(03-15-2019 08:05 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(03-15-2019 06:26 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  So with two Texas Democrats now in the fold, I was curious and looked it up - did you know that there have been roughly two dozen Texans running for president on a major party ticket in its history? You'll know most of the recent ones (and they've all pretty much been Republicans or Independents since Lloyd Bentsen in 1976 - Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, both Bushes, Ron Paul, Ross Perot, Phil Gramm, and John Connally). And of course you have LBJ (and technically Eisenhower since he was born in Texas).
But can you name three of the earliest prominent candidates? The first one should be easy based on name recognition alone. The second one has Rice ties. And the third one still to this day is the longest living Vice President ever (no fair looking it up - you're on the honor system still).

Sam Houston
Jesse Jones
John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner

I guessed first and looked it up to confirm, probably at the same website that you looked. GHWB also had strong Rice ties (on faculty briefly) but you said earliest and had already mentioned him, so that ruled him out.

Yeah you got it right. Good job. My brother got the last two but he guessed Hogg instead of Sam Houston for the first one.

Dont know if I would brand Carly Fiorina as 'Texan'; only in the Eisenhower sense to be honest.

And, tbh, there are a lot of people that dont paint either Papa Bush or Shrub as Texan either. A better case can be made for Shrub as opposed to Papa, though.

Interesting article that breaks down the Democrats in terms of '5 lanes'.

5 Lanes for 2020 Democrats

(03-15-2019 08:39 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  Interesting article that breaks down the Democrats in terms of '5 lanes'.

5 Lanes for 2020 Democrats

Interesting read. Remember, I was the first to predict Harris.

But also interesting are the statistics in this part:

[Not only is this an electorate that thinks the president is a criminal who stole the election, it’s an electorate that is willing to believe conspiracy theories with no evidence (Russians tampering with vote tallies) in order to justify that anger.

A July 2018 Quinnipiac poll found that 86 percent of Democrats think “President Trump is racist,” and Democratic voters’ low opinion extends to members of the other party in general: A November 2018 Axios/Survey Monkey online poll found that 61 percent of Democrats described Republicans as “racist,” “bigoted,” and/or “sexist,” 54 percent said “ignorant,” 44 percent said “spiteful,” and 21 percent said “evil.” David French wrote more about polls of this nature yesterday.

So 61% of Democrats think I am racist, and 21% think I am evil. Hillary may have been pulling her punches when she said that only half of us are deplorables.

And if 86% of the people Lad talks to think Trump is racist, no wonder he thinks it is a given.

I was just listening to Chris Cuomo on CNN, and he was outright lying about what Trump said, using an edited video, and the clear intent was to present Trump as a white supremacy sympathizer. I guess it works on the faithful.

Taxing the rich

The 1990s Democratic Party made friends with the rich. The 2008 Democratic Party was eager to bail them out. The 2019 Democratic Party seems ready to declare wa

(03-04-2019 04:01 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(03-04-2019 01:05 PM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote:  Looks like we've got 14 Democratic candidates so far, with Inslee and Hickenlooper entering the arena. Just three months or so from the purported first debate in June

John Hickenlooper
Jay Inslee
Elizabeth Warren
Kirsten Gillibrand
Cory Booker
Bernie Sanders
Amy Klobuchar
Kamala Harris
Julian Castro
Pete Buttigieg
Andrew Yang
John Delaney
Tulsi Gabbard
Marianne Williamson

Avenatti

My guess is we can scratch that name from the list of potential presidential nominees.

Looks like Avenatti basta'd up one tree too many, and when he tried to basta with Nike, they basta'd right back.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/m...index.html

(03-25-2019 01:02 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(03-04-2019 04:01 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(03-04-2019 01:05 PM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote:  Looks like we've got 14 Democratic candidates so far, with Inslee and Hickenlooper entering the arena. Just three months or so from the purported first debate in June

John Hickenlooper
Jay Inslee
Elizabeth Warren
Kirsten Gillibrand
Cory Booker
Bernie Sanders
Amy Klobuchar
Kamala Harris
Julian Castro
Pete Buttigieg
Andrew Yang
John Delaney
Tulsi Gabbard
Marianne Williamson

Avenatti

My guess is we can scratch that name from the list of potential presidential nominees.

Looks like Avenatti basta'd up one tree too many, and when he tried to basta with Nike, they basta'd right back.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/m...index.html

Wow, kinda hard to figure out whom to root for in this one, but actually, I think I'm going to stick up for Avenatti. I fail to see how it fits the definition of extortion to bring a colorable claim to a potential defendant and offer to settle it:

Quote:18 USC 1951(b)(2): The term “extortion” means the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.

I could see "wrongful" if the underlying claim was BS and known by Avenatti as such, but I have zero doubt that there are, in fact, plenty of people out there with knowledge of Nike payments exactly like the ones Adidas was making. So, assuming Avenatti did enough due diligence to form a reasonable belief that his client had true information, it can't be extortion to take that to Nike and offer (even aggressively) to button it up in a nondisclosure agreement.

Now allegedly Avenatti additionally wanted a featherbedding arrangement whereby he would get paid way more than the client under the auspices of doing legal services for Nike. That could be a problem for him if he was never actually going to perform any legal services, but he'll say he was offering to, and can the government prove beyond a reasonable doubt to the contrary when the key element is Avenatti's own state of mind?

The fascinating part here is that the FBI/DOJ and Nike are undoubtedly extremely adverse parties -- Nike almost certainly is under investigation for doing the same stuff as Adidas -- but they found a temporary mutual interest in the midst of all that. Nike wants to deter a flood of lawyers seeking payment for nondisclosure agreements to hide Nike's wrongdoing. The FBI doesn't want to see evidence of Nike's wrongdoing start to disappear behind a flood of nondisclosure agreements. So they mutually agreed to try and stick Avenatti's head on a pike as a warning to all other lawyers. Just charging him will probably have that effect, even if the charges are legally flimsy. But that flimsiness could actually give rise to a malicious prosecution claim by Avenatti at some point down the road.

And on yet another level, both the FBI and Nike have obviously gotten sideways with Trump (the FBI for obvious reasons, Nike for the Kaepernick imbroglio) and could see some mutual benefit in antagonizing a high-profile Trump enemy to buy them some goodwill of some sort.

(03-26-2019 12:11 PM)illiniowl Wrote:  

(03-25-2019 01:02 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(03-04-2019 04:01 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(03-04-2019 01:05 PM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote:  Looks like we've got 14 Democratic candidates so far, with Inslee and Hickenlooper entering the arena. Just three months or so from the purported first debate in June

John Hickenlooper
Jay Inslee
Elizabeth Warren
Kirsten Gillibrand
Cory Booker
Bernie Sanders
Amy Klobuchar
Kamala Harris
Julian Castro
Pete Buttigieg
Andrew Yang
John Delaney
Tulsi Gabbard
Marianne Williamson

Avenatti

My guess is we can scratch that name from the list of potential presidential nominees.

Looks like Avenatti basta'd up one tree too many, and when he tried to basta with Nike, they basta'd right back.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/m...index.html

Wow, kinda hard to figure out whom to root for in this one, but actually, I think I'm going to stick up for Avenatti. I fail to see how it fits the definition of extortion to bring a colorable claim to a potential defendant and offer to settle it:

Quote:18 USC 1951(b)(2): The term “extortion” means the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.

I could see "wrongful" if the underlying claim was BS and known by Avenatti as such, but I have zero doubt that there are, in fact, plenty of people out there with knowledge of Nike payments exactly like the ones Adidas was making. So, assuming Avenatti did enough due diligence to form a reasonable belief that his client had true information, it can't be extortion to take that to Nike and offer (even aggressively) to button it up in a nondisclosure agreement.

Now allegedly Avenatti additionally wanted a featherbedding arrangement whereby he would get paid way more than the client under the auspices of doing legal services for Nike. That could be a problem for him if he was never actually going to perform any legal services, but he'll say he was offering to, and can the government prove beyond a reasonable doubt to the contrary when the key element is Avenatti's own state of mind?

The fascinating part here is that the FBI/DOJ and Nike are undoubtedly extremely adverse parties -- Nike almost certainly is under investigation for doing the same stuff as Adidas -- but they found a temporary mutual interest in the midst of all that. Nike wants to deter a flood of lawyers seeking payment for nondisclosure agreements to hide Nike's wrongdoing. The FBI doesn't want to see evidence of Nike's wrongdoing start to disappear behind a flood of nondisclosure agreements. So they mutually agreed to try and stick Avenatti's head on a pike as a warning to all other lawyers. Just charging him will probably have that effect, even if the charges are legally flimsy. But that flimsiness could actually give rise to a malicious prosecution claim by Avenatti at some point down the road.

And on yet another level, both the FBI and Nike have obviously gotten sideways with Trump (the FBI for obvious reasons, Nike for the Kaepernick imbroglio) and could see some mutual benefit in antagonizing a high-profile Trump enemy to buy them some goodwill of some sort.

(03-26-2019 12:11 PM)illiniowl Wrote:  Wow, kinda hard to figure out whom to root for in this one, but actually, I think I'm going to stick up for Avenatti. I fail to see how it fits the definition of extortion to bring a colorable claim to a potential defendant and offer to settle it:

I see your point. The law can be murky and apparently illogical at times. Like when paying off a bimbo is considered by some to be a campaign finance violation.

But, both issues are being handled by federal prosecutors, so let's see who goes to jail and for what.

In a way, this makes Avenotti more high profile than some of the other announced candidates.

Apparently Robert Francis thinks the Green New Deal is "right on the money". Will give him kudos, but perhaps not great smart points, over his elected brethren whom ran like scalded cats from vocalizing or even acting on their support for this thingy.

(04-02-2019 10:13 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  Apparently Robert Francis thinks the Green New Deal is "right on the money". Will give him kudos, but perhaps not great smart points, over his elected brethren whom ran like scalded cats from vocalizing or even acting on their support for this thingy.

As long as he grins and smiles, it doesn't matter what he says.

(04-02-2019 10:33 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  As long as he grins and smiles, it doesn't matter what he says.

We've seen that playbook before...
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSimpsons/com...d_to_that/

I couldn't find the video, but I remember it well: after JFK's response, the press audience reacts with a collective giggle and then a contented, admiring sigh.

(04-02-2019 10:33 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(04-02-2019 10:13 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  Apparently Robert Francis thinks the Green New Deal is "right on the money". Will give him kudos, but perhaps not great smart points, over his elected brethren whom ran like scalded cats from vocalizing or even acting on their support for this thingy.

As long as he grins and smiles, it doesn't matter what he says.

... and waves his arms

https://youtu.be/kQDQ-Q4kW5Y

Democrat offended by socialism

"The ambitious plan [GND] would cost up to $93 trillion, or over $600,000 per household, according to an American Action Forum study."

(04-03-2019 10:17 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Democrat offended by socialism

"The ambitious plan [GND] would cost up to $93 trillion, or over $600,000 per household, according to an American Action Forum study."

You mean Democrats aren't some faceless homogeneous mass? Who would have thought?

(04-03-2019 10:17 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Democrat offended by socialism

"The ambitious plan [GND] would cost up to $93 trillion, or over $600,000 per household, according to an American Action Forum study."

Their estimate to address food insecurity is amazingly worthwhile - only $10 per household to make sure there are no citizens without access to fresh food by incentivizing grocers to enter food deserts.

(04-03-2019 10:17 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Democrat offended by socialism

"The ambitious plan [GND] would cost up to $93 trillion, or over $600,000 per household, according to an American Action Forum study."

She is Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., the first Vietnamese-American woman in Congress. She said:

Quote:"The idea that in the greatest democracy, the greatest capitalist system in the world, we’re having casual conversation about socialism, offends me."
...
"It is the system that built us the greatest nation and the greatest economy in the world," Murphy said. "Sure, we have to fix the inequities that exist in our system. We have to make sure everybody, no matter what ZIP code they're born in, has a fair shot. But it is not the moment to undo the whole system and embrace something that Americans have spent blood and treasure fighting to save other countries from."

Now THAT's the kind of Democrat the world needs more of!

(04-03-2019 12:19 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(04-03-2019 10:17 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Democrat offended by socialism

"The ambitious plan [GND] would cost up to $93 trillion, or over $600,000 per household, according to an American Action Forum study."

Their estimate to address food insecurity is amazingly worthwhile - only $10 per household to make sure there are no citizens without access to fresh food by incentivizing grocers to enter food deserts.

The incentive would be a subsidy in the amount necessary to cover their losses. I'm not enthusiastic about a federal subsidy program for local grocery stores. But, then again, it wouldn't be the first business propped up by federal subsidies.

(04-03-2019 12:53 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(04-03-2019 10:17 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Democrat offended by socialism

"The ambitious plan [GND] would cost up to $93 trillion, or over $600,000 per household, according to an American Action Forum study."

She is Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., the first Vietnamese-American woman in Congress. She said:

Quote:"The idea that in the greatest democracy, the greatest capitalist system in the world, we’re having casual conversation about socialism, offends me."
...
"It is the system that built us the greatest nation and the greatest economy in the world," Murphy said. "Sure, we have to fix the inequities that exist in our system. We have to make sure everybody, no matter what ZIP code they're born in, has a fair shot. But it is not the moment to undo the whole system and embrace something that Americans have spent blood and treasure fighting to save other countries from."

Now THAT's the kind of Democrat the world needs more of!

True, as long as they don't define a "fair shot" as an equal or minimum outcome.