Yeah, Obama is indistinguishable from Bush et al. in the systemic stuff. He kept up, and even expanded the Big Brother state, continued Bush’s bailout of Wall St., and so on.

He made a tiny bit of headway (at a price) on healthcare, and he negotiated a deal with Iran to curb nuclear proliferation that no Republican since Nixon could have accomplished.

But, yeah. Guantanamo and Patriot. Weirdly, still standing.

It may be Gurley’s fault. How would I know.

But I still wouldn’t have called that play, and I would say the same thing even if Gurley scored on it. Running between the tackles has got to be the least successful option in the playbook this year. And Fisher’s, “You need to be able to do that” just isn’t a reason to try it. Yes, they need to be able to do that. But the track record says they can’t.

Martz woulda called something with 5 WRs, 3 TEs, a FB, and some trapeze equipment.

wv wrote:

——————–
Well, in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus clearly states one can reach the ‘kingdom’ by going outside OR inside.

“The Kingdom is inside of you and it is outside of you.” ~Gospel of Thomas

So the notion that Fisher is a heretic for attempting an offtackle play, and should be burned at the stake, flies right in the face of the scriptures.

w
v
“Scrutamini scripturas. [let us look at the scriptures] Two words that have undone the world.”
John Selden (1584-1654)

Typical scriptural fundamentalist. You take a text from the Apocrypha, and twist its meaning.

Jesus did NOT say the kingdom is inside the tackles, or outside the tackles.

He said inside of you, or outside of you.

Plainly, he meant that the Touchdown is both Inside you, and Outside you. It’s a state of mind AND a place.

He never said anything about how to reach the end zone kingdom. Well, he did. But not in Thomas.

zn wrote:

I understand your frustrations but just want to focus on one thing. I can’t think of many defenses that could lose a top-flight DE like Quinn and a top-flight CB like Johnson and have meaningful depth behind those players.

Consensus before the season was our DL depth was fabulous. And only a year or two ago, we thought we had an embarrassment of riches in the secondary. More players than positions with Roberson, Bryant, Robertson etc. All promising young players.

And here we are.

And, yes, Quinn and Johnson are blue chip players, and their loss hurts. But…man. How many times have we watched the Rams take on a backup QB, and various injury replacements, and the mismatch we expect just never happens. In fact, some of these backups have a knack for having career days against the Rams.

I think this season is just the point at which a lot of Rams fans are going to say…”Enough. Just win. Win! No more 7-9 bullshit.”

zn wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

The Rams just lost two games they expected to win. It only makes sense that the head coach was going to have something to say to his team using language that he might not want the public to hear.

I think (and I don’t know for a fact) that it had more to do with 2 things in the Detroit game. The dumb defensive penalties, and the chippiness they showed during the Detroit victory kneel.

I don’t think a coach rips into a team for losing when they showed effort.

…

I didn’t stay with it through the kneel down.

Ogletree, by chance? Sims?

I wanted the FG at the end of the half, but I won’t complain that they went for it.

I do complain that it was a run up the middle when that has been one thing they have proven consistently terrible at all season.

A pitch, a roll-out, a sweep, 4 wide, I don’t care. Not up the middle.

Poster One: Trump supporters live in a glitchy “reality.”

Poster Two: So you’re saying freedom is outdated?

Billy_T wrote:

He gets his brownshirts frothing mad with calls of “lock her up!” and so on. This is the first election in my lifetime where one of the candidates says he will jail the other if he wins. Prior to that, he’s all but called for her assassination by “second amendment people,” and he and his campaign team have egged on the Russians to launch cyberattacks, which may well mean screwing with vote totals.

All the while, he’s pushing this absurd persecution (complex) meme that everyone is supposedly out to get him, and his fanboys eat that up. It syncs up with their own sense of persecution and victimization as supposedly besieged white Christian males.

A toxic brew of racism, xenophobia, persecution complexes, misogyny and nationalism that is self-evidently reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany. The parallels are unmistakable, in my view.

I hate to admit this, but the damage is done. IMO, civility is a tacit agreement that is very fragile in a society, and when it is compromised, I think it is an extremely tall task to restore it.

As an analogy, money is actually worthless, right? Our entire society depends upon the agreed illusion that those small sheets of paper actually have value. Which they don’t. Except by consensual agreement. Right? Really, without our agreement, a slice of bread has more value than $100 bill. I can’t eat that $100 bill, it is useless as a heating source. Etc.

Likewise, I believe our political society depends upon a gentleman’s agreement. And the tacit rules that underwrite our written rules (laws) have been eroding since the right wing noise machine was born. Trump, I think, has killed it. That his absolutely disgraceful behavior is accepted – and championed – by millions of people is very bad news. We may have all been distressed over the years at the way mud-slinging has become so prominent in our political life, but the bar hasn’t just been lowered, it’s been completely knocked aside.

Millions of people in this country are serious about electing a total lout. And I don’t think that barrier, now broken, is going to be restored. Trump has already seriously damaged this country, and it is just the beginning.

Not War, war. But it wouldn’t be surprising if Near War happened. Things considered of national “interest” get wasted. American and Russian “puppet” sites.

PA Ram wrote:

I actually believe that the United States and Russia are very close to war.

At this point I’d be more surprised if they didn’t have some sort of conflict. Whether it’s the Ukraine, missile shields in Europe or the war in Syria, there are so many hot spots right now, I can’t imagine those plates keep spinning.

Add to that the cyberattacks and the United States vow to respond, the personal animosity between Putin and Clinton, and you have a recipe for conflict.

I think it’s going to happen. How long it goes, how limited it will be, I don’t know.

And I hope I’m wrong.

But beyond that–when Trump loses the election I wouldn’t be surprised to see white nationalists try to start a race war here or create some sort of anarchy.

I try to be the optimist(except with the Rams, of course)but I think there are some dark times ahead.

I have read nothing on the Russia Us relationship, though I know enough to know that the situation is testy. I have no understanding of how testy, or exactly what the disputes are – I am sure the issues are much deeper than Syria and Ukaraine.

The Trump supporters do worry me quite a lot. They are heavily armed, very angry, and already feel that they are victims of injustice. Add to that the fact that they are already being cultivated to believe that the ONLY thing that could possibly give Clinton the White House is election fraud, and we have a big problem. These are people who, shall we say, don’t rely heavily on the Scientific Method for the construction of their reality.

PA Ram wrote:

. Are there people who are saying they won’t vote for Trump publicly but who will do it when inside the voting booth?

I would say, yes. I don’t know for sure about what they are saying to the polls, but public support is much smaller than private support.

I live in the most conservative county in California. It votes for the GOP at a rate of 70%, typically. And there are a high percentage of Libertarians here.

Bush stickers and signs were all over the place, even in 2004. Lots of McCain/Palin, plenty of Romney/Ryan.

There is just nothing around. I see a handful of Trump signs. A couple of bumper stickers. No sign of Hillary, either. By far the most common political sign out now is the State of Jefferson stuff (There has been a Libertarian group trying to split off from California for decades, and it has risen much higher in visibility the past 3 or 4 years).

So I surmise that a lot of Trump supporters are smart enough to know what supporters of Trump look like, and they don’t want to look like that. A lot of people are smart enough to keep their bigotries to themselves except in the company of other known bigots. I am certain lots of people who are going to vote for Trump are hiding behind the Undecided or Gary Johnson camps at the water cooler, but will punch the ticket for Trump once behind the curtain.

I am voting for Jill Stein, and I share her reservations about Hillary’s foreign policy.

Trump is worse. Trump is worse than Bush. Trump is the worst candidate this country has ever nominated.

joemad wrote:

Zooey, do you see yourself in the photo? I might have been sitting right across from your seats in the stadium….

I think you cut me off by 2 or 3 rows. At the ten yard line, to the right of that top gate/tunnel, I was in those red seats. This photo has gotta be late in the game. I can tell by the shade. I don’t think that hit us until the 4th quarter.

It’s so funny you were there, too, and some other people from the board, and we didn’t know it. Maybe next year we can have a little get together of a few of us before the game just for some handshakes and giggles. That would be fun. I have an excuse, now, with my kid right there. He got the tickets from some other student there.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by Zooey.

From up high in the shaded area pre-game. You can just see the Hollywood sign.

Downtown from where I sat pre-game. Notice the blue and white.

Todd Gurley scores on this play. Notice the seats are filled in.

Oh, I meant to add, fwiw, a rough unscientific jersey accounting.

At first, I formed the opinion that Dickerson jerseys were number one, but by the end of the day, I was convinced there was an equal number of Gurley jerseys.

After those two, the landscape was dominated by LA Rams of old.

There were a smattering of Austin and Quinn. Saw one Donald. A few Goff. One Hekker jersey.

Most popular after the running backs was Jack Youngblood. Bunch of Warners. Quite a few Cromwell. Some Jackson (Steven, not Harold). A surprising number of Reynolds – half a dozen. An autographed Ferragamo, and 1 each in blue and white of Jones, Snow, and Gabriel. Saw a few Bruce, and one Holt.

Think it was:

Dickerson/Gurley
Youngblood
Warner
Cromwell
Jackson
Goff
the rest of them.

Which one would you wear? Or do you wear?

I think Youngblood is probably my all-time favorite Ram. Jones, Olsen, and Gabriel high up there for me.