As a proud U of M alum, I love this pick.

Funk came to Maryland with very high expectations. If memory serves, with the “athlete” category, and no true position. ACL tears in consecutive years (2018, 2019) derailed a very promising career. He likely would have been a Christian McCaffrey type if he had not beeen banged up.

Worked damn hard to recover, and his Pro Day performance showed he’s mostly back. Has 4.4 speed, good vert at 38, and decent broad at 10.2.

I think he can help the Rams, at least on special teams, where he’s a willing “demon.” Xavier Jones should watch out. Funk may end up RB3.

And, given the name “Funk,” I thought this would be a good place for this recent discovery — late to the party as I may be. Easily one of the best post-Hendrix guitar solos in history, with Eddie Hazel starring, and all of 21 at the time:

Love his speed, but this is a dumb pick in the 2nd round, especially when the Rams have so few. You just don’t pick a player this high who won’t see the field outside gadget stuff. And at 155 pounds, with very small hands and short arms, he’s not going to get the 50/50 stuff, which they do need. I’m also worried he’s a fumble waiting to happen at his size.

I could almost see it if they didn’t already have Woods, Kupp, Jefferson and Jackson, but they do. The Rams don’t have a problem at wideout. They don’t even lack depth. With Jackson, they don’t lack speed . . . and if GPS is a true measure, Jefferson is speedy too.

They needed O-line or ILB at this spot, especially. Or, a freakish edge guy like Ossai from Texas.

I’ve gone from thinking McVay and the FO were geniuses, to thinking they’ve lost their freakin’ minds this offseason.

Gotta hope they find value as the draft progresses, but this is not an auspicious start.

I think I may understand now. The Rams strategy is obviously Spockian Eleveny dimensional chess. Vulcan Post-Doc required. It’s on another level from any other team, and no one but a true Queen’s Gambit quant will “get it.”

So . . . no real problem at QB or so we thought. They had Goff, a guy they traded a thousand draft picks so they could move up and grab, and then another thousand draft picks to dump, with no real “issue” other than lack of confidence, which the Rams decided could be fixed by bashing him before they traded him away, thus radically devaluing their own asset . . . and now they sign a punter, when they have a Top Three punter already, one who may be HOF level, and they don’t sign anyone to play Center or ILB, which they desperately need, or anyone who can scare defenses into playing waaaay deep, or a Left tackle to replace the Father Time dude they have there now . . .

As the Guinness commercial used to say, “Brilliant!”

I’m pounding the draft-table for Johnny Steamroll, Bulldog Pancaker, or Wolfgang Von Trapblock. Just hoping they don’t run sub-5.0 forties at their Pro Days, or the Rams may be out of luck.

Jelly ruined my peanut butter sandwiches as a kid, and I won’t ever, ever, not ever, forgive it for that.

The only place jelly should be seen or heard from is in a donut. That’s it. Blueberry is preferred; strawberry acceptable.

And I think this should be mandated at the Federal level, along with an end to shaky cams, and even the hint of a 17-game NFL season.

nittany ram wrote:

So, what you’re saying is the Rams are about to go from a Hav, to a Hav not.

Groan.

;>)

But Hemingway couldn’t hav said it any better.

And destroying the Republican party would have inevitably led to all kinds of things: Green New Deal (a real one, too), Wall St reform, Medicare for All, increased wages and benefits for workers, stronger unions, less imperialism abroad, reduced police state, all kinds of things that the financiers of the Democrat party do not want to see happen. The Democrats NEED the Republicans so that THEY can be the leftward edge of the economic and political spectrums.

This part of your post sums it up.

In a sane world, the Dems, at least as far as their leadership goes, would be the “conservative” party. The GOP wouldn’t be a party at all. It would be several far-flung strands of far-right lunacy, broken up enough to be relatively harmless.

We leftists would be the Opposition.

I won’t live to see it. But that’s how things should shape up. The DSA and other left-wing groups could form coalitions to go against the Dems, and hopefully persuade progressive Dems to jump ship.

I hope future generations get real political choices, and that capitalism itself is on the ballot. IMO, if it isn’t, and we don’t replace it with a sane, egalitarian, fully democratic economy, working within the limits of this planet’s ecology, we humans won’t make it very far into the 22nd century. Most other life forms will likely go extinct well before that. We’ve already lost half of that since 1970.

etc.

The following is an Op-Ed, and by a centrist pundit. But it all strikes me as accurate, factual, truthful and to the point. It also points to the WTF nature of the GOP reaction,

(I’m pasting the whole thing, given recent changes at accessing articles at the WaPo):

Opinion: Trump left them to die. 43 Senate Republicans still licked his boots.

Opinion by
Dana Milbank
Columnist
Feb. 13, 2021 at 6:37 p.m. EST

In the end, the darkest truth of Donald Trump’s crime came to light.

As his marauders sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 in their bloody attempt to overturn the election, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy called the then-president and pleaded for Trump to call off the attack.

Trump refused, essentially telling McCarthy he got what he deserved. Trump was, in effect, content to let members of Congress die.

That damning account, in a statement Friday night from Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (Wash.), a Republican who defended Trump during his first impeachment, momentarily threw the Senate’s impeachment trial into chaos on its final day.

Trump’s lawyers, in their slashing, largely fictitious defense, claimed that Trump was “horrified” by the violence, hadn’t known that Vice President Mike Pence was in danger and took “immediate steps” to counter the rioting.
AD

But Herrera Beutler revealed such claims to be a lie. When McCarthy “finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol,” she wrote. McCarthy, she continued, “refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’ ”
McConnell says Trump ‘still liable for things he did’ while president
On Feb. 13, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said former president Trump could still be held accountable within the criminal justice system. (The Washington Post)

Her account wasn’t seriously or substantively refuted. On Saturday afternoon, senators agreed that Herrera Beutler’s statement would be entered into the trial record as evidence.

Even knowing this, most Republican senators, as long expected, voted to acquit Trump, a craven surrender to the political imperative not to cross the demagogue. But the impeachment trial was not in vain, for it revealed the ugly truth: Trump knew lawmakers’ lives were in danger from his violent supporters, and instead of helping the people’s representatives escape harm, Trump scoffed.
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Republicans scrambled to limit the damage of Herrera Beutler’s revelation. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had feigned being open to conviction, abandoned the pretense and, minutes before the Senate convened Saturday, emailed his Republican colleagues that he would vote to acquit.

On the Senate floor, Trump counsel Michael van der Veen, a personal-injury lawyer by day, tried in every way to demonstrate his indignation at the late revelation. He shouted. He growled. He gesticulated madly. He pounded the lectern. He stomped. He spat out words: “Antics.” “Rumor.” “Report.” “Innuendo.” “False narrative!” He actually declared that “it doesn’t matter what happened after the insurgence into the Capitol building.” So what if Trump scoffed at McCarthy’s desperate entreaty to save lawmakers’ lives?

Sputtering like the Looney Tunes character Sylvester the Cat, van der Veen declared: “Nancy Pelosi’s deposition needs to be taken. Vice President Harris’s deposition absolutely needs to be taken. And not by Zoom. None of these depositions should be done by Zoom. We didn’t do this hearing by Zoom! These depositions should be done — in person, in my office, in Philly-delphia!”

Sufferin’ succotash!

Laughter broke out in the chamber.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” he responded. “It is civil process. … I’ll slap subpoenas on a good number of people.” He seemed to think he was arguing a slip-and-fall case in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas.

Republicans joined the theatrics.

On the Senate floor, Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.), an always-Trumper, was seen pointing at Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) and saying “blame you” in a raised voice. Romney was one of five Republicans who joined all 50 Democrats in voting to allow witness testimony.

Sen. Mike Lee (Utah), another Trump ally, interrupted a presentation to complain that the House impeachment managers “said something that’s not true” — never mind that the Senate had sat in silence during hours of falsehoods from Trump’s team.

After Herrera Beutler’s revelations sparked a vote for witnesses, Senate leaders brokered a compromise to keep the impeachment trial from spiraling into endless discovery. Herrera Beutler’s statement would be admitted as evidence, but this would “not constitute a concession by either party as for the truth of the matters asserted by the other party.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the lead impeachment manager, claimed that “this uncontradicted statement” provided “further decisive evidence of [Trump’s] intent to incite the insurrection.”

Van der Veen, in response, howled about due process and fairness being “violently breached” — interesting words, given what his client did.

When the yeas and nays were counted, seven Senate Republicans joined Herrera Beutler in her courageous stand, voting along with all 50 Democrats to convict Trump. The other 43 Republicans, some of whom, like McConnell, feebly denounced Trump’s conduct even as they acquitted him, now have the cowardly distinction of licking the boots of the man who left them to die.

Zooey,

That makes sense. Protecting themselves while protecting Trump in effect. But it’s a perverse bargain. They wouldn’t be in danger if not for Trump. Not politically or literally. And that part puzzles me. The GOP, if it wanted to, could shut Trump down, along with his entire base, if they got on the same page against him, as they are now pretending to be for him.

They’re generally really good at messaging and a united front, unlike the Dems. Why not kill Frankenstein’s monster while they have the chance? . . . and they had that chance dozens of times in the last 5 years.

In my view, Trump’s base would have fallen in line with an anti-Trump message too, at least eventually. They’re all too easily led by the nose. Anyone who can be convinced that satanic cannibals with space lasers rule the world can be convinced of pretty much anything.

Oh, well. My gut tells me that America, right now, is the most gaslit nation in the world, by miles, and perhaps all time. That’s not gonna turn out well.

Going back to what WV said about the difficulty of convicting people in a court of law, I thought Trump’s call to the Georgia Secretary of State was an excellent example. He knew exactly what Trump wanted him to do, which is why he leaked the audio to protect himself from his own legal liabilities.

Trump said everything but “steal the votes for me, or else.” He walked right up to that line, almost crossed it several times, and did threaten him. But he may well have couched his rhetoric in enough double-speak to get away with it. I have no idea, but I do know he shouldn’t be able to.

Here’s the full transcript and audio of the call between Trump and Raffensperger

So, again, Trump set the stage for an insurrection, wanted it to happen, and developments over night say he and McCarthy got into a shouting match about Trump’s refusal to do anything to stop the melee. There is no question Trump used his own zombie horde as a battering ram to attempt a coup. It’s beyond obvious, based on years of whipping his base into a (white) army of the permanently aggrieved, angry and irrational.

I think it’s imperative to shut down the rise of fascism in America, right now, this instant. While we leftists can easily multitask, hold feet to the fire all over the map, this should be our priority. As long as we have capitalism in place, we’ll have empire and corporate pols. They’ll always be there. But the fascist menace starts with that status quo, that corporatism, that love of capitalism and empire, and adds the ugliest of ideologies on top of it.

If they “win,” we won’t have a chance in hell of battling against corporate power, which is at least possible under the rule of centrist Dems. At least the battle is possible. Under fascist rule, we’d all be underground, if not in more dire straits.

Just my two cents, etc.

These books scared the hell out of me, and should be required reading for decision-makers:

Naomi Klein’s On Fire.

THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH by David Wallace-Wells

And Jason Hickel’s The Divide.

(Probably can’t post three links together, so I won’t try.)

The last one is excellent on global inequality as well. Actually, that’s its main topic, but it includes a great deal of info on climate change and environmental destruction too.

All of that makes a lot of sense, WV. And I defer to your expertise in courtrooms. You have, what? More than three decades of it? Pushing four?

So, yeah. I’d bet you’re right about that, as far as courtroom conviction goes. But to gain a conviction in an impeachment trial doesn’t involve the same level of proof or consensus, as far as I know. The standard is “political,” not criminal. It’s much lower, right? Just 67 out of 100 to convict, and then 51 to prevent future public office.

I also think it’s the case that he never had to go beyond those weasel words. His base was already enraged to the point of exploding. Trump had fed them dangerous lies for years about “rigged elections,” and that he could only lose if an election was stolen from him. That goes back to before his battle with Clinton, and before this election too. He had them so wound up, he could have said boo and they would have stormed the Bastille.

But unlike the French peasantry, they stormed it so they could keep King Louis in power, so they could have their great white hope in Versailles for life.

Trump knew this. He knew he had a zombie horde he could play tin general with. He knew they saw their own fates wrapped up in his, even to the point where they saw/see Trump as America itself. You can’t have a more dangerous situation than that. Except, of course, if the demagogue has the intellectual firepower and organizational skills to start the process early enough and keep more of it behind closed doors. Trump was just bad at being Il Duce. But, to me, that doesn’t change the fact that attempted a coup and people died because of that.

The next wingnut won’t make the same mistakes.

Zooey,

This is spot-on:

If they really wanted to hurt them, they would have brought in witnesses. Witnesses would not only say, “Yeah, we have evidence that there were contacts between the WH and the Proud Boys,” they would also end up inevitably talking about what they know about the Capitol police’s complicity, and the tours of the building given by the fascist boys Jordan, Gosar, Gaetz and others the day before. Cruz and Hawley would be dragged into it. The Democrats had the ability in their hands to smack a deadly blow to the GOP. They didn’t. I speculated earlier as to Why, but they could have dragged the entire thing out in the open, and blown the top off the GOP. Instead, they declined to call witnesses, and made it very clear in their arguments that the congress was NOT on trial, only Trump, trying to give them an Out. It IS theatre, and they DO want to deal a blow, but unlike…the police, say…they are only interested in restraining the GOP, not executing it.

The Dems are forever bringing Roberts Rules of Order to a gun fight.

And, as usual, the GOP goes for the jugular. The Trump team of Mob lawyers had no scruples regarding going after the entire Democratic party. But the Dems continue(d) to try to make this only about Trump. They should have, and could have, destroyed the entire GOP, as you say, for direct and indirect complicity in a fascist coup.

I have no real idea why, just theories.

P.S. What’s with Cruz, Graham and Lee meeting, more than once, with Trump’s defense team? Why is that allowed?

Also, while pretty much every politician lies up a storm, no one in history has ever come close to Trump. And his lies kill. The Dems just aren’t in the same universe when it comes to that.

Above and beyond the usual lies of omission our media tend to ignore, Trump was documented with more than 30,000 instances while president.

Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims as president. Nearly half came in his final year.

I feel like a massive weight is lifted from me now, just to be able to deal again with the usual political bullshit. While Trump was in office, we had all of that plus his own epic, never-before-seen level of mendacity, sadism and sociopathology.