zn wrote:

Emory Hunt@FBallGameplan
What makes Eric Bienemy such a great coordinator, is his understanding of personnel. He thinks ‘players, not plays’ in critical situations. That’s a very tough thing for many coordinators to grasp

I would have thought every coach would know this.

As I’ve gotten older — and hopefully wiser — I’ve changed my mind a bit about the relative importance of coaching. Used to weight it far behind player talent. Not so anymore. I still think you win with superior athletic talent, and that it’s the most important factor, but that coaching talent is close.

But one aspect of that coaching talent has to be to recognize player talent and how to best utilize it — macro and micro-wise. Isn’t that fundamental and obvious?

What good is a play, a scheme, even a team philosophy, if the personnel is all wrong for it?

Syncronicity, harmony, meshing, blending, etc. etc.

Um, a drop box, in the middle of a pandemic, is sanity, rationality, and logic all wrapped up in a smart package, and easily supported by the Constitution.

Calling that “harvesting” is like calling the entire vote, for Trump or Biden, “harvesting.”

Of course, the real issue here is this: It was always about projection and confession by Trump and the GOP. It was always designed to create the false narrative that the Dems were trying to cheat, when, in reality, it was Trump and the Republicans engaging in the(ir usual) cheating, rigging, stealing.

Best defense is a good offense, etc. etc.

And as everyone here knows, the GOP has been doing this for generations. Set up a “voter fraud commission,” whenever they’re in power, try to cover for their own cheating, and put the Dems back on their heels. In no case has their own commission ever found any substantial fraud. The most recent, massive non-partisan study, which looked at all votes cast between 2000 and 2014, came up with something like 30 votes, total. Out of roughly a billion.

Goddess, I despise right-wing politics and parties!!

How Biden’s executive order could reduce hunger today — and long after the pandemic is over

Excerpt:

Opinion by
Catherine Rampell
Columnist
Jan. 23, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. EST

Stories of deep, pervasive hunger have been among the more disturbing undercurrents of the past year. Food lines stretch for miles. About 29 million U.S. adults — nearly 14 percent of the adult population — said last month that their household sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat in the previous seven days, according to the Census Bureau’s most recent Household Pulse Survey. The shares are even higher among Blacks, Latinos and households with children.

Congress has temporarily increased food assistance over the past year in response to the coronavirus pandemic, but the benefits are still not sufficient. Even with Congress’s temporary increases, for example, the average food stamp recipient still receives only $2.30 per person, per meal, according to estimates from Dottie Rosenbaum, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (Before the pandemic, the average benefit was closer to just $1.40 per person, per meal; without changes to law or administration policy, it would be slated to return to this level once the public health emergency ends.)

On Friday, however, President Biden took some important steps toward relieving this hardship. As part of an executive order on economic relief, Biden set in motion three major changes to food assistance programs.

Joseph-Day has impressed me. I think they hit on that late pick. I know he hates his new nickname, but it kinda fits. Seabass has game. I like Brockers, too.

It shouldn’t be that tough to transition, really. But they’re still going to need to bring in some youngins, cuz Brockers will turn 31 in season, and Donald will be 30. Got some yute if they keep Williams, who fits the hogmolly mode, kinda. Don’t really know what they have in Gaines yet.

You can never have too much talent at D-line.

That’s what initially drew me to the Rams in the first place, back in the 1960s. The Fearsome Foursome. I want them to get that all back, updated for 2021!

If I have the LDE and RDE rolls reversed, I can blame it all on lack of coffee. And, well, age.

;>)

Agamemnon wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Did the Rams receive any compensation for losing Staley?

I’m not exactly clear about the new NFL policy.

I believe compensation is for minorities. A strategy to get more jobs for them.

Thanks.

Sounds like a good program. So if the Rams hire Morris, Atlanta likely receives comp, right?

Since it’s not a subtraction from teams, but an addition from a separate pool, there is no incentive to deny access to coaches . . . if I understand it correctly.

Again, I like it.

Does anyone doubt that if Obama and Dem enablers had done this, that if the shoe had been entirely on the other foot, they would have been arrested immediately? With the full support of the GOP as well?

I don’t.

And I honestly think Trump should have been arrested on January 6th, along with Giuliani, Gosar, Brooks and Cawthorne, and anyone else who was involved in whipping up the violent mob — whipping up the mob into violence.

To me, this isn’t at all about “free speech,” or “protected political speech,” and I don’t see it as a civil liberties issue, either. IMNSHO, when you incite violence, and this is all based on lies, you have to be held to account.

Fair trial, impartial jury, no kangaroo courts. But you get a taste of your own beloved “law and order,” at least.

I’m guessing this won’t happen. But I wish they could just find someone in house, willing to keep the same defense as Staley’s. It’s gotta be tough for players to learn a brand new system, and it tends to lead to slow starts.

Ego likely comes into play, of course. I doubt many new DCs want to just keep the previous regime in place. They want to make their own mark, and I understand that. They have their own ideas, and given the chance, want to implement them.

But Staley’s D worked so well — with rare exceptions, like the GB game — I’d love to see it in 2021 too.

Find a really good coach, in house, one who can motivate, get the players to buy in to his leadership, but keep the 2020 D in place.

That’s my hope.

Whiteness is a shield. Although I think it’s fair to add this: If white people rebel against the system from the left, they risk losing all or part of that shield. White people who rebel from the right just don’t. They’re seen by all too many police/protectors of capitalism as somehow representing the “real” America. They’re seen as “patriots,” who own the flag, etc.

White leftists, OTOH, are seen as the Other, foreign in a sense, not real Americans.

Hitler went after communists and all leftists before he went after the Jews.

Trump’s overwhelmingly white rioters/supporters stormed the Bastille to keep Louis XVI in power.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Billy_T.

Good post, Cal.

Yep. Dems suck at messaging. They have from roughly Carter on. Some of the younger Dems, like AOC, are much better at it, but their message is undermined by the Dem leadership itself.

THE key to messaging for political parties is standing together, without apology. The GOP does this, regardless of the odiousness of their policies or politicians. Which tells me it isn’t the content of the message, but its delivery, and a united stand behind that delivery.

Americans respond to confidence, certainty, unwavering support for this or that agenda. If the folks at the top don’t project that, voters tend not to buy in.

Hope all is well.

Another thing (or two, or three) to consider about the change:

Trump repeatedly lobbed attacks at the so-called “radical left,” putting the lives of leftists in danger — and anyone thought to be a leftist. This was echoed endlessly by his supporters and flunkies. It was concerted, revved up to eleven, and his “base” bought into it. One of the oft-cited reasons for his voters’ support was their view that “socialism” had to be crushed. Ending “communism” was a battle cry for the mob at the Capitol.

Biden won’t be our friend, of course. But he won’t call openly for the destruction of the left. He won’t incite violence against us. And his DoJ, ICE, Homeland Security, etc. etc. . . . are unlikely to be headed by political appointees with anything approaching a white nationalist agenda. The latter is the norm under Trump.

In short, POCs and leftists won’t be official policy targets after January 20th. Will that end the overall targeting, etc.? Of course not. But at least it won’t have an official stamp /support to be proactively, overtly racist and anti-left.

In a world with so few things to feel (even slightly) hopeful about . . . I’ll take the above.

wv wrote:

The Rightwing-Fascists invaded
the Neoliberal-Imperialist house.

The only change i see coming during the Biden years,
is there will be even more emphasis on ‘security’.

w
v

I think we can expect a significant change in environmental policy. Well worth the switch from the fascist Trump to the center-right Biden. I also see a truly significant change happening in the way we deal with Covid. Going from an admin that turned mask-wearing into a culture war, shut out the science, and spun out umpteen lunatic fringe fictions, to one committed to medical science? I think that’s going to save hundreds of thousands of lives. That’s not hyperbole, IMO.

Lotsa other areas of significant difference, in my view. Again, if we compare just the two parties, those differences matter. Compared with where we should be, what we should do, the standards we should adhere to? Biden and company will fall waaay short. But we didn’t have the choice of a Biden or a leftist. We had a choice of a Biden or a Hitler wannabe.

Personally, I’m gonna happily take the old-school centrist Dem eight days a week in that scenario.

W,

I think most of this is about filling deep, deep voids created by capitalism and its atomization of society. It’s about identity politics. People seek tribal allegiances when society creates such voids. When it can’t deliver on its promises . . . and most of this is likely on the subconscious level.

Used to be that religious ritual fulfilled that for the masses. But capitalism killed “God” and tried to replace him with “the free market.” That’s simply not sufficient for 99% of the populace. God is dead, capitalism killed him, and people need to find somewhere, someone, to fill that void, to replace that cosmic/social/personal loss.

Especially for the right, that means the reactionary (identitarian) trifecta: nationalism, fundamentalist religion, and ethnicity.

In short, as capitalism creates more and more despair, dislocation, inequality, and environmental destruction, people will struggle harder and harder to “belong” in some other way. That means a hell of a tough row to hoe for the foreseeable future.

zn wrote:

Zooey wrote:

None of that is on the table in any way…with maybe the one exception of government health insurance…and Biden opposes that.

So…again…name a socialist policy or system that Biden supports.

And by the “strict definition of policies” test, of course, not a single member of the Dem party is a “socialist” though some are progressives who advocate policies (such as M4A) which fit within a “New Deal reborn” model that is still essentially amended capitalism and not strictly socialist.

And as I said Biden shut those people out and does not identify with any of their policies.

Though you know of course that to a lot of righties the word “socialist” is not used in anything remotely like its real sense. It’s just a pejorative buzz term for anyone who advocates any social and economic policies that are not “shrink the government” style right-wing policies.

It reminds me of the days of Martin Luther King when many opposed to civil rights called the typical policy ideas of the civil rights movement “communist.” It’s just a big broad form of name-calling.

…

To me, this is self-evident. But it’s not for all too many Americans: There is a huge difference between socialist “ideas,” policies, agendas, and an actually existing socialist society. Every OECD country has implemented a host of the former, but there has never been a socialist society, nation-state, etc. Not. Ever. Never. That would require at least these three things:

1. Economic democracy (socialism, in a nutshell) replaces economic apartheid (capitalism)
2. The entire economy (down to individual businesses and the shop floor) is democratized.
3. We the people, not “the state,” not any political party, person, junta, own the means of production, together, hold it in common, directly. No proxies.

And we strive to end all vestiges of class society, together, democratically.

No such scenario has ever existed beyond small enclaves like the Paris Commune of 1871, parts of Republican Spain in the 1930s, old-school Israeli Kibbutzes, etc. etc.

To bring it back to Biden and the Dems . . . Not a single member of that party advocates for an end to capitalism, though I wish to goddess the entire party would. Even the furthest leftward faction doesn’t. The Squad doesn’t. Sanders, the indie, doesn’t. And Biden is well to their right.

In short, W, your conservative friends are nutz.

wv wrote:

Artist, revolutionary, anti-imperialist, communist.

And oh, btw, he tried to murder Trotsky.

art:https://www.pbs.org/video/siqueiros-walls-of-passion-eiuwap/

Thanks, WV. Surprised that PBS has this.

Have bookmarked the video.

Hope all is well, and Happy New Year!