The Frankish Reich

Those listless vessels! They're downright ... deplorable!! (He could at least use words tailored to the Poorly Educated. Elitist!!)

The God of The Trumpies. The one who floods Chavez Ravine just a couple months after they mocked his nuns. (see that thread for something so stupid I couldn't even dream it up if someone said "come up with a comical Republican take on Southern California flooding")

I thought God brought this plague? Why intervene when the heathens are meeting their just end? (idiots)

I apologize. You are correct. List of plagues visited on the heathens (recent memory): 1. Maui wildfire. Hawaii democrats to blame. 2. Missouri tornadoes. God enjoys Drag Queen Story Hour and let 'em know it in no uncertain terms. 3. Vermont flooding. Come on. This one's obvious. Ben and Jerry's rainbow ice cream, etc. I predict God will show his anti-DeSantis bias by bringing a hurricane next month, forcing Ron back into his kinky white boots as retribution for all that anti-Disney stuff (God likes Disney too). He may even spend a night at Mar-a-Lago disguised as Hurricane Melania. This is fun! More, please. (idiots)

Here's what he posted: BlackRock, State Street, & Vanguard represent arguably the most powerful cartel in human history: they’re the largest shareholders of nearly every major public company (even of each other) & they use *your* own money to foist ESG agendas onto corporate boards - voting for “racial equity audits” & “Scope 3 emissions caps” that don’t advance your best financial interests. This raises serious fiduciary, antitrust, and conflict-of-interest concerns. So far, a legitimate point. These companies are, of course, the biggest shareholders because they run the biggest mutual funds. But then this: As President I will cut off the real hand that guides the ESG movement - not the invisible hand of the free market, but the invisible fist of government itself. This simply doesn't follow. He says private companies are behind the ESG investing agenda, but then blames the "invisible fist of the government itself." It probably sounds good to the low information voters he is courting, but it is meaningless. What he seems to want is MORE government regulation of the markets, to be achieved through government control, imposing new fiduciary standards on private investment companies. Remember that the next time this vulture investor talks about "too much regulation." https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/23/vivek-ramaswamy-martin-shkreli-pharma-00098338

We have a new leader in the Dumbest Hot Take of 2023 contest. It's called Chavez Ravine. ra·vine rə-ˈvēn Synonyms of ravine : a small narrow steep-sided valley that is larger than a gully and smaller than a canyon and that is usually worn by running water Ravine flooding generally occurs with excessive seasonal rainfall. The end result is the overflowing of riverbanks or the rise in lake levels at the ravine or river mouth. Can't wait for Pizzagate's take on the next hurricane to slam into Florida.

Dion looks too fat. Brown doesn't look fat enough. Like a family with two dogs where the alpha eats both dinners.

I go with the old wisdom that you can't win any regular season games in the preseason, but you can lose some. Exhibit: Nathaniel Hackett, Broncos 2022. Camp was a walk in the park, no important starters played at all in the preseason, the players (including a new QB) were utterly unprepared, and the regular season was a crap show. But that's the preseason (camp/practice/"games") as a whole. I've not seen any evidence that the games themselves make any difference.

https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2023/8/11/23827954/how-to-bet-the-nfl-preseason Anyone putting any money on anything related to this game needs to seek treatment. Immediately.

I will file this away in my folder "Uncomfortable Areas of Agreement."

Confirmation bias. Or maybe we should slip Spencer Brown a knife when he's going up against a Pro Bowl edge rusher. I'm not sure which one you're getting at.

From the Library of Congress: In February 1940, Guthrie wrote "This Land is Your Land" in reaction to Irving Berlin's song "God Bless America." Guthrie heard Berlin's song repeatedly while he traveled cross-country and became increasingly annoyed that it glossed over the lop-sided distribution of land and wealth that he was observing and had experienced as a child. Although Guthrie was no statistician his observations accurately reflected the fact that, even in the depths of the Depression, nearly 20 percent of the nation's wealth rested with one percent of its population.

Remember Peace through Power? You don't push Putin toward an acceptable negotiated settlement by signaling that you've lost your will to fight back. Short of Putin being ousted in some kind of coup (an extremely unlikely event), this will end with some kind of negotiated withdrawal. It doesn't have to end with a Ukrainian surrender, which is essentially what a lack of allied support would result in.

? More of the self-pleasuring monologue that I don't even understand.

Oh, I agree. Look, I'm over analyzing this and I know it. Mostly because this kid would be smarter just to say, "I'm writing in the character of a rural common man frustrated by a distant government that doesn't seem to know I exist." Or even "the song speaks for itself." He's new to the business, so by oversharing his life story he makes it easy for me to nitpick. But he brings it on himself with that line about fat welfare queens ...

They really should've used AI to make Freddie sing the more honest "tight bottomed boys." I'm pretty sure that would've passed today's censors.

Yes. The difference is Woody and Dylan and all the great folk singers never punched down, making other downtrodden people the object of their scorn.

There goes the family's Christmas in Minsk dream vacation.

Senior citizen who played Hercules 30 years ago surprised that no one wants to see him take his shirt off anymore.

Hmm. Oliver thinks the government should subsidize him, or that the meritocracy is failing people like him, or that for the capitalists who live north of him succeed in large part on the backbreaking efforts of people like him. That's what Woody Guthrie thought. At least he admitted that he was a Communist.

Good point. Makes me feel just a little bit better.

Ouch. You kind of have a point. If this was a song by a black man blaming the legacy of slavery for holding him back, I think the same people would hate the song.

What has the government "made harder?" How has it impacted his freedom to "live his life as he want?" He doesn't mention working a non-music job since that factory one. If you don't make money you don't pay taxes. And he didn't earn enough at that factory job to owe much in the way of income taxes. So: "I'm just not satisfied, it must be the fault of the rich men holding me back." I'm not criticizing here. He's expressing a very real and prevalent sentiment. My question is: why is it prevalent? He didn't get a good education, he didn't learn a marketable skill (don't we have a successful plumber posting here?), he started drinking too much ... what the hell does any of that have to do with The Man (i.e., the Rich Man North of Richmond?)? The message of the song resonates (hah! pun, given the guitar) with the anti-elite Trumpy crowd. But it's the opposite of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps and stop blaming someone else" sentiment. It's actually the "I demand you make my life better and provide insurance for my bad choices" sentiment. I thought that was a liberal sentiment ...

I don't care about preseason football. Never watch it. Not even a minute of it. I do read the great summaries here of the posters who watch it closely to evaluate new players, etc. It's a great value, saving me hours of boredom actually watching meaningless games. So far, here's what I've gleaned from those summaries: - the O line, particularly RT, remains a problem - MLB is a big problem - our backup QB situation leads me to believe we're eff'd if Allen misses more than a couple games - some offensive skill players have made nice plays, some have dropped easy catches, Shakir or Isabella, basically a coin flip - a couple young guys or waiver pickups have shown up nicely and may get some snaps - Poyer looks like a guy coming off an injury, Elam looks like the disappointment he looked like last year In other words, exactly what I knew before the preseason started. So I'd chalk this preseason up to "of no consequence whatsoever." Right now the only thing that matters: no important players suffering significant injuries. Let's move on to the regular season.

Let's get away from the name calling. What could we, as a country, have done to help Oliver Anthony succeed in life? - Education. He dropped out of school at 17. Why? Were the schools bad? Was he unmotivated? Not terribly bright? All of the above? - Job Training. He says he wanted to be a cattle rancher. That's like me wanting to be a MLB player when I was a kid. I don't know of any job training we could have for that. He could've moved to a ranch out west and started to learn the trade from the bottom up. He didn't. He stayed in Virginia and NC working at a dead-end factory job. - That factory job: I don't disagree with him here. This is the source of a lot of frustration in the country. My old Buffalo relatives had factory jobs. They were hard. They sometimes got injured. But they bought homes with money from those jobs and entered the solid middle class. That doesn't seem possible today. I see the lefty songwriter Billy Bragg says the best thing to do is organize a union. And yes, that was a difference between then and now. My old relatives were unionized. But there also wasn't the constant threat of moving the factory overseas. Protectionism + unions? Do we want to go back to that? I don't since it seems kind of stopgap/temporary. And I doubt young Oliver would've been happy even if he'd been making a living wage in a soul destroying job. The one thing I know: welfare payments to someone else weren't the cause of his plight. That's envy, not a cause. Maybe he wanted welfare payments too. Why should anyone get them if they're able bodied and can work for a living? I understand the frustration, but frustration at someone else who's better at gaming the system isn't a cure for your pain. So ... what would all the Oliver Anthony's do if they replaced those Rich Men North of Richmond?