The Frankish Reich

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?

That's the new "Republicans" for you.

Right. Mike Pence refused to be intimidated into doing something he knew was contrary to law and the constitution. Poetic justice for Trump. He chose Pence as his running mate to shore up support/turnout from the religious right (unlike fake Christian Trump). He didn't realize that that would mean Pence takes his oath of office, sworn on the Bible, seriously.

Oh really? https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/jared-kushners-deal-making-career-off-to-sluggish-start-d245fea8 Jared Kushner set up last year at Tel Aviv’s Hilton Hotel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, aiming to spend some of the $3 billion that Gulf nations had pledged for him to invest. For five days, Kushner and his team at Affinity Partners listened to pitches from promising Israeli companies hoping to secure funding from the former White House senior adviser, who is also former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Kushner had raised the money from Saudi, Emirati and Qatari investors, after presenting himself as a unique business leader able to bridge the region’s economic and cultural divides. To that end, he had secured unique approval from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to invest the kingdom’s money in the Jewish nation for the first time. Kushner left Tel Aviv last spring without writing any checks. *** Kushner’s post-White House work has drawn scrutiny from some in Congress who question whether the business arrangement is a Saudi reward for all the work Kushner did in government to advance the kingdom’s interests in Washington. The Trump Tower is also North of Richmond. But Oliver may want to take a southward look too, toward Palm Beach.

The info we have on this insta-star says that he dreams of being a cattle rancher. It's good to have dreams. But if you want to be a cattle rancher, well, come on out here to the great empty quarter of the country and work on a cattle ranch. Learn the trade. Work your way up. I know people who've done this. They are immigrants from Mexico. They now live pretty well. Nobody gave them a damn thing. Ain't no 5'3" 300 lb welfare queen stopping you from doing it. Calling bs on that part of the backstory.

Very gracious of Tucker to agree to spend some quality time with a man he hates passionately.

Brown is a puffed up TE. Put on 80 lbs (!) in college ahead of the shift to T. Or to be more accurate, a puffed up 6'8" basketball/baseball/TE/DL player. A project, both when he was drafted and today. He may be adequate of even good someday. If I were the Texans HC I'd have given him the starting RT job right out of his rookie camp. We are not the Texans, hoping to compete by Brown's 3rd or 4th season. Wrong player for a win-now team.

I have nothing against this guy. I even kind of agree with the general sentiment about out-of-touch Washington politicians. But it is fair to call him out for seeming to blame his (previously) dire economic situation on what Reagan called "welfare queens." Dude says he dropped out of high school at 17. Worked tedious/dangerous jobs for a while. Obviously tried on the side to be a singer/songwriter. Now roughly 30 years old (even Wikipedia doesn't seem to know for sure). In other words, kind of the typical millennial people roll their eyes at when it's a liberal woman ("I want to be a writer, but it's hard and so I've had a bunch of dead end short term jobs and now they're gonna make me start paying back my student loans!) In other words, until a week-and-a-half ago a classic Millennial Failure to Launch. Nobody's fault but his own. Congrats to him, he won the Country Singer/Songwriter Lottery. Now take that $8 million someone is waving at you, but don't sign till you get a good lawyer and financial advisor.

I read the part of the AG memo screenshotted above. It appears that she's saying that the Arizona statute does not allow for hand counting except in certain limited circumstances. So ... it basically says "follow the law as written." But some people apparently don't like following the law as written. Me? I'm waiting for the release of that 100 page CONCLUSIVE and DAMNING REPORT that will cause all charges against Trump to be IMMEDIATELY DROPPED. That's still coming, right?

It was deliberately leaked by his far and away dominant PAC. A PAC led by the same guy who has now been pulled into the immediate DeSantis campaign. It was leaked because it's illegal for these PACs to coordinate with campaigns. In other words, the PAC people can't call the DeSantis campaign people and say "you're doing it wrong; here's what our research shows would work better." So they posted - briefly, but long enough for everyone including the campaign to take notice - a strategy memo for everyone to see. Technically no "coordination" that way. There's nothing happenstance or "outsider" here.

No. It sets off my finely tuned bs detector when a Hindu speaks in terms of a singular capital G god. Ramaswamy's god is (not surprisingly) Rama. One of the Hindu gods, sometimes considered to be a manifestation or avatar of Vishnu. Certainly not the God of the Old Testament. So it is idiotic pandering for a follower of a polytheistic religion to put out a statement that "God is real." All gods are real? That's a refutation of the religious right voters he's trying to pander to. Let's hope they see right through it. A more honest approach: I am a Hindu. I follow a moral code based on my religion and sense of morality. I respect your Christian faith and I pray to my gods that you will respect my Hindu faith, and I believe you will find some important similarities in the moral codes we follow.

To end the curse you must embrace the curse.

Reading is a skill. Go back and read what I said. It is the exact opposite of what you think I said.

The backlash is on! No more trans women playing competitive chess in the female division. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/17/sport/fide-bans-transgender-women-chess-spt-intl/index.html It seems to me that if there is any competitive activity that should not have gendered divisions, it would be something like chess. But ... whatever.

After a few months in Cheektowaga, Caracas may start looking pretty good again.

Which one? I told you they'd go there. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/us/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-desantis-documents.html An opposition research memo suggests that Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been gaining on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in some polls, “was very much ingrained in India’s caste system.”

Yes! Fire away. And by the way, a textbook kill shot. Give him a medal.