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znModeratorJourdan Rodrigue@JourdanRodrigue
Jalen Ramsey: “I love LA. I want to be here for the rest of my career…I can’t wait to tell my kids I played with the best football player ever, Aaron Donald.”Sarina@sarina
“This team has been everything I’ve dreamed of plus more.” -Jalen Ramsey==
Gary Klein@LATimesklein
Rams COO Kevin Demoff said team was in touch with NFL and local officials re air quality but as of now expects that Sunday night’s game will be played as scheduled.Stu Jackson@StuJRams
@RamsNFL HC Sean McVay says RB Darrell Henderson Jr. (hamstring) is good to go for Sunday’s game against the Cowboys.znModeratorRamblin’ Fan@RamblinFan
Booth comment “Rams 9-7 and didn’t make the playoffs, Cowboys are always in the spotlight”
The omitted facts: Cowboys were 8-8, fired their head coach, and didn’t make the playoffs eitherJourdan Rodrigue@JourdanRodrigue
Jalen Ramsey on with us, fresh after signing that record-breaking 5-year deal…he says it’s actually difficult to put into words to describe how powerful a moment it was for him to get that phone call from
@DavidMulugheta. His two daughters were named in escalator clauses in the deal, and Ramsey says it’s because they are his “why”.
Stu Jackson@StuJRams
CB Jalen Ramsey on signing 5-year contract extension with Rams: “I felt relief. I felt like all of my hard work had paid off.” Said he thought about his family and his daughters when he got the phone call from his agent when the deal got done.Lindsey Thiry@LindseyThiry
“I don’t even cry or nothing like that,” Jalen Ramsey says, when asked about his contract, “but I just teared up…” Ramsey says the emotion came realizing his two daughters will be set for life, along with their children, and so forth.Ramsey says as the season inches closer, he came a bit anxious about the contract situation, but now he can be “Truly free.”
znModeratorA Judge Asked Harvard to Find Out Why So Many Black People Were In Prison. They Could Only Find 1 Answer: Systemic Racism
It wasn’t Black-on-Black crime. Violent video games and rap songs had nothing to do with it; nor did poverty, education, two-parent homes or the international “bootstraps” shortage. When a judge tasked researchers with explaining why Massachusetts’ Black and Latinx incarceration was so high, a four-year study came up with one conclusion.
Racism.
It was always racism.
According to 2016 data from the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission, 655 of every 100,000 Black people in Massachusetts are in prison. Meanwhile, the state locks up 82 of its white citizens for every 100,000 who reside in the state. While an eight-to-one racial disparity might seem like a lot for one criminal justice system, nationwide, African Americans are imprisoned at almost six times the rate of white people. So, in 2016, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ralph Gants asked Harvard researchers to “take a hard look at how we can better fulfill our promise to provide equal justice for every litigant.”
After gathering the raw numbers from nearly every government agency in the state’s criminal justice system, examining the data, and researching the disparate outcomes, Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Policy Program found that Black incarcerees received more severe charges, harsher sentences and less favorable outcomes than their white counterparts. They looked at more than a million cases, from the initial charges through the conviction and sentencing, and discovered disparities that could not be explained by logic or reason.
“White people make up roughly 74% of the Massachusetts population while accounting for 58.7% of cases in our data,” the study explained. “Meanwhile, Black people make up just 6.5% of the Massachusetts population and account for 17.1% of cases.”
Of course, that could only mean that Black people commit much more crime, right?
Nope.
OK, then maybe Black people commit worse crimes.
That wasn’t it.
What they found is the criminal justice system is unequal on every level. Cops in the state are more likely to stop Black drivers. Police are more likely to search or investigate Black residents. Law enforcement agents charge Black suspects with infractions that carry worse penalties. Prosecutors are less likely to offer Black suspects plea bargains or pre-trial intervention. Judges sentence Black defendants to longer terms in prison. And get this: The average white felon in the Massachusetts Department of Corrections has committed a more severe crime than the average Black inmate.
The study, “Racial Disparities in the Massachusetts Criminal System” (pdf) unearthed a number of factors that contribute to these significant disparities, including:
It’s not that Black people are criminals: It’s that the cops think Black people are criminals: For instance, despite making up only 24 percent of Boston’s population, Black people made up 63 percent of the civilians who were interrogated, stopped, frisked or searched by the BPD between 2007 and 2010. According to the researchers, this suggests “that the disparity in searches was more consistent with racial bias than with differences in criminal conduct.”
Black suspects don’t get bail: The average bail is slightly higher in cases involving Black defendants. Furthermore, more Black and Latinx defendants are detained without bail as compared to white defendants.
Black people are charged with higher offenses: But curiously, when they get to court, Black defendants are convicted of charges roughly equal in seriousness to their White counterparts despite facing more serious initial charges.There are actually two separate systems: The study notes that prosecutors are more likely to exercise their discretion to send Black and Latinx people “to Superior Court where the available sentences are longer.”
And separate sentences: If you’re Black and charged with crimes carrying a mandatory minimum, you are substantially more likely to be incarcerated and receive a longer sentence.
Especially if they find drugs or guns on you: Black and Latinx people charged with drug offenses and weapons offenses are more likely to be incarcerated and receive longer incarceration sentences than white people charged with similar offenses
Sentencing length: The average Black person’s sentence is 168 days longer than a sentence for a white person. Even when the researchers controlled for criminal history, jurisdiction, and neighborhood, they concluded: “[R]acial disparities in sentence length cannot solely be explained by the contextual factors that we consider and permeate the entire criminal justice process.”
The researchers even looked at poverty rates, the family structures of convicted felons and the neighborhoods they lived in. They eventually decided that the only reasonable explanation that explained the disparities was racism.
One of the more interesting parts of the report juxtaposed people who possessed illegal firearms with people arrested for operating a vehicle under the influence (OUI). They reasoned that both acts are potentially dangerous but statistics show that driving under the influence actually causes much more harm to the public than simply carrying an unlicensed firearm. But, because white people make up 82 percent of people who are convicted of OUI, the state considers operating under the influence as a “public health problem,” so the charge is often resolved without a felony conviction. In fact, 77 percent of the people who don’t end up with a felony conviction after admitting that they operated a vehicle under the influence are white.
However, despite Black defendants making up 16.4 percent of firearm cases in 2012, 46 percent of the people convicted of a firearm offense was Black. And 70.3 percent of the time, the Black person’s only offense was carrying a firearm without a license.
The researchers also couldn’t figure out why Black people are always initially charged with more serious crimes than white people. The easiest explanation was that Black suspects commit worse crimes than white people, but the data disproved that assumption. Then, they hypothesized that prosecutors may be overzealous when it came to convicting violent cases but that proved not to be the case. When all was said and done, Black people were arrested more often, had higher bail and received harsher sentences. But when they examined convictions, they discovered that Black people were surprisingly less likely to be convicted than white people. Essentially, according to the researchers, a white person has to commit an egregious offense to wind up behind bars while all a Black person has to do is…well, be a Black person.
The researchers noted that they could not “conclusively isolate the impact of unconscious bias, prejudice, and racism in generating the disparities” precisely because there was so much of it. They could only conclude that the criminal justice process was a Rube Goldberg machine that produces “racially disparate initial charging practices leading to weaker initial positions in the plea bargaining process for Black defendants, which then translate into longer incarceration sentences for similar offenses.”
I didn’t go to Harvard but when I Googled the word “systemic” it said:
“relating to a system, especially as opposed to a particular part.”
And when I Googled the word “racism,” it said:
“prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.”
And it didn’t even take four years.
znModerator
znModeratorPlus the entire “panic” thing is itself dubious. There is such a thing as disaster studies. Historians and social science people study events like the great SF earthquake in the past, or tsunami events in the present and so on. What people in disaster studies say is that there is more harm done by authorities doing things to “prevent or control panic” than there is harm done by actual or real panic. In fact disaster studies people say that the entire “people panic” routine is all fiction. Under the conditions of actual disaster, you are far more likely to get community solidarity than “panic.”
“Panic” is a thing in movies.
So what kind of “panic” did Trump-brain anticipate? Rioting in the streets? Cities burned down? Mobs congesting the freeways?
Naw the “panic” would be people hunkering down and…gulp…spending less money on a daily basis because they go out less.
Which of course would not be panic, it would be a rational response.
But less lucrative.
znModeratorI’m beginning to feel sick from all of this shitty air…and I consider myself a healthy person…
Wow, sorry to hear all this. Which is a weak and lame thing to say I know but it’s sincere too. Hang in there.
znModeratorHenderson has been nursing a hamstring injury and missed more than two weeks of practice, but he’s been a full participant the last two days.
znModeratorLindsey Thiry@LindseyThiry
Rams DT Aaron Donald, a two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year, says he saw ESPN’s new run stop win rate that qualified him as average against the run.“I’m gonna use it as motivation,” Donald said, a slight grin on his face.
Pray for running backs.
Sean McVay says they’re still monitoring Darrell Henderson for Sunday, but continued to express optimism about his return from a hamstring injury.
Jourdan Rodrigue@JourdanRodrigue
Aaron Donald naturally doesn’t want to give anything away about the new Rams defense. “Just say it’s exactly the same so that they think that.”“Anything about Aaron Donald not being a great player immediately loses credibility with me.” – Sean McVay, hopefully settling the TL down good lord
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Rex Chapman@RexChapman
Skip Bayless thinks Dak Prescott is weak for admitting he’s suffered depression following his brother’s suicide and during the Covid-19 pandemic. He says leaders don’t do that.Disgusting take.
Leaders help others. Dak is helping teammates and fans alike by speaking up.
Rich Eisen@richeisen
Going after @dak for sharing mental depression and doubt publicly and how it affects his ability to effectively lead others says way more about the person who goes after him than it does about Dak.
I mean, it’s such an antiquated view of what’s supposedly strong and what’s supposedly weak and it has been shown time and again that reinforcing depression and being open about it as something that’s weak is terribly harmful.
znModeratorA’Shawn Robinson, Rams Get Creative to Bend COVID-19 Opt-Out, Keep Door Open for 2020
Robinson qualified for the NFL’s medical opt-out—which meant he’d get $350,000 to sit out the season, and his contract would toll
Enh. It does not say why he qualified for the medical opt-out.
znModeratorOne of my favorite memories playing Dallas was from 2008 when Steven Jackson dominated the Dallas Defense with a 160 rushing yard and 3 touchdowns performance. Yet another display of power, vision, and speed! pic.twitter.com/8vFvrFOomI
— RAMS ON FILM (@RamsOnFilm) September 10, 2020
znModeratora know. There’s this thing called the Internet. You can search “what do worms eat?”
“Types of Foods for Composting Worms
“…worms love fruits and vegetables from your kitchen and garden. Save your left-over, spoilt organic matter, peelings, and cores for the worms. They also like tea bags, bread, pasta, grains, shredded black print newspaper, coffee grounds, and hair”w
vI do all that. And it;s what allows me to harvest spice.
Without spice, I would not have the ability to fold space.
Though admittedly I haven’t actually tried to fold space yet. What if I can’t fold it back the way it was? Then Jupiter suddenly occupies Mercury’s orbit. It could be a real gawdamm mess.
znModeratorJ.R. Reed: What to know about the 2020 NFL Draft prospect
https://www.dawgnation.com/football/jr-reed-2020-nfl-draft-prospect
JR Reed is a safety who played his college football for the University of Georgia. He is expected to be taken in the 2020 NFL Draft.
Reed didn’t arrive at Georgia with huge expectations but left as an All-American.
Below you can find more information about Reed and what he will be bringing to an NFL team for starting in the 2020 NFL season.
J.R. Reed has strong NFL bloodlines as he enters the 2020 NFL Draft
JR Reed probably knows a good bit more about the NFL than some of his fellow prospects, as his father played in the NFL for 12 seasons. Reed is the son of former Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints wide receiver Jake Reed.Reed’s uncle also spent some extensive time in the NFL, as his uncle is Dale Carter, who was a four-time pro bowler and two-time All-Pro. Reed is also cousins with 2020 NFL Draft prospect Nigel Warrior, who played at Tennessee.
Thanks to his upbringing, Reed has grown accustomed to tough coaching and has a good idea of what it takes to be a successful player for some NFL team.
“My dad was tough on me, too, growing up,” Reed said in 2017. “So, I know that it comes from love and when [Smart’s] coaching, I know he doesn’t mean any harm.”
Related: Toughness runs in the football family of Georgia’s J.R. Reed
JR Reed didn’t start his college career with Georgia football
Like many prospects these days, Reed was a transfer student during his time in college. But he didn’t leave one big-time program to head to another.He went from playing for Tulsa to starting for Georgia’s 2017 SEC Championship team.
Reed transferred into Georgia in the summer of 2016, prior to Kirby Smart’s first career game as a head coach. He sat out that first season in Athens, and that proved to help him a lot.
“Sitting out (2016) made me a lot more hungry,” Reed said. “Seeing some of the games, really being in the stands, watching the Tennessee game and seeing the games that we lost and being there with my mom and dad, I’m just thinking, ‘You know, that could be me’.”
Reed went on to become Georgia’s starting safety for each of the past three seasons. He improved each year and was the senior leader for the nation’s No. 1 scoring defense in the country in 2019.
Related: Georgia football counting on ‘Alpha’ Bulldog J.R. Reed for continued leadership
The Bulldogs also won the SEC East every year Reed was a starter. That’s quite an accomplishment for the lowest-rated recruit on Georgia’s roster, as Reed was ranked the No. 1856 player in the 247Sports Composite rankings.
JR Reed was one of the top defensive backs in college football last year
Reed was a solid player coming into the 2019 season. By the end of it, he was one of the top defensive backs in the country and a finalist for the Jim Thorpe Award which goes to the nation’s top defensive back.He finished the year with 54 tackles and interception to go along with a fumble recovery for a touchdown. The Bulldogs had the No. 1 scoring and rushing defense in the country, thanks to Reed’s stellar play.
He also showed off some impressive athleticism with a critical interception in the Notre Dame game.
“I can do a lot, I can play in the box, I can play the middle of the field, I can come down and cover your best tight end, whatever you want me to do in that secondary I can do,” Reed said.
Related: Georgia safety J.R. Reed finishes NFL combine on explosive note
JR Reed measurables for the 2020 NFL Draft
Height: 6-foot-1Weight: 202
40-yard dash: 4.54
Broad Jump: 130 inches
Vertical Jump: 34 inches
znModeratorSeptember 10, 2020 at 2:32 pm in reply to: Ramsey deal clears 2020 cap space… & other Rams n the cap issues #120740znModeratorAlbaNY_Ram
This chart shows that from 2011 thru 2017 teams that spent between 56% and 59% of their cap in their top 10 players had the most success. From this article: https://www.sbnation.com/2018/3/15/17114596/nfl-free-agency-2018-salary-cap-formula-winning-teams
The ‘rule’ suggested by the chart is to get as close to 60% as you can without going over (since going over 60% seems to correlate with wins dropping from 9.2 down to 5.5).
From the article, though: “The exception to the rule: The 2017 Los Angeles Rams In the sample of eight teams that went over 60 percent (they were at 63.1 percent), last year’s 11-5 Rams were one of just two that had a winning record* and were the only team with a scoring margin higher than plus-60 — at plus-149, they had the third-best margin of the year.” (They attribute the Rams’ success to getting a lot of production from guys on their rookie deals: Goff, Gurley, Kupp, Watkins, Cooper, Higbee, Donald, Joyner, and Johnson.)
Going on my failing memory I think the trend is more like 8 or 9 players in that 56% – 59% range rather than 10 in recent years. Looking for supporting documentation …
znModerator
“This Is Climate Change”: West Coast Fires Scorch Millions of Acres & Blot Out the Sun
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/9/10/leah_stokes_west_coast_fires?fbclid=IwAR1B6iXUFibBSiEJPP4nQyIuLoBqOe16qFIQvdIk_oCyCt6-yPe7BnSkg1oznModeratorA preview of the position groups and matchups for the Rams and Cowboys on Sunday Night Football in Week 1 https://t.co/SMb7ZC96fj
— TurfShowTimes (@TurfShowTimes) September 10, 2020
znModeratorMichael Lombardi@mlombardiNFL
On Jalen Ramsey’s extension: “Here’s the other issue: You think anyone is throwing to Jalen Ramsey with Troy Hill on the other side?”Sosa K@QBsMVP
Troy Hill’s 76.4 PFF grade ranked 12th among all qualifying CB’s in the NFL last season.Ranks among CB’s w/35+ tgts:
– 2nd lowest completion %
– 11th in forced incompletion %
– 5th in NFL passer rating allowed
– 12th fewest receiving yards allowedSounds pretty decent to me!
Rich Cimini@RichCimini
The #Jets have signed former Giants LB Alec Ogletree (former Rams first-round pick) to the practice squad. They also signed WR Jaleel Scott to the PS. WR Donte Moncrief was placed on PS IR.znModeratorI love hearing this so much. @MichaelBrockers drops a tidbit that the Rams' O has been practicing/preparing against the 6-1 D that stifled the offense last year. I'm not betting against Sean McVay and Kevin O'Connell. pic.twitter.com/RR8hCJy8uT
— Sosa K (@QBsMVP) September 10, 2020
znModeratorJ.B. Long@JB_Long
“(The Cowboys) are a line of scrimmage team and that’s where the game is going to be decided. It starts with playing really physical at the point of attack, setting edges… You’ve got to kill blocks and then, you ultimately got to tackle.” – @RamsNFL DC Brandon StaleyznModeratorYeah Chuck, really out of left field. https://t.co/8ib7rzK6Zx
— Cody Johnston (@drmistercody) September 9, 2020
September 10, 2020 at 11:13 am in reply to: Ramsey deal clears 2020 cap space… & other Rams n the cap issues #120728znModeratorfrom https://theramswire.usatoday.com/2020/09/10/rams-contract-jalen-ramsey-details-cap-hit-2020/
By getting Ramsey’s deal done, the Rams actually freed up a significant chunk of cap space in 2020. According to Mike Garafolo’s breakdown of Ramsey’s contract, his base salary this season will only be $1.2 million – down from $13.7 million.
Because he got a $25 million signing bonus, which is prorated over five years, his cap hit will drop from that $13.7 million figure to about $6.2 million ($1.2 million base salary plus $5 million per year for the bonus). That gives the Rams an additional $7.5 million in cap space this year, potentially opening the door for a Cooper Kupp extension.
znModeratorWell…..based on that clip, i have a bad feeling about it. Looks like another version of the Avengers.
w
vMy question is, what do sandworms eat.
They are really big and there can’t be a whole lot of foodstuffs wandering around out on the desert.
At least on earth blue whales have krill.
That’s a cruel trick of evolution–to make you this gigantic creature who lives in desert sands, where nothing edible would venture.
…
znModeratorznModeratorIf you missed the Science Channel documentary on SoFi Stadium, you can watch it in its entirety and on demand/for free on SC's website here: https://t.co/usf3XYAZ6V
(h/t @LARamsFC)
— Stu Jackson (@StuJRams) September 10, 2020
znModeratorExpecting to see this play at least 6 times on Sunday night. pic.twitter.com/c4NceeDQ3o
— Rams Brothers (@RamsBrothers) September 10, 2020
znModeratorznModeratorsomeone I know who lives in Oregon, from Facebook
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Stacy Alaimo
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So sad. And the fires are ongoing. Managed to wet down my wood fences and my roof (somewhat) and pack up in case I have to evacuate with the dogs. No idea where I’d go! Seems like there are fires in all directions. My neighbor, who has lived here her whole life, says it has never been this bad, or even close.znModeratorTakeaways From ‘Rage,’ Bob Woodward’s New Book About Trump
Mr. Woodward reveals that President Trump sought to play down the severity of the coronavirus and repeatedly denigrated the U.S. military.link https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/us/politics/woodward-trump-rage-takeaways.html
“This is deadly stuff,” President Trump said of the coronavirus in a Feb. 7 interview with the journalist Bob Woodward for his upcoming book, “Rage.” But it was a vastly different story than he was telling the public at the time. Mr. Trump would later admit to Mr. Woodward that publicly, he “wanted to always” play down the severity of the virus.
Mr. Woodward conducted 18 interviews with the president for the book, which goes on sale next week. Mr. Trump also granted Mr. Woodward access to top officials inside the White House, revealing the inner workings of the president and his administration.
Here are five takeaways.
Mr. Trump minimized the risks of the coronavirus to the American public early in the year.
Despite knowing that the virus was “deadly” and highly contagious, he often publicly said the opposite, insisting that the virus would go away quickly.“I wanted to always play it down,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Woodward on March 19. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
And while he was saying publicly that children were “almost immune” to the virus, he told Mr. Woodward in March: “Just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older. Young people too — plenty of young people.”
In April, as he began to urge the country to reopen, Mr. Trump told Mr. Woodward of the virus, “It’s so easily transmissible, you wouldn’t even believe it.”
Two of the president’s top officials thought he was “dangerous” and considered speaking out publicly.
Gen. Jim Mattis, Mr. Trump’s former defense secretary, is quoted describing Mr. Trump as “dangerous” and “unfit” for the presidency in a conversation with Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence at the time. Mr. Coats himself was haunted by the president’s Twitter feed and believed that Mr. Trump’s gentle approach to Russia reflected something more sinister, perhaps that Moscow had “something” on the president.“Maybe at some point we’re going to have to stand up and speak out,” Mr. Mattis told Mr. Coats in May 2019, according to the book. “There may be a time when we have to take collective action.”
Ultimately neither official spoke out.
Mr. Trump repeatedly denigrated the U.S. military and his top generals.
Mr. Woodward quoted Mr. Trump denigrating senior American military officials to his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, during a 2017 meeting.“They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals,” the president said.
And in a discussion with Mr. Woodward, Mr. Trump called the U.S. military “suckers” for paying extensive costs to protect South Korea. Mr. Woodward wrote that he was stunned when the president said of South Korea, “We’re defending you, we’re allowing you to exist.”
Mr. Woodward also reports that Mr. Trump chewed out Mr. Coats after a briefing with reporters about the threat that Russia presented to the nation’s elections systems. Mr. Coats had gone further than he and the president had discussed beforehand.
When asked about the pain “Black people feel in this country,” Mr. Trump was unable to express empathy.
Mr. Woodward pointed out that both he and Mr. Trump were “white, privileged” and asked if Mr. Trump was working to “understand the anger and the pain, particularly, Black people feel in this country.”Mr. Trump replied, “No,” and added: “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.”
Mr. Woodward writes that he tried to coax the president into speaking about his understanding of race. But Mr. Trump would only say over and over that the economy had been positive for Black people before the coronavirus led to an economic crisis.
Mr. Woodward gained insight into Mr. Trump’s relationships with the leaders of North Korea and Russia.
Mr. Trump provided Mr. Woodward with the details of letters between himself and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, in which the two men fawn over each other. Mr. Kim wrote in one letter that their relationship was like a “fantasy film.”In describing his chemistry with Mr. Kim, Mr. Trump said: “You meet a woman. In one second, you know whether or not it’s going to happen.”
Mr. Trump also complained about the various investigations into ties between his campaign and Russia, saying that they were affecting his abilities as president and his relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
“Putin said to me in a meeting, he said, it’s a shame, because I know it’s very hard for you to make a deal with us. I said, you’re right,” Mr. Trump said.
znModeratorJourdan Rodrigue@JourdanRodrigue
Jared Goff is absolutely glowing about Jalen Ramsey’s contract this afternoon on Zoom…he said Ramsey has been the top corner in the league for a long time and was finally getting paid like it.znModeratorThe Rams’ first injury report of 2020 is here and it comes with good news for Darrell Henderson https://t.co/r25zOYQ2re
— Cameron DaSilva (@camdasilva) September 9, 2020
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