The Frankish Reich

I used to like to use this William F. Buckley quote: "I'd rather entrust to government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University." I don't anymore. Somehow we are not finding 400 citizen-legislators our there. We are selecting for a lot of people who are far lesser than any 435 random people: George Santos is the ultimate. I'd like to say we've hit bottom, but have we? - Lauren Boebert from my great state of Colorado. High school dropout. Generally unsuccessful business owner, doing clownish things like starting a diner where all the waitstaff carry guns. - Marjorie Taylor Greene. Inherited a successful construction company from her father but showed no interest in running it. Became more concerned with the dating opportunities afforded by Cross Fit, which reawakened her sex life but did not result in a successful business plan. Switched to wild conspiracy mongering and rode that into a congressional seat, where part of her party now views her as some kind of leader. - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Over-educated millennial bartender who rode her generation's grievances into a congressional seat, where she is (where have we heard this before?) somehow seen as a thought leader by many of her peers. - Matt Gaetz. Overgrown frat boy, son of the Florida Senate's president. Did get a law degree, but then actually worked in law for a year or so before following daddy into politics. Ran into trouble when his dalliances with very young women (and what about that Cuban boy in his home? who knows?) became public, so doubled down on his crusade against the entrenched bureaucracy he was born into, now openly settling scores against those he thinks weren't sufficiently supportive of him in his time of need. - Andy Biggs. Small town lawyer who (I am not making this up) won the "you may have already won" $10 million Publisher's Clearinghouse sweepstakes and parlayed that into a congressional seat. - Kamala Harris. Well known in SF (I lived there at the time) as married Mayor Willie Brown's paramour. Got appointed to boards involving things she had no experience in thanks to that connection. Parlayed those appointments into the SF DA job, then Senator, then, without any meaningful record of accomplishment, into the a place where a failed heartbeat of an 80 year old man will make her President. Oh, for the days of country actually run by "elites."

Neal just looked the most devastated by Hamlin going down of all the Bills players. They must be very close. I hope the good news now helps him through it.

The big loss is in run support, particularly since NE will have to run effectively to stay in this one. And it’s awfully hard to see who fills that role. Siran Neal? He’s a mainstay on special teams, and I’d have more faith in him on run support than the other candidates.

Yes, there is a serious issue here, buried underneath the clownish behavior of the anti-McCarthy Repubs. In the House, it's the Hastert Rule, named after Republican Speaker Denny Hastert: the Speaker will not bring a bill to a floor vote unless it is supported by a majority of his caucus (the Republican members). This effectively destroys ANY bipartisan legislation from moving through the House. Under the current composition of the House, you could have 200 Republicans and 200 Democrats support a bill -- 90% of the House -- support a bill and it would never see the light of day because 22 Republicans oppose it. This is crazy, and it needs to change. It's not some kind of time-honored rule in place since 1800; it was created in 2006 (although I see some people say Newt Gingrich created it in practice in the 1990s). In the Senate, it's the filibuster rule. I'm a bit more ambivalent about that one, but we need to have an honest debate there too. What we're doing now in both houses isn't working so well.

I dunno. Some of these are pretty funny. Gotta love that the so-called "conservative website" sees fit to publish the jokes under the guise of rolling their eyes at the jokesters who wrote them. Seems to me he might have gotten a laugh or two himself-- 2) "Can't wait to see this go to penalty kicks tomorrow on the House floor." 3) "Well GOP crazies actually did stop the transfer of power – to themselves." 7) "It's outrageous that Antifa has delayed Kevin McCarthy's ascension to Speaker." 9) "They should start the next Speaker vote with a runner on second base." 11) "Straightforward from here – McCarthy needs to call Brad Raffensperger and ask him to find nine votes." (1:26 p.m.)

Well, you had enough patience to read it and to comment. EDIT: Your 6th comment on PPP today! So much for the "zero patience for pathetic petty political nonsense." Good news: Just 4 more comments to go to catch up with the number of Kevin McCarthy floor votes! I'll take the over.

What is ridiculous about Conway’s statement of an obvious fact? McCarthy is driving a hard bargain? Right now, he’s basically saying: “Elect me Speaker today with no risk. Any one of you can bring a motion for a new Speaker vote at any time for any reason, and I agree to bring that motion to the floor.” Italian governments have more staying power. Liz Truss had more staying power. Breaking: just lost the TENTH vote. It has now descended into total farce. Say what you will about Pelosi (believe me, there’s a lot to say), but she was never humiliated like this by her own party. Unanimity held.

Let’s hope they never doom scroll thru PPP here …

Fantastic news. Of course we don’t know what challenges he still faces, but there’s life, there’s hope, and there’s no sense in being “guardedly” optimistic. I choose to be optimistic without putting any of my own uninformed timelines on his recovery.

In general, yes. But if you know who your around 1 opponent will be? That may make it a closer call.

Exactly. We understand what the rules are for making the playoffs/seeding in the playoffs before the season begins, and the key one is "the team that wins the most games wins the division/gets first seed." There's a special spin on that this year that isn't expressly stated in the rules (the COVID rules maybe, but I'm not sure those were made to apply to other situations): 2 teams had a game canceled (Bills/Bengals), so they weren't given the chance to garner one additional win. So any special rule needs to: (1) preserve/credit the wins every team has accumulated; (2) figure out a way to not handicap a team that didn't have the opportunity to garner that additional win by virtue of a game cancellation. (Here it doesn't really matter what the reason was. The game was canceled. It's not the Bills fault, and it's not Tee Higgins and the Bengals fault. A horrific thing happened, and a game was canceled in the 1st quarter because of it. It wouldn't matter if it was canceled because there was an active shooter in the stadium or because there was a torrential downpour.) That's why I fall back on "tied in the loss column = coin flip/lottery." Any other option tends to give an unfair advantage to one team at the expense of the others. Playoff seeding is pretty random anyway in that you can be in an awful division and get in at 9-8 or even (as it looked just a couple weeks ago) with a losing record. Schedules are unbalanced, and most of the seeding doesn't reflect true performance throughout the regular season anyway.

The thing with my daughter's friend and her sister (with the basketball obsessed dad I talked about): I got the feeling that the girls really weren't obsessed themselves with basketball. The demands of basketball camps/travel teams, etc. kind of caused them to fall out of a really tight-knit group of friends who stayed together for 13 years of school, K-12. They missed out on a lot, and I'm not sure they're all that thrilled with what they gained from the experience.

Only if the Bills/Chiefs both win this weekend, and only if win percentage is the deciding factor. I say it should be a tie if they’re tied in the loss column and a coin flip should decide who gets the #1 seed. It’s actually good that all 3 teams involved are clear playoff teams already. The only thing at issue is seeding, and given that the NFL canceled one game, there’s no clear rationale for going by win percentage. You might as well say “when teams are tied in the loss column, the tiebreaker is head-to-head record.” Coin flip!

Thanks for pointing out the existing rules. But as you note, there isn’t one for “game cannot be played at all.” Unthinking adherence to “try to act as if everything is back to normal” usually brings the worst results. I remember the Broncos having their entire QB room barred based on 2020 COVID protocols. Yes, kind of their fault. But it resulted in a joke of a game with WR Kendall Hinton playing QB and completing 1 pass for 13 yards in a New Orleans blowout. This made a mockery of the product on the field. If they’d just forfeited tickets would’ve been refunded; the Saints wouldn’t have gotten one tainted win. Acting like “we’ll play the games as scheduled or the closest we can” was the worst solution. Likewise the 1987 strike season played (for 3 games) by “replacement players” in games the NFL insisted would count. Trying to maintain the status quo resulted in a farce. Compare the 1981 MLB season, divided in rough halves by a strike. The league decided there’d be a first half winner in each division and a second half winner. Those teams went to the playoffs. An after-the-fact solution, but nobody harps on the Dodgers WS win as illegitimate today. (The Reds fans do a little, since overall they had the best record in the NL West but didn’t make the playoffs at all under the new rule. Nobody cares except them) And the NBA COVID “bubble” season was fantastic. Every season should be as short and intense. The NHL version was kinda ok if I remember correctly. The point: try to maintain general fairness and strive toward putting the best product on the field even if that means deviating from the standard more than some of the alternatives.

Watching my kids and their friends from K-12, I’m astounded by how single-minded some parents can be. One family had 2 girls, both really, really good basketball players through middle school, and then starters and very good players in high school, but not all-state or anything. The dad moved them from school to school looking for the best (basketball) “fit.” And travel teams/summer basketball camps, adding up I’m sure to well over 100K. And they did get scholarships. To D2 colleges I had never heard of (and I thought I’d heard of most everything). Not like top academic colleges like Colgate or something. Neither is a star player at that level. Just ordinary small college athletes at out of the way minor schools of no particular distinction. In what way was this worth it? It is for the dad I guess, who still fills HIS social media with posts about their college teams.

Q. What have we learned in 57 pages of discussion here? A. No solution is perfect. In fact there are big problems with every proposal. In hindsight, the NFL should have had a rule for dealing with game cancellations that can’t be made up (based on league determination). No, we fortunately haven’t seen this particular situation before. But let’s say 9/11 had happened on 1/1 and the Jets/Giants couldn’t play and the game couldn’t be moved before the playoffs. Or that some Storm of the Century shut down Week 18 from Chicago to Boston. Or that 90% of some team tested positive for COVID ahead of Week 18. People don’t react well to after-the-fact fixes. They don’t mind if the plan was in place and known to all teams ahead of the event. I say no contest/coin flip if two teams are tied in the loss column after Week 18 concludes. We can create all kinds of fancy fixes that won’t satisfy people anyway. The Bills didn’t “forfeit”; the league canceled the game. For all I know the “atmospheric river” crossing California may inundate Las Vegas on Sunday and cause the Chiefs game to be canceled. The fix for a random occurrence altering an expected scenario is usually a random method for assigning a winner. Coin flip and be done with it.

IF it played out that way, it would be a good result - as fair as can be hoped for under the circumstances. (Visions of losing to the Steelers backups in my head and all that)

This is true. “America First” — what did it really mean? - Protectionism: starting with Bill Clinton, both parties were strongly free trade. Starting with the Bernie/Trump rise in 2016, both parties moved sharply back to the old protectionist/high tariff side. Add in the return of old fashioned (I’d say “failed”) industrial policy, and that’s “America First”-ism. It goes back to Truman at least; back to the 1st half of the 19th century mercantilism at most. Bernie provided a pro-union flavor of protectionism; Trump’s new spin was anti-unionism combined with protection from competition for old industries. You won’t find many economists other than Peter Navarro who think either flavor is a good idea. - Foreign policy: again, an idiosyncratic Trump blend. Kissingerian “real politik” (a focus on what alignments work best for America rather than the emphasis on democratization that flowed from Jimmy Carter to Bush 43), but without the broad conflict of ideology thinking that informed Cold War policy. It was almost more Monroe Doctrine than anything 20th Century: Russia, your natural domain is Eastern Europe to the Pacific; we’ll leave you alone as long as you don’t meddle in our half of the globe. As such it was a rejection of Republican strategy from Eisenhower through Mitt. - Immigration: it started out with a rational idea — the USA, unlike most developed countries, doesn’t so much pick and choose its immigrants as those immigrants pick and choose us. So maybe we move to more of the Canada/NZ points-based model for legal immigration, trying to attract high-value workers and deter low-value arrivals. But it dissolved into a general “immigration bad” narrative, whether legal or illegal, as Trump cozied up to the so-called white nationalist wing. There was a pro-USA compromise to be had early on (Trump’s pro-DACA sentiments had people dreaming), but the Muslim ban so poisoned the well that no bipartisan compromise could ever emerge. - Cultural issues. A very selfish conspicuous consumer who extolled a return to traditional moral values; a kind of “serial marriage and fatherhood and secularism is fine for people like me, but an unmitigated disaster for all those people like you.” I don’t deny the importance of government in leading on moral/social issues, but this is one area in which the messenger really needs to live it in order for the message to have an impact. - Fiscal policy. A total repudiation of the budget balancing obsession that was a Republican mantra since the time of Reagan. Cut taxes, keep spending, forget all about social security and Medicare reform since those are not popular with the electorate. It’s a mishmash of social, economic, and national security theories that may not even deserve the title of “theory.” America First had appeal as a slogan, but this incoherent mess is best described with a different neologism: Trumpism.

As I said to our other medical expert here: a sincere thanks. People want information (it’s a natural human reaction to a tragic event), and I’m glad we have people willing to share their expertise and experience. It is much better than relying on speculation and internet sources.

But what about the teams that may be screwed by handing the Vikings a win? Didn’t the NFL give teams a stern warning (hah!) about fielding a competitive team in the final week? (Was it the Pederson/Eagles thing?)

The quip “too soon” may apply here. It’s a laugh line when we talk about something that happened a long time ago, but it is a real thing. Everyone agrees that reconvening on Tuesday night to finish the game wasn’t reasonable. Yes, life will go on, and the Bills will go on. But we’re talking about whether it’s reasonable to require Hamlin’s teammates to return to business as usual: practice during the week, media availability, game 6 days later, etc, etc. And for the game itself: the kind of celebratory/party atmosphere: tailgates, drinking, all that … it just isn’t right yet. I don’t mean to say we shouldn’t play on Sunday, but I don’t really know how I (much less the team) feels about that.

The new game on the House floor: avoiding being seen in the same frame as freshman Rep., The Honorable George Santos or Whatever Your Real Name May Be. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/01/george-santos-congress-mccarthy-first-day.html

Right after Trump's very excellent much much much better than Obamacare comprehensive health care plan

Driving home last night from the bar where I was watching the game (I don’t think anyone felt like being there once the gravity of the injury started to sink in), I heard Rich Eisen doing the radio coverage. He told a story I’d never heard before. Howie Long had two boys playing college football - on different teams, one on offense, one on defense - and they were about to play each other. Eisen asked the typical question, “Howie, how do you feel about that?” He was probably expecting a funny answer - I can’t help cheering for both sides, etc. That’s not what he got. Howie said he felt a little sick about the whole thing. He said that on the line, “every play out there is like a car crash.” It’s brutal in the NFL even when it looks ordinary to us. And I think all his listeners understood exactly what Howie meant.

If the rules don’t allow for an exceptional response to an unprecedented event - a near death on the field of play - then we need new rulers. My solution: the game is declared no contest. If KC/Bills/Bengals wind up ties in the loss column, you do a lottery for seeding.