zn wrote:

wv wrote:

“The Rams had tried to trade up in the draft the
prior year, after scouting Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota. But the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Titans held the top two spots and wouldn’t budge.”

So would we rather have either of those two – or goff?

I would take Goff out of all 4, personally. (#4 being Wentz.)

…

============

I might take wentz over goff, but I’m not sure. tough call.

w
v

I’m sick of Pittsburgh being good, and I’m sick of Cleveland being bad.

w
v

Billy whats your take on this article from WSW’s website:

wsw:http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/12/07/pers-d07.html

excerpt: “…It is evident that a significant faction of the ruling elite has concluded that Trump must go, in one form or another.

There is not, however, an ounce of democratic or progressive content to this campaign. The conflicts in Washington are conflicts within the ruling class, pitting the Trump administration—which is increasingly relying on far-right and fascistic forces—with powerful elements of the military and intelligence apparatus with which the Democratic Party is aligned….” see link

w
v

Is there a single free-agent signed under McV that has disappointed?

A single draft choice thats disappointed?

w
v

PA Ram wrote:

This is feeling more and more like a road game as they have to adjust their practice and will be facing a loud hostile stadium of Eagles fans. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

Eagles: 55

Rams: 3

==============

Exactly PA. I wish this game was in Philly.

In fact, i wish the rams would just move to Philly and change their colors to green and white.

w
v

zn wrote:

Alden Gonzalez
ESPN Staff Writer

Rams will gauge the air quality at the facility on Wednesday to decide whether they need to practice elsewhere on Thursday. And they pretty much have a place in mind if that’s the case. A Wednesday walk-through, which will take place near their facility, isn’t a big deal for them. That’s what Wednesdays have basically become for them anyway, with several veterans taking rest days midweek. They’re in pads on Thursdays. That’s the big one for them.

======

I’m hoping the pollution, smog, and carcinogenic air in LA become
kinda like the “12th Man” for the Rams. Home field advantage. Ya know.

w

v

Billy_T wrote:

And, speaking of colluding with Israel, The Intercept has this article as well:

https://theintercept.com/2017/12/05/michael-flynn-jared-kushner-israel-settlements-trump/

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Yeah, the Israel thing is infuriating. Israel has colluded with every president and almost every senator for decades. Its just not called colluding. Cuz…..its Israel.

Its spawning some weird contortions out on the internetz:https://forward.com/opinion/388867/jared-kushner-was-right-to-collude-with-russia-because-he-did-it-for-israel/

w
v

Billy_T wrote:

Another example of a difference that matters. To me, this is outrageous and scary stuff….

“…The Trump administration is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies…

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Well, that was predictable in my view. I (and others) think there is a split in the deep-state. A fracture, in the deep-state…concerning Trump. Trump ‘gets that’. Otherwise why would he want a separate intell force? He knows there’s an ‘anti-trump’ contingent in the ‘Intell community’.

He doesnt trust a large part of the deep-state’s intell-community. He wants a group he can trust. So, he privatizes an intell-group.

Now for me, its more “King Kong vs Godzilla” stuff. I am appalled at the monstrosity of the CIA. They are godzilla to me. A torturing, lying, enforcing subsystem of the Corporotacracy. So i dont get quite as upset about Trump creating a ‘different’ hideous, lying, enforcing, torturing thing. Trumps intell-system and the Establishment Intell systemy — King Kong vs Godzilla. Both, non-democratic hideous subsystems.

Will Trumps private-cia be worse than the establishment-cia, Billy? The films i posted about are about Indonesia — the place where the CIA participated in the extermination of a million labor leaders, artists, academics, chinese, and ‘communists’. The CIA provided many of the names to the death squads. Goodyear benefited from the slave-labor of many of them before they were butchered.
Will Trump’s group be worse than that?

Maybe. But my point is, when a system is as bad as the CIA, i dont get all that upset about ANY alternative to it.

Btw, who killed more humans in his first year as Prez – Obama or Trump? I dont know the answer to that. I really dont. Does anyone know?

w
v

Billy_T wrote:

But, again, if the cumulative effect of presenting the mountains of horrible, odious shit committed by the GOP and the political right, versus the smaller mountains of odious shit committed by the Dems and the political center, results in folks seeing the Dems as the lesser of two evils . . . well, I think that’s accurate, fair and definitely helpful.

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Ok, but i dont think the Dem-MSM presents the Dems as “the lesser evil”. And i dont think the Rep-MSM presents the Reps as “the lesser evil”. If the two corporate-MSMs told the american people “both parties are destroying the poor and the biosphere and both parties are supporting wars and atrocities and torture, etc…but one of those horrible hideous corporate parties isnt as bad as the other” — well, if they said THAT, I’d be fine with it. That would be accurate. King Kong and Godzilla. Smallpox and the Black Death. John St.Clair and Greg Robinson.

But the two MSMs dont do that. The each have their agendas. The Rep-MSM slams the Dems and holds out the Reps as the good guys. The Dem-MSM slams Trump and holds out the Dems as the good guys. THAT is all propaganda. THAT is not ‘lesser evil’ stuff. Zn voted for Hillary but he knew what she was. He voted for her as a ‘lesser evil’ strategically, which is fine. But the MSM does NOT present the corporate parties in ‘that’ light.

And so what “I” see is the Dem MSM attacking reps and offering up the Same Ole Sorry Ass Dems as alternatives. I do NOT see the Dem-MSM offering up any planet-saving alternative.

I just dont take the MSM seriously as a ‘news’ media. Its a propaganda machine for the corporotacracy/empire/deep-state. Its a Lie-machine. Drenches us in lies of commission and lies of omission. I dunno much about North Korea media, but i doubt North Korean media is any more effective as propaganda than the american MSM.

….btw, i know that you and me and zn and the other ‘leftists’ would agree on almost ALL the practical, do-able, incremental capitalist POLICY decisions. Ya know. The real-world stuff. We’d all support better regulations on pollution, better health care systems, etc etc etc. We dont have to agree on some of this ‘big picture’ stuff to know we agree on specific policy stuff.

w
v

Ozoneranger wrote:

My God, almost all of you sound like the French General Staff after Dunkirk. Surrender monkeys!

Rams, 51-7.

Yeah, I’m off my meds.

=============

Exactly Ozone. Nothing says French Surrender Monkey like
avocado on toast.

w
v

Well i agree its a bad thing, among the gazillion bad things Trump is and will continue to do.

But (and i ‘think’ you agree) Trump was just a symptom or reflection of the long trend, the long Dem-Rep Corporate trend.

w
v
“…An American inequality gap that first began to almost imperceptibly widen in the 1970s has, by now, reached Grand Canyon proportions. Before it hits its ultimate moment, it may make the nineteenth-century version of a Gilded Age look like an era of moderation. Since 1980, stunningly enough, the share of national income of the richest 1% has doubled. If all that American wealth hadn’t gushed upward, if it hadn’t produced a raft of billionaires, as well as hordes of multi-millionaires and millionaires, with so many interests to protect, we would never have experienced such prodigious top-down funding of elections; the building of a 1% democracy, that is, would have been inconceivable. If the Republican Party hadn’t been sold to the Koch Brothers and the Democratic Party hadn’t gone all neoliberal on us, can you really imagine working class voters putting their faith in a billionaire to make America great again for them? I doubt it.

Similarly, if this country hadn’t been pursuing its never-ending war on terror so assiduously and unsuccessfully these last 16 years, while Washington was being transformed into a war capital, the national security state was rising to prominence as a kind of shadow government, and the funding of the US military hadn’t become the only truly bipartisan issue in Congress, Trumpism would never have been conceivable. In our American world, The Donald’s tendency toward authoritarianism is often treated as if it were a unique attribute of his. To believe that, however, you would have to overlook the growth in this century of a distinctly authoritarian spirit in Washington. You would have to ignore what it meant for the national security state to be ever more embedded in our ruling city. You would have to forget about the American intelligence community’s development of an historically unprecedented surveillance machinery aimed not just at the world but at American citizens as well….”
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/42768-unfounding-father-why-we-need-to-stare-at-you-know-who

Billy_T wrote:

Something to keep in mind when we look at media coverage and do compare and contrast.

If Joe Smith commits dozens of crimes, and Bob Jones commits a few, and “the media” cover them as they happen, in accordance with what happened, it’s going to appear they’re being “unfair” to Joe Smith.

If they wanted to be “fair and balanced,” they’d take six crimes from Smith, and six crimes from Jones, and deal with that. But it would distort reality.

Between the two criminal money parties, the GOP is aggressively worse, and if the media cover what they do as it happens, and what the Dems do as it happens, it’s going to appear to be “unfair.” Because the GOP simply does more ugly, odious shit than the Dems, and that’s been the case at least since the 1960s, and during stretches prior to that.

Same thing goes with Trump versus whomever. If the media tries to “balance” coverage so that they don’t report most of the ugly, racist, deeply corrupt shit Trump does, so it looks like it’s all a lot more even with Dem ugliness, that distorts reality and that’s not “helpful.”

They need to just report what happens and say to hell with trying to artificially manipulate “balance” between the parties. There isn’t any.

=============

Well my view overlaps some with that, but also diverges. If the media only covers the Dems and the Reps, and only compares/contrasts the TWO corporate-planet-killers and ignores the other parties (such as the green party, socialist parties etc) then i think what you have is a corporate propaganda system. And since its a corporate propaganda system, i dont get all ‘into’ the idea that the media should hammer the reps more than the dems. That just plays into the hands of the Dem-powers-that-be.

Its like if you have Godzilla, King Kong, and Mr Rogers running for President. And lets say, Godzilla is worse than King Kong. But King Kong is still a city-stomper. Well, i dont really care if the MSM says Godzilla is better than King Kong, or if the media says King Kong is better than Godzilla. Because both are city-killers. And painting EITHER of them as “better” just insures destruction.
But Mister Rogers is running too…so, if the MSM is ignoring Mister Rogers….then its a propaganda system and thats all it is.

I’m exaggerating to make a point, of course.

w
v

They are not the best team, and i dont know anyone who thinks that. The Pats are the best team until somebody takes them down.

Eagles sure look good though. I’m expecting a battle of the titans. A hard-fought, hard-hitting, close game.

Rams 3.14159
Eagles 3

w
v

Zooey wrote:

I just keep thinking about retiring somewhere else. And I’m not even close to being able to retire, but if I retire to a 3rd world country, I will be able to do it sooner. And I’m willing to do that. I’ve just had it here.

This country is just too god-damned ignorant, arrogant, and greedy… .

================

Ha. …I have recurring “off the grid” dreams. Ya know. Living in a tiny-house, growing my own food, solar/wind energy. Maybe an intentional community.

If i were younger…. 🙂

Now for the love of God, would you go watch those two documentaries I posted about
: Act of Killing and the look of silence. And watch the directors cuts. And the commentaries by W. Herzog. He said — and i agree totally — we will never see anything like those films again. Ever.

w
v