Ramsey Glissadevil wrote:

I’ll bet that study said what the guy who conducted the study wanted it to say. Like polls. And the polls said Trump will lose the election. I didn’t vote because I don’t trust politicians. I trust the media less. The media is the megaphone for a corrupt government. If Trump denuclearizes North Korea, he will get my vote. I also liked the economic moves Trump has made and the abolishment of the Obamacare penalty and how Trump has pulled America out of deals or treaties that funneled American tax payer dollars to foreign elite. The Paris climate accord for one.

Its not a white thing. Its a worker thing. Workers don’t like the government taking huge chunks of their paychecks. Hard working black, Hispanic, and oriental folks feel the same way.

Hey, Ramsey, welcome aboard.

Or have you posted here before with a different handle? I had a long period of absence meself, so I may have missed you during that time. Anyway . . .

Trump actually hasn’t pulled us out of any treaties or deals that involve our taxdollars.

TPP wasn’t ratified or implemented yet, so that’s not an issue. We’re still in NAFTA, GATT, WTO, etc. etc.

The Paris Accords were/are all voluntary, with no legal boundaries attached. They don’t take one penny of your taxes.

As for your taxes: Trump and the GOP gifted themselves — as in, the super-rich — literally trillions of dollars in the process, which will all have to be paid back by your grandkids. Trump slashed his own taxes to the point of tens of millions per year, and if he’s as rich as he says he is, his heirs will literally save billions. No “workers” benefit one iota. The super-rich did. And, again, that money has to be paid back, because it had to be borrowed.

But the real “deals” Trump made happen were for himself and his family. Like letting the Chinese company ZTE off the hook and receiving half a billion from China to fund one of Trump’s own projects in Indonesia. China also has given Ivanka Trump 34 trademarks she otherwise never would have received. Jared Kushner received a half a billion dollars in loans (at least) after speaking with two CEOs in the Oval Office. Trump changed US policy toward Qatar after they turned Kushner down for loans.

The list goes on and on. No president in the last century has done as much personal grifting as Trump. It’s not close. He’s easily the most corrupt and mendacious president we’ve ever had, and that’s saying a ton, when we look through our history.

wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

All the best to BillyT and zooey.

======

Absolutely.

We are all gettin old, aint we.

Btw, i had an esophagus issue a while back and my doctor said
i should bake it in the oven at 325 degrees for twenty minutes.

w
v

We are. Real old.

But I’m having a lot of trouble picturing you fitting your esophagus into an oven, not to mention lifting it in the first place. Or do you have one of those huge outdoor pit ovens, and you just rolled it over there somehow?

Zooey wrote:

I’m sorry to hear that, Billy. I was hoping you were in the clear, since I hadn’t seen you refer to cancer for quite a while. All the best.

Thanks, Zooey. It sounds like we had similar mindsets regarding when and where to talk about our travails. I had no idea you were going through all of that, and it sounds like you’ve dealt with it with some serious toughness and stoicism. The Rams could use someone like you to play linebacker!!

Quick summary of my own deal: I pretty much stopped talking about it online when the treatments became close to routine. Maintenance chemo was mostly just a fact of life from roughly 2003 on — after the first full treatment — with a year’s break now and again. Two serious flareups in the 2000s, and another in 2013 before this last one, which is the worst of all.

Was also recently disabused of an earlier notion that recurrences weren’t that big a deal, because they’d just, well, do chemo again. My latest doctor said these things add up — I read “cumulative effect” between the lines — and they’re really pushing me toward stem cells now.

Will post about that sometime in the future. It was pretty interesting, but depressing, too. It seems we’re not as advanced there as I thought we’d be by now.

Best wishes, Zooey. You know all of this, of course, but spend as much time as you can with family and your closest friends. That’s what counts when all is said and done.

I was thinking of a couple:

Me: That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying we’ll use Air Coryell and pass the ball all the time. No Marty Ball. No Ground Chuck. We’re going to throw it 70% of the time!!

Them: History shows it never works to do that. You can’t do Ground Chuck or Marty Ball and win Super Bowls. We know it leads to disaster again and again. You just can’t run the ball 70% of the time and win.

Me: Again, I’m not saying that. It’s Air Coryell and passing the ball all the time.

Them: But running the ball all the time means millions of deaths and a Stalinist hell!! Everyone knows that!! Why don’t you SEE that!!!

I hope Ekubam can match his elite athleticism with actual productivity. He’s probably the fastest linebacker they’ve had in years and years.

Far from the ideal as far as height and length, but he has speed and agility to burn, and can get stronger.

I might be waaay off on this, but I don’t think any of the other recent draftees are particularly “elite” athletically. McSnead seemed to have concentrated more on older players, with high football IQs, who were often leaders on their respective teams.

Not that they weren’t athletic too. They all are. Just not “elite.”

With this rash of injuries, it’s a damn good thing they decided to draft and sign (UDFAs) so many front seven guys.

I still think Kiser will end up starting this year, but no longer think Obo will. His injury is too much the set back.

On the outside, I’m guessing it’s Young and Ekuban. If healthy, I like Young’s chances to be a good one too.

Something almost no one is talking about in the media, regarding this case:

NFL players kneeling was not a widespread concern until Trump made it so. And it was fading as a concern until he jumped back into the fray recently. Any loss of revenue via boycotts can be traced back to Trump’s highly opportunistic rhetoric, not to the players’ actions. So when the idiot (former?) CEO of Papa Johns made a big stink about the players supposedly costing him money, he should have focused on his buddy Trump, not them.

It’s also the case that no American, regardless of “sides,” should support any president’s call for American citizens to be fired and deported for expressing dissent, especially when it’s non-violent. Even the suggestion that this should happen should be roundly condemned by every American.

snowman wrote:

The NFL’s attempt to dictate the behavior of its black players is typical of our country’s treatment of minorities. We treat them badly, then order them not to inconvenience us.

EDIT:
It just hit me that mandatory attendance at church and tithing and all the other church rules generate fake devotion. It’s about obedience, not faith or patriotism.

I’ve thought the same thing about forcing kids to attend church, especially when it’s clear that’s the last place they want to be.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the best way to go is live and let live. If you have to coerce anything or anyone, it’s not worth it. You’ve already lost. Let it be, etc.

And I am ferociously opposed to coerced “patriotism” of any kind, cuz it’s not. It’s not patriotic if it’s compelled — via peer pressure, business owners or our liar in chief.

This is so obvious and self-evident, I have no real idea why it’s even an issue. The players silently kneel, harm no one, do this non-violently, and no one can argue that they don’t have every reason in the world TO protest.

This country has lost its mind.

And, of course, Zooey, you’re right about the most important thing here: The protest was/is against police brutality and systemic racism, not about the flag or the anthem . . . . even though I think the anthem should be a part of the protest. It’s written by a slaveholder who later tried to defend his fellow slaveholders in court. The third verse actually celebrates the killing of slaves. We can do better as a nation in our choices.

It still surprises me that black players haven’t brought that up. That tells me they’ve showing remarkable restraint.

Trump likely knew he was doing this all along, but his interjection moved the goalposts for both the protesters and the people who hate the protests:

For the former, it’s now, at least in part, a matter of rejecting the authority of any man/woman, regardless of title, telling them they have to leave the country if they don’t want to stand while the anthem is played. And for those against the protesters, standing with Trump has now entered the fray. It keeps spinning more and more away from the original intent of the players — which was the point, of course.

One sure fire way to destroy dissent is to make sure few enough people remember the original rationale for that dissent.

Good Op Ed, from a surprising source:

Excerpt:

It is right to decry this culture of intolerance and advocate for civility and engagement instead of boycotts and reprisals. The cure for bad speech is better speech — not censorship. Take that message to the heartland, and conservatives cheer.

Until, that is, Colin Kaepernick chose to kneel. Until, that is, the president demanded that the N.F.L. fire the other players who picked up on his protest after he was essentially banished from the league.

That was when the conservative mob called for heads to roll. Conform or face the consequences.

On Wednesday, the mob won. The N.F.L. announced its anthem rules for 2018, and the message was clear: Respect the flag by standing for the national anthem or stay in the locker room. If you break the rules and kneel, your team can be fined for your behavior.

This isn’t a “middle ground,” as the N.F.L. claims. It’s not a compromise. It’s corporate censorship backed up with a promise of corporate punishment. It’s every bit as oppressive as the campus or corporate attacks on expression that conservatives rightly decry.

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But this is different, they say. This isn’t about politics. It’s about the flag.

I agree. It is different. Because it’s about the flag, the censorship is even worse.

One of the most compelling expressions of America’s constitutional values is contained in Justice Robert Jackson’s 1943 majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. At the height of World War II, two sisters, both Jehovah’s Witnesses, challenged the state’s mandate that they salute the flag in school. America was locked in a struggle for its very existence. The outcome was in doubt. National unity was essential.

But even in the darkest days of war, the court wrote liberating words that echo in legal history: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

Excellent article by Hedges, as usual.

I talk to people all the time who confuse the Dems with the left. And I try to correct them, but it never really matters. It’s hopeless. I try to show them how the Dems have mostly been a center-right party at least since the 1960s, but they still think of them as commies. I even try to differentiate between liberals and leftists, which also generally doesn’t get through.

And when they talk about “socialism,” I try to remind them of some truly great socialists, who were the opposite of Stalin — a huge number of Americans see “socialism” and immediately think Stalin . . .

MLK, Gandhi, Helen Keller, Einstein, Kafka, Dorothy Day, Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Morris and Peter Kropotkin, Oscar Wilde, Camus, Orwell, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Michael Harrington, Naomi Klein, Richard D. Wolff, David Harvey . . . to name a few. I often add “ooooh, scary!!!” after that . . . again, to no avail.

Too many Americans see Dems in monolithic terms as “far left,” and they see the “far left” in monolithic terms as Stalinist. They see an either/or instead of the thousand and one actual options and alternatives.

I think this is all by design. The powers that be WANT us to think in terms of two. It’s much, much easier to control us that way and keep us frustrated but ultimately docile and compliant. Herd us into two pens — Dem or Republican — and even narrow down the possibility of what THAT could mean.

We’re screwed primarily, IMO, because too many people see only a tiny slice of what the world could be.