charm-fest.
I call these drivers day traders. Always buying and selling lanes. In real dense jams, at best you gain, what five seconds per mile traveled, and yet you're still stuck like the rest of us. Semi drivers are your best friends in these situations. Lay back a few car lengths, nobody wants in that space (unless it is night and you re stuck looking at your own headlights shining off his rig). Semis are also great at clogging a soon to be closing lane in construction zones, when some jackass wants to bee line it to the orange arrow. In tandem, I've seen Semis pull this stunt for miles. Love it.
The TV networks have been big on silly displays of general athleticism: American Gladiators, Wipeout, American Ninja Warrior. If someone came up with something in the same vein that was not hokey and was really compelling, I could see people getting into it.
If they went "old school" and did away with the "just touching", they'd have an audience. Might be tough to attract competitors.
Those people need to be severely beaten.
though a UFC style comp that returns to the more original "anything goes" (can wear whatever you want, less restriction on small joints and that sort of non-fatal just too easy to get people hurt stuff) might help too.
1) When someone wins a presidential election, we get four years after that to learn about their personality, which will always seem "bigger" in retrospect (see Obama, Bush).
2) When someone loses a presidential election, the memory of that person tends to be as a loser, even if they did well against the economic fundamentals and are quite charming or spectacularly weird (see Dole, Kerry).
I really don't see how John McCain wasn't a "bigger" personality than Obama, but was the guy who ran for president the year the economy went in the toilet with his party in office, so he lost.
Those people need to be severely beaten.
This is the only subway complaint I feel is worthwhile.
And I agree with the solution.
To stick with politics and finance:
With the increase in population and technology, being committed to capitalism and other things conceived in the dawn of man as the only way to go is probably going to destroy us.
Buttf*cking. (Which gets past the nanny! HA!)
The GOP strategy in PA is, quite literally, "disqualify a half a million voters and hope that does it."
Weird, it didn't even occur to me that this was an actual suggestion. I just assumed it was a masturbation joke...looking back on it I can't even figure out why. I blame jet-lag.
I'm sometimes guilty of this on buses, if there's a mother with a stroller who isn't able to immediately get off the bus. So I end up thinking there's no one coming off and walk into her. In those moments I usually feel awful enough to willingly submit to a beating.
Funny. Of all the things I've read on BTF over the years, this image of Ray talking to strangers on the subway is the most unbelievable.
We need a material element so banks won't be able to just keep printing ink on paper, or electronically entering digits and a dollar sign into accounts, and pretending they just gave up something of value.
Banks shouldn't be doing that. Only governments have the power to create currency.
That's what everyone thinks, but the US government decided to hand that power over to the private Federal Reserve in 1913, hence your multi-trillion dollar national debt. So instead of financing the public works of the nation with by creating currency and owing no interest, the Federal Reserve creates it, lends it to the Federal gov't, and expects to be repaid, with interest. Utter foolishness.
I'm a ####### foreigner and even I know that every cent of Federal Reserve profit is handed over to the treasury department.
It seems like the case for central bank independence sounds a lot like the case for autocracy. It involves a lot of handwaving about how bad it would be if central bankers were actually beholden to the people like democratic leaders, and how they'd do foolish things like help people get jobs or pay off debts, instead of serving their true masters, low inflation and neoliberal labor market reforms.
EDIT: To be clear, "central bank independence" doesn't mean that the Fed prints money absent the authority of the government, as RM seemed to suggest. But there is a problem where the central bank gets to choose what they do absent any significant democratic pressures.
The little things can bring so much joy.
Hahahaha! That's a good one.
People on the austerity side aren't mad. What they want to achieve is to instill confidence in government finances, leading to lower rates, more confidence in government finances should lead to more confidence in business prospects and a virtuous cycle. It is optimistic to count on knock-on effects. But the spending way also relies on stimulating the business sector, if they tighten their belt because they perceive harder times when the stimulus ends, it will all be for naught.
And should you really try to stimulate the economy when you can only do so by issuing bonds that you can't hope to repay, and crashing the economy when you default?
The ECB basically appointed the most recent Italian PM, and they seem committed much more to establishing themselves as the leading power on the continent than in helping aid the crippling economic and social pain caused by the recession.
They haven't got the mandate to do anything like that. As it is now, ultra-hawkish Bundesbank is screaming bloody murder at what they are doing.
Not doing austerity in Europe would involve redoing the entire political system and introducing a common fiscal system and much tighter political integration. That won't happen, the healthy countries will say flat no in referendums even if the politicians would agree. It would in any case be a multi-year project.
In some ways it is like the fourth branch of government, and in many ways closer to the SC than the others in its authority. Ignoring politics and "what the cool kids say" there is a whole lot the Treasury could do while semi-ignoring the Fed, but they never really do that.
The whole thing is very custom based and may not last in its current form. But as with anything I bet changes would have a whole pile of unintended consequences.
As to sports: I enjoy playing and watching Volleyball (All flavors, but sure I admit Women's Beach holds my interest longest, sue me). Very cool sport. Don't know if it is the next big thing, but I like it and will always stop and watch it when it is on.
The only reason they can't repay them is they are stuck with a currency they don't control - which is a stupid place to be. Otherwise they could in fact repay them. Cue the inflation hysteria.
Or having the Germans (and some others) being willing to accept a monetary policy that is bad for them. Which I admit is only slightly more politically possible.
They (Europe) put themselves into this halfway heck, where they are neither integrated nor truly sovereign. It works great when everything is going well, but #### happens and now they have to figure out something. I don't think they "deserve" what they have coming or anything though, because the whole world will pay for this nonsense.
Authorities believe Chris Truby was involved.
My favorite BBTF meme. And Mike Crudale.
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