NoCal radio stations were all slitting their wrists over the 49ers today. Cheered me up a lot.

Oh, and Braden Fiske. Another sack and another forced fumble.

Jackson, maybe Robinson.

Some of the other guys will be available in September if they have an injury bug at a position. Some of them are just not going to get the vet minimum anywhere.

wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

I’m sure being a woman of color didn’t help, but yeah…

Right. Which speaks to the fact there are some factions in the Blue or Red pies that are just givens. There is a white supremacist faction that will always go Republican. And Patriarchal ‘family values’ fundamentalist christian faction that will always go Republican. Also a white-wealthy-country-club crowd that will always go Rep. So, yeah, the woman of color thing hurt the pr0-genocide, pro-ecocide, soul-less, mind-numbingly-dull Dem. w v

What they need is an exciting black woman.

At any rate, I’m pretty disconnected from Dem-Rep politics, though, these days.   So, I dont have a good sense of the exact algebra of why the soul-less Duplicat lost and the Buffoon Replicant won.

But I am curious.   (In a quirky, doomer, apocalyptic, wry way. )   I like to keep up on mainstream capitalist-pathology and ecocide-culture.  🙂     So, i will read around, the next few weeks, as i did in 2016.    Probly the same exact forces are at play.  Same factions.

My gut tells me, that Kamala is John Kerry.  She’s Bob Dole.  She’s just got a dull personality that did not excite enough people.   Shallow amerikunz.  Ya know.

Same. I’m curious, but I can already feel my curiosity starting to fade, though my activity in this thread would testify otherwise. But it’s kind of like replaying a car accident in your head, over and over, just to try to get a handle on it. The damage is done, and the fallout will follow. Trump’s victory is bad news in immediate, substantial ways to vulnerable, marginalized groups. But the Grand Arc of biosphere destruction, of imperial devastation, of a sharpening divide of wealth and power…all that marches on either way, so I find myself more interested in trying to protect my future and my kids, and enjoying myself as much as possible than in reading the news headlines.

I didn’t watch any coverage on Tuesday. My wife did. I received some Push headlines that suggested the worst was happening, but it wasn’t until I got up yesterday morning that I actually knew for sure. And I was sick for about an hour, and then I started moving into the autopsy, and trying to figure out how I was going to maintain my mental health over the next four years, and the only answer to that is to restrict the amount of news I digest. That feels like a copout of sorts, but it also seems starkly obvious that I can’t do a god damn thing about any of this.

Leftists often like to say Dems lose because the party moved too far right, and abandoned the working class. (see vid with RD Kelly below) I mean, leftists always say that.   Could be truth to that.  I dunno.  Thats why LEFTISTS didnt like her.  But Clinton won twice by moving right.  Obama won twice by moving right.   I mean, the Dem ecocide-coalition sometimes works.  Sometimes it doesnt.

And I think there is some truth to the claim that Ds have moved too far to the right. If the Democrats actually strengthened unions and raised the minimum wage, and provided healthcare and family leave and vacation time and workers’ comp and all that, they probably wouldn’t be facing the angry maga people. But I don’t think it’s an Intellectual, principled choice on the part of voters. Seems to me that the truism that it always comes down to the economy is accurate. The price of eggs, milk, and rent have gone up a lot, and people are feeling squeezed. That’s it. They aren’t thinking about Fed policy and interest rates and any of that. Since neither party is doing a damn thing to reverse those trends – and, in fact, seem united in believing that the working class should experience a little MORE insecurity – they turn to other factors. And for a lot of those people, the next thing on the list is hating the scapegoat for their economic insecurity, and here we are. That gets turned into resentment against lgbtq and immigrants and racial minorities and religious minorities and a bunch of stuff that wouldn’t really feel threatening IF they had enough money to prosper and retire etc. But when you are struggling financially, everything becomes a threat.

Anyway. We’re screwed. Enjoy your evening.

zn wrote:

roberto clemente@rclemente2121

pff / week 9 centers:

out of 31 qualifying centers, limmer ranked:

#6 overall

#4 pass pro

#9 run blocking

That’s ridiculous.

This front office should not be fired.

wv wrote:

I am in favor of the Rams dominating and obliterating the Dolphins. I vote for that. w v

Oh, thank goodness. I was beginning to think I was the only Rams fan on this board. I feel like I stepped into some kind of weird Dolphin orgy here.

Jordan
@JordanChariton
3h • 17 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
🧵MAJOR takeaway ignored by Dems in losing to Trump twice in 8 years:

Combined Millennial/Gen Z turnout—age 18-44—declined by 7% from 2016 (44% of voters) to 2024 (37% of voters). This was age group @BernieSanders won & galvanized—but Dems & media took him out by the knees.

…
@BernieSanders 2016 (Bernie wave)

18-44
44% of voters

18-29
19% of voters
Image
@BernieSanders 2020

18-44
40% of voters
(4 point turnout drop vs 2016)

18-29
17% of voters
(2 point turnout drop by 2016)

***Lots of young voters felt Dems came together to stop Bernie from winning Dem primary
Image
@BernieSanders 2024

18-44
37% of voters
(3 point turnout drop vs 2020)
(7 point turnout drop vs 2016)

18-29
14% of voters
(3 point turnout drop vs 2020)
(5 point turnout drop by 2016)

***Millions of young voters disgusted by Gaza genocide, buried by student loans, deflated in post-Bernie era
Image
@BernieSanders There’s never 1 singular reason a presidential candidate wins or loses an election—but Dems shrinking in youth turnout by 7 points in eight years is significant. The reality is the corrupt elites running the party truly thought if they just put forward Taylor Swift and Beyonce…
@BernieSanders Mixed with “cute” “cool” TikTok videos, that would sway the youth. But young people are not stupid and didn’t support @BernieSanders because he was cool or had celebrity support: they supported him because he was the only one offering them a bold economic reprieve from this…
@BernieSanders New Gilded Age young people are living in. Millennials grew into adulthood while simultaneously being CRUSHED by post 9/11 economic downturn, 2008 financial crash, growing shit-job/job-less/gig-job economy, and as student loan debt slaves…
@BernieSanders Gen Z has mostly had to grow into adulthood in the same growing shit-job/job-less/gig-job economy with the sour cherry on top of the COVID economic collapse…
@BernieSanders In 2020, Millennials/Gen Z in large part held their nose & voted for Biden because they wanted to stop Trump (and I believe bc of Bernie’s strong endorsement of Biden). BUT they were also promised:
✅$15 min wage
✅Public Option
✅Aggressive climate policy
✅$2K checks

….
@BernieSanders But they got:
🛑$15 min wage (the parliamentarian!)
🛑Public Option (Biden never uttered it again after election)
🛑Aggressive climate policy (Biden doubled public land drilling)
🛑$1,400 check
🛑Small loan cancellation blocked by Supreme Courty
@BernieSanders Now, you can argue “well it’s more than they would have gotten from Trump!”…

But if you are young, haven’t had the economic opportunities that Boomers/Gen X had, and have a hopeless economic future, “the other guy is worse” eventually…

Falls on deaf ears.
@BernieSanders When you add in something young people across the country have repeatedly told me since 2016—”why the hell are we spending all this money across the world while ignoring here”—all of this is a recipe for disaster for Democrats…
@BernieSanders This is not meant to relitigate the whole “Bernie was screwed in 2016 & 2020” argument (but he was). This is to show clearly by the data…turnout among age 50 and under inched toward half the electorate in 2016 when Bernie galvanized the youth—and has dramatically shrunk…
@BernieSanders over eight years since then as the Dem Party blamed Russia for their defeat, moved further right, offered SHORT-TERM economic relief during a deadly pandemic that they allowed to quickly expire, and abandoned the few economic promises they made…
@BernieSanders The takeaway: offering neoliberal crumbs like tax credits, grants, help w/ home down payments (when Wall Street is still allowed to buy up all the housing and double the price)…is not enough for a younger generation with little economic hope, no savings, and buried in debt.
@BernieSanders Maybe instead of listening to their donors and crushing the most popular politician— beloved and energized young people—they should start embracing his politics and putting forth his proposals to win back working class voters of all colors and ages…
@BernieSanders Better chance I develop six-pack abs by Thanksgiving.

wv wrote:

I dont have much respect for Bernie anymore (‘my friend Joe’ etc) but he did at least say some useful things to his buddies in the Ecocide-Party.  (and i hate TYT, btw, fwiw)

Yeah…I saw Bernie’s statement both on twitter and facebook yesterday, and I didn’t read it. I did watch the video you brought here, and I guess I’m glad he’s found his voice again, now that the bargain he made is at an end, but it feels like too little, too late. His capitulation to the party went exactly the way we all expected it would. He gave up his voice in exchange for a committee seat that got a few things passed that will be a little bit of help to a few people. That was the deal. It wasn’t enough, and now we have Trump again.

nittany ram wrote:

Well, yes, we have the ability to ruin things for us and the majority of the creatures most similar to us, but as Stephen J Gould pointed out, we couldn’t destroy all life on Earth even if we wanted to.  Life (even higher life forms) have survived global catastrophes greater than we can bring about.  We are here indirectly as a result of the last one.  And ultimately, our efforts would destroy us before we could exterminate everything else.

Well, my son tells me that we are pretty close to killing all the plankton that live in the ocean, and that the plankton produces far more oxygen than the rainforests do, and when the plankton goes, everything above it on the food chain goes.

I think if we get down to plankton level, Stephen J Gould’s contributions to science won’t matter much to anything left.

nittany ram wrote:

So YOU’RE why Trump won. I agree.  I don’t know how you fight the system when it has so much influence and power over every aspect of daily life. This has to be unprecedented.  No society in history has been under this much control while not realizing they are under control. Like you, what bothers me the most is the effect this is having on the environment.  Propelling  the “6th Extinction”.   However, I get some relief knowing humans will be dead before the planet is.  Earth will get the last laugh

I dunno what you mean by “the planet.” I think in 100 years, give or take a coupla decades, the only living thing on this planet will be those freaky things that live on the bottom of the ocean along the volcanic vents. We are headed for a hard reset.

And I think wv is right. There is absolutely no chance of fixing this. Sociopathic greed monsters control “reality,” and you can’t argue people out of their realities. It doesn’t matter how much evidence you have. From time-to-time somebody will “get it,” and see what’s happening, but there is no chance whatsoever of changing the system. At least not until it collapses of its own accord, and that will happen, but it will be environmental collapse that makes the system go belly up, and there’s nothing left to do at that point but write epitaphs anyway.

Trump’s victory brings some unnecessary suffering into the equation earlier, and pointlessly. But the window began to shut somewhere in the 60s, and slammed shut when Clinton sold the Democrat party to Wall St.

zn wrote:

This is not an issue of the left not being heard, this is an issue of the right getting a very regressive message out to its base, while being backed by big money that has been promised huge gifts in the form of tax relief and drilling rights etc. So it’s a combination of the rich oligarchy getting even more of what it wants than ever before–and I mean by huge big preposterous bunches more–and prejudiced Magas saving their kids from migrants turning them trans (the latter joke captures a real point). Among the things threatened? Besides the environment. Social security, FEMA, education, women’s reproductive rights, the safety net and assistance out of poverty…. it goes on and on. This is the worst in our lifetimes. By far. Make no mistake.

I dunno. While I agree that things are going to get far, far worse, and this is basically the death of the “American dream” of living in prosperity and freedom, the fact that the oligarchy financed this heavily doesn’t account for the voting patterns. It is also true, for example, to say that the oligarchy financed Harris. They were kind of in a win-win situation as a class, though specific billionaires backed the MAGA agenda, and some backed Harris.

So here’s something I’m thinking about: Trump apparently has drawn FEWER votes this election than he did in 2020. He actually performed worse than the last time he ran. Not by a lot; it’s basically a push. So now I’m looking squarely at the fact that Harris got ~15M fewer votes than Biden did. Trump didn’t gain in popularity. Harris was a drop-off from Biden. A huge drop-off.

Why?

Well, it’s complex, and there are undoubtedly several factors.

But it seems apparent that, once again, the Democrats relied mostly on the argument that Trump is terrible. Which has the virtue of being true. But also isn’t enough on its own. And I say that having just made the prediction a few hours ago that it WOULD be enough, that women in particular were bound to vote against the regressive, misogynistic policies that are unfolding.

Harris ran on “Joy!” And secondarily, she ran on being a Republican. Bragged about Republican endorsements, including those of Liz and Dick Cheney, a war criminal. And promised to take advice from Republicans, and even find a place in her cabinet for a Republican. In the mean time, she also forcefully backed war criminal Netanyahu, and said nothing about specific policies. She deliberately ran on vague generalizations about “economic opportunities.” And apart from her saying she would continue to back Israel and fracking, I don’t know a single thing that she said she would fight for. On abortion rights, she said that if a bill came to her, she would sign it. She didn’t promise to lead the fight, or make it a priority.

Basically, she presented nothing except the absence of MAGA as a platform and some feel-good vibes.

And I think the way she came to be the nominee was unhelpful. Voters didn’t choose her. She was the nominee by default. I think all of this added up to a good deal of apathy about her as a candidate, and it appears that there wasn’t enough fear of Trump to put her over the top.

Well, part of it, I think, is that the camera doesn’t see what Stafford sees.

If you watch that play through the camera – which is what we do – it looks like an INT all the way, and then Johnson bursts in like a comet and snatches it out of nowhere.

But that isn’t what Stafford was looking at when he cut that throw loose.

So, again, I dunno. I’m inclined to think it was a brilliant throw, and Stafford erased Worrell because he tracked Johnson all along, and saw the window.

nittany ram wrote:

wv wrote:

Is there a throw that better exemplifies the essence of Stafford, more than that one? The gunslinger. Ice-water. Assassin. Reckless. Pinpoint power-accurate. Stubborn. Tough. I wish some football expert would go over the details of that pass. The TD will get all the press coverage, but the pass to TJ was as interesting a play as the Rams will have all year.. w v

Someone on twitter quipped that if Mahomes had made that throw, there would already be a one-hour televised special about it on NFL network.

I agree with all of this. That was either the greatest shitty pass of all time, or the shittiest great pass of all time. Or something. I dunno. But I’ve never seen anything like that before. That was brand new fresh and original.

You know, he led Tyler Johnson precisely, and put that ball EXACTLY where it need to be for that to be a catch. And the fact that “Pants-Around-His-Ankles” Worrell tried to deposit that check before it got endorsed just adds to it.

That Stun Gun was set at eleven. That’s all I know.

zn wrote:

Zooey wrote:

I don’t even recognize this Rams front office anymore. Why don’t they go get some actual players?

They know nothing about football. Remember, they’re the guys who let Darren Arnold retire.

Deacon Jones, too. Don’t forget that he could still be wearing the horns.