Pretty cool. That’s a much better story than the TV “Lone Ranger.”

Very nice work on the gardens. I am jealous. Just moved to a new home, and I’m just trying to get this place presentable before moving on to gardening. When I do, I will try to remember to post some photos … I’ll be lucky if I can start next spring.

I live in Missouri. I guess this isn’t even a swing state anymore, but with Trump on the GOP ticket, my wife and I will vote for Hillary, just in case.

I like the show. I was a late-comer to the show, and binged on the first three seasons or so. I loved the unpredictability. Now, it seems a little more predictable. But, that’s OK. This season’s productions were amazing. That battle scene, wow, that was amazing. They did a great job with that. And, the thing with GOT, you don’t know if the heroes are going to win. It looked like Jon Snow failed. And, he did. Twice. But, for the first time, there’s a savior to erase a mistake, and a cavalry to save the day. Kind of the same thing with the slavers’ seige of Mareen, except dragons instead of the cavalry. Arya also got a lot of extra chances.

I, too, have problems with some parts of the show. There was one season where I was underwhelmed. Not a fan of the Sand Snakes. There’s way too much jumping around, and there are characters I don’t know even know they are, but they act as though I do. But, then, there are amazing scense. Peter Dinklage facing the prospect of death, talking to his brother, as we await The Viper vs. The Mountain. And, then, that fight … the most memorable battle to the death in all of TV history. (If only The Viper would have seen The Incredibles. Don’t get caught monologuing!)

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the last two seasons. Loving the dragons and the Dragon Queen. And, the White Walkers are pretty cool, har, har, har. I’m going to guess that Cersei will die a fitting death of some kind. Then, we’ll have fire vs. ice. Winter is here!

Yes, that was a very good article.

American politics is disgusting. In a fair and open-minded arena, the media would be fawning over Sanders the underdog. Instead, he’s held nearly in contempt. How dare he continue to challenge the anointed Democrat? Hillary has “paid her dues.” … What’s amazing is that Trump could be president simply because he’s facing Hillary. And, the only way she wins is sounding more and more like Sanders. Surreal.

PFT initially raised the red flag regarding the possibility that the man known in St. Louis as Silent Stan will be as calculatingly ruthless with a potential partner as he was with a hometown he supposedly loves and then left. League sources have expressed optimism that the deal finalized two weeks ago in Houston comes with assurances that Kroenke will be reasonable, and incentives for him to quickly welcome another team to L.A., including for example the immediate ability to sell premium products at the stadium to be opened in 2019.

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Have the other owners met Stan Kroenke?

“I think that L.A. is a one-team market, I think L.A. is a two-team market, I think L.A. is a three-team market, I think L.A. is a four-team market,” Grubman told me. “But each of those models is going to rest on a couple of essential foundations. One is you have to a have a killer stadium, and two is you have to have flawless execution of the market because you have to have an identity that is unique, and your brand has to really resonate. As big as it is, it is a very competitive place, and second place in anything in Los Angeles, in anything, gets no air time. So if you have two teams in one stadium and they execute flawlessly and it’s a great stadium, they’ll be terrific. If you have two stadiums and each of them execute flawlessly, they’ll be terrific. If you have two stadiums and one executes well and one executes poorly, it doesn’t matter what that second stadium is. It is all about execution, plus a great stadium. With that, I think you can have any number of teams, up to a point of course. And Los Angeles loves a winner. They love a winner, they love sizzle, they love being first.”

What the hell is Grubman saying, or trying not to say, in this quote? So, L.A. can support up to four teams. Or, if there’s a team or multiple teams who are not winning, L.A. won’t support any of them. I mean, I know that the Kroenke project is what made this deal happen. He has the crazy money, the land and the vision to wow a bunch of rich guys, and the NFL front office folks like the idea of landing in a shiny new facility in the greater L.A. area. It really does all make sense … except when SK, or anyone in the NFL, tries to talk about football and how this was a decision about football. SK hasn’t made any football decisions. This is all about empire building. And, if his product sucks, it doesn’t matter, because he will make money. The part that’s a little head-scratching for me is that he’s gonna make money off the real estate project around the stadium, but the other NFL owners don’t share in that, do they? No way. How could they?

Not unless we move the city to Canada.

Herzog wrote:

I am a Ram fan no matter what. Just can’t shake this awful feeling. My wife doesn’t understand what’s wrong with me.

Yeah, I can’t talk much to my wife about it. I just point out reasons why Kroenke is a dick once in a while. But, she doesn’t really understand my loss.

See, what makes it even harder is knowing that walking away from the Rams means walking away from news like this about the Nittany email. Where will I get my information about Nittany’s communications if I don’t stick around here? My bet? I won’t. Unless I find myself working for the NSA. Which is unlikely. Which means that I will probably never know about the email that Nittany gets when I walk away.

I’ll be the first to admit that what happened to STL football fans here isn’t different than what happened to L.A. fans. There are some differences about how this went down, though. L.A.’s leadership had no stadium plan, and L.A. had no appetite to put together a plan. STL did. Georgia wasn’t super-rich, and she was going to need help to build a new stadium. SK is super-rich, and he needed no help, obviously. Both were after more money, but we’re talking really good money versus crazy-rich make the franchise cherry-on-my-Fortune-500 portfolio type uber-money. And, I don’t know how much Georgia lied to the fans of L.A., but SK was living a lie, and even said he intended to stay here, and wouldn’t lead the charge out of here. The people at Rams Park who just lost their jobs said that SK told them he wouldn’t abandon STL.

I heard from a local media person on a radio show that Shaw added the “top tier” clause as almost a last-second addendum and pretty much expected it to be rejected, and he was surprised when it was accepted.

Let’s face it, though: Kroenke and Goodell would have found some other path to L.A. even without this clause. They scorched St. Louis on the way out even with the clause.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by Dak.

Fisher said in an interview that he was in on the meetings about the new stadium during the season.

So much for his patented line that he didn’t know what was going on, he didn’t want the distraction.