FWIW, I asked my niece (former Marine) and she tells me that both the VA hospitals at Travis AFB (Fairfield) and Mather(Rancho Cordova) are pretty good. Travis is bigger. Mather has a relationship with UC Davis Med Center. California real estate prices are higher than average, of course, though some places are more affordable than others.

Pfft.

That was all a bunch of cherry-picking from a tree with precious little fruit on it.

I think we can agree that ESPN doesn’t know shit about it. They weren’t in Thousand Oaks or Irvine. Seriously, Dickerson is in the best situation to offer an opinion. He was actually around the team. And Mannion, iirc, looked better than Goff during the preseason last year. Goff may be more talented, but he spent last year learning how to QB from under center.

I think both Goff and Mannion are NFL worthy, and possibly more than that, but nobody really knows yet, including the Rams. Orlovsky is a camp arm, and emergency backup.

Yep.

When I informed my son that McCain was diagnosed with brain cancer, he said, “Sounds like a pre-existing condition.”

And Old McConnell postponed the vote on the health bill while McCain had surgery because he needs McCain’s vote to kick millions of Americans off health care while he goes to the Mayo Clinic on taxpayers’ money.

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.