The Frankish Reich

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)

Because you are generally a reasonable person, here's my taxonomy of election claims: A. The Strong Actual Fraud claims. These are the Trump claims. - A.1. Someone hacked/manipulated election machines/software to make them spit out invalid/fraudulent results. - A.2. Someone stuffed the ballot boxes with "votes" from nonexistent (dead, moved away) or invalid (multiple ballots, same person) voters. B. The Weak Improper Influence claims. (Someone or some entity "Improperly Tried to Influence How People Voted"). These are the Hillary 2016 Russian influence claims. - B.1. Foreign actors, perhaps with assistance (collusion) of American actors. Russian state-sponsored persons/entities improperly (and/or illegally) engaged in online propaganda either to suppress Democratic votes, drum up Republican votes, or to discourage people from voting entirely. - B.2. Domestic actors, perhaps with the assistance of U.S. government actors, sought to suppress something or to emphasize something with the intent (or result) of causing people to change whether and how they voted. This is the Hunter's Laptop theory. It is also the Comey Overreaction/More Hillary Emails theory. [EDIT: adding another category] C. The Voter Suppression/Undue Voter Encouragement Claims. These are the Stacy Abrams-type claims, that a state government run by the opposing party took steps to make it unduly difficult to cast a ballot in a way that differentially impacted one party. Polling stations shut down/consolidated into more distant stations in minority/Democratic areas, or polling hours shortened/Sunday voting eliminated, etc. The reverse side of this coin: claims that voting was made too easy in a way that benefits the opposing party or minority groups, like allowing for Sunday voting and transporting groups en masse from church to the ballot box. They are very different kinds of claims. What I'm saying is that Trump's A.1 and A.2 claims have basically zero evidentiary support. And so his supporters (not so much him yet; he's slow to catch on) have begun moving to the weaker B.2 claim. That doesn't mean that there is necessarily nothing there; just that it is more akin to the Hillary B.1 claims than it is to the earlier Trump A.1 and A.2 claims. "Election interference" is a catch-all dealing with all these "engaged in shenanigans to change whether and how actual voters voted." That is quite different from "counted phantom votes" or "changed properly cast votes from one candidate to another." It makes some sense to speak of an election as "stolen" if there is: 1. Solid proof of A.1 and/or A.2 happening, in 2. Sufficient numbers as to plausibly change the result of the election as a whole. Attorney General Barr investigated 2020, and didn't say there was no way A.2 (people ineligible to vote who voted) happening, but he did say there was no evidence that this was in numbers sufficient to change the result. It does not make sense to speak of an election as "stolen" if we are talking about improper influence, since that means that people voted one way rather (or voted when they otherwise wouldn't have, or vice versa) than another based on what they heard or read. That simply doesn't agree with what we typically mean by "stolen" or "rigged." Those terms are properly reserved for the "A" category strong claims, with proof.

Don't Re-X the troll.

Which, of course, she didn't say. No one - not Kamala, not anyone - is saying the revised Florida curriculum "omits" slavery. That is a nonsensical comment. If you are accusing the new curriculum of glossing over the horrors of slavery by suggesting that some slaves learned marketable skills, of course you are saying that slavery is IN the curriculum. I love how people who accuse Democratic critics of mischaracterizing something have no qualms about doing exactly the same thing.

The bolded comment is correct.

Yes, he was. Have I ever said otherwise?

That is scary. TIA? Wishing nothing bad for Mitch (he is at a minimum a bastion of stability, even if many people don't like his particular variety of stability), is this not even more proof that we need to move away from the gerontocracy currently governing America?

But since he seems to be able to get the Florida legislature to do whatever he wants, it stands to reason that he can get them to fix Florida insurance law so that property insurers can stay in that market and still make money. Yet ... he doesn't. Why not? Because he doesn't want to be known as the Governor who raised insurance rates?

Well, the timeline would have to be earlier, but it could be something like this: some new and more damaging dirt on Biden comes out by next Spring, or even just before the convention. Biden withdraws for the good of the country. Kamala is sidelined for some ass-covering reason (I always thought Supreme Court nominee if someone conveniently resigns or even dies, but maybe something else). Boring standard-issue Democrat runs in Biden's stead, in time to get on all state ballots. Not Newsome - California is too divisive. Some Amy Klobuchar type. Obviously the Dem power brokers would prefer a different candidate, but not just any (Kamala) different candidate. But the problem is Biden actually seems to want four more years, and Kamala as the understudy makes things difficult. So I wouldn't rule it out. And yes, I want it to happen.

There you go. Why would this be absurd? The fivethirtyeight reliable poll average pre-election had Biden winning nationally by ... almost exactly the margin that he did win by. Every stupid Trump theory has been shot down, one by one: - Venezuelan Election Machines hacked! The subject of a record-breaking defamation settlement when discovery showed absolutely zero evidence of this. - Georgia election officials brought in fake ballots in suitcases! The subject of Giuliani's recent concession that this was not true. - Arizona flooded with fake votes, including by dead voters! The subject of an audit by a Republican-paid firm, showing that no such thing happened and in fact the Biden vote was just a tick higher than reported in official results. And still: they believe. It's a religion. Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe in Trump's bs.

I will hazard a guess that the percentage of school age children in America who are actually underfed statistically rounds to zero. Yet the "going to bed hungry" or "unable to learn because they are hungry" memes persist. And in general, the poorer the kids are, the higher the rate of obesity. Walmart cheapo white bread: $1.32. Walmart peanut butter: 64 ounces (that's a lot!), 6 bucks. Walmart jelly: 2 bucks, 18 ounces. But what about vegetables you ask? Yeah, a lot less vegetables for the school compost bin.

But property insurers are leaving Florida. Why? They may not be willing to deal with the risk imposed by hurricanes and other weather events. OK. I get it. But the typical response of an insurer to a high risk environment is to charge higher premiums. So are Florida insurance regulators not allowing that to happen? If so, aren't they meddling in the free market? If not, what is the reason?

Or maybe, just maybe ... they don't want to impeach Biden, at least not until he's officially renominated, lest it gives the Democratic power brokers and opportunity to push him out, and an opportunity for a younger candidate (not Kamala) to be his anointed successor. A big "be careful what you wish for."

So ... plea deal is dead for the moment at least. Good. Reminiscent of the judge who refused to allow withdrawal of Mike Flynn's guilty plea. Both are appropriate exercises's of a federal court judge's authority to ensure that agreements are in the interest of justice.

They are not "ignoring" the story.

How childish can people be? Of course vaccines have side effects. We would still have polio and smallpox outbreaks if right-wing pundits had an internet in the 1950s and 60s.

The Man Who Knew Too Much About Sous Vide.

As for the mainstream media ignoring Hunter (and isn't working at home great): just flipped on MSNBC. "Breaking News: New Details From Hunter Biden Hearing."