The Frankish Reich

I will make a half-hearted attempt to rescue our OP ... ... young, good-looking, single football star soon to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Small town boy, came to rust belt city with charming small town feel, love affair begins. Small town boy, small town sweetheart, the new king and soon-to-be queen of Buffalo. Before too long, becomes seduced by the good life beyond Firebaugh and Buffalo. Starts innocently enough - celeb golf tourneys, invites to the Kentucky Derby and parties with the ultra wealthy and famous. High school romance over. New starlet girlfriend. Buffalo no longer big enough. New So Cal home, but it's o.k, it's not Malibu, it's way down there in Dana Point. Dana Point starts seeming kind of far away from the West LA social scene. So maybe move in a bit closer. Maybe find another starlet girlfriend. We still love Buffalo, but it is ... Buffalo, not LA or Las Vegas. Contracts don't last forever ...

Let's hear it for the Survivor of a Crucifixion! I'll call her Barabbas.

We are so lucky that most criminals really are that stupid. "His cell phone pinged to various robbery locations." You do know you can power down that phone or leave it at home? I guess not.

Philip Rivers' old commute-in-style van is available! https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/philip-rivers-to-make-hellish-l-a-commute-in-200000-luxury-office-on-wheels/

I take pride in having an open mind, so I did watch this video. Lindsay is indeed far better than most of these public intellectuals of the new right. I can't really argue with anything in the first half of the video. It is a defensible take on Marx and Marx's purpose. (I will disagree, however, with the silly characterization of Marx as a "theologian" rather than an economist. True, he wasn't an economist - there really wasn't any such thing in his time, as we understand "economist" today - but calling him a theologian is just saying that anyone who envisions a better future for humanity is necessarily a religious-type leader. Which he wasn't.) It goes awry in the second half. Yes, a lot of the modern "critical" studies are grounded in what academics would call "Marxian" (as opposed to "Marxist") thinking. That is, analysis of the type that couldn't be done if Marx hadn't existed, but that isn't expressly following Marx's lead. But it's way, way overwrought. Example: Proposition: Disney supports a woke (hence Marxist) agenda, both explicitly (by criticizing Florida law) and implicitly (by putting out "entertainment" projects that undermine bourgeois values). But: in reality, Disney is doing exactly what a Marxist believes a capitalist would do. It is "appropriating" its critics, throwing them a bone by acting all "woke" in things that don't really matter to "capital," like support of drag shows. Meanwhile, it continues to do what it does best: the "commodification of leisure." The best Marxist explanation I've ever heard was in this little rhyme from the old English (Marxist) band, Gang of Four: "The problem of leisure, What to do for pleasure." Disney exists - thrives, makes tons of money - by convincing you that it's not good enough to have leisure time at home to spend eating, drinking, playing games with your family, friends, and neighbors. No! That doesn't make (much) money for anyone. You must haul the family to a designated Pleasure Location where you will spend money to have "fun," and spend even more money to cut in line ahead of the funseekers who have a little less money than you have. Jim Gaffigan nails it - everyone asks him what he's doing this summer, as if "staying home, relaxing, and enjoying the fine weather" isn't enough: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jim-gaffigan-does-not-have-summer-plans/ You must consume their movies and TV, and then be convinced to buy their tie-in merchandise. And while there may be some concessions (appropriation?) to "woke" values, on the whole their entire operation reinforces traditional bourgeois values: family fun (which must be structured and monetized), traditional gender roles (some boys may want to be princesses, but from my experience ALL little American girls want to be princesses), etc., etc. Leisure is not a wonderful outgrowth of our capitalist system that allows you to have a surplus of time to spend away from productive activity. It is a problem to be solved by a capitalist colossus like Disney (or Universal, or Apple, or Taylor Swift). Marxists call it the commodification of leisure. We can recognize that this has happened but still not agree with Marx's prescription. So what I'm saying is that Lindsay is a good cultural critic himself, but that he's missing the forest for the trees.

You should archive this alongside my other MAGA whiner favorites: - I couldn't afford NY Strip steaks for the family 4th of July - My usual 300 count of wings for Sunday just set me back $250 At lest Deek buys his BMW EV and gloats about it like a good old fashioned Republican. I don't think he even mentioned what it cost.

And they made a big deal about Michelle Obama touching the Queen when she initiated the contact. These silly rules are rules for The Queen/King's subjects, not for us! I think we may have fought a war over who should be considered British subjects ... ... the Fake Indignation Machine will not be stopped!

Russell Wilson WAS the best at not taking hits when scrambling. The historical durability of running (not scrambling/buying time - I mean tucking the ball and taking off) QBs is not promising...

Right. If Murray is getting regular work, then something (injury, Cook not stepping up, etc.) has gone wrong. Having said that, in a sea of "everything's gone wrong" last year in Denver, Murray stood out as a steady, productive back.

Nice job of equating "Disney movie features trans character" with "creep drugged and raped 17 men."

Expensive tastes. We've been through this before. They can price it at that absurd level because they will find buyers at that absurd level. https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/subaru/ascent A perfectly utilitarian 8 passenger SUV for around 50K. Buy 2, pocket the $17,000 savings!

And also excellent points. Guy who knows U.S. law enforcement is onto him tries to turn himself into a whistleblower in a politically motivated prosecution. We'll find out more as the case progresses.

The Biden Administration deserves credit for ensuring that the Turkey-Sweden rift didn't compromise U.S./NATO interests. https://www.rferl.org/a/nato-turkey-sweden-takeaways/32498758.html

I think ideally the Bills would've won the Super Bowl and Mitch would've walked away. He seems like a great person with a lot of commitments outside the game. It would be awful to see another concussion dictating the decision for him.

My point exactly. Although I think some of our posters here would choose the former ...

Good points. Look, anti-Biden people are jumping to the conclusion that this is an attempt to silence a guy who has the dirt on the Bidens. But ... maybe it does the opposite: this guy would know about Biden corruption because he himself is corrupt. You're not gonna find a squeaky clean source on any illegal activity.

The demanding a trade to the Rams part of the process.

Imagine what he could have built right on Harlem Rd. for $7 million. Didn't anyone pitch him that opportunity?

Yes, it would be. Even better: stop trying to prop up local economies that time has passed by. We hate to see it happen, the slow death of a marginal community. But it is happening regardless of what the governments do. Back when Republicans like to call themselves "the party of ideas," there was an idea here: give people money to move away from dying localities to the parts of the country that are thriving and desperate for workers. It made sense. You know what happened to that idea? The realignment of party coalitions happened, with rural America voting Republican. What are the chances that Mitch McConnell would approve of a plan that gave Appalachian Kentuckians the means to resettle in Texas? In Idaho? Slim and none. So both the Republicans and the Democrats must continue to subsidize their base voters: rural/small town Americans for Republicans, even if they're in a dying local economy; urban Americans in rust belt cities for Democrats.

Nothing quite on the order of suspending the constitutionally mandated presidential succession model based on ... what? Unsupported allegations of (now refuted allegations) of election machine tampering? Unsupported allegations of voter fraud sufficient to change the results in one or more states? What if the Biden Administration were to run with this? Let's say they lose in the electoral college in 2024 but claim that various states suppressed the vote. Martial law! We'll need to have the military run America (who elected them?) until we sort this out. And who will "sort this out?" Why, that would be me, the "interim president." This - along with the diabolical fake electors scheme - was so far beyond the pale that either Republican supporters are simply ignoring the magnitude of the issue (but Hillary!) or they actually think martial law would be a good thing. Sometimes its hard to tell these days.

Flynn's conviction/pardon isn't such a big deal. What is a big deal: his open support for the idea of declaring martial law to keep Trump in the White House. Nobody - Nixon, Clinton/Gore (the contested election of 2000), Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War - nobody ever suggested such a thing before. It should absolutely disqualify him from any sort of public life, "convicted" or not.

The title here almost gave me a cardiac event - when I read it quickly I thought Damar needed CPR again ...

Oh, Trump had the right to pardon Flynn all right. Questions about pardons are legitimate, particularly when the pardon bypasses the normal bureaucratic process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controversy

Taking a step back here ... ... does child sex trafficking happen? Of course it does. Is it commonplace or a pervasive problem? No. A lot of what is dubbed "trafficking" is really just plain old "smuggling." The difference in law: "Smuggling" typically describes people being moved across borders because they want to be moved across borders. This is 99.9 (probably 99.999) percent of what we see. "Trafficking" involves taking a person across borders against their will, or then holding them after crossing in captivity for an illicit purpose. We saw a few things that would count as "trafficking" in the recent immigration waves, such as children being brought from Guatemala and then put to work cleaning meat packing plants. Occasionally there's sex trafficking too, but in my experience it is rare. I have dealt with the fallout of more raids on Thai massage parlors than I care to think of ("let's do a sting on the massage parlors" is always at the top of an investigator's list for some reason). After those raids the workers are always interviewed in that kind of "woke" way: "is someone telling you you have to do this? Do you feel free to leave if you want to?). And I have yet to see anyone say "i told them I want out and they threatened me and made me stay." Instead, it's always been "I'm here because I'm making more money than I could doing anything else." So a certain degree of skepticism is in order. EDIT: SF drug trafficking organizations use illegal Hondurans, many under 18, as street level dealers. The old DA wouldn’t prosecute them - theyre “trafficke” and forced into this! Thar just doesn’t fit the facts: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2023/san-francisco-drug-trade-honduras/ “Of the 25 dealers interviewed, most said they were not trafficked or were unaware of anyone being forced to sell drugs.”

What we will never know: did Flynn plead guilty and promise other things (not implicating Trump? First son in law Jared?) in exchange for a promised pardon? Note that Flynn also "forgot" to disclose that he was lobbying for the government of Turkey prior to his appointment to the tune of about half a million dollars - he filed the paperwork after his appointment. Ann all-around creep and grifter who has somehow - the only way I can think of is by pandering to the Q Anons - become a cause celebre for the nutcase fringe right.