PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Will Nick Bosa’s political views become an issue for 49ers?

By grabbing Nick Bosa with the second pick of the NFL draft, the 49ers got a man most agree should disrupt opponents’ quarterbacks and backfields for years to come. But is there a chance Bosa will also become a disruptive force within the team’s fanbase or even its locker room because of his political beliefs?

Bosa hasn’t hidden his right-leaning political views and fervent support of President Donald Trump, but before the draft he did delete a number of controversial social media posts from when he was a teenager that included racial tones.

“I had to,” Bosa told ESPN before the draft. “There is a chance I might end up in San Francisco.”

Among the items deleted were a Bosa tweet calling then-49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick “a clown” for kneeling as part of his social justice protests in 2016. He also criticized the movie “Black Panther” and Beyonce’s music while liking tweets from conservative political analyst Tomi Lahren.

The 49ers’ decision-makers are confident that Bosa’s online presence will not become an issue, which is why general manager John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan didn’t hesitate when picking him Thursday.

If there’s one thing I learned from the 49ers in recent years, some issues are much bigger than football, and a quarterback must be free to discuss them, even on Sunday. Hopefully Bay Area fans will continue to demonstrate their tolerance for diversity by accepting Bosa’s outspokenness on any issue he wishes to opine upon.

ICYMI: CBO Report: 1.4 Million Lost Health Insurance Since 2016 — And Obamacare Is To Blame.

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WELL, SCHOLARS DEAL IN IDEAS AND GET THEIR SENSE OF SELF-IMPORTANCE FROM IDEAS: “America Isn’t an Idea/It’s a place with unique customs that people are proud of. Why do country singers get this but so many scholars don’t?”

UNEXPECTEDLY! Higher minimum wage means restaurants raise prices and fewer employee hours, survey finds.

IS PREPAREDNESS A PRESIDENTIAL QUALITY? So Biden appears on the inevitably fawning gabfest The View, and is tossed a softball question about the touchy stuff. To be honest, I’d like to think he’s sincere. Being 60+ years old, I’ve been called to HR for addressing a 19-year-old intern as “sweetheart” in passing — a function of my age and generational upbringing. But listen to this interview and it’s amazing to me that he was not prepared and can’t seem to string together a single coherent sentence. If he can’t see *this* coming from a group willing to love him, how would he deal with Putin?

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? The Authors of the CDC’s Opioid Prescribing Advice Say It Has Been ‘Misimplemented’ in a Way That Hurts Patients.

HMM: Bank of America Silent on Donations to Planned Parenthood, SPLC.

They sure weren’t silent about this: Bank of America to Stop Financing Makers of Military-Style Guns.

THOUGHTS FROM a hipster coffee shop.

Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, “An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity.”

Never saw American prosperity. Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I’ve ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Now, I’m not attributing Miss Ocasio-Cortez’s words to outright dishonesty. I do think she whole-heartedly believes the words she said to be true. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand.

Indeed. It is essential for Democrats’ objectives that things be awful. Or, failing that, that people think that things are awful.

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CHANGE: In a Dramatic Moment Trump Tells NRA Crowd That U.S. Will Halt Ratification of Obama-Era UN Arms Treaty.

WOMAN WAKES AFTER 27 YEAR COMA.

I’VE BEEN READING THESE STORIES SINCE THE ’80S: Aging Sealift Fleet Is Achilles Heel Of Pentagon War Plans.

USA TODAY: Trump’s Charlottesville comments twisted by Joe Biden and the media. “Sure, Donald Trump said there were ‘fine people on both sides’ but in the next breath he condemned ‘neo-Nazis and White nationalists.’ Don’t leave that out.”

Forget it, it’s all about the narrative.

GOOD: NASA, FEMA, international partners to hold asteroid impact exercise.

MIDDLEBURY STUDENT GOVERNMENT DOUBLES DOWN: In the wake of Middlebury’s latest speaker disinvitation, its student government officially demands that those hosting speakers be made to fill out a “due diligence form” issued by the diversity office in order to “remov[e] the burden of researching speakers from the student body.” That’s not even the worst part of what, without a trace of irony, it calls “proposals for community healing.”

COLORADO: State Lawmakers Aim To Temper Teen Vaping Rates With Big Tax Increases.

Gov. Jared Polis joined public health advocates and high school students at the state Capitol on Wednesday to announce HB 19-1333, which would ask voters in the fall to increase taxes on cigarettes and impose new taxes on nicotine vaping devices, like the popular JUUL.

“We have a moral imperative to reduce teen smoking and vaping. We have financial imperative for public health,” Polis said.

The governor said the new bill was personal to him. His partner’s mother, a lifelong smoker, died at 58 from lung cancer.

Under the proposal, vaping devices, the pods that contain liquid nicotine and tobacco products would be taxed at 62 percent of their wholesale price. The cigarette tax would more than triple.

That new revenue line would raise more than $300 million annually for Colorado.

Prediction: It won’t.

WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN THIS? How California’s troubled high-speed rail project was ‘captured’ by costly consultants.

But significant portions of this work have been flawed or mismanaged, according to records reviewed by The Times and interviews with dozens of people involved in the project. Despite repeated warnings since 2010 about weaknesses in its staffing, the rail authority believed it could reduce overall costs by relying on consultants and avoiding a large permanent workforce. But that strategy has failed to keep project costs from soaring. Ten years after voters approved it, the project is $44 billion over budget and 13 years behind schedule.

A reckoning may be coming very soon, however.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently told The Times that he would be taking aim at the consultants when the rail authority sends a major project update to the Legislature on May 1, including a detailed plan on building a partial operating system from Bakersfield to Merced for $16 billion to $18 billion.

“I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” Newsom said. “How did we get away with this?”

But actually reducing the role of consultants will be problematic because they have become cemented into place.

When state rail authority employees go to their Sacramento headquarters, they work in offices rented by a consultant. When they turn on their computers, much of their data is stored on servers owned by consultants. The software they use to help manage the project is the property of a consultant.

It’s inherent graft built into every left-controlled city’s “desire named streetcar” on a massive, statewide scale.

UNEXPECTEDLY! Once Again, Trump’s Economy Beats the ‘Experts.’

WELL, THAT’S BECAUSE THEY WERE: Fox: Strzok-Page texts sure look like FBI was attempting to spy on incoming Trump admin.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: Trump Should Counter North Korea’s $2 Million Bill for Otto Warmbier with an Invoice from the American People.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Swallowable, self-inflating capsule may help people lose weight.

WORRIED CHRIS MATTHEWS WARNS DEMS TO ‘SOBER UP,’ FEARS ANOTHER MCGOVERN:

I think the message to Democrats is don’t blow this one. You blew it in 2016. You lost to Trump. Nobody should have ever lost to Trump. You could do it again. So don’t go with having a lot of fun in next year and a half, following the flavor-of-the-month stuff. Don’t enjoy yourself. Sober up. Pick the best candidate to beat Trump. Because nobody wants to be around the Democratic Party the day after losing to Trump twice. Nobody’s gonna be forgiven for that. So shake yourselves up, sober up, and pick the guy that can prevent this guy from staying in the White House for, as he put it, eight years.

Minutes later, Matthews continued to sound the alarm, fearing President Trump could win reelection:

And they can easily lose. I talked to somebody in Pennsylvania yesterday, you know him. He’s a Republican in Montgomery county. And they’re talking 45 states if it’s Bernie. The Democrats can lose this war next time. And they live in a bubble. And that’s been their big problem. A lot of people up in Pennsylvania, and places like that, think the Democrats have been having one hell of party the last few years and they weren’t invited.

Wait until Chris Matthews discovers that he works for MSNBC, a channel dedicated to pushing Democrats as far to the left as possible. All the Democrats have to do is not be crazy — but MSNBC is the crazy.