statsman

It just pisses me off. I remember driving to work, early one morning, and hearing of the collapse. As the day wore on, more news came out about the death toll and injuries. Texas offered to cancel the game (the B12 south had already been clinched), but the Ags insisted on playing. (Some said, “that’s what the dead students would have wanted”. No, idiot, they would have wanted to live, but they couldn’t have that, could they?). Mack Brown heavily encouraged those outside the two-deep to give blood. There are two competing narratives of the game. From the Texas side, it was a shambles from the time UT checked into their College Station Hotel (phone calls to players’ rooms all night, breakfast canceled with a late morning kick off), through several bad officiating calls helping the Ags (Ag Brian Gamble drew a 15 years penalty for laying Simms out while yards out of bounds; Slocum convinced the ref to pick up the flag). The Ags remember the game as Aggie spirit saving the day after a disaster by helping the Ags defeat Texas. The full culpability of the Ag campus in the bonfire collapse wouldn’t be known until several weeks later. Incompetents put in charge, warnings ignored, just a screwed up mess all the way around. Of course they revere that weekend as one of their greatest moments.

Those Goddamned stupid motherfuckers… https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/09/texas-am-bonfire-tradition/

I’m looking forward to the new wave of SEC trolls finding this board, settling in, and then interacting with our old B12 trolls. “What? Why are you posting about the OSU Cowboys? Nobody gives a shit about them! Whoo-Pig sooey!”

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-ceasefire-negotiations-northern-gaza-return-5d2597cc?st=bynlbpz2kivkhf5&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

Oil is a commodity. That means global prices affect us.

Funny. Iran feels the same way about the USS Vincennes shooting down a plane full of civilians. The US also killed an innocent family of ten with a drone strike, in a screwed up retaliation at ISIS, two years ago. Mistakes happen. They’re awful. Decent nations acknowledge them (Russia, on the other hand, still claims to not be at fault for shooting down the Dutch 777 or the Korean passenger plane)

I have probably posted this before, but… about 20 years ago, I was in a cross-functional meeting to plan a major new project. This one guy starts, “Let’s go around the room, say our name, and where we went to college. I’m Mike, and I went to Texas A&M”. The next guy, a respected company leader- “My name is John, and I got my GED in prison”. And that was the end of that foolishness.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/court/2024/04/04/482603/harding-street-raid-former-houston-police-officer-gerald-goines-reindicted-on-murder-charges/?amp=1

It’s just one of several boxes to check or not check. When Texas was in the same conference, the answer to the question, “Why does Texas play home and away every year with Baylor, TCU, TT, Rice, UH and SMU?” was “Because Texas has to”. That answer is gone. Now, the question is “Why would Texas schedule any of those schools? What does Texas get out of it?” I’m struggling to think of a reason…

No. Baylor (a school 90 minutes from Austin, and 90 minutes from DFW) and TT have stadiums that only hold about 50k. Texas needs at least 40k tickets. “that’s not how it works” because that’s how it never worked before. TT fans could be all kinds of asses in Lubbock, because Texas was required to play there every other year. These are “rivalries” created because of geographic convenience for scheduling over 100 years ago. If Hardin Simmons joined the SWC instead of Baylor, we would have been schlepping out to Abilene every other year. A proposal for a new realignment was offered upthread. Texas isn’t agreeing to anything like that unless its needs are met, or it is forced to. Ticket availability isn’t a good reason? Well, what is a good reason for TT and Texas, or Texas and TCU to play every year?

There’s a little more. Texas is a “big dog”,…that had its state elected leaders tell it when it could move conferences and who it had to take with it (leaving the B12 was a fluke of timing- Texas legislature being out of session, media contract winding down, Texas Ex as governor). Texas is a “big dog”,…that was in a conference led by haters. Which makes sense, because most of the members hated and resented Texas. Back to the above proposal- Al mentions that revenue could be split unevenly. OK, there is one more problem- UT is done playing games in state, where it is only allotted 6,000 seats for fans (when it could easily sell 40,000 seats to Longhorn fans).

I think you have to realize that Northwestern, Vandy, etc. understand that they get a benefit from the bell cows doing well. ISU was in a similar position, in the Big 8, which used to be nicknamed “The Big 2 and Little 6”. ISU understood that it benefited from OU and NU doing great. The SWC, and to a similar extent, the PAC were different. Those conferences were configured where the big schools (Texas, TAMU) considered the little schools’ locations their recruiting territory, breeding resentment at the little schools. Baylor fans, for example, resent Texas in a way foreign to ISU fans feelings about OU. Texas recruits Waco, and when Texas is doing well, Waco stores sell more Texas stuff than Baylor stuff. The small SWC schools have a shared interest in Texas being down. In the SWC, this manifested in the conference being OK with massive cheating, leaving it to the NCAA to clean up. A similar dynamic resulted in the Big 12. ISU may not have resented Texas, but Baylor, TCU and TT sure did. ISU and OSU certainly saw the opportunity to take advantage of with Texas down, circling those dates on the schedule. I’m sure some is Texas’ fault, primarily for allowing itself to falter, but the larger point remains- Northwestern doesn’t hate Michigan and Mississippi State doesn’t hate Alabama the way the Left Behinds hate Texas.

The deadly airstrike on a convoy of aid workers in Gaza reveals the challenges and shortcomings of the safety measures Israeli forces have in place to protect civilians in war. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/world-central-kitchen-israel-gaza-military-d08b3bde?st=joexi5hme7oiqyx&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

The Israeli drone team that killed seven aid workers lacked the evidence to order the strikes and twice violated the military’s operating rules, an Israeli military investigation found https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-to-allow-more-aid-into-gaza-after-biden-warning-over-u-s-support-49bc42e4?st=v362sr2qxf4viiw&reflink=share_mobilewebshare I know the description doesn’t match the link title. They haven’t updated the link title yet.

So, the presidents of Syracuse and West Virginia say, “This isn’t working! We need a new set up where we are in the top tier!” mmmm-okay….

Thanks. Then, I’m guessing a nation typically won’t have that happen in an active war.

I don’t believe this is CR, because I’m asking a procedural question, not a political one - In a parliamentary system, I know they have elections on a schedule, and that the coalition government can call early elections (only done when polls show opportune times). If a coalition breaks because a minority party makes a break from it, does that require a fresh general election?

President Biden is set to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as pressure mounts on Israel over the killing of aid workers in Gaza https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/biden-netanyahu-set-to-talk-as-gaza-aid-worker-deaths-add-to-pressure-on-israel-9dee3793?st=3ib9pj7mlwlsvt1&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

Ok. I’ve just seen it, all my life, described as “attempted genocide” of the Jews.

Israel’s problem isn’t solved by pushing Palestinians away. They are Iran’s proxies. Hamas has missiles because Iran supplies them (and to Hezbollah). Since we’re talking about Senitics here, can I ask about semantics? If driving a people away is “genocide”, can we then say that Germany (and most of Europe, and the Arab world of the mid 20th century) were successful in their genocide? Since they drove almost all of the Jews away?

France’s Macron once advocated dialogue with Russia but now wants to keep all military options open in Ukraine, unsettling NATO allies. https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/macron-france-russia-putin-b89d1177?st=x8c5u6gx36w4qe9&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

Israeli’s initial investigation into a strike that killed seven aid workers in Gaza found its forces had wrongly identified their vehicles as hostile targets https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-blames-misidentification-for-strike-that-killed-gaza-aid-workers-f88da70e?st=eigwknbie7duiy8&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

You don’t think mistakes happen? When ISIS blew up a dozen marines and 100 Afghans during the flight from Kabul, the U.S. responded by using a drone to blow up a car carrying an Afghan loyal to the U.S. and his family. You don’t think mistakes happen?

I’ve jogged for decades. I don’t carry any spray. The technique I use with angry barking dogs on the loose is: I stop, kneel low and start patting the ground and call them to me- “Here, boy! Here!” It confuses the hell out of them and they have always stopped. That said, I have seen some dogs behind fences or tied up on ropes that I wouldn’t rely on that to work.

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-iran-conflict-threatens-to-spill-into-open-warfare-1bd60453?st=hif5r8w81rfcoa3&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink