The Frankish Reich

It is with no joy that I have to say that after years of arguing the opposite point, I now have to agree with you. The internet in general? A net positive. Social media? A net negative.

Are you suggesting that he had personal reasons for his political views? https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/trump-in-1999-i-am-very-pro-choice-480297539914

Enough! No dripping videos. I draw the line at Congressman Dry Hump. Seriously ... dude willingly participated in all the videos and probably trusted some people not to out him. It happens. He was a nothing a couple years ago and will be a nothing again after the election. There's no "kompromat campaign." He's not important enough to warrant that. You might as well say your old fave Hunter Biden is the victim of a kompromat campaign ... they're both morons who both willingly recorded their sorry and corrupt lives.

In the category of "even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while," I can't disagree with my old friend BigBlitz on this one. Neither party has a monopoly on wackos. But right now, anyone has to admit it's this Cawthorn creep. Law School Exam Question of the Week: if I'm a Florida teacher discussing Madison Cawthorn, can I say gay? He's living the old punchline: the only way a Republican won't get reelected in his district is if he's caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. EDIT: you gotta see the video. The headline says it all: "Naked Thrusting Cawthorn ..." OP - could you please change the title to "Naked Thrusting Cawthorn?"

I have no interest in rioting. But I gotta admit it: I'm curious as hell about how and where these Supreme Court Justices live.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/05/politics/jen-psaki-karine-jean-pierre/index.html (CNN)Karine Jean-Pierre will become the new White House press secretary when Jen Psaki departs her role next week, President Joe Biden announced in a statement Thursday, becoming the first Black and out LGBTQ person to hold the position. Which reminds me of: https://www.theonion.com/area-teen-quickly-running-out-of-chances-to-be-first-op-1819575437 Citing the increased visibility of gay athletes, politicians, and officials, area teen and homosexual Alex Zaragoza, 15, told reporters today that he is worried about running out of opportunities to become the first openly gay member of any professional field or social group. Zaragoza expressed anxiety over the fact that the possibility of personally breaking down barriers for homosexuals in any given field is rapidly dwindling as more and more people become the first member of their profession to live as openly gay. Zaragoza told reporters that if he wants to one day become the first out homosexual member of any given occupation then he better “act fast.” EDIT: I didn't realize this! She was also actually the first Black + openly lesbian Chief of Staff to a Vice Presidential Candidate!! We'll seemingly never run out of things to be first at!!! First-ism lives!!!! Jean-Pierre served as the chief of staff for Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris on the 2020 United States presidential campaign and was the first Black woman, and the first lesbian, to ever hold that position

Everyone just needs to take a deep breath and think this through. 1. Consider Peter Singer, professional philosopher. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-15/young-case-against-peter-singer/4199120 He's argued that there may not be anything intrinsically/morally wrong about infanticide, particularly with severely disabled newborns. Most of us recoil in horror at this prospect. 2. Consider so-called partial birth abortion. Most of us recoil in horror at the idea that this "procedure" - call it what you like - would be allowed. (Let's set aside the idea that in many cases this is a non-viable fetus; let's just assume that at least in some cases it is) 3. Consider in vitro fertilization. Most of us think, "what a wonderful thing ... a couple that ordinarily cannot conceive can now share in the joy of having a child." My understanding is that the Mississippi "trigger law" would ban all (not just 15+ weeks) abortions. Consider that with in vitro fertilization it is typical to fertilize many eggs, then after a week or so to transplant just one or two (of many) embryos into the woman-host's uterus. https://nyulangone.org/locations/fertility-center/in-vitro-fertilization-egg-freezing-embryo-banking/in-vitro-fertilization (The "octomom" was a horrific exception.) The others? "Terminated." I assume Mississippi would make that illegal? And if it doesn't, why not? If terminating a potential human life is morally wrong, isn't that exactly what these embryologists are doing, in order to give life to one or two? What I'm saying is that we all have our individual moral sense of where to draw the line. I don't know exactly where I draw it, but it isn't necessarily as late as "viability." And it certainly isn't so early as to outlaw in vitro fertilization. The Roman Catholic Church is ultra-consistent here: it's all wrong. Very few people go that far. Between Peter Singer and the Pope there's a lot of room. Who makes the choice? State legislatures? Well, I'm not real fond of most of them. Supreme Court Justices? Umm, same. Roe v Wade has been on thin ice for a long time because it really wasn't well-reasoned. But there's a core concept there that at some point the State (meaning the 50 states and/or the federal government) just has no business getting involved. That's why Roe grew out of Griswold, the contraception case. I would prefer a Supreme Court decision that affirms that basic principle of Roe (the "there's a zone of personal autonomy that the state ought to keep out of" - by the way, all of the vaccine "freedom to choose" people should agree in principle, since you are basically arguing the same point) while allowing more room for the states to make their own decisions about where to draw that line. It doesn't look like that's what we'll get, and that's why I don't like the direction Alito - a tone deaf originalist - is going in this draft opinion. Justice Alito, maybe it's your job to find the hidden meaning of the Ninth Amendment as well as of the rest of the constitution. (I admit I was heavily influenced by this book.) Maybe the final version will go more in a Roberts direction. That would be a good thing.

Not a place anyone thinks of a glamour spot. Let's face it, Buffalo and Green Bay are considered old rust belt cities without a whole lot of nightlife. Not great draws for elite free agents or young draft picks. But ... when your football team is good, and has a winning culture and a national following along with a marquee QB, all of a sudden guys are happy to come there. The new Green Bay, or Pittsburgh if you prefer.

We are the new Green Bay Packers.

Right. Under his reasoning we'd also want a bad FG kicker so McD is tempted to go for it on 4th and 10 at the 40.

In a vacuum, well, maybe he's not the best player available at 63. But picks aren't made in a vacuum. They're made to (1) fill an immediate need, other than what you can fill for more money in free agency or a trade; and (2) build depth for the future when the current contributors become too expensive in free agency. I see this as mostly (1) - filling an immediate need. We had basically no speed out of the backfield last year. Recognizing that, Daboll started using (ultimately over-using) McKenzie as a substitute, engineering ways to get him outside. But he's not in any way a running back; not even a CJ Spiller type speed back, so that was no plan for improvement in 2022. So they could've traded for a Gio Bernard (a guy without much left in the tank), could've signed a Philip Lindsey type (not the worst idea), or, as they did, tried to fill the roster need by using the 63rd pick overall. There isn't much room elsewhere to crack the roster since McD is unlikely (other than Elam, and I guess Araiza) to depend on non blue-chip rookies to fill a critical position given the fact that this team has Super Bowl aspirations and a Super Bowl-worthy roster already. If Daboll's Giants had used the 63rd overall pick on Cook, well, they would've been idiots. Thankfully we're not in that position anymore.

I know, I know, different kinds of backs, but ... given that we can hope Cook will steal Zack Moss's carries, and given that Moss's longest run last year was 17 yards, I think I'll take "50 yards and caught from behind."

The Bills have been rumored to have interest in Giovani Bernard at various times. My hope is we just got Giovani 2.0. Every draft we see these inflated expectations surrounding 2nd/3rd rounders. It's wonderful when you hit the lottery and get a multi-year Pro Bowler. In reality, you want a good player who makes a solid contribution for the duration of team control over his salary. Bernard's first 3 years: about 12-14 touches (rushing/receiving) per game, about 5-6 yards/touch, 9 TDs his rookie year, then 8 the next (then just 2) - exactly the kind of change of pace complement to Singletary that we've been missing. Will he be his brother? Probably not. That's why he went 63rd overall.

This topic is now closed. It is no longer contributing to the community, having exhausted every permutation of the following words or phrases: - Wind - “Orchard Park” /s as “San Diego” - “Ray Guy” - “Hall of Fame” - Haack - Holder - “Championship!”

Apparently you missed the part about his first interception. It came against the mighty BUCKNELL BISON! (the sign of a fine academic institution, bucking the trend of adding an “s” to the plural of bison….we’ve been doing it wrong all these years)

I think people are forgetting that we have a damn good roster. Maybe the best in the NFL. So you're drafting for immediate needs, two of which are rookie-starter quality CB (check) and RB with speed to get outside who can be an asset in the passing game (check). It would be nice to also find a rookie starter quality O lineman, but they went the bargain free agent route to fix that need, and I think they did a pretty good job at that. So maybe they know Bernard is a guy who's willing and able to be a special teams guy who will learn a role and fill in as needed, who is also a high ceiling guy if you find the right defensive niche for him. And apparently a 30 Wonderlic if the reports are to be believed.

This is the kind of "who won the draft" thinking that increasingly bears no resemblance to reality. This NFL draft basically an efficient market now. We used to see a lot of seat-of-the-pants GMs out there making decisions that were sometimes weird. I'm thinking Tebow here - the Josh McDaniels displaying his smartest man in the room syndrome and thinking he could turn a guy nobody saw as an NFL QB into just that by drafting him 25th overall. We almost never see that in the first round anymore. Of course, there's going to be a much wider difference of opinion as you get into later picks: less of a consensus of who is the best player left on the board at pick 100 overall vs. pick 50, at 150 vs. at 100, etc. And then we get to the point where teams - particularly good teams (the Bills!) are going to be drafting based on need rather than best player available. So that injects more uncertainty as we move into the 3rd, 4th, 7th rounds. There's a perfectly good basis to criticize a "need" pick that doesn't appear to fill a real need, but that's not the case here since "Milano backup" is a real need. But at least through about the 3rd round, one thing doesn't change: the information available to the 32 GMs out there. That's particularly true of players coming from a Baylor, where tape of every game, including conference championships and a major bowl game, are available. There's a tiny bit of team-specific info out there from interviews (and apparently in Bernard's case, from coaching staff personal relationships), but really, this is about as efficient a market as any player selection process in professional sports - unlike, say, MLB, we're not talking about pure athletic talent of an 18 year old high schooler vs. a strong statistical profile of a 21 year old major college player. The NFL has both: the athletic measureables, and the results against high-level competition. So that's why I keep out of the interminable mock draft discussions,, and also most (with the exception of this one!) post-draft discussions. I have no basis for thinking I have more information that Brandon Beane about Terrell Bernard, about what other GMs think about him and where he may be selected, or about anything that matters. I know a little more about the Bills and where they stand in the competitive cycle (namely, this is the time to win a Super Bowl) and their positional needs now and in the next 3-4 years, and the pick makes perfect sense to me from that perspective. I have yet to see anyone here through 28+ pages provide any persuasive argument as to why this is an objectively poor draft pick - I've only seen speculation (the "Kiper had him as a 5th rounder" type stuff, or the "we could've traded down and taken him later" stuff) that I will simply ignore unless there's an objective basis for saying it.

I really like what Beane did with the O line for not much money and without relying on blue chip draft picks (who wouldn't have been there when the Bills picked). Compare 2022 to 2021 - add Bates (in what should be an important role somewhere), Saffold, Quesenberry (I think he'll beat out Brown for the starting job), and reduce/eliminate the need for replacement level players like Feliciano, Boettger, Williams. Not to mention moving on from the horrific Ford. If Morse had retired we'd have a hole to fill. We don't. t's a substantial upgrade overall.

This is the thinking that I disagree with. If he could've been drafted in the 5th round (or let's say late 4th) and everybody knew that, Beane obviously would've made the deals he needed to make to trade down. Once in a while we see truly weird picks (the Pats taking that UT-Chattanooga G was one this year) where there's no reason to believe they wouldn't last another couple rounds, but this is a rarity. Everyone sees the same tape, the same scouting reports, etc., etc., particularly from a program like Baylor.

Yep. From what I've seen, kind of a tweener. But so is Milano and they definitely figured out how to make the best of his talents. Maybe that's the new market inefficiency that Beane is trying to exploit. I'm not sure any of us are in a position to second guess Beane on this one.

Some of "the gays" seem to like young Republicans too! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10764209/GOP-Rep-Madison-Cawthorn-caught-video-male-staff-members-hand-crotch.html

Yes, Junior, this is truly astonishing and there just must be some kind of conspiracy that explains it. It's almost as if Trump aficionados departed Twitter because they thought it had done Senior wrong, and they suddenly came back as soon as White Knight Musk swooped in with the unspoken promise of restoring Pops' Twitter status.

Hey, where's that Section 230 repeal bill when you need it! #HoistByHisOwnPetard

I agree. But I hope everyone sees what you just did. Your original comment that I responded to said that if corporations do speak out on issues of public policy, they should lose any special tax/regulatory benefits they were given. Quite a different concept, isn't it? One is about what we think corporations should (in the exercise of their own prudence) keep their mouths shut about. The other is about what a government should do if they act imprudently. Should Congress exempt Tesla buyers from the electric car tax credits if Elon says something the Dems don't like?