bnw wrote:

Mike Martz! Max-Q!

—————–
Yes, he was in training back then. Learning
to be a paranoid, suspicious, authoritarian, bad-drafting,
stubborn, over-sensitive, offensive wizard.

w
v

Zooey wrote:

Old world monkeys and apes mainly see as humans do – they are trichomats, so they pick up red, green, and blue. But many new world monkeys do not. There is no real pattern among species. In fact, in the same family of monkeys there can be up to six different types of color blindness or vision. As with their human cousins, color blindness is more common in males than in females.

Basically, the way I see it, is that red lights are unfair to monkeys, and they should not have to abide by them.

————————————
Normally, i would post a picture of a funny monkey, at this point.

But I think a history lesson is required before
we can move on to the funny monkey pictures.

…some traffic lights had four colors, not three. I bet u didnt know that.

w
v

PA Ram wrote:

I don’t know that I agree with that. Would the monkey REALLY have to be trained? Or could he just wing it?

Seriously though–I think you belittle your profession a little bit, wv. I am sure that learning procedures and laws and cases would drive me batty.

————————–

No, its true, Pa. Trained monkeys. Visit a bar meeting sometime. Talk to a bunch of lawyers.
Be prepared to talk about golf, though.

Btw, the first thing you learn in law school is to “think like a lawyer”. Thats what ‘they’ call it. Thinking like a lawyer. What that means is to always look at things from many sides. Be prepared to see things from various points of view, and dont think that there is ‘one holy truth’. There may be a final ‘verdict’ but thats not ‘the truth’. For example, the law allows for arguments about ‘self-defense’ but just what constitutes ‘self-defense’ ? There could be a gazillion fact patterns, each one just a slight-degree different. Or, what is ‘free speech’? Is it money? Sometimes? When? When not? Well, Scalia might say X, and Thurgood Marshall might say Z, and Oliver Holmes might say Q….law is not like math. Its more like looking at a painting. Interpretations. Based on Interests, politics, logic, a gazillion conscious and unconscious things.
In other words the ‘law’ is full of ‘questions’ but not necessarily full of ‘bright line answers’. And thus to ‘think like a lawyer’ is to ‘get’ the fact that there are many ‘arguments’ and even opposing arguments might have equal merit…depending.

In other words ‘thinking like a lawyer’ is much like posting on a message board….which…a trained monkey could do. Yes?

PS — a trained monkey is driving a car. He goes through a red light. Did he break the law? Well, a person NOT thinking like a lawyer might give a quick yes or no answer. But a person “thinking like a lawyer” would say, “it depends” (and then they’d talk for three hours, going back and forth about whether it might be an illegal act or justified in some way…

w
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Billy_T wrote:

Waterfield,

Nader didn’t cost Gore the election. That would have been mathematically, physically and, due to the way we structure elections, impossible from an electoral point of view. Presidents win via a cumulative count in the Electoral college. No one state can possibly be “decisive” because of this. You need a lot of states to get to 270. Gore won 20. Bush won 30 and received 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266. Take any of those 30 states for Gore, leave Florida in Bush’s column, and Gore wins.

It’s akin to saying that a missed field goal, in the last second of the last game of the season, cost some NFL team a chance to get to the playoffs. Wrong. If they had won another game prior to that last one, it wouldn’t have mattered, and if they had scored more points prior to that last-second field-goal attempt, it wouldn’t have mattered, etc. etc.

It’s become an article of faith among too many Democrats, but it’s really nothing more than a copout and a refusal to take responsibility for Gore’s terrible campaign, the lack of turnout among Dems, and the fact that more than 300,000 Democrats in Florida voted for Bush. Nader cost Gore roughly 27,000 likely votes there. If just 564 Democrats had stayed with their own candidate, instead of voting for Bush, Gore wins. And if the ballots hadn’t been so confusing to people in Palm Beach — even Buchanan said he believed at least 95% of his votes should have gone to Gore — Gore wins. And if Gore takes his own state of Tennessee, he wins, etc. etc.

If, if, if. Too many Democrats want to cherry pick just one possible counterfactual among a sea of them, while ignoring 99% of the rest. They need to do some real soul searching, or just let all of that go.

Nader had nothing to do with Bush’s victory. He couldn’t possibly.

—————–

I always thought it was Gore who cost Nader the election 🙂

But people disagree on these things.

This election really is quite interesting. The most interesting
in my lifetime. (to me, anyway)

A week ago, i thought Clinton was a shoe-in. Now, I think Trump
really has a good chance. The biosphere loses either way, but its
all pretty interesting.

w
v

Zooey wrote:

It wouldn’t be a Jeff Fisher draft without the addition of a defensive player.

That’s the thing about Fisher. He’s a coach who will draft a defensive player. That’s what really sets him apart from other coaches in the league who get all their defensive players through free agency. It’s takes balls, man.

—————

He’s a man apart, alright. A rebel with balls. But is he a Holden Caulfield or a Cool Hand Luke?

w
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Zooey wrote:

bnw wrote:

I have not heard of it.

Dead Poets Society. A film with Robin Williams. 90% of the humor in this depends upon having seen that film.

—————-

So you liked the DPS ? Cause i remember arguing with zn and RFL about it. RFL just blasted it, as i recall.

I thought it was a nice movie.

w
v

How are the St.Louis stations gonna handle Rams games now?

I mean, I would think there are still a ton of Ram
fans in St.Louis. Most of the Loo fans just watched the Rams
on tv like the rest of us. A lot of em probly dont care
all that much about where they play. Yes? No?

Just my opinion, but I think there’s an opportunity here
for a crafty-smart station. I bet there’s still plenty
of interest for a lot of St.Loo fans. Despite all the…ya know.

w
v

Zooey wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

So it’s only been 50 years since the poor were more than an afterthought to a US president? Then what’s the issue?

Hmm. I’ have to say, Yes. Very few of us are old enough to remember anything that the government did in our lifetime that actually helped poor people.

Although we have given them non-stop opportunities to go out in a blaze of glory defending our freedom from brown and yellow peasants. There’s that.

—————

I keep thinking of the Bernie quote about McDowell County in WV.
Average lifespan for males is 64. Six hour drive to Fairfax County in Va — 82 years. Think about that. But dont just think of the quantity of years, think about the ‘quality’ of life of poor people. In a gazillion ways they are dehumanized. Start with simple obvious things — like dental care. Think about daily ‘stress’. Think about trying to raise children under overwhelming ‘stress’… I could go on. But all the politicians (and voters) want to talk about is ‘the middle class.’ It makes me crazy.

w
v
—————–
Harold Laski (1930): “A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property.”

Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison (in Growing Prosperity, 2000): “If you pour enough wealth into the funnel at the top, those at the bottom eventually receive a little of the benefits themselves. One might ask, what kind of decent society requires making the rich that much richer to prevent everyone else from getting poorer?”

“Plato told Aristotle no one should make more than five times the pay of the lowest member of society. J.P. Morgan said 20 times. Jesus advocated a negative differential – that’s why they killed him.” Graef Crystal (compensation expert 1998)

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862):”It is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the devil work hard.”

Oh, I dunno. I guess I’m always at odds with the Corporate side
of my little Rams hobby. Ya know. I don’t think i like any
of the big-money-corporate aspects of pro-football.

So, i just focus on the ‘game’ and the coaching and plays
etc, etc.

I dont wanna get into the ‘why’ i dont like the mega-corporate
aspects of pro-football, for all the obvious reasons. Aint the right
board for that, and the regulars already know what i think anywayz…

I wish i understood more about the history of the Green Bay Communists
and just how exactly that whole thing (whatever it is) managed to
exist and thrive in the NFL.

w
v

“…Bill Clinton turned out to be a “New Democrat,” in other words a triangulating neoliberal corporatist…. Barack Obama has been a terrific President whose administration has been, nevertheless, not nearly as progressive as the two campaigns he waged to get into the White House led progressives to expect…”

First off jst let me say i HATE the word ‘neoliberal’ — I hate it
coz it confuses a lot of average joe and janes. People interested
in communicating with the masses should use a word like corporate-puppet
or rightwinger or somethin thats not an ‘insider’ word…

Second….Obama has been a ‘terrific President’ ?

Um…no.

w
v

The thing about the rightwingers is they are usually quite honest. I mean this is a perfectly honest, up-front, direct encapsulation of their view:

“..The 1st Amendment guarantees freedom, not equality. Rights are exercised to radically unequal degrees, and the right to speech is no exception.”

That was, essentially what William F Buckley repeated over and over again for decades on his show. That same idea, right there.

Citizens United fosters Inequality. The Right is fine with Inequality.
(Buckley used to argue you cant have democracy without inequality)

As a person of the left that whole notion is
appalling.

…and i’m still not voting for Clinton 🙂
Cause she’s a crusher-of-poor-human-beings.

w
v