The Frankish Reich

And the guidelines are ... GOVERNMENT guidelines, right? If there were no such guidelines or better guidelines, insurers would raise premiums commensurate with increased risk (a totaled home now results in a million dollar claim rather than a half million dollar claim) and they'd stay in the market. I hope you don't teach economics.

No. California has similar problems. A market failure there too. Markets typically don't fail by themselves. Bad policy is the usual culprit. Gavin Newsom isn't running for President (yet). Ron DeSantis is (for a little bit longer)

The real trafficking/child labor crisis: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/labor-dept-says-number-children-found-working-illegally-up-44-percent-rcna96480 Immigrants being put to work doing hard physical labor and not going to school. Not as sexy as, well, "sex trafficking," but far, far more prevalent. The sex-obsessed alt right should be paying attention to this, particularly since it meshes with the immigration issue.

Russell Wilson concerns me. He can still throw. But his mobility has declined greatly, and it's made him a below-average starting QB by the age of 33. Yes, there's a lot of hits behind the line of scrimmage thanks to bad O lines and his propensity to hold onto the ball too long. But there was also a ton of wear and tear in getting to 500, 600, 800+ yards running downfield in his 20s. Steve Young was also a guy with unusually low mileage on him for his age. There was the USFL spell (not sure how much damage he sustained there against lesser players), and then he sat behind Montana for 4 full seasons.

It is government failure because an insurance market - which could be profitable despite tropical storm risk - is in turmoil. And it is not profitable because government regulation doesn't allow the companies to charge a premium sufficient to protect against risk. In those situations, the government needs to fix the regulatory structure.

Agreed. Which is why I tried to separate scramblers from runners. I see where you could move a Rodgers into the “runner” category (he did have some 300+ Yard rushing seasons) and make him another Steve Young exception. But what 70s QBs like Tarkenton and Staubach did seems very different to the way Allen, Lamar, Hurts, Fields play the game today. Well, yes. There's a difference between Lamar's Ravens offense and Allen's Bills offense (not to mention Fields and the Bears so-called offense, which involves Fields running for his life on every play). I think Hurts/Eagles is closest. It's not designed-run dependent, but the designed and undesigned runs are very important parts of their respective offenses.

Elway ran for 3400 yards over 16 seasons. Allen has already run for 3100 over 6. I hope you’re right about Allen’s future tracking Elway’s, but right now they’re not comparable with respect to how much their success depends on running. I forgot that Cam ascribed his shoulder problem to trying to make a tackle on an interception. So yes, you can carve out a “freak injury” exception for him. But to me he showed an overall decline in ability that went beyond that.

I’m saying we don’t know. RG3, Culpepper, Vick - all could still throw, but after the run was no longer a real threat they were backup quality at best. Randall Cunningham made the transition and was great in that one fluke season, but again … we just don’t know. He recovered and could still throw, but without the huge run threat he just wasn’t very good anymore.

So the Bills and Allen are also damn fools for paying attention to such things. Or “this is why you are not in NFL management.” Other than Young, while these guys could run, they weren’t heavily run dependent like Allen.

I tried to use an objective standard. - an average of 30 yards rushing per game (roughly 500 yards per season) over a sustained period of 2+ years of starts. QBs who are mobile and more like old fashioned “scramblers” pretty much never hit that level. So it weeds them out and leaves us with the clear running QBs OR - QBs who had at least one season (usually multiple seasons) of 400+ yards rushing. Again, this weeds out the scramblers and guys like Mahomes and Rodgers who don’t often run by design. So … not perfect, but it avoids cherry picking to prove the hypothesis. Would he? I mean, I think so. But take away the run threat and would he be anywhere near the same guy?

Well, those things aren't exactly independent from running the ball a lot and taking hits ...

Uh oh. Looks like we're in a battle for 4th place with the Pats.

Exactly. I'm not saying Josh is doomed to an early retirement if he doesn't stop running with the ball. Every guy is different, and the NFL of the 2020s is different too. But it is playing with fire to keep running and taking hits. I expect to see more of a situational approach. He'll run when it really counts, like in the playoffs or when a key game for playoff seeding hangs in the balance. The rest of the time? Slide, run out of bounds behind the line, or throw the ball away. That only makes sense.

I don't think so. I think the criteria I set were objective, and also fit reality. Roethlisberger wasn't a guy with designed run plays or who was eager to tuck the ball away and take off. His style was more to move around and use his massive size to shed would-be QB sacks. Rodgers is a special kind of QB, more like a right handed Steve Young in some ways, but again - all those years and never a 400 yard rushing season tells us something.

Sure, that's true of some, or even a lot. But it's not true at all of others. McNair had a huge arm and was a very accurate passer in his day. Culpepper too. And Russell Wilson. I see the point in that a lot of these guys were runners because they were totally unsuited to the classic pocket passing game, and that (we hope) Josh actually is. That's why they want him to change before its too late.

It was not a hoax. It happened. The question was whether Trump and the Trump campaign invited it, looked the other way as it happened, coordinated with it, etc. They may not have "colluded" with Russia in the end (although some Trump campaign people got convicted for what anyone would call collusion in common parlance - for example, Manafort sharing Trump campaign polling information with Russians), but yes ... the Russians (and Russia) did most definitely interfere.

In other words (and note that the quote here is to Barr's somewhat slippery synopsis of the report): Russian-affiliated individuals (including some we now know were Russian state agents) DID make multiple offers to the Trump campaign. So: yes. Russians, and in turn Russia, did try to interfere to help Trump win the election.

In other words, government failure. The State of Florida's regulations make it unprofitable or too risky to write property insurance policies. You can fix that, or you can legislate against Disney. Apparently you can't do both at the same time?

So we've all heard it. Josh Allen needs to change his game, become more of a pocket passer, less inclined to take off running. His longevity depends on it. Does it? The sample is small, and many of the leaders on the yards per game board are still young and active. But it's not promising. Bottom line: since 2000, no true "running QB" has ever lasted as an effective starter past Age 33. [Exception: weird, inexplicable Randall Cunningham comeback at 35, but that happened in 1998.] Historically, you'd probably expect most QBs to run out of gas in their mid-30s. But we're now in the age of Brady, Brees, Rivers, Rodgers, Manning(s) playing into their late 30s or 40s, and yet no actual running (not "mobile" or "scrambling" - we're talking about the guys who pull it down and take off downfield) QB has made it past 33. Many were done in their 20s. These are the post-2000 QBs who either averaged 30 yards per game running over at least a couple seasons of starts, or who had at least one 500+ yard rushing season or multiple 400+ yard rushing seasons in their careers. (No, Rodgers and Mahomes have never had even a single 400 yard rushing season) 1. Lamar Jackson. 63.4 rushing yards per game. 26 years old. Still active. Poor injury history. 2. Justin Fields. 57.9 yards per game. 24 years old. Too soon to tell. 3. Mike Vick. 42.7 yards per game. Basically done as a starter by Age 33 season (even with missing 2 years due to suspension) 4. Jalen Hurts. 42.2 yards per game. 24. Too soon to tell. 5. Josh Allen. 40.1 yards per game. 27. Too soon to tell. 6. Kyler Murray. 38.7 yards per game. 25. Too soon to tell 7. Cam Newton. 38.0 yards per game. Effectively done as a starter by Age 30 season. 8. Colin Kaepernick. 33.3 yards per game. Effectively done as a starter by Age 28. [**Big Asterisk] 9. Robert Griffin III. 32.3 yards per game. Effectively done as a starter by Age 24. Devastating knee injury. 10. Daniel Jones. 31.6 yards per game. 26. Too soon to tell. 11. Deshaun Watson. 30.9 yards per game. 27 Too soon to tell (but not looking promising) [*Little Asterisk] 12. Randall Cunningham. 30.6 yards per game. Effectively done as a starter at 31. But then with a weird, non-running QB career year at 35. Then done again at 36. 13. Russell Wilson. 28.7 yards per game, but four 500 yard-plus rushing seasons by age 29, including one 800 yard season. Effectively done at 33 (unless there's a surprise return to form under Sean Payton?) 14. Kordell Stewart. 23 yards per game [value decreased by early "slash" years], with four 400+, one 500+ rushing seson by age 29. Done as a starter by Age 30. 15. Tyrod Taylor. 25.6 yards per game, but three 400+ and one 500+ yard rushing season with the Bills. Constant injuries since. Done as a starter by Age 28. 13. Donovan McNabb. 20.7 yards per game, but three 400+ and one 600+ yard rushing seasons by age 26. Effectively done as a starter by Age 34. 14. Steve McNair. 22.3 yards per game, but five 400+ yard, one 500+ yard, and one 600+ yard rushing seasons by age 29. Effectively done as a starter by Age 34. 15. Daunte Culpepper. 25.3 yards per game, but five 400+ seasons, one 600+ rushing season by age 27. Done as a starter by age 28. 16. Vince Young. 24.3 yards per game, but rookie season 500+ yards rushing. Done completely by age 28. [*I feel like he should get the world's tiniest asterisk, but I'm not sure why] THE GREAT EXCEPTION 17. Steve Young (included here even though he'd retired after 1999, and was before everyone else's time). 25.1 yards per game, but four 400+yard, one 500+ yard rushing seasons by age 32. Made it all the way to Age 37 as a top-flight starter, even rushing for 454 yards that year. Like I said: The Great Exception.

Correct. I was counsel to a law enforcement agency after 9/11 happened. That agency got inundated with tips. Some sounded pretty convincing and downright scary. So-and-so was a money conduit for the 19 hijackers. So-and-so from the same country was trying to get into the same flight training courses. All kinds of things. Many, many tips, upon follow-up, turned out to be from people who got something wrong. Or even worse, from people looking to settle a score with the person who was the subject of the tip. That's why this stuff is considered raw, unvetted, unverified, until it is.

i'll also note that Nixon/Watergate comes closest to what the Republicans are trying to get at with Hunter Biden. Nixon was informed about Watergate by at least June 20, 1972 - 4.5 months before the election. That was the day that resulted in the famous 18 minute gap in his recorded conversation with Haldeman. But of course he and his campaign hushed it up until long after the election was over. So it is a "B" type of election interference. But not even then did anyone say Nixon "stole" the election because of that. It was "Nixon should be kicked out of office because of his role in covering up what happened." People still voted for him in overwhelming numbers. This "but what if they had known [x]" thing just becomes way too attenuated to support the use of the word "steal" or "rigged." This is why I do think the Hunter investigation is far from over, and that it should continue until some key questions (what did Joe know and when did he know it?) are resolved.

OK. Well, I will grant you "C" is a plausible argument, that vote-by-mail etc. differentially benefited Democrats by design. I don't buy it, because Republicans chose not to avail themselves of early voting, and no doubt some Republicans who fully intended to vote on Election Day got sidetracked and never made it. So that's on them and on what their leadership told them to do.

Added now. The Stacy Abrams type claim.

And you fail, because there simply isn't proof of either A1 or A2. That's why we're seeing the shift to the "B" claims - the news media, in cahoots with law enforcement, tried to suppress the truth about Hunter and his laptop. Oh, and I realize there's another category of claims, so I've added "C" to my categories in the original post.

This is the job of the press. Before he slipped into pure hack status, conservative commenter and radio guy Hugh Hewitt did this with Trump. If I remember correctly, he asked Trump, "What is the nuclear triad?" Trump obviously had no idea what he was talking about. (It is the Cold War strategy that our nukes are deployed on land, in air, and on submarines, making a Russian knock-out of all our nuclear defenses practically impossible.) Hewitt made a big deal about this, suggesting Trump wasn't qualified to be President given his shocking ignorance of a key U.S. defense doctrine. Until Trump was nominated and he conveniently forgot all about this. That's the kind of question debate moderators should ask. And they shouldn't let go until the candidate either fesses up that he simply doesn't know, or reveals his ignorance by trying to bluff his way through it (see Trump's recent Iowa comments on a carbon sequestration pipeline)