ComradeKayAdams

I’d rephrase slightly as: “nice job mainstream media. You really know how to pick them.” Since day one, the media has been deliberately and relentlessly molding the narrative on every Democrat candidate in order to achieve a desired result for their corporate donors. Biden was never vetted in a primary process where the main point was supposed to be doing just that for each candidate. Makes ya wonder if even just one of those nondescript, uncharismatic, white male candidates from back in the day (your choice among Bennett, Delaney, Bullock, Moulton, Inslee, Sestak, Hickenlooper) could have been a better option – if given a fair chance from the media – than a senile rapist who has been wrong on every major political issue from the past five decades? As I’ve said all along, forcing a Biden matchup versus Trump cements the 2016 political realignment of the Democrats as the party of reckless economic globalism and regime-change foreign interventionism. The Democrats were supposed to be the party of the working class and the party of peace. And then here we see Trump slide ever so slightly to the left of Joe with $1200 checks and COVID-19 medical relief and student debt relief, while Joe BYE-DONE continues fumbling around in his house with Zoom during a pandemic. Donald Trump is now the presidential candidate for the progressive left…oh my. Can’t help but wonder how much longer the mainstream media can continue gaslighting us with the Joe charade. That coronavirus leadership poll highlights America’s emerging awareness that Joe is probably in the early stages of dementia. The media still likes to point out his competitiveness by referencing national polls from the past week which have him holding anywhere between a tie with Trump and an 11% lead. My big counterpoint is the devastating presidential candidate enthusiasm poll from two weeks back. Even if more Americans prefer Biden, all that matters are the votes from people motivated enough to – you know – go out and vote. I believe we are looking at a complete meltdown of the white working class and the under-40 voting blocs that have formerly buttressed the Democratic Party throughout this era of neoliberalism. The mainstream media, of course, isn’t capable of self-reflection and will eventually blame everyone else for Biden’s inevitable November loss. Any guesses as to whom their favorite target will be? Answer: Bernie Brothers and Sanders Sisters. The voter shaming has already begun with the usual media personalities. They frame the situation as intransigent Millenials and unsophisticated idealists choosing revolution over sensible incrementalism. Why won’t they just accept Biden’s false promises of watered-down public policy scraps? Don’t they know progressive platforms can’t win elections (except when they sort of did twice in 1992 and 2008 while centrists lost 1984 and 1988 and 2000 and 2004 and 2016 and, yes, 2020…but whatever)? That COVID-19 bandana pic from an online Bernie Bro bully must mean he is getting ready for a violent ANTIFA strike. “Closet Trump supporter” is the accusation du jour. This one’s my favorite: in typical Dem establishment style, they are accusing select Bernie supporters of being Russian assets, which to be perfectly frank sounds super exciting! As soon as Putin gives me the orders, Kaytlana Adamsnova be rolling into Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum like:

You’ve given me a grand total of 8 sentences to read. All 8 are variations of calling me stupid, but without any specific details explaining why or how I’m stupid, as well as no recommended educational path I could take to eventually become less stupid. Instead of unchaining me from Plato’s cave, you’ve blocked the cave entrance with a pile of big rocks. Given the way you came at me, I assumed it was because you disagreed with practically everything I said. Unless you agree with most of what I said but don’t like how I express it? I don’t know. Maybe clarify your point of view here a bit more. How do you feel about the clarity of the defined problem as outlined in the Paris Agreement? You deserve a “like” for the Ghostbusters reference. I hope the following exchange puts you more at ease: Me: orange man bad! Rest of PPP: green commie B word! I think it might be comparing apples and oranges, really. CV models are much less complex than climate models and are modeling vastly different types of things. CV models for this particular CV have been around only within the past 5 months at best, while climate models have been around for 60 years. CV models have a much smaller scientific community working on them, while climate models have an enormous body of research literature and related research conferences. If you’re comparing the two strictly by accuracy at this present time, I think climate models easily win the debate. The biggest problems with the CV models are the official data. Many people get the virus but don’t report it. Then you have variations among countries with how cause of death is determined. And then you have serious questions with the quality of data from countries like China and Iran and India. While these CV models use many of the same modeling factors as with other pandemics, scientists are still struggling to work out many of the little details on the mechanisms by which COVID-19 spreads. With climate models, there are no similar concerns with the accuracy (or precision) of the data collected. The issue is getting the right mathematical models for all the possible factors on the planet that influence the climate. NASA GISS (see: Gavin Schmidt’s work) has been compiling the results of many different climate models for the past 20 years, and most of them are extremely impressive in their accuracy. They historically became much more accurate once the ocean’s effects were better understood. Climate models aren’t black boxes, by the way. All the underlying assumptions made are published and then shared among scientists. The various biases, points of view, or funding sources of the climate model creators are irrelevant. The only bias is toward correctly matching climate data from the past and present while making accurate predictions of the future. Rest assured that if Joe Biden somehow becomes president, there will not be a Green New Deal. That’s not what centrist/moderate/establishment Democrats want. They only throw around the “green” label to corral gullible progressive lefties on election day and obfuscate true interests (example: Liz Warren’s “green new military” proposal). They have no desire to fundamentally reshape our civic infrastructure and thus large parts of our economy; they’re only willing to trim around the margins a bit. I always judge politicians by their actions and their donors, not by their speeches and their promises. If Joe Biden or any of the establishment Dems actually cared about any of the Green New Deal components, they would have achieved something substantive within the past 25 years since Al Gore began sounding alarms. I don’t know what you mean by “nature snapping back in 60-90 days.” Are you referring specifically to global warming? The effects of the estimated global COVID-19 shutdown times are projected to be about a 5% reduction in annual carbon dioxide emissions, which will be measurable in atmospheric ppm but utterly negligible in the scheme of things with respect to atmospheric temperatures and ocean temperatures and Arctic ice size and sea elevations and the like. But let’s say the effect is somehow much larger than expected. This would mean these measurable outputs are much more robust to the carbon dioxide system inputs than we thought, which would be encouraging news in term of our potential to turn things around. But that still doesn’t alter the fact that we don’t ever want to push nature beyond certain “point-of-no-return” limits for atmospheric ppm inputs and global temperature outputs. As you may already know, the Earth’s climate is one giant feedback control system with a complex number of positive feedback loops and negative feedback loops. You don’t want to drive this system’s gain beyond certain regions of stability. The atmosphere of Venus is a very extreme example of doing that (although to be clear, an anthropogenic greenhouse effect couldn’t possibly create THAT type of system instability here on Earth). If you’re referring to nature in general, 60-90 days of inactivity will likely show obvious reductions in pollution and increases in animal populations. But nature’s ability to snap back, following corrections in human behavior, completely depends on the situation. Sometimes it can restore itself quickly (hole in ozone layer), sometimes very slowly (rainforest soil restoration), sometimes a mix of speeds (Chernobyl impact region), and sometimes not at all (ecological distortions from megafaunal species extinction). I don’t see the point of ever having a careless regard for nature, even if it’s just a temporary carelessness. Environmentalism is about much more than maintaining a subjective “green aesthetic” for whacko lefties like me. It’s about securing at all times our civilization’s health, food supply, civic infrastructure, and ultimately the economy.

Hillary is way too toxic. She's so despised among the Midwest working class that it's too big of a risk. It can't be Warren or Gabbard since the VP would basically be the likely President within another year, and the DNC doesn't want either of them to ever have that position of power. I don't know enough about Gretchen Whitmer yet, honestly. A lot of Bernie supporters like Stacey Abrams and would stick with the Dems to vote for her, but she doesn't have the proper experience in my opinion. I still think it's going to be Kamala Harris. Young woman of color, enough experience in California politics and on the national political stage, strong centrist who can still kind of pivot on a few key progressive issues, and easily corruptible so she will do whatever the DNC and donors want.

The progressive left wing of the Democratic Party is unfortunately a potential breeding ground for anti-semitism because it’s a natural home for those who most vociferously criticize the state of Israel’s actions, Islamophobia, billionaire crony capitalists (Jews are greedy trope), and mainstream media corruption (Jews own entertainment industry tope). I saw glimpses of it myself from time to time within the Bernie movement, though happily not very often and less often than in 2016. So it’s definitely not just corners of the alt-right that foster anti-semitism. It’s something we all need to carefully monitor as our country enters a major social and economic upheaval, since history shows us that Jews are often the most vulnerable and on the front lines of the blame game in times like these.

For me, it's just an off-season projection based partly on Ford's draft report and partly on his rookie year performances at RG and RT. I think Ford has the highest ceiling of the 3 (Ford, Feliciano, Williams) at RG and Williams has the highest ceiling (a return to 2017 form) of the 3 at RT. So that's why I have Feliciano as the odd man out. It's a projection dependent on best-case scenarios. I'm not a Feliciano hater by any means. I will say this, however: this Bills only had the 24th best offense last year and were mediocre in both allowed QB sack percentage and rushing yards per carry. Diggs, a younger Gore replacement, and more collective experience in Daboll's offense may not be enough to propel the offense into top 10 range. Maybe fielding the same starting OL lineup as last year is sufficient (Dawkins-Spain-Morse-Feliciano-Ford), but maybe the Bills will need an internal upgrade among Long, Nsekhe, Williams, and Bates.

Okay which one of you edited my wikipedia page??? Apparently I'm dating this guy now: https://muckrack.com/larry-lease

Hi Bill, I’m sure it did to some extent. But I don’t think the correct solution would have been to outright reject Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and continue to divide the progressive wing into smaller pieces. As the de facto leader of the nation’s progressive left, Bernie should have stepped up to address the situation immediately when it came up, denounce as necessary, reframe the Israel/BDS debate, and clarify an “official” progressive stance on this issue. Bernie didn’t do this because he tends to be way too conflict averse with people he sees as allies. He let the issue linger in the minds of many moderate voters to the point that they came to associate the centrist wing as the pro-Israel group and the progressive wing as the anti-semitic Palestinian apologists group, with little room for nuance.

They are still occurring, of course, but their effects have already been accounted for and still can’t explain the specific temperature trends seen since the late 19th century. The greenhouse gas effect caused by modern human activity (mainly from fossil fuel burning, concrete production, deforestation, and methane gas emissions from livestock) is the earth science community’s overwhelming consensus explanation. I’m not really in the mood for personal attacks right now. I summarize the ideas of climate change experts because it also happens to be what I “believe,” which is to say it makes the most sense to me so far based on all the evidence I’ve seen. Arriving at conclusions different from you isn’t proof that I am blindly faithful or lack an aptitude for critical thinking. In science, strong heterodox claims require strong evidence. So what are the peer-reviewed research papers countering the man-made global warming consensus that you find particularly persuasive? What logical fallacies or flaws in the data or computational modeling errors do these papers describe that pique your interest? And what is your own educational background that makes you qualified to assess these challenges to a scientific consensus? I’m asking for published papers in a research journal, not an opinion piece from a William Happer type or a YouTube video from a neckbeard quack. Articles summarizing the dissenting arguments from climate change scientists are perfectly fine, too. Full disclosure on my own climate change background: not a professional climatologist or earth scientist, avid conservationist since adolescence, scientifically literate, basic earth science knowledge at an intro undergrad course level, semi-frequent reader of popular science articles, second-hand connections with actual climatologists via postdoc oceanographer friend who has published articles herself on climate change. I never argued that reforestation was the only solution needed. It’s not a trivial one, but the big limiting factor is the amount of land on the earth capable of growing forests. Research was done a while back about the reforestation potential of the entire Sahara Desert. The big conclusion (to no one’s surprise) was that it would be way too expensive. The somewhat unexpected realization was that it would also probably wipe out the Amazon rainforest in a sort of whack-a-mole problem solving dilemma. So yeah, I don’t want to overstate the idea that we can just grow a bunch of trees anywhere to get us out of this mess. I believe this was JP Losman’s plan for downtown Buffalo. It ended up being his greatest contribution to the city. You have bizarre expectations for political discourse on an online football message board. I didn’t realize DR and I were being graded on our prose. This is my 5th post here. The first two were fairly simple questions. The third was a much longer post casually summarizing all of my opinions on the subject so that DR knew where I stood. The fourth was a quick follow-up. I didn’t know I was supposed to be composing a well-focused expository essay all this time. You want a clearly defined problem: anthropogenic global warming is negatively impacting our coastal cities and overall civilization in a number of ways, and it requires a rapid large-scale movement toward a solution. Do you want specific metrics? Carbon dioxide ppm, temperature limits, sea level rise limits, time scales? Do you want a bibliography appended with properly cited research papers? Why do I need a clearly defined solution right now? I came here to participate in a discussion partly because I don’t have one. I have my general biases toward what a solution might look like, but I’m open to discussing all types of ideas. I originally came here today to share something I recalled about planet terraforming that was based on NASA Mars research done many years ago. Nevermind.

Hi DR, I was confused about the “top secret patents related to propulsion” and “recovered craft” comments. No need to type up a lengthy explanation to me if you don’t want. Is there a link or book you recommend I check out on this? You raised an excellent point here which I forgot to cover: the issue of countries like China and India raising the global carbon footprint despite whatever efforts we make to reduce our own. Diplomacy and open dialogue and pressure from Paris Agreement countries may not be enough. Hopefully the international economic pressures from wanting to participate in an exploding renewable energy economy would be enough, as well as a shrinking international demand for fossil fuels that China and India self-generate. If not, maybe high tariffs or economic sanctions as a last resort?! You might be interested to know that scientists can measure the dip in atmospheric carbon during the thirteenth century solely due to Genghis Khan’s raids. Destroying civilizations and allowing for the reforestation of the lands is good for the planet. So is the complete implosion of the world economy because of a pandemic. But there are less drastic solutions we can explore as well! No, that was due to things like the earth’s orbital fluctuations, variations in sun energy output, changing ocean currents, shifting continental positions, volcanic activity, and what not. Climate change since the advent of the Industrial Revolution can only really be explained by artificially throwing lots of carbon into the atmosphere and not having as many trees around anymore to absorb it. Earth scientists have accounted for all other possible contributing factors.

My post-mortem analysis of the Bernie campaign: 1. The entire campaign strategy was too heavily dependent on other major candidates not dropping out before Super Tuesday. You can’t coast on 30-35% pluralities in a largely one-on-one race; you also need a coherent plan to break into 50%+ majorities. 2. At a certain point, it became obvious that the primary was about beating Trump and not about public policy. Bernie didn’t adapt quick enough to this emerging truth. He doubled down by repeatedly calling Joe Biden a nice, likeable, uncorrupt guy who could beat Trump. Great strategy, Bernie… 3. Too many Democrat establishment hires in Bernie’s campaign from prior Obama and Clinton campaign teams. Some would call them incompetent and out of touch. I call them campaign saboteurs. 4. He never properly defined socialism and where he stands in relation to that term and to capitalism. 5. Didn’t support what should have been obvious political allies and completely failed to build a single unified progressive left coalition. The first warning sign for me was the Zephyr Teachout incident. I ignored it at the time, but what an omen! Bernie also didn’t aggressively mend relations with Warren before Super Tuesday. Oops. Tulsi Gabbard would have been an amazing attack dog for VP on a very competitive Dem ticket, but she was more or less spurned. 6. Didn’t try hard enough to extend base of support with Boomers, African Americans, and suburban moms. 7. Didn’t help enough college students and working-class Americans navigate voting hurdles during the primary. Sending Liz Warren a few mean snake emojis online is neat, but you know what’s better? Actually going out into the real world and voting! 8. PC nonsense and ideological purity tests. The death knell of the progressive left. The rest of the country won’t ever begin to take us seriously as a political force until this stops. In retrospect, Bernie Sanders was never that committed to winning. Too much political theater and not nearly enough political results. Too bad the Bernie Bro cult is largely incapable of questioning their dear leader. As a Sanders Sis, it hurts me to see most of them continue to believe that Biden can be pushed left and that the Democrats are a viable home for progressives. Kamala Harris for VP is my prediction, which says it all: 4 more years of neoliberalism. Gross. R.I.P. Bernie 2020.

I would vote for Walt Patulski. But honorable mention goes to Leif Larsen, the 194th selection in 2000. John Butler chose to take a chance on a semi-professional Norwegian polar bear wrestler instead of Tom Brady. Wonderful.

You lost me a bit in your last two paragraphs, DR, but I always appreciate outside-the-box brainstorming for difficult problems! Here is broadly where I stand on this subject, since I have some time to waste this morning: 1. Man-induced climate change is not a hoax like this thread title suggests. The science behind it, in terms of the fundamental mechanisms by which planets warm, has been well-established since the middle twentieth century. The accumulated evidence is overwhelming. I won’t bore my dear PPP readers with talk of weather pattern data, average temperatures, summer sea ice, greenhouse gases, ice core gas deposits, atmospheric carbon isotopes, ocean sediments, tree rings, corals, sun activity, orbital mechanics, cyanobacteria, yadda yadda yadda…unless people really want to… 2. The computational models that scientists use to predict global warming time frames and levels of severity are certainly open to criticism, but not at all to the degree that the biggest and loudest climate change skeptics state. When it comes to the problem-solving stages of climate change, I have no problem operating from the worst-case starting point of these models due to the grave potential impact on civilization. 3. Private industry has an important role to play in terms of technological innovation and churning out applicable products into the global markets, but it needs government incentives to move toward these solutions in a focused and expedited manner. In terms of the fundamental science behind these products, this is best done in academia and with (primarily public) research grants. It’s been this way for a while now. The glory days of Bell Labs and IBM research labs are long gone. The same goes for the government labs, too. The glory days of NASA and the Manhattan Project are even more long gone. 4. I enthusiastically support the Green New Deal, but only when viewed as a declaration of a moral imperative and a loosely outlined philosophy for getting to that point of solving man-made climate change. I’m not comfortable with calls for nationalizing our energy industries, for example. I’m also very unhappy with exclusions of nuclear energy and what I see as an overreliance on wind farms. We need many more details on the (unavoidably disruptive) economic transition process for fossil fuel companies and all other industries affected by substantial infrastructure changes. I’d also like to see a greater emphasis on things like addressing reforestation initiatives, the environmental impact of meat/dairy industries, and public/private land right claims. Basically, I’m open-minded to a wide range of discussion on the details, but I’m also fairly convinced at this point that a large primarily government-based movement is needed to tackle climate change. We are, after all, at this point because we have not been a proper watchdog of capitalism since the Industrial Revolution began. I don’t think capitalism is inherently evil or anything like that, but it has proven over and over again that it is not much of an environmental steward and doesn’t respond very well to long-term problems and community-shared risks like man-made global warming. We need to be pragmatic and not turn a once very healthy American skepticism of centralized government authority into a dogmatic pathology. Sure, be wary of increased government reaches of power and government arbiters of economic victors in a Green New Deal, but also hold that same standard for fossil fuel companies that have been manipulating government regulations and spreading disinformation campaigns for quite some time now.

Corporate welfare is okay in limited cases, but the dairy industry definitely shouldn’t be included in these cases. The original purpose of farm subsidies was to stabilize the country’s food supply during famines or deep economic recessions, like what was seen during the Gilded Age. The dairy industry has always invested heavily in lobbyists in order to convince America and its politicians that they provide a “critical” nutrition source (I think they may have even played a prominent role in getting Iowa to be the first primary state?). The problem here is that dairy milk is in no way an essential source of nutrition. You can get calcium and vitamin D from a large variety of natural food sources, as well as fortified ones, supplements, and sunlight in the case of vitamin D. Many Americans are not even lactose tolerant, including most non-Caucasians. Dairy farmers are whining to the government because alternative plant-based milks are hurting their business model, but at the same time they’re completely unwilling to adapt their farm business model to accommodate the natural changes in demand occurring within the food market. I didn’t even touch the animal rights issues with the dairy industry, but that’s another topic for another thread.

I’ve been a proponent of FDR-style capitalism independent of the pandemic crisis. This latest crisis only exacerbates some of the fundamental weaknesses in our economic system. So does this mean you won’t be giving my post a “like?” Take your time. Or even table discussion of long-term structural changes like M4A and only focus on your original topic of how to transition our economy back to something resembling normal. When doing so, try to address some of the concerns I raised in my post: unemployment spikes in a service-oriented economy, people losing health care due to unemployment, health care costs, student loan payments, rent payments, and mortgage payments. I posted this in another thread somewhere: wage growth hasn’t been keeping up with costs of living for four decades now (especially rent, education, child care, health care).This has mostly affected the working class and is a significant reason why so many Americans find themselves barely treading economic waters. But even if we assume it’s 100% due to Americans irresponsibly living beyond their means, that doesn’t take away the economic crisis that it presents during this pandemic! These people are not going to have money to put back into the economy once we try to jump-start it. Not what I meant at all. I am NOT declaring South Korea a clear winner. I’m saying that if you WERE to (foolishly) go about declaring winner countries and loser countries right now at this very moment, you would probably choose South Korea, a country that happens to incidentally have universal health care. And again to be clear, I am NOT suggesting that a nation’s specific pandemic response is directly related to their general health care system, either. There are numerous reasons why they initially appear to have had better success than others (geography, culture, past experiences with zoonotic diseases to name a few).

Gotcha, but don't you think the government has a major role to play too, in terms of research grants from NSF, DOE, DOD, etc....? Or from government-run DOE research labs? Once upon a time, a lot of amazing and diverse science/technology resulted from throwing a lot of taxpayer money into NASA. There's also the temporal constraint component to man-made climate change. The free market operates on its own time frame.

What exactly are the solutions to climate change that don't involve some form of a large-scale government-influenced initiative? This is an honest, sincere question for the message board. 259 pages of this thread are too many to peruse. Any specific articles, links, books, or YouTube videos I should check out? I'd be very open to free market solutions if there are good ones out there.

I think it's waaaaaay too early to declare winners and losers in the coronavirus medical response. Too many factors and too many unknowns that need to play themselves out. Right now the clear winner might be South Korea, for example, which also happens to have universal health care. Any perceived failures among the medical responses from Europe's countries probably go beyond the simple fact that they have socialized medicine. It's important to note that pretty much every other major developed country outside the US has a healthy social safey net that includes universal health care. The rest of the world is looking in horror at the fact that we just sent 10 million Americans to the unemployment lines in the past two weeks (and eventually over 30% of our work force by some worst-case estimates) when our country has an employment status-based health care system with huge health care costs. Furthermore, the rest of the world is offering generous socal welfare goodies to get their citizens through this crisis like large UBI's and rent/mortgage payment suspensions. Oh yeah, they also don't have the enormous student debt bubble that we have looming over our economy. Oh yeah, and 59% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck BEFORE this crisis began (source: Charles Schwab's 2019 Modern Wealth Index Survey). Our weird American economic system of "socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor" (MLK quote) wasn't constructed to withstand a shut-down like this. And we hate anything associated with the label "socialism" so much that we may not even be politically capable of offering temporary socialism relief to avert a catastrophic social and economic disaster.

I, for one, am willing to sacrifice my dear Polish grandma for the sake of the 2020 NFL season. This is Buffalo's year. You had a great run, Grandma Adams, but the Bills are entering a tight two-year window of opportunity before Josh Allen's rookie contract is up.

It's a good start, but I see the infamous Lychee and Dog Meat Festival in Yulin is still set to take place at the end of June. I will not be happy if this is allowed to continue... China needs to ban this and all wet markets IMMEDIATELY.

I really like this new 14-team playoff format. It rewards the best record in the conference with a week off, all of the division winners are guaranteed a home game, and you still have over half of the teams in the regular season not qualifying.

Well I'm glad everyone here at least seems to understand the dangerous potential for crony capitalism in the coronavirus bailout bill. When the time comes, will we put away partisan bickering and push every single elected politician for the necessarily strict oversight? I have my doubts, but maybe I'm being too cynical. Regarding your statements on the need for more individual responsibility: there's no doubt a lot of truth to it for many Americans. But I also think you are generalizing too much here to the point that you may be ignoring the fundamental flaws with our current economic system. It’s hard for many to financially prepare for emergencies like this pandemic when wage growth isn’t keeping up with costs of living, health care, education, etc…

Ok, well thanks for the advice which I am taking up by defecting to the Green Party, but just so you know I don’t reject capitalism and I have a feeling that we don’t agree on the same definition of socialism here either. I like capitalism with a healthy social safety net and a few key regulatory limits on otherwise laissez faire business and bank interactions. I also don’t have a problem with the existence of billionaires. My problem with some of them is the way they use their wealth to corrupt government, the media, and the military for their own benefit while simultaneously exploiting the working and middle classes. Don’t worry! Joe Biden won’t be capitulating in any meaningful way to progressives because he has said so very bluntly and repeatedly. Best of luck with the under-40, Latino, and white working class voting blocs. I can try and keep you updated on what percentage of the Bernie voting coalition I think will stick with Biden, based on my experiences and connections with the Sanders campaign. Right now I’d say a solid 80%, though that’s still double the attrition percentage from 2016. The coronavirus, however, presents such a huge unknown for society and for the economy that predictions at this moment in time seem pointless… You and me, 1915 Buffalo Bill Cody Fan! Howie’s campaign may be as unconventional as your use of punctuation, but together we can help him defeat Trump and Biden on November 3. Then we can celebrate with a big bowl of delicious TRUMPOLINI (I’m vegan, so no cheese please).

Hi Bill, I have some free time tonight, so I will try to answer all your questions. I think the establishment Dems pander to progressives only in a very selective way. When it comes to most issues of civil liberties, I think they do a good job of giving us what we want and going to battle for us in promoting these positions. However, curiously enough when it comes to issues like social welfare programs or Wall Street regulations or progressive tax codes at the very high limit or the military-industrial complex or foreign policy or the environment, I don’t think they come even close to compromising with us. Keep in mind I am referring to how politicians actually vote and govern, not to what they say behind microphones. The reason for this discrepancy of support between issues? As you have probably figured out by now from my rants, my opinion is that it comes down solely to their corporate donors and how these politicians themselves benefit financially from these particular policy stances. Maybe you know a lot more about Cuomo than I do right now? I kind of stopped following him so closely since his days battling Cynthia Nixon. If he’s been pivoting more toward true progressive ideas, that is news to me and might actually make him an even more salable alternative to Biden at the convention. He’s connected to the Kennedy dynasty, too, which gives him a lot of cachet with low information voters. Oh yeah, here’s a fun fact for y’all: his dad Mario (a Bills fan, BTW) was a big national name back in 1988 and was the leading candidate to replace Jessie Jackson at the national convention if Dukakis couldn’t finish off Jackson during the primaries. History possibly repeating itself, in a way??? I would have liked the Democratic Party to have moved away from Obama and Bill Clinton and gone back to their FDR and LBJ roots. This sounds too radical to many message board readers here, but it’s not seen as remotely radical to Millenials (my people!), Generation Z, and citizens of modern Western democratic countries. I’m also somewhat to the political right of your stereotypical Bernie supporter on a number of issues like PC culture, second amendment, late-term abortion, Russiagate, Ukrainegate, border control, and nuclear energy. I’m also to the extreme left of them on a select few issues like the drug war, animal rights, and many aspects of environmental protections. As you can see, choosing a political party to belong to isn’t as simple for me as it is for others. That’s also probably why it’s easier for me to quit the Dems than it is for other Bernie supporters. Overall, I do still think of Bernie Sanders as an honest politician and a good person. I have no regrets volunteering for his campaign this past year. At the national level, I think history will view him more as an influential political iconoclast like Eugene Debs than just another presidential candidate has-been like George McGovern. I don’t think Bernie ever had the killer political instincts to defeat the party establishment and become president like Trump did. Bernie listened to a lot of bad advice from certain campaign insiders and did not do a good job of sifting through the typical ideological purity test nonsense that progressives tend to engage in so to unite the different factions of the movement. One example: I have insider knowledge that a certain high-up campaign manager personally dislikes Tulsi Gabbard and pressured Bernie to reject her endorsement because she is seen as too far-right for the movement…a bunch of high school mean girls nonsense that Bernie didn’t quell. I hope any of this was remotely interesting to anyone? Yikes I type too much…

Hmmm.... I would maybe substitute CB with an LDE Lawson replacement here. Now normally I'm a BPA kind of gal, and I think Beane is a BPA kind of guy, but I - like you - think he should prioritize an RB Gore upgrade this year. Not too many draft picks are going to make this season's roster, so I would use a couple of these picks to trade up a bit to secure players whom Beane likes. Singletary is the McCoy-like lightning; the Bills still need some Lynch-like thunder.

starters: Dawkins - Spain - Morse - Ford - Williams backups: Nsekhe, Long, Feliciano, Bates, Boettger, Salako This is a really solid group! They lack elite talent but have outstanding depth. Can the Bills even find a rookie OL starter in the draft outside the top 53 picks? Can any OL draft pick outside the top 85 picks even crack this roster's top 8?