The Frankish Reich

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?

Why? 1. Corporations have free speech rights, just like real persons. See U.S. Const., Amendment 1; Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010). 2. Conditioning state benefits on the content of political speech is per se unconstitutional. 3. [it gets worse] Part of Disney's exercise of its free speech rights was its statement that it would no longer provide political contributions to supporters of the so-called "Don't Say Gay" law. The Governor expressly stated that he was encouraging the legislature to repeal a benefit provided to WDW in response to the content of Disney's political speech, including political speech as it occurs through spending. I get that people think it's fun to slap back at the libs. You think we'll just continue to take it? Hahah, just watch. But what happens when the tables are turned? This is an awful precedent, whichever side of the political aisle you're on.

Good legal analysis of the many issues created by DeSantis's grandstanding: https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/the-contractual-impossibility-of-unwinding-disneys-reedy-creek?context=search&index=1 In case it was not obvious, dissolving Reedy Creek “limited” and “altered” its ability to improve and maintain its project and collect its various charges and taxes, and thus Florida would be violating its pledge to bondholders by dissolving Reedy Creek. However, even without that explicit language, the bill dissolving Reedy Creek would have problems under contracts clauses of the Florida and U.S. constitutions. Stating that the county assumes the debt is simple enough—actually figuring out what that means is a different story. Reedy Creek spans both Orange and Osceola counties, so how will the debt be divided? Would it be by taxable value of property or by the properties themselves? And how would that apply to the utility revenue bonds when there is no easy way to divide which county the utilities rest in?

I don't disagree that the original purpose of the special district was to foster rapid development/expansion. But having just been there (and really, kids, don't make me go again - I've lost patience with the whole "Disney experience"* and I'd gladly have a few pints in Harry Potter Land up the road), it's wrong to say WDW is not expanding. It is always expanding. The whole new Star Wars area just opened. They're putting a hotel in there for the full Star Wars experience. They just connected up some other hotels by aerial gondola. There's new construction all over the place. It's like some kind of fungus that must continue to grow or it will die. *Yes, it is kind of a "nobody goes there anymore, it's always too crowded" thing.

Obviously I don't think Disney was taking a loss by continuing the RCID. I just pointed out that it not only gave them more control over their property; it also lowered their borrowing/bond interest costs. I do think they'll cut a deal as soon as everyone moves on from Ronnie's little "I can run as the real owns-the-libs candidate in 2024" moment.

Let's set aside the current so-called "Don't Say Gay" controversy and the Disney-DeSantis thing. Speaking as someone coming from a general libertarian perspective: 1. We should take a step back and consider whether the creation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District was a net benefit or loss for the people of Orange County and Florida. I think the answer is clearly yes. Would Disney have built WDW without it? Probably. But it was certainly an incentive to keep expanding and developing an incredibly successful engine of economic growth. (If you are an environmentalist, that's a bad thing. So I get that, but I don't get the Republican-based opposition.) 2. More control over the development of Disney's private property is in accord with limited government principles. And it provides proof of the economic value of limited government. The WDW "campus" is remarkably well maintained and organized. It's hard to imagine the State/County doing as good a job by imposing their various zoning/building code demands. It's not as if the roads are crumbling and the hotels are collapsing. It is it's own weird kind of model city. 3. The main economic benefit today (other than avoiding another couple layers of bureaucracy): Reedy Creek, as a municipal corporation/special municipal district, gets to issue bonds as if it were a real city. That lowers borrowing costs, since Reedy Creek bonds earn federal tax-free dividends. If Disney needs to go to the private bond market to finance more development, their bonds probably need to pay a higher rate. Many progressives hate these special municipal districts. Pro-development (read: "traditional Republicans") typically like them for the reasons I just described. I don't know why "make WDW pay more" is considered sound policy by so-called limited government conservatives, other than the desire to punish the Disney Corporation for its corporate political statements (statements it has a 1st Amendment right to make! Read that Republican Supreme Court favorite, Citizens United) that are contrary to Gov. Ron's agenda. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Unfortunately, Florida is all too willing to sacrifice the type of thing that allowed it to make a straight-faced claim to being politically innovative (pro-business policy like Reedy Creek) for crass partisan gain.

Who needs Twitter, Facebook, etc. when we can just start "football" discussion boards to make the world a better place? Big Blitz, you're letting me down here by not tying this into your John Legend Mind Manipulation Theory of Everything.

You mean you don't love the poorly educated?

You know who seems to trust PFF grades? The Bills. I'm not saying they're using PFF, but it appears that their pro scouting is pretty much in line with PFF's. Every OL free agent signing has been a guy PFF liked better than the in-house option (I'm including Bates here because he is both - PFF liked him a whole lot better than the guys who got the majority of the snaps last year). The pure "counting stat" of sacks allowed makes Quessenberry seem like a awful choice, but the Bills are trusting PFF (type) grading rather than that staggering number. It'll be interesting to see if the Bills/PFF got it right.

Just here to say thanks. This is the way the old internet worked. You'd ask a question, or comment on a news event, and someone who actually knows something about the topic would jump in and clarify it for everyone. I miss that old internet. Nicely done, ALLEN1QB and sherpa.

Oh no, not THE Kevin Clinesmith. OMG, that's like .... 25 steps from Hillary herself! Kind of the Papadopoulos of the Dems. Posting hint: if you're gonna invoke the screen name of the wildest conspiratorial poster of all time, you gotta do better. Channel your DR! He would've said that the real Hillary was arrested by the military a long time ago. Too bad the mods scrubbed the "Q Analysis" 600 page thread. You'll have to ask DR if he archived it ... somewhere in a hidden bunker in North Hollywood. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/17/fact-check-hillary-clinton-not-hanged-guantanamo-bay/7687922002/

Correct. It's not like there were no prosecutions - and findings of guilt - here. Of course what we have in response is the typical "whataboutism." Yes, the whole Hillary-Fusion-Steele-Perkins Coie thing stinks, and I think it's pretty clear that she was deep into digging up dirt on Trump. But there's a kind of "see, they set up Trump!" thing going on here that assumes that Trump was somehow pure as the driven snow until evil deep state operatives set him up. It's also pretty clear that he and his minions were trying like hell to get dirt on Hillary from Russian state sources. That's why the Bannon quote (above in this thread) is so telling ... that's what one of Trump's key insiders thought of the whole mess, until of course Trump weirdly pardoned him for a completely unrelated offense, and Bannon rewarded him by coming back home to Trumpland. If you want to deflect blame by going to the old "politics is a dirty business," you won't get any argument from me. But that's not going to convince me or anyone other than those in the echo chamber that Trump was just a fine loyal American doing patriotic things ...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/03/donald-trump-russia-steve-bannon-michael-wolff Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”, according to an explosive new book seen by the Guardian.

Well, let me remind you of how all of this started: Don Jr. "breathlessly" took a meeting with a woman who was almost certainly (and it's not as if she was a master of disguise - she was right out of central casting) was a Russian agent: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/mueller-report-confirms-don-jr-too-stupid-to-collude-with-russia

You do realize that in the government (believe me, I know) a late Friday filing is widely understood to be something you do to BURY, not amplify, a piece of news? And that a pre-holiday (Good Friday/Passover/Easter weekend) filing is even more famously something you do when you want to minimize publicity for a filing or press release? That tells me that Mr. Durham is underwhelmed by his own investigative "bombshell."

Agreed. Montreal was a great baseball city, and one that would be perfect for a MLB team to move to (or for MLB to expand to) - with a nice downtown ballpark it immediately becomes one of the better MLB sites to visit. So why hasn't the NFL colonized Saturday night? Or Saturday afternoon for that matter. I understood this to be an old "don't tread on college football Saturday" thing, but now college games are all over the place anyway, so it's not like they're honoring their part of some kind of gentlemen's agreement. Saturday just seems such a better time slot than the dreaded Thursday.

So you're saying that Darrian is a verb?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/15/politics/mike-lee-chip-roy-text-messages-jan-6-mark-meadows-overturn-election/ Let's set aside for just one moment whether this was a "peaceful assembly that got just a tiny bit out of hand" or an out-and-out "insurrection." Maybe a minor point, but it bothers me: Mark Meadows was White House Chief of Staff. Not a Trump 2020 Campaign Official. He--and other White House (not campaign) officials--was using your taxpayer-funded position to encourage the Senate to refuse to count state-certified electoral votes. I realize that the last couple decades (maybe longer) have seen an ever-increasing blurring of the line between campaign staff and White House (publicly-funded) staff, but this is the first time we've seen it go quite this far. We were all paying the salaries of some White House staffers who spent their work hours trying to overturn electoral results.

Damn! You got me. There it is, staring at me in the Constitution itself. I think it's Article 1, clause 9(b)(i): "Congress shall make laws and appropriate funds to facilitate interstate trucking operations (including but not limited to the "18 wheelers," "tractor-trailers," and "semi-trucks" that will probably be invented within the next 200 years or so) through the creation of an interstate highway system, including by enacting of a gasoline and diesel fuel taxes to facilitate commerce, to be effective no later than 60 days after the invention of the internal combustion engine, or within 60 days of the invention of diesel fuel or gasoline, or the year 1956, whichever comes first."