I was hoping they would give Mannion the opportunity as well. And draft a QB. Just not trade up to do so. Just draft a QB somewhere, and another one this year, and another next year. But I would have gone with grooming Mannion for a couple of seasons to see, all while developing other guys.

I hope I’m wrong, obviously.

Anybody surprised by this?

Nice that they were caught this time, but how many times every day does something similar happen?

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

Is Newt really that much worse?

There’s no question that the answer is yes.

From E.J Dionne today: (It’s not much, but it’s related).

The destruction of political norms started decades ago. Here’s how it happened.

By E.J. Dionne Jr. Opinion writer June 18 at 7:08 PM

Let it be said that for one lovely moment, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi responded exactly as those in authority should to a shocking assault on human lives and our political system. After last Wednesday’s shooting on a baseball field, both spoke in a spirit of thoughtful solidarity and genuinely mutual concern. Kudos to them.

Unfortunately, so much else that has been said over the past few days is — I will use a family-oriented term — balderdash. We are not, alas, about to enter some new age of civility because of this terrible episode. And our divisions are not just a matter of our failing to speak nicely of and to each other, even though politeness is an underrated virtue these days.

The harsh feelings in our politics arise from a long process — the steady destruction of the norms of partisan competition that began more than a quarter-century ago. Well before President Trump took political invective to a new level, Newt Gingrich was pushing his side to extreme forms of aggressiveness. Journalist John M. Barry cited an emblematic 1978 speech Gingrich gave to a group of College Republicans in which he warned them off “Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire, but are lousy in politics.”

“You’re fighting a war,” the future House speaker said. “It is a war for power. . . . Don’t try to educate them. That is not your job. . . . What’s the primary purpose of a political leader? . . . To build a majority.”

Gingrich won his majority in 1994, but the cost was high. This is not to say that Democrats were pacifists. But I’d argue that the critical shift happened on the Republican side. The turning point came when President George H.W. Bush was punished by members of his own party, including Gingrich, for agreeing with Democrats on the need for a tax increase in 1990. It was a watershed for the GOP. Republicans would never again repeat what they saw as the elder Bush’s “mistake.”

Political scientists Steven Webster and Alan Abramowitz, pioneers in identifying “negative partisanship” (i.e., preferences driven primarily by intense dislike of the other side), have shown that our deepening differences are driven by disagreements on policy. It goes beyond mere name-calling.

Look at the issue of gun violence. When even mild measures such as background checks are cast as draconian impositions on the right to bear arms, we simply cannot have a rational back-and-forth on practical steps to make events such as last Wednesday’s a little less likely.

Or take health care. Say what you will about Obamacare, but it really did try to draw on conservative and Republican ideas (health insurance exchanges, subsidies for private insurance, tax credits and the like). As Ezra Klein wrote recently on Vox, the lesson of the repeal effort (now being carried out in secrecy in the Senate) is that “including private insurers and conservative ideas in a health reform plan doesn’t offer a scintilla of political protection, much less Republican support.” Civility is a lot harder to maintain when you try to give the other side its due and get nothing in return. And it only aggravates already existing policy differences when one side regularly moves the goal posts.

Yes, I am offering a view of our problem from a progressive perspective. For what it’s worth, I have over the years written with great respect for the conservative tradition and conservative thinkers from Robert Nisbet to Yuval Levin. Conservatism has never been for me some demonic ideology, and I am happy to take issue with those who say otherwise.

But I would ask my friends on the right to consider that ever since Bush 41 agreed to that tax increase, conservatives and Republicans in large numbers have shied away from any deal-making with liberals. They have chosen instead to paint us as advocates of dangerous forms of statism. This has nothing to do with what we actually believe in or propose. Every gun measure is decried as confiscation. Every tax increase is described as oppressive. This simply shuts down dialogue before it can even start.

John F. Kennedy once spoke of how “a beachhead of cooperation” might “push back the jungle of suspicion.” So let us begin with that Ryan-Pelosi moment. We can at least agree that political violence is unacceptable and that each side should avoid blaming the other for the deranged people in their ranks who act otherwise. Things have gotten so intractable that even this would be progress.

Read more from E.J. Dionne’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

zn wrote:

For those who have seen it…there’s a scene everyone will recognize where Diana and Steve set sail from her island. At one point she innocently invites him to sleep next to her. He hesitates because of social gender rules and customs he grew up with, which she does not understand. They’re very awkward about it all. The scene is considered one of the films highlights because of the way it pokes fun at both her incredulous innocence and his straight-laced morality.

Well according to the actors, that entire scene was improvised.

.

I saw it on Friday, and I liked it a lot. I put it up there with the top tier of superhero films. This scene you mention was very good, and there were a few other moments that were brief, but also good. Like the bit with the ice cream. They didn’t belabor it. Just a quick snapshot of her “newness.” The way she carried the sword around in London like it was perfectly normal, too. And I absolutely loved her casual complacency when she walks in on him as he is getting out of the pools. She just has no sense of embarrassment whatsoever. It was wonderful.

I am also a big fan of the way the relationship between WW and Captain Trevor is presented. At first, he is protective of her, and even tries to shield her when surrounded by the Nazi agents. But when he realizes what she is capable of, he simply respects and supports that. There is no resentment, no power struggle. But, otoh, he also does not surrender his authority. All the other companions also just accept her skills for what they are. That may have been my favorite thing about the film. She was just better than everyone else, and everybody was just fine with that.

It is a good movie.

I don’t have high hopes for a sequel, though, because a lot of the charm comes from her naivete, and you can’t continue to play that for long.

It’s really no mystery why people choose a six-pack and a television rather than read books by John Stockwell.

We are so fucking doomed. I’m sorry to say it again. It’s been the main refrain of this board for a few years. But just nothing we know about the world suggests that we can fix its problems with a nice bit of legislation that allows people to pee in the bathroom of their choice, or whatever.

Newt Gingrich is one of the Leading Assholes in the increasing divisiveness we are suffering from in our country right now. The government is dominated by completely shameless hypocrites who say and do the most appalling things, and blame others for it. And I don’t see how we pull back from this civil divide when hot-headed rhetoric is now fully ingrained in media marketplace, making millionaires and celebrities out of people who feed the fires of resentment.

Here are the subsequent picks to Robinson. There are a few names there that would have been better choices in retrospect.

1 3 Jacksonville Jaguars Blake Bortles QB UCF The American
1 4 Buffalo Bills Sammy Watkins WR Clemson ACC from Cleveland [R1 – 2]
1 5 Oakland Raiders Khalil Mack † LB Buffalo MAC
1 6 Atlanta Falcons Jake Matthews OT Texas A&M SEC
1 7 Tampa Bay Buccaneers Mike Evans † WR Texas A&M SEC
1 8 Cleveland Browns Justin Gilbert CB Oklahoma State Big 12 from Minnesota [R1 – 3]
1 9 Minnesota Vikings Anthony Barr † LB UCLA Pac-12 from Buffalo via Cleveland [R1 – 4]
1 10 Detroit Lions Eric Ebron TE North Carolina ACC
1 11 Tennessee Titans Taylor Lewan † OT Michigan Big Ten
1 12 New York Giants Odell Beckham, Jr. † WR LSU SEC
1 13 St. Louis Rams Aaron Donald † DT Pittsburgh ACC
1 14 Chicago Bears Kyle Fuller CB Virginia Tech ACC
1 15 Pittsburgh Steelers Ryan Shazier † LB Ohio State Big Ten
1 16 Dallas Cowboys Zack Martin † G Notre Dame Ind. (FBS)

The Guardian started tilting right during the Thatcher years. It’s trajectory is more-or-less the same as Labour’s, or the Democrats. It moved to the right with the rest of the country, and became Blairite.

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

I’m guessing its not making a dent,

Nope.

Not a dent.

Well, unlike Benghazi, there is no actual truth to the Russia connection. The Democrats made it all up. They are quite the obstructionists.

I rarely go to movies, but I’ve been thinking of going to see this one in part because I got into another Facebook holy horror over the film that dwarfs that other one I posted here on the DNC/Clinton/Sanders. It was on the question of feminism, and I never got any answers, so I think I have to see it for myself.

I was wondering why nobody had posted on it yet because Super Hero films are usually referenced here.

And on the same day, it is revealed that he funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars from a cancer charity into his own business.

Typical Trump day.

I reflect on the educational system’s impact on all of this quite a bit, since it is basically my job to teach critical thinking. So I wonder, how much fault belongs to teachers? How much is the system? How much is the students? And I don’t know.

What I do know is that I ask students questions that require higher level thinking – evaluation, synthesis, etc. – and few of them answer. I am careful to start with the lower level questions – recall, understanding, etc. – so that I “scaffold,” an education term for making sure all the pieces are understood by the students so that they are in a position to answer the question. And…you know…they just don’t. Largely. Even when they have registered enthusiasm for the topic in question. So it doesn’t seem to be apathy, at least not entirely.

I do believe that the system tends to numb kids, and dull their love of learning (I would get rid of grades K-8 at least, possibly even k-12 because I think it teaches kids that school is about getting points rather than learning and exploring). But I am inclined to think that teenagers, even bright teenagers, just mostly are not capable (or perhaps mature enough) to engage in critical thinking. There are some. Maybe 10% of the kids I have come through my classes. But most kids just want the answer, and want to parrot.

And this isn’t unique to our time.

I am just more and more inclined to believe that critical thinking just isn’t for everybody. I have a lot of friends who seem intelligent, but just aren’t interested in politics, or social issues, environmental issues etc. To them it’s just boring stuff, and both sides do it, and shut up about it already. That kind of thing. They just aren’t interested in engaging.

I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I tend to think the problem is that for the most part, humans just don’t want to struggle mentally, physically, or emotionally.

zn wrote:

waterfield wrote:

Yes-what I meant is that when it comes to this particular issue the Republicans will always default to economics.

This is a good n important thread to start W, thanks for the contribution.

I wonder if diehard dogmatic republicans can be explained by genetics.

I wonder about that, too. And about environmental factors. I’ve been thinking about that since I started thinking more about political “branding,” about identifying with a political brand.

As I said a month or so ago, I think the Republican brand tends to attract people who tend to place a higher value on Authority, and on unsympathetic black and white rules/discipline.

Is that kind of thing genetic? Or is it personality based? I dunno.